Victoriana
SOME of the best listening radio has given me has been the skilful BBC adaptations of novels by Dickens, Trollope, Hardy and George Eliot. There are obvious disadvantages in serial versions of great Victorian books, but the advantages, I feel, outweigh them, The dull, embarrassingly sentimental and padded passages, go, and the BBC’s combination of piety and know-how preserves the essential spirit of the works and brings the characters to life with excellent acting. How differ-
ent all this is from Hollywood vulgarisations! The current dramatisation of Besant. and Rice’s The Golden Butterfly (YA Sunday link) takes us into less well-known, but hardly less satisfying, fields. The story, with its delightfully illiterate heroine, paternalistic lawyer, dilettante twins, and American oil-king, offers a feast of character in the grand manner. The careful, polite language, full of exquisite formalities and leisurely courtesy, strikes happily upon my ear. And we know, happily, that unlike a soap-opera, it is moving towards a planned, satisfying end, I have no doubt that Dickens and Trollope have gained readers through such adaptations. Certainly, two episodes of The Golden Butterfly sent me hot-foot to my first Besant and Rice-Ready Money Mortiboy, which I offer as a suggestion to NZBS adaptors.
J.C.
R.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19560914.2.48.2
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 893, 14 September 1956, Page 24
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205Victoriana New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 893, 14 September 1956, Page 24
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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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