Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of… the 1870's, pt.1 (1870-1874)

Le Ventre de Paris, my favourite of the earliest Rougon-Maquart, and not just because it ends with a character saying "Respectable people - what bastards!"

I need to read the Rougon-Maquart series. I’ve only read germinal but I really enjoyed the BBC radio dramatisation of the whole series a few years back.

I was writing about the series but didn't get that far, here's the one on Le Ventre

https://haonowshaokao.com/2011/08/02/les-rougon-macquart-3-le-ventre-de-paris-1873/

It's Middlemarch

how have i been missing all these threads?

i've been hitting project gutenberg like mad since getting my ereader about a decade ago now. all the dickens, lots of hardy and other victorians etc, and yet i've read exactly three of the above (madding, looking-glass and edwin drood which can't really count given it's only half a book)

Much of this half-decade leaves me cold. Neither naturalism nor the so-called Victorian novel hold much allure as far as I’m concerned. The contrast between this and what was happening in French poetry at the time (Mallarmé, Rimbaud, Verlaine) is staggering, stylistically speaking. I’m tempted to go with Demons, even though it could have used some trimming, or the Flaubert, but I’m loath to vote for him again. That said, there is far too much that I haven’t read here and that seems most intriguing.

middlemarch and demons is an impossible call for me

Middlemarch, but it was painful not to vote for Demons

?erewhon on

i love demons. and middlemarch.

Pom otm about the stark contrast. Hardy's never been a favourite of mine. I love 'Demons' but will vote for the wonderful 'Torrents Of Spring' by Ivan Turgenev.

not voting and haven't voted in any of these because like everybody else who *is* voting i haven't read most of them but i find it hard to believe any of them are better than Middlemarch which is one of the greatest of all time

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

The men of ILB have redeemed themselves.

seems like an unnecessary and obscurely nasty bit of subtweeting but ok

Sorry it was a shit joke (been reading Austen this week so was thinking about that actually good thread)

Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of… the 1870's, pt.2 (1874-1879)