The latest in our reading journeys from the Sheffield Hallam University students taking part in the Ideas into Action initiative.
As a child, I was surrounded by reading in school and out of school. Of course I went through the standard practice of learning how to read when I started primary school like most other children in this country. I was also familiarised with reading at home, as my parents used to read to me before I went to sleep, some of the books including The Little Princess series, those being some of the key books I remember from that long ago.
As I grew older, particularly when I was about 11 or 12, when I started year 7, me and my group of friends all took an interest to reading young adult books and tended to share our thoughts on them. One particular key series that sparked my love of reading was The Hunger Games trilogy, which me and my friends read and then we would anticipate the release of the films and go and see them together multiple times. It seems like in 2012, young adult reading really took off, and I was a huge fan of all the dystopian novels released and publicised around that time. An author that remains strong in my memory of that time was John Green, the book that left the biggest mark on me of his was the teen romance of The Fault in Our Stars. Until I read that, I had never thought a book would inflict so much emotion and make me cry! It is also a nostalgic experience for me, when these authors bring out books now, as I love to read them and it really takes me back to my early teens. In comparing myself with Elsie Brownlee’s reading journey, it is easy to see that our generational differences create very different reading journeys. In comparison to Elsie who grew up in the early 1930s, it is clear that I had more freedom when it came to reading books and so did my friends. Elsie’s journey focuses around the library setting and her love of books that stemmed from there, ‘At about the age of eleven, Elsie became a fervent library user.’ Me and my friends all purchased our books with pocket money, showing that we had a bit of power in buying exactly what we wanted to read.
As I got older and entered High School, I constantly had a book on the go, and I really think my love of reading began to grow even more. When I was 16, I read the Harry Potter books for the first time, which was strange considering that the franchise had been around for so long! I had never read them because I thought they were a bit childish and overhyped but I was completely wrong. Even now, I still find comfort in reading them as they are a great escape from the world around us, especially in times like these. Another popular book series that I deemed as overhyped was the Twilight series, but I read all of these around about when I was 17 and I completely fell in love and they are still some of my favourite books I’ve ever read!
When I was at the point of deciding what I wanted to study at university, I was in no doubt that English Literature would be the one for me and I have never regretted this decision as it has opened so many genres and books to me that I never would have picked up. Some including classics such as Wuthering Heights and gothic novels which I had never even heard of such as The Castle of Otranto and Beloved. I believe that this degree has opened my mind to authors and contexts that I was ignorant of before. It is also so lovely that I can talk to like-minded people about reading and books that I couldn’t do before.
Currently my reading interest is horror novels, particularly by Stephen King. So far I have read Carrie and The Shining, and I am now reading Pet Sematary. I feel like being in lockdown has really re-sparked my love of reading as it is a great escape for me.
When I leave Sheffield Hallam University, I am going to do a masters in Global Media and Culture, as I would love to become a writer for a social media company. Elsie, who I mentioned earlier, had a dream to work in a library. Elsie: ‘I thought, “I’d love to work in a place like this. I’d LOVE to work in a place like this.”’ (2015). Even though libraries are still working today, it is much more accessible to buy books from online, physical copies and e-books alike. As we are both women, it is interesting to see how her father practically chose her job for her, yet I have the choice to do whatever I would like to in the future, ‘Elsie’s father thought further education for girls a waste of time as they were bound to get married’ (2015). I feel lucky to have a different approach on the life I want to live.
Here is another blog post by Natalie Haigh from Sheffield Hallam University through their Ideas into Actionproject.
Anne of Green Gables, written by Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery and published in 1908, is a wonderful and heartwarming novel that is full of adventure and beautiful landscapes. Moreover, it is a novel that has firmly secured a place in the hearts of millions of readers around the world. The novel’s popularity speaks for itself. Anne of Green Gables has been translated into 36 different languages and has sold over 50 million copies worldwide, making it an undisputed best seller and piece of popular fiction. Although the novel was originally written for readers of all ages, it proved to be exceptionally popular with younger audiences. Subsequently, the novel was established as a children’s classic in the world of literature. The novel follows the story of Anne Shirley, a 12 year old red-haired orphan girl who is adopted by Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert. Matthew and Marilla are siblings who live on a farm called Green Gables in Prince Edward Island, Canada. Anne is sent to the two siblings accidentally as they originally requested a boy. Despite the mix-up, Anne is an extremely curious, high-spirited and imaginative child who brings unexpected adventure into Matthew and Marilla’s lives. With that, Matthew and Marilla decide to keep her.
Lucy Maud Montgomery, author of Anne Of Green Gables (Credit: Library and Archives Canada / C-011299)
Upon reflection, one of the reasons why I personally enjoyed the novel so much is because of the many beautiful and inspiring themes within it. From hope and perseverance, to forgiveness, hard work and true happiness, the novel sheds light on how making mistakes and learning from them is what allows Anne to develop and blossom into a better person. Therefore, I could not help but feel touched and inspired by Anne’s fictional character and her remarkable outlook on life at such a young age.
Anne of Green Gables is the first novel in an anthology series. Due to the immense popularity of her first novel, Montgomery went on to write a series of sequels to continue the story of Anne Shirley. She wrote five more novels, in which Anne grows older in each. The overriding response to the novel is that it is a beautiful and heartwarming story. It is the character of Anne and her ability to remain in high spirits, regardless of what life throws at her, along with the beautiful themes in this novel that make it such a popular piece of fiction. And one that holds a special place in the hearts of millions of readers all over the world.
Although the novel was very popular all over the world, it was extremely well received in Japan where it is known as Red-haired Anne. According to journalist Levinson-King, one of the main reasons for the novel’s appeal and popularity in Japan is ‘because the world of Green Gables is filled with kawaii, which means the quality of being cute, romantic and beautiful in Japanese.’ He goes on to write that the Japanese ‘love the story because it is full of beautiful scenery and puff sleeves and cute things, like tea parties’ (Levinson-King, 2017, BBC News Article). Therefore, the immense popularity of the novel in Japan can be attributed to the beautiful imagery it includes which aligns with Japanese interests and beliefs. As a result of the novel’s popularity,
Japan has developed the commercialisation and commodification of Anne as a popular cultural and media image, so that an “Anne industry” has developed (Ochi, 2006, p. 361).
The ‘Anne empire’ that has emerged off the back of Montgomery’s heroine protagonist spans merchandise, books, plays, television series, museums and musicals to name a few.
Why has this commercialisation occurred in both Japan and Canada, particularly in the leisure and tourism industry?
The real Green Gables (copyright Pam Gibson)
One extremely significant and profitable part of the commercialisation of the novel, is the tourist attractions that have been created in Prince Edward Island, Canada. The Green Gables Farmhouse where the novel is set is situated in Cavendish in Prince Edward Island, and is an extremely popular tourist attraction, particularly with Japanese tourists. Scholar Baldwin interestingly writes:
Perhaps the most surprising indication of the continued popularity of Anne is the growing number of Japanese who flock to Cavendish, Prince Edward Island, to visit the recreated home of a Canadian girl who never existed, and to examine objects she might have used had she been a real girl’ (Baldwin, 1993, p. 2).
Baldwin acknowledges how astonishing and bizarre, yet how remarkable it is that thousands of people are so invested in Anne’s fictional character, that they are prepared to fly across the world to Canada to see the recreated home that Anne’s fictional character grew up in, and pay a lot of money to do so. Baldwin goes on to shed light on an interesting question:
Why do so many Japanese people, especially young women, worship Anne Shirley, a red-haired wisp who comes from a very different culture and time period, and who makes allusions to authors, events, and people with whom the Japanese reader is unfamiliar?
Baldwin compiles the opinions of different scholars in response to this question. He writes:
There are several theories about why the Japanese are so fond of Anne. According to American writer Donald Ritchie, a leading expert on Japanese popular culture, the people’s passion for Anne can be explained by the cult of innocence, which is highly prized in Japan.
Emiko Mori, by contrast, attributes the Japanese admiration for Anne to her frankness and spontaneity, which ‘are things Japanese perhaps find hard to be. We are afraid to be that way’ (Baldwin, 1993, p.2). Therefore, it can be suggested that there are many reasons as to why Anne is such a popular figure in Japanese culture, and this cannot be pinned down to one specifically.
But is this excessive level of commercialisation of Anne of Green Gables problematic in any way? It can be suggested that large corporations are taking advantage of Anne’s popularity through the creation of tourist attractions, and are subsequently knowingly profiting from a piece of popular fiction that they did not write or create. Therefore, this raises an interesting question as to whether it is moral and ethical to profit from someone else’s work, especially when the creator of that work is now deceased. These corporations are continuing to profit from Montgomery’s legacy and her work after her death, which could be considered to be problematic and a sensitive subject. In contrast, the commercialisation and commodification of Anne of Green Gables could be viewed as positive and beneficial. Arguably, these corporations are helping to keep the legacy of Anne’s fictional character alive. Moreover, they are providing the loyal and avid readers, who cherish the novels dearly, the opportunity to visit the story world in real life. This experience will undoubtedly evoke feelings of joy, nostalgia and excitement in those people. Not to mention all of the jobs that the ‘Anne empire’ has created, and the boost it has given to the Canadian economy in particular. As Baldwin notes,
the number of Japanese tourists to Canada grew from 2.9 million in 1976 to 5.5 million in 1986, and Japan became Canada’s second-largest source of overseas tourists’ (Baldwin, 1993, p.2).
Bibliography
Baldwin, D. (1993). L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables: The Japanese Connection. Journal of Canadian Studies, 28(3), 123-133.
Drain, S. (1986). Community and the Individual in Anne of Green Gables The Meaning of Belonging. Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 11(1), 15-19. doi:10.1353/chq.0.0082.
Gray, P. (2014). “Bloom in the Moonshine”: Imagination as Liberation in Anne of Green Gables. Children’s Literature 42, 169-196. doi:10.1353/chl.2014.0009.
Ledwell, J & Mitchell, J. (Eds.). (2013). Anne around the World: L.M. Montgomery and Her Classic. McGill-Queen’s University Press. Retrieved from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt24hnsz
Levinson-King, R. (2017). Anne of Green Gables: The most popular redhead in Japan. BBC News, Toronto.
Shelagh J. Squire (1996) Literary Tourism and Sustainable Tourism: Promoting ‘Anne of Green Gables’ in Prince Edward Island, Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 4:3, 119-134, DOI: 10.1080/09669589608667263
Natalie is a student at Sheffield Hallam University and has been taking part in our joint project through the university’s Ideas into Action initiative. Here is Natalie’s account of how she became a reader.
My name is Natalie Haigh, I’m 22 years young and I was born in Rotherham in 1998. I grew up in Rotherham. My parents moved there before I was born and still live there to this day. My grandparents also live in Rotherham and have lived there for the majority of their lives, as my grandad worked as a solicitor nearby in Sheffield. When I was five years old, I attended a very small primary school in my local village which was a largely working class area. I then moved on to a comprehensive school close by where I completed my GCSEs. After leaving comprehensive school, I moved on to study at a college in Rotherham where I completed my A Levels. That brings me on to the present day. I am currently a second year student at Sheffield Hallam University where I am studying for a BA Honours degree in English Literature. An English Literature degree was a natural choice for me because I have always had a passion for reading and writing ever since I can remember.
My very first memory of reading was in primary school. I can vividly remember learning to read. I read the Biff, Chip and Kipper books by Oxford Reading Tree. Reading was the activity that I always looked forward to the most at primary school. I can remember the extremely cosy reading corner where my teachers read all sorts of different books to my class. My favourite was Sheila Lavelle’s novel, My Best Friend because it was filled with mischief and adventure. I loved it so much that whenever my teacher would come to the end of a chapter and tell us it was time to move on to maths class, I begged her to start the next chapter and carry on reading to us. The same teacher created a reward scheme for my class. Every time a member of our class excelled at something or made a kind gesture towards someone, she would reward them by putting a marble in a jar. We kept a record of how many marbles were in the jar and collected them, because when the jar was filled with one hundred marbles, my teacher granted us a full Friday afternoon to do anything that we wanted. This was called ‘Golden Time’. I would always go to the cosy reading corner during Golden Time, and I would sit and read books there for hours. Meanwhile, most of the other children were off painting or watching films together. I have such fond memories of Golden Time because it was a rare occasion when I could read at school all afternoon without any distractions, in a comfortable and cosy environment.
My parents and grandparents always read to me too. My grandparents had a house full of books and I would often stay over at their house. I remember being fascinated by their bookcase. As a small child, their bookcase seemed huge in comparison to me. I have always been very inspired by my grandad and what he achieved in his career. He always told me that he learnt everything he knew from books and reading. Therefore, he was always very encouraging when it came to reading and was keen for me to read as much as possible. One thing he taught me to always do when reading, which stands out in my memory the most, is that when I come across a word I do not know the meaning of, I should look up its definition in the dictionary and make a mental note of it. This is something that has stuck with me and that I continue to do today. My grandad always had either a book or newspaper in his hands, and my grandma has a love for glossy fashion magazines. My grandma has an extremely vivid imagination and she would tell me fascinating stories about her childhood and the adventures she got up to. Reading the Biff, Chip and Kipper books and hearing the stories of what my grandma got up to when she was younger sparked my interest in adventure stories. I went on to read Enid Blyton’s The Magic of the Faraway Tree and Joyce Lankester Brisley’s series, Milly-Molly-Mandy. I noticed that the Milly-Molly-Mandy book series was also loved and treasured by one of Reading Sheffield’s interviewees, Margaret C. When I was around ten years old, I was given Beaver Towers by Nigel Hinton to read by my favourite teacher, another children’s fantasy novel that I absolutely adored and could not put down.
Moving on to comprehensive school, I was given the novels Animal Farm by George Orwell and Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck to read. As much as I enjoyed reading and studying these novels, my personal reading tastes evolved and I became far more interested in reading thought-provoking self-help books, books about business and enterprise, and autobiographies of people who inspired me. In fact, I actually went through a phase of feeling guilty about reading non-fiction. I battled with personal insecurities that stemmed from me thinking those books were not academic enough for me to tell people I was enjoying reading, or even to include in this blog. However, I eventually came to my senses and realised that those were the sorts of books I enjoyed, and that ultimately, were a huge part of my personal reading journey. I was reading so much fiction in school such as Animal Farm and Of Mice and Men, that I had a yearning to read something new and refreshing. I noticed that Reading Sheffield’s interviewee, Jocelyn Wilson, also spoke about reading the right sort of books. She says
I did a project on keeping a notebook of all the things I’d read… I know that it was criticised by the person who taught English at school, saying, “I can’t think why you read all this rubbish when you’re capable of reading something so much better” (Hewson, 2015, Jocelyn’s Reading Journey).
I strongly resonated with this part of Jocelyn’s reading journey as I personally felt a lot of pressure to read fiction, especially in school. Therefore, I did not want to discuss the sort of books I was actually reading and enjoying with my school teachers, purely out of shame and fear that they would be unimpressed and disappointed that a lot of the books were non-fiction.
One contrasting factor of my own personal reading journey to those of Reading Sheffield’s interviewees, is that I am from a different generation. The rise of social media and advances in technology changed the way I was reading. Rather than going to my local library and taking out books to read, I found myself reading most books on my Kindle. I also read a lot of different people’s online blogs. Blogs were a new and exciting medium to experience. Moreover, I could easily interact with the authors of the blogs and engage in conversation with them about their works by commenting and receiving instant responses. I quickly discovered that an entire online community for authors and readers existed in the world of blogging, sort of like lots of online book clubs. Therefore, reading started to feel more like a social activity than an independent one. Moreover, so much of the reading that I do is online now, which is one of the main ways that my reading history contrasts to many of Reading Sheffield’s interviewees. Now, the vast majority of my time is taken up by reading books, plays and academic works for my degree. For me personally, whenever I go on holiday is the time that I really indulge in reading books that I genuinely want to read. I take a few books away with me every holiday and I usually get through them all. On holiday, I don’t have to worry about anything else. I can get completely immersed in a book whilst soaking up the sun. And it is during times like those when I remember why I fell in love with reading.
Anne of Green Gables was a completely new novel to me at the beginning of this process, with me having neither heard of the novel or Lucy Maud Montgomery herself. However, I am incredibly grateful to be involved in this course as I feel lucky to be exposed to such a plethora of new and intriguing tales I may have never discovered throughout my regular day to day life. The first in a series of seven novels chronicling the adventures of titular character Anne Shirley, Anne of Green Gables is generally considered a classic of their youths for many people born in the 20th century. Perhaps the best way to illustrate the quality of the novel is through its sheer longevity. Originally released in 1908, Anne of Green Gables has withstood the test of time and still remains a classic read for younger generations starting their journeys into a love of fiction. This permanence is not only due to the high quality of the writing and storytelling but also the nostalgic warmth it brews in many parents, compelling them to read it to their children and have them fall in love with it too.
With the high volume and high intensity of university work, I usually do some research and preparation before reading a book, frequently spoiling the plot for myself to make the process of analysing and discussing the novel more streamlined. However, for this I decided to take myself back to my childhood and simply dive headfirst into the pages with no prior knowledge or expectations whatsoever. And what a joyous experience it was, watching young Anne subvert the prejudices of those around her and win their hearts made me feel like a child again, a sensation I have been chasing since I flipped the last page.
From the moment we are first introduced to Anne until the very end of the novel we cannot help but to support her in everything she does and wish her the best. This feeling is paralleled by Matthew Cuthbert who, despite mistakenly adopting Anne when in search of a young man to help with the farm work in his old age, falls in love with her rampant imagination and spirited soul before the pair can even make it back to his home from the train station. Anne even manages, eventually, to win the affections of Marilla Cuthbert despite her stern and traditionalist approach. Watching their relationship develop over the course of the novel was humorous, touching and come the end of the novel, utterly heart-shattering.
The epitome of Anne’s character and the reason she is so endearing and means so much to so many is her complete selflessness and unwillingness to take anything lying down. Her back and forth rivalry-come-friendship with Gilbert Blythe, whom I notice is much revered by those of Reading Sheffield, particularly Val seems to have had a soft spot for this young gentleman, is one of the most satisfying relationships we see blossom over the novel. We see an immensely strong friendship and mutual respect develop over years from the childish teasing of Gilbert calling Anne ‘Carrots’ in reference to her red hair, which led to him getting a slate smashed over his head, to the pure altruistic act of him giving up his job so she can work closer to Marilla and care for her as she is going blind and has lost her brother Matthew. This coupled with Anne giving up her life’s dream and everything she has worked for since moving to Avonlea to make sure her adoptive mother receives proper care demonstrates exactly why both of these characters, and the novel as a whole, are so effortlessly charming and endearing.
It was therefore no surprise to me, upon closing the novel, that when I researched reviews and opinions of others on Anne of Green Gables I was greeted with nothing but a wave of glowing commendations for this book and smiling tales of people’s childhoods spent buried in the pages of this wonderful novel that has touched so many. It was these recommendations accompanied with my own overwhelmingly positive experience that persuaded me to purchase more books in the series to get lost in over the course of, hopefully, a long hot summer of 2021.
L. M. Montgomery’s bright outlook on the world is a welcome contrast to the bleak views of many, especially through recent struggles, Anne’s smile and burning red hair shines through the dark clouds for so many. Montgomery’s writing is spectacular in this novel, incredibly accessible to a modern audience for the time it was written and fluently funny throughout. She tickles your funny bone with one hand and tears your heart out with the other as every emotional beat hits harder than the last. We smile every smile and cry every tear along with Anne as we become totally and completely captivated by her story, willing her to succeed at every venture despite her tendency, particularly early in her adopted life, to accidentally do something she most certainly is not supposed to. My personal favourite being when she accidentally gave her friend Diana wine instead of raspberry cordial, causing her to return home drunk and triggering her mother to be less than pleased, yet Anne of course still wins her over as she most certainly will win you over if you are yet to read this novel. Anne of Green Gables is a defining work of fiction for many childhoods past, present and future as its sheer charisma is undeniable. It is clear to see why, 113 years after its release, it is still being printed across the globe.
Students at Sheffield Hallam University have been exploring our interviews with Sheffield readers and our research. They have each written their own reading journey and a reflection on a book or author mentioned by our original interviewees (click here for more information on these tasks). We hope this has given the students an understanding of the world their grandparents and great-grandparents grew up in. For us, reading the thoughts of people born 70 or so years after our interviewees, in a very different world, have made us look afresh at our material.We’re pleased to publish the work of the students over the next few weeks.
In preparation for writing this blog I took what I saw as the most logical step and phoned my mum up to try and pick her brains as to what she remembers about reading to me as a young child. What followed was five minutes of me scrambling around my room trying to find a pen as she rattled off countless books and series that, at least according to her, I had spent half my childhood with my head buried in. The most prominent of which was a collection of Dr Seuss short stories I used to have read to me over and over every night when I was a toddler. To this day my mother and I can quote those stories and often do to cheer each other up on down days around the house, particularly the classic that is Too Many Daves, a personal favourite of mine as a child that my mother and I still quote around the house to this day. It was Dr Seussthat I believe kickstarted my lifelong adoration of poetry and poetic form as most of his writing has an almost musical rhythmic quality. Another of my great loves as a child was the Mr Menseries, owning the whole collection and reading each one over and over until the binding was worn out. I even went as far as to paint myself blue, bandage up and go to World Book Day at school as Mr Bump. Mr Sneezealso stands out in particular as one book that got especially battered as I read it almost constantly as a toddler, turning over from the last page and going straight back to the beginning. My mother passed down her love of reading to me and I grew up with my nose in a book. As I had no siblings to play with the next best thing was to immerse myself in a whole new universe to transport myself away from rainy Derbyshire.
To be honest, as much as I enjoyed personal reading, I was far less infatuated with the assigned reading in primary school, often reading a book as fast as possible to simply get it out of the way so I could get back to the latest Diary of a Wimpy Kid I was probably reading at the time. My grandparents also had a profound effect on me and my reading journey, two or three times a week they would take me to the library whenever they picked me up from school to grab a new book to read. Thirteen years later I now suspect this was to shut seven-year-old me up for an hour or two, which was successful for them and also got me even further interested in reading.
Like most people my age, one of the major literary influences in my early life was the Harry Potter series. I had seen the first couple of films and was instantly engrossed in the fantastical universe J K Rowlinghad created. This inspired me to pick up all seven books and speed read them before the next film came out to make sure I was up to date, an unfortunate side effect of this was that I had little to no filter between my brain and my mouth as a child and would not hesitate to mention something that happens later in the series to one of my friends that had not yet got around to reading some of the later books. For this I could only apologise. This started a domino effect leading me to binge read many series of books, although somehow missing out on Lord of The Rings until I was much older. The Percy Jackson series hugely impacted me early in secondary school, cultivating a fascination with Greek mythology in tandem with my ever-growing love of literature. This led to an intense yet brief obsession with all things mythological which was reignited for me at university as we began to study The Odyssey and the heavily explored mythos surrounding it.
In secondary school I was indeed that one kid that genuinely enjoyed Shakespeare and poetry. My enjoyment of Shakespeare was more of an appreciation of his immeasurable impact on the English language and culture, with his stories being told and adapted in many forms of media to this day. However, my love for poetry was, and is, very palpable and real. Almost daily you will find me writing some nonsensical poetry on my laptop to be shoved into my folder and never read again. The release of emotion from writing and reading poetry, for me, is unmatched and I will continue to produce poetry for the rest of my life. I have my year 10 English teacher to thank for this, as she pushed me to continue to pursue poetry beyond what we had been studying in class.
Most of my reading outside of university is news articles nowadays as I try and keep up to date on the world and on things I am interested in. This led to me writing a few articles for football magazines over the past few years as when I feel so passionately about something the words come easily. Because of how much I enjoyed the process of writing and editing these articles, I am looking into perhaps pursuing journalism or something similar as a vocation or as a postgraduate degree.
Regrettably, I have neglected to use a library in years now, favouring reading online or picking up books from the charity shop. This has also coincided with me having to read more for school and university work, so I feel I have less time and motivation to read for pleasure. Hopefully after my degree is finished I can relax and spend more time browsing the library and reading for pleasure in the sun like I had done so much as a child.
Guest contributor Mike Peart, born in 1944, has lived in Sheffield for many years. He is an independent researcher, specialising in railway history.In March this year, Mike wrote A Reading Journey of Sorts. In the strange months since COVID arrived, he has expanded his original memories.
During my childhood in Heston, Middlesex, I don’t ever recall being taken to the local library. There certainly was one when it was the Borough of Heston & Isleworth, but I’m not sure if I ever darkened its door. My mother was a member of the Boots Booklovers’ Library in Hounslow which was the nearest large shopping centre. She regularly read her way through their books with the shield bookmark and eyelets punched into the binding. I’m not sure what she read but I suspect that much of it would have been linked to the films of the day as she was also a keen cinema-goer, going at least once a week with my godmother. Apart from Heston Library, there was also a library in Hounslow where an aunt of mine was librarian in the 1930s before she married. But my mother didn’t go there either. I wonder if she was suspicious of public libraries and their late 1940s preoccupation with infectious diseases and their effects on the book stocks. She had lost her firstborn in 1942 at the age of ten months to gastroenteritis and this affected her life and attitudes right up to her death in 1996. It may be that she thought the books at Boots were more hygienic, what with the Booklovers’ Library being consciously refined, not to mention the company being chemists and all that – but I don’t really know. Thinking back, I cannot remember my father ever reading any fiction – his reading was always related to his engineering profession.
Boots Booklovers’ Library logo (Addedentry, Creative Commons Licence)
I have absolutely no recollection of either parent or any aunt or uncle reading to me. I think my mother helped me although I don’t think it was from children’s books necessarily as we didn’t have any. It was just as likely that I had to read cartoon strips or sections for children in the Daily Express, the News Chronicle or even the Daily Mirror, all of which appeared in the house at some time or other during my childhood. I think that most of my reading at home started with occasional copies of the Dandy comic, then the Rupert Bear strip in, I think, the Daily Express newspaper. A legacy of Rupert’s simple rhyming in cartoon strips is my tendency to produce some awful verse. On shopping trips with my mother, I may well have read shop and bus signs and the labels in places like David Greig’s grocery and MacFisheries: the word ‘eels’ always looked strange to me. I did spend a lot of time listening to the valve radio, BBC Home Service and Light Programme, and Listen with Mother from 1950, noted for its ‘Are you sitting comfortably?’ introduction. Some stories surely must have come across that way.
I think my mother told me I could read before I got to infant school in 1948/9, but I have no recollection of what reading and writing took place there under the kind, hatted and elderly Miss Farrah with her aura of eau-de-cologne and mothballs. The only thing I do recall from infant school is ‘music and movement’ to the accompaniment of a wind-up gramophone. It was only later in junior school years that some comic annuals started to appear as birthday or Christmas presents, although they weren’t what you would call ‘quality reading’. The tales of Desperate Dan, Biffo the Bear and Korky the Kat were hardly improving literature. I was also given a small number of the Famous Five books by Enid Blyton, although only a small fraction of the 21 apparently available in the series. They were read repeatedly during bouts of scarlet fever, chickenpox and German measles.
A Famous Five Adventure
Apart from my mother’s library books, there were very few books at home although there was a small dark oak bookcase which was used for other purposes. As to its contents I can only recall an ancient edition of Pears’ Cyclopaedia and two hefty tomes called The Home Doctor and The Family Lawyer, all of which may have come from my paternal grandfather after he died in 1938. This latter volume was about three inches thick and served as a useful stand upon which to place the potty for a growing boy when potty training was taking place! (Was this the way of developing into a barrack-room lawyer through a process of osmosis?) The only fiction books of ours that I can recall at home were both prizes given to my father at school: Treasure Island (1883) by Robert Louis Stevenson and The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) by Oliver Goldsmith. I did try to read both, unsuccessfully I think, when I had scarlet fever at about the age of eight or nine.
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1911 (public domain)Illustration by E Frere from The Vicar of Wakefield, showing perhaps why it failed to appeal to a young boy (public domain)
My parents were members of the Heston Ratepayers’ Association and received their monthly RAM magazine about local matters which I also tried to read. (Almost 70 years later I write for RAM by the way!) Then there was my father’s collection of The Journal of the Proceedings of the Institution of Chartered Mechanical Engineers which apart from learned articles contained diagrams and photographs, some of which dealt with railways which has been an obsession of mine ever since. Otherwise, there were a few of my father’s engineering HND textbooks such as Strength of Materials and others dealing with workshop mathematics, use of the slide rule and logarithm tables.
I suspect that I only read anything available when the weather was bad, otherwise I’d have been outside playing, gardening and messing about with small bikes and home-made ‘trolleys’ with friends.
When the 11-plus was approaching, I do recall my mother buying me books of exercises called Progress Papers to work through. I think there was parental desperation to get me into the grammar school my father had attended and avoid the local senior school which didn’t have a good reputation and was home to the local bullies. I was also provided with Angus MacIver’s First Aid in English. These aids may well have helped my pass in the 11-plus in 1956 and I certainly became an expert in collective nouns – a smuck of eels, a murder of crows, a parliament of rooks, a clowder of cats – and McIver’s other obsessions such as proverbs and absurdities at a very early age.
The elephant is a bonny bird It flits from bough to bough It makes its nest in the rhubarb tree And whistles like a cow.
English at grammar school consisted of learning ‘rules’ by rote and being forced to work laboriously through Shakespeare – Twelfth Night in my case. I can recall my father having an unresolved argument and subsequent correspondence with my English teacher about the way the subject was being taught, and I really didn’t enjoy it at all, despite passing both English Language and English Literature at ‘O’ level. I enjoyed learning and speaking foreign languages far more and at the time probably read more French including Voltaire than any English authors. A neighbour, a retired army captain, lent me his copy of Mein Kampf looted from Berlin although the German was a little beyond me. I was, though, introduced to the German double ‘S’ (ß – Eszett) and gothic script. Keen to better my French while still at school, I started subscribing to Paris Match magazine and I went to Librarie Hachette in London to buy a decent-sized French dictionary. The assistants spoke French and I had to say something like ‘Où se trouvent les dictionnaires?’ to which the reply was ‘En bas’. A French penfriend knowing of my interest in railways kept me regularly supplied with La Vie du Rail magazine.
I ‘resigned’ (no better word for it) from grammar school in 1962 after the first and utterly uninspiring ‘A’ level year of French, German and English Literature. Trying to get into the intricacies of Voltaire’s Candide and Tonio Kröger by Thomas Mann during the summer holiday when there was so much else to do was the clincher. The only spark had been occasionally struck by the headteacher, G J P Courtney, who taught the ‘A’ level French students and had written several of his own French grammar books. We were taught to sing the Marseillaise, the words of which I still know better than the second verse of our National Anthem! Instead, my great uncle who had been Director of Education for Winchester City and Hampshire and, reputedly, the founder of that county’s first girls’ grammar school, encouraged me to write. I corresponded with him by letter regularly and he gave feedback whilst also trying to persuade me to learn Esperanto. As a county president of the Rotary Club he saw Esperanto as a good way of improving international relations in the tense post-war years and he had several books in the language at his home in Winchester.
At the same time, I was by then Honorary Secretary of a railway preservation society and had to do a lot of typewritten correspondence with members, British Railways, potential backer celebrities such as John Betjeman, exhibition organisers, sponsors and the railway press. I also started and produced the society’s first regular newsletter to members, which developed into a quarterly magazine now at edition number 230. Both were duplicated at first and, apart from typing the stencils, I also had to write most of the copy despite many appeals to others to contribute. A fellow committee member, a journalist on the Daily Telegraph, urged me to qualify in journalism so I also started, but never finished, a correspondence course with the London School of Journalism. So far as books went, I was certainly by this time buying and studying a lot of books dealing with railway operation and working through official texts for the Institute of Transport qualification. I did work for British Railways between September 1962 and October 1964 and this was when I discovered I couldn’t pursue my railway operating management career because of defective colour vision. I had also asked about a two-year short service commission in the Army but they, too, needed perfect colour vision. Up to this point I had been based at home in Heston, Middlesex with central London and its suburbs as my universe.
Some of Mike’s railway collection
My father retired in April 1965 and we immediately moved to Dulverton, Somerset. As I was available, I spent the first nine months helping my parents renovate a very run-down Georgian house which was their retirement home. Although I made numerous friends around Exmoor, I did find time to read and I bought several J B Priestley novels, The Flight of the Phoenix by Elleston Trevor and A Kind of Loving by Stan Barstow. Faced with the need to find a new career, my next acquisitions were mainly Pelican text books dealing with psychology and criminology. I also acquired a large collection of grammar books, style guides and dictionaries from Foyles, as well as the collected works of Oscar Wilde, Conan Doyle, Shakespeare, Robert Burns, Byron and other English poets.
After the premature end of my railway career, I had paid for vocational guidance which had suggested following a career in either adult education, probation work, social work and, due to the highest ‘interest’ marks the Vocational Guidance Association had ever seen in their psychometric tests, striving to become a professional musician! I was a very bad self-taught pianist at the time and I realised that there was no way this occupation would earn me a living and the playing tailed off. Hence, the civil service beckoned after it was suggested by the Department of Employment’s Professional & Executive Register that I should join that very department: I did. It was only after retiring from the successor to that organisation in 1994 that I started to write, and I have since completed one management book for Hodder & Stoughton, contributed chapters to others, and have written four more books with a fifth currently in production for the National Railway Museum, plus countless articles for eight different organisations’ journals.
Despite my unpromising start with libraries, I have been over the years an enthusiastic user of Sheffield Central Library, Totley Library, central libraries in Hull, Grimsby and Manchester, some London borough libraries, the onetime government library in Moorfoot, Sheffield and the National Railway Museum library.
Even now in my seventies I do not buy, borrow or read fiction. I write surrounded by well over a thousand books – all of them works of reference, histories, geographic guides and technical books mainly dealing with railways. That said, I will happily watch television and film dramatisations of novels old and new. I do, though, feel that it’s cheating – much like absorbing the classics from the Classics Illustrated comics that I recall from the 1950s and 1960s. I will occasionally resort to radio dramatisations as well – creating the pictures for oneself is a pleasurable part of using that medium.
So, after such an unpromising and almost lifelong relationship with reading fiction, I now write mainly to entertain and inform others. A brief flirtation with journalism has helped me to produce copy quickly – never mind the quality, feel the width – and it was the positive encouragement of my great uncle which, I think, mainly set me on this path.
Poppy, who is 11 years old and lives with her family in Sheffield, is our latest guest blogger.Like many others these days, she’s thinking about her lockdown reading.
My book review is about the book A Pinch Of Magic, or as it says in full on the cover, Three Sisters, A Family Curse and A Pinch of Magic, written by Michelle Harrison.
This book is based around a
family who (years before) had been put under a curse. The curse meant that if
they left their town they would die by sunset. The main character (Betty) and
her sisters are determined to undo the curse.
Personally, I like the main
character Betty because she is adventurous, daring and mischievous!
Some parts of the book I find
very puzzling and scary! Puzzling because I didn’t know how it was possible
that they would break the curse, and scary because sunset was coming near which
would cause their death!
My favourite part of the book
was when Betty finally found her sisters, after they had been taken, by risking
her own life as well.
The reason I wanted to carry
on the book was because I had no idea how it was going to end. Also, this is a
book that is hard to stop reading.
A book I would recommend is Why The Whales Came by Michael Morpurgo. I would recommend this because it’s a short, interesting book set during the war.
I normally prefer to only read a book once but one I have read more than once is Katy by Jacqueline Wilson, because at points in the book it’s telling you the perspective of somebody in a wheelchair. It’s saying that when you’re in a wheelchair, everyone stares at you and treats you differently, which is something I find interesting.
Personally, a place I specially like to read is either in my bed. or in the garden on a nice sunny day! I read in my bed because I find it comfortable and gets me ready for a good night’s sleep. I like to read in the garden because it’s nice and relaxing with the sun shining above you.
Lily, who lives with her family in Sheffield, is our latest guest blogger.
During lockdown I have been enjoying the Harry Potter books very much. They are very intriguing and I can’t get to sleep until about 10pm because I can’t put them down. I am currently reading the sixth book and there have been lots of interesting things that have happened along the way. I like Ron because he is funny and gets in the way, not knowing what is going on around him. I don’t like Luna because she is very strange and doesn’t play a big part in the books.
I also like the Famous Five books written by Enid Blyton. They
are great tales of four children and a dog called Timmy and together they find
criminals and solve mysteries. My favourite character is Anne because she makes
me feel like myself. I don’t like Julian because he is too serious. I recommend
you read them, because something new happens every time. There are 21 books in
the series and all of them are amazing, I would really recommend them. They are
old books but still great reads.
Another author I like is David Walliams. He has a really
good collection of funny stories with incredible illustrations by Tony Ross.
Some of my favourites are The Ice Monster, Gangsta Granny and Grandpa’s Great
Escape, but all of them are really good. David Walliams is really good at
writing about how children and adults interact, and the characters are great.
Lots of his books have been turned into films.
One book I often go back to is The Truth Pixie by Matt Haig. It’s about a pixie who is cursed to tell the truth which stops her getting any friends. In the end she finds a little girl who loves her and wants to keep her for who she is. I like to read it when I am scared or upset as it is comforting and stops me having nightmares.
Sometimes I enjoy to read fact books. At the moment I have been reading the Great Women books by Kate Pankhurst. She is the great-grand-daughter of Emmeline Pankhurst who I also enjoy reading about – I have a book called Suffragette: The Battle for Equality, by David Roberts, that I really enjoy reading. I got Greta Thunberg’s book for Christmas and it is great. Inside are all her speeches which are worth a look at. Me and my family also love the See Inside series of fact books. They are lift-the-flap books with hidden facts and there are lots of different ones, we’ve got Castles, Space and General Knowledge.
In lockdown I’ve been reading in the garden because it has been warm and sunny. I also read in bed where it is cosy and warm. I am looking forward to the libraries reopening so I can get some new reads.
We usually record the reading journeys of Sheffielders born in the first half of the 20th century. But we enjoy hearing from anyone who loves books. Here is our latest guest blogger, Mabel, born in the 21st century, talking about what she reads.
At the moment I’m reading The Dragonfly Pool by Eva Ibbotson. It’s about a girl who goes to boarding school because of the war and joins a folk dancing class which goes to a competition in the kingdom of Bergania. But when they get there the king is shot and the girl rescues the orphaned prince from going to Colditz.
My favourite character is Tally because she is funny, brave and exciting. The book is sad because it’s set in the war so people die but it has a happy ending. It’s also quite mysterious because you don’t know who is the mother of Julia, another student at Tally’s school. My favourite bit is when they go to the dragonfly pool – it sounds beautiful – I’d like to go there. I need to keep reading the book because the prince has been taken away and I need to see if he comes back.
I would recommend The Dragonfly Pool to people who like
adventure and suspense. Other books I would recommend are:
Inkheart by Cornelia Funke – for a person who likes books, magical creatures and adventure
The Star of Kazan by Eva Ibbotson – for someone who likes mystery, horses and happy endings!
I love to read all my books again and again because they feel like old friends and they’re still exciting even though I know what’s going to happen. The place I most like to read is the top of the attic stairs because it’s light and I’m not disturbed, unless Mum comes up to tell me not to sit on the stairs!
Our guest blogger Julie was born on the Manor estate in Sheffield in 1950. She attended St Theresa’s Primary School. After graduating from Notre Dame High School, she left Sheffield for Newcastle-on-Tyne, to train as a teacher. She taught for two years in Liverpool before heading off on an adventurous journey to Sydney, Australia, where she still lives. She has spent her career in education – teaching, writing and lecturing. She was Head of Education at the Australian Museum and General Manager of the charity The Peer Support Foundation. She now writes fiction. Her novel Nowt But Drippin’ is set in Sheffield and will be released by Pegasus later this year.
Manor Library and its garden today
By Julie Howard
My earliest memory of Manor Library is the Peter Pan and Wendy mural, which was painted on one of the glass partitions. Dressed in pale greens and blue they flew through the air, their eyes wide with astonishment. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. It was 1955 and the library was only a couple of years old. It was glorious.
Manor Library in the 1950s, when Julie joined
The Manor entrance today, showing it has not changed so very much since the 1950s
In the children’s library, boys and girls whispered
together as they searched the shelves. Occasionally a giggle would erupt only
to be quelled by a glower from the librarian. Once we had chosen our book, we
approached the counter. The librarian vigorously flicked through small brown
envelopes until she found our card. There was a nerve-wracking moment as she scrutinised
the chosen book before peering down into your face. Heaven help you, if you
chose something unsuitable. I remember a Just
William book being confiscated. With a burning face I went back to
choose ‘something more suitable’ from the shelves, which was difficult because
I didn’t know what I’d done wrong. I now think it was because I had chosen a ‘boy’s
book’!
The imposing entrance through which the young Julie walked
I loved Manor Library from the first moment I stepped
in there. At first, I was heartbroken to find I couldn’t borrow a book until I
was six. It took me weeks of pleading before they let me join. It was years
later I found out that the kind-hearted librarian had changed my birthdate. Nat the Cat was my first book. I read
it in the morning and went back for more in the afternoon, only to be told that
I could only have one book a day!
The library in the 1950s
Manor Library was a daily lifesaver for me. After tea,
mum would walk me up to ‘Reading Circle’. Children sat cross-legged on the
floor and the librarians’ stories took us away from our everyday lives to Narnia and other exotic places. From
that time on, mum often found me standing and staring hopefully at the back of
my wardrobe. The librarians always left us, jaws hanging, at the most crucial
part of the story. If we wanted to know the ending, we had to rise up to the
challenge of finishing the book.
At Christmas time the drama group would put on plays
and the whole family would attend. Of course, with my long blonde hair I was
always an angel, but one year, I was lucky enough to get a singing part… Oh joy!
It was a magical place to write. Storybook and pencil
in hand I would walk up Prince of Wales Road, to the library, which always seem
to be open. I’d sit at one of the tables and write my stories of fairies and
goblins.
Julie and her classmates
I now divide my time between Sydney and Sheffield (Manly to the Manor) Of course an annual pilgrimage to Manor Library to say thank you, is essential. I am still reading and writing voraciously. My novel Nowt But Drippin’ is set in Sheffield and draws on some of my childhood memories. I also work with refugees and others trying to get their stories into print. After all we all have a story to tell, don’t we?
Julie today
Manor Library serves the Manor ward in souh-east Sheffield. The area was rural until the 1930s, when Sheffield Council started building a large estate to relieve inner city crowding. The branch library was almost ready in 1939, when war broke out, and it could not be completed and opened until 1953. The design of the building was innovative in its day, and we plan to tell the story of Manor Library in a future post.
