Published in 1817 I reread this for my chronological reading project, one publication for each year of the 19th century.

Northanger Abbey is one of those books which get better with every reread. A biting satire of Gothic Novels and a coming-of-age story of a naïve girl who had a sheltered upbringing and whose love for gothic stories has distorted her view of the world.

For me, this is Austen's most entertaining novel. I always have so much fun rereading it. Not only do I love the heroine Catherine and her growth throughout the novel, I also love her interactions with the Tilneys and, yes, even with the Thorpe's. John Thorpe is probably the most ridiculous suitor in all of Austen's novels and Isabella is the biggest bullshitter. As aggravating as both are, they always make laugh with the ridiculous things they say and do. What I wished, though, is that there was a bit more of Eleanor Tilney in the story. I would love to get her backstory and see her appear more in Northanger Abbey.

Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were the last of Austen's novels, both posthumous publications. Interestingly, even though they were published at the same time, Northanger Abbey was the first novel she wrote (in 1799) and Persuasion was the last she finished writing. The London bookseller, whom she sold Northanger Abbey to in 1803, decided not to print the work but also refused to sell it back to her for some reason. It was only in 1816 that Jane's brother Henry was able to buy it back for the same sum it was sold before. Jane died in 1817, but in the year before that she revised Northanger Abbey with the intention of having it finally published. When she died it was her brother Henry who gave the novel its final name and arranged the publication in late December 1817, "with a preface for the first time publicly identifying Jane Austen as the author of all her novels."

A few favourite quotes:

"But for my own part, if a book is well written, I always find it too short."

"If a rainy morning deprived them of other enjoyments, they were still resolute in meeting in defiance of wet and dirt, and shut themselves up, to read novels together.

"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid."

. . . In the year 1817:

Publications:

• Persuasion, by Jane Austen
• Melincourt, by Thomas Love Peacock
• Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, by Percy Bysshe Shelley
• Ormond, by Maria Edgeworth
• Rob Roy, by Walter Scott
• Lalla Rookh, by Irish poet Thomas Moore

Born:

• Henry David Thoreau (died 1862) American writer; famous for his book "Walden"
• Theodor Storm (died 1888), German novelist and poet; wrote Immensee

Died:

• Jane Austen (born 1775) English novelist; Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion are my favourites
• Germaine de Staël (born 1766) French writer; I dnfed her book "Corinne, or Italy" 😬

Art:

• Young Gardener, by Orest Kiprensky
• Prinzessin Luise und ihr Bruder Prinz Albrecht von Preußen, by Gerhard von Kügelgen
• Interior with Peasant Family, by Cornelis Kruseman
• The Three Graces, sculpture by Antonio Canova
• Flatford Mill, by John Constable

Music: An die Musik (D 547), by Franz Schubert

You can check out my other chronological project reads on my shelves "project 1800-1899" & "project 1900-1999"

Published in 1916 I read this for my chronological reading project, one publication for each year of the 20th century.

Mountain Interval is a poetry collection by Robert Frost which contains a variety of his poems, but most importantly the poem he's best known for, The Road Not Taken. That's the first poem of his that I read and instantly loved. And I know a lot of people do. There are only a couple more of his poems that I knew before reading this collection, but I was certain that I would enjoy reading more of his works.

I did not... unfortunately...I was actually quite taken aback by the nature of some of these poems. I was not prepared to read about murder, mutilation, death and other bleak themes. It felt like Frost was aiming for shock value with the violence and misery in these poems.

Don't get me wrong, not all of them are gruesome and disturbing like his poems "Out, Out" or "The Vanishing Red". The other poems were sometimes enjoyable and quite atmospheric, but a lot of them felt taken out of context and just didn't grab me. And a lot of them were quite boring or pointless. For me it went downhill after 1/3 of this collection.

There are probably people who will enjoy these poems, if you don't mind the themes. I don't mind macabre stories, I liked reading Edgar Allan Poe, for example. But Frost's poems were just not for me. I also don't like how they're written. They would've worked much better as short stories, it doesn't feel like they were meant to be poems.

Here's one of the few poems that I really enjoyed:

BOND AND FREE

LOVE has earth to which she clings With hills and circling arms about- Wall within wall to shut fear out. But Thought has need of no such things, For Thought has a pair of dauntless wings.

On snow and sand and turf, I see Where Love has left a printed trace With straining in the world's embrace. And such is Love and glad to be. But Thought has shaken his ankles free.

Thought cleaves the interstellar gloom And sits in Sirius' disc all night, Till day makes him retrace his flight, With smell of burning on every plume, Back past the sun to an earthly room.

His gains in heaven are what they are. Yet some say Love by being thrall And simply staying possesses all In several beauty that Thought fares far To find fused in another star.

. . . In the year 1916:

Publications:

• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce
• The Mysterious Stranger, by Mark Twain
• Mr. Britling Sees It Through, by H. G. Wells

Born:

• Roald Dahl (died 1990), British author; wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Matilda
• Shirley Jackson (died 1965), American author; wrote We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Died:

• Henry James (born 1843), American-British writer; wrote The Portrait of a Lady
• Saki (H. H. Munro, born 1870), British writer; wrote When William Came
• Jack London (born 1876), American writer; wrote The Call of the Wild
• Natsume Sõseki (born 1867) Japanese writer; wrote Kokoro and I Am a Cat

Art:

• Water Lilies, by Claude Monet
• Ice fishing, by Jahn Ekenæs
• Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco, by Colin Campbell Cooper
• !!!...Pierrot, 1916, by Carlos Bonvalot
• Clove Pond, by William J. Glackens
• Vorticist Landscape (War Impressions), by Edward Middleton Manigault
• Sunshine, by George Henry
• Königstein with red church, by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
• Meditation, by Konrad Mägi
• Sem pão, by Maria Pardos Ferreira Lage
• Spielgefährten, by Ferdinand Max Bredt

Music: Sonata for flute, viola, and harp (first performed 1916), by Claude Debussy

Film: The Vagabond, romantic comedy film by Charlie Chaplin

You can check out my other chronological project reads on my shelves "project 1800-1899" & "project 1900-1999"

Published in 1816 I read this for my chronological reading project, one publication for each year of the 19th century.

The Sandman, by E.T.A. Hoffmann:

As a young boy Nathanael's mother always told him "The Sandman is coming!" when it was time for bed. The Sandman is a mythological character from European folkore, who sprinkles sand in children's eyes to make them fall asleep and have sweet dreams. Some nights Nathanael had to go to bed early due to the nightly visits his father received by an aquaintance. One of those times the nurse told him that the visitor is the Sandman, and that he steals the eyes of children who would not go to bed and feed them to his own children who lived in the moon. This traumatized and intrigued Nathanael at the same time. The story becomes a reality in his mind and an obsession with the Sandman begins and continues into adulthood. He starts to drift off into a nightmarish delusion that the sandman, who he believes to be that nightly visitor, is out to get him.

Hoffmann's works were negatively received by his contemporaries and harshly criticised. I wasn't aware of this before reading The Sandman. Now I can see why his works didn't go well with society's expectations and literary taste. Hoffmann just was ahead of his time in my opinion. The way he plays with reality and illusion in this phantasmagoric tale he would've fit much better in the beginning of the 20th century and had more success. "Kafkaesque" came to my mind and that he could've easily been a part of the expressionism movement. I also find it very interesting how he explored themes of mental illness in this fantastical story. It's really mesmerising! It's also quite influential, it is not only considered Gothic fiction, but also early horror and sci-fi, with its depiction of an early idea of robotics.

Quote:

"Everything, his whole life, had become to him a dream and a foreboding, and he was always saying that every man, although he might think himself free, only served for the cruel sport of dark powers. These he said it was vain to resist, and man must patiently resign himself to his fate."

In the year 1816:

• Lord Byron, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Polidori gather at the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva in Switzerland and tell each other tales.
• This leads to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) and Polidori's The Vampyre (1819, based on Byron's Fragment of a Novel)

Publications:

• The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, by E. T. A. Hoffmann
• To Solitude, by John Keats
• Darkness, by Lord Byron
• Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude, by Percy Bysshe Shelley
• The Antiquary (3rd of the Waverley novels) by Walter Scott

Born: Charlotte Brontë (died 1855), English novelist and poet; wrote Jane Eyre (1847) under her pen name "Currer Bell"

Died: Richard Brinsley Sheridan (born 1751), Irish playwright and politician; wrote The School for Scandal (1777)

Art:

• Portrait of a Lady Reading a Book, by Nicolas-André Monsiaux
• The Kitten Deceived, by William Collins
• A Cherry Vendor at the Door, by Abraham van Strij
• Interior of the Studio of Van Dael and his students at the Sorbonne, by Philippe-Jacques van Bree
• Portrait of a Lady with a letter, by Antonín Machek

Music: Septet No.1, Op. 74 - Johann Nepomuk Hummel

You can check out my other chronological project reads on my shelves "project 1800-1899" & "project 1900-1999"