![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
Camille, Crowned with the Immortals
May. 30th, 2010 11:09 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
amie-de-rimbaud.livejournal.comYour resident Camille aficionado here (Camille-eon?) with another 19th-century fictional representation of the Desmoulins couple. It’s a novel called Crowned with the Immortals by Mrs. Hylton (Marianne) Dale, published in 1896. It’s funny because I just discovered the existence of this book a month or two ago, only it was out of print and impossible to find, but then the British Library went ahead and kindly reissued a paperback version of it! So hurray for more Camille literature becoming available.
It’s dedicated to Claretie, whose book Dale used as her central source. Her other sources (listed at the end) include Carlyle and George Henry Lewes’ Life of Robespierre (which I've never read--any good?), so that alone should indicate what kind of a novel it is. Very Victorian.
But for all its Victorian sentimentalism, I actually found it a fairly enjoyable read. If you like Claretie’s style, this novel is pretty much a fleshed out adaptation with dialogue and description, full of charming little domestic scenes and many social engagements among the revolutionaries: dinner parties, nights at the opera, romping around the green pastures of Bourg-la-Reine, etc. It’s not great literature, but the style is fluid and engaging, even if the characterizations are a little flat. While it isn’t free from the 19th-c. British prejudices against the Revolution (and Robespierre, of course, is dealt a poor hand), I wouldn’t say the politics of the novel are very conservative; overall, it’s really not that bad.
I’ve tried to learn more about Marianne Dale, and I’ve found a mention of her in “The Women’s Industrial News” and she seems to have been the author of an essay, “Child Labor Under Capitalism” (1908). Maybe her progressive views on her own society contributed to her interest in revolutionary France! :)
It’s dedicated to Claretie, whose book Dale used as her central source. Her other sources (listed at the end) include Carlyle and George Henry Lewes’ Life of Robespierre (which I've never read--any good?), so that alone should indicate what kind of a novel it is. Very Victorian.
But for all its Victorian sentimentalism, I actually found it a fairly enjoyable read. If you like Claretie’s style, this novel is pretty much a fleshed out adaptation with dialogue and description, full of charming little domestic scenes and many social engagements among the revolutionaries: dinner parties, nights at the opera, romping around the green pastures of Bourg-la-Reine, etc. It’s not great literature, but the style is fluid and engaging, even if the characterizations are a little flat. While it isn’t free from the 19th-c. British prejudices against the Revolution (and Robespierre, of course, is dealt a poor hand), I wouldn’t say the politics of the novel are very conservative; overall, it’s really not that bad.
I’ve tried to learn more about Marianne Dale, and I’ve found a mention of her in “The Women’s Industrial News” and she seems to have been the author of an essay, “Child Labor Under Capitalism” (1908). Maybe her progressive views on her own society contributed to her interest in revolutionary France! :)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}