Literature Studies
The Lit Salon studies of significant literature give you the opportunity to experience the diverse worlds of such authors as George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, Thomas Mann, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, Alice Munro and Salman Rushdie. Through a close consideration of language use, narrative form and rhetorical techniques, we come to a greater understanding of the power and play of the word while broadening our perspectives.
For the adventurous, our signature 20-week study of James Joyce’s Ulysses, starting each year in January, takes you on a deep dive into Joyce’s groundbreaking novel. Or, our magnum two-year-plus voyage through Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time just might change your life. For a less intensive commitment, the monthly Lit Salon Book Club reads the finest late-20th and 21st century literature from around the world.
We post a wide range of our regular studies—from one to eight meetings—throughout the year. Check below for current offerings and check back frequently for new listings.
Do you have ideas for a study not listed? Contact us to suggest a study.
Upcoming Literature Studies
october 2019
Event Details
T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage which we did not take Towards the door we never
Event Details
T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
–From ‘Burnt Norton’
T.S. Eliot’s ‘Four Quartets’ is often described as the best long poem of the 20th century. Eliot’s vast final work attempted to order and understand the movement of time, the dissatisfaction of worldly experience, the nature of purgation and the struggle towards artistic wholeness and spiritual health (modified from C.K. Stead). In the poem, Eliot weaves belief systems and diverse influences including Dante, The Bhagavad Gita, The Eightfold Path of Buddhism, the New Testament, medieval mystics, Greek myths and the Grail Legend: so our study will also involve comparing wisdom traditions.
I will provide each participant with pages of annotations and reference reading (gratefully donated by Mike McGarry, fellow educator and philosopher)—but as always with the Salon work, the focus is on the text itself. In previous Salons, we have found our way to thoughtful considerations of various belief systems in a respectful atmosphere; this study will open up space for such considerations using the poem as a spring board. What we believe—as individuals, as cultures—addresses how we live and how we try to invest our lives with meaning. Eliot is taking on these elemental questions through his Anglo-Catholic faith but drawing into this perspective wisdom across time and beliefs.
SALON DETAILS
- Facilitated by Toby Brothers
- Tuesday evenings 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
- Four meetings over five weeks (no meeting November 12th)
- Meetings in Kentish Town
- T.S. Eliot’s Collected Poems 1909-62 (Faber & Faber; ISBN-13: 978-0571105489).
- £95 for the four sessions
TO REGISTER for the study, please use the secure Paypal payment button below to pay £95. Opening notes will be sent shortly after registration. The study is limited to 11 participants. Please contact us if you have any questions.
Christopher Guerin, writing in the on-line magazine ‘When Falls the Coliseum’, describes his pleasure in the poem:
“Though I first studied the poem in college — emphasis on “studied”, which doesn’t always mean “experience” or “appreciate” — my firstencounter with Four Quartets took place while being chased by fierce thunderstorms across Interstate 70 in Kansas in the early evening. (I learned the next day that I had been surrounded by tornados!) I had put in a cassette recording I’d made off an LP of Four Quartets being read by Sir Alec Guinness.
No, the incredible impression the poem made on me at the time had nothing to do with Obi Wan Kenobi. Guinness’ delivery, though, seems the perfect voice for this poem, much more earnest and spiritually aware than Eliot’s own weary, almost defeated delivery. (The recording is hard to find, but well worth the search. Highly recommended.)
From the beginning, I was captivated by the cadence, the imagery, and the playful, seeking nature of the words. It’s impossible to quote anything less than the whole of the first section…”
Which he does—and you can read the rest of his commentary and selections of the poem here.
Further DETAILS
We will consider each Quartet in one meeting– reflecting on the other sections as they expand and invigorate the one in front of us. The facilitated discussion will use the text of the poem as a springboard for our conversation; participant questions, responses and ideas are welcomed to help navigate the challenges of the work. There is no expectation of previous study or work with the poem nor in the academic tradition: this study will challenge and invigorate the first time reader as well as the life-long lover of T.S. Eliot’s extraordinary vision.
The poem can be found in T.S. Eliot’s Collected Poems 1909-62 (Faber & Faber; ISBN-13: 978-0571105489).
november 2019
Event Details
T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage which we did not take Towards the door we never
Event Details
T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
–From ‘Burnt Norton’
T.S. Eliot’s ‘Four Quartets’ is often described as the best long poem of the 20th century. Eliot’s vast final work attempted to order and understand the movement of time, the dissatisfaction of worldly experience, the nature of purgation and the struggle towards artistic wholeness and spiritual health (modified from C.K. Stead). In the poem, Eliot weaves belief systems and diverse influences including Dante, The Bhagavad Gita, The Eightfold Path of Buddhism, the New Testament, medieval mystics, Greek myths and the Grail Legend: so our study will also involve comparing wisdom traditions.
I will provide each participant with pages of annotations and reference reading (gratefully donated by Mike McGarry, fellow educator and philosopher)—but as always with the Salon work, the focus is on the text itself. In previous Salons, we have found our way to thoughtful considerations of various belief systems in a respectful atmosphere; this study will open up space for such considerations using the poem as a spring board. What we believe—as individuals, as cultures—addresses how we live and how we try to invest our lives with meaning. Eliot is taking on these elemental questions through his Anglo-Catholic faith but drawing into this perspective wisdom across time and beliefs.
SALON DETAILS
- Facilitated by Toby Brothers
- Tuesday evenings 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
- Four meetings over five weeks (no meeting November 12th)
- Meetings in Kentish Town
- T.S. Eliot’s Collected Poems 1909-62 (Faber & Faber; ISBN-13: 978-0571105489).
- £95 for the four sessions
TO REGISTER for the study, please use the secure Paypal payment button below to pay £95. Opening notes will be sent shortly after registration. The study is limited to 11 participants. Please contact us if you have any questions.
Christopher Guerin, writing in the on-line magazine ‘When Falls the Coliseum’, describes his pleasure in the poem:
“Though I first studied the poem in college — emphasis on “studied”, which doesn’t always mean “experience” or “appreciate” — my firstencounter with Four Quartets took place while being chased by fierce thunderstorms across Interstate 70 in Kansas in the early evening. (I learned the next day that I had been surrounded by tornados!) I had put in a cassette recording I’d made off an LP of Four Quartets being read by Sir Alec Guinness.
No, the incredible impression the poem made on me at the time had nothing to do with Obi Wan Kenobi. Guinness’ delivery, though, seems the perfect voice for this poem, much more earnest and spiritually aware than Eliot’s own weary, almost defeated delivery. (The recording is hard to find, but well worth the search. Highly recommended.)
From the beginning, I was captivated by the cadence, the imagery, and the playful, seeking nature of the words. It’s impossible to quote anything less than the whole of the first section…”
Which he does—and you can read the rest of his commentary and selections of the poem here.
Further DETAILS
We will consider each Quartet in one meeting– reflecting on the other sections as they expand and invigorate the one in front of us. The facilitated discussion will use the text of the poem as a springboard for our conversation; participant questions, responses and ideas are welcomed to help navigate the challenges of the work. There is no expectation of previous study or work with the poem nor in the academic tradition: this study will challenge and invigorate the first time reader as well as the life-long lover of T.S. Eliot’s extraordinary vision.
The poem can be found in T.S. Eliot’s Collected Poems 1909-62 (Faber & Faber; ISBN-13: 978-0571105489).
Event Details
The London Lit Salon Book Club is a monthly book discussion group in South London that reads the finest 20th and 21st
Event Details
The London Lit Salon Book Club is a monthly book discussion group in South London that reads the finest 20th and 21st century literature from around the world (with the occasional classic thrown in the mix for good measure).
The Book Club’s monthly schedule offers the same serious discussion and professional facilitation as the Salon’s other studies, while providing the opportunity to explore a world of literature for which we might not offer one of our multi-week, in-depth studies. Like all books we read at the Lit Salon, the book club selections speak to basic and enduring questions of what it means to be human.
The Lit Salon Book Club meets on Sunday evenings from 6:30pm – 8:30pm in the comfortable West Norwood (SE27) bungalow of our discussion facilitator Mark Cwik. Meetings for 2018/19 are scheduled for:
07 October 2018– William Trevor’s Two Lives: Reading Turgenev and My House in Umbria.
18 November 2018 — Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight
06 January 2019 — Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights
03 February 2019 — Sjón’s The Blue Fox
03 March 2019 — Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses
07 April 2019 — Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita
28 April 2019 — Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go
26 May 2019 — Paul Auster’s The Music of Chance
28 July 2019 — Bridget Collins’ The Binding
08 September 2019 — Tessa Hadley’s Late in the Day
03 November 2019 — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah
01 December 2019 — TBA
Our book for 03 November will be Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s 2013 novel Americanah, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Chicago Tribune‘s Heartland Award, was shortlisted for the 2014 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, and was a New York Times Book Review Best Book of the Year.
Eugenia Williamson in the Boston Globe says: “Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has written a scintillating, funny, and heartfelt novel, not least because of Ifemelu, a Nigerian transplant whose 13-year tenure as a resident of the United States has come to an end. She is a complex and unforgettable character . . . The journeys of these characters, their brush-ups with race, class, politics, literature, family on three continents result in a cerebral and utterly transfixing epic . . . Among its many strengths, Americanah is superlative at making clear just how isolating it can be to live far away from home. . .”
And, Michael Peed of the New York Times Sunday Book Review writes: “Adichie is an extraordinarily self-aware thinker and writer, possessing the ability to lambaste society without sneering or patronizing or polemicizing. For her, it seems no great feat to balance high-literary intentions with broad social critique. . .”
Registration for the Lit Salon Book Club is in six-month subscriptions of £90. You can also try us out with a one-month payment of £15. See below for payment options.
SPECIAL OFFER: if you’ve not attended before but would like to try us out, we invite you to attend your first meeting free of charge. Please email facilitator Mark Cwik to RSVP and we’ll provide you with location info.
With our friendly atmosphere of collaborative inquiry, high quality and challenging readings, professional facilitation and focused discussions, we are confident in calling the Lit Salon Book Club the best book discussion group in London.
SALON DETAILS
- Facilitated by Mark Cwik
- Sunday evenings 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
- Ongoing monthly study, next meeting 03 November 2019
- Meetings in South London (West Norwood SE27)
- 03 November recommended edition: Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; Fourth Estate (2014); ISBN-13: 978-0007356348
- £15 per month, registration in six-month subscriptions, or as one-month trial.
TO REGISTER for this ongoing study, please use the secure Paypal payment button below to pay £90 for a six-month subscription:
OR, for monthly payment, use the Paypal button below to pay £15:
january 2020
Event Details
Dubliners: Between Paralysis and Epiphany in 'The Sisters' and 'The Dead' “My intention was to write a chapter of the moral history of
Event Details
Dubliners: Between Paralysis and Epiphany in ‘The Sisters’ and ‘The Dead’
“My intention was to write a chapter of the moral history of my country and I chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to me the centre of paralysis. I have tried to present it to the indifferent public under four of its aspects: childhood, adolescence, maturity and public life. The stories are arranged in this order.”—James Joyce as quoted in Herbert Gorman’s James Joyce (NY, 1939)
Dubliners is characterised by a sense of paralysis. The moral centre of these stories is not paralysis alone but a recognition of that static state. Joyce loved Ireland but could not remain there—part of his critique of his culture and its people is imaged in these stories—in people caught in patterns and prejudices that they cannot escape. In many of the stories collected in this early publication, a clang of awareness or self-realization marks the climax. Often these moments reveal Joyce’s fascination with epiphanies- that moment of sudden and intense illumination when a profound truth is/may be revealed. In Stephen Hero, a character suggests the recording of epiphanies is one of the most important functions of writing: ‘they are the most delicate and evanescent of moments’ and offer ‘a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in memorable phase of the mind itself’. For Joyce, these moments did not occur at the height of the heroic or dramatic gesture, but in the ordinary acts of life. Are there moments in the readings that fit this description? More importantly, what is revealed?
“I did not know whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I could tell her of my confused adoration. But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.”
― James Joyce, Dubliners
SALON DETAILS
- Facilitated by Toby Brothers
- Monday evenings 5:30 pm – 8:00 pm
- Two meetings: five hours total
- Meetings in Kentish Town
- Recommended edition: Penguin Classics (Feb. 2000) ISBN-10: 0141182458
- £60 for the two sessions
TO REGISTER for the study, please use the secure Paypal payment button below to pay £60. Opening notes will be sent shortly after registration. The study is limited to 10 participants. Please contact us if you have any questions.
We will discuss the opening and closing stories of Dubliners: “The Sisters” and “The Dead”. These are the book-ends of Dubliners and have structural and thematic resonances. This comparison will also allow us to consider the development of Joyce’s craft as he prepares the ground for his later experimentation.
In both works, Joyce is driven to find that moment of illumination, the epiphany, when clarity is suddenly attained. He was convinced this was not a moment of great victory or apparent importance, but often a mundane moment when pieces fell into place.
The style of this study will reflect the traditional Salon format: I will offer a structure for our discussion and particular passages and ideas for us to grapple with, but I encourage and support your contributions to the discussion. I have no expectations in terms of preparation nor previous Joyce study:The Salons typically have a broad spectrum of participants from the simply curious to literature teachers or lecturers—and some who have spent years reading Joyce. Each person brings their lived experience to the study whether it is a knowledge of the Catholic tradition. Irish history, love of music or intrigue with language: all contribute to our understanding as a group.
Joyce can be…intimidating. Please approach the reading with a sense of play. Much may remain unclear on your first reading; after our work together and if you are able to complete a second reading, you may find the pattern and weave of Joyce’s art singing for you. In his writing, he experiments with language and relies less on narrative logic than on the connections and synchronicity of words and events.
Event Details
"You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.” —William Faulkner There is a strong
Event Details
“You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.”
—William Faulkner
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 only 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.
“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 skillfully 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 marvelous work was immense.”
—Ulysses Salon participant
See more participant feedback here…
SALON DETAILS
A) DAYTIME: Tuesdays 12-2 PM
B) EVENINGS : Tuesdays 7:30-9:30 PM
- Both afternoon and evening studies start January 14th and finish June 23rd ; there will be a few special Sunday evening meetings for both afternoon & evening groups to address the longer chapters.
- We will meet for 21 meetings; there will be a few breaks around school half-terms
- Please purchase these editions in preparation for our study:
- Ulysses, by James Joyce, Annotated Students’ Edition; (Penguin Modern Classics), ISBN-10: 0141184434. (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
- The total cost for the 20-meeting study, with all notes and resources materials, is £400
TO REGISTER, Please use the Paypal button below to pay for the study; upon receipt of payment, you will receive opening notes and loads of resources to start the study.
For the daytime study on Tuesdays :
If you have any questions about this study, please contact us.
Event Details
"You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.” —William Faulkner After wandering through these
Event Details
“You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.”
—William Faulkner
After wandering through these rich pages with many wonderful readers, I am keen to offer a study of Ulysses for those who have already passed through once (or more) and are ready to dig deeper. The reading schedule will be the same, but we will approach with an understanding of the structure already in mind. This will allow us to flesh out the themes from the start of the work and engage more thoroughly the historical, social and aesthetic structures that Joyce inhabits and overturns. Hopefully this will also give seasoned readers the opportunity to feel grounded in the text and discover motifs, connections and explorations that they may have missed in the madness of the first reading.
If you have not previously read Ulysses, please join the afternoon study.
“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 skillfully 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 marvelous work was immense.”
—Ulysses Salon participant
See more participant feedback here…
SALON DETAILS
A) DAYTIME: Tuesdays 12-2 PM
B) EVENINGS : Tuesdays 7:30-9:30 PM
- Both afternoon and evening studies start January 14th and finish June 23rd ; there will be a few special Sunday evening meetings for both afternoon & evening groups to address the longer chapters.
- We will meet for 21 meetings; there will be a few breaks around school half-terms
- Please purchase these editions in preparation for our study:
- Ulysses, by James Joyce, Annotated Students’ Edition; (Penguin Modern Classics), ISBN-10: 0141184434. (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
- The total cost for the 20-meeting study, with all notes and resources materials, is £400
TO REGISTER, Please use the Paypal button below to pay for the study; upon receipt of payment, you will receive opening notes and loads of resources to start the study.
For the evening study on Tuesdays:
If you have any questions about this study, please contact us.
may 2020
Event Details
Salon Weekend Retreats Building on the success of our London-based studies, we are excited to offer travel studies that place participants in locales
Event Details
Salon Weekend Retreats
Building on the success of our London-based studies, we are excited to offer travel studies that place participants in locales that reflect and contextualize the literature. Journeying together to beautiful sites, the London Lit Salon retreat offers a more intensive immersion in the book while opening the mind to a part of the world illuminated through the beauty of the language.
A Portrait of A Lady by Henry James
The book is a painted portrait or even a kaleidoscope. We watch and guess what Isabel will do. But like a portrait, she is (perhaps) caught in a frame and frozen by the artistry –or the terms of her world.
Previous studies have included considerations of gender roles, the negotiated space between self and other, the corruption or freedom offered by privilege, the challenge of looking at nationalities in generalizations (and the tempting ease to do so), the ways in which humans reveal themselves…these Salon discussions are full of wonder: the meeting of the gathered minds and the provoking text is a powerful thing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson seems to echo in the lines and characters of Henry James, Isabel in particular: “You think of me the child of my circumstances: I make my circumstance…I—this thought which is called I, –is the mould into which the world is poured like melted wax. The mould is invisible, but the world betrays the shape of the mould. You call it the power of circumstance, but it is the power of me.” –from Emerson’s essay The Transcendentalist
Our study of PoAL may include a consideration of this quote in light of Isabel’s life and choices: how much do we make ourselves? How does the world impose itself on the individual in the act of self-creation?
Salon Details and Registration
- Weekend Meeting :May 15th-17th 2020
- Meeting in Rye–The Mermaid Inn and (as weather permits) garden at Henry James House
- Facilitated by Salon Director Toby Brothers
- Cost £165 includes notes and critical resources; rooms at the Mermaid range from £90 per night to £125
- RECOMMENDED EDITION: Norton Critical Edition Oct. 2017; ISBN-10: 0393938530
To register for the Salon study, please use the Paypal button below to pay £165: (Please pay for the room directly to The Mermaid Inn once your registration has been confirmed):
From J. Smiley’s 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel
“The question (could a novel be art) were…framed in terms of technique, but the ideal was no longer just to promote the novel’s ability to communicate more and more details about more and more things, but also to have an aesthetic shape or effect that would be intended by the author and felt by the reader as consciously graceful, beautiful or ‘right.’ Foremost proponent of these ideas was Henry James…” p. 134
“Everything that Isabel has learned about love and marriage growing up in the United States turns out to be wrong—in Europe, marriage is a pure commodity relationship, and it is the fate girls to be bought, sold, and dominated. Their only choices are to accept their fate knowingly or undergo it without understanding it. ..In Pofa Lady James does what he intended to do…uses intense psychological analysis and careful depiction of settings to fill the spots where the vulgar might have been. “ p. 135
“H. James …recognized that, as vital and satisfying as the English novel was, English novels were missing something that French novels possessed—psychological refinement and depth. …HJ wanted to write…important novels about the progress of the inner life, in which the climax might be only a silent recognition by the protagonist that she has made a commitment fatal to her happiness. Readers had to be educated to understand the weight of such subterranean drama…” p.136
Can’t find what you’re looking for?
Would you like to study something else? Have a look at our past salons to see what events we have run previously.
Or do you have a suggestion for a salon? We’d love to hear your ideas. Please let us know.
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I would recommend courses led by Toby to anyone who wants to look at a text in detail in a study group
I was certainly surprised at how much I was thrown off balance by these two astounding writers…I look forward to returning for more
We all came to the group with different backgrounds and interests but Mark has skillfully guided us through a stimulating programme of Greek literature.
I always leave the meetings with a much broader understanding of what we are reading than when I arrived
Everyone feels they get heard and therefore that each of us has a contribution to make
In all of the courses I have attended I have felt a bond within the group, and this contributes significantly to the quality of the discussions
Lovely, intimate groups with in-depth discussions, lots of learning, and friendships are made for life there
I’ve read things I’d never dared read before. I’ve made new friends and met really interesting people.
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