THE FURROWED MIDDLEBROW DOZEN 2023

I almost decided to scrap my Dozen post this year. Following Rupert's , tragic death in March, my reading for much of this year went off the rails. There were several months when I was reading anything and everything but middlebrow fiction, which reminded me too much of our collaborations, so the number of really interesting discoveries I made in that field this year was down considerably from my norm—though happily my interest in the middlebrow revived by the time of our return visit to London and the British Library in September. (This was before the terrible cyberattack, of course—I've felt particularly bad in the past weeks for those researchers who come from faraway places, having planned and saved their pennies for the trip, to do work that can only be done at the British Library, and then have arrived to find they can do nothing. And how awful for the librarians and staff who have to deal with their stress and disappointment when they are frustrated themselves that they can't help them.)

Even a couple of days ago, I thought, no, I just can't be bothered with a list. It's too depressing this year. But then today I finally took a look at the list of books I've read this year, and I thought, well, maybe I could at least write about some of those I enjoyed the most. And then—by cheating just a bit and including three books I only finally posted about this year despite reading them earlier, as well as including not one but two representatives of the Y chromosome—I realized that, even if the competition wasn't as fierce as usual this year, I had come up with a pretty darned respectable list of twelve books I enjoyed most. I also frankly felt that I owed it to you loyal readers, who were so supportive of my obscure reading habits when I had doubts a few months back!

And so here we are…

One thing I turned to quite a lot this year, in my avoidance of middlebrow fiction, was mystery. In addition to those mentioned below, I polished off my too-long-delayed reading of Edmund Crispin's novels, which I loved, enjoyed some more George Bellairs, discovered Clifford Witting, whom I look forward to reading more of, giggled over one very zany thriller by American Elliot Paul, and, following our trip to Japan in April, quite enjoyed Okamoto Kido's The Curious Casebook of Inspector Hashichi. I even fell prey to the Agatha Christie estate's relentlessly clever marketing and read Marple: Twelve New Mysteries, and very much enjoyed it (my favorite stories were Lucy Foley's and Val McDermid's, for best capturing the feel of the "real" Miss Marple, with Ruth Ware's coming in next, but even the very untraditional ones—Miss Marple navigating the streets of New York or doing Tai Chi in Hong Kong—were highly entertaining and just what I needed to escape for a while. Of all the unlikely things, Chateaubriand's memoirs proved surprisingly distracting as well (I have volume 2 lined up to start before long)!

But here, for better or worse, are my top 12 reads of the year.

12) AGATHA CHRISTIE, The Secret of Chimneys (1925)

Discovering that there was one Christie novel I had somehow never read—in 40 odd years of reading and re-reading her work—and then discovering that it's a really delightful, fun adventure story that I shall now want to re-read regularly, should really probably rank higher than #12 on my list. On the other hand, I suspect you might have heard of Christie before, so she's not exactly a discovery… I'll just say that, though I tend to avoid the very early Christie because they tend to be a bit tediously perky and/or a bit dull for me, this one is certainly an exception. Silly, yes, but very charmingly so.

11) EDITH CAROLINE RIVETT (as E. C. R. LORAC), The Theft of the Iron Dogs (1946)

I confess I've flirted with Rivett/Lorac for the past couple of years, since the British Library started reprinting them, and my mileage has varied. I was underwhelmed by one earlier in the year, and enjoyed but didn't love Death of an Author over the summer. I was about to write her off altogether, but we were in the British Library shop in September, there was a 3-for-2 sale, this was hot off the presses, and I couldn't resist. And I absolutely loved it. One of several she set in rural Lancashire, including Fell Murder, which I'm saving with anticipation, and Crook o' Lune (1953), which I read and also loved when we got home. Though I found the mystery quite effective, it was almost unnecessary, so fascinating are the farming characters and the rural life described. I've also since very much enjoyed her wartime Murder by Matchlight (1945), and I've grown attached to Chief Inspector Robert Macdonald, so I am now a solid (if selective) Rivett fan—and all thanks to the BL's clever marketing and the irresistible smell of a brand new book's pages!

10) BERYL SYMONS, Jane Carberry Investigates (1940)

Beryl Symons had already published a number of one-off thrillers and some romance when she created her own version of Miss Marple and wrote five novels about her. It's not too difficult to tell them apart however. Jane Carberry is a wealthy and glamorous middle-aged spinster with a brother who is Deputy Commissioner of Police and an arch nemesis in the Belgian police, who seems to make a habit of arresting Jane for the crimes she gets herself mixed up in but doesn't actually commit. Symons must have known Belgium well, as most of the books seem to involve Jane jetting back and forth from London. I can't ravely recommend it (I've only read this one so far, but I seem to have come across the others at the BL…)—it's ridiculous and implausible and there's no "detection" or "investigation" at all, only ludicrous coincidences and Jane stumbling into the middle of jewel thefts and murders and making everyone suspect her. But it reminded me just enough of Mrs. Pollifax to make me want to read more. I promise to properly review one of these soon-ish.

9) MARGARET MASTERMAN, Gentlemen's Daughters (1931)

Finally, a book I actually reviewed, and only recently! A quiet, charming little school story—marketed for adults, but could easily be enjoyed by all fans of the genre—about a girl's intellectual growth and sense of independence. Gently humorous, entirely plausible and realistic, and sensitively and subtly told.

8) ANN STAFFORD & JANE OLIVER, Cuckoo in June (1935)

Elder spinster (in her 30s, no less!) gets stuck with trying to keep her frivolous younger cousin away from men, first by taking her across Europe and then by hiding her away on her brother's farm. Cheerful, funny, and no substance whatsoever, but suffice it to say love is in the air and the farm is no place for either young woman to hide. Illustrated with Stafford's delightful drawings—hand-colored, even!

7) EMORY BONETT, A Girl Must Live (1936)

Unscrupulous, gold-digging Gloria Lind narrates her machinations to win an Earl at the expense of her fellow gold-digging chorus girls. Pure silly fun à la Gentlemen Prefer Blondes or How to Marry a Millionaire, with fashion elements to fulfill any fashionista's dreams, and charming illustrations by Anna K. Zinkeisen.

6) JANE BIRD, By Accident (1935)

Two mysterious newcomers to an English village provoke speculation, intrigue, and romance. Comic and tragic by turn, but with a lovely, life-affirming spirit, this was an impulse purchase and impulse read, and the impulse paid off this time.

5) A. A. MILNE, Four Days' Wonder (1933)

This was a gift from my friend Kathy, who sent it for Christmas as one of her own absolute favorites. I couldn't help diving in right away, and then of course I couldn't stop reading. I know I read Milne's Red House Mystery years and years ago, but I'd never read anything else, a fact I'll clearly have to address. Surely no one does silly, laugh-out-loud funny dialogue better. A murder mystery, albeit without the murder, and a rollicking good time throughout. Thank you, Kathy! 

4) HUMPHREY PAKINGTON, Four in Family (1932)

There's no better purely silly frolic on this list (unless it's #2 below, or perhaps #3, or maybe #5) than this early (first) novel from Pakington, a successful and fairly prolific author in his day who has been as thoroughly forgotten as any middlebrow woman. It's delightfully giggle-inducing throughout, a difficult thing for an author, however clever, to maintain. I mention this because a friend and I have each read some later Pakington and found him uneven, to say the least. I have high hopes for The Roving Eye, another 1932 effort, but even if Four is his only perfect comedy, it's better than most authors ever manage to accomplish even once.

3) ELLA MONCKTON, August in Avilion (1940)

A bit rough around the edges, like a less polished Apricot Sky, but pure delight nonetheless, and it was just what the doctor ordered for a mood-lifter. A charming and funny family holiday in Cornwall, with the somewhat unusual but lovably eccentric family of an artist. "I was enjoying it so much that I did that thing where you start rationing the remaining pages to make a book last longer. It still didn't last long enough."

2) ELEANOR FARJEON, Miss Granby's Secret (1941)

A novel within a novel, a format I usually shy away from, but in this case loved so much it hurt. The Bastard of Pinsk is an unpublished manuscript written by 16-year-old Adelaide Granby, later a bestselling Victorian author of gushingly romantic, purple prose and now deceased. The manuscript is read by Adelaide's suffragette grand-niece, along with her aunt's diaries, as she speculates about the mystery man who may have been "darling Aunt Addie's Grande Passion." It's hilarious, but also touching, in its very clever examination of what a sheltered, repressed Victorian girl could have experienced of passion, and if you don't giggle at least once on every page, I'll eat my hat. (I don't actually wear a hat, so I'll just have another dark chocolate digestive biscuit instead.) 

1) KATHERINE DUNNING, The Spring Begins (1934)

Perhaps a bit more serious #1 than usual this year, but this gorgeous thing deserves all the attention it can get. Heavily influenced by Woolf, but don't shy away if you're not a Woolf-hound because it's also more accessible and more down-to-earth, with it's focus on three young women just at the point of discovering men and sexuality. Two of them are servants, the other an impoverished gentlewoman, and their experiences and sensibilities couldn't be more different, but Dunning has so much to say about the vulnerability of women and the liberation they can find for themselves (sometimes). Don't tell anyone, but I might like it even better than Mrs. Dalloway!

That's that for this year. What were your favorite obscure reads this year?

Happy New Year to all of you lovely readers! Good heavens, let's hope 2024 is better than 2023…

THE FURROWED MIDDLEBROW DOZEN 2022

What an up-and-down kind of reading year it has been (never mind the kind of year it's been in the news!), but ultimately what a productive and enjoyable one. At times this year, I was, I confess, lagging a bit, motivation-wise, but that all changed with our trip to England in October, and our time at the British Library and the Bodleian. You may have noticed my reinvigorated reading since then, and there's certainly more to come. I'm also well aware that we're overdue for an announcement of upcoming FM titles—our next batch has been delayed a bit, but our announcement should (finally!) be coming soon.

As always, I wanted to end the year by looking back at the highlights. My actual FM Dozen always (with one tiny cheat this year, but one which fits well thematically) focuses on my blog-specific reading for the year, but I like to mention a few highlights that were either non-blog-related or just didn't quite make the cut. This was, as always, a challenging year to narrow down to a dozen.

I had quite a splurge of mystery reading this year, after a long period of not reading them much. Particularly during our October trip itself, I read one after another. Since I don't regularly blog about mysteries, they're a restful retreat for me—no making notes, or thinking of clever things to say about them, just pure readerly pleasure. It was during our trip that I properly discovered EDMUND CRISPIN, with whom I have been passionately involved ever since. If you like a bit of intellectual zaniness in your mysteries, Crispin is your man (though I know many of you discovered him long ago). I also read a slew of GLADYS MITCHELL both before and during our trip, and she provided particular inspiration with her focus on stone circles in The Dancing Druids (1948) and The Whispering Knights (1980). And I very much enjoyed CAROL CARNAC's (i.e. EDITH CAROLINE RIVETT, who also wrote as E.C.R. LORAC) Crossed Skis (1952), which combines a murder plot with a group of cheerful folks on holiday in the Alps.

An embarrassing confession re my mystery reading: A few years ago, I wrote about reading Agatha Christie's Passenger to Frankfurt (spoiler alert: I didn't enjoy it), which I thought was the very last of Christie's novels that I hadn't read. Then, a few weeks ago, organizing my books and my database, I made the shocking discovery that there was another Christie I had missed. A few weeks passed, and as we've been relaxing over the holidays, I decided to treat myself to one last unread Christie. In due course, yesterday I finished Towards Zero (not her best, but not bad, and an interesting conceit), only to realize as I was nearly finished that it seemed a bit too familiar. I double-checked my database, and reader, I read the wrong book. In the ensuing weeks, I had got confused between two novels featuring Superintendant Battle. On the bright side, however, this means I still have my first read of The Secret of Chimneys to look forward to!

Further outside the realm of my blog, when Andy and I both got covid at the beginning of July, I found myself reading (and loving) LAURENCE STERNE's classic, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (1767). Covid brain clearly did unusual things to me. I also discovered American MAX EWING's brilliantly campy Going Somewhere (1934), and was saddened to learn he committed suicide the same year. Finally, one of my few reads this year of a book actually published in 2022, SELBY WYNN SCHWARTZ's After Sappho (2022), about modernist lesbians (and surely, by today's definitions, at least a couple of trans men) and the worlds they created, was gorgeous and inspiring and added considerably to my TBR list.

But enough name-dropping of those who didn't make the Dozen…

12) AUSTIN LEE, Miss Hogg and the Dead Dean (1958)

First up, my slight cheat. Including a male author is breaking my own rules, but I recently read the last two Miss Hogg mysteries that I hadn't read before and enjoyed them so much I couldn't resist. All nine of them are delightful, silly fun, and the first three were reprinted by Greyladies (here's hoping for more?). Not for the humdrum mystery fan, as the puzzles are no great shakes, but I have a feeling some of you would enjoy them for the characters and silliness.

11) SYBIL BOLITHO (as SYBIL RYALL), A Fiddle for Eighteen Pence (1927)

Two young women on a road trip through France, with sightseeing, periodic car trouble, run-ins with local residents, and occasional personality conflicts—not to mention a young man who just keeps popping up. A fun bit of virtual travel from the early days of cross-country road trips.

10) OONA H. BALL, Barbara Goes to Oxford (1907)

More charming virtual travel, and appropriate inspiration for our own stay in Oxford, this is the addictive fictional diary of a well-to-do Irishwoman's three weeks in the city with a friend, meeting extraordinarily friendly people who show them all the best spots. Largely a cheerful travelogue, there's also just a touch of romance…

9) ISOBEL STRACHEY, Suzanna (1956)

From very early in the year, this Strachey novel about a young woman trying to escape being defined by men is sometimes messy and uncomfortable, but has stayed with me throughout the year. It also reminds me that I must get back to reading more of her fascinating work.

8) KATHLEEN MACKENZIE, The Starke Sisters (1963)

Pure silliness about three sisters in the 1960s forced by their imperious great-grandmother to live according to Edwardian norms. This book and its two sequels were marketed as children's books, but both the humor and the descriptions of clothes seem more calculated to please adult readers.

7) ROSE ALLATINI (as EUNICE BUCKLEY), Family from Vienna (1941)

Any 1941 novel focused on a well-to-do Jewish family, some of British nationality, others refugees from Austria following the Anschluss, forcibly reunited in London, is bound to have some uncomfortable moments in view of the horrors that were to follow, but Allatini manages to produce a delightful family comedy, albeit with dark edges, from these materials. I'm ashamed to say that though I have managed to get hold of Allatini's two succeeding novels dealing with the same characters, I haven't yet got round to reading them.

6) JOYCE DENNYS, Economy Must Be Our Watchword (1932)

I've got a review coming up of this one, so for now I will just give a grateful thanks to Simon Thomas, who was willing to share his copy of this vanishingly rare title so I could read it. Stay tuned for more.

Thank you to my faithful Fairy Godmother
for this wonderful cover image!

5) ANN STAFFORD & JANE OLIVER, Cook Wanted (1933)

I discovered this sequel to Handheld Press's delightful reprint Business as Usual entirely by accident, but loved it all the more as a result. Following that novel's heroine into the complications of married life, it's just as much fun as its predecessor, and now my Fairy Godmother has provided a scan of the irresistible dustjacket!

4) NOEL STREATFEILD (as SUSAN SCARLETT), Sally-Ann (1939)

It's hard to believe that it was only early in 2022 that I was reading some of Noel Streatfeild's frolicsome Susan Scarlett romances for the first time. This was one of the last I read, and if forced at gunpoint to choose my favorite of the twelve, I think this might just be the one.

3) MARGARET RIVERS LARMINIE & JANE LANGSLOW, Gory Knight (1937)

One of two products of our England trip on this year's Dozen. I waited for years for someone to reprint this Murder by Death-like parody of Golden Age mysteries, and then decided to fetch it myself at the British Library. The parody versions of Hercule Poirot and Lord Peter Wimsey are particularly chuckle-inducing, and it's all energetic fun, even if the solution won't light any fires for die-hard puzzlers.

2) DOROTHY LAMBERT, All I Desire (1936)

My favorite Dorothy Lambert so far, not even excluding Much Dithering, which is really saying something. An author of torrid romances retreats to a quiet English village, only to find that her the skeletons in her closet, in the form of not one but two figures from her scandalous past, are waiting there for her. It's pure delight, despite its hideously inappropriate title.

One of many illustrations not used in the books

1) JOYCE DENNYS, The Henrietta Letters (director's cut) (1939-1954)

I'm cheating here a bit too as far as my usual rules go. I generally only allow one book per author in my Dozen, but rules are made to be broken (and I could say that this is technically not "a book"). What could possibly have been more exciting this year than my discovery that the 1980s volumes of Henrietta letters, Henrietta's War and Henrietta Sees It Through, contained less than half of the existing letters Dennys wrote for The Sketch during (and after!) World War II. I'm planning to put together a proper post about this soon, but suffice it to say that most of the material left out of the books is just as funny and charming as what was included!

And that's that for another year! Stay tuned for more new reviews coming along soon—as well as that long-awaited announcement of new FM titles coming, we now think, in April of 2023.

Happy New Year to all of you!

The Furrowed Middlebrow Dozen 2021

Oh, what a terrible year for the world at large, but what a wonderful year of reading! I've worked from home on average three days a week this year, spending two days in the office, and it has really affected my quality of life even more than I could have imagined. Subtracting the stress and strain of a commute, adding the comfort of wearing shorts and a t-shirt for work, subtracting all the distractions of the office (and the shady neighborhood in which it's located), adding the mood-lightening sunshine our apartment receives most days and the mental and physical health benefits of lunchtime workouts, it's been a revelation of how civilized life can be even while getting one's work done just as well as ever. And this of course is not to mention that that commute time can now be used for reading, so it has been an extraordinarily fruitful year! 

Of course, if I could make the horrors and frustrations of covid for others go away with a snap of the finger, I would happily give up these benefits, but alas I don't have that ability, so I will make do by being very thankful and aware of how lucky we've been. And for now, at least, our office is continuing to allow us to work from home three days a week indefinitely, so here's hoping 2022 will be another excellent bookish year.

Even allowing for the 12 non-blog-related titles I mentioned last week in my first ever UNfurrowed Dozen (see here), it was terribly difficult getting this list down to 12 blog-related titles. With my addictive reading of numerous titles by a few authors, the list could have been completely dominated by D. E. Stevenson, Monica Stirling, and Violet Trefusis, so I've had to rigorously limit myself to one or two titles by each. DES's The Tall Stranger and The Blue Sapphire, two of our titles being released next week from Dean Street Press, were near misses, as were the two early non-mystery titles by Felicity Shaw, later better known as mystery writer Anne Morice (see here). Then there was the delightfully enjoyable (but pricey!) Emily, by Hilda Stewart Reid, which I discussed here. Two children's titles, Dorita Fairlie Bruce's The Bees on Drumwhinnie (1952), one of her historical Colmskirk novels, and Catherine Christian's Diana Takes a Chance (1940), which I didn't get around to reviewing, would also likely have made the cut in a slower year.

And as you'll see, I'm forced to risk irritating and annoying you with my top pick of the year. It was a choice between being a coy little tease or actually lying to you about the best book I read this year, so I've gone with the former…

And now, in the flesh, I give you the Dozen.

12) MARY CLIVE (as HANS DUFFY), Seven by Seven (1933)

Best known for her later memoir/novel Christmas with the Savages, Clive wrote four earlier novels using the Duffy pseudonym. The other three have proven impossible to get my hands on, but this one was a delight, evoking (if not bettering) Evelyn Waugh and demonstrating once and for all how unjust the process by which some books are remembered and treasured and some fall by the wayside really is.

11) ISOBEL STRACHEY, First Impressions (1945)

And here is perhaps another example of said injustice. Strachey was taken quite seriously in her time, and is an absolutely brilliant metaphorist above all else ("The curate stood beside him in a curious toppling position. His clothes looked as though they were being blown off him although there was no wind."), but of course she's now forgotten as well. I read three of her novels this year (one still to review) and have four more to look forward to in the New Year.

10) IVY COMPTON-BURNETT, Daughters and Sons (1937)

My favorite novel yet by one of my favorite authors, though one that most readers either love or hate. If you must read just one ICB, this one, described as "one of the lightest and most comic of her novels" (though still delightfully bleak and morbid), is the one to try.

9) DOROTHY LAMBERT, Scotch Mist (1936)

Most of you know that in 2020 Dean Street Press reprinted Dorothy Lambert's wonderful village comedy Much Dithering, from 1938. I've since read a handful more of Lambert's novels, with varying results, but this year I found another treasure in this holiday frolic set in a Scottish boarding-house reluctantly managed by the increasingly impoverished Neil McPherson. Alas, more or less impossible to find, but perhaps one day we'll be able to reprint this one too?

8) NAOMI ROYDE-SMITH, Outside Information (1941)

A bit rough around the edges as it was compiled as events were actively unfolding, and perhaps all the better for it, this combination of diaries and letters (including a few from friends like Margaret Kennedy) by a prolific novelist provides some irresistible reportage on the Blitz, supplemented with humor, occasional poignancy, and vivid personality. An excellent complement to Frances Faviell's A Chelsea Concerto.

7) D. M. LARGE, The Quiet Place (1941)

For somewhat lighter reading about the early days of the war and the Blitz (albeit from a distance), this novel about the Irish O'Hara sisters, who open their quiet country home to paying guests seeking escape from bombs is a lovely, funny, warm-hearted book about the idiosyncrasies of its eccentric characters, who find the war creeping up on them even in the Irish countryside.

6) DOROTHEA TOWNSHEND, A Lion, a Mouse, and a Motorcar (1915)

Just what the doctor ordered for pure giddy escape, this utterly daft spy adventure/comedy rollicks along like nobody's business. Delia Gwyn, a rector’s daughter, finds herself swept into international intrigue, complete with Russian princesses, a short stint in a Spanish prison, a near miss of an assassination attempt, and a dramatic rescue from a kidnapping attempt. It's completely implausible, but no less fun for that, and I send my thanks again to Kathy Reed, who dared to send her vanishingly rare copy of the book to San Francisco for me to read. It has happily returned safely home now.

5) D. E. STEVENSON, Kate Hardy (1947)

VERY difficult narrowing down the DES titles I read this year to only one. Many of the 11 novels we're reprinting in just a few days (see here if you've somehow escaped knowing this!) were, believe it or not, new to me this year, and I loved them all. The Tall Stranger and The Blue Sapphire, mentioned above, are loaded with charm, and Young Mrs Savage is a perfect holiday story. But I finally settled, for purposes of this list, on this lesser-known gem, which I never got round to writing about in any detail. A novelist in the immediate postwar years spontaneously buys a home in the country and finds the country may not allow her much more time for writing than London does! (This one has been virtually impossible to find, but not anymore, as of next week!)

4) MONICA STIRLING, Dress Rehearsal (1952)
3) MONICA STIRLING, Ladies with a Unicorn (1953)

The author I read more than any other this year might well have dominated this list if I'd allowed her two, but these two titles represent, for me, her best efforts in two different styles. Dress Rehearsal is largely a comedy set in a girls' boarding school and, despite the publisher's assurance that it's not autobiographical, reflects in almost every detail Stirling's own upbringing. Ladies with a Unicorn, meanwhile, is in what I call Stirling's Proust Lite style, with its characters' present-day, postwar dramas largely filtered through their wartime traumas. Scintillating elegance and high fashion in the Roman film industry combines with gritty recollections of darker days, and I found the combination impossible to put down.

2) VIOLET TREFUSIS, Tandem (1933)

Dear Violet could also have dominated this list, but this one is the clear winner for me out of her six novels available in English (all of which I read this year, as well as cursing the literary stars that her other two haven't been translated from French). Beginning in 1892 with sisters Pénélope and Iréne in girlhood, Tandem soon leaps forward to show us the girls getting married and then their very different (but intriguingly echoing) married lives. The characters are possibly based on Violet's friends, Anna de Noailles and Princesse Marthe Bibesco (mentioned in last week's UNfurrowed Dozen), also novelists. Broderie Anglaise, about Violet's romantic triangle with Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf, has always got more attention than this novel, understandably but definitely not deservedly.

1) ?????????????????, ????????????????

And finally… Just in the past couple of weeks, my planned list has been upended by an email revealing (and then sending) a manuscript of an unpublished novel, previously thought to have been lost, by a favorite author. I can't say much more (and not just because of a perverse urge to tease), but the novel is sooooooo lovely and brilliant and funny and poignant, it has to occupy this spot. It's not any exaggeration to say it's by far my favorite read of the year, and I hope it will some day be a favorite of yours too…

And there, teasing aside, you have my favorite reads of the year. Now it's time for you to share your happiest discoveries!