The Book Lover's Almanac: December highlights
"In cold December fragrant chaplets blow, And heavy harvests nod beneath the snow." The Dunciad (1728) by Alexander Pope
Next week, for the last newsletter of 2023 I’ll again post details of what I’ve read over the last 12 months and which were my favourites (it’s going to be a slightly different format from normal - nailbiting stuff, eh?). But this week I thought I’d treat you to 10 of the top entries from the December section of my new The Book Lover’s Almanac which, of course, makes the ideal gift this Christmas for everybody. Unless they hate books. Don’t buy it for anybody who hates books. Unless maybe you think it might encourage them to read more books. Then buy it.
Anyway, here are my super soaraway suggestions, starting as all the best lists do with number 2:
December 2
1802: 26-year-old Jane Austen accepts a proposal of marriage from 21-year-old Harris Bigg-Wither, the younger brother of her friends Alethea and Catherine. She changes her mind overnight and retracts her decision the next morning. No details emerge about Austen’s thoughts on either of her choices, although her niece Caroline goes on to write: “Mr Wither was very plain in person — awkward, and even uncouth in manner — nothing but his size to recommend him.”
December 8
1956: TS Eliot meets Igor Stravinsky for tea at the Savoy Hotel, London. After a slow start - Eliot has been expecting somebody taller, Stravinsky finds him intellectually intimidating - they bond over a shared love of the music of Richard Wagner and dance. Two years later to the day, they meet up for dinner again and Eliot admits he cannot recite his poems off by heart since he keeps rewriting them.
December 10
2013: Many years after Nelson Mandela first recites it to fellow inmates during his incarceration on Robben Island, US President Barack Obama recites the final stanza of Invictus (1888) by William Henley at the statesman’s South Africa memorial service. Prince Harry also uses phrases from it for chapter headings in his 2023 memoir Spare.
December 11
1992: Journalist Terence Blacker comes up with the term ‘Aga saga’ in a column for Publishing News, applying it in particular to the middle-class world of the novels by Joanna Trollope.
December 14
1922: Virginia Woolf meets Vita Sackville-West at a dinner party hosted by Woolf’s brother-in-law Clive Bell. First impression: “She is a grenadier; hard; handsome; manly; inclined to double chin.”
December 15
2001: Alan Bennett makes a list in his diary of words only used at Christmas time, including tidings, abiding, swaddling, lo!, and abhors. Additionally, he notes that carols are full of titles for poor novels.
December 21
1872: After some confusion over dates, Phileas Fogg returns to the Reform Club in London having been Around the World in 80 Days. Jules Verne’s travel tale is first serialised in the Paris newspaper Le Temps, timed to coincide with the return of Fogg after his adventures.
December 24
1956: Writer Michael Bond is looking for Christmas stocking filler presents for his wife in Selfridges on London’s Oxford Street. He spots the last teddy bear on a shelf and, feeling sorry for it, buys it on impulse. He calls him Paddington after his local railway station…
December 25
1878: Louisa May Alcott replies to a Miss Churchill who has written to her asking for advice about becoming a writer. “There is no easy road to successful authorship; it has to be earned by long & patient labor, many disappointments, uncertainties & trials. Success is often a lucky accident, coming to those who may not deserve it, while others who do have to wait & hope till they have earned it. This is the best sort & the most enduring.” With commendable honesty, she adds that, “though I do not enjoy writing “moral tales” for the young, I do it because it pays well.”
December 26
1959: A busy Boxing Day for Sylvia Plath who makes fish soup, meatloaf, oatmeal cookies, apple cakes, and bread stuffing.