# One's favourite English fiction?



## Fogey (Aug 27, 2005)

_Of Human Bondage_, Somerset Maugham
_Lord Jim_, Joseph Conrad
_Sherlock Holmes_ (The Canon), Sir A Conan Doyle
_New Labour_, Anthony Charles Lynton Blair
_The Picture of Dorian Gray_, Oscar Wilde
_Robinson Crusoe_, Daniel Defoe
_Goodbye, Mr Chips_, James Hilton
_Beasts and Super-Beasts_, H H Munro

One is in a rather _bildungsroman_ temper, so perhaps edits are forthcoming. Gentlemen? (Ladies?)


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## Rich (Jul 10, 2005)

_Treasure Island_ has always been one of my big favourites. I'm very fond of Anthony Powell's _A Dance to the Music of Time_. Also all of Kingsley Amis. I see you classify Anthony Blair as a writer of fiction - fair enough, but is he really in the same league as Wilde, Conrad, etc.?


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## ashie259 (Aug 25, 2005)

I'm very fond of Patrick Hamilton (_Hangover Square, The Midnight Bell, The Slaves of Solitude,_) etc. You might say he wrote the _Bildungsroman _ in reverse.


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## mpcsb (Jan 1, 2005)

Anything by Jane Austen. I've read and re-read _Pride and Prejudice_ more times than I can remember.


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## Patrick06790 (Apr 10, 2005)

Off the top of my bleary head:

P.G. Wodehouse and John Mortimer. Anthony Burgess, before the spirit of James Joyce crawled up his caboose. Arthur Conan Doyle (see "Tales of Mystery and Terror" - something like that).

Manning Coles - WW II spy stuff. Very entertaining.

Reginald Hill and Ian Rankin write the smartest detective fiction around these days.


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## Joe Frances (Sep 1, 2004)

Mortimer; Trollope; Dickens; Micael Dobbs (Francis Urquart series, and his great Churchill novels- -"Winston's War"; "Never Surrender" and "Churchill's Hour"); Susan Howatch's brilliant Starbridge series (6 novels).

Joe


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## n/a (Sep 4, 2002)

For detective fiction, let us not forget Edmund Crispin. (Robert Bruce Montgomery)

_Holy Disorders_ is a particular favourite.

"When Britain first at Heaven's Command arose from out the azure main, this was the character of the land and guardian angels sung the strain: Rule Britannia! Britannia rule the waves! Britons shall _*never*_ be slaves."


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## Yckmwia (Mar 29, 2005)

This subject arises, in one form or another, every few months. Whenever it does, I recommend, with immoderate enthusiasm, Anthony Powell's _A Dance To The Music of Time_. I'll do so again, and this time add a word for Powell's four volumes of memoirs, published under the collective title _To Keep The Ball Rolling_.

One could go through life without having read either of Ford Maddox Ford's masterpieces, _The Good Solider_ and the tetralogy _Parade's End_; but why would one wish to do that?

William Golding's _The Spire_ has likely been read by only one one-thousandth of the people who have read _Lord Of The Flies_. In a better world, this ratio would be reversed.

Amis _pere_ beats the pants off of Amis _fils_; but if the lot of them had called it a day after the publication of _Lucky Jim_ we would still have the best the family had to offer.

So far as I know, the spirit of Joyce crawled up Anthony Burgess's caboose while young Master Wilson was still a sixth former at Xavierian College, Manchester. I would submit that it wasn't Joyce's undue influence, but age and drink that led to a decline in Burgess's fiction. Still, everything up to and including _Earthly Powers_ is worth reading and re-reading.

J.G. Farrell's historical novels of Empire, including the Booker winner _The Seige of Krishnapur_, are first-rate and once again in print in the U.S.

Sterne gave the Cock and Bull story its definitive treatment to date in _Tristram Shandy_, and it's highly unlikely that it will be surpassed any time soon.

I can't decide whether John Cowper Powys's _Wolf Solent_ is a masterpiece or a mess. It's _something_ out of the ordinary, in any case.

I've been re-reading V.S. Pritchett's _Collected Stories_ and I'm coming around to the belief that Sir Victor may well have been the best short story writer in the language - and the competition in that category is stiff, particularly from the American and Irish contingents.

If Slavs writing in English (Conrad) and the Anglo-Irish (Wilde) may be included in this discussion, then the collected works of V. Nabokov and his most talented current disciple, John Banville, must be given their due.

Michael Frayn's clever, clever fictions, especially his recent _Headlong_, never fail to delight and surprise.

Henry Green is an acquired taste; but isn't a taste for most delicacies acquired, and not innate? Penguin publishes Green's six novels in a convenient two volume set, the second volume of which is indispensable, as it contains Green's two best works _Loving_ and _Living_.

Speaking of writers Green(e): Graham Greene scaled the heights several times, in _The Power And The Glory_, _The Heart Of The Matter_, and, possibly, _Brighton Rock_. One could do far worse.

"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just." Thomas Jefferson


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## Patrick06790 (Apr 10, 2005)

> quote:So far as I know, the spirit of Joyce crawled up Anthony Burgess's caboose while young Master Wilson was still a sixth former at Xavierian College, Manchester. I would submit that it wasn't Joyce's undue influence, but age and drink that led to a decline in Burgess's fiction. Still everything up to and including Earthly Powers is worth reading and re-reading.


I'll buy that.


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## eromlignod (Nov 23, 2005)

Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
The Count of Monte Christo, Alexandre Dumas
Penrod, Booth Tarkington
The Scarlet Pimpernell, Baroness Orzcy
Lorna Doone, R.D. Blackmore
Tobacco Road, Erskine Caldwell
Anything by Steinbeck.

Don
Kansas City


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## Yckmwia (Mar 29, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by Patrick06790_
> 
> 
> 
> ...


It is The Wheel, Kismet. Only today there is posted on the LRB's website a review of a new biography of AB. The reviewer appears to be an inordinately severe, youngish, Cantabrigian Lecturer, who concludes that AB was "a sharp but minor talent." The dead must silently endure such indignities, without protest or complaint, until the veil envelops us all.

However, the reviewer, Colin Burrow, does score some points when he describes Burgess in decline as becoming "in many of his attitudes the least attractive kind of creature in the world: a tax exile . . . whose opinions were admired by Auberon Waugh." Ouch! Now that's hitting a man where it hurts.

"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just." Thomas Jefferson


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## jbmcb (Sep 7, 2005)

Douglas Adams - Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy - one of the only books I laughed uncontrollably at while reading. The movie was a depressing shadow of the book. "The great yellow spaceships hung in the air exactly in the way that bricks don't" is still one of my favorite lines from any book.

Nick Hornby, Arthur Conan Doyle, Orwell, Tolkien...


Good/Fast/Cheap - Pick Two


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## The Gabba Goul (Feb 11, 2005)

Though I thought the movie was pretty boring, I did enjoy reading the book; _A Clockwork Orange_...

...does that count???

*****
[image]https://radio.weblogs.com/0119318/Screenshots/rose.jpg[/image]"See...What I'm gonna do is wear a shirt only once, and then give it right away to the laundry...eh?
A new shirt every day!!!"​


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## Earthmover (Jan 3, 2005)

It seems that I lean towards the non-British Isles authors.

Does _Remains of the Day_ by Kazuo Ishiguro count? I really like that novel, and I didn't think I would. It was a very pleasant surprise.


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## Kav (Jun 19, 2005)

Please define english? I could pull out Beowulf, Chaucer and Shakespear and leap to C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and G.K. Chesterton and on to a minor phenomenon called Harry Potter . I am always amused at this anglo-irish business. Dylan Thomas isn't called anglo- welsh, Bobby Burns anglo- scot and I'm sure theres a good manxman writing lyric motorcycle prose. The proper term is british literature as in british Isles. That is why we don't have anglo-american, anglo canadian or anglo australian. Worldwide it is english literature which could properly include the lyrics of Bob Marley and the wailers. Have you ever held a conversation with a jamaicaman?


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## Fogey (Aug 27, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by Yckmwia_
> If Slavs writing in English (Conrad) ... may be included in this discussion


Great God, what fool would bar him? That 'slav' was one of the most brilliant writers of English ever to put pen to paper; every one of his sentences evokes the same sort of introspective majesty as does, say, St Paul's Cathedral. Conrad was at least as English as Queen Victoria.

Besides, the last forty-eight years of his life was a British citizen.

_ The conquest of love, honour, men's confidence -- the pride of it, the power of it, are fit materials for a heroic tale; only our minds are struck by the externals of such a success, and to Jim's successes there were no externals. Thirty miles of forest shut it off from the sight of an indifferent world, and the noise of the white surf along the coast overpowered the voice of fame. The stream of civilisation, as if divided on a headland a hundred miles north of Patusan, branches east and south-east, leaving its plains and valleys, its old trees and its old mankind, neglected and isolated, such as an insignificant and crumbling islet between the two branches of a mighty, devouring stream. You find the name of the country pretty often in collections of old voyages. The seventeenth-century traders went there for pepper, because the passion for pepper seemed to burn like a flame of love in the breast of Dutch and English adventurers about the time of James the First. Where wouldn't they go for pepper! For a bag of pepper they would cut each other's throats without hesitation, and would forswear their souls, of which they were so careful otherwise: the bizarre obstinacy of that desire made them defy death in a thousand shapes -- the unknown seas, the loathsome and strange diseases; wounds, captivity, hunger, pestilence, and despair. It made them great! By heavens! it made them heroic; and it made them pathetic too in their craving for trade with the inflexible death levying its toll on young and old. It seems impossible to believe that mere greed could hold men to such a steadfastness of purpose, to such a blind persistence in endeavour and sacrifice. And indeed those who adventured their persons and lives risked all they had for a slender reward. They left their bones to lie bleaching on distant shores, so that wealth might flow to the living at home. To us, their less tried successors, they appear magnified, not as agents of trade but as instruments of a recorded destiny, pushing out into the unknown in obedience to an inward voice, to an impulse beating in the blood, to a dream of the future. They were wonderful; and it must be owned they were ready for the wonderful. They recorded it complacently in their sufferings, in the aspect of the seas, in the customs of strange nations, in the glory of splendid rulers. _

-Joseph Conrad, from _Lord Jim_


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## n/a (Sep 4, 2002)

> quote:_Originally posted by JLPWCXIII_
> ...every one of his sentences evokes the same sort of introspective majesty as does, say, St Paul's Cathedral. Conrad was at least as English as Queen Victoria.


That Conrad was a slav caught me off guard. But the reference to St. Paul's Cathedral?

A man after my own heart. Tip: attend Evensong on a weekday. Get there early enough and you can sit in the quire, otherwise closed at all times to tourists.

"When Britain first at Heaven's Command arose from out the azure main, this was the character of the land and guardian angels sung the strain: Rule Britannia! Britannia rule the waves! Britons shall _*never*_ be slaves."


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## mendozar (Dec 13, 2005)

I hear they're making a movie adaptation of _Tristram Shandy_. How? I have no idea!

Cheers,

Rufino


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## ChubbyTiger (Mar 10, 2005)

JRR Tolkien
CS Lewis
Douglas Adams
Terry Pratchett
Neil Gaimen

I have never read anything bad by any of them. 

CT


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## globetrotter (Dec 30, 2004)

I was thinking, when Conrad was mentioned, that a lot of my favorite writers have writen in English as a second language. Conrad, some fo the Indian writers, etc.

I am also a huge fan of graham greene.


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## Fogey (Aug 27, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by globetrotter_
> 
> I was thinking, when Conrad was mentioned, that a lot of my favorite writers have writen in English as a second language. Conrad, some fo the Indian writers, etc.
> 
> I am also a huge fan of graham greene.


_Her English is too good, he said,
Which clearly indicates that she is foreign.
Whereas others are instructed in their native language
English people aren't.
And although she may have studied with an expert
Di'lectician and grammarian, I can tell that she was born
Hungarian!
_


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## Srynerson (Aug 26, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by eromlignod_
> 
> Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
> Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
> ...


You have an expansive view of "English" I see.


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## Yckmwia (Mar 29, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by Kav_
> 
> I am always amused at this anglo-irish business. Dylan Thomas isn't called anglo- welsh, Bobby Burns anglo- scot and I'm sure theres a good manxman writing lyric motorcycle prose. The proper term is british literature as in british Isles. That is why we don't have anglo-american, anglo canadian or anglo australian.


You don't say? Do you mean to tell us that you don't understand why the appellation "Anglo-Irish" is applied to writers such as Swift, Sheridan, Goldsmith, Burke, Synge, Wilde, GBS, Yeats, and others, even Beckett? How interesting. True, one doesn't often hear Anglo-Scots or Anglo-Welsh, but one does hear, for instance, Anglo-Indian (e.g., Kipling.) Now why would that be, one wonders? Could it perhaps be that the writers named were members, or descendants, of an alien English ruling caste, one which continued to identify with England in the face of rising ethnic and religious nationalism by the subject peoples that the caste was charged with ruling on behalf of The Crown? By God, it could. A similar situation did not arise in Scotland, Wales, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, or the U.S., at least not to anywhere near the same degree.

The proper term is merely "British Literature"? Tell that to Seamus Heaney.

"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just." Thomas Jefferson


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## Kav (Jun 19, 2005)

Oh dear, didn't Countess Markewitcz hang out with Yeats? No wonder her aim was so good during the Easter uprising.


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## Yckmwia (Mar 29, 2005)

...


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## Yckmwia (Mar 29, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by Kav_
> 
> Oh dear, didn't Countess Markewitcz hang out with Yeats? No wonder her aim was so good during the Easter uprising.


Madame Markiewicz wasn't a terribly close friend of Yeats', which is just as well: The Countess was in the middle of the fray in 1916, while the poet remained at a discreet distance, where he could observe the terrible beauty as it was born. Poets. Anyway, as it happens, my strained parallel of Conrad/Nabokov, Wilde/Banville was not only irksome to the Conradians, but was inaccurate as well: it seems Banville is not a son of the Ascendancy, but a Christian Brothers-educated bogtrotter. He writes like a god, though.

"I wish you lot would have the decency to shoot me." Countess Markiewicz


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## Kav (Jun 19, 2005)

The irish government today announced it's intention to pursue 'peacefull nuclear development.'Seeing it's nieghbors the cymry, cornwallmen,picts and scoti occupied as well as the Pale of Dublin and part of Ulster by a nuclear power bent on controlling the region for strategic peat reserves,M.P. Gerry Adams reminded the reporters "We are Gaels, not Britons, speak goidelic, not brythonic and reject the evil influence of outside impurities. We will restore our ancient glory and punish all firbolgs, milesians, angles,saxons,jutes,normans and mormon missionaries. Speaking in Washington, Condi Rice said " ****** Micks are dangerous enough drunk, let alone joining our club, and oh! this microphone is on?" From his Crawford ranch President Bush said a nukular Ireland would "cast a Kelly green glow of radiation over the White Cliffs of Denver." Reports of domestic spying on the phone lines of the A.O.H., the S.F. Bay's 'Irelands 32' and 'Starry plow' pubs and Nancy Reagan's private phone were hotly denied. Meanwhile on AAAC,YCKMWIA continued to order the world affairs in his own vision, oblivious to realities, placing irish literary genius in the spoils bag of english ethnicity, yet overlooking the anglo irish butchery of Omar Kyamme's Rubaiyat.[B)]


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## Mahler (Aug 5, 2005)

I'll limit myself to the second half of 20th century in British fiction only:

Evelyn Waugh
Michael Frayn
David Lodge
Salman Rushdie

and I'm probably forgetting somebody important...


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## daltx (Jan 19, 2006)

I am particularly partial to the Psmith books by P.G. Wodehouse. All of them will make you laugh out loud. I have not read his other books yet. Does anyone have experience with them?


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## Karl89 (Feb 20, 2005)

He may not be my favorite but his work is the most appropriate and important for these troubled days. Of course I speak of George Orwell. 

Karl


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## cufflink44 (Oct 31, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by Kav_
> 
> . . . the anglo irish butchery of Omar Kyamme's Rubaiyat.[B)]


Kav, themâ€™s fightinâ€™ words!

However you want to assign Fitzgeraldâ€™s national or cultural affiliation, you canâ€™t accuse him of butchering Khayyam. Quite the contrary. Sometimes he conveys him quite literally, often he interprets him, and on occasion he improves him. But heâ€™s always true to the spirit, if not always to the exact letter, of the Rubaiyat.

I have enough Persian to be able to make my way through old Omar in the original. Naturally Iâ€™ve found quatrains I like better directly from Khayyam. But Iâ€™ve also found rather flat images in the Persian that are elevated into greatness by Fitzgerald.

Take the opening rubai. The Persian has this line (my literal translation): â€œThe sun has thrown morningâ€™s lasso onto the roof.â€ Hereâ€™s what F. does with it:

_And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light._

I donâ€™t see how you can fault Fitzgerald for this enhancement. And I could multiply examples like that one.

By the way, the idea that Fitzgerald simply grabbed some vague ideas from Khayyam and then went off on his own is a widespread but unfortunate myth. At the least, you can always see chunks of the original inspiration in every quatrain. But many times the English tracks the Persian almost exactly. For example:

_The Ball no Question makes of Ayes and Noes,
But Right or Left as strikes the Player goes;
And He that toss'd Thee down into the Field,
He knows about it all--HE knows--HE knows!_

Where does that strange last line come from? Directly from Omar:

U danad-o U danad-o U danad-o U
_ He knows, He knows, He knows, He!
_
Finally, hereâ€™s one where I think Omar had it better. In Fitzgerald:

_And if the Wine you drink, the Lip you press,
End in the Nothing all Things end in--Yes-
Then fancy while Thou art, Thou art but what
Thou shalt be--Nothing--Thou shalt not be less._

The original is closer to this (my translation again):

_Khayyam, if youâ€™re drunk with wine, be happy.
If youâ€™ve sat a moment with a lovely maid, be happy.
The end of all life in this world is nothingness.
Think about being nothing. Now, while youâ€™re still something, be happy._

Examples like the preceding notwithstanding, itâ€™s hard for me to see how Fitzgeraldâ€™s translation or interpretation or whatever you want to call it could be considered anything short of inspired.

The defense rests.

----------------------------------------------------------
Ah, Love! could you and I with Fate conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits--and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!

Fitzgerald, _Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam_, 2nd ed.:CVIII


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## Kav (Jun 19, 2005)

Fitzgerald is O.K. Listening to the persian recited by a lady named Roya on a picnic is better.


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## crazyquik (Jun 8, 2005)

Christmas Carol by Dickens.

The Compleate Angler by Izaak Walton, if you consider that fiction.

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Beware of showroom sales-fever reasoning: i.e., "for $20 . . ." Once you're home, how little you paid is forgotten; how good you look in it is all that matters.


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## AlanC (Oct 28, 2003)

Conan Doyle (reading The Lost World currently, perpetually reading The Canon)
Tolkien
C.S. Lewis
Patrick O'Brian
Bernard Cornwell
C.S. Forester
Allan Mallinson

I'll endorse Gissing, too, to get a bit more serious.

I have to agree that Gaiman and Adams are top rate, too.


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## ashie259 (Aug 25, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by Karl89_
> 
> He may not be my favorite but his work is the most appropriate and important for these troubled days. Of course I speak of George Orwell.
> 
> Karl


So true. I'm reading _ Nineteen-Eighty-Four _again at the moment. The Emmanuel Goldstein tract is particularly interesting to read from the perspective of the intervening years.


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## RJman (Nov 11, 2003)

Recently read Orwell's essays; reading "England Our England" I remembered Hanif Kureishi's wonderful essay which took that as a point of departure on a bitter, excoriating journey indeed. Both are two authors I like very much.

Eric Ambler's spy stories -- Ian Fleming couldn't touch him, and I'm a Bond fan.

Another shout out to Banville; I've never considered Nabokov a British writer, if this thread is about British fiction.

Rupert Everett's books are quite interesting, although extremely rare.



-- RJman


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## Yckmwia (Mar 29, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by RJman_
> 
> Another shout out to Banville; I've never considered Nabokov a British writer, if this thread is about British fiction.
> 
> -- RJman


Well, VN did take a degree from Cambridge, and _Glory_ is set there; but, no, he was not a British, English, or even "Anglo-Russian" writer. I should have just noted Banville and left it at that.  Hasty thoughts, hasty fingers.

"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just." Thomas Jefferson


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## mpcsb (Jan 1, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by Yckmwia_
> ... Hasty thoughts, hasty fingers.


Hasty pudding,... oh wait that's a different university.


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## Yckmwia (Mar 29, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by mpcsb_
> 
> 
> 
> ...


But it's in Cambridge. . .

"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just." Thomas Jefferson


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## JLibourel (Jun 13, 2004)

My favorite English language novelist would be Sir Walter Scott, hands-down. (Obviously not "English" strictly speaking.) I have read 14 or so of his novels, of which my favorite would be Old Mortality.


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## Mr. Knightly (Sep 1, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by mendozar_
> 
> I hear they're making a movie adaptation of _Tristram Shandy_. How? I have no idea!
> 
> ...


It's a movie about trying to make a movie of the book. The subtitle has been changed to "A Cock and Bull Story." It's supposed to be brilliant.

My faves:

Novelists:
Tolkien (undergrad thesis topic)
Patrick O'Brian and Jane Austen (combined masters thesis topic)
Graham Greene
Dickens (Just because he's fun)

Poets:
Wordsworth
Keats
Yeats
Coleridge

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man.


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## Anthony Jordan (Apr 29, 2005)

Very much on the light side, but my favorite reading includes Conan Doyle (Holmes and Challenger in particular), Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham, Dornford Yates (particularly the Berry books), Terry Pratchett and (dare I mention it?) Howard Phillips Lovecraft, all of which I return to time after time.


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## Vettriano Man (Jun 30, 2005)

Probably too much to list in one go, but of all my favourite English authors I do have a passion for John Galsworthy. He has a way of very subtly sending up the British upper middle classes and with a slightly humourous touch too, but I also see so much of my ancestors in his characters which I find very amusing. I also get a wonderful insight into the periods that they were written about and enjoy the clever way some of his characters are interlinked from one book to another.


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## jklu (May 22, 2005)

My favourite purely English author is Virginia Woolf. To the Lighthouse is by far the most enjoyable novel, with The Waves, then Mrs Dalloway following.


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## AlanC (Oct 28, 2003)

> quote:_Originally posted by Anthony Jordan_
> 
> Very much on the light side, but my favorite reading includes Conan Doyle (Holmes and Challenger in particular)...


I just finished _The Lost World_. I want to try some of the Gerard stories.


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## manicturncoat (Oct 4, 2004)

Would V.S. Naipaul quaify for the "English" list?


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## Full Canvas (Feb 16, 2006)

First Blush *Fiction* Favorites are:

Chesterton â€" _The Man Who Was Thursday_
Woolf â€" _To The Lighthouse_
Nabokov â€" _Pale Fire_
Milhauser â€" _From The Realm of Morpheus_
Verne â€" _Mysterious Island_
Bronte â€" _Wuthering Heights_
Shaw â€" _Androcles and the Lion_
Durrell â€" _Balthazar_ 
Graves â€" _Count Belasarius_
Jennings â€" _The Journeyer_
Wilde â€" _The Picture of Dorian Gray_

This brief list only begins a much longer list of favorites
__________________________-


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## LabelKing (Sep 3, 2002)

Joseph Conrad is quite supreme. I always align him with Diane Arbus for one reason or another.

George Eliot, of whose Middlemarch Virgina Woolf called 'one of the few English novels written for adult people.

Agatha Christie is a fun novelist.

Oscar Wilde is really best for his plays; his singular novel is slightly mawkish. Pithy it may be.

As for Yeats, he was a member of Stella Matutina, The Golden Dawn.

Speaking of the mystic, I am also fond of James Joyce, although him being from that "ols sow that eats her own farrow" complicates things inclining on English.

*'The kind of acting I used to enjoy no longer exists because your prime consideration is the budget, running time, the cost - and whether they'll understand it in Milwaukee.'*

*Dirk Bogarde*


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## Emma (Jan 29, 2005)

I'll catch some of those you have already mentioned:

Arthur Conan Doyle is ok of course, Lord Jim I really had to struggle through, Oscar Wilde's Decay of Lying is a favourite (only book about art esthetics ever read so that might be the reason), Goodbye Mr. Chips I should read with thought it seems very touching, Anthony Powell - Buyer's Market is absolutely great, Jane Austen great of course, I love her, some books by PG Wodehouse are very good (he's quite easy-reading, don't you think, the quality isn't the same in all books?) they remind me of my grandparents' library, "thy must read your yearly Jeeves from scruffy paperbacks".

the Good Soldier I highly recommend.

Tristram Shandy I read for some university course can't remember too much about it. Scarlet Pimpernel was awesome when I was a child, so handsome and brave. Tolkien yes yes, I'm a Finn he used many things from Kalevala. CS Lewis of course, nice to find new dimensions from books you read first when a child. Hmm I seem to like Decamerone more than Chaucer (read translations of both only though) and prefer Eddan for Beowulf; I remember the last one was barely understandable when I read it in my teens.

Neil Gaiman is v good, both in novels and comics (Sandman).

Terry Pratchett used to be better IMHO. I should read Yeats and Heaney, I listened to university lectures in Irish literature when I was in high school, it was very interesting, at that time I also read some Joyce... never made it with the Ulysses though... Burns and Thomas (and Walt Whitman BTW) I'd like to really read something from (just having some suspicions towards poetry and it always seems to be too many novels and plays to read...) - which reminds me of how great Shakespeare is. The number plays I don't like so much (you know Richard II and so on) romcoms and such are more me [:I]. IMO Gaiman has treated Shakespeare quite well in his comics which is another reason to read them.

Evelyn Waugh only one book read it was good, the one that was a tv-series w Jeremy Irons, Salman Rushdie only two books read (Verses and Haroun) his style is fascinating, should take time to read him more, Sir Walter Scott was marvellous when I was a teen, Dorothy L. Sayers the same, I return to their books from time to time (summers).

Virginia Woolf is extr recommendable by the three books I have read by her (Lighthouse, Dalloway and Room)

George Eliot I definitely wait to have time to read. Bronte sisters didn't open to me as well as Austen did in my teens (what's so great with dark and grim men? couldn't understand at all.)

--

So what would I like to add?

John LeCarre. Spent one Christmas reading his books out of my Uncle Colonel's library, sipping Dry Sack medium dry (he refused to give me a better bottle). Read quite many books by him and there are still many missing.

Alistair MacLean and Dick Francis (Hot money) come from the same vein. MacLean's books made me in my teens to decide I'd rather die in extreme cold than in extreme hot (Zebra vs. Java Head)

Thelwell.  Harry the P isn't so bad either (I snitch the books from my friends' shelves three weeks after their publication)

Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising series (and especially the book of the same name. Read it christmastime.) if you like some quality fantasy novels meddling with king Arthur saga and then some landscape.

Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd.

E. M. Forster nobody mentioned yet. I don't know if delicate is the right word for him.

Henry James, if he counts, and in this context I think he must be counted in.

and as many of you have mentioned books outside BI, please do read Dante's Divine Comedy. I'm not a scholar but it's a fantastic read.


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## n/a (Sep 4, 2002)

> quote:_Originally posted by LabelKing_
> Agatha Christie is a fun novelist.


At the risk of falling victum to lynch mobs from both sides of the pond, what am I missing? I have never been able to stomach her writing. Is it a generational thing? The last attempt was _4.50 from Paddington_ and I frankly found the whole mess absurd.

Per earlier in the thread, I find Edmund Crispin an altogether finer writer in the same genre.


Rarely, rarely, comest thou,
Spirit of Delight!
Wherefore hast thou left me now
Many a day and night?
Many a weary night and day
'Tis since thou art fled away.

Percy Bysshe Shelley: _Song_​


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