Those wonderful books of the past...

[fajrdrako]

This week’s question is suggested by Island Editions:

Do you have a favourite book, now out of print, that you would like to see become available again? (I have several…)

My first thought was of books of my childhood. The first would be A Treasury of Great Poems, edited by Louis Untermeyer. Not actually intended for children, this book was given to my mother by her Sunday School class when she got married in 1944. She loved it, as did I. It had a friendly, clear introduction to each poet and each poem, and the poems were well chosen, and I got more of an education in poetry from this book than I ever did in high school or university English classes. It had in it poems that are still my favourites, like the wonderful translation Tennyson wrote of "The Battle of Brunanburh". Can't you just imagine how that burned its shield-wall into my adolescent imagination?

Then there is He Went With Christopher Columbus or any of the books by Louise Andrews Kent, whom I loved as a kid. I was mad over history. This book sent me into years of happy role-playing games as a stowaway or cabin boy/girl with Columbus. All the Kent books fanned my imagination and increased my love of history.

Likewise, Merrylips by Jean Marie Dix, a wonderful adventure about a little girl in the English Civil War.

So, dragging myself away from childhood reading - there's Edward, Edward or any of the novels of Lolah Burford. Historical novels with a psychological slant - themes of white slavery and abuse of aristocratic privilege.

O City of Byzantium by Niketas Choniates. It ought to be in print. It's a wonderful book. I can't think why it isn't. It ought to be a much-read classic. Likewise, I'd love to see L'histoire de guillaume le maréchal in print again - it was last published in Paris in the 1870s - but now that it's available online, my feelings aren't quite so urgent. I love electronic technology.

Because I like this topic, I asked this question of a couple of my friends. One said "Dickens' magazine 'Household Words'." Another cited the Pitman shorthand version of A Sign of Four. Another said, "The works of John Masefield" - which actually is in print, but (appallingly) not available in Canada, for copyright reasons.

There's also a Louis Untermeyer poem I've been looking for and not finding anywhere - I don't know if it's in print or not, and I can't remember the title of the book where I originally found it. It was something like The Oxford Book of Naughty Verse, and it was called something along the lines of, "To his right-beloved Shakespeare, from WH", and it begins: "Whenas (methinks that is a pretty way to start)...." and it ends:

In thy next poem, if thou wouldst give me joy,
Please make it clear I'm not that kind of boy?

Does this sound familiar to anyone here?

Comments

[idiotgrrl.livejournal.com]

I just checked the Treasury of Great Poems. Amazon has a bunch of them.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Yes, but I don't think it's currently actually in print, even though there are copies still around. It did have numerous editions. I'm planning to buy it when I can afford it. (Whenever that might be!)

[idiotgrrl.livejournal.com]

Afford it? The cheapest one was $1.17. If that's unaffordable, let me get a message to Santa Claus.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Oh, I must look again! Last I checked, there was nothing like that... It was more in the $30 range. Yay!

[idiotgrrl.livejournal.com]

It sure looked like $1.17 to me. I didn't check to see what condition it was in, though.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

"Legible" would be enough. I'm not fussy. Torn pages? No problem. Missing pages? that would be a problem.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

I use Bookfinder (http://www.bookfinder.com). Wonderful.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Handy, too!

[duncanmac.livejournal.com]

Sigh. You were exposed to much more poetry than I ever was.

As for now, I'd be delighted to curl up with some poetry ... if I had time. (I sometimes think I spend far too many weeks behaving like acephalous poultry [i.e. a chicken with its head cut off].)

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

You were exposed to much more poetry than I ever was.

I think I was very lucky that those kids gave my mother that book. But my mother loved poetry - she used to write it sometimes - and she used to read it to me when I was a preschooler, things like "Silver Pennies" (another book that ought to be in print, if it isn't) and "When We Were Very Young" and "A Child's Garden of Verse".

There's less poetry in my life now, but I make it a point to still read it whenever possible. Many poem's aren't very long, so it's easy to pick up a poetry book, read a poem or two, and put it down again.

It's thought-provoking, too.

[filkferengi]

_Silver Pennies_ rocks! I got it from the library around 10-12, prime impression-age. A few decades later, I got it at a local library book sale, & it's glowing on my shelf *right now* & is still every bit as good. The sequel, _More Silver Pennies_, while not as incandescent, is still quite shiny [if you can find it].

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

My aunt had a copy of Silver Pennies, which I think someone (maybe my mother) gave her for Christmas in 1920-something. I loved it so much she gave it to me - actually, I think she'd given it to my cousin, and my cousin gave it to me. I cherish that book. It's old and the pages aren't in as great shape as they were 70 years ago - or the binding - but it's delightfully readable.

I've never seen a copy of More Silver Pennies, but I continue to look for it, in a casual sort of way.

[tudorpot.livejournal.com]

Trent's Last Case by Edmund Clerihew Bentley , and Frederica by Georgette Heyer. But in checking re TRent's last case, Amazon says it has new copies, but they are out of stock- so who knows.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Sometimes "out of print" does not mean "unavailable". Sometimes it does. I didn't realize "Trent's Last Case" was out of print. I keep thinking of other things I should have mentioned, like most of the books of Baroness Orczy or Samuel Shellabarger. And an odd book I once loved called "Lorenzaccio" by Irwin Upton - again, a historical novel.

Historical novels (except for lurid romances) and sadly out of fashion and they remain my favourite genre.

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

Oh god, "Edward, Edward" - not only do I have that, but my mother does too! What an utterly sick and twisted book. I remember reading it being all appalled (and also appalled at liking it so much). Sigh.

Oooooh, Amazon link = did not realize she had so many other books! Eeeeeeeeeeeeh!

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I pretty much enjoyed all the Lolah Burford books I read, though Edward, Edward was the best by far and the only one I still have. I think. I really liked Vice Avenged, which is a sort of... companion piece? - to Edward, Edward, though set earlier and with different characters. It starts with the same boy's club rape dare that Edward, Edward mentions, but it's about the consequences in the life of one of the other young men. As with Edward's mother, the girl gets pregnant. But this girl has big tough brothers to avenge her dishonour.

The thing about Edward, Edward is that it's so very well written. The plot is lurid and the style is exquisite.

I also really liked Alyx, in which the hero is a young British aristocrat whose family wants his money so they have him shanghaied to Virginia and sold as a slave to the wealthy owner of a plantation, where he is expected to breed more white slaves and also to service the Master. (And the mistess? I think.) Maclyon is... similar in theme. After the Battle of Culloden, a Scotsman is sent as a slave to the colonies. His wife dedicates herself to finding him and rescuing (or buying) him and bringing him home, prostituting herself to do so.

I think I liked the others a little less well, and then there are some I never read or found, either.

[filkferengi]

I've only ever read _The Vision Of Stephen_ by her [a time-traveling YA I quite enjoyed], & had no idea she'd written such lurid stuff.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I read Edward, Edward because it was reviewed in Analog with great praise. It was supposed to be a review of The Vision of Stephen, but the writer of the review seemed to have a lot more to say about Edward, Edward. I was intrigued.

I thought The Vision of Stephen was okay, but it didn't make much of an impression - if I'd read it first, I don't think I'd have bothered picking up another Burford novel.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

After the Battle of Culloden, a Scotsman is sent as a slave to the colonies. His wife dedicates herself to finding him and rescuing (or buying) him and bringing him home, prostituting herself to do so.

Clearly the author doesn't know the difference between "indentured servant" and actual slave. One for the bonfire of tartanised sentimental Jaco crap, methinks.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I don't remember the plot details of MacLyon well enough now - and I don't think the hero's enslavement was legal; there were all sorts of levels of wrongdoing going on.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

It sounds ghastly. I cannot, cannot understand the longevity of the Walter Scott-engendered sentimental cult around Jacobitism, especially among non-British romance novelists (whose knowledge of 18C Britain, and especially Highland culture, drives me around the twist). Frankly, if someone was stupid enough to be a Jacobite, they deserved all they got.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Perhaps Walter Scott himself is reponsible for the longevity of the cult. He was well-known enough, and enduringly possible, and as we've talked about, remains in print while other, better writers are forgotten.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

Yup. Plus it was all taken up so enthusiastically by Queen Victoria and everyone… People seem to think, "Oooh, rebellion's always romantic!". Yeah, right: rebellion in favour of the divine right of kings, a Catholic succession, and the right of heritable jurisdictions for the nobility. It was a deeply reactionary cause, which would have greatly slowed down political progress, but people overlook that, just because of a load of mawkish songs and a lot of sentimental, tartan-wrapped twaddle.

The US-written Jaco romances boggle me completely: it's obvious that the authors have no grasp of real Scotland, and often depict Jacobitism as Scotland v England, not civil wars over dynastic/sectarian issues. Some novelists feel free to invent laws for real countries: it's as if, for them, Scotland is just some fantasy-land, like Ruritania. That attitude frightens me.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

rebellion in favour of the divine right of kings, a Catholic succession, and the right of heritable jurisdictions for the nobility

People are so strange. And history... not so much written by the victors, as the people with the wildest imaginations.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

One key aspect, especially with the romance novels, is that they are not intended for a domestic audience. Academic historiography here has moved far beyond this sort of thing, but fiction has not caught up, especially the fiction produced in N America.

I do wonder if there are issues that might be defined as a "diaspora mentality"? I note that several novelists in the tartanised subgenre make much in their introductions of "being of Highland descent", or words to that effect (as if that renders the need for proper research unnecessary!). It seems to me that for people in N America (and indeed, no doubt also in Australasia) who claim Scots ancestry, what prevails is a highly inauthentic notion of "Scottishness" (for which read "Highlandness", since they seem to work under the assumption that that is the only Scots identity), based on Walter Scott and such modern dross as Braveheart. They get hung up on the notion of "authentic Scottishness=Highlandness=Jacobitism", with the result that non-Highland Scots, or non-Jacobite (Highland or not) are made invisible or are depicted as "not true Scots", "anglicised", "traitors", & c. It's over-simplistic on every level, politically, religiously, & c.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Romance tends to favour the exotic and the nostalgic. For Americans, that means the geneological past, and the far away. I'd say "for Canadians" too, but the point is that the money-rich American market is where the romance market is aimed.

I do wonder if there are issues that might be defined as a "diaspora mentality"?

I'd say, undoubtledly. I think we can see it historically - a similar mentality to medieval Europeans writing about Alexander the Great, or the glory days of King Arthur's legendary Britain. (The latter hasn't gone away. Or, come to think of it, the former.) I wonder if displaced Saxons c. 1100 were making up similar stories in their Byzantine exile. Or the Norse in Kiev.

In North America (and I can't speak for Australia/NZ but I'd bet it's the same) it isn't just the Scots background but also the Irish. I wonder if it's cross-cultural - i.e., after a few generations, or a few dozen generations, will the Lebanese and Vietnamese immigrants be telling similar stories of their imagined homselands? I have seen it, a very little bit, with the Chinese.

And oddly enough, I've not really seen it with French Canada, which tends more to look at the future, and to see France not so much as a romanticized homeland, but an alternate oppressor. Much more like the attitude of the multi-generational Scots-Americans to the English.

Maybe that's it: the Americans fought a big war with the English, and so won't romanticize them (at least, not in the same way) so they romanticize the Scots instead, making them fellow-victims.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

Maybe that's it: the Americans fought a big war with the English, and so won't romanticize them (at least, not in the same way) so they romanticize the Scots instead, making them fellow-victims.

Which is utter victim-complex bollocks, and reveals how warped their knowledge of history is. They fought the British, which includes Scots, with (at the time) an army that was about a quarter Scots (officers and men) and also with a goodly proportion of Irish. Scots were loathed by the American rebels as they were prominent in the colonial administration, and Jefferson was especially nasty about them. Highlanders were also prominent in the Loyalist forces in New York State and in the south. I'm reminded of the primary school history teacher I met at King's Mountain, who asked, re: Pattie, "What was a Scotsman doing fighting for the British?" I had to explain Britain to her as a concept…

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Oh, sure, it's all imaginary, but we're talking about fiction here. Romanticized fiction all the way.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

I find their confusion over English/British pretty disturbing, given how they expect everyone else to grasp their far bigger and more complex federal system!

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I once asked a friend from the Manchester area what she would call her country, and she didn't have an answer for me. I think "UK" is now the proper political designation - ? There are all sorts of reasons for the confusion, including the perception that the British Empire was run by the English, because it was ruled by the King or Queen of England.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

There are all sorts of reasons for the confusion, including the perception that the British Empire was run by the English, because it was ruled by the King or Queen of England.

Since 1603, the Kings and Queens of Scots(the crown was a Scots takeover). The British Empire was run very much by the Scots (see Tom Devine's books). False perceptions are a major problems.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

We get very little English (or British) history here in high schools. Most of it even in my time was post World War II history, and dealt with the UK only insofar as it affected recent Canadian history. What people know about history, they learned - mostly - from Hollywood.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

And that is the basic problem: inadequate teaching of history; a preference for dubious myth over reality.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

All most people get is the dubious myth. Of course they believe it; there's no one to tell them different. (They don't believe me...!)

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

What's also odd about it is that people want their identities to be perceived as based on "victimhood".

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

That doesn't seem odd to me. I's all part of the same legendary status and heroic journey. Past suffering, heroism in action, villains to oppose.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

It seems very odd to me to regard victimhood as a desirable state, something to be proud of. Reminds me of the peasant in Holy Grail: "Help! Help! I'm being oppressed! Come and see the violence inherent in the system!"

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Hee! Love Monty Python.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

I think what's bizarre is that victimhood has come to be seen as morally "more pure", a status to be sought as desirable. Once you accept the label of 'victim', you don't need to take responsibility for anything. It's psychologically unhealthy on an individual or cultural level.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

Choniates – yes! I cannot believe a university press would do this!
Ilgen's biography of Conrad, too: German ed, 1880, Italian ed, 1890 (which I have)… English? Never.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Did Ilgen write it in German?

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

Yes. I have part of it in German (it was issued in parts, I think, in German), but the whole in Italian.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Good! With a little practice, I could read the Italian. For some reason I have something of a mental block when it comes to German. Theoretically I should be able to read it, but it intimidates me in a way other languages don't. Which is odd, because it isn't so unlike English or Dutch.