Isabel Colegate (1931–2023)
Auteur van Het jachtgezelschap
Over de Auteur
Isabel Colegate is the author of thirteen previous books, including the novels The Shooting Party, The Summer of the Royal Visit and, most recently, Winter Journey. She is married with three children and lives near Bath
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Werken van Isabel Colegate
The Great Occasion 1 exemplaar
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Algemene kennis
- Officiële naam
- Colegate, Isabel Diane (born)
Briggs, Isabel Diane (married) - Geboortedatum
- 1931-09-10
- Overlijdensdatum
- 2023-03-12
- Geslacht
- female
- Nationaliteit
- UK
- Geboorteplaats
- Lincolnshire, England, UK
- Woonplaatsen
- Lincolnshire, England, UK (birth)
Norfolk, England, UK - Opleiding
- Runton Hill School
- Beroepen
- novelist
secretary
literary critic - Prijzen en onderscheidingen
- Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (1981)
- Korte biografie
- Isabel Colegate left school at the age of 16. She went to work as a secretary in the small literary agency of flamboyant publisher Anthony Blond; he later published her books and helped in her successful writing career. Her novels often deal with the decline of the English aristocracy, the disintegration of class structures, and social change in the years immediately before and after World War I.
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Besprekingen
Lijsten
Spirit of Place (1)
Prijzen
Misschien vindt je deze ook leuk
Gerelateerde auteurs
Statistieken
- Werken
- 16
- Ook door
- 2
- Leden
- 1,167
- Populariteit
- #22,034
- Waardering
- 3.9
- Besprekingen
- 16
- ISBNs
- 68
- Talen
- 4
- Favoriet
- 1
What you will find is a kind of Eurocentric (including USA), certainly British roundup of people who have been notable recluses; often unkempt or characterised by religious zeal, filth, suffering, and/or madness. There are certainly some interesting characters. Who would not be intrigued by Isabelle Eberhardt? or indeed, the wealthy William Beckford whose manifold talents (marred by sexual indiscretion) included tower building. I wondered if the privileges of the mid-18th century British upper classes who had the means to realise their eccentric imaginings was worth the darker colonial exploitations and slavery that financed them.
Although I found many passages of interest, this is a poorly designed book. Not that the binding has failed (there are a few typos indicative of a lack of care) but it's annoying to have the chapter headings omitted from the contents page, the illustrations have no captions and the alternating use of unattributed line drawings of trees and what may be a hermitage in the author’s garden (charming as they are) serves no function other than to confuse the reader.
By the end, I felt as if the author was on a kind of quest (pilgrimage) to uncover her inner solitary. She certainly travelled and read widely but without a central thesis the book tends to feel scattered and unstructured. She writes unevenly but clearly loves words, and often sent me to my dictionary for the unfamiliar: coenobitic, yashmack, eremitic, syneisaktism, apophatic, dilatory, catamite, accidie.… (meer)