Your Humble Blogger is enjoying watching Masterpiece Theater<\/i> again, after all these years. Well, I’m not actually watching Masterpiece Theater, but over the last year or two I’ve been watching a bunch of English costume dramas on DVD, and most of them were probably on Masterpiece Theater at some point, right? I think this binge really started off with Cranford<\/i>, although we watched the Pride and Prejudice<\/I>, too, around the same time, maybe before. We are currently halfway through He Knew He Was Right<\/i>, and I suspect we will watch another one before the end of the year. Such fun. Even the dreadful ones. Although when the second Middlemarch<\/i> DVD turned out to be too scratched-up to play, we just let it go. Rufus Sewell wasn’t going to take off his clothes, anyway.\n
So we can blame the BBC for my Victorian Novels kick. Although I’m not sure how many of these were actually BBC productions, but I think it would be fair to blame the BBC, even if I was watching Grenada or Thames, yes? Yes.\n
Where was I? Oh, right, Mrs. Gaskell. We watched three of them: Cranford<\/i>, which was utterly brilliant and wonderful and wonderful and lovely and wonderful; Wives and Daughters<\/i>, which wasn’t; and North and South<\/i>, which was very good in places, and very interesting, but not as wonderful. I read Cranford<\/a>, which was OK but not as good as the TV, and I figured I would read more when I got around to it, but there wasn’t much hurry.\n And then the Best Reader of this Tohu Bohu happened to spot a copy of Wives and Daughters<\/a> used somewhere or other, and then I figured it was in the house, so I would certainly read it at some point, but there was no hurry at all, and then my Best Reader actually read it before I did, and what’s more, loved it, and I figured I should really get around to it at some point. And then, after another month or so passed, I did read it. And it is wonderful. An immediate favorite.\n Seriously, when the back cover says that this is the most unjustly forgotten novel in the English language? I am baffled that this book isn’t popular. It’s not that I think it is every bit as good as Pride and Prejudice<\/a>, although I like it better, myself. I mean, I understand why P&P<\/i> remains popular. I do think it’s better than Persuasion<\/a>, but the point is that Jane Austen only wrote half-a-dozen novels, and people read all of them, and then… read them again? Which is fine, but if that’s you, give Wives and Daughters<\/i> a try.\n And now, to Sylvia’s Lovers<\/i>.\n Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>, In Which Your Humble Blogger has a recommendation for Austen fans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12599"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18947,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12599\/revisions\/18947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
-Vardibidian.\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"