Lucy Worsley

A very British murder
This is an interesting chronological account of the reasons for the British fascination with crime and murder from the 1800s to the second world war. In its time, public hangings for a variety of crimes not just murder provided entertainment for the masses. Journalists provided very gory details of how the murders were investigated and the culprits were apprehended, long before there were police officers and detective inspectors.
Included in the history are celebrated murder mystery writers such as Wilkie Collin’s, Agatha Christie, Ngao Marsh, Dorothy Sayers, Arthur Conan Doyle.… (plus d'informations)

A sparkling, assiduously researched and deeply moving biography which brings Jane Austen and her world to vivid, reach-out-and-touch-it life - so much so that I approached the inevitable end (of both the book and Jane's life) with mounting dread. Oh, you know how it's going to turn out, but by then Worsley has made you care so much that you can't help but delude yourself, just a little, by hoping and wishing for a different ending. When the moment comes, as you know it must, Worsley treats it with such care that you feel as though she, and you, have lost a personal friend. In her hands, Austen is not just a vaguely sketched figment more than two centuries in the past, but utterly real.

Worsley's biography is a searching, eminently readable examination of Austen, the woman, and the context in which she lived, loved and wrote. It's wonderfully thorough, too, considering just how much material was deliberately destroyed by the Austen family and how hard they worked to stage manage their increasingly famous relative's image in the decades following her death. It makes a compelling case for Austen's significant contribution to the development of the novel - the lessons she learned from those who came before, the rules she bent, and the path she forged for those who followed - and rages a little, here and there, at the way Austen was dudded in life or dismissed in death. Something I noted and enjoyed was the way Worsley seamlessly drew on historical material and the contemporaneous recollections of others to add small, pertinent details not necessarily directly related to Austen, but which painted a fuller picture of the events and mores of the time.

Like Austen, Worsley has a distinctive authorial voice...smart, well-informed, tart and fun. By the end of it, you're left feeling that if you can't meet Jane, Lucy might well be a lovely substitute. Based on this, I'll happily search out more of her work.… (plus d'informations)

I picked this up for research, and soon after I acquired it, I was delighted to come across Worsley's series on PBS that brings vivid life to the book! That encouraged me to start reading all the sooner. While I've watched a number of Worseley's programs, I hadn't read her work before. I found her to be an incredibly breezy, fascinating read. She incorporates many details but never bogs down the narrative. Every so often, her own voice emerges with an aside as well. Agatha Christie had an interesting life, and is a figure greatly misunderstood. I really appreciated the author's incites into the period during which Christie went missing in 1926.… (plus d'informations)

This book is a tour of the evolution of detective fiction in Britain, letting the reader catch glimpses of the evolution of society and attitudes towards criminals, literary history and true crime.

We start of in a rather sarcastic manner, as the author introduces “the business of enjoying a murder. And a large-scale, profitable and commercial business it was, too.” This business and the “art” of murder are reflections of society’s darkness, of course.

There were lots of facts and details that I enjoyed learning about very much (despite the horrific true crime stuff). In the 19th century, you could tour the places where (in)famous crimes had been committed and buy rather gruesome souvenirs. I had heard of “Penny Dreadfuls”, but not their predecessors, “Penny Bloods”. Apparently, Edward Bulwer-Lyton of the “it was a dark and stormy night” fame began his career by writing those. Etc, etc, etc…

Female detectives in fiction appeared much earlier than I thought. 1841! Can you imagine!? There were also several books published in 1860’s that featured female detectives (and some lovely moments of emancipation). So cool!

It was also very enjoyable to read about the “Golden Age” of detective stories, about its appeal and the stories’ flaws. It reminded me of authors I used to enjoy (G.K. Chesterton) and authors that did not impress, yet I wondered if I should give them another chance (Dorothy L. Sayers).

The detractors of detective fiction have a point, of course, in satirising “the business of enjoying a murder”. Yet what is a detective story, really? It is seeing the order being restored in the world; seeing the triumph of good over evil. Isn’t this the most comforting genre imaginable?
… (plus d'informations)