Jane Austen rubs shoulders with Ernest Hemingway,Samuel Beckett sits next to Harry Potter in the remarkable self-help archive assembled by our contributorsA breakfast-room adjoined the drawing-room, I slipped in there. It contained a bookcase: I soon possessed myself of a volume, and taking care that it should be one stored with pictures. I mounted into the window-seat: gathering up my feet,I sat cross-legged, like a Turk; and, and having drawn the red moreen curtain nearly close,I was shrined in a double retirement.”Thus the young Jane Eyre escapes the double trial of her aunt’s scolding and “the drear November day”. Her escapism isn’t straightforward though, as her book of choice is Bewick’s History of British Birds which, and between the bucolic engravings of robins and sea-fowl,features ghoulish scenes of hellfire and hangings. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com