June 2012
5 posts
2 tags
"A radiant acceptance of life"
“Meeting all contacts with the world lightly yet courageously; withdrawn, but not disdainful; in love with experience, yet exceedingly fastidious; detached, yet keenly, almost passionately interested; she watches the strange postures and pretences of humanity, preserving beneath her formidable dignity and restraint a generosity, a belief, and a radiant acceptance of life unsurpassed by any...
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"The Advantages of Being Virginia Stephen"
“‘Every second Englishman reads French’! One thinks of every second Englishman—in Halifax and Bristol, Great Brissenden and Bethnal Green. One thinks of the proportion of the population educated at elementary schools; how that only 15 per cent. of all English boys and girls ever have any further education after leaving school at fourteen; and of the minority of even that 15...
3 tags
Literature in Six
“‘The best thing for being sad,’ said Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, ‘is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled...
3 tags
The Gift of Books
“The urgings of dear friends—‘You must read this, I loved it’— … refer to more than books; they are an index of the friendship’s value and durability. Although sharing a love of the same booksis affirmation of a friendship, not sharing it may be an even stronger testimony. ‘You wouldn’t like it, it’s not your kind of thing,’ is a...
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"A library of women's fiction with Boadicea waving...
“In the publishing world of the 60s and 70s, women rarely had the opportunity to choose which books to publish, and paperback lists, particularly, reflected this. But now the choice of novels was mine. It was common to think of the literary tradition that runs from Jane Austen through Ivy Compton-Burnett to Barbara Pym as a clever and witty women’s view of a small domestic world. This...
