Favorite historical fiction: William Golding, The Spire; Benjamin Myers, Beastings; Benjamin Myers, Cuddy; Kate Atkinson, Shrines of Gaiety; Fred D'Aguiar, Feeding the Ghosts; Hernan Diaz, In the Distance.
Favorite neo-Victorian mashup: Adam Roberts, The Death of Sir Martin Marprelate.
Favorite political allegory: Raphaela Edelbauer (trans. Jen Calleja), The Liquid Land.
Favorite biofiction: Karen Powell, Fifteen Wild Decembers.
Only religious memoir with an autopsy report included?: William Carus Wilson, Memoir of a Beloved and Long-Afflicted Sister.
Best horror-cum-social satire: Joan Samson, The Auctioneer.
Novel eliciting the most "wait, what did I just read" reaction: Brendan Connell, The Translation of Father Torturo.
Victorian ghost stories I'm always happy to reread: Mary Elizabeth Braddon, "At Chrighton Abbey"; Elizabeth Gaskell, "The Old Nurse's Story."
Most Gothic biography: Daphne du Maurier, The Infernal World of Branwell Bronte.
Favorite little-known psychological horror novel: Frank Baker, The Twisted Tree.
Trend that I hope is coming to a close: Sherlock Holmes mashed up with Lovecraft.
Mystery series I thought couldn't get any more lugubrious, and yet, it did: John Banville's Quirke (no longer published under the Benjamin Black pseudonym?).
Novels with endings that made me say "...really?!": Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait; Elizabeth Hand, A Haunting on the Hill.
Most unusual horror collection: Brian Evenson, The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell.
Favorite horror anthology: Joyce Carol Oates, ed., A Darker Shade of Noir.
Most competent long poem by Branwell Bronte?: "Sir Henry Tunstall."
Most competent Victorian religious novelist: Emma Jane Worboise.
Most cheerful Victorian religious novel: J. W. Keyworth, Willie's Secret.
Best friend (well, arguably) of a famous novelist with the worst handwriting: Ellen Nussey.
Victorian clergyman-diarist least willing to take a stand on anything: Henry Nussey. You would think that the man could at least have an opinion about witnessing people speaking in tongues, but apparently not.
Grimmest experience reading nineteenth-century correspondence: a tie between Thomas J. Wise making off with chunks of Ellen Nussey's collection of Charlotte Bronte's letters and his buddy Clement Shorter making off with (just about all of) Arthur Bell Nicholls' collection of Charlotte Bronte's everything else.
Most grudging antiquarian purchase: a volume of William Carus Wilson's sermons.
Most aggravating experience teaching with e-texts: a website I had been using for years suddenly vanished without a trace.
There is no excuse for a POD book to cost this much: Margaret Smith, ed., The Letters of Charlotte Bronte: Volume Three.
I looked for Emma Jane Worboise on Google Books and found no ebooks at all. Just James Clarke & Co reprints, at outrageous prices, or 19th century originals, at outrageous prices. I'm POOR. Did you buy her books? Read them from a well-stocked library?
Big fan of Yonge, Craik, Carey, Sewell, and other musty tomes.
Posted by: Karen Lofstrom | December 23, 2023 at 02:05 PM