Category: Virago
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The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton – Edith Wharton is one of my favourite writers. I discovered her some 25 years ago and I remember going on holiday to Italy one year when my girls were in their early teens and being accused of not listening to them as I was so engrossed in my…
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I first came across Elizabeth von Arnim when I picked up a copy of The Enchanted April in Waterstones some 20 years ago and thought 'this looks interesting'. I purchased it, went home, read it in two hours and came straight back into town and Waterstones and bought the other three on the shelves. Since…
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Along with most of us I suspect, I only knew Dodie Smith as the author of 101 Dalmatians and it remained this way until in my mid-forties I came across a battered old green Virago edition of I captured the Castle and realised it was the same author. I read it and loved it and…
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“A large family should be a specially happy community, but it sometimes occurs that there is a boy or a girl who is nothing but a middle one, fitting in nowhere. Henrietta Symons is such an one, being the third daughter in an upper middle class family with parents who are so indifferent towards their…
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A few years ago I went to a book sale here in Colchester and came across a little pile of books by E H Young. They were all in the wonderful Virago green cover editions and were being totally ignored in the mad rush to grab the Dan Browns, Danielle Steeles and John Grishams piled…
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When I was painting my bookshelves last week and all my books were in heaps on the floor, I had a bit of a clear out (not a big one, just a few books went) and I realised that I had duplicate copies of many books. I remember my mum always used to ask me…
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Have some catching up to do as books seem to have piled up over the last few weeks and though I have been reading, my posting is far behind. So am doing a round up over the next few days to get up to date. A Perfect Proposal – Katie Fforde. I never wait for…
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I am obviously on a von Arnim roll at the moment as just before my wonderful purchase over the weekend, I spotted that at long last this simply gorgeous film is out on DVD. What took so long? I originally saw this some ten years or more ago and adored it so much I bought…
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And as I was mentioning Louisa May Alcott in my previous post, here are the Virago editions of Rose in Bloom and Eight Cousins: On the left ‘An English Rose’ by Emile Vernon – on the right – ‘The Young Gallant’ by Edmund Eagles. Two of my favourite books by this author. In these books…
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"With the intention of making a suitable match, Undine Spragg and her parents move to New York where her youthful, radiant beauty and ruthless ambition prove an irresistible force. Here Edith Wharton dissects the traditions, pretensions and prohibitions of American and European society – both the ostentatious glitter of the nouveau riche and the faded…
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"One rainy Sunday in January Mrs Palfrey, recently widowed, arrives at the Claremont Hotel in the Cromwell Road. Here she will spend her remaining days. Her fellow residents are a magnificently eccentric group who live off crumbs of affection, obsessive interest in the relentless round of hotel meals, and undying curiosity. There is Mrs Burton…
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I discovered this book by sheer accident when wandering around Waterstones in Colchester on a wet, rainy day and for some reason picked this up wondering who on earth this author was. Ten minutes later after standing reading the first two chapters and discovering that a downtrodden, middle aged woman, seeking refuge from her boring…