Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski - aka Joseph Conrad

   In October 1874, Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, aged sixteen, left  Kraków by train for Marseilles. After three years of sailing from the French port, he joined the British steamer Mavis. From 1878 to January 1894, he voyaged with the British Merchant Marine. From that point onwards, Joseph Conrad pursued a career as an author. In the 1860s/1870s, much of Africa remained a blank canvas to Europeans. Over the next few decades, it was 'opened up' by Europeans - missionaries, 'explorers', traders and armies. It is writ large in History books that this developed into a 'Scramble for Africa'. V. G. Kiernan (The Lords of Humankind, 1969) has written, Africa in this period became very truly a Dark Continent, but its darkness was one the invaders brought with them, the sombre shadow of the white man.

This is the context of Conrad's own journey to the Congo, starting with an interview in Brussels by the Société Anonyme Belge pour le Commerce du Haut-Congo; embarkation from Bordeaux in May; arrival at Boma, the seat of the Belgian Congolese Government in June; further overland trekking to Kinshasa; and then travelling the 1,000 miles to Stanley Falls. Apparently, he did not feel a sense of excitement or achievement; instead a great melancholy descended on him. His boyhood daydreams had been befouled by the actualities of H. M. Stanley and the Congo Free State. This is the context for one of the books he is best remembered for - Heart of Darkness.

Penguin Books - 1999

(part of a Millennium box set)

I must have bought a Penguin copy of the book back in the 1990s. Having just got through André Gide and Albert Camus (see earlier Blogs), I thought I would continue a Covid-19 Misery Fest, by re-reading the novel. The  Penguin printing was diabolical! No margins worth speaking of and small, dark print. Darkness indeed. So, serendipity-like, on a usual pop-in to the Oxfam bookshop in Derby, there awaiting me was a much more reader-friendly edition (see above). 

Now, the confession. I had to read the book, short as it is (a mere 110 pages) in three 'bites'. Why? it bored rather than depressed me - heresy!  I found the writing 'cold' (a strange word to use, I know). I could summon up little sympathy for any of the characters: Marlow chuntered slowly on, like the big river he was on; Kurtz just became a pain, first in reputation, then in the flesh. More interesting were the African woman, with the helmeted head and tawny cheeks...the barbarous and superb woman, who was the only native not to flinch at the screech of the boat's whistle; and the Intended (of Kurtz), who receives Marlow in her lofty drawing room, coming forward, all in black, with a pale head, floating towards me in the dusk.

By his later years, Conrad was, apparently, set fast in his finicky ways, a stickler for spotless boots, prissy neckties, starched collars, regular mealtimes, and punctilious with ladies and tradespeople. This is how his second son, John, remembered his father (who was 48 when he was born). He got angry with everybody: wife, children, photographers, cricket lovers, eaters of porridge ("damned fish glue"). Oh, dear, he would not be a conducive dinner-companion and would be a long way down my list of Authors I would like to have met!  And yet, I must have had my usual spasm of buying a batch of his works and Christine taught The Secret Agent to her students. The ones in my collection are below.

1911 - Penguin reprint 1966     1898 - Penguin reprint 1976

1897 - Penguin reprint 1977     1904 - Penguin reprint 1978

1907 - Penguin reprint 1980     1913 - Penguin reprint 1975

A. N. Wilson (an author I much admire), headed one of his End Columns (3rd September 2001) on The continuing appeal of Conrad's moral universe. He wrote: One of the happiest purchases I ever made was a complete edition of Conrad - £10 for the pristine set...How glad I am to have come to an appreciation of Conrad in advanced middle age! Conrad's great themes, of moral failure, of disappointment not with life but with oneself, are more fully appreciated later in life. Well, not by this 'oldie'. Purblind I probably am; lacking in a certain critical faculty, certainly. But I doubt I will return to Conrad - so many other authors to enjoy, and occasionally endure. I will go back to Camus, possibly even Gide, to top up on my misery quota.  I am much more like to watch a repeat of Albert Hitchcock's 1936 film Sabotage rather than Conrad's The Secret Agent. Sorry, Józef .

Ken Follett's latest blockbuster

 I have just finished reading the fourth of Ken Follett's Kingsbridge series. Although Follett has written over twenty other novels, including Eye of the Needle, which became an International Bestseller (which book nowadays doesn't have that boast on its front cover?), he is probably best known for The Pillars of the Earth, which burst on the scene as long ago as 1989. I didn't read it until many years later, when I picked it up for £4 in Michael's Moon's wonderful book emporium in Whitehaven. I thought it was a bargain then and I feel I still do.

First edition - Macmillan 1989

I seem to remember I bought the book because I was in a frenzy of collecting novels on The Anarchy.

The blurb on the front flyleaf of the dust wrapper supported my purchase. The book takes the reader back to a turbulent era of intrigue and treachery - a time of civil war, famine, religious strife, and battles over royal succession. The cast of characters included Tom, the master builder; Aliena, the noblewoman; Philip, the prior of Kingsbridge; Jack, the artist in stone; and Ellen, the woman from the forest. As a spoiler, I would like to state here that I agree with some of the Amazon reviewers about the latest in the series - give or take, the cast is very, almost too, similar.

                      First edition - Macmillan 2007        First edition - Macmillan 2017

Eighteen years later, Follett followed up his bestseller with another Kingsbridge story - World Without End - this time set in 1327. It is a world dominated by regicide, war with the French, the Black Death and, as always with Follett, the cruelties of religion and churchmen. As one reviewer, when the book came out, wittily wrote: Caris, the principal female character, is a freethinker, proto-Protestant, pioneering medical mind, fab shag, and creator of the three-field system. And surely a candidate for the stake, if a real historical perspective came into play. 

I don't remember as much about the third book, A Column of Fire, which runs from the very end of Mary Tudor's reign into that of James I. Certainly good old 'hatred' is to the fore again, as are the ancient stones of Kingsbridge Cathedral. Tolerance and compromise wage battle against the tyrants who would impose their ideas on everyone else - no matter the cost. Are we in 1558 or in 2020? 

First edition - Macmillan 2020

   

 I once called a friend's book a 'good doorstop' and immediately felt ashamed of myself. 'Blockbuster' or 'heavyweight' is much politer. Follett's large cast of characters and extended time-scale means that his stories will not come in quickly. Pillars of the Earth was 806 pages;, World Without End seemed to result in a Book Without End, weighing in at 1111 pages; A Column of Fire was a mere 746 pages; whilst his latest beats Pillars with 817 pages. I read one reviewer who said they had read the latter in one sitting - don't they sleep or eat?

The negatives about these books are easy to quantify. They are too long; judicious pruning would have helped greatly. The main characters are always irredeemably bad or awfully good. The dialogue too often tips into modern slang/anachronistic wordplay or cod-medieval. The sex scenes are too often gratuitous and laboured (Follett seems to have a fixation about pubic hair). And yet, I quite enjoyed them. Follett clearly does his research and, apart from the above comments, he seems at ease in the period he is writing about.

My main gripe about this Prequel (there is still a gap of 129 years between the end of the The Evening and the start of The Pillars) is that at nearly every opportunity the 'bad' win. There are 817 pages. Not until page 748 do we read that one of the minor baddies, the spy-servant Agnes, has died - of 'Whore's Leprosy'; on page 764, the ale-house keeper/ferry owner baddie Dreng dies of a heart attack (trying to hit his slave girl a second time with a shovel); on page 782 Wigelm, the youngest of the three baddie brothers is killed by the long-suffering Ragna; then, the baddie-in-chief, Bishop Wynstan, the most evil of the brothers (riddled with the same 'Whore's Palsy' and having defecated in his cathedral in front of the King and other nobility on page 806) is finally stripped of his bishopric and sent to the Leper's Island to be looked after by a lesbian-inclined Mother Agatha; his side-kick Archdeacon Degbert ends up as a penniless village priest.

The goodies get their positive come-uppance only at the very end, too. Sheriff Den becomes Shiring's ealdorman; prior Aldred - who has a hankering for his own sex - becomes Bishop of King's Bridge (for most of the book named Deng's Ferry); the hero (yet another builder) Edgar returns from France  (on page 810) to unite with the long-suffering Lady Ragna - on the penultimate page - having just become Edgar of Lordsborough, thanks to her. It all happens too quickly - for both bad and good. 

It was not just the battle, Ragna reflected. Garulf's family had defied the king's rule again and again for a decade, disobeying orders and refusing to pay fines. It had seemed that they would get away with it indefinitely, but now at last their insurrection had come to an end. There was justice, after all. A pity it took such a long time coming. (my highlighting). 

One could say the same about Follett's book, as this is on pages 802-803.

Bibliophile or Bibliomaniac?

 For  many years now I have had attached to one of my study bookshelves the following quotation (from whence I know not!): The lives of Bibliomaniacs are rarely ever quaint and can be, in extremis, utterly alarming. I was reminded of it again today. I have been slowly adding details of my books to a great icloud website https://www.libib.com/library/home. Title, author[s], publisher, page totals, illustration of cover or title page and quality are all detailed. I have been slow due to the fact that I often stop to peruse a book, occasionally one I had not touched for a long time. A few, alas, I had forgotten I owned.

Today, a cutting from The Daily Telegraph (Saturday, November 22, 2008) fell out of one reference book. It was an article by that erudite journalist Christopher Howse, which started A collector has been convicted of stealing rare maps and prints that he cut out of valuable old books in the British Library in London and the Bodleian Library in Oxford. A single page he removed was valued at £30,000! Howse also went on to write about the borderline between bibliophiles and bibliomanes, between collectors and obsessives - a subject I find much more interesting! He gave a few examples of the latter breed. An amiable scholar, who died the previous year, had a house jammed with books. They were on shelves, the floor, in the kitchen - he was unable to use his stove! - and when asked if he could find a particular volume, he would reply "Within a foot or two".  Another scholar had the dream job of cataloguing books printed before 1700 in National Trust Properties. He could research and read books at any major institution. That didn't stop him cramming his home with volumes, on stairways - everywhere. I happen to have a friend whose house is similarly overrun! 

The man who popularised the word bibliomania was Thomas Dibdin, who in 1809 had published  Bibliomania or Book-madness, containing some account of the history, symptoms and cure of this fatal disease. I must look for a copy! I know my 'weakness' - it is for 'sets': Yale's English Monarchs, The New Oxford History of England, Collins' Brief Lives, Haus Publishing's British Prime Ministers, and so on. I have over 400 of the 600-odd Oxford 'World's Classics' pocket volumes, all in first editions. Once I start reading a novelist, I have to collect all his works  - the most obvious is John Buchan; but I have done the same for John Meade Falkner, Daphne du Maurier, Constance Holme, Maurice Walsh and many others. The only brake on me is cost - I have all Sir Walter Scott's works on first editions bar Waverley. I only have Stevenson's Treasure Island, because I bought it for £9! Recently, I have been after John Galt and others in the 'Blackwood' Group of early nineteenth century Scottish novelists. Before that, there was a brief stab at Mary Webb and A. E. Housman. 

And so the total mounts up, passing 8,000 not long ago. But, I don't waste money on cigarettes and only drink occasionally - that's my argument, anyway. Below are some glimpses of my Library - every book cherished as a friend. W. E. Gladstone (a hero of mine and now pathetically under attack by the moronic pond-life the western world appears to be breeding) sums up my feelings towards these friends:

Books are a delightful Society. If you go into a room filled with books, even without taking them down from their shelves, they seem to speak to you, to welcome you.

My earliest books - from aged six to before University

BEDROOM

                  John Buchan Collection                 du Maurier, Forster, Holme, Tey, Weyman

LIBRARY

Oxford World's Classics 

LIBRARY

  Meade Falkner, West Indies, Monasteries                        History, Biographies

     Castles, Travel, Ludlow, Marlborough    STUDY

Nineteenth Century Historical and Scottish Novels

Puffin and Peacock books

BACK BEDROOM

ALL BOOKS MATTER

Re-reading Albert Camus

 Having just gorged on Gide (see previous Post), I turned to Camus again, for a quick fix. I chose his The Fall (La Chute, 1956). I noticed that I had written in pencil "Swindon, October 1973" on the front fore title page. This sent me scurrying to check on my other Penguin paperbacks: also bought that day in Swindon was The Plague (La Peste, 1947). The other three have written in them "Marlborough, October 1973": The Outsider (L'Etranger, 1942), Exile and the Kingdom (L'Exil et le royaume, 1957) and A Happy Death (La Mort heureuse, published posthumously in 1971). I checked my 1973 Diary and read that it was the Autumn half-term week and I had spent the previous few days touring South Wales and the Borders, feasting on castles - Chepstow, Raglan, Grosmont, Skenfrith, Monmouth, Goodrich, Croft, Ludlow, Stokesay; then North Wales - Shrewsbury, Whittington, Denbigh, Rhuddlan, Flint and Ewloe. All in three days - oh to be young again! Back home in Marlborough, on Wednesday 31st October it reads "Up town - bought books by Camus". On Thursday 1st November: "Swindon". So my dates are wrong for those two.

                                  

                                    Swindon - Penguin, 1972                Swindon - Penguin 1972

                  Penguin, 1971                      Penguin, 1972                       Penguin, 1973 

Marlborough

The only one I can't remember reading is A Happy Death. I know I re-read the others a few years ago. So - to The Fall. Perhaps not the best novel to pick up during the debilitating Covid-19 period. If you are feeling too happy or smug, then a good antidote is Camus. I must admit I endured rather than enjoyed the re-read this time. I should have picked The Outsider (not The Plague!)

Sartre called Camus' pessimism "solar"...the philosophy of Camus is the philosophy of the absurd, and for him the absurd springs from the relation of man to the world, of his legitimate aspirations to the vanity and futility of human wishes. The conclusions which he draws from it are those of classical pessimism. The Fall is the story of Jean-Baptiste Clamence, once a successful barrister in Paris, now settled in a fogbound Amsterdam as a self-styled 'judge-penitent'. From a cosy life of self-esteem and near-adulation by others, a few events make him see through the fundamental hypocrisy of his existence. His good nature and kindnesses are merely condescension writ large. He descends into debauchery and then self-judgement. Rather like The Ancient Mariner, he collars an un-named cher compatriote who has to listen to his (rather drawn-out for me) tale. I found I had to concentrate beyond the line of enjoyment as the bon mot sentences came too thick and fast. Why are so many French writers (and films) so 'deep'? or, rather, soul-destroying? Left wing, tubercular (severely) and a compulsive womaniser, Camus is an acquired taste. I just hope that in 1972 I was in a much more receptive frame of mind. Camus once said: What interests me is knowing how we should behave, and more precisely, knowing how to behave when one does not believe in God or reason. His books reflect this ambition.

Medieval Women

 Over the past weeks, I have been dipping into a wonderfully produced book, Medieval Women, collated and introduced by Deirdre Jackson (Research Associate in the Department of Manuscripts and Printed Books at the Fitzwilliam, Cambridge University - or she was in 2015 when this book, published by the British Library, came out). It contains 200 pages packed with colourful illustrations of medieval illuminated pages from Psalters, Breviaries, Books of Hours, Chronicles and other manuscripts - a treasure trove of artistic craftsmanship that takes the breath away. Having spent the last few months gradually cataloguing my own Library, one of the facts that stands out is the incredible progress made over the last three decades in the printing (reproduction) of colour images in books such as these. All too often, one notes they are printed in the Far East - Hong Kong, Vietnam and, inevitably, the great Wen of China. It was, therefore, pleasing to see that this book was produced by Gutenberg Press in Malta. Long may it continue!

The British Library - 2015

Deirdre Jackson divides the book into seven chapters: Sexuality; Marriage; Mothers; Learning; Prayer; Literary Patronage; and Work. One of (the few!) positive aspects of getting old is that one increasingly realises how little one knows AND, thus,  how much there is still to find out and enjoy. I have a couple of books on Books of Hours - The Hastings Hours (Thames and Hudson, 1983) Eamon Duffy's Marking the Hours (Yale, 2006) - and a considerable collection on medieval women. However, Jackson's book brought together the two strands in a learnéd and fascinating way. Women who wished to have sex but couldn't were to take some cotton and musk or penny-royal oil and anoint it and pop it in the necessary channel...this both dissipates the desire and dulls the pain. To forestall 'unsuitable' attachments in convents, the Bishop of Besanҫon stipulated that nuns should sleep fully clothed in separate beds with a lamp burning all night. Hovering over all the human race, like some sort of monstrous albatross, was the Catholic Church, whose mantra appears to have been Thou shalt not, rather than Thou shall. The church attempted, usually successfully, to control all book learning and production and tales of Romance. When education was the prerogative of a relatively small elite (around whom the Church militant was wrapped) and when wives and women from the upper classes may have learned to read, but often remained illiterate, it comes as no surprise at the level of religious infestation in all walks of life. 

          

                       Margaret Beauchamp and                     A Prioress instructs

                                guardian angel                                      two novices

                                  c. 1430-1440                                        c. 1290-1300

I found the chapters on Learning (pp. 83-107), Prayer (pp. 109-127) and Literary Patronage (pp. 129-161) the most interesting; but the illustrations, nigh on every page, were breathtaking. The book was worth purchasing for those alone. I just wish all this new knowledge stuck in my brain a little more cohesively.

Deirdre Jackson has a splendid and uplifting final paragraph:

Whether single or married, religious or secular, women made key contributions to medieval culture. The manuscripts they left behind give us a deeper understanding of their lives and retain the power to move, captivate, puzzle and delight us. To turn the pages of a book made hundreds of years ago is like reading over the shoulder of a person who betrays no rising sense of irritation, and is, at any rate, in no position to object. Among the most personal of possessions, manuscripts are also among the most eloquent. Luxurious volumes made for privileged patrons and modest volumes alike offer us insights into a world that seems at once foreign and familiar.  Amen.

Further Thoughts on Nuns

 My 'interest' in nuns started long before I read Eileen Power's seminal (seminarial?) work. Unlike male monasteries, not many nunneries/female priories survive to any great extent ((even Lacock Abbey, in Wiltshire, has been 'transformed' into a mansion in the 16th and mid-18th centuries, although the retained cloisters are superb), so my youthful meanderings around Britain was spent amongst the ruins of castles and monkish abodes. My Tudors and Stuarts A Level course similarly concentrated on the monks at the Dissolution (as did David Knowles in his important surveys). However, on 28th October 1969, I bought Josephine Bell's Tudor Pilgrimage in the Fontana paperback edition, published the same year. The story of the nine inmates at the fictional St. Mary's Priory at Silfelde-on-Loddon, and their ejection into the turbulent world of the monstrous Henry VIII, is one that I have gone back to on several occasions. I quote from the back of the paperback: Dame Isobel, accused of treason against the King, finds herself the quarry of a witch-hunt; Dame Margery, mis-shapen and feeble-minded, stumbles upon a band of merciless tormentors; Elynor Snow, a reluctant novice, takes to the road with Thomas, the Priory gardener, posing as his wife; Elizabeth Tylney comes face to face with...a man she loved, desired - and feared. Great story - it captured me! I bought the first edition many years later.

                       

                          Geoffrey Bles - 1967                                Fontana Books - 1969

 

In my 'burst' of collecting and reading Muriel Spark novels, over twenty years ago, I purchased the first edition of her The Abbess of Crewe (1974); when I sold most of them subsequently, I retained the USA edition. I can do no better than quote Good Reads from the Internet: An elegant little fable about intrigue, corruption, and electronic surveillance...[it] is set in an English Benedictine convent. Steely and silky Abbess Alexandra (whose aristocratic tastes run to pâté, English poetry, and carpets of "amorous green") has bugged the convent, and rigged her election. But the cat gets out of the bag, and - plunged into scandal - the serene Abbess faces a Vatican inquiry. Watergate (1972-4) anyone?! I tired of Spark's later books (rather as I did of Iris Murdoch's - though The Bell now springs to mind with its convent) but I have kept this one, as well as her The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

The novel which has cast the greatest spell on me has been Sylvia Townsend Warner's The Corner that held Them (1948). It brilliantly describes the chronicles of Oby, a Benedictine convent in Eastern England in the later 14th century. The detail given to the effects of the Black Death, the fall of the convent spire, the Bishop's Visitation, an absconding nun, the squabbles, jealousies, boredoms and pleasure, is the work of sustained historical imagination. I must, I will, read this masterpiece again.

                         

                   The Viking Press - 1974                                   Chatto & Windus - 1948

Two other novels are well worth reading, even if they are very different. Florence Barclay's The White Ladies of Worcester (1917) - the story of a gallant knight, a beautiful nun and a wise bishop - is very much of a period piece and is, perhaps, not for the palates of 21st century readers; but I liked it. Joanne Harris's Holy Fools  (2003) is set in 17th century France and is a harrowing tale of witch trials, religious frenzy and regicide. Juliette's roller-coaster life, both inside and outside a convent, is graphically described. What is there not to like about a story of passion, secrets and murder - bad habits indeed! Told in the first person, one travels with Juliette along a road of trial and tribulation.

                         

                        G. P. Putnam - 1917                                         Doubleday - 2003

Finally, (so far!) two novels written much earlier. The Abbess of Shaftesbury; or the Days of John of Gaunt by Anonymous (1846), I bought just eighteen months ago. I don't think my critical tastes have declined (if they have, I don't care) but, again, I enjoyed the tale set in Shaftesbury (Shaston Abbey) and then Lyddington, Wiltshire - not far from where I used to live. It is strongly anti Roman Catholic and its superstitious and idolatrous practices and the false arguments and vain quibbles whereby those practices were defended. The heroes are an amiable and enlightened disciple of Wickliffe and illustrious martyrs, such as John Huss and Jerome of Prague. Equally fierce in its condemnation of the celibate life is Denis Diderot's The Nun (La Religieuse, 1796), which tells the story of Suzanne Simonin, forced to take the veil and who, stifled by boredom and claustrophobia, starts a lawsuit to obtain release. She falls victim to a licentious Mother Superior... I have yet to read it; can't wait!

                        

                       F & J Rivington - 1846                                       NEL - 1966

Just to show I am not entirely enslaved by the printed page, I also have a small collection of DVDs on the same topic.

 

             

                                

                              Ingrid Bergman as                                         Deborah Kerr as

                      Sister Mary Benedict - 1945                             Sister Clodagh - 1947

 

            

                              Audrey Hepburn as                                   Lilli Palmer as

                               Sister Luke - 1958                             Mother Katharine - 1960

Although Deborah Kerr and Ingrid Bergman both showed their fine acting talents in their respective films, Audrey Hepburn must always come top for me. Her story is an oft-told one - torn between her vocation and the tug of supporting a cause outside the cloister, she finally chooses the latter.

I pass over my DVDs of Sister Act (I and 2) and Nuns on the Run, to maintain a respectful approach to the cloister. However, I end on downward path. This year, I purchased The Nun (2018), fully expecting it to have some semblance to Diderot's novel. The plastic case should have forewarned me, with its graphic evil nun's face and the fact there was a Special Feature 'A New Horror Icon'. I watched maybe twenty minutes, then had to turn it off. Anyone can make a mistake. 

Eileen Power and Medieval Nunneries

 I recently bought a fine copy of Eileen Power's Medieval People in a first printing Penguin, in its dust wrapper. Published in Pelican Books in 1937 as number A19, it had a very heart-warming quotation from Charles Lamb on the title page: 'I counsel thee, shut not they heart nor thy library'. I also have a copy of the first hardback edition, published by Methuen & Co. in 1924 (alas, without a dust wrapper).

                             Penguin Books - 1937                      Methuen - 1924

 

There are six chapters, each concentrating on various aspects of social life in the Middle Ages and various classes of historical material. Power takes us on a journey through life on a medieval estate (Bodo the French peasant); Venetian trade with the East (Marco Polo and family); English monastic life (Chaucer's Madame Eglentyne); the English wool trade (Thomas Betson); and the cloth industry in East Anglia (Thomas Paycocke). I found all the stories fascinating, learning much and admiring Power's meticulous research and skilful descriptions. I had already bought and read her excellent series of Ford Lectures, delivered at Oxford University in 1939, only a year before her early death, aged just fifty-one.

Moreover, in 2005, (I can't believe it is so long ago) I purchased Maxine Berg's biography of Power.

                                 O .U.P. - 1955 reprint                  Maxine Berg - 1996

Eileen Power, born in 1889, studied at Girton College, Cambridge, and took a First in both parts of the historical tripos. After further study at the University of Paris and the London School of Economics, she became directory of studies in History at Girton (1913-1921). In 1921, she was appointed lecturer in economic history at the LSE, becoming Reader in 1924 and Professor in 1931. She also became involved in Suffrage politics, increasingly researching women's medieval history as well as world history. Her Medieval People was a social history written to spread a message of internationalism. She associated trade and merchants with international connection and peace. She co-wrote children's history books with her sister Rhoda and together they gave BBC schools history broadcasts. I found reading about her life and work that I increasingly admired both - a magnetic and attractive personality ensured her lectures were extremely popular and I quite understood Maxine's Berg's feeling of irritation (even anger?) that she was wrongly overshadowed by the male historians of the time. I did note, however, when recently flicking through G. M. Trevelyan's English Social History, that he dedicated the book to Power: To the memory of Eileen Power economic and social historian. Power was a feminist, but never an aggressive one and was unfairly sidelined for many years after her death, being dismissed by one historian as a writer of a cosy sort of social history, short on the analytical and strong on the picturesque. Well, others, such as Trevelyan himself, have been accused of this - and of writing 'narrative history'. Give me this type of history - literary, readable and, above all, inspiring, rather than the boring analytical, chart/graph obsessed genre,  with footnotes/endnotes taking up more space than the main text. Ugh!

Eileen Power did not live long enough to publish weighty tomes (Power's oeuvre, for all her hard work, was woefully thin on major monographs) - but she did leave behind one magnum opus: Medieval English Nunneries.

               

                                                Cambridge University Press - 1922

She set out to give a general picture of English nunnery life during a definite period, the three centuries before the Dissolution. She relied heavily on Bishops' Visitations, which, inevitably, led to a charge that the picture drawn militated against the nuns, where blame rather than praise was usual. Rather like OFSTED and schools these days. At least, it eschewed the hagiography of Abbot Gasquet and other Roman Catholic apologists. She also used other sources, such as the Archiepiscopal Registers, individual nunnery Account Rolls, Inventories and Cartularies, Wills and Letters. She,  rightly, paid tribute to the work and support of A. Hamilton Thompson and G. G. Coulton. Her book was in the series Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, for which Coulton was the General Editor. I am a great fan of both men and their writings, particularly Coulton, who did a hatchet job on Gasquet and had a trenchant turn of phrase. I must blog on him one day, as I have several of his books.

However, back to Power's work. I pillaged it for my own little booklet on Grace Dieu Priory (2006; 2nd ed. 2016) and my longer Introduction in Grace Dieu Priory Leicestershire 1414-1418: The Draft Account Book of the Treasuresses (2013) and found it compelling reading. With chapters on the Abbesses and Prioresses and the Novices; financial problems; education, both for the nuns themselves and for children of both sexes; and, especially interesting for a voyeur like me, the accounts of nuns escaping the bounds of the convent - Fish out of Water - and their sexual peccadillos - The Old Daunce. Also of great value is her chapter on The Nun in Medieval Literature: using Ancren Riwle and Myroure of Oure Ladye (Syon Nunnery), as well as Langland, Gower and Chaucer. Power ended her survey, aptly enough, with a long quotation from Chaucer on Madame Eglentyne - a masterpiece of humorous observation, sympathetic without being idealised, gently sarcastic without being bitter.

Eileen Power's early death was a great loss to the History profession. She should be placed in the Pantheon with the other great practitioners of her time.