Sabbatical Two: Bibliography
Guidebooks:
Adams, Tim (editor) : City Secrets, London
Marvelous little volume of tips from London’s culture-makers – architects, journalists, scholars, designers and chefs graciously share their favorite corners of London.
Kaplan, Rachel : Little-Known Museums in and around London
Just like it says – lots of things you won’t see in the larger guidebooks.
The completely fabulous National Trust HandbookWorth its weight in gold. Don’t leave home without it.
Reference and Biographies:
Oxford Book of Royal AnecdotesYou can learn a lot very quickly about a particular time in the English monarchy with this tasty volume. Beware – it’s hard to put down once you’ve picked it up.
Bell, Curtis and Fielding : Who’s Had WhoHugely entertaining history of… well, who’s had who. These are the writers of Blackadder, so if you like that, you’ll love this.
Daly, Gay : Pre-Raphaelites in LoveOverlook the cheesy title – this is actually a very well-done look at the women involved with the Pre-Raphaelites: Jane Morris, Elizabeth Siddons, Georgiana Burne-Jones among others. The web of relations between the women is developed with subtlety and warmth.
Oman, Carola : The Winter QueenPretty much the only full-length biography of Elizabeth of Bohemia. Oman overplays Elizabeth’s ditziness, but the research is essentially sound.
Entertainment:
Austen, Jane : Northanger AbbeyOh yes, Pride and Prejudice or Emma deserve their fame. But it’s this little early gem that’s my favorite Austen novel, a sly and witty send-up of Gothic novels and their heroines. We follow young Catherine Morland on her first visit “to all the difficulties and dangers of a six weeks’ residence in Bath.” (And Henry Tilney is the ONLY Austen hero I personally would want to marry!)
Behn, Aphra : Oroonoko and Other StoriesBased on Behn’s own experiences with slavery in colonial Guyana, Oroonoko was the Uncle Tom’s Cabin of England – it raised the awareness of people in the street to the heinous nature of the traffic in human beings. Other narratives deal with Aphra’s more typical ground, relations between men and women.
Benson, E.F. : Mapp and LuciaOne of six screamingly funny books about two bossy, pretentious, savagely social-climbing provincial ladies engaged in a war to the knife in a small town in southeastern England between the Wars.
Hill, Tobias : The Love of StonesMarvellously sure-footed first novel detailing the obsession of a young woman searching for the whereabouts of a legendary jewel called The Three Brethren.
Mitford, Nancy : Pursuit of Love/Love in a Cold ClimateMitford writes a disguised version of her own potty family and its vivid characters in these delightful novels, essential to understanding the English upper class between the wars.
Sayers, Dorothy L. : Gaudy NightThe quintessential Dorothy Sayers mystery – where no one gets murdered. Writer Harriet Vane is asked by her Oxford college to help them with a peculiar set of pranks and must come to terms with her feelings for Lord Peter Wimsey, the elegant amateur sleuth who saved her from a false accusation of murder in the earlier Strong Poison.
Warner, Sylvia Townsend : Lolly WillowesThe first Book of the Month Club book of the month. The delightfully subversive tale of an Edwardian spinster and how she emerges from the tyrannies of her well-meaning, conventional family.
Winterson, Jeanette : Sexing the CherryWinterson weaves together astonishing narratives about life in London before and during the Restoration – surreal, yet accessible, lush and taut all at once.
Wodehouse, P.G. : The Code of the Woosters, The Mating Season et al
Feckless Bertie Wooster gets pulled out of the soup again and again by his preternaturally perspicacious valet Jeeves. Always entertaining.
Woolf, Virginia: OrlandoCalled “the prettiest love-letter in the world,” Woolf wrote this extraordinary novel about love and gender for her then-lover Vita Sackville West. It’s been made into a marvelous movie starring the inimitable Tilda Swinton.