Please read this note in its entirety whilst listening to the following and sipping a nice, hot cup of Darjeeling: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiXgOQ9_-RI This is a private group, mainly to keep out tittlebats. We are a very active, enthusiastic group devoted to reading together, discussing together, and amusing each other. If you’d like to join, please do
not send a message to the "Group Administrator". Instead, please contact my housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers: http://www.shelfari.com/o1517308418. Leave your card and a letter of introduction with her, explaining why you wish to gambol amongst us and what you’d bring to our little
salon in terms of your obsession with all things Angl-ish.
Much Prized: Participation in our Group Reads, the ability to write a coherent sentence, a sense of humour, a sense of play, a good imagination, good manners, an appetite for stimulating intercourse and a deep and abiding love for British literature, arts and culture.
Much Frowned Upon: Lurking. All those found guilty of Lurking will be expunged once a year using the most shocking medieval methods. Also, Shirking. If one doesn't participate in our Group Reads, one wonders what one is doing here.
A Message from Lord Manleigh:Kind hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood." -- Tennyson
“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 raising 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 any other writer with a British accent you contrive to lay your hands upon. 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,
M.MANLEIGH, THE MARQUESS OFTerence Egbert Ethelred Edward George Kitty Carlisle, 1st Marquess, 14th Viscount Manleigh, Knight of the Queen’s Handbag (2008), recipient of the Dickens Cross (2011) and Knight Grand Cross of the Most Literate Order of Anglophiles (2010). Only son of Egbert Edward George Carlisle, 13th Viscount, and Trixie Carlisle
née Sidebotham (dec.). Nephew to Hecuba Villiers-Stoat, Marchioness of Stoat, and Dame Dido Courtland, GBE, best-selling authoress. M cr 2009; V sf 1974. Educated at St Rawberry's, Eton, and Magdalen College, Oxford. President of the Board of Directors and Trustee, Saint Indigestia’s Lunatic Asylum; President of the Board of Directors and Trustee, The Studleigh Seminary; Member, The Virgin Queen Society, Oxford; Secretary, The Vermicelli Club. Author and Editor,
The Essential Book of Manleigh Verse. Unmarried and without issue. Of Manleigh Hall near the village of Manleigh-under-Dureth in the County of East Anglophilia, and Carlisle House, Mayfair. Kindly direct all correspondence c/o Messrs. Choake, Throttle and Bleede, Solicitors, 64 Chancery Lane, City of London.
A Word About Manleigh HallManleigh Hall, which sits on 10,000 unspoiled acres in East Anglophilia, is the country seat of Terence Carlisle, 1st Marquess of Manleigh, and has been home to the Carlisle family for over four hundred years. The present house was commissioned in 1791 by Ethelred Carlisle, 9th Viscount Manleigh, and designed by Sir Pericles Gobsmack in the so-called Gothibethan style. It is considered one of the most vulgar English houses in existence. The parkland, designed by the infamous “Incompetency” Brown, contains a primate zoo, a maze, a prison tower, a Gothic chapel (built in 1962), a divinity school (Studleigh Seminary), a private psychiatric hospital (Saint Indigestia's Lunatic Asylum), and a flock of the most blood-thirsty swans in Great Britain. The house oozes fine art, fine books, fine furniture, fine food, youthful clergy and the occasional tittlebat. The house is open to the public on Thursdays from 10:30 a.m. to 10:45 a.m. Visitors to the Hall should not miss a trip to the nearby village of Manleigh-Under-Dureth, which boasts a particularly insignificant Norman-era church, Saint Indigestia's, and an Elizabethan inn, The Cock and Tittlebat, where uncomfortable room and unappetising board may be found at exhorbitant prices.
Membership (in order of Anglophilic Precedence)“Brenda”
The Marquess of Manleigh, KQHB
The Lady Beauwhistle
Sir Magnus Ramping-Fumitory, Bart.
Lt. Dame Constance Oxford-Whapdoodle, DC, BC, DCA, RN (ret)
Dame Daisy Barksby-Pryce, BC, GCA, RAC
Miss Agnes Dei, BC, CA, CAC, Shopgirl
Lady Hermione ffotheringhay-ffeatherstonehaugh, DCA, RAC
Dame Margaret Salisbury, DCA, DBE
The Countess of Langley, CA
Lady Clementina ffinch-ffarowmore, CA, DAM
Lady Louisa van der Luyden, OA, CAC
The Hon. Chloë Cavendish, MA, RAC, WA
Quentin Heath, Esq., MA, RAC
Lady Argentum de Flowered, RAC, CAC
Lady Anne Smythe-Holcolmbe, DAM
The Earl of Dagenham, CAM
Miss R. Eglantina Chittlethwaite, WA
Ms. Trilby Dalloway-Halcombe, WA
Edward Langston, Esq., WA
The Hon. Emily Vivien Clementine Ogilvy-Milner, RAC, SD
Captain Sir Roderick Prichard Williams, RN (Ret), CAC, SD
Mrs. P. E. Dalrymple-Jones, CAM, SD
Lady Aisley Somerfield-Hunt, SD
Lady Lucy Hampton Wentworth, SD
Mrs. Prudence Garel-Croft, SD
Horace Pendlebury-Davenport, Esq., SD
Mrs. Elizabeth Manchester
Auxiliary Members:
The Marchioness of Stoat
Dame Dido Courtland, GBE
Sir Jocelyn Grope, KBE
Sir Esmé Bassington-Bassington, KBE
Sir Beverly Frye, MD FRCPsych
Percival Arbuthnot, OBE
J. Basil Fitzwilliam, MBE
Neville Psmith, Esq.
The Rev. Isaiah Sturgeon
Gerald Antinous-Jones
Mrs. Danvers
Nanny Smallbits
Nurse Carrion-Fowles
Plum Hawkins
Upcoming Group Reads:Justine by Lawrence Durrell (Discussion Begins 1 July)
Current Group Reads:Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope (Our Victorian Summer Serial Read; Discussions Begin the First Saturday in June)
The Best Poems of the English Language (British Selections Only, of course), ed., Harold Bloom (Ongoing Poem of the Week Feature)
Our Group Reads (To Date)2008The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club 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
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)
2009Villette by Charlotte Brontë (Our Favourite Group Read, 2009)
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 (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
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
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Hercule Poirot's Christmas by Agatha Christie
2010Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
Private Lives by Noël Coward
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
The Mousetrap by Agatha Christie
Love's Impudence by Dido Courtland
The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy (Our Favourite Group Read, 2010)
Knots and Crosses by Ian Rankin
Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
The Chronicles of Clovis by Saki
The Code of the Woosters by P. G. Wodehouse
The History Boys by Alan Bennett
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
Blithe Spirit by Noël Coward
The Monk: A Romance by Matthew Lewis
Lady Windermere’s Fan by Oscar Wilde
Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
2011The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emma Orczy
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke (tie; Our Favourite Group Read, 2011)
The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene
Beasts and Super-Beasts by Saki
King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard
Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth & Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay
A Passage to India by E. M. Forster (tie; Our Favourite Group Read, 2011)
The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham
The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens
The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh
The Virginians by William Makepeace Thackeray
Piccadilly Jim by P. G. Wodehouse
2012The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
The Toys of Peace by Saki
The British Museum is Falling Down by David Lodge
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Personal History of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (Our Favourite Group Read, 2012)
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
A Shropshire Lad by A. E. Housman
A Pelican at Blandings by P. G. Wodehouse
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
2013The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
Excellent Women by Barbara Pym
The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch
Possession: A Romance by A. S. Byatt
« less
