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Angela Thirkell: August Folly, 1936

January 9, 2022 By allisonmthompson Leave a Comment

August Folly is a book that I enjoy when I read it, but I don’t read it as often as others as I dislike some of the characters or are embarrassed by them or for them. (Terrible way to begin an essay, I know!)  Even though it is still funny and light, in many ways I feel that this is Angela Thirkell’s cruelest book in part because of the stresses within the Tebben family, which might mirror stresses that Thirkell was feeling toward her two elder sons, who were growing increasingly estranged from her.

However, while this is not my favorite of Thirkell’s works, perhaps because I feel so sorry for Mrs. Tebben, it is one of the best-plotted ones.  We have the story of Richard Tebben’s poor degree at Oxford and his parents’ concern over what will become of him, Richard’s infatuation with the beautiful Mrs. Dean, the gentle Margaret Tebben’s hopeless future and her potential romance with Laurence Dean, the machinations of Mrs. Palmer and the play, Hippolytus, that she is putting on in the barn, and the crusty Oxford don Mr. Fanshawe’s growing interest in Helen Dean, who is a rather confused young woman who has an intense adoration of her brother Laurence and a consequent hatred of anyone who might come between the two of them. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Angela Thirkell Tagged With: August Folly, Barsetshire

Angela Thirkell: Wild Strawberries, 1934

January 2, 2022 By allisonmthompson Leave a Comment

Published in the same year as The Demon in the House, Wild Strawberries is a charming and extremely funny but rather conventional romance which, if it had been Angela Thirkell’s only novel, might (still undeservedly!) be called a “woman’s novel” of the type to be read while eating a box of chocolates, but it contains countless gems of pointed humor and the seeds of the social satire that is to come. Neither Thirkell nor her contemporary readers were aware that this was an early installment in what would become a saga—the county in which the action takes place is still not named. With the benefit of hindsight we can see how beautifully Thirkell works with her various threads: she will have no difficulty connecting Laura Morland from High Rising with the characters in this installment. Loosely speaking, Wild Strawberries is the story of twenty-three-year-old Mary Prescott, who spends the summer with her uncle’s wife’s family, the Leslies. She falls in love with David, the spoiled playboy youngest son, but ends up marrying John, the staid widower of seven years. Put like this, it sounds scarcely strong enough to hold up a short story, but it is more than enough!

When I think of this book I think of English country life with a golden haze over it—this is a romantic paean not to love itself but to the “lost” country house life of Angela’s youth. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Angela Thirkell Tagged With: Wild Strawberries

Angela Thirkell: The Demon in the House, 1934

December 20, 2021 By allisonmthompson Leave a Comment

Published in 1934, this book has little value as social history—except perhaps in documenting the curious desire of the gently-born English of the time to get rid of their children, especially their boys, for the greater part of the year—but it is delightful nonetheless.  The Demon is the irrepressible Tony Morland and the book chronicles his adventures during the Easter, Half-term, Summer, and Christmas holidays. Tony is an obnoxious, busy, grubby, boastful, voluble, exaggerating little boy based on Angela Thirkell’s youngest son, Lance Thirkell, who was born in 1921 making him, at the time of publication, about thirteen.

Tony is actually presented on paper as being thirteen (mid-way between the two youngest girls at the Rectory with whom he often plays (and spars):  Rose at fourteen-and-a-half who adores him and Dora at twelve-and-a-half who does not, and I think the purpose of this age was to give him long trousers and send him off to the Upper School at the conclusion of the installment. In fact his speech and actions are that of an eight- or nine-year old boy and the action—what there is of it—of the story takes place a year after that of High Rising as Adrian and Sybil Coates have just had a baby girl. So ignore the stated age—it’s just there so his mother can worry about whether his spirit will be crushed by the move to the Upper School. (Adrian Coates tells her his sympathies lie with the masters and the other boys.)

As will so often be the case as we read along with Angela, [Read more…]

Filed Under: Angela Thirkell Tagged With: Barsetshire, Laura Morland

Angela Thirkell: High Rising, 1933

September 4, 2021 By allisonmthompson Leave a Comment

High Rising appeared in 1933 and I consider it a tour de force, springing like Athena fully armed from the forehead of Zeus. While Angela Thirkell had written many articles, short stories, and one previous novel—all written because she needed the money as her principal character and avatar Laura Morland does—this is the first of what would be a long series of inter-connected works. The tone is assured and confident, witty and observant. She does not yet name her imaginary county or connect any characters to Trollope’s; it is just a slice of idealized, upper-middle class English life.

If this is your first Angela Thirkell novel and if you are not into romanticized English county life, you might be tempted to say OK, it’s funny, it’s “nice,” but what’s the big deal? If you are that kind of reader the big deal comes a few novels hence, when we move into the War years, with each novel being written in the time it is set in. Here’s where we get the splendid, page-long sentences, the social commentary, and the details of life in War and the more dreadful Peace. If you are not that kind of reader, and are enjoying High Rising for the comic-romance that it is, then you will enjoy the rest of the series. As one anonymous reviewer on Amazon commented, “if you like this kind of book, this is the kind of book you will like,” a pungent summation indeed! [Read more…]

Filed Under: Angela Thirkell, Uncategorized Tagged With: Angela Thirkell, Cecil Sharp, English folk dance, High Rising

Angela Thirkell and Welcome to Barsetshire!

August 22, 2021 By allisonmthompson Leave a Comment

Dear Reader:

“What ho, what ho!”

Oops—wrong author!

Welcome to Angela Thirkell’s fictional county of Barsetshire! I have had a lovely summer reading through her 28 books, wallowing in the dizzying details of the county and its inhabitants—so interesting and so confusing, just like real life.

As I wrote in a previous post, I approached this project with a little trepidation, fearing that her novels wouldn’t hold up as well as I remembered them, but I am happy to say that they do. (“Too, too gratifying!” as one of her characters would say.) They are richly observed, fascinating in their detail, with sympathetic characters—and sometimes not-so-sympathetic ones like the odious Geoffrey Harvey, whose equally odious sister Frances is in the Department of Efficiency and Purging charged with getting rid of Undesirables in the government. They are funny, often in a surprisingly savage way; sometimes sentimental; and while they are romantic, in a yearning for the Golden Past sort of way, they are not really, after the first one or two in the series, romances.

(Above:  This is actress Thelma Todd, but she looks as if she could be Glamora Tudor, doesn’t she?) [Read more…]

Filed Under: Angela Thirkell Tagged With: Anthony Trollope, Barsetshire, Thirkell

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  • Angela Thirkell: August Folly, 1936
  • Angela Thirkell: Wild Strawberries, 1934
  • Angela Thirkell: The Demon in the House, 1934
  • London Lavender, Edward Verrall Lucas, and Cecil J. Sharp
  • Angela Thirkell: High Rising, 1933

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