Norman Mailer at the bar; cursing, drinking too much scotch & getting the cold shoulder when he tries to pick up Ivy Compton Burnett while Len Deighton looks on.

New on the blog today, I've written about THE SUNDIAL by Shirley Jackson. Shades of Barbara Comyns & Ivy Compton-Burnett in this irresistible blend of Gothic horror, suspenseful ambiguity & barbed humour in the dying days of an era. I loved it! #BookSky 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/04/26/t...

Finishing off the #1961Club with a novel by Ivy Compton-Burnett: www.stuckinabook.com/the-mighty-a...

Yes, he is good. He is so good one wonders why he isn't better. [Ivy on Anthony Trollope, BOTD in 1815.]

ICB is really worth a read. An acquired taste but the greatest of black comedies if you get on her wavelength. A bit like Jeeves and Wooster written by Kafka. Manservant and Maidservant is a good place to start.

I love this in Ivy Compton-Burnett's MANSERVANT AND MAIDSERVANT. The 'HMM' at the bottom is the printer's way of identifying that this is gathering H of M[anservant] and M[aidservant] (pages earlier on are labelled e.g. GMM and FMM), but it looks like a sardonic commentary on the action.

“It is not as plain as you all think,” said Lavinia. “Why, have you personal knowledge or experience?” said Ninian. “You should not ask dreadful questions,” said Hugo. “You deserve to have a dreadful answer.”

It's Ivy Compton-Burnett o'clock in my #1961Club journey, and I'm not sure I've enjoyed any of her novels more than THE MIGHTY AND THEIR FALL! #BookSky

Remembering Edith Wharton's hilarious story of traveling in France with James and his stopping the car to ask a local French farmer directions, in late Jamesian style, while the farmer looked on, baffled.

Every time anyone says 'show not tell!' they should be force-fed late-period Henry James.

"I get a kick out of Ivy Compton-Burnett"

Exciting news: my poetry chapbook Thorns: A Book of Poems will drop on May 1 on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, featuring exclusive cover art by surreal artist Welderwings! Sign up for my email newsletter (link below) for further updates and sneak previews! 🥀✨

There was never a truer word spoken.

I'll be here on 18 April at eleven. Come if you can! www.messrsbookshop.com

Of course Henry James had talent, but he makes one work too hard for such a small result. [On Henry James, BOTD in 1843.]

“Real achievement would be independent of reward,” said Ninian. “The reward would be in itself.” “I knew there was some drawback,” said Hugo. “Fancy having to provide the reward as well as earn it!”

“It is said that effort is its own reward,” said Lavinia. “Perhaps that is why it often has no other.”

A curious talent. One has to respect him. But how one would like to give him a kick. [On Henry James, BOTD in 1843.]

“Pride should go before a fall,” said Hugo. “But it does not seem to.”

INTERNATIONAL WOMAN

“Are we talking of actual evil?” said Ninian, as if he had not heard. “Or of natural effort for our own welfare?” “Oh, that is almost too evil to speak about,” said Hugo. “Some subjects should be forbidden.”

“Well, are we to talk about ourselves and each other? Is that a better or safer thing? People might take the chance to speak the truth.” “Only terrible people. But of course that is nearly everyone.”

[The sketchbook of a Victorian girl, Emily M. Madden, featuring the adventures of her cat, Mouton.] wellcomecollection.org/works/rzwecsjy

"In a sense he will not die.” “In a poor sense,” said Teresa, “as he will not be alive.”

started my first ivy compton-burnett novel

“And you are afraid of nothing,” said her son. “I don’t feel I am going to meet my Maker. And if I were, I should not fear him. He has not earned the feeling. I almost think he ought to fear me.” “I think he must,” murmured Hugo.

“You allow the children to believe, Grandma,” said Lavinia. “They need to accept an All-seeing Eye. Or rather we need them to. No ordinary eye could embrace their purposes. We may as well depute what we can.” “Even to an imaginary overseer,” said Ninian.

I would rather be alive then dead. When I die, people will say it is the best thing for me. It is because they know it is the worst. They want to avoid the feeling of pity. As though they were the people most concerned!

And I don’t believe in a future life, or want to. I should not like any form of it I know. I don’t want to be a spirit or to return to the earth as someone else. I could never like anyone else enough for that.

One day, quite suddenly, when you're not expecting it, I'll take a hammer from the folds of my dark cloak and crack your little skull.

“Were you proud of Grandma?” said Hengist. “We were better than she was. And we oughtn’t to be better than an old person.” “It is not for you to criticise your elders.” “We have to criticise Grandma,” said Leah. “You would yourself, if you were not in her power.”

“I will go in my own time,” said Selina. “You cannot dismiss your mother. And my presence makes no difference. I am on no one’s side. I see with the eyes of all of you. It is as if no one was here.”

“So Father is to marry a wife,” said Egbert. “It is very masculine of him. I have always appreciated his feminine streak. And now I am afraid it is not there.” “People ought not to marry openly,” said Hugo. “It is one of those things that should be recognised but veiled.”

“I have no thought over from myself. Does she know about me?” “Know that you exist?” “Yes, there is nothing else to be known.”

“Well, God sees everything. And so in a way he can’t see anything. He must pass it over.” “Leah and Hengist, He passes over nothing. What is there in your minds and lives that He does not know?” “There isn’t much in our lives. Even Miss Starkie can’t say there is.”

“Children do not think about such things.” “They think about everything.” “Well, they never talk about them.” "You know they do,” said Leah. “You hear them.”

With his exuberant working-class bonhomie, rumbustious American manners, & fondness for chewing the fat with the common man on the street, Studs Terkel seems the most improbable interviewer imaginable for Ivy Compton Burnett--but somehow this conversation works? studsterkel.wfmt.com/programs/ivy...

“I don’t like this room as well as the schoolroom,” said Leah, looking round. “Does it matter to anyone what you like?” “No, but I can tell them, if I want to.” “It matters to her,” said Hengist. “Nothing matters to other people, that is not to do with themselves.”

“Letty, your habit of talking as one possessed by an imbecile spirit, has been wearying to me from your cradle,” said Elsa. “I am sorry to see it growing upon you.”

“It is such a quaint argument--that women must not do a thing, because they have not done it before,” said Miss Dorrington, who had yet to take of a subject an other than genial view.

Soon does one learn the bitter lesson that humanity is never content just to differ from you and let it go at that. Never.

“I don’t dare to know,” said Joanna. “I shut my eyes to the truth. It does seem that we are eating our cake and having it. And I should have thought we were, if it was not known to be impossible.” “It is, unless someone supplies another cake.”

[SOME ANAGRAMS OF IVY COMPTON-BURNETT Contrive Numb-Potty Province Nutty-Tomb Boycott Vermin-Punt Non-Cop Brevity-Mutt Connive by Trump-Tot Purity Tomb-Convent Mr. Bouncy Tinpot-Vet Bovine Mutton-Crypt]

Were the tombs so many in the churchyard when last you saw it?--were the familiar ones so grey and lichen-grown? Was the moss so close on the wall which marks its bound? Was the creeper on the porch of the parsonage framing its windows with many-tinted falls?

[Mildred Bailey, When That Man is Dead and Gone] archive.org/details/JV-1...

“You don’t feel that marriage would mean a fuller life?” “I don’t want the things it would be full of."

“Why is it cowardly to hit a person when he is down, or to strike a woman? Unkind and violent and quite inexcusable, but why cowardly? And why are bullies always cowards?" “They cannot be. Bullying is very brave. That is why they bully people weaker than themselves. They know how brave it is.”

I shall soon have to weed my book. Books are very like plants. They are better, the more they are weeded, and they come up out of each other and are all the same.

"Great novelists like Dickens, Wharton, and Woolf." BUT NOT THEM. NOVELISTS *LIKE* THEM.

So. 'Great novelists like Dickens, Wharton and Woolf, such as Trollope, Compton-Burnett and Joyce' is acceptable? Seems odd to express it thus!