Wings of the Dove, The: Background & Resources

[Silver]

Please post any additional resource material or background information upon the author that you think might be relevant and helpful to the discussion of The Wings of the Dove

Be aware of possible spoilers and post warnings wear appropriate.

[MadgeUK]

The title refers to the 55th Psalm, which records the deceit and guile of conspirators and exclaims 'Oh that I had wings like a dove! For then I would flee away and be at rest.' Also possibly Psalm 68, where God has conquered the kings of Canaan for Israel and the wings of [His] dove are sheathed with silver, its feathers with shining gold [from the Canaanites]."

Henry James was nearly 60 when he wrote 'Wings of the Dove', which may explain why it deals with death. When he wrote The Wings of the Dove around the turn of the century (he first put pen to paper in 1894; the novel was published eight years later), one of his primary objectives was to dramatize the conflict between the fading morals and traditions of the 19th century and the emerging, 'modern' liberality of the 20th century.

This extract from an online review might be interesting to ponder when we have read the novel:-

'The final fictions of Henry James are royal works of art, but royalty can be exasperating. My loving quarrel with The Wings of the Dove, The Golden Bowl, and The Ambassadors is about the way a mist or fog seems so often to envelop the characters and settings. Out of the mist comes, often thrillingly, the thoughts of the protagonists, their ethical struggles, their formidable efforts to discern the motives of others. But I have terrible difficulty in seeing the characters themselves - their faces, bodies, glances, gestures. James may repeatedly tell us that Kate Croy is "the handsome girl," but her specific handsomeness never quite meets the inward eye. Joyce went much further with stream-of-consciousness than James, but one always sees or feels the sturdiness of Bloom, the voluptuousness of Molly, the angularity of Stephen. Did James, who earlier portrayed people so vividly, so visually in The Bostonians and Washington Square, grow tired in his later years of the animality of human beings?'

[Bill]

Madge,

James seems so concerned with subtle variations of mood that I sometimes think I'm an insensitive dolt. It's as though James points to a one inch square and says, "What color is it.

I say, "Well, it's pink, a pale pink with a hint of blue."

And James says, "You think that one inch square is merely a pale pink with hint of blue? There are thirty-seven different shades in there. Now let me describe each one."

I believe he dictated the last three novels, and that might be part of the reason for the convolutions.

You're probably right about Kate, but because I saw the film I keep imagining someone vaguely like Helena Bonham Carter.

[MadgeUK]

I thought the film made a better job of explaining James than James did:).

[Bill]

I usually hate films made from major works of literature, but this was excellent. It's not James, exactly, but it was an excellent film.

I was rereding Chapter I, though, and I still think it's a masterpiece.

[[deleted user]]

Bill wrote: "Madge,

James seems so concerned with subtle variations of mood that I sometimes think I'm an insensitive dolt. It's as though James points to a one inch square and says, "What color is it.

I say,..."

I picture all beautiful women as brunettes, so for me, Kate looked much like Helena Bonham Carter even before I saw the movie. I did love the movie, but I was ever so glad I'd read the book first, as the movie doesn't capture the nuances that James does.

[Bill]

They are two different experiences.

But usually I abhor movies of classic literature and this one was not abhorrent.

Most classic literature depends on THE WRITING and often that is impossible to translate into dramatic action. With James, it is absurd.

On the other hand, with late James there is the temptation to hit him over the head with a candlestick -- and I'm a pretty tolerant reader.

I was willing to read an awful about whaling slowly and carefully in Moby-Dick, I'm used to reading poems, but I at times I just cannot translate what James is saying into anything I recognize as English.

[[deleted user]]

Ha Ha. The first book of James..( well, I had read The Turn of the Screw without problem. ) I managed to get through I had to translate into English first for a few chapters. But worth it.

[Deborah, Moderator]

Bill wrote: "They are two different experiences.

But usually I abhor movies of classic literature and this one was not abhorrent.

Most classic literature depends on THE WRITING and often that is impossible t..."


I'm so glad you said this Bill. That is exactly how James makes me feel.

[Bill]

Adelle,

I don't have problems with earlier James -- mostly people don't have problems with early and middle James -- it the three novels -- The Wings of a Dove, The Ambassadors and The Golden Bowl which are collectively "late Henry James."

The thing is I've struggled through paragraphs where he is describing some delicate feeling so obliquely that I have no idea what he's doing. It's quite possible that I don't have his delicacy of feeling.

It's also possible that he needed an editor.

I'm pretty good at reading but I've read some paragraphs several times and couldn't figure out what was being expressed, exactly. It's the exactly part that I had trouble with.

[[deleted user]]

Bill wrote: "Adelle,

I don't have problems with earlier James -- mostly people don't have problems with early and middle James -- it the three novels -- The Wings of a Dove, The Ambassadors and The Golden Bowl..."

Oh, Bill, I knew what you meant! I threw out Turn of the Screw because it was the first James I read through. Ha! Because it was so readable. AND I really wanted to find out how it ended! (you know....to the degree that one thinks one knows ... what happened.)

I did read the three you mentioned-- WOTD, The Ambassadors, The Golden Bowl. My F2F group did a year or two of James. Hoping to someday find time to read The Princess Casamassima.

I

[Kim]

I read The Golden Bowl at university. It tended to be referred to as The Golden Bore.

[[deleted user]]

Oh sure, if I had been required to have read The Golden Bowl when I was in college I wouldn't have cared for it either. Lol, and then I would have probably felt all clever to have mocked the title.

When I read it with my group, it was a book we had chosen because we really wanted to read it. By no means an easy book, it afforded us several great discussions.

[Kim]

I didn't coin the alternative title and as it happens, I didn't mind the book at the time (although that might just have been because it wasn't quite as difficult as I thought it might be!). That said, I remember next to nothing about it now. I read The Portrait of a Lady during the same period and quite liked it. At this point though, if I wanted to read some James I think I'd read something shorter.

[Andreea]

Bill wrote: "It's also possible that he needed an editor."

A lot of people say that, but James wasn't only a very thorough writer who wrote and rewrote everything, but in the early 1900s he went back and revised most of his major work for republication (the so called New York Edition, he also wrote new prefaces for most of his books as well) - very few writers have edited/revised/rewritten their books as many times as he did.

[[deleted user]]

Kim wrote: "I read The Portrait of a Lady during the same period and quite liked it. At this point though, if I wanted to read some James I think I'd read something shorter."

A friend of mine, a former English teacher, she, too, prefers Portrait of a Lady. Have you read The Beast in the Jungle? I thought it was very James, yet only 52 pages.

[Bill]

And there are the short-stories!! And the short novels/novells -- Daisy Miller, Washington Square.

The short story, The Middle Years, was one I was led to read because of a T-shirt. The T-shirt had the famous quote from The Middle Years on it:

“We work in the dark, We do what we can, We give what we have, Our doubt is our passion, And our passion is our task, The rest is the madness of art”

I bought the T-shirt which only referenced James but not the story. I put the quote in and came up with the story.

It was the only time a T-shirt has led me to a work of literature. :-)

[[deleted user]]

Off topic: T-shirt. No spoiler (view spoiler)[

There was this FABulous T-shirt in my past.

White T-shirt. And fortunately a man's T-shirt, with a V-neck, as I truly, truly hate round-neck T-shirts...with the possible exception of when Marlon Brando wore them.

Anyway. A white T-shirt. And on the front was a drawing of a stage, and a musical band was playing, and each musician had an instument. There was a logo on the drum. The lead singer was recognizable as Jerry Garcia.

And in the foreground, in the familiar Star Trek uniforms, were Captain James T. Kirk, Mr. Spock, and Mr. McCoy ("Bones").

And McCoy is saying to Kirk, "They're Dead, Jim."

Of course to appreciate the T-shirt one must belong to that subset of society that followed both Star Trek and The Grateful Dead.

Not as literate as yours.
lol, but then, I'm not as literate you you.

Anyway, I loved it.

(hide spoiler)]

[[deleted user]]

Background Information on Henry James. Not necessarily helpful to the reading, but interesting if one likes to know something about the author. No spoilers. (view spoiler)[

From “the Jameses: A Family Narrative” by R. W. Lewis (I read it back in 2005.)

Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
In an exceptionally smoothly blended narrative, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Edith Wharton traces the remarkable James family from William James of Albany, N.Y., who emigrated from Ireland in 1789 and founded the clan's fortune, to the death of novelist Henry in 1916. The main focus is on Henry Sr. and his three most prominent children: leading psychologist and thinker William; great novelist Henry, "inveterate collector of impressions"; and Alice, political radical and frequent invalid. It was Henry Sr., with his fierce independence of lifestyle and many trips to Europe en famille , who provided the cultural seedbed for his children's intellectual development. Younger offspring "Wilky," a Civil War hero, and the alcoholic "Bob," tragic figures both, receive their share of attention. Above all, it's the story of a great family, one obsessed with the notion of family immediate and national, cleverly infused with quotes from and insights into their letters and books. Photos.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

http://www.amazon.com/Jameses-Family-...



Henry James: his grandfather, William James, emigrated from Ireland. Became one of 2 or 3 richest men in the country. One of William’s sons, Henry James (our Henry James’s father) was rather given to flinching money from his father, engaged in some disreputable behavior. When William James died, his son Henry James was pretty much written out of the will. This Henry James, later Henry James, Sr., contested will. Won, because the will said that Henry wasn’t getting money because he wouldn’t make good moral choices, father thought the money would lead to his ruin, because of the way the will was worded, not found to be valid grounds. Was awarded an equal 1/12 of estate with the others. {The result, at 27 he started receiving an annual income (in excess of $300,000/year in 1990 dollars)}

Our Henry James wrote even as a boy. He wrote that he remembered his aunt addressing her daughter, “Come now, my dear, don’t make a scene—I insist upon your not making a scene!” It was an instant of revelation for him: “Life at these intensities,” he explained to himself, “clearly became ‘scenes’” (90).

Henry James, had a slight stutter. In the family, in life, always more of an observer, remembered walking the streets of the cities the family traveled thru “storing up treasures of impressions” (100).

Henry, Sr. was always moving the family: Europe, America, Europe, America, different cities in both continents, always thinking that somewhere else would be better, that some other education theory would be better, that some other religious philosophy would be better, advising his children not to make career decisions too early so as not to limit them.

(Daughter Alice later railed against this, writing to her brother William that having no roots is not good for children.) (Henry Sr. finally made a commitment to Swedenborg. http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/sweden.htm love this: In Earths in the Universe Swedenborg claimed that the moon is peopled by a race which speaks through its stomachs- the sound is like belching. Mmmm.)

William rather wanted to be an artist. Henry Sr. rather wanted him to be a scientist. But Father, Henry remembered, was consistently hostile to ANY final choice as being in the nature of things too narrowing. Father was inevitably uneasy.

1861: Henry’s “accident.” Said to have kept him from fighting at the start of the Civil War. Henry’s two younger brother’s fought in Civil War. Seems like Father actually pushed them to join. Youngest brother, Bob, esp., 15, already drinking rather too much. Henry James, writing years later of “the soft spring of ’61” and the accident that kept him out of the war … but the accident which can be dated because of newspaper reports of the fire happened October 28.

Father wrote letters to friends describing how he wouldn’t let William or Henry join, “both of whom vituperate me beyond measure because I won’t let them go … the scamps pull so hard.” But, writes Lewis, the statement is unconfirmed by any source and is in fact “distinctly implausible” (124). The elder James was an ardent abolitionist, giving many speeches, but counseled his sons, “I tell them that no young American should put himself in the way of death, until he has realized something of the good of life, until he has found some charming conjugal Elizabeth or other to whisper his devotion to, and assume the task, if need be, of keeping his memory green.” (124). Yet, he pushed his 15 year old son Bob---Bob talked of quitting the army on medical grounds but his father wrote appealing to his “manhood” to resist the temptation, writing that it was a “passing effeminacy… I conjure you to be a man and force yourself like a man to do your whole duty.” Lewis writes: Henry Senior’s words could not but have made a bad condition worse. Even as a fledgling, Bob had worshipped his father, expressing that reverence in the familiar way of striving to please… He always felt inferior in the presence of the gifted older brothers---Henry James, Sr also pushed his 17 year old son Wilky to sign up (Wilky was officer in the Mass 54th black regiment).

Mmmm. Also, William was subsidized by his father’s money almost until he was 30 and started a career, and Henry was subsidized for years, spending upwards of $50,000 per year in travel in Europe, but Bob and Wilky, although advanced some money, were much more expected to be making it on their own.

William travels Germany for 15 months. Continuing debate with his father. William recognizes that he was passing through a crisis of identity, and, writes Lewis, “there occasionally welled up in him a resentment at having been subjected to Father’s theory of education, which trained him for nothing and prepared him for nothing.” William wrote that educationally speaking, “the greater part of the last ten years had been worse than wasted” (190).

Henry Junior, writing of his family, “It was indeed the subtly estranging effect of his family upbringing that had brought him to such a pass [feeling profoundly dissatisfied with society]; but that same upbringing would give him his abiding theme—
the ‘otherness’ of the human situation” (242).

Henry wrote, in regards to The American, [among the best of James’s novels...or so said auther, Mr. Lewis. I, personally, haven't read it. ], “We are each the product of circumstances and there are tall stone walls which fatally divide us.” Lewis writes: “He was talking about the novel’s ending; and also about the human condition, and about himself” (295).

Mmmm. William, Alice, Henry all wrote of their mother in almost divine terms. Lewis writes: “Literary analysts in our time have trained themselves to be severely skeptical of such marks of filial devotion, and to dig hard for hints of buried animosity, of covert fear and resentment. In the present case, we have Leon Edel’s representative contention that for all Henry James’s incantatory eloquence about love and loss, wisdom and beneficence, ‘on a deeper level of feeling, which he inevitably concealed from himself, he must have seen his mother as she was, not as he imagined and wanted her to be.’ What she was, in fact, as Edel sees her, was a woman who was in no small degree responsible for the strains and contradictions—in some filial cases (the younger brothers and Alice) destructive—that darkened the family life. The main evidence for this view is the series of mothers in Henry James’s fiction: “strong, determined, demanding, grasping women” like Mrs. Touchett, or in The Spoils of Poynton, or in the Ambassadors. It is in these portraits that Henry’s true feelings about his mother get expressed” (337). Or not.

William has stated repeated that he will never marry. But he does finally. His father (Henry Sr.) meets a young woman, and comes home and tells William he has found the woman that he (William) will marry. A rather tempestuous courtship. She actually leaves the country to make a point to him---that if he wants her he had best get around to asking her to marry him. He writes passionate, devoted letters. They do eventually marry. {They seem to have an intense physical attraction, and, William had been fighting
”solitary urges” for years.} But whenever a child is born, William finds that he has to leave for several months. The little children seem to bother him.

Halfway through the book, I had to give it up. Time constraints.




The Jameses: A Family Narrative

(hide spoiler)]

[MadgeUK]

Thanks Adelle - fascinating stuff.

[[deleted user]]

MadgeUK wrote: "Thanks Adelle - fascinating stuff."

So welcome, Madge. I don't say it as often as I should, but I ALWAYS enjoy the background and side information you post. You are a great resource on any read. (I really was so engaged with James, his writing and his life, for a couple of years.)

[Lily]

Thank you, Adelle!

I have finally set aside other considerations and spent a considerable part of the late afternoon and evening with Wings of the Dove (reading), after having spent much of the afternoon in the sensuous luxury of listening to Proust. What a fun contrast to experience, although I am uncertain as to how faithful to either author or work of art.

[Bill]

Adelle wrote: "Off topic: T-shirt. No spoiler

There was this FABulous T-shirt in my past.

Adelle, that WAS an hysterically funny T-Shirt. Really.

Other fave T-shirts in my past: No spoiler.

(view spoiler)[

"I went to the psychiatrist. He said, 'Tell me everything' so I did and now he's doing my act."

Regular looking sweatshirt instead of "Athletics Department" it says "Aesthetics Department"

Piqua Ohio "Outdoor Underwear Festival" -- there actually was an outdoor underwear festival. Their claim to fame was an old Hanes plant. And my business partner at the time's husband came from Picqua, so I had to get T-shirts for them.

And, loses something in the telling, but a t-shirt I got at the time that I got at the Louvre which said "Art" dribbling out of paint tubes. (hide spoiler)]

[Linda2]

I was an English Major and had to read TWOTD. I can't touch it again. 45 years is too soon.

But I've read Washington Square several times.

[Lily]

Rochelle wrote: "I was an English Major and had to read TWOTD. I can't touch it again. 45 years is too soon.

But I've read Washington Square several times."

Rochelle -- Why, if you can tell us w/o spoilers?

Side question: When you were majoring in English, how many pieces of literature were you likely to be reading concurrently?

I know that the first night we were in graduate school in business we had some 1,000 pages in reading. (It was a program for those of us who were also working and it started with a week in a cloistered setting.) I was too dumb at the time to realize immediately this was as much an exercise in time management as in reading prowess!

But, at the moment, I know I am over my head in trying to timeshare reading literature; I just don't have a measure yet of how much over extended.

[Linda2]

Lily wrote: "Rochelle wrote: "I was an English Major and had to read TWOTD. I can't touch it again. 45 years is too soon.

But I've read Washington Square several times."

Rochelle -- Why, if you can tell us w..."

Because Catherine's father is somewhat like my mother. Every time I saw the film I read the book again, and after I saw The Heiress in the theater. As to the style, it has very little resemblance to James' late work. It's quite clear.

In college, in dinosaur times, hmmm.... I would be reading one piece of lit, but also many pages in other subjects nightly. Why did you ask?

[Linda2]

In fact, WS is unusually short as novels go, 162 pages in my Wordsworth edition.

[[deleted user]]

Lily wrote: "But, at the moment, I know I am over my head in trying to timeshare reading literature; I just don't have a measure yet of how much over extended. .."

;-)...I know that feeling!

[Lily]

Rochelle wrote: "Why did you ask?..."

Because I'm trying to figure out what should be possible. :-)

I meant to ask you why won't you touch The Wings of the Dove again, but thanks for your comment on Washington Square!

[Linda2]

Lily wrote: "Rochelle wrote: "Why did you ask?..."

Because I'm trying to figure out what should be possible. :-)

I meant to ask you why won't you touch The Wings of the Dove again, but thanks for your comment..."

It was possible for me to read enormous amounts at once, but that was long ago. In spite of my having more energy then, more time and a professor guiding us, WOTD was cryptic to me. And it still is. I've downloaded it and tried a small portion. You're always up for more challenges than I. :-)

[Lily]

Rochelle wrote: "You're always up for more challenges than I...."

:-) Probably just different ones!

[Linda2]

I meant literary ones.

[Lily]

Rochelle wrote: "I meant literary ones."

Even there.

[[deleted user]]

Tonight I began reading background. Tomorrow I shall commence reading--for real--the novel.


James was most definitely not paid by the word. In fact, he often contracted with his publisher for short stories…which become books. Although a good deal of his writings were first published in serial form in magazines, and afterwards as books, this wasn’t the case with The Wings of the Dove which was consciously designed to be published directly in book form. This was economically riskier for James; but it gave him greater control.

From The Norton Critical Edition: "Notes on the Text"

“James made literally hundreds of acute and penetrating changes when he reread TWofD, and in their cumulative force they enhance the sustained power of his prose idiom. However minor many of these verbal changes appear when considered individually, they have the collective effect, not of a precious polishing, but of a masterful clarification and fulfillment of that late manner. For the attentive reader—and James reminds us in his Preface that this novel ‘might have a great deal to give, but would probably ask for equal services in return’ –these changes have an air of quiet drama that typifies virtually every aspect of James’s most mature fiction” (Norton; Notes on the Test, 408).

James domestic life was disrupted the year that he was primarily engaged in writing TWOFD because his housekeepers of sixteen years “became so plagued with alcoholism that James finally had to dismiss them” (Norton 409).

James pressed to have the American edition come out at the same time as the British edition “so that he would be protected against unauthorized printings which would detract from sales and royalties” (Norton 410).

James’s mature style was objected to by many readers, including his brother William James:

‘You can’t skip a word if you are to get the effect, and 19 out of 20 worthy readers grow intolerant. The method seems perverse: ‘Say it out for God’s sake,’ they cry, ‘and have done with it.’ And so I say now…”

“If the first dominant note of James’s late manner is his insistence on presenting the solid core of reality in the intangible shape of consciousness, the second is his virtuosity in elaborating those realities of consciousness so as to make them overwhelmingly concrete” (Norton 413).

“Milly, carrying the full weight of James’s most mature vision of the destiny of the American character, is not mere girl but fabular princess, possessed now of ‘the great national, the great maidenly ease’ (James’s description of who he wants Milly to be).

“The novel is in one sense—for James and his characters and his readers alike—a strenuous exercise in putting the most sensitive and accurate definitions on words. As the novel continually dramatizes for us those conflicting and interpenetrating forces of “fortune” defined as “destiny” and “fortune” seen as “wealth” (Norton 421).

“It was in his ‘Preface’ to TWOTD that James first alluded to himself publicly as ‘the poet.’ The evidence is impressive that he was not using the word carelessly” (Norton 421).

[MadgeUK]

they have the collective effect, not of a precious polishing, but of a masterful clarification and fulfillment of that late manner. etc....

I get the feeling that I am reading a different novel!!!

[[deleted user]]

Lol... Madge, I was thinking of you even as I was typing those words up! (Thinking you would be thinking almost exactly what you said. I was guessing you thinking, "That's not the book I''m reading.") Thanks for posting... You gave me a smile!

[Linda2]

Adelle--I knew he wasn't getting paid by the word. :-)


.....maybe by the page.

[[deleted user]]

:-). He gots a lot of them, for sure.


It was interesting, though. The Norton "Authoritative" Text (You just have to love that) had all these pages showing the word changes James had made when the work was re-published in the "official" collection some years later.


All very nuanced. LOL. So James.

Changed wordage--------------------Original wordage.

to which she had braced for....vs.... which she had prepared

of feebler intelligence...vs... a bigger fool

reprobation ... vs ... disgust

etc. etc. etc. ... vs... blah, blah, blah

Actually, I made up that last comparison. I found them interesting to browse through.

But you know, James hardly made any money. And less with his later works than with his early works. The early works made money. But he didn't want to write on "that level" anymore.

Publishers were reluctant to publish him towards the end...for although he had a name and was well regarded in writing circles, he books didn't sell well and there WERE so many pages that it the company practically lost money printing them. I suppose they published him for the prestige of publishing James. I don't know the value of money back then, but James got something like 200+ pounds for Wings of the Dove. Good thing for him he inherited money. Also...Edith Wharton, who had money and wrote books that made money, on the QT would ask her publisher (the same publisher that James had) to send some of her earnings to James and make him think that he was money due him.

[Linda2]

Adelle wrote: ":-). He gots a lot of them, for sure.

It was interesting, though. The Norton "Authoritative" Text (You just have to love that) had all these pages showing the word changes James had made wh..."

I think, by 1902 extremely long-winded novels were going out of style.

Let's do a Wharton next, preferably one I haven't read.

[[deleted user]]

Still, I think it important to keep in mind that James wasn't writing based on what he thought was in style. Had he wanted to do that, he could have. He proved it with his earlier works.

I suppose he might have been thought of as a writer's writer. He was called "The Master."

[Lily]

Rochelle wrote: "Let's do a Wharton next, preferably one I haven't read. ..."

Which ones haven't you read? Here should be a list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Wh...

Maybe the better question should be, which of these would interest you?

In a sense, I consider Wharton to have the same attitude toward the world as James -- wealth, European sophistication, America struggling to grow up. And, yes, there are big differences between them.

[Linda2]

Lily wrote: "Rochelle wrote: "Let's do a Wharton next, preferably one I haven't read. ..."

Which ones haven't you read? Here should be a list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Wh...

Maybe the better que..."

I've even read her collected ghost stories.

Of the better ones, I've missed: The Custom of the Country, The Buccaneers, Summer. This isn't the place to make nominations, but I can start spreading the bug here.

[MadgeUK]

It would perhaps be appropriate to have a 'rest' with a Wharton as she too found James' later works 'incomprehensible':)

[Lily]

Rochelle wrote: "...Of the better ones, I've missed: The Custom of the Country, The Buccaneers, Summer. This isn't the place to make nominations, but I can start spreading the bug here. ..."

I enjoyed The Buccaneers, but Wharton did not finish it (she was working on it at her death) and the result has been heavily criticized -- probably justifiably from a literary quality perspective.

[Bill]

The next read has to fall between 1800 and 1835.

I personally cannot stand Edith Wharton, although I know many charming and intelligent people who do. I DO NOT get it -- which is my problem. But I will strongly urge against Wharton -- unless we do Byron's Don Juan next. I would trade a vote for Don Juan for a vote for Edith Wharton. :-)

But Wharton drives me crazy. Everything ends unhappily not because it's the necessity of the characters or even the plot but because Edith Wharton cannot imagine happiness. The amount of contrivance necessary to kill poor Lily Bart is enough to make one write the literary humane society. Similarly with Ellen and Newland. I will say that The House of Mirth features one brilliantly funny line that I will love until senility -- to the effect that the elite society went to church because God was the sort of company they'd keep.

HOWEVER, I DO think Wharton's an interesting woman -- if an incredibly annoying novelist. I WOULD be interested in reading the (2007) Hermione Lee biography.

[Linda2]

Bill wrote: "The next read has to fall between 1800 and 1835.
..."
MUST BE? Have you checked that with Chris or Silver? :-)

Bill wrote: "I DO NOT get it -- which is my problem. But I will strongly urge against Wharton -- "

YOU don't get here, but many of us DO. We have 861 members.
:P :P :P (tongue out)

[Bill]

I didn't have to check. That was Silver's stipulation, not mine. This is from her original post:

I noticed that as of late we have been reading a lot from the Victorian period, and while I can understand the appeal and it does take up a large segement of the groups timeline I thought it would be fun to try something new.

Please nominate a book that has been published from 1800-1836

Get with the program. :-)

And, if you'd read what I wrote you'd see I acknowledge a lot of charming and intelligent people like Edith Wharton. If there are enough people here who want to read Wharton, too bad for me. I even offered to exchange a vote for Don Juan. And I am willing to read the Hermione Lee biography.

As for the 861 members, that puzzles me, not just here but on other groups as well. The percentage of people who vote and then the even smaller number who post surprise me all the time. If you have 8 regulars who post it's a lot.

[Linda2]

Bill wrote: "As for the 861 members, that puzzles me, not just here but on other groups as well. The percentage of people who vote and then the even smaller number who post surprise me all the time. If you have 8 regulars who post it's a lot. ..."

I think some people are serial group joiners, even if they have only a passing interest in the topic. It exists on every website forum. Ditto my craft groups, knitting forums, computer help forums, etc.

The regulars might be closer to 10 or 15. There are also people who participate actively for a long stretch, then disappear. I think some people don't come back if they don't like the current book.

Someone should do a sociological study of online forums.

[Jan]

I'm still here, but spending less time on the computer than when I first broke my arm nearly two years ago...although now that I have an iPad I'm finding wordswithfriends(a scrabble lookalike) very distracting.
Still keeping up with the Dickens project, however.
Bill, a lot of people seem to join but then move on or get busy, but what is most surprising is people who join and never even make one comment...why do they bother to join if they don't want to say anything at all?

[Lily]

Jan wrote: "I'm still here, but spending less time on the computer than when I first broke my arm nearly two years ago...although now that I have an iPad I'm finding wordswithfriends (a scrabble lookalike) very..."

Jan -- I miss you. Glad to see your words here. I have been jumping around myself and not being consistent with some groups of readers that I have thoroughly enjoyed. Sometimes it isn't a matter of not wanting to do so, it's a matter of the number of hours in a day, even when "retired."