N S Ford

Tag: Thomas Hardy

  • Review of ‘Short Stories from the 19th Century’ selected by David Stuart Davies

    This collection of fifteen short stories is a good read, although it could be better. In my opinion, only seven of them have that wow factor you’d want in a short story. Here are all the stories, in the order they appear.

    ‘The Black Veil’ by Charles Dickens. A sombre tale of poverty and crime in London.

    ‘The Withered Arm’ by Thomas Hardy. Tragedy, sympathetic characters, country traditions and the inescapable workings of fate ensure this is a classic Hardy story of Wessex.

    ‘The Terribly Strange Bed’ by Wilkie Collins. Set in Paris, this is a creepy and amusing cautionary tale about gambling.

    ‘The Bottle Imp’ by Robert Louis Stevenson. A variety of exotic South Pacific locations, the fear of going to hell and an Aladdin-style fairy tale make this a memorable and unusual read.

    ‘The Red-Headed League’ by Arthur Conan Doyle. A rather dull Sherlock Holmes story.

    ‘The Stolen Bacillus’ by H G Wells. An entertaining collision of Wells’ social fiction and science fiction.

    ‘The Squire’s Story’ by Elizabeth Gaskell. I had to skip this one. I don’t wish to read about a man who whips children and hunts foxes.

    ‘The Journey to Panama’ by Anthony Trollope. The intriguing possibility of romance aboard a steamship.

    ‘The Sphinx without a Secret’ by Oscar Wilde. More of a symbolic tale than a story with a plot.

    ‘The Judge’s House’ by Bram Stoker. A creepy story about a rat-infested haunted house.

    ‘The Necklace’ by Guy de Maupassant. The perils of wanting to keep up appearances are demonstrated in this excellent tale with an ironic twist.

    ‘The Kiss’ by Anton Chekhov. A shy military officer is kissed in a case of mistaken identity and then simultaneously realises he wants romance and that everything is pointless.

    ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Disturbing and thought-provoking, this story is a portrait of a woman suffering from postnatal depression and is also a feminist classic.

    ‘Juke Judkins’ Courtship’ by Charles Lamb. An unmemorable yet vaguely amusing tale about a man with a sense of entitlement.

    ‘One Dollar’s Worth’ by O Henry. A fake coin causes trouble in a Wild West town.

    The selection of stories is hit and miss. The star of the collection is ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’. However, its more modern tone doesn’t really match the other stories. Three of the stories are about hanging in some way, which I thought was too much. Only two of the stories are by female authors. I would have appreciated knowing when the stories were first published. It also annoyed me that the name David Stuart Davies is prominent on the cover and he has written the introduction, plus introductions to each story, yet nowhere in the book are we told who he is and what qualifies him to select fifteen stories out of the thousands produced in the nineteenth century.

    I expect that all of these stories can be downloaded for free from the internet, but I prefer to read classics in print. Considering this book cost about £1.99 or so, it’s a decent collection of stories. It’s a pity that whoever wrote the blurb added an extra ‘l’ to Gilman’s name and that in the introduction, Chekhov is spelt both with and without the ‘h’.

    First published in 2000 by Wordsworth Editions.

  • The time-travelling bookworm: ‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles’ by Thomas Hardy

    I know this book well, having studied it and seen maybe two or three adaptations. It’s not really an accessible read, because Hardy had a tendency to insert bits of Latin, Greek and various mythology references into his writing. Luckily if you have a good edition (such as Penguin Classics) these are not much of a problem as there are notes in the back. While the writing can be quite detailed, the content is fairly simple and includes the typical Hardy trademarks: tragedy, missed opportunities, coincidences, lost innocence and more tragedy. First published in 1891 as a newspaper serial, with the subtitle A Pure Woman Faithfully Represented, the book was somewhat controversial at the time but is now known as a classic and possibly Hardy’s greatest work. It’s not my favourite of his but I’m certain to re-read it (yet again) in the near future.

  • 10 writers I’d love to have coffee with – time travel edition!

    My previous post on writers I’d love to have coffee with was very popular. My blogger friend Ryan stole my idea and then he also did a time travel edition – which I’m now stealing from him. So here are 10 writers I’d want to meet, if someone invented a time machine. Since most of my favourite writers are actually from the past, this was a difficult choice to make…

    Charlotte Brontë. I’d travel to Haworth Parsonage (which I’ve visited before, but obviously not in 1847) and we’d go for a walk on the windswept moor while discussing the recent publication of Jane Eyre. Although this time was a relatively happy moment in Charlotte’s life, I would feel sad knowing what the future had in store for herself and her siblings.

    H G Wells. The master of science fiction was noted for predicting the future. I love musing upon the future so I think we’d click. We’d meet at the turn of the 20th century and I’d tell him that The Time Machine is one of my favourite books. However, I wouldn’t tell him what a mess the BBC made of The War of the Worlds.

    Stella Gibbons. We’d meet in the late 1940s for a cup of tea and a bun in a cheap and cheerful café, like so many of her female characters do. I too have a sharp sense of humour so I think we’d have some laughs together. I’d tell her how much I like her post-Cold Comfort Farm novels and that after their reissues, many readers are delighted to discover them.

    Virginia Woolf. I’d be intimidated by the prospect of meeting one of the greatest modern writers but I think she’d be fascinating to talk to. We’d have a smart lunch somewhere in London in the 1920s. I probably wouldn’t admit to her that I’ve touched (and, er, sniffed) a leather travel bag which belonged to her and which now sits in the Penguin Random House archive.

    Mary Shelley. A super-intelligent and fascinating writer, Shelley would be an amazing person to meet, in between her writing, romantic journeys and tragic life events. I think it would be best to meet in Italy, where she spent a lot of her time. We could have proper Italian coffee and discuss the now legendary circumstances in which she wrote Frankenstein.

    Jane Austen. It would be fantastic to see what Jane was really like, both in appearance and behaviour. We’d have a civilised tea at Chawton, Hampshire and talk about books. I’d try not to make some grave error in manners. It would be tempting to tell her how famous her name will become and also that what most people remember about Pride and Prejudice is Mr Darcy’s wet shirt scene.

    Harper Lee. A very private person with a reputation as a recluse, merely because she didn’t grant interviews, Harper Lee might be a little reserved about meeting up. If we did, however, we would go to an anonymous New York coffee shop in 1961, the year that To Kill A Mockingbird won the Pulitzer Prize. I’d be tempted to suggest never to publish Go Set A Watchman…

    George Orwell. Meeting Eric Arthur Blair would be fascinating, I’m sure. I think we’d have strong coffee someplace full of cigarette smoke. Or perhaps we would have a pint in a poverty-stricken northern town while he researches his book The Road to Wigan Pier. While I really admire Nineteen Eighty-Four, I would be too sad to meet him during the writing of it, as he was very ill.

    H P Lovecraft. He has a reputation as weird and lonely with a far-out imagination, so I think we’d get on well. We’d meet in 1930s New England in some sinister old town haunted by eldritch beings older than the universe. Knowing he was to have a relatively short life dominated by poverty and tragedy, I’d also want to tell him how influential his work will be and maybe give him a hug.

    Thomas Hardy. Dorset in the 1880s would be the obvious location to meet the author of favourite classics such as Tess of the D’Urbervilles and The Mayor of Casterbridge. We would have afternoon tea at Max Gate, the house he designed. I feel that he would be easier to get on with than some other Victorian writers as he seems unconventional and sympathetic.

    Which writers from the past would you like to meet? Do you wish someone would hurry up and invent time travel?

  • Film of the book: ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’ (2015)

    Rural setting? Check. Innocent but free-spirited female protagonist? Check. Sequence of tragic events caused by misunderstandings and the workings of fate? Check. It must be a Thomas Hardy novel!

    Far from the Madding Crowd is essentially about the choices of the heroine, Bathsheba Everdene. There are three men in her life who want to marry her: Gabriel Oak, caring and proud; the respectable and mentally fragile Farmer Boldwood; and the seductive but irresponsible Sergeant Troy. As the owner of a farm, Bathsheba’s an independent woman and doesn’t actually have to marry at all to be financially secure. The film version, adapted for the screen by David Nicholls and directed by Thomas Vinterberg, concentrates on the relationship dynamic between Bathsheba and Gabriel in particular and also emphasises the independent woman theme. The plot is quite close to the 1874 book, with added romance and a dash of feminism.

    Filmed in the English counties of Oxfordshire, Dorset and Somerset, there are some beautiful scenes and the light is just perfect. The acting is excellent, particularly Carey Mulligan as Bathsheba, Michael Sheen as Boldwood, Matthias Schoenaerts as Gabriel and Tom Sturridge as Sergeant Troy. There’s a timeless yet vital quality to the film and I’m sure Thomas Hardy would’ve loved it.

    To say that I enjoyed this film would not be telling the truth – there are some upsetting tragic scenes and it’s one of those stories where you wish that the two leading characters had got together from the start, instead of going through heartbreak with other casualties along the way, before finally ending up together. But then there’d be no story. Let’s say I appreciated this film and that there were many things I admired about it.