Wyllard’s Weird by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Wyllard’s Weird
by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

*

First Chapter/First Paragraph/Tuesday Intros is hosted by Bibliophile By The Sea. To play along, share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you’re reading or thinking about reading soon.

There are some travellers who think when they cross the Tamar, over that fairy bridge of Brunel’s, hung aloft between the blue of the river and the blue of the sky, that they have left England behind them on the eastern shore–that they have entered a new country, almost a new world. This land of quiet woods and lonely valleys, and bold brown hills, barren, solitary–these wild commons and large moorlands of Cornwall seem to stand apart, as they did in the days gone by, when this province was verily a kingdom, complete in itself, and owning no sovereignty but its own.

*

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme hosted by Jenn of A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can participate. If you’re new to Teaser Tuesdays, the details are at Jenn’s A Daily Rhythm or on my Tuesday Memes Page.

At this point, said the report, the child again became hysterical, and had to be carried away. After this she had an attack of brain-fever, and could not again be interrogated formally.

*

This book has taken over my life! Wyllard’s Weird is a 19th Century three-volume sensation novel which Cheryl found at the Internet Archives. Thanks, Cheryl! She also discovered that another meaning of weird refers to a person’s destiny. I am proofing reading it for Free Literature and it will be available at Project Gutenberg in numerous formats. This means I can’t just fly through the reading for fear of missing too many OCR errors. But it became very exciting and intriguing to me about halfway through the first volume and it is hard to keep making myself slow down.

*

What are you currently reading? Do you have anything to share with us?

Advertisement

Teaser Tuesdays – September 2, 2014

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.

Anyone can participate.

If you’re new to Teaser Tuesdays, the details are at MizB’s Should Be Reading or on my Teaser Tuesdays Page

 

Family Happiness by Leo Tolstoy
Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude

But suddenly I felt that I must see what he was doing there and what he looked like — that I must watch his movements while he supposed that no one saw him. Besides I was simply unwilling just then to lose sight of him for a single minute.

This translation is in the public domain. It may be downloaded free at ManyBooks.

Teaser Tuesdays – June 10, 2014

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other Teaser Tuesdays participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

 

My Teaser this week is from Elective Affinities (1809) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 – 1832). The quote is from the Penguin Classics edition, translation by R. J. Hollingdale.

 

 

‘Granted this fashion of argument,’ Eduard replied, ‘you women would be invincible: first sensible, so that one cannot contradict; affectionate, so that one is glad to give in; sensitive, so that one does not want to hurt you; full of premonitions, so that one is frightened.’

‘I am not superstitious,’ Charlotte replied, ‘and would pay no attention to these obscure stirrings if that was all they were; but mostly they are instinctive recollections of the happy or unhappy consequences of our own or other people’s past actions.’

 

Don’t be put off by the title as I was when I first saw it and thought the book might be philosophical essays or some other non-fiction. The cover blurb of the above edition reads: “Elective Affinities reflects the conflict which Goethe felt between his high regard for the idea of marriage and his experience of spontaneous passion. Set in the German countryside of the early nineteenth century, the novel depicts the emotional turmoil into which Eduard and Charlotte are thrown by the introduction into their comfortably idle lives of two fresh faces.”

 

Do you have a ‘Teaser’ to share with us?

Please leave a comment with the link on MizB’s Teaser Tuesday post or below. Or, if you don’t have a blog, you can share your Teaser here in the comment section instead.