Round-up – Autumnal Classics

Ten authors for Autumn

As we enter the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, here are some books for you to take leaf peeping.

O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker (1991)

At the bottom of a great stone staircase, dressed in her mother’s black lace evening dress, twisted in murderous death, lies Janet. So end the sixteen years of Janet’s short life. A life spent in a draughty Scottish castle, where roses will not grow, and a jackdaw decides to live in the doll’s house. A life peopled by prettier, smoother-haired siblings, a Nanny with a face like the North Sea and the peculiar, whisky-swigging Cousin Lila. A life where Janet is perpetually misunderstood – and must turn from people, to animals, to books, to her own wild and wonderful imagination.

‘A sparky, funny work of genius and one of the best least-known novels of the 20th Century’ Ali Smith

W&N Essentials | 224 pages | introduced by Maggie O’Farrell

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (1847)

Emily Brontë’s novel of impossible desires, violence and transgression is a masterpiece of intense, unsettling power. It begins in a snowstorm, when Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange on the bleak Yorkshire moors, is forced to seek shelter at Wuthering Heights. There he discovers the history of the tempestuous events that took place years before: the intense passion between the foundling Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, her betrayal of him and the bitter vengeance he now wreaks on the innocent heirs of the past.

‘It is as if Emily Brontë could tear up all that we know human beings by, and fill these unrecognizable transparencies with such a gust of life that they transcend reality.’ Virginia Woolf

Penguin Classics | 416 pages | edited and introduced by Pauline Nestor | preface by Lucasta Miller

The Vet’s Daughter by Barbara Comyns (1959)

Growing up in Edwardian South London, Alice Rowlands longs for romance and excitement, for a release from a life that is dreary, restrictive and lonely. Her father, a vet, is harsh and domineering; his new girlfriend brash and lascivious. Alice seeks refuge in memories and fantasies, in her rapturous longing for Nicholas, a handsome young sailor and in the blossoming of what she perceives as her occult powers. A series of strange events unfolds that leads her, dressed in bridal white to a scene of ecstatic triumph and disaster among the crowds on Clapham Common. The Vet’s Daughter is a uniquely vivid, witty and touching story of love and mystery.

‘A small Gothic masterpiece . . . I have read it many times, and with every re-read I marvel again at its many qualities’ Sarah Waters

Virago Modern Classics | 176 pages | introduced by Jane Gardam

Reading in the Dark by Seamus Deane (1996)

This is the story of a haunted Irish childhood. The setting is Derry in the Northern Ireland of the 40s and 50s, fraught with political hatred, family secrets and lethal intrigue. As a young boy tries to make sense of life, poverty and violence shift and obscure the facts; meanwhile his night-time reading of Irish legends weaves enchantment through reality. Claustrophobic but lyrically charged, breathtakingly sad but vibrant and unforgettable, this is one of the finest books about growing up – in Ireland or anywhere – that has ever been written.

‘Go into your nearest bookshop and buy Reading In The Dark . . . A novel that no reader with any concern for their heart or mind should be without.’ A. L. Kennedy

Vintage Classics | 256 pages

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (1938)

On a trip to the South of France, the shy heroine of Rebecca falls in love with Maxim de Winter, a handsome widower. Although his proposal comes as a surprise, she happily agrees to marry him. But as they arrive at her husband’s home, Manderley, a change comes over Maxim, and the young bride is filled with dread. Friendless in the isolated mansion, she realises that she barely knows him. In every corner of every room is the phantom of his beautiful first wife, Rebecca, and the new Mrs de Winter walks in her shadow.

‘The moment I finished this story, I turned to page one and started it over again.’ Malorie Blackman

Virago Modern Classics | 432 pages

The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy (1887)

Love, and the erratic heart, are at the centre of Hardy’s ‘woodland story’. Set in the beautiful Blackmoor Vale, The Woodlanders concerns the fortunes of Giles Winterborne, whose love for the well-to-do Grace Melbury is challenged by the arrival of the dashing and dissolute doctor, Edred Fitzpiers. When the mysterious Felice Charmond further complicates the romantic entanglements, marital choice and class mobility become inextricably linked. Hardy’s powerful novel depicts individuals in thrall to desire and the natural law that motivates them.

Oxford World’s Classics | 416 pages | edited by Dale Kramer | introduced by Penny Boumelha

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850)

Fiercely romantic and hugely influential, The Scarlet Letter is the tale of Hester Prynne, imprisoned, publicly shamed, and forced to wear a scarlet ‘A’ for committing adultery and bearing an illegitimate child, Pearl. In their small, Puritan village, Hester and her daughter struggle to survive, but in this searing study of the tension between private and public existence, Hester Prynne’s inner strength and quiet dignity means she has frequently been seen as one of the first great heroines of American fiction.

‘A perfect work of the American imagination.’ D. H. Lawrence

Penguin English Library | 288 pages

Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym (1977)

In 1970s London, Edwin, Norman, Letty and Marcia work in the same office and suffer the same problem – loneliness. Lovingly and with delightful humour, Barbara Pym conducts us through their day-to-day existence: their preoccupations, their irritations, their judgements, and – perhaps most keenly felt – their worries about having somehow missed out on life as post-war Britain shifted around them.

‘No novelist brings more telling observation or more gentle pleasure.’ Jilly Cooper

Picador Classics | 208 pages | introduced by Alexander McCall Smith

Autumn Journal by Louis MacNeice (1939)

Written between August and December 1938, Autumn Journal is still considered one of the most valuable and moving testaments of living through the thirties by a young writer. It is a record of the author’s emotional and intellectual experience during those months, the trivia of everyday living set against the events of the world outside, the settlement in Munich and slow defeat in Spain.

‘He completely seizes the atmosphere of the year of Munich. He tolls the knell of the political thirties with melancholy triumph.’ Cyril Connolly

Faber & Faber | 96 pages

Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner (1926)

Lolly Willowes, so gentle and accommodating, has depths no one suspects. When she suddenly announces that she is leaving London and moving, alone, to the depths of the countryside, her overbearing relatives are horrified. But Lolly has a greater, far darker calling than family: witchcraft.

‘Witty, eerie, tender . . . her prose, in its simple, abrupt evocations, has something preternatural about it.’ John Updike

Penguin Modern Classics | 176 pages

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What are the classics you like to read at this time of year? Let me know in a comment below!

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