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Anglophiles Anonymous
550 books / 73 members / 6040 posts
Please note: This is a private group, mainly to keep out lurkers and tittlebats. If you’d like to join, please do not email the group administrator. Instead, do leave your card with Mrs. Danvers, along with a note on her page, explaining why you’d like to gambol amongst us and what you’d bring to the conversation in terms of your obsession with all literary things Angl-ish.
Much Prized: The ability to write a coherent sentence and a deep love of British Literature. The possession of a ridiculous British alias is much admired.
Much Frowned Upon: Lurking.
Cordially yours,
Terence ("Tinky") Egbert Ethelred Edward George Kitty Carlisle
1st Marquess of Manleigh, KQHB
Manleigh Hall, Studleigh-Under-Dureth, Sussex
Dear Besotted Reader of British Literature:
Do you feel as if you’ve been born in the wrong country? Are your favorite initials BBC? Do you wish you could pepper your prose with spellings like “sympathise” and “sense of humour” without eliciting raised eyebrows? Does a novel without a tea drinking scene seem like a rough draft to you? Do you get choked up thinking about Edward and Mrs. Simpson? Are your favorite authors of the right sort? Are you “U”? Do you go to the “loo?” Do you own a china tea set, and use it? Have you ever made and eaten a cucumber sandwich? Are you unphased when you come across a man named “Evelyn”? Do you long to have a vast family estate you’re forced to rent out to self-catering travelers because of the bloody Inland Revenue? Do you love Austen, Dickens, Eliot, Waugh, Pym, Mitford, Wodehouse, Benson, and basically any other writer with a British accent? Do you curse the fact that you weren't a member of the Bloomsbury Group? Or that you've never found a body in your library?
Step into the drawing room and tell us all about it. Would you like one lump, or two?
Our Favourite Novels
To give you an idea of our prevailing tastes, here are the results of our recent Favourite British Novels contest:
1. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
2. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
3. Rebecca by Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning, DBE
4. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
5. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Runners Up:
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Atonement by Ian McEwan, CBE, FRSA, FRSL
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien, CBE
Middlemarch by George Eliot
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, DL
Our Favorite Authors
Charlotte Bronte
Jane Austen
Charles Dickens, FRSA
Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning, DBE
E. M. Forster, CH, OM
Thomas Hardy, OM
Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller, Lady Mallowan, DBE, a.k.a. Agatha Christie
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Emily Bronte
George Eliot
Ian McEwan, CBE, FRSA, FRSL
J. R. R. Tolkien, CBE
Our Favourite Contemporary Novels
1. Atonement by Ian McEwan, CBE, FRSA, FRSL
2. Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
3. Tied: Possession by Dame Antonia Susan Duffy, DBE, a.k.a. A. S. Byatt and Bridget Jones' Diary by Helen Fielding
4. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Dame Muriel Spark, DBE
5. Watership Down by Richard Adams
Runners Up:
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J. K. Rowling, OBE
The Spy Who Came In From the Cold by John le Carre
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, CC
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
Our Favourite Authors Among the Living
Ian McEwan, CBE, FRSA, FRSL
Kazuo Ishiguro
J. K. Rowling, OBE
Dame Antonia Susan Duffy, DBE, a.k.a. A. S. Byatt
Helen Fielding
Margaret Atwood, CC (speaking up for Canada)
Richard Adams
Philippa Gregory
J. M. Coetzee (speaking up for Australia)
Baroness James of Holland Park, OBE, FRSA, FRSL, a.k.a. P. D. James
Zadie Smith
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