Ann Herendeen
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Anything That Moves MeAuthor's Note from PhyllidaMay 11, 2013
Phyllida and the Brotherhood of Philander began life as a Regency romance novel. The first regencies, written by Georgette Heyer in the 1930s and 40s, are comedies of manners that take place in Great Britain between 1811 and 1820, when the future King George IV acted as Prince Regent because his father, George III, had become incapacitated. Heyer’s prototypes established a popular subgenre of the historical romance: witty, lighthearted love stories among members of the wealthy and leisured upper classes, while the darkness of world conflict occurs mostly offstage in the final years and aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars. (more…)
My Tudor BingeFebruary 26, 2013
I finished reading Bring Up the Bodies, the second book in Hilary Mantel's planned trilogy about Henry VIII and his crew as seen through the eyes of Thomas Cromwell, two days after our book club's discussion. Now I'm reeling from self-imposed Tudor overload. Wanting to know more about the standard interpretation of Cromwell and his character (as opposed to Mantel's partisan approach), I started with Wikipedia. But I also needed my regular nightly fix of TV, and what more logical than The Tudors, the over-the-top (and I don't just mean breasts spilling out of tight bodices) cable series starring the acting world's physical antithesis of Henry, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, four seasons ready for binge-streaming on Netflix. And to put the cherry on this sex-and-violence sundae, (more…)
Natural BisexualityFebruary 5, 2013
As regular readers and viewers of my Facebook author "fan page" have probably noticed, most of my posts are about writing, usually links to articles in publications like the New York Times. But what generate the most interest are photos (Facebook is a visual medium) and posts that in some way address the substance or theme of my own writing: male bisexuality, and the m/m/f ménage. (more…)
Review of Hilary Mantel's Wolf HallJanuary 14, 2013  Wolf Hall by Hilary MantelMy rating: 4 of 5 stars Rating and reviewing a book like Wolf Hall is a challenge on many levels. It's serious historical fiction written by an intelligent, talented author, about a well-known period of English history (Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, divorce, male heir, rise of Protestantism, break with Rome) as told by a relatively unfamiliar main character, Thomas Cromwell, Henry's chief minister and, as we might think of him, "enforcer." (more…) To Anachronism in HeavenDecember 31, 2012
For my last blog meditation of the year, I want to revisit a favorite topic: the use of language in fiction, especially historical fiction. Yes, I've written about this a lot, but the issue keeps sitting up and jumping off the slab each time I think my last autopsy has established a cause of death. (more…)
Fay Weldon's Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane AustenNovember 11, 2012  Letters to Alice on first reading Jane Austen by Fay WeldonMy rating: 5 of 5 stars "Alice" is a fictional character, the author, Fay Weldon, signs her letters to this nonexistent niece "your aunt Fay" and most of the book reads more like essays than a novel. Sounds ghastly, right? It probably is if you read it at the wrong moment. (more…) Jane Austen and ZombiesNovember 3, 2012
By a strange confluence of programming during last month's Jane Austen Society of North America's annual general meeting (JASNA AGM), I would come home after a full day of sessions about the seduction of conversation, coded sexual references in Austen's fiction and gendered ways of speaking, and watch a couple of episodes of Season 2 of The Walking Dead, the popular zombie-apocalypse cable TV show--my own version of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. (more…)
Review of Edith Wharton's The House of MirthOctober 30, 2012
The House of Mirth, published in 1905, is Edith Wharton's first major work of fiction, and it established her reputation as a brilliant novelist and harsh critic of her society. Because I came to it after reading The Age of Innocence, which shows Wharton at the height of her power, I can't help giving Mirth four stars, where Innocence rated five. (more…)
Seduction and ConversationOctober 15, 2012
The Jane Austen convention (formally known as the JASNA AGM, the Jane Austen Society of North America's annual general meeting) that ended a week ago on Monday was such a mind-blowing experience for me that I had hoped to write up a kind of "what I did last summer (week)" school report. I'd discuss, in chronological order, or more ambitiously, in order of fabulousness, the events of the five days, and devote a paragraph or two of evaluation to each.
Well, that's not happening. (more…) The Monogamish MythSeptember 29, 2012
The panel that filled an entire 19th-century Episcopal church—pews and gallery, and sitting on the floor in the aisles—at last Sunday's Brooklyn Book Festival was a discussion of monogamy. The panelists were excellent: Eric Klinenberg, sociologist and author of (more…)
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