William Blake expressed his radical vision through illuminated books that combine poetry and art. We’ll study selections from some of his powerful early poems: Songs of Innocence and Experience, The Auguries of Innocence and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. While Blake’s poetry stands on its own and requires no background knowledge, encountering him is especially interesting after reading Dante or Milton. So, this study would be a fine next chapter for those who have previously studied Paradise Lost or The Divine Comedy with the LitSalon. You can view some of Blake’s art and poetry here.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Five meeting study led by Sean Forester
• Mondays, 6.00 – 8.00 pm (UK time), 7, 14, 21, 28 September and 5 October
• Please purchase facsimile editions of Songs of Innocence and Experience and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell with Blake’s illuminated manuscripts in full colour. The texts are also available free online at the Blake Archive.
• £200 for five two-hour meetings

Thomas Mann’s 1924 novel The Magic Mountain is often grouped with two other giant literary classics, James Joyce’s Ulysses and Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. Together these works are seen as the formative novels of the Modernist era.

A first dip into the text of The Magic Mountain reveals an accessible, lilting narrative in which readers soon find themselves considering time, society, passion and memory from the particular perspective of an invalid needing medical care in an environment far removed from regular life. But we are not concerned solely with the beauty of the prose, but about the power and seduction of the realm of the mind.

Unlike some books we study in the Salon, the challenge of reading The Magic Mountain lies not just in decoding and teasing out the themes, patterns and narrative play (although we do have a VERY playful narrator), but in grasping mountainous ideas: philosophies, paradigms and approaches to constructing our lives in purposeful ways. Do we aim for the purity of transcendent music? Do we indulge in the decadence of the senses when we recognise the limits of time? Do we try to catalogue suffering and thus reveal the beautiful rationality of humankind and our ability to overcome the pain of living? All this is considered from the rarefied perspective of this mountain retreat, a Swiss Sanatorium on the verge of the First World War.

Often funny, occasionally erotic, moments of the fantastical clash with the absurd, feasts, suicides, seances and war . . . it is a packed book that is also deeply political. Written between the First and Second World Wars, The Magic Mountain engages with questions of nationalism and nostalgia, with the shadow of future events shifting the weight of the ironic stance that Mann assumes.

A little knowledge of some of the German and Austrian thinkers whose fingerprints can be found in the pages – Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Freud, Heidegger – can be helpful but is not necessary for a thoroughly satisfying read. During the course of this study we will invite Keith Fosbrook to share a little of his expertise in this area with the group.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Thirteen week study, live on Zoom, led by Toby Brothers and Sarah Snoxall with additional contribution from Keith Fosbrook.
• Tuesdays, 12.00-2.00 pm (UK time), 22 September – 15 December 2026 (except for the second meeting in the series which will be from 12.00-2.00 pm on Wednesday 30 September).
• We are also offering a later study (on Tuesdays only) from 22 September – 15 December 2026, 5.30-7.30 pm.
• Recommended editions (2): The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, translated by John E. Woods, Vintage, ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0679772873 OR Everyman, ISBN-13: ‎ 978-1857152890.
• £490 for thirteen-week study.

REDUCED COSTS: we are committed to making our studies as affordable as possible. We have a fund in place to support anyone who would like to register for a study but finds the cost difficult to afford. We can’t promise to help, but please email us at litsalon@gmail.com in confidence if you would like to request a reduction in the cost of a study.

Thomas Mann’s 1924 novel The Magic Mountain is often grouped with two other giant literary classics, James Joyce’s Ulysses and Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. Together these works are seen as the formative novels of the Modernist era.

A first dip into the text of The Magic Mountain reveals an accessible, lilting narrative in which readers soon find themselves considering time, society, passion and memory from the particular perspective of an invalid needing medical care in an environment far removed from regular life. But we are not concerned solely with the beauty of the prose, but about the power and seduction of the realm of the mind.

Unlike some books we study in the Salon, the challenge of reading The Magic Mountain lies not just in decoding and teasing out the themes, patterns and narrative play (although we do have a VERY playful narrator), but in grasping mountainous ideas: philosophies, paradigms and approaches to constructing our lives in purposeful ways. Do we aim for the purity of transcendent music? Do we indulge in the decadence of the senses when we recognise the limits of time? Do we try to catalogue suffering and thus reveal the beautiful rationality of humankind and our ability to overcome the pain of living? All this is considered from the rarefied perspective of this mountain retreat, a Swiss Sanatorium on the verge of the First World War.

Often funny, occasionally erotic, moments of the fantastical clash with the absurd, feasts, suicides, seances and war . . . it is a packed book that is also deeply political. Written between the First and Second World Wars, The Magic Mountain engages with questions of nationalism and nostalgia, with the shadow of future events shifting the weight of the ironic stance that Mann assumes.

A little knowledge of some of the German and Austrian thinkers whose fingerprints can be found in the pages – Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Freud, Heidegger – can be helpful but is not necessary for a thoroughly satisfying read. During the course of this study we will invite Keith Fosbrook to share a little of his expertise in this area with the group.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Thirteen week study, live on Zoom, led by Toby Brothers and Sarah Snoxall with additional contribution from Keith Fosbrook.
• Tuesdays, 5.30-7.30 pm (UK time), 22 September – 15 December 2026. Please note that there is also an earlier study from 12.00 noon-2.00 pm (UK time) on the same dates.
• Recommended editions (2): The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, translated by John E. Woods, Vintage, ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0679772873 OR Everyman, ISBN-13‏: ‎ 978-1857152890.
• £490 for thirteen-week study.

REDUCED COSTS: we are committed to making our studies as affordable as possible. We have a fund in place to support anyone who would like to register for a study but finds the cost difficult to afford. We can’t promise to help, but please email us at litsalon@gmail.com in confidence if you would like to request a reduction in the cost of a study.

“Every reader finds himself. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.”

Marcel Proust

Facilitator Toby Brothers writes:

Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time is one of the mountains of Modernism. This is my eighth tour through the Search and each visit reveals new nuggets and gasping moments. This third volume considers closely the draw of the social dance and the realm of social power: you might not think the anxious aristocracy of the Belle Epoque will teach you something about the world you live in – you will be surprised. The groups who have made it through the first two volumes in the last six months are lively and welcoming and we have room for two or three more to join us. If you have not read the first two volumes previously, please contact us to discuss.

Here is how one Salonista describes the pleasure and work of reading Proust: “This is a velvet jewel of a book that demands the attention of a lover full of enchantment and obsession, we need not get impatient as all good lovers perfect their art in taking their time.”

While another observes: “I feel really privileged to be gaining a better understanding of Proust’s amazing work and be able to enjoy the intricacies of his language and thoughts . . . the meetings allow plenty of time and space for exploration and our study is reinforced by emails and relevant essays in between meetings. I am very grateful to have this opportunity to join the study.”

Reading Proust teaches the reader to observe how the world is experienced, to be aware that although humans are tempted to give greater weight to the perceptual universe, it is the entwining of memory, idealised experience (dreams) and relationships with what our senses perceive that moulds our consciousness.

JOINING DETAILS:

• It may be possible for new members to join this group of readers. If you are interested please email litsalon@gmail.com using the subject heading: ‘Joining Proust Group’.
• Facilitated by Toby Brothers
• Wednesdays, 3.00-5.00 pm (UK time) 
• Thirteen meeting study: 7 October – 9 December 2026, resuming from 13 January – 3 February 2027, N.B. these dates cover 14 weeks allowing one ‘spare’ week for use in case of illness.
• Recommended edition: Vintage Classics (Moncrieff/Kilmartin/Enright)  ISBN-13: 978-0099362418
• £455 for thirteen meetings, includes background materials, literary criticism, opening notes and discussion notes.

“Every reader finds himself. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.”

Marcel Proust

Facilitator Toby Brothers writes:

Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time is one of the mountains of Modernism. This is my eighth tour through the Search and each visit reveals new nuggets and gasping moments. This third volume considers closely the draw of the social dance and the realm of social power: you might not think the anxious aristocracy of the Belle Epoque will teach you something about the world you live in – you will be surprised. The groups who have made it through the first two volumes in the last six months are lively and welcoming and we have room for two or three more to join us. If you have not read the first two volumes previously, please contact us to discuss.

Here is how one Salonista describes the pleasure and work of reading Proust: “This is a velvet jewel of a book that demands the attention of a lover full of enchantment and obsession, we need not get impatient as all good lovers perfect their art in taking their time.”

While another observes: “I feel really privileged to be gaining a better understanding of Proust’s amazing work and be able to enjoy the intricacies of his language and thoughts . . . the meetings allow plenty of time and space for exploration and our study is reinforced by emails and relevant essays in between meetings. I am very grateful to have this opportunity to join the study.”

Reading Proust teaches the reader to observe how the world is experienced, to be aware that although humans are tempted to give greater weight to the perceptual universe, it is the entwining of memory, idealised experience (dreams) and relationships with what our senses perceive that moulds our consciousness.

JOINING DETAILS:

• It may be possible for new members to join this group of readers. If you are interested please email litsalon@gmail.com using the subject heading: ‘Joining Proust Group’.
• Facilitated by Toby Brothers
• Wednesdays, 5.30-7.30 pm (UK time) 
• Thirteen meeting study: 7 October – 9 December 2026, resuming from 13 January – 3 February 2027, N.B. these dates cover 14 weeks allowing one ‘spare’ week for use in case of illness.
• Recommended edition: Vintage Classics (Moncrieff/Kilmartin/Enright)  ISBN-13: 978-0099362418
• £455 for thirteen meetings, includes background materials, literary criticism, opening notes and discussion notes.

“La Bovary, c’est moi.“

Gustave Flaubert

“Quand Mme Bovary parut, il y eut toute une révolution littéraire… Le code de l’art nouveau se trouvait écrit.“

“When Mme Bovary appeared, there was a whole literary revolution . . . the code of a new art was written.”

Emile Zola

Gustave Flaubert (1821 – 1880) is often referred to the first modern novelist and the inventor of literary realism. Madame Bovary arrived on the scene (trailing generally negative reviews and a lawsuit for offence against public morals and religion, of which Flaubert was acquitted) misunderstood and undervalued, but Flaubert knew that he had written a masterpiece. Time proved him correct.

Flaubert wrote precise fiction in reaction to idealism and romanticism. His goal was to present the world as it really was; there are no heroes in Madame Bovary. He used clear and concise language (he wanted to remove all poetry from his writing), a meticulous attention to detail, a crystalline structure, and brilliant psychological insights into his characters. Flaubert rejected the idea of artistic inspiration, and laboured like a mole for fifty-three months, testing every word for its aptness, and reading and rereading each sentence. But he wasn’t interested in merely creating the perfect form. He entered the emotional life of his characters, feeling his way through the novel. It was written in the early days of France’s industrial age, and Flaubert wanted literature to aid in the understanding of human nature, just as the natural sciences and social sciences did. 

Madame Bovary appeared at number 10 in the Guardian’s 2026 ‘Best 100 Novels of All Time’ with good reason. Although it is completely embedded in its time and place, I believe it has much to say about how we live now, and this is something we will explore in this study. There are many young girls today who are living completely in the world of internet influencers, lost in a dream disconnected from any reality. Will they emulate Emma Bovary in our own age as they attempt to navigate the world as it really is?

N.B. A study of Flaubert’s Sentimental Education is planned for early in 2027.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Eight-meeting study led by Ralph Kleinman
• Tuesdays, 6.00-8.00 pm UK time
• We are also offering a second later study, primarily for US participants, from 12.00 midnight-2.00 am UK time (7.00-9.00 pm Eastern Daylight Time/Eastern Standard Time)
• 20 October to 8 December 2026
• Recommended edition: Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, translated by Lydia Davis, Penguin Classics, ISBN-13: 9780143106494 (to avoid confusion we ask that all participants use the same translation during study meetings)
• £280 for eight meetings, to include opening notes and resources

“La Bovary, c’est moi.“

Gustave Flaubert

“Quand Mme Bovary parut, il y eut toute une révolution littéraire… Le code de l’art nouveau se trouvait écrit.“

“When Mme Bovary appeared, there was a whole literary revolution . . . the code of a new art was written.”

Emile Zola

Gustave Flaubert (1821 – 1880) is often referred to the first modern novelist and the inventor of literary realism. Madame Bovary arrived on the scene (trailing generally negative reviews and a lawsuit for offence against public morals and religion, of which Flaubert was acquitted) misunderstood and undervalued, but Flaubert knew that he had written a masterpiece. Time proved him correct.

Flaubert wrote precise fiction in reaction to idealism and romanticism. His goal was to present the world as it really was; there are no heroes in Madame Bovary. He used clear and concise language (he wanted to remove all poetry from his writing), a meticulous attention to detail, a crystalline structure, and brilliant psychological insights into his characters. Flaubert rejected the idea of artistic inspiration, and laboured like a mole for fifty-three months, testing every word for its aptness, and reading and rereading each sentence. But he wasn’t interested in merely creating the perfect form. He entered the emotional life of his characters, feeling his way through the novel. It was written in the early days of France’s industrial age, and Flaubert wanted literature to aid in the understanding of human nature, just as the natural sciences and social sciences did. 

Madame Bovary appeared at number 10 in the Guardian’s 2026 ‘Best 100 Novels of All Time’ with good reason. Although it is completely embedded in its time and place, I believe it has much to say about how we live now, and this is something we will explore in this study. There are many young girls today who are living completely in the world of internet influencers, lost in a dream disconnected from any reality. Will they emulate Emma Bovary in our own age as they attempt to navigate the world as it really is?

N.B. A study of Flaubert’s Sentimental Education is planned for early in 2027.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Eight-meeting study live on Zoom led by Ralph Kleinman
• Tuesdays, 12.00 midnight-2.00 am the following day UK time (7.00-9.00 pm Eastern Daylight Time/Eastern Standard Time)
• We are also offering an earlier study, from 6.00-8.00 pm UK time
• 20 October to 8 December 2026
• Recommended edition: Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, translated by Lydia Davis, Penguin Classics, ISBN-13: 9780143106494 (to avoid confusion we ask that all participants use the same translation during study meetings)
• £280 for eight meetings, to include opening notes and resources

A close, contemplative reading of seven classic Russian short stories, guided by George Saunders’ provocative description of them in A Swim in a Pond in the Rain as “seven fastidiously constructed scale models of the world, made for a specific purpose that our time maybe doesn’t fully endorse but that these writers accepted implicitly as the aim of art — namely, to ask the big questions.”

What happens when we read these stories with that purpose in mind? We’ll consider questions of truth and love, how to live and how to make meaning within the solitary confinement of our mortality. Together, we’ll linger over the strange, precise worlds these writers have made—and see what their stories might still ask of us.

In this study, we will use the book as a background to our own reading, focusing on the stories themselves—by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy and Gogol—while also drawing on Saunders’ insights as a backdrop to our discussions. Rather than analysing his commentary in detail, we will engage directly with these literary masterpieces, exploring their themes, techniques and enduring relevance.

JOINING DETAILS:

• A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, ISBN 978-1526624246 is a required text for this study
• Four-week study on Zoom led by Alison Cable
• Thursdays, 6.00-8.00 pm (UK time)
• 5, 12, 19, 26 November 2026
• £140 to include introductory notes and resources

“. . . Unclean . . . spawned from the leprous literature of the French decadents — a poisonous book . . . ”

Anonymous review, London Daily Chronicle, 30 June 1890

“Dull and nasty . . . stupid and vulgar . . . immoral. It may be suggested that Wilde derives pleasure from treating a subject merely because it is disgusting.”  

Samuel Henry Jeyes, The St. James Gazette, 24 June 1890

“The poor public, hearing from an authority so high as your own, that this is a wicked book that should be coerced and suppressed by a Tory Government, will, no doubt, rush to it and read it. But, alas, they will find that it is a story with a moral. And the moral is this: All excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its own punishment. ”   

Oscar Wilde, from his response to the St. James Gazette review, 25 June 1890

Joseph Marshall Stoddart, Oscar Wilde’s editor in the Philadelphia offices of Lippincott’s Magazine, was neither a bumpkin nor a prude: in 1882 he arranged for Wilde to visit Walt Whitman in Camden, New Jersey, during his American visit. But, alarmed by material he feared readers would find “offensive”, and unbeknownst to its author until after publication, Stoddart went through Wilde’s original manuscript, pencil in hand, crossing out some 500 words to render it “acceptable to the most fastidious taste.”

In short, the novel that Wilde’s irate fin de siècle reviewers deemed filth was already a bowdlerised version of The Picture of Dorian Gray.

The contemporary reader, fresh from watching the latest episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race, may struggle to understand the fury that The Picture of Dorian Gray unleashed in the 1890s. Or the stench it carried for decades after, having starred as Exhibit A in Wilde’s 1895 trials for “gross indecency”.

One hundred and thirty-six years on, The Picture of Dorian Gray speaks to our moment with uncanny precision.

Dorian Gray’s portrait — polished, static, forever young while its subject rots — anticipates the curated profile picture, the Zoom filter, the gap between the life performed online and the life actually lived. In an era of Botox and doom scrolling, instant gratification and weekly scandal, Wilde’s central question feels less like Victorian Gothic and more like Monday morning: what are we willing to sacrifice — integrity, authenticity, other people — to keep the image intact?

Wilde knew, long before Instagram did, that the real corruption isn’t the sins you commit; it’s the lengths you’ll go to make sure nobody sees them.

This study will use, as its basic text, The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray, published by the Harvard University Press (2012).

JOINING DETAILS:

• Four-meeting study, live on Zoom, led by Dr Nancy Goldstein
• Thursdays, 6.30-8.30 (UK time), 12 November – 3 December
• HIGHLY recommended edition: The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray: A Reader’s Edition ISBN: 9780674066311
• £160.00 for four two-hour meetings

REDUCED COSTS: we are committed to making our studies as affordable as possible. We have a fund in place to support anyone who would like to register for a study but finds the cost difficult to afford. We can’t promise to help, but please email us at litsalon@gmail.com in confidence if you would like to request a reduction in the cost of a study.

In the more than 100 years since it was first published on 2 February 1922 – James Joyce’s 40th birthday – Ulysses has sometimes been described as ‘unreadable’ and is frequently listed as ‘the book I’m ashamed (or regretful) not to have read’. And yet it came in at number 3 in the Guardian’s recent list of The 100 Best Novels of All Time and at number 10 in the follow-up Readers’ top 100 novels of all time. It is now 20 years since Salon founder Toby Brothers first led a group reading this extraordinary and challenging work, and in 2027 we are again offering the opportunity to join her in guiding a group of committed and curious readers through the pages. Join us if you can, and bear in mind the words of the great American novelist William Faulkner:

“You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.”

“. . . Joyce’s contribution to a new way of writing particularly as it affects narrative theory, the role of the reader, and how stories are told from inside the consciousness of the individual. So both the external world we associate with history and the internal world that rightly belongs to the private world of consciousness are redrawn by Joyce in a manner that is both original and at times dependent on sources outside the novel.”

David Pierce in Joyce’s Portrait: A New Reading

Widely acknowledged today as one of the greatest novels of all time, UIysses was immediately controversial on publication, described by one Irish critic as “The most infamously obscene book in ancient or modern literature”. Our study is suitable both for people who have not yet entered the pages of Ulysses and those who have already read it at least once. Our work with this book will widen your perspective and deepen your experience of the power of language.

There are many good reasons for studying this huge and sometimes intimidating text, but you will only know for yourself by diving in. Toby believes the best way to study it is with a group of hungry, curious fellow readers who all contribute to evoking meaning through their questions and insights, she explains:

“The good news: reading Ulysses is fun. And I don’t mean in a frustrating, overly-analytical see-how-much-you-know-way. The language is amazing – even when I don’t understand it. Perhaps, especially when I don’t understand it, because meaning sneaks in through more than my critical faculty. Meaning slides in through sound, through the lushness of the language, through the filmy and substantial images, and suddenly I find myself transported from a walk on a beach to a contemplation of the origins of man. Thank you James Joyce.”

Any time spent studying Joyce leaves one a better reader – a broader thinker – even if all the references, repetitions, epiphanies and allusions are not immediately understood.

Here are comments from two Ulysses participants:

“I am  thoroughly enjoying this journey. I feel wide open, exposed and receptive to new ways of thinking. What could be better than that? I enjoy the links with the classics and their current counterparts such as the agony of Sisyphus and the trials of thoughtful, surely sad, Martin Cunningham. And then Bloom with his many pockets reminded me in an amusing way of the Artful Dodger.

“Joining the Ulysses salon was one of the best things I have ever done. This was a book I had wanted to read for years but never got past the first section. I had no idea what the salon would be like and was very apprehensive about joining up. But Toby so skilfully guided us through it, her knowledge of the text seemingly inexhaustible, that with her warmth and generosity and sensitivity she got everyone involved and the satisfaction of participating in the salon and in getting an understanding of this marvellous work was immense.“

JOINING DETAILS:

• We are offering this study from 12.00 – 2.00 pm (UK time) with an alternative option later in the day (5.30 – 7.30 pm)
• The study will comprise 21 meetings led by Toby Brothers starting on Tuesday 12 January and finishing on Tuesday 15 June 2027, with four possible Sunday afternoon meetings (4.30-6.30pm on 31 January, 28 February, 14 March and 30 May) and NO meetings on 4 and 11 May.
• The total cost for the 21 meeting study, with all notes and resources materials, is £575
• Please purchase these editions in preparation for our study:

  • Ulysses, by James Joyce, Annotated Students’ Edition, Penguin Modern Classics 2011, ISBN: 9780141197418. There are many editions of Ulysses — I find this edition is most coherent and the notes and introduction by Declan Kieberd very helpful; as we will constantly be referencing particular passages, having the same edition will be extremely useful.
  • The New Bloomsday Book: A Guide Through Ulysses, by Harry Blamires, ISBN-10: 0415138582

REDUCED COSTS: we are committed to making our studies as affordable as possible. We have a fund in place to support anyone who would like to register for a study but finds the cost difficult to afford. We can’t promise to help, but please email us at litsalon@gmail.com in confidence if you would like to request a reduction in the cost of a study.

In the more than 100 years since it was first published on 2 February 1922 – James Joyce’s 40th birthday – Ulysses has sometimes been described as ‘unreadable’ and is frequently listed as ‘the book I’m ashamed (or regretful) not to have read’. And yet it came in at number 3 in the Guardian’s recent list of The 100 Best Novels of All Time and at number 10 in the follow-up Readers’ top 100 novels of all time. It is now 20 years since Salon founder Toby Brothers first led a group reading this extraordinary and challenging work, and in 2027 we are again offering the opportunity to join her in guiding a group of committed and curious readers through the pages. Join us if you can, and bear in mind the words of the great American novelist William Faulkner:

“You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.”

“. . . Joyce’s contribution to a new way of writing particularly as it affects narrative theory, the role of the reader, and how stories are told from inside the consciousness of the individual. So both the external world we associate with history and the internal world that rightly belongs to the private world of consciousness are redrawn by Joyce in a manner that is both original and at times dependent on sources outside the novel.”

David Pierce in Joyce’s Portrait: A New Reading

Widely acknowledged today as one of the greatest novels of all time, UIysses was immediately controversial on publication, described by one Irish critic as “The most infamously obscene book in ancient or modern literature”. Our study is suitable both for people who have not yet entered the pages of Ulysses and those who have already read it at least once. Our work with this book will widen your perspective and deepen your experience of the power of language.

There are many good reasons for studying this huge and sometimes intimidating text, but you will only know for yourself by diving in. Toby believes the best way to study it is with a group of hungry, curious fellow readers who all contribute to evoking meaning through their questions and insights, she explains:

“The good news: reading Ulysses is fun. And I don’t mean in a frustrating, overly-analytical see-how-much-you-know-way. The language is amazing – even when I don’t understand it. Perhaps, especially when I don’t understand it, because meaning sneaks in through more than my critical faculty. Meaning slides in through sound, through the lushness of the language, through the filmy and substantial images, and suddenly I find myself transported from a walk on a beach to a contemplation of the origins of man. Thank you James Joyce.”

Any time spent studying Joyce leaves one a better reader – a broader thinker – even if all the references, repetitions, epiphanies and allusions are not immediately understood.

Here are comments from two Ulysses participants:

“I am  thoroughly enjoying this journey. I feel wide open, exposed and receptive to new ways of thinking. What could be better than that? I enjoy the links with the classics and their current counterparts such as the agony of Sisyphus and the trials of thoughtful, surely sad, Martin Cunningham. And then Bloom with his many pockets reminded me in an amusing way of the Artful Dodger.

“Joining the Ulysses salon was one of the best things I have ever done. This was a book I had wanted to read for years but never got past the first section. I had no idea what the salon would be like and was very apprehensive about joining up. But Toby so skilfully guided us through it, her knowledge of the text seemingly inexhaustible, that with her warmth and generosity and sensitivity she got everyone involved and the satisfaction of participating in the salon and in getting an understanding of this marvellous work was immense.“

JOINING DETAILS:

• We are offering this study from 5.30 – 7.30 pm (UK time) with an alternative option earlier in the day (12.00-2.00 pm UK)
• The study will comprise 21 meetings led by Toby Brothers starting on Tuesday 12 January and finishing on Tuesday 15 June 2027, with four possible Sunday afternoon meetings (4.30-6.30pm on 31 January, 28 February, 14 March and 30 May) and NO meetings on 4 and 11 May.
• The total cost for the 21 meeting study, with all notes and resources materials, is £575
• Please purchase these editions in preparation for our study:

  • Ulysses, by James Joyce, Annotated Students’ Edition, Penguin Modern Classics 2011, ISBN: 9780141197418. There are many editions of Ulysses — I find this edition is most coherent and the notes and introduction by Declan Kieberd very helpful; as we will constantly be referencing particular passages, having the same edition will be extremely useful.
  • The New Bloomsday Book: A Guide Through Ulysses, by Harry Blamires, ISBN-10: 0415138582

REDUCED COSTS: we are committed to making our studies as affordable as possible. We have a fund in place to support anyone who would like to register for a study but finds the cost difficult to afford. We can’t promise to help, but please email us at litsalon@gmail.com in confidence if you would like to request a reduction in the cost of a study.

The London Literary Salon offers you the opportunity to join a five-day study based in Edale, in the Peak District National Park in July 2027, where we will explore Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre — an invitation to read, walk and reflect in immersive engagement with Brontë’s novel and the landscape that inspired it.

How might we read Jane Eyre today — as a story of selfhood and rebellion, but also as a text shaped by gender, empire, class and desire? This immersive study combines literary discussion and walking on the moorland paths that inspired Brontë’s novel, with opportunities for morning stretches and reflective writing. A short train trip to Hathersage, the village closely linked to the novel, will offer further insight into the places that inspired Brontë’s writing. Participants may choose to walk the circular 8 km Jane Eyre Hathersage Trail, tracing the village, architecture and landscape that shaped Brontë’s imagination.

Toby Brothers will lead the literary discussions, guiding the group through the rich text with reflections that include psychological, feminist, postcolonial and queer readings of Jane Eyre. Alison Cable will co-facilitate and offer walking and creative writing space, encouraging reflection, response and imaginative engagement with both text and landscape. Together, we will explore the familiar and the overlooked: Jane’s struggles for autonomy, the silences within the text, and the ways literature continues to resonate with questions of freedom, identity and justice in our own lives, here and now.

According to the poet, essayist and feminist Adrienne Rich:

‘The concern of the tale is not with social mores, the social mores may occur among the risks and challenges encountered by the protagonist. Neither is it an anatomy of the psyche, the faded chemistry of cosmic forces. It takes its place between the two: between the realm of the given, that which is changeable by human activity, and the realm of the fated, that which lies outside human control: between realism and poetry.

‘The world of the tale is above all a “vale of soul making”, and when a novelist finds herself writing a tale it is likely to be because she is moved by that vibration of experience which underlies the social and political, though it constantly feeds into both of these. In her essay on Jane Eyre, critic Q.D.  Leavis perceives the novel’s theme as “. . . an exploration of how a woman comes to maturity in the world of the writer’s youth”. I would suggest that a novel about how a man “comes to maturity in the world of the writers youth” would not be dismissed as lacking in range or in Woolf’s words, “a sense of human problems”. I would suggest further that Charlotte Bronte is writing not a bildungsroman but the life story of a woman who is incapable of saying “I am Heathcliff” because she feels so unalterably herself. Jane Eyre, motherless and economically powerless, undergoes certain traditional female temptations, and finds that each temptation presents itself along with an alternative –the image of a nurturing or principled or spirited woman on whom she can model herself, or to whom she can look for support.‘

Adrienne Rich, Jane Eyre: The Temptations of a Motherless Woman (published in the Norton Critical Edition of Jane Eyre)

While Virginia Woolf wrote that the Brontës:

‘. . . seized those aspects of the earth which were most akin to what they themselves felt or imputed to their characters, and so their storms, their moors, their lovely spaces of summer weather are not ornaments applied to decorate a dull page or display the writer’s powers of observation – they carry on the emotion and light up the meaning of the book.’

Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader (1916)

We will be based in Edale, with accommodation confirmed at The Gathering, a combination of glamping ‘lodges’ and barns, with options for shared or single rooms. Walking across the hills and moors will offer space for thought and inspiration, but all activities are optional: indoors, we will read, write and talk together, fostering immersive engagement with text and the landscape. To round out the evenings, participants may choose to join the local pub quiz, or just take in the lively sense of the village community and place.

SAMPLE SESSIONS INCLUDE:

• Morning and afternoon literary discussions with Toby Brothers and Alison Cable: close reading of key passages, exploring Jane’s journey, moral choices and the novel’s social and political contexts. Short walks with Alison Cable: gentle, reflective walking, with opportunities to use the landscape as inspiration for written response.
• Jane Eyre Hathersage Walk: short train trip to Hathersage, to visit the village that inspired Brontë, with an optional walk to Stanage Edge, passing ‘Vale Hall,’ ‘Thornfield’ and ‘Moor House’, and the added bonus of Robin Hood’s cave and the gravesite of Little John. PLEASE NOTE: The trail is rated ‘moderate’, with one steep climb and descent; there is a shorter option to walk to North Leas Hall (the inspiration for Thornfield) and back.
• Evening reflection sessions: sharing insights, discussing emergent themes, and optional participation in pub quiz (Friday).

JOINING DETAILS:

• Five-day study in Edale, Derbyshire led by Toby Brothers and Alison Cable
• 29 July – 2 August 2027
• £600 for the study and background notes, plus £175 for three days half board (breakfast and lunch on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, breakfast on Monday) plus £100 initial deposit on accommodation at The Gathering, total cost £875.
• Additional costs: participants are responsible for arranging and paying for their own travel, accommodation and additional meals and insurance. We have reserved a variety of rooms at The Gathering (an initial £100 deposit is included in the registration fee) and will liaise with the venue – participants are asked to advise us of their preferences on booking the study. Although we will endeavour to meet your requirements, we will allocate the reserved accommodation on a first-come-first-served basis, please consider sharing accommodation with another participant as this helps us to ensure everyone can stay on site .
• We strongly recommend reading or re-reading Jane Eyre in preparation for the weekend so the language, ideas and vision of the text are fresh.
• Recommended edition: Norton Critical Fourth Edition (published in 2016, this is preferable to the third edition) ISBN: 978-0-393-64050-2.
• An initial non-refundable deposit of £150 secures your place on the study and a reservation on accommodation at The Gathering. The balance of £725 (which will cover the cost of the study, breakfasts and lunches) will be payable by 1 May 2027.
• Any refunds will be at the discretion of the London Literary Salon, dependent on our ability to fill the place, and will be subject to an administration charge.

“. . . learning seamanship illuminates the book brilliantly. Toby is inspiring, we never feel unconfident and we feel safe to think aloud. As a field trip, this is genius.”

Horatio Clare, Financial Times (writing about the 2025 Moby Dick Afloat!)

A not-to-be-missed opportunity to complete reading one of the greatest books ever written in English – an extraordinary story of obsession and maritime adventure – over the course of a six-day voyage aboard a traditional sailing ship. Four online meetings will introduce Moby Dick, followed by six study sessions at sea on the Eda Frandsen, a lovingly restored and maintained gaff cutter, originally built in Denmark in 1938. This unique study will allow readers to complement their appreciation of Herman Melville’s text with a practical understanding and experience of the reality of seafaring life under sail.

“I am half way in the work . . . It will be a strange sort of book, tho’, I fear; blubber is blubber you know; tho’ you might get oil out of it, the poetry runs as hard as sap from a frozen maple tree;—and to cool the thing up, one must needs throw in a little fancy, which from the nature of the thing, must be ungainly as the gambols of the whales themselves. Yet I mean to give the truth of the thing, spite of this.”

Herman Melville

First published in 1851, Moby Dick ranks on almost any list as one of the greatest works in the English language. Its three famous opening words ‘Call me Ishmael . . .’ together with the image of the one-legged Captain Ahab in mad pursuit of the great white whale, have become cultural icons. This grand—and occasionally grandiose—adventure tale unites the many voices of Herman Melville in a mongrel mix of epic poetry, Shakespearean tragedy, encyclopaedic cataloguing, biblical oratory, and not a small dose of comedy. Melville presents an insightful study of obsession, madness and charismatic leadership that anticipates many of our contemporary conversations about democracy, cosmopolitanism, capitalism and environmentalism.

In 2019, commemoration of the 200th year since Herman Melville’s birth generated rich responses and reconsiderations of this truly amazing book. Philip Hoare (mentioned below as one of the curators of the Moby Dick Big Read project) writes on its contemporary resonance in his article Subversive, queer and terrifyingly relevant: Six reasons why Moby Dick is the novel for our times. 

“The book features gay marriage, hits out at slavery and imperialism and predicts the climate crisis – 200 years after the birth of its author, Herman Melville, it has never been more important.”

Philip Hoare

Together, artist Angela Cockayne and writer Philip Hoare convened and curated a unique whale symposium and exhibition at Peninsula Arts, the dedicated contemporary art space at Plymouth University. This grew into an extraordinary compilation of art and voices (Tilda Swinton, Stephen Fry and more) – the Moby Dick Big Read – inspiring and inspired by this vast book.

Read Toby’s blog post about Moby Dick Afloat! in 2026.

SALON DETAILS:

• Five two-hour meetings online, followed by six-day study with six nights on board the Eda Frandsen from 3.00pm on Monday 13 September 2026 to 9.00am on Sunday 19 September 2027.
• Five online meetings (on Zoom) Wednesdays 5.30-7.30 pm (UK) in advance of departure, dates to be confirmed.
• Facilitated by Toby Brothers, Salon Director
• Recommended edition: Moby Dick (Norton Critical Edition, Third Edition 2018), by Herman Melville, edited by Herschel Parker; W.W. Norton & Co. ISBN-13: 978-0393285000
• Cost for four online meetings and six-night voyage with study sessions, including opening notes will be £2,180.00 per person (£1,680 to cover the cost of sailing on the Eda Frandsen + £500 for the literary study).
• Participants will be responsible for arranging their own travel to and from our departure and end point, the port of Oban on the west coast of the Scottish Highlands, as well as insurance to cover their trip.
• We have just seven places available. If you are interested in joining, please email us using the subject line Moby Dick 2027 giving your name and a phone number on which we may contact you.
• Please note that the voyage will involve sharing confined living and sleeping space while onboard. We do not require you to have nautical skills, but some time spent on sailing boats or camping would be useful so you know what to expect. We ask you to let us know in your email whether you have such experience and to confirm that you are in good physical health.
• It is always possible that there may be rough seas and weather, so please consider carefully whether you are likely to be adversely affected by these conditions.
• If we are able to offer you a place we will ask for an initial deposit of £100 per person, with the balance due by 31 December 2026.