Literature Studies booking now:
March 2024
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Eugène Delacroix, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Event Details
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi retrovai per una selva oscura
che la diritta via era smarrita
In the middle of the journey of our life
I awoke within a dark wood
where the straight way was lost
So begins Dante’s epic journey. The Inferno takes us into the depths of Hell, where we meet such remarkable characters as Francesca, Ulysses and Ugolino and hear their stories of passion, pride and hatred. Dante writes in the first person as a very human voyager, reacting with strong and varied emotions to the characters before him, as the reader might. As we pass through an array of landscapes, each peculiarly appropriate to the sins of the inmates there, Dante presents a psychological study of what leads men and women into destructive behaviours. How can we understand good and evil? Dante challenges us with the big questions.
Like Joyce, Dante is an ideal author for an in-depth study at the LitSalon. The Divine Comedy has multiple meanings that provide rich material for discussion. The poem weaves together myth, theology, history and the contemporary life of Dante’s time. For his epic poem Dante created a new and beautiful poetic form – terza rima. This form interlocks the rhymes from stanza to stanza in a binding forward movement. For preference, we will read the English translation by John and Jean Hollander with its excellent notes, but as an alternative the Robin Kirkpatrick translation may be more readily available. In addition to reading in translation, facilitator Sean Forester will help you experience a few select examples of the original Italian.
Join us as we read one of the classics of world literature. Find out for yourself why T.S. Eliot declared “Dante and Shakespeare divide the modern world between them.”
STUDY DETAILS:
- Eight meeting study (on Zoom) led by Sean Forester
- Sundays 4.00-6.00 pm (UK)
- 4, 11, 18 & 25 February, 3,10, 17 & 24 March 2024
- £240 for 8 sessions, to include opening notes and resources
- Recommended editions, The Inferno by Dante Alighieri:
- Random House USA, translated by Robert & Jean Hollander, ISBN-13 : 978-0385496988 (N.B. this is a US edition and not always easy to source in the UK)
- Alternatively, in the UK: Penguin Classics, translated by Robin Kirkpatrick, ISBN-13 : 978-0140448955
Organizer
Time
(Sunday) 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time
Location
VIRTUAL - VIA ZOOM
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“When
Event Details
“When we are in love, our love is too big a thing for us to be able altogether to contain it within ourselves. It radiates towards the loved one, finds there a surface which arrests it, forcing it to return to its starting-point, and it is this repercussion of our own feeling which we call the other’s feelings and which charms us more then than on its outward journey because we do not recognise it as having originated in ourselves.”
Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove
Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time is one of the great mountains of Modernism. We spent eight weeks reading the first volume of the work, now we turn to Volume II: Within a Budding Grove (recommended edition: Vintage Classics, translators D.J Enright, C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin). This study is designed for people who have already read Volume I, but it may be possible to pick up from Volume II and return to the first book at a later date, please use the ‘enquire before you buy’ button below to discuss this with the facilitator.
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, idealized experience (dreams) and relationships with what our senses perceive that moulds our consciousness.
Proust also uses his curious and attentive narrator to uncover the ombre — the part of the self that hides in the shade or shadow. As we come to know the characters in the narrator’s world, each turns out to have aspects that reveal a savagery or laziness or discrepancy that was not what appeared on the surface. Of course, as soon as Proust reflects this to the reader, we recognize this truth of human nature: all carry a shadow, an untoward or simply unmanageable part of the self that we struggle to contain. In Proust’s world, these aspects are equally a part of the coherent self. This has me thinking a great deal about how carefully we construct the social self, and how we temper what simmers beneath the surface.
In Volume II, Proust will continue to explore class structures and awakening sexuality. As we considered in Volume I, the form of love as Proust conceives it is an entity not necessarily shared between the lovers – but may often be a projection from one onto the love object – and therefore limited in how much that love depends on the actuality of the other in its conception.
STUDY DETAILS:
- 11 meeting study, 15 January – 1 April 2024 (no meeting 12 February)
- Mondays, 1.00-3.00 pm (UK)
- Facilitated by Toby Brothers
- £275 for 11 meetings
- Recommended edition: Within a Budding Grove by Marcel Proust, translated by D.J. Enright, C.K. Scott Moncrieff, T. Kilmartin, Vintage Classics, ISBN-13: 978-0099362319
Time
(Monday) 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time
Location
VIRTUAL
Future Event Times in this Repeating Event Series
25 March 2024 1:00 pm1 April 2024 1:00 pm
Event Details
“When
Event Details
“When we are in love, our love is too big a thing for us to be able altogether to contain it within ourselves. It radiates towards the loved one, finds there a surface which arrests it, forcing it to return to its starting-point, and it is this repercussion of our own feeling which we call the other’s feelings and which charms us more then than on its outward journey because we do not recognise it as having originated in ourselves.”
Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove
Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time is one of the great mountains of Modernism. We spent eight weeks reading the first volume of the work, now we turn to Volume II: Within a Budding Grove (recommended edition: Vintage Classics, translators D.J Enright, C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin). This study is designed specifically for people who, having completed their journey through Proust’s monumental creation, have the urge to do it again.
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, idealized experience (dreams) and relationships with what our senses perceive that moulds our consciousness.
Proust also uses his curious and attentive narrator to uncover the ombre — the part of the self that hides in the shade or shadow. As we come to know the characters in the narrator’s world, each turns out to have aspects that reveal a savagery or laziness or discrepancy that was not what appeared on the surface. Of course, as soon as Proust reflects this to the reader, we recognize this truth of human nature: all carry a shadow, an untoward or simply unmanageable part of the self that we struggle to contain. In Proust’s world, these aspects are equally a part of the coherent self. This has me thinking a great deal about how carefully we construct the social self, and how we temper what simmers beneath the surface.
In Volume II, Proust continues to explore class structures and awakening sexuality. As we considered in Volume I, the form of love as Proust conceives it is an entity not necessarily shared between the lovers – but may often be a projection from one onto the love object – and therefore limited in how much that love depends on the actuality of the other in its conception.
The advantage of studying the Search again after having read through it all once before, is that you can refer to the overall architecture as it is revealed in each volume. Our discussions arc over the course of all the volumes and this brings multiple dimensions to each event and encounter. As one happy ‘rebounder’ commented: “Thank you very much. ‘Proust 2nd time‘ is so rewarding for me, with such stimulating discussions from the group.”
STUDY DETAILS:
- 11 meeting study, 15 January – 1 April 2024 (no meeting 12 February)
- Mondays, 3.30-5.30 pm (UK)
- Facilitated by Toby Brothers
- £275 for 11 meetings
- Recommended edition: Within a Budding Grove by Marcel Proust, translated by D.J. Enright, C.K. Scott Moncrieff, T. Kilmartin, Vintage Classics, ISBN-13: 978-0099362319
Time
(Monday) 3:30 pm - 5:30 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time
Location
VIRTUAL
Future Event Times in this Repeating Event Series
25 March 2024 3:30 pm - 25 March 2024 5:30 pm
Event Details
Daniel Deronda, George Eliot’s controversial last published novel, combines two
Event Details
Daniel Deronda, George Eliot’s controversial last published novel, combines two major narrative strands in an ambitious book by a writer at the height of her powers. The first strand tells the story of Gwendolen Harleth, a beautiful, spirited woman, as she marries a member of the English ruling class. In agonisingly precise detail that continues to resonate with modern readers, Eliot explores the subordination of women and their shockingly ruthless exploitation by men.
The second strand follows the experiences of Daniel Deronda, an unusually sensitive young man, brought up as an upper-class Englishman but troubled by doubts as to his parentage and true identity. These strands intersect as both characters, in different ways, make deep discoveries about themselves. Eliot spins a web of images, motifs and subtle allusions to help us trace complex parallels between the two, but the second strand has never been as well received, most notoriously by F R Leavis, who went as far as to suggest that its excision would leave a great novel without distractions.
There are perhaps two important reasons for this negative response. As part of her critique of English attitudes, Eliot tries to counter a certain arrogance, even contempt, on the part of the upper classes towards Jews and oriental races. With close friends in the Jewish community, she had made her own scholarly study of its history and customs and was so repelled by her fellow countrymen’s attitudes and ignorance that she devoted a large part of her novel to trying to remedy this, making a plea for greater understanding and tolerance. She was aware of taking a risk and wrote ‘The Jewish element seems to me likely to satisfy nobody’. A second reason concerns the characterisation of Daniel, frequently dismissed as unconvincing. Here again, Eliot demonstrated daring, describing her character as having ‘perhaps more than a woman’s acuteness of compassion’ and as being able to explore the ‘unmapped country within us’. For the English upper class, a man with somewhat feminine aspects, a penchant for digging deep into the human psyche and an unusual openness to other societies would never be an obvious role model.
It is then no surprise that ‘taking a gamble’ is a recurring theme of the book. At the end of her career, Eliot was bravely exploring and exemplifying this aspect of life, challenging the conventions of contemporary affluent society and using all her literary skills to create a stunning artistic experience which retains its power to the present day. Familiar features of melodrama and romance mingle with innovatory techniques which would later become established in the works of modernist writers. In her final novel, she was still exploring, out on the edge . . . Will you take a gamble and sign on for this Salon study?
STUDY DETAILS:
- Eight-week study facilitated by Keith Fosbrook and Sarah Snoxall
- Monday evenings, 5.00-7.00 pm (UK), 22 January to 11 March 2024
- £280 for 8 meetings
- Recommended edition: Daniel Deronda by George Eliot, Penguin Classics, ISBN: 9780140434279
Time
(Monday) 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time
Location
VIRTUAL - VIA ZOOM
Event Details
King Henry and the Prince of Wales, Robert Thew, after Josiah Boydell, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Event Details
Henry IV 1 ends with the king’s victory at the Battle of Shrewsbury. His errant son Hal had returned to fight at his side and the rebel Hotspur – who, at the beginning of the play, Henry had wished was his son rather than Hal – is dead. But the last sentence of the play shows that we are a long way off ‘happy ever after’:
“Rebellion in this land shall lose his sway
Meeting the check of such another day;
And, since this business so fair is done,
Let us not leave till all our own be won.”
It would have been clear to the Globe audience that a second play was in the offing and, indeed, both plays were written around 1597. But it would be a mistake to think that Shakespeare himself had any notion that he was writing what came to be known as the ‘Henriad’ – that is the four plays Richard II, Henry IV parts 1 and 2 and Henry V. There is no evidence that the plays were ever produced in sequence until late in the 19th century.
It would also be a mistake to think that knowledge of Richard II and Henry IV part 1 are essential for an understanding of Henry IV part 2. As P. H. Davidson begins his introduction to the Penguin Shakespeare edition of the play: ‘the most important point to grasp in an understanding of Henry IV 2 is that it is a play in its own right, a play of its own kind, and especially that it is very different from Henry IV 1.’
However, Shakespeare provides a splendid recap in the shape of Rumour, who opens the play with a chorus speech that does a neater job on ‘Previously in Henry IV . . . ’ than most modern TV series achieve.
STUDY DETAILS:
- Eight-meeting study led by Jane Wymark
- Mondays, 6.00-8.00 pm (UK), 15 January – 4 March 2024
- £240 for 8 meetings, to include opening notes and resources
- We will use the Arden Shakespeare edition edited by James C Bulman: ISBN 978 1-9042-71376, but other editions are welcome, particularly the Folger and RSC editions (it’s useful to have a range of footnotes).
Time
(Monday) 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time
Location
VIRTUAL - VIA ZOOM
Event Details
“When
Event Details
“When we are in love, our love is too big a thing for us to be able altogether to contain it within ourselves. It radiates towards the loved one, finds there a surface which arrests it, forcing it to return to its starting-point, and it is this repercussion of our own feeling which we call the other’s feelings and which charms us more then than on its outward journey because we do not recognise it as having originated in ourselves.”
Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove
Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time is one of the great mountains of Modernism. We spent eight weeks reading the first volume of the work, now we turn to Volume II: Within a Budding Grove (recommended edition: Vintage Classics, translators D.J Enright, C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin). This study is designed for people who have already read Volume I, but it may be possible to pick up from Volume II and return to the first book at a later date, please use the ‘enquire before you buy’ button below to discuss this with the facilitator.
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, idealized experience (dreams) and relationships with what our senses perceive that moulds our consciousness.
Proust also uses his curious and attentive narrator to uncover the ombre — the part of the self that hides in the shade or shadow. As we come to know the characters in the narrator’s world, each turns out to have aspects that reveal a savagery or laziness or discrepancy that was not what appeared on the surface. Of course, as soon as Proust reflects this to the reader, we recognize this truth of human nature: all carry a shadow, an untoward or simply unmanageable part of the self that we struggle to contain. In Proust’s world, these aspects are equally a part of the coherent self. This has me thinking a great deal about how carefully we construct the social self, and how we temper what simmers beneath the surface.
In Volume II, Proust will continue to explore class structures and awakening sexuality. As we considered in Volume I, the form of love as Proust conceives it is an entity not necessarily shared between the lovers – but may often be a projection from one onto the love object – and therefore limited in how much that love depends on the actuality of the other in its conception.
STUDY DETAILS:
- 11 meeting study, 15 January – 1 April 2024 (no meeting 12 February)
- Mondays, 6.00-8.00 pm (UK)
- Facilitated by Toby Brothers
- £275 for 11 meetings
- Recommended edition: Within a Budding Grove by Marcel Proust, translated by D.J. Enright, C.K. Scott Moncrieff, T. Kilmartin, Vintage Classics, ISBN-13: 978-0099362319
Time
(Monday) 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time
Location
VIRTUAL
Future Event Times in this Repeating Event Series
25 March 2024 6:00 pm1 April 2024 6:00 pm
Event Details
“You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament:
Event Details
“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.
“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.”
Ulysses Salon participant
SALON DETAILS
- We are offering this morning study from 11.00 am-1.00 pm (UK time), comprising 20 meetings starting on Tuesday 16 January and finishing on Tuesday 25 June 2024, with three Sunday meetings (dates and times to be confirmed) and NO meetings on 13 February, 2 April, 7 May and 4 June.
- The total cost for the 20 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
Time
(Tuesday) 11:00 am - 1:00 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time
Location
VIRTUAL
Future Event Times in this Repeating Event Series
19 March 2024 11:00 am - 19 March 2024 1:00 pm26 March 2024 11:00 am - 26 March 2024 1:00 pm9 April 2024 11:00 am - 9 April 2024 1:00 pm16 April 2024 11:00 am - 16 April 2024 1:00 pm23 April 2024 11:00 am - 23 April 2024 1:00 pm30 April 2024 11:00 am - 30 April 2024 1:00 pm14 May 2024 11:00 am - 14 May 2024 1:00 pm21 May 2024 11:00 am - 21 May 2024 1:00 pm28 May 2024 11:00 am - 28 May 2024 1:00 pm11 June 2024 11:00 am - 11 June 2024 1:00 pm18 June 2024 11:00 am - 18 June 2024 1:00 pm
Event Details
“You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.” William Faulkner
Event Details
“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 are offering an opportunity to join in a ‘Slow Read’ of one of the greatest novels of all time in the company of others. The ‘Slow Read’ approach has proved popular within the Salon as our approach is not driven by completion of the text within a defined timescale, rather we focus on full enjoyment of the material.
Every time I run a study of Ulysses, there is SO much we do not get to consider – I know we may still not get to everything, but this will be an opportunity to go deeper and wider in this amazing work than ever before in Salon studies. I propose we start with 5-8 pages a week, then check in and see if, as a group, we want to slow down, speed up or just wallow. I expect we will find our rhythm at about five pages per week, but I am open to possibilities.
The ‘Slow Read’ is served in tranches of two-hour sessions – usually between six and ten in number. As long as there is continued interest, I will keep offering this study until we reach the final notes on the text.
If you have not previously read Ulysses and are interested in this study, please contact us to discuss using the enquiry form below. Please also contact us if you are interested in the study but the timing does not work for you as we are considering a later meeting schedule if there is sufficient interest.
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 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.”
Ulysses Salon participant
I will offer many resources for reading around, but also welcome contributions and independent research from participants. This study is particularly opportune given the abundance of new resources available thanks to the Ulysses centenary, including the offerings of the newly published Cambridge Centenary Ulysses, the brainchild of Catherine Flynn.
Toby Brothers, Director, London Literary Salon
JOINING DETAILS:
- This is the sixth section of the ‘Slow Read’ Ulysses study led by Toby Brothers, 6 two-hour sessions, Tuesdays from 2.30-4.30 pm (UK), starting on 20 February and ending on 2 April 2024 with NO MEETING on 27 February.
- If you are interested in joining this study but have not participated in the first five sections please email the facilitator toby@litsalon.co.uk.
- The total cost for this section with all notes and resources is £165.00. We expect to read an average of 8 pages per week.
- Please have available 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
Time
(Tuesday) 2:30 pm - 4:30 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time
Location
VIRTUAL
Future Event Times in this Repeating Event Series
19 March 2024 2:30 pm - 19 March 2024 4:30 pm26 March 2024 2:30 pm - 26 March 2024 4:30 pm2 April 2024 2:30 pm - 2 April 2024 4:30 pm
Event Details
“You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament:
Event Details
“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.
“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.”
Ulysses Salon participant
SALON DETAILS:
- We are offering this evening study from 5.45-7.45pm (UK time), comprising 20 meetings starting on Tuesday 16 January and finishing on Tuesday 25 June 2024, with three Sunday meetings (dates and times to be confirmed) and NO meetings on 13 February, 2 April, 7 May and 4 June.
- The total cost for the 20 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
Time
(Tuesday) 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time
Location
VIRTUAL
Future Event Times in this Repeating Event Series
19 March 2024 5:00 pm - 19 March 2024 7:00 pm26 March 2024 5:00 pm - 26 March 2024 7:00 pm9 April 2024 5:00 pm - 9 April 2024 7:00 pm16 April 2024 5:00 pm - 16 April 2024 7:00 pm23 April 2024 5:00 pm - 23 April 2024 7:00 pm30 April 2024 5:00 pm - 30 April 2024 7:00 pm14 May 2024 5:00 pm - 14 May 2024 7:00 pm21 May 2024 5:00 pm - 21 May 2024 7:00 pm28 May 2024 5:00 pm - 28 May 2024 7:00 pm11 June 2024 5:00 pm - 11 June 2024 7:00 pm18 June 2024 5:00 pm - 18 June 2024 7:00 pm25 June 2024 5:00 pm - 25 June 2024 7:00 pm
Event Details
Antonio Tempesta, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons “Everything
Event Details
“Everything changes, nothing dies: the spirit wanders, arriving here or there,
occupying whatever body it pleases.”
Part II of our three-part, year-long reading of Ovid presents a perfect opportunity for new readers to join this study. The episodic structure of the Metamorphoses invites entry into the poem at any point along the way. In books 6 through 10, Ovid continues his artful version of the famous and infamous tales of gods and humans, among them the stories of Jason and Medea, Daedalus and Icarus, Orpheus and Eurydice, Venus and Adonis, Arachne, Niobe, Pygmalion, and Hercules.
The Roman poet Ovid’s (43 BCE – 17 CE) masterful work Metamorphoses weaves together over 200 of the most famous myths of the Greeks and Romans. Pulsating with energy, wit, sensuality and sensitivity, his epic poetic tapestry envisions the history of the cosmos as an unbroken and intertwining stream that stretches from the creation of the world to the rise of the Caesars. Ovid’s ever-flowing narrative explores life’s many changes, from the intimacies—and violence—of human love and desire, to the global scale of destruction and renewal.
Our study will read from two translations of the Metamorphoses, including the recently released version by Stephanie McCarter (please read notes below), that seek to address questions of accuracy in translation and the representation of women, gendered dynamics of power, and sexual violence in Ovid’s classic.
If you have any questions about this study, please contact facilitator Mark Cwik.
STUDY DETAILS:
- Fifteen-week virtual study (on Zoom), 11 January – 25 April 2024 (N.B. no meeting on 15 February)
- Thursdays, 3.00-5.15 pm (UK), facilitated by Mark Cwik
- £375 for fifteen-week study
- Recommended editions:
- The Metamorphoses of Ovid, translated by Allen Mandelbaum
Harcourt/HMH/Mariner Books (1995)
ISBN-13: 978-0156001267 - Metamorphoses by Ovid, translated by Stephanie McCarter
Penguin Classics (13 April 2023)
ISBN-13: 978-0525505990
- The Metamorphoses of Ovid, translated by Allen Mandelbaum
Time
(Thursday) 3:00 pm - 5:15 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time
Location
VIRTUAL - VIA ZOOM
Future Event Times in this Repeating Event Series
21 March 2024 3:00 pm - 21 March 2024 5:15 pm28 March 2024 3:00 pm - 28 March 2024 5:15 pm4 April 2024 3:00 pm - 4 April 2024 5:15 pm11 April 2024 3:00 pm - 11 April 2024 5:15 pm18 April 2024 3:00 pm - 18 April 2024 5:15 pm
Event Details
‘He watched
Event Details
‘He watched her go until he could discern her, just. A gentle disturbance in the darkness, a warmer darkness where she was. That plum coat. She might be walking away from him, weary of him. He thought he might as well follow. What could it matter? At the first hint that he was not welcome, he would step away. Actually, it would be the second hint, if her walking away was the first.’
Jack (pages 65-66 in the Virago recommended edition)
What peculiar twist of fate could possibly draw together a Black American high-school teacher and a down-at-heel white man in the segregated days of 1940s Missouri? Yet just such an encounter – in the twilight gloom of a graveyard amongst trees and tombs, Hamlet and doggerel poetry – sparks the unlikeliest of flames. The romance between Della Miles and Jack Boughton struggles against family resistance and society’s miscegenation laws. Harder though are the couple’s inner doubts and fears. For Della, associating with a drunkard and ne’er-do-well risks her self-esteem, the good name of her family, and her job. Whilst Jack, full of Calvinist premonitions of perdition, feels torn between the depths of his love and the terror of his self-knowledge. How can Jack honour his love for Della when he teeters so often on the edge of self-destruction? Would he love her better and protect her more by simply walking away?
Set in the years after World War II, Marilynne Robinson returns to the world of Gilead and the Ames family, this time to give the account of the family’s symbolic prodigal son. In Jack, Robinson explores a life imbued by Calvinist theology:
‘One of the crucial things [Calvin] brings to me, is that the encounter with another being is an occasion in which you can, to the best of your ability, honour the other person as being someone sent to you by God.’
Marilynne Robinson, When I was a Child I Read Books
What this ‘sending’ means for Jack is played out in the tenderness and fragility of his encounter with Della through a story which forms the final novel in Robinson’s Gilead quartet. Whilst each book in the series (Gilead, Home, Lila and Jack) focuses on a familiar set of relationships, each novel reweaves the story from a sufficiently different point of view for the books to stand alone as a separate but interconnected works.
STUDY DETAILS:
- Five meetings, Thursdays, 5.00-7.00 pm (UK), 1-29 February 2024
- Led by Nicky von Fraunhofer
- Recommended edition: Virago ISBN: 9-780349-011790-0
- £175 for five two-hour meetings, to include opening notes and resources
Time
(Thursday) 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time
Location
VIRTUAL - VIA ZOOM
Event Details
“Every
Event Details
“Every reader finds himself. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.”
– Marcel Proust, The Prisoner & The Fugitive
We continue our voyage through Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time with this, the fifth and sixth volumes (combined), which together consider closely the seductive agony of jealousy. There are one or two spaces in the study alongside people who have already journeyed through the first four volumes. If you are interested in joining the group please use the ‘enquire’ link below 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 with what our senses perceive that moulds our consciousness.
SALON DETAILS
- Virtual study facilitated by Toby Brothers
- Wednesdays, 6.30-8.30 pm (UK time)
- 15 meeting study from 7 February to 19 June 2024
- Recommended edition: Penguin Classics, ISBN-13: 978-0141180359
- £350 for 15 meetings (includes background materials, literary criticism, opening notes and discussion notes)
Time
(Wednesday) 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time
Location
VIRTUAL
Future Event Times in this Repeating Event Series
20 March 2024 6:30 pm27 March 2024 6:30 pm3 April 2024 6:30 pm10 April 2024 6:30 pm17 April 2024 6:30 pm24 April 2024 6:30 pm1 May 2024 6:30 pm29 May 2024 6:30 pm5 June 2024 6:30 pm12 June 2024 6:30 pm19 June 2024 6:30 pm
April 2024
Event Details
Russian writers are renowned the world over for their mastery of the short story form. In his 2021 book A Swim
Event Details
Russian writers are renowned the world over for their mastery of the short story form. In his 2021 book A Swim in a Pond in the Rain (in which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading and Life) Man Booker Prize winner George Saunders offers his own masterclass in storytelling and life. In his wondrous investigation, he presents seven classic Russian short stories alongside close readings of his own.
In our focused study of the reading and writing of short stories we will read stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy and Gogol. Alongside our own reading and responses we will consider George Saunders’ reactions, technical explanations and questions, which will inform our detailed discussions of these exceptional works.
On the value of close reading together, Saunders writes:
‘To study the way we read is to study the way the mind works: the way it evaluates a statement for truth, the way it behaves in relation to another mind (i.e., the writer’s) across space and time… The part of the mind that reads a story is also the part that reads the world; it can deceive us, but it can also be trained to accuracy; it can fall into disuse and make us more susceptible to lazy, violent, materialistic forces, but it can also be urged back to life, transforming us into more active, curious, alert readers of reality.’
George Saunders
Join us as we dive into this unique blend of fiction and non-fiction. As we read we will consider what makes a good story as well as what makes a good life.
JOINING DETAILS:
- Six-week study on Zoom led by Alison Cable
- Tuesdays, 5.00-7.00 pm (UK)
- 9, 16, 23, 30 April & 7, 14 May 2024
- £150 to include introductory notes and resources
- In addition to reading individual stories, we will refer extensively to George Saunders’ analysis in A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, ISBN 978-1526624246, which is a required text for this study
Time
(Tuesday) 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm(GMT+01:00) View in my time
Location
VIRTUAL - VIA ZOOM
Future Event Times in this Repeating Event Series
16 April 2024 5:00 pm - 16 April 2024 7:00 pm23 April 2024 5:00 pm - 23 April 2024 7:00 pm30 April 2024 5:00 pm - 30 April 2024 7:00 pm7 May 2024 5:00 pm - 7 May 2024 7:00 pm14 May 2024 5:00 pm - 14 May 2024 7:00 pm
Event Details
This
Event Details
This is our second Virginia Woolf study in East Sussex, a county which in many ways became the writer’s spiritual home.
As one of the key members of the celebrated Bloomsbury Group, Woolf is often seen as a London writer, but she and her husband Leonard had an abiding love for the South Downs. Together they purchased Monk’s House near Rodmell in 1919 and used it as their writer’s retreat. Virginia wrote some of her major works there and the Sussex landscape was integral to her writing as she tried to capture what she saw as its unsurpassable beauty. There are a number of other Bloomsbury outposts in the area: in 1916 Virginia’s sister, Vanessa Bell, moved to Charleston Farmhouse with the painter Duncan Grant, while John Maynard Keynes and his wife Lydia Lopokova also settled locally.
Night and Day (published in 1919) is full of surprises. Written by Virginia Woolf in the early stages of her career, it doesn’t offer what her seasoned readers have been primed to expect. Instead of a bold use of form and curious choice of subject matter, the text features a typical marriage plot with a supposedly happy ending and a dose of romantic conflict along the way. The common criticism of Night and Day is that it is far too conventional. For this reason, the text is rarely studied and eagerly dismissed, despite the fact that Woolf herself credited it with teaching her ‘certain elements of composition’ she felt she needed to learn. If works such as Jacob’s Room (1922) and Mrs Dalloway (1925) represent Woolf’s ‘arrival’ as a writer, then Night and Day is part of the journey that gets her there. Read in this way, the novel becomes a blueprint for her later books, containing the seeds of the radicalism that is yet to come. Indeed, the greatest surprise concealed within Night and Day is that it isn’t conventional at all, it is simply a set of challenges posed in conventional terms – a Woolf in sheep’s clothing.
This study will suit both new and experienced readers of Woolf’s writing, providing an insight into her creative development that also enhances an understanding of her other works. Sessions will focus on close-reading sections of the text in order to allow for a deep and thorough understanding of this enjoyable novel.
SALON DETAILS:
- To make a booking or ask questions please email us at litsalon@gmail.com using ‘Night and Day 2024’ as the subject line. Payment will be by bank transfer (N.B. we will supply bank details which will be different from any you may have used on previous occasions).
- Facilitated by Toby Brothers and Karina Jakubowicz
- 11-14 April 2024, Alfriston, East Sussex
- This is an opportunity to enjoy the locale, including visiting Charleston House, Charleston in Lewes and Monk’s House, as well as joining with other readers in discussing Night and Day and its relationship to Woolf’s other works. We are in the process of investigating particular outings in the area based on what exhibits will be available at the time of our visit, these will be added to the schedule as we confirm the best options.
- £460 for twelve hours (or more) of study spread over four days, plus accommodation costs (please see details below)
- We will stay at Wingrove House, a 19th century colonial-style country house hotel set in the beautiful and historic village of Alfriston, East Sussex in the South Downs National Park. We will be within easy reach of sites associated with Bloomsbury, making it the ideal choice for Woolf-related Salons. The cost for three nights, including breakfast, will start at £504.00 per person (room charges vary, rising to a maximum of £711.00). Please note that participants are responsible for booking their own accommodation and any insurance required, the hotel is holding a number of rooms for clients of the London Literary Salon until 31 January 2024, please mention that you are with the Salon when booking.
- Recommended edition: Night and Day by Virginia Woolf, Oxford World’s Classics, ISBN-13: 9780199555604
Time
11 (Thursday) 5:00 pm - 14 (Sunday) 1:00 pm(GMT+01:00) View in my time
Location
Wingrove House
High Street, Alfriston, East Sussex, BN26 5TD
May 2024
Event Details
Event Details
“Do you remember your childhood? I am always coming across these marvellous accounts by writers who declare that they remember ‘everything’. I certainly don’t. The dark stretches, the blanks, are much bigger than the bright glimpses. I seem to have spent most of my time like a plant in a cupboard.”
Katherine Mansfield
We will open this study with a LitSalon Special lecture by Dr Gerri Kimber which can also be booked as a standalone event.
Katherine Mansfield was a master of the modern short story. She crafted precise pictures of individual moments and scenes, resulting in deft narratives that are as devastating as they are beautiful. While the early 20th century novel has received a significant amount of critical attention, the short story has been somewhat overlooked. Nonetheless, as Mansfield’s biographer states, the short story ‘was often the most aesthetically experimental, formally innovative, emotionally powerful prose form of the early twentieth century.’ One critic has gone so far as to call it ‘the chosen form of the exile’, due to its daring and artistically marginal status.
This six-week study will consider themes including childhood, motherhood and female relationships. We will ask how Mansfield responds to the vulnerability of children while also addressing the difficulty of motherhood. We may also consider the fate of reluctant parents and the role of older carers.
These stories cover a broad geographical landscape, including Germany, Paris, London and New Zealand, and represent different stages in Mansfield’s career. This study is perfect for those who are new to Mansfield’s work as well as those who have already participated in our reading and discussion of her wonderful writing.
JOINING DETAILS:
- Seven meetings on Zoom facilitated by Karina Jakubowicz, including single introductory LitSalon Special lecture on Monday 13 May, 6.00-8.00 pm BST from the world expert on Katherine Mansfield, Dr Gerri Kimber.
- Mondays, 6.00-8.00 pm (UK), 13 May-24 June 2024, stories to be studied (in order, weeks 2-7):
Week 2. Something Childish But Very Natural
Week 3. The Child Who Was Tired
Week 4. At Lehmanns
Week 5. How Pearl Button Was Kidnapped
Week 6. Je ne Parle Pas Francais
Week 7. Life of Ma Parker
Most are available free of charge from the Katherine Mansfield Society - £200 for seven meetings and introductory notes (including LitSalon Special Lecture at discounted rate of £20)
Time
(Monday) 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm(GMT+01:00) View in my time
Location
VIRTUAL - VIA ZOOM
Future Event Times in this Repeating Event Series
20 May 2024 6:00 pm - 20 May 2024 8:00 pm27 May 2024 6:00 pm - 27 May 2024 8:00 pm3 June 2024 6:00 pm - 3 June 2024 8:00 pm10 June 2024 6:00 pm - 10 June 2024 8:00 pm17 June 2024 6:00 pm - 17 June 2024 8:00 pm24 June 2024 6:00 pm - 24 June 2024 8:00 pm
Event Details
Event Details
“Do you remember your childhood? I am always coming across these marvellous accounts by writers who declare that they remember ‘everything’. I certainly don’t. The dark stretches, the blanks, are much bigger than the bright glimpses. I seem to have spent most of my time like a plant in a cupboard.”
Katherine Mansfield
This LitSalon Special, a lecture by Dr Gerri Kimber, acknowledged as the world expert on Katherine Mansfield, serves as an introduction to our six week reading of Mansfield’s work: The Child Who Was Tired & other stories led by Karina Jakubowicz but can also be booked as a standalone event. Gerri Kimber has contributed to over 40 books on Mansfield’s life and work, was President of the Katherine Mansfield Society for ten years (2010-2020) and is currently working on a new biography of Mansfield for Reaktion Books.
Katherine Mansfield was a master of the modern short story. She crafted precise pictures of individual moments and scenes, resulting in deft narratives that are as devastating as they are beautiful. While the early 20th century novel has received a significant amount of critical attention, the short story has been somewhat overlooked. Nonetheless, as Mansfield’s biographer states, the short story ‘was often the most aesthetically experimental, formally innovative, emotionally powerful prose form of the early twentieth century.’ One critic has gone so far as to call it ‘the chosen form of the exile’, due to its daring and artistically marginal status.
Our six-week study following the introductory lecture will consider themes including childhood, motherhood and female relationships. We will ask how Mansfield responds to the vulnerability of children while also addressing the difficulty of motherhood. We may also consider the fate of reluctant parents and the role of older carers.
JOINING DETAILS:
- A LitSalon Special from world expert on Katherine Mansfield, Dr Gerri Kimber.
- Monday 13 May 2024, 6.00-8.00 pm BST on Zoom
- £30 (or £20 if booked as part of The Child Who Was Tired)
Time
(Monday) 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm(GMT+01:00) View in my time
Location
VIRTUAL - VIA ZOOM
September 2024
Event Details
It is now a Salon tradition to spend some time each year in St Ives reading Virginia Woolf’s work and enjoying a place
Event Details
It is now a Salon tradition to spend some time each year in St Ives reading Virginia Woolf’s work and enjoying a place she loved and in which she spent significant parts of her childhood. In 2024 we will again offer two Woolf studies in St Ives: To the Lighthouse (29 September to 2 October) and Jacob’s Room (4 to 7 October).
The Cornish coastal town of St Ives serves as a prism through which we will explore Woolf’s perspectives on landscape, domesticity and identity in To the Lighthouse. We have already completed five magical journeys through this book in the environment that inspired it – this is an incredible experience!
“This is something I have dreamed of doing since I first read Woolf’s magical book To the Lighthouse – it has haunted me always. The opportunity to study this work with a keen group of minds in the place that is so crucial to the writing is simply delicious.“
Toby Brothers
During our visit you will have the opportunity to visit the iconic Tate St Ives gallery overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, built between 1988 and 1993 on the site of an old gasworks. 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 following their mother’s death, her children travelled back in 1905 following the death of their father in 1904.
“What is the meaning of life? That was all – a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years, the great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one.”
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
“If life has a base that it stands upon, if it is a bowl that one fills and fills and fills – then my bowl without doubt stands upon this memory. It is of lying in bed, half-asleep, half awake, in bed in the nursery at St Ives. It is of hearing the waves breaking, one, two, one, two, and sending a splash of water over the beach; and then breaking, one, two, one two, behind a yellow blind . . . If I were a painter I should paint these impressions in pale yellow, silver, and green. There was the pale yellow blind; the green sea; and the silver of the passion flowers.”
“Here is the past and all its inhabitants miraculously sealed as in a magic tank.”
“The past only comes back when the present runs so smoothly that it is like the sliding surface of a deep river. Then one sees through the surface to the depths. The past sometimes presses so close that you can feel nothing else.”
Virginia Woolf, “Sketch of the Past”, begun in June 1939
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.
SALON DETAILS:
- Places are still available. To make a booking or ask questions please email us at litsalon@gmail.com using ‘To the Lighthouse, St Ives 2024’ as the subject line. Payment will be by bank transfer (N.B. we will supply bank details which will be different from any you may have used on previous occasions).
- Facilitated by Toby Brothers
- Our meetings will take place in the fabulous Porthmeor Studios
- 29 September to 2 October 2024
- Recommended edition: To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf, with introduction by Hermione Lee, Penguin Classics, ISBN: 9780241371954
- Cost £520, 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 meet your needs.
More on the study:
As one of the primary modernist works, To the Lighthouse demonstrates Woolf at play with language; testing the ability of language to truly reflect human experience by recording the life of the mind not just action. One of the characteristics of modernist writing is a shifting centre of narrative perspective, reflecting a questioning of ultimate and moral authority at a time experiencing the dissolution of Imperialism and absolute values.
Writing from the edge of the violent shift from the Victorian to the Modernist era, Woolf’s ambivalence is demonstrated in her work. She struggles against the boundaries and structures of the Victorian age while holding a great longing and nostalgia for the noble traditions of the time. Her model, Mrs. Ramsey, (queen-like) holds her daughters to the awe of the noble men that surround her and allows them to “sport with infidel ideas…of a life different…in Paris perhaps; …for there was in all their minds a mute questioning of deference and chivalry…though to them all there was something in this of the essence of beauty, which called out the manliness in their girlish hearts…” (To the Lighthouse, pages 10-11).
This quote also demonstrates the Modernist reworking of absolute truth…it is not a question of either this (a male-dominated world) or that (a world of female emancipation): the apparently rigid gender roles borrow from each other — “manliness in their girlish hearts”, “Indeed, she had the whole of the other sex under her protection…” — there is another imperialism here, an intimate imperialism of female over male. The truth in this work is not rigid (although Mr. R would like it to be) but can be permeated, blended — seen from another view.
Re-reading Hermione Lee’s biography of Virginia Woolf (a review of which is quoted below) has me turning over the search one makes for lost childhood, often for a place that might hold a time but, of course, never does. For Woolf, that search included a grappling with the impact and idealisation of the parent figures — especially the lost mother, whose influence and contradictions continue to wrap around the child inside. Virginia Woolf and a few of her siblings returned to the house in St Ives (that we are lucky enough to visit) years after her mother’s death and the sale of the house. They were like ghosts, sneaking around the gardens, peering in the windows: as though searching for their lost selves and a past that can never be recaptured. That visit — and the need to lay to rest her grief-enwrapped memories of her mother — was the catalyst for To the Lighthouse.
For those who want to go further, here is an excerpt from a review of Hermione Lee’s Virginia Woolf which is a great read:
“Ms. Lee documents the evolving perception of her subject from ”the delicate lady authoress of a few experimental novels and sketches, some essays and a ‘writer’s’ diary, to one of the most professional, perfectionist, energetic, courageous and committed writers in the language.” She does this without recourse to the politicised agendas of the academy or special pleading (all of Woolf’s flaws are on display here); this account sets itself above the fray, the better to home in on the glittery and elusive creature at its centre — the prize catch in what one critic has described as the Bloomsbury pond. From its very first page, Ms. Lee’s book is informed by current thinking on how to approach the writing of someone’s life: “There is no such thing as an objective biography, particularly not in this case. Positions have been taken, myths have been made.” But it is also infused with a very personal passion for her subject, which enables the author to cut crisply through the labyrinth of theories that have sprung up…”
– Daphne Merkin, This Loose, Drifting Material of Life
Although To the Lighthouse is not autobiographical, many critics and readers have found close parallels between Woolf’s early life and the world presented in the book. As we go into the read, it may help you to have a sense of Virginia Woolf and her precarious position as a visionary on the edge of a violently changing world. I will have more biographical notes for you when we start.
Time
September 29 (Sunday) 5:00 pm - October 2 (Wednesday) 1:00 pm(GMT+01:00) View in my time
Location
St Ives, Cornwall
October 2024
Event Details
It is now a Salon tradition to spend some time each year in St Ives reading Virginia Woolf’s work and enjoying a place
Event Details
It is now a Salon tradition to spend some time each year in St Ives reading Virginia Woolf’s work and enjoying a place she loved and in which she spent significant parts of her childhood. In 2024 we will again offer two Woolf studies in St Ives: To the Lighthouse (29 September to 2 October) and Jacob’s Room (4 to 7 October).
As one of the key members of the celebrated Bloomsbury Group, Woolf is often seen as a London writer, but 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.
In 1922, Jacob’s Room, Virginia Woolf’s third novel, was the first book to be published by the Woolfs’ own imprint, the Hogarth Press. This book is the linchpin between the more traditional novel form and Woolf’s leap forward into the modernist mode. She lets go of event and character development to make room for the intensity of living — that incredible burning that may look from one angle like inconsequence, but from another angle the very heart of being.
This was also the form she chose to address the unimaginable moment of war — ripping into the heat of life and leaving only gaping space where a beloved son had been. Her decision not to narrate the war and the resultant deaths directly, but to use her art to demonstrate the gashed web of connection that is left behind, was controversial for her contemporary audience. How do we narrate the unliveable events that circumscribe our identity in the historical moment? This is in part what Woolf responds to – not philosophically, but aesthetically.
Woolf is also engaging the question she will pursue through all of her literature: how do we know each other? How do the various planes of personality, the glimpses of each other’s interior, add up to an authentic being?
“. . . having this afternoon arrived at some idea of a new form for a new novel. Suppose one thing should open out of another . . . only not for 10 pages but 200 or so–doesn’t that give the looseness and lightness I want; doesn’t that get closer and yet keep form and speed, and enclose everything, everything? My doubt is how far it will enclose the human heart–Am I sufficiently mistress of my dialogue to net it there? For I figure that the approach will be entirely different this time: no scaffolding; scarcely a brick to be seen; all crepuscular, but the heart, the passion, humour, everything as bright as fire in the mist. Then I’ll find room for so much—a gaiety–an inconsequence – a light spirited stepping at my sweet will. Whether I’m sufficiently mistress of things – that’s the doubt; but conceive ‘Mark on the Wall ‘, ‘Kew Gardens’ and Unwritten Novel taking hands and dancing in unity. What the unity shall be I have yet to discover; the theme is a blank to me . . .”
Virginia Woolf, A Writer’s Diary, 26 January 1920
During our visit you will have the opportunity to visit the iconic Tate St Ives gallery overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, built between 1988 and 1993 on the site of an old gasworks. 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 following their mother’s death, her children travelled back in 1905 following the death of their father in 1904.
“If life has a base that it stands upon, if it is a bowl that one fills and fills and fills – then my bowl without doubt stands upon this memory. It is of lying in bed, half-asleep, half awake, in bed in the nursery at St Ives. It is of hearing the waves breaking, one, two, one, two, and sending a splash of water over the beach; and then breaking, one, two, one two, behind a yellow blind . . . If I were a painter I should paint these impressions in pale yellow, silver, and green. There was the pale yellow blind; the green sea; and the silver of the passion flowers.”
“Here is the past and all its inhabitants miraculously sealed as in a magic tank.”
“The past only comes back when the present runs so smoothly that it is like the sliding surface of a deep river. Then one sees through the surface to the depths. The past sometimes presses so close that you can feel nothing else.”
Virginia Woolf, “Sketch of the Past”, begun in June 1939
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.
SALON DETAILS:
- Places are still available on this study. To make a booking or ask questions please email us at litsalon@gmail.com using ‘Jacob’s Room 2024’ as the subject line. Payment will be by bank transfer (N.B. we will supply bank details which will be different from any you may have used on previous occasions).
- Facilitated by Toby Brothers and Sarah Snoxall
- Our meetings will take place in the fabulous Porthmeor Studios
- 4 to 7 October 2024
- Recommended edition: Jacob’s Room by Virginia Woolf, Vintage Classics, ISBN-13: 978-1784877958
- 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 meet your needs.
Time
4 (Friday) 5:00 pm - 7 (Monday) 1:00 pm(GMT+01:00) View in my time
Location
St Ives, Cornwall
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Aeschylus’ The Oresteia From Beowulf through The Odyssey, our study of the classics informs our understanding of the role of art and literature in forming our sense of ourselves and human history. This…
Angle of Repose
Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose “What interests me in all these papers is not Susan Burling Ward, the novelist and illustrator, and not Oliver Ward the engineer, and not the West…
Antigone
Sophocles’ Antigone “A man, though wise, should never be ashamed of learning more, and must unbend his mind.” ― Sophocles, Antigone Across time, this play from the height of the culture of…
As I Lay Dying
William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying “He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that…
Beloved
Toni Morrison’s Beloved “Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.” Toni Morrison, writer, professor and essayist on issues including race, gender and forces of…