Quirk

The Barbarous Babes: being the Memoirs of Molly by Edith Ayrton Zangwill is now freely available on Project Gutenberg! Thanks to kurowasan for scanning the book and the volunteers at Distributed Proofreaders for all their work m

This is Edith Ayrton Zangwill's first published book from 1904, an episodic children's book that reminds me of E. Nesbit's non-fantastic fiction. Molly is a relatable protagonist with an engaging narrative voice that sucked me in instantly. I reviewed it in a bit more detail here.

For the last two weeks I've been in a state of "I really need to work on these paper revisions", which, being who I am, means that I have been coming up with all sorts of ways to procrastinate. Which is not a very good excuse for not posting last week, when I should have told you about the awesomeness of Una Silberrad, and in the past week I have been procrastinating by other means than reading; so I should still write up these books even though they are less fresh in my mind.

Una Silberrad was a popular early 20th century British novelist; like many popular women writers of the time, her books, though in the public domain, are hard to find electronic copies of. I first heard of her from Jo Walton's reading posts on Reactor. A friend of mine is involved with the process of getting her books into project Gutenberg -- in fact we became friends after I messaged her and said "hey, it would be great if someone did this for Edith Ayrton Zangwill, too", and she volunteered to do this, without having read anything of Edith's, just on a Discord friend-of-a-friend's suggestion!

Princess Puck, Una Silberrad. This book just made it to Project Gutenberg, thanks to my friend's efforts. This is a really charming coming-of-age story, with a girl who comes of age and ultimately gets to save the day with her interest in family/local history and her strength of purpose to do what is right. (I think the protagonist maybe could be read as having autistic spectrum traits, in particular her talent for mimicry, but it's unclear.) There is a romance, but this is the sort of story where you feel like the protagonist would have had a meaningful life even if the plot contrivances hadn't arranged to make the romance work out in the end. Reminded me a bit of The Secret Garden, with its combination of romantic tropes and groundedness in everyday work. Of the supporting characters, I particularly liked the protagonist's business-minded older cousin, and how the relationship between the two develops over time.

The Good Comrade, Una Silberrad. This is the only other fiction book of Silberrad's on Gutenberg so far (but this will change soon!) -- it was Silberrad's mos popular novel, and I can see why. This fits the conventional structure of a romance novel much better than Princess Puck, but it goes some really interesting places (Holland, and horticulture) first. Julia is a very resourceful heroine; she has the key Una Silberrad heroine traits of valuing hard work and not caring too much for social norms and class distinctions, but is also very much herself, and shaped by her family circumstances (her father is an alcoholic and gambler, her mother is a professional at keeping up appearances).

Desire, Una Silberrad. This one is not yet on Gutenberg, but was particularly recommended to me. This one has two protagonists; the titular Desire, a wealthy and alluring young socialite, and Peter, an aspiring young writer from a middle-class background. Again the ending is conventional, but the way it gets there is not. (Early in the plot there's some fake dating, but it's not at all used in a tropey way.) Desire starts out being not entirely likeable as a character, but I liked her arc.