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Bezig met laden... William - an Englishman (origineel 1919; editie 1999)door Cicely Hamilton (Auteur)
Informatie over het werkWilliam: An Englishman door Cicely Hamilton (1919) Bezig met laden...
Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. Persephone book #1. Another excellent book from Persephone that I would never have found otherwise. One thing I love about the Persephone publications is that they don't really do a book summary on the book jacket, so unless you dig a little, as a reader you really don't know what you're getting into. That worked really well for this novel. In [William - An Englishman], William is sort of floundering as an adult. His domineering mother has died and left him enough money to live on. He falls into a political group dedicated to pacifism and women's suffrage. There he meets Griselda and the two fall in love. For their honeymoon they travel to Belgium. Before they leave they hear that "some Archduke" has been assassinated, but it feels remote and they continue their honeymoon travels. While there, on a secluded farm in the countryside, they start to hear distant "thunder" and the family hosting them disappears. It becomes violently clear that they are trapped in the middle of a world war. The rest of the book details their war experience, and I won't give away any additional plot. I really liked this. The plot was exciting and the character development and insights into WWI were well-written. "What he termed public life-a ferment of protestation and grievance...with all the extremist's contempt for those who balance" By sally tarbox on 23 March 2018 Format: Paperback William Tully is a quiet little clerk in pre-WW1 London, described as 'painstaking and obedient...unobtrusive and diffident. To his colleagues, he is 'a negligible quantity. He was not unpopular- it was merely that he did not matter.' Cowed by his redoubtable mother, William finds himself - following her unexpected death- a free agent, possessed of a small income. But what to do now? "His life had been so ordered, so bound down and directed by others, that even his desires were tamed to the wishes of others and left to himself he could not tell what he desired." By chance, he latches on to colleague Faraday, whose private life is entirely dedicated to social activism; under his tutelage, William becomes a regular at meetings promoting women's suffrage, pacifism and other causes. And here he meets his future wife Griselda; their shallow, ignorant outlook focussing on protests and struggles. "They believed (quite rightly) in the purity of their own intentions; and concluded (quite wrongly) that the intentions of all persons who did not agree with them must therefore be evil and impure...They read newspapers written by persons who wholly agreed with their views...From these they quoted, in public and imposingly, with absolute faith in their statements." Paying no heed to the greater world affairs of 1914, they spend their honeymoon in the Belgian Ardennes...and find themselves in the middle of hideous war. Slowly, as he witnesses the atrocities, William's mindset changes; a realisation that the trivial complaints they made about British society were as nothing compared with this: "He remembered -quite plainly, he remembered - a letter writte to the daily Press to point out with indignation that one of the Leaders of the Movement had been hurt in the ankle in the course of the Great Civil War." With experience, William renounces pacifism for militarism, but even here he is doomed to disappointment... A very well-written novel; the author herself was both a suffragette and a nurse in WW1 France. Comic at times, as we follow the committed but narrow-minded young couple in their efforts to redeem society, the descriptions of the war are vivid and shocking. I'm not sure we really get to know William; written in the 3rd person, he is brought to us through Hamilton's eyes, and perhaps it loses a little immediacy through that. But an unusual and interesting work. This Peresphone classic tells the story of William Tully, a very mild-mannered, somewhat weakling of a man. Once his mother dies and he comes into a comfortable fortune he decides to give up work and go into politics. As an activist he meets the lovely Griselda who is supporting the cause of suffragettes. Convinced he's met his match they marry and plan their idealistic life together. While William and Griselda are on honeymoon in rural Belgium they literally walk right into World War I. To say this was a rude-awakening for them is an understatement. The brutality of war is vividly eye opening for this extremely naïve couple and brings question to everything they once believed. This book starts off light and airy and then leads you down a gritty path of reality. Beautifully written yet equally heartbreaking. How I acquired this book: First book Peresphone "Book-a-month" subscription, birthday gift from my husband. Shelf life: One month geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
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Excerpt from William: An Englishman The next day increased the sense of his new-found importance; his mother had died rich, as he and she understood riches. She had trusted her son in nothing, not even with the knowledge of her income. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)823.912Literature English English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1901-1945LC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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I found this short book to be a bit heavy-handed, but extremely interesting, and would recommend it. ( )