Welcome to Litsy!

(1743) Fielding's fictional biography of the thief and con artist Jonathan Wild is a satire of English political life in general, and of “prime minister” Robert Walpole in particular. The running joke is that Wild (like Walpole) is a “great man”, i.e., driven to (in)famous deeds by ambition and avarice and untroubled by “vulgar” traits like honesty or loyalty. Deeply cynical -- misanthropic, even -- but also funny and uncomfortably relevant.

Thank you, everyone, for lowering my expectations - I enjoyed this a lot. I loved straight talking Ivy with her witchy connection to wild things (including budding artistic geniuses) and the skewering of the “respectable” for their rigid adherence to social class and accepted behaviour. The final chapter was very satisfying, letting us know how things turned out for everyone. A great finish to our reading year with #FurrowedMiddlebrowClub.

I ended up enjoying this book, although not all the characters were likeable (and I certainly wouldn‘t want to live in Ivy‘s cottage!) This vintage dust jacket is not at all how I picture a woman who‘s had three husbands and could have a fourth if she chose. 🤣

I was also interested to see that one of my favorite authors, Elizabeth Goudge, was a fan of Stella Gibbons. Next I‘m going to try Cold Comfort Farm.

#FurrowedMiddleBrowClub

I loved the charming scenes in Ivy‘s cottage, so cozy and sweet, despite the 🪳🪳🪳. The novel would have been better had it focused on Ivy as healer and hadn‘t spun out and around too many other threads that weren‘t very engaging.

I‘m not one for gushing sentimentality, but the final scene with Mike was 😭. #FurrowedMiddlebrowClub

P.S. I‘m still in denial about the season. 🫣

(1742) Fielding's follow-up to Shamela continues his critique of Pamela. It's a gender-swapped comedy in which Pamela's brother Joseph resists his female employer's advances. Compared to Shamela, JA has more nuance, more satirical targets, and more than one joke. Of course jokes that worked for his audience often don't work for me: much of it is slapstick, some based on SA. But the humor of character, manners, and wordplay still get laughs from me

Here is our “master list” of what we‘ve read together as a group (to help out those of you who will be nominating our 2026 reads). Sorry for the small print; I threw it together quickly! 😆

#FurrowedMiddlebrowClub

It is a trite but true Observation, that Examples work more forcibly on the Mind than Precepts: And if this be just in what is odious and blameable, it is more strongly so in what is amiable and praise-worthy.

#FirstLineFridays
@ShyBookOwl

I started this with a “four chapters a day“ plan and then read it straight through so I was definitely engaged. Set in the 30s, it started out with two interesting characters: Ivy, a thrice-widowed charwoman with an incredibly strong sense of self, and poet Helen, who's kind of lost herself in an affair with a man who won't marry her.

cont.

#FurrowedMiddlebrowClub
#37by37

A very soft pick. It was a bit of a meandering hodgepodge. Taciturn, middle aged, and slightly witchy charwoman, Ivy Gover, inherits her uncle cottage outside the village of Nethersham in 1930 or so. There are a few village romances, a poignant foster son situation, a mean girl, class consciousness and class clashes. And then there‘s an epilogue 40 years later. It felt a little unfinished.

I was really enjoying this, but halfway though it suddenly started focusing on all these extraneous characters. I'm baffled.

#FurrowedMiddlebrowClub