 Beloved BooksbyGillian PolackIn a recent article, I mentioned that some rather good books were not those that were published yesterday. For a few weeks, I’d like to talk about some of the cool books that were published a hundred or more years ago. My first thought was, “I can’t be the only person who enjoys old books.” I asked some of my friends what books they thought should be included. That’s what today’s article is about. My call to arms: This week I'm writing my holiday season pieces for BiblioBuffet. While I have review books I could talk about, what I really want to do is write about old favourites. Scintillating essays. Comfort reading. Prickly, brilliant novels. Non-fiction that is unforgettable. Any type of literature, in fact, as long as it first appeared in print a hundred years ago or earlier. Do you have any favourites you think I should include? Lynne Roberts gave one of the early responses. She is a librarian, and her love of books runs deep. “I love the Iliad because it is a huge epic, yet amazingly human. Gods use humans as their playthings, and yet, people make choices. It’s hard to articulate what makes me enjoy it so. Again, Genji is deeply human, even if the main character shouldn’t be allowed out on his own. It’s the exploration of how one man can destroy so many lives, and end up harming himself the most. It is beautiful, stylish and humane. Proust. Really, it’s just the language, and the sense of the lost world in that time before World War I. The past is indeed a different country. Also, Kipling’s Just So Stories. They are old, old friends, and I can recite most of them. They are part of my mental landscape: Old Man Kangaroo, the Butterfly that stamped, the Camel and his hump, and most especially, the Elephant’s Child, who is so full of insatiable curiosity. He pays a stiff price for that curiosity. But as we intensely curious people know, the answer is worth the pain. Most of the time, anyway.” Aimee Smith went straight for Jane Eyre. “I love the characters,” she explained, “the glowering, gothic and windswept atmosphere, the achingly beautiful and delicate descriptions. The inner landscapes are as well drawn as the outer. I identify with Jane, or wish I did more (she is my hero, because of her strength and courage and ferocious determination to live with love, or live well without it). There are lovely characters (Helen Burns, the kind teacher) in the childhood, so I don’t mind it. The middle is about freedom and wildness that has been trapped and might, just might, break free again. A brief glimpse of light, then it’s horribly tragic for a bit, and then there is more freedom—true independence, hard won and made possible by the kindness of strangers. Then there is the unexpectedly happy ending, which is more equal than it would have been if it had happened earlier. It is a glorious book. No doubt it is dated with attitudes to race and Bertha has no voice. But in terms of truth and beauty, it is first class.” Jenny Jones backed her to the hilt, “I’m with Aimee Smith on Jane Eyre. The passage where Mr Rochester pleads with Jane to run away with him is one of the most passionate I have ever read. And the fact she won’t go—why live your life according to a set of principles only to abandon them the second they become inconvenient? I really respect that—this makes it my all time favourite book. I first read it when I was twelve.” Heather Gammage was so keen to communicate her love that she used some very modern language to describe a very old manuscript. “There is a newish (2001-2) translation of the Chronicon Thietmar of Merseburg I only just found. He’s historical fiction at its fun-est (I’m not kidding. He’s about as accurate as most, but he writes like it's a great story). I love it! Thietmar FTW.”(1) Brian Wainwright also suggested history. “Wylie's History of England Under Henry IV will always have a place in my heart,” he said. “It’s also a very good example of how not to edit a history book.” Lyn Battersby suggested Peter Pan. “It’s a book that I read as a child and as an adult and it meant different things to me according to the time of my life. As a child it was about adventure and danger and pirates, but as an adult I read it as a story about a young girl forced into a mothering role when she and her brothers are whisked away from the safety of their home. Also Anna Karenina.” (Anna Karenina comes up quite frequently. In fact, it will be mentioned again next fortnight.) British writer Chaz Brenchley didn’t have to stop and think. “Kim,” he said, instantly. Chaz and I discussed Kim for a bit. I admitted, a trifle desperately, “How wrong is this? I didn’t need to ask the author, or why you named Kim, or any context. I should be asking you for quotable quotes. But I really want to know about the memory game.” Chaz offered to quote “all the way from '”Kim sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam-Zammah” to “He smiled, as a man may who has won salvation for himself and his beloved.” ” He then admitted that, “Actually, the one I use most is “God’s curse on all unbelievers!” though I have an abiding fondness for “the arrogance of that creed that numbers nine-tenths of the world as heathen” (and they dismiss Kipling as a dim imperialist! He knew exactly what he was dealing with...).” Tiki Swain loves so many old stories. A version of the tales of Arthur from her childhood, “. . . Jules Verne! and more Mark Twain—my dad read one of his gorier scary short stories to my Year 4 class on his “parent come to help” day, and the story’s always stuck with me. It was only as an adult I realised I didn’t remember him ever being asked back to do another help day. Ooh! Rudyard Kipling! Kim and Puck of Pook’s Hill were serious childhood favourites. I love the sensory richness of the world Kim described, and of course the spying and disguises.” Deborah Green adores At the Back of the North Wind. “As a child I liked that the boy was named after the horse. I thought the North Wind was fabulous—a really big powerful beautiful female figure who could be a gentle breeze or a terrifying storm, and I thought the ending was fantastic (don’t want to say what it was, spoilers!) but it’s not something that would be considered a happy ending in the contemporary fiction I read as a child.” She also loved MacDonald’s Curdie novels when she was young “because they were mysterious and magical and the characters didn’t do what I expected them to. Now I come to think about it, there were strong female characters in those books too.” Cary Lenehan lists “Anything by Henry Rider Haggard (father of modern fantasy) or Jules Verne (father of hard SF). For Haggard I started with King Solomon’s Mines (passages of which are echoed by Tolkein—who also loved these works), as everyone does. Eventually I moved on to the more ‘hard core’ books involving fantasy She, Ayesha (which I have in first edition) and so on. I love the way Haggard, who was Secretary to the Governor of Natal and knew Shaka etc, blended the real and the fantasy into an epic whole that was so believable. I have all of his fiction and am still seeking his non-fiction (OK I am a completeist and even have his correspondence with Kipling—now that is fascinating). The way he wrote established the tropes that are still used today in the fantasy genre. Cary Lenehan was adamant. “Verne. How can you compare anyone? Wells was the only other writer to so flesh out an alternate technology world. Much of our popular culture of the last 100 years has been influenced by what he wrote and how he wrote it. He gave the name to the first nuclear submarine and his ‘Paris in year 2000’ was not too far off the mark in broad scope. Everyone wants to go ‘Around the World’ et al." Western Australian writer Ian Nicholls admitted “I have very few books that are over 100 years old. There’s a War of the Worlds first edition that's a bit battered (read: decrepit), and a Princess of Mars in a similar condition. I feel quite strongly about those. The book I would really, really like to have and that I feel very strongly about is Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal. Love to have it, love to buy it. The there’s The Yellow Book, all thirteen volumes of it. I saw a set, unbound, in an antiquarian bookshop in London. Eight hundred pounds. I was so tempted. Sigh.” (I have a copy of the Baudelaire, but please don’t tell Ian.) There were so many more answers, and so many more books. The novels of Mary Braddon (from Lucy Sussex, who knows them better than anyone), Robbery under Arms, Black Beauty, the Sherlock Holmes stories, The Secret Garden, Seven Little Australians, Moonfleet, Huckleberry Finn. I’ve only given you the answers that were detailed and colourful. I feel that I could ask the same question again, more specifically, and get enough books to create a library. What struck me was that all the people who replied to my question were at least as passionate as I am. We talk about new books all the time because the industry is geared to this. We talk about fashionable books all the time for they are pushed our way. It’s rather good to know that the old books are in the minds of readers, even if they aren’t spoken about as often by the chattering classes. What struck me is how much Rudyard Kipling and Frances Hodgson Burnett and Leo Tolstoy and Charlotte Brontë and Arthur Conan Doyle are in the minds of so many. (1) Editor's note: FTW is text speak for “For the Win”. Books mentioned in this column:
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