Napoleon and the spectre and universal love

The Scotsman reviews The Virago Book of Ghost Stories edited by Richard Dalby, which was published about a month ago. A short tale by Charlotte Brontë, Napoleon and the spectre, has been included.

We have 31 stories here, all by women (as you would expect from Virago, even though the editor is a man) and almost all good. Indeed, there is only one utter dud, the first in the book, Napoleon and the Spectre by Charlotte Brontë; this is indescribably feeble and I am baffled by its inclusion.

It's a very short tale taken from the manuscript known as The Green Dwarf and written in 1833, when Charlotte Brontës was 17 years old. Perhaps bearing that in mind might help understand that Charlotte Brontë was still evolving as a writer. Given this context it shouldn't sound so feeble and certainly not 'one utter dud'. Sometimes you'd think people imagine Charlotte Brontë came out of the womb writing Jane Eyre!

Elizabeth Gaskell's The Old Nurse's Story also appears in this selection and is considered 'splendid'.

On another news, the BBC has organised a Q&A between students from the around the world and students from China. This is what someone in the UK asked to someone in China.

Question from Andrew, Birmingham, UK
I would like to know if students are encouraged to write creatively in literature lessons and what books and poems are they introduced to? Do they ever read western literature or magazines?
Wei Juan (17): Because the university examination is coming up, we concentrate on formal academic writing, not creative writing. We study the most famous Chinese and western literature - recently we have read Jane Eyre and some Shakespeare.

We have always loved the fact that Jane Eyre is translated (phonetically) as Jian Ai, which in Chinese means universal love :)

Categories: Books, Juvenilia, Translations