Masters of English prose, the authors under scrutiny here wrote and lectured in tumultuous times to lead their nation out of the wilderness. Their most important work, ranging from Macaulay to Stevenson, will be carefully discussed in clear language for any reader who wants to know more about the Victorians and their prose.
The text will also include a close examination of the period’s poetry. The Victorian poets elected to do more than versify; by coming to grips with thorny contemporary issues, they struggled to find workable solutions. Even as they sing, their poems are charged with the main currents of social, political, scientific, religious, and philosophical thought.
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Nonfiction
Their Portraits in My Books:
The Fiction of George Gissing
George Gissing's books, published during the last two decades of the nineteenth century, are memorable for their portraits of women. Only a few women played active roles in his life, but those who did exerted a lasting influence. In each of his novels he portrayed women vividly and with unerring realism. He worried, in fact, that some might see themselves in his books and rebuke him. His portraits of women are warm and human, revealing an essential sympathy that makes them timeless. An important feature of his novels, his feminine portraiture is worth careful study.
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The Woman Question
and George Gissing
Even though his books never sold as well as those of more popular novelists, women in particular liked George Gissing’s work and often wrote to him for advice. They could see he was keenly interested in the lives of women and the long struggle to improve their condition in a male-dominated and gender-restrictive society. Though Gissing tried to champion the women’s cause, he did not entirely succeed. Yet if he could say at the end of his career that he knew nothing at all about women, it was not because he had failed to write about them or to make a thorough study of them. Gissing used the "woman question" of his day to create female characters as much alive now as when he first began to write.
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Searching in Shadow:
Victorian Prose and Thought
In 1831, the beginning of a cruel decade for England, Thomas Carlyle observed: "Man has walked by the light of conflagrations and amid the sound of falling cities, and now there is darkness and long watching till it be morning." Thirty years later Matthew Arnold counseled a faltering friend: "Roam on! The light we sought is shining still." When the nineteenth century ended, having generated more questions than answers, a London journalist summed up the struggle in one short sentence: "They searched in shadows, seeking light." The authors under scrutiny in this volume are Macaulay, Carlyle, Newman, Mill, Ruskin, Arnold, Darwin, Huxley, Morris, Pater, and Stevenson. Others of lesser note are Spencer, Stephen, and Butler. Masters of English prose, they wrote and lectured to lead the nation out of shadow and confusion, or as one put it: "out of the wilderness."
Available in paperback.
On a Darkling Plain:
Victorian Poetry and Thought
Speaking the deepest and truest thoughts of humankind, the Victorian poets elected to do more than merely sing as versifiers. By coming to grips with thorny contemporary issues and suggesting workable solutions, they struggled to lead their people out of the wilderness. Tennyson, who came to be known as the voice of Victorianism, is the poet most often credited with this ambition, but Matthew Arnold and the other major poets had a similar aim. Their poems, while not devoid of feeling, are charged with the main currents of philosophical, social, scientific, and religious thought. The best of their poetry fits word and thought to the troubling developments of the period and rises to prophecy, predicting the problems of our own time.
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Victorian Sages
The Victorian sage was a wise and well-informed man who wrote compelling prose as teacher, preacher, and prophet. He wanted to lead his people out of the wilderness, and he believed earnestly that he had the means by which to do it. In tumultuous and uncertain times, he worked long and hard to be heard. At the end of his life, he looked back to ask with some dismay whether anyone had heard at all. At times he was gravely disappointed, even bitter, as he convinced himself that the people who needed him most had neither listened nor learned. In brighter moments he was certain his work was not done in vain. Performing as sage were Macaulay, Carlyle, Newman, Mill, Ruskin, Arnold, Darwin, Huxley, Morris, and Pater. Others of lesser note were Spencer, Stephen, Butler, and Stevenson.
Out of print.
Portraits in Charcoal:
George Gissing's Women
Half biography and half critical study, this book about George Gissing is for the general reader. It draws a parallel between the women in Gissing's life and the women in his novels. Gissing's feminine portraiture, rendered in shades of somber experience, is one of the most striking features of his work. It derived from his intense and abiding interest in the women of his time and the way they lived their lives. His portraits of women, warm and human, were shaped in all their detail by an essential sympathy that made them neither topical nor contemporary but timeless.
Available in paperback.
fiction
Cayenne Heat
How does a wretch convicted of a petty crime find happiness or even survival in a prison known for its inhumanity? That place robbed me of my youth, my teeth, and my peace of mind while instilling within me a fierce desire to escape. More than a few times I survived soul-shattering solitary confinement to run as fast and as far as I could. I had little muscle compared to the hulking convicts in French Guiana, but we all know strength is not defined by muscle alone. My narrative speaks of desperate attempts to escape the oppressive heat, horror, and corruption of the prison colony the French called Bagne de Cayenne.
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The Inward Journey:
Original Short Stories
You will find here a collection of original short stories that will take you on an inward journey to nowhere and everywhere. Beginning with "Erpenbeck and Friend” and ending with "Growing Old," the journey will be easy and pleasant in some places, rough and rutted in others. Each story, as Mark Twain has said, will transport you to a faraway place and magically bring you home again for supper. Enjoy your meal, savor your supper.
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I, Jonathan Blue
My name is Jonathan Blue. During the last two decades of the nineteenth century, I worked many hours each day for acceptance as a writer. In my youth, I dreamed of becoming a classical scholar at Oxford or Cambridge. When the fantasy was shattered by a stupid excess of emotion, I attempted to begin a new life in America. A year later, I was living in a London slum with a drunken wife. In grim poverty, I wrote about poor people struggling to survive in slums among the worst in the world. They were my neighbors, and from them came inventive and motive force. In maturity I lived with a delicate and beautiful woman, but in failing health and for a short time. Then like a turbulent river, I dashed unimpeded to the sea.
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But Not Without Hope
Bonheur was and is my name. Every person in my native France knew the name meant sunshine, well-being, happiness. But how does one find happiness in a prison known worldwide for its coarse, brutal inhumanity? Fifteen painful years, prime years of youth, I endured in that terrible place, determined to escape. Though I planned each escape with great care, something always went wrong. Perhaps I was the sorry victim of a malicious destiny. If so, that mysterious force, was up against the resilience of the human spirit, its power to endure. I was small of stature, yet I need not remind you that strength comes in many forms.
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Of Time and Tide:
The Windhover Saga
One glance at the contents of this book will tell any lover of sea stories that an exciting saga of danger and adventure aboard a three-masted sailing ship named the Windhover is about to unfold. She leaves Bermuda in the summer of 1871 to cross the Atlantic and Mediterranean en route to Naples, Italy. By no means will it be a journey without incident. On the high seas, sour provisions bring crew and captain into conflict. As the squabble becomes incendiary, the second mate, who narrates the story, must find a way to overcome a mutinous crew, regain control of the ship, and bring her to safe haven.
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A Tinker in Blue Anchor
After a checkered career at sea and on land Leo Mack settles down in Blue Anchor shortly before the Civil War. A solitary man living in Ida Crabtree’s boarding house, he finds his worth and mission when the war begins. As a traveling tinker he carries news of military events to isolated farmhouses and becomes in effect a broadcaster of war news. In time just about every person in the county knows Leo by name, but nothing of his background. Isaac Brandimore takes it upon himself to tell Mack’s story but dies before the work is completed. Emily Kingston comes forward to salvage the story and finish it, but not before Leo dies. Concluding the project, she observes that Leo Mack, in tattered work clothes, was "animated in good times and bad by blood and brain and spirit." His death, she tells us, diminished Blue Anchor.
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Mose in Bondage
In the autumn of 1850 the man called Mose, a fixture on the Horton plantation in North Carolina, is sold to a wily slave trader to settle a debt. Traveling southward, he sinks into cruel bondage while a woman sold by Horton at the same time runs northward to freedom. In Savannah Mose becomes the property of a kinder master, but in Alabama under the thumb of Cody Hawk he suffers intensely. With some help from a slave named Pearl, he shakes off the deadly grip of a dark force, experiences a kind of rebirth, and gains the strength to escape the hell created by Hawk. Saving himself, he is not able to save Pearl.
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Against the Grain
The book dramatizes the plight of abolitionist Quakers living in eastern North Carolina during the Civil War. As the war rages from 1861 to 1865, both Union and Confederate forces tramp through the region to destroy whatever they come upon and confiscate anything of value. A Quaker family entrenched in rural tradition and a faith emphasizing peace quietly resists the brutality of the war but is made to suffer. As Southerners, Union soldiers see them as the enemy. As abolitionists going against the grain of Southern culture, Confederate soldiers despise and harass them. When they refuse to pay the exemption tax, their men are required to go into the army. Refusing to bear arms, their mettle is severely tested at Gettysburg and Petersburg. This book is about courage and endurance in the maw of adversity. It is closely based on historical fact, Confederate records, and Quaker tradition.
Available in hardcover, paperback and Kindle editions.
Beacon’s River
Beacon’s River is a tale of ambition and human suffering in the mind and heart of a young man struggling for success as a novelist. Based on the life and career of nineteenth-century novelist George Gissing, the book is about a man wrestling with destiny as he dreams of making his mark in the world. Soon after his father dies, Andrew Beacon goes away to a Quaker boarding school with two younger brothers. An exemplary but lonely student, he wins a scholarship to a college known to be a stepping stone to Oxford or Cambridge. At eighteen, on the brink of realizing his dream, he meets a woman of the streets who changes the course of his life. After serving a month in prison, he leaves England to start over in America but returns a year later. Badgered by loneliness and hardship but losing himself in his work, in time he finds the woman meant for him. The love they cherish before he dies completes the pattern of a life that runs like a tumultuous river from mountain to sea.
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Stormbirds
A Quaker community in North Carolina finds itself opposing both the North and the South during the Civil War. In the fall of 1860, chilly winds of change sweep through Cross Keys and touch everybody. As the war rages from 1861 to 1865, armies on both sides tramp through the region, confiscating property and hurting the innocent. Walter Kirkwood refuses to pay the exemption tax and goes away to war in the spring of 1863. Near the end of that year his father, David Kirkwood, is called to military duty. In the thick of battle Walter suffers three terrible days at Gettysburg. His father, refusing to bear arms, is placed in the front lines at Petersburg as punishment for disobeying orders. At home the women and children endure and survive. It is a story of courage in the face of adversity, a novel closely based on historical fact and Quaker tradition.
Out of print.