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Belchamber (New York Review Books Classics)…
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Belchamber (New York Review Books Classics) (original 1904; edition 2008)

by Howard Sturgis, Edmund White (Introduction), E. M. Forster (Afterword)

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Charles Edwin William Augustus Chambers--Marquis and Earl of Belchamber, Viscount Charmington, and Baron St. Edmunds and Chambers--known familiarly as Sainty, is the scion of an ancient English aristocratic family. Behind him stretches a rogues' gallery of picturesque upper-crust scoundrels. But he is uninterested in riding to hounds or drinking or whoring in the great tradition of his forebears, and though he admires his tough-minded puritanical Scottish mother, he lacks her unrelenting moral self-assurance. Sainty is instead a sensitive soul, physically delicate, sexually timid, intellectually inclined, utterly honest, and thoroughly decent, but constitutionally incapable of asserting himself. When it comes to assuming the responsibilities of his inheritance, to managing his feckless younger brother Albert or fathoming his sly cousin Clyde, and, above all, to the essential business of marrying and continuing the family line, Sainty hasn't a prayer.… (more)
Member:dottiehinkle
Title:Belchamber (New York Review Books Classics)
Authors:Howard Sturgis
Other authors:Edmund White (Introduction), E. M. Forster (Afterword)
Info:NYRB Classics (2008), Paperback, 368 pages
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Belchamber by Howard Sturgis (1904)

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» See also 2 mentions

Shocked by how little notice and how few reviews this book has. I first came across it while reading Edith Wharton's biography, A Backward Glance, and I saw in the book that EM Forster was a lover of it too. My impression is that in every era, this book has had a small number of very devoted readers.

It's like few other books I've ever read. The type here is very clear to us: a shy, timid, bookish young man who's had the misfortune to be born as the sole heir to his lordly father's estate. The book shines in the delicate way it portrays Lord Belchamber's character and his timidity, without making us dislike him. He is a person of, at times, moral force (he reminds one of Alexei Karenin from Anna Karenina), but this qualities can be a person's undoing if they're not strong enough to back it up. And yet...and yet...there's a delicate beauty in his weakness as well. Perhaps this book resonated so strongly in me because I saw myself in Belchamber. Not every strong character needs to be a hero or an anti-hero. And not every weak character needs to be some sort of comic laughingstock. I think there's room in literature to portray people as they are: weak and strong at the same time. Totally worth your time if you loved, for instance John William's STONER or anything by Wharton or Henry James. ( )
2 vote rahkan | Jun 7, 2019 |
Belchamber is an odd book disguised as a more conventional one. Sturgis could certainly write, with control and wit, but he was a stylist whose personality was best expressed in imitation. ‘By the way,’ the New York Times’s reviewer wrote in 1905, ‘there’s a sort of old-fashioned touch about some of it, and now and then a suggestion of Thackeray’ – which was a funny thing to mention as an afterthought, since a relished old-fashionedness is one of the book’s most persistent registers.
 

» Add other authors (2 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Howard Sturgisprimary authorall editionscalculated
Briod, BlaiseTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Forster, E. M.Afterwordsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
White, EdmundIntroductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Belchamber is one of the most beautiful places in England.
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Charles Edwin William Augustus Chambers--Marquis and Earl of Belchamber, Viscount Charmington, and Baron St. Edmunds and Chambers--known familiarly as Sainty, is the scion of an ancient English aristocratic family. Behind him stretches a rogues' gallery of picturesque upper-crust scoundrels. But he is uninterested in riding to hounds or drinking or whoring in the great tradition of his forebears, and though he admires his tough-minded puritanical Scottish mother, he lacks her unrelenting moral self-assurance. Sainty is instead a sensitive soul, physically delicate, sexually timid, intellectually inclined, utterly honest, and thoroughly decent, but constitutionally incapable of asserting himself. When it comes to assuming the responsibilities of his inheritance, to managing his feckless younger brother Albert or fathoming his sly cousin Clyde, and, above all, to the essential business of marrying and continuing the family line, Sainty hasn't a prayer.

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