Polling the 19th-century novel (second number): 1871-2

I only know Middlemarch and Alice and I find it hard to choose between those two.

Feel like it'll be hard to beat dusty-dusty here, but Through the Looking Glass a possible, maybe Middlemarch?

Haven't decided on my own vote yet - torn the same way, NV.

(and also haven't read many of these - Carroll, Dostoevsky, Hardy, Eliot, Verne, Le Fanu)

I think I've read Carmilla, tho isn't it barely novella length? I'm aware of most of the rest of them but I've never read Verne, nor that Dusty Dusty, nor that Hardy.

Yeah, it's def more novella than novel, but I thought fuck it get some vampires in.

The Verne I read when a kid, & then the cartoon version occupied its space in my memory, so I half-believe Fogg is a lion in the book too.

I don't know much about many of the others. It's an early not-good Henry James I believe; Ouida only made it in because a) apparently this is some kind of cult, repeatedly filmed and manga-ed novel in Japan, and maybe someone knows something about that? and b) Ouida is my go-to name for 'once famous, now forgotten author' and I feel like I owe her.

Never read any Trollope.

p surprised ive read almost all of these. well okay all but 5.

oh man middlemarch is such a chore, so longwinded & self-serious, all that 'lens of science' stuff, the worst characters.

trollope is p good, sorta shit ppl probably call 'minor' but its engaging, great characters, moves along well.

macdonald is more fun than carroll, if less clever, like both of those books but i mean

[russian title] was 'amazing' havent read it in years tho, dont really trust 20 yo me's judgement, abstain

henry james is garbage, dont really care about the rest, havent read: fanu, butler, alcott, hardy, coolidge

henry james is garbage

ALL Henry James?!

I'd really like to go w/Zola but that's not his best and 'Through the Looking Glass' is so classic it's become pop.

I love Middlemarch, it is probably v. serious but I feel like Eliot has quite a deadpan sense of humour going on often too. I'm not wholly keen on the authorial voice but hey it's a 19th century novel what are you gonna do? I still think it's the most amazing portrayal of how a certain kind of middle class life can slowly bury and crush people, and the minute delineation of social politics is as real as anything I've ever read.

have read ... two of these. hm.

I love Middlemarch, it is probably v. serious but I feel like Eliot has quite a deadpan sense of humour going on often too. I'm not wholly keen on the authorial voice but hey it's a 19th century novel what are you gonna do? I still think it's the most amazing portrayal of how a certain kind of middle class life can slowly bury and crush people, and the minute delineation of social politics is as real as anything I've ever read.

OTM. As a piece of architecture, the book is staggering.

Also: lol @ Watch and Ward. Dedicated Jamesian that I am, I still haven't read it.

i feel like i should give middlemarch another try but its so long, & i disliked it so much. also the mill & the floss. but i read it one summer w/ a friend & he loved it, got a lot out of it, felt true affection for it. all i got was something to im about during long summer afternoons @ my crappy office job

i dont like henry james v much, also have ~complicated~ set of beliefs/opinions/feelings surrounding his 'place in literature' but watch & ward is terrible, just generally

what's to dislike about Middlemarch?

its really tedious

Fair enough. I prefer "leisurely," but the patience and skill with the characters are sketched pays off.

I'm a James sceptic: he's prob the central-canon author I have most trouble with, ie dislike. I think maybe I'm not that interested in what goes in people's heads, especially when precisely represented in super-elaborate fiddly prose; I can find it fascinating in 20pp bursts, and sort of funny, but I just think 'f it, get moving' when I see there are 340 pages left. (Feel like he could even trim some of the stories a bit.) He's sort of fascinating, & I think he may click with me one day, but till then it's magnificent, but it isn't for me.

Eliot, though: she's prob my high victorian fave for people thinking about people, how the net of minds-hearts that makes up society is built. NV OTM about her being dry funny; and stranger than she gets credit for (Romola is a very odd novel)

Skeptics' misconceptions of James are often based on the late novels. Have you fellows tried Washington Square? It's as good as "hard" realist writing gets.

True, those crits are more re: the late ones, but I remember reading Portrait of a Lady in my teens and being so bored; more recently, didn't find Daisy Miller changing my mind. It was fine, but nothing to make me think 'look out new york edition, here I come'

But I'm not really a fan of hard/c19th realism - I've only really started thinking about c19th novels again over the last few months after a long, slightly hostile gap.

I think I've read Carmilla, tho isn't it barely novella length?

Carmilla is a long short story, appearing initially in a magazine and then in Sheridan Le Fanu's collection "In A Glass Darkly" (where the stories have a tenuous linking device that kind of allows you to think about the whole book as a novel).

I haven't read that Hardy novel, supposedly the best of the minor ones.

much as a I love Carmilla (the original lesbian vampire story, though far less schlocky than tha sounds), I must give this to Through The Looking Glass.

xp

Read it on a long bus ride from Warsaw to London many years ago. Enjoyed it, but can't remember much in detail. Likeable.

Found Middlemarch unreadable all through my teens, 20s and 30s, but midway through it now and I am loving it. Perhaps I have just got more boring. Maybe in my 50s I will start to appreciate Henry James!

i found carmilla to be one of the least interesting (or at least out of place) stories in that collection: much prefer the green tea drinking addict/phantom monkey story, big on the swedenborgianism (which from memory is also a feature of uncle silas). strangely enough my oxford world classics edition of in a glass darkly turns into walden about halfway into the book for twenty or so pages. finally need to get around to reading devils, so in lieu i choose: erewhon.

I liked Green Tea too, but I did find myself thinking that having a little spectral monkey as a pet might actually be fun.

What I like about Carmilla is how sad it is, the sense of ancient loneliness about Carmilla.

I like all the storeis in "In A Glass Darkly". The long one at the end (In the Inn of the Dragon Volant?) is maybe the best, but my favourite might actually be the one about the retired captain who is being chased around Dublin by a phantom familiar. Part of the fun of that is walking by a lot of the locations every day.

Henry James pretty much disowned Watch and Ward, though of course he wasn't always the best judge of his own work - he didn't include the Europeans or Washington Square, his two most approachable novels, in the New York Edition. Interesting to see W&W in the same timeframe as Middlemarch, which James admitted was an influence on Portrait of a Lady.

Years ago on ILX Mark S started a thread called 'Henry James in Space' and sometimes, reading, say, the Bostonians nowadays can be akin to wallowing in a Jack Vance-like novel about an exotic, distant 'other' culture, full of unspoken rules of conduct and display.

Fucccck, this is hard: Middlemarch vs Alice vs Carmilla vs The Demons

'Watch and Ward' is nuts: a man basically adopts a young girl and grooms her over the years to become his ideal wife. Very (inadvertantly) creepy.

middlemarch better win this shit

oh man middlemarch is such a chore, so longwinded & self-serious, all that 'lens of science' stuff, the worst characters.

oh lamp :(

it's not self-serious, it's just serious! also eliot is making fun of dorothea brooke sometimes, trust me!

i guess i haven't read all of these but i will vote for middlemarch 100 times

(Romola is a very odd novel)

Every time one of these threads goes up I google when Romola was written in the hope I will get to talk about it! It is such an amazing weird novel.

We read Under The Greenwood Tree at school and it was a terrible choice - as a bunch of metropolitan 14 year olds even the keenest of us got nothing out of it, I think I'd probably really like it now.

Romola got me thinking about all these novels again. Read it as an undergrad, but picked it up again, in fascination, about 6 months ago. I had a hazy but peculiar outline in my head & I wanted to read it again, with a better map of the Renaissance; was also reading a bit of Browning, so Victorian England's imagined Italy drawing me in. Haven't had a chance to actually read it yet; would also like to read Daniel Deronda, never have.

ha! 1862/3 could be battle of the over-researched & awesome historical novels - Romola v Salammbô.

I'm very tempted to read Romola, but I wonder if a BBC miniseries wouldn't do the trick.

Felix Holt is an odd one.

I think I've read only four of these, the Hardy (charming but definitely minor) and Middlemarch, Little Men, and Alice. I've read quite a lot of Dostoevsky, James and Trollope but not those particular books. I've read other Zola and MacDonald.

But Middlemarch is possibly my favourite novel so I'm very confident in voting for it.

Romola on the other hand is just terrible.

I hope that the following question will appear friendly, or not unfriendly.

What is the point of this poll? What does it aim to establish?

I am just not clear about that, yet.

I remember that there was another poll about C19 novels. I think the thread vanished once I had voted (did I vote at all? I've hardly read any of the texts). Was that poll completed? Does this poll relate to that one in a significant way?

My own vote here would be for Middlemarch. I will now cast it.

pinefox, they are HISTORICAL.

like 'best techno choons of 1992'

Those questions do not seem unfriendly.

There is no real point to the poll. It is a pretext for chatter about books from this period; harmless pleasure, gaiety of nations etc. There's some idle curiosity - which do ilxors choose if presented with The Devils, Through the Looking Glass and Middlemarch? - and I enjoy thinking about books in these small time-bursts – the odd bedfellows thrown up, the state of fiction.

There was a previous poll:
Novels of 1847-8: a poll, by w---
There may be more.

Enjoying these polls: nothing to contribute however Romala and Watch and Ward sound like a gateway of sorts into Eliot and James.

i haven't really read any of these (part of 'devils', probably some part of the carroll, a couple chapters of the eliot) but my #1 resolution this year is to read 'middlemarch' so that's what i voted for.

Should be interesting - this poll's doesn't seem as tethered to eleventh grade english class as the previous.

Two clear contenders for me - Middlemarch and whatever the Dostoevsky book is called this week. I'll probably flip a coin.

reading 'the europeans' a few months ago made james, briefly, my favorite author. oddly, i haven't gotten to any of his other books yet.

rereading asimov's 'foundation' in anticipation of that ile poll, and also sturgeon's 'more than human' and delaney's 'nova.' also considering giving 'naked lunch,' of all things, another go.

Somehow missed this so far.

What I like about Carmilla is how sad it is, the sense of ancient loneliness about Carmilla

Definitely this. A Glass Darkly is great but Carmilla feels like it came out of a special place and is different to the rest of the stories - the cold sweet ambivalence of the emotions in it give an unusual feeling. Also lesbian vampires - good call.

I love The Devils - seems quite often to come second place to other D, but it's such a great example of individual character as a driven/fatalistic form of mental hysteria. The way the different characters interact - the deception, the self-deception, the emotional lies and dreadful blackmailing sincerity - is so well done (it's like a Russian Clans of the Alphane Moon). That great D unsparing psychological eye - and of course his characteristic mixture of absurdity and tragedy.

So probably from these two. Never read any Trollope - one of those things where I might just end up reading the lot in quite a short space of time when the whim takes me. Middlemarch is some high hardcore writing - doing so much so well, and I enjoyed it but probably admired it more than enjoyed it and prefer the two above. Need to read Romola. I like Verne's general sprightliness (gets through a lot of stuff quickly). I had a Louisa May Alcott book once, no idea what happened to it, back then couldn't possibly imagine reading it, which is now making me wish I had.

Alice books are amazing - logic and maths wheeling the imagination to such strange places (and vice versa). Love so many of the ideas, never quite clicked as totally enjoyable reading. (lack of emotional content maybe?). Haven't read Under the Greenwood Tree, need to rectify that.

Um - think I might go for the Dostoevsky to be honest - doesn't seem like he's getting a lot of love, and I want him to have a vote so he doesn't feel left out the poor sausage.

I think I voted Dostoevsky too - can't remember.

there's a quick read of 'watch and ward' given in this bookforum article about first novels.

The Devils > Middlemarch iirc

huge LeFanu fan, but Carmilla doesn't belong in a poll of novels

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

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

Oooo - surprised at no votes for Carmilla

I've only read two of these and they placed 1st and 2nd. Probably would have voted as such too. I used to hate MM but I read it again last year and changed my mind about it and Eliot in general.

Carmilla and the Carroll are the only ones I've read. <3 them both for all time (esp. Carmilla and Le Fanu in general), didn't vote.

v happy with these results

lol middlemarch

'I should learn everything then,' she said to herself, still walking quickly along the bridle road toward the wood. 'It would be my duty to study that I might help him better in his great work. There would be nothing trivial about our lives. It would be like marrying Pascal.

i met a failed eliot scholar once, man what kind of complicated identifications must they have with their academic mentors

lol Casaubon. What a weenie.

thread makes me want to read Middlemarch again now i'm of an age for the bleakness to hurt harder

were there more of these threads than just the two? j., how long have you been reading middlemarch?

years

but i dunno just this week? i started over

Nah, just these two. I think I'd almost found a nice couple of years in the nineties that would work. Maybe I'll have another look today.

he wasn't always the best judge of his own work - he didn't include the Europeans or Washington Square, his two most approachable novels, in the New York Edition.

Just a quick note--having just barely gotten into Roderick Hudson, nonetheless I strongly suspect that this actually works the other way around, that the Europeans and Washington Square (the latter of which I've already read) (and is my favorite James) are the most approachable because they have not been included in the New York edition...

omg casaubon's letter proposing marriage is so awful

Dan Savage was wrong: it gets worse.

he wasn't always the best judge of his own work - he didn't include the Europeans or Washington Square, his two most approachable novels, in the New York Edition.

wrt James I think it sounds ok - given how his writing changed over his lifetime he would probably look at his earlier work unfavourably.

He did express regret that The Bostonians couldn't fit the NYE, but given how he admitted he'd need to put in a lot of work I shudder.

I need to read Daniel Deronda again. It's sort of astonishing that it's by the same writer as Middlemarch - the geographic coverage alone is so different, embracing London, Germany, the Mediterranean, and ultimately Palestine. "Provincial life" vs. cosmopolitan life.