strange and random happenstance

The second time I went to New York it was more than just a rushed trip tacked onto a family vacation to Washington. The second time was magical, going to all the museums and looking at all the art I'd spent years reading about. During that trip I discovered The Frick Collection, which is located right on fifth avenue and was the home of Henry Clay Frick. It's not just the art that is amazing, though seriously you will be shocked by the number of pieces you recognize from Ingres to Renoir to Vermeer to Rembrandt, but the house itself is a work of art preserved in time. It's like really cheap time travel! You feel as if Edith Wharton were about to hold court over high tea in the luxurious indoor garden. Years later when I went back to New York I discovered the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, which is located in the Andrew Carnegie Mansion. Again I was walking in another era. These homes were built by the New York upper crust as they slowly started moving to the Upper East Side. I was so pleasantly surprised when I picked up Lauren Willig's latest book, The English Wife, to slip back into this world again. A world of excess and elegance, fortunes lost and gained, and secrets, but all contained within this other time. So whether you knew about Lauren Willig's new book yet or not, I think you can feel the theme month coming on right? The English Wife is Lauren's fourth stand-alone and therefore a fourth theme month was not just necessary but vital. It's in another time and another world, but one I hope you've been wanting to explore as much as I have over the years. 

But enough from me, let's hear from Lauren as we welcome in Willig Winter!

"When Miss Eliza asked me if I would recommend six or seven books I’d used in writing The English Wife for a companion read, I thought, easy peasy!

Then I looked at my bookshelf.

I’d forgotten just how much went into The English Wife. My research pile included book-length accounts of infamous murder cases in turn of the century New York (of which there were more than you would expect), oversized coffee table books with pictures of mansions and marquetry and jewels and gowns, extensive histories of Dutch New York, biographies of robber barons, sociological studies of nineteenth century women’s charitable organizations, memoirs of nineteenth century authors and socialites, unpublished dissertations about specific towns in the Hudson Valley in the mid to late nineteenth century, and books on topics that I can’t go into without giving plot twists away.

And that’s just the New York end of things. We won’t even get into all the Newport research, the gossipy accounts of past residents and glossy pictures of “cottages”. A chunk of the book takes place in England and a smaller chunk in France, so I also have shelves and shelves of books on topics like theatre in Victorian England, monographs about Paris in the Belle Epoque, and biographies of Proust. I may have gotten just a little carried away while reading up for this book....

So, in the interest of brevity, I’m sticking to the New York-centric books for this particular list and keeping it to non-fiction. With one exception at the end. You’ll see why.

At some point, I’ll try to put up a more comprehensive list on my website. If I don’t get crushed beneath a giant pile of research books along the way." - Lauren Willig

Literally the seven books Lauren has selected look beyond tempting, but in the interest of full disclosure, unlike Ashford April (The Asford Affair), This Summer (That Summer), and Jazzy July (The Other Daughter), I have been unable to read them all and write reviews because this year has been a personal as well as a global dumpster fire. But my guilt is your reward, because this means I feel obliged to do a giveaway!  

Giveaway Prize:
A copy of The English Wife personalized TO YOU from Lauren's tour stop at Murder by the Book in Houston on January 17th, 2018

The Rules:
1. Open to EVERYONE (for clarification, this means international too).

2. Please make sure I have a way to contact you if your name is drawn, either your blogger profile or a link to your website/blog or you could even include your email address with your comment(s) or email me.

3. Giveaway ends Sunday, December 31st at 11:59PM CST (Yes, that's New Year's Eve folks!)

4. How to enter: Just comment on this post for a chance to win!

5. And for those addicted to getting extra entries:

• +1 for answering the question: What is your favorite house turned museum?
• +2 for becoming a follower
• +10 if you are already a follower
• +10 for each time you advertise this contest - blog post, instagram (@miss.eliza), twitter (@eliza_lefebvre), etc. (but you only get credit for the first post in each platform, so tweet all you like, and I thank you for it, but you'll only get the +10 once from twitter). Also please leave a link! 
• +10 for each comment you leave on other Willig Winter posts with something other than "I hope I win!" 

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 7 comments  

Labels: Ashford April, Cooper Hewitt, Edith Wharton, Giveaway, Jazzy July, Lauren Willig, New York, That Summer, The Ashford Affair, The English Wife, The Frick, The Other Daughter, This Summer, Willig Winter

So my literary love of Lauren Willig should by now be fairly obvious. Even if I didn't have two months this year devoted to her books, as well as the year long Pink for All Seasons re-read that has been going on since last September, I hope my previous efforts haven't been overlooked by my readers. Back when Lauren first said her third stand-alone would be set in the 20s I might have gotten more then a little excited. The 20s is an era that I just have a natural affinity for. Perhaps it's because I was raised on stories of my grandmother in her youth being a rebellious flapper and sneaking out of school only to show up in a cell in Chicago after being detained after a raid on a local speakeasy. Or perhaps that mobsters held a special appeal. What started as a love for a distinctly American era has grown more and more to encompass the unique "Bright Young People" era of England. Therefore, even if the two previous theme months dedicated to Lauren's first two stand-alones, Ashford April and This Summer, didn't exist, well, Jazzy July would have happened. I also illogically insist that her publishers knew of my struggle trying to find a good title for my theme month when the book was slated for a May release and moved it back just so Jazzy July could exist. I did say it was illogical.

What I love about doing these specific theme months is that it gives me insight into Lauren's process and into her finished work. I shoot her an email and she shoots me an email back suggesting books to read that inspired or informed her newest book. I narrow the selection down, in this case a nice balance of biographical, historical, and contemporary books, and give her the final list, she writes a little something about them, and then I sit down and devour them, ending in a review. This year I decided to do something a little different. Usually I sit down, read Lauren's book, write the review, then go on to read all the other books, because I don't want any outside source tainting my reading of Lauren's book. But the last two times I did this I noticed that re-reading the book later after having read these other books gave Lauren's book even greater depth. And in the case of The Ashford Affair, I feel like I might have done the book a disservice with my review. So I had a new idea. I've read The Other Daughter, I mean, seriously, there was no waiting on reading that book. BUT as I write this I have still to write my review. I jotted down notes and have a vague outline, but so it will remain until I read all the other books for this month. I then plan on re-reading The Other Daughter and finally writing my review. Personally, I don't think in this instance my opinion is going to change, but I do feel my understanding of the world Lauren has brought back to life already expanding. This is going to be a fun month and I hope you'll join me. Flapper costume optional. Mainly because I don't think I could fit the one I have anymore.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Ashford April, Bright Young People, Chicago, Flappers, Jazzy July, Lauren Willig, Pink for All Seasons, Stand-Alones, That Summer, The Ashford Affair, The Other Daughter, Theme Month, This Summer

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
Published by: Oxford University Press
Publication Date: 1848
Format: Hardcover, 486 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Wildfell Hall has a new resident. A mysterious widow and her young son who want nothing to do with the outside world. The outside world disagrees. The nosey neighbors must know everything they can about the mysterious Mrs. Graham. Young Gilbert Markham wants to know everything but for a very different reason, he is inexorably drawn to the young widow and cannot understand why she remains aloof and detached, craving solitude over companionship and love. But soon Helen Graham realizes that her feelings for Gilbert mean that she must disclose her past so that he can move on and realize their love is doomed, and not just because her husband isn't dead.

Mrs. Helen Graham is really Mrs. Helen Huntington, the wife of a cruel man who has more vices then she could enumerate. She has fled her husband because he was trying to imprint their your son with his own dubious morals.  Helen could have suffered anything if it was just herself that was the target of Huntongton's malice, she stubbornly married him after all, but their son is another matter. After years of feeling trapped and hunted in her own home, can she remake her life, or will the old one haunt her?

Sometimes I am a very contrary person, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a case in point. Instead of reading the book before watching the miniseries I decided to watch the miniseries first which then put me off the book. For some reason I view the steadfast rule of reading the book first not applying to the Brontes. I had seen so many adaptations of their books prior to ever picking one up that they are grandfathered into my weird reading habits with this clause. Yet I still question how an adaptation with Toby Stephens and James Purefoy, not to mention Rupert Graves, Pam Ferris, and Paloma Baeza, could be so bad. It was dull and lifeless and I remember barely being able to finish it.

The miniseries turned me off the book and because of this the book has languished for years waiting for the time when I would pick it up and love it. I seriously can not think of any reasonable excuse why it took me this long to read it. I was under so many misconceptions about this book that I should have just trusted to my gut which tells me that Anne Bronte is awesome. I am serious when I say that I think Anne might just be my favorite Bronte. This isn't just me routing for the underdog, though she is the least embraced of the sisters, this is totally to do with how awesome her books are.

There's a part of me that knows Anne's desire for "truth" in this novel comes from a desire to counter the pro bad boy image her sisters had created in their works. But there's a deeper part of me that wonders if she's not just messing with Charlotte and Emily a little. Who, given the chance, wouldn't try to mess with their siblings a little? Her sisters did everything to make this bad boy redeemable by love trope and then in comes Anne and blasts them out of the water. Huntington is a bad boy to equal Heathcliff and Rochester, but love is unable to sway him. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is an opus to the irredeemable. I can just picture the sisters sitting around their fireplace on a cold night in Haworth talking about their dream men and Anne just looking askance at them and plotting how to prove them wrong, preferably in three volumes, she was, after all, a silent plotter. I don't think anyone has ever summed this up better then Kate Beaton in her "Hark, a Vagrant" comic, "Dude Watchin' with The Brontes" so I won't attempt to and move onto other things.

So, other things! What I find amazing in this book, and in fact all the work by the Brontes, is how they were able to capture an entire world from outside their cloistered lives and put it on the page. It just goes to show that sometimes writing what you know isn't the only answer, but writing what you feel is. Over a hundred and fifty years later this book pulses with life. It was criticized at the time for being too repulsive and scandalous, but that is why it resonates till this day. It is the truth of human nature and fallibility that Anne sought out to capture and did. Infidelity, adultery, drugs, drink, games of chance, everything not written about in literature of it's day that still causes so much heartbreak.

The degraded life that Helen lives made me connect to her because, not only did I pity her, I worried that she wouldn't make it out of this situation, ironic because having watched the miniseries I knew the outcome, but still I worried. But as to the debauchery, one problem I have always had and mentioned repeatedly in literature set during this time is the overuse of the Hellfire Club. It seems if you are debauched during the Regency or early Victorian eras you therefore have to belong to some incarnation of said Hellfire Club. But here I make an exception. Usually the Hellfire Club is just a trope used by modern writers, as in those still currently writing. Think of the spunk it took for a little ex governess to allude to the Hellfire Club in a book written in 1848! You Anne Bronte are the exception that proves the rule! When you wrote those few lines alluding to fire and brimstone it was not yet hackneyed, it was controversial. I wish I could tell you how much you mean to me and literature, this poorly written review will have to suffice.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Anne Bronte, BBC Miniseries, Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell, Emily Bronte, Hark a Vagrant, Hellfire Club, James Purefoy, Mary Barton, That Summer, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, This Summer, Toby Stephens

At the beginning of last month, after a horrid June I might add, I had a wonderful email waiting for me in my inbox which made me instantly know that July was going to be a far far better month. The email was from the lovely Lauren Willig telling me about an idea that was bandied about on her website and that the St. Martin's folks liked. The idea was for a "That Summer Read Along." Read alongs are a big trend right now online, whether it's a combination re-read/read along in anticipation of the newest volume in a series, or just a virtual book club, they are très chic. What makes them better then book clubs is that you can have immediate discussions with people all over the world and by having a little structure, like with moderator, or with a certain number of chapters per week you get to read together at the same pace instead of having people skip ahead or fall behind. Which brings me to the That Summer Read Along!

Starting today, August 1st, there is going to be an official That Summer Read Along on facebook. There will be giveaways, prizes (one person who signs up by Monday, August 4th will be chosen to receive a signed copy of The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla, a five star book if ever there was one), discussions, answers to burning questions, you name it! I am honored to be one of the four moderators of this bookish event. I am joined by Ashley of The Bubblebath Reader, Christina of Austenprose, and Céline, an ardent Willig fan. To read Lauren's full announcement, head on over to her website, join us on Twitter (#ThatSummerReadAlong) or just join us on facebook! I'll be the moderator for the third week (August 16th-22nd), because all my favorite parts (which was hard to pick in a book with so much awesome in it) of That Summer happen to happen then (happenstance I tell you!) Re-reading the book and taking copious notes was a joy, as was my theme month "This Summer," and I can't wait to discuss this book with all you fellow readers! Also, don't think I won't be popping in all month to talk about the book even though I only moderate one week! I can't wait and hope to see you all there!

And speaking of read alongs... I met fellow That Summer moderator, book addict, and blogger Ashley through our mutual love and admiration of Lauren Willig's Pink Carnation series. Ashley started her blog, The Bubblebath Reader, back in January, featuring many of the authors I love, so obviously you must now all go and follow her blog! She was kicking around the idea of having a year long Pink Carnation re-read/read along because the final (weep wail) volume, The Lure of the Moonflower, is out in a year and it will be the twelfth book... exactly enough for a year of Pink. I was more then a little excited by this idea, and totally in love with her proposed title of "Pink for All Seasons." I quickly said that not only was I for it, but I might have begged to be a part of it, quickly claiming next April and The Orchid Affair as my book, and then going so far as to design the banner... because once a graphic designing book lover gets an idea in her head she can't let it go! Starting in a month, aka September, aka right after the That Summer Read Along ends and you are feeling bereft, the re-read/read along begins! So I ask you to join me and Ashley reading a volume of the Pink Carnation series each month, with lots of fun discussions, casting ideas, giveaways, and who knows what else we'll think of, as we count down to the final (weep wail) book!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Austenprose, Facebook, Lauren Willig, Pink Carnation, Pink for All Seasons, Re-Read, Read Along, That Summer, The Bubblebath Reader, The Lure of the Moonflower, The Orchid Affair, This Summer

That Summer by Lauren Willig
Published by: St. Martin's Press
Publication Date: June 3rd, 2014
Format: Hardcover, 352 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
" 2009: When Julia Conley hears that she has inherited a house outside London from an unknown great-aunt, she assumes it’s a joke. She hasn't been back to England since the car crash that killed her mother when she was six, an event she remembers only in her nightmares. But when she arrives at Herne Hill to sort through the house—with the help of her cousin Natasha and sexy antiques dealer Nicholas—bits of memory start coming back. And then she discovers a pre-Raphaelite painting, hidden behind the false back of an old wardrobe, and a window onto the house's shrouded history begins to open...

1849: Imogen Grantham has spent nearly a decade trapped in a loveless marriage to a much older man, Arthur. The one bright spot in her life is her step-daughter, Evie, a high-spirited sixteen year old who is the closest thing to a child Imogen hopes to have. But everything changes when three young painters come to see Arthur's collection of medieval artifacts, including Gavin Thorne, a quiet man with the unsettling ability to read Imogen better than anyone ever has. When Arthur hires Gavin to paint her portrait, none of them can guess what the hands of fate have set in motion.

From modern-day England to the early days of the Preraphaelite movement, Lauren Willig's That Summer takes readers on an un-put-downable journey through a mysterious old house, a hidden love affair, and one woman’s search for the truth about her past—and herself."

I think by now you will have realized that this is your mandatory reading for this summer, right?

A Barricade in Hell by Jaime Lee Moyer
Published by: Tor Books
Publication Date: June 3rd, 2014
Format: Hardcover, 336 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"In Jaime Lee Moyer's Barricade in Hell, Delia Martin has been gifted (or some would say cursed) with the ability to peer across to the other side. Since childhood, her constant companions have been ghosts. She used her powers and the help of those ghosts to defeat a twisted serial killer terrorizing her beloved San Francisco. Now it's 1917—the threshold of a modern age—and Delia lives a peaceful life with Police Captain Gabe Ryan.

That peace shatters when a strange young girl starts haunting their lives and threatens Gabe. Delia tries to discover what this ghost wants as she becomes entangled in the mystery surrounding a charismatic evangelist who preaches pacifism and an end to war. But as young people begin to disappear, and audiences display a loyalty and fervor not attributable to simple persuasion, that message of peace reveals a hidden dark side.

As Delia discovers the truth, she faces a choice—take a terrible risk to save her city, or chance losing everything?"

Looks so good, also love the cover art correlation to the first book. LOVE a unified look!

Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King
Published by: Scribner
Publication Date: June 3rd, 2014
Format: Hardcover, 448 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"In a mega-stakes, high-suspense race against time, three of the most unlikely and winning heroes Stephen King has ever created try to stop a lone killer from blowing up thousands.

In the frigid pre-dawn hours, in a distressed Midwestern city, hundreds of desperate unemployed folks are lined up for a spot at a job fair. Without warning, a lone driver plows through the crowd in a stolen Mercedes, running over the innocent, backing up, and charging again. Eight people are killed; fifteen are wounded. The killer escapes.

In another part of town, months later, a retired cop named Bill Hodges is still haunted by the unsolved crime. When he gets a crazed letter from someone who self-identifies as the “perk” and threatens an even more diabolical attack, Hodges wakes up from his depressed and vacant retirement, hell-bent on preventing another tragedy.

Brady Hartfield lives with his alcoholic mother in the house where he was born. He loved the feel of death under the wheels of the Mercedes, and he wants that rush again. Only Bill Hodges, with a couple of highly unlikely allies, can apprehend the killer before he strikes again. And they have no time to lose, because Brady’s next mission, if it succeeds, will kill or maim thousands.

Mr. Mercedes is a war between good and evil, from the master of suspense whose insight into the mind of this obsessed, insane killer is chilling and unforgettable."

Stephen King equals a good summer read!

My New Friend is So Fun! by Mo Willems
Published by: Disney-Hyperion
Publication Date: June 3rd, 2014
Format: Hardcover, 64 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"Gerald is careful. Piggie is not.
Piggie cannot help smiling. Gerald can.
Gerald worries so that Piggie does not have to.

Gerald and Piggie are best friends.

In My New Friend Is So Fun!, Piggie has found a new friend! But is Gerald ready to share?"

I adore Piggy and Elephant!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A Barricade in Hell, Jamie Lee Moyer, Lauren Willig, Mo Willems, Mr. Mercedes, Piggy and Elephant, Stephen King, That Summer, This Summer

Effie: The Passionate Lives of Effie Gray, John Ruskin and John Everett Millais by Suzanne Fagence Cooper
Published by: St. Martin's Griffin
Publication Date: May 1st, 2010
Format: Paperback, 288 Pages
Rating: ★
To Buy

"Years and years ago, my grandmother took me to an off-off-Broadway play about Effie Ruskin’s love affair with John Everett Millais. It was rather odd viewing for a ten year old, but it stuck with me somehow. I can still remember the red plush seats of the theatre and the Victorian parlor set on stage.

I hadn’t realized quite how much it had stuck with me until my editor asked me, after The Ashford Affair, what the next book was going to be, and I found myself burbling, “I want to write a book about a love affair between an unhappily married Victorian woman and a Preraphaelite artist.” My heroine is very different from Effie—and my hero, Gavin Thorne, was based more on William Holman Hunt than on Millais—but Ruskin was certainly a major influence on the character of my heroine’s husband." - Lauren Willig

Effie Grey thought that in marrying the erudite author and art critic John Ruskin that she was entering a life of parties and soirees peopled by the elite of London. Instead this young Scotch girl entered a loveless marriage where she was repeatedly berated and belittled not just by her husband but by her in-laws as well. She suffered through six years of daily horrors but was willing to accept her fate because it was the life she had chosen. But then John Everett Millais showed up in her life. They had once met at a dance years ago, before their lives took different paths, a meeting Millais remembered well. Those paths would converge when Ruskin took Millais under his wing. The two men working together and even vacationing together meant the young Effie and Everett where often thrown together, perhaps by Ruskin's doing, and love soon stirred in their hearts. Effie had the grounds to do something unheard of in Victorian England. Effie could leave Ruskin because their marriage was unconsummated and therefore was not a real marriage at all. With Everett's encouragement, she took this unheard of step to reclaim her life. But in trading one man for another, was Effie able to get what she wanted or was she stifled yet again? 

There are two ways in which this biography could have worked. One would have been to write more in the style of Philippa Gregory and make it a fictionalized biography though as thoroughly based in fact as possible. The other would have been to go more scholarly and linger on details and events. Instead Effie is a book that leaves you wondering why you are reading a book obviously dumbed down for the masses. At times the writing style shifts into a conversational conspiratorial style only to be followed up with dull facts and figures. I just wanted to shake the author and tell her to pick a style, any style. This mishmash of styles gave me extreme dissatisfaction and at times annoyed me to the point of wanting to throw the book. I've read my fair share of art history books and biographies but I don't think I've ever been this bored and frustrated by a book that combines two passions of mine.

At a little over two hundred pages, minus all the appendices, Suzanne Fagence Cooper has written little more then a fleshed out outline for a book. I got no sense of the three people one who this book hinges. In fact, Ruskin, Millais, and Effie, seemed nothing more then cardboard cut outs that occasionally mimicked Victorian stereotypes, but usually remained two dimensional. I'm sorry but two dimensional characters can not, by definition, have passion, so right there the title of the book is wrong. There's a part of me that just wishes to rewrite this whole book. Cooper had unheard of access to documents that have never been seen and the soapy miniseries Desperate Romantics did a better job of making these people flesh and blood in their minimal screen time then a scholar whose life is the Pre-Raphaelites. The fact that the secondary family members and friends were far more interesting then the subjects of the book is a sign that your book isn't working, just so you know for future reference.

But it's not just the writing style that is irksome. The structure of the book is such that I have a feeling I plot out my book reviews more then the author did this book. She relied too much on the gimmickry of using Millais artwork as chapter headings, work that is not included in the book, but more on that later, then bothering to realize her timeline was fucked. There is no way to capture her structure then by saying it's wibbly wobbly timey wimey. I get why Cooper starts out with a little flash forward to Effie leaving Ruskin, because it gives the beginning of the book a thrust, an event, a crisis we are building to. We only cover twenty-seven years in the first eight chapters, most of those concentrating on the six to seven years of Ruskin and Effie together, leaving us five chapters to cover the remaining forty-two years of her life, of which two chapters don't even deal with Effie, the supposed topic of this book. And it's these remaining five chapters I have the most issue with. They jump around and go forwards and backwards over events from different points of view and at different times. I have no freakin' idea of a coherent timeline of events in Effie's life other then she had tons of children. If there was just some through line, some way to sort things out into order instead of writing in such a way that it feels like Cooper forgot to tell part of her story and instead of going back and adding it in in the appropriate spot, she just wrote it into the section of the book she was on even if it made no sense, then I might have at least come to grips with the book.

Adding to the issues of the book making no sense is the fact that Effie and Millais really had too many children, and Effie too many siblings, and couple that with the propensity for using the same names in different branches of the family and you are at sea. Not to mention all the children had nicknames and while Cooper claims she will use the same naming conventions throughout the book, she does not, not that this is a surprise given the grammatical errors and the abysmal mess that is the appendices. I hope she knows there are standards for appendices, you can't sight something differently each time... which ties back in with the naming issues. Effie's eldest daughter is Effie... yep, this wasn't fun, because Cooper would quite often forget to say Effie the younger and so, who knows which Effie was which. There reached a point pretty early on when I realized I didn't care. Also, the multiple Everetts, the eldest son's nickname being Evie, which, when you are reading fast, as you do with books you are growing more and more in hate with and longing for the time when you can write a scathing review, well, it too reads like Effie. But again, what does this all matter. All these people, all their lives, I couldn't care less about any of them as they are portrayed by Cooper.

Now I must finally vent on a personal pet peeve. Graphics! I'll first just state I hate this cover with a passion. You have one of the greatest painters of ALL TIME as your subject and he painted his wife quite often and you have a crappy stock photo of a girl with ill fitting gloves. If there's one thing I learned, Effie loved her clothes and those gloves wouldn't do. Are you trying to appeal to the common demographic who you might lure to see the upcoming movie by making it look not about art? Cause right there, you're pissing me off with underestimating me, but then again, the book was written at such a basic level, perhaps the people who this book appeals to will find it fascinating, ie, not me. Yet this little cover rant isn't my main issue. My main issue is that when you have a book about artwork you MUST include pictures of ALL THE WORK! Yes, there are some pieces featured, but Cooper goes into great detail annoyingly waxing her own views on Millais' work only to not have the work included in the book. You talk about it, we have the right to see it. You can't get printing rights or some other snafu that doesn't let you include the art, you omit that section wherein you tried to color my views of the work with yours. Here's an idea lady, you go off and write your bland pap for the unwashed masses who hope to seem educated in picking up this paltry tome, and I'll avoid you and read fascinating works by real scholars.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Artwork, Desperate Romantics, Effie, John Everett Millais, Lauren Willig, Philippa Gregory, Pre-Raphaelite, Ruskin, Suzanne Fagence Cooper, That Summer, This Summer, Victorian, William Holman Hunt

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
Published by: Oxford University Press
Publication Date: 1848
Format: Hardcover, 486 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy (different edition then one reviewed)

"I have to confess: I loved this book as a teenager (an oppressed heroine fleeing from an abusive husband! A devoted hero who sees the good in the reclusive heroine! An adorable little moppet of a boy!), but when I was researching That Summer, I decided to watch the BBC version, since the costumes are exactly the right time period for me (and, yes, I may have a little weakness for BBC costume dramas). The heroine in the film version irked me. And now I can’t quite separate the two.

Anyhow, now that I’ve got that out of the way….

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was a seminal work for me on the way to That Summer because, like Mary Barton, it was published in 1848. Unlike Mary Barton, it deals with the propertied classes with which my heroine, Imogen, would have been familiar. Like my Imogen, the heroine of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Helen, fancies herself in love in her youth, marries unwisely and then is forced to live out the consequences.

This is a theme that fascinates me. Remember your crushes in your teens? Remember the unwise romantic choices you made? What if you’d married one of them? And found yourself owned by that man, his property under the law, with no legal identity, no independent means, no recourse?

Sends a chill down your spine, doesn’t it?" - Lauren Willig

Wildfell Hall has a new resident. A mysterious widow and her young son who want nothing to do with the outside world. The outside world disagrees. The nosey neighbors must know everything they can about the mysterious Mrs. Graham. Young Gilbert Markham wants to know everything but for a very different reason, he is inexorably drawn to the young widow and cannot understand why she remains aloof and detached, craving solitude over companionship and love. But soon Helen Graham realizes that her feelings for Gilbert mean that she must disclose her past so that he can move on and realize their love is doomed, and not just because her husband isn't dead.

Mrs. Helen Graham is really Mrs. Helen Huntington, the wife of a cruel man who has more vices then she could enumerate. She has fled her husband because he was trying to imprint their your son with his own dubious morals.  Helen could have suffered anything if it was just herself that was the target of Huntongton's malice, she stubornly married him after all, but their son is another matter. After years of feeling trapped and hunted in her own home, can she remake her life, or will the old one haunt her?

Sometimes I am a very contrary person, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a case in point. Instead of reading the book before watching the miniseries I decided to watch the miniseries first which then put me off the book. For some reason I view the steadfast rule of reading the book first not applying to the Brontes. I had seen so many adaptations of their books prior to ever picking one up that they are grandfathered into my weird reading habits with this clause. Yet I still question how an adaptation with Toby Stephens and James Purefoy, not to mention Rupert Graves, Pam Ferris, and Paloma Baeza, could be so bad. It was dull and lifeless and I remember barely being able to finish it.

The miniseries turned me off the book and because of this the book has languished for years waiting for the time when I would pick it up and love it. I seriously can not think of any reasonable excuse why it took me this long to read it. I was under so many misconceptions about this book that I should have just trusted to my gut which tells me that Anne Bronte is awesome. I am serious when I say that I think Anne might just be my favorite Bronte. This isn't just me routing for the underdog, though she is the least embraced of the sisters, this is totally to do with how awesome her books are.

There's a part of me that knows Anne's desire for "truth" in this novel comes from a desire to counter the pro bad boy image her sisters had created in their works. But there's a deeper part of me that wonders if she's not just messing with Charlotte and Emily a little. Who, given the chance, wouldn't try to mess with their siblings a little? Her sisters did everything to make this bad boy redeemable by love trope and then in comes Anne and blasts them out of the water. Huntington is a bad boy to equal Heathcliff and Rochester, but love is unable to sway him. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is an opus to the irredeemable. I can just picture the sisters sitting around their fireplace on a cold night in Haworth talking about their dream men and Anne just looking askance at them and plotting how to prove them wrong, preferably in three volumes, she was, after all, a silent plotter. I don't think anyone has ever summed this up better then Kate Beaton in her "Hark, a Vagrant" comic, "Dude Watchin' with The Brontes" so I won't attempt to and move onto other things.

So, other things! What I find amazing in this book, and in fact all the work by the Brontes, is how they were able to capture an entire world from outside their cloistered lives and put it on the page. It just goes to show that sometimes writing what you know isn't the only answer, but writing what you feel is. Over a hundred and fifty years later this book pulses with life. It was criticized at the time for being too repulsive and scandalous, but that is why it resonates till this day. It is the truth of human nature and fallibility that Anne sought out to capture and did. Infidelity, adultery, drugs, drink, games of chance, everything not written about in literature of it's day that still causes so much heartbreak.

The degraded life that Helen lives made me connect to her because, not only did I pity her, I worried that she wouldn't make it out of this situation, ironic because having watched the miniseries I knew the outcome, but still I worried. But as to the debauchery, one problem I have always had and mentioned repeatedly in literature set during this time is the overuse of the Hellfire Club. It seems if you are debauched during the Regency or early Victorian eras you therefore have to belong to some incarnation of said Hellfire Club. But here I make an exception. Usually the Hellfire Club is just a trope used by modern writers, as in those still currently writing. Think of the spunk it took for a little ex governess to allude to the Hellfire Club in a book written in 1848! You Anne Bronte are the exception that proves the rule! When you wrote those few lines alluding to fire and brimstone it was not yet hackneyed, it was controversial. I wish I could tell you how much you mean to me and literature, this poorly written review will have to suffice.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Anne Bronte, BBC Miniseries, Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell, Emily Bronte, Hark a Vagrant, Hellfire Club, James Purefoy, Mary Barton, That Summer, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, This Summer, Toby Stephens

Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell
Published by: Everyman's Library
Publication Date: 1848
Format: Hardcover, 390 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

"In my research phase, I like to get my hands on anything my characters might have read, both to pick up on the slang and physical details of the day, but also so I know what my characters’ cultural landscape is like. Mary Barton created a huge stir when it came out in 1848, detailing, as it did, the life of the poor in Manchester. My historical heroine scandalizes her staid sister-in-law by reading Mary Barton.

It also provided me with inspiration for the background of my hero, Gavin Thorne, who grew up poor on the streets of Manchester and begged and stole his way to the Royal Academy.

Even after all this time, Mary Barton is still a multi-hanky read. (Or a box of tissues, if we’re being modern about it.)

Of course, you could always just skip straight to North and South…." - Lauren Willig

Mary Barton's life isn't easy. Even before she lost her mother and her unborn sibling, she had lost a brother and her aunt had run off. Mary's life is just her and her father and a few close friends like the Wilsons. The Wilsons have had their fair share of loses as well, if not more then the Bartons. Young Mary works hard at a seamstresses, supplementing her father's income from the mills, and when he's laid off, being the only source of income, and a meagre one at that. Most days the only thought is whether to spend money on food that will barely stave off the hunger, or spend it on opium to take away the pain. But the father and daughter still have reasons to live. John Barton is heavily active in the local unions trying to get fair wages for his fellow workers, while Mary is for a time happily the center of a love triangle, where one of her suitors is the son of a mill owner. But as the times get harder and John is out of work longer and longer, the thought of rivals in love does little to comfort Mary when she realizes she has been playing a fool with other's hearts. Her own heart might just break when a shocking murder happens in Manchester and she might just be the cause of it.

For 19th century women writers you can't do better then Jane Austen and the Brontes. There's a reason why all their books are still classics to this day. Yet sometimes Austen is too perfect with her happily ever afters, which Charlotte Bronte dissed as lacking passion, the feel of blood being pumped through a beating heart. Whereas the Brontes, Emily in particular, could be a bit bleak. That's where Elizabeth Gaskell enters in. When I first read Wives and Daughters I thought to myself how it was such a happy blend of the two extremes of these other popular authors. With Elizabeth Gaskell, the romance of Austen is tempered with the bleakness of the Brontes. What results is a happy, yet realistic, middle. The harshness and horrors of the world aren't covered up or hidden behind lacy curtains while the heroine sits and daintily sips tea in a parlor. Life isn't extremes, it's not all roses and it's not all bleak moors. Elizabeth Gaskell's work feels more relatable, more real by her having the good mixed equally with the bad.

But I was sorely tried when starting Mary Barton to find the balance Gaskell is known for. For much of the book you aren't just inundated with the depressive lives and the horrors of Manchester, you are drowning in it. If, at any time in your life, you're feeling a little too happy and content, pick up Mary Barton and I guarantee that you will be in a nice depressive state in minutes flat. The sorrow of the book is so overwhelming that at times I wondered if I could go on, with the book that is. There's stillbirths, typhus, drug addiction, prostitution, destitution, stalking, murder, starvation, delirium, blindness, strokes, and this is just off the top of my head! Death, death and more death, spiraling ever downward.

But what shocked me is, when you think about it, these struggles are still ongoing. People are still starving, still dying. There are constant arguments about raising the minimum wage, of what to do with the homeless. So many of us live in a bubble that we just don't see. We don't dwell on the starving children because they are easy to forget in our daily lives filled with immaterial concerns. I can't imagine the sensation this book caused in it's day by not sugar coating life. Did this book provide a wake up call for Victorians? Because if it did we sorely need a reminder in this day and age. We need a modern Gaskell or Dickens to come along and shake the tree. You can see why they were friends because they believed in showing the real underbelly of the world that most don't see everyday, if ever. If you do get severely depressed at least it's eyeopening.

But the genius of Gaskell is, despite the fact that she's taking you on a personally guided tour of hell, she weaves in characters and stories of such eloquence and romance that you must keep reading, if just to see if there's a happily ever after. The point in which Mary Barton really connected for me was when the murder was committed. This is referred to in the introduction as the "crisis point" in the book. Before this the book didn't have much plot. We were just wallowing in the filth, sadness, and despair of Manchester life. Yes there's a little love triangle and comings and goings, worries about where the money for dinner was coming from, but nothing that really declared itself to be the spine of the book. The all of a sudden, out of nowhere, murder!

Now I love me a murder mystery, I can't deny that, but here it galvanized the loosely assembled coterie of characters into a driving force that made the last half of the book fly by where previously I had been laboring through it. I was there with Mary as she worried about the accused, as she made herself physically ill hunting down an alibi, as she took to the witness stand resulting in her losing her grip over her mind. I mean, yes, I was somewhat involved in Mary's life previously, but, wow, Gaskell just stepped it up a notch and took a book that I thought would be nothing but me crying and made it something more. She made it a classic worthy of those other authors of her time...

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 2 comments  

Labels: Bronte, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell, Emily Bronte, Jane Austen, Lauren Willig, Manchester, Mary Barton, Murder, North and South, That Summer, This Summer, Wives and Daughters

Middlemarch by George Eliot
Published by: Modern Library
Publication Date: 1871
Format: Hardcover, 799 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy (different edition then one reviewed)

"When I told my much-beloved little sister that I was going to write a book about a young Victorian woman who married a much older antiquarian and then finds him not at all who she thought him to be, there was a pause, followed by, “So, basically, you’re writing Middlemarch.”

Have I mentioned how much I love my little sister?

I will admit, I did have Dorothea and Casaubon on the brain, as well as Effie and Ruskin, when Imogen and her husband Arthur popped into my head. (That’s what my characters do: they pop. I don’t make them up piece by piece. They come to me fully formed, and then I have to figure them out as I’m writing about them.) But that’s pretty much the extent of the overlap between the two stories.

If you’re going to read Middlemarch, parcel out a long period of time and make a big pot of tea. Because you’re not going to want to stop once you start. Dorothea’s unhappy marriage to Casaubon is just the beginning…." - Lauren Willig

Ah, to be young and idealistic. Dorothea Brooke longs for nothing more then to marry an intelligent man and help him in his great work, like Milton's daughters, but with less complaining. She thinks she finds that man in the much older Edward Casaubon and they are wed. Tertius Lydgate is a young doctor who has bought a practice in Middlemarch and has such visions for the new fever hospital and a life of study and medical advancement. Instead he is beguiled by the young Rosamund Vincy and they are wed. Rosamund's brother Fred has hopes of a large inheritance and the hand of the humble Mary Garth, despite his family's objections to Mary, though they all cling to the thought of the inheritance because Fred doesn't seem that interested in a career. Another young idealist uncertain of where life will take him is Will Ladislaw, the cousin of Casaubon. But after meeting his cousin's young wife he feels that his life will take him wherever Dorothea is. All these young idealists, all these young hearts with dreams and ambitions shall be tried by fire and be thwarted in one way or another as they try to live their lives in Middlemarch.

Back in 1996 a costume drama made the biggest splash stateside since Upstairs, Downstairs. I'm of course talking about Pride and Prejudice. While a wet shirt might have changed the fusty notions that are attached to period pieces, it also made a household name of the show's writer, Andrew Davies. Andrew Davies became the go-to screenwriter to adapt 19th century novels into miniseries. Emma, Vanity Fair, Wives and Daughters, The Way We Live Now, Daniel Deronda, He Knew He Was Right, Bleak House, The Diary of a Nobody, Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, Little Dorrit, have all been adapted by his fair pen. But the fact is Colin Firth isn't the first Firth to brood sexily and shoot pool in an Andrew Davies adaptation. That honor belongs to Colin's younger brother Jonathan, as the gambling Fred Vincy in Middlemarch. We often forget how hard it was to see shows that had previously aired in this current age of streaming and YouTube. Even in the early days of DVDs you had to wait months after they were available to rent in order for them to be affordable to buy. Pride and Prejudice had stoked my interest in costume drama and Andrew Davies was the go-to guy, so obviously I had to get my hands on Middlemarch. With a region free DVD player and an Amazon UK account I was able to achieve my ends.

The adaptation was long and it didn't satisfy any need in me and actually made me want to read the book more. Of course with the length of my to be read pile it isn't any wonder that it took me almost two decades to get to it. I can see what frustrated me in the miniseries because it frustrated me in the book. Middlemarch has an almost unwieldy cast and Eliot has a way of overwriting that makes it very hard to connect. But unlike a miniseries which only has six hours to win us over, with almost 800 pages Eliot is able to build her narrative so that by the end you are so invested in the characters lives that if she hadn't written that little "finale" you would have wept tears of frustration. As for her overwriting and meandering habits to pad chapters with so much information that doesn't build on the plot to insane degrees, I can actually forgive her. The reason being that every once in awhile there is such an insightful line or comment that gives you a clear beam of light shining down from on high that you just want to shout "Yes, a million times yes!" There is also the fact that over time Eliot tends to pontificate less and less focusing more on the plot and the interaction of the characters. I also wonder if the fact that the novel was published in serialized form might have something do to with this shift. By writing in this way I'm sure she was able to gauge what her readers wanted and tweak the novel more to their tastes, and to mine.

What struck me most forcefully about Middlemarch is that while this book was written 142 years ago it is still so relevant in it's issues that it's eerie. With this "study of provincial life" Eliot taps into the universality of people everywhere. Jealousy, money problems, medical advancement, xenophobia, misunderstandings, misconceptions, thwarted ambitions, atonement, all these issues and more are handled in such a way that you, as the reader, connect with a similar incident in your life. The one thing I really connected with was an interesting aspect of Lydgate's practice which caused much stir in the town among his prospective patients. Unlike other Doctors, Lydgate didn't deal with prescriptions for medication cutting out the middle man. It is unclear among the villagers if this is from a lack of knowledge or a lack of self interest, because Doctors could make more money if they cut out the pharmacist, as it were. But it seems to me more that Lydgate, with his newfangled ideology and research believed more in the idea that under most circumstances the body can heal itself and therefore doesn't need drugs. This rang so true to what Doctors say nowadays. Of course, when you now go to the Doctor it's more they're worried that if they proscribe something when they don't need to that you will develop an immunity to the drug that will later cause problems when you truly do need drugs. How many times have I been on the losing end of that argument that I needed drugs for a sinus infection and they told me no? The answer is too many to count... so I have a feeling that if I did reside in Middlemarch, Lydgate just might not be my Doctor because of how many times I then ended up in Urgent Care getting the meds my Doctor was hesitant to proscribe.

But this little meditation of Lydgate's habits only touches on one aspect of one character in a book with enough characters to almost give George R.R. Martin a run for his money. With this many characters, of course you are going to have your favorites, those you love, those you hate, and of course, those you love to hate. But what I found so interesting is that I had sympathy for all the characters, even those I didn't like. In books I usually never root for the antihero. If a character is unlikeable, that's it, we're done, the book and me will not be able to reconcile our differences. But the way in how this community was made up and how each life touched and influenced the other it's like a house of cards or a train of dominoes, you can't pick and choose, everyone is in it together and everyone is therefore needing of our sympathy. While Dorothea is the most obvious character to have feelings for, with her thwarted ambitions in her marriage and then the impositions placed on her by her husband's will, I was even worried about Bulstrode. I worried about a man who, in his past, had dubious dealings which came back to haunt him and I was perfectly happy for him to get away with murder if he could. The lives that Middlemarch is teaming with all need each other and form a perfect view of what provincial life was and how aspects of human nature transcend the generations. This is a must human novel indeed.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 2 comments  

Labels: 19th Century, Andrew Davies, Casaubon, Colin Firth, Doctors, Dorothea, DVD, Effie, George Eliot, GRRM, Jonathan Firth, Lauren Willig, Lydgate, Middlemarch, Pride and Prejudice, Ruskin, That Summer, This Summer

On Art and Life by John Ruskin
Published by: Penguin Books
Publication Date: September 2nd, 2004
Format: Paperback, 97 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
Out of Print

"Oh, Ruskin. So groundbreaking in his aesthetic. Such a nightmare in his personal life. One of the things I love about this time period—and the Preraphaelites in particular—is their revolutionary ideas of beauty. Flinging aside the constraints of classicism, they (to misuse Shakespeare) found tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.

Ruskin laid the groundwork for their upheaval in aesthetics and was one of their key champions. Even if, in his home life, he was a complete mama’s boy who took to his bed with a sniffle—and couldn’t consummate his marriage with his young wife. But that’s next week’s book….

Ruskin pops up in cameo appearances in That Summer, a tall, thin man in his signature blue coat. I took the liberty of borrowing his childhood home on Herne Hill (which he describes quite eloquently in his autobiography Praetorita) and using it as the basis for my heroine’s house.

Thanks, John Ruskin!" - Lauren Willig

The world around us should be our inspiration for art. There is a reason why art and architecture varies by climate. The materials available and the surrounding environment should feed art and make it of it's place, not attempting and hence forcing it to being something it's not. Yet if the labourer who is to create these masterpieces doesn't have any artistic freedom his work is just that of another cog in the industrial revolution. Man can either be a tool or a man. To make a truly great society there needs to be expression allowed in each and every man's work, otherwise society is failing. There needs to be heart in work. Hand, heart, material working in harmony will bring about the artistic revolution that is needed to offset the industrial revolution.

This slim volume contains the chapter "The Nature of Gothic" from Ruskin's The Stones of Venice and a talk he gave on "The Work of Iron, in Nature, Art, and Policy" in Tunbridge Wells in 1858. This book is part of the Penguin Books series of "Great Ideas." Penguin has always been an innovator when it comes to reissuing books of note. As the blurb on the back says "Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them." With the way Ruskin's writing fed the Pre-Raphaelites and their Brotherhood, I think we can safely say that this is one of the books that have enlightened and enriched our lives. Given that art is a difficult and nebulous topic to write on, Ruskin's clarity of vision shines through in such a way that anyone interested in art should pick this up if they can... the Brotherhood certainly did, in more ways then one. Who knows if without Ruskin's vocalization of his beliefs if the Brotherhood would have been able to settle on a cohesive ideology and change the face of art. But more then that, his support of them gave the movement credibility.

Ruskin has such a way with words you can see why the Pre-Raphaelites took him and his writing to heart. He has a way of illuminating the everyday and rising it above the mundane. Through his words you can see a Utopian society for the betterment of man is possible. Yes, these ideals might be romantic, but that is what the Pre-Raphaelites where all about. Ruskin easily breaks down what is wrong with Victorian society. Art and craft are moving towards the mass produced, cookie cutter houses where the decoration in the homes are done by rote, not by feeling, one wonders what he would make of today's subdivisions. A society enslaved by their industrialized homes with the same wallpaper and the identical rosettes lining the walls and ceilings. That is why Ruskin embraces Gothic Architecture. In the Gothic he sees aspects that show the originality of the craftsman. He believes that there is a Gothic Heart that needs whimsy and naturalism among other things in order succeed. Of course the Utopian aspect (ie unrealistic) is where he believes that a society would move away from convenience and back to this time of buying custom objects wherein the maker was able to express themselves and therefore break free of being just a tool, a slave of modern industrialization.

Ruskin's beliefs are impractical but worthy. Ruskin needed the Pre-Raphaelites as much as they needed him. Without someone to latch onto his treatises there was no way to see if they were feasible, even on a small scale. The early doctrine of the Brotherhood believed in genuine ideas, naturalism, empathy, and quality. This tailors so well to all that Ruskin has written. In his talk at Tunbridge Wells he said that hand, heart, and material needed to work together in harmony. Add in Ruskin's belief in this Gothic (literally Northern from "Goths") Heart that believes in changeableness and naturalism and truth, ie, truth to nature, and it's a perfect fit. This naturalism/truth to nature of listening to ourselves as well as our abilities that feeds into our choice of medium aligns the man and the Brotherhood into one.

The nature of your location and the environment creates how you express yourself, but some things can only be done in certain materials. Don't ever try to use a material in a way that is not conducive to what you want to do. If something is light and airy, don't use marble. Each man must believe in truth and beauty. Truth to the world, the materials, the subject, and himself. Each to his own means and own thoughts, the master to perfection, the average man to imperfection, but take joy in both and look for nothing less. The artist shall use his skill to make everything to the best of his abilities, even down to making his own paint. You read these tenets and everything clicks. This is what the Pre-Raphaelites believed. This was their code like the Musketeers, "One for all and all for one." Ruskin was the chronicler and inspiration for them... a little bit ironic though when you realize that Ruskin thought all art should be of it's time, whereas the Pre-Raphaelites loved to paint classic allegorical subjects using real artifacts... but not everyone can agree all the time.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Art, Brotherhood, Lauren Willig, Musketeers, On Art and Life, Penguin, Praetorita, Pre-Raphaelite, Ruskin, That Summer, The Nature of Gothic, The Stones of Venice, This Summer, Tunbridge Wells, Utopia

As most of you know by now I have a deep abiding love for Lauren Willig's writing. For a fan this is an exciting time in her writing career. With last year's The Ashford Affair she officially branched out from her Pink Carnation series, which is sadly winding down, and has started to write stand-alones. That Summer is her new stand-alone which is coming out this summer (get the theme month title eh?) I have to say, if she wanted to hook me more then Kenya, choosing the Pre-Raphaelites was a sure way to do it. Everyone knows who the Pre-Raphaelites are even if they aren't aware of it. I remember back in high school my English classroom had the ubiquitous Pre-Raphaelite posters on the back bulletin board. There was Sir Francis Bernard Dicksee's La Belle Dame Sans Merci and John William Waterhouse's The Lady of Shalott. They never removed these posters in the four years I had classes in that room on and off. There's just something so magical about these paintings, the way they convey such detail and meaning to the written word that it captures the cross pollination of artistic mediums that the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood embraced and made me want to learn more versus those people who just slap the posters up on their walls. 

When I was in undergrad getting a BS in Art there was a plethora of Art History courses that were required which I took to with great zeal, even adding in such classes as German Architecture: The Modern Movements, which oddly ties into the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Because the classes covered such a wide range of time, literally from Ancient Egypt to Picasso, there wasn't as much time to dwell on each subject as I would have liked. What was interesting though is that later when I took my German Architecture Class so many of the ideologies of these German artists harked back to the Brotherhood. The Brotherhood believe in craftsmanship, romanticism, spiritualism, nature, ideas, and never forget that signature jawline. They believed in elevating art for the people while there was always the irony that they spent so much time and effort on their art that it wasn't the common man but the wealthy who could afford their work, much like the Arts and Crafts movement, but more on that later. The German's believed in this craftsmanship and this love that was put into every aspect of the work with amazing attention to detail, which Frank Lloyd Wright would later use, going so far as to design the clothes that the inhabitants of his houses wore. If you have ever had the honor to see some of the Brotherhood's work, they made the frames that houses the paintings because it was the only way to truly view the art. They were Victorian Renaissance men that were both craftsmen and artists.

A few years back the Pre-Raphaelites got a little buzz again off the BBC Miniseries, Desperate Romantics, which I hope Lauren has finally watched after much urging on my part. While the series plays fast and loose with facts, making it in essence "Victorian Entourage," it once again ignited my interest in these artists. It didn't hurt having Aidan Turner playing Dante Gabriel Rossetti is all I'll say on that. At the same time the Art Institute of Chicago did a fascinating exhibition called Apostles of Beauty: Arts and Crafts from Britain to Chicago. The synchronicity of the exhibition's timing was eerily awesome for me. Because any way you look at it the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and Arts and Crafts are connected movements with John Ruskin and Williams Morris being figureheads in both. The centerpiece of the exhibit was Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Beata Beatrix. But the exhibit had innumerable sketches and paintings and even house plans that gave such insight into the movements that I just wanted to learn more. Therefore this month is all about learning more. To delve into Lauren's research material, to read what inspired her, to find out the origins of That Summer and get special insights into why this world called out to her and me. And in another wonderful twist of fate, the MET is having a Pre-Raphaelite exhibition opening this month and thankfully lasting until I go to New York in August called The Pre-Raphaelite Legacy: British Art and Design. I'm positive they did this just to coincide with That Summer.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 2 comments  

Labels: Aidan Turner, Art History, Beata Beatrix, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Desperate Romantics, John William Waterhouse, Lauren Willig, Pink Carnation, Pre-Raphaelite, That Summer, The Ashford Affair, This Summer