#virginia dickens

[moonstruckvaleandivy]

#urdu quote #urdu posts #deep feelings #dark academia aesthetic #heartbreak #book quotes #love quotes #aesthetic #poets on tumblr #love poetry #taylor swift #relationship quotes #lana del rey #selena gomez #charles dickens #charles bukowski #sylvia plath #virginia woolf

[scatteredastrology]

book recs for the signs

aries: 

energetic, hot-headed, courageous, fiery, competitive, heroic, daring

- the illiad by homer

- east of eden by john steinbeck 

- war and peace by leo tolstoy 

taurus:

homely, indulgent, sensual, tender, stubborn, stagnant, creative

- my year of rest and relaxation by ottessa moshfegh 

- on earth we’re briefly gorgeous by ocean vuong 

- the goldfinch by donna tartt 

gemini:

lively, witty, superficial, spontaneous, adaptable, curious 

- the secret history by donna tartt 

- and then there were none by agatha christie 

- lord of the flies by william golding 

cancer:

nurturing, moody, intuitive, sentimental

- the bell jar by sylvia plath

- the turn of the screw by henry james 

- mrs dalloway by virginia woolf 

leo: 

dramatic, passionate, vivacious, steadfast, playful

- the picture of dorian gray by oscar wilde

- if we were villains by m.l. rio 

- the phantom of the opera by gaston leroux 

virgo:

meticulous, analytical, modest, critical, complex, distant

- the catcher in the rye by j.d salinger

- the stranger/the outsider by albert camus 

- sherlock holmes by arthur conan doyle

libra: 

romantic, diplomatic, idealistic, gullible, harmonious, aesthete 

- to kill a mockingbird by harper lee

- pride and prejudice by jane austen 

- little women by louisa may alcott 

scorpio: 

intense, perceptive, thoughtful, obsessive, elusive 

- inferno by dante 

- lolita by vladimir nabokov 

- these violent delights by micah nemerever 

sagittarius: 

philosophical, optimistic, restless, insatiable, adventurous, wise

- crime and punishment by fyodor dostoevsky 

- don quixote by miguel de cervantes

- the razor’s edge by w. somerset maugham 

capricorn: 

ambitious, reserved, dedicated, reliable, resilient, protective, melancholic 

- the great gatsby by scott fitzgerald 

- great expectations by charles dickens 

- anna karenina by leo tolstoy

aquarius: 

intelligent, unique, strange, detached, revolutionary, rebellious

- frankenstein by mary shelley 

- animal farm by george orwell 

- the metamorphosis by franz kafka 

pisces: 

introspective, yearning, dreamy, artistic, sensitive

- the haunting of hill house by shirley jackson

- the waves by virginia woolf 

- the starless sea by erin morgenstern 

#astrology #books #virginia woolf #literature #dark academia #zodiac #sylvia plath #charles dickens #mary shelley #kafka #oscar wilde #donna tartt #jane austen #shirley jackson #classics #book recommendations #first post in forever #book recs #edited

[sage-green-kitchen]

I just want to read discarded library copies of classics that I bought at a garage sale and drink tea from a fancy tea cup. That's all I want.

#dark acadamia aesthetic #aesthetic #teacup #books & libraries #literature #light academia #rainy day #books #oscar wilde #charles dickens #virginia woolf #jane austen

[sapphiceffy]

if you believe all classics are boring then you are my enemy sorry

#classics #classic books #classic literature #dostoyevsky #dickens #Tolstoy #virginia woolf #Yalom #jane austen #victor hugo #Oscar Wilde #not supporting most of those authors but their books slay #classics are great but maybe you need to try them later in your life and that’s okay

[wornhandswornmind]

Two Lovers on the N1 (the Night Bus)

It's not until they sit down 

That the hollowness of my adjoining seat tugs at the elbow of my sleeve.

Its inherent gravity prickling at the skin.

Not until the arm melts into arm 

That I feel the weight of my own head

How the heavy head longs for a shoulder.

Not until the bus comes to a halt that the engine’s buzz reverberates into my toes

That I hear the cry of my ice cream stained converse, longing to dance, kick, and scuffle across another’s, until it wears its heart out over the trivial battle and finds shelter against yours.

How the Left yearns for another Right!

Tired of one’s own.

It's not until I hear a sigh of contentment sound from a zenned lover above me that I murmur to myself, 

“So long days, So long nights.”

#albert camus #charles dickens #classic literature #creative writing #crime and punishment #eve babitz #franz kafka #fyodor dostoevsky #joan didion #kafka #love #love quotes #dark academia #dark academia aesthetic #light academia aesthetic #english literature #virginia woolf #literature #librarylife #letters #f scott fitzgerald #books and libraries #4funzies #lana del rey

[aibidil]

Oh!, to be a battleaxe side character in classic lit—

Betsy Trotwood (David Copperfield)

To this hour I don’t know whether my aunt had any lawful right of way over that patch of green; but she had settled it in her own mind that she had, and it was all the same to her. The one great outrage of her life, demanding to be constantly avenged, was the passage of a donkey over that immaculate spot. In whatever occupation she was engaged, however interesting to her the conversation in which she was taking part, a donkey turned the current of her ideas in a moment, and she was upon him straight. Jugs of water, and watering-pots, were kept in secret places ready to be discharged on the offending boys; sticks were laid in ambush behind the door; sallies were made at all hours; and incessant war prevailed. Perhaps this was an agreeable excitement to the donkey-boys; or perhaps the more sagacious of the donkeys, understanding how the case stood, delighted with constitutional obstinacy in coming that way. I only know that there were three alarms before the bath was ready; and that on the occasion of the last and most desperate of all, I saw my aunt engage, single-handed, with a sandy-headed lad of fifteen, and bump his sandy head against her own gate, before he seemed to comprehend what was the matter. These interruptions were of the more ridiculous to me, because she was giving me broth out of a table-spoon at the time (having firmly persuaded herself that I was actually starving, and must receive nourishment at first in very small quantities), and, while my mouth was yet open to receive the spoon, she would put it back into the basin, cry ‘Janet! Donkeys!’ and go out to the assault.

Mrs. Cadwallader (Middlemarch)

The parishes of Freshitt and Tipton would have felt a sad lack of conversation but for the stories about what Mrs. Cadwallader said and did: a lady of immeasurably high birth, descended, as it were, from unknown earls, dim as the crowd of heroic shades—who pleaded poverty, pared down prices, and cut jokes in the most companionable manner, though with a turn of tongue that let you know who she was. Such a lady gave a neighborliness to both rank and religion, and mitigated the bitterness of uncommuted tithe. A much more exemplary character with an infusion of sour dignity would not have furthered their comprehension of the Thirty-nine Articles, and would have been less socially uniting.... She would never have disowned anyone on the ground of poverty: a De Bracy reduced to take his dinner in a basin would have seemed to her an example of pathos worth exaggerating, and I fear his aristocratic vices would not have horrified her. But her feeling towards the vulgar rich was a sort of religious hatred: they had probably made all their money out of high retail prices, and Mrs. Cadwallader detested high prices for everything that was not paid in kind at the Rectory: such people were no part of God’s design in making the world; and their accent was an affliction to the ears. A town where such monsters abounded was hardly more than a sort of low comedy, which could not be taken account of in a well-bred scheme of the universe. Let any lady who is inclined to be hard on Mrs. Cadwallader inquire into the comprehensiveness of her own beautiful views, and be quite sure that they afford accommodation for all the lives which have the honor to coexist with hers.

"Excuse me, it is you two who are on the wrong tack,” said Mrs. Cadwallader. “You should have proved to him that he loses money by bad management, and then we should all have pulled together. If you put him a-horseback on politics, I warn you of the consequences. It was all very well to ride on sticks at home and call them ideas.

Mrs Rachel Lynde (Anne of Green Gables)

Mrs. Rachel Lynde was a red-hot politician and couldn’t have believed that the political rally could be carried through without her, although she was on the opposite side of politics.

“Well, since you’ve asked my advice, Marilla,” said Mrs. Lynde amiably—Mrs. Lynde dearly loved to be asked for advice—“I’d just humor her a little at first, that’s what I’d do .... That is I wouldn’t say school to her again until she said it herself. Depend upon it, Marilla, she’ll cool off in a week or so and be ready enough to go back of her own accord, that’s what, while, if you were to make her go back right off, dear knows what freak or tantrum she’d take next and make more trouble than ever. The less fuss made the better, in my opinion. She won’t miss much by not going to school, as far as that goes. Mr. Phillips isn’t any good at all as a teacher.... I declare, I don’t know what education in this Island is coming to.” Mrs. Rachel shook her head, as much as to say if she were only at the head of the educational system of the Province things would be much better managed.

Granny Weatherwax (Discworld)

She hadn't ever needed to. Granny Weatherwax was like the prow of a ship. Seas parted when she turned up.

Unlike wizards, who like nothing better than a complicated hierarchy, witches don’t go in much for the structured approach to career progression. It’s up to each individual witch to take on a girl to hand the area over to when she dies. Witches are not by nature gregarious, at least with other witches, and they certainly don’t have leaders. Granny Weatherwax was the most highly-regarded of the leaders they didn’t have.

It was one of the few sorrows of Granny Weatherwax’s life that, despite all her efforts, she’d arrived at the peak of her career with a complexion like a rosy apple and all her teeth. No amount of charms could persuade a wart to take root on her handsome if slightly equine features, and vast intakes of sugar only served to give her boundless energy.

Lady Bruton (Mrs Dalloway)

Lady Bruton had the reputation of being more interested in politics than people; of talking like a man; of having had a finger in some notorious intrigue of the eighties, which was now beginning to be mentioned in memoirs.

She was getting impatient; the whole of her being was setting positively, undeniably, domineeringly brushing aside all this unnecessary trifling (Peter Walsh and his affairs) upon that subject which engaged her attention, and not merely her attention, but that fibre which was the ramrod of her soul, that essential part of her without which Millicent Bruton would not have been Millicent Bruton; that project for emigrating young people of both sexes born of respectable parents and setting them up with a fair prospect of doing well in Canada. She exaggerated. She had perhaps lost her sense of proportion. Emigration was not to others the obvious remedy, the sublime conception. It was not to them (not to Hugh, or Richard, or even to devoted Miss Brush) the liberator of the pent egotism, which a strong martial woman, well nourished, well descended, of direct impulses, downright feelings, and little introspective power (broad and simple — why could not every one be broad and simple? she asked) feels rise within her, once youth is past, and must eject upon some object — it may be Emigration, it may be Emancipation; but whatever it be, this object round which the essence of her soul is daily secreted, becomes inevitably prismatic, lustrous, half looking-glass, half precious stone; now carefully hidden in case people should sneer at it; now proudly displayed. Emigration had become, in short, largely Lady Bruton.

#what have we learned today #i like unapologetic political opinionated hard-ass not-sexy older women #absolutely unconcerned with gender roles #i aspire to be them except not as rude or judgy of individuals #i wish there was more class/race/ethnicity diversity in these examples but that’s probably somewhat limited based on genre alone #charles dickens #george eliot #lm montgomery #terry pratchett #virginia woolf #terry pratchett doesn’t really fit by time but i had to include granny so #i’m reading david copperfield right now and i fucking lose it every time Betsy Trotwood hollers about the audacious donkeys

[naturalborndevil]

girls don't want a job they want the complete penguin clothbound classics collection

#dark academia #real #penguin classics #books #writeblr #bookworld #light academia #virginia woolf #jane austen #fyodor dostoevsky #charles dickens

[aboydreamsofflowers]

In Middlemarch and Jane Eyre we are conscious not merely of the writer’s character, as we are conscious of the character of Charles Dickens, but we are conscious of a woman’s presence, of someone resenting the treatment of her sex and pleading for its rights. This brings into women’s writing an element entirely absent from a man’s, unless indeed he happens to be a working man or a negro, or who for some reason is conscious of a disability. It introduces a distortion and is frequently the cause of weakness. The desire to plead some personal cause or to make a character the mouthpiece of some personal discontent and grievance always has a distressing effect, as if the point at which the reader’s attention is directed were suddenly two-fold instead of single. The genius of Jane Austen and Emily Brontë is never more convincing than in their power to ignore such claims and solicitations …

- Virginia Woolf, Four Women Novelists

#virginia woolf #middlemarch #jane eyre #charles dickens #literature #english literature #novelist #creative writing #feminism

[catgopurr]

Classic Authors Teapot by CartersofSuffolk on Etsy

#tea #teapot #etsy #authors #author #classic authors #reading #books #book #oliver twist #jane austen #charles dickens #ernest hemingway #virginia woolf

[sytycdinternational]

SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE USA SEASON 17 // Callbacks Group Routine / Choreography by Mandy Moore

#SYTYCD #So You Think You Can Dance #group #Dance with somebody #Mandy Moore #US17 #US17C #Alexis Warr #Anna Miller #Camila Schwarz #Essence Wilmington #Ralyn Johnson #Beau Harmon #James Thomas #Keaton Kermode #Konnor Kelly #Thiago Pacheco #Waverly Fredericks #Flora Dickens #Virginia Crouse #Mia Mellican #jordan Betscher #Carter Williams #Jerome Cunanan #Shafar Delgado #Matthew Deloch #Samuel McWilliams #Tristen Sosa #Jaliyah “Juicy” Kersten #Jocelyn Martinez

[moonstruckvaleandivy]

I've always been closer to torrential skies, hungry tides, eclipsed moons, and fathomless stars than any other rendezvous of the universe.

#aesthetic #book quotes #love quotes #deep qoute #poets on tumblr #relatable quotes #literature #love poetry #heartbreak #john keats #virginia woolf #charles dickens #jane austen

[wornhandwornmind]

Notes on Space, and the Importance of Pacing

12/4 

I didn’t get out of bed until 1pm, as I was thinking about my alternative lives where the unattainable lies within my grasp. 

In terms of my headspace, I have realized how much I love to stick my hand in the dirt, in the privacy of my own room. I looked at Orion Carloto’s instagram post this morning where she talked about her attachment to spaces of which she can call her own, whether it be permanently or periodically; and I just thought about how valid she. 

There truly is something special about having a place hidden from the eyes of others. A place to shed the outside skin. Having a space to pace, a bed or chair to sit and ponder.

The act of sitting, pondering, and pacing are interwoven in my being, serving as my strongest methods of escapism. It is something I can only go about doing alone. It is the time where I feel the most free.

For extra context, when I have my dorm to myself, I tend to put on music or thought provoking YouTube videos (about different philosophies and modes of thinking throughout the years), get worked up in the melody or wrapped in different modes of thinking , and I begin to walk up and down the narrow hallway of my dorm. I can go about this cycle for hours. I sit down, play about three seconds of whatever video I am watching, and then within the next two seconds I am back on my feet walking back and forth. 

During this pacing, I reflect on the art/media and try to find ways to insert myself/my personal touch into the media/art itself. Questions of how could I make this art mine run through my mind. How can I make others fascinated by the inner-workings of my mind? For this limited time I feel smarter than I truly am, more desirable than I am. It’s almost as if I, mentally, take on a new form; I exist in the body and mind of another. It’s always a wonderful feeling: feeling more important or clever than you really are.

In a world where one can feel lost in the sea of greater ideas, louder speakers, etc. it is crucial that I create time where I feel like I am actually contributing to something greater. That I hold something of my own, something valuable, something covetous. While I pace up and my hallway I bear gifts bewildering to others due the intensity and gravity of them. 

In retrospect, this sitting down then getting right back up to walk back and forth sounds like a build up to hysteria, or just mental unrest, but in terms of the second diagnosis, it can be good to let the mind roam, it’s how new ideas come about. 

In my English class this semester we read an excerpt from Charles Dickens’ daughter, in regards to the methods of her father constructing characters for his novels. She notes that he had a mirror which he would stand in front of and try to take on the form of the characters who he intended to write about. Although it seems like I cannot really compare my hallway pacing to Dickens’ methods of character transfigurations, as he actually had intention in his contrivances, I still would like to think that this aids to my previous testament of how having a space to pace, and move allows for new ideas to form. Maybe the idea of having a space to take on a new form is what I enjoy? 

Moving on to my bed. (more abstract)

When I sit on her, I’m bound to stand and pace within seconds of my but meeting the sheets. When I sit, I ponder, I take in information and I contort it, bend it to my will; however, when I lie down on my bed I’m in a completely different realm. When I sit and pace, remnants of reality are still there and come to me in flashes. Yet when I lay down reality is forgotten, left behind. I’m in a new world completely. This is the moment, as I referred to earlier, where I reach deep beneath the dirt without the shame that accompanies the act on the other side of my bedroom door. 

I revel in the impossible, the grime. Consciousness is left behind. My bed is my chrysalis of unabashed pleasure, contentment, lust, happiness, insecurity, misery, and more. There, I can embrace feeling. Emotions of all kinds roam wild, and there is a person in this scape who helps me make sense of them, perversions and all. My bed is a place where I feel less alone, more room for the imagination to take up the empty space on my bed or just the blank spaces in my life as a whole. My bed is where I find fulfillment from unplanted grains. The grit of possibility resides beneath my sheets. 

It is not something that I do when I am intentionally trying to come up with ideas, like how one might do when they are in a staff meeting and are trying to come up with pitches for a business venture. I feel like I have to do this. There is something in my body that just will not allow me to sit down for more than 2 minutes when hearing or seeing something. My pacing in my dorm room is somewhat essential to my sanity.

#writeblr #writing #franz kafka #absurdism #bookshelf #virginia woolf #clarice lispector #albert camus #books and libraries #classical literature #charles dickens #classic literature #creative writing #crime and punishment #eve babitz #fyodor dostoevsky #joan didion #kafka #love #love quotes #dark academia #dark academia aesthetic #light academia aesthetic #english literature #literature #librarylife #letters #f scott fitzgerald #4funzies #lana del rey

[literarylondonhq]

Well known writers featured on the London Literary Pub Crawl.

London has been home to some of the most revered writers in history. Here are five of the most famous writers who have lived and worked in the city: Charles Dickens: The renowned English author was born in Portsmouth, but moved to London in his early twenties and wrote most of his beloved classics, such as Great Expectations, Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol, while living in the city. George…

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#Anthony Burgess #bohemian #Books #Charles Dickens #J.K. Rowling #Literary London #literature #London #poetry #Shakespeare #Virginia Woolf #Writers

[continuoussearch]

Revision, process, and practice

Revision, process, and practice

Okay, I don’t know if this scene will stay or not, but while drafting (and until someone snatches it out of my hands, it is all drafting), I wrote this: We walked into the sunlight outside. The sidewalk was empty; Willi and Benjamin had already turned at the corner and another corner. Cars crept slowly down the one-way street, pausing at the stop sign and squeezing into city traffic. The waft of…

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#Charles Dickens #creativity #fiction #inspiration #knowledge #learning #life #purpose #self-definition #stories #Virginia Woolf #work #writing

[writerthreads]

How to write a gripping beginning

by Writerthreads on Instagram

Personally, I find beginnings to be one of the hardest parts of the whole book because it's so important. The beginning is what makes or breaks your book. It's what keeps readers interested after they pick it up at a store, or when they first download it on their Kindle. Below are some tips, as well as some analyses, on how to perfect a story's beginning.

Introduce your main character and the setting: Mrs. Dalloway

By "introduce", I don't mean a giant 10-page info dump on royal family tree or the ten kingdoms the world is made up of. Rather, I'm thinking of a character in a place, or doing something. The best, and one of the most famous examples would be how Virginia Woolf started Mrs. Dalloway:

Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.

Already, you have the titular character, Mrs Dalloway, introduced. She's doing something, too. She's saying that she's going to buy flowers herself, setting up a scene later where she's probably going to, or back out of, buying flowers. The pronoun "herself" suggests to the reader in Woolf's era that she's of a middle-class background and that somebody (eg. a servant) would normally be running errands for Mrs. Dalloway, but the character wanted to do this simple task herself.

I could go on forever about how each word in this simple sentence has implicit meanings and my ex-A Level Eng Lit teacher will probably be very proud of me, but that's not the point. The main idea is that in just a single sentence, a lot is being revealed to the reader without the writer having to info dump anything.

Allow me to continue to the second paragraph of the book:

For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be taken off their hinges; Rumpelmayer's men were coming. And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning-fresh as if issued to children on a beach.

More characters are introduced now: we have Lucy, Rumpelmayer and his men. Mrs. Dalloway's full name is revealed, and so is her personality through her thought. It's childlike, whimsical and light, and that's why her name "Clarissa Dalloway" is used here instead of the stiff "Mrs. Dalloway".

In just two paragraphs, we are introduced to the titular character and some minor characters are mentioned. We also know bits and pieces of what's going to happen. Woolf artistically starts off the book with simple prose. Everything is well thought out, yes, Virginia Woolf is a literary genius, yes, but this is something that we can all do: write a simple introduction without weighting readers down with lots of detail we don't need, and get straight into the story.

Start in media res

Fun fact: "in media res" is also the name of our Discord Server!

When you start in the middle of an action, readers are transported straight to the story, hooking them in. For example, if you were writing a rom com, you could start with the main character bumping into a long-lost friend:

Emma saw a familiar cowboy hat bobbing in and out of the crowd in front of her. Emma found herself pushing through sweaty limbs into the crowd, trying to catch a glimpse of the person who wore the hat, trying to see whether it was really her friend who had ghosted her five years ago.

Obviously this isn't the best beginning in the world, but you get the point.

Try something interesting

A strong story opening makes you want to know more. Donna Tartt does this perfectly in A Secret History:

The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.

What is up? Who is Bunny? What's so serious about their predicament? Tell us more!!! Bunny's death makes us want to know what has happened, while mentioning the characters' situation wants us to know what's going to happen. Tartt forces us to continue on to find out the full story.

Lead with a strong statement

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy:

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Tolstoy’s first line introduces the domestic strife that drives the story’s tragic events, using a bold, sweeping statement, while Dicken's catchy first sentence introduces us to the book's main themes.

There are way more examples of good beginnings that you can only learn from by reading. If you're a beginner, literally comb through a library shelf of the genre you're writing in and see how published authors have written their beginnings. Alternatively, you could go check out our post on the best story beginnings for more ideas!

#writers on tumblr #writing #story writing #teen writer #writers #writers block #writing inspiration #writing tips #my writing #writeblr #writing prompt #writers and poets #writerscorner #writer problems #creative writing #writer things #writerslife #writing advice #writing community #writing process #story ideas #short stories #fiction #stories

[wornhandswornmind]

Everyday I like to think I learn something new about myself. However, most days it seems I am reminded of that which I try to bury,

full of breath and animosity.

I want to dance to the beat of my own drum but I still want others to sway to my Machiavellian prose.

It's another day of trying to construct my effervescent portrait from dull discontorted shades

but after so many unsatisfactory drafts, who's really to blame

My hand is tired of it!

The weight it bears, the strain that obstructs

It maybe be time to loosen the grip on my brush.

#albert camus #charles dickens #classic literature #creative writing #crime and punishment #eve babitz #franz kafka #fyodor dostoevsky #joan didion #kafka #dark academia #dark academia aesthetic #light academia aesthetic #english literature #virginia woolf #literature #librarylife #letters #f scott fitzgerald #books and libraries #4funzies #lana del rey #writeblr #girlblogging #poem #james baldwin