New York Times bestselling author Jerry Craft returns with a companion book to New Kid, winner of the 2020 Newbery Medal, the Coretta Scott King Author Award, and the Kirkus Prize. This time, it’s Jordan’s friend Drew who takes centre stage in another laugh-out-loud funny, powerful, and important story about being one of the few kids of colour in a prestigious private school.

Eighth grader Drew Ellis is no stranger to the saying “You have to work twice as hard to be just as good.” His grandmother has reminded him his entire life. But what if he works ten times as hard and still isn’t afforded the same opportunities that his privileged classmates at the Riverdale Academy Day School take for granted?

To make matters worse, Drew begins to feel as if his good friend Liam might be one of those privileged kids. He wants to pretend like everything is fine, but it’s hard not to withdraw, and even their mutual friend Jordan doesn’t know how to keep the group together.

As the pressures mount, will Drew find a way to bridge the divide so he and his friends can truly accept each other? And most important, will he finally be able to accept himself?

SALON DETAILS 

“But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

In Middlemarch, Eliot probes the complexity of human nature and studies the idea of vocation: the call to find meaning through work in a provincial world.

I love the dilemma–how is an intelligent woman going to be intellectually stimulated in a time when there are so few options for women? This reflects Eliot’s own story: why does she write under a male pseudonym? Dorothea settles on marriage to an older man, a scholar and (she hopes) a mentor–ironically making an intellectual choice about the desire of the heart. What ensues is her struggle to be the person she aspires to being a world which values none of the ideals that interest her.

I love how psychological Eliot is, how interested she is in the inner workings of people’s minds. Why do Dorothea and Lydgate make the choices they do? Why do they choose people so unsuited to them? As in Daniel Deronda, Eliot is very interested in intellectual/spiritual passion–how religious scholarship can inform or transform a life–but while she is attracted to the dispassionate discipline of religious wisdom, she also knows that earthly love is what sustains us. This tension, between moral ideal and human behaviour, is the drive of the novel and probably makes the most sense in its historical context: a time of great intellectual inquiry, the Victorian obsession with self-improvement. Yet it isn’t that different from the self-improvement obsessions of our own time…

This study was added in response to the interest in the previous study of Middlemarch – as well as the requests for something to focus the mind during lockdown and its aftermath.

SALON DETAILS

• Facilitated by Sarah Snoxall
• Tuesday early evening  5:00 pm – 7:00 pm   
• Seven-meeting study, 20 April 2021 through 7 May 2021 
• Online discussions using Zoom meeting interface. Zoom is free for participants, instructions will be sent upon registration.
• Recommended edition: Middlemarch by George Eliot (Norton Critical Editions) Paperback – 26 Jan. 2000 ISBN-10 : 9780393974522
• £170 for seven-week study, includes notes and questions for preparation.
  

UPDATE: AS of March 8- one space remaining!

TO REGISTER for the study, please use the secure Paypal payment button below to pay £170 (Please contact us if you prefer to pay by direct bank transfer).

“The implications surrounding our responsibility to live, and live sensuously, are at the heart of The Ambassadors.”
Colm Toibin, Guardian, ‘ A book that changed me’

The countryside near Paris painted by Emile Lambinet

‘Strether’s first question, when he reached the hotel, was about his friend; yet on his learning that Waymarsh was apparently not to arrive till evening he was not wholly disconcerted.’

These are the opening words of The Ambassadors, the first of Henry James’ final trio of completed novels. Written when James was in his early sixites, it is often thought to be his most autobiographical book. The central character, Lambert Strether, a 55 year old American, experiences a serious life crisis when he is sent on a mission to the dangerously seductive European city of Paris. Faced with the dawning realisation that he may have missed out on some of the most important things in human life, he is forced to consider a seemingly endless cascade of questions. His bewilderment is portrayed via a detailed exploration of his inner world, combined with a series of vivid, humorous scenes in which he encounters a variety of characters, both American and local. The basic plot of a rather naïve (for his age) American in an alluring but ultimately corrupt metropolitan European context will be familiar to readers of Henry James, as will the fact that it is the women who are the strong characters directing the course of events.

Responses to the book over the years have been many and various. Henry James himself wrote: ‘I am able to estimate this as, frankly, quite the best, “all round”… of all my productions’. Professor Sarah Churchwell (who also wrote the introduction for the Everyman edition) was a fierce advocate when she chose it for BBC Radio 4’s ‘A Good Read’ (click here, discussion starts 10 minutes in). The consensus of modern opinion is that James’ final novels represent his finest achievement. Why not join us to find out what you think?

“For the uninitiated, and even for those who are familiar with the famous author, encountering the late novels of Henry James can be both exasperating and exhilarating. For Keith Fosbrook, this is all part of the pleasure of accompanying fellow readers on the adventure . . . I have read three of James’s novels with Keith in the last six months and I am looking forward to reading another one later this year.”
                                                                                                                                                                       LLS participant, Barry Fernald

Salon Details and Registration

• Facilitated by Keith Fosbrook
• Seven meeting study from 21 April to 9 June, Wednesday evenings 5.00pm to 7.00 pm
• Recommended Edition: Norton Critical Second Edition (1994); ISBN 0 393 96314-4
• £170 for seven meeting study includes background materials and opening notes.
• To register for the study, please use the secure Paypal button below to pay £170. Please ensure that the email that is connected to your Paypal account is the same email that you use for correspondence.

Opening notes will be sent shortly after registration. If you have any questions about this study or payment please contact us.

Rope Bridges

Your land of love consists mainly of rope bridges
criss-crossing the sky like a cat’s cradle, strung
between mountains, for each time you’ve moved on,
‘gotten over’ something, a rope bridge hangs
as testament, the last remaining thread of thought . . .

Caroline Bird

Since Sir Thomas Wyatt introduced the Petrarchan sonnet to the English Court in the early 16th century, poets have been using this deceptively simple 14-line form to express their thoughts on love, mortality, politics and just about everything else. Adapted by Shakespeare to accommodate the challenges of rhyming in English, and used by a succession of poets from Milton to Frost, the sonnet is very much alive and well in the 21st century – in recent years two poets have received T.S. Eliot Prize nominations for collections comprised entirely of sonnets.

This two-part study considers the enduring appeal of the sonnet through the study of form, metre and voice. Sonnets written in the 1600s or in 2000s will be looked at in detail to help us understand how poets (including Caroline Bird, quoted above) have found expression for their ideas through fitting them into a tightly woven square of rhymed iambic pentameter. Throughout the course we will read these ‘little songs’ aloud and dig deeper into their meaning as we hear their music.

Salon Details:

Facilitated by: Caroline Hammond and Jane Wymark

Tuesday Evenings: 6–8.00pm

Two-meeting study: 27 April & 4 May 2021

Recommended Books: TBC

£50 for two meeting study includes background materials and opening notes

To register,  please use the PayPal button below to pay £50.  

Upon receipt of payment, you will be sent the opening notes, resources and preparation suggestions. If you have any questions about this study, please contact us.

Long Ago and Far Away is an ongoing, weekly virtual Salon group that began in January 2020 as an eight-week study of the Myths and Legends of Troy. Since then, the group have continued together and met weekly through a year of lockdown, going on to read:

• over twenty Classical Greek dramas by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides
• some of the oldest extant Greek myths in Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days, and the Homeric Hymns
• Ovid’s Roman retelling of myths from Greece in the Metamorphoses
• foundation myths of Mesopotamia and the Epic of Gilgamesh
• most recently, the biblical Book of Genesis

Now well into their second year, the dedicated and energetic readers in the Long Ago group will next turn north for an extended study of stories from the Norse tradition. First up: beginning 28 April, 2021 is a first sequence on the Sagas of Icelanders.

Long Ago and Far Away meets in six-week segments, with a flexible reading plan that follows the interest of the group. Following the first six-week round of Icelandic Sagas, the group will likely continue with more of the sagas, and then delve further into Norse myth and legend in the Prose and Poetic Eddas, the Song of the Nibelung, and the Saga of the Volsungs.

If you are interested in joining the Long Ago and Far Away group on continuing basis, please email facilitator Mark Cwik for more information.

SALON DETAILS

• Facilitated by Mark Cwik
• Ongoing weekly study, email facilitator Mark Cwik for details if you are interested in joining.
  
• Wednesday 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm.
  
• New topic starting 28 April, 2021: Literature of the Norse
  
• Online discussions using Zoom meeting interface. Zoom is free for participants, instructions will be sent upon registration.
• Book edition:
  • The Sagas of Icelanders, introduction by Robert Kellogg, with preface by Jane Smiley
    (Penguin Classics, 2001)
    ISBN-13: 978-0141000039

About the Icelandic Sagas:

As grandly epic as Homer, rich in tragedy as Sophocles, compellingly human as Shakespeare, and psychologically keen as Chekhov—the sagas of Icelanders are the crowning achievement of medieval Scandinavian narrative and rank among the world’s greatest literary treasures. They describe a world of a millennium ago that nevertheless rings familiar with perennial human struggles.

The forty-plus narratives of adventure and conflict that comprise the sagas are set in Iceland’s 9th- and 10th-century Age of Settlement, when a handful of families fled the oppressive kingship of Norway to set up new lives on an island in the middle of the Atlantic. It was in Iceland the era of a unique commonwealth of free chieftains with no king, clerical hierarchy, or armies, ruled by Viking traditions of honour and blood vengeance. Written down anonymously several hundred years later, the sagas look back on a pioneer generation struggling to forge and maintain a self-governing community in a harsh environment at the edge of the known world.

With economy of style and astute insight into character, the sagas portray poets, warriors, statesmen, farmers, and outlaws—strong and determined men and women who strive for power, wealth, fame, respect, and love in a frontier society that wavers between the rule of law and vengeance.
In this study we will first look closely at two of the short sagas, to become familiar with the unique literary style and the cultural background of these great tales. We’ll then lauch into the grand, multi-generational Laxdaela Saga, followed by one of the gems of the saga tradition: the story of the wily, Odyssean poet-warrior hero of Egil’s Saga.

Aeneas departs from Dido and Carthage (Aeneid, Book IV)

“My song is of war and a man: a refugee by fate,
the first from Troy to Italy’s Lavinian shores,
battered much on land and sea by blows from gods
obliging brutal Juno’s unforgetting rage. . . ”

More than Homer’s Iliad or Odyssey, Vergil’s Aeneid is probably the one text from classical antiquity that has had the longest continuous influence over the European literary and cultural imagination. Taking both of Homer’s great epics as his models, Vergil created a hero and a poem that are uniquely his own—and that are distinctly Roman.

Achilles and Odysseus are essentially private heroes: their struggles and conflicts are personal, internal, centred on their own desires and goals. Vergil’s Aeneas journeys through the complicated world of personal, familial, and civic responsibility. A widowed father, a devoted son, and the appointed leader of refugees from the Trojan War, Aeneas struggles with—and against—his duty to lead survivors from the fallen city of Troy to find a new home in a distant land. The Aeneid is a poem of adventure, violence, heroism, duty, and love, recounting along the way the famous tale of the Trojan horse and the fall of Troy, Aeneas’ love affair with the doomed Queen Dido of Carthage, his journey into the underworld, and ultimate arrival of Aeneas and the survivors of Troy in Italian lands.

In his poem, Vergil engages in the conscious creation of a foundation myth for what became the vast empire of Rome. He crafts a nuanced exploration of the price paid for empire in lives lost, relationships broken, blood spilled, and peoples displaced and destroyed. As Shadi Bartsch puts it in her introduction, “Rather than being simple propaganda, the Aeneid is in many ways a story about stories and how they work. It is an epic that tells the story of foundation but puts on display the fault lines at the base of its own edifice, revealing the mechanisms at work in wholesome origin-stories and justifications of imperial aggression.”

This study will be read-as-we-go, covering one to two books of the Aeneid per week. The study will take place on Zoom. Each session will last 2 1/4 hours, with a short break mid-session.

SALON DETAILS

• Facilitated by Mark Cwik
• Nine-meeting study
• Thursday afternoons 4:00 pm – 6:15 pm.
  
• 29 April, 2021 to 24 June, 2021
  
• Online discussions using Zoom meeting interface. Zoom is free for participants, instructions will be sent upon registration.
• This study will use the new translation of the Aeneid by Shadi Bartsch. Please be sure to obtain this translation:
  • The Aeneid: A New Translation, by Vergil, translated by Shadi Bartsch
    (Profile Books, 2020)
    ISBN-13: 978-1788162678
• £200 for nine-week study, includes notes and questions for preparation.
  

TO REGISTER for the study, please use the secure Paypal payment button below to pay £200. If you would prefer to pay by bank transfer, please email facilitator Mark Cwik to arrange payment.

ABOUT THE FACILITATOR: Mark Cwik has been organizing and leading discussions of great literature for over twenty years in London, Chicago and Toronto. He specializes in works from the ancient, mythic and religious world. He was trained as a discussion facilitator while at the Great Books Foundation in Chicago and has been a passionate advocate for great books education since attending St. John’s College, Santa Fe and the University of Chicago Basic Program in Liberal Education.

“I’ve been coming to Mark’s discussion groups for about 15 years . . . Mark is amazing in his ability to keep the group functioning smoothly. He asks questions that get to the heart of the piece and he keeps the group focused on those questions. You don’t feel that he’s trying to steer us to any conclusion; he’s in it with us to figure out what the author is saying. He makes everyone feel welcome and their opinions are respectfully heard. He’s always prepared and totally dedicated to advancing our understanding of the great books.” — group participant.

If you have any questions about this study, please contact facilitator Mark Cwik.

Where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding?
Mortals do not know the way to it, and it is not found in the land of the living.
The deep says, ‘It is not in me,’ and the sea says, ‘It is not with me.’
Job: 28: 12-14

Tempest Horizon 2021, Nicky von Fraunhofer

Bereaved, bankrupt, and unwell, the eponymous hero of our story, Job, searches for meaning in his suffering. By turns comforted then taunted by ill-advised but well-meaning friends, Job’s quest for wisdom finally brings him face to face with God. Through poetry, provocation and personal encounter will Job resolve his quest, or does his conversation only bring about more questions?

Whether you come from any faith background or none, find out how this epic narrative from the Hebrew Wisdom tradition explores issues that have startling modern resonances. For this study, you are welcome to bring any version of the Bible. If you do not have access to one, the text is also freely available on many websites.

• Facilitated by Rev Dr Nicky von Fraunhofer
• Thursdays, 16:30-18:30 BST, 6-20 May
• £72 for three-meeting study
• Meetings online (via Zoom)
• To join, please use the Paypal button below

To register, please use the Paypal button below to pay £72 for this three- meeting study. Upon receipt of payment, I will send you the opening notes, resources and preparation suggestions.

Gerard Manley Hopkins:
The Windhover

Composed on 30 May 1887, Hopkins called The Windhover “the best thing I ever wrote” and, since its publication it has been celebrated for its daring, innovative language and stunningly accurate evocation of a kestrel in mid-flight.  The intensity of the poem’s rhythm and experimental use of form still has the ability to startle us with its freshness and anticipates the work of modernist poets on whom Hopkins was a major influence. The powerful ‘sprung rhythm’ meter makes it a challenging but very satisfying poem to read aloud.

Over the course of two hours we will study the work in depth, look at its form and construction and, through repeated readings, unlock the secrets of this acclaimed poem.

Salon Details:      

• Facilitated by:  Caroline Hammond
• Single meeting study: Saturday 8 Ma 2021, 2-4.00pm
• £25 includes background materials and opening notes

“The course of true love never did run smooth.”

Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing (William Blake, c. 1786)

Performed for the first time in 1598 (at the latest), with multiple revivals in his own lifetime, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of Shakespeare’s most enduring plays. It lives on in the 21st Century as an example of both Shakespeare’s lyric mastery and his capacity to engage diverse audiences across time and space.

It has often been said that A Midsummer Night’s Dream was specifically created for an aristocratic wedding. Although there is no evidence to support such a claim, it is wonderful to think it might be true. An enchanted forest is the perfect backdrop for lovers to take their vows. But not all is well in this play’s magical wood. The Fairy Kingdom is in conflict, the ecosystem is in upheaval, and at least one jilted lover has her eye on a dangerous mate. Meanwhile, a human is transformed into an ass, and a troupe of ‘rude mechanicals’ nearly sabotage their own play.

In equal parts wholly improbable and fully plausible, this beloved comedy holds a funhouse mirror up to nature, one in which we may see distorted reflections of ourselves. Love-struck and desperate for freedom, the characters flee to the forest to escape the city’s restrictive laws. But the woods have a law of their own. The monarchs of the Fairy Kingdom and their subordinates fling the lovers into unanticipated bedlam. Believing they still have some control, the protagonists strive heroically – and hilariously – to win the hearts of their beloveds.

For centuries it was believed that on no other night than Midsummer was magic so alive. During the Midsummer festival, witches and spirits reached the height of their powers. This sinister aspect of the holiday hovers in the wings of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. From the moment this play opens, with Duke Theseus’s confession of violent wooing and Egeus’s threat to kill his rebellious, besotted daughter, we feel this comedy could take a tragic turn. Can love truly conquer all?

THIS STUDY IS NOW FULL– If you are interested in a future study, please email the organizer 

• Facilitated by Jane Wymark and Julie Sutherland
• Mondays, 18:00 – 20:00 BST, 10 May to 21 June
• £175 for seven-week study
• Meetings online (via Zoom)
• Recommended edition: Folger Shakespeare Library (editors Barbara A Mowat and Paul Werstine), ISBN 978-1-5011-46213
• To join email the organizer (here) for details

…Today, guess what, we became beekeepers!  We went to the local meeting last week (attended by the rector, the midwife, and assorted beekeeping people from neighboring villages) to watch a Mr Pollard make three hives out of one (by transferring his queen cells) under the supervision of the official Government bee-man.  We all wore masks and it was thrilling.  It is expensive to start beekeeping (over $50 outlay), but Mr Pollard let us have an old hive for nothing, which we painted white and green, and today he brought over the swarm of docile Italian hybrid bees we ordered and installed them.  We placed the hive in a sheltered out-of-the-way spot in the orchard the bees were furious from being in a box.  Ted had only put a handkerchief over his head where the hat should go in the bee-mask, and the bees crawled into his hair, and he flew off with half-a-dozen stings.  I didn’t get stung at all, and when I went back to the hive later, I was delighted to see bees entering with pollen sacs full and leaving with them empty at least I think that’s what they were doing.  I feel very ignorant but shall try to read up and learn all I can.  If we’re lucky, we’ll have our own honey, too!

From Letters Home, 15 June 1962

When Sylvia Plath died on 11 February 1963 she left a black spring binder on her desk containing a manuscript of forty poems with the title Ariel.*  The final five poems are a sequence about bees: The Bee Meeting, The Arrival of the Bee Box, Stings, Swarm and Wintering.  In this powerful sequence Plath purposefully changes her poetic tone as she uses the natural metaphor of bees to explore issues of female self-assertion, rites of death and rebirth, creativity and survival.  She also writes with loving precision about the details of beekeeping and the bees themselves.  The final poem, Wintering, is a tour de force evoking cold and despair but, ultimately, hope for the coming spring.

Over the course of two hours we will study Wintering in depth, look at its form and construction and, through repeated readings, unlock the secrets of this acclaimed poem.

*This is not the version of Ariel published in 1965, which has four of the bee poems in the middle of the book, but Faber did publish Ariel the Restored Edition in 2004, with a foreword by Frieda Hughes.

Salon Details:

• Facilitated by:  Caroline Hammond
• Monday Evening: 6–8.00pm
• Single meeting study: Wednesday 12 May 2021
• £25 includes background materials and opening notes

TO REGISTER for the study, please use the secure Paypal payment button below to pay £25. Contact us if you prefer to pay by direct bank transfer. Opening notes will be sent shortly after registration. The study is limited to 10 participants. Please contact us if you have any questions.

“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 life, won the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. Beloved is regarded by many as Morrison’s best work, and once you have spent some time in the text, it is easy to understand why. Morrison works to help the reader grasp the psychological devastation wreaked by the institution of slavery by close observation of a community of ex-slaves creating lives in Ohio in the second half of the 19th century.

This text is meaty and evocative, and also quite difficult to read alone. The work also offers endless possibilities in terms of discussion of the formation of self, claiming of self, mother/child relationships, the fury of love, the permeable boundaries between the living and the not living, as well as the more predictable (but no less provocative) issues of race, gender and role of history.

But what you need to know– along with the history and context which will be provided as part of the Salon–is that the writing is so gorgeous. Morrison tackles the most painful aspects of human experience with an honesty and lyricism that will leave you breathless. If this is your first reading of the book, try not to read around too much until you have read the whole book: many reviews and commentary give away the central traumatic event that Morrison reveals carefully and purposefully in her own time. I think Morrison is very purposeful in the way she tells this story—we will discuss the framing and the narrative progression and her purpose there. You are strongly encouraged to read the whole novel before the study begins– and then we will consider it section by section.

This study is appropriate for first-time readers of Beloved as well as those who have previously read and studied Beloved in the Salon.

SALON DETAILS 

“Millions of things came back to her. Atoms danced apart and massed themselves. But how did they compose what people called a life? She clenched her hands and felt the hard little coins she was holding. Perhaps there’s ‘I’ at the middle of it, she thought; a knot; a centre; and again she saw herself sitting at her table drawing on the blotting paper, digging little holes from which spokes radiated. Out and out they went; thing followed thing, scene obliterated scene.”

–Virginia Woolf, The Years

Each study in St Ives is magical. The light, the smell and sound of the sea gilds the intensive study with a unique sense of stepping into another world. This study of The Years, the last novel published by Virginia Woolf while she was still alive, expands our time in Cornwall to five days as requested by past participants. We will meet Wednesday evening for our first exploration with six more meetings spread over the coming days to allow time for enjoyment of the natural and cultural gems offered in this beautiful place. This will be the Salon’s first study of The Years; this study will have the exploratory energy that a first Salon study offers.

IN LIGHT OF THE CURRENT PANDEMIC, the dates for this study are shifted: Sept.29 toOctober 3rd 2021 …there are three spaces available.

The Years is described as a family saga–and is often considered more accessible than other works by Woolf. With the experience of many studies of To The Lighthouse, Between the Acts, The Waves and Mrs Dalloway, I have come to relish the subtle profundity beneath the language experimentation and interior explorations that Woolf offers. The Years engages history– the personal history of a family, the mantel of history of a people, the sense of a denigrated future in the shadow of historical myths and mistakes–and considers how various characters negotiate this troubled inheritance. Woolf moves deftly between the individual and the larger cultural landscapes–illuminating how one person can exist in their vulnerable selfhood amidst the waves of the world around them.

To understand this book, you will want to read with a wide awake mind and then re-read once you have played on the surface of plot and character. Notice how the descriptions along the edges—the fragments, the other stories invoked, the changing weather passages—all comment on and expand the central narrative. We will also consider essays from her work, The Pargiters — the theoretical framework that Woolf wrote alongside The Years but then excluded from the text. This has become available in Mitchell Leaska’s edition: “The Pargiters is interesting in its own right for the insight it offers into Woolf’s politics, which she expresses more bluntly in the novel-essay than she ever had before.” (R. Higney, Modernism Lab)

SALON DETAILS: 

• Five-day Meeting in St Ives — approximately 14 hours of study
• Meeting St Ives Cornwall; facilitated by Salon Director Toby Brothers
• Cost £325 includes notes and critical resources (transport and housing not included)
• RECOMMENDED EDITION: The Years by Virginia Woolf (Vintage Classics Woolf Series) Paperback – 6 Oct 2016 ISBN-10: 1784872237
• If possible, please also purchase The Pargiters–  this book is difficult to find and tends to be pricey– if you can not find an affordable edition, please contact us— I have a few editions for purchase or loan.

To register for the Salon study, please use the Paypal button below to pay £325: (Please pay for the  room directly to No4St Ives once your registration has been confirmed):

‘A brilliant fantasia of all Time’s problems, age and youth, change and permanence, truth and illusion’ The Times Literary Supplement

The Years is the story of the Pargiter family – their intimacies and estrangements, anxieties and triumphs – mapped out against the bustling rhythms of London’s streets during the first decades of the twentieth century, as their Victorian upbringing gives way to a new world, where the rules of etiquette have shifted from the drawing room to the air-raid shelter. Virginia Woolf’s penultimate novel is a celebration of the resilience of the individual amid time, change, life, death and renewal.

Virginia Woolf:  “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, haf 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 surace 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.”

—“Sketch of the Past,” begun in June 1939.

St IVES:  Virginia Woolf spent much of her childhood in St. Ives.  The London Literary Salon invites you to join us in St Ives to explore this lovely coastal town and have it serve as a prism through which we will explore Woolf’s perspectives on landscape, domesticity, historical inheritance and identity in her novel The Years. We have already completed four magical weekends with Woolf’s writings in the environment that inspired it– this is an incredible experience!

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, and there will be an optional boat trip to Godrevy Lighthouse.

We may also look at Talland House, now privately owned, her childhood summer home.  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 travellled back in 1905 following the death of their father in 1904.

Accommodation:  We are working with No4 St Ives which is just steps from Talland House and has an elevated position overloooking St Ives Bay.  It is a 5 minute walk from the beach and St Ives Town Centre.

Approximate cost: 

 Rooms at No4 St Ives range from £110-£140 per night– if the room is shared, the cost is halved; breakfast included. Some of us plan to stay Sunday night as well to be able to enjoy an extra day in this beautiful site. The entire cost is to be paid upfront. If for some reason you are unable to attend, we will work to find someone to replace you & reimburse you for the room but can not guarantee that is possible. The Salon cost may be applied to a later study. 

Train cost is approx.  £70  each way(cheaper if bought earlier) 

Salon cost is  £325: We will meet around 14 hours over the five days. The first meeting starts at 5:45 Wednesday evening; the last meeting is scheduled for 9:30-11:30 Sunday morning. On previous trips, many have stayed in St Ives through Sunday evening to have time for further exploration and reflection. Please discuss this option with Sue and Mike from No4 St Ives if you are interested. 

We will enjoy dinner out on Wednesday and Friday…other costs will include the optional boat trip & visit to the St Ives gallery. 

Getting there:  The train from London takes just over five hours, with one change at St Erth for the branch line to St Ives.

This event and other in-depth explorations of  Virginia Woolf and her works can be found on the website of the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain

Part of the challenge when reading Woolf is to understand it is not the action that matters but the impression of thoughts; it is by attending to the pattern and signification of thoughts and impressions that we will uncover meaning, innovation. As one of the primary modernist writers, Woolf plays with language; testing its ability to truly reflect human experience by recording the life of the mind not just action. Her narrative form reflects one of the characteristics of Modernist writing in its shifting centre of narrative perspective reflecting a questioning of ultimate and moral authority that characterized the time with the dissolution of Imperialism and absolute values.

Writing from the edge of the violent shift from Victorian to Modernist era, the loss of an old world in the violent destruction of war and massive social change, Woolf’s ambivalence is demonstrated in her work. She struggles against the boundaries and structures of the Victorian era while holding a great longing and nostalgia for the noble traditions of the time.

If you have any questions about this study, please contact us.

“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
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SALON DETAILS

A) DAYTIME: Tuesdays 2:30-4:30 PM   **This study will be VIRTUAL**   
B) EVENINGS : Tuesdays 5:00-7:00 PM  **This study will be VIRTUAL**   

• Both afternoon and evening studies start January 11th and finish June 19th (combined Sunday evening) 2022 ; 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 £445

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 :

For the early evening  study on Tuesdays

If you have any questions about this study, please contact us.