books read

[flea]

skimmed, because it had to go back the the library and wasn't well-written enough to fascinate:

Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Unexpected Life of the Author of The Secret Garden, by Gretchen Gerzina (2004). Did you know that FHB was born in Manchester, moved at age 15 to Knoxville TN (in 1865) with her widowed mother and 4 siblings, started supporting her family at 18 by writing stories and serialized novels for women's magazines (sort of the Harlequin romances of the Victorian set) and continued to do so for the rest of her life? That she wrote more adult novels and plays than children's books, and was most famous for Little Lord Fauntleroy in her lifetime? I hadn't thought much about FHB heself, although I;ve read many of her children's books, but had I done so I might have imagined some cottage-bound English spinster, not the married-and-divorced, jet-setting woman she actually was.

re-read: A Lady of Quality, by Georgette Heyer. Set in Bath, heroine Annis. Not a favorite, but a solid story.

Comments

[scrappylj.livejournal.com]

I was just thinking about "Lady of Quality" this morning! Doesn't he come back to find her getting over the flu and say something like "What is this? I left you in a high state of preservation." Makes me smile every time. I like that one--the less-ditsy-than-you expect SiL and dour Jurby.