Elizabeth Bishop is one of those poets who’s often referred to as a writer’s writer, but this doesn’t mean her poems are hard to read. On the contrary: as one of the most loved and admired twentieth-century poets, Bishop has the rare ability to do high-low. She’s enjoyable and accessible and also intensely artful and complex, not to mention very funny. In this special episode, Sophie and Jonty chat to American writer and critic Rachel Cohen about her decades-long admiration for Bishop and deep appreciation for her art.

Bishop was born in New England and spent a significant amount of her childhood in Nova Scotia, Canada. Her writing is infused with the austerity and beauty of Northeast America. But Bishop has another side too, a flamboyance and lushness of texture that came from living in Key West Florida and Brazil. She struggled with alcoholism and depression and had intense lifelong friendships with several of the most important writers of her generation, including the great poets Robert Lowell and Marianne Moore.

We talk about the paradoxes and contradictions of Bishop and her last published collection, Geography III, with the brilliant Rachel Cohen, whose books, essays and occasional observations are, like Bishop’s poems, beautiful, meticulous, and expansive all at once. Rachel has written about Bishop in her fabulous book A Chance Meeting.

Further Reading:

Elizabeth Bishop, Geography III

Rachel Cohen, A Chance Meeting

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In the winter of 1927, George Orwell dropped his aitches, pulled on his distressed tailored trousers, and took the first of many trips to the underbelly of London society. Over the following years, he spent long stints amongst the homeless and starving people of both Paris and London. He collected these experiences into his first book Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), conveniently leaving out the weekends and kitchen sups with mater and pater.

Orwell’s intention was partly to draw attention to the appalling social inequality of France and England after the First World War, but also simply to allow his imagination to wallow in scenes of surreal vividness and black humour.

In this - the first in a four-part series about Orwell’s life, work and times - Sophie and Jonty look at the circumstances that lead to his first, and still one of his best-loved, books. They focus on two of his most famous essays that provide unique insights into his early years.

In Such, Such Were the Joys, Orwell wrote about his experience of English boarding school, where he developed an ineradicable sense of himself as intrinsically doomed and disgusting, of a world where bullies will always triumph and where the underdog can never win. In Shooting an Elephant, Orwell recounts his years working for the Indian Police in the 1920s and his realisation that the British Empire was a corrupt, murderous regime.

Finally, Sophie and Jonty follow Orwell into the mean streets of Paris’ 5th arrondissement and London’s Whitechapel, the scenes of brutality that follow and a truly bizarre encounter with another Old Etonian in a slum lodging-house.

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Content warning: mild bad language

Books mentioned:

Orwell: The New Life (2023) by DJ Taylor

WIFEDOM (2023) by Anna Funder

Essays by George Orwell

The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) by George Orwell

Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) by George Orwell

David Copperfield (1850) by Charles Dickens

New Grub Street (1891) by George Gissing

Nadja by (1928) Andre Breton

Paris Peasant by (1926) Louis Aragon

Tom Jones (1749) - as ever - by Henry Fielding

Gulliver’s Travels (1726) - as ever - by Jonathan Swift

Tales of Mean Streets (1894) by Arthur Morrison

People of the Abyss (1904) by Jack London

Tropic of Cancer (1934) by Henry Miller

Kitchen Confidential (2000) by Anthony Bourdain

The Tramp Ward (1904) by Mary Higgs

Autobiography of a Super-Tramp (1908) by WH Davies

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Legendary bestseller Jodi Picoult is also a graduate of the Princeton English Department, and this week she came back to teach class! Sophie recorded a live episode at the Princeton Public Library in front of a packed house of Jodi fans who were delighted to hear why she believes that when it comes to Shakespeare's best plays, a women was holding the quill!

Jodi's newest novel "By Any Other Name," tells an intense, gripping story about a real-life woman who might just have written many of Shakespeare's most famous works, including Hamlet, Merchant of Venice and Romeo and Juliet, leaving the Bard himself to run his theatre, make money, and have extra-marital affairs.

Emilia Bassano, Jodi's heroine, is a brilliant but under-appreciated writer in the precarious world of the Renaissance court. In real life, Emilia Bassano was a self-made author, lover, mother, and an all-round Elizabethan bad-ass. She published the first collection of poems by a woman in England, and in this live conversation we get a fascinating glimpse of an extraordinary women in an extraordinary time. Jodi takes us through the evidence of of Emilia's "fingerprints" in Shakespeare's plays, and she explains her own original discovery of a sizzling connection between Emilia and the hottest man at court, the Earl of Southampton!

"Bardolatry" was a term George Bernard Shaw came up with to describe people who love Shakespeare too much, and Jodi is leading a new vanguard of Bardoloclasts — skeptics who are breaking the myth of Shakespeare to reveal hidden histories behind the legend.

Special thanks to Janie Hermann, Becky Bowers and the Princeton Public Library for their support.

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Producer: Boyd Britton

Digital Content Coordinator: Olivia di Costanzo

Designer: Peita Jackson

Our thanks to the University of Sydney Business School.

Content warning: moderate swearing and sexual content

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By many reckonings, this is the most famous novel in English. It’s also the book Jane Austen described as her own “Darling Child.” As we head to the milestone of Jane’s 250th Birthday in December (get ready for the minced chicken and negus party) Sophie and Jonty dig into one of the most joyful, funny, sexy stories ever told.

In this episode we ask why this small novel of village life exploded into a global cultural icon, inspiring retelling upon retelling, and catapulting Mr. Darcy and Lizzie Bennet’s romance into a modern myth.

You’ll hear about some lesser-known experiences from Jane Austen’s life that informed the writing, and why it took her so long (aspiring writers, take heart). Sophie tries to shoehorn four historical secrets at the start of the episode, but Jonty only lets her share two of them on air. And he dings her for being too interested in legal history.

Instead, the duo argue about why mismatched attraction, or mistaking steamy passion for implacable dislike, is such an evergreen literary trope, and how much Elizabeth’s love of Darcy depends on seeing his enormous house.

Both hosts give favorite jokes another outing – listeners can decide if repetition make them more funny. Not as funny as Austen, that’s for sure. Tune in for a tune-up about the original Meet the Parents, a tale of colliding families, ghastly mothers in law, and male bonding activities.

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Books Mentioned or Used as Sources:

Rachel Cohen, Austen Years: A Memoir in Five Novels, 2020.

Claudia L. Johnson and Clara Tuite, 30 Great Myths About Jane Austen, 2020.

Sandra MacPherson, “Rent to Own, or, What’s Entailed in Pride and Prejudice,” Representations, 2003.

Claire Tomalin, Jane Austen: A Life, 1999.

Fay Weldon, Letters to Alice: On First Reading Jane Austen, 1985.

Producer: Boyd Britton

Digital Content Coordinator: Olivia di Costanzo

Designer: Peita Jackson

Our thanks to the University of Sydney Business School.

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In Part 2 of David Copperfield, we pick up David where we left him, sobbing at the door of Betsey Trotwood’s house in Dover. From this low, David’s life changes - he is no longer a victim, but embarks on a (very long) journey towards self-reliance, re-encountering old friends like Micawbers and Steerforth, but also new characters like Uriah Heep and the simpering Dora.

To make sense of this long, rambling journey of redemption, Sophie and Jonty reveal the influence of the emerging self-help movement on Dickens’ world-view and how his side-hustle as the director of a Home for Homeless Women inspired him to send many of the characters in David Copperfield off to Australia at the end of the book - and the inevitable happy ending this suggests.

BOOKS MENTIONED OR USED AS SOURCES:

Charles Dickens: A Life (2011) by Claire Tomalin

Self-Reliance (1841) by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Self-Help (1859) by Samuel Smiles

1848: The Revolution of the Intellectuals (1944) by Lewis Namier

Demon Copperhead (2022) by Barbara Kingsolver

Rivals (1988) by Jilly Cooper

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David Copperfield is the name of an American illusionist, whose feats included levitating over the Grand Canyon, walking through the Great Wall of China and making an airplane disappear. It’s also the name of novel by Charles Dickens.

Published in serial form between 1849 and 1850, David Copperfield charts the degradation and eventual success of its narrator - a figure based closely on the author himself. So much so that Dickens later referred to the book as a ‘favourite child’, which considering his self-proclaimed habit of ‘slaughtering’ his child characters is fortunate for Copperfield.

David Copperfield is very much A Tale of Two Stories - a literary pun which Jonty is very pleased with. The first story is that of David’s neglect as a child, the second of his adult life as he aspires to a state of self-reliance.

In this episode, Sophie and Jonty look at the mid-life crisis that precipitated the writing of Copperfield as Dickens suffered a minor breakdown, excavated memories from his unhappy childhood and distributed increasingly silly names to his many children.

We discover the literary innovations that resulted from Dickens choosing to adopt first person narrative for his child star, how he ripped off Charlotte Bronte without acknowledging it, and the vast cast of unforgettable characters like the Micawbers, Betsey Trotwood, and Uriah Heep that carry his story along.

Finally, we leave listeners on a cliff-hanger as poor David, homeless and destitute, walks from London to Dover and flings himself at the mercy of his long-lost aunt. What will happen to David? Will he rise to success and levitate across the Grand Canyon? Listen to part 2 to find out.

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Producer: Boyd Britton

Digital Content Coordinator: Olivia di Costanzo

Designer: Peita Jackson

Our thanks to the University of Sydney Business School.

Content warning: moderate swearing and sexual content

BOOKS MENTIONED OR USED AS SOURCES:

Charles Dickens: A Life (2011) by Claire Tomalin

Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne

Tom Jones by Henry Fielding

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

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In part 2 of SLoB's Valentine's special, more heroes and heroines from the world of classic books get the brutal Tinder treatment as Sophie and Jonty assess the romantic moves of your literary faves. They are in full agreement concerning the lead characters of Sense & Sensibility and Go Tell It On The Mountain, but the conversation turns fractious as they lock horns over whether Frankenstein or his monster is the greatest lover in Mary Shelley's famous novel. Fortunately, Dracula - that great peacemaker - is on hand to elicit full agreement that he, the Prince of Darkness, is the ideal date.

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Producer: Boyd Britton

Digital Content Coordinator: Olivia di Costanzo

Designer: Peita Jackson

Our thanks to the University of Sydney Business School.

Content warning: moderate swearing and sexual content

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It's Black History Month and Sophie and Jonty are bringing their analytical chops once again to the giant of 20th-century literature, James Baldwin.

In his debut novel, Go Tell It On the Mountain, Baldwin had captured the experience of growing up in 1930s Harlem. In his second novel, Giovanni’s Room, published in 1956, he focused instead on his experiences as a gay man, living in Paris. But, unlike Baldwin, the narrator of this novel is white.

The hero David is torn between two desires - his burgeoning love for an Italian barman called Giovanni, and the imperative to marry his girlfriend Hella. He struggles to choose, but the casualty is Giovanni rather than David. Baldwin wrote Giovanni’s Room while wrestling with his own homosexuality - and his fears about the life of loneliness it condemned him too - and developing new theories about white and black experience in America. Sophie and Jonty talk about the unique experiences behind the writing of this novel, the powerful expression of homosexual desire, and why Paris isn’t all it’s meant to be.

Content warning: mild sexual content

-- To join the Secret Life of Books Club visit: www.secretlifeofbooks.org

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Producer: Boyd Britton

Digital Content Coordinator: Olivia di Costanzo

Designer: Peita Jackson

Our thanks to the University of Sydney Business School.

Further Reading

Notes On A Native Son (1956) by James Baldwin

James Baldwin: Living in Fire (Pluto Books, 2019) by Bill V Mullen

The Ambassadors by Henry James (1903)

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