2,506: The Shakespeare Thefts by Eric Rasmussen

The First Folio was the original “Complete Works of Shakespeare”.  It was compiled by two of Shakespeare’s actor colleagues, John Hemminges and Henry Condell and includes all of the plays today recognised as belonging to Shakespeare other than Pericles, The Two Noble Kinsmen and the two “lost” plays, Cardenio and Love’s Labours Won. It is generally believed that approximately 750 copies were originally published and, although there is some argument as to whether the publication was a financial success or failure, the First Folio rapidly became a most sought after book.

Today, it has, of course, assumed iconic status as a direct line from the modern reader to the mind of Shakespeare and it remains the sole source of 18 of his plays, including the perennial favourites The Tempest, Twelfth Night, Julius Caesar and, most dear to me, Macbeth.  Many theatre people believe that the First Folio, with its particular formatting and structure provides the best guide to how Shakespeare intended the lines to be read.  (For a great description of this, you should check out Ben Crystal’s Shakespeare on Toast).

Of the original 750 or so copies, 228 are known to still exist, according to the most recent census.  The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, has the highest number and the second largest collection resides in a specially constructed room at Meisei University in Tokyo.

Eric Rasmussen is a noted Shakespeare scholar and led the team that carried out the most recent First Folio census, following on from a census taken by Sir Sidney Lee in 1902, which identified 160 copies.  This team went on an obsessive journey around the world, tracking down and examining every copy of the First Folio to which they could get access.  The fruits of their labour can be found in The Shakespeare First Folios: A Descriptive Catalogue, which describes in detail the physical condition of each copy as well as details of any marginalia found therein.

As this volume is both dryly academic and would set the reader back around £225, it is likely that most people will find The Shakespeare Thefts more to their taste.  This slim volume is a combination of anecdotes about the First Folio, memoir of the taking of the census and discursion on extreme book collecting.

Rasmussen’s hook is that, of the 160 copies of the First Folio identified by Lee, 14 of them have since gone missing, mostly through theft.  Some of these thefts are discussed in the book, including Durham University’s copy, which turned up in the possession of a self-proclaimed millionaire who actually lived with his old mum in a North-East terraced cottage and an American copy stolen so that it wouldn’t end up in the hands of Hitler.

The slight snag, however, is that most of the book is about copies that weren’t actually stolen but just have interesting stories attached to them, such as the RSC’s copy that was accidentally purloined by the Pope or the Meisei copy that has a bullet hole in it or…I could go on but that would start to spoil it for you.

One of the most fascinating nuggets of First Folio lore recorded by Rasmussen is the fact that there are missing copies that were once owned by the Herbert brothers, the dedicatees of the First Folio and William Beeston, son of Christopher Beeston, a member for a while of Shakespeare’s acting company.  As so many of the First Folios contain marginalia by their owners, who knows what may have been written into these copies.  Notes on Shakespeare’s stage directions?  Emphasis marks on the “To be or not to be” line in Hamlet?  Although they may well have been lost forever, there is still the tantalising possibility that they lie, undiscovered, in an English attic, abiding their time.

The Shakespeare Thefts is a gossipy, light, easy read about the First Folio and bibliomania in general.  That is both its strength and weakness.  I would have liked more meat in it and less froth.  Many of the stories are skipped through more rapidly than they deserve and there is almost an air of this being a set of magazine articles or notes for an as yet unfinished book about it.  There is also a little too much unnatural levering in of stories about Rasmussen and his team which I felt distracted from the book as a whole (and that is no disrespect to the amazing work they have done).  Nevertheless, the cast of reprobates, eccentrics, bibliomaniacs and historical figures who parade through this book make it an entertaining read for anyone with an interest in Shakespeare or book collecting.

2,550: Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks by John Curran

I haven’t read any Agatha Christie for some years now.  As a child, I used to love them, especially Poirot (I was never a Marple fan) and must have read most of her non-Marple books.  As an adult, however, without quite succumbing to the snide criticism that a lot of people seem to have for Christie, I haven’t until recently felt the urge to reacquaint myself with her.

John Curran, on the other hand, is a massive fan of Dame Agatha.  Indeed, he is described as an Agatha Christie scholar (yes, apparently they do exist).  And so, according to Curran himself, he came to make the acquaintance of Matthew Pritchard, Christie’s grandson and, on a visit to Greenway, Christie’s country home in Devon, he discovers, tucked away in a locked room, Christie’s notebooks, 73 of them to be precise, filled with her jottings and ideas.  Hence the title of his books, Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks.  Only, there’s a snag.  You see, they weren’t really secret at all.  In fact, both of Christie’s biographers, Laura Thompson and Janet Morgan, had already had full access to them and had analysed them in their own books on the Queen of Crime.

I suppose it’s a minor quibble really and, to be fair to Mr Curran, it doesn’t really detract from what he has set out to do, which is no less than an exhaustive, scholarly analysis of the notebooks and an attempt to link them to Christie’s final, prodigious output.

Before discussing the book proper, I should give you a couple of warnings.  This is not a book for non-Christie fans.  Indeed, it may not even be a book for casual Christie readers.  Curran brings the full panoply of scholarly technique to bear and digs down to a level of minutiae that is likely only to appeal to the Christie hardcore.  Secondly, the book assumes a fairly in-depth knowledge of her oeuvre from the reader.  If you have only a passing acquaintance or a vague memory of them like me, much of Curran’s work will pass over your head.  Finally, the corollary of this is that the book is crammed with spoilers including the identity of virtually every Christie murderer.  In defence of Curran, he does highlight at the beginning of each chapter the books he discusses in that chapter.

Assuming that I haven’t put you off already, there is much of interest to the dedicated Christie fan.  Curran quickly makes it clear that Dame Agatha could not be accused of being a methodical worker.  The chronology of the notebooks bears little resemblance to the chronology of her bibliography and notes on different books are jumbled up together.  One gets the distinct impression that she had an incredibly fertile mind that threw off ideas left, right and centre in an almost random fashion.  One of Curran’s strengths is the way in which he has managed to draw some order out of the apparent chaos of the notebooks.

He does this by organising his chapters by theme (nursery rhymes, modes of travel, murders overseas).  This allows him to explore relevant parts of the notebooks in a systematic manner, although it does lead to a certain amount of repetition and means that it is difficult to get an organic sense of Christie’s workings.

Curran also manages to tease out some themes that run through Christie’s novels and short stories.  If one were playing “Christie Cluedo”, it would be a fairly safe bet to plump for the doctor having committed the murder with poison.  Christie’s favourite settings were also of the English village or country house mould, notwithstanding books like Death on the Nile and Murder on the Orient Express.  Family dynamics were also issues in which Christie had a great interest and Curran writes informatively on how this is reflected in her books.

Another fascinating insight that Curran gives us is the lack of certainty that Christie had when starting a manuscript.  She was perfectly capable of changing murderer, victim and even detective halfway through the writing process as can be seen from her notes.  One bit of trivia that might be of interest is that Miss Marple was originally meant to have been the detective in Death on the Nile before a change of heart gave the assignment to Poirot.

If Curran has hyped up the alleged “secret” nature of the notebooks, he partially redeems himself by including two previously unpublished Poirot short stories in the book.  The first, entitled The Capture of Cerberus was originally intended to form part of Poirot’s Labours of Hercules, originally published in Strand magazine in 1939 and 1940.  It’s an odd story, featuring a thinly disguised Adolf Hitler and an unusually virile Poirot (he drinks vodka with a Russian countess and scales a high wall).  Deemed unsuitable by Strand, an alternative version was eventually published by Collins in the book edition.  As I say, it is an odd story and, although an interesting curiosity, not a classic by any stretch.

The Incident of the Dog’s Ball, on the other hand, remained unpublished due to its similarity to the novel, Dumb Witness.  Frankly, it’s not very good and I can see why it hadn’t seen the light of day until Curran got hold of it.  It does, however, highlight one of Christie’s habits, that of recycling plot devices throughout her output.

In conclusion, if you are a Christie fan, there is enough of interest here to make it a worthwhile, if slightly heavy read.  It’s probably best taken in small doses and maybe alongside a reading of the books he is discussing.  Although I am not sure I will bother with the second volume, which is due out in the near future, it has piqued my interest in Christie sufficiently that I have set myself the target of reading (or re-reading) all of her crime stories in chronological order both to see whether I still enjoy them and to put context to Curran’s commentary.

2,551: Talking About Detective Fiction by P.D. James

As potential authors of a book about the detective novel genre go, there can be few more-qualified candidates than P.D. James, creator of Adam Dalgliesh and recipient of more literary honours than you could shake a stick at.  Accordingly, Talking about Detectives is much more than a short potted history of the genre.  It is also an analysis of the continuing popularity of detective fiction, a critique of some of its most iconic practitioners and an insight into the author’s own writing habits and techniques.

Lady James defines the detective novel quite loosely in a way that allows her to pull Jane Austen (of whom she writes, “with Jane Austen what we have is Mills and Boon written by a genius”), Trollope and Dickens into her narrative of the inception of the genre.  Following convention, she too identifies Wilkie Collins The Moonstone as the first true detective novel before considering the first great British detective, Sherlock Holmes.

No worshipper of shibboleths, the author is very comfortable poking gentle fun at, for example, at the implausibility of Holmes and Watson’s living arrangements and even half-accusing Homes of murdering Dr Watson’s puppy.  Her critical eye and refusal to follow received wisdom is also apparent in her dissection of Agatha Christie and the other Queens of the Golden Age of British crime fiction, Marjorie Allingham, Dorothy L. Sayers and Ngaio Marsh.  Nevertheless, she is happy to accord them a chapter of their own in the narrative and a central position in the development of the detective novel.

James is happy to identify writers whom she rates including (and despite the beliefs of some other reviewers) the above four grandes dames, Josephine Tey and Sara Paretsky.  She also admits that if she were to be starting over again, she would probably write a female detective like Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski but that this option was far less plausible when she first created Adam Dalgliesh.  As well as the above female writers, James gives a large amount of credit to Edgar Allan Poe for having come up with four of the great innovations in detective fiction* and makes a persuasive (at least to this partial reader!) argument for a revival in popularity of G.K. Chesterton.  There is also an amusing dissection of Ronald Knox’s ten commandments for detective fiction writers, including the baffling prohibition on the presence of “Chinamen” in detective novels (presumably a poke at Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu books).  One of Lady James’ contentions, however, is that detective fiction actually benefits from rules and conventions which can actually liberate the writer rather than confining him or her, as some critics have alleged.

In trying to assess the continuing popularity of detective fiction, James makes a point about Agatha Christie that has, in my view, a more universal resonance:

“But one thing is certain: Agatha Christie has provided entertainment, suspense and temporary relief from the anxieties and traumas of life both in peace and war for millions throughout the world and this is an achievement which merits our gratitude and respect.”

This, I think, goes to the very nub of it.  At the heart of the detective novel is the comforting thought that order and justice can be restored to the world from the chaos and evil occasioned by murder.  Lady James makes the telling point that the Golden Age took place during the years between the two world wars, a time of political upheaval and economic turbulence throughout the world, in which detective stories were a retreat to a more ordered and comfortable place.  She goes on to comment:

“Whether we live in a more violent age than did, for example, the Victorians is a question for statisticians and sociologists, but we certainly feel more threatened by crime and disorder than at any other time I can remember in my long life.”

 Given that Lady James was born in 1920, this is a strong statement and, looking back at the recent riots in London and other major English cities, it is difficult to dispute.  Indeed, on her own views, it may be that we are about to enter a new Golden Age of British detective fiction.  I don’t know whether the same is true in the US, continental Europe or the rest of the world but I suspect it may be.

As for the future of the detective novel?  Lady James identifies a few pointers.  She comments on the waning of the influence of the old conventions of the novel, the ever-increasing focus on the darker realities of modern life, the impact of forensic science on the detective novel, the international spread of the genre and the general eclipse of the gifted (or lucky) amateur in favour of the professional policeman.

It should be acknowledged that Talking with Detectives is heavily weighted towards British detective fiction and, although devoting a chapter to the masters of the American “hard-boiled” story, Chandler and Marlowe, it is relatively light on American writing and the growth of the Eurocop in the genre.  It probably also requires the reader to have a passing knowledge of the great names of the genre, both modern and historical.  Nevertheless, this long essay will be a fascinating and entertaining read for all aficionados of the genre, whether casual or devoted.

2,566: The Test of Time: What Makes a Classic a Classic?

In 1999, to celebrate the impending millennium, Waterstone’s and the Arts Council of England published a collection of 47 pieces by various luminaries of the British literary, publishing and journalism scenes at that time.  Each contributor was asked to opine on what they thought it meant to be a “classic” novel and about their relationship to the classics.  They were also asked to nominate ten “essential” classics for the next 100 years and up to ten books that should never have been called classics.

Amongst the contributors were authors like Michael Moorcock, Kate Mosse, David Lodge and Christopher Priest, publishers and booksellers like Tim Waterstone and Stuart Proffitt, journalists such as Cosmo Landesman and John Humphrys and a few random annoyances like Vanessa Feltz and Julie Burchill.  The pieces ranged from the self-consciously contrary to the depressingly pretentious but the majority of the pieces were entertaining, serious and thought-provoking.

The question of what it means for a novel to be a “classic” is probably one of the most-debated questions in literature studies and I would guess that pretty much every book blogger who has been around for a while will either have addressed it themselves or read (and probably disagreed with) several posts on the topic.  From my own perspective, I am continually changing my position on the matter and don’t yet feel comfortable to set out my own views in a post.

As you would expect, a wide variety of views was expressed in The Test of Time.  Umberto Eco’s well-known definition was trotted out, there were variations on the theme of longevity plus meaning and there was even a view that a classic is whatever Penguin tells us is a classic –not a view I necessarily subscribe to but an interesting take on the issue.  Amongst the views were:

“’Classic’ means a novel of which we have formed a never-changing opinion which combines feelings of love for its flesh-and-blood and being moved by its greatness; when I pick it up I wan to read it now no matter how often I have already done so.” – Frank Delaney

“…they, more than others, appear to have something valid and exciting to say to successive ages and generations.” – André Brink

“My definition of classic………is obstinately rooted in the belief that the best literature is that which you carry in your heart from the moment you read it to the moment you die.” – Patrick Jansson-Smith

“A novel must stand the test of time and still be read enthusiastically generations after it was written to qualify for the dubious distinction of “classic”.  That is the only objective measurement: longevity.  Everything else is subjective” – John Humphrys

There were a heartening number of contributors who simply refused to accept a distinction between classic and non-classic, preferring to divide the world into great books, good books and bad books.  There were others who pointed out the fallacy of believing that everything ever written by a “classic” author must therefore be a classic book – surely even the likes of Dickens and Austen had an off-day.

If I had to try and boil down every contributor’s ideas to try and distill a common idea, it would be that a classic is a book that has longevity, that has messages or themes that are appealing to many different generations and that has an interesting plot.  There’s nothing revolutionary there and, indeed, it is pretty misleading to try and reduce 47 different views to a couple of bare-bones lines but there we go.

The best illustration of the difficulty in defining a classic and of the pretentiousness of those academic and artistic types who declaim magisterially that there is “a Canon” (one can almost hear the capital letter) is in the lists of essential classics and "classics that never were" that the contributors submitted.  Here is a list of a few of the books that were listed as essential classics for the 21st Century:

Lucky Jim – Kingsley Amis

Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë

Don Quixote – Cervantes

The Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

Howard’s End – E.M. Forster

The Ambassadors – Henry James

For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway

The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien

Sons and Lovers – D.H. Lawrence

Ulysses – James Joyce

And now, a list of some of the books that were cited by contributors as books that should never have been considered to be classics:

Lucky Jim – Kingsley Amis

Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë

Don Quixote – Cervantes

The Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

Howard’s End – E.M. Forster

The Ambassadors – Henry James

For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway

The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien

Sons and Lovers – D.H. Lawrence

Ulysses – James Joyce

Notice anything peculiar about the lists?  Yes, you got it.  They are absolutely identical.  Now, admittedly, this is not scientific and there are all sorts of counter-arguments to be made about why many of the books nominated by contributors ended up in both sections but I think it is an amusing illustration of the true subjectivity at the heart of this issue and also a refutation of the concept of The Canon of literature.  One curiosity did emerge, though.  There was widespread agreement that Sir Walter Scott’s work was pretty awful and should never, ever have been called “classic”.

Having read The Test of Time, I am still no closer to coming up with my final position on what constitutes a classic but it has given me much food for thought.

2,571: Howard's End is on the Landing by Susan Hill

I don’t know about you but I have a very bad habit.  Actually, I probably have many very bad habits but there’s only one that’s pertinent to this post.  You see, whenever I visit someone’s house, I don’t just check out their bookshelves, I pretty much go through them in detail to see what they read.  I’ve even been known to stand there with my head cocked on one side, reading book spines while my host or another guest is talking to me, which never fails to irritate Mrs Falaise.  I suppose it’s another attraction of blogging and reading other blogs, that you get to see what other people have on their virtual shelves.

I hope you recognise at least a little bit of you in that last paragraph and that I am not freakishly alone in this quirk.  If you do, you, like me, will probably enjoy Howard’s End is on the Landing by Susan Hill, the noted author, critic and publisher.

Ms Hill spent a year reading only books she already had in the house she shares with her husband, Shakespeare scholar Stanley Wells, and her family in Gloucestershire and has turned that year into a part-description of that year, a part-memoir and a part-essay on her favourite books.  Her range is extensive and eclectic, covering everything from the likes of Dickens, Hardy and Trollope to lighter fare such as Fleming, Sayers and Wodehouse and, for a member of Britain’s literary establishment, she has refreshingly non-elitist views on reading materials.  This all makes for a fascinating and entertaining tour of her book collection.

She is, of course, helped by the fact that she lives in a large farmhouse with plenty of room for books and that, as one half of a bookish couple, there are no tensions over book storage (her husband even has an entire room dedicated to Shakespeare scholarship).  For anyone with limited storage space, this book is likely to rouse the green monster of jealousy repeatedly.

This will not be the only cause of envy arising from Howard’s End is on the Landing.  Susan Hill had her first novel published even before she started at university and was quickly taken up by London literary circles in the late 1960s.  As a result, she has known or met many of the most famous authors of the late 20th Century.  The memoir side of the book is replete with tales of how she bumped into E.M. Forster in the London Library as an undergraduate or how she was humiliated by Edith Sitwell or how she met Ian Fleming at a party.  Frankly, if you have ever harboured ambitions of writing, parts of this book will make you wish to be able to swap lives with Ms Hill.

In truth, the name dropping would be a little boastful or pretentious if it weren’t for the fact that the literary world is so clearly her milieu.  It is a natural place for her and it is authors and academics who people her world.  Once you accept this, it is easier to enjoy the linkage between some of her favourite works and her friends and colleagues.

She also has a number of opinions from which I differ.  She sees no point in e-readers which, as you will appreciate if you read my post on the subject, is definitely not something with which I agree (although I do have some sympathy with her viewpoint) and I find it slightly amusing that this book is now available in a Kindle version.  I am also at odds with her on the subject of P.G. Wodehouse’s short stories.  She believes that his style, “ambling up to a novel, taking the scenic route”, doesn’t work.  I believe that many of his short stories are mini-masterpieces although I accept that the best are linked chronologically in the books in which they appear.  On the whole, though, I find myself pleasingly in agreement with her.  Our views on Sayers, le Carré, Fleming and Wodehouse’s novels coincide and neither of us is fond of Austen.

If all this weren’t enough to pique your interest, she even includes as a mini-theme, the picking of a list of the 40 books she would choose if she could only have 40 books to last the rest of her life.  It seems to me that many bloggers, maybe even most book bloggers, love lists of books and so this must be the cherry on the top of this particular cake.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and the highest praise I can give it is that, having read it, I would love to be able to spend an afternoon pottering about in her house examining her shelves and then to sit down for a cup of tea with her to hear more reminiscences.