Vainglory - Softcover

Firbank, Ronald

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0987367889 ISBN 13: 9780987367884

Publisher: Michael Walmer, 2013

Synopsis

They were in the dogs' cemetery. Lady Castleyard tapped a little crooked cross. "One fears," she said, "that Georgia must have poisoned them all for the sake of their epitaphs." Welcome to one of the most distinctive styles in English literature. Ronald Firbank was an acute observer; his famous way of taking down extraordinary snatches of conversation, or pithy single sayings, on slips of paper, and then including them in his novels when an opportunity arose, anticipated modern experimental cut-up techniques by half a century. His was also a rare wit: Lady Barrow lolled languidly in her mouse-eaten library, a volume of mediaeval Tortures (with plates) propped up against her knee. In fancy, her husband was well pinned down and imploring for mercy at Figure 3. How eagerly, now, he proffered her the moon! How he decked her out with the stars! How he overdressed her! Coldly she considered his case. "Release you? Certainly not! Why should I?" she murmured comfortably, transferring him to the acuter pangs of 9. In this amazing first novel, published in 1915, well-connected Mrs Shamefoot is searching for some sort of immortality, and has decided that she requires a dedicatory stained-glass window to be designed and built into a cathedral of which she approves. Engendering consternation all around at her daring, one-eyed pursuit of her aim, and casting wide her net, she finally settles on the church in Ashringford, and events conspire with her: in a storm, some scissors are left on the scaffolding around it, the lightning catches them, and a great part of the wall comes crashing down. She does not miss the opportunity. With a huge cast of astonishingly overdrawn characters, utterings and situations, Firbank comedically depicts a social world made largely of women and their talk: ladies both voluble and shy; daughters both wild and domesticated; spinsters and widows with obsessions, or the cutting tongues made to spike them; servants whose opinions are as strong as their mistresses'. These all swirl around Mrs Shamefoot, approving, disapproving, commenting on each other and her in a turmoil of zesty snippets. The results are like nothing else. Ronald Firbank was born in London in 1886, the son of a wealthy MP and landowner. He attended Trinity Hall in Cambridge but left without completing his degree. His first book, containing two stories, was published in 1905, after which he published eight full-length novels, and more stories and plays. Ill with lung disease for most of his life, he died in Rome in 1926, at the age of 40.

About this title

Review:

Ronald Firbank is one of the funniest writers in English and Richard Canning's introduction makes him entirely accessible for a new generation of readers (Edmund White)

Elusive, rich, and now and again comically improper (Guardian)

Deliciously influential (Philip Womack Telegraph)

These three early novels should be welcomed with a bacchanal of the sort that you might find within their pages. Published between 1915 and 1917, they display a brittle, beautiful sensibility [...] Without Ronald Firbank we would not have Aldous Huxley, Evelyn Waugh or Henry Green. His ultimate descendant is William Burroughs [...] This reissue is a reminder of what can be done with words, and may it reach a whole new generation of readers. Time to break open the champagne. (Observer)

As Richard Canning notes in his introduction to this authoritative new edition, Ronald Firbank is our great unsung modernist...These novels reveal subtler and more surprising pleasures with each reading. Yes, there is frivolity here, but there is also heartbreak and an almost ruthless refusal to prettify the rawest and most elemental aspects of human experience (David Leavitt)

A person who dislikes [Firbank's novels] may, for all I know, possess some admirable quality but I do not wish ever to see him again (W H Auden)

About the Author:

Ronald Firbank (1886-1926) was born in London to wealthy parents. In 1906 he went to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, but left after two years. He travelled a good deal, though lived mainly in London, habitué of the Cafe Royal. Firbank was well-known for his extreme and deliberate aestheticism, his sinuous, loosely-jointed figure, and his morbid nervousness, which issued in hysterical laughter and an elaborately capricious manner. His other notable works include Valmouth, The Princess Zabaroff, The Flower Beneath the Foot, Sorrow in Sunlight and Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli.

About this edition

• Publisher: Michael Walmer
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0987367889
• ISBN 13: 9780987367884
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 206