Back to Top

Author Archives: Janet Mullany

The day was actually December 16th, Tuesday, but I couldn’t let this week go by without thanking Austen and all she’s done in educating me about writing (and reading, come to that).

Here are a few things I’ve learned:

You can write very hot scenes using very proper language and vocabulary. e.g. Mansfield Park, which I guest blogged about on Jess Michael’s site earlier this week.

You don’t need excessive, if any, descriptions of people or places. Fine eyes. It says it all.

You don’t need to wrap everything up at the end of a book but if you feel compelled to do so, you may certainly leave something to be read between the lines;

Happy for all her maternal feelings was the day on which Mrs. Bennet got rid of her two most deserving daughters. With what delighted pride she afterwards visited Mrs. Bingley, and talked of Mrs. Darcy, may be guessed. I wish I could say, for the sake of her family, that the accomplishment of her earnest desire in the establishment of so many of her children produced so happy an effect as to make her a sensible, amiable, well-informed woman for the rest of her life; though perhaps it was lucky for her husband, who might not have relished domestic felicity in so unusual a form, that she still was occasionally nervous and invariably silly.
Mr. Bennet missed his second daughter exceedingly; his affection for her drew him oftener from home than anything else could do. He delighted in going to Pemberley, especially when he was least expected.

captain-charles-austen-2And thanks, Jane, for having such hot brothers, because I find all your portraits awful. Here’s Charles (1779-1852), one of her Navy brothers who rose to become Admiral of the Fleet. Yowsers. The nose works on him.

Have you celebrated Austen’s birthday this week? How?

 

 

Posted in Jane Austen | 2 Replies

I’m not religious and I don’t do much over Christmas, but one thing I’ve done for years is to attend a performance of the Messiah. I’ve attended performances in concert halls with huge choruses and orchestras; and a memorable performance in York Minster during the power cuts of the early 1970s when we all kept on our gloves and hats and one very short intermission at which we all dashed out to the nearest pub for warming drinks. Last national_cathedral_002-2Saturday I heard Messiah at Washington National Cathedral, performed with a baroque orchestra and an “authentic” chorus of a children’s choir plus male voices. It was really spectacular and in a gorgeous setting.

Handel, however, composed it for Easter, and it’s still performed then. It has never waned in popularity–Mozart, Carl Maria von Weber, and Mendelssohn introduced it in Europe and the rise of choral societies in the later nineteenth century ensured its popularity. The world record for an unbroken sequence of performances is held by the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic, which has performed it annually since 1853!

Handel composed the work in 1741 in a breathtaking 24 days, despite a difficult relationship with librettist Charles Jennens:

Messiah has disappointed me, being set in great haste, tho’ [Handel] said he would be a year about it, and make it the best of all his Compositions. I shall put no more Sacred Words into his hands, to be thus abus’d.

Six months later Jennens was still unimpressed:

‘Tis still in his power by retouching the weak parts to make it fit for publick performance; and I have said a great deal to him on the Subject; but he is so lazy and so obstinate, that I much doubt the Effect.

250px-Neal_Music_HallMessiah premiered in Dublin on April 13, 1742 as part of a series of charity concerts in Neal’s Music Hall in Fishamble Street near Dublin’s Temple Bar. Right up to the very date of the premiere the performance was plagued by technical difficulties, and the Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Jonathan Swift (under whose aegis the premiere was to be held) postponed it. He demanded that the revenue from the concert be promised to local asylums for the mentally ill. The performance was sold out, with gentleman requested not to carry swords or ladies to wear hoops, to make more room in the hall. Handel led the performance from the harpsichord with his frequent collaborator Matthew Dubourg conducting the orchestra.

Ticket_1773_HF

Ticket for a benefit performance of the Messiah

Handel continued to work on the score and excerpts were performed in 1749 to raise funds for the Foundling Hospital in London (of which Handel was a founder). In 1750, the final  version was presented there and remained the fundraising vehicle for the institution.

Messiah is famous for the Hallelujah Chorus in which the audience stands, a tradition allegedly started at the first London performance on March 23, 1743. King George II rose, and so of course the rest of the audience had to follow. However, there are no eyewitness accounts, and the first mention of it comes 37 years later. Confusingly, it seems that audiences of the time liked to stand to certain pieces of music, such as the Dead March from Saul, and an audience member of a 1750 Messiah noted that the audience stood for the “grand choruses” (note the plural):

Audiences may have been spontaneously standing not because of royal example, but because of the confusing oddity of Handelian oratorio, and the additional oddity of Messiah itself. Handel’s hybrid of sacred subjects with operatic style, moving Bible stories into secular venues, had already struck some puritanical Britons as curious, or worse; Messiah went further, its libretto (by Charles Jennens) not even a dramatic narrative, but a theologically curated collection of Scripture passages.

“An Oratorio either is an Act of Religion, or it is not,’’ complained one anonymous critic on the eve of the London premiere of Messiah. “If it is one I ask if the Playhouse is a fit Temple to perform it, or a Company of Players fit Ministers of God’s Word.’’ The sermon-like atmosphere of Messiah may have triggered audiences’ churchgoing reflexes, and they may have felt compelled to respond, standing for choruses as if they were hymns – better to be piously safe than sorry. Read more

Tell us about your favorite Christmas music!

Posted in History, Music | Tagged , , | 1 Reply

I am recycling a post from  a few years ago when Thanksgiving and the birthday of George Eliot, born November 22, 1819, coincided.

Let us give thanks for George Eliot. Highly literate and educated despite being born into the sort of provincial society she depicts in her novels, she left England at the age of thirty after the death of her parents and traveled in Europe, returning to become a writer for the Westminster Review. Her life was unconventional (she lived out of wedlock with a married man, George Henry Lewes, for years–as she grew in fame and fortune Victorian society accepted the liaison. After Lewes’ death she married a man twenty years her junior; go, girl. And she earned a living as a writer, “coming out” as George Eliot, a name she adopted early in her career.). Interestingly Eliot’s books rarely turn up on lists of “my favorite romance novels” in the company of Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre.

Why? Here’s a reason, in her own words:

Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning, as it was to Adam and Eve, who kept their honeymoon in Eden, but had their first little one among the thorns and thistles of the wilderness. It is still the beginning of the home epic – the gradual conquest or irremediable loss of that complete union which makes the advancing years as a climax, and age the harvest of sweet memories in common.

Consider Middlemarch, possibly her greatest work, where the emphasis is on the community itself and the burgeoning romances are only part of the big picture. She subverts the marriage of true minds–Lydgate and Dorothea, two peas in a pod of innocence and idealism–and instead pairs them with partners who, in Lydgate’s case, are far their inferior. rsewellAnd Dorothea and Rufus Sewell, oops, Will Ladislaw–well, I can only conclude that he’s great in the sack and has the right sort of politics, certainly nothing to turn up one’s nose at, yet I digress–I’m left feeling that she sacrifices herself to romance. And I certainly think Mary Garth could have done better than Fred Vincy. Of course Eliot was smart enough to know that if she paired up Lydgate and Dorothea, there would be no book; that the troubling and imperfect relationships and their uncertain outcomes makes the book a brilliant masterpiece.

Now I love Daniel Deronda for similar reasons–the relationships aren’t what you think they’re going to be–and there’s no overt happy ending but a huge amount of interwoven complexity. She took the risk of trying to write about a truly good hero–Daniel, making a journey of discovery into his origins, forging his own destiny–and even she couldn’t quite do it. Daniel is really only interesting when he’s suffering, upon rare occasions, some sort of negative feelings–when he acknowledges his own snobbishness in becoming associated with a family of Jewish shopkeepers (oh, the vulgarity! How embarrassingly materialistic they are!). So Daniel is the turkey at the Thanksgiving dinner, handsome to look at, but a bit bland and occasionally dry. The rest of the book–the gravy and yams and cranberries and the rest of the delicious accompaniments, the fabulous secondary characters and their love interests and concerns–is Eliot’s unconventional triumph.

Have a great Thanksgiving, everyone.

Posted in Reading | Tagged , | 1 Reply

(Only) historical note: The Rookeries were the notorious, filthy, crime-ridden slums of London, cleared by the Victorians, whose notorious, filthy, crime-ridden slums were cleared by the Blitz and mid-late 20th century city planners.

rookeryKeep a careful eye on your billfold. You will be assaulted by various crooks and villains intent on getting your money.

  • Hundreds of brilliant reviews? Certainly, follow me into this dark alley.
  • Make the amazon/NYT/USAToday lists? Absolutely, just let me look after your cash for a moment, be right back.
  • Copyedit your book? I’m fully-qualified, but what does it have to do with Chicago?

But here is some real advice I have received from experts who shall remain nameless (and who’ve sold much better than I have)**:

  • Write a series with at least three books every year. What they’re about doesn’t really matter, but for heaven’s sake, don’t try to be original or complicated or funny.
  • So long as one or more of the words duke, Navy Seal, alpha male spring to mind, you’re fine.
  • You don’t need to have your book copy edited or line edited or have a professionally-designed cover. You have spellcheck and photoshop, you’re ready to go.

I take the view that readers deserve better. Have we really been brainwashed to that extent by the big however-many-are-left NY publishers that that’s all we’re worth? It seems that there are writers (notoriously EL James) who have somehow tapped into the zeitgeist and who sell and sell and sell. It has nothing to do with the quality of the writing or the storytelling (or notoriously, the editing or lack thereof).

[**Yes, my sales suck. But I’m also very disappointed as a reader too, and I don’t think I’m the only one.]

I’m ending this rant with a word from the great Ursula K. LeGuin, who was honored recently at the National Book Awards.  (You can read a whole transcript of her speech here):

Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between the production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximize corporate profit and advertising revenue is not quite the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship.

Thoughts?

On this, my alleged writing day, I have important business.

Yesterday morning, the teapot broke.

Fortunately I have some emergency teabags to hold me through until I have bought a new one, but this is a big issue. Particularly after my husband served me a cup of tea made from Earl Gray teabags that are at least ten years old, although I should be grateful he didn’t use the teabags that are so awful I reserve them for cleaning purposes (mainly the kitchen floor).

The shopping process has begun. Its appearance, really, is not important. I mean we’re not talking about a romance hero here. Size, however, is (so I guess we are talking about a romance hero after all). I need a large teapot. To me a cup of tea means not one, but several. It must be resilient. My departed teapot, made of metal and glass (with some very dodgy looking solder that I suspect may have been lead-based, acquired at the Indian grocery store that keeps me in Brooke Bond export tea and mangoes) lasted me a couple of years. So it has to be cheap.

And it has to pour well. I have a vintage Royal Doulton  teapot I bought at a yard sale that I called into use yesterday and it was awful–an  English made teapot that didn’t pour!! I’ll give up the gilding any time (besides, if you do want to throw it into the dishwasher, the decision will be made for you). Sadly, when you buy a teapot you can’t always guess how well it’s going to pour.

So here are my top choices so far:

The UK Tea & Infusions Association (check out that site, there’s  a great section on the history of tea, and a counter for how many cups of tea have been drunk so far today in England, currently at well over 128 million. How do they know??) commissioned Bodum to make teapots. The advantages are that they make a 34 oz size and they seem fairly tough.  Bodum introduced the coffee press concept to tea making. Advantages: tough. Disadvantages: Expensive and do I trust the press method??

$_57A fairly cheap ceramic pot with infuser. Advantages: looks pretty, looks as though it will pour ok. Cheap. Large. Disadvantages: I know that if the infuser is not stainless steel as soon as I receive it I will drop it and break it. It happens every time.

And here are a couple of purely silly items. A shark infuser and (oh I want it so much, but I’ll never use it and I know this shape is pretty much unusable),  a Tardis teapot!!!

Are you a tea drinker and how do you like your tea? Teabags or are you a loose woman? (For which terrible pun I thank Bingley’s Teas).

sharkDoctor-Who-TARDIS-Teapot-P14961886

 

 

Posted in Research | Tagged | 10 Replies