19th century literature – Page 2

An American Christmas Breakfast

‘”I shall take the cream and the muffins”, added Amy, heroically giving up the articles she most liked.’ (Louisa May Alcott, Little Women)

Every year since I started this blog, I have written a Christmas-themed post: there have been, amongst others, mince pies from Pride and Prejudice, Christmas cake from Jane Eyre and fudge from Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales. This year, feeling that I had exhausted my knowledge of Christmas food in English Literature, I decided to look across the Atlantic to America to Louisa Alcott’s Little Women (the new film version of which, directed by Greta Gerwig, is due for release this Christmas). Continue reading “An American Christmas Breakfast”

The Lake District: Poetry and Grasmere Gingerbread

Last month I spent a long weekend in the Lake District, the beautiful area in North West England renowned for its lakes, mountains and literary associations: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charles and Mary Lamb, Robert Southey, Beatrix Potter and John Ruskin all lived there at some point in their lives. Continue reading “The Lake District: Poetry and Grasmere Gingerbread”

Easter baking

Like Christmas, Easter provides the keen cook with the opportunity to spend hours in the kitchen. There’s the traditional dinner of roast lamb – the springtime counterpart to the roast turkey Christmas dinner.
And when it comes to baking, Easter offers its own slightly lighter variants of Christmas delights, which stlll contain many of the same ingredients, specifically dried fruit, nuts and marzipan. Instead of the heavy fruited Christmas cake there’s the simnel cake, which can be made at the last minute, dispenses with the icing and makes a real feature of the marzipan. And the dense alcohol-rich fruited filling of the mince pie gives way to the lightly fruited and spiced hot cross bun. Continue reading “Easter baking”

Literature and home

I love reading a book set in the place in which I live. Coming across familiar buildings, landmarks and street names as I turn the pages of a novel arouses a pride in me that where I live is worthy of literary treatment. The delight is increased when the geographical references are unexpected. Discovering a passage in Maggie O’Farrell’s The hand that first held mine (2010), in which the couple at the centre of the present-day narrative take their newborn baby to see a doctor in Dartmouth Park, the area of North London in which I was then living, made me enjoy the book even more. Continue reading “Literature and home”