Do you know someone who deserves the gift of a Salon Study? Throughout December we are offering gift vouchers for the festive season in denominations of £30.00, £50.00 and £100.00. Please email litsalon@gmail.com with the subject ‘GIFTS’ to let us know how many vouchers you would like to purchase, to whom they should be sent and with what message.

Feel free also to email us with any questions you may have, again with the subject ‘GIFTS’.

Awash in murder, madness and revenge, Hamlet has spoken to the ‘beast’ in humankind for over four centuries. Written around the turn of the 17^th century, Hamlet – in its fullest version – runs for over four hours. Even then, good productions of the sensational play can hold audiences in thrall. But, despite its preoccupation with violence and vengeance, Hamlet is also deeply philosophical, and bloodlust often takes a back seat to considerations of ethics and the moral course of action. It is the tension between these two aspects of humankind – part base, part noble – that has made this protagonist and the host of characters who come into his sphere so magnetic. 

In this six-session study participants will engage in reading and discussing key scenes in Hamlet, including all seven of his soliloquies. As we undertake a close analysis of the play, we will examine the elements that make it a great revenge tragedy, but we will also consider ways in which Shakespeare makes it about so much more than revenge alone.

This study launches a series on English Renaissance revenge tragedy. Each study will be completely self-contained, but participants are welcome (and encouraged!) to consider taking part in the entire series. Next up will be Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy beginning on 19 February.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Six session study on Zoom led by Julie Sutherland
• Wednesday, 8 January-12 February 2025, 5.00-7.00 pm (UK/GMT)
• £180 for six two-hour meetings, to include opening notes and resources
• Recommended text: we strongly encourage participants to acquire the Arden Shakespeare Hamlet, revised edition, editors Ann Thompson & Neil Taylor: https://www.bloomsbury.com/ca/hamlet-9781472518385/. Variations between texts can be significant, having the same version will facilitate reading and discussion. N.B. Contrary to what Amazon says in its description, this edition presents an authoritative, modernised text based on the Second Quarto text (1604/5), which was printed from a manuscript believed to be Shakespeare’s ‘foul papers’ (his rough drafts).

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licóur
Of which vertú engendred is the flour;
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye,
So priketh hem Natúre in hir corages,
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages 

Join the LitSalon on a literary pilgrimage with The Canterbury Tales. Imagine it is spring, the rain and mud behind us, nature bursts with new life. It is the season of love and pilgrimage. We are gathered around rustic wooden tables at the Tabard Inn, near London. Tomorrow we begin our walk (or ride if we can afford it) to St. Thomas Becket’s shrine at Canterbury Cathedral. Our host suggests that each of us tell a story on the road.

What an astonishing variety of characters Chaucer gives us!  We see the full range of medieval society, from the noble Knight to the bawdy Miller, the vitality of the Wife of Bath to the hypocrisy of the Prioress. The Canterbury Tales offers a masterful sense of irony throughout. For example, Chaucer presents himself as a character in the poem and the master poet tells a tale that is pure doggerel.  Finally, the Host can bear it no longer: “Namoore of this, for Goddes dignitee.” Poor Chaucer protests to no avail.

To truly appreciate Chaucer’s poetry, one needs to delve into the Middle English. We will do that by first reading the General Prologue in the original. Following this initial five meeting study we will offer two further studies reading some of the most compelling tales in modern English (although those wishing to continue in Middle English are encouraged to do so) as set out below (to be listed on this website at a later date).

Part I: Knight’s Tale, Miller’s Tale, Pardoner’s Tale, Franklin’s Tale (16, 23 February & 2, 9 March)
Part II: Wife of Bath’s Tale, Shipman’s Tale, Nun’s Priest’s Tale (16, 23, 30 March)

If you have studied Joyce, Dante or Shakespeare with the LitSalon, why not challenge yourself with Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, one of the greatest works in English literature?

JOINING DETAILS:

• Five meeting study of the Prologue led by Sean Forester
• Sundays, 4.00 – 6.00 pm (UK) 
• 12, 19, 26 January & 2, 9 February 2025
• Recommended text: Penguin Middle English edition, ISBN: 9780140422344 (Everyman and Riverside Chaucer are fine too). You may also find the interlinear translation of The Canterbury Tales on the Harvard University Chaucer website useful.
• £150 for five meetings, including notes and resources.

“tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral.”

Thus, in Act 2 of Hamlet, Polonius excitedly describes the varied possible delights on offer from the approaching players. The Winter’s Tale, cited as the penultimate solo work in Shakespeare’s canon, goes a long way to covering all the forms of drama that Polonius enumerates.

The descriptive term that might arguably cover the entire list is ‘romance’, although in Shakespeare’s day the word did not apply to drama but to euphuistic prose works such as Pandosto by Robert Greene (which is the source material for this play), so Polonius can’t be blamed for the longer-winded ‘tragical-comical-historical-pastoral’. It was not until the 19th century that this play – along with the other three plays written at the end of Shakespeare’s career: Cymbeline, Pericles and The Tempest – were described as the Late Romances.

The compilers of the First Folio would not have classified The Winter’s Tale as a history play, but the power of monarchs and questions of succession are certainly among its themes. The action moves between the formal court of Sicilia and the bucolic rural setting of Bohemia, where shepherds (the word ‘pastoral’ derives from the latin pastor meaning shepherd) are very much present. The play contains tragedy in its first half and a good deal of comedy in its second. 

“I would love to see a rep company do The Winter’s Tale and King Lear together, same actors same costumes, because I think Shakespeare wrote The Winter’s Tale to answer King Lear’s tragedy with hope”

Jane Smiley

The first half of the play moves towards an expectation of full blown tragedy, which is then altered by what is probably Shakespeare’s most famous Stage Direction: ‘Exit pursued by a bear’. As Professor Emma Smith explains, ‘the stage direction itself enacts the shock of the theatrical moment. Wait…there’s a bear? Where did that come from? But the real significance of this stage direction is the work it does as part of a cluster of dramaturgical, linguistic and structural effects in the middle of The Winter’s Tale. These effects have one concerted purpose: to wrest the play from the path of tragedy and to pluck a comedy from its darkest reaches.’

Ultimately, as one of the characters in the play, Paulina, exhorts:

“It is required, 
You do awake your faith”.

The Winter’s Tale is a romance, a fairy story, a thing of hope . . .

JOINING DETAILS:

• Eight week study on Zoom led by Jane Wymark
• Monday 13 January – 3 March 2025,  6.00 – 8.00 pm (UK)
• Recommended edition: The Arden Shakespeare, edited by John Pitcher, ISBN
  9781903436356
• £240 for eight meetings, including notes and background resources

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

from The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats

Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart offers an intimate and sweeping view of Igbo life in Nigeria during the late colonial period, capturing the complexities of family, tradition, and the forces that shape communities. Through the story of Okonkwo and his village, Achebe creates a world that is at once specific and universal, exploring how personal and cultural identities are built and challenged. 

In this study, we’ll journey through Achebe’s rich narrative, discussing his powerful storytelling, his nuanced view of colonialism, and the ways he invites us to see both the beauty and fragility of human experience. Together, we’ll delve into the themes of tradition, resilience, language, and the complex encounter between cultures, reflecting on how these themes resonate with us today. 

The workshop offers a space for all readers—whether you’re discovering Achebe for the first time or returning to his work—to come together in curiosity, empathy and open dialogue. 

JOINING DETAILS:

• Monday 13 and 20 January 2025, 7.00–9.00 pm GMT
• Led by by Alison Cable, two meeting workshop on Zoom + optional additional reflective writing session* on 27 January (also on Zoom, 7.00-9.00 pm GMT)
• £60 for two meetings + FREE optional meeting*
• Recommended edition: Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, Penguin Modern Classics, ISBN: 9780141023380

*In this optional reflective writing session, we will be inspired by the novel to deepen the reading experience through a variety of guided writing prompts.

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

William Faulkner

First published on 2 February 1922 – James Joyce’s 40th birthday – UIysses was immediately controversial, described by one Irish critic as “The most infamously obscene book in ancient or modern literature”.

The ‘Slow Read’ is an opportunity to read and relish of one of the greatest novels of all time in the company of others. The ‘Slow’ approach has proved popular within the Salon as our approach is not driven by completion of the text within a defined timescale, rather we focus on full enjoyment of the material.

In a typical session we might discuss – inter alia – the immaculate conception (who does or does not have a navel?), language as a tool of colonialism (and how to subvert it), space between thought and speech, amor matris, cubist paintings, Thoth (Egyptian bird-headed god), changing understandings of Hamlet, Shakespeare’s sex life, the occult, cypher jugglers, Norse mythology, the dialectic within Stephen’s head, the Daedalus-Icarus myth . . . We are all here for the tangents!

Every time I run a study of Ulysses, there is SO much we do not get to consider: I know we may still not get to everything, but this will be an opportunity to go deeper and wider in this amazing work than ever before in Salon studies. Our run rate is about 5-8 pages a week, with frequent check- ins to see if, as a group, we want to slow down, speed up or just wallow.

The ‘Slow Read’ is served in tranches of two-hour sessions – usually between six and ten in number. As long as there is continued interest, I will keep offering this study until we reach the final notes on the text.

If you are interested in this study but have not previously read Ulysses, please contact us to discuss using the enquiry form below.

“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.”

Ulysses Salon participant

I offer many resources for reading around, but the richness of our work comes from the contributions and independent research from participants. This study is particularly opportune given the abundance of new resources available thanks to the 2022 Ulysses centenary, including the offerings of the recently published Cambridge Centenary Ulysses, the brainchild of Catherine Flynn. 

Toby Brothers, Director, London Literary Salon

JOINING DETAILS:

• This is the ninth section of the ‘Slow Read’ Ulysses study led by Toby Brothers and occasional guest facilitators from within the group, 13 two-hour sessions, Tuesdays from 2.30-4.30 pm (UK), starting on 14 January and ending on 22 April 2025.
• If you are interested in joining this study but have not participated in the first seven sections please email the facilitator toby@litsalon.co.uk.
• The total cost for this section with all notes and resources is £390.00, we expect to read an average of 8 pages per week.
• Please have available 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

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Matthew Arnold (24 December 1822 – 15 April 1888) was an English poet, social critic and inspector of schools. Traditionally believed to have been written on his honeymoon in 1851, Dover Beach is one of his best loved and most frequently quoted poems.

Dover Beach is a poem set on the edge of changes still too unformed to be fully understood and its rich descriptions have been interpreted in many ways. Through reading and discussion, we’ll be able to consider the poem’s influence and meaning and hear its beautiful cadences come to life. 

SALON DETAILS:

• Single meeting study facilitated by Caroline Hammond
• Tuesday 14 January 2025, 6.00 – 8.00 pm GMT
• £30 (includes background materials and opening 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. 

Although Madame Bovary 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?

JOINING DETAILS:

• Seven-meeting study led by Ralph Kleinman
• Wednesdays, 7.00-9.00 pm UK (BST)
• 15 January to 26 February 2025
• 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)
• £210 for seven meetings, to include opening notes and resources

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

—William Faulkner

First published on 2 February 1922 – James Joyce’s 40th birthday – UIysses was immediately controversial, described by one Irish critic as “The most infamously obscene book in ancient or modern literature”.

We offer an opportunity to read one of the greatest novels of all time in the company of others. Our work with this book will widen your perspective and deepen your experience of the power of language.

There is a strong argument for studying this huge and intimidating text – book list chart-topper of 100 greatest books of all time, critics’ darling, most lauded/least read, the book that many literary academics dedicate their lives to studying – but you will only know for yourself by diving in. I believe the best way to study it is with a group of hungry, curious readers who all contribute to evoking meaning, through their questions as well as their insights.

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 – thanks, 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.

“The classes I have taken with the Literary Salon have been extraordinary.“

“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 early in the day, from 11.30-1.30pm (UK time), comprising 21 meetings starting on Tuesday 21 January and finishing on Tuesday 17 June 2025, with four Sunday afternoon meetings (4.30-6.30pm on 23 February, 30 March, 18 May and 8 June) and NO meetings on 4 March, 29 April, 6 and 13 May.
• The total cost for the 21 meeting study, with all notes and resources materials, is £500
• 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

“My apologies to chance for calling it necessity.

My apologies to necessity if I’m mistaken, after all.“

Wistawa Szymborska, Under One Small Star

Awarding Wistawa Szymborska the Literature Prize in 1996, the Nobel Academy praised her “poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality.”

We are living through a fraught political era in which ecological succour and the possibility of peace may seem elusive. Can poetry offer a way to read the world that helps us be both engaged in and also derive some relief from the world and its troubles?

This single session study takes up that question, looking at two poems by Wistawa Szymborska, reading them together as a way of thinking about and through the times in which we find ourselves.

Szymborska’s poetry, written in response to the political upheavals of the twentieth century, perhaps provides a reflective space in which to dwell a little on the difficulties we face and also offer a unique way to be human within a world that is sometimes ill at ease.

In The Century’s Decline she asks “how should we live?” and in Under One Small Star she hones her sharp yet warm irony on all the recognisable shortcomings and monumental efforts of human life and endeavour and experience. She gives us permission to feel joy and to be inadequate to the problems of the world while still holding space with all these weighty things.

It is my hope that we can derive some succour from Szymborska’s words.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Single two-hour study on Zoom led by Desma Lawrence
• Tuesday 21 January, 12.00 – 2.00 pm (UK)
• We will read and discuss two poems by Wistawa Symborska: The Century’s Decline and Under One Small Star
• £30 for one meeting, including notes and texts

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

—William Faulkner

First published on 2 February 1922 – James Joyce’s 40th birthday – UIysses was immediately controversial, described by one Irish critic as “The most infamously obscene book in ancient or modern literature”.

We offer an opportunity to read one of the greatest novels of all time in the company of others. Our work with this book will widen your perspective and deepen your experience of the power of language.

There is a strong argument for studying this huge and intimidating text – book list chart-topper of 100 greatest books of all time, critics’ darling, most lauded/least read, the book that many literary academics dedicate their lives to studying – but you will only know for yourself by diving in. I believe the best way to study it is with a group of hungry, curious readers who all contribute to evoking meaning, through their questions as well as their insights.

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 – thanks, 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.

“The classes I have taken with the Literary Salon have been extraordinary.“

“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 evening study from 5.30-7.30pm (UK time), comprising 21 meetings starting on Tuesday 21 January and finishing on Tuesday 17 June 2025, with four Sunday meetings (4.30-6.30pm on 23 February, 30 March, 18 May and 8 June) and NO meetings on 4 March, 29 April, 6 and 13 May.
• The total cost for the 21 meeting study, with all notes and resources materials, is £500
• 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

“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

After completing incredibly satisfying studies of Ulysses and Magic Mountain, we have turned to the next big mountain of Modernism, Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. This is my seventh tour through the Search and each visit reveals new nuggets and gasping moments. This fourth volume, Sodom and Gomorrah, 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 anything about the world you live in, but you will be surprised. The group that has made it through the first three volumes in the last six months is lively and welcoming and we may have room for two or three more participants. If you have not read the first three 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.”

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, together with what our senses perceive, that moulds our consciousness.

I’d  like to share with you part of Edmund White’s essay on this section from Andre Aciman’s collection The Proust Project:

“In these pages, Proust alludes to so many conflicting theories of homosexuality that they end up by casting doubt on one another — and on all such theories.  In fact they suggest, finally, that only the conventions of a few cultures (but not all or even most cultures) determine the definition of normality; mere convention and nothing more absolute defines the status of homosexuality.

On the face of it nothing could seem further from the Proustian position.  He starts out with the most extreme (and the most offensive) theory; that male homosexuals are inverts, i.e., women disguised as men.  this whole initial disquisition on homosexuality is triggered by Marcel’s realization that Charlus’s face in repose is that of a woman since ‘he was one.’  This is the theory of ‘the soul of a woman enclosed in the body of a man’ first worked out by the German sexologist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs in 1868.

Proust plays with the theories and homophobia of his time – and exposes societal hypocrisies in all forms.”

JOINING DETAILS:

• Facilitated by Toby Brothers
• Mondays, 1.00-3.00 pm (UK)
• Thirteen-meeting study on Zoom starting on 27 January 2025 (N.B. no meetings on 3 March, 14 & 28 April, 5 & 12 May)
• Recommended editions: Penguin, ISBN 9780141180342, Christopher Prendergast (Editor), John Sturrock (Translator) OR Vintage Classics, ISBN 9780099362517
• £390 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

This ‘second time around’ study is designed specifically for people who, having completed their journey through Proust’s monumental creation at least once, have the urge to do it again.

Facilitator Toby Brothers writes:

Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time is one of the mountains of Modernism. This is my seventh tour through the Search and each visit reveals new nuggets and gasping moments. This fourth 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, but you will be surprised. 

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.”

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, together with what our senses perceive, that moulds our consciousness.

I’d  like to share with you part of Edmund White’s essay on this section from Andre Aciman’s collection The Proust Project:

“In these pages, Proust alludes to so many conflicting theories of homosexuality that they end up by casting doubt on one another — and on all such theories.  In fact they suggest, finally, that only the conventions of a few cultures (but not all or even most cultures) determine the definition of normality; mere convention and nothing more absolute defines the status of homosexuality.

On the face of it nothing could seem further from the Proustian position.  He starts out with the most extreme (and the most offensive) theory; that male homosexuals are inverts, i.e., women disguised as men.  this whole initial disquisition on homosexuality is triggered by Marcel’s realization that Charlus’s face in repose is that of a woman since ‘he was one.’  This is the theory of ‘the soul of a woman enclosed in the body of a man’ first worked out by the German sexologist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs in 1868.

Proust plays with the theories and homophobia of his time – and exposes societal hypocrisies in all forms.”

JOINING DETAILS:

• Facilitated by Toby Brothers
• Mondays, 3.30-5.30 pm (UK)
• Thirteen-meeting study on Zoom starting on 27 January 2025 (N.B. no meetings on 3 March, 14 & 28 April, 5 & 12 May)
• Recommended editions: Penguin, ISBN 9780141180342, Christopher Prendergast (Editor), John Sturrock (Translator) OR Vintage Classics, ISBN 9780099362517
• £390 for thirteen meetings (includes background materials, literary criticism, opening notes and discussion notes)

This study offers a rare opportunity to read Virginia Woolf’s famed mock-biography, Orlando, with Karina Jakubowicz, Woolf scholar and creator of The Virginia Woolf Podcast. Readers will be guided through the text step-by-step, explaining the desires, jealousies and rivalries behind what has been called ‘the longest love letter in the English language.’ There will be opportunities to discuss Woolf’s inspiration, Vita Sackville West, and to consider Woolf’s treatment of history, gender and the genre of biography.

To guide our readings, each week will feature one object drawn from the archives at Knole House or Sissinghurst Castle, or from Virginia Woolf’s own collections. Orlando is a story that spans 400 years, so each object will relate to the time period that we are looking at in the text itself. These pieces may simply serve as bookmarks to help readers navigate the text, or they may develop into talking points that furnish our understanding of the history that Woolf describes. 

The eight-session study will begin with a lecture on the background to the text that can be booked as a standalone event or as part of the whole. The following seven sessions will be discussion-based and split according to the timetable below.

Session 1: Lecture

Session 2: Preface and first half of Chapter 1, up to the beginning of The Great Frost (p. 22)

Session 3: Read until the end of Chapter 1

Session 4: Chapter 2.

Session 5: Chapter 3

Session 6: Chapter 4

Session 7: Chapter 5

Session 8: Chapter 6 

N.B. If you are interested in developing your critical or written skills, this can be done via a weekly written task with feedback at additional cost. For more information on this, please email us using the subject line ‘Orlando feedback’. 

JOINING DETAILS:

• Eight meeting study on Zoom led by Karina Jakubowicz
• 27 January to 17 March 2025
• Mondays, 6.00-8.00 pm
• £30 for the lecture alone, £240 for the whole course
• Recommended edition: Oxford World’s Classics, edited by Michael H. Whitworth, ISBN: 9780199650736 (but any decent edition will work). 

This lecture is available to book as a standalone event or as an introduction to a complete eight-week study giving participants a rare opportunity to read Virginia Woolf’s famed mock-biography, Orlando, with Karina Jakubowicz, Woolf scholar and creator of The Virginia Woolf Podcast. Readers will be guided through the text step-by-step, explaining the desires, jealousies and rivalries behind what has been called ‘the longest love letter in the English language.’ There will be opportunities to discuss Woolf’s inspiration, Vita Sackville West, and to consider Woolf’s treatment of history, gender and the genre of biography..

To guide our readings, each week will feature one object drawn from the archives at Knole House or Sissinghurst Castle, or from Virginia Woolf’s own collections. Orlando is a story that spans 400 years, so each object will relate to the time period that we are looking at in the text itself. These pieces may simply serve as bookmarks to help readers navigate the text, or they may develop into talking points that furnish our understanding of the history that Woolf describes. 

The complete study consists of eight sessions which will be discussion-based and split according to the timetable below and may be booked here.

Session 1: Lecture

Session 2: Preface and first half of Chapter 1, up to the beginning of The Great Frost (p. 22)

Session 3: Read until the end of Chapter 1

Session 4: Chapter 2.

Session 5: Chapter 3

Session 6: Chapter 4

Session 7: Chapter 5

Session 8: Chapter 6 

N.B. If you are interested in developing your critical or written skills, this can be done via a weekly written task with feedback at additional cost. For more information on this, please email us using the subject line ‘Orlando feedback’. 

JOINING DETAILS:

• Introductory lecture by Karina Jakubowicz on Zoom
• Monday 27 January 2025, 6.00-8.00 pm
• £30 for the lecture alone (£240 for lecture and seven further meetings)
• Recommended edition: Oxford World’s Classics, edited by Michael H. Whitworth, ISBN: 9780199650736 (but any decent edition will work). 

“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

After completing incredibly satisfying studies of Ulysses and Magic Mountain, we have turned to the next big mountain of Modernism, Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. This is my seventh tour through the Search and each visit reveals new nuggets and gasping moments. This fourth volume, Sodom and Gomorrah, 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 anything about the world you live in, but you will be surprised. The group that has made it through the first three volumes in the last six months is lively and welcoming and we may have room for two or three more participants. If you have not read the first three 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.”

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, together with what our senses perceive that moulds our consciousness.

I’d  like to share with you part of Edmund White’s essay on this section from Andre Aciman’s collection The Proust Project:

“In these pages, Proust alludes to so many conflicting theories of homosexuality that they end up by casting doubt on one another — and on all such theories.  In fact they suggest, finally, that only the conventions of a few cultures (but not all or even most cultures) determine the definition of normality; mere convention and nothing more absolute defines the status of homosexuality.

On the face of it nothing could seem further from the Proustian position.  He starts out with the most extreme (and the most offensive) theory; that male homosexuals are inverts, i.e., women disguised as men.  this whole initial disquisition on homosexuality is triggered by Marcel’s realization that Charlus’s face in repose is that of a woman since ‘he was one.’  This is the theory of ‘the soul of a woman enclosed in the body of a man’ first worked out by the German sexologist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs in 1868.

Proust plays with the theories and homophobia of his time – and exposes societal hypocrisies in all forms.”

JOINING DETAILS:

• Facilitated by Toby Brothers and Ralph Kleinman
• Mondays, 6.00-8.00 pm (UK)
• Thirteen-meeting study on Zoom starting on 27 January 2025 (N.B. no meetings on 3 March, 14 & 28 April, 5 & 12 May)
• Recommended editions: Penguin, ISBN 9780141180342, Christopher Prendergast (Editor), John Sturrock (Translator) OR Vintage Classics, ISBN 9780099362517
• £390 for thirteen meetings (includes background materials, literary criticism, opening notes and discussion notes)

” . . .Today, guess what, we became beekeepers!  We went to the local meeting last week (attended by the rector, the midwife, and assorted beekeeping people from neighboring villages) to watch a Mr Pollard make three hives out of one (by transferring his queen cells) under the supervision of the official Government bee-man.  We all wore masks and it was thrilling.  It is expensive to start beekeeping (over $50 outlay), but Mr Pollard let us have an old hive for nothing, which we painted white and green, and today he brought over the swarm of docile Italian hybrid bees we ordered and installed them.  We placed the hive in a sheltered out-of-the-way spot in the orchard the bees were furious from being in a box.  Ted had only put a handkerchief over his head where the hat should go in the bee-mask, and the bees crawled into his hair, and he flew off with half-a-dozen stings.  I didn’t get stung at all, and when I went back to the hive later, I was delighted to see bees entering with pollen sacs full and leaving with them empty at least I think that’s what they were doing.  I feel very ignorant but shall try to read up and learn all I can.  If we’re lucky, we’ll have our own honey, too!“

From Letters Home, 15 June 1962

When Sylvia Plath died on 11^th February 1963 she left a black spring binder on her desk containing a manuscript of forty poems with the title Ariel.*  The final five poems are a sequence about bees: The Bee-Meeting, The Arrival of the Bee-Box, Stings, Swarm and Wintering.  In this powerful sequence Plath purposefully changes her poetic tone as she uses the natural metaphor of bees to explore issues of female self-assertion, rites of death and rebirth, creativity and survival.  She also writes with loving precision about the details of beekeeping and the bees themselves.  The final poem, Wintering, is a tour de force evoking cold and despair but, ultimately, hope for the coming spring.  

Over the course of two hours we will study Wintering in depth, look at its form and construction and, through repeated readings, unlock the secrets of this acclaimed poem. 

*This is not the version of Ariel published in 1965, which has four of the bee poems in the middle of the book, but Faber did publish Ariel the Restored Edition in 2004, with a foreword by Frieda Hughes. 

JOINING DETAILS:

• Single meeting study facilitated by Caroline Hammond 
• Tuesday 28 January 2025, 6.00 – 8.00 pm (GMT)
• £30 (includes background materials and opening notes)

“I seemed to be lying neither asleep nor awake looking down a long corridor of gray half light where all stable things had become shadowy paradoxical all I had done shadows all I had felt suffered taking visible form antic and perverse mocking without relevance inherent themselves with the denial of the significance they should have affirmed thinking I was I was not who was not was not who.”

William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury

In William Faulkner’s first truly modernist work, he attempts to break through the confines of time and sequence to get at the essence of human nature. As Malcolm Bradbury explains, “Faulkner’s preoccupation with time has to do with the endless interlocking of personal and public histories and with the relation of the past to the lost, chaotic present.” The Sound and the Fury exposes a crumbling world through inference and allusion rather than through direct social critique. In the modernist method, Faulkner employs stream of consciousness and symbolism as connecting fibres against individual interior realities that must compete for authority.

This study will draw upon participants’ questions and ideas to shed light on this complex text. The book is richer when discussed, enabling the first time reader access to Faulkner’s vision, while those re-reading will find greater depth and resonance. Upon a first reading, the narratives appear jumbled and opaque; but as the pieces start to fit together, the complex and careful planning that Faulkner employs becomes apparent. Does the work expose the depths and hidden realms of the human spirit? This is what we must grapple with in our study.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Led by Toby Brothers & John Allemand on Zoom
• Wednesday evenings 5.00 – 7.00 pm (UK)
• Five-meeting study 29 January – 26 February 2025
• Recommended edition: The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner, Norton Critical Edition (edited by Michael Gorra); ISBN-13: 978-0393912692
• £200 for five sessions

‘Give me an example,’ I said quietly. ‘Of something that means something. In your opinion.’
‘Wuthering Heights‘ she said without hesitation . . .
‘But that’s unreasonable. You’re talking about a work of genius.’
‘It was, wasn’t it? My sweet wild Cathy. God, I cried buckets. I saw it ten times.’
I said ‘Oh’ with recognizable relief, ‘oh’ with a shameful, rising inflection, ‘the movie.’

Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Ironically, this exchange between the unnamed narrator of Breakfast at Tiffany’s and its unlikely heroine, Holly Golightly, prefigures the eclipse of Truman Capote’s original 1958 novella by the 1961 film. Whether you love or loathe the iconic movie starring Audrey Hepburn, the book is different – romantic but devoid of sentimentality – painting a complex, funny and poignant portrait of a 1940’s New York demi-monde.

Credited as the inventor of the ‘non-fiction novel’, Capote’s prose style in Breakfast at Tiffany’s prompted Norman Mailer to describe him as “the most perfect writer of my generation”. In our two-meeting study we will consider whether and why this judgement was justified, as we discuss how the author evokes character – most notably the unique and irrepressible Holly Golightly – and, in less than a hundred pages, immerses the reader in his plot.

Please note, the book contains some language and cultural tropes that are true to the period described but which some readers may find offensive today.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Two-meeting study on Zoom led by Toby Brothers and Deborah Lawunmi
• Thursday 30 January & 6 February, 5.00-7.00 pm UK (GMT)
• Recommended edition: Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Penguin Modern Classics, ISBN: 9780141182797
• £70 for two meetings to include opening notes and resources

       “Don’t bargain.
Just grab the swishing tail
of your nerve’s latest adventure
and go with the inevitable tide.“

Dorothy Porter  The Sea Hare

Blaise Pascal wrote that what makes humans distinct is that we know we are attached to a dying animal, and that the universe knows nothing of this. Our knowledge of death, our awareness of our mortality is so fundamental to our human experience.

This study looks at the ways poets have written about death, taking up different responses to the theme in a variety of poems, reading works that face – unstintingly at times, but also tenderly and deeply – the universal yet oft avoided fact of our mortality.

My idea for this salon is that we come to it with an open curiosity about the ways that poets have thought poetically about death.

Starting with Milton’s pastoral elegy Lycidas we go on a journey to the underworld with Rilke’s Orpheus, and through the surreal musings of Neruda and deep existential fear explored in Larkin’s Aubade. Studying eleven poems over four meetings we will finish with poems that contemplate our own mortality, in Dorothy Porter ‘s The Sea Hare and in a selection of haiku known as death poems, written by Japanese poets as their last words of goodbye.

Meeting One
Lycidas, John Milton
The Funeral of Sarpedon, Constantine Cavafy
Sylvia’s Death, Anne Sexton

Meeting Two
Orpheus, Euridice and Hermes, Rainer Maria Rilke
Lenox Hill, Agaha Shahid Ali ­

Meeting Three
Aubade, Philip Larkin
Nothing but Death, Pablo Neruda
To Whoever is Reading Me, Jorge Luis Borges

Meeting Four
The Sea Hare, Dorothy Porter
Japanese Death Poems
In Praise of Dreams, Wistawa Szymborska

JOINING DETAILS:

• Four week study on Zoom led by Desma Lawrence
• Tuesdays, 12.00 – 2.00 pm (UK)
• 4, 11, 18 and 25 February 2025
• £120 for four meetings, including notes and texts

The Tyger, first published in 1794, is the product of a revolutionary age. Societal transformations in Europe and North America were radically altering industry, statehood, philosophy, law and religion. In the vanguard of the Romantic movement that was to produce a generation of poets including Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Keats and Clare, Blake was a master of the lyric form, finding connections between the natural world and the introspective workings of the heart and mind. 

For many readers The Tyger is also woven into their earliest childhoods, one of the first poems they were introduced to, heard before it was read. Whether The Tyger is part of your personal canon or completely new, as we explore the lyricism, images and Blake’s unique voice we will uncover new and unexpected meanings through reading and discussing the poem. 

JOINING DETAILS:

• Single meeting study facilitated by Caroline Hammond
• Tuesday 4 February 2025, 6.00 – 8.00 pm GMT
• £30 (includes background materials and opening notes)

Arnica, eyebright, the
draft from the well with the
star-die on top,

in the
Hütte,

Thus begins Paul Celan’s poem Todtnauberg, setting the scene for his meeting with the philosopher Martin Heidegger.

This short poem is Celan’s record of his meeting at the philosopher’s Black Forest retreat in Todtnauberg in 1967. The two men were admirers of each other’s work, though on Celan’s side the admiration was fraught. Celan was a survivor of the European Shoah, carried out by the Third Reich, that claimed the life of both his parents. Living most of his life in France, Celan composed his poetry in German (his mother tongue and the language of his beloved mother), utilising the language that was also infused with the Reich, and which he called “the deathbringing speech” to work through the individual and collective trauma of the Shoah.   

Heidegger, one of the monumental figures in European continental philosophy of the twentieth century, had a well known affiliation with the Nazi party which he never denied, redressed, or ever spoke about publicly. Their meeting, not surprisingly, attracted much scrutiny.  

The poem, a chronicle of that meeting, closely follows the inscription that Celan left in Heidegger’s visitor’s book: “In the Hütte, with the view from the star in the well, with the hope of a coming word in the heart” (“Ins Hüttenbuch, mit dem Blick auf den Brunnenstern, mit einer Hoffnung auf eines kommendes Wort im Herzen”). 

There are many ways to read, interpret and translate the poem, a poem about silence and the hope for words. We will read the poem together, many times, hoping ourselves to come to an understanding and interpretation of this very moving and concise work. 

JOINING DETAILS:

• Single meeting study led by Desma Lawrence and Emilia Steuerman
• Wednesday 12 February 2025, 12.00 – 2.00 pm (UK)
• £40 for single meeting with two facilitators
• We will provide the German text with English Translation(s) and background notes on both Celan and Heidegger.