Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of… the 1840's, pt.2 (1846-1849)

Tenant of Wildfell Hall is almost as powerful; its happy ending is earned.

i started reading TYPEE once when i was stuck somewhere and bored and had nothing to read but free ebooks on my phone. i got about 30 pages in, then felt like this was the kinda book that was best appreciated in an oversized edition with, like, n.c. wyeth style illustrations. but i'm sure i'll go back someday cuz it's hard to resist a book where the first two sentences both end in exclamation marks:

Six months at sea! Yes, reader, as I live, six months out of sight of land; cruising after the sperm-whale beneath the scorching sun of the Line, and tossed on the billows of the wide-rolling Pacific -- the sky above, the sea around, and nothing else!

It feels a bit unimaginative to vote for Jane Eyre but I had to do it. Haven't read any of the foreign-language books, though, so I'm not sure how much my vote should even count.

Heathcliff calling Isabella a slut

Did slut have the same sexual connotation then that it does now? I thought it meant, like, slovenly, sloppy, lazy - still a gendered insult, but not the same gendered insult it is now.

In the sense of 'a woman of a low or loose character; a bold or impudent girl; a hussy, jade', the OED dates it as far back as 1450. As far as contemporaneous usage is concerned, the following quote from Nicholas Nickleby is provided: 'Never let anybody who is a friend of mine speak to her; a slut, a hussy.'

a slattern, even

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

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Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of… the 1850's, pt.1 (1850-1855)

I just started reading Yeast: A Problem from 1948, and am thinking that Gaddis and Pynchon probably read this one.

Oh yeah, Charles Kingsley, also author of The Water Babies! I first (and last) came across him in a CS Lewis essay. (You mean 1848.)
nfluencing the Inklings: George MacDonald and the Victorian Roots of Modern Fantasy
edited by Michael Partridge and Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson

BOOK DESCRIPTION

​Magdalen College, where C.S. Lewis taught in Oxford, was an appropriate site for the “Informing the Inklings” conference hosted by the George MacDonald Society. Participants explored how MacDonald and fellow literary figures such as S.T. Coleridge, Lewis Carroll, Charles Kingsley, and Andrew Lang paved the way for 20th century fantasists such as C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. The twelve essays collected in this book examine this rich lineage of mythmakers. Contributors include Stephen Prickett, Malcolm Guite, Trevor Hart, and Jean Webb as well as other Inklings experts. Like the authors they write about, these scholars believe imaginative fiction has the power to enrich and even change our lives.
more info:
http://www.wingedlionpress.com/influencing_the_inklings.html