‘We live over in the town, six miles away.’

‘Yes,’ Eleanor said, remembering Hillsdale.

‘So, there won’t be anyone around if you need help.’

‘I understand.’

‘We couldn’t even hear you, in the night.’

‘I don’t suppose-’

‘No one could. No one lives any nearer than town. No one else will come any nearer than that.’

‘I know,’ Eleanor said tiredly.

‘In the night,’ Mrs Dudley said, and smiled outright.

For Eleanor Vance, frustrated and bored with her city life, Hill House holds the promise of change. She embraces the opportunity to embark on Dr Montague’s oddly vague scientific project located in an isolated countryside house. His experiment promises a new start and a chance to put behind her memories of nursing an invalid mother. Eleanor is delighted to make friends with the round, rosy and bearded Dr Montague, and her fellow invitees, the sophisticated and cat-like Theo, and facetious heir to the estate, Luke. And yet, Eleaner soon realises that it is the house itself, which is central to their encounters, a building which broods and presses them down with the quiet weight of its own history.

Shirley Jackson’s Hill House, with its quirky, off-kilter architecture and uneasy relationships shows plenty of potential to unbalance the unwary. Acclaimed by Stephen King as a ‘nearly perfect haunted-house tale,’ and adapted for film in 1963 and 1999, Shirley Jackson’s gothic tale continues to be a classic text that is both entertaining and intriguing. In an era dominated by atheism, secularism and science, why is it that we are still drawn to the uncanny and the ghostly? What is it about gothic mansions filled with dark recesses that draws us in and fascinates us with their ghostly reminders of wronged lives? Could it be that, for all our modern sophistication, none of us fully shake our dread of unquiet places where we fear to tread alone?

Over four sessions (covering approximately 60 pages per session) we will follow the events at Hill House to their dramatic conclusion and consider wider aspects of gothic literature. Will you linger on the threshold wondering whether to go back? Or might you join the salon to find out what happens in Hill House after dark, when no one will come near?

JOINING DETAILS:

• Four meeting study on Zoom led by Nicky von Fraunhofer
• Wednesday 30 April to 21 May, 5.30 – 7.30 pm (UK)
• £140 to include opening notes and resources
• Recommended text The Haunting of Hill House, Penguin Modern Classics: ISBN 978-0141191447

Russian writers are celebrated for their mastery of the short story, crafting narratives that are rich in character, insight, and psychological depth. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain (2021), George Saunders presents seven classic Russian short stories, offering his own close readings as a guide to their artistry.

In this workshop, we will use Saunders’ book as a framework for our own reading, focusing on the stories themselves—by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol—while also drawing on his insights as a backdrop to our discussions. Rather than analysing Saunders’ commentary in detail, we will engage directly with these literary masterpieces, exploring their themes, techniques and enduring relevance.

JOINING DETAILS:

• A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, ISBN 978-1526624246 is a required text for this study
• Four-week study on Zoom led by Alison Cable
• Thursdays, 5.00-7.00 pm (UK/BST)
• 8, 15, 22 and 29 May 2025
• £120 to include introductory notes and resources
• Use this link to share details of the study.

Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) was, quipped one critic, Portugal’s three greatest modern poets. To read Pessoa is not just to read one poet but to enter into a whole literature. 

Pessoa’s attempt to forge a new literary modernism for Portugal took shape through his creation of different literary personas. He called these personas ‘heteronyms’, to distinguish them from pseudonyms, as essentially distinct personalities with biographies, literary styles and philosophical and political ideas as different from each other as from Pessoa himself.

Pessoa authored works under at least 72 different names throughout his life, and this compulsion seems to have been both an aesthetic and a psychological necessity. At the centre of his most important and accomplished literary achievements is the poetry authored by the three main heteronyms – Alberto Caiero, Alvaro de Campos and Ricardo Reis; by Pessoa himself as one of that company of heteronyms; and his great prose masterpiece The Book of Disquiet, authored by the semi-heteronym Bernardo Soares.

Over five meetings we will take a sample of work from each of Pessoa’s heteronyms as a general introduction to the work – and the literary universe – of Fernando Pessoa. 

JOINING DETAILS:

• Six-week introductory study led by Desma Lawrence
• Tuesdays, 12.00-2.00 pm (UK), 13 May to 17 June 2025
• £180 for six-session study, to include opening notes and resources

“You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament:
with faith.”

—William Faulkner

First published on 2 February 1922 – James Joyce’s 40th birthday – UIysses was immediately controversial, described by one Irish critic as “The most infamously obscene book in ancient or modern literature”.

We offer an opportunity to read one of the greatest novels of all time in the company of others. Our work with this book will widen your perspective and deepen your experience of the power of language.

There is a strong argument for studying this huge and intimidating text – book list chart-topper of 100 greatest books of all time, critics’ darling, most lauded/least read, the book that many literary academics dedicate their lives to studying – but you will only know for yourself by diving in. I believe the best way to study it is with a group of hungry, curious readers who all contribute to evoking meaning, through their questions as well as their insights.

The good news: reading Ulysses is fun. And I don’t mean in a frustrating, overly-analytical see-how-much-you-know-way. The language is amazing – even when I don’t understand it. Perhaps, especially when I don’t understand it, because meaning sneaks in through more than my critical faculty. Meaning slides in through sound, through the lushness of the language, through the filmy and substantial images, and suddenly I find myself transported from a walk on a beach to a contemplation of the origins of man – thanks, James Joyce.

Any time spent studying Joyce leaves one a better reader – a broader thinker – even if all the references, repetitions, epiphanies and allusions are not immediately understood.

Here are comments from two Ulysses participants:

“I am  thoroughly enjoying this journey. I feel wide open, exposed and receptive to new ways of thinking. What could be better than that? I enjoy the links with the classics and their current counterparts such as the agony of Sisyphus and the trials of thoughtful, surely sad, Martin Cunningham. And then Bloom with his many pockets reminded me in an amusing way of the Artful Dodger.

“The classes I have taken with the Literary Salon have been extraordinary.“

“Joining the Ulysses salon was one of the best things I have ever done. This was a book I had wanted to read for years but never got past the first section. I had no idea what the salon would be like and was very apprehensive about joining up. But Toby so skilfully guided us through it, her knowledge of the text seemingly inexhaustible, that with her warmth and generosity and sensitivity she got everyone involved and the satisfaction of participating in the salon and in getting an understanding of this marvellous work was immense.“

JOINING DETAILS:

• We are offering this evening study from 5.30-7.30pm (UK time), comprising 21 meetings starting on Tuesday 21 January and finishing on Tuesday 17 June 2025, with four Sunday meetings (4.30-6.30pm on 23 February, 30 March, 18 May and 8 June) and NO meetings on 4 March, 29 April, 6 and 13 May.
• The total cost for the 21 meeting study, with all notes and resources materials, is £500
• Please purchase these editions in preparation for our study:

  • Ulysses, by James Joyce, Annotated Students’ Edition, Penguin Modern Classics 2011, ISBN: 9780141197418. There are many editions of Ulysses — I find this edition is most coherent and the notes and introduction by Declan Kieberd very helpful; as we will constantly be referencing particular passages, having the same edition will be extremely useful.
  • The New Bloomsday Book: A Guide Through Ulysses, by Harry Blamires, ISBN-10: 0415138582

“You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament:
with faith.”

—William Faulkner

First published on 2 February 1922 – James Joyce’s 40th birthday – UIysses was immediately controversial, described by one Irish critic as “The most infamously obscene book in ancient or modern literature”.

We offer an opportunity to read one of the greatest novels of all time in the company of others. Our work with this book will widen your perspective and deepen your experience of the power of language.

There is a strong argument for studying this huge and intimidating text – book list chart-topper of 100 greatest books of all time, critics’ darling, most lauded/least read, the book that many literary academics dedicate their lives to studying – but you will only know for yourself by diving in. I believe the best way to study it is with a group of hungry, curious readers who all contribute to evoking meaning, through their questions as well as their insights.

The good news: reading Ulysses is fun. And I don’t mean in a frustrating, overly-analytical see-how-much-you-know-way. The language is amazing – even when I don’t understand it. Perhaps, especially when I don’t understand it, because meaning sneaks in through more than my critical faculty. Meaning slides in through sound, through the lushness of the language, through the filmy and substantial images, and suddenly I find myself transported from a walk on a beach to a contemplation of the origins of man – thanks, James Joyce.

Any time spent studying Joyce leaves one a better reader – a broader thinker – even if all the references, repetitions, epiphanies and allusions are not immediately understood.

Here are comments from two Ulysses participants:

“I am  thoroughly enjoying this journey. I feel wide open, exposed and receptive to new ways of thinking. What could be better than that? I enjoy the links with the classics and their current counterparts such as the agony of Sisyphus and the trials of thoughtful, surely sad, Martin Cunningham. And then Bloom with his many pockets reminded me in an amusing way of the Artful Dodger.

“The classes I have taken with the Literary Salon have been extraordinary.“

“Joining the Ulysses salon was one of the best things I have ever done. This was a book I had wanted to read for years but never got past the first section. I had no idea what the salon would be like and was very apprehensive about joining up. But Toby so skilfully guided us through it, her knowledge of the text seemingly inexhaustible, that with her warmth and generosity and sensitivity she got everyone involved and the satisfaction of participating in the salon and in getting an understanding of this marvellous work was immense.“

JOINING DETAILS:

• We are offering this study early in the day, from 11.30-1.30pm (UK time), comprising 21 meetings starting on Tuesday 21 January and finishing on Tuesday 17 June 2025, with four Sunday afternoon meetings (4.30-6.30pm on 23 February, 30 March, 18 May and 8 June) and NO meetings on 4 March, 29 April, 6 and 13 May.
• The total cost for the 21 meeting study, with all notes and resources materials, is £500
• Please purchase these editions in preparation for our study:

  • Ulysses, by James Joyce, Annotated Students’ Edition, Penguin Modern Classics 2011, ISBN: 9780141197418. There are many editions of Ulysses — I find this edition is most coherent and the notes and introduction by Declan Kieberd very helpful; as we will constantly be referencing particular passages, having the same edition will be extremely useful.
  • The New Bloomsday Book: A Guide Through Ulysses, by Harry Blamires, ISBN-10: 0415138582

After completing incredibly satisfying studies of Ulysses and Magic Mountain, we have turned to the next big mountain of Modernism, Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. This is my seventh tour through the Search and each visit reveals new nuggets and gasping moments. This fourth volume, Sodom and Gomorrah, considers closely the draw of the social dance and the realm of social power: you might not think the anxious aristocracy of the Belle Epoque will teach you anything about the world you live in, but you will be surprised. The group that has made it through the first three volumes in the last six months is lively and welcoming and we may have room for two or three more participants. If you have not read the first three volumes previously, please contact us to discuss.

Here is how one Salonista describes the pleasure and work of reading Proust: “This is a velvet jewel of a book that demands the attention of a lover full of enchantment  and obsession, we need not get impatient as all good lovers perfect their art in taking their time.”

Reading Proust teaches the reader to observe how the world is experienced, to be aware that although humans are tempted to give greater weight to the perceptual universe, it is the entwining of memory, idealised experience (dreams) and relationships, together with what our senses perceive, that moulds our consciousness.

I’d  like to share with you part of Edmund White’s essay on this section from Andre Aciman’s collection The Proust Project:

“In these pages, Proust alludes to so many conflicting theories of homosexuality that they end up by casting doubt on one another — and on all such theories.  In fact they suggest, finally, that only the conventions of a few cultures (but not all or even most cultures) determine the definition of normality; mere convention and nothing more absolute defines the status of homosexuality.

On the face of it nothing could seem further from the Proustian position.  He starts out with the most extreme (and the most offensive) theory; that male homosexuals are inverts, i.e., women disguised as men.  this whole initial disquisition on homosexuality is triggered by Marcel’s realization that Charlus’s face in repose is that of a woman since ‘he was one.’  This is the theory of ‘the soul of a woman enclosed in the body of a man’ first worked out by the German sexologist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs in 1868.

Proust plays with the theories and homophobia of his time – and exposes societal hypocrisies in all forms.”

JOINING DETAILS:

• Facilitated by Toby Brothers
• Mondays, 1.00-3.00 pm (UK)
• Thirteen-meeting study on Zoom starting on 27 January 2025 (N.B. no meetings on 3 March, 14 & 28 April, 5 & 12 May)
• Recommended editions: Penguin, ISBN 9780141180342, Christopher Prendergast (Editor), John Sturrock (Translator) OR Vintage Classics, ISBN 9780099362517
• £390 for thirteen meetings (includes background materials, literary criticism, opening notes and discussion notes)

This ‘second time around’ study is designed specifically for people who, having completed their journey through Proust’s monumental creation at least once, have the urge to do it again.

Facilitator Toby Brothers writes:

Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time is one of the mountains of Modernism. This is my seventh tour through the Search and each visit reveals new nuggets and gasping moments. This fourth volume considers closely the draw of the social dance and the realm of social power: you might not think the anxious aristocracy of the Belle Epoque will teach you something about the world you live in, but you will be surprised. 

Here is how one Salonista describes the pleasure and work of reading Proust: “This is a velvet jewel of a book that demands the attention of a lover full of enchantment  and obsession, we need not get impatient as all good lovers perfect their art in taking their time.”

Reading Proust teaches the reader to observe how the world is experienced, to be aware that although humans are tempted to give greater weight to the perceptual universe, it is the entwining of memory, idealised experience (dreams) and relationships, together with what our senses perceive, that moulds our consciousness.

I’d  like to share with you part of Edmund White’s essay on this section from Andre Aciman’s collection The Proust Project:

“In these pages, Proust alludes to so many conflicting theories of homosexuality that they end up by casting doubt on one another — and on all such theories.  In fact they suggest, finally, that only the conventions of a few cultures (but not all or even most cultures) determine the definition of normality; mere convention and nothing more absolute defines the status of homosexuality.

On the face of it nothing could seem further from the Proustian position.  He starts out with the most extreme (and the most offensive) theory; that male homosexuals are inverts, i.e., women disguised as men.  this whole initial disquisition on homosexuality is triggered by Marcel’s realization that Charlus’s face in repose is that of a woman since ‘he was one.’  This is the theory of ‘the soul of a woman enclosed in the body of a man’ first worked out by the German sexologist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs in 1868.

Proust plays with the theories and homophobia of his time – and exposes societal hypocrisies in all forms.”

JOINING DETAILS:

• Facilitated by Toby Brothers
• Mondays, 3.30-5.30 pm (UK)
• Thirteen-meeting study on Zoom starting on 27 January 2025 (N.B. no meetings on 3 March, 14 & 28 April, 5 & 12 May)
• Recommended editions: Penguin, ISBN 9780141180342, Christopher Prendergast (Editor), John Sturrock (Translator) OR Vintage Classics, ISBN 9780099362517
• £390 for thirteen meetings (includes background materials, literary criticism, opening notes and discussion notes)

After completing incredibly satisfying studies of Ulysses and Magic Mountain, we have turned to the next big mountain of Modernism, Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. This is my seventh tour through the Search and each visit reveals new nuggets and gasping moments. This fourth volume, Sodom and Gomorrah, considers closely the draw of the social dance and the realm of social power: you might not think the anxious aristocracy of the Belle Epoque will teach you anything about the world you live in, but you will be surprised. The group that has made it through the first three volumes in the last six months is lively and welcoming and we may have room for two or three more participants. If you have not read the first three volumes previously, please contact us to discuss.

Here is how one Salonista describes the pleasure and work of reading Proust: “This is a velvet jewel of a book that demands the attention of a lover full of enchantment  and obsession, we need not get impatient as all good lovers perfect their art in taking their time.”

Reading Proust teaches the reader to observe how the world is experienced, to be aware that although humans are tempted to give greater weight to the perceptual universe, it is the entwining of memory, idealised experience (dreams) and relationships, together with what our senses perceive that moulds our consciousness.

I’d  like to share with you part of Edmund White’s essay on this section from Andre Aciman’s collection The Proust Project:

“In these pages, Proust alludes to so many conflicting theories of homosexuality that they end up by casting doubt on one another — and on all such theories.  In fact they suggest, finally, that only the conventions of a few cultures (but not all or even most cultures) determine the definition of normality; mere convention and nothing more absolute defines the status of homosexuality.

On the face of it nothing could seem further from the Proustian position.  He starts out with the most extreme (and the most offensive) theory; that male homosexuals are inverts, i.e., women disguised as men.  this whole initial disquisition on homosexuality is triggered by Marcel’s realization that Charlus’s face in repose is that of a woman since ‘he was one.’  This is the theory of ‘the soul of a woman enclosed in the body of a man’ first worked out by the German sexologist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs in 1868.

Proust plays with the theories and homophobia of his time – and exposes societal hypocrisies in all forms.”

JOINING DETAILS:

• Facilitated by Toby Brothers and Ralph Kleinman
• Mondays, 6.00-8.00 pm (UK)
• Thirteen-meeting study on Zoom starting on 27 January 2025 (N.B. no meetings on 3 March, 14 & 28 April, 5 & 12 May)
• Recommended editions: Penguin, ISBN 9780141180342, Christopher Prendergast (Editor), John Sturrock (Translator) OR Vintage Classics, ISBN 9780099362517
• £390 for thirteen meetings (includes background materials, literary criticism, opening notes and discussion notes)

This summer many of us will be celebrating one hundred years since the publication of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, but there’s more to this novel than meets the eye. 

Mrs Dalloway began as a short story titled Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street. It was published in 1923 and led to Woolf writing one of the 20th century’s best loved books. Few people realise that when she completed Mrs Dalloway, she felt compelled to return to the scene described in its final pages and wrote six stories about Clarissa’s party and her guests. In these works (not published until after her death) we meet a host of characters both new and familiar: there’s Mrs Vallance, who reminisces about her past in Scotland, Lily Everit, who is glowing after having received a good mark on a college essay, and (of course) Clarissa Dalloway herself, who flits through the room – there one minute and gone the next. 

You do not have to have read any Woolf or be familiar with Mrs Dalloway to enjoy this study. Some may wish to make this preparatory reading for the novel, while others will want to use it to expand on their understanding of the text. This also serves as background reading for To the Lighthouse, the novel Woolf wrote after completing these stories. Looking through them we might notice several similar themes such as nostalgia, the figure of the hostess, and the archetype of the young, intellectual woman who struggles in her shadow.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Four meeting study led by Karina Jakubowicz on Zoom
• Tuesdays, 10 June – 1 July, 6.00-8.00 pm (BST)
• Schedule:
  10 June – Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street paired with the opening of the novel Mrs Dalloway
  17 June – The Man Who Loved His Kind and The Introduction
  24 June – Ancestors and Together and Apart
  1 July – The New Dress and A Summing Up
• Texts will be provided
• £130 for four sessions
• Please use this link to share details

Albert Camus finished writing L’Étranger in May 1940, when he was not yet 27 years old. The novel was published in April 1942 and has since become one of the best known books in French literature. According to the critic and translator Alice Kaplan it “changed the history of modern literature”. Part of a trilogy on ‘the absurd’ (Camus wrote at the same time the play Caligula and the philosophical essay The Myth of Sisyphus), L’Etranger has been read in a variety of ways: as an existential treatise, as an indictment of colonialism, as a study in alienation, as a morality novel. However, in the face of the indifference of the main character, it is the vividness of the scenes and the details of the small characters that stay with us: the whining of the dog, the gait of the mother’s fiancé. The murder and the trial are bathed in colours: the bright yellow sun at the beach, the grey prison cell.

This is a book one does not forget. Deceptively easy to read, it is part of the secondary school curriculum in France, and appears on the French GCSE-level syllabus in England too. I have even seen it taught to students just beginning to learn French, because Camus writes in simple and direct sentences. Today, young people still read it as a ‘coming of age’ rite of passage. A film was made (Visconti), a song composed (The Cure) while many essays have been written and classes taught on the meaning of this book.

Why read the book now? What is its message? This is a novel that constantly surprises and opens new possibilities. Recently, the Algerian author Kamel Daoud published The Meursault Investigation, a story that finally names the Arab murder victim and tells the story from the point of view of his family today. Reading – or rereading – L’Étranger can be a new and enlightening experience, come and join us!

JOINING DETAILS:

• Four-meeting study on Zoom, led by Emilia Steuerman
• Thursdays, 6.00-8.00 pm (UK), 12 June – 3 July 2025
• We will read Sandra Smith’s translation: The Outsider, Albert Camus (Penguin Modern Classics, ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0141198064).
• £120 for four two-hour meetings, to include background notes and resources.

A not-to-be-missed opportunity to complete reading one of the greatest books ever written in English – an extraordinary story of obsession and maritime adventure – over the course of a six-day voyage aboard a traditional sailing ship. Four online meetings will introduce Moby Dick, followed by six study sessions at sea on the Eda Frandsen, a lovingly restored and maintained gaff cutter, originally built in Denmark in 1938. This unique study will allow readers to complement their appreciation of Herman Melville’s text with a practical understanding and experience of the reality of seafaring life under sail.

“I am half way in the work . . . It will be a strange sort of book, tho’, I fear; blubber is blubber you know; tho’ you might get oil out of it, the poetry runs as hard as sap from a frozen maple tree;—and to cool the thing up, one must needs throw in a little fancy, which from the nature of the thing, must be ungainly as the gambols of the whales themselves. Yet I mean to give the truth of the thing, spite of this.”

Herman Melville

First published in 1851, Moby Dick ranks on almost any list as one of the greatest works in the English language. Its three famous opening words ‘Call me Ishmael . . .’ together with the image of the one-legged Captain Ahab in mad pursuit of the great white whale, have become cultural icons. This grand—and occasionally grandiose—adventure tale unites the many voices of Herman Melville in a mongrel mix of epic poetry, Shakespearean tragedy, encyclopaedic cataloguing, biblical oratory, and not a small dose of comedy. Melville presents an insightful study of obsession, madness and charismatic leadership that anticipates many of our contemporary conversations about democracy, cosmopolitanism, capitalism and environmentalism.

In 2019, celebration of the 200th year since Herman Melville’s birth initiated a particularly auspicious moment to study this great work, generating rich responses and reconsiderations of a truly amazing book. Philip Hoare (mentioned below as one of the curators of the Moby Dick Big Read project) writes on the contemporary importance of this work in this article Subversive, queer and terrifyingly relevant: Six reasons why Moby Dick is the novel for our times. 

“The book features gay marriage, hits out at slavery and imperialism and predicts the climate crisis – 200 years after the birth of its author, Herman Melville, it has never been more important.”

Philip Hoare

Together, artist Angela Cockayne and writer Philip Hoare convened and curated a unique whale symposium and exhibition at Peninsula Arts, the dedicated contemporary art space at Plymouth University. This grew into an extraordinary compilation of art and voices (Tilda Swinton, Stephen Fry and more) – the Moby Dick Big Read – to illuminate each chapter, inspiring and inspired by this vast book.

SALON DETAILS:

• Four two-hour meetings online, followed by six-day study with six nights on board the Eda Frandsen from 3.00pm on Saturday 5 July 2025 to 9.00am on Friday 11 July 2025
• Four online meetings (on Zoom) Wednesdays 5.30-7.30 pm (UK), 28 May, 4, 11, 18 June 2025
• Facilitated by Toby Brothers, Salon Director
• Recommended edition: Moby Dick (Norton Critical Edition, Third Edition 2018), by Herman Melville, edited by Herschel Parker; W.W. Norton & Co. ISBN-13: 978-0393285000
• Cost for four online meetings and six-night voyage with study sessions, including opening notes will be £1,850 per person.
• Participants will be responsible for arranging their own travel to and from our departure and end point, the port of Mallaig on the west coast of the Scottish Highlands, as well as insurance to cover their trip.
• We have just one place (of seven) remaining. If you are interested in joining, please email us using the subject line Moby Dick 2025 giving your name and a phone number on which we may contact you.
• Please note that the voyage will involve sharing confined living and sleeping space while onboard. We do not require you to have nautical skills, but some time spent on sailing boats or camping would be useful so you know what to expect. We ask you to let us know in your email whether you have such experience and to confirm that you are in good physical health.
• Even in summer it is possible that there may be rough seas and weather, so please consider carefully whether you are likely to be adversely affected by these conditions.
• If we are able to offer you a place we will ask for an initial deposit of £100 per person, with the balance due by 31 December 2024.

‘This is a waterfall.’

‘Yup. You ever seen a waterfall, Klara?’

‘Yes. I saw one in a magazine in the store. And look! You’re eating, right in front of the waterfall.’

‘You can do that at Morgan’s Falls. Have lunch while the spray covers you. You’re eating your food then you realize your shirt’s soaked at the back.’

‘That can’t be good for you, Josie,’

Klara is one of many Artificial Friends (AFs) in a store. She waits patiently to be picked out and taken home, but Klara is neither the latest nor the most sophisticated model. Despite her obvious limitations, the store manager knows that Klara stands apart from the newer range of AF models in a special way. Klara notices details about human beings, and she cares about what she sees.

Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro says that the initial idea for Klara came from a short story he wrote for small children. He was advised that the idea of an android would be too frightening so he extended the idea into a novel for adults but retained the viewpoint of a young child. Klara, as an outsider narrator, focuses on specific aspects of life. Her commercial purpose is to aid with loneliness and this is the lens through which she sees the world.

Kazuo Ishiguro published his first novel, A Pale View of the Hills, in 1982. In the years since, he has written only seven more. He says that writing is not easy for him and that his primary aim as a writer is to create works that stay with the reader long after they have finished reading the book. Although Ishiguro accepts the categorisation of a Science Fiction writer, he is less comfortable with the reductive element implied by the categorisation of fiction into ‘genre’ writing. In his 2017 Nobel acceptance speech, he said: “Good writing and good reading will break down barriers. We may even find a new idea, a great humane vision, around which to rally.”

JOINING DETAILS:

• Four meeting study led by Nicky von Fraunhofer and Jane Wymark on Zoom
• Wednesdays 6-27 August 2025, 6.00 – 8.00 pm (BST)
• Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, 2021, paperback, Faber ISBN 9780571364909
• £160 for four meetings
• Please use this link to share details

Love, lust, honour, betrayal: this study will explore the doomed lovers Tristan and Isolde (Yseult). We will read selections from the original Celtic legend as told by by Anglo-Norman poet Thomas of Britain (1170) and the medieval German version by Gottfried von Strassburg (1215). We will also listen to Wagner’s musical interpretation in the opera Tristan und Isolde and discuss the impact of a different artistic medium on our response to the story.

This is London Literary Salon’s first experiment with adding a musical element to the discussion of literature and will be purely experiential, no knowledge of music theory is required. If you have enjoyed our discussions of literature and visual art, we invite you to drink the love potion with Tristan and Isolde and surrender yourself to the power of poetry and music combined as we consider why Tristan is considered one of the greatest operas of the 19th century. 

JOINING DETAILS:

• Four week study led by Sean Forester on Zoom
• Thursdays, 7, 14, 21 & 28 August 2025,  5.30-7.30 pm (UK)
• Text: Tristan: With the Surviving Fragments of the ‘Tristran of Thomas’ (Penguin Classics) by Gottfried von Strassburg, Translated by A.T. Hatto, ISBN-13: ‎978-0140440980
• Music: Tristan und Isolde by Richard Wagner
• Use this link to share details of the study.
• £120 for four meetings, to include opening notes and background resources.

Who hasn’t gazed at this mountain of Modernism and felt daunted, or wondered what could possibly take any writer more than three thousand pages and six or seven volumes to say?

In our study, we enter the Proustian universe through the first volume: this will give readers a glimpse of the breadth and purpose of this carefully constructed creation that Proust uses to reflect on the workings of the mind, memory, imagination and the role of art. Harold Bloom cites In Search of Lost Time as ‘the greatest literary work of comic jealousy’. Proust uses social critique, abundant detail, lyric descriptions and philosophical query to portray a sensitive young mind engaging with the world and human relationships. The narrator’s incredible vision and unique voice develop over the course of the volumes. By studying this first volume, you will acquire the tools needed to complete the epic on your own if you are inspired, or continue with the Salon study if this is working for you. We continue to ask, could there be a better moment in history to go in search of Lost Time?

This will be the ninth troop I have led through Proust’s massive work. Please be assured that registering for the first volume does NOT commit you to continuing, but even though completing the entire cycle with us involves two and a half years of reading together, most people do choose to stay the course (some might say become addicted) and find the work immensely satisfying.

For myself, I would say simply that my time in Proust has changed the way I understand my relationship to the world of art and experience. Here is how one salonista describes the pleasure and work of reading Proust: “This is a velvet jewel of a book that demands the attention of a lover full of enchantment and obsession, we need not get impatient as all good lovers perfect their art in taking their time.”

SALON DETAILS

• Nine week virtual study starting 17 September (N.B. no meetings on 1 and 15 October), for first time readers of In Search of Lost Time. Please note that we sometimes offer a ‘second time around’ study for those who have already completed their first encounter with Proust’s work, please email us if this is of interest.
• Wednesdays 3.00 pm-5.00 pm (UK)
• Facilitated by Salon Director, Toby Brothers
• Cost £300 (includes notes and critical resources)
• Recommended edition: In Search of Lost Time: Volume I, The Way By Swann’s, by Marcel Proust, translated by Lydia Davis, Penguin Modern Classics, ISBN 978-0141180311
• Use this link to share details of the study.

A little background and encouragement:

Proust’s writing requires a wide-awake mind as the reader is drawn into dissecting the world as it is experienced and the way our minds decorate and create memories, values and paradigms of understanding. This sounds so dry, but the wonder is how deeply sensual Proust’s work is — he is most concerned with the experience of intimacy and how this dance between two beings is fractured and reimagined through the lens of perception.

Reading Proust teaches the reader to observe how the world is experienced, to be aware that although we may be tempted to give greater weight to the perceptual universe, it is the entwining of memory, idealised experience (dreams) and relationships with what our senses perceive that moulds our consciousness.

A comment from a previous Proust participant:

” . . . brilliant, frustrating, revealing, engrossing and I am part of what has become a special community of equally frustrated and hugely encouraging students of different ages and  backgrounds. Guided by Toby we are full of insights and laughter. We read aloud and discuss the week’s reading. Time flies, brains feel rejuvenated and the weeks go by much more speedily with the Salon to look forward to. Encouragement is key, there are  no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ opinions. In fact the best thing about the Salon is that we all feel valued. What’s not to love!”   

Who hasn’t gazed at this mountain of Modernism and felt daunted, or wondered what could possibly take any writer more than three thousand pages and six or seven volumes to say?

In our study, we enter the Proustian universe through the first volume: this will give readers a glimpse of the breadth and purpose of this carefully constructed creation that Proust uses to reflect on the workings of the mind, memory, imagination and the role of art. Harold Bloom cites In Search of Lost Time as ‘the greatest literary work of comic jealousy’. Proust uses social critique, abundant detail, lyric descriptions and philosophical query to portray a sensitive young mind engaging with the world and human relationships. The narrator’s incredible vision and unique voice develop over the course of the volumes. By studying this first volume, you will acquire the tools needed to complete the epic on your own if you are inspired, or continue with the Salon study if this is working for you. We continue to ask, could there be a better moment in history to go in search of Lost Time?

This will be the ninth troop I have led through Proust’s massive work. Please be assured that registering for the first volume does NOT commit you to continuing, but even though completing the entire cycle with us involves two and a half years of reading together, most people do choose to stay the course (some might say become addicted) and find the work immensely satisfying.

For myself, I would say simply that my time in Proust has changed the way I understand my relationship to the world of art and experience. Here is how one salonista describes the pleasure and work of reading Proust: “This is a velvet jewel of a book that demands the attention of a lover full of enchantment and obsession, we need not get impatient as all good lovers perfect their art in taking their time.”

SALON DETAILS

• Nine week virtual study starting 17 September (N.B. no meetings on 1 and 15 October) for first time readers of In Search of Lost Time. Please note that we sometimes offer a ‘second time around’ study for those who have already completed their first encounter with Proust’s work, please email us if this is of interest.
• Wednesdays 5.30 pm-7.30 pm (UK)
• Facilitated by Salon Director, Toby Brothers
• Cost £300 (includes notes and critical resources)
• Recommended edition: In Search of Lost Time: Volume I, The Way By Swann’s, by Marcel Proust, translated by Lydia Davis, Penguin Modern Classics, ISBN 978-0141180311
• Use this link to share details of the study.

A little background and encouragement:

Proust’s writing requires a wide-awake mind as the reader is drawn into dissecting the world as it is experienced and the way our minds decorate and create memories, values and paradigms of understanding. This sounds so dry, but the wonder is how deeply sensual Proust’s work is — he is most concerned with the experience of intimacy and how this dance between two beings is fractured and reimagined through the lens of perception.

Reading Proust teaches the reader to observe how the world is experienced, to be aware that although we may be tempted to give greater weight to the perceptual universe, it is the entwining of memory, idealised experience (dreams) and relationships with what our senses perceive that moulds our consciousness.

A comment from a previous Proust participant:

” . . . brilliant, frustrating, revealing, engrossing and I am part of what has become a special community of equally frustrated and hugely encouraging students of different ages and  backgrounds. Guided by Toby we are full of insights and laughter. We read aloud and discuss the week’s reading. Time flies, brains feel rejuvenated and the weeks go by much more speedily with the Salon to look forward to. Encouragement is key, there are  no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ opinions. In fact the best thing about the Salon is that we all feel valued. What’s not to love!”   

It has become a Salon tradition to spend some time each autumn on the Cornish coast reading Virginia Woolf’s work and enjoying one of the places she loved and in which she spent significant parts of her childhood. In 2025 we are again offering two Woolf studies in St Ives: The Waves (28 September to 1 October) and The Voyage Out (3 to 6 October).

As one of the key members of the celebrated Bloomsbury Group, Woolf is seen primarily as a London writer, yet the Cornish coastal town of St Ives – where she spent many childhood summers – serves as a prism through which we can explore her perspectives on landscape, domesticity and identity.

“Thus when I come to shape here at this table between my hands the story of my life and set it before you as a complete thing, I have to recall things gone far, gone deep, sunk into this life or that and become part of it; dreams, too, things surrounding me, and the inmates, those old half-articulate ghosts who keep up their hauntings by day and night; who turn over in their sleep, who utter their confused cries, who put out their phantom fingers and clutch at me as I try to escape—shadows of people one might have been; unborn selves.”

Virginia Woolf, The Waves

Reading Virginia Woolf requires a release of the faculty we have so carefully trained to be grounded in time and fact. Her fluid and probing prose allows such a deep and troubling glimpse into the human heart that one comes away wiser and broader than before. This is not my first floating into The Waves, what I have already experienced makes me want to swim far out into her embracing world of character and reflection.

We invite you to join us in St Ives to explore this lovely place and share the work with a group of other keen minds.

I love this review of The Waves from Goodreads:

‘My umpteenth reading of The Waves and it still floors me. There’s not a wasted word here: Woolf’s attention to rhythm—she was listening to Beethoven’s String Quartet in B-flat Minor, Opus 130 while writing this novel, and Beethoven’s nuances are found in her prose at all turns—and the ways in which she questions subjectivity, interpersonal relations, the ways in which we are connected and yet disparate from those around us are on display here more so than in any of her other fictional works.

‘The last section is sadly not as famous as the last section in Joyce’s Ulysses, but it may well be even more gut-wrenchingly brutal in its philosophical underpinnings and the ways in which Woolf engages with poetics to sustain the flow of her inquiries into what it means to be human. On each reading there is something more to be found here, something more to be learned, something to relish and treasure, some keen diamond-edged truth that slices just as much as it illuminates.’

During our visit you will have opportunities to visit the iconic Tate St Ives gallery overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, built between 1988 and 1993 on the site of an old gasworks, and the Barbara Hepworth Museum & Sculpture Garden. If weather allows, there will be an optional boat trip to Godrevy Lighthouse and we also hope to look at Talland House, Woolf’s childhood summer home (now privately owned). For several months of the year the elegant house overlooking St Ives Bay would be the Stephens’ family home until 1895 when Virginia’s mother, Julia Stephen, died. Although the complete family never returned to St Ives after their mother’s death, her children travelled back in 1905 following the death of their father in the previous year.

Feedback from participants in previous St Ives studies:

“The studio where the discussion took place is a beautiful, extraordinary place, the participants were imbued with the light and landscape, creating a friendly and committed atmosphere. The two facilitators were wonderful . . .”

“The collaboration between participants and facilitators was rich indeed, and I wonder how it was accomplished that everyone in the group was so insightful and intelligent and I might even say soul-searching . . . I also think it was just a superb group of people.”

Read Salonista Leah Jewett’s account of a Salon Study in St Ives here.

JOINING DETAILS:

• You can share details of this study using this link
• Please use the form below to secure your place with an initial registration deposit of £60.00. Once you have registered we will then send you details for payment of the balance owing (£500.00) to complete your booking by bank transfer.
• Facilitated by Toby Brothers and Sarah Snoxall
• Our meetings will take place in the fabulous Porthmeor Studios
• 28 September to 1 October 2025 (approximately 14 hours of study)
• Recommended editions:  The Waves by Virginia Woolf, Vintage Classics, ISBN-13: ‎
  978-1784870843 or Penguin Classics, ISBN-13: 978-0241372081
• Cost £560, includes notes and critical resources (N.B. travel, food and accommodation are NOT included and participants are responsible for arranging their own travel, accommodation and insurance).
• Recommended places to stay include No 4 St Ives, 3 Porthminster Terrace, Blue Sky, The Olive Branch, Rivendell and the Harbour View Hotel, but PLEASE check web details and review sites before booking to make sure they will meet your needs.

It has become a Salon tradition to spend some time each autumn on the Cornish coast reading Virginia Woolf’s work and enjoying one of the places she loved and in which she spent significant parts of her childhood. In 2025 we are again offering two Woolf studies in St Ives: The Waves (28 September to 1 October) and The Voyage Out (3 to 6 October).

As one of the key members of the celebrated Bloomsbury Group, Woolf is seen primarily as a London writer, yet the Cornish coastal town of St Ives – where she spent many childhood summers – serves as a prism through which we can explore her perspectives on landscape, domesticity and identity.

The Voyage Out is Virginia Woolf’s first novel. Athough not published until 1915, she may have begun writing it as early as 1906, when she was just 24. The book is mentioned in her letters from 1908, under the title Melymbrosia, but was set aside for some time following her breakdown in 1910, and then further delayed by another breakdown and attempted suicide after being delivered to her publisher in 1913.

Over these years, the book underwent numerous drafts and revisions, allowing the author to reflect many of her own experiences and preoccupations in its pages. Virginia married Leonard Woolf in August 1912 and, through her central character, Rachel Vinrace, she explores the tension between individual identity and the merging with others implicit in marriage, as well as suggesting possibilities beyond the binary that would feature in her later life and work.

According to E.M. Forster The Voyage Out is ‘. . . a book which attains unity as surely as Wuthering Heights, though by a different path’, he described it as ‘A strange, tragic, inspired novel . . . as poignant as anything in modern fiction.’ Toby, who is co-facilitating this study, admits that it was one of the first Woolf works she ever read and yet it is the last she has developed for a Salon study, in spite of the characters (who include Richard and Clarissa Dalloway appearing for the first time) and drama remaining with her for many years.

Reading The Voyage Out in the company of others is an opportunity to consider the early development of Virginia Woolf’s unique and innovative modernist style. This study will be rewarding for those who know her work well and readers dipping a toe into her literary stream for the first time.

We invite you to join us in St Ives, where we can explore a truly lovely place and share the work of a great author with a group of other keen minds.

During our visit you will have opportunities to visit the iconic Tate St Ives gallery overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, built between 1988 and 1993 on the site of an old gasworks, and the Barbara Hepworth Museum & Sculpture Garden. If weather allows, there will be an optional boat trip to Godrevy Lighthouse and we also hope to look at Talland House, Woolf’s childhood summer home (now privately owned). For several months of the year the elegant house overlooking St Ives Bay would be the Stephens’ family home until 1895 when Virginia’s mother, Julia Stephen, died. Although the complete family never returned to St Ives after their mother’s death, her children travelled back in 1905 following the death of their father in the previous year.

Feedback from participants in previous St Ives studies:

“The studio where the discussion took place is a beautiful, extraordinary place, the participants were imbued with the light and landscape, creating a friendly and committed atmosphere. The two facilitators were wonderful . . .”

“The collaboration between participants and facilitators was rich indeed, and I wonder how it was accomplished that everyone in the group was so insightful and intelligent and I might even say soul-searching . . . I also think it was just a superb group of people.”

Read Salonista Leah Jewett’s account of a Salon Study in St Ives here.

JOINING DETAILS:

• You can share details of this study using this link
• Please use the form below to secure your place with an initial registration deposit of £60.00. Once you have registered we will then send you details for payment of the balance owing (£500.00) to complete your booking by bank transfer.
• Facilitated by Toby Brothers and Sarah Snoxall
• Our meetings will take place in the fabulous Porthmeor Studios
• 3-6 October 2025 (approximately 14 hours of study)
• Recommended editions:  The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf, The 1915 Virginia Woolf Modern Fiction Classic (Annotated), Robinia Classics, ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8365413207
• Cost £560, includes notes and critical resources (N.B. travel, food and accommodation are NOT included and participants are responsible for arranging their own travel, accommodation and insurance).
• Recommended places to stay include No 4 St Ives, 3 Porthminster Terrace, Blue Sky, The Olive Branch, Rivendell and the Harbour View Hotel, but PLEASE check web details and review sites before booking to make sure they will meet your needs.

After Dante Alighieri’s death his family discovered that the final thirteen cantos of his Divine Comedy were missing. They searched for months and began to fear the great epic poem would never be published. But then, according to Boccaccio, Dante appeared to his son Jacopo in a dream. Clad in radiant white, the poet led his son to the house in Ravenna where he had lived in exile and pointed to a place on the wall. When Jacopo awoke, he went straight to the spot his father had shown him and found the missing cantos hidden behind the wall. 

These final cantos describe Dante’s magnificent mystical vision of the afterlife awaiting virtuous souls. In the view of the translator and scholar Robert Hollander, “Dante’s Paradiso is surely one of the most daring poetic initiatives we have. . . . Theology set to music, as it were, it pushes its reader (not to mention its translators) to the limit.”

Our LitSalon group has read Inferno and Purgatorio, and we now move to Paradiso, but new readers are also welcome to join the journey. Why not begin with Dante’s heaven before descending into his hell? We hope to offer Inferno again in January 2026.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Eight meeting study of Paradiso, the third and final part of Dante’s Divine Comedy led by Sean Forester on Zoom
• Sundays, 4.00-6.00 pm (UK), 12, 19, 26  October & 2, 9, 16, 23, 30 November 2025
• You can use any translation of Dante that you prefer, although Sean recommends:  Paradiso: A Verse Translation by Robert Hollander and Jean Hollander, ISBN-13 : ‎ 978-1400031153.
• £240 for eight two-hour meetings, to include background notes and additional resources.
• Use this link to share details of the study.
• The next cycle of The Divine Comedy will begin in January 2026 with Inferno (12 meetings) followed by Purgatorio in Spring 2026 (10 meetings).