IVY AND JANE
DARKNESS AND DAY, by I. Compton Burnett; Victor Gollancz. English price 10/6. VOLUME THE THIRD, by Jane Austen; Oxford University Press. English price 8/6. HE familiar Compton Burnett ingredients will be found in her latest novel, but worn with a difference, The skeleton in the cupboard (suspected involuntary incest) is successfully shooed away, instead of being brought out and given a permanent place of honour at the head of the table. The childrenonly two of them- instead of being an oppressed majority, are rather horrid and oppress their governess. Old. Sir Ransom Chace talks of his age rather tiresomely; but where is the domestic tyrant, sucking everybody’s life blood? A milder, more mellow spirit informs the epigrams which, as usual, volley back and forth interminably while we gasp for breath. The cloud of darkness which usually broods over Compton Burnett human nature is here at last dispersed. This third volume of Jane Austen’s juvenilia presents us with a grotesque short piece, Evelyn, in which people rush around giving each other, at first acquaintance, anything from a square meal to a house complete with heiress, and marrying or dying of. broken hearts in a manner rather unfamiliar to Jane Austen devotees. The second longer unfinished fragment, Catharine, makes up for this nonsense. It is much more firmly constructed, and the encounters of Camilla and Catharine are a delicious forecast of the six great novels. But perhaps its publication was prim-arilv-an act of piety. .
David
Hall
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 651, 21 December 1951, Page 11
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247IVY AND JANE New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 651, 21 December 1951, Page 11
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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