For Anne Fans

By -
Anne's Anthology: Following the Footnote Trail, ed. Margie Gray

I know you're out there.  You always spell Anne with an 'e,' you look for kindred spirits, Gilbert is your dream boy, and you would happily go to Prince Edward Island on a vacation.  Possibly you even insisted on a dress with puffed sleeves when you were 14, if you are old enough to have lived through the 80's.

In honor of the Victorian Celebration, I thought I'd let you know about a book just for Anne-addicts.  Anne's Anthology is a collection of poetry that was popular in the Victorian era--every piece that was quoted or referenced in Anne of Green Gables, all gathered into one very large book, complete with where the reference is found.  This is not a collection of Victorian poetry that has remained popular for the last century or so or been judged important; it's a collection of what Victorians themselves liked, which I think makes a difference.

It's not a terribly well-known book.  It's one that homeschoolers use, and if you have to own a copy, you'd probably be better off ordering it from a homeschool supplier than from Amazon.  I got it from Rainbow Resource myself, and I've enjoyed having it.  I've read nearly all of it since I bought it a few years ago.

However I did not actually read the entire 700-page book this week.  I was looking through it last night and read some of the poems, like "The Vision of Sir Launfal," "Curfew Shall Not Ring Tonight," and so on.  But I thought I'd share.


Comments

  1. Adriana@ClassicalQuestJune 23, 2012 at 9:22 AM

    Sounds interesting. I was absolutely obsessed with all things "Anne" at age 14. My best friend and I memorized The "Lady of Shallot" and "The Highwayman". Love to see young people today who are into the wonderful new (usually BBC) period dramas -- such a great introduction to the classics!

    ReplyDelete
  2. CassandraJune 23, 2012 at 10:12 AM

    I have somehow managed not to read Anne of Green Gables for the first (almost) sixteen years of my life, but I came across this post today when I was on the train to the city and spontaneously decided to get a copy of it. I hope it lives up to my expectations :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. JeanJune 23, 2012 at 3:58 PM

    Ha! I hope you like it. It helps if you're a teeny bit younger and very romantic-minded. The movie made in 1987 was excellent--it still is--and produced a generation of Anne fans. It's one of the few literary movies that I think is OK to watch before reading the book, even.

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousJune 25, 2012 at 9:51 AM

    We used this for homeschool several years ago. In fact, we built an entire study around it. I have not seen much of Anne's Anthology around and was pleased to see it here. It is a marvelous book.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of...
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the s...
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he ...
Read more