{"id":28,"date":"2009-12-19T17:37:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-19T17:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookblog.salticid.com\/?p=28"},"modified":"2017-06-05T22:48:18","modified_gmt":"2017-06-05T22:48:18","slug":"frances-hodgson-burnett-kick-minor-works","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2009\/12\/frances-hodgson-burnett-kick-minor-works\/","title":{"rendered":"Frances Hodgson Burnett kick – minor works"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now that Project Gutenberg offers epub format, and the Sony Reader is switching over to it, I’m downloading stuff like crazy. One click from Google Books, too! I have both a PRS-505 (thanks, Boyce!), which I’m using now, and a PRS-500, which is off at the Sony factory being updated to use epub<\/a> (500 owners, don’t miss your chance!).<\/p>\n

My first catch-up has been Frances Hodgson Burnett, one of my favorite authors. I picked up everything in PG and Google Books, finding some stories, novels, and novellas I’ve never read. Here are some not-very-good ones:<\/p>\n

The White People<\/i><\/a> – 1920. Burnett did write some great stuff late in life (Robin<\/a><\/i>, one of my favorites, is 1922), but this is almost dreck. A little girl sees ghosts but doesn’t know that’s what they are until she grows up. Burnett’s indulging her woo-woo leanings but not providing any compensating character development. I can read T. Tembarom<\/a><\/i> every year but I’d never pick this up again.<\/p>\n

Theo: A Sprightly Love Story<\/a><\/i> – 1877. Not close to dreck but not good either, from the other end of her career (yet I loved 1873’s Vagabondia, which I’ll cover in a separate post). A poor girl is brought to London by a wealthy aunt, falls in love with a man who’s engaged to be married, pines away until everyone is noble & self-sacrificing. Burnett sure knows how to work the cliched situations, but at least these characters have a little more dimension.<\/p>\n

Lodusky<\/a><\/i> – 1877. Burnett’s narrative bag o’ tricks includes having two protagonists, an unreflective “uncouth” character (rural or blue collar\/spontaneous and natural) and a sophisticated observer (citified and cultured\/buttoned up and inhibited). Here there are three: the title character, a backwoods siren; a middle-aged female writer; and the writer’s love interest, an artist who’s fatally fascinated by the beautiful-but-evil temptress. Crossing class lines never works out in FHB stories. Lots of bad southern dialect, although not as incomprehensible as some 19th-century attempts can be.<\/p>\n

In the Closed Room<\/a><\/i> – 1904. Another mystical the-afterlife-is-wonderful story with a live child playing with a ghost child, but more fleshed out than The White People<\/i>. Like that one, it’s full of italics (late Burnett lurvs<\/i> italics) which the early PG texts unfortunately rendered in CAPS, which leaves a very WEIRD impression.<\/p>\n

Esmeralda<\/a><\/i> – 1877. This time it’s a sophisticated couple (French, teacher and artist) who are observers of an uncouth American couple: “Esmeraldy” and Wash, North Carolinians separated by E’s social climbing nouveau-riche mother. Mother has her heart set on a “Markis” for her daughter. Double pining–Wash follows the family to Paris and almost dies of starvation before the French couple operate the mechane<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Le Monsieur de la Petite Dame”<\/a> – 1877. A noble husband tries to sacrifice himself for his young American wife, pining for another. Set in Pari, sprinkled with “Pouf!<\/i>” and “Mon Dieu!<\/i>” in lieu of dialect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now that Project Gutenberg offers epub format, and the Sony Reader is switching over to it, I’m downloading stuff like crazy. One click from Google Books, too! I have both a PRS-505 (thanks, Boyce!), which I’m using now, and a PRS-500, which is off at the Sony factory being updated to use epub (500 owners, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":316,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions\/316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}