Please read this note in its entirety: This is a private group, mainly to keep out Lurkers, Tittlebats, Boojums and Snarks. If you’d like to join, please do not send a message to the "Group Administrator". Instead, use the Shelfari "Search Members" function to seek out my housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers. Leave your card and a letter of introduction with her, explaining why you wish to gambol amongst us and what you’d bring to the conversation in terms of your obsession with all literary things Angl-ish. She's a bit of a cold fish but she'll see I get the message.
Much Prized: Participation in our Group Reads, the ability to write a coherent sentence, a sense of humour, an appetite for stimulating intercourse and a deep and abiding love for British literature. The possession of a ridiculous British alias is much admired.
Much Frowned Upon: Lurking. All those found guilty of Lurking will be expunged once a year using the most shocking medieval methods.
A Message from The Most Hon. The Marquess of Manleigh:“I must ask anyone entering the house never to contradict me or differ from me in any way, as it interferes with the functioning of the gastric juices and prevents my sleeping at night.” -- Posted at the entrance of Renishaw Hall, home of Sir George Reresby Sitwell
Dear Besotted Reader of British Literature,
Allow me to introduce you to our little circle, an oasis for those of you out there who suspect you’ve been born in the wrong country. You pale, lost souls who wish you could pepper your prose with spellings like “civilised” and “sense of humour” without eliciting raised eyebrows. You who stare at the clock wistfully at half-past four and bemoan the fact that no steaming pot of tea and scrummy comestibles are nigh. You know who you are. You find yourself spending inordinate amounts of time reading the Brontës, Austen, Dickens, Eliot, Woolf, Waugh, Mitford, Wodehouse and basically any other writer with a British accent. You curse fate because you weren’t a member of the Bloomsbury group. To your chagrin, you’ve never found a body in your library. You long to find others of your ilk, soul-mates with whom you can prattle on about British literature, poetry, cinema and telly without receiving blank stares in return. My dears, you are not alone.
Step into the drawing room and tell us all about it. Would you like one lump, or two?
Yours cordially,
Sir Terence ("Tinky") Egbert Ethelred Edward George Kitty Carlisle, KQHB
1st Marquess of Manleigh, 14th Viscount Manleigh and Knight of the Queen's Handbag
Manleigh Hall, Studleigh-Under-Dureth, Sussex
Upcoming Group Reads:Hercule Poirot's Christmas by Agatha Christie (Discussion begins 4 January)
Current Group Read:Persuasion by Jane Austen (Discussion begins 1 December)
The Chronicles of Clovis by Saki (H. H. Munro)
Our Group Reads (To Date)The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham
The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
Scoop by Evelyn Waugh
A Far Cry From Kensington by Muriel Spark
Atonement by Ian McEwan (Runner-Up, Our Favourite Group Read 2008)
On Beauty by Zadie Smith
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole
Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (Our Favourite Group Read, 2008)
Villette by Charlotte Brontë
Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers
My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier
Mapp and Lucia by E. F. Benson
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (giving a nod to the Commonwealth)
Amsterdam by Ian McEwan
The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony in Eight Fits by Lewis Carroll
King Lear by William Shakespeare
Twelfth Night, Or What You Will by William Shakespeare
Reginald by Saki (H. H. Munro)
Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll
Some Tame Gazelle by Barbara Pym
Reginald in Russia by Saki (H. H. Munro)
Dracula by Bram Stoker
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