2023 Planning: The Victorian Era outside of the Empire

When we started on the Victorian theme this year, the plan was to have a second year of non-British authors in 2023 in Club 2023. I still would like to do that so time for some planning.

I like the idea of having 2 Readalongs per quarter just because people may not want to read a certain book or author and still participate. But if most people prefer 1 book per Q, I am fine with that as well.

In addition, we don't want to get stuck into reading just French novels so... we probably should split the world into parts and pieces. I had been thinking:
- Russia, Eastern and Central Europe
- Western Europe and Scandinavia
- Latin America (Mexico and anything south of it)
- USA and Canada
- The Far East
- Africa and the Middle East

That gives us 6 and we have only 4 quarters. So we have two options - either go for bimonthly threads or consolidate further:
- Europe
- Latin America
- USA and Canada
- Everyone else

Alternatively we can make this a double year plan, go into 2024 and split it a bit more into:
2023:
- USA and Canada
- The Latin European world: France, Italy, Spain, Portugal
- The Far East
- Non-Ottoman Africa and Native voices from around the world
2024:
- Latin America (Mexico and anything south of it)
- The Slavic world
- The Ottoman non-Slavic lands: Middle East and Mediterranean Africa (minus Morocco and Egypt - these go into Non-Ottoman Africa).
- The rest of Europe

Yes, I know some of these are very wide brushes but it is also a LONG period. And some authors will fall under two of these categories but we can discuss what goes where.

I kinda like that last plan the most (the 2 years one). But it may be too much for most people so... I am asking :)

Or we can go without order with the only rule that once an author from a country is selected, the country is off-limits for the readalongs.

So here are some questions for discussion, opinions and so on:
- Split the world into parts and stay in them per window or do a free for all for the readalongs?
- Do we keep the 1 male/1 female author per window?
- 4 or 6 windows (quarterly or bimonthly)? If 4, 1 or 2 years?
- Do we want to allow the whole of 19th century or 1837-1901 (the actual Victorian times)?

Any ideas, questions, concerns and so on are welcome. I would like to have a plan by the end of October so we can do some nominating and voting for the first books in November, giving people enough time to get books for January-February (or January-March).

PS: There will also be a new "Victorian Tavern", maybe with an updated name for anything else anyone reads from the times that is outside of the readalongs, including proper Victorian (where else would one will post their thoughts on how similar or different are Dickens, Dostoevsky, Alberto Blest Gana and Ibsen?) :)

PS2: For the record: my preference is for the 2 years plan, 1 male/1 female per quarter, 1837-1901 only. But if most people prefer something else, I can work with any other plan.

It’s a lot questions and all the answers seems at least ok to me. I might just play sheep and follow the lead.

(In 2022 I’ve read two and I’m reading a 3rd of the 8. That for me is a good success rate. So if this helps me read 1-4 of these in 2023, that would be terrific.)

I am open to any plan. My only preference would be the entire 19th century as the timeframe.

I am a strong advocate of 1 male/1 female writer, but am wondering how accesible works in English translation for 19th century women writers will be (especially authors outside of Europe).

>3 kac522: Well, we can try at least :) I plan to do a bit more digging before the voting (especially for female options) and if we find out we cannot find any, we can always default to two men (from different countries!).

My thoughts:

- split the world into parts - this might keep the group more focussed
- 1 male and 1 female works well - if it is difficult to find women in translation, default to two males for that quarter
- quarterly over 2 years
- actual Victorian era works to keep the reading distinct as much as possible from Romantic era works, which are quite different

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Thanks for your work on this.

Thanks, yes, that sounds like a good basis. I agree we should stick to 1 male and 1 female unless we find we really can’t for a given region.

1837-1901 is arbitrary, but I agree with >5 SassyLassy: that it makes sense to stick to something like that.

Splitting Europe into (at least) two makes sense, otherwise we are going to miss a lot.

I wonder if it would make sense to take Spain & Portugal together with Latin America rather than throwing them in with France and Italy, where they will probably get lost. There are certainly a few interesting 19th century women writers in Spain, at least.

I wonder if we could include India somewhere even though it was notionally already covered in this year’s project: we haven’t actually tried very hard to find any Victorian writing from the subcontinent.

>6 thorold: I was thinking on Spain and Portugal but Latin America is already big enough as it is - put Spain and Portugal in there and we will lose Latin America because the European authors will probably win. And I really would like to go around the world. That's why I stuck them with France and Italy.

India and Australia did not emerge from under the Empire until after 1900. I would prefer not to mix actual Victorians in the next 2 years... So if there any native writers, they go under "Non-Ottoman Africa and Native voices from around the world". Plus we can always read them in the tavern.

No matter what we do we will miss someone. Maybe when we see where we are late next year, we can plan for a "Catch Up" year for 2025 which covers non-European British Empire, other places that got buried in the bigger conversation (so if France and Spain get the two slots in 2023, Italy and Portugal remain eligible for 2025 eventually) and so on...

>7 AnnieMod: Yes, you’re probably right. We’re never going to have time to cover everywhere in the world adequately, it’s sensible to make some broad categories that at least get us into places where we don’t often go.