“Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents”, grumbles Jo March in Little Women.
At this time of year our minds turn to Christmas shopping and which books we should be buying for family and friends. If you have enjoyed my newsletters this year, I would be thrilled if you would consider showing your appreciation by shopping from my website.
You might enjoy Brief Encounters: Literary Travellers in Australia which will tell you fascinating stories of what 11 different authors saw and did while in this country. I was thrilled to hear recently that my book Happily Ever After: Celebrating Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice had given one woman a whole new appreciation of that novel, and A Dance with Jane Austen is gorgeously illustrated and will teach you about the etiquette, dress, suppers and music in the balls in Austen’s novels. Claire Tomalin, one of the world’s top biographers, kindly described my book Jane Austen and Crime as “essential reading for every Janeite”. I have two audio CDs to relieve the tedium of long drives – Finding Katherine Mansfield (about New Zealand’s greatest writer) and Poetry to Fill a Room (with me reading favourite poems such as The Lady of Shalott, The Highwayman, The Listeners, Ozymandias etc).
Signed copies of my books are available on request, and all prices include postage. Happy shopping and thanks for showing me that you get pleasure from my literary notes.
Brief Encounters: Literary Travellers in Australia 1836-1939
Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, many distinguished writers made the long and arduous voyage across the seas to Australia.
Click here to purchase
A Dance with Jane Austen
Jane Austen loved to put on her satin slippers with shoe-roses, her white gloves and muslin gown, and go off for an evening of fun.
Click here to purchase
Happily Ever After: Celebrating Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice
Find out how Pride and Prejudice first came to be written, the struggle to get it published and what the first reactions of readers were like.
Click here to purchase
Jane Austen and Crime
Discover the darker side of Jane Austen! Find out what Jane Austen knew of crimes and where she describes them.
Click here to purchase
Georgette Heyer: Complete to a Shade
It has been said that “with a Georgette Heyer book you don’t buy a book, you buy a world. If it suits you, you settle down forever.”
Click here to purchase
Finding Katherine Mansfield – Audio CD
Katherine Mansfield’s life was a short one, but in her 34 years she wrote some of the finest short stories in English.
Click here to purchase
Poetry To Fill A Room – Audio CD
English novelist Arnold Bennett once said that “if there was one word that could clear a public place… quicker than any other, that word was poetry”.
Click here to purchase
Do you enjoy giving books at Christmas gifts? I’d love to hear about your book gift giving.
Sally King
I have just finished reading Wild Island – a novel of Jane Eyre and Van Diemen’s Land by Jennifer Livett. I was keen to read this novel, Jane Eyre being my favourite go – to book, and Jennifer being a university lecturer I recall with esteem. The novel is set both in Hobart and on the Tasman Peninsula, places that contain very special memories for me. I loved gaining a perspective of Tasmania in the 1800s through the seamless mix of real historical characters and events, and delightful storytelling. Maybe the ease with which I could identify with place added to my enjoyment of this novel, yet I am sure Bronte readers would also love the read!
Susannah Fullerton
The book is on my list of books to read, so thanks for letting me know how much you enjoyed it, Sally. It has had good reviews.