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Louisa Alcott’s Blood and Thunder Tales
Some years ago I gave a lecture to a local literary society, which I then repeated for the WEA. The subject was Louisa Alcott’s work outside of Little Women and we explored her love of writing gothic stories, as well as her experiences as a nurse during the American Civil War. Below is the first half of the lecture which introduces her gothic writing, which she referred to as her ‘blood and thunder tales.’
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Man-Size in Marble: A Tale for Halloween
Halloween is the perfect time of year for reading ghostly tales, and this offering from Edith Nesbit will not disappoint.
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Back to School with Anne of Avonlea
Fans of the eponymous orphan Anne Shirley will have probably first encountered her in L.M. Montgomery’s novel Anne of Green Gables, published in 1908. The publishers must have had faith in its potential as Lucy Maud Montgomery was tasked with writing a sequel before the print run of her first novel was completed. Thus, Anne of Avonlea arrived on the shelves in 1909 to great success.
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Elizabeth Gaskell and ‘Wives and Daughters’
Elizabeth Gaskell died in 1865 leaving behind a wide range of works – novels, novellas, short stories, poetry and non-fiction. Her final novel, Wives and Daughters lay unfinished, just shy of the final chapter or so.
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The Shadowy World of Edith Nesbit
Recently, I was fortunate to have a very small involvement with some bibliography research regarding the newly published Wordsworth collection of Edith Nesbit’s ghost stories. I also wrote a blog discussing some of her ghostly tales which you can read an excerpt of below. If you would like to read the full article, just follow the link in the usual way.
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Sherlock Holmes in 1924
This is from my Wordsworth Blog written last year to commemorate three Sherlock Holmes stories written in 1924. Sherlock Holmes is one of my favourites and I am sure to write more on his antics in the future.
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Robert Louis Stevenson in Bournemouth
Robert Louis Stevenson was only 44 years old when he died, yet during his short life he produced many works and lived in many places. He was born in Edinburgh in 1850 and died on the Pacific island of Samoa in 1894. In between, he lived in London, the French Riviera, Fontainebleu, Belgium, California (including Monteray and San Francisco), Bournemouth, the Adirondacks in New York State, and Hawaii. As may be apparent, he travelled extensively and often earned an income from his travel writing. Amidst this list of interesting and far flung places you may have noticed mention of Bournemouth, and it is this period of his life which most interests me, not least because it was a highly productive period during which he wrote many of his best known works. But how did he end up in Bournemouth?
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Kate Chopin: Two Stories
Kate Chopin was not a conventional woman. She was a professional writer at a time when it was unusual and somewhat irregular for a woman to have such an occupation. She was unconventional though, before she became a writer and shocked her in-laws with her behaviour which would have seemed most unladylike in New Orleans during the 1870s. This shocking behaviour consisted of expressing her opinions freely, smoking, and walking around the city unaccompanied.
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A Princess in the Attic
I first came across A Little Princess through the 1973 BBC adaptation and was immediately captivated by it. I am not sure exactly what drew me in but having recently returned to the original novel I realise I was a similar age to the gently heroic Sara Crewe when the narrative begins. Frances Hodgson Burnett’s tale of the experiences of young Sara, born in India and who at the tender age of seven arrives at Miss Minchin’s Select Seminary for Young Ladies in London, has remained in print since its first publication in 1905.
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Mary Elizabeth Braddon, ‘Eveline’s Visitant’
Mary Elizabeth Braddon was a contemporary of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, and yet is nowhere nearly as well known. If her name does spark any recognition, it is usually in connection with her novel Lady Audley’s Secret. Yet Braddon’s output during her life was prolific, often producing two novels a year, most of which were serialized in the popular magazines of the time. She also wrote plays, poetry and short stories. Curiously though, it is Lady Audley’s Secret and Aurora Floyd, both published in 1862, which have received most of the academic attention over the years, despite the fact that her publishing career began in 1860 with Three Times Dead and ended with Mary, published posthumously in 1916.
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‘Lois the Witch’ and Elizabeth Gaskell
This is an extract of my first blog written for Wordsworth Editions. I have added a link to their site if you would like to read the full article. The above image is the statue of Roger Conant, first citizen of Salem, which stands outside the Salem Witch Museum in Massachusetts, which I was fortunate enough to visit back in 2018.
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Congratulations on setting up the blog, well done!
Literary Likes 
Excellent first article