Published in 1820 I read this for my chronological reading project, one publication for each year of the 19th century.

Lamia, a narrative poem by John Keats

Lamia is a woman trapped in the form of a serpent, when the god Hermes comes her way. He is looking for a nymph who is said to be the most beautiful of all. The nymph has been invisible to him but Lamia renders her visible in exchange for Hermes restoring her human form. Lamia then falls deeply in love with Lycius, a young handsome Corinthian youth. But their happiness is destroyed by Lycius' former master Apollonius, who reveals Lamia's true identity.

Keats was inspired to write this poem by an account of Apollonius of Tyana's (Greek philosopher) defeat of a lamia-seductress. The capture of "Lamia of Corinth" by Apollonius is a legend about "an apparition which in the assumed guise of a woman seduced one of Apollonius's young pupils". Apollonius' warning "you are warming a snake on your bosom, and it is a snake that warms you", led to the believe that Lamia was a literal snake. The lamia-seductress admits to fattening up her victim in order to consume him. In this legend she targets young men "because their blood was fresh and pure", which led to the assumption that she was a blood-sucking vampiress.

Keats reworked this legend in his poem Lamia into a tale of consuming love, where he turns the man-eating monster of Greek mythology into a sympathetic and tragic character. It's not an easy read, I have to admit. But there is something hauntingly beautiful about it.

"So done, upon the nymph his eyes he bent Full of adoring tears and blandishment, And towards her stept: she, like a moon in wane, Faded before him, cower'd, nor could restrain Her fearful sobs, self-folding like a flower That faints into itself at evening hour: But the God fostering her chilled hand, She felt the warmth, her eyelids open'd bland, And, like new flowers at morning song of bees, Bloom'd, and gave up her honey to the lees. Into the green-recessed woods they flew; Nor grew they pale, as mortal lovers do."

. . . In the year 1820:

Publications:

• Melmoth the Wanderer, Gothic novel by Charles Maturin
• The Munster Cottage Boy, by Regina Marie Roche
• Maurice, or the Fisher's Cot (written 1820 then lost, published 1997), by Mary Shelley
• Prometheus Unbound (and "To a Skylark"), by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Born:

• Anne Brontë (died 1849), English novelist and poet; wrote The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
• John Tenniel (died 1914), English illustrator and cartoonist; famous illustrations to Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
• Anna Sewell (died 1878), English novelist; her only book was Black Beauty

Died:

• Lavinia Stoddard (born 1787), American poet and educationist; best known for her poem "The Soul's Defiance", which "was included in most of the anthologies published in the United States in the 19th century."
• Eaton Stannard Barrett (born 1786), Irish satirical poet and novelist; wrote the comic gothic novel The Heroine, which Jane Austen called "a delightful burlesque"

Art:

• Beethoven with the Manuscript of the Missa Solemnis, by Joseph Karl Stieler
• Water Meadows near Salisbury, by John Constable
• Young Anglers, by William Collins
• Venus in Search of Cupid Surprises Diana, by William Hilton (depicts a scene from the poem The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser)
• Rome, from the Vatican. Raffaelle, Accompanied by La Fornarina, Preparing his Pictures for the Decoration of the Loggia, by J. M. W. Turner
• Reading the Will, by David Wilkie
• The Country Wedding, by John Lewis Krimmel
• The Shop of the Bookdealer Pieter Meijer Warnars on the Vijgendam in Amsterdam, by Johannes Jelgerhuis

Music: Manx song collection Mona Melodies, the first-ever printed collection of traditional music from the Isle of Man, published in London in 1820

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

Published in 1919 I read this for my chronological reading project, one publication for each year of the 20th century.

In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust - Volume II "Within a Budding Grove", also known as "In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (or in bloom)"

"When Proust's adolescent narrator travels from Paris to the sunny seaside town of Balbec he meets an intriguing set of new acquaintances who provide him with both friendship and entertainment."

I was very entertained and amused while reading this. It always takes me by surprise when I come across humorous moments in this book. I feel like it's not talked about enough, how funny Proust can be while at the same time providing profound reflections on life, love, art, society, time, and memory. I remember how I always considered it a very "serious" novel before I started reading this. And then Proust hits me with comedy. Not all the time, of course, but it's in there. Anyways, I appreciate Proust's humour!

In conversations about Proust's writing it's also often highlighted that it is complex and difficult to read, which is why a lot of people hesitate to give it a try. I think the issue lies somewhere else, though. It's not hard to read, it just demands mindfulness and patience. In a fast paced world like ours, and especially influenced by our online world, media and technology, it's quite challenging for a lot of people to just stay still and pay attention to the small and quiet things. And this is a novel that wants you to slow down your perception of time and to engage with the text without thinking of reaching the end. You know the saying "the journey is the destination"? That's what this is! It's a book that incites you to think of the present time and challenges you to focus and appreciate the moment, in the present and the past.

I didn't go much into the actual content of this Volume because it's more about the writing itself for me at this point. There's a lot happening in this novel as a whole and there's a central theme or guiding thread, of course, but there are a lot of digressions into more general themes and reflections. Even though I'm only at Volume 3, which I just started, I already know that once I've finished reading my German editions I will do a reread with the English Modern Library editions, where I will go deeper into it. For now I'm just reading, enjoying and letting it all wash over me. . . . In the year 1919:

Publications:

• Night and Day, by Virginia Woolf
• Demian: The Story of a Boyhood, by Hermann Hesse
• The Beach of Dreams, by Henry De Vere Stacpoole
• A Man and His Dog, by Thomas Mann
• In the Penal Colony, by Franz Kafka
• The Young Visiters or Mister Salteena's Plan, by Daisy Ashford (written by a 9 year old)
• Dragon: the Old Potter's Tale, by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

Born:

• J. D. Salinger (died 2010), American novelist; wrote The Catcher in the Rye
• Doris Lessing (died 2013), British novelist novelist; wrote The Golden Notebook

Died:

• L. Frank Baum (born 1856), children's writer; wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
• Ella Wheeler Wilcox (born 1850), American author and poet; wrote the collection Poems of Passion and the poem "Solitude", which contains the lines "Laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep, and you weep alone."

Art:

• Contemplation, by Horace Weston Taylor
• Women Making Shells, by Henrietta Mabel May
• Spring Frost, by Elioth Gruner
• Piccarda, by John Riley Wilmer
• Tennis at Newport, by George Bellows
• Le Bassin Aux Nymphéas (Water Lily Pond) by Claude Monet
• Water Lilies, by Claude Monet
• Drei Mädchen mit Hund (Three girls with dog), by Adolf de Haer
• Landschaft mit blauen Felsen und Wasserfall, by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
• Der Blitz (the lightning flash), by Heinrich Steinhagen
• Woman with a Red Umbrella Seated in Profile, Henri Matisse
• Dancing into the Dark, by Hannah Höch
• Caged, by Henry Justice Ford

Music: "Dardanella", popular Jazz Dance song by McCarthy & Fisher, Inc., New York

Film: Male and Female; American silent adventure/drama film; based on the 1902 J. M. Barrie play The Admirable Crichton: Its main themes are gender relations and social class.

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

Published in 1819 I read this for my chronological reading project, one publication for each year of the 19th century.

The Vampyre, by John William Polidori

Since I reread Frankenstein for 1818 and read up on its origin, I decided to read Polidori's The Vampyre as well, as both stories originated at the same time and place. The inspiration for The Vampyre was a vampire story told by Lord Byron as part of a contest among Polidori, Mary Shelley (where she conceived Frankenstein), Lord Byron, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Polidori took substantial suggestions from Byron's Fragment of a Novel, but he created an independent story and the titular character, who had characteristics which gave him a resemblance to Lord Byron.

This is the story that created the prototype of the modern vampire, an aristocratic villain who preys on high society, and inspired the romantic vampire genre of fantasy fiction. So, I think it's a must read for anyone interested in vampire literature. However, part of it hasn't aged well. The human main character does some idiotic things, like taking the honour codex too literally when he promises the villain to keep a secret and thus not preventing the death of another human.

I enjoyed it primarily from a literary and historical perspective. It is not among my favourite vampire stories, though. I'd rather reread Carmilla or Dracula.

Quote:

"Those who felt this sensation of awe, could not explain whence it arose: some attributed it to the dead grey eye, which, fixing upon the object's face, did not seem to penetrate, and at one glance to pierce through to the inward workings of the heart; but fell upon the cheek with a leaden ray that weighed upon the skin it could not pass."

. . . In the year 1819:

Publications:

• The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr, by E. T. A. Hoffmann; a satirical autobiography of a cat named Murr who has learned to write
• The Bride of Lammermoor, by Sir Walter Scott; historical novel set in Scotland, about the tragic love affair between young woman and her family's enemy. Love Donizetti's 1835 opera Lucia di Lammermoor!
• The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., by Washington Irving; a collection of 34 essays and short stories, incl. "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle"
• "La Belle Dame sans Merci" ("The Beautiful Lady without Mercy"); a ballad by the English poet John Keats

Born:

• Walt Whitman (died 1892), American poet, essayist and journalist; considered one of the most influential poets in American literature, his "O Captain! My Captain!" was recited in the film Dead Poets Society (1989)
• Herman Melville (died 1891), American novelist and poet; wrote Moby-Dick
• George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans, died 1880), English novelist and poet; one of the leading writers of the Victorian era, she wrote seven novels (most famous Middlemarch)
• Theodor Fontane (died 1898), German novelist and poet; regarded by many as the most important 19th-century German-language realist author

Died:

• August von Kotzebue (born 1761), German playwright; wrote "Menschenhass und Reue" (literal translation "Misanthropy and Repentance", but known in England as The Stranger)
• Benedikte Naubert (born 1756), German writer; anonymously published more than 50 historical novels and is considered a pioneer of the genre in the 1780s, today she is largely unknown, even in Germany.

Art:

• The Dream of Happiness (detail), by Constance Mayer and Pierre-Paul Prud'hon
• On a Sailing Ship, by Caspar David Friedrich
• The Flight of Florimell, by Washington Allston
• Pygmalion and Galatea, by Anne-Louis Girodet
• Self-portrait, by Marie Ellenrieder
• England: Richmond Hill, on the Prince Regent's Birthday; by J. M. W. Turner
• The Post Office, by Edward Villiers Rippingille
• The Wounded Trumpeter, by Horace Vernet
• The Raft of the Medusa, by Théodore Géricault

Music: Trout Quintet (popular name for the Piano Quintet in A major, D. 667), by Franz Schubert

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

Published in 1918 I read this for my chronological reading project, one publication for each year of the 20th century.

Bliss by Katherine Mansfield:

"ALTHOUGH Bertha Young was thirty she still had moments like this when she wanted to run instead of walk, to take dancing steps on and off the pavement, to bowl a hoop, to throw something up in the air and catch it again, or to stand still and laugh at nothing-at nothing, simply."

I heard great things about Katherine Mansfield, but I've never read any of her short stories...until now. And I have to say, I'm impressed. This short story grabbed my attention from the start. Mansfield's writing is so captivating and reading this did whet my appetite to read more of her works.

The short story Bliss was published in 1918. Her collection Bliss and Other Stories came out in 1920 and it contains short stories written between 1917 and 1920. I will definitely check out the rest of this collection.

While I was reading Bliss the story felt euphorically melancholy to me, and I was certain it would be going in a certain psychological direction and then it went another way. I was very surprised about the subtle homoerotic undertones in this story. Didn't expect that, but it made it more intriguing. A very fascinating short story! . . . In the year 1918:

Publications:

• My Ántonia, by Willa Cather
• The Magic Pudding, by Norman Lindsay
• The Man Who Lost Himself, by Henry De Vere Stacpoole

Born:

• Madeleine L'Engle (died 2007), American writer for children and teens, wrote A Wrinkle in Time
• Muriel Spark (died 2006), Scottish novelist, wrote The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
• Robert C. O'Brien (died 1973), wrote Z for Zachariah

Died:

• Edmond Rostand (born 1868), French poet and dramatist, wrote Cyrano de Bergerac
• Gustav Klimt (born 1862), Austrian painter
• Claude Debussy (born 1862), French composer

Art:

• Lady with a Fan, by Gustav Klimt (the final portrait created)
• Merchant wife at tea, by Boris Kustodiev
• Portrait of Vita Sackville-West, by William Strang
• Olga in an Armchair, by Pablo Picasso
• Nina Salaman Portrait, by Solomon J. Solomon
• Frog princess, by Viktor Vasnetsov
• A Cloudy Day, Bluebonnets near San Antonio, Texas, by Julian Onderdonk
• Self-portrait, by Louis Bouquet
• Die Leiden der Frau im Kriege oder auch Trauernde Frauen, by Heinrich Vogeler
• Alpine Kitchen, by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
• Blick auf Klosterneuburg, by Gustav Feith
• Junge Frau mit Mandoline, by Robert Scheffer
• Combing Teddy, by Sarah McGregor
• Lovers, by Pál Szinyei Merse

Music: The Planets, Op. 32 (Neptune, the Mystic) - orchestral suite by Gustav Holst

Film: A Dog's Life - American short silent film written, produced and directed by Charlie Chaplin

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

Published in 1818 I reread this for my chronological reading project, one publication for each year of the 19th century.

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus:

It was the year without summer when Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (later Shelley), Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Polidori and Lord Byron spend time together at a villa in Switzerland. In 1816 the "summer temperatures in Europe were the coldest of any on record between 1766 and 2000, resulting in crop failures and major food shortages". The rainy days kept the group indoors and to pass the time the four of them told each other tales. A friendly competition developed to see who wrote the best one, which resulted in Mary's "Frankenstein" and Polidori's "The Vampyre".

Frankenstein is one of my all-time favourite and most reread novels! Isn't it astonishing that Mary Shelley was only 18 years old when she started writing this brilliant early philosophical sci-fi horror story?

If you haven't read this, do not expect the story of the monster you're familiar with through popular culture. This is about a creature who is thrust into this world by a man with a god complex and immediately abandoned by its "father" when it doesn't live up to the creator's expectations. Victor Frankenstein's moral conflict of creating such a "monster" comes too late, the deed is done. All his remorse and regret prevent him from seeing his own responsibility for his creation and the part he himself played in turning his creature into a monster.

This is a thought provoking story about humanity's capabilities and responsibilites. It questions the concept evil and explores themes of morality, identity and the consequences of human knowledge and ambition.

A few favourite quotes:

"My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy, and when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did not endure the violence of the change without torture such as you cannot even imagine."

"Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it."

"But I am a blasted tree; the bolt has entered my soul; and I felt then that I should survive to exhibit, what I shall soon cease to be a miserable spectacle of wrecked humanity, pitiable to others, and intolerable to myself."

. . . In the year 1818:

Publications:

• Nightmare Abbey, by Thomas Love Peacock; "makes good-natured fun of contemporary literary trends."
• Endymion, by John Keats; "based on the Greek myth of Endymion, the shepherd beloved of the moon goddess Selene." Famous first line "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever".
• Ozymandias, by Percy Bysshe Shelley; a sonnet which "explores the worldly fate of history and the ravages of time: even the greatest men and the empires they forge are impermanent, their legacies fated to decay into oblivion."
• Marriage, by Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
• Secrets in Every Mansion, by Ann Hatton

Born: Emily Brontë (died 1848), English novelist and poet, wrote Wuthering Heights (her only novel)

Died: Matthew Lewis, English novelist (born 1775); wrote the 1796 Gothic novel "The Monk", which is mentioned in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbeyp

Art:

• Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich
• The Cloakroom, Clifton Assembly Rooms, by Rolinda Sharples
• The Penny Wedding, by David Wilkie
• Chalk Cliffs on Rügen, by Caspar David Friedrich
• The Studio of Ingres in Rome, by Jean Alaux

Music: Jan Václav Voříšek - 12 Rhapsodies, Op. 1

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