The Loving Spirit (Virago Modern Classics)

Product Information

Pues me ha gustado mucho quizá porque no iba con las expectativas muy altas por ser la primera novela de la autora. It feels almost ironic that The Loving Spirit is indeed set on the coasts of Cornwall, as that is also a place that I love to spend time at. It has been a few years, but this book has given me the reminder and incentive to return. The Loving Spirit è il suo primo romanzo (1931), storia di una famiglia di piccoli armatori della Cornovaglia, tra i picchi e le scogliere dell'immaginaria Plyn, le cui vicende abbracciano dal 1830 al 1930 l'arco di quattro generazioni. Westland E. The passionate periphery: Cornwall and romantic fiction. In: Bell IA, editor. Peripheral visions: images of nationhood in contemporary British fiction. Cardiff: University of Wales Press; 1995. p. 153–72. There is a great quality of courage here; the tale is cast in a large mold. With a feeling of personal exile, the reader is dragged into London for a time, but the main events happen in Cornwall, on the coast, where the English Channel starts at one end of its stormy passage between the Atlantic and the North Sea. They could not be placed more suitably.

On 1st April 1967, youngHelen wrote to Daphne, asking about how she had come to document her family's history into the novel The Loving Spirit. She received a wonderfully full letter in reply. Daphne explained how the characters in The Loving Spirit related to the real people in the Slade family and the reasons for the fictional choices that she made in the novel. She referred to the novel's character Katherine, who was really Helen's grandmother Dora. She also told Helen that her dear grandfather Harry had taught Daphne how to row and fish and that he had been the du Maurier family's boatman for many years. I loved all of the characters, and I enjoyed how the book travels through the generations of the Coombe family. In fact, when it was time to move on, I felt quite torn about it, because I was enjoying time with those particular characters. McDowell L. Gender, identity, place: understanding feminist geographies. Cambridge: Polity Press; 1999. As for the story, I can honestly say, Janet Coombe is one of my favourite fictional characters, mainly because she reminds me of myself, if course. She is obstinate, determined, and likeable but most of all, she wanted to break the barrier of what was expected of a woman. She was a unbreakable force, that had a solid influence on the generations of family that continued on after her departing. She grew up as a wild, and free spirit, but ended up conforming with society's expectations by marrying her cousin. She loved her family (that was obvious) and but she felt like the sea was calling her all of her life, and because that wildness within her never faltered, she felt like she needed to satisfy that calling. Having made the necessary cuts to The Loving Spirit, Daphne moved on to writing her second novel; I'll Never Be Young Again. At home in Hampstead, Daphne travelled into London each day to work on her second book. Her Aunt Billy, Muriel's sister and Gerald's secretary, loaned Daphne a room, in her offices in Orange Street, off Leicester Square.Rodgers S. ‘Feminine Power at Sea’. Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. R Anthropol Inst News. 1984;64:1–4. Es verdad que no es tan emocionante como "Rebeca" o "Jamaica Inn" pero en ella se ven ya muchas de las características que van a ser cruciales en la prosa de la autora como es el caso de las magníficas ambientaciones de las que nunca me canso. Parece que te transportan totalmente a la época y el lugar en cuestión.

Dunant S. Jamaica Inn. In: Taylor H, editor. The Daphne du Maurier companion. London: Virago; 2007. p. 151–5. Of these children, Samuel and Mary, the two oldest, and Herbert, the fourth, were hard-working, estimable souls, just like their father. Joseph, the third child, was twin spirit with his mother. Philip, the fifth child, was a stranger in the family. Elizabeth, the sixth, was a happy blend of both parents. Plyn doesn’t exist, but Ferryside does. Where Daphne spent her summer holidays. A place that inspired her to pen down her first novel. The loving spirit. From the very start, her love for the Cornish countryside is so apparent. Wide open spaces, the sprawling blue skies overhead, the tiny swaying sails in the distance: I could almost feel the grass bend and the stalks break under my bare feet. Such is the elegance and dexterity of her prose. And even though her voice here isn’t as refined as in her later novels, especially Rebecca, it is strong with a whiff of the greatness it will ultimately mould into. I haven't even talked about the social context and how the Coombe family tried to fit in the change occurring in Great Britain at that time, but it was so well-done. As it's a family saga, we got to follow the family's company through generations and it definitely showed how everything changed at the turn of the 20th century and after World War One. Horner A, Zlosnik S. Glimpses of the dark side. In: Taylor H, editor. The Daphne du Maurier companion. London: Virago; 2007. p. 242–8.

Contents

At home at Cannon Hall, in Hampstead, the du Maurier's decided that they should use the windfall from The Ringer to buy the house in the country that they had talked of. Muriel decided to take her three daughters on a trip to Cornwall to search for a second home. Daphne, having returned from Britany, was planning to carry on with her writing, but somewhat reluctantly, she agreed to join her Mother and sisters on the trip to Cornwall,and they set off in September. Strong's 3588: The, the definite article. Including the feminine he, and the neuter to in all their inflections; the definite article; the. Daphne du Maurier was obsessed with the past. She intensively researched the lives of Francis and Anthony Bacon, the history of Cornwall, the Regency period, and nineteenth-century France and England. Above all, however, she was obsessed with her own family history, which she chronicled in Gerald: A Portrait, a biography of her father; The du Mauriers, a study of her family which focused on her grandfather, George du Maurier, the novelist and illustrator for Punch; The Glassblowers, a novel based upon the lives of her du Maurier ancestors; and Growing Pains, an autobiography that ignores nearly 50 years of her life in favour of the joyful and more romantic period of her youth. Daphne du Maurier can best be understood in terms of her remarkable and paradoxical family, the ghosts which haunted her life and fiction.

This single chain of events altered all the du Maurier girls' lives forever and affected Daphne in particular. She had never been comfortable with the crowded, social life of London and Hampstead, so this house was about to change everything. Wieder einmal eine solide Leistung von Frau Maurier. Eine opulente und großartige Familiengeschichte über vier Generationen und mehr als hundert Jahre. Sie beschreibt, wie sich eine narzisstische Kränkung eines Buben, der dann als Erwachsener richtig fies und bösartig wird, sogar noch auf die Ur-Enkel auswirkt.

A 1931 review of The Loving Spirit by Daphne du Maurier

The Loving Spirit was the first novel of Daphne du Maurier and was published in 1931 by William Heinemann. The book takes its name from a line in the poem "Self-Interrogation" by Emily Brontë. In this article, written to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the publication of The Loving Spirit, we take a look at the du Maurier family in the late 1920s and how the advent of Ferryside, as the du Maurier's holiday home, gradually altered the dynamics of Daphne's life. We tell you how the Slade family and their boatyard's real story came to be written into Daphne du Maurier's first novel and what Daphne's life was like at the time she was writing it. Even as a novice writer Daphne was able to conjure up the atmosphere of life in the boat building harbour of Fowey. She described the sights and sounds, the smells and the weather, so much of which still the same today, giving the book a timelessness that means it never becomes dated and always offers more each time we read it. The way in which this book centres around the homely comfort of the countryside, and then there is the unknown, which is the sea, is wonderful. I believe this book is about taking that risk, and getting out of that rut. Westland E. Reading Daphne: a guide to the writing of Daphne du Maurier for readers and book groups. Truro: Truran; 2007a. Payton P. Paralysis and revival: the reconstruction of Celtic–Catholic Cornwall 1890–1945. In: Westland E, editor. Cornwall: the cultural construction of place. Penzance: Patten; 1997. p. 25–39.