“I am nothing to you. You say I am wilderness. I am. Is that a tremble on your mouth, in your eye? Are you afraid? You should be.”

Toni Morrison, A Mercy

Toni Morrison explained that she wrote A Mercy to explore a time before slavery was identified with race. This may help readers to consider race more as described here:

“an interplay with other social determiners, such as gender and class. Moreover, we must resist the trigger reaction that interprets ‘race’ to reference black-white relations, given that in colonial America another different people lived here who were subjected to biological mayhem as well as painstakingly plotted genocide.”

From the introduction to Critical Approaches: Toni Morrison’s A Mercy, edited by Shirley A. Stave and Justine Tally

Differing perspectives and narrative styles tell the story. As we read, we notice how the land—the specific geographical settings—impact character and tellings; we also see different paradigms: for example, what is ownership to one character is something different to another . . .

A Mercy is a study of displaced peoples. Instead of focusing on (and singling out) the experience of Black Americans, Morrison chooses a moment in the history of the United States—in the moment before this land comes to be called the United States—and explores the lives of the collection of people creating a home in wilderness. These ideas are connected to post-colonial theory, race issues and immigrant cultural adaptations, but perhaps what is new in our understanding today is how prevalent and constant the loss of home is for peoples across history.

We may each experience aspects of displacement in our own lives, and this may open us to a kind of understanding—but I believe through literature—the carefully evoked experience of others—we may start to understand with greater complexity the precarious experience of the displaced identity—and the strategies and creativity one uses to respond to this upheaval.

For anyone who has read Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!,   A Mercy  is in part Morrison’s response to that explosive text. 

JOINING DETAILS:

• Four week study on Zoom, facilitated by Toby Brothers and Deborah Lawunmi
• Mondays, 11 January – 1 February 2027, 5.30 – 7.30 pm (UK)
• £160 for four meetings with two facilitators (includes notes and critical resources)
• Recommended edition:  A Mercy by Toni Morrison, Vintage, ISBN-13: 978-0099502548

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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

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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

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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.

This will be our fifth year offering opportunities to read Virginia Woolf in East Sussex, a county which in many ways became the writer’s spiritual home. Basing ourselves in the village of Alfriston, we can consider her work surrounded by some of the countryside she loved best. In 2027 we will run two long weekend studies: the first (8-11 April) will focus on her 1927 masterpiece To the Lighthouse in its centenary year; while in the second (15-18 April) we will explore her 1928 novel Orlando.

As one of the key members of the celebrated Bloomsbury Group, Woolf is often seen as a London writer, but she and her husband Leonard had an abiding love for the South Downs. Together they purchased Monk’s House near Rodmell in 1919 and used it as their writers’ retreat. Virginia created some of her major works there and the Sussex landscape was integral to her writing as she tried to capture what she saw as its unsurpassable beauty.

There are a number of other Bloomsbury outposts in the area: in 1916 Virginia’s sister, Vanessa Bell, moved to Charleston Farmhouse with the painter Duncan Grant, while John Maynard Keynes and his wife Lydia Lopokova also settled locally.

Widely regarded as one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, Virginia Woolf described To the Lighthouse as ‘an elegy’. She considered it ‘easily the best of my books’ and acknowledged strong autobiographical elements, including the characters of Mr and Mrs Ramsay who were modelled closely on her own parents.

“This theme may be sentimental; father and mother and child in the garden; the death; the sail to the Lighthouse. I think, though, that when I begin it, I shall enrich it in all sorts of ways; thicken it; give it branches—roots which I do not perceive now.”

Virginia Woolf,  A Writer’s Diary, 14 May 1925

First published on 5 May 1927, this extraordinary work rewards reading and re-reading. Every encounter reveals new facets of Woolf’s world. Toby Brothers, founder of the London Literary Salon and co-facilitator of the study, admits that even after more than twenty close readings she still learns from the book, always finding new resonances and greater understanding to share with study participants.

Feedback from recent travel studies reading Virginia Woolf:

” . . . a truly wonderful experience. And a huge thank you for all you do to make such events so extraordinary.”

“Travel Studies are worth going the distance for. Set against the backdrop of a place related to the book you are reading, a travel study makes the words come alive over time and feel shot through with new meaning.”

“I feel like the LitSalon is the book group I’ve always needed and I’m willing to travel all the way from California to be part of it (and you can quote me on that).”

Toby will co-facilitate this study with literary scholar Karina Jakubowicz, creator and presenter of The Virginia Woolf Podcast.

JOINING DETAILS:

• To ask questions please email us at litsalon@gmail.com using ‘To the Lighthouse in Alfriston 2027’ as the subject line. To reserve a place please use the form below to pay an initial deposit of £50. Full payment will be payable using bank transfer by 31 January 2027.
• Four-day in-person study facilitated by Toby Brothers and Karina Jakubowicz
• Thursday 8 – Sunday 11 April 2027, Alfriston, East Sussex
• This is an opportunity to enjoy the locale, including visiting Charleston House, Charleston in Lewes and Monk’s House, as well as joining with other readers in discussing Woolf’s achievement in To the Lighthouse and its relationship to Woolf’s other works. We will also research outings in the area based on exhibits that will be available at the time of our visit, opportunities will be added to the schedule as we confirm the best options.
• As in previous years, we are in conversation with our fellow enthusiasts at Much Ado Books in Alfriston, who have created a great community that celebrates reading and the art of books in wonderful ways. Together we will offer an event celebrating Woolf and To the Lighthouse during our stay there.
• £550 for twelve hours (or more) of study in six meetings spread over four days, plus accommodation costs which must be booked and paid for direct (please see details below).
• Please note that participants are responsible for booking their own travel, accommodation and any insurance required (travel insurance is recommended if you are visiting the UK from overseas).
• We will stay at Wingrove House, a 19th century colonial-style country house hotel set in the beautiful and historic village of Alfriston, East Sussex in the South Downs National Park. We will be within easy reach of sites associated with Bloomsbury, making it the ideal choice for Woolf-related Salons. We expect the cost per night, including breakfast, to start at £192.00 per room, rising to a maximum of £262.50 (charges vary across a range of accommodation). These rates are discounted for London Literary Salon participants but the hotel is very popular and the accommodation is not reserved in advance, so please book your room as soon as possible after registering for the study and mention the London Literary Salon when booking.
• Recommended edition: To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, Penguin Classics ISBN: 9780241371954

This will be our fifth year offering opportunities to read Virginia Woolf in East Sussex, a county which in many ways became the writer’s spiritual home. Basing ourselves in the village of Alfriston, we can consider her work surrounded by some of the countryside she loved best. In 2027 we will run two long weekend studies: the first (8-11 April) will focus on her 1927 masterpiece To the Lighthouse in its centenary year; while in the second (15-18 April) we will explore her 1928 novel Orlando.

As one of the key members of the celebrated Bloomsbury Group, Woolf is often seen as a London writer, but she and her husband Leonard had an abiding love for the South Downs. Together they purchased Monk’s House near Rodmell in 1919 and used it as their writers’ retreat. Virginia created some of her major works there and the Sussex landscape was integral to her writing as she tried to capture what she saw as its unsurpassable beauty.

There are a number of other Bloomsbury outposts in the area: in 1916 Virginia’s sister, Vanessa Bell, moved to Charleston Farmhouse with the painter Duncan Grant, while John Maynard Keynes and his wife Lydia Lopokova also settled locally. In the nearby Weald of Kent stands Sissinghurst Castle, which Vita Sackville-West bought with her husband Harold Nicolson before creating together what would become one of England’s best-loved gardens.

Inspired by Vita Sackville-West, her close friend and lover, Virginia Woolf’s mock-biography, Orlando, has been called ‘the longest love letter in the English language.’ The central character survives centuries and emulates Tiresias (the blind prophet of Thebes who was transformed into a woman for seven years and then back into a man). By changing genders, Orlando is given the unique ability to compare what it is to be male and what it is to be female.

You can view the trailer for Sally Potter’s extraordinary 1992 film of Orlando starring Tilda Swinton below.

“At any rate, it was not until she felt the coil of skirts about her legs and the Captain offered, with the greatest politeness, to have an awning spread for her on deck, that she realised with a start the penalties and privileges of her position.”

Virginia Woolf, Orlando

Critics disagree about how to categorise Orlando, is it an ironic biography or an imagined autobiography? The proposal of Virginia Woolf as a comic genius is not how we usually consider this writer of such nuance and profundity, whose work combines narrative beauty, unique aesthetic and remarkable understanding of the depths of the human mind. In this book she seeks to probe the limits of gender, writing long before gender was understood to be a social construct.

Woolf was, as always, ahead of her time.and, as always, reading the work and participating in the discussions it provokes – around gender, same-sex love, societal constraints, the search for joy across historical epochs and the genre of biography itself – will illuminate the chaotic world we live in, where gender continues to be problematised and re-considered.

“Memory is the seamstress, and a capricious one at that. Memory runs her needle in and out, up and down, hither and thither. We know not what comes next, or what follows after. Thus, the most ordinary movement in the world, such as sitting down at a table and pulling the inkstand towards one, may agitate a thousand odd, disconnected fragments, now bright, now dim, hanging and bobbing and dipping and flaunting, like the underlinen of a family of fourteen on a line in a gale of wind.”

Virginia Woolf, Orlando

JOINING DETAILS:

• To ask questions please email us at litsalon@gmail.com using ‘Orlando in Alfriston 2027’ as the subject line. To reserve a place please use the form below to pay an initial deposit of £50. Full payment will be due using bank transfer by 31 January 2027.
• Four-day in-person study facilitated by Toby Brothers and Karina Jakubowicz
• Thursday 15 – Sunday 18 April 2027, Alfriston, East Sussex
• This is an opportunity to enjoy the locale, including visiting Charleston House, Charleston in Lewes and Monk’s House, as well as joining with other readers in discussing Woolf’s achievement in Orlando and its relationship to Woolf’s other works. We will also research outings in the area based on exhibits that will be available at the time of our visit, opportunities will be added to the schedule as we confirm the best options.
• As in previous years, we are in conversation with our fellow enthusiasts at Much Ado Books in Alfriston, who have created a great community that celebrates reading and the art of books in wonderful ways. Together we will offer an event celebrating Woolf and Orlando during our stay there.
• £550 for twelve hours (or more) of study in six meetings spread over four days, plus accommodation costs which must be booked and paid for direct (please see details below).
• Please note that participants are responsible for booking their own travel, accommodation and any insurance required (travel insurance is recommended if you are visiting the UK from overseas, just in case).
• We will stay at Wingrove House, a 19th century colonial-style country house hotel set in the beautiful and historic village of Alfriston, East Sussex in the South Downs National Park. We will be within easy reach of sites associated with Bloomsbury, making it the ideal choice for Woolf-related Salons. We expect the cost per night, including breakfast, to start at £192.00 per room, rising to a maximum of £262.50 (charges vary across a range of accommodation). These rates are discounted for London Literary Salon participants, but the hotel is very popular and the accommodation is not reserved in advance, so please book your room as soon as possible after registering for the study and mention the London Literary Salon when booking.
• Recommended edition: Orlando by Virginia Woolf, Vintage Classics, ISBN: 9781784870850

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.