Wylie, Wilde, Boll, London, Symons, Carlyle, Seton, Woolf

Since my last post I've read an issue of The Economist, The National Enquirer, The New Scientist, The New Yorker, and The Globe, two issues of OK Magazine, and three issues of Eclectic Reading.

I've also read Carlyle by Louis Cazamian, Carlyle by John Nichol, two catty volumes of Virginia Woolf's journal, although her depression must account for some of the comments; Elinor Wylie by Thomas A. Gray, which made me wonder why the biographer bothered if she was considered second-rate; Ernest Thompson Seton by Magdalene Redekop, about a Canadian writer I've never heard of; Mme du Châtelet by Esther Ehrman, a woman scientist; Heinrich Böll by Robert C. Conard; Oscar Wilde by Heasketh Pearson, which proved witty; Arthur Symons by Karl Beckson; and Jack London by Robert Baltrop.

Woolf, Burney

Since my last post, I've read an issue of OK Magazine. I expect to finish reading Marcel Ayme tomorrow.

I also read the second volume of Virginia Woolf's diary, which includes some pretty sharp comments about people, particularly women. Of course, a diary is not meant to be anything but honest. It also contains some despairing comments about her own writing, about being old and out of fashion, as well as recording some mundane reasons which nonetheless prevented her from writing on this day or that. It is when I read her 'fighting off the fidgets' that I feel the most compassion.

I also read a memoir of Fanny Burney, by Dodson. Being dresser to Queen Charlotte is quite an odd occupation for a talented writer. I will be reading Burney's diaries next. Finally, I am reading a biography of Christina Rossetti, by Jan Marsh.

Ayme, Woolf, Queneau, Gautier

Since my last post, I've read one issue of Eclectic Reading.

I have also read the complete works of Theophile Gautier, a Frenchman primarily remembered for his poetry. I grew up hearing my mother sing her own mother's favorite songs, which were Gautier poem's set to music. Well, damn. Two volumes later, I find that he was extremely maudlin by today's standards. He was a serial writer, but he was not the master of the feuilleton that Balzac was, or Dickens. He has novels set in foreign climes, which I can legitimately claim is Voltairian, seeing as I have read Voltaire and his works on China, for example, are not well informed. I've read the first (of 5) volume of Virginia Woolf's diaries, which so far are well-written but not remarkable. I read a book about the blue-stockings in 18th century England. I've read two of the three volumes of the complete works of Raymond Queneau. He was boring, until Les enfants du limon, which suddenly and unexpectedly experiments with form. These experiments probably merit him his place in literature, but these experiments are innocuous. They neither detract nor add more than a note of unexpectedness. I have ordered the third volume, as I have the last two volumes of Woolf, and now am reading Marcel Ayme, a great descriptor of IIIrd Republic France.