Little Black Classics Box Set (Penguin Little Black Classics)

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The truly scary thing about this story is how real it is. This is the rest cure Victorian women were subjected to, and the journal I wrote here is the ridiculous rationale that drove it. The author of this story was actually administered this “cure.” Her own experienced informed her narrator’s perspective. It’s terrible that something like this had to be written to show how stupid these ideas were. This is a very powerful story, and this was a very stupid husband. I’ve restricted my wife’s freedom incredibly. I direct her every action for her own safety. She eats what I tell her, when I tell her. And she has to stay in our bedroom all day. This will soon be over; she only has a temporary nervous depression. She babbles on to me about her problems at night. I don’t have time for them. I’m a man you see. So that means respectability and shutting down any sign of emotion. I told her to go to sleep, this will soon be over. What strange folly, to beguile the tedious hours like this all day before my ink stone, jotting down at random the idle thoughts that cross my mind

And if you have any interest in selling the public domain in a way that brings value to the reader, you could do a lot worse than study how the people at Penguin do it. Contemplating the books en masse is like being let loose in a sweet shop. Austerely desirable, but also playful in their way: some familiar authors have been given unusual titles – It Was Snowing Butterflies for a selection from Darwin’s Beagle voyage; Mrs Rosie and the Priest for a story from The Decameron – and others are discrete, self-contained, such as De Quincey’s On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts, or The Communist Manifesto. I do not know The Dhammapada; now I can get a taste of it. Ditto Pu Songling, Kenkō, Akutagawa and Shen Fu. Buying the lot doesn’t seem like a crazy extravagance. Brave, outspoken and guaranteed to annoy people wherever she went - including exasperated fellow pilgrims in Jerusalem and her long-suffering husband - Margery Kempe was one of the most vivid and unforgettable voices of the Middle Ages. Whether travelling alone, getting herself arrested or having visions of marrying Jesus, Margery repeatedly defied feminine convention - and also managed to compose the first autobiography in English, despite being unable to read or write. It makes sense you see. I got the idea from the prestigious Dr. Silas Mitchell. He describing what he calls his "rest cure" for hysterical women, wrote, "I do not permit the patient to sit up or to sew or write or read. The only action allowed is that needed to clean the teeth." At the end of six weeks to two months of such treatment, he says the women would be good as new. So I’m going to try this on my wife. Can you not see the sheer intellect behind the idea? This will solve everything just you wait and see. So if you’re a publisher, that’s very cool. You’re giving two sets of value that end up benefitting you. You give someone the chance to sample the work and if they like it you can offer them the full thing.My wife has taken a turn for the worse. She barely eats and she just sleeps all day. She says she needs a vocation; she needs something to do to pass the time, and test her intellects. What silly notions. What she clearly needs is more restriction. That’s the only way she will get over her aliment. She keeps talking about the wallpaper, says she wants the room decorated because it feel like a prison. She says it reminds her of bars. I cannot be doing with it, I told her to go to sleep. I’ve got man things to do in the morning.

I’ve got a great idea. My wife is suffering from low mood. So I, being an extremely practical Victorian man, have decided that the best solution for the problem is to restrain her in the house. This is clearly a brilliant idea. Our marriage simply doesn’t restrain her faculties enough. It is a most wonderful comfort to sit alone beneath a lamp, book spread before you, and commune with someone from the past who you have never met". That being said though, there have been some great things in this series. I completed my goal of increasing my literary awareness and finding a few authors I may never have encountered. All in all, there have been many ups and downs. So this review is a summary of my experience, highlighting the three I enjoyed the most. Content-wise, there is a mixture of short stories, poetry and non-fiction. Some are excerpts from larger pieces. Here is the list in full: Because, I assure you, if you go through some of the classics looking for the little known gems on Gutenberg, it’s going to take you a long time to find something that’s actually pretty good.I caught my wife writing in a journal. What an impetuous woman she is! Does she not understand that these restrictions are for her own safety? I do this because I must have a trophy wife. In public we must be seen as a successful couple with an air of respectability. She can’t be jotting down such nonsense and expressing her thoughts. I told her to stop. She doesn’t need the distraction. She needs to be well again, for my sake. If anybody’s been following me for a while, they’ll know I have been trudging through this box set for over two years. The rate in which I’ve been reading them has decreased considerably as time went on. I used to review one a week, but it eventually got the point that is was a struggle to do one a month.