Thursday, January 7, 2010

Serial Readers Discuss 'Wives and Daughters'

My friend Serial Susan writes a blog called Serial Readers. This is an excellent place to engage in an on-going web-based book group, with guidance from a scholar. Susan David Bernstein’s (English) research and teaching focus (at the University of Wisconsin Madison) is on Victorian literature and culture, nineteenth-century transatlantic literature, as well as feminist theory and women’s writing. She's also co-taught a course on Darwin, but more on that another day.

The blog features chapter-by-chapter entries, calling attention to themes and interesting bits of the current book. Comments come from other dedicated readers. You can jump in back where the entries for a particular book began, and hasten to catch up.



Right now the serial readers are immersed in Wives and Daughters, a wonderful novel (or "every-day story") by Elizabeth Gaskell, first published in the Cornhill Magazine from August 1864 to January 1866. When Mrs. Gaskell died suddenly in 1865, the book was incomplete; the last section was written by Frederick Greenwood. The story revolves around Molly Gibson, only daughter of a widowed doctor living in a provincial English town in the 1830s.

There's a link at Serial Readers to a piece about web-based novels, or wovels. Making me wonder, will that irksome-yet-clever word also catch on?

6 comments:

Daughter Number Three said...

Sounds interesting. (And I mean that in the true sense, not the Minnesota sense.) Thanks!

Serial Susan said...

Thanks for blogging on my "Serial Readers"! If you go to "Serial Readers" in the next few weeks (Jan. 2010), you can cast a vote (or multiple votes) for our next selection--short stories by either George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, or Wilkie Collins. So please vote and vote often! Thanks again, Elenabella!

elena said...

I'm tempted to do voter overload on all three of those options...but my very favorite would be Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell. What did you think of the PBS version?

Lyle Daggett said...

Wovels? Hmm hmm hmmm...

Let's not even get started on woetry.

Serial Susan said...

I also wanted to mention that there's a character in this novel (Roger Hamley) based on the young Charles Darwin, who was a distant cousin of Gaskell's! Please do vote early and vote often by paging to the bottom of "Serial Readers." thanks!

elena said...

Ah yes, I know Roger well...fell for him myself during my first pass through the book.

But woetry..there's potential there, I'm afraid...