BleakChesneyWold

                                            Review of new book by Paul Williams  On the night of 24th November 1898, a prisoner by the name of William John Onion, decided to turn his life around. Onion was seriously ill in his cell, and prayed, offering to give up intoxicating alcohol and make amends for his shocking life. He had a little over 500 hundred convictions, largely related to getting drunk, then turning offensive and often violent. Police officers, Workhouse staff, his first wife, were amongst those Onion had assaulted.  Onion had tried to change his life before. This time he succeeded, becoming teatotal, and pursued his skill as a verse writer which he had been developing throughout the 1890's.  Born near Whitechapel Road, his father died when he was an infant, his mother was severely ill in hospital. Onion and a younger sister spent some time in Selby...

                            1860's Best Seller -'Fear Among the Teacups'  East Lynne, the second novel by Ellen Wood, ( Price), who was usually known as Mrs Henry Wood, was first serialised by Colburn's New Monthly Magazine in 1860. Then published in book form in 1861, going on to sell two and a half million copies, and translated into many languages. Also to become the best selling novel of the 1860's. Quite an achievement for a woman who was writing to earn money after husband went bankrupt. JAMES There were popular stage versions, five films, and a television series of the book in 1982. There was even a comedy - East Lynne on the Western Front (1931), set in 1915, in which soldiers decide to stage their own version.  East Lynne (1861) is regarded an exquisite mid-Victorian sensation novel. Instead of one country pile, there is both East Lynne and West Lynne, each with their own aristocratic family at the...

                                              The Curse of the Other World                                                Born in London in  1831,Amelia B (Blandford) Edwards was a novelist, musician,journalist,poet, travel writer and a leading Egyptologist.  Her first novel was My Brother's Wife A Life -History (1855) though Barbara's History (1864) is probably better known, dealing with the Victorian interest in bigamy. Miss Edwards wrote some quite striking ghost stories, many published in such magazines as Household Words and All The Year Round . Now with the rise of ghost and horror tales narrated on podcasts and Youtube, Amelia B Edwards's short stories are gaining a new audience. The Phantom Coach (1864) and the railway haunting classi...

                                             If the Devil Learnt to Play Violin  J.Meade Falkner is probably best known for the novel  Moonfleet (1898), set a century or so before, amongst the smugglers of the Dorset coast.  Moonfleet  was  filmed in 1955 and has since been regularly televised. His occult novel The Lost Stradivarius (1895) has now been republished as part of 'British Library Tales of the Weird' , edited with an introduction by Mike Ashley (2025). J.Meade Falkner wrote some five novels and two books of poems. Also a travellers guide to Oxfordshire, and local histories of Oxford and Berkshire. SOCIETY WEBSITE  Mr Ashley also includes the fact that J.Meade Falkner became a private tutor to the son of Sir Andrew Noble. Towards the end of the 19th century J.Meade Falkner became a secretary of the armaments company Armstrong Whitwo...

                Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) Makes a Stand   This is a follow up to the previous  Battle of Solferino 1859  post from this blog.  Series 2 of the Netflix series  The Empress,  based upon the life of Empress Elizabeth of Austria ( better known as 'Sisi') ended with the start of the Second Italian War of Independence in 1859. Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria, has to fight off the French under Napoleon III and their Italian allies led by Victor Emanuel II of Piedmont from taking the provinces of Lombardy and Venetia, part of the Austrian Empire. Series 3  of The Empress  will presumably open with the Battle of Solferino in Lombardy. Technically a French and Piedmontese victory. Yet the horror of the battlefield was one of the factors that led to Napoleon III agreeing a peace treaty with Franz Joseph at Villa Franca, and leaving the campaign. A Swiss observer to the carnage at the...

                               " What a terrible thing War is "  (attributed to) Napoleon III                                    The village of Solferino, is located in the province of Mantua, Lombardy, in the north of Italy, and lies some 10 km south of Lake Garda. Also the site of a battle that took place on 24th June 1859, the highlight of the Second Italian War of independence, and a key date for  the overall Italian Unification process. The armies of the Austrian Empire were defeated by the French along with their allies, the Kingdom of Piedmont and Sardinia. Solferino was the largest European battle since the Battle of the Nations at Leipzig in 1814. Two emperors, Napoleon III and Franz Joseph, were with their forces at Solferino,as was King Victor Emmanuel II. Certainly from the French side, the railwa...