Christina Rossetti Part I

Christina Rossetti was born in London in 1830 and died in 1894.
Her family were of Italian origin.   Her father was a political exile from Italy and the family was artistic. Her brother was the poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti who was a member of the Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood. The family was not well off, but at first they lived in modest middle class comfort. Her father was a teacher at Kings College and Christina was given a good education at home. Then her father became ill and had to resign his job, and suffered from poor health and depression.
Her mother and sister had to teach, to provide for the family. Maria, the sister became a live in Governess, and her mother set up a school.
Christina became more isolated at home. She feared that she would have to become a governess, too. Like the Bronte sisters, she was shy and devoted to her family. She began to suffer health problems and depression, but she was very interested in her brother’s artistic work and she herself wanted to be a writer. She wrote poems and stories from childhood. She began to have her poems published form the age of 18.
She found consolation for the difficulties of her life, in religion. She was a devout Anglo Catholic, although she did suffer from religious crises during her life. She led a sheltered life, mixing with some of her brother’s friends but also maintaining friendships by letter. Her work is often considered to be as good as Elizabeth Barrett Browning... and she is felt to be one of the most gifted women poets of the Victorian era.
In the 20th century, critics have reevaluated it, looking for feminist and Freudian themes in her poems. She was a lively child, with passionate emotions, but grew more guarded and somewhat repressed. She had a breakdown in 1845, and some writers have believed that it might have been triggered by family problems- some have even theorised about a possible incestuous advance from her father. Other biographers have noted that by giving her a “health problem”,  she was now excused from having to work outside the home.
However she did in later life have several health issues that were clearly of physical origin and not the vague "illness and delicacy" that afflicted some Victorian women.  She had Graves Disease, suffered from lung weakness  that was feared to be TB, and in the end died of cancer.

 It is clear that she suffered from a strong sense of sinfulness. Her depression and ill health meant she had a narrow life. Her faith was important to her, but all the same, she felt a conflict between the restrictions of a generally conservative religious belief, the “propriety” expected of a middle class young lady, with her own artistic ambitions and desire for success in her work and her taking pride in her poetry. These problems of her over scrupulous nature and her inner conflicts shows in a novella called “Maude” which she wrote at the age of 20 but which was not published till after her death.

Rough Music my story on Amazon

Rough Music is “band” story set in the US, in the late 1970s. It’s about a country rock band and its 2 lead singers and how they cope with life on the road. It’s not a conventional love story, but more about marriage, life in the music world and life in the later 1970’s. YOu can find it on Amazon.... http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rough-Music-Nadine-Sutton-ebook/dp/B01AEQS0G0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1452977780&sr=8-1&keywords=nadine+sutton

More on Arthur

I hope to write some more blogs about 20th and other Arthurian novels in the near future. I have read many, some good, others not so good. One of the developments in the 20th and 21st century is the feminist Arthurian novel which concentrates on Guenevere or the women in the stories. One of the first of these is Marion Zimmer Bradley’s “Mists of Avalon” which covers the women in the legends and is in my opinion a bit inclined to skew the story. It favours paganism over Christianity, and makes claims that paganism gave women more freedom than Christianity did. Another very good trilogy is Persia Woolley’s one on Guenevere which depicts her as a Princess from the North, who is intelligent, and an active partner in ruling the Kingdom with Arthur. Sharan Newman another American writer also has a Guinevere trilogy, which has more fantasy elements. more will follow

Gillian Bradshaw's Arthurian Trilogy

Gillian Bradshaw was born in America in 1956 and is well known for her historical and historical fantasy novels. She spent some time in Chile, then studied at the University of Michigan.  After that, she did a further degree at Cambridge where she met her husband.  She settled in England and wrote her first novels, the Arthurian Trilogy know as “Down the Long Wind”. (She later turned to Classical Greece and Rome, and wrote another novel (Island of Ghosts) about Britain, during the Roman Empire.) But her first works are among my favourite Arthurian tales. Her novels have fantasy elements, involving Morgawse, Arthur’s half-sister, and Gwalchmai, her son, but it is mostly set in a realistic Dark Ages Britain, with Arthur portrayed as a warrior who has been “raised to the Purple” and taken the title of Emperor of Britain, and tried to Unite the warring British small kingdoms against the Saxons.
 Arthur is not a king but a “bastard reared at a monastery”, the son of Uther, the former king. He is married to Gwynhwyfar, the daughter of a Romanized nobleman. Medraut in this novel as in much of the legend is the son of Morgawse by her half-brother, whom she seduced because she wanted to destroy his kingship. In this trilogy, Gwynhwyfar’s affair is with Bedwyr, since Lancelot was not an original character in the legends... So some authors have chosen to use Bedwyr as “Arthur’s friend with who becomes his wife’s lover”. Bradshaw gives a picture of Dark Ages Britain, and sticks closely to the lines the traditional Arthurian story, with Medraut fomenting trouble in Camlann, setting the warriors at odds and revealing Bedwyr’s affair, so that he splits the kingdom. While Arthur is abroad he seizes power, and then fights his father, but both men are killed during the Battle of Camlann. Gwynhwyfar becomes a nun…and later an abbess of a convent in Northern Britain....

Arthurian stories

Arthur is a very popular mythological figure in the “Matter of Britain”, the legends which tell of the origins of Britain as a nation. However there is no historical evidence that he existed. The legends became very popular with the publication of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s’ “History of the Kings of Britain”.   This was published in the 12th Century, around 1138. We don’t know how much of the “facts” in this work are from Geoffrey’s imagination, or from earlier sources.
 Arthur is depicted as a King who fought the Saxons and then established an empire over Britain, Ireland, Gaul and other countries. Other characters who appear in Geoffrey’s version are Arthur’s wife Guenevere, his wizard Merlin and his father Uther Pendragon. He was associated with Cornwall, being conceived at Tintagel. Chretien de Troyes added Lancelot to the story, there was a French cycle of stories which covered the adventures of Arthur’s knights and Guinevere’s love affair with Lancelot. In earlier texts, poems and “histories”, Arthur was not always depicted as a King, but as a warrior. He is referred to as Dux Bellorum, (Leader of Battles), which has led some writers to speculate that there was a historical figure called Arthur, but that he was not a King. He might have been a soldier who fought the Saxons, or other British kings, and might have been raised to the rank of Emperor, by his soldiers and accepted as such, as long as he defended the country…

 In the 15th Century, Thomas Malory wrote a version of the story, combining all the legends, in “Morte D’Arthur”, which has fixed the story for many generations. It as an immensely popular work, depicting the characters as 15th century knights rather than the Dark Ages warriors they might have been. Castles, beautiful ladies being rescued etc.….are part of his version of the story, but they are of course historically inaccurate. Over time, the “Arthur story” became less popular and by the more "rational" 18th century, there were few works on him.
 But in the 19th century, with the revival of interest in medieval history and culture, there was a resurgence of “Arthurian interest”. Tennyson’s cycle of poems revitalized the story, though it’s been said that he depicted the king as a 19th Century gentleman. Tennyson re tells the Lancelot story, of Guinevere’s falling in love with her husband’s Knight, and having an affair with him, which led to the breakup of the Kingdom. There were other 19th century writers, such as William Morris, who wrote Arthurian poems, and the Pre Raphaelites drew on the legends for many of their paintings. However in the 20th Century, the legends have become even more popular and there are literally hundreds of new works about Arthur, some of them “fantasy” novels which emphasize the supernatural aspects of the story. Many others are “historical” ones, which attempt to give a realistic picture of medieval life, with Arthur as a Roman or Romano- British warrior…. More to follow!

Charles II

Charles II is probably best known for his bawdy and “sexed up” court. He was a complex man, who had had a very difficult childhood, and in many ways he was attractively “unroyal” in his manner. But he had a darker side. He was determined to rule as a King, although he knew that he could not be the absolute monarch his father had tried to be. But he was a much more skillful politician than his father or brother and managed to rule without Parliament, but without alienating the political classes as they had done. However he could only do that with French aid. But on the lighter side of his character, he liked women and one of his great pleasures was being with his mistresses. They were often witty and charming social creatures as well as bedmates. His Queen wasn’t smart or light hearted enough to take part in the court’s amusements of witty talk and debauchery, but Charles – even though she had no children – never parted with her. I’ve posted on 2 of Charles’ well known mistresses on this blog Barbara Palmer, Duchess of Cleveland, and Nelly Gwynne. I hope to do some more posts on other royal favorites. His mistresses included the French Louise De Keroualle, Lucy Walter, the mother of his son, James Monmouth, Moll Davies, Hortense, Duchess of Mazarin, and Catherine Pegge and Lady Shannon. His brother, James II, although he was a devout almost fanatical Roman Catholic, had numerous mistresses, but Charles joked that his ladies were so plain that he felt sure they had been allocated to James by his confessor, as a penance.