Favourite School Books
Margaret Williamson
March 2021
I found the list of favourite school books published for World Book Day (4 March 2021) very interesting. With Orwell, Dickens and Shakespeare each figuring twice in the top ten, there wasn’t much chance for other authors! This led to a discussion of our own favourite ‘set books’. I would certainly include Keats Poetry & Letters and Hamlet (both A Level); Hardy’s Mayor of Casterbridge (O Level); and any of the Brontës from personal choice. Certainly not Dickens! Barry chose H G Wells’ History of Mr Polly and Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, which he can still quote after almost 70 years!
I remember my mother finding me in tears and saying “I thought you were doing some English homework”. “I am, I’m reading Tess of the D’Urbervilles”. Another vivid memory is of my cousin Barbara reading a school book with a red cardboard cover while relaxing in the bath. It slipped under the suds as she nodded off, to be awoken by my Auntie’s screams on looking in and seeing blood-red water!
March 2021
I found the list of favourite school books published for World Book Day (4 March 2021) very interesting. With Orwell, Dickens and Shakespeare each figuring twice in the top ten, there wasn’t much chance for other authors! This led to a discussion of our own favourite ‘set books’. I would certainly include Keats Poetry & Letters and Hamlet (both A Level); Hardy’s Mayor of Casterbridge (O Level); and any of the Brontës from personal choice. Certainly not Dickens! Barry chose H G Wells’ History of Mr Polly and Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, which he can still quote after almost 70 years!
I remember my mother finding me in tears and saying “I thought you were doing some English homework”. “I am, I’m reading Tess of the D’Urbervilles”. Another vivid memory is of my cousin Barbara reading a school book with a red cardboard cover while relaxing in the bath. It slipped under the suds as she nodded off, to be awoken by my Auntie’s screams on looking in and seeing blood-red water!
Pat, my oldest friend from Grammar School and Girl Guides, adds this about her favourite set books and classics. “A Level: loved King Lear which was completely new to me, John Donne's poems (ditto) and also Wordsworth - Prelude and Tintern Abbey. I don't know why we did Shaw's Candida, a dreadful play. I was amused when we were told that Wuthering Heights, which I'd read several times while primary school age, was a book to be studied. We also did Lord of the Flies. Poor Piggy!! I read most of the Brontë novels as a child, from my Dad's bookshelf, but only much more recently Shirley, The Professor and Villette, much of which Charlotte wrote in French. The only thing that annoys me is that she persists in referring to Villette, when in fact the story is set in Brussels. Also from my Dad's bookshelf, aged about nine, Tale of Two Cities and then The Scarlet Pimpernel, which started my interest in France.
Another friend, Eve, recalls the following. “It's not really surprising that many of my most loved books became my most loved films, such as the Laurence Olivier/Merle Oberon film of Wuthering Heights recently reshown on TV, but I will try to respond on my school experience. If I remember correctly we read Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and Richard III, Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities and Jane Austen's Emma. Somewhere in there were Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan (which we had to perform for the rest of the school) and, of course, the Romantic poets - Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth and Coleridge. Of those, Keats and Shelley are clear winners (I used to be able to quote long passages) and, because I was always fascinated by the French Revolution, A Tale of Two Cities is up there, too. My favourite Shakespeare at the time was Antony and Cleopatra; Richard III is hardly likeable, poor man, in the way that Hamlet is, nor is he so eloquent. Going on to study English Literature at University, I happily discovered D H Lawrence, William Blake, Huxley, Orwell and T S Eliot. It was a long time ago, but the Brontës are still Top of the Pops, especially Emily, and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility will always have a special place in my heart.”
I wondered which books were read in Australian schools. Our good friend Rebecca, educated in Melbourne, satisfied my curiosity: "A few I can remember were To Kill a Mockingbird, Macbeth, The Catcher in the Rye and The Outsiders. My sister, who was a year ahead of me, had a completely different set of books: Lord of the Flies, Day of the Triffids, Romeo and Juliet and Of Mice and Men". Interesting that all these are by British or American writers.
Kevin Bergstrom, a South African we met on a campsite in Romania (he'd come overland from Cape Town by Land Rover!), was surprised to find me reading Alan Paton's Cry the Beloved Country which he knew as a school set book.
Now, back to a good book on a wet afternoon. I am currently reading Lawrence Durrell’s glorious memoir of bygone Corfu, Prospero’s Cell: a very different island from our disappointing visit in October 2019. Barry, who prefers non-fiction, is engrossed in The Beckoning Silence by mountaineer Joe Simpson. We also resolved to learn to play Chess during the past year and have got as far as setting up the pieces and printing two copies of the rules. Perhaps if we have another 12 months locked down here . .
Now, back to a good book on a wet afternoon. I am currently reading Lawrence Durrell’s glorious memoir of bygone Corfu, Prospero’s Cell: a very different island from our disappointing visit in October 2019. Barry, who prefers non-fiction, is engrossed in The Beckoning Silence by mountaineer Joe Simpson. We also resolved to learn to play Chess during the past year and have got as far as setting up the pieces and printing two copies of the rules. Perhaps if we have another 12 months locked down here . .