Howards End....

[eighthobstruction]

....ref James ....I got put off by his early novels (the subject matter , not the writing) the Ambassadors was one.... posh Americans in Europe n'all that....breaches of ettiquette....

ED.... no it wasn't the Ambassadors....it was the Americans

[eighthobstruction]

I really enjoyed Antal Szebb :Journey by Moonlight that you rec somewhere vinteuil....

[vinteuil]

I really enjoyed Antal Szebb :Journey by Moonlight that you rec somewhere vinteuil....

... love you too, bruv





.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

....anybody read any Mrs Gaskell or Disraeli....I've often wondered what they are like....

Mrs G is pretty darn good (North & South a favourite). I've read Disraeli's Sybil some time ago - I can't really remember anything about it (other than thinking at the time that she was better in Fawlty Towers).

[eighthobstruction]

Mrs G is pretty darn good (North & South a favourite). I've read Disraeli's Sybil some time ago - I can't really remember anything about it (other than thinking at the time that she was better in Fawlty Towers).

[eighthobstruction]

....just wikied Henry James....what a fab life as to who he knew and what a LOT of books he wrote....

[Nick Armstrong]

....but don't start reading Henry James ff; it will do you no good at all....

[french frank]

....but don't start reading Henry James ff; it will do you no good at all....

I might just about manage Daisy Miller or Washington Square but either would see me through for a year or so.

[vinteuil]

....ref James ....I got put off by his early novels (the subject matter , not the writing) the Ambassadors was one.... posh Americans in Europe n'all that....breaches of ettiquette....

ED.... no it wasn't the Ambassadors....it was the Americans

... yep - you can have early James like The American (posh Americans in Europe) or The Europeans (posh Europeans in America) - or late James like The Ambassadors or The Wings of the Dove or The Golden Bowl (even posher Americans in Europe).

Lovely stuff....

.

[Barbirollians]

Trying to read The Ambassadors was like wading through treacle as I recall .

I don't agree with the criticism of EM Forster on here but I do think that his works do perhaps appeal most to the young especially A Room with a A View and Howards End for their idealism although the latter is a complex work that takes in particular a very modern view of the role of women for 1910 . Leaving aside Passage to India it should also be remembered that the novels were all written by the time he was 30 .

Julian Barnes in his Guardian article on Forster in 2016 on the other hand suggested he wasn't perhaps mature enough to read him when he was young but has come to appreciate him in his 60s.

[Conchis]

Having read The Golden Bowl earlier this year, I feel I have nothing to fear from the rest of the James canon.

I am about to read Alistair Maclean's The Dark Crusader (published under his early nom de plume Ian Stuart). I've never read anything by MacLean before and feel I ought to do repair this omission.

[Rolmill]

I am about to read Alistair Maclean's The Dark Crusader (published under his early nom de plume Ian Stuart). I've never read anything by MacLean before and feel I ought to do repair this omission.

Speaking as one who read all of MacLean's books in his youth, I would start with HMS Ulysses - definitely his best!

[vinteuil]

Having read The Golden Bowl earlier this year, I feel I have nothing to fear from the rest of the James canon.
.

... I think you're probably right. Tho' The Sacred Fount is almost unreadable....

[un barbu]

There is an old joke about the three stages of Henry James's writing: James the First, James the Second, and the Old Pretender.

[mercia]

.. not having read Howards End, are we ever told the source of income for the Schlegels, that allows them to lounge around all day vacuously wittering away ?