My year with Stella...

Thanks. I’m learning, only a hobby. In my dream life, I spend all afternoon and evening in my combined book and coffee shop (located in Bloomsbury, obvs), reading and selling the occasional hand bound book that I made that morning ;)

Next, to fill out the existing covers, I needed scrap paper to make up roughly the same thickness - I used old Esperanto exercises and some exam notes, cut approximately to size. The old pages were too brittle to be cleaned up with a cutter, so had to do them individually with a metal ruler scraped flat over the pages. The first few pages were damaged as I was experimenting, doh, so had to be recreated. Eventually, I had a new text block ready for the press (pic 6)

After 48 hours in the press, just before removal, the text block looks like a much more usable object (pic 7)

Then the covers had to be repaired (I forgot to take pics), new pastedowns cut, and the whole thing assembled. And then it was time to start reading! (pics 8 & 9)

Now of course, I need to do something similar with the original volume two, which needs to have the pages removed from volume one inserted at the front, and the pages for volume three removed from the back, and so on…

Conscious I left this dangling somewhat, so here's a bit of an update on the "readalong edition" of Oliver Twist

The original volume one was in worse condition than it first appeared, almost as if it knew it was about to be sacrificed, and decided to start the process of deconstructing itself (pic 1)

The thing to bear in mind is that the new volume one, that aligns with the readalong, has a performance requirement of exactly one read, it’s not meant to be permanent, so it’s a bit of a punk publication!

After removing the text block, the basic construction of these very mass-market books can be seen more clearly (pic 2)

Separated, it’s clear how rough the spine edges of the pages were (pic 3)

For the new volume one, I need all the pages from the beginning to the end of Chapter 22. This introduces a slight problem, as the end of Chapter 22 and the beginning of Chapter 23 are on the same piece of paper (pic 4, edited to avoid any spoilers!)

I decided to use this page in the new volume two, since all bar three lines belong to that volume; which meant creating a new page 199 for volume 1 (pic 5)

Only five pics allowed per post, so the conclusion appears in the next post!

Very quick one: another oeuvre completed! Ridiculous that I read P&P in high school, have re-read it dozens of times, but somehow went decades without reading any other Austen novels! Despite P&P being an absolute favourite, I think I might like Mansfield Park even more 😀

After the six novels, came this edition of the Minor Works - from the library - which is lovely. We have a ragtag collection of paperbacks of the novels around the house, but if I were in the market for a new set, I might consider this Oxford edition...

Other reading may be on hold for a couple of days…

While I'm on the subject of covers, this site: https://literariness.org/2025/05/24/analysis-of-farm-stella-gibbonss-cold-comfort/ features a very conventional summary of Cold Comfort Farm, but does have a cover I've never seen before - and this is a book that's had many, many covers. I suspect this may have been created with AI, but I like it anyway...

Just came across this site too: https://www.vam.ac.uk/blog/museum-life/in-conversation-with-kerry-hyndman-book-cover-award-winner-2022%ef%bf%bc - the digital roughs are fascinating alongside the final designs...

Yeah, quite a lot of her work has that kind of familiar vibe lol

Novel #21, The Charmers. Dull cover. And from the Penguin website, it appears there isn't a graphic alternative either. https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/412006/the-charmers-by-gibbons-stella/9780099560548

Finished novel #20, The Wolves Were in the Sledge (1964).

Well, this is a strange one! Entirely written in first person, the narrative belongs to Nancy, one half of the couple at the centre of the story. It's not clear how reliable a narrator Nancy is, if only because new husband Toby keeps her so much in the dark about what is actually going on.

Toby is a very modern character, I see them all the time these days: someone who is somehow 'special', too special to get a normal job. So Toby and Nancy live a kind of peripatetic life, always on the look out for their next opportunity or adventure.

Step forward the Rodes, an extremely rich American couple who want to spend weeks driving around rural Hertfordshire searching for clues about their British ancestors, and are prepared to finance this, with assistance from Nancy and Toby. Who, throughout, are living rent free in a London apartment courtesy of Toby's shadowy friend Guy. It's all very murky!

Nancy, by the way, is another Stella hero who I could just shake. She's so passive most of the time, despite Toby being frankly, a bit of a dick. This presumably read differently in 1964, but it's clear who wears the trousers in this relationship, and it's not Nancy. So often in her narrative Nancy articulates why something that Toby has done has upset her, but almost invariably goes on to do nothing about it.

Overall, this one describes a world quite far from my own experience, despite being set in London, and so I had trouble relating to the main characters. Some of the supporting cast of 'oldies' as Nancy calls them are well drawn eccentrics though.

Okay, onwards to #21, The Charmers, which I already have and have read before in fact. Wolves... was the last out of print novel, there are six more to go, which are all available in paperback from either Vintage or Dean Street Press. I aimed for two Stella novels a month, so with almost three months and six novels to go, basically I'm on target to finish by the end of the year 😀

A very quick one: previously I've mentioned the difference between the "red" and "illustrated" covers on some of the Vintage re-issues of Stella's novels. Somewhat randomly today I came across the website of the illustrator who did five of them! Interesting to see the cover for The Rich House was an existing work entitled "Beach Walk". Also, the cover shown for White Sand and Grey Sand shows the earliest version, which carried over the misspelled title ("White Sands and Grey Sands"), now corrected. Also also, the red colour used for the plain covers changed quite a lot between print runs!

Another day at the British Library, spent in the company of Stella's 1950 volume "Collected Poems". This is another book that's long out of print and pretty hard to find, hence reading it at the library.

Most of the poems were in the first three volumes of poetry; of the few which were new to me, I've reproduced two below.

It's a shame that Stella's poetry isn't better known. Like the novels, I think some of it deserves a second life. For there not even to be a "Selected Poems" volume in print feels really sad. I mean, she's not Wordsworth, or Dickinson - but that's besides the point. Poetry is a broad church, and I think there's room for well written, intelligent poetry of a certain period, almost a century ago.

-----

FAIRFORD CHURCH

In the wet light from the west
The beech hangs her boughs
And one fairy tree moves her breast
By God’s valiant house;
One pale, fairy tree of gold
With not a leaf shed,
Though the mists of the autumn are out
On this field of the dead.

Nobly the church gazes up
At the yellow light,
Strong in five-hundred-year stone,
Facing day, watching night,
Facing the sorrow around,
Braving the sky
And the terror of Time, and the mindless cloud
Floating wearily by.

Look, how it fights with its tower!
This shield of worn stones
With pallid blue glass and tall saints
On the field rich with bones.
Saying: “Little is sure. Life is hard.
We love, suffer, and die.
But the beauty of earth is real
And the Spirit is nigh.”

Ironic to be reading this just now, when Fairford is in the news for other reasons besides its church.

[Pic of bomber near Fairford Church via Christopher Furlong on x]

Yeah I imagine that is quite interesting! The og instalments of OT are available as pdfs online, I was thinking about printing them anyway, maybe I will do that an do a similar comparison.

I guess the key is, how long do people have to wait for the cliffhanger to be resolved? If it's instalments, it's weeks or months, building up the suspense and (hopefully) demand for the next issue; in the book, the payoff is just over the page anyway, so if it makes more sense artistically to move it, why not? lol

In non-Stella news, Oliver Twist has turned up! For the readalong starting in October, I decided I want to experience OT as it was first published (in book form): as a triple-decker. There is loads online about how and why three-volume sets came into being and survived as long as they did. TL;DR - it was because of lending libraries.

Anyway, I thought it would be fun, given that the readalong is over three months, to have three corresponding volumes.

Alas, searching for an affordable triple-decker set proved fruitless. There are many early first editions out there: this one is kind of middle of the road price-wise. Even if I had that kind of mony - I don't! - I wouldn't spend it on this project lol.

Sadly, there doesn't appear to be a facsimile version in three volumes either. Perhaps a gap in the market?

Also, even if something had been available, there is another problem. The early three-volume boundaries don't align to the later "book" boundaries in the single-volume versions. The readalong's monthly chapters are based on Books One, Two and Three of the Penguin single-volume edition. Which means that there wouldn't have been the experience of finishing volume one at the end of the first month, volume two at the end of the second and so on.

So, I have a plan! I bought this cheap two-volume set instead, because it's expendable. Not in the greatest condition anyway, and definitely not any kind of loss if it is 'modified' somewhat.

The key to this whole thing is, I'm looking for the experience of reading OT in triple-decker format; I'm not that bothered about owning a three-volume set...

And here is the next novel, The Wolves Were in the Sledge. The cover is very of its time (1964)!

Finished novel #19, The Weather at Tregulla (1962).

This is pretty bleak. For me anyway. Art always exists at the intersection between the work and the person experiencing it. The setup in this story - rural location, the fascination and ultimately conflict between age-old local families and incoming "arty" types is something I experienced first hand as a child. Ditto the desperate desire to leave said rural area and head to the bright lights...

Anyway, Una is a nineteen years old and desperate to get to London to pursue a career on the stage. The somewhat unfortunate death of her mother, and subsequent loss of the mother's income, means that her plans are scuppered and she is condemned to remain on the farm in her Cornish village.

Things take a turn for the better though when a nearby cottage is rented by an artist, Terence, and his sister Emmeline. This pair are pretty bohemian and I have to say I recognise them. Growing up on a farm in the Celtic fringes, there were plenty of people like this, with kids called things like Merlin and Zed, and seemingly no "real" work to do: writers, painters, musicians, who all bumped along in a kind of marijuana infused hippy lifestyle. Terence and Emmeline appear similar, and rumours start to spread about how the last place they rented was left trashed, and they seem to be doing their best to spoil this place too.

Terence is an absolute magnet for Una of course; but more interestingly, local boy Navy sailor Barney is the star attraction for Emmeline, who may not be quite as enamoured of the hippy lifestyle as her brother is.

Things take a darker turn, as they nearly always do: when it comes to communities like this, of locals and incomers with vastly different outlooks on life, alas "never the 'twain shall meet" is so often the case.

Reading other reviews, this book isn't massively popular, even amongst people who love Stella and her London novels in particular. I think that's probably because most of the characters are actually pretty unlikeable. I wouldn't say it's one of my top reads; but for someone who grew up and spent their entire life in London, I can recognise that Stella has really captured the tensions of the situation.

Next up: The Wolves Were in the Sledge.

Yes me too. I wish I could write. All I ever do is block caps on forms really :/

Aside from her published books and articles, Stella has left behind a very small amount of ephemera - there is no video that I know of, very little audio, and not even a massive number of pictures. Her first novel was published almost a hundred years ago and "things were different then" I suppose, but even so, she continued publishing until 1970 and writing into the 1980s. It feels like a carefully limited "footprint."

What a joy then to come across this at the website of The Keats Shelley - a museum in Rome "dedicated to the British romantic poets in Italy".

A hand written manuscript, in Stella's own hand, of her poem Writ in Water - written in memory of John Keats.

Although I generally think that an artist's work is their best memorial, and don't go overboard on celebrity accoutrements, it is nice occasionally to see something that's a little closer to the actual person, something they actually touched or wrote or whatever.

The text of the poem reads:

Writ in Water
In memory of John Keats

What stronger rune to be written in?
Seething, or locked in arcane permafrost.
Sans water, man would shrunken be, and lost.
His very substance is of water made,
Of water, and of dust.

Whither its cloudy depth, secret and warm,
Shapeless and colourless, his primal shade,
A pulsing jelly, burgeoned into form.
Three days he can exist without the thin
Life-making flow. And music, in full streams,
Pours down all hills, giving voice to dreams.

Sweet boy, bright star eclipsed at twenty-five,
Your genius erred in thinking water humble -
Rivers shall run while Earth herself’s alive;
Iron rust, stone crumble.

I popped in to the Covent Garden branch of Waterstones while I was passing. Very unusual not to have a copy of CCF - maybe someone had just bought the shelf copy! 😉