My year in books (with a special appendix on Victorian anti-Catholic sermons)

• Best relatively recent fiction: Julian Barnes, Arthur and George; E. L. Doctorow, The March; Richard Flanagan, Gould's Book of Fish; James Robertson, The Fanatic.
• Best mid-twentieth-century fiction: Oakley Hall, Warlock. 
• Best early twentieth-century fiction: Arnold Bennett, The Old Wives' Tale; L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between. 
• Best nonfiction: Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation; ditto, Thomas Cranmer; William St. Clair, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period; Michael Wheeler, The Old Enemies.
• Best Victorian fiction not read previously: Margaret Oliphant's Chronicles of Carlingford series. 
• Best reread Victorian fiction: Charles Dickens, Bleak House. 
• Best neo-Victorian novel: Jane Harris, The Observations. 
• Best SF: Nalo Hopkinson, The Salt Roads. 
• Most readable (least unreadable?) didactic novel: Lady Charlotte Maria Pepys, The Diary and Houres of the Ladye Adolie, A Faythfulle Childe, 1552 (1853).
• Genre with which I had the worst luck: Detective fiction (the newest Inspector Rebus aside). 
• Historical novel with which I was less impressed than I was apparently supposed to be: Geraldine Brooks, March. 
• Least impressive historical novel, period: Chris Hunt, The Bisley Boy. 
• Contemporary novel best suited for shaving several years off one's stay in Purgatory: Peter Carey, Illywhacker.  (The runner-up in this category? Peter Carey, Bliss.) 
• Most bizarre Anglican didactic novel acquired this year: J. W. Cunningham, The Velvet Cushion (1814) (a popular short novel about English ecclesiastical history as told by...you guessed it...a cushion). 
• Much-wanted Victorian novel I had to throw out because the seller a) neglected to mention that it was badly infested by active mold, and b) refused to believe me when I pointed this out to her: Catherine Sinclair, Modern Accomplishments; Or, the March of Intellect (1849).  Particularly annoying since I own the sequel.
• Reverse order: Speaking of sequels, I somehow wound up with Christopher Wordsworth's Sequel to Letters to M. Gondon... (1848) before I had his Letters to M. Gondon... (1847).
• Choice review assignment that resulted in the loudest "Squee!": the first five volumes in Pickering & Chatto's new scholarly edition of Charlotte Smith.  Because this set currently retails at $750. 
• Best press discovered this year: Nonsuch. 
• Best eBay bargains: sixteen volumes of the Exeter Hall Lectures for about $50; two exceptionally rare novels by Emily Sarah Holt for less than $10 apiece (as opposed to the $50+ at which they normally retail).
• Best expensive art books acquired inexpensively: Alison Smith, The Victorian Nude; Michael Rosenthal and Martin Myrone, Thomas Gainsborough. 
• Why you should look beyond the title page before listing your antiquarian book on eBay, example #1130: a full run of What is Romanism?, a series of 26 tracts published by the SPCK between 1846-1850; the seller was under the impression that the book contained only 2 tracts. 
• Books I was happiest to acquire, although the bulk of the planet's population will no doubt wonder about my sanity: Alessandro Gavazzi's Lectures (it can difficult to find these ex-priests in convenient print format); Andrew Steinmetz's The Novitiate (male writer in a female-dominated genre); J. S. Le Fanu, The House by the Churchyard (I'd been looking for a copy for several years).
• Books most in danger of immediately crumbling into dust: my volumes of the British Pulpit series, which are in unbelievably rotten shape even though nobody ever bothered to cut the pages. 
• Too many books? Nah...: even with the addition of that cute little bookcase upstairs, I'm still going to wind up with books on the floor.  Time to start constructing book islands.  (My parents tell me, incidentally, that one of their college friends managed to fit a collection two or three times bigger than mine into a one-bedroom apartment.)
• Best book-related observation: after I mentioned to a friend of mine at USCB that I was engaged in desultory house-hunting, she wryly noted that most people would get rid of some books before getting rid of the house. 

And now...anti-Catholic sermons:

• Coals to Newcastle: "That we should think of bringing Christianity back to the Italians, is a fact which starts many a painful reflection, and disturbs not a little the serenity of our faith in the speedy and universal sway of the gospel of Jesus Christ as He Himself gave it to men."  John Clifford, Christianity in Rome, Past and Present: A Sermon Preached in Rome on the 31st of March, 1878... (n.d.), 5.
• This gives new meaning to "Judeo-Christian": The argument that both Catholicism and Anglo-Catholicism were, in effect, inappropriate revivals of Jewish religious practice.  See Francis Close, Anglican Ritualism Traced to Judaism... (1873); C. H. Davis, Romanism and Romanizingism; Revived Galatianism and Perverted Judaism... (n.d.); E. C. Ince, "The Glory that Excelleth"... (n.d.).
• Worst abuse of the English language in a title: "Romanizingism"?!
• Trope most likely to drive modern readers to violence: The modesty trope ("I'm publishing this because all my friends begged me to!"). 
• Paragraph that probably caused a number of Victorian Catholic readers to roll their eyes in disbelief: "I desire to give no unnecessary offence to the professors of popery.  But, argument cannot offend any man of understanding.  I am anxious only that the Roman Catholic should examine the grounds of his own faith, and thus ascertain the extent of his own danger.  To give him the knowledge of that Scripture, which his church discountenances, when it does not actually shut the book; and to awake him to that infinite peril, in which his church suffers him to remain, relying on masses and mortifications; is so far from insult, that it is the very highest among the sympathies of Christian charity."  George Croly, Popery the Antichrist... (1848), 5.
• Good heavens: "Surely we need not wonder that even a Roman Catholic writer mourns over the souls of priests lost through the Confessional; nor that wherever it is introduced the female mind is tainted, the young contaminated, and public morals invaded by unbridled licentiousness."  Talbot Greaves, The Romish Confessional... ([1877]), 20-21.
• Seriously? You don't say: "The chief danger to be apprehended perhaps by many of us from the controversy with Romanism, is not that of being beguiled into her net, but of having our own spirits embittered, and our Christian character marred and soiled in the contest. The arena of theological warfare is not the most favourable for the cultivation of brotherly love, and of the gentleness and meekness of Christ."  J. H. Hamilton, The Romish Hierarchy in England... (n.d.), 17-18.
• It was?: J. Alton Hatchard, "Romanism Overthrown by Wellington"... (1852).
• I thought this was Darwin's fault?: "But we have a further cause of alarm.The inevitable result will be the spread of Rationalism and Scepticism [sic], under the form of Neology. If you ask Englishmen of the nineteenth century to believe such rubbish as that which I have read to you from Rome, and the astounding contents of “THE GLORIES OF MARY,” not a few will rather cease to believe any thing at all. I have been told on good authority, that not very long ago, in the University of Oxford, the Sermon in the morning was on the Historical Inaccuracies of the Books of Moses; and that in the afternoon, on the Advantages of Auricular Confession!" John C. Miller, “Subjection; No, Not for an Hour:” A Warning to Protestant Christians, in Behalf of the “Truth of the Gospel,” as Now Imperilled [sic] by the Romish Doctrines and Practices of the Tractarian Heresy... ([1850]).
• Exclamatory!: George Croly, The Spread of the Gospel the Safeguard of England!... (1835); Peter Hall, A Wonderful and Horrible Thing! Lying Prophets, Usurping Priests, and a Consenting People, Combined to Bring Back Popery into England... (1847); James Ormiston, No Puseyite Monkery!... (n.d.); Frederick Russell, Popery! And the Duty of Adhering to the Principles of the Reformation!... (1839). 
• Questions, questions: Frederick Meyrick, The Bible? The Church? Conscience? Which is Supreme?... (1867)

Comments

[Imani]

I noticed the NYRB's "Go-Between" on a site recently. As you've mentioned it I'm even more motivated to order it (since it definitely won't be in stock anywhere here).

[Wegie]

My parents tell me, incidentally, that one of their college friends managed to fit a collection two or three times bigger than mine into a one-bedroom apartment.

On a purely practical note, did they mention how this feat was achieved? One suspects that the college friend might not have been enamoured of such adiaphora as actually seeing the floor or having somewhere to sleep!

Surely "The Go-Between" is generally available in paperback, Imani? It's been a set text at A Level over here in the past few years, so there's bound to be an up to date Penguin edition.

[John Thomas McGuire]

I would agree that Doctorow`s book stands as a more impressive achievement that Brooks`s tome. It really makes Sherman`s march come alive. "March" was striking in parts, but struck me overall as too diffuse to be truly memorable.

[Imani]

Not in Canada Wegie. Chapters (our chain booktore here) has the NYRB edition listed but unavailable for order. I suppose the local indie may have it, but it's doubtful. I'd have to go to Amazon.

[LouisBranning]

Oakley Hall's Warlock blew my socks off this year too.

[Jenny D]

Nice list! I started making mine last night also & was struck with the need to come up with some more entertaining and relevant organizing scheme than I had last year, yours is quite inspiring... Hmmm... we will see...

Watch out for that mold!