Category: the Victorian era

+Book Review+ A MidSummer Night’s Steampunk by Scott E. Tarbet (a Shakespearean re-telling)

Posted Saturday, 12 April, 2014 by jorielov A MidSummer Night's Steampunk, Scott E. Tarbet, Xchyler Publishing 4 Comments

Published By: Xchyler Publishing (@XchylerPublish) 18 November, 2013
Official Editor Websites: Site | Twitter
Converse via: #AMidSummerNightsSteampunk
Genres: After the Canon | Classic Re-Telling | Shakespearean | Steampunk | Fantasy
Available Formats: Trade Paperback and E-Book
Page Count: 324

Acquired Book By: I contacted Xchyler Publishing about receiving books in exchange for honest reviews and was asked to pick the two books I’d like to request. Moments in Millennia was my second choice, as my first choice was A MidSummer Night’s Steampunk. My interest in this novel is based on a life-long love of William Shakespeare’s writings! I received a complimentary copy of “A MidSummer Night’s Steampunk” in exchange for an honest review direct from the publisher Xchyler Publishing. I did not receive compensation for my opinions or thoughts shared herein.

On Appreciation of William Shakespeare:

As a participant of the A to Z Challenge this April, whereupon each blogger is undertaking 26 Essays | 26 Days, I elected to focus on my love and appreciation of Classical Literature on Day 3: Letter C. Therein, I discuss my fascination and affinity for William Shakespeare from the very first moment I first read his plays and Sonnets. I knew I had found a writer I would be reading for the rest of my life. He had this classic way of ebbing out the human sphere of emotion, psyche, and our living observations. He was the best at conveying each dynamical evocation of human emotions as well. A champion of wordsmiths, it was through his bar of sophisticated eloquence I tend to seek out in other writers. He always felt to me to give great pause before enduing his characters with action or dialogue. He wanted us to have a legacy of thought left behind and for this I am in his debt.

Imagine my happiness in finding there was an author out there who would not only take his own passion for Shakespeare to a new height of re-telling the magically laced “A MidSummer Night’s Dream” and retrofit it into a Steampunkified re-telling of the classic tale with the bentings of a scientific quality of theory!

Author Biography:

Scott Tarbet writes enthusiastically in several genres, sings opera, was married in full Elizabethan regalia, loves Steampunk waltzes, and slow-smokes thousands of pounds of Texas-style barbeque. An avid skier, hiker, golfer, and tandem kayaker, he makes his home in the mountains of Utah.

You can learn more about Mr. Tarbet through the Interview I conducted ahead of this book review! He shares his thoughts on Steampunk as a genre, his appreciation of Shakespeare, and a lot of keen bits for writers & readers alike!

Book Synopsis:

Immerse yourself in this Steampunk retelling of Shakespeare’s classic, replete with the newfound wizardry of alternative Victorian technology, mistaken identities, love triangles, and deadly peril, set against the backdrop of a world bracing itself for war, and Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee.

Pauline Spiegel, a master artificer like her mother before her, wants just one thing: to wed the love of her life, Alexander MacIntyre, a lowly undersecretary of the Royal Household. However, a long-term pact between her parents, and a noble House, stands between her and her happily ever after. When a priceless mechanoid of unfathomable power is stolen, Pauline finds herself entangled in skullduggery and international intrigue, upon which the fate of nations rest. Only with the help of her friends, and a brilliant scientist with a swarm of micromechanical insects, can Pauline survive the dark forces determined to destroy her. But will her betrothed and his rag-tag band of semi-mechanical soldiers reveal Alexander’s secrets as well?

To begin with a parting of prose:

A lover of quotations and bits of poetry, I am one reader who appreciated the warming of my reading palette with bobblements of poems greeting me at each interface! A lovely poem reminiscent of the innocence of fairies greets you before you reach the Prologue. And, yet another poem graces the upper corner of Chapter 1. A little nibbling of foreshadow in which I took the most delight! And off from here comes the divergence into a world of mechanisms and the air in which humanity’s door is slightly skewed towards automation. Rehabilitating veterans of war has been turnt on its heels to retrofit survivors into the most efficient entity of their trades. A fantastical yet questioningly haunting insight into how production and quantity can supersede plausibility and ethics.

Each chapter is lit with a piercing thought writ out through the hand of poets to help give heed to the next foray of intrigue!

My Review of A MidSummer Night’s Steampunk:

As I nestled into the story of A MidSummer Night’s Steampunk, I attempt to recollect if I had read the original play or if perchance, I had seen an adaptation of it instead? The corridors of my memory are a bit foggy at best, which is why I had to shift a bit of my fragmented memories and emerge into the sadistic fever of mechs who were created not necessarily for the well-being of their inhabitors but for the progression of automated industrialism as I aforesaid. The shockingly brutal rebuilding of a sentient being is off-set by the fact that the mechs do not seem to realise their individualistic freedoms have become abandoned on the whim of their creator.

The words in which Tarbet uses to create his universal pace is a pure delight to this wordsmith’s heart! He gives you a felicity of choice as you ease your way forward into the chapters which yield the most foreshadowing to satisfy your appetite for the action yet to transpire. Picking up where Shakespeare had left off is not an easy task, but to knit together a story which honours the canon and gives such a creative spark to Steampunk at the same time is a celebration of his writing style.

The forbearing inertia of caution is under-stitched into the story of the classic tale, giving a new appreciation for the choices humans have made since the Victorian age as each path chosen has turnt out a different avenue of progress. If we had opted instead to keep the heart of what Steampunk gives the reader, the age of steampower and gaslight we might have made deviations in other areas where the Industrial Revolution had yet to enlighten. By keeping Victorian technology in place, we see how devious the experiments can take inventors when their minds are wired for clockwork and automation. A little too much good for their own souls if you ask me!

At first I found it a bit tricky to ascertain how to proportionate the mech characters in my mind’s eye, as I’m quite new to Steampunk & Clockpunk alike. Then, all of a sudden whilst the mech men made their way through to central London, it dawned on me how to visualise them! From that moment forward, I had this envisioning shadow of how they were created and how they would stand out in ordinary streets of London! I think if there were illustrative plates for this particular piece it might have helped me out a bit. Character sketches to off-set the lack of baseline recognition! Except to say, Tarbet expertly gives such a vivid viewing of each of the mech’s mannerisms to purport an honest impression of how they can be perceived! I am such a visual learner that at times, when I step outside a world I’ve previously visited, I must adjust my eyes to a new one! In this, I celebrated my ability to see visually in my mind’s eye what Tarbet was attempting all of us to embrace!

A clever re-telling by far, as he has etched in such a reformed rite of passage for women in the story, where there is an alliance between Lakshmi, Jennie, and Vicky – all women of equal power and without the ambiguity of being able to blend in from behind prying eyes. For them to launch a series of events to forestall a dictator’s diabolical plans to overtake surrounding nations is one of the best moments I was celebrating! It gave way to the expression that ‘behind all good men, is a great woman’; and in this particular story it could not be more true! A separate alliance was forged out of necessity from the mech men, a wickedly fascinating engineer Pauline, her two suitors Alexander & Winston, along with a besotted in love girl named Clementine who only has eyes for Winston!

At the very heart of the story is the searing warmonger Wilhelm who is blinded by carnal rage and a robust ill-fated sense of power. His intentions for his home country is strengthened by his assertion that power and proclivity towards violent rule are his inherit gifts. A madman on the collision course towards altering history whilst utilising another madman’s offering of technology. There are moments of intense fighting and heated battle between human and mechs, and mechs vs mechs with an equaling sense of unease. Each is caught in the cross-hairs of an emerging war neither fully understands. It is only when logic is cast aside and reason is indued by a spark of enlightenment which dances straight into the vortex of human understanding can true change be cast. Free will of man and mech is the turning point towards diplomacy and democracy.

As I was reading the story, I thought this particular book would be a great lesson in ethics for a University class to undertake. There is enough within the chapters to take both sides of the argument and dissect the worth of its message. What foolish folly and provocation can be found in the nettling and maddening proclamations of one man’s dream for supreme rule.

Equality & Diversity : Undertone Components

An undertone component of A MidSummer Night’s Steampunk is the inequality of the mechs inside the story. They have become their own race of men as their lives were irrefutably altered when they came home from the battlefield and/or the hospital in which their very life hung in the balance between being medically altered through technology and death. Due to their new status of half man | half machine, they are no longer viewed as individuals outside the scope of what trade they perform based on their ‘upgrades’ towards industry efficiency. And, therein lies the problem. Rather than being viewed as the people they were prior to the surgeries that were performed without their consent, they are no longer given the compassion of humanity by any person who crosses their path. Rather instead they are refuted from view, a mere glimpse of a hint of the ravages of war and a different age of invention.

Tarbet presents both sides of the argument giving a positive light on how restoration of a person’s self-worth, self-identity, and the living freedoms of liberty each of us is innately inherit to have is plausible if there are still those who agree all sentient life has rights to keep in tact.

Fly in the Ointment:

Although I enjoyed reading this re-telling of William Shakespeare’s “A MidSummer Night’s Dream”, there is a curious attachment in the second half of the story to bring out the full measure of Jack the Ripper’s presence. At first, the subtle nodding towards Hitler’s reign over Germany; the conquest of Napoleon through France; and the merciless tactile militant force of the mechs carved out of the unwilling criminally insane patients was taken for what each representation was given to highlight. However, for me, this stretched a bit too far into the darker shadows of the theories behind why Jack the Ripper killed and what his motivations were to hunt innocents in the streets of London. I was a bit surprised that the wielding of the alternative history components were writ as strong as they were, as the backdrop of the story which illuminated the most joy for me were the clockpunk and automation engineering technologic advances on the side of the good.

There is always a battleground arc for good vs. evil, but there are times where I feel the vile bits to highlighting said evil can inadvertently overtake the good bits. I was pleased to see Tarbet use the eloquence of Shakespeare to empathise the vocalisations of human emotion without falling into the quandary I normally express in Fly in the Ointment. No, it’s not an issue of language but rather of how far pushed the envelope felt to me for the level of violence against the backdrop of where the story was leading. Of course, all stories are open to interpretation of the reader, and I for one, felt the story was guiding me towards one passageway of an ending rather than diverting down another.

A decidedly splendid extra:

Behind the conclusion of A MidSummer Night’s Steampunk, the author’s biography & acknowledgements and a bit of a mini catalogue of titles via Xchyler Publishing itself, is a decidedly splendid extra: a preview of On the Isle of Sound and Wonder by Alyson Grauer! A book which is not yet released and an author of whom Mr. Tarbet spoke about in his Author’s Interview!

A MidSummer Night’s Steampunk Book Trailer by Xchyler Publishing

There is something magical afoot at Xchyler Publishing as their music accompaniments inside their book trailers draw your imagination into the narratives of their stories long before you pick up their books!

This book review is courtesy of:

Xchyler Publishing

check out my upcoming bookish events and mark your calendars!

I have been blessed with four spotlights on behalf of Xchyler Publishing:

An Editor Interview with Penny Freeman,

a book review of Moments in Millennia: a Fantasy Anthology,

and my Interview with author Scott E. Tarbet ahead of this book review!

I’d be keen to hear reader responses to my review of A MidSummer Night’s Steampunk, as I was happily settled into the alternative history backing of story against the clockpunk elements of automation before plunging head-first into the Jack the Ripper thread. Have you ever felt ensconced into a story-line which at a certain point in time arched into a different thread of discovery than you forethought? What do you look for within the realm of Steampunk, Clockpunk, and automation stories? What draws you in and what if anything disappoints you?

{SOURCES: A MidSummer Night’s Steampunk Book Cover, and synopsis were provided by Xchyler Publishing and were used by permission. Author photograph & biography were provided by the author Scott E. Tarbet and used with permission. Book Review badge provided by Parajunkee to give book bloggers definition on their blogs. The book trailer by Xchyler Publishing had either URL share links or coding which made it possible to embed this media portal to this post, and I thank them for the opportunity to share more about this novel and the author who penned it.}

Posted Saturday, 12 April, 2014 by jorielov in 19th Century, Action & Adventure Fiction, After the Canon, Airship, Alternative History, Automation, Book for University Study, Book Review (non-blog tour), Book Trailer, Bookish Discussions, Bullies and the Bullied, Classical Literature, Clever Turns of Phrase, Clockmakers & Watchmakers, Clockpunk, Clockwork & Mechanisations, Clogs & Gears, Debut Novel, Dirigible, England, Excessive Violence in Literature, Fantasy Fiction, Fly in the Ointment, Genre-bender, Good vs. Evil, Indie Author, Inspired By Author OR Book, MidSummer's Night Dream, Re-Told Tales, Steampunk, the Victorian era, Warfare & Power Realignment, William Shakespeare, Wordsmiths & Palettes of Sage, Xchyler Publishing

+Book Review+ Close to the Wind by Zana Bell #ChocLitSaturdays

Posted Saturday, 25 January, 2014 by jorielov Berni Stevens (Illustrator), ChocLitUK, Close to the Wind, Zana Bell 1 Comment

Close to the Wind by Zana Bell

Author Connections:

Personal Site | Facebook | Twitter

Converse via: #CloseToTheWind

Illustrated By: Berni Stevens

@circleoflebanon | Writer | Illustrator

Genre(s): Fiction | Romance | Historical

Victorian | Adventure | High Seas Epic

Published by: ChocLitUK, 7 October 2013

Available Formats: Paperback, E-Book, Audiobook, & Large Print Page Count: 352

Acquired Book By:

I am a ChocLit reviewer who receives books of my choice in exchange for honest reviews! I received “Close to the Wind” from ChocLit via IPM (International Publisher’s Marketing) in exchange for an honest review! The book released on 7th October 2013. I did not receive compensation for my opinions or thoughts shared herein.

Inspired to Read:

I recently re-read “The House Girl” which touches on the true meaning behind ‘freedom’ and how to free ourselves not only from our given set of circumstances but by how listening to our inner hearts we can find the path we’re meant to be on. I found it interesting in this premise that the question of ‘freedom’ is broached again in a new vein, in regards of how to know the choices your making are leading you in the right direction. As much as when you eclipse to the point of securing your freedom what is the cost of the freedom your now living? I like books that make you think! And, definitely appreciate protagonists who are conflicted, searching, and determined!

Book Synopsis:

What would you give to be free?

Georgiana da Silva is catapulted out of the Victorian drawing rooms and into a world of danger when she escapes her fiendish fiancé to engage in a mad dash across the world to save her brother before an unknown assassin can find him.

Meanwhile, Captain Harry Trent is setting sail for New Zealand. With a mission to complete and the law on his heels, he’s got enough trouble of his own without further complications.

Thrown together, unable to trust anyone, Georgiana and Harry are intent on fulfilling their missions despite the distractions of the other. But liberty comes at a price and the closer they get, the more they must question the true cost of being free.

Author Biography:

Zana Bell lives in New Zealand. She describes herself as a big fan of Georgette Heyer and combines the elements of light-hearted romance with travel and adventure. Zana’s first book was a young adult time travel, published in New Zealand and Australia. Her second novel was an historical, based on the life and times of Charlotte Badger, convict, pirate and New Zealand’s first English woman immigrant. It was voted Single Titles 10 Best Books in 2008. She is also the author of two contemporary romances from Harlequin’s Super romance line. The first won a Cataromance Reviewer’s Choice award 2010. This is her début novel for Choc Lit and the return to her love of writing historical novels.

Setting a course for New Zealand:

There is always a moment when a reader realises that they have jumped the moon and become fully absorbed into the story they are holding in their hands! The very moment the pages etch out of view, and your mind enchants you by placing you singularly into the world in which the characters are living. For me, it was the scene in which Georgiana realises the actions of what she set forth into motion have now landed her in the berth of a ship headed in the direction of New Zealand! The last time I was swept away into a high seas epic adventure was whilst in a darkened theater watching Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, which coincidentally I had only a murmuring of a knowledge of the books by O’ Brian prior to seeing the motion picture! I went with my Da because I knew he might appreciate it a bit more than my Mum! I was so enraptured by the breadth of the story, I only dared to scant my eyes away during the scenes of surgery above decks! What I love about the world of high seas epics, is that the whole of the story is taking place within a certain diameter of space! Tight quarters, tight ship, but an expanse of a stage set against the wills of man!

I have unearthed quite a heap of stories writ in this vein of thought, but I haven’t yet squared away the proper hours to address reading them! In this way, I was pleasantly surprised to find Close to the Wind offered in the ChocLit catalogue! The appeal factor for me is the thirst for adventure and for travelling into the charted and uncharted worlds where maps do not always foretell of being. To slip away from the life on land, giving your heart to the sea and seeing where the winds take you next — there is a happy allure in this, as it’s a pure sense of freedom as you change your own stars as you journey.

My Review of Close to the Wind:

Georgiana is not only fearless in her pursuit to reach New Zealand, but she is daring in her approach of how to sail. Taken with the confidence of her years of circus training in her youth, she devises a disguise she perfected in local theatre; of a boy rather than girl! Dressed in her brother’s clothes, with her hair chopped off into a lad’s level of trim, and her chest bound with cloth, she dares herself to believe the transformation in order to save her skin whilst sailing aboard the Sally! Her guile exterior belies her a bit as she attempts to forge a distance between her female tendencies and the brave face she must constantly place forward to blend in with the crew!

As she grows her confidence to man the decks as a swab, she finds it harder to squash the affection brewing inside her heart for Captain Trent. In turn, Trent is a man of precision skill in knowing his adversities as well as knowing of whom he can trust. He sees in George (Georgiana’s ingenious name to hide the obvious!) a story of unknown depths, as he could assert from their first meeting that there was something not quite true in George’s façade. The power struggle between is cleverly writ, as Georgiana is attempting to find the stance of strength whilst surrounded by the burliness of the crew, in an ill-attempt to reach her destination. Whereas Trent is trying to maintain the clarity of his role of Captain, without having a scamp of a pup needle his yawl.

By the time they pulled into the first port, after a raging storm changed the tides for both Georgiana & Trent, we were given the chance to see each of them in a new light. The addition of the mysteriously enchanting Consuela was a happy one indeed! She softened Georgiana’s temperament towards her own self-loathing as she harboured a distasteful self-image of herself. Consuela is like a moonstone of reason for both lead characters to either take heed of and seek advice, or to run reckless of in their own directions.

Georgiana and the Captain’s path divert away from each other, hers leading to a role of Governess, whilst his leads to a new reason to grieve for her fears about where their lives are leading. The solicitous of her desire to walk against her own nature and at the very same time embrace her gender is fodder to folly. I appreciate seeing how she is distressed one minute and on the brink of fanciful thoughts the next! The story is as much of a coming-of age tale as it is a suspenseful mystery. I love seeing characters’ futures become so intrinsically entwined with each other that they start to wonder when the other wasn’t in their life. The manner in which Bell re-asserted them into their journey towards New Zealand is beyond clever!

There is a sudden depth of knowledge ebbing out of Trent’s past life which provides a kaleidoscope of emotions; as you presumed he lived his life more of a pirate than a gent. A glimpse into his rough-hewn past reveals a vulnerable vein of humanity. It’s the choices that each have to make in successive chapters which will give way to where their fates are directing them. I personally was enthralled from the first chapter until the last — not wanting the action, the danger, or the intrigue to let up even an inch! This is definitely an enjoyable read for those who like a bit of a daring risk towards seeking freedom of its most innocent ideal! As much as it is an exposition on self-identity and the assurances we all seek to understand where we belong.

Intrigue and Adventure are Bell’s mischievous graces:

I lay claim that they are mischievous graces because Bell has a way with crafting a story to where the reader is as perplexed about the outcome as the central lead characters! She gives you insightful intrigue against the passionate escapades of the adventurous crew of Sally. She has you properly endeared to the ramshackle cast long before doubt can cloud your judgement of the truer hintings of what a few characters might be attempting to keep out of sight. I like writers whose research into their topic fades gently into the back-story of their novels, to where you are feeling the story evoked through you as you read rather than feeling bogged down in a thesis of its origins. I have a cursory knowledge of tall ships and the life therein, but as Bell helps nudge us forward in the narrative, you feel as though you have stepped aboard many a ship rather than a mere few!

Her grace of giving us a responsive Captain Trent, despite his flawed nature and his qualms over his past (mere presumed, he is not giving of his internal thoughts), he responds to his crew and to his charges alike. I like how strong he is represented and how you want to support him even though there could be an element of danger if you do. In Georgiana, I could relate to the strong will of a girl trying to forge her own way in the world, as she is writ with such a hearty girth of backbone despite her tendencies to swallow in her own fears. Her natural perseverance given to her by her upbringings in the circus lend well in her role on the ship as much as her interactions with each of the secondary characters who cross her path. She’s not the atypical Victorian lass and I thank Bell for writing her in this new light of boldness! Afterall, the society balls are only one way towards happiness, and if your feet are leading your path into new areas to tread, its best to follow where they plant you!

{NOTE: I marked this as ‘debut novel’ as this is Zana Bell’s first ChocLitUK novel; but not her first novel overall.}

This book review is courtesy of ChocLitUK,

check out my upcoming bookish event and mark your calendars!

NEWSFLASH : This marks my third #ChocLitSaturdays, where I will be spotlighting a book published by ChocLitUK! Coordinating bonus features will alight on my blog in forthcoming weeks! My next ChocLit review will be for “Dangerous Decisions”, on the 8th of February! I will be tweeting about it ahead time if you want to watch the hashtag for future announcements for this Jorie Loves A Story feature!

{SOURCES: Author photograph, Author Biography, Book Synopsis, and Book Cover were provided by ChocLitUK and were used by permission. Post dividers by Fun Stuff for Your Blog via Pure Imagination. Book Review badge provided by Parajunkee to give book bloggers definition on their blogs. Jorie Loves A Story badge created by Ravven with edits by Jorie in FotoFlexer.}

Posted Saturday, 25 January, 2014 by jorielov in 19th Century, Action & Adventure Fiction, Blog Tour Host, ChocLitSaturdays, ChocLitUK, Debut Novel, High Seas Epic, Historical Fiction, Historical Romance, Indie Author, Modern British Literature, New Zealand, Pirates and Swashbucklers, Romance Fiction, the Victorian era, Victorian Era

WWW….Wednesday #2: One Book at a Time, One Day at a Time!

Posted Thursday, 26 September, 2013 by jorielov Abigail Reynolds, Andrea Barrett, Ann Purser, Annie Vanderbilt, Bluebird or the Invention of Happiness, C. Allyn Pierson, Charlotte Bronte, Colleen McCullough, Death by Darjeeling, Flora Thompson, Hallie Rubenhold, J.L. Mulvihill, Jane Eyre, K.B. Laugheed, Lark Rise to Candleford, Laura Childs, Lucid Stars, Mary Robinette Kowal, Mary Simses, Maya Slater, Melissa Nathan, Mistress of My Fate: the Confessions of Henrietta Lightfoot, Mr. Darcy's Little Sister, Murder on Monday, Sarah Waters, Sharon Lathan, Sheila Kohler, Stephen Zimmer, Susan Vreeland, Susan Wittig Albert, The Boxcar Baby, The Chronicles of Ave: Vol. I, The Forest Lover, The Independance of Miss Mary Bennett, The Irresistable Blueberry Bakeshop and Cafe, The Private Diary of Mr. Darcy, The Secret Keeper, The Secret Papers of Madame Olivetti, Thyme of Death 4 Comments

I loved the premise of this meme {WWW Wednesdays} due to the dexterity that it gives the reader! :) Clearly subject to change on a weekly rotation, which may or may not lead to your ‘next’ read which would provide a bit of a paradoxical mystery to your readers!! :) Love the concept! Therefore, this weekly meme is hosted by Should Be Reading. Each week you participate, your keen to answer the following questions:

What are you currently reading!?
What did you recently finish reading!?
What do you think you’ll read next!?

Afterwhich, your meant to click over to Should Be Reading to share your post’s link so that the rest of the bloggers who are participating can check out your lovely answers! :) Perhaps even, find other bloggers who dig the same books as you do! I thought it would serve as a great self-check to know where I am and the progress I am hoping to have over the next week!

What are you currently reading!? A better question would be to ask “What is Jorie not reading!?” (smiles a bit mischievously!) You see, I fell behind on my Septemb-Eyre + Classics Re-Told Reading schedules, but I stubbornly refuse to abandon ship on either project! Afterall, I am stitching together posts this week for 4 adaptations in motion picture for “Pride and Prejudice”, as well as making headway towards having book reviews ready as well! Therefore, I am knee deep inside Chapters XII-XXI of Jane Eyre, expecting to post my ruminations by Sunday, which coincides with my review of The Boxcar Baby, which I am starting on the morrow! The Pride books I am reading are as follows: Mr. Darcy’s Little Sister by C. Allyn Pierson, The Private Diary of Mr. Darcy by Maya Slater, and The Independance of Miss Mary Bennett by Colleen McCullough.

Meanwhile, I have seven! lovely books in progress at different stages of absorption:

To the keenly observant, this list was included on my #1 WWW! I still fully intend to read each of them!

What did you recently finish reading!? The Secret Keeper K.B. Laugheed! This story bewitched my mind, as it was such an engrossing multi-dimensional stroke of narrative!! I was quite gobsmacked when I read the other reviewers’ opinions, as I would never consider this to be a book for a pre-teen! Unless they were emotionally mature, but even then, its not a story of innocence nor of a life lived wrapped around the warmth of hearth and home! Its a gutting testament of the power of overcoming your past and carrying forward into your future! I seriously wonder at times, am I reading a different book altogether!? When I was between the ages of 9-12 I wouldn’t be caught dead reading a book with such heavy story-lines as these, because I was wrapped up in: Anne of Green Gables, Mandie, Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, Thoroughbred, The Black Stallion, Agatha Christie, and other childhood favourites I’ve outlined under “Children’s Lit: The Undiscovered Frontier“. By 13, I was exploring more mature texts, as I was in a Michael Crichton, John Grisham, and Tom Clancy phase by then, but evenso, the books I chose to read by them were not on this same theme. I was also entering my cowboy and frontier fiction days, yet those authors were more tempered than Laugheed in their descriptions of frontier Americana. As I would consider this book akin to “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” the tv series, which I watched in my twenties! The story is still haunting my thoughts, because I very much want this book to transform itself into ‘a first of a series’ OR at the very least ‘one of two’ stories stitched together. Its very much one half of a whole! I truly love this book, for adults! I’ll step off my soapbox now, my ire was irked that’s all!

What do you think you’ll read next!? I will be diving into the world of Ave, [The Fires of Eden series] by way of a short story collection that knits together previously spoken about characters or events, inside The Chronicles of Ave: Volume I by Stephen Zimmer! My review of this lovely collection will be live on my blog: 5th of October! Continuing forward with Eyre, Chapters XXII-XXIX will be consumed next, as well as Two Shall Become One: Mr. & Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy: Pride and Prejudice Continues by Sharon Lathan, Pemberley by the Sea {alternative title: The Man Who Loved Pride and Prejudice} and Mr. Darcy’s Obsession by Abigail Reynolds; Pride, Prejudice, and Jasmin Field by Melissa Nathan; Dancing with Mr. Darcy: stories inspired by Jane Austen and Chawton House {anthology} by Sarah Waters and Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal. I am still awaiting materials through ILL &/or books to boomerang back to me, to complete my Classics Re-Told Project, therefore, this is an abbreviated list!

BONUS: What did you forego reading at the moment to read again lateron? Sadly, I had to let go of Lucid Stars by Andrea Barrett, which was an ILL book, and therefore, will be a bit trickier to get back again! I simply ran out of hours to read all the lovely books I was attempting to read having been ill for a week [third week of September!]. There are times when you simply cannot do anymore than your able too. The Irresistible Blueberry Bakeshop & Cafe, and Jane and the Unpleasantness of Scargrave Manor slid into this category as well! I was able to reach the audio clip that I shared with you during my Top Ten List for Autumn Reads, yet that was about as far as I made it before it was called back! With Scargrave, I felt like it would be possible to conclude the story, but in the end, the hours rain out of the hourglass! I am back on hold for both of these lovelies, and eagerly await their return! I have also decided that for whichever reason, my ‘time’ to read Mistress of my Fate has not yet arrived!

Whew!

I wonder what everyone else is up, too!?

{SOURCE: The WWW Wednesday badge created by Jorie in Canva as a way to
promote the weekly meme for those who want to take part in it.}

Posted Thursday, 26 September, 2013 by jorielov in 19th Century, After the Canon, Biographical Fiction & Non-Fiction, Books of Eyre, British Literature, Classics Re-Told: 19th Century & Gothic Classics, Cosy Mystery, Debut Novel, Fantasy Fiction, Folklore and Mythology, Historical Fiction, Library Find, Literary Fiction, Reading Challenge Addict, Science Fiction, Septemb-Eyre, Speculative Fiction, Steampunk, the Victorian era, WWW Wednesdays

Septemb-Eyre: Chapters I-XI | A tumultuous beginning, of a girl determined to make it on her own!

Posted Wednesday, 11 September, 2013 by jorielov Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre, Smith Elder & Co. 8 Comments

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Originally Entitled: Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Currer Bell

[Miss Brontë, like Jane Austen, lived in a time and age, where pen-names were of necessity to disguise their gender!]

Published By: Smith, Elder, & Co., London England |16th of October, 1847

Published in the United States, originally a year following in 1848.

| Currently in the Public Domain |

| Page Count: 643 |

Acquired Book By: Purchased at a big box store within the last several years, by which of whose origin is lost to time itself. It was my intent to read Eyre alongside a friend of mine, yet our goal was never achieved, hence why I was encouraged to join a blogosphere community read-a-long and interact with other Eyre enthusiasts! My version is the Puffin Classics unabridged edition, by which Jane Eyre is seen on the cover with a gothic lit road behind her, her eyes cast aside to the left. Adorned in bonnet and cloak, with her hands clasp in front of her, and a look for anticipation for which we can only yet imagine. She stands in her adult version of herself, with all the tribulations of her childhood thus behind her. Her countenance eludes that there is a story behind her eyes, awaiting to be shared and viewed indiscriminately; as she would readily expect no less of the readers who read of her story.

Ruminatively Expressive about Week I

Although, in the corner of my mind, I drew in a memory of my last viewing of Jane Eyre (as described on the originating posting of this reading challenge; see link attached below!), I was deeply curious about how my heart and mind would shift over and into the text of the canon! Its such a curious proposition to become intimately acquainted with a particular work, ahead of reading such a work, and then, as your whet with anticipation of delving into it, your struck by a curious enquiry of mind,… shall I become thus removed or thus wholly attached afterwards!? How will my perceptions alter as I read Ms. Eyre’s life unfolding upon the printed page, and will I, as I had with Pride and Prejudice, hearing the echoing effect of dialogue whispering in my ears as I read!? Hearing the voice of Eyre through the subtle and calm notings of Charlotte Gainsbourg?!

I was curious too, where the original story begins, and the measure of creative liberty of the motion picture will start to blur, and etch into each other. Which scenes have I latched onto as being the epitome of Jane story, that will in full effect, be additions rather than admissions, to where the overall takeaways will alter, deviate, and shift as I read!?

I would purport, that as these murmurings alighted to mind, I was at first a bit more anxious to pick up the book, than I had first realised possible, as I truly, attempted to put Jane Eyre off until the last possible hour! What ironic turning of events! As it were, I, of whom was rallying around the other Septemb-Eyres (my endearing reference for those blokes and lasses participating in the collective reading challenge), for the very start of this challenge to get underway, found in herself, a air of trepidation!! How unlike me! And, yet, part of that has a bit of founding in our pursuit of reading classical literature, we walk a bit of a dance between what we know, what we expect to discover, and what is shortly revealed as we consume their tomes! There is a measure of uncertainty that perhaps, even the best of readers, are cautious as he/she proceeds!

For you see, I had selected the bookmark for reading Eyre on Monday last, as we were making our meet + greets, as its a thin and narrow metal bookmark, adorned with beadings and ribbons that are attached at the top center piece. Enscribed in its center is a bold and uplifting quote from Ms. Eleanor Roosevelt, which I felt was more than fitting for the nature of story that was about to unfold as I lifted page after page, absorbing into a world that entices me and distracts me at the same time! And, yet, which hour did I first lay heart and mind to rest, to cast aside any fear or anxiety to read Eyre!? A shade past midnight on this very Monday morn, the very day we’re meant to impart our impressions of the first eleven chapters of Jane Eyre’s life! Four hours readily dissolved, as I was purposely elsewhere, drinking in the hearty words of Ms. Brontë’s choosing, by which, she would not alleviate the causal reader’s interest for a less hardy array of turns of phrase, but which a literary wanderer drank in with pure celebration! Such words! Such ways to describe the angst, the anguish, and the inner-most workings of thought in a character such as Jane Eyre! A girl quite ahead of herself, both in a curious perception of her set of circumstances, and the quality of changing said perception by her experiences and encounters at Lowood School for Girls.

Such was my beginning, but alas, its below that I am putting my thoughts down properly, and even, in a vain attempt, to list the murmuring echoes of Ms. Gainsbourg, as I had Ms. Knightley’s elsewhere! As well as to draw to light a few differences I noted between the text and the one adaptation I had previously seen!

It should also be said, as this is a collective reading, we are surely to depart an excessive array of [*SPOILERS*] to the reader who has not yet picked up this text! Due proceed reading past this point on your own liberty, and know, that if what is expressed has spoilt your joy of discovering Jane for yourself, kindly note that this notice was placed to prevent such a bad tiding!

In walked Jane Eyre, as calm as a willow bending in the wind,…

or should I say, that attribution belongs to another, a Ms. (Helen) Burns, of whom, Ms. Eyre draws a readily acquaintance and confidence as she’s removed from Gateshead and placed into custody of Lowood Institution for Oprhans! No, pray give leave, to express that Ms. Eyre is a firecracker of unrequited internal rage and admonition for her plight as thus handed down to her in life, as her parents are long since dead; her last surviving relation put to rest in the grave prematurely, and she is left to the dealings of her Aunt, [Sarah Reed, of the late Uncle Reed, her direct relation] of whom, is presented rather apt to reflect Angelica Houston’s character in “Ever After”, as she presides such blatant disregard for her niece, Eyre! It’s only in the reflections of Jane, as an older self, that we find a disconnect between the younger Eyre’s presumption of what was occurring and the wiser Eyre’s imparted understanding, that not all was as first known when the story starts to unfold!

The edgings of the story are wantonly haunting, as the world around Ms. Eyre is draped in grey tones, rain sodden exteriors, and the atmosphere of Gothic underpinnings, as there is rumours of a potential haunting of her Uncle, whilst alive was tender and kind towards Jane, but in whose death, wrecked a miserable state of affairs to unfold and befell her! I was quite appalled at her nephew’s extensive violence towards her, [in this regard, young Harry Potter lived comparatively comfortably!] and her Aunt’s diffidence not to correct the improper and unkind behaviour! Such grievances I can only try to attempt to tolerate, as I know the resolution of the story in-full, but that does not make it any easier to read or rather, observe her humble and caustic beginnings! If anything, it sets up in my mind how far Ms. Eyre had to transmorph into the resolute and strong adult she became!

As Brontë, deftly brings to life the under kernels of Eyre’s hardening and the porticoes of her knowledge that if she were to embark down certain pathways, she might not soon return! Much less, would she want to be such a creature!? To walk through this world, fully hardened and affaced to all the goodness that surely must still be present!? I can sympathise with her on this level, as when your day-to-day existence is presented in a continuous imprisonment of harsh punishment [solitary confined to the nursery, never allowed outside or downstairs, always finding reprimand rather than nurturing, and an absence of time being measured by usual perimeters!], I can understand her reasonings and her deepest of questions regarding not only the state of her personal affairs, but her state and place in the world itself! How angst ridden we should all feel, to have no Hope, no Light, and no perceivable exodus of our allotted circumstance!?

Her knight of sorts, comes in the shape and form of an apothecarist, who on a lark suggestion on her behalf, suggests that she is sent off to school, and given opportunity to make something of her life; rather than to be cast-off and put aside as she has been thus far forward! Her Aunt devilishly sets into motion to put her into proper place and denounce any notion of her ever becoming more than a humbled lowly counterpart of a human, as in her own eyes, she at this point didn’t seem to attach any wantings of Jane to succeed in life, no matter in what caste placed henceforth! Thus, we see the arrival of a most devious and darkly embodied cleric [Brocklehurst] who takes the task a bit too severely to not only punish the lower class of orphans (as he perceives them to being!), but he inflicts his personal religious reasonings for such outrageous declarations of “humble them before God, equip them with rations beneath regular souls, and do not attach favour, kindness, love, or humanity, for they do not deserve it!” (this is a paraphrase in my own words of the outrageous words spewed out of his mouth at Lowood & Gateshead!) A ghastly character, (reminiscent of Snickett’s Count Olaf, the caregiver of the Bauldelaire orphans!) you would not want to engage with, and yet, he is the one who presides over the teachers and caretakers of Lowood!

I took direct offense of his inability to accept that young Jane took pleasure in reading not one or five, but nine books of the Bible! Because her attention was focused solely on the passages held within: Revelations, Daniel, Genesis, Samuel, Exodus, Kings, Chronicles, Job, and Jonah, yet not inclusive of Psalms, he took this omission as a guilt of an girl with a wicked heart, a wicked soul! In his eyes, a wretched creature who will suffer hell and damnation, live a cursed existence and will need every ounce of her self-defiance to be rid from her by direct force! For a man of the cloth, his mind was closed and obtuse in its scope of the differences individuals take to walk a spiritual life amongst the living! How contrite and hypocritical this evoked an ire in my mind, as he would soon be bled out as a torturous tyrant!

Once Eyre is transcripted into Lowood, I started to see a shifting in her character, as she was thus removed from her previous environment, and placed into another; just as stark, cold, desolate, and un-inviting surely, but with the hope of ‘something better’ to alight in her life even still! I saw this in the appearing of Miss Temple , whilst at the same time, Miss Scratherd was rather an odious addition to her life! The affection that was revealed upon her exit of Gateshead, by way of Bessie, her nursemaid surprised me rather shockingly, as foresaid, it did not appear that there were any kind regards bestowed upon her, aside from the rhyming songs and fantastical stories she would give to young Jane; a reflection of an internal kindness that was not always extended elsewhere. By the time I had settled into Lowood, I felt sorry for Jane not to realise the full reality of Bessie’s adoration and love, until it was nearly too late to even admit existed! Therefore, by extension, the propellent of Miss Temple, becoming a solid ally and rock in her young years, I hoped that the encouragement and positive influences she may shower onto Jane, might in effect, re-direct the course of her outcome in life. It aught to be acknowledged, that up until this particular junction, Eyre was truly living by her wits and instincts, rather than the subjection and conjectures of a teaching adult!

Helen, by contrast to Jane, is a young teen whose angelic presence and inclinations of foreknowledge past her young years, gently guides her towards finding peace from her past, acceptance of her present, and a resolute hope for her future! Never had anyone listened to Jane’s conscription’s of woe, whereupon allowing the merit of what was disclosed to be absorbed and turned over in one’s mind, before selecting the appropriate response to give a young girl of ten years! For Helen, instinctively knew that if no one took the time to intercede on Jane’s behalf, she would be a begotten and fallen soul, doomed to be restrictive of the blight of life condemned to her by her Aunt! Helen, therefore, took every opportunity to enfuse the light and love of God, with the insightfulness of a woman at least thrice her age, to educate Jane how the edification of spirit and the education of the mind can lead to a truer freedom than by fierce altercations by which Jane was [at that time] proficient in being subjected.

This led to a continuation of Eyre’s soliloquy of conscience thought, which extrapolated the complex of the whole set of observations that her sensitive eyes took in around her. She was fiercely attached to the installment of liberty and justice for those who were taken askance and punished severely for their [supposed] indiscretions and faults of character. She was a budding sociologist in many ways, as she overturned many a thought as to how mature adults could subject children to the life by which they did at Lowood School for Girls! It was part abomination and part torture, to think that human decency and respect had fallen to such low degrees as the state of affairs the school was subject to before the revolt of the community to condemn its principles and organisation after the bout of typhus had consumed and taken the lives of nearly half the students! [They began with just past 80 girls strong!] How I celebrated this liberation! This show of support for innocent lives who lived without a proper voice! For me, it came nearly too late to right all the wrongs that had transpired, but to think that they received liberation at all was reason enough to celebrate!

Ill tidings and sorrow soon followed closer to home, as Eyre found herself in a position to lose the one confidante that knew her best of all: Burns! Helen’s young body fell to consumption and was taken to Heaven at the young age of 14 or 15. A trusted saint whose grace and conviction of faith inspired her young friend to trust in a being greater than them both, and to rectify by the means given before her, to re-write her own future. My throat was held tight with emotion, as I was nearly consumed by the grief that washed over me during Helen’s last night; where Jane was nestled close to her in an embrace of sisterly friendship. I nearly felt young Burns’ epitaph ought to have read:

Angel of Earth, Forevermore in Elysium!

[abode of the blessed, heaven]

The story shortly shifts forward eight years, no less! To where Eyre is on the brink of a new cross-roads in her young life. She is now nearly eight and ten years, and on the departure of Miss Temple to her martial life elsewhere than the village surrounding Lowood, she is illuminated by a startling discovery! Her life was lived up to this point, on the foothills of others around her, by whom, she drew her intense strength to carry-on. She was fully content to continue on at Lowood School, having graduated [at least this is presumed], and begun her tenure of teaching. Two years, she has not once felt the need to think about the world outside of Lowood, but with departure of Miss Temple firmly in place, she curiously steals away glimpses of the world beckoning to her just outside the walls; a sight she can readily see from her window. In her chamber, she steals away hours in the night, to come across an idea of a transition she could undertake, that would illumine her achievements but not uprise her past her station. An odd and singularly unique voice brings to light the notion of place an advert in the local newspaper, offering her service as a hired Governess [a teacher in the employ of a family to teach their children at home; the precursor to the modern home study movement], by which the [potential] employee could contact her at the local Post Office.

In my mind, I felt as though Helen herself was coming down to remit a seed of inspiration into her dear friends’ subconscious, if to help guide her towards the next bridge she needed to cross to obtain a measure of independence. Her conformity into life at Lowood was part ambition to succeed and transcend her environment(s), but also, as a measure of grace to find within its structures and limitations the sanctity and security it afforded her. In this way, when she purported the ability to advert for a means better than the one she currently had, she was in this way, seeking to step out of the shadows of her ill-begotten family, and the pseudo-control of Lowood. When Mrs. Fairfax’s letter arrived poste haste seeking her position to be substantiated, Jane drew in a breath of hope, that perhaps, her time had finally come! Trepiderious? Yes. Excited? Most definitely! By receipt of the initial letter, Jane made the motions come to life to grant her full release of her Aunt [who not once contacted her since she left!], and of Lowood, itself! On the eve of her journey to Thornfield Hall, dear Bessie [her nursemaid!] re-appeared into her life, keeping in tow a shy toddler, and endeavouring to bestow upon Jane everything that she had so very dearly wanted her to know eight years ago! Bessie was there as she left Gateshead Hall, and again as she left Lowood School for Girls! At the precipice of each turning tide of young Eyre’s life, Bessie was there to rally behind her, and bide her farewell!

Jane’s voice in the story has matured, and taken on a different scope than her former young self could articulate to the reader. You can tell she has not only deepened her compassion for humanity, but has facilitated a genuine ability to be humble in all manners, seek servitude and provide a need for others at all costs to personal needs or wants, and to rectify her mind towards self-assurance that come what may in life, she was now in the ability to provide for herself, rather than rely on the opinions of others as a vindication of who she was! Her entrance into Thornfield was under the [blind] preconception that Mrs. Fairfax was her charge’s caregiver, when in fact, she is refuted of this upon arrival, and has instead uncovered that Adele is a ward of Thornfield’s master, Lord Rochester! I didn’t bring to mind this entreaty, as much as I would preferred, enso, as though it was being seen for the first time, I appreciated that Ms. Brontë allowed a bit of softening to occur in Jane’s life! Up until this point, every day would lead to a possibility of confrontation, and with her settled here, in Rochester’s absence, I felt as though she could untense her muscles so to speak, ease into a new setting, and feel accomplished in her ability to communicate with Adele in the child’s native tongue of French!

As the grounds are slowly described and revealed, you get the sense that there is a bit of an ominous undercurrent to the estate, as though a small sense of foreboding is leading your senses to stand alert and ferret out what ‘is not quite right, yet not altogether wrong’ at the same time! This is further apparent, when Jane heard a women’s odd sounding laughter whilst Mrs. Fairfax was leading her around the turrets. A plausible answer was provided, but I, nor Jane, took it for any weight other than a passing acceptance that we have not yet been long at Thornfield to be in a position to question things further!

The starkness of Thornfield is warmed by Mrs. Fairfax, and the engagingly bouncy inclusion of Adele, of whom promotes a well-being that I had not yet seen visible in Jane’s life. She doesn’t have to forecheck everything she says or does, at least not at this point, as her cursory impression of Thornfield is limited in Chapter 11. I am on bated breath to sink further into the text over the next week, and eagerly await what fascinations will greet me! I know that the estate itself is as much as a character as Eyre and the inhabitants therein. That is one of the attractions I find with Gothic Literature on a whole — a near Hitchtockian accounting of setting, time, and place, to where your psychological suspended into the subtext!

What staid with me throughout the entirety of the opening chapters, is the elucidation of Ms. Brontë, who thus effused her fictional work with counterparts of reality at each turn! She mastered the ability to absolve and absorb what weighed heavily on her heart, pouring out her grief and emotional keenings into the breath she gave Jane Eyre! She took the tragedies of her own life [her elder siblings died as a result of a school similar to Lowood!] and gave them a proper tomb to cleanse herself of feelings she most likely could not dissipate otherwise. I believe, its through her pen, she tapped into a greater purpose that gave her life meaning and worth, than anything she could readily achieve in her everyday life. She suffered greatly by her own experiences, as I read she and her sisters [Anne and Emily] were afflicted by anxiety disorders, but with her pen, she cast aside all of this, in order to cast into the world a tome of her intellect and wisdom.

Reading this book contributed to these challenges:

Books Of Eyre
Septemb-Eyre

Posted Wednesday, 11 September, 2013 by jorielov in 19th Century, Books of Eyre, British Literature, Classical Literature, Gothic Romance, RALs | Thons via Blogs, Septemb-Eyre, That Friday Blog Hop, the Victorian era

Septemb-Eyre: A Jane Eyre Read-a-long! Declaration of Participation!

Posted Monday, 2 September, 2013 by jorielov Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre 20 Comments

I first stumbled across The Classics Club several months ago, whilst I was initially creating Jorie Loves A Story. I am not remembering what led me to it precisely, although I’d imagine it had something to do with the book blogs I was discovering at the time! Always want to take a nose and peek at a blog, as you never know what your about to discover! Common interests, book challenges, read-a-longs, wicked sweet linkage to explore, dare I say, a new book to read? In this vein, I was settling it in my mind that I would properly join The Classics Club in January {2014}, which encouraged me to work on the bits of how I wanted to construct my personal Classics Challenge therein! More or less, this is how I came across: Septembre-Eyre: A Jane Eyre Read-A-Long! Hosted by Entomology of a Bookworm, who appears to have wanted to read this book nearly if not more dearly than I! What a better way to begin my Books of Eyre Challenge, then to read Jane Eyre with others!? Especially considering, August has grown to be a bit all-encompassing now that I added in Austen in August!

Specifics of this Read-Along Include:
2 September 2013: Septemb-Eyre Declarations of participation & Introductions;
9 September 2013: Chapters I-XI;
16 September 2013: Chapters XII-XXI;
23 September 2013: Chapters XXII-XXIX;
and 30 September 2013: Chapters XXX-End.
A wrap-up posting about my adventures during Septemb-Eyre!

Readers taking on the read-a-long: Kerry @ Entomology of a Bookworm; ~~Rachel~~ @ A Home Between Pages; ~~Sam~~ @ Tiny Library; Jaclyn @ Covered in Flour; Jorie @ Jorie Loves A Story; Charlene @ Bookish Whimsy; Cham @ Eat Ur Banana; Lori @ The Coffee Girl; Loosheesh @ Loosheesh Can Read Too; Andi @ Estella’s Revenge; Brooke @ The Blog of Litwits; Stephanie @ StrazzyBooks; Shan @ Good Books and Tea; ~~Sasha~~ @ Sasha & the Silver Fish; Alison @ The Bookish Girl Reads On; MJ @ Creative Madness Mama; ~~Jen~~ @ Under a Gray Sky; Madeleine @ Owl You Need is a Good Read; Maggie @ An American in France; Stacy @ Novel Meanderings of an Academic; Kwame @ The Wandering Bookmark; Crafts4Others; who will be next!?

Why I have always wanted to read

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë:

There is something altruistic about the Brontë’s writings, and in the vein, of Ms. Charlotte, she had a way of penning the life of Jane Eyre who brought out this attribution in the fullest of light. Eyre, in my mind, was a humble woman with a caregiver’s soul. She never shied away from doing what was right, even if it put herself in a quandary of a position lateron. She led with her heart, pinched her nose towards a determined air of strength, and drew a measure of a breath for what life had given her the opportunity to have, rather than focus on what was lacking or unavailable for her to achieve. She took great courage in extreme adversity, and was led to a man named Rochester who never knew that the one thing he needed was a living angel to help show him the way back towards peace, redemption, and the blessings of life yet lived.

I knew of her story, long before I ever dreamt of seeing an adaptation of her life spilt out inside of a motion picture. As you might already have gathered by reading other entries in my blog, there is a curious notation of ‘how’ and ‘when’ I come to read the books that alight in my life. There is even a curious nodding in knowing why some books are first read, whereas others are first seen. This isn’t always the case, as exceptions to rules are always fluttering just outside of view. Yet. In this particular case, Jane Eyre arrived to my heart and eyes via the 1996 motion picture adaptation starring Charlotte Gainsbourg {as Ms. Jane Eyre} and William Hurt {as Edward Fairfax Rochester}. It was one of those early morns, where I was vexed by the anguish of a bout of unwellness that would not shake off of me rather easily, but instead, wanted to clinge to me, withering me away in a restless torrent of unease. By the time the clock nearly stroke 3am, I was well on my way towards punching the television remote to find ‘something!’ remotely sensible to be on at that particular hour! I did not think I’d find much, as anyone whose struggled to get through a night such as that, and dares the television to produce ‘something of a pang of relief’ will attest that the limitations of quality is more plausible! Therefore, before I could turn the channels to far afield, my knackered and weary self stumbled across a period drama! What great fortune, eh!? I sorted out how to sit comfortably, and started to drink in this gothic lit world. It took me a bit to realise what I was watching and what was unfolding before me. Jane Eyre, you see, is one of those classical works of literature I always fashioned I’d drink in through the text prior to sorting out which adaptation I wanted to watch next. In this way, I was quite gobsmacked that I was pleasantly delighted despite my otherwise vexing condition! I was watching Jane Eyre! I could hardly believe my fruitious good luck!

And, such begins my proper introduction into this lovely story! I never forgot my intention to read the book, nor did I ever forget the impression of the actors who in this particular version left a strong mark on my heart! The portrayals spoke to me, and etch themselves into my mind’s eye. I daresay, each new version I shall watch next will be bent against this original one that I found! It’s a story of self-reliance and self-motivated propensity to survive no matter what blight on your path life may afford you to circumvent. It’s a story of a woman who any young girl or mature woman can align her heart with and rally alongside as Jane Eyre finds her voice and her self-worth whilst setting up a life she can proud to call her own.

And, why I wanted to participate in a read-along verse reading it on my own:

Reading is such a sedentary and solitary experience, whereupon you may or may not ever cross paths with another reader who is as excited and enchanted by the texts that you find as riveting as though they were freshly printed and released the day you stumbled across them! Time is temporal for a lot of our activities in life, such as correspondences and letters, and in the exercise of examining works by authors who turn our eye and settle into our unconsciousness long before their words spark a breath of life inside us. In an ever expanding world of technologic shiftings, it’s harder yet, to find readers who truly are wrapped up and encased into the ‘classics’. Prior to find The Classics Club, I wasn’t even sure if it was still en vogue to be as enraptured as I am with this lot of literature! Except for a few kind souls I am sure, who are scholarly and keen on glimpsing the hidden truths in such long forgotten texts by modern students.

Reading one particular book in a collective of readership will be new to me, as I have just recently participated in my first ‘reading marathon’ {Bout of Books, 8.0}, by which, I can attest that falling rather ill twice in a score of seven days does not bode well for accomplishing your goals; although, on the flip-side, I did settle into a regular rhythm of absorbing the words, settings, and characters, for which I am evermore grateful! These are the moments where you wonder, what was the true goal and outcome we were meant to achieve!? You pause, a smile breaks through your thoughts, and you continue onward towards your next bookish challenge that has intrigued you to participate! Thus, arriving at: Septemb-Eyre as I cross-reference my reading of Jane Eyre as my first book towards my end-goals of Books of Eyre Challenge! I am whet with anticipation to see what the four weeks shall reveal, not only for me, as a new reader of this wickedly smashing book, but of the revelations of being a collective reader embarking into the life of Jane Eyre during the same time frame!

As I wander around to the other readers’ blogs,

I noted the following:

[These are my impressions on Introduction Day,
by which, I shall return each week to see their next impressions!]

Charlene @ BookishWhimsy: She has perplexed me with her inquisitive enquiry about the ‘twist’ and what pray tell, are ‘silly posts’ as a method of updating!? Hmm,… methinks I will have to stay tuned with a whetted curiosity! Being that she is truly one of the biggest and most ideal cheerleaders for all-things Eyre, I am thankful to see she is participating!! I am not going to read her previous take on Eyre though — I’d be plumb too tempted to read about the bits that would be different from the film, and as that is how I am coming into the plot, I’d rather be happily surprised!

Kerry @ Entomology of a Bookworm: To read that she has four copies of Jane Eyre, but has yet to read one! I can relate to this, because I have at least two copies of Pride and Prejudice; two copies of Outlander; and two copies of a variety of other books that I am now forgetting! The reason being!? Whilst being packed or in-between relocating moves over the years, I never knew which box had which book! Laughs. It took until the [2005] adaptation of Pride and Prejudice for me to resolve that picking up the pocket edition was in my best interest! I read it then, as I read it this past August! I have yet to get through Outlander as both copies are tucked into boxes I have yet freed; except to say, I have read most of The Outlandish Companion, which was an unexpected gift for me during Nanowrimo 2008 by my Mum! :) As an aside, when I join The Classics Club, I can just imagine all the corridors of literature I shall be embarking down myself! :)

[Having read her comment on @ The Coffee Girl] Did not realise she wasn’t keen on Pride and Prejudice, perhaps after I am able to complete my posting of it, she might re-attempt it for a third time, as it truly is one of my favourite stories of all-time!! I am always so happy to get entrenched into Longbourn, Netherfield, and Pemberley!

[Side note: I attempted multiple times to leave a comment only to see it go “poof!” right before my eyes! What gives!?]

Loosheesh @ Loosheesh Can Read Too: A newbie to [tCC- I did not know they shortened it like that!] The Classics Club, who, like me, has been enchanted by all the lovely blogosphere events that either they host exclusively for members OR are little additions that anyone [like me!] can participate in! A bit like how Adam @ Roof Beam Reader hosted Austen in August!? She has a delightful sense of humour whilst describing her reading tendencies, and I love her light-hearted attitude! :) On the Darcy vs. Rochester war-of-heroes, I do suppose I will be the odd-duck out, as I lay claim to each of the men rather equally!

[Side note: Unfortunately, her blog is hosted at BookLikes, and without an account there I cannot leave her a proper comment, so I will be leaving them on my Septemb-Eyre updates postings. I could not find a contact email for her either! Quite sad! I wanted to drop her a bit of encouragement and talk about Jane Eyre!]

Lori @ The Coffee Girl: I loved how we both chose to read Pride and Prejudice during Austen in August!! :) What happenstance that is! My review of the book is soon-to-be added to my blog, as I have only been working on it since the 18th of August, the day in which I first began it! For me, it was a re-reading, but only my second! despite my long history of appreciating it! She most likely will enjoy my post of this, and likewise, I look forward to reading hers after mine goes live! According to Adam, I have only today + the morrow to get my tail whipped into shape so it can be placed in the official Linky!

Ahem! I love how she fully fleshed out her first post, and gave the history of Jane Eyre in her life! Love it! I was not a bit surprised she’s more actively vocal in social media outlets — I think I am one of the lone book bloggers who picked her blog verse the rest of the lot! :) I had to smile whilst reading how she selected most of her reading list!! Ahh, the Gilmore Girls shall live evermore! Strangely, I never wanted to read Jane Eyre because of the cultural attachments it provoked,… it was simply one of those stories that alighted in my mind as being one that would wholly fulfill me and sustain inside my memory for a lifetime. There are certain stories and characters that never quite detach themselves from me, and I simply sensed this would be true of Jane Eyre!

Alas! A fellow gothic fiction appreciator! I wonder, pray tell, if she’s stumbled across Kate Morton as of yet!? I am seriously neglectful in my Morton reads, as I have checked out at least 3 of her books [at the library! of course, given the badges, eh?!], yet I am always wrapped up in something off the cuff that takes me away from the text! Deep sighs. [my choices thus far include: The Distant Hours, The Forgotten Garden, & The Secret Keeper] I do not share her itch for Faulkner, but the gothic fiction genre is one I am keen to explore! [Magical Realism is another that is closely hinged to it!]

Like her, I do agree, that the most important aspect of read-a-longs is that we each finish our chosen book in our own way. Even if it runs counter-current to the event, we must all do what is right for each of us. A bit like how I thought my delays in finishing Pride and Prejudice was somewhat of a disappointment, only to be cheered up by Adam himself by a message he sent me on his own Austen in August experiences this year! :) Truly. We each give as much as we can, to both reading, blogsophere events, and to our respective blogs. There are no epic fails and there is no right/wrong approach to our end goals!

I have been wanting to use one of these coffee badges in the worst way! I think I finally found a reason too as she is a coffee drinker! :) Despite my appreciation for tea, there are a few coffees that I enjoy drinking myself! My java of choice will forevermore remain: Ethiopian Yirgacheffe Americano-Misto, as it was my first cuppa of java that felt as though it was only a slight deviation from my regular tea mistos! Light, airy, with rich undernotes of chocolate and berries! Joy in a cuppa! Then, as I started to etch out of my comfort zone with trying other variations, I have come to find joy in: straight-up espresso raspberry mocha latte! [if I were to look against calories, i’d do it up with ‘whip, rasp & choc syrup’!] Although, I do appreciate a good drip coffee as well, such as Highlander Grog! :) All the whilst, I am still and will remain a dedicated tea drinker! :)

[Side note: I attempted to leave a comment only to have it disappear on me again! What is up with my java settings!?!]

[UPDATE: Its not my java settings, its a disagreement between WP blogs + Blogger blogs! Oy for pete’s sakes, I went through this during the Bout! Double exasperated sighs! I finally could post my comment to Lori if I used Name/URL!]

Jacyln @ Covered in Flour: Her sensibility won me over, at the mentionments of: thirty-something addicted to books, adore Jane Eyre, books are scattered into boxes (smiles wickedly!), ANGLOPHILE (wait til she reads My Bookish Life!), enchanted by Brit Lit (if she only knew how much I was too!), TEA-aholic (double grins!), and hiker! Okay, so is it too soon to follow a new blog!? And, who isn’t keen on upstate New York!? Hmm,… back to her post! I best leave a comment before she wonders why I followed her without one! Laughs. I love her on the fly wit and how she just adores Eyre and that’s reason enough to read Jane Eyre! My sentiments were entwined as this for Pride and Prejudice!

Brooke @ The Blog of Litwits: She is one of the few who is re-reading this lovely story, as I am noting that we [the Septemb-Eyre girls; as a bloke hasn’t yet joined us!] fall into a few categories: re-readers, newbies, and dedicated through adaptation of motion picture [that would be me!]. I am enjoying reading our own unique journey towards Jane Eyre as they are each very personalised and individual! She is also a member of tCC, by which I can already tell I am going to enjoy being a member of myself, if it will continue to lead me to such wonderfully engaging readers such as these! :) Although I hadn’t recently purchased my copy, it is a new copy as well which has yet to be broached!

Madeleine @ Owl You Need is a Good Read: The poor dear reminds me of myself, one month ago, whilst launching JLAS, undertaking Austen in August, settled into Bout of Books, 8.0, participated in the first Blog Pen Pal Exchange, encountered an illness, a 4-day migraine, technical difficulties during the Bout & afterwards [more than half the Bout’er blogs wouldn’t load – who knew I needed to switch browsers!? I love! SeaMonkey now!], waylaid by fierce lightning and thunderstorms, AND just when I was thrilled to bits about all the lovelies I am reading, the hours ticked off the clock and I arrived at September before I could make a backwards glance and wonder, “Where did dear August go off too!?” I give her credit!! IF she can pull it off, I tip my hat in congratulations!! I learnt a hard lesson in not taking on too much, which will make me feel less stressed and provide more enjoyment out of the events I dearly want to participate in! Of course, I wouldn’t be a bookish girl worth her salt if I didn’t admit, that I just might get in over my head again (at some point), and relish the experience I gather even if I fall a bit short (again!)!!

And, she’s a librarian to boot! I wonder what she will do when she sees all the library love on my blog!? And, that she can get some for hers as well!? :) :) Those badges that Squeesome created on behalf of a suggestion of mine still makes me grin like a cheshire cat!! :) In full honesty, I think I came across her blog in the recent past!? I wonder!? Blog Nation or the Bout!? Hmm,… I know this, because I loved the entire concept of their blog! I always considered myself an ‘owl’ in many ways, as there are various metaphors for bookish souls, inasmuch as I adore the House of Ravenclaw! :) Ironically, I sort of forgot to give out the personal bits in my post, yet thankfully most of what might be curious to know about me is located under My Bookish Life! Again, I realise I am one of the minority who blogs but does not tweet or engage on other bookish sites.

Stacy @ Novel Meanderings of an Academic: I was happy to see that this is her first blogosphere event and that she too, is as enraptured by Jane Eyre as I am! I realise I’m coming into this from a different perspective, but ooh, anyone who adores Ms. Eyre is alright in my book! :) Laughs. Her parents gifted her an especially keen edition of the novel, which reminds me of the gifted copy of Little Women I received from mine! Parents and grand-parents of bookish girls definitely know how to surprise their kin time to time, eh!? :) I am most curious if she is still in school or is a professor!? Its hard to tell, as I hadn’t realised that her blog doesn’t have a lot posted on it until after I left my comment! A happy mystery!

Maggie @ An American in France: Its her first time reading Jane Eyre, and decided to take up this read-a-long after having completed Mansfield Park, a month beforehand! I am hopeful that the heart of Eyre will attach itself to her, because that is one of the special parts to Jane! I am now wondering, how all the newbies are going to feel about the story, as most did not see a film adaptation like I had!? Hmm,… only the weeks shall reveal! I must confess, ever since I went to her blog as a member of the Septemb-Eyres, I was curious about her life in France! A country I am reading more in literature, and a country of ancestral origins!

Cham @ Eat Ur Banana: [~~WP + Blogger are Disagreeing Again- this was meant to post on her blog!~~][By 10p Thursday, I am able to leave comments! I rock!] Good afternoon, Cham! I am hoping that this note will post, because so far today, two of the Septemb-Eyre blogs I’ve tried to leave notes on [Estella’s Revenge + Good Books & Tea] have not yielded a live comment! I am not sure if its a disagreement with WP + Blogger again(!), or if its something else! I’ve checked all the java settings on my end, plus SeaMonkey has less hiccups than Explorer hence why I switched over — I digress! Technologic issues aside, I wanted to drop by and say, I’ve been stalking your blog since last night, curious when your post would go live! :) Laughs. I am starting Jane Eyre today rather than yesterday, as I nearly exhausted my eyes trying to finish Pride and Prejudice!! I think my world is always a bit chaotic when I have certain books I want to finish by certain deadlines! Laughs.

Wow! Your over 30% into the book already!? And, here I thought we were all going to just read the selected chapters each week! Wow. Impressed! I am a new reader of Eyre, but I am not a stranger to Eyre! You’ll have to visit my blog to sort out what I mean! I can relate to what you mean, as I used to only talk about books with my close circle of friends as well, but one thing I am enjoying about being a book blogger now is that I get to talk about books & bookish culture with some of the most giving and genuine readers I have ever met! :)

Rachel @ A Home Between the Pages: [hasn’t posted yet – I presume by 12th of September she is not participating?] Except to say, that her post on The Golem and the Jinni, intrigued me to no end, as I have been awaiting finding other readers who are as engaged into that story as much as I was! I simply was over the moon in pure joy reading her recollections, and I know how hard it is to capture the full essence of the story whilst attempting to write a blog post, because I had the same issues — its a story that is lit bright and deep in your mind and heart. Chava and Ahmed do not readily leave your conscience, which is why they were sprinkling out into my review of The Clockwork Man, which was my contributing piece for The Clockwork Carnival. They stay with you. They murmur their experiences in your ear. And, she is quite right, your slightly haunted by them, because its not a story that unhinges from you very readily!

Sam @ Tiny Library: [hasn’t posted yet – I presume by 12th of September she is not participating?] Except to say, that I read that she is reading Z: a novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, and I was most esteemed to see that, as that was one of my favourite reads of 2013!! I spent the greater portion of the first six months wrapped up in the lives of the Fitzgerald’s, as this is what I relayed to her on her blog: :) I came in search of your Septemb-Eyre post, but saw that you are reading Z(elda!) for which I have such a warm-hearted memory of reading this year myself! :) I decided not to blog about it as I was wrapped up with the Fitzgerald’s lives for the greater part of January-May, with the full measure of my joy overflowing when I went to see The Great Gatsby!! I had originally wanted to read the book prior to the film but in the end, I was simply thankful I had the opportunity to see the film in June rather than May, as I was a bit delayed getting to the theater! What a brilliant way to conclude a six-month emmersion as much as celebrating my birthday! As I get into Gatsby the novel either lateron this year or early next, I will re-visit the film! To me, this new version (its the only adaptation I have seen!) truly peered into their lives as an example of how outrageous a portion of their lives had become and how true to form all that insanity can yield. I kept smiling because pieces of Z floated to mind throughout the film!!

Meanwhile, I hope that you are having a nice visit with Zelda, and walk away with a good feeling like I did when the story concludes. Their lives were tumultuous yes, but there was a lot of mirth to them as well. The ending gutted me, but its the ending that was real.

What I had forgotten to relay to her though is that I was one of the First Impressions readers who read it through Book Browse, and participated in a book club discussion of the book.

Andi @ Estrella’s Revenge: I originally came by her blog via Bout of Books, 8.0, to which I was thankful to see she is involved with Septemb-Eyre! :) I am not sure what is wrong or why I cannot post my comments, but I had this one compose for Andi, yet it will not post on her blog! ~~[I tried EVERYTHING: Name/URL, Anon, WP, & OpenID!~~] [By 10p, Thursday night, I am back and posting up a storm!] Hallo, Hallo Andi! I was practically stalking your blog last night into the moon hours, wondering when your post would pop up! Laughs. I had such a fun time going to everyone’s blogs, dropping notes, and then, awaiting the ones who hadn’t posted to, erhm, post! As I mentioned on my post, it was nice to ‘see’ you again, after having concluded the Bout! I couldn’t help but smile and chuckle throughout reading your “Intro!” to Septemb-Eyre! I should have known I’d be in for a unique read, as I was back-reading your blog a bit last night,… laughs. Petty thief. Classic! Cannot wait to read your weekly updates — they are sure to be as wickedly unique as this one! By the by, should I bypass “The Other Typist” completely or go in blind and compare notes with you lateron!? [ducks book flying in her direction at the mere mention of this book!]

Stephanie @ Strazzy Books: [hasn’t posted yet – by 12th of September, I presume she isn’t participating!?]

Shan @ Good Books & Tea: First of all, I am thankful to see that not only are we a diverse group of readers who appreciate the classics, but we are equally diverse in what we like to drink as we read! I am a tea girl who digs coffee, and therefore, for me, heaven is a book with either a cuppa tea OR a cuppa java! :) Rock on, dear hearts! Now, then, she’s one of the newbie readers of Jane Eyre, such as I am, (alongside Kerry, our fearless leader!), even though I might have seen a motion picture adaptation AND know the gist of the story, that is in no way an indication that I know what actually transpires inside the novel! Therefore, I am a newbie, too! :) I am most curious to sort out what kind of tea she likes to drink the most, as I personally love the sinfully delish chai latte for a break from the everyday cycle. However, my favourite teas are always: green, white, red, and herbal! :)

~~After attempting to post this on the 3rd & 4th of September I truly give up! I wanted her to read this note~~: [On Thursday, the 5th, I sorted out I needed to switch browsers for the SECOND time this week! I am posting again in other words!] Shan, I am always up for a new citrus infused tea — which brand do you recommend if I were to try orange pekoe for the first time!? I left you a long reply over on my blog! :) Yes, I do concur with you!! We have populated quite a lovely group indeed in Septemb-Eyre! Cheers!

Sasha @ Sasha & the Silver Fish: [hasn’t posted yet – by 12 September I presume she isn’t participating] Except that she was mentioning tCC Master List that she has written up on her blog, and I noted that most of the titles that she wants to read are ones that I am not yet familiar, which was extraordinary, as most times when I come across tCC Master Lists, I can pick out more than half that I recognise! I love an unexpected day like this! :) I look forward to seeing her thoughts on picking up Jane Eyre, as I noted that she is re-reading it! I can say this, I am going to enjoy being in the fold of tCC come January! Lots of wonderful bookish soul are in that club!! :) :)

Alison @ The Bookish Girl Reads On: OOh my dear, dear stars! Pray tell, am I the only soul who finds an attraction to both Mr. Darcy AND Mr. Rochester!? For me, Darcy won me over with the letter he wrote to Elizabeth as it was so very reminiscent of a real-life event of someone I know personally, that I think when I read that for the first time in 2005, it simply eclipsed my heart in a way that could only naturally be logical for me! I would think though, that more would be esteemed to find him dashing after such a revelation, but perhaps, he comes off a bit too stilted and proud, even with the inclusion of the letter? Now as far as Rochester is concerned, he reminds me quite a heap of Mary’s Uncle in The Secret Garden, almost to the brink of wondering if getting nearer to him is possible or wanted? Yet. Both are heroes in their own ways, and their mannerisms were accepted by the women who loved them. Who truly is to say who was right or wrong, when love is forever blind!?

I enjoyed reading her maddening adventures in University, and how it nearly wrecked her for appreciating drinking in a book on her own terms and for pleasure, rather than dissection! I think that was a misstep in my thinking that I’d appreciate a Lit course at University; I suppose I juxtapositioned my own hopeful wishes on that scale but did not take into account the headache of the time schedules, the grueling structure of enquiries, and how in the end, you might not dare want to open up another book if it would spark a memory of the experience! She walked away with the ability to put tongue-and-cheek on the situation and still appreciates classical literature! I count that as a blessing!

MJ @ Creative Madness Mama: [hasn’t posted yet – by 12th of September I presume she is not participating!]

Jen @ Under a Gray Sky: [hasn’t posted yet – by 12th of September I presume she is not participating!]

Kwame @ The Wandering Bookmark: He mentioned that he has read Wide Sargasso Sea which is actually one of my selections for Books of Eyre that I will be reading this year! I am thankful that he didn’t spoilt the surprise and left it to our own inklings to seek it out! He is amongst the re-readers who embarking down a familiar path, but I do wonder, how each of them will react to the story at this point of time in their lives!? As I was discussing earlier on another blog or perhaps even my own (as it all blurs together at some point!), that our experiences and the time intervals can change our reactions and perceptions! Will be intrigued to watch her progress!

Crafts4Others: Joined as she was given Jane Eyre, as her Classics Club spin cycle choice! I have heard of those spin cycles, as apparently from what I have gathered tCC members are either joyfully celebrating OR are deeply worried they may or may not enjoy the book that has come up to read next! I am thankful that she is not only reading it to mark it off her tCC List, but will be joining those of us who have not yet read the novel!

to be continued shortly, as I am awaiting everyone’s introduction post! :) checked again on 8 September, still waiting!

And, the most humbling revelation is that Kwame is a bloke, for whom, I accidentally mistook for a girl! Oy vie! I promptly wrote him an apology and explained that I had complete egg on my face for not realising the gender of his name! Sadly, this is not the first time I have misunderstood a person’s name, but I always feel most grievous for the slight, as I am always trying so hard to get ‘names’ right! Of course, the other side of this for me, is sorting out how to properly ‘say a person ‘s name’, as I find myself betwixt a mystery on ‘that’! moreso than naught! Therefore, we are not just ‘Septemb-Eyre girls’, where the ‘Septemb-Eyre Collective: blokes and lasses together!’

such as Jane Eyre!

{*NOTE: This particular post will serve as an archive of all the posts yet to come for this read-a-long. Therefore, you will find more links threaded to my postings as this continues to move forward in the box above which stipulates the time frame of the read-a-long itself. As you check back, be sure to click through to the next post in line! The same will be true on my Absorbing Lit page where this is cross-posted!}

This Jane Eyre RAL is hosted by:

Kerry’s Archived Posts on Septemb-Eyre

and is in conjunction with my reading challenge:

{SOURCES: Seriously wicked bookish + coffee badges {entirely FREE!} provided by Squeesome Designs! Blog badge for Entomology of a a Bookworm provided by the share codes off the blog itself. Jorie Loves A Story badge created by Ravven with editing through PicMonkey by Jorie. Books of Eyre Reading Challenge badge created by Jorie in Canva Photo Credit: Daniel Ruswick (Public Domain : Unsplash).}

Reading this book contributed to these challenges:

Septemb-Eyre

Posted Monday, 2 September, 2013 by jorielov in 19th Century, Books of Eyre, British Literature, Classical Literature, Gothic Romance, RALs | Thons via Blogs, Septemb-Eyre, the Victorian era