Sally on the Rocks by Winifred Boggs -1915- reprinted in the British Library Women Writers Series - 2021 with a Preface by Lucy Evans and an Afterword by Simon Thomas

 Sally on the Rocks by Winifred Boggs - 1915- British Library Women Writers Edition-2021- with a Preface by Lucy Evans and an Afterword by Simon Thomas

"Part of a curated collection of forgotten works by early to mid-century women writers, the British Library Women Writers series highlights the best middlebrow fiction from the 1910s to the 1960s, offering escapism, popular appeal and plenty of period detail to amuse, surprise and inform".- From The British Library

Winifred Boggs - 1874 to 1931

There are currently 15 works in the British Library Women Writers Series. I am hoping to read through them. Most are fairly brief and all include author bios and expert commentaries. The Kindle Editions are under $4.00.

British Women Writers Works I have so far read

Strange Journey by Maud Cairnes -1935

The Love Child by Edith Olivier - 1927

Tea is So Intoxicating by Ursula Bloom (writing as Mary Essex)- 1950

Father by Elizabeth Von Armin - 1931

The Tree of Heaven by Mary Sinclair- 1917

O, The Brave Music by Dorothy Evelyn - 1943

Sally on the Rocks by Winifred Boggs- 1915

So far Sally on the Rocks is my favourite in the series.

As the story opens Sally Lunton is in Paris, World War One has just begun. Sally's six year relationship with a young English man has just ended. She has been making a little money as a painter but not nearly enough to be comfortable. At 31 she knows she must find a husband before she gets much older. Plus she no longer feels save in Paris. She decides to return the small English town of Little Crampton, under the care of her dedicated guardian. Her parents are deceased and she has no siblings.

As in other books in the series, there is a rich busybody older woman who asserts herself in a very judgemental way into the lives of residents. "The sooner you discovered that Miss Maggie was neither to be defied nor ignored, but appeased, the better. Also that it would save time and trouble to tell her your own version of the worst. No matter how small the skeleton she pounced upon, the lady could make its bones rattle so loudly that you would be deafened". In Little Cranpton men were allowed to have a premarital adventure but a hint of this could destroy the reputation of a woman.

  Sally is advised to set her sights on Mr. Bixby, a bachelor in his forties who manages the local bank. Besides his salary he receives £3000 pounds a year from an inheritance, quite a good income. She has some competition as a widow is also after him. Mr. Bixby is smug, a bit portly and way to hung up on the advise his late mother left him about Women in a book she wrote.

 Men are already returning, broken, and traumatised from the trenches, and others were being hailed heroes merely for wearing a uniform. Mr Bixby is over the age to enlist and he basically says he is to valuable to be in the war. He seems jealous of the appeal of soldiers to women.  

Another important character enters. An officer who disobeyed the command of his superior. This leads to his entire command but for three men being killed. He is falsely branded a Coward. He is also from Little Crampton and has returned there. 

I do not want to give up much of the really quite involving plot.

One thing I was really struck by was how antiwar the novel was. Not to be hyperbolic in my companion but I recently read Persians by Euripides and I was reminded of the opening speech of the Persian messenger describing the horrible devastation inflicted on Persian soldiers forced to fight in a war meaningless to them. From the mouth of Sally:

"This war reaping the youth and manhood and strength of the world, robbing us not only of this generation, but the next, is horrible, but it still rages on. God looks down from His high Heaven, but He does not put back the sword in its scabbard. Death is horrible, and life sometimes more."

Readers now will not probably accept the treatment of alcoholism as a character weakness.

There are numerous exciting plot turns, interesting minor characters, some stuff for foodies. We know what the characters look like, how they dress and what they are hiding.  I felt I was there in Little Crampton.

I found Sally on the Rocks a delightful work

Next on my list is Chesterson Square by E. F. Young.

Mel Ulm

The Tree of Heaven by May Sinclair - 1917 - British Library Women Writers Edition-2020 with a Preface by Tanya Kirk and an Afterword by Simon Thomas

 

Part of a curated collection of forgotten works by early to mid-century women writers, the British Library Women Writers series highlights the best middlebrow fiction from the 1910s to the 1960s, offering escapism, popular appeal and plenty of period detail to amuse, surprise and inform.- From The British Library

There are currently 15 works in the British Library Women Writers Series. I am hoping to read through them. Most are fairly brief and all include author bios and expert commentaries. The Kindle Editions are under $4.00.

British Women Library Women Series Works I have so far read

Strange Journey by Maud Cairnes -1935

The Love Child by Edith Olivier - 1927

Tea is So Intoxicating by Ursula Bloom (writing as Mary Essex)- 1950

Father by Elizabeth Von Armin - 1931

O, The Brave Music by Dorothy Evelyn Smith - 1943

Mary Amelia St. Claire, writing with the pen name of May Sinclair wrote some two dozen novels, as well as numerous short stories and poems.  She was active in the struggle to secure the right to vote for English women.

Born - August 24, 1863 - Rockferry, UK

Died -  November 14, 1946 - Buckinghamshire, UK

World War One -June 28, 1914 to  November 11, 1918

The Tree of Heaven focuses on an upper middle class English family taking them from the start of the 20th century to the opening year of World War One.As novel opens, Francis is sitting under an ash tree which the family calls "the tree to heaven". She is expecting her husband Anthony to arrive for tea shortly. Like other books in the series, having tea plays an important part. They have four children, Dorthea, and three sons, John, Michael and Mickey.

We follow the children as they grow older.  Their parents do not fully approve of  the romantic partners of the children.   One son becomes committed to Freedom for Ireland. The mother gets involved in the struggle to allow women  to vote. I found the treatments of meetings of those invloved in this especially interesting.

As time marches toward 1914, the war with Germany transformed everyone into patriots. The parents fear their sons will be killed in the war.  Older women become nurses to wounded soldiers. We are there at the front.

Sinclair did not know how the war would end while writing The Tree of Heaven.  Like the other novels in the series I have read, this work vividly brought to life the era it depicts.

I will next read Sally on the Rocks by Winifred Boggs

Mel Ulm

O, The Brave Music by Dorothy Evelyn Smith - 1943- British Library Women Writers Edition published 2020 - with a Preface by Lucy Evans and an Afterword by Simon Thomas

O, The Brave Music by Dorothy Evelyn Smith - 1943- British Library Women Writers Edition published 2020 - with a Preface by Lucy Evans and an Afterword by Simon Thomas

Part of a curated collection of forgotten works by early to mid-century women writers, the British Library Women Writers series highlights the best middlebrow fiction from the 1910s to the 1960s, offering escapism, popular appeal and plenty of period detail to amuse, surprise and inform.-  From The British Library

There are currently 15 works in the British Library Women Writers Series.  I am hoping to read through them. Most are fairly brief  and all include author bios and expert commentaries.  The Kindle Editions are under $4.00.

British Women Library Women Series Works I have so far read

Strange Journey by Maud Cairnes -1935

The Love Child by Edith Olivier - 1927

Tea is So Intoxicating by Ursula Bloom (writing as Mary Essex)- 1950

Father by Elizabeth Von Armin - 1931

O, The Brave Music by Dorothy Evelyn Smith - 1943

O, The Brave Music opening about 1910 in a small town not too far from London. It is narrated by Ruan, looking back to thirty years ago starting when she was seven.  She lives with her father, a Non-Conformist Minister and her mother.  The mother is a great beauty, now in a love-less marriage.

 When illness causes Ruan to move out to a friends place up in the Yorkshire Moors, she falls in love with the place . There are some beautiful descriptions of the place by an author who obviously knows and loves the area herself. It was really lovely reading about her visits to the almost wild life up on the moors with her friend David, a young lad a bit older than herself.

We follow Ruan and her familiy’s life through about 12 years, ending prior to World War One.  Her mother leaves her father for another man.  Her father goes to Africa to be a missionary, leaving Ruan and her older sister in the care of the estate owner she stayed at earlier. Ruan comes to love Reading, riding in the moors, and David, whose passion is to become a doctor.

O, The Brave Music perfectly develops a broad spectrum of characters.  There is much more in this wonderful work than i have mentioned.

My goal is to read all 15 of The British Library books by July One of next Year.

“Dorothy Evelyn Smith (née Jones) was born in 1893 in the Peak District of Derbyshire.

Her father was a minister in the United Free Methodist Church, the family eventually moving to London. However, Dorothy set many of her novels in Yorkshire, which she knew well.

By 1911 Dorothy was a part-time student at an art school, and in 1914, she married James Smith, the son of another non-conformist minister.

During World War I, Dorothy began to write poetry and short stories, some of which were published. The Smiths had moved to Essex by 1920 where a daughter and later a son were born. The couple remained in the county, and after James’s death, Dorothy moved to a bungalow at Leigh-on-Sea to be near her son and his family.

In the early years of the Second World War, Dorothy Evelyn Smith began writing her first novel, O, the Brave Music (1943), the first of eleven novels ultimately published, the last in 1966.

Dorothy Evelyn Smith died at the age of 76, in 1969” https://www.deanstreetpress.co.uk/pages/author_page/75

Mel Ulm

 

Father by Elizabeth Von Arnim - 1931- British Library Women Writers Edition - 2020 with a Preface by Lucy Evans and an Afterword by Simon Thomas - 256 Pages

Father by Elizabeth Von Arnim - 1931- British Library Women Writers Edition - 2020 with a Preface by Lucy Evans and an Afterword by Simon Thomas - 256 Pages

“Part of a curated collection of forgotten works by early to mid-century women writers, the British Library Women Writers series highlights the best middlebrow fiction from the 1910s to the 1960s, offering escapism, popular appeal and plenty of period detail to amuse, surprise and inform.”  From The British Library

There are currently 15 works in the British Library Women Writers Series.  I am hoping to read through them in 2022. Most are fairly brief  and all include author bios and expert commentaries.  The Kindle Editions are under $4.00.

British Women Library Women Series Works I have so far read

Strange Journey by Maud Cairnes -1935

The Love Child by Edith Olivier - 1927

Tea is So Intoxicating by Ursula Bloom (writing as Mary Essex)- 1950

Father by Elizabeth Von Armin - 1931

Elizabeth Von Armin

Born: August 31, 1866, Kirribilli, Australia 

Moved with Family to London 1869, age three

She moved to The United States in 1939 at The Inception of World War Two

Died: February 9, 1941 Charleston, South Carolina,USA

Katherine Mansfield was her cousin.  Her second husband was the brother of Bertrand Russell.

She was a prolific highly regarded very succesful author.

Father centers on two oppresive domestic relationships.

Jennifer Dodge, 33 and a spinister is totally dominated by her widowed father, Richard Dodge.  The father is a well known author, notorious in rural England for his anti-clerical views.

The father is very selfish and sees it as Jennifer’s duty to cater to his needs while looking down on her as a burden.

“it was every woman’s duty to make the best of herself, and Jennifer’s not doing so no doubt accounted for the fact that she was still on his hands. Off those hands she ought, of course, to have been long ago; yet if some man had reft her from him before he was ready, as now, for her to go, it would have been extremely awkward, father knew; he couldn’t have run his house without her; his work would have suffered considerably; In fact he was unable to imagine what would have become of him.”

Then a shocking event occurs, her father marries a 19 year old girl. Jennifer, having an annual income from her mother on  which she can get by, moves out when her father is away on his honeymoon.

Jennifer, after a hilarious misadventure, it may not sound like it but Father is very funny in sad way, rents a cottage from a mild mannered vicar, James Ollier.  He is totally dominated by his older spinister sister Alice.  After accepting six months rent in advance, Alice begins to worry that her brother may fall in love with Jennifer.

There are numerous very surprising plot twists.  Things you never expected happen, lives change forever.  

I throughly enjoyed this book.  The account of marriage of Richard Dodge from the point of view of his 19 year old bride, told on a visit to Jennifer, is pretty shocking for 1931.

Next I will read O, The Brave Music by Dorothy Evelyn Smith.

Mel Ulm

 

Tea is So Intoxicating by Mary Essex -pen name of Ursula Bloom- 1950 -British Library Women Writers Edition 2020 with a Preface by Alison Bailey with an Afterword by Simon Thomas - 156 Pages

Tea is So Intoxicating by Mary Essex -pen name of Ursula Bloom- 1950 -British Library Women Writers Edition 2020 with a Preface by Alison Bailey with an Afterword by Simon Thomas - 156 Pages 

“Part of a curated collection of forgotten works by early to mid-century women writers, the British Library Women Writers series highlights the best middlebrow fiction from the 1910s to the 1960s, offering escapism, popular appeal and plenty of period detail to amuse, surprise and inform.”  From The British Library

There are currently 15 works in the British Library Women Writers Series.  I am hoping to read through them in 2022. Most are fairly brief  and all include author bios and expert commentaries.  The Kindle Editions are under $4.00.

British Women Library Women Series Works I have so far read

Strange Journey by Maud Cairnes -1935

The Love Child by Edith Olivier - 1927

Tea is So Intoxicating by Ursula Bloom (writing as Mary Essex)- 1950

In the two previous works in The British Library Women Writers Series as well as the early works of Barbara Pym from the 1950s sharing tea has served as a bonding agent bringing people together.  People were often judged by the elegance of their tea service.  Tea is So intoxicating centers on the chaos brought to a small English town when a couple newly moved there try  to start a tea shop catering to high class hikers and bike riders.

Tea is Intoxicating is just such a huge amount of fun to read, the characters all are very real, warts and all.

It would not be fair to potential readers to give away very much of the plot.  There are fist fights over a woman, a terribly spoiled teenage daughter, Duck, raised by her indulgent father after his wife leaves him. There are accidents, people are badly hurt, a woman we love to hate tries to stop the tea shop.  David was an accountant for a chain of tea companies and he is convinced he will make a fortune setting up shop in a house he has purchased.  His wife is convinced otherwise. She left her husband Digby, father of Duck, for David and wonders if this was a mistake.

Each chapter brings an exciting development and more character development.  New minor characters come on stage.

We see the obstacles of setting up a Tea Shop.  A cake cook, Mimi, from Vienna is hired.  She charms the men but the women hate her. The men see her as an innocent girl, but with great legs, the women as a potential man stealer. Slight spoiler, something really surprising comes out on her toward the end.  Her accent is really well done.  I found myself falling for her. Maybe with this novel published long after the others allusions to her figure catch our attention as not seen in earlier works.

We are in post war rural England.  There is still rationing,servants are hard to find and keep.  Divorce has just become legal.  Many of the men were in the war.  The rural aristocratic people, once very dominating, sees their world going downhill fast.

Mary Evans was one of the numerous pen names of Ursula Bloom, author of over five hundred works. Tea is So Intoxicating is considered her best work.

Born: 1892, Essex, UK

Died: 1984, Nether Wallop, UK

Mel Ulm

 

Strange Journey by Maude, Cairnes - First published in 1935 - This edition published in 2022 by The British Library - with a preface by Lucy Evans and an afterword by Simon Thomas

Information on The British Library Women Writers Series - From Stuck in a Book

Strange Journey by Maud Cairnes - 

First published in 1935 - This edition published in 2022 by The British Library - with a preface by Lucy Evans and an afterword by Simon Thomas 

March 28, 1893 to February 8, 1965

Maud Cairnes was born in 1893, the eldest child of Warner Hastings, 15th Earl of Huntingdon, and Maud, Countess of Huntingdon.  Her full name was Lady Maud Kathleen Cairnes Plantagenet Hastings, from which she took two names to publish her works of fiction, though she was known as Lady Kathleen.  

Polly Wilinkson, happily married to Tom,with two young children is what was then considered upper Middle Class with one servants.  She does have to manage her household, avoid making her helper mad while helping Tom advance in his office job.  One day she sees in front of her house an elegant woman in a Rolls Royce.  She wonders what kind of life she leads. Lady Elizabeth is a member of the landed gentry.

Here are Polly’s thoughts:

“Suddenly I felt a longing to change places with her, to get into that big, comfortable looking car, lean back in the soft cushions I felt sure that it contained, while the chauffeur made it glide away through the dusk to some pleasant house where there would be efficient servants and tea waiting, with a silver teapot, thin china, and perhaps hot scones, nice deep arm chairs to sit in, and magazines lying on the table.

The traffic moves, the Rolls passes, and Polly goes back into the house. A week or so later, a picture of a similar Rolls in a magazine brings back that daydream. But suddenly, Polly feels a moment of dizziness, after which her head clears and she looks down at her hands.”

Polly has changed places with Lady Elizabeth.  At first she things it must be a dream but when she returns to her House she finds for the last  few days she has been acting strange.  She realizes Lady Elizabeth has been in her place.  Over the next several months she is repeatedly transport to the Grand House of Lady Elizabeth.  She realizes all is not Right with Lady Elizabeth’s marriage to Major Forrester Gerald.She wonders if Elizabeth is Sleeping in bed with Tom while she has to ward Elixabeth’s husband out of her room.  When Polly first was in the Grand House she did not know which of the 22 rooms was hers.  She is turned off by a big hunting party though Elixabeth loved it. Polly cannot shot or ride well at all.

While back at Polly’s place Elizabeth regales the children with stories of knight, castles and dragons.  She attends a party for Tom’s boss, an event that would have intimidated Polly and pulls it off perfectly. To her Tom’s boss is way below her but she plays her role.

Polly and Elizabeth meet up to deal with what is happening to them.  I thought this made Strange Journey even more interesting.

There is much comic in the plot.  There is no hint of Life for those lower down in Society.  

This edition includes bio data on Maud Cairnes.

I throughly enjoyed Strange Journey.

Mel Ulm