I really, really wanted Jane Eyre to be eaten by wolves.

I got a copy of Spycatcher from abroad when it was banned.

I also have some back alley press editions of Trotsky and Lenin that I found in a box at a car boot sale, along with something called the KGB training manual. Weird.

Crime and Punishment

A superbly written book, which is exactly the problem. The awfulness is what happens to the victims - their murder. I found it so upsetting, because it was described so well.

I will finish it one day. But not yet. I was recently bereaved and can’t take it at the moment.

I find the imposition of another person’s moral system to be very annoying in classic literature. For instance, many older book copies remove spicier language used in earlier times. So many copies of Pepys remove the word turds from the description of his neighbours sewage overflowing into his cellar. You can’t take the turds out of the seventeenth century without losing a great deal of the atmosphere! Likewise the syphilitic whores and the mercury treatments to cure it which are part of any good Boswell journal.

To some extent, it’s the editors and publishers not the authors who impose moral standards.

They’re scared of public condemnation. Free speech in literature should be enshrined in law. After all, people don’t have to read it. Personally, I dislike anything bigoted and that abuses religious, sexual or gender groups. But I fully support your right to read about Pepys shite or Boswell’s whores.

I’m happy with cheap reading copies. I was brought up browsing through second hand stores and I have some reading copies that may well be Victorian, like Thackeray and Dickens.

I do collect certain books and I came across an early copy of Robert Burns that had been signed by a previous owner- who was my 3 great’s grandfather! I paid a couple of hundred pounds for it!

I ordered a book from an Amazon reseller - quite a large company - at a very cheap price, and the front cover was cut in half with a part missing. Perfect condition otherwise.

Now I could have sent it back, but it only cost £1 plus postage, so being the resourceful ex-teacher/crafty person that I am, I re-covered it in high quality card.

I now have a good reading copy of Plato

The pillow book of Sei Shonagon

Little Women

Several.

Great Expectations- I like most Dickens, so I would probably have liked this, but for school.

The mill on the Floss - George Eliot-something about being forced to read this spoiled it for me. The teacher took a weird approach of just reading the first ten chapters or do, then the last chapter. I’m guessing she was skipping over religion or sex, it being a convent school.

All poetry whatsoever. I completely and utterly hate poetry because if school, except for Japanese haiku, which we never read. Special hate points for the Lady of Shallot, The albatross and the war poets.

Tristram Shandy

Can you do a lunchtime half hour library session once a week, with the oldest children getting trained up as assistant librarians. Get the administration and the children used to using the library.

Also can’t you use the space for other lessons, given that it’s an empty room. Not necessarily literature.

Baby steps. It took me three years as a teacher governor to get the governing body to allow female staff to wear trousers. 2003, not 1950!

Persephone books has been publishing lots of early twentieth century popular books by female authors. I thoroughly recommend their website, just for the interesting information on these books. Authors like EM Delafield, Noel Streatfield, Dorothy Whipple, and my personal favourite, Monica Dickens

https://persephonebooks.co.uk/pages/book-list