ClimbingSky

Why Baseball, Books, and the Grateful Dead matter

Victorian Literature

  • Book Review: Parade’s End by Ford Madox Ford

    “…there are not many English novels which deserve to be called great: Parade’s End is one of them.”  ~W.H. Auden When I was in college, I had to make a choice one semester between taking Romantic Literature or Victorian Literature. Knowing just enough about everything to get myself into trouble, I chose to take Victorian Literature. Romantic Read more

  • Book Review: “The Woman in White” by Wilkie Collins

    The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins has been on my To-Be-Read List for a very long time. Considered to be one of the earliest Detective Novels, it is also a regular on lists of the greatest English novels ever written. It is also quite big, 700-800 pages! Two weeks before Thanksgiving, I downloaded the Read more

  • Poetry Review: “Memorabilia” by Robert Browning

    I have been spending a little time of late again with Robert Browning, reading Chesterton’s biography of Browning and re-reading for the first time in a couple of decades his poetry in a serious and more formal way. I have never been far from Browning (who incidentally, shares my birthday) because certain Browning poems and Read more

  • This House is Haunted by John Boyne

    The Literary Ghost Story is a noble tradition: The “Signal-Man” and Dickens play an important role John Boyne’s novel This House is Haunted.  It is a well-written “Victorian” ghost story featuring London fog, numerous literary references, and a mysterious country manor. Before the arbitrary distinctions of genre vs. literary fiction, many great writers tried their hand at Read more