January - March 2018 - 19th Century Europe (& rest of the world, excluding Northern America)

Marie Curie

In the 19th century, energized by the industrial revolution and under pressure from a rapidly growing population, Europe launched a new period of colonial expansion, inspired by the discovery of new markets, new areas for the settlement of Europe’s poor migrants, and the desire to " civilize the barbarian nations ".

The 19th century was an era of rapidly accelerating scientific discovery and invention, with significant developments in the fields of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, electricity, and metallurgy that laid the groundwork for the technological advances of the 20th century.

It was the age of Victoria, of Napoleon, slave revolts, railroads, and the Barbary Pirates. It also marked the end of the Ottoman Empire in the Baltics and the industrial revolution

Jane Austen published her works, Keats was writing poetry, Mary Shelley published Frankenstein. The term 'scientist' was coined by William Whewell, and Darwin shocked the world with his On the Origin of Species.

Here's a link to tag 19th Century literature : https://www.librarything.com/tag/19th+century+literature

Here's the new wiki for you to update as you read:
https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/Reading_Through_Time_Quarterly_Theme_Rea...

I've definitely got to get to Wives and Daughters and I really want to finish Jenny Uglow's Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories. I've also got Claire Harman's Brontë biography to get to. And I may do some reading/rereading of Thomas Hardy.

I am reading Mansfield Park by installation which means I will probably be reading it well into February so it should fit in here nicely.

I've got the last Gaskill to read, Wives and Daughters and then will be finished with my anthology. (I"m sure there are more, but haven't checked)

I finished Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell. It was 1/3 books contained in a Gaskell Anthology that I had and it was my least favorite (Cranford and North and South).

I read Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen. I enjoyed the humor and many book references even though the two main characters didn't appeal to me as much as some other Austens that I have read.

I finished North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell. I guess I'm opposite to tess - I liked Wives and Daughters better. But it was still very good. I kept thinking of the could just have an honest conversation it would have solved a few problems.

I Did really like the setting of a factory town. The tension and the living conditions, while she certainly could have been grittier still added a lot to the story.

I don't find a wiki for this quarter?

I've got a long one, a real doorstopper — Brontë biographer Juliet Barker's biography of Wordsworth: A Life. It's actually longer than The Brontës: Wild Genius on the Moors! Fortunately, I've got three months to read it in, and I figure a chapter a day will get me through it in a month (or two months if I do a chapter every other day). I read the Norton Critical edition of Wordsworth's Poetry and Prose for the last quarter (Napoleonic era), and to make any sense of the Prelude you really have to read it once, then read a good Wordsworth biography, then go back and read it again.

>8 cmbohn: Interesting note on North and South. Reverend Hale's parsonage was in the village of Helstone – as in Caroline Helstone of Shirley. And of course there's the governess, Miss Eyre, in Wives and Daughters.

Interesting little bit of speculation, the "battle of the books" in Cranford, with Captain Brown supporting The Pickwick Papers while Deborah Jenkyns supports Rasselas, the latter of which happened to be Helen Burns's book in Jane Eyre. Was this a Gaskell tease of Charlotte Brontë, giving Helen's book to the domineering old spinster Deborah?

I didn't catch those allusions! Thanks for pointing that out.

>9 Tess_W: Try this link for the Quarterly Wiki:

https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/Reading_Through_Time_Quarterly_Theme_Rea...

I think it wasn't working when you tried it as someone didn't finish their update properly (and blushes - that someone just might have been me!!)

>13 DeltaQueen50: thanks Delta! I was now able to post!

I finally finished Wordsworth: A Life by Brontë-biographer Juliet Barker. I gave it 5***** but it wasn't as good as Wild Genius on the Moors but that's probably just a Brontëan bias on my part. I got about halfway through it in hard cover, then switched over to Kindle for ease of reading (nearly 1000 pages) and finished it on Kindle during a two-day hospital stay for a recurrence of COPD.

Unfortunately, the Kindle edition of Wordsworth isn't as nicely formatted as Wild Genius, lacking back-and-forth links between text and endnotes; and both biographies contain interesting textual endnotes that don't merely cite bibliographic sources. Fortunately for me, I'm not as interested in Wordsworthian details as I am Brontëan.

Wordsworth could as easily fit the Napoleonic era considering that the best of his poetry generally falls within the Revolution and Napoleonic periods, and I used Wordsworth's Poetry and Prose (Norton Critical) for the last quarter's Napoleonic reading; but Wordsworth died in 1850, over a decade into the Victorian Era, and Barker's biography gives significant attention to Wordsworth's later life.

One feature that would have improved Barker's biography would have been a good biographical glossary. There are a goodly number of characters in this biography, many of them relatives of William and his wife Mary; and some of these characters, as would be expected in any extended family, have the same given and surnames, which can get a bit confusing.

Just stumbled across the quarterly time period thread and noticed that Nicholas Nickleby, a book I read earlier in January, will count here.

>16 lkernagh: Bonus, Lori.

I went to Victorian England for my nineteenth century read. A Foreign Affair was set at the beginning of Queen Victoria's reign. Liberty Lane investigated a plot to replace young Vicky with a man posing as the lost child of Queen Charlotte. The child was supposed to have died at birth but word was put out that the baby was kidnapped. It was up to Liberty to foil the plot while surviving in a perilous world where she has to support herself as someone involved in the plot killed her father. It was an interesting read and I am looking forward to following the series.

I've added a couple more books to the wiki that I have read during January and this month. The North Water by Ian McGuire is about a 19th century whaling ship and is an excellent but very violent read. Also The Revenant by Michael Punke which is about fur trapper Hugh Glass and his survival after a horrific mauling by a Grizzly bear. This takes place in 1823.

I have read a collection of stories written in the 1880s by Russian author Vsevolod Garshin, most of them reflecting on the Russian-Turkish War of 1877/78: ...alle Bitternis der Welt. Wonderfully written, most of them very sad. However, the lives of the middle class struck me as surprisingly modern, with girls attending high school and university.

April Thru June thread is up: http://www.librarything.com/topic/288449

Whoops, I realize The Revenant doesn't actually belong in this quarter as it is set in North America. I did just finish Mansfield Park by Jane Austen and it does fit so I will add that to the Wiki while I remove The Revenant.

>22 DeltaQueen50: Yeah, confusing.

I am currently reading a nonfiction book, What Kings Are and Wizards Drank. It's intended to be a reference for writers of fantasy about what real life would have been like in books like LOTR and so on, but the comparison she uses most often is medieval Europe. Some stuff about the 19th century too, with regards to steampunk worlds. I think it would count and I am enjoying it but the writing is not as good as the information.

I have just completed a historical mystery set in Victorian England. Based on week long pedestrian races, Wobble To Death was a fun read.

My reads for this quarter were:

Hedda Gabler, Norway. Classic - but not impressed.
Mrs. Osmond, early to mid 1800s, set mostly in Italy and England, psychological fiction about a woman who was married for her inheritance.
On the Night of the Seventh Moon, 1859-60s Germany, chick-lit about a schoolgirl who falls in love with Bavaria and someone she meets there.
Remarkable Creatures, 1810s-20s England, biographical fiction about the girl who found the first "monster" fossils.
The Secret Garden, the beloved children's classic.
Tom Brown's School Days, 1850s Rugby, coming of age story and much ado about sports.

>26 countrylife: I've had my eye on Remarkable Creatures for a while. What did you think of the book?

>27 Familyhistorian: : I enjoyed it very much; it earned 4 stars from me. I read somewhere that the biography of Mary Anning by Shelley Emiling is a better book, but I have not read it so cannot compare. I thought this author brought her characters, the place, and the time to life. How accurate her biographical fiction was, I do not know. But I enjoyed the story very much.

Just managed to squeak another book into this quarterly challenge: Mr. Darwin's Shooter by Roger MacDonald is a fictionalized account of what by today standards would have been considers a co-contributor to Darwin's naturalist work and the creation of his "Origin of the Species" thesis. decent historical fiction read but it did take me two months to read it as I just never felt connected to the story, the characters or their situations.

>29 lkernagh: : I had the same reaction to that one. Took me a long time to finish it, too.

"A Gentleman in Moscow": Count Rostov, an old order aristocratic gentleman born and educated to a life of ease, is put on house arrest within the Grand Metropol Hotel in Moscow and down-sized to a100 square foot attic room. During the first few years, he survives on his wit, his humor and his outgoing personality as he reproduces his former life in a smaller venue. After four years, the house arrest which separates him from the world he knew brings him to the edge with suicidal thoughts. Once he turns away from that option, he recreates himself and sets aside the black hole of limited interests and becomes the head waiter in the hotels exclusive restaurant, building relationships from the basement to the attic. Years later, a young woman he befriended as a child, brings her 5 year old daughter for safe keeping. Sofia completely changes his long view of life in Russia

I'm currently reading a nonfiction book which isn't strictly 19th century Europe, but this section is all about the scientists from that era, Charles Darwin, Lyell, Alfred Wallace, etc. It's about island biodiversity and evolution. It's called The Song of the Dodo.