While She Knits - Da Public Domain

[checkers65477.livejournal.com]

Gosh, that sounds like a rap group, doesn't it?

This WSK question is courtesy of rosaleeluann .  What is your favorite book in the public domain, ie; published prior to 1923?

Comments

[madclairvoyant.livejournal.com]

Les Miserables and Othello, I guess. Oh, and the Taming of the Shrew. I am fairly sure they were published before 1923, but about the public domain...

(I have a lot of empty space between my ears.)

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Ooh, nostalgia! As a teenager, I read loads and loads of 19th century historical novels. I was utterly obsessed with The Three Musketeers and its sequels when I was 11. The Bride of Lammermoor by Walter Scott broke my heart and made me cry all night and most of the rest of the day.

But my enduring favourites are The Children of the New Forest by Captain Marryat, and The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy. My adult eye sees loads of flaws in the first of these, but my heart doesn't care. I just love secret identities and cool revelation scenes. The Children of the New Forest led me to having an English Civil War themed 11th birthday party, much to the bafflement of all comers. The Scarlet Pimpernel caused a life-long love of a certain type of hero, and ultimate brought me here. :-D

[agentmaly.livejournal.com]

An English Civil War themed 11th birthday party sounds really entertaining (as long as you ignore all the carnage; I hope the party had a slightly lower body count).

[aged-crone.livejournal.com]

So, have you read all of the Scarlet Pimpernel books? I agree with you - I love them! (Though if Orczy had written "inane laugh" one more time I was going to reach back through time and stab her to the heart with a pencil).

I need to reread Children of the New Forest - it's been a while, but I did enjoy it. Cavaliers all the way, for me!

Do you enjoy Ivanhoe? I do, but it drives me mad when they talk about old Ulrica and how terrible a time she had when the Normans invaded. "Old" is an understatement, given that the Conquest was in 1066 and Ivanhoe's set in the 1190's.

[rosaleeluann.livejournal.com]

The first that come to mind for me are The Scarlet Pimpernel and Whose Body.

I also love Jane Eyre--I knew that story since before I can remember.

As I kid I read Heidi over and over again, and Black Beauty. The copies I had of those books as a kid were already old, I'm grateful that my mom didn't mind them getting a little more wear and tear rather than trying to preserve them. Books should be read!

Another fun, odd, and less well-known one is Once On A Time by A. A. Milne.

All of these have fun recordings at librivox.org, if anyone is curious.

[elvenjaneite.livejournal.com]

Austen, naturally, and Elizabeth Gaskell. I also love Jane Eyre. I grew up on Stevenson and Howard Pyle. Plus Dumas, and Orczy. For a few years I was very enamored of Gene Stratton-Porter, but I have a suspicion that some of her opinions and attitudes would not be okay with me now.

[rosaleeluann.livejournal.com]

I love Pyle's illustrations, but haven't read any of his books. Which of his would you recommend?

[elvenjaneite.livejournal.com]

I always liked Pepper & Salt, which is a collection of fairy tales. Or his Robin Hood, which is the one I grew up on and therefore the Correct Version.

[agentmaly.livejournal.com]

Robin Hood is so hard! Robin Hood and Arthur. You go from version to version and people have different names, and do different things, and you just want to choose one but it's hard to know which one and I have ideas about Robin Hood which I'm sure I got from some version I read in late childhood but I don't know which it was. So instead I'm left to go, 'No wait! It's Will Stutely who's supposed to be almost hanged, not Will Scarlet!' and be dissatisfied.

[brandy-painter.livejournal.com]

The Count of Monte Cristo, anything by Austen, The Scarlet Pimpernel, A Tale of Two Cities

[beth-shulman.livejournal.com]

Except for the "anything by Austen" bit - all of this.

[(Anonymous)]

Dumas! (drool...)

[elvenjaneite.livejournal.com]

OH YES. And I rewrote the end of Rupert of Hentzau because I was NOT OKAY with how Hope did it. Good times, good times. :)

[aged-crone.livejournal.com]

Feel free to skip The Heart of Princess Osra. Meh.

[checkers65477.livejournal.com]

Sherlock Holmes for me, and there are now some Agatha Christie books available, too.

[filkferengi]

Jane Eyre came first, but also Juliana Horatia Ewing, Caroline Dale Snedeker, and Frances Hodgson Burnett, especially _A Little Princess_ & _Secret Garden_. _The Lost Prince_ came later.

[aged-crone.livejournal.com]

Wuthering Heights. (Pause while I go stride about the moors for a while).
Little Women, Little Men, Jo's Boys, Eight Cousins, Rose in Bloom, An Old-Fashioned GIrl - all Louisa May Alcott.
Those enjoyable old girls' college stories, like the Betty Wales books.
Daddy-Long-Legs, and also Just Patty and When Patty Went to College, by Jean Webster. (But her sort-of sequel to Daddy-Long-Legs, Dear Enemy, gives me the cold creeps with its advocacy of eugenics).
Mark Twain
Jane Austen, especially P&P and Persuasion
The Scarlet Pimpernel series
the Anne of Green Gables books
the Five Little Peppers books (and in Five Little Peppers Grown up is what has to be the least romantic proposal in all literature...)
Ivanhoe, and The Talisman, by Sir Walter Scott
Pollyanna and Pollyanna Grows Up
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Further Chronicles of Rebecca

I'm sure there are more, but I'm drawing a temorary blank.

[booksrgood4u.livejournal.com]

Seconding the following:

Little Men and Jo's Boys - Little Women get's all the press, and those other two, which are awesome, get left in the dust.

The Scarlet Pimpernel - Sir Percy and Gen should be friends!

Ivanhoe - "He trusts me not!"


Also adding in here "The Importance of Being Earnest"