G. B. Stern (1890–1973)
Author of The Matriarch
About the Author
Series
Works by G. B. Stern
Thunderstorm 4 copies
The rueful mating 3 copies
Seventy Times Seven 3 copies
Long lost father 2 copies
The back seat 2 copies
One is only human 1 copy
Children of No Man's Land 1 copy
The Rakonitz chronicles 1 copy
Smoke rings 1 copy
The slower Judas 1 copy
Pantomime 1 copy
Debatable Ground (1921) 1 copy
Associated Works
Murder on the Menu: Cordon Bleu Stories of Crime and Mystery, Volume 1 (1984) — Contributor — 211 copies, 2 reviews
Trumps: A Collection of Short Stories — Contributor — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Stern, Gladys Bronwyn
- Birthdate
- 1890-06-17
- Date of death
- 1973-09-20
- Gender
- female
- Occupations
- novelist
playwright
biographer
literary critic
autobiographer - Relationships
- Holdsworth, Geoffrey Lisle (husband)
Kaye-Smith, Sheila (co-author)
Forest, Antonia (friend) - Short biography
- G.B. (Gladys Bertha, later Gladys Bronwyn) Stern was born in London, England to a cosmopolitan, assimilated Jewish family. She wrote her first novel at age 20 and continued to produce one novel every year until 1964. She also wrote plays, including The Man Who Pays the Piper (1931), which was revived by the Orange Tree Theatre in London in 2013.
With Sheila Kaye-Smith, she wrote two books about Jane Austen, Talking of Jane Austen (1943) and More Talk of Jane Austen (1949). She also published short stories, literary criticism, biographies of Robert Louis Stevenson, and 10 volumes of memoirs and autobiography. Her 1938 novel The Ugly Dachshund was made into a film in 1966.
In 1919, she married Geoffrey Lisle Holdsworth, and sometimes collaborated on works with him. - Nationality
- UK
- Birthplace
- North Kensington, London, England, UK
- Places of residence
- London, England, UK
Wallingford, Oxfordshire, England, UK - Place of death
- Wallingford, Oxfordshire, England, UK
- Associated Place (for map)
- England, UK
Members
Reviews
Reading this is like being in a book club all by myself, with two invisible members from the 1940s.
Sheila Kaye-Smith and G.B. Stern write whimsical and interesting essays on various aspects of Jane Austen's novels.
In this second volume, they tackle family life, letter-writing, questions of health, characters with no speaking parts, and other subjects.
They even dally with writing brief scenes for some of the novels seven years after "the end." It's all very charming and enjoyable, and much show more more satisfying than the current rage for fan-fiction and the Hollywoodization of Jane Austen.
Fun stuff! show less
Sheila Kaye-Smith and G.B. Stern write whimsical and interesting essays on various aspects of Jane Austen's novels.
In this second volume, they tackle family life, letter-writing, questions of health, characters with no speaking parts, and other subjects.
They even dally with writing brief scenes for some of the novels seven years after "the end." It's all very charming and enjoyable, and much show more more satisfying than the current rage for fan-fiction and the Hollywoodization of Jane Austen.
Fun stuff! show less
It was a plain red hardback sitting on a shelf in a secondhand bookshop. There was no dust jacket, no adornment at all, just the title and the author’s name on the spine.
I knew the author’s name. Two of her books were reissued as Virago Modern Classics, and she wrote two books about Jane Austen with Sheila Kaye-Smith, another Virago author.
And I wondered, why ten days of Christmas instead of the more usual twelve?
It was, I found, because this is a house-party novel, set over ten show more eventful days at 1948.
On the first page I met fifteen year-old Claire, who had arrived from America to spend Christmas with friends and family she hadn’t seen since before the war. Her American-born mother had whisked her family across the Atlantic as soon as war broke out. Younger siblings were born in America, but Claire remembered her English roots, and so her parents were persuaded to allow her to visit.
I was drawn in by lovely prose and storytelling, and I noticed that Claire was an exact contemporary of my mother.
Claire barely remembered her hosts, Anthony and Dorothy, but it didn’t matter. She was quickly caught up in a big gathering of adults and children, extended family and friends.
Upstairs the children planned to put on a play, to honour Claire’s Uncle Ted; he was an actor and he was appearing in a highly successful West End revue, which would delay his arrival until after Christmas.
It was lovely to watch the preparations. Which play to choose? Who should do what? Where should the performance take place?
And downstairs the adults enjoyed each others company, caught up on news, and made preparations.
The writing was lovely, the characters were beautifully drawn and that post-war era was captured beautifully. The war was over, the past was done, but the future was uncertain.
The joy was in the details… Nineteen year-old Rosalind leaving the children to join the adults… William, Anthony’s elderly father, complaining about people who gave him one present for Christmas and his boxing day birthday… Sixteen year-old Terry, arriving a little later than the others, commissioned to bring copies of the chosen play and arriving with stars in her eyes… Nick and Tan, from different sides of the family, neither settled into post-war lives, good friends who maybe could be something more …
I thought I was just going to float along, watching a happy house-party and seeing a play, but then something changed.
It was such a small thing that started it. A duplicated gift. The recipient, Rosalind, didn’t deal with the situation as well as she might. Terry, who idolised Rosalind, was upset when her gift was given back to her. Sorrel, the abandoned wife of Dorothy’s errant brother, was upset for her daughter.
There were cross words between children and adults. Old recriminations were spoken aloud. Secrets were revealed. Words that should be left unsaid were spoken aloud.
It was horribly believable.
The play was cancelled. And it seemed that the house-party would come to an end sooner than had been planned.
Then Ted arrived, happy and quite unaware of the disharmony in the house. His warmth and enthusiasm changed things again. he helped to build bridges, and adults and children built new relationships, on better understanding.
That sounds a little contrived. And maybe it was, but it felt right.
Because the author so clearly understood how families work.
And because in what seemed to be a simple story she said so much about two generations and the times they lived in.
An afterword, two years later, made me catch my breath.
I am only sorry that Ten Days of Christmas is out of print.
It would suit a dove grey dust jacket very well … show less
I knew the author’s name. Two of her books were reissued as Virago Modern Classics, and she wrote two books about Jane Austen with Sheila Kaye-Smith, another Virago author.
And I wondered, why ten days of Christmas instead of the more usual twelve?
It was, I found, because this is a house-party novel, set over ten show more eventful days at 1948.
On the first page I met fifteen year-old Claire, who had arrived from America to spend Christmas with friends and family she hadn’t seen since before the war. Her American-born mother had whisked her family across the Atlantic as soon as war broke out. Younger siblings were born in America, but Claire remembered her English roots, and so her parents were persuaded to allow her to visit.
I was drawn in by lovely prose and storytelling, and I noticed that Claire was an exact contemporary of my mother.
Claire barely remembered her hosts, Anthony and Dorothy, but it didn’t matter. She was quickly caught up in a big gathering of adults and children, extended family and friends.
Upstairs the children planned to put on a play, to honour Claire’s Uncle Ted; he was an actor and he was appearing in a highly successful West End revue, which would delay his arrival until after Christmas.
It was lovely to watch the preparations. Which play to choose? Who should do what? Where should the performance take place?
And downstairs the adults enjoyed each others company, caught up on news, and made preparations.
The writing was lovely, the characters were beautifully drawn and that post-war era was captured beautifully. The war was over, the past was done, but the future was uncertain.
The joy was in the details… Nineteen year-old Rosalind leaving the children to join the adults… William, Anthony’s elderly father, complaining about people who gave him one present for Christmas and his boxing day birthday… Sixteen year-old Terry, arriving a little later than the others, commissioned to bring copies of the chosen play and arriving with stars in her eyes… Nick and Tan, from different sides of the family, neither settled into post-war lives, good friends who maybe could be something more …
I thought I was just going to float along, watching a happy house-party and seeing a play, but then something changed.
It was such a small thing that started it. A duplicated gift. The recipient, Rosalind, didn’t deal with the situation as well as she might. Terry, who idolised Rosalind, was upset when her gift was given back to her. Sorrel, the abandoned wife of Dorothy’s errant brother, was upset for her daughter.
There were cross words between children and adults. Old recriminations were spoken aloud. Secrets were revealed. Words that should be left unsaid were spoken aloud.
It was horribly believable.
The play was cancelled. And it seemed that the house-party would come to an end sooner than had been planned.
Then Ted arrived, happy and quite unaware of the disharmony in the house. His warmth and enthusiasm changed things again. he helped to build bridges, and adults and children built new relationships, on better understanding.
That sounds a little contrived. And maybe it was, but it felt right.
Because the author so clearly understood how families work.
And because in what seemed to be a simple story she said so much about two generations and the times they lived in.
An afterword, two years later, made me catch my breath.
I am only sorry that Ten Days of Christmas is out of print.
It would suit a dove grey dust jacket very well … show less
Part of the spoils of this year's Trinity Second-Hand Book Sale. I got it for only 50c; which, considering that it's hardback and a first edition, makes it rather undervalued, I think. It's a collection of essays about Jane Austen's six main novels, written by Sheila Kaye-Smith and G.B. Stern, who were quite popular novelists in their day.
It was written in 1943, which shows both in references in the text, and in the way they analyse the novels. That it's old-fashioned is not necessarily a show more bad thing - though there is an awful lot I would disagree with and find wrong, particularly with regards to Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and the Vexed Question of Colonel Brandon - because it's interesting to see how opinions of Austen's works have changed over time. Interesting to see how other things have changed, too; I was vastly amused at one section, wherein G.B. Stern (who came from an upper-class English background) declared that Lady Catherine de Bourgh's character was a failure because it was impossible to imagine that any great lady of the aristocracy could ever be so rude. I both boggled and laughed at that, because I go to school with quite a few offspring of that particular social class, both English and Irish, and no. Just no. Being a countess doesn't absolve you from being an ass. Lady Catherine is terrifyingly realistic to me. show less
It was written in 1943, which shows both in references in the text, and in the way they analyse the novels. That it's old-fashioned is not necessarily a show more bad thing - though there is an awful lot I would disagree with and find wrong, particularly with regards to Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and the Vexed Question of Colonel Brandon - because it's interesting to see how opinions of Austen's works have changed over time. Interesting to see how other things have changed, too; I was vastly amused at one section, wherein G.B. Stern (who came from an upper-class English background) declared that Lady Catherine de Bourgh's character was a failure because it was impossible to imagine that any great lady of the aristocracy could ever be so rude. I both boggled and laughed at that, because I go to school with quite a few offspring of that particular social class, both English and Irish, and no. Just no. Being a countess doesn't absolve you from being an ass. Lady Catherine is terrifyingly realistic to me. show less
Gladys Stern dedicated this book to John Galsworthy, and it's fitting as this is a family saga on a par with the Forsytes.
Following the vast Jewish Rakonitz family - from Napoleonic times to the 1920s; from Pressburg to Vienna and ultimately London...but with offshoots all over Europe...from 'typical' Jews to those who adopt Englishness....it's staggering how the author gets so many characters into just 300 pages.
But the central character is the eponymous matriarch, Anastasia, alternately show more charming, autocratic...utterly self sacrificing towards the family, yet ruling them with a rod of iron. And her granddaughter Toni...motivated, modern, yet deeply caught up, too, in the pre-eminence of family and the magic of her ancestry:
"They needed not to be collected always on the same estate in the same land, steadfast and unmoving, like the old families of England, or the clans of Scotland. They were a tribe of nomads, and they settled and moved on again, and were legally granted other nationalities, and bought other people's houses and gardens, and left them again, and they spread and spread without rooting, and scattered and scattered without rooting; but invincibly the face survived. Just that one inspiration, br some strength and for some purpose it survived, and you could never tell where it would break through, or in whom..."
Unputdownable. show less
Following the vast Jewish Rakonitz family - from Napoleonic times to the 1920s; from Pressburg to Vienna and ultimately London...but with offshoots all over Europe...from 'typical' Jews to those who adopt Englishness....it's staggering how the author gets so many characters into just 300 pages.
But the central character is the eponymous matriarch, Anastasia, alternately show more charming, autocratic...utterly self sacrificing towards the family, yet ruling them with a rod of iron. And her granddaughter Toni...motivated, modern, yet deeply caught up, too, in the pre-eminence of family and the magic of her ancestry:
"They needed not to be collected always on the same estate in the same land, steadfast and unmoving, like the old families of England, or the clans of Scotland. They were a tribe of nomads, and they settled and moved on again, and were legally granted other nationalities, and bought other people's houses and gardens, and left them again, and they spread and spread without rooting, and scattered and scattered without rooting; but invincibly the face survived. Just that one inspiration, br some strength and for some purpose it survived, and you could never tell where it would break through, or in whom..."
Unputdownable. show less
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