Fictional Virago Readers, Part the Two

It's Maggie Smith's birthday today and she loved her Viragos! From her biography by Michael Coveney.

"After her final seven-month season in Stratford, Ontario, she had a week's holiday and then, typically, went straight to Pari with Beverly to join the Merchant Ivory shoot of Jean Rhys's first novel, Quartet. Jean Rhys, a favourite novelist was, like Virginia Woolf, someone whose every written word she had long since devoured. Like her responses to most things, Maggie's response to literature is instinctive and intuitive. In drama, the challenge of Shakespeare and Congreve is inexhaustible because the writing demands the utmost technical concentration. It also offers the attractive challenge of playing women who assert their individuality in the face of social and marital constrictions. For similar reasons, Maggie has always found inspiration in the high stylists of the feminine consciousness: Woolf, Rhys, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, EF Benson and many of the women writers published or reissued by the distinctive and aptly named Virago Press. There is a definite link in the 1980's between the spiritual nutrition Maggie found in her reading and the projects she undertook" page 174

Maggie and Beverly move into their new farmhouse in Sussex:

"On the landing outside {Maggie's bedroom}, hung her treasured collection of Erte's original costume designs for the Lillian Gish silent movie version of La Boheme (Gish disliked them, so they were never used). In the main sitting room, books everywhere, was an almost complete collection of the distinctive Virago reprints of classic feminist novels, and the latest clutch of literary biographies in hardback. Trophies were strewn discreetly around, serving as decorative props, not displays." Chapter 13.

Had to hunt for this thread....can't believe it hasn't been active for over 2 years! I've been reading Dorothy L. Sayers, and Lord Peter has just examined the books in a female suspect's possession...including works by May Sinclair, Dorothy Richardson, and Storm Jameson. No titles mentioned, however.

That's brilliant. There is a whole storyline on a BBC radio drama, Home Front, about a book recently reprinted by Persephone Books, Despised and Rejected. It was originally written and published during WW1 and was banned. The story involves illicit copies being infiltrated into the public library's stock and being borrowed by library users. I'm not sure if I missed a conclusion of that storyline as it's a multi-storyline drama which is coming to an end.

>2 laytonwoman3rd: thanks for reviving this thread! It's always fun to read about Virago books or authors spotted "in the wild," so to speak.

Not quite a reference to readers, but a radio sitcom here set in East Yorkshire features the characters trying to set off on holiday from Winifred Holtby airport. I don't think then an airport has actually been renamed after Winifred Holtby (and yes, I admit, I looked it up).

>5 elkiedee: I don't think then an airport has actually been renamed after Winifred Holtby If it hasn't, it should be!

>6 Sakerfalcon: Agreed! 😀😀😀

>5 elkiedee: I missed that Luci, I must have a search! Radio 4 I assume?

We don't have a Winifred Holtby airport in East Yorkshire but we do have a Winifred Holtby school and a street called The Land of Green Ginger (not nearly as lovely as it sounds).

>Radio 4 or Radio 4 Extra - I think that the airport episode was the last one in a series I don't seem to have heard before (a lot of the comedy and drama content does get repeated - a youngish man came to visit his uncle in an East Yorkshire seaside town - fictional name - Flanford (?) but perhaps based on Bridlington? and is sti. ll there several series/years later. Uncle sounds like a bit of a Delboy type but nephew has perhaps had a slightly more middle class/aspirational upbringing - think he screwed up in a graduate job role. It's one of their series that slowly grew on me. Though it's one of their series that I think is newer - cultural references to things like booking an Escape Room adventure (a few years ago it might have been paintball) and an airport dominated by one budget airline company sound like the last decade.

'They were less familiar with my favourite contemporary author, Willa Cather, having only read her Pulitzer Prize winner, One of Ours, but I urged them to base their critical appraisal on her earlier novels, My Antonia, O Pioneers and The Song of the Lark, which to my mind stand unsurpassed in modern fiction.'

From A Woman of Independent Means by Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey'

>10 BeyondEdenRock: Who were the "they" being encouraged to read more Willa Cather novels in this? I have the Hailey book itself in VMC on the shelves in front of me, and I don't think I've read O Pioneers or One of Ours. I liked The Song of the Lark and love My Antonia (which I've read more than once) but I'm sure that both are worth rereading.

>11 elkiedee: The quotation is taken from a letter from Bess to her sister-in-law, describing a visit to the family home of her son's friend. I could happily re-read any of the Willa Cather novels mentioned.

'I changed his sheets and put the vase of yellow roses I'd arranged for my room on his bedside table. I picked up his book, The Getting of Wisdom. 'An Australian novel,' Da had said. 'About a bright young woman; it's hard to believe a man wrote it. I think you would like it very much.' '

From The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams

'He turned on her the look that always reminded her of Mr. Warwick's "authorative stare" in Diana of the Crossways.'

From Linden Rise by Richmal Crompton