Max Goldsworthy

I have just finished a spree of reading early English novels (let’s say, Pre-WWI as a cutoff) and thought it’d be nice to share my thoughts on everything I’ve read.

I think my motivation for doing this was that I’ve always instinctively neglected these novels because their premises always seemed so dry and removed from any of my interests. Nowhere was this more true than for Jane Austen – because the idea of getting invested in a courtship between posh people in such a stiff and stuffy culture seemed to me to be pretty unlikely. Well, I felt a strange motivation to either confirm or dispel my prejudices, and so I dove straight in with Jane Austen.

Emma, Jane Austen

I chose this book because Austen was quoted as saying ‘I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like.’ and I thought that offered the hope of something a bit more radical and against my expectations of the time period. Well the joke’s on me, because I didn’t much like the heroine.

The premise – that Emma is trying to match make all her friends but keeps screwing it up – did actually work for me, particularly since there were at least four very effective plot twists, each constructed by making the reader see things from Emma’s perspective and then accepting the conclusions she comes to, only to have what’s actually going on revealed to us (and her) later. I found this aspect very impressive, and it’s probably the book I’ve thought most about since finishing – basically just realising all the clues that I missed at the time – and for that reason it’s also the book I suspect would be most improved by a second read.

Realistically, I’m unlikely to ever do that though, because while I really appreciated this aspect of it, I found other parts extremely dull, and it is also the book that most matched my negative expectations of the time period. The most eventful thing to happen in it is a walk up a hill with a picnic.

Persuasion, Jane Austen

Still, I was buoyed enough to continue my mission – and at this point I had bought both Persuasion and Pride and Prejudice, as I had a particular aversion to the idea of Sense and Sensibility and these were the other two that seemed to sit near the top of people’s Austen rankings. I think I read Persuasion first purely because it was shorter and marginally more obscure.

This one I simply found very charming and sweet, albeit a little ephemeral. I was surprised by how much I could be driven through a story by romance alone though – but I suppose when you genuinely like the characters and the obstacles between them feel real yet surmountable, you can’t help but root for them.

Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

So it turns out that this is rightfully considered Austen’s best book. Beyond the central characters and romance, which has at least the same charm that Persuasion has, there are numerous engaging side characters and side plots, like the pompous Mr Collins, or the sarcastic Mr Bennet – both of whom I was surprised to find genuinely funny. It also has some of the more interesting details about the time period – like the wacky concept of entailment which drives much of the plot. All of these aspects are layered together in a very satisfying package, and this was one of two books I read during my spree that I would enthusiastically call great.

Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte

Even enjoying Pride and Prejudice as much as I did, I had had enough Jane Austen and wanted something different. I figured the best thing to do was to use the momentum I had to read something very different, that nevertheless still intimidated me: Wuthering Heights. That was a good idea, because I certainly needed all the momentum I had to get through this one.

The only thing I knew going in was that this book was extremely polarising, and the people who champion it say that the biggest mistake people make with it is to treat it as a love story, when it’s actually about obsession and abuse. That may be, but the fact remains that it is a book about universally horrible people – even to the point of cartoonishness – and there was nothing in it that I found thematically interesting enough to be worth spending all this time in their company.

The only silver lining I found was that some of the descriptions of scenes – and especially the sense of atmosphere created – were legitimately really strong. I did feel like I was actually trapped on an isolated Yorkshire moor, with a fanatical, cantankerous servant who spent most of his days sermonising in an almost impenetrable Yorkshire dialect, for what that is worth.

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson

I had intended to read Jane Eyre next to complete my foray into the Bronte sisters, but after Wuthering Heights I no longer fancied it. Hence I pivoted onto books that were short and had strong premises, in the hopes of regaining some momentum. This one is essentially just a short story and… it’s pretty good. I don’t have a lot to say about it.

Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

If you’d asked me at the start which book on this list I thought I would have enjoyed most, I would have told you Frankenstein. An interesting premise? sometimes called the ‘first science fiction’ book? And to top it all off, the writing is usually described as unexpectedly poetic and beautiful? This was sure to get my momentum back!

My high hopes were met immediately, with a series of letters from an explorer to his wife detailing his attempt to be the first person to reach the north pole, and his surprise at seeing a man pass by on a dog sled, followed by another man in dogged pursuit, who looked near death. When the pursuer needs rescuing – and as he begins to tell the explorer his story, we learn that this is Frankenstein chasing his monster, and I was completely invested. My investment persisted through the first half of the book, at least until the creation of the monster but after that I began to flag.

My problem was firstly with the character of Frankenstein, who pretty soon after this becomes a total wet blanket. My more significant problem was just how much the plausibility and pacing gets sacrificed in service of some (‘Romantic’ digressions. The action moves to the alps for no real reason, goes all through England and up to Orkney (stopping off, of course, in the Lake District) again for very little reason, and it’s all essentially because Mary Shelley wanted to describe these places. This is why you shouldn’t marry Romantic poets and let them collaborate on your books.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde

The last of my ‘strong premise’ reads, although to tell the truth I was a little wary going into it. I knew Oscar Wilde was supposed to be witty, although whenever I’ve been exposed to his witticisms I have usually found them smug and annoying – an impression that was unfortunately reinforced after reading this.

In his defence, most of these quips are said by a character, Lord Henry, who is probably not an exact reflection of Wilde himself, although once again we’re in the realm where all the characters are insufferable and – despite the occasional flashes of excellent writing, and the really well executed premise – there is not enough here to make it feel worth it.

There is also an apparently infamous chapter in the middle, chapter 11, where he goes on and on describing various objects that Dorian now likes in a monotonous list, and I have no shame to say that I skim read most of this bit.

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

After such a string of misses (and one frustratingly near hit in Frankenstein) I had little motivation left. I picked this up partly out of a grim-faced completionism to finish what I’d started, but also out of a temporary insomnia, as I had been accustomed to reading a chapter of Dorian gray recently in order to fall asleep and I thought that another unappealing, dull book might me serve equally well. I’m grateful I did though, because this is the second book I read that I would enthusiastically call great – and in fact it is better in my mind than Pride and Prejudice.

The whole value of the book hinges on the character of Jane, who I just found incredible in the way she navigates self-respect, independence, opportunity and her love for a man who’s love can quickly turn ‘despotic’. Beyond the character of Jane, I actually found it kind of a messy book in the way other characters are handled, and it falls into a slightly overbearing depiction of the intensity of love that weirdly made me look back more fondly on Wuthering Heights as a parody of this sort of writing. Ultimately for me though, the strength of the heroine is more than enough to overcome these defects – and I think I slightly value the higher highs here more than the comprehensive excellence of Pride and Prejudice.

Conclusion

I had always planned to end this spree after Jane Eyre, largely because I have been procrastinating my learning of Russian for too long, but after finishing that book, I have all my motivation back to carry on. My next steps would be to to deep dive into Dickens and Hardy, and finally George Eliot’s Middlemarch, after which I would consider my survey of pre-modernist English prose complete. Not that I won’t be convinced to dip back in at some point in the future, but I would only do so out of a particular interest or craving, and not merely on the reputation of the author, or as part of another focused spree.

In general, I found the approach of reading a bunch of books together in a spree to be immensely satisfying: there’s just enough focus to feel like I was completing something, but just enough vagueness in the grouping that things never felt too same-y. Moreover, the lows in this list help to accentuate the highs by contrast, and it is enjoyable to reflect on my own reading narrative in the way I have done here. I expect I will stick to this mode of reading for some time.

It is also gratifying just how wrong most of my expectations were, both of the books I thought I would like, but also the books I thought I wouldn’t, and this is a valuable inspiration to be bolder and less prejudicial when selecting books in future.