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Claire Jarvis's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Claire Jarvis recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Claire Jarvis's favorite book recommendations of all time.

1

My Secret Life

An Erotic Diary of Victorian London

'My Secret Life' is perhaps the most infamous of all underground Victorian erotica. It is the sexual memoir of a well-to-do gentleman who began at an early age to keep a diary of his erotic behavior. He continues this record for over 40 years, creating in the process a unique social & psychological document.

Authorship of the book is mysterious. Henry Spencer Ashbee, a book collector, writer & bibliographer notable for his particular focus on sexuality is suspected by some to be "Walter". He is very likely the compiler of the book's index, the provider of some editorial...
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Recommended by Claire Jarvis, and 1 others.

Claire JarvisAn amazing document. It hovers between fictionality and memoir. (Source)

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2

Poems and Ballads Atalanta in Calydon

This volume brings together Swinburne's major poetic works, ATALANTA IN CALYDON (1865) and POEMS AND BALLADS (1866). ATALANTA IN CALYDON is a drama in classical Greek form, which revealed Swinburne's metrical skills and brought him celebrity. POEMS AND BALLADS brought him notoriety and demonstrates his preoccupation with de Sade, masochism, and femmes fatales. Also reproduced here is 'Notes on Poems and Reviews', a pamphlet Swinburne published in 1866 in response to hostile reviews of POEMS AND BALLADS. less
Recommended by Claire Jarvis, and 1 others.

Claire JarvisYou can see the blend of contagion and desire that is so central to Baudelaire in Swinburne very early in the nineteenth century. (Source)

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3

Aurora Floyd

With Lady Audley's Secret, Mary Elizabeth Braddon had established herself, alongside Wilkie Collins and Mrs Henry Wood, as one of the ruling triumvirate of sensation novelists'. Aurora Floyd (1862-3), following hot on its heels, achieved almost equal popularity and notoriety.
Like Lady Audley, Aurora is a beautiful young woman bigamously married and threatened with exposure by a blackmailer. But in Aurora Floyd, and in many of the novels written in imitation of it, bigamy is little more than a euphemism, a device to enable the heroine, and vicariously the reader, to enjoy the forbidden...
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Recommended by Claire Jarvis, and 1 others.

Claire JarvisThe horsewhipping scene in this book skates the line between rage and erotic rage. It’s done really well, so as to signal eroticism without it being explicit. (Source)

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4

Wuthering Heights

You can find the redesigned cover of this edition HERE.

This best-selling Norton Critical Edition is based on the 1847 first edition of the novel. For the Fourth Edition, the editor has collated the 1847 text with several modern editions and has corrected a number of variants, including accidentals. The text is accompanied by entirely new explanatory annotations.

New to the fourth Edition are twelve of Emily Bronte's letters regarding the publication of the 1847 edition of...
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John SutherlandThe Brontës had this idea of a Samson figure. Rochester, like Samson, has to be mutilated before he can be domesticated. What is interesting about Heathcliff, in Wuthering Heights, is that he isn’t. He remains this superman. He is greater than a human being. He is named after two elemental things, the heath and the cliff. We never know what his first name is. (Source)

Robert McCrumCathy—and all of Emily Brontë’s characters—are more or less feral. That’s why we love them. It’s a different world, it’s a mad world. In some ways, Emily Brontë is more of a poet. But she has inspired many subsequent writers of fiction. You couldn’t imagine Lawrence without her, for example. You couldn’t imagine some of Hardy. (Source)

Riz KhanAgain it’s about love turning into obsessions and being all-consuming and how even future generations are manipulated by this love. (Source)

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5

Dracula

“Welcome to my house. Come freely. Go safely; and leave something of the happiness you bring.” less

Becky Cloonan@Noise_Raptor Oh, thank you so much! This book was such a delight, and such a challenge! Dracula is one of my favorites- funny enough I'd jump at the chance to do this again XD (Source)

Douglas StarrWhen you read the physical description of Count Dracula, he does not resemble the handsome vampires we see on television; rather, he looks like a thug. He has one continuous eyebrow across his forehead, thick hands, pointy teeth and pointy ears. (Source)

Andrei CodrescuVampirism is a growth industry. Dracula is bigger than Jesus now. (Source)

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