Spooky Isles: Mary Shelley and the Birth of Frankenstein, Part 5

Originally published on Spooky Isles, June 29th 2012, as the final instalment of a five-part series; available here.

By the time of her death, Mary Shelley was the respected author of seven novels, at least twenty-three short stories, and even some children’s literature. She was also an accomplished biographer, poet and editor of the works of her husband Percy, whose status as one of the major poets of the Romantic period was largely assured by her efforts. Despite the significance of works such as The Last Man (1826), however, her full importance as a writer is only just beginning to be understood: it’s interesting that, when her later work was more critically acclaimed at the time, it has mostly been forgotten, while Frankenstein’s reputation continues to grow.

It’s one of the most accomplished Gothic novels of the period, borrowing heavily from the conventions pioneered by her father among others, but at the same time its voice is unique. Mary’s own chequered personal life provides themes and preoccupations which are not articulated as strongly by anybody else – her insight into the traumas of childbirth and parenthood, as well as her own struggle to live up to the reputations of her famous parents, shine through in Victor Frankenstein’s struggles to create a human being and then to make a man. The suggestion that the two are not the same is one of the keynotes of the novel.

Science fiction as a genre in English largely owes its existence to Frankenstein, which is probably the earliest and one of the most influential examples. Even modern writers acknowledge its influence; elements of Shelley’s work have been in detected in the shocking twist of Iain Banks’ The Wasp Factory and Stephen King’s It. Perhaps most interesting is that fact that science itself has been influenced by Mary’s thinking: the technology she envisioned became an inspiration for real innovations.

There are as many reasons for the novel’s perpetual success as there are readers, but the truth is that everyone who comes to Mary’s masterpiece now brings with them certain expectations. The image of Frankenstein’s Monster is burned into our cultural memory thanks to nearly two hundred years of adaptation for stage and screen and even modern music: think of Metallica’s ‘Some Kind of Monster’ or Alice Cooper’s ‘Feed My Frankenstein’. The name has entered everyday use, and we all have our own idea of what it means.

In fact, it’s often surprising to encounter the novel for the first time and notice how it differs from the image we’ve inherited. The ‘monster’ isn’t green. There are no bolts through his neck. There are no hysterical screams of “It’s alive!” and, most importantly, Frankenstein is the name of the scientist and not his creation. Still, that the creature and his maker are identified with each other would have pleased Mary: it supports her argument that corrupt political systems make victims of the empowered and disempowered alike.

It’s the politics that are often overlooked by Shelley readers, mostly thanks to the Victorian habit of domesticating women’s writing and relegating Mary’s work to the status of ‘romance’. In many ways, though, the political element is what holds the rest together: questions of responsibility, control and the abuse of power remain at Frankenstein’s core. Over the intervening years, it has continued to strike a chord in the wake of scientific as well as political progress – whether it’s the governing class or the scientist in the laboratory, in the end, Frankenstein explores the consequences of men playing God with the lives of others, and that theme never dies.

Spooky Isles: Mary Shelley and the Birth of Frankenstein, Part 4

Originally published on Spooky Isles, June 22nd 2012, available here.

When Mary Shelley published her debut novel in 1818, nobody knew it was hers. The first edition was published anonymously, leaving reviewers free to speculate; though no attempts seem to have been made to name an author, some reviews came close.

“It is formed on the Godwinian manner, and has all the faults, but many likewise of the beauties of that model.” (The Edinburgh Magazine)

“It is piously dedicated to William Godwin, and written in the spirit of his school.” (The Quarterly Review)

Comparisons of Mary’s novel with those of her father William Godwin are clearly warranted, although another school of thought suggested that it could be Percy Shelley’s work.  The use of Godwin’s tropes and themes was less important, however, than the revolutionary politics he shared with his daughter, and the potential threat they posed was keenly felt by more conservative voices.

 This was an even greater concern given that the book became commercially successful very quickly: it was translated into French as early as 1821 and popularised through a range of melodramatic dramatic adaptations from the likes of Richard Brinsley Peake. Anxiety about the dangerous influence of the novel on the young and vulnerable, especially in light of its apparent moral ambivalence, is tangible in nearly every surviving review from this period.

Nonetheless, the reviews do generally tend to acknowledge the author’s considerable “original genius and happy power of expression” (Sir Walter Scott), suggesting grudging respect for an aesthetic talent coupled with disquietingly radical attitudes. In fact, the initial reception of Frankenstein was mixed, ranging from outrage and disgust to fascination and qualified praise.

Once the author’s name was released, however, the tone of her critics quickly shifted. Her colourful private life may have been enough of a deterrent to certain groups in society, but above all, readers were driven by the view of politics as a man’s subject. Though Mary was tellingly often credited with a “masculine mind”, commentators treated Frankenstein (as they would her later novels) as a ‘romance’ if, indeed, they heeded it at all:

“The writer of it is, we understand, a female; this is an aggravation of that which is the prevailing fault of the novel; but if our authoress can forget the gentleness of her sex, it is no reason why we should; and we shall therefore dismiss the novel without further comment." (The British Critic)

A great number of critics followed suit. Despite the success of the small print run of the 1823 edition, the bestseller was ignored by many intellectuals for years. Even the 1831 edition, which had undergone several revisions and finally gained a mass audience, did little to cure this, and the lack of new editions in the following five decades meant that Frankenstein was studied relatively little and valued less. Like so many groundbreaking artists, Mary saw her work met by critics unequipped to judge it.

Around the same time, Mary’s life was becoming even more difficult. Relations with her husband had always fluctuated wildly, but she was left devastated when she suffered another miscarriage in 1822 and, weeks later, Percy drowned off the coast of Italy just before his thirtieth birthday. After a year with friends in Genoa, she returned to England and devoted her life to her surviving son, Percy Florence, and a career as a professional author. Much of her life was spent in terse discussions with Percy’s father, Sir Timothy, over the allowance he granted her for his grandson’s upkeep; continuing to write novels and short stories; and in editing and promoting her husband’s poems, assuring the literary appreciation he had largely been denied in life. She never remarried. By the time she died of a suspected brain tumour in 1851 she was a respected author, but predominantly for her later work.

Frankenstein was, however, as alive as its central Creature. Stage adaptations continued, and the characters remained in the public consciousness though the novel was out of circulation. Perhaps this is why its resurgence was so strong: only in the 1880s, when it had come out of its original copyright conditions and the benefits of mass literacy were beginning to appear, that Frankenstein found a truly huge readership. The first reprint sold more than all the previous editions combined, and from that point it grew into the global phenomenon that has had such impact on the modern world.

Spooky Isles: Mary Shelley and the Birth of Frankenstein, Part 3

Originally published on Spooky Isles, June 15th 2012, available here.

Of the coterie that spent the summer of 1816 at Lake Geneva, Claire Clairmont must be by far the least renowned. Among the few who know her name, she is Mary Shelley’s step-sister, a friend of Percy Shelley and one of many lovers of George Gordon, Lord Byron. It was thanks to her, however, that the group came together at all. Her brief affair with Byron that spring had clearly exacerbated her infatuation – introducing her step-sister to the poet enabled her to arrange for Mary, Percy and herself to stay in a house near the grand villa the poet had leased.

For Mary, who was increasingly known as Mary Shelley although the couple were not yet married, this was one of many complications in her life. Travelling for the sake of Percy’s poor health with an infant child would have been stressful enough without the controversy that followed them at home and abroad. Although we don’t know exactly when that summer Claire learned she was pregnant with Byron’s child, nor indeed when Byron tired of her and the affair ended, it’s almost too tempting to suggest that this was another trauma of procreation on the list that inspired Mary’s unique representation of a monstrous birth.

The group found themselves together on the dark, stormy night of June 16^th, the atmosphere perfect for a ghost story, when a plot was hatched: instead of telling other people’s stories, they would write their own. Percy struggled to find inspiration and quickly gave up. Even Byron, who was incredibly prolific all summer, began a vampire novel and abandoned it. The successful writers were, ironically, the ones who were not yet known. Byron’s physician Dr. Polidori took up the poet’s ideas and developed them into The Vampyre, the short story that catalysed the subgenre eighty years before Bram Stoker put pen to paper for Dracula. Mary, meanwhile, struggled with her assignment, but refused to give up so lightly. According to her introduction to the 1831 edition of her novel, several days passed until, after a long night talking of contemporary experiments in galvanism (reanimating dead flesh using electrical currents), she had a peculiar waking dream:

“I saw—with shut eyes, but acute mental vision, —I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world. His success would terrify the artist; he would rush away from his odious handywork, horror-stricken.”

She thought she had the beginnings of a short story. Over the next year, with Percy’s encouragement and collaboration, including his frequent alterations and suggestions on the manuscript, it became a full length novel, drawing on the traumas that marked their early relationship. The first four chapters were written after Mary’s half-sister Fanny Imlay committed suicide, depressed after Mary and Claire’s departure and having learned of her illegitimacy. In November, Percy’s heavily pregnant wife Harriet also killed herself, breeding lasting guilt for both himself and Mary; when the lovers finally married just a few weeks later, it was in part to help Percy’s suit for custody of his two children by Harriet. By the time Frankenstein was finished in May 1817, it was built on over a year of painful childbirths and childrearing that shine through in the relationship between creator and creation.

When eventually published in January 1818, with a preface by Percy and dedication to her father William Godwin, Frankenstein didn’t even bear Mary’s name – it was anonymous until the second edition was released in 1822 – but her masterpiece was given to a world that had no idea just how important it would be.

Spooky Isles: Mary Shelley and the Birth of Frankenstein, Part 2

Originally published on Spooky Isles, June 8th 2012, available here.

11 November 1812 proved a milestone in Mary Godwin’s life. A brief return to her father and step-mother’s house from a stay with family friends in Dundee saw her introduction to the Shelleys. The lives of the couple had already been tempestuous. Percy, the son of a Whig MP who later inherited the title of Sir Timothy, had been educated at Eton and Oxford, until his authorship of the atheist tract The Necessity of Atheism resulted in his expulsion from University College in 1811. Relations with his father, already strained as a result, finally disintegrated later that year when Percy eloped with and married Harriet Westbrook, a sixteen-year-old school-friend of his sister who, as the daughter of a wealthy coffee-house owner, was his considerable social inferior. Sir Timothy cut off his son’s allowance, and financial problems plagued the couple as Percy continued to write and publish poetry as well as his politically revolutionary tracts. They moved around a lot, and even spent time in Ireland where Percy aided efforts repeal the Act of Union and ensure Catholic emancipation. After their return, the Shelleys finally met one of Percy’s idols with whom he had been corresponding for much of that year: William Godwin.

Godwin’s daughter was fifteen at the time, and it was to be two years before Mary’s acquaintance with the Shelleys was renewed. By that time, the couple’s first daughter, Eliza Ianthe, was nearly a year old, but a rift had grown between Percy and Harriet that was never to be healed, and a passionate relationship began to form between Shelley and the daughter of his mentor. In early summer 1814 the pair met frequently, often at the grave of Mary’s mother Mary Wollstonecraft, and in late July, accompanied by her half-sister Claire Clairmont, Mary and her twenty-two-year-old lover eloped.

This was to be the start of a hectic if brief life together, taking in extensive travel, literary creativity and, of course, financial instability. By the time they returned to England in September they were all but penniless and Mary was already pregnant – but Harriet was always a constant presence. She gave birth to Percy’s second child Charles in November 1814, and his letters to his wife demonstrate barely suppressed guilt for abandoning their family: when his grandfather died in 1815 and his immediate financial difficulties eased, he made arrangements to pay Harriet £200 a year for their maintenance. The relationship was viewed with universal disapproval, even from Godwin, despite his earlier philosophical arguments against the institution of marriage that probably influenced Percy. Mary’s sister Claire was also a source of tension, her close friendship with Percy causing considerable jealousy on Mary’s part even after Claire had an affair with Lord Byron. The couple’s first daughter died before her first birthday in early 1816, twelve days after the birth of their son, William. Though Mary does not seem to have begrudged Percy’s support of Harriet – after her eventual suicide Mary supported his efforts to gain custody of the children – their relationship was under constant strain, yet clearly kept intact by strong mutual affection.

By mid-1816, when ‘the Shelleys’ travelled to Lake Geneva to spend the summer with Byron, Mary found herself grieving for the death of one child while trying to raise another, in a relationship with another woman’s husband and facing public recrimination for her unconventional lifestyle – at the age of nineteen. Given her mother’s scandalous reputation, having cohabited and had a child with a man out of wedlock before meeting Godwin, Mary would have been even more keenly aware of the position in which she had put herself, and it is in this unique climate of loss, guilt and uncertainty that Frankenstein was born.

Spooky Isles: Mary Shelley and the Birth of Frankenstein, Part 1

Originally published as a five-part series in Spooky Isles, June 1st 2012, available here.

What comes to mind when you hear the name of Mary Shelley? There’s at least one obvious answer. The woman who gave the world Frankenstein and wife of poet Percy Bysshe Shelley is one of few women whose marriage to another writer has not overshadowed her own literary achievement. That’s hardly surprising – the 1816 classic is a major contribution to the Gothic genre and arguably the first science fiction novel in English literature. It’s also gripping, original and genuinely frightening. Still, it wasn’t shaped in a vacuum, and neither was its creator. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, as she was born, was surrounded by literary and political influences that can be traced throughout her remarkable career, and nowhere more clearly than Frankenstein.

By far the most significant influences were her parents. Mary’s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, died of puerperal fever eleven days after giving birth, but remained an important presence throughout her daughter’s childhood. The author of an array of treatises including A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and the novels Mary and the unfinished Maria; or, The Wrongs of Woman was renowned for her radical views and has since earned a place in the history of feminist thinkers. However, her unconventional lifestyle – including her illegitimate daughter from an earlier relationship – was placed in the spotlight when her husband, Mary’s father William Godwin, published a memoir of her which spoke candidly of her sexual history. The scandal which became attached to Wollstonecraft’s name persisted throughout Mary’s lifetime, but she was also keenly aware of her mother’s literary achievements: she was as much of a presence as her portrait staring down from the wall in Godwin’s study.

Godwin himself had achieved some success as a writer. The controversial treatise An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793) was followed by six major novels, the first of which was Things as They Are, or The Adventures of Caleb Williams (1794), but throughout Mary’s infancy and early childhood his fortunes declined. He had been known as one of the foremost thinkers of his circle of liberal reformists, and insisted on high intellectual standards for his children. As a result, Mary was multilingual, well read and steeped in mythological and religious traditions. Though his financial circumstances got worse and worse over the years and his fame faded somewhat, his circle remained large and as a result Mary came into contact with major figures including Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charles and Mary Lamb and, of course, Shelley. Mary grew up surrounded by philosophical and literary heavyweights whose views she took on board, not least the father she adored.

Looking at the work of Mary’s parents, common threads start to appear that are clear in her own work. Godwin’s Caleb Williams is a dramatic Gothic novel, discussing the abuse of power by tyrannical governments by focussing on a servant persecuted by his master when he discovers his dark secret. The Wrongs of Woman sees Wollstonecraft using Gothic tropes to represent the suppression of women in the tale of a wife locked in an asylum by her husband. It’s no surprise that both belonged to the radical intellectual movement which admired the French Revolution – freedom from the oppression of political institutions dominates their thought because that power is so often and so easily abused. One of the central themes of Frankenstein is the responsibility that comes with the acquisition of power; proof, as though it were needed, that Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was fully deserving of both her parents’ names.

The Bubble Literature: The Heart and Stomach of a Poet

Originally published in The Bubble Literature, February 1st 2012, available here.

Who is the greatest writer in the English language? The standard answers, I suppose, will all be flying around: Shakespeare, Chaucer, Dickens, Austen, maybe even Wilde or Joyce. It’s a common argument among book-lovers (though I must say, Mansfield Park would be massively improved by the addition of a dragon or two), and one which often produces less obvious answers too. Take, for example, George Puttenham; in his 1589 work The arte of English poesie, he sings the praises of “the Queen our sovereign Lady, whose learned, delicate, noble Muse, easily surmounteth all  the rest that hath written before her time or since” (his spelling is worse, but you get my drift).

Now obviously, Puttenham needs to keep his queen sweet, so there is an element of flattery here, but it seems he has a point: in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Elizabeth I was a highly respected literary figure. There are plenty of debates to be had about whether speeches or letters can be counted as literature, but as well as her prolific output in those areas she produced a substantial amount of poetry in a variety of languages, many of which circulated in manuscript form around her court.

If anything, the real surprise is how her literary output has been forgotten in the intervening 400 years, though there are reasons for this. As most people know, the reign of Henry VIII’s middle child was eventful, to say the least; exploration of the New World, the Spanish Armada, the imprisonment and execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, the succession crisis when she failed to marry and produce an heir, religious intolerance in England matched by religious war on the Continent, and the small matter of what many still consider to be a ‘golden age’ of the Arts in England. Given her pivotal role in one of the most fascinating eras of English history, it was to some extent inevitable that she would be predominantly studied in light of her political, social and religious roles.

Even for specialists in literature of the period, it’s difficult to study writing of this type: writers at the Elizabethan court would frequently share their verse in manuscript form around select circles of friends. Unfortunately, this meant that they often didn’t bother putting their names on the manuscripts, and since they copied down each other’s work with varying levels of accuracy, there can be several different versions of any given poem floating around at once. This means that, even if you do happen to work out who wrote a poem, it’s hard to be certain which version is the original, let alone whether the author might have changed it themselves later on – there’s rarely a single stable ‘text’ for a reader to refer to. Still, this is a problem faced when reading any of the Elizabethan court writers, but people are still reading Philip Sidney and Walter Ralegh, and since a Complete Works of Elizabeth is now on the market, it’s time this poetess got the recognition she deserves.

I wouldn’t go as far as to agree with Puttenham – she may not be the greatest writer in history – but she is surprisingly good. It’s interesting to think about how her poetry plays into the propaganda which circulated about her during her lifetime. Woodstock, where she had been imprisoned during her Catholic sister Mary’s reign, had become something of a Protestant tourist attraction after she had taken the throne; on the wall was etched ‘O Fortune, thou wresting, wavering state’, a poem written during herincarceration in which she justifies herself as an innocent victim who will be vindicated and restored to her rightful place at the head of the English people while her enemies are punished. In her later years, when the famous image of the Virgin Queen was becoming more established, she replied to poems directed at her by her courtiers in exchanges which overlaid the language of loyalty with that of love, using the common tropes of romance to reinforce bonds of service. These were the poems which were allowed to circulate freely so as to cast her in the best possible light.

That wasn’t the case with many other poems, though. In fact, there are some which scholars are fairly certain were suppressed during the Queen’s lifetime. By the late 1580s and 1590s, when it was obvious that Elizabeth would never marry¸ she was writing poems such as ‘Now leave, and let me rest’ and ‘When I was fair and young’, in which she admits her regret at not marrying sooner and dramatises her own melancholy. They’re heartbreaking, demonstrating the vulnerability of a queen who needed to be strong and unflinching in her later years as murmurs of rebellion began to grow; her enemies would have loved them.

It might be surprising that a powerful ruler like Elizabeth I managed to produce a body of poetry, especially given how much has probably been lost over four centuries, but it really is worth a look. It ranges in tone from quiet menace to bold assertions of dominance via the sadness of a lonely old woman who found herself a victim of her own position; it certainly proves that Good Queen Bess was more than just Queenie in Blackadder. In any case, it will help you decide whether she really did have the heart and stomach of a concrete elephant.

The Bubble Columns: Compare the Ghost Writers?

Originally published in The Bubble Columns, available here.

In the run up to Christmas last year I wrote an article for another publication about the avalanche (it was snowing at the time) of celebrity autobiographies filling the shelves of our bookshops. In it I argued that although it’s a genre of shameless profiteering and very little originality, the usually humorous and often inspirational stories of people like Dawn French and Jo Brand were popular because they left a smile on our faces. In a climate of economic gloom, depressing weather and endless Katie Price documentaries, I said, who doesn’t need a little cheering up?

Well, the best piece of news I’ve heard this week completely reinforced that belief. Tony Blair and the aforementioned talentless wonder Price may both have seen their new tomes in high demand, but one autobiography is expected to outsell them. It’s exceeded them so far on pre-sales orders alone by 165%. This autobiography, by one of the most well-known faces in the British media, is on track to be a bestseller. And he makes it look so… simples.

He’s Alexsandr Orlov, owner of long-running family business Compare the Meerkat.

A Simples Life: The Life and Times of Aleksandr Orlov looks set to be a contender for bestselling autobiography of the year, achieving more than double the pre-orders received by Amazon.co.uk for Cheryl Cole’s, Dannii Minogue’s or Russell Brand’s latest (ghost?) writings. The renowned entrepreneur has amazed everyone with his popularity, which has increased exponentially since his huge media campaign informing people looking to compare car insurance that his was not the site they were looking for.  Fiercely proud of his heritage, Aleksandr and his head of IT, Sergei, have documented the struggles of generations of Orlovs, including the dark times – including the devastating war against the mongooses – in their adverts and become national treasures in the process, despite their Russian background.

But the media frenzy doesn’t end with a bestselling book. For two days only, to coincide with the book launch, Orlov will be opening Comparethemeerkat.shop in London’s Regent Street, where devoted fans can see artifacts and portraits from the family home, although he himself cannot be there due to a speaking engagement at “Moscow’s Velvety Dress and Dinner Time Etiquette convention”.

Naturally, he is delighted with his success. Speaking to Sky News Online last week, Orlov claimed “My story of struggles, successes and Sergei is the greatest, most thrillsy book ever written by a meerkat in the bath. With this book, I am hope to inspire the next generation of young businesskats. And with royalties I am hope to re-marble roof on Orlov family mansion. Please enjoyment.”

…Okay, so it’s a cheesy and shameless marketing ploy, but it’s also brilliant. A fictional character, invented by an advertising company to sell a price comparison website, has become an industry. There are cuddly meerkats being sold in shops across the country. Most people can quote at least one line from at least one advert (“Quiet – it’s just a fur wound!”), and Comparethemeerkat.com itself must now surely be more popular than its counterpart. As marketing campaigns go, this is an object lesson in success – I’m half expecting Aleksandr to announce his intention to stand for Parliament at the next election, and I think he’d do pretty well (he couldn’t be any worse, could he?).

If any were needed, here’s proof of the power of mass media. What began as an entertaining gimmick has, through multi-platform marketing, entered all of our homes and above all, our minds, to the point where people will actually travel to the capital to see a fictional meerkat’s possessions and pay to read his life story. It’s worrying to think what that influence could do in the wrong hands: as old as culture itself is the argument that it shapes individuals, and through them, society, for better or worse. But society also determines the kind of cultural artefacts which are produced – in mass culture, only those things which will sell will be made. Advertising executives supplied a celebrity because it fitted the demand of our star-obsessed society, and now that we’re demanding more and more of Aleksandr, who can blame them for feeding it to us?

At least, though, this time they did it well. I can’t help but think that this humble meerkat from Meerkovo, near Moscow, has more interesting and useful things to say than the vast majority of today’s tabloid-fodder “stars” who have never had to take a second job comparing muskrats in Muscovite alleyways by night. Good on you, Mr Orlov. Now, who’s coming to London with me?

Palatinate Books: The Autobiographical Takeover

Originally published in a shorter form in Palatinate Books, December 2009

Ladies and gentlemen, the run-up to Christmas has officially begun. The shops have had the cards for weeks already, but you know that things are getting really serious when everyone who has ever appeared on TV suddenly has a fascinating, humorous and inspirational story to tell, at the cost of about £20 and several irretrievable hours of your life.

The past few years have seen a flood of celebrity autobiographies, and it seems that no-one is immune to the charms of a generous publishing deal, from Dawn French to Michael Parkinson via Paul O’Grady and Alan Carr. Even Andy Murray, a tennis player no older than most undergraduates last year, managed to sign a three-book contract for the various stages of his career despite having never won a major tournament, while footballers like Jamie Carragher apparently have ‘sensational stories’ that I need to read, whether I’ve actually heard of them or not. Talk about a saturated market.


Of course, if you’re not interested in the life story, you could just invest in the general ranting of your chosen celebrity- Jeremy Clarkson is on his fifth book of pet hates already with Driven to Distraction. Alternatively, there’s always Al Murray’s Pub Landlord’s Book of British Common Sense, or you could enjoy Charlie Brooker’s desert-dry wit in The Hell of It All, in which he proves that it is actually possible to hate everything in the modern world all at once. Whichever way you look, there’s a celebrity staring out from the cover of their latest tome.

The marketing behind these stocking-fillers is shamelessly simple- a book written by someone of whom a loved one is a fan is guaranteed to go down well on Christmas morning. My dad will be receiving Frankie Boyle’s gloriously titled My Shit Life So Far for this very reason. But this type of book is also popular all year round, because their appeal to the reader goes slightly deeper.


The function of celebrities as role models means that their stories- often full of the well rehearsed “bad boy/girl made good” motif- can be a source of inspiration and encouragement. Jo Brand’s new book, Look Back In Hunger, features her transformation from rebellious, runaway teenager to successful comedienne, via numerous failed relationships and ten years as a mental health nurse. Sharon Osbourne’s Extreme, is exactly that- her fluctuating weight, tempestuous family life and fight against cancer all described in vivid detail.


As well as this, the most popular books in the genre have a strong element of humour. The huge number of comedians writing recently (Boyle, Brand, Peter Kay) proves the appeal of amusing anecdotes and sharp one-liners in personal narratives, but there’s also Dara O’Briain writing about touring Britain in Tickling The English and Michael Palin’s diaries from the 1980s. Everyone likes a laugh at the best of times, but in our current climate of economic gloom, miserable weather and endless Katie Price documentaries, who doesn’t need cheering up?


This is really the genre’s chief defence. Yes, celebrity writing is very formulaic, and yes, it is a bandwagon to jump on at the first suggestion of money, but it also leaves a smile on your face. Sometimes I’d rather read about Ozzy Osbourne’s debauchery than force myself through another nineteenth-century paving slab in which a young woman almost doesn’t, but inevitably does, marry her perfect man.

One day, the tide of popular culture may move away from these books. I hope it’s in favour of such modern classics as Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. However, until Pride and Prejudice and Zombies gets the recognition it surely deserves: it is a truth universally acknowledged that a celebrity in possession of minor success must be in want of a ghost writer.

Palatinate Books: David Nicholls Resurrects the Campus Novel

Originally published in October 2009 in Palatinate Books

It’s the start of a new term, and whilst everyone either celebrates their reunion after a long summer break or tries to find their way around Elvet Riverside, it may be worth looking around. Listen to everyone swearing in vain that they’ll finish their essays on time this year. Anticipate Saturday night in Klute. Observe the stereotypes and politics- university is society in miniature, and that’s why it’s the perfect setting for a book which can deal with all of this and more. Cue the campus novel.

Beginning in America in the early 1950s, campus novels reached Britain with the release of such novels as Kingsley Amis’ Lucky Jim (1954), but the traditions in the two countries have always remained separate. Writers like Amis and David Lodge, author of Nice Work and Changing Places, brought us stories of bed-hopping and class war not amongst students, but the faculty. In America, although there have been many books written about academics (Philip Roth’s The Human Stain, for example), the genre has also produced plenty of books where students were at the centre.

Thematic differences grew over the years as well. Perhaps inevitably, class division became a major addition to the British genre during the 70s and 80s, when student grants began to allow people from more diverse backgrounds than ever before the opportunity of higher education.

Perhaps the key difference, however, is that whilst consistently popular in the States, in Britain the genre has experienced decline for many years. Some critics even suggest that its concern with class has been contributory, since authors were wary of being accused of elitism. The most recent addition to the canon, Zadie Smith’s On Beauty, is set in America, despite its author being a born and bred Londoner. Whatever the reasons, it has been evident in recent years that the British campus novel has been gradually disappearing.


Good job, then, that David Nicholls has revived the genre with his romantic comedy Starter for Ten. Set in 1985, it’s the first-person account of Brian Jackson, a working-class student from Southend-on-Sea who earns a place in a top university. He narrates his first year with endearing honesty as he tries desperately (and often embarrassingly) to woo the woman of his dreams, prove himself on the University Challenge team, honour the memory of his deceased father and somewhere along the line gain an education.

As you can probably guess, he finds university life a minefield. With the Thatcher government at its peak, the campus class war is being keenly felt: Brian repeatedly tries to justify himself to his upper-class flatmates, while some of the most bourgeois students invent working-class credentials to use as a political banner. Upon returning home, he has to deal with his mother’s new relationship and his growing distance from his old friends, while the anticipation builds to the climactic University Challenge match against a gloriously stereotypical Oxbridge team.

It isn’t just the politics of the time that the novel reflects - the soundtrack and fashion in every scene is described so clearly that even those of us who don’t remember it will be transported to 1985- yet none of this manages to get in the way of Brian’s coming-of-age story.

But it’s more than that, too. In a genre dominated by promiscuous lecturers and pompous professors, Starter for Ten is such a gem because it encapsulates all the elements of campus life, but reinstates them into the realm of students: indeed, it is an account of one fresher’s quest for love, friendship and advanced general knowledge which students everywhere will automatically recognise. As campus novels go, it’s one of the best.