Showing posts with label Anne Ross. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anne Ross. Show all posts

Sunday, November 06, 2022

James Family Values


Barry Sonnenfeld, dir.: Addams Family Values (1993)
June 17, 1905

Dear Mr. Johnson:

Just back from three months in Europe, I find your letter of May 16th awaiting me, with the very flattering news of my election into the Academy of Arts and Letters. I own that this reply gives me terrible searchings of the heart.

On the one hand the lust of distinction and the craving to be yoked in one Social body with so many illustrious names tempt me to say “yes.” On the other, bidding me say “no,” there is my life‐long practice of not letting my name figure where there is not some definite work doing in which I am willing to bear a share; and there is my life‐long professional habit of preaching against the world and its vanities.

I am not informed that this Academy has any very definite work cut out for it of the sort in which I could bear a useful part; and it suggests
tant soit peu the notion of an organization for the mere purpose of distinguishing certain individuals (with their own connivance) and enabling them to say to the world at large “we are in and you are out.”

Ought a preacher against vanities to succumb to such a lure at the very first call? Ought he not rather to “refrain, renounce, abstain,” even tho it seem a sour and ungenial act? On the whole it seems to me that for a philosopher with my pretensions to austerity and righteousness, the only consistent course is to give up this particular vanity, and treat myself as unworthy of the honour, which I assuredly am. And I am the more encouraged to this course by the fact that my younger and shallower and vainer brother is already in the Academy, and that if I were there too, the other families represented might think the James influence too rank and strong.

Let me go, then, I pray you, “release me and restore me to the ground.” If you knew how greatly against the grain these duty‐inspired lines are written, you would not deem me unfriendly or ungenial, but only a little cracked.

By the same token, I think that I ought to resign from the Institute (in which I have played so inactive a part) which act I herewith also perform.

Believe me, dear Mr. Johnson, with longing regret,
heroically yours,

WILLIAM JAMES

Cambridge, Mass.


- Quoted from Letters to the Editor. The New York Times (April 16, 1972)


R. W. B. Lewis: The Jameses: A Family Narrative (1991)


I think you'll agree that this is quite an odd letter to send to someone inviting you to join their organisation - all the more so given that William James had already agreed to be one of the founding members of the American Institute of Arts and Letters some years before.

What can have motivated it? Was it really an expression of humility on his part, or was it - as Leon Edel, in his immense, magisterial five-volume biography of Henry James (1953-1972), suggests - because his "younger and shallower and vainer brother" was already in the Academy: i.e. had been asked first?

It's important to stress that William James was 63 at the time, with a worldwide reputation as one of the most influential psychologists and philosophers then living. His "younger and shallower and vainer brother", Henry, was 62, and already seen as a potential candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, for which he was nominated in 1911, 1912, and 1916.

William himself, in context, characterises his own reaction to this insult - an Academy daring to offer priority to his younger brother - as "a bit cracked." His choice of words in describing the possible "James influence" on that institution as "too rank and strong" is also strangely visceral - as if there were something lurking in his family background which literally sickened him.

I've written elsewhere about the mountain of books by and about Henry James collected by me over the years. Which is yet another reason for being surprised at Williams' characterisation of this "Master of nuance and scruple" (in W. H. Auden's phrase), this "great and talkative man," as a "younger and shallower and vainer brother." Vain, yes, perhaps - younger, definitely - but shallow? The mind boggles.

The family tree of the Jameses was more or less as follows ("A shilling life will give you all the facts" - Auden again):

On July 28, 1840, [Henry James Sr. (1811–1882), an American theologican and Swedenborgian mystic], was married to Mary Robertson Walsh (1810–1882), the sister of a fellow Princeton seminarian, by the mayor of New York ... The couple lived in New York, and together had five children:
  1. William James (1842–1910), a philosopher and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States.
  2. Henry James Jr. (1843–1916), an author considered to be among the greatest novelists in the English language ...
  3. Garth Wilkinson "Wilkie" James (1845–1883) ...
  4. Robertson "Bob" James (1846–1910) ...
  5. Alice James (1848–1892), a writer and teacher who became well known for her diary published posthumously in 1934 ...
- Wikipedia: Henry James Sr.
[It could almost pass for a picture of Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes, couldn't it? The article I borrowed this image from is even entitled "Henry James’s Smarter Older Brother." And is it just me, or is there something a little territorial in the way William is trying to tower over his brother, while Henry obligingly tilts his head to try and look as small as possible? It's like two cats establishing precedence when they meet in the backyard.]
I guess what interests me most about the James family, though, is not so much the primeval struggle for dominance between the two eldest brothers - it's a psychological commonplace that a second child tries to distinguish him or her self as much as possible from their older sibling. No, it's how that pattern affects the other children that concerns me.

And, yes, I am the youngest in a family of four children: my eldest brother embodies scientific method and logic; the next brother down is completely dedicated to creative writing and the exercise of the existential will; the next down, my sister, was an invalid a little like Alice James, very gifted artistically but unable to deal with the stresses of the workaday world.

So what was left for me, the youngest child? The necessity of avoiding all of these prior choices - in part, or wholly - in order to construct my own independent existence. And how successful have I been? Well, I'm not really in a position to judge: but all I can say is that I believe that your place in the succession, from first to last, has a massive influence on your own individual process of individuation, especially in families with a very dominant ethos: like the Jameses, or the Manns, or (for that matter) the Rosses.


Viktor Mann: Wir waren fünf. Bildnis der Familie Mann [There were five of us: A Mann Family Album] (1949)
Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann (1840–1891), Lübeck merchant and senator, married Júlia da Silva Bruhns (1851–1923), a German-Brazilian writer. Together they had five children:
  1. [Luiz] Heinrich Mann (1871–1950), author, president of the fine poetry division of the Prussian Academy of Arts ...
  2. [Paul] Thomas Mann (1875–1955), author, Nobel Prize for Literature laureate in 1929 ...
  3. Julia Elisabeth Therese ['Lula'] Mann (1877–1927), married Josef Löhr (1862–1922), banker. She committed suicide by hanging herself at the age of 50.
  4. Carla [Augusta Olga Maria] Mann (1881–1910), actress. She committed suicide by taking poison at the age of 29.
  5. Karl Viktor Mann (1890–1949), economist, married Magdalena Nelly Kilian (1895–1962).
- Wikipedia: The Mann Family
[In this picture, taken around 1902, Heinrich seems still to be trying to assert dominance over Thomas. He was, after all, a well-known writer and cultural figure by this time. He'd already published a number of books. Thomas, by contrast, had only published one novel, but it was Buddenbrooks, a massively influential work which would eventually earn him the Nobel Prize. Is he already conscious, here, of biding his time?]
You see what I mean about the possible perilous effects of family dynamics? First Carla, then Lula, both sisters, both suicides. Carla was conscious that her acting career was not going as she'd planned: she had little hope left of rivalling her two elder brothers. Whatever miseries drove her to the final act, it cast a long shadow over the whole family. And, then, of course, Lula followed her example seventeen years later.

Thomas Mann's eldest son, Klaus, another writer, who'd striven all his life to get out from under his father's long shadow, would commit suicide in his turn in 1949. He, too, had lived much of his life in a closer-than-close conspiracy with his older sister Erika, a well-known actress married - for passport reasons - to homosexual poet W. H. Auden.

So what am I trying to say about this succession of family tragedies? Nothing to belittle or attempt to 'explain' them, I assure you. Let's return to the Jameses in an effort to make the point a little clearer.


Marie Leon: Henry and William James (early 1900s)


William and Henry had their intense rivalry, co-existing with a genuine love for each other, to keep them going. But what of the rest of the family?

You'll note that both brothers were just of an age to be eligible to join up for the American Civil War (1861-65) - William 19, Henry 18 - when it first broke out. Henry bowed out as the result of an 'obscure hurt', a phrase which generations of critics interpreted to mean some kind of debilitating accident in the genital regions: a little like the hero of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises (1926). It explained a lot.

However, his biographer Leon Edel has deduced from careful sorting of the evidence that it was far more likely to have been a bad back. In any case, it was enough to spare him from joining the forces in any capacity whatsoever. Was it residual guilt over this that explains his rather patronising review of Walt Whitman's poetry book Drum-taps (1865), a record of the older poet's hospital visits and tending of wounded soldiers during the war? Certainly in later life Henry felt deeply ashamed at having so missed the merits of Whitman's work when he first encountered it.

William, by contrast, was already at Harvard, where he made sure he had enough to do in the scientific arena to make it quite impossible for him to find leisure to take note of the war. Nor was he alone in this. As was the case during the Vietnam war, very few university students in the North actually joined the colours. It was mostly those with manual jobs who marched off to the front.


Jane Maher: Biography of Broken Fortunes (1986)


It was Wilkie and Bob, their two younger brothers, who actually joined up. In her book Biography of Broken Fortunes: Wilkie and Bob, Brothers of William, Henry, and Alice James, Jane Maher traces the sorry saga of their lives thereafter: their abortive attempts to be accepted on their own terms, their business and other failures. Wilkie went bankrupt, was left out of his father's will, and died at the early age of 38. "Unsuccessful at poetry and painting, Bob, an alcoholic with a violent temper, spent many years in asylums, and died at 63, not long before his brother William," as her blurb has it.

But that's not really the whole story. It's important to note here that both brothers were legitimate war heroes, men of honour and principle, and that many of their subsequent difficulties ought properly to be attributed to post-traumatic stress. Both volunteered to serve as officers in Massachusetts' newly-formed Black regiments. As Wilkie put it in a speech to Union Veterans many years later:
When I went to war I was a boy of 17 years of age, the son of parents devoted to the cause of the Union and the abolition of slavery. I had been brought up in the belief that slavery was a monstrous wrong, its destruction worthy of a man’s best efforts, even unto the laying down of life.
Wilkie subsequently took part in the heroic (if misguided) Union assault on Battery Wagner in 1863 - the subject of the 1989 civil war film Glory - and was only a few steps behind Colonel Robert Shaw when he died.
Gathering together a knot of men after the suspense of a few seconds, I waved my sword for a further charge toward the living line of fire above us. We had gone then some thirty yards ... Suddenly a shell tore my side. In the frenzy of excitement, it seemed a painless visitation … A still further advance brought us to the second obstruction … The enemy’s fire did not abate for this crossing, and here it was I received my second wound, a canister ball in my foot.
He did eventually recover from his wounds, but walked with a limp for the rest of his life.

Bob, too, saw action in the sea islands off coastal South Carolina and Georgia, and nearly died of sunstroke while campaigning in Florida. Little was done by their family after the war to assist them in their transition to civilian life.

When their father decided to buy some land in Florida which he intended to farm with the help of freed slaves, Wilkie was put in charge of the venture. Bob joined him just before local hostility and bad financial conditions put an end to the experiment. They eventually both ended up working for the same railroad in Wisconsin.

Were they failures? In the material sense, perhaps yes. But as Henry remarked (a little guiltily?) of Wilkie:
"He is not particularly successful, as success is measured in this country; but he is always rotund and good-natured and delightful."
- quoted in Carl Swanson, Milwaukee Independent (2021)
As for Bob, his alcoholism gradually estranged him from his family, and:
In 1885 he returned to Concord to become, in the quarter-century remaining to him, an amiable dilettante, painting, writing poetry and endearing himself as a conversationalist of remarkable powers.
- Edwin M. Yoder, The Washington Post (1986)
Henry James found this brother's conversation, too, "charged with natural life, perception, humor and color ... the equivalent, for fine animation, of William's epistolary prowess."


Alice James (1848-1892)


What, then, of Alice, the youngest of the James siblings? Well, in many ways she had the oddest destiny of all. She became a professional invalid in the High Victorian manner: like the sofa-bound Signora Neroni in Trollope's Barchester Towers (1857), or (for that matter), the crippled heir of Redclyffe in Charlotte M. Yonge's famous novel.


Alice James & Katharine Loring (Leamington Spa, 1890)


William, the psychologist, was largely unimpressed by her vapours, but empathetic Henry lavished her with attention. It was mainly for that reason that she shifted her residence to Britain after their parents' death. She also wrote an exceptionally subtle and (at times) acerbic diary, which has become a classic in its own right.

Subsequent biographers and critics, Jean Strouse and Susan Sontag among them, have veered between sympathy and impatience with "Alice-as-icon and Alice-as-victim". She did, however, at least for a time, succeed in putting herself at the centre of the family discourse - which is more than her other two brothers, Wilkie and Bob, ever managed to do.


Leon Edel, ed. The Diary of Alice James (1964)






Anne Ross: Poinsettia: A Mermaid's Tale (2013)


My own sister, Anne Mairi Ross (1961-1991), a gifted writer and artist, took her own life some three decades ago now. The rest of us rage on. Surviving such family conflicts can be a difficult thing to achieve, and it's therefore with more than an Academic interest that I pore over the histories of the Jameses and the Manns - as well as those of various other creative families, the Bells (Julian and Quentin), the Powyses (John, Theodore, Llewellyn and their eight siblings).

I'm not so naïve as to think that such analogues could ever account for the complexities of any human life, but I'm not sure it's really feasible to ignore the similarities in all these Freudian sibling dramas, either.

I'd like to conclude with a poem from my latest book, The Oceanic Feeling. This one comes from the section called "Family plot," which begins with the following epigraph:
These works of fiction, which seem so full of hostility, are none of them really so badly intended … they still preserve, under a slight disguise, the child’s original affection for his parents. The faithlessness and ingratitude are only apparent.

– Sigmund Freud, ‘Family Romances’ (1909)

Jack Ross: The Oceanic Feeling (2021)


Oh br/other!


My eldest brother is flying up

to Auckland
for the weekend
to see my mother

Bronwyn is flying down
to see her sister
in Wellington on Friday

coincidence? hardly
Bronwyn’s younger brother
arrives today

last time we stayed with him
I had a tantrum
and wouldn’t sleep another night

under his roof
I read a thesis recently
on placing far less stress

on Oedipus
the br/other was the term
the author coined

for his new theory
Luke, I am your father!
try your brother

then the sparks will fly  



Anne Ross: Poinsettia (2013)






Thursday, July 09, 2020

Juvenilia



Charlotte Brontë: The Young Men’s Magazine (1830)


I remember when I used to buy those fat old volumes of the works of some poet or other, they would almost invariably include a section at the front entitled 'Juvenilia.'

Kindlier editors would relegate this to the appendices, so that it didn't constitute one's first introduction to - say - Wordsworth or Tennyson, but those obedient to the remorseless dictates of chronology would place those sorry scraps of verse right there, front and centre, the first thing the eye was likely to light upon.

There's a passage in W. H. Auden's long narrative poem 'Letter to Lord Byron' where he imagines his own fate in the next world:
You know the terror that for poets lurks
Beyond the ferry when to Minos brought.
Poets must utter their Collected Works,
Including Juvenilia. So I thought
That you might warn him. Yes, I think you ought,
In case, when my turn comes, he shall cry ‘Atta boys,
Off with his bags, he’s crazy as a hatter, boys!’
Now was the fear an entirely idle one in his case. The remorseless hand of Katherine Bucknell, editor of this and many other volumes of literary remains by the poet and his great friend Christopher Isherwood, has not allowed even this sacred turf to remain untrodden:



W. H. Auden: Juvenilia (1994)

Juvenilia: Poems 1922-1928. Ed. Katherine Bucknell. London: Faber, 1994.

Juvenilia: Poems 1922-1928. Expanded Paperback Edition. Ed. Katherine Bucknell. 1994. Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2003.
It's true that some of Auden's early verse is very good - excellent imitations of Thomas Hardy and Edward Thomas, for the most part - but none of it quite reaches the level of the poems included in his first, 1928, chapbook, let alone the Faber-published Poems (1930).



C. S. & W. H. Lewis: Boxen (2008)

Boxen: The Imaginary World of the Young C. S. Lewis. Ed. Walter Hooper. London: Collins & Fount Paperbacks, 1985.

Boxen: Childhood Chronicles Before Narnia. Essay by Walter Hooper. 1985. Introduced by Douglas Gresham. 2008. London: HarperCollins Publishers, 2010.
You have to be pretty high up the index of salability (as well as critical reputation) to merit publication of your juvenilia, it should be said. Another recent instance is C. S. Lewis, whose childish 'beast fable' world of Boxen first saw print in 1985, and then again - in a greatly expanded edition - in 2008.

Those who were hoping for something prophetic of the Narnia books were in for a bit of a disappointment, but so great is the interest in him that both books appear to have sold quite well to Lewis 'completists' (such as myself).



Jane Austen: Juvenilia

The Works of Jane Austen. Vol. 6: Minor Works. Now First Collected and Edited from the Manuscripts. With Illustrations from Contemporary Sources. Ed. R. W. Chapman. The Oxford Illustrated Jane Austen. 6 vols. 1954. 2nd ed. 1958. 3rd ed. Rev. B. C. Southam. 1969. London: Oxford University Press, 1975.
A rather better known example is (of course) Jane Austen, whose juvenilia first appeared in print in the early twentieth century, and was added by R. W. Chapman as an extra to his classic five-volume edition of her novels in 1954.



Jane Austen: Minor Works (1958)

I suppose the essence of a really impressive body of juvenilia is that it needs to be created in partnership with a sibling or other collaborator. That was the case with C. S. Lewis and his older brother Warnie, as well as Jane Austen and her older sister Cassandra, illustrator of the classic "History of England … By a partial, prejudiced and ignorant Historian."


Beer, Frances, ed. The Juvenilia of Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986.
Of course there's no question who are the most famous family of juvenilia writers of all time - and I don't mean Daisy Ashford and her sisters, for all the undoubted charm of The Young Visiters and its successors.



Daisy Ashford: The Young Visiters (1919)


I refer, of course, to the Brontës: Anne, Branwell, Charlotte, and Emily. The story goes that their father Patrick came home one day in 1826 with twelve wooden soldiers, which he meant to be a birthday present for Branwell, who was about to turn nine. His older sister Charlotte (10), and the two younger girls Emily (7) and Anne (6) each chose a particular soldier as their own, and began to elaborate a complex game around these "Young Men" (as they called them):
However, it was not until December 1827 that their ideas took written form, and the imaginary African kingdom of Glass Town came into existence, followed by the Empire of Angria. Emily and Anne created Gondal, an island continent in the North Pacific, ruled by a woman, after the departure of Charlotte in 1831. In the beginning, these stories were written in little books, the size of a matchbox (about 1.5 x 2.5 inches—3.8 x 6.4 cm), and cursorily bound with thread. The pages were filled with close, minute writing, often in capital letters without punctuation and embellished with illustrations, detailed maps, schemes, landscapes, and plans of buildings, created by the children according to their specialisations. The idea was that the books were of a size for the soldiers to read. The complexity of the stories matured as the children's imaginations developed, fed by reading the three weekly or monthly magazines to which their father had subscribed.


Fannie Ratchford: The Brontës’ Web of Childhood (1941)

Ratchford, Fannie Elizabeth. The Brontës’ Web of Childhood. 1941. New York: Columbia University Press, 1949.

Ratchford, Fannie Elizabeth, ed. Gondal's Queen: A Novel in Verse by Emily Brontë. Austin: University of Texas Press / London: Thomas Nelson and Sons Limited, 1955.
The classic account of all this is Fannie Ratchford's The Brontës’ Web of Childhood. She followed this up with a rather more controversial rearrangement of Emily Brontë's Gondal poems, which she saw as a connected series of lyric moments which could be linked into a 'verse novel' about a single protagonist, 'A. G. A.' - Queen Augusta Geraldine Almeda.



Pauline Clark: The Twelve and the Genii (1962)

Clarke, Pauline. The Twelve and the Genii. Illustrated by Cecil Leslie. 1962. Faber Paper Covered Editions. London: Faber, 1970.
An even more imaginative response to their imaginary world can be found in Pauline Clarke's 1962 children's book, which concerns the further adventures of the twelve toy soldiers immortalised in the Brontë children's - the 'Genii' of the title - tales of Glass-town, Gondal and Angria.


Wise, Thomas J., & John Alexander Symington, ed. The Shakespeare Head Brontë: The Miscellaneous and Unpublished Writings of Charlotte and Patrick Branwell Brontë. 2 vols. Shakespeare Head Press. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1936.
Actually reading the stories themselves is not so simple as it might appear. For a long time the most complete edition available was that produced by celebrated literary forger and thief Thomas J. Wise, in collaboration with John Alexander Symington, in 1936.

However, given that he:
privately printed abridged and inaccurate editions of ... [the] manuscripts; he removed the original covers from a number of the booklets and had them rebound for his own personal library; and others he took apart page by page, selling the fragments to friends and acquaintances.
- The Cambridge Companion to the Brontës, ed. Heather Glen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002): 37
that's not really saying very much.



Christine Alexander, ed.: The Early Writings of Charlotte Brontë (3 vols, 1987-91)

Alexander, Christine, ed. An Edition of the Early Writings of Charlotte Brontë. Volume I: The Glass Town Saga, 1826-1832. 3 vols. Shakespeare Head Press. Oxford & New York: Basil Blackwell, 1987.

Alexander, Christine, ed. An Edition of the Early Writings of Charlotte Brontë. Volume II: The Rise of Angria, 1833-1835. Part 1: 1833-1834. 3 vols. Shakespeare Head Press. Oxford & New York: Basil Blackwell, 1991.

Alexander, Christine, ed. An Edition of the Early Writings of Charlotte Brontë. Volume II: The Rise of Angria, 1833-1835. Part 2: 1834-1835. 3 vols. Shakespeare Head Press. Oxford & New York: Basil Blackwell, 1991.
Light began to dawn on this unsatisfactory situation in 1987, when New Zealand-born Academic Christine Alexander started to publish her magisterial, 3-volume edition of the Early Writings of Charlotte Brontë.

I recently purchased all three of these books from Browsers Bookshop in Hamilton. Somewhat poignantly, it turned out to be a gift set presented by the editor to her old school, Woodford House. Judging from the library slip at the back, it had only ever been borrowed once, so I suppose it made sense to de-accession it. Anyway, their loss is my gain.



Christine Alexander, ed.: The Early Writings of Charlotte Brontë (1987-91))
[photographs: Bronwyn Lloyd]


The fact that it proclaimed itself to be a three-volume edition and it was three volumes I bought led me, mistakenly, to think that it was complete. Not so, I'm afraid. Volume II, The Rise of Angria (1991), is divided into two separate parts.

So where's volume III? Nowhere, it would appear. For some reason the edition was interrupted mid-course, and we're still awaiting its completion thirty years later.



24-7 Press Release: Prof. Christine Alexander (2014)


Not that time has exactly stood still in the meantime. There's been one more attempt, by Brontë scholar Juliet Barker, to provide a representative selection of Charlotte Brontë's part of the juvenilia, as well as a strange little stand-alone publication of the late play 'Stancliffe's Hotel.'



Juliet Barker, ed.: Charlotte Brontë: Juvenilia 1829-1835 (1996)

Charlotte Brontë. Juvenilia 1829-1835. Ed. Juliet Barker. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996.

Charlotte Brontë. Stancliffe's Hotel. 1837-39. Ed. Heather Glen. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin, 2003.


Heather Glen, ed.: Charlotte Brontë: Stancliffe's Hotel (2003)


What can one say about all this? I suppose that the principal interest we take in the juvenilia of subsequently celebrated writer is for the echoes they presumbaly contain of their later, more accomplished works.

And yet they can have a strange charm in themselves. The Scottish writer Marjorie Fleming (1803-1811) wrote a diary in the late eighteen months of her brief life which contains such flashes of charm and wit that it's hard to put down even now.



Miss Isa Keith: Marjorie Fleming (1811)

The Complete Marjory Fleming: Her Journals, Letters & Verse. Ed. Frank Sidgwick. 1934. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1935.
I'm not sure that the same can be said of Opal Whiteley's very odd diary, which was all the rage in the roaring twenties, but seems now to have been some kind of an odd hoax.



Opal Whiteley (1897-1992)

The Diary of Opal Whiteley. Introduction by Viscount Grey of Fallodon. Preface by Ellery Sedgwick. 1920. London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1920.

E. S. Bradburne. Opal Whiteley: The Unsolved Mystery. Together with Opal Whiteley's Diary: 'The Journal of an Understanding Heart'. London: Putnam & Company Limited, 1962.






Anne & Jack Ross: Kwalic Archive (c.1970-1975)


I have to add, as a postscript to this post, some links to the Mosehouse Studio posts Bronwyn Lloyd has devoted to the childhood writings and drawings of my own family - mostly to do with our toy Koala bears, inhabitants of the city of Kwalalumpa, mapped and genealogised with almost Brontë-like zeal by my sister Anne and myself.




Anne Mairi Ross (1961-1991)


Sunday, February 10, 2019

Russian Foreign Languages Publishing House



Jack & his new bookcases (Bronwyn Lloyd: 30-1-19)


Recently we decided to get some new bookcases. Above you can see the before: how they looked on delivery day. Below you can see after: how they look now I've finished arranging them:



The finished article (BL: 12-2-19)


It's clear that you'll need a bit of context before you can understand how (and why) I got from point A to point B, however. First of all, the room itself:



Anne's Room I (29-1-19)


This was once my sister Anne's bedroom. After that, it was used as an office. But it's always been a slightly awkward space: too cramped for a guest room, and too hot and stuffy to work in comfortably in the afternoons. Accordingly, we took out all the furniture:



Anne's Room II (29-1-19)


The first set of books I transplanted there were my American history books. As you'll know if you read this blog at all, I have a fascination with all aspects of the American civil war, but actually I'm partial to most of the great American narrative historians: Washington Irving, William H. Prescott, Francis Parkman, and their twentieth century counterparts: Robert Caro, Shelby Foote, David McCullough, Barbara Tuchman, and Edmund Wilson:



American History I (10-2-19)




American History II (10-2-19)


This was followed by children's books and Russian books, in each of the remaining bookcases:



Children's & Russian books (10-2-19)


Bronwyn gave me two beautiful bookends for Christmas, a Chinese boy and girl each reading a book. The question was what to put between them?







Chinese Bookends (10-2-19)


My sister had a particular fondness for books published by the Russian Foreign Languages Publishing House, with their distinctive cover designs and charmingly eccentric typefaces:



Foreign Languages Publishing House II (10-2-19)


I therefore decided to put all the volumes I had in this series (including some that used to belong to her), and put them on top of a central pair of bookcases, counterpointing the three placed against the wall:



Film & TV etc. (10-2-19)




The Powys Brothers et al. (10-2-19)


The Moscow-based Foreign Languages Publishing House, founded in 1946, included a series of Classics of Russian Literature, alongside Soviet Literature, Marxist-Leninist Classics, and various others (including the endearingly titled "Soviet Children's Library for Tiny Tots").

The translations were often clumsy and stilted by comparison with the practised smoothness of (say) Constance Garnett's versions, but that just seemed to add to their charms. They seemed so intensely Russian, somehow. Here's a list of the ones I've managed to assemble so far:





    Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Poor Folk (1950s)


  1. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. Poor Folk. 1846. Trans. Lev Navrozov. Classics of Russian Literature. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, n.d.



  2. Fyodor Dostoyevsky: White Nights (1950s)


  3. Dostoyevsky, F. White Nights / A Faint Heart / A Christmas Party and a Wedding / The Little Hero. 1848, 1848, 1848 & 1857. Trans. O. N. Shartse. Classics of Russian Literature. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, n.d.



  4. Fyodor Dostoyevsky: The Insulted and Humiliated (1957)

  5. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. The Insulted and Humiliated. 1861. Ed. Olga Shartse. Classics of Russian Literature. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, n.d. [1957].



  6. Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Notes from a Dead House (1950s)


  7. Dostoyevsky, F. Notes from a Dead House. 1862. Trans. L. Navrozov & Y. Guralsky. Classics of Russian Literature. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, n.d.



  8. Fyodor Dostoyevsky: My Uncle’s Dream (1950s)


  9. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. My Uncle’s Dream / Most Unfortunate / The Gambler. 1859, 1862 & 1867. Trans. Ivy Litvinova. Classics of Russian Literature. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, n.d.



  10. Fyodor Dostoyevsky: A Funny Man’s Dream (1950s)


  11. Dostoyevsky, F. A Funny Man’s Dream: Our Man Marei / The Meek One: A Fantasy / A Funny Man’s Dream: A Fantasy / Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants. 1876, 1876, 1877 & 1859. Trans. Olga Shartse. Ed. Julius Katzer. Classics of Russian Literature. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, n.d.



  12. Nikolai Gogol: Evenings Near the Village of Dikanka (1950s)


  13. Gogol, Nikolai. Evenings Near the Village of Dikanka: Stories Published by Bee-Keeper Rudi Panko. 1831-1832. Ed. Ovid Gorchakov. Illustrated by A. Kanevsky. Classics of Russian Literature. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, n.d.



  14. Nikolai Gogol: Mirgorod (1950s)


  15. Gogol, Nikolai. Mirgorod: Being a Continuation of Evenings in a Village Near Dikanka. 1835. Illustrated by A. Kanevsky. Classics of Russian Literature. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, n.d.



  16. Alexaner Kuprin: The Garnet Bracelet (1950s)


  17. Kuprin, Alexander. The Garnet Bracelet and Other Stories. Trans. Stepan Apresyan. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, n.d.



  18. Mikhail Lermontov: A Hero of Our Time (1956)


  19. Lermontov, Mikhail.A Hero of Our Time. Trans. Martin Parker. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1956.



  20. Alexander Pushkin: The Tales of Ivan Belkin (1954)


  21. Pushkin, A. The Tales of Ivan Belkin. 1830. Trans. Ivy & Tatiana Litvinov. Illustrated by D. A. Shmarinov. Classics of Russian Literature. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1954.



  22. Alexander Pushkin: Dubrovsky (1955)


  23. Pushkin, A. S. Dubrovsky. 1833. Trans. Ivy & Tatiana Litvinov. Illustrated by V. Kolganov. Classics of Russian Literature. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1955.



  24. Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin: Judas Golovlyov (1950s)


  25. Saltykov-Shchedrin, Mikhail. Judas Golovlyov. 1880. Trans. Olga Shartse. Classics of Russian Literature. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, n.d.



  26. Lev Tolstoy: Childhood, Boyhood, Youth (1950s)


  27. Tolstoy, Lev. Childhood, Boyhood, Youth. 1852, 1854 & 1857. Ed. D. Bitsi. Classics of Russian Literature. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, n.d.



  28. Lev Tolstoy: Resurrection (1950s)


  29. Tolstoy, Lev. Resurrection: A Novel. 1899. Trans. Louise Maude. Ed. L. Kolesnikov. Illustrated by O. Pasternak. Classics of Russian Literature. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, n.d.



  30. Lev Tolstoy: Short Stories (1950s)


  31. Tolstoy, Lev. Short Stories. Trans. Margaret Wettlin. Illustrated by V. Basov. Classics of Russian Literature. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, n.d.



  32. Reminiscences of Lev Tolstoi by His Contemporaries (1950s)

  33. Wettlin, Margaret, trans. Reminiscences of Lev Tolstoi by His Contemporaries. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, n.d.



  34. Ivan Turgenev: A Hunter’s Sketches (1950s)


  35. Turgenev, Ivan. A Hunter’s Sketches. 1852. Ed. O. Gorchakov. Classics of Russian Literature. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, n.d.



  36. Ivan Turgenev: Three Short Novels (1946-64)


  37. Turgenev, Ivan. Three Short Novels: Asya / First Love / Spring Torrents. 1857, 1860 & 1871. Trans. Ivy & Tatiana Litvinov. Classics of Russian Literature. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, n.d.





And here's an alphabetically arranged list (by author and title) of some of the other volumes I don't yet own::



    Ivan Bunin: Shadowed Paths (1950s)


  1. Ivan Bunin
    • Shadowed Paths. Translated from the Russian by Olga Shartse, n.d.


  2. Anton Chekhov: Three Years (c.1950)


  3. Anton Chekhov
    • Three Years. c. 1950. 140 pp.


  4. V. M. Garshin: The Scarlet Flower (1959)


  5. V. M. Garshin
    • The Scarlet Flower. 1959. 179 pp. Frontis of author. Illustrated with black & white drawings. Navy blue cloth cover ... with red & gold lettering on its spine and a red flower on its front board.


  6. Nikolai Gogol: Taras Bulba (c.1954)


  7. Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol
    • Taras Bulba. Translated from the Russian by O.A. Gorchakov. Designed by D. Bisti (illustrator). c. 1958. 143 pp.


  8. Nikolai Leskov
    • The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories. Translated By George H. Hanna. Frontispiece photo of the author. n.d. 346 pp.


  9. Alexander Pushkin: The Captain's Daughter (1954)


  10. Alexander Pushkin [Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin]
    • The Captain's Daughter. 1954. Beige paper over boards, gilt spine and cover titles.


  11. M. Saltykov-Schedrin
    • Tales from M. Saltykov-Shchedrin. Collection of short stories. Translated by Dorian Rottenberg and edited by John Gibbons. n.d.


  12. Lev Tolstoi: The Cossacks (1965)


  13. Lev Tolstoi [Leo Tolstoy]
    • The Cossacks: A Story of the Caucasus. Edited by R. Daglish. c. 1965.


    • Lev Tolstoi: Tales of Sevastopol (1950)


    • Tales of Sevastopol. Illustrated by Pyotr Pavlinov. Classics of Russian Literature No. 17. 1950. 154 printed pages of text with one tipped-in colour plate and full-page monochrome illustrations throughout. Hard back binding in publisher's original decorated duck egg blue cloth covers. Gilt title and author lettering to the spine and to the upper panel. Quarto size: 10 1/2'' x 8 1/4''.


  14. Ivan Turgenev: Fathers and Sons (1950s)


  15. I. S. Turgenev [Turgenev, Ivan] [Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev]
    • Fathers and Sons. Translated from the Russian by Bernard Isaacs. Illustrated by Konstantin Rudakov. 1951. 214 pp. 9 tipped in plates.


    • Ivan Turgenev: Mumu (1960)


    • MUMU. n.d. 78pp. "Never in the whole of literature has there been a more shattering protest against cruel tyranny."


    • Ivan Turgenev: On the Eve (1950s)


    • On the Eve. 1958. Small purple hardcover with black lettering and design on cover, 179 pp.


    • Rudin. Translated by O. Gorchakov. Illustrated by V. Sveshnikov. Designed by E. Fomina. 1954. 138 pp.




As well as all of these Russian classics, there was the possibly even more characteristic and spirited companion library of Soviet literature:



    Maxim Gorky: Childhood (1950s)


  1. Gorky, Maxim. Childhood. 1913. Trans. Margaret Wettlin. Library of Selected Soviet Literature. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, n.d.

  2. Gorky, Maxim. My Universities. 1923. Trans. Helen Altschuler. Library of Selected Soviet Literature. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, n.d.

  3. Gorky, Maxim. Foma Gordeyev. 1901. Trans. Margaret Wettlin. Library of Selected Soviet Literature. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, n.d.

  4. Gorky, Maxim. The Artamonovs. 1927. Trans. Helen Altschuler. Illustrated by D. Shmarinov. Library of Selected Soviet Literature. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, n.d.



  5. Anatoly Rybakov: The Dirk (1954)


  6. Rybakov, Anatoly. The Dirk: A Story. Trans. David Skvirsky. Illustrated by O. Vereisky. Soviet Literature for Young People. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1954.



  7. Mikhail Sholokhov: And Quiet Flows the Don (1950s)


  8. Sholokhov, Mikhail. And Quiet Flows the Don. 1926-40. 4 vols. Trans. Stephen Garry. 1934. Revised and Completed by Robert Daglish. Library of Soviet Literature. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, n.d.

  9. Sholokhov, Mikhail. Virgin Soil Upturned. 1932. Trans. R. Daglish. 1935. Library of Selected Soviet Literature. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, n.d.



  10. Leonid Solovyov: The Enchanted Prince (1957)


  11. Solovyov, Leonid. The Enchanted Prince: Book Two of the Adventures of Khoja Nasreddin. 1954. Trans. Bernard Isaacs. Library of Soviet Literature. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1957.



  12. Alexei Tolstoy: The Lame Prince (1950s)


  13. Tolstoy, Alexei. The Lame Prince: A Story. 1912. Trans. Leonid Lamm. Library of Soviet Literature. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, n.d.

  14. Tolstoy, Alexei. Nikita’s Childhood. 1920. Ed. K. Y. Vladimirsky & V. A. Zaitsev. Trans. V. Korotky. Russian Readers for Beginners. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, n.d.

  15. Tolstoy, Alexei. Aelita. 1923. Trans. Lucy Flaxman. Ed. V. Shneerson. Library of Soviet Literature. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, n.d.



  16. Alexei Tolstoy: Aelita (1950s)






There was a shake-up in 1964, at the end of the Khrushchev era. The original Foreign Languages Publishing House, with its zany, eccentric designs, was split into two separate publishers: Progress and Mir. The former specialised in literature, often reprinting the same texts as its predecessor in a rather more sober and official-looking manner, while the latter handled scientific and technical books.

Here's a list of the "Progress Publishers" books I have:



Fyodor Dostoyevsky: The Insulted and Humiliated (1976)


  1. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. The Insulted and Humiliated. 1861. Trans. Olga Shartse. 1957. Russian Classics Series. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976.

  2. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. The Idiot. 1868. Trans. Julius Katzer. 1971. Russian Classics Series. 2 vols. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975.

  3. Gogol, Nikolai. A Selection, I: from Mirgorod / from St. Petersburg Stories / The Government Inspector. Trans. Christopher English. Russian Classics Series. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1980.

  4. Gogol, Nikolai. A Selection, II: Village Evenings near Dikanka / from Mirgorod. Preface by S. Mashinsky. Trans. Christopher English & Angus Rosburgh. Russian Classics Series. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1981.

  5. Goncharov, Ivan. The Same Old Story: A Novel. 1847. Trans. Ivy Litvinova. Illustrated by Orest Vereisky. 1957. Russian Classics Series. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975.

  6. Gorky, Maxim. Letters. Trans. V. Dutt. Ed. P. Cockerell. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1966.

  7. Lermontov, Mikhail. Selected Works. Trans. Martin Parker, Avril Pyman, Irina Zheleznova, et al. Russian Classics Series. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976.

  8. Mayakovsky, Vladimir. Poems. Trans. Dorian Rottenberg. Illustrated by Vladimir Ilyushchenko. 1972. Soviet Authors Library. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976.

  9. Pushkin, Alexander. Selected Works in Two Volumes. Volume One: Poetry. Introduction by A. Tvardovsky. 1974. Russian Classics Series. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976.

  10. Pushkin, Alexander. Selected Works in Two Volumes. Volume Two: Prose Works. Russian Classics Series. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1974.



Alexander Pushkin: Selected Works: Volume One - Poetry (1976)







Anne Ross (1961-1991): self-portrait


I hope that this new bookroom constitutes a fitting memorial for my wonderful (and sorely missed) sister Anne. It contains many of the children's books and Russian novels she loved, and is meant to remind us of her - as well as existing for purposes of pure entertainment, of course. She wouldn't have wanted it any other way.



The library cat gives her blessing