Wow, thank you! I have enough here to keep me busy for a month!
I’ve already read most of Jane Austen’s catalogue (Persuasion is my favorite, followed by Mansfield Park, as if you couldn’t figure that out), and I’ve read The Girl with the Pearl Earring (loved it) and Bleak House (was crushed when Esther turned down Mr. Jarndyce, whom I adored). I started Gaudy Night once, but put it down for reasons I cannot recall.
I feel I have to defend myself – I do have broader tastes than I’m representing here, but this really is a favorite theme of mine. I will truly check out each and every recommendation you all have posted.
I just checked out from the library Villette and two du Mauriers (The King’s General and Jamaica Inn were out, so I got The House on the Strand and The Breaking Point…which may not fit my bill, but I love her writing style, so I’m sure I won’t be disappointed). I suspect I will end up reading du Maurier’s entire catalogue (I loved Rebecca that much).
Oh, and I also discovered that Jonatha Ceely has published a sequel to Mina, called Bread and Dreams – I’m actually taking a break from it to post here. These are good stories – they’re about a young Irish girl who escapes the Irish Famine (and a terrible shipwreck, and some people who want to buy her freedom) and disguises herself as a boy and works in the kitchen of a great house in England. There she meets a Jewish Italian cook, who is a sad and gentle and lovely man (I have a literary crush on him), and they form a lovely friendship. In the sequel, they’ve travelled together to America (she disguised as his nephew), and they’ve just parted ways…though, I hope, not for long.
I happen to have just re-watched the Poldark TV series and am now re-reading the novels (I’m up to the third one). FYI, there are a number of departures between the novels and the series, though they are both very worthwhile. Unfortunately, the TV series is no longer available new in the US. (I got the VHS tapes a few years ago.)
gallows fodder, I’m right with you on the themes you enjoy (and I’ll cast another vote for The Girl with the Pearl Earring.)
Some more recs:
Through a Glass Darkly by Karleen Koen. I read it ages ago, but it’s one of those those books that I remember getting to the end of and thinking, “No-o-o-o-o-o-o-o!”
The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All by Allen Gurganus. I really did not like this book the first time I read it, but then I realized how haunted I was by certain images and phrases and plot points. I have not seen the TV adaptation, but I can’t imagine that it came close to doing justice to this book.
Ah, I was going to suggest Persuasion, but I see you have already read it. I was going to suggest Villette as well, but a couple somebodies beat me to it. It really is wonderful, and I like it much more than Jane Eyre.
You might want to try Howard’s End by EM Forster. It’s about the struggle between classes in society and offers several love stories, of varying “successfulness.” A much different take on intermarriage between different classes than the other books mentioned.
I’m going to add another novel to this list: Moonraker’s Bride by Madeleine Brent, whom Jess mentioned above. I first read this book when I was 10 – gosh, it may have been the book that started the obsession!
It’s about an orphaned English girl raised in China at the turn of the century who marries a mysterious stranger while he’s in prison (can’t remember exactly why right now), and then he is apparently executed. She is taken to England and lives with a snotty family, who barely tolerate her and her gauche ways. Then her husband shows up alive and takes her home with him, only to ignore her except for rare occasions when they go out to the theatre, and she can’t figure out what his damage is. There’s a quest for a hidden treasure and the Boxer Rebellion all mixed into the plot, too. It ends wonderfully, and it’s full of great historical detail.
Well, if after reading all the books that others here are suggesting, you’d like a slight variation on this theme, I highly reccommend Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. Let’s consider Becky Sharp, perhaps fiction’s first female antihero (the book’s subtitle is “A Novel Without a Hero”):
Girl: yes
Low social standing: check.
Relationship with older, socially superior man: And how. Plenty of them.
Shy, modest, sympathetic. Well, not so much. (But she can do a very good impression of those qualities.)
Likeable: Many would say no, but she’s so ambitious, determined, and resilient, that it’s hard not to have a certain grudging admiration for someone who so clearly knows who she is and what she wants.
Also, the narrator’s witty and satirical observations about the characters and society at large make Vanity Fair a very enjoyable read, if not precisely what you were asking for.
I don’t know if it would be to your taste, but Jenna Starborn is a science fiction re-telling of Jane Eyre by Sharon Shinn. It’s an interesting spin on the story and Shinn does a decent job of staying true to the general themes and feel of the original.
I’m not a huge SF/fantasy fan but the offbeat premise of this one caught my interest. It’s worth a read.
Although the classic Forever Amber breaks some of your rules, it is a smashingly good read. Let’s put it this way. I took it with me on my honeymoon and I couldn’t put it down. The main character is not such a sweet girl, but the story is fascinating! I think the author was Windsor, but I’m not sure. It should be very easy to find. (Don’t waste your time on the movie. Ugh!)
A gothic novel that does stand out in my mind as particularly good was one called Claire. I kept it until it disintegrated.
Have you read Wuthering Heights? It was also written by one of the Bronte sisters. Again, it breaks your rules, but oh, what a love story!
I’m glad you started this thread. I will have to keep a list myself.
Oh, you’ve read one of Brent’s! If you haven’t read the rest of them, you really ought to. I just wish he’d written more of them – they are really among my favorite books of all time. He had a real hand for strong & competent women (as I said before, he was the creator of Modesty Blaise). Some of the worst of the gothic romances had really weak, victim-ish heroines – it was a flaw in the genre, frankly, probably stemming from a misunderstanding of Jane Eyre’s character. I have heard people claim (most of whom could not have read the book) that Jane was a wimp!
Anyway, given this new information (that your gothic affection may have started with Moonraker’s Bride, you definately need to take my list above to the library with you. My affection for the genre also started with Brent (whom I also started reading at around age 10) and all of the books I suggested were favorites because their heroines reminded me, in some way, of Madeline Brent’s heroines.
**A ** lover, one, prior to Lord Peter; and if he didn’t mind, why should we? However she does lose out on the “shy, modest” categories called for in the OP.
If you find the Vane likable, she first appears in Strong Poison, though she doesn’t actually do much, being in jail at the time. Have His Carcase (that isn’t a typo) might be more fun for romantics than Gaudy Night because Harriet and Peter spend more of it actually together, alternately sparring, flirting, and solving a murder.
I will truly check out each and every recommendation you all have posted.