William Makepeace Thackeray - Vanity Fair

William Makepeace Thackeray 1811-1863

Vanity Fair roman paru entre 1846 et 1847 . Il se déroule sous la régence du futur george IV (1811-1820 )pendant les guerres napoléoniennes.
Thackeray est aussi l'aureur de Barry Lindon publié en 1844.

un article du Guardian sur Vanity Fair

Thackeray as illustrator( wood engraving )

Rebecca's Farewell

Mr. Joseph entangled

Rebecca makes acquaintance with a live Baronet

Miss Swarz rehearsing for the drawing room

Le titre du livre s'inspire d'un conte Le voyage du pélerin ( the pilgrim's progress 1678 ).

Amelia Sedley et Rebecca (dite Becky) Sharp sont deux amies qui suivent l'enseignement d'un pensionnat pour jeunes filles. La première est issue d'une famille bourgeoise fortunée, est timide, douce et ne connaît rien de la vie. La seconde a perdu ses parents, son père était peintre et sa mère chanteuse, elle est intelligente, charmante et fait tout pour cacher ses origines modestes et suspectes aux yeux de la bonne société londonienne.

Tom Sharpe -

Tom Sharpe 1928-2013 vient de mourir

excellent écrivain plein d'un humour loufoque à lire dans le texte original
pour perfectionner son anglais. En particulier la série des Wilt

en savoir plus link1  ( guardian ) link2 ( lemonde )

H.P.Lovecraft

H.P.Lovecraft 1890-1937

une  biographie ( en anglais )

A lire L'appel de Cthulhu ( en anglais )

A Room with a View by E. M. Forster audio book

E.M.Foster 1879-1970

A room with a view 1908

George Eliot

George Eliot 1819-1880
Middlemarch 1871-1872

Dorothea Brooke and Will Ladislaw from Middlemarch by George Eliot

Agatha Christie - Sleeping murder

Agatha Christie 1890-1976
Sleeping murder ( a Miss Marple Mystery ) 1976
Curtain: Poirot's Last Case

it is generally believed that Christie wrote Curtain (Hercule Poirot's last mystery, which concludes the sleuth's career and life) and Sleeping Murder duringWorld War II to be published after her death, and that Sleeping Murder was most probably written sometime during the Blitz, which took place between September 1940 and May 1941. But the Agatha Christie/Edmund Cork and Harold Ober literary correspondence files, currently held at Exeter University in Devon, indicate Sleeping Murder was written early in 1940.

let sleeping dogs lie=1.Prov. Do not instigate trouble.; Leave something alone if it might cause trouble.
2.to not talk about things which have caused problems in the past, or to not try to change a situation because you might cause problems.

A CHRISTMAS TREE BY CHARLES DICKENS

CHARLES  DICKENS 1812-1870


A CHRISTMAS TREE BY CHARLES  DICKENS

http://www.ibiblio.org/ebooks/Dickens/Dickens_Tree.pdf ( full text )

Guardian podcast

Ford Madox Ford

Ford Madox Ford 1873-1939

Parade's End on BBC.

Scheming Sylvia in 'Parade’s End’ is just the latest evil woman to captivate TV viewers

Compelling: Rebecca Hall plays the ruthless and reckless Sylvia in Parade's End

Parade's End is a tetralogy (four related novels)

 by Ford Madox Ford published between 1924 and 1928

James Joyce - Ulysses (1922)

James Joyce 1882-1941 -  Ulysses (1922)

 “Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.” This is the classic third-person opening to the 20th-century novel that has shaped modern fiction, pro and anti, for almost a hundred years. As a sentence, it is possibly outdone by the strange and lyrical beginning of Joyce’s final and even more experimental novel, Finnegans Wake: “riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.” 

Philippe Sollers   - Joyce,toujours

 James Joyce. Lettres à Nora

James Joyce's dirty letters to Nora

Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice (1813)

Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice (1813)

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” The one everyone knows (and quotes). Parodied, spoofed, and misremembered, Austen’s celebrated zinger remains the archetypal First Line for an archetypal tale. Only Dickens comes close, with the beginning of A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light etc…”

Robert Louis Stevenson - Treasure Island (1883)

Robert Louis Stevenson  - Treasure Island (1883)

“Squire Trelawnay, Dr Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17-- and go back to the time when my father kept the Admiral Benbow inn and the brown old seaman with the sabre cut first took up his lodging under our roof.” Among the most brilliant and enthralling opening lines in the English language

Katherine Mansfield - The Doll's House

The Doll's House

by Katherine Mansfield 1888-1923 New Zealand

When dear old Mrs. Hay went back to town after staying with the Burnells she sent the children a doll's house. It was so big that the carter and Pat carried it into the courtyard, and there it stayed, propped up on two wooden boxes beside the feed-room door. No harm could come of it; it was summer. And perhaps the smell of paint would have gone off by the time it had to be taken in. For, really, the smell of paint coming from that doll's house ("Sweet of old Mrs. Hay, of course; most sweet and generous!") -- but the smell of paint was quite enough to make any one seriously ill, in Aunt Beryl's opinion. Even before the sacking was taken off. And when it was . . .

Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton  1862-1937- The House of Mirth, The Age of Innocence

Charles Dickens - Great Expectations

en savoir plus (  link )

Edith Wharton - the house of mirth

Edith Wharton  1862-1937


une biographie interessante ( link )


une autre  ( link  )  


Chez les heureux du monde (The House of Mirth) 1905

Charles Dickens- The Pickwick Papers

Christmas Eve at Mr Wardle's. Mr Pickwick kisses a lady under the mistletoe bough., From Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club by Charles Dickens, Illustration by Phiz or Hablot Knight Browne (1815-1882/British)


Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club  was published in twenty instalments

20 Monthly parts: April 1836 – November 1837