BOOKS & MORE BOOKS: THE FITZGERALDS OF DUBLIN, A SAGA OF VICTORIAN IRELAND

Fond of Victorian literature and history? You haven't missed an episode of costume drama series like Victoria?!? You are hooked on 19th century great classic novels?!? Looking for some awesome historical fiction to read which is set just in that fascinating era?  I've got the perfect suggestion for you, a great summer read! You can't miss this book series by Lorna Peel: The Fitzgeralds of Dublin.  Let's start from book 1: A Scarlet Woman. 

PERIOD DRAMA NEWS: OLD FRIENDS AND NEW ACQUAINTANCES COMING SOON

1. GENTLEMAN JACK: SURANNE JONES + SALLY WAINWRIGHT + VICTORIAN ENGLAND

Suranne Jones (Doctor Foster, Save Me, Scott & Bailey)  and  Sally Wainwright (To Walk Invisible, Last Tango In Halifax, Happy Valley) are due on set together again to shoot Gentleman Jack, a coproduction BBC/HBO. Of course, Suranne Jones will lead the cast as the protagonist while Sally Wainwright will sign the screenplay and will direct the 8-part series.

If you love good TV drama you should at least be as excited as me. But if, like me,  you are also a period drama lover, you should be on seventh heaven since this new series is set in 1832.

It’s the story of Anne Lister (Suranne Jones), a remarkable landowner who - after years of exotic travel and social climbing - returns to Halifax, West Yorkshire, determined to transform the fate of her faded ancestral home, Shibden Hall.

JULIAN FELLOWES' BELGRAVIA PROGRESSIVE BLOG TOUR - RECAP & REVIEW OF EPISODE 3: FAMILY TIES + GIVEAWAY!

Released in 11 weekly installments, each episode of Julian Fellowes’ Belgravia will conclude with twists, turns and cliff-hanger endings popularized by the novels of Dickens, Gaskell and Conan Doyle in the nineteenth century. Delivered directly to your cell phone, tablet or desktop via a brand new app, you can read the text or listen to the audio recording narrated by acclaimed British actress Juliet Stevenson, or jump between the two. In addition, you will have access to the exclusive bonus features available only through the app including: history, fashion, food & drink, culture and more that will frame the story while immersing you into the character’s sphere.

Julian Fellowes’ Belgravia is  the story of a secret. A secret that unravels behind the porticoed doors of London's grandest postcode. Set in the 1840s when the upper echelons of society began to rub shoulders with the emerging industrial nouveau riche, Belgravia is people by a rich cast of characters. But the story begins on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. At the Duchess of Richmond's new legendary ball, one family's life will change forever.

I’m really honoured to be part of this progressive tour promoting Fellowes’ Belgravia project. I loved Downton Abbey and have been missing all the beautiful characters in it since it ended with the last Christmas special on 26^th December 2015. Reading Belgravia is something  new and different , of course, but it is a way to experience similar emotions.  Join us in this awesome tour, discover more about the story and the characters in Belgravia, leave your comments to enter the grand giveaway contest.

PERIOD & MORE PERIOD - DOCTOR THORNE, TROLLOPE & FELLOWES ARE A WINNING PAIR

“Conduct! Is conduct everything? One may conduct oneself excellently, and yet break one's heart.”

I've been watching quite a bit of present-day drama series lately,  but not completely neglecting my search for good period drama. I haven't seen anything in a 19th century costume since War & Peace, actually, but being quite taken by my unmissable Wednesday nights' dates with Rev. Sidney Chambers.  I love Grantchester series 2 even more than the series 1 and, mind you, I was deeply fond of that. I have had to convert, ehm, surrender to the charms of the ginger after Outlander and Grantchester. 

We've had plenty of good series to watch, especially on Sunday nights, so you may have missed this lovely adaptation of Anthony Trollope's Doctor Thorne (book 3 in the Barsetshire Chronicles, 1858). Book 1 and 2 were adapted by BBC as The Barchester Chronicles in 1982 with a stellar cast including the late Alan Rickman.

If you were distracted by the Hiddleston/Colman vs Laurie/Hollander battle of talents in BBC One adaptation of John Le Carrè's The Night Manager and you lost Tom Hollander as the lead in Julian Fellowes's adaptation of Doctor Thorne, don't worry, you can catch up thanks to ITV online player or add the DVD to your costume drama collection. 

WHEN PC MEANT POLICE CONSTABLE - SPOTLIGHT ON ... JAMES ROBERTS AND HIS PARDON ME: A VICTORIAN FARCE.

Pardon Me: A Victorian Farce

The year is 1896 and following a brief, if lively, spell in the diplomatic corps, Madagan Rùn is being executed for Treason. The prima facie case against him is compelling. Madagan coerced the normally temperate Dr Jameson into raiding the Boer Republic, then tipped off the Boers and pocketed a cheque for 30,000 krugerand.

Now here's the pity of it. All his unfathomable schemes have been driven by a selfless devotion to Queen, Country and Empire. Trouble is, to save himself he must perforce lay bare the grievously stained undercarriage of Victorian high-society: starting with fantastical revelations vis-à-vis the making, lending and subsequent mislaying of the world's first ever celebrity sex celluloid.

No less an august triumvirate than Cecil Rhodes, Joseph Chamberlain and Prince Victor Albert have reason aplenty to pray Madagan takes his secrets with him to the gallows. Sadly for them the florid and faintly familiar Mr Melmoth has just posted a Remington Typewriter® to the Tower and instructed his chum Maddy to tell the old Queen everything. Pardon Me.

HOW ROMANTIC IS FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD? FROM THE BOOK TO VINTERBERG'S MOVIE (2015)

The story

Independent and spirited Bathsheba Everdene has come to Weatherbury to take up her position as a farmer on the largest estate in the area. Her bold presence draws three very different suitors: the gentleman-farmer Boldwood, soldier-seducer Sergeant Troy and the devoted shepherd Gabriel Oak. Each, in contrasting ways, unsettles her decisions and complicates her life, and tragedy ensues, threatening the stability of the whole community. The first of his works set in Wessex, Hardy's novel of swift passion and slow courtship is imbued with his evocative descriptions of rural life and landscapes, and with unflinching honesty about sexual relationships.

" ... THEY CAN'T FIND THEM, THEY MAKE THEM." AT THE THEATRE: MRS WARREN'S PROFESSION BY GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

“People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them.”

It was a bit sad to be sitting in a half-empty theatre while  watching  this play,  one of George Bernard Shaw’s "Plays Unpleasant". The thought that The Eliseo is going to be closed at the end of the season, all those empty seats and what was said and performed on stage made me, in the end, quite melancholic. The "unpleasant" in the title is not a random choice. 

The cast was really good in the hard task to involve the audience in this not-at -all –easy- to - digest piece. You know, you can’t actually relate to any of the characters and you are constantly disturbed by the harshness of one or the hypocrisy of the others.

PERIOD & MORE PERIOD - THE INVISIBLE WOMAN

Directed and starring Ralph Fiennes  as Charles Dickens, THE INVISIBLE WOMAN is the latest period  movie I saw. It is an adaptation of Claire Tomaline's book of the same name. It was released in 2013, it hasn’t made it to Italian theatres so far, but it is fortunately already available on DVD.  

The invisible woman of the title is Ellen Ternan , played by Felicity Jones, seen as Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey 2007 or more recently in Hysteria. Ellen, Nelly, was  a beautiful young actress with whom Charles Dickens had a  secret 13-year affair and who was 27 years his junior.

Abi Morgan (Shame)   adapted Claire Tomalin‘s novel.  Tom Hollander , as the author Wilkie Collins,  Kristin Scott Thomas, as Nelly's mother, Tom Burke (The Musketeers)  as Ellen’s husband, George Robinson,   are also in  the cast.

MASTERS, WORKERS AND SLAVES - THE MILL, TV SERIES & DVD

The Mill was unfortunately broadcast on Sundays,  while BBC1 The White Queen had been off to a good start  for a few weeks. The scheduling  was unfair, and probably unfruitful,  for Channel 4. Watchers like me, fond of period drama and longing to see both, had to choose. But it was not a huge problem: I saw The White Queen live and recorded The Mill.  I could catch up,  I saw the 4-episode series and it was worth it.

Set in a cotton mill in Cheshire in 1833, The Mill is a very interesting,  original drama based on the real lives of humble young people who lived and worked in that area when the political unrest to obtain more rights for workers was rising.

The idea of using the historical archives of the Quarry Bank Mill in Cheshire to tell the story of a social turning point, when workers and activists began to rebel against the use of unpaid child apprentices forced to work 12-hour shifts in dangerous conditions makes this series really realistic and unique.

The series offers a very realistic picture of the working class in the Victorian Age, something I only saw in one other period drama before, BBC North and South (1994) based on Elizabeth Gaskell's novel (1855). The Mill has been defined the anti-Downton Abbey, and it actually is a completely different attempt to period drama. 

REVIEW: THE INFERNAL DEVICES BY CASSANDRA CLARE - VICTORIAN LONDON & THE SHADOWHUNTERS WORLD

A full immersion in The Shadowhunters Chronicles these days! I've been reading Cassandra Clare's trilogy The Infernal Devices (prequel to The Mortal Instruments), I've been following the huge publicity campaign for the first movie based on the shadowhunters world (TheMortal Instruments City of Bones), and re-reading City of Bones for aread-a-long meant to be a sort of counting down to the movie release .

The shadowhunters in The Mortal Instruments series are half angel half human creatures who  fight demons in present-day New York city. In The Infernal Devices their ancestors have to fulfil the same task in a dark Victorian London setting. The stories of the two series are somehow intertwined,  more so than you might expect. Once back in time and in London,  you find yourself in the same fascinating world you had known with Clary Fray in 21st century NY , a world made of blood, danger, fight, runes, iratzes, great values and deep love.

ASK JANE EYRE

"Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!--I have as much soul as you,--and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you"

If you are obscure, plain, poor and little,  life  may not be smooth and easy for you. Ask Jane Eyre. You may have to bite wicked older cousins who want to torture you,  defend yourself from a jealous aunt who wishes you were dead, you may have to survive long solitary hours locked in a scary red room, then to strive to keep yourself sane and alive in a bleak, heartless place like a school for poor girls,  you must accept to go on living without anybody caring for you or loving you ... but, in the end, you'll meet your hero, your Mr Rochester and have your own reward. He is not tender and handsome, maybe, but impetuous, fascinating, authoritative, mysterious, restless. Anyhow, he doesn't trample on you, he doesn't make you feel a nobody, he treats you as his equal and trusts you. Last but not least, he desires you passionately. What if you discover on your wedding day that he has a mad wife in the attic and can't marry you? No panic, hold on, you can make it. You'll have to endure the awesome shock, run away and give up your dreams for a while, live among strangers you'll  learn to love for about a year, but be sure,  at last,  you'll have your reward, you'll have your happy ending.

CHARLES DICKENS IN ITALY - CAELUM NON ANIMUM MUTANT QUI TRANS MARE CURRUNT

Today is Charles Dickens's birthday. He was born on 7 February 1812. I'm posting this article to celebrate the incredibly talented story-teller on a very special date and to let you know the man behind the books a little more.

Would you believe such a successful, rich and widely appreciated man suffered from unhappiness? That he pined  for romantic, passionate love all his life long? Apparently he did. He tried to escape his dissatisfaction and unhappiness travelling and, especially, writing.

This piece by Claudio Taccucci, was originally published on Tiscali online paper in Italian. I asked Mr Taccucci permission to translate his article and post it here at FLY HIGH! to share it with all of you who, like me,  are interested in the great English novelist. He gladly and generously accepted, so here it is for you to enjoy. 

Caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt . Those who go to sea may change their horizon,  not their soul. Charles Dickens had a tormented soul and when he was haunted by his own predicaments  or unhappiness, he escaped. If he was in his London house, he went out at night and roamed the city for hours,  going back only in the morning. Nobody will ever know what he actually did in those hours,  which he justified as a quest for inspiration for his novels. When, to avoid melancholy, his walks were not enough, he left on trips. He travelled all over England with a friend, stayed for long periods in Paris or sailed for the States on self – promotion tours.

ROMANCING MISS BRONTE BY JULIET GAEL - BOOK REVIEW

If you love Jane Eyre and Charlotte Brontë, this novel is unmissable. If you are interested in the lives of the Brontë family, so full of sorrow and talent, you'll love it.
I've just finished reading it and, by chance, I'm also working on the Brontës and their novels with my students at the moment. So Romancing Miss Brontë has come out a great source of anecdotes in order to bring  Charlotte, Emily and Anne to life for my pupils, with the aim to make today's teenagers see them as unique human beings as well as great writers. 
Practical advantages apart, reading this novel was a real treat and a great pleasure. I came to discover it after meeting  the author Juliet Gael in Rome not long ago (see my post) and I'm really happy I did it. 

Impossible not to be fascinated by the story of the three sisters who managed to get to fame thanks to their strength, talent and ... stubborness. Yes, stubborness. Because,  if we have Jane Eyre, Villette and Shirley,  Wuthering Heights, Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall,  we owe that especially to Charlotte's stubborness. She fought to make it and made it at last. This is the prevailing trait of  her personality revealed in Juliet Gael's portrait: a certain tenacity,  we might even recognize as stubborness.

The romance  suggested in the title is a constant element in the story. Charlotte spent most of her life trying to forget Monsier Heger, the married professor she fell in love with, unrequited, when she was studying in Brussels. She tried to recognize his stern stare and his strong personality in any man she met, and when she couldn't find them anywhere around her, she depicted those traits on paper, attributing them to her own iconic hero, Mr Rochester.

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR. HENRY MAYHEW'S LONDON AND ITS FIRST ITALIAN TRANSLATION

London Labour and the London Poor is a remarkable work of Victorian journalism by Henry Mayhew, Dickens's contemporary and like Dickens celebrating his bicentenary this year (both were born in 1812). 

Mayhew observed, documented, interviewed, described hundreds of poor people living in the abyss which was London in the 1840s-50s for a series of articles published in the Morning Chronicle. Those articles were later on compiled  into book form (1851 in 3 volumes, 1861 a fourth Extra Volume was added). 

As a fond reader of Victorian literature, yesterday I was in Rome, at Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, for the presentation of the first Italian translation of Mayhew's work by Mauro Cotone: Il lavoro e i poveri nella Londra Vittoriana.

The Italian version of the work is a selection of 138 articles out of the many hundreds Mayhew wrote. Mauro Cotone selected them obtaining a significant wide range of typical figures from the crowd inhabiting London slums: beggars, street entertainers, mudlarks, prostitutes, labourers and thieves. A great portion of those destitute beings had no fixed place of work nor a fixed abode, they lived in the slum alleys and streets where Mayhew meet them. The caricatures full of pathos we find in Charles Dickens's pages become sketches of real people in these articles, people telling about themselves in authentic first-person accounts and objectively described by a professional reporter. 

AUTHOR GUEST POST: CHRISSIE ELMORE, SO YOU WORK IN A COTTON MILL ...

Chrissie Elmore is my guest again  here at FLY HIGH   after her interview about Unmapped Country, her  continuation of Mrs Gaskell's North and South.  She accepted to share some of the information she found researching the context of her book: the world of the cotton mills in Victorian England. Read her interesting post and don't forget to check out her book!

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So You work in a Cotton Mill ... by Chrissie Elmore

‘So you work in a cotton mill?  Now don’t you complain about getting up at 5am. In 1851 with everyone flooding into Manchester for jobs and starving Irish undercutting the wages, you’re the lucky one. At least it means your family has a roof over their heads.

I know running home for a cup of tea and piece of bread at 8am hardly seems worth it when you only have half an hour but at least it will keep you going until 12, then you can share a nice bowl of potatoes with those tiny pieces of bacon fat. Yes, it’s boring when you’ll get exactly the same for supper when you’re shift ends at 8pm, but let’s face it, your Ma wouldn’t know what to do with anything else if she could afford it – she went into the factory when she was six.

Oh, and try and use the privy at the mill – you don’t want to go near the one in the corner of the court that hasn’t been cleared for months.’

AUTHOR GUEST POST AND GIVEAWAY - KAREN ESSEX, TRAVELLING FOR DRACULA IN LOVE OR HOW TO RELOCATE A VAMPIRE

Readers often tell me that they take my novels on holiday as travel and history guides.  I love giving readers an experience on the page, but I love it even more when they are inspired to leave their armchairs and experience the characters and the history firsthand.  As an historical novelist, nothing informs my work like travel.  I love to walk in my characters’ footsteps, breathing in the air that they breathed, literally sharing molecules with them.
For Dracula in Love, which recreates Bran Stoker’s Victorian Gothic thriller from the perspective of Mina Harker, the vampire’s eternal muse, I planed to visit all of Stoker’s original haunted settings, but I also wanted to add some new geography to an old story.  Mina needed a history and a place of birth, both missing in the original.  Moreover—and more radical—I wanted to disentangle Dracula from his Transylvanian roots.  After all, Stoker made up that Dracula lived there.  Why couldn’t I change it?

My first step was to relocate myself to London and into a temporary flat in Pimlico, where early in the story, a naïve Mina dreams of settling with her future husband, Jonathan Harker.  Later, I moved to a neighborhood developed in 1890, the year in which the novel is set.  (My flat, coincidentally, is not far from where Bram Stoker resided.) 

READING DANIEL DERONDA, GEORGE ELIOT'S MOST CONTROVERSIAL WORK

Hugh Dancy as Daniel Deronda - BBC 2002

I decided my more- than- 500-pages tome for this summer  would be Daniel Deronda and I successfully got through  its 675 pages + notes +  introduction slowly but enjoying every bit . Long didactic passages about Zionism included? Yes, I found them interesting if not exciting.

My first meeting with George Eliot’s last novel  was actually 10 years ago with its 2002 BBC adaptation , which soon became one of my best favourites ,  when I hadn’t even read a page from the book and only  just heard about it.

BBC drama was stunning and I found the story so original and brave  that I promised myself I would read the book sooner or later. I’ve  kept the promise though it wasn’t sooner.  You know, how is it that we usually complain? Too many books, too little time. That’s it. Now,   let’s start my musings giving some order to my thoughts , focusing on few important themes  and,  especially,   let’s introduce the book properly.

VICTORIAN VICES - AUTHOR GUEST POST BY PAUL EMANUELLI (AVON STREET - A TALE OF MURDER IN VICTORIAN BATH)

The Victorian Era was in many ways like our own. It was the first age of consumerism, and the Industrial Revolution was the forerunner of the current Technological Revolution. New discoveries and inventions revolutionised manufacturing processes in the Victorian age. Railways and steamships made travel faster and cheaper, rapidly shrinking the world. Mass production and increased international trade made more and more products available and affordable.  And with the growth in industry and trade, the middle classes grew in number and wealth, and wanted to buy as much as possible of what was on offer. 

TRANSLATING MRS GASKELL'S NORTH AND SOUTH FOR ITALIAN READERS - INTERVIEW WITH LAURA PECORARO

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell has its first Italian translation at last! It was published by Jo March Agenzia Letteraria in November 2011. I'm proud to own a brand new copy thanks to the publishers,  which I soon added to my Gaskell shelf,  and I'm proud to introduce you the translator of this amazing classic novel: Laura Pecoraro. You know how much I love this work and how much I wrote about it (and about the TV adaptation and a few sequels  as well) both here on FLY HIGH and on LEARN ON LINE. I actually dreamt of translating it myself  - but never felt quite good enough - because I thought it was so unfair Italian reades couldn't enjoy such an interesting literary work. This is why I'm really grateful to the publishers and the translator for their efforts. Not for myself, of course. But for the millions of potential readers out there. I hope they won't miss the chance!

Here we are, then. Meet Laura Pecoraro. Read our chat about Nord e Sud, its themes and characters, and especially about  the difficult journey toward a good translation. Enjoy!

DICKENS WORLD - WATCHING MICAWBER (2001)

In the year of Dickens Bicentenary we owe him some gratitude and remembrance. So, since  I've seen  all the adaptations of his novels I could find, I decided I needed  some more Dickens , surfed the Net and found this lovely series dating back to 2001 (available on DVD).   David Jason stars as Mr. Micawber in this gentle comedy set in Victorian England and inspired by a character from Charles Dickens' novel 'David Copperfield'.

Like in that novel, in this lovely series too , Mr Micawber is incredibly eloquent and well-spoken, but he is also criminally bad with money. He doesn't meet any lovely 10-year-old David in the 4 episodes I saw,  but through his adventures - well, add a "mis" before the "ad "- the watcher can revisit the Dickensian - subtly ironic but lovable - portrait of an amiable character inspired to his own father, John Dickens. Micawber and Mr Dickens senior shared the same sad fate of being incarcerated in a debtors' prison (the King's Bench Prison) after failing to meet their creditors' demands.