Books I read because of other books

 

 Books in Books 

 

I love it when a favourite author mentions what books a character is reading, and in my teens, 20s and 30s I was forever reading books that I had come across via a mention in another book.

It's an idea that’s in the air at the moment: Caroline Crampton has done a riveting Shedunnit epi on Agatha Christie’s reading (and I am mentioned – you’ll have to listen to find out why), and there is a new book out on Jane Austen’s reading – blogfriend Trollopian brought it to my notice and I ordered a copy straightaway.

Jane Austen's Bookshelf: The women writers who shaped a legend : Romney, Rebecca: Amazon.co.uk: Books

So I’m looking today at some early influences on me - I think on the whole these days I am not going to discover new authors that way? (ie because I am so old). But it does still happen.

For the purposes of this blogpost, I am not talking about books that exist to recommend others – one of my great favourites is Claud Cockburn’s Bestseller, which had a huge effect of my reading and on this blog, and Julian Symons Bloody Murder had very useful (if not objective) recos for my early adventures in crime stories.

Here I am looking for a moment in a novel where one character reveals what book they are reading, and so I made a note…

I think I am not the only one. Please tell me if you did this, and tell us all your favourite finds.

Dorothy L Sayers (woman of the moment on the blog) – Peter Wimsey goes punting with Harriet in Gaudy Night, and the book he has with him is Religio Medici by Thomas Browne. Quite the challenge, but I found myself a Penguin copy (LPW’s was of course bound in calf with his engraved bookplate in it). It was not easy reading, and quite melancholy, but I have never regretted it.

Both Peter and Harriet were fond of Kai Lung, a character invented by Ernest Bramah, who would nowadays be accused of cultural appropriation. Kai Lung is an itinerant Chinese story-teller, who makes amusing and possibly wise remarks in the course of his activities. Wikipedia says these books have never been out of print, but I can tell you they were very difficult to find when I was looking for them. I eventually nabbed a 2ndhand copy of Kai Lung Unrolls his Mat, and found it fitfully amusing: I didn’t try to find any more. Bramah also wrote stories about Max Carrados, the blind detective – I am always convinced he was one of the sleuths parodied in Agatha Christie’s Partners in Crime, and I am always wrong.

Anyway, the real point here was that Lord Peter says to Harriet (this is Strong Poison, she is in jail) “And if you can quote Kai Lung, we should certainly get on together.”

Obviously what I actually wanted was a boyfriend who would be impressed by my general literary abilities.

Lord Peter’s mother is reading an AJ Cronin book in Busman’s Honeymoon, but not enjoying it. That didn’t tempt me to read it, but you can find more on Cronin here.

Antonia Forest – the children’s/YA author who inspires fanatical devotion among her fans, and is almost completely unknown elsewhere -  is responsible for many a literary excursion. For years after I read End of Term, I was longing to find a ghost story mentioned there, And a Perle in the Middes by Eleanor Farjeon. It took the coming of the internet to enable me to track it down and read it: Forest doesn't name the author, and it is a short story in a book with another name. Only Google could help, I had to wait for it to be invented. It is one of the most charming stories you could ever read, and deals with the ever-fascinating phenomenon of Boy Bishops. You can read a lot more about all this in a blogpost here.

Forest was forever most splendidly telling you what the characters read. She set me off onto the Mask of Apollo by Mary Renault – an all-time favourite, one of those books I read every 5 years or so: included in blogpost on another book here.

She also mentioned books that I had already read, eg blog favourite Brat Farrar, which made me quite proud, though I did worry that I was too much like Ginty, when we all wanted to be her sister Nicola.

Just look at this priceless exchange between the excellent Nicola, and the handsome boy-next-door, Patrick, in the 1976 Attic Term:

‘[there’s] A couple of books I meant to lend Ginty – would you mind taking them back with you?’

Nicola took the books he was holding out, glancing instinctively at the titles: one was Mediaeval Latin Lyrics, the other, three paper-backs, a translation of Dante—a name she knew, vaguely, from Virgil lessons—by—how most peculiar !—the same person who wrote Lord Peter Wimsey. . . . “Go hon!” thought Nicola sceptically at her sister Ginty, for this was not at all the sort of thing Ginty read, left to herself. What Gin liked were thrillers and grown-up novels like The Constant Nymph . . . she must have been doing a massive showoff to Patrick to have borrowed these. ...

(I said before: ‘This should place the book [ie Constant Nymph] exactly even if you haven’t read it.’)

 

Mediaeval Latin Lyrics is a wonderful, much-loved book round here: I’m not sure if I read it because of Forest, but it would have been in my head.

Now Margaret Kennedy’s The Constant Nymph (like Lord Peter Wimsey) is mentioned in many other books – I have featured it several times on the blog and did a whole post called ‘Constant Nymph in Popular Culture’, follow-up to a previous list of mentions. I certainly wanted to read the book a long time before I got hold of it – but I think because of  Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love (endless posts). Here the cousins tease Fanny with it, predicting all kinds of trouble for a forthcoming marriage: ‘soon I was dying at a Brussels boarding-house, in the arms of Aunt Emily’s husband.’

And of course – this is very circular – Constant Nymph features in Sayers’ The Nine Tailors : young Hilary Thorpe wants to write: ‘I’ll write novels. Best sellers. The sort that everybody goes potty over. Not just bosh ones, but like The Constant Nymph.’

Another much-mentioned author is Charlotte M Yonge, and it was frequent references to The Daisy Chain in other books that made me eventually seek it out: again I had to do a whole post on her ubiquity, Charlotte M Yonge Out in the World. There I also mention ‘The Heir Of Redclyffe’,  known to generations of young women as ‘the book that made Jo March cry’ in  Little Women.  Jo also enjoyed The Vicar of Wakefield, as featured on the blog very recently.

 

I read The Young Visiters by Daisy Ashford because it is mentioned in Josephine Tey’s Miss Pym Disposes. (a great blog favourite and mentioned all over the place , and yes it took me to the Edgar Awards in NY). One character lends it to another as a familiar favourite, and both of them are snooty about a woman who didn’t appreciate it. (Very Tey-ish, she has an opinion on everything). The book did make me smile, as promised by Miss Pym.

This is a long post, and getting very circular! I keep going round the same authors (I haven't at all finished with Antonia Forest - the Brontes for those in the know about Peter's Room...). In my life there have been many others. But I’ll end it there for now, and hope for some responses from readers, and we can do another post…