Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent condition. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> I say this presuming that here and there readers may be found who want to assess these half-dozen masterpieces rather than enjoy them to revel in them and finally to wonder at them. The writing of this book and the subsequent adventures of the manuscript during the thirteen years before it was pub- lished offer another literary puzzle to the critic. The clue to this puzzle may lie in the fact that Jane assured of her ability as a literary artist was out of key with the school of fiction which had held the fashion since her infancy; a fashion which tinctured even the greatness of Sir Walter Scott. She had no predecessor in fiction unless some degree of affinity may be conjectured with Laurence Sterne (at least in the matter of mood). Her dry humour her conciseness of manner her elegance of diction (and the latent scholarship and even formalism of phrasing) were quite out of temper with the prevailing melodrama of the day. The late Michael Sadleir has described that melodrama in his Introduction to Northanger Abbey (in The World’s Classics). The Gothic Romances flooded the libraries rolling in like three-decker galleons loaded with fustian and pseudo-sensibility. Most popular were Mrs Ann Radcliffe’s The Romance of the Forest and The Mysteries of Udolpho. These two books still have a lingering per- fume the same that obviously bewitched even Jane’s fastidious nose. For it is obvious that though she rebelled against the fashion she was not entirely out of sympathy with it. The very quality of her temperament so vigorous humorous and concise demanded a certain antidote. She could appreciate the vast gesture the vague scene the rhodomontade which were the stage properties of the novels that enriched the booksellers of the early nineteenth cen- tury. The Turneresque landscapes of Scott’s Waverley enchanted her because her genius denied her access to them as material for her own books. (OS)