Matthew John Caldwell Hodgart (1916–1996)

One of my guides to reading Joyce as an undergraduate. Clear and simple. Just enough information to get going and not feel naive. Reading Joyce became a joy, after a little help like this. Probably out of print and largely lost to the world, I'd imagine.

I picked up my copy off a remaindered table. I couldn't afford much else.

I found my long lost copy in my son's bookcase after we finished painting the house. I doubted him, I feel ashamed that I didn't bother looking there before. Or show more perhaps it was the clarity of a bright freshly painted room. Should've painted years ago.

Nausicaa episode
Tired after his escape from the Cyclops-Citizen, and after a visit of sympathy to the widowed Mrs Dignam in Sandymount (an episode not recounted) Bloom stops for a rest on the rocks of Sandymount Point show less

4208 Memoirs and Portraits, by Horace Walpole Edited by Matthew Hodgart (read 9 Sep 2006) The author is the youngest son of Sir Robert Walpole, prime minister of England from 1721 to 1742. The book is made up of extracts from Horace's diary from 1750 t0 1771. Horace was born in 1717 and died in 1797. The book is not reader-friendly, and could have been edited much better to make it more informative to today's reader. The diary was not published till long after Horace was dead, and his show more comments are often very critical. For instance, of Samuel Johnson (whose biography I read last month) he says: "His manners were sordid, supercilious, and brutal; his style ridiculously bombastic and vicious; and, in one word, with all the pedantry he had all the gigantic littleness of a country schoolmaster." Quite a different picture than the biography I read last month painted! I did not enjoy the reading of this book much since so much dealt with material and people I knew little of. Not a successful book for me. show less

This copy dates from my undergraduate days. My favourite is probably Corbet's "The Fairies' Farewell", but it is abridged. The full version with all nine verses took some tracking down online, but it is better because it gives a wider picture. Kipling of course used it for his second “Puck” book. Likewise, I prefer the Oxford Book of Ballads version of "Tam Lin", which again I found online.