Edition one: the long (Edwardian) summer
Week One of Wildfell Book Club
Edition one: the long (Edwardian) summer
Hello! Thank you so much for signing up for Wildfell Book Club and welcome to our inaugural issue.
Each week, we will be bringing you some of the terrific content on our website, book recommendations and exclusive bookish interviews. We hope you enjoy tuning in.
A note from the editor:
This week I have been thinking a lot about big houses, the turn-of-the-century kind. The kind in which one could spend a long summer, sipping tea and taking long subdued yet thoughtful walks. Big houses have been on my mind largely down to our book of the season - Howards End - a wonderful novel with a fascinating sense of space and place. As in many ‘big house’ novels (See Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited or Elizabeth Bowen’s The Last September), the house itself becomes a character in the text - the physical embodiment of characters’ deliberations or woes. In these times when summer holidays appear to be on hold, there is something in taking a slower, more home-based approach to getting away. Here we can take solace in reading. There's nothing like escaping from the mundane and the ordinary into the pages of a good book. I hope you take some inspiration from the articles and recommendations below.
Megan - EiC at Wildfell
Book Club Submissions: If you have read Howards End and would like to write something for the zine, or would like to read it and then write something, we would love to have your submissions. Email editor@wildfellzine.com for more information, or with article pitches.
Article of the Week:
In this insightful feature, Maisy Hallam discusses why we have a responsibility to diversify our reading lists. For her, a particularly stand-out moment was her first reading of James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room, a seminal novel by a breathtakingly good writer. Read her article here.
Creative Writing of the Week:
Mel Galley's poem 'The City Builds' is an eclectic mix of visual art, photography and poetry. Discussing the respective landscapes of Velez Blanco and Manchester, this poem is a beautiful reflection upon art and architecture. Read her poem here.
Book Recommendation:
This week's book recommendation is On Beauty by Zadie Smith. Smith based the novel upon E.M. Forster's Howard's End - our book of the season. On Beauty is sensitive and critical, interlacing comedy with cynicism. Set between Boston and central London, the novel follows two families - the Belseys and the Kippses - as each family navigates the clumsy intricacies of life and love in the 21st century. The book is an energetically considered comment upon questions of body image, sexuality, gender and race, and keeps the reader captivated right up until its final sentences. Zadie Smith is a brilliantly talented writer and her novels are a fixture of any good bookshelf. For a taster, perhaps first listen to her instalment of ‘Desert Island Discs’, which you can find here.
A bookish Interview:
This week's interview is with Alice Wright, a freelance writer and editor at Wildfell.
Who is your favourite author and why?
Daphne du Maurier, always. Her writing is intricate, beautiful and captivating. Her focus on women's psychology and multi-faceted female characters mean she has been so unfortunately under-rated. I think she should be on the compulsory curriculum!
What are you currently reading? Would you recommend it so far?
I am reading Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited for the second time. The first time was in a book club at school when I was 16. Now I am reading it in a rather more virtual book club with freshly graduated friends. It's an apt time to be reading a book about nostalgia for a former life. I would absolutely recommend it.
What genre of book do you keep returning to?
The Gothic. I've been fascinated by the Gothic since doing Frankenstein for A-level, and it's become a little obsessive. I wrote my undergraduate dissertation on the significance of locks and keys in Gothic literature. I think it's a highly misunderstood genre... but I won't go into that now.
If you were stranded on a desert island, which book would you hope to have packed?
Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca. You can't read that book too many times.
Thanks for tuning in to Edition One of Wildfell Book Club - we’ll see you again next week for more bookish content.