Isabel Colegate (1931–2023)
Autor de The Shooting Party
Sobre El Autor
Isabel Colegate is the author of thirteen previous books, including the novels The Shooting Party, The Summer of the Royal Visit and, most recently, Winter Journey. She is married with three children and lives near Bath
Series
Obras de Isabel Colegate
The Great Occasion 1 copia
Obras relacionadas
Etiquetado
Conocimiento común
- Nombre legal
- Colegate, Isabel Diane (born)
Briggs, Isabel Diane (married) - Fecha de nacimiento
- 1931-09-10
- Fecha de fallecimiento
- 2023-03-12
- Género
- female
- Nacionalidad
- UK
- Lugar de nacimiento
- Lincolnshire, England, UK
- Lugares de residencia
- Lincolnshire, England, UK (birth)
Norfolk, England, UK - Educación
- Runton Hill School
- Ocupaciones
- novelist
secretary
literary critic - Premios y honores
- Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (1981)
- Biografía breve
- Isabel Colegate left school at the age of 16. She went to work as a secretary in the small literary agency of flamboyant publisher Anthony Blond; he later published her books and helped in her successful writing career. Her novels often deal with the decline of the English aristocracy, the disintegration of class structures, and social change in the years immediately before and after World War I.
Miembros
Reseñas
As he does every October, in 1913, Sir Randolph Nettleby, Bart., invites some of the best shots in England to his Oxfordshire estate to shoot pheasant. The activity has a particular meaning here, for we don’t expect tweed-coated gentlemen to trample through the underbrush in their wellingtons, bagging a few birds for supper.
Rather, we have the spectacle of “beaters,” local men and boys recruited to flush the pheasant so that the frightened birds take brief flight — the only type they are capable of — toward the tweed-coated gentlemen, waiting with their loaders and dogs. Not that the participants would agree, but this is more mechanized killing than sport. The shooters take hundreds of birds, and the loaders are there to make sure the gentlemen never even have to turn their heads to receive a ready weapon, restocked with cartridges.
The novel’s opening paragraph notes that an infamous incident will take place, “an error of judgment which resulted in a death.” And since the timing is the autumn before the Great War, Colegate intends The Shooting Party as a metaphor for England on the eve of that tragic struggle.
What a metaphor it is, slaughter for its own sake, by the so-called best people in the country, no less. That the death referred to is a mistake, and that the author reveals it up front, properly removes any sense of whodunit, though the narrative does build suspense as to who will be the victim, how, and why. Instead, Colegate focuses on the characters, who represent various social classes and attitudes.
In lesser hands, this premise and approach could have devolved into a talky, theme-driven tract, populated by two-dimensional ideas rather than characters. But Colegate writes well-drawn people whose private concerns merge beautifully in a single, cohesive picture, and whose opinions often seem contradictory, which makes them more human.
For example, Sir Randolph, courteous to all despite his oft-injured sensibilities, worries that the stewards of the land, as he views himself, are a vanishing breed. Outwardly almost diffident, he nevertheless carries himself as the aristocrat born to rule, and his confusion as to how the world has changed lends him depth.
Stolid Bob Lilburn, who believes in form above all, astonishes his gorgeous wife, Olivia, by doubting that there could exist in England any people worth knowing whom he doesn’t already know. Lionel Stephens, a lawyer who seems perfect to everyone, believes he’s passionately in love with Olivia and would be willing to die for her if the fraught international situation brought war. A footman repeats this sentiment to the young parlor maid he fancies, who has the sense to think it’s twaddle.
Throughout, Colegate’s description of the shoot evokes the future conflict, often involving the manner in which the birds, fed and catered to before their destruction, are driven toward the guns. Again, a lesser author might have overplayed the symbolism, but Colegate’s hand remains deft. That’s because she’s careful to keep her descriptions active as well as physically and visually precise.
Though published forty years ago, The Shooting Party still keeps its edge. It’s one of those elegant novels I admire, in which the central action is itself an arresting metaphor. I must warn you that other than from a library (or sources in the UK), the book may be hard to find. But it is well worth your time and effort, a classic tale.… (más)
Rather, we have the spectacle of “beaters,” local men and boys recruited to flush the pheasant so that the frightened birds take brief flight — the only type they are capable of — toward the tweed-coated gentlemen, waiting with their loaders and dogs. Not that the participants would agree, but this is more mechanized killing than sport. The shooters take hundreds of birds, and the loaders are there to make sure the gentlemen never even have to turn their heads to receive a ready weapon, restocked with cartridges.
The novel’s opening paragraph notes that an infamous incident will take place, “an error of judgment which resulted in a death.” And since the timing is the autumn before the Great War, Colegate intends The Shooting Party as a metaphor for England on the eve of that tragic struggle.
What a metaphor it is, slaughter for its own sake, by the so-called best people in the country, no less. That the death referred to is a mistake, and that the author reveals it up front, properly removes any sense of whodunit, though the narrative does build suspense as to who will be the victim, how, and why. Instead, Colegate focuses on the characters, who represent various social classes and attitudes.
In lesser hands, this premise and approach could have devolved into a talky, theme-driven tract, populated by two-dimensional ideas rather than characters. But Colegate writes well-drawn people whose private concerns merge beautifully in a single, cohesive picture, and whose opinions often seem contradictory, which makes them more human.
For example, Sir Randolph, courteous to all despite his oft-injured sensibilities, worries that the stewards of the land, as he views himself, are a vanishing breed. Outwardly almost diffident, he nevertheless carries himself as the aristocrat born to rule, and his confusion as to how the world has changed lends him depth.
Stolid Bob Lilburn, who believes in form above all, astonishes his gorgeous wife, Olivia, by doubting that there could exist in England any people worth knowing whom he doesn’t already know. Lionel Stephens, a lawyer who seems perfect to everyone, believes he’s passionately in love with Olivia and would be willing to die for her if the fraught international situation brought war. A footman repeats this sentiment to the young parlor maid he fancies, who has the sense to think it’s twaddle.
Throughout, Colegate’s description of the shoot evokes the future conflict, often involving the manner in which the birds, fed and catered to before their destruction, are driven toward the guns. Again, a lesser author might have overplayed the symbolism, but Colegate’s hand remains deft. That’s because she’s careful to keep her descriptions active as well as physically and visually precise.
Though published forty years ago, The Shooting Party still keeps its edge. It’s one of those elegant novels I admire, in which the central action is itself an arresting metaphor. I must warn you that other than from a library (or sources in the UK), the book may be hard to find. But it is well worth your time and effort, a classic tale.… (más)
"The element of ritual lent it a kind of solemnity; like so many rituals it required a sacrifice"
By sally tarbox on 21 June 2018
Format: Kindle Edition
It's 1913 and in an aristocratic household, a group come together for a shooting party. In the first paragraph the author tells us that it culminated in "an error of judgement that resulted in a death...a mild scandal at the time."
So the reader is trying to guess throughout the narrative of the preceding twenty-four hours who will be the victim...the highly strung grandson who fears for his pet duck as the shooters blast the wildfowl? The gamekeeper's studious son who's been roped in as a beater? One of the participants in extra marital liaisons? The two menservants in competition over whose master is the best shot? The socialist eccentric who's turned up preaching animal rights and equality for the poor?
The novel (inspiration for the later Gosford Park and Downton Abbey) focuses on both above and below stairs, and gives a flavour of the world on the cusp of war, the endless loss of bird life an image of what is to follow...
Enjoyable read.… (más)
By sally tarbox on 21 June 2018
Format: Kindle Edition
It's 1913 and in an aristocratic household, a group come together for a shooting party. In the first paragraph the author tells us that it culminated in "an error of judgement that resulted in a death...a mild scandal at the time."
So the reader is trying to guess throughout the narrative of the preceding twenty-four hours who will be the victim...the highly strung grandson who fears for his pet duck as the shooters blast the wildfowl? The gamekeeper's studious son who's been roped in as a beater? One of the participants in extra marital liaisons? The two menservants in competition over whose master is the best shot? The socialist eccentric who's turned up preaching animal rights and equality for the poor?
The novel (inspiration for the later Gosford Park and Downton Abbey) focuses on both above and below stairs, and gives a flavour of the world on the cusp of war, the endless loss of bird life an image of what is to follow...
Enjoyable read.… (más)
This was an interesting book. Upon picking it up I was expecting a text that centered upon what it meant to be a solitary and instead what the author writes is more about the lives of specific recluses divided up by regions time and scenery such as a desert or the forest. It is from these sketches we can draw some assumptions. Colegate's writing is wonderful and discussions of the recluses interspersed with her own travels really made this book worthwhile to me.
I did regret the lack of depth but I think I'm a bit closer on understanding solitude's draw… (más)
I did regret the lack of depth but I think I'm a bit closer on understanding solitude's draw… (más)
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Spirit of Place (1)
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Estadísticas
- Obras
- 16
- También por
- 2
- Miembros
- 1,171
- Popularidad
- #21,976
- Valoración
- 3.9
- Reseñas
- 16
- ISBNs
- 68
- Idiomas
- 4
- Favorito
- 1
What you will find is a kind of Eurocentric (including USA), certainly British roundup of people who have been notable recluses; often unkempt or characterised by religious zeal, filth, suffering, and/or madness. There are certainly some interesting characters. Who would not be intrigued by Isabelle Eberhardt? or indeed, the wealthy William Beckford whose manifold talents (marred by sexual indiscretion) included tower building. I wondered if the privileges of the mid-18th century British upper classes who had the means to realise their eccentric imaginings was worth the darker colonial exploitations and slavery that financed them.
Although I found many passages of interest, this is a poorly designed book. Not that the binding has failed (there are a few typos indicative of a lack of care) but it's annoying to have the chapter headings omitted from the contents page, the illustrations have no captions and the alternating use of unattributed line drawings of trees and what may be a hermitage in the author’s garden (charming as they are) serves no function other than to confuse the reader.
By the end, I felt as if the author was on a kind of quest (pilgrimage) to uncover her inner solitary. She certainly travelled and read widely but without a central thesis the book tends to feel scattered and unstructured. She writes unevenly but clearly loves words, and often sent me to my dictionary for the unfamiliar: coenobitic, yashmack, eremitic, syneisaktism, apophatic, dilatory, catamite, accidie.… (más)