And relax…

Reading 1900-1950 is off for a little rest over the Christmas period, and will be back on the 2nd January. Thank you everybody, for making the first year of blogging such a happy and rewarding experience! I hope you all have a lovely holiday, with lots of time for reading. I am looking forward to … Continue reading →

John Galsworthy and the Forsyte Saga keep turning up in other people’s novels…

Mr John Galsworthy (1867-1933) has a terrible habit of turning up in other people’s novels in the inter-war period. In a sense it isn’t very surprising – he was such popular and influential novelist that he was a household name to most people. What is interesting is the way that he and his novels are … Continue reading →

Beverley Nichols’ first autobiography: Twenty-Five (1926)

I’ve posted before about Beverley Nichols (1898- 1983), a prolific writer of novels, journalism, political tracts, plays, children’s fiction, books about houses, gardens and cats – you name it, he wrote it. My interest was started by finding a copy of his early novel Crazy Pavements (1927), a surprising, dark and funny book. I wanted … Continue reading →

The Crowded Street by Winifred Holtby (1924)

With Winifred Holtby we return once more to the novelists of the 1900-1950 who have been found acceptable to the modern palate. The Crowded Street was among the first Virago reprints in 1981, and is now in print with Persephone. Review by George Simmers (see his blog Great War Books) Muriel, the heroine of this novel, … Continue reading →

Xenophobia, misogyny and sentimentality: Reprieve by Warwick Deeping (1945)

No reprieve from Warwick Deeping on this blog! Sylvia D has bravely read another Deeping from the 1940s so you don’t have to. The plot summary Arthur Valentine Brown is a rather grey, well-to-do city man in his late forties who lives in a mock Tudor “mansion” in affluent suburbia in a loveless marriage with … Continue reading →

The Dark House by Warwick Deeping (1941)

My friend and colleague Mary Grover is, I think I can safely say, the world expert on the novelist Warwick Deeping. She wrote a splendid book about him called The Ordeal of Warwick Deeping: Middlebrow Authorship and Cultural Embarrassment (2009) and her collection of all sixty-eight of Deeping’s novels formed the beginning of the special collection at … Continue reading →

The Day of Temptation by William Le Queux (1899)

William Tufnell Le Queux (1864-1927) is a fascinating figure. His Wikipedia entry paints a rather splendid and exotic picture of an Anglo-French bestselling author and journalist, who travelled widely, made pioneering radio broadcasts, and was an early ‘flying buff’. However, it does caution that Le Queux’s own account of his exploits and abilities were usually … Continue reading →

A spy thriller by Agatha Christie: N or M? (1941)

Review by Sylvia D: N or M? continues the story of Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, whose adventures when working  for British intelligence during the First World War are related in Christie’s The Secret Adversary (1922).   After the outbreak of the Second World War Tommy is approached by a friend of their old intelligence chief and … Continue reading →