Novel Approaches

Did Dickens ruin Christmas? He was certainly a pioneer in exploiting its commercial potential. A Christmas Carol sold 6,000 copies in five days when it was published on 19 December 1843, and Dickens went on to write four more lucrative Christmas books in the 1840s. But in many ways, this ‘ghost story of Christmas’ couldn’t be less Christmassy. The plot displays Dickens’s typical obsession with extracting maximum sentimentality from the pain and death of his characters, and the narrative voice veers unnervingly from preachy to creepy in its voyeuristic obsessions with physical excess. The book also offers a stiff social critique of the 1834 Poor Law and a satire on Malthusian ideas of population control. In this bonus episode from ‘Novel Approaches’, part of our Close Readings podcast, Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell join Tom to consider why Dickens’s dark tale has remained a Christmas staple. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up: Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrna⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsna⁠⁠ AUDIO GIFTS Close Readings and audiobooks: https://lrb.me/audiogifts

After drunkenly selling his wife and child at auction, a young Michael Henchard resolves to live differently – and does so, skyrocketing from impoverished haytrusser to mayor of his adoptive town. Every unexpected disaster and sudden reversal in The Mayor of Casterbridge stems from its opening, in a plot which draws as much from realist fiction as Shakespearean tragedy and the sensation novel. Mary Wellesley and Mark Ford join Clare Bucknell to unpick the many strands in Thomas Hardy’s first Wessex novel. They explore how the novel – at once ‘algorithmic’, theatrical and fatalistic – is suffused with Hardy’s class anxieties, affinity with Dorset and fascination with pagan England. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up: Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrna⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsna⁠ Further reading and listening from the LRB: Mary and Mark discuss Hardy’s medievalism on the LRB Podcast: ⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/the-lrb-podcast/thomas-hardy-s-medieval-mind⁠ Mark discusses Poems of 1912-13 with Seamus Perry in Love and Death: ⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/close-readings/love-and-death-poems-of-1912-13-by-thomas-hardy⁠  James Wood on Hardy’s life:⁠ https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v29/n01/james-wood/anxious-pleasures⁠ Hugh Haughton on Hardy’s ghosts: ⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v07/n21/hugh-haughton/ghosts⁠ Next episode: New Grub Street by George Gissing.

Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped began life serialised in a children’s magazine, but its sophistication and depth won the lifelong admiration of Henry James. Set in the aftermath of the 1745 Jacobite rising, Kidnapped follows young lowlander David Balfour’s flight across the Highlands with the rebel Alan Breck Stewart. In Stevenson’s hands, a straightforward adventure story becomes a vivid exploration of friendship, the body, and social and political division. In this episode of Novel Approaches, Clare Bucknell is joined by Stevenson fans Andrew O’Hagan and Tom Crewe. They explore Stevenson’s startlingly modern handling of perspective and pacing, his approach to the art of fiction, and the value of being ‘betwixt and between’. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up: Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrna⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsna⁠ Further reading in the LRB: Andrew O’Hagan on Stevenson’s life: ⁠⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v27/n04/andrew-o-hagan/in-his-hot-head⁠⁠ ...his circle: ⁠⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n10/andrew-o-hagan/bournemouth⁠⁠ ...and his home in Edinburgh: ⁠⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n01/andrew-o-hagan/diary⁠⁠ P.N. Furbank on R.L.S.’s letters: ⁠⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v16/n16/p.n.-furbank/what-sort-of-man⁠⁠ Matthew Bevis on Treasure Island: ⁠⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v34/n20/matthew-bevis/kids-gone-rotten⁠⁠ Next episode: The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy.

In The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James borrows from Eliot, Austen, folktales and potboilers, but ‘the thing that he took from nowhere was Isabel Archer’. James transformed the 19th-century novel through his evocation of Isabel, a woman who wants and suffers in a profoundly new (and American) way. Deborah Friedell and Colm Toíbín join Tom to discuss the novel that established Henry James as ‘the Master’. They dissect James’s and his characters’ complicated motivations, the significance of his 1905-6 revisions, and the ways in which a ‘primitive plot’ irrupts in a painstakingly subtle and stylish novel. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up: Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrna⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsna⁠⁠ Further reading in the LRB: Colm Toíbín on Henry James: ⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v30/n01/colm-toibin/a-man-with-my-trouble⁠ Ruth Bernard Yeazell on Henry James’s life and notebooks: ⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v10/n01/ruth-bernard-yeazell/the-henry-james-show⁠ James Wood on The Portrait of a Lady: ⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v34/n19/james-wood/perfuming-the-money-issue⁠ Next time on Novel Approaches: 'Kidnapped!' by Robert Louis Stevenson. LRB Audiobooks Discover audiobooks from the LRB: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobooksna

Trollope enthusiasts Tom Crewe and Dinah Birch say they could have chosen any one of his 47 novels for this episode, so it’s no wonder Elizabeth Bowen called him ‘the most sheerly able of the Victorian novelists’. They settled on The Last Chronicle of Barset: a model example of Anthony Trollope’s gift for comedy, pathos, social commentary and masterful dialogue. At the heart of Last Chronicle is a mystery: how did the impoverished Reverend Crawley get his hands on a cheque for £20 that no one can account for, and is he capable of theft? The scandal has dire repercussions not only for Reverend Crawley, but the whole county: his ostracision raises broader questions about inequity in the church; it sparks rifts between his daughter, her would-be husband and his parents; and it gives his young relative Johnny Eames an excuse to flee the entanglements of London high society for the continent, in search of the only man who may be able to solve the puzzle. Although it’s the final book in the Barchester series, Last Chronicle can be read as a standalone novel, and Tom and Dinah join Thomas Jones to explore its sensitivities, ambivalences and sheer readability. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up: Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrna⁠⁠⁠ In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsna⁠ Further reading in the LRB: John Sutherland: Trollopiad ⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v14/n01/john-sutherland/trollopiad⁠ Richard Altick: Trollope’s Delight ⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v06/n08/richard-altick/trollope-s-delight⁠ Next time on Novel Approaches: 'The Portrait of a Lady' by Henry James. LRB Audiobooks Discover audiobooks from the LRB: ⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobooksna