As eye_of_a_cat has mentioned, neither of us has the time to take on the behemoth that is running Dracula again this year, and my plans for running Clarissa, an even huger job, got put on hold. It might happen next year (it's a January start), but meanwhile there are six months to go.

I could probably manage running something simpler, and I have my eye on doing another nineteenth-century novel in instalments. Not another epistolary novel with a back-and-forth time scheme, those are the ones which are much more work, simply two or three chapters a week posted straight, in the style of Carmilla but in a dedicated community. Many nineteenth-century novels were originally serialised, so this would be quite close to the original reading experience.

At first I thought of Wilkie Collins, say The Moonstone or The Woman in White. Both of these have multiple narrators, which would allow the fun of having different character journals again. However, something I'd quite like to try this time round is linking to Librivox online free recordings of the text, so that people could listen to their chapters instead of reading them if they chose. The folks at Librivox are in middle of recording both of those novels, and I'd quite like to leave them until they're available as audiobooks.

My next thoughts were Austen's Mansfield Park and Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, both popular texts which give plenty to talk about, and both available on Librivox. At the moment, I'm leaning towards the Austen, perhaps running the Bronte afterwards. Here's why.

( "Of Rears and Vices I saw enough. Now do not be suspecting me of a pun, I entreat." )

So what do people think? Would a serialised reading of Mansfield Park attract people? Is there anyone interested in helping me run this? ETA: co-mod now found in the person of elfbystarlight. For the students among you, is it worth waiting another week or so for people to finish exams, or could we start more or less immediately? I'd probably set up a community for serialised novel readings, so that once one novel is done, another could be begun if people wished. How many chapters a week would people like? Two or three strikes me as good. We can call the character journal mansfield1814 in line with the usual form we've used for these reading groups, but we're currently a bit stuck on names for the community. Any suggestions?

retrospection_ is carrying out some research on the hypertext readings of texts such as we conducted with Dracula here, so if you took part in any way, even if you just read along silently, she'd love to hear from you.

When we created this community, just over six months ago, we were expecting a few dozen people to join. At its peak, membership here reached 1800-plus. As you can imagine, then, we're pretty pleased with how things turned out! We'd like to thank all of you for making this such a lively and interesting six months; we've had a great time, and we're glad you have too. We hope that some of you will be joining us for Carmilla (see the post below) and other epistolary novels (see our userinfo) in the very near future.

Poll #862371 The future of the community
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

What would you like to see appearing in the community now that the novel's finished?

If we do open up posting access to everyone, what would you want the community's purpose to be? (Remember, there are already various communities dedicated to film versions, Gothic literature in general, and vampires)

Please feel free to add your own suggestions or clarifications in the comments.

Thanks again for a great six months!

- eye_of_a_cat and elettaria

With so much going on in the discussions, and so many of the discussions now off the front page, there've been a lot of interesting comments and conversations you might have missed. I've gathered up a bunch of links below the cut, grouped roughly into categories. Enjoy! (And if there's anything else I've missed, as I'm sure there will be, just let me know and I'll add it to the post.)

( Links to all manner of things... )

I honestly don't know what's happened with our date lists, but I've just spotted another entry which should have been up a week ago. It's the Seward post I just put up, the one for 23 August. Please note that it comes before the last three posts we've put up for Seward. The next post for him will be for today's date.

Due to a mix-up with our dates list, we've run a few entries behind, going back to the 21st August. The entries in question have just been posted today, and they carry the correct dates within the body of the text. Apologies for any confusion.

As you may be aware, following the real-time readings of Dracula and Les Liaisons Dangereuses, which are currently running most successfully at dracula1897 and lesliaisons1782, we're planning to do the same thing with Richardson's mammoth novel Clarissa in January. It's the longest novel in the English language though a very great one, so we're going to need a team to get this working. There will be a variety of jobs that need doing, so you can sign up for anything you're interested in and do as much or as little as you like. For instance:

( Examples of jobs )

If you're interested, leave a comment here so we can chat a bit, and then apply to join epistolary_mods, a closed community which is where the mods of the real-time reading groups discuss such thrilling matters as icons and proofreading. We're a nice bunch. You don't need to have read Clarissa already, there will still be jobs for you, but it'll help if a few people on the team have done so, and it'll be necessary to have a decent knowledge of the novel for some jobs.

ETA: Evidently I didn't phrase this clearly enough. If you're interested in helping out, apply to join epistolary_mods, there's not much I can do until you do so. We're currently letting in pretty much anyone (with a two-second skim of your journal) and assuming that raving psychopaths don't apply to help with mammoth eighteenth-century novels.

If you are enjoying Dracula, we present to you...

Choderlos de Laclos' Les Liaisons Dangereuses. In real-time. Join up and read along.

Les Liaisons Dangereuses is another epistolary novel, meaning that it's written as a series of letters. On this community, they'll be appearing on the day they're dated, starting with Cécile Volanges's first letter on the 1st of August. The novel finishes in December with a single letter later in January, so we've got about five months. Posts will be made by the characters in Les Liaisons Dangereuses, who each have their own LJ account, but everyone will be able to comment. The novel will be posted in the original French and discussed in English, though you're welcome to start threads in French as well.

For more information, go to lesliaisons1782. Brought to you by elettaria and angevin2, and inspired by dracula1897.

It seems we've run into a few problems here.

Let's start off with the positive, though, because the discussions themselves have been wonderful. I didn't originally plan on them going anywhere when I set up the community, but that's because I was expecting maybe twelve people joining and none of them wanting to talk. I'm really glad that's not what happened, and that so many of you are enjoying the discussions, but not planning ahead on quite how popular they'd get means I didn't plan ahead on what kind of rules, if any, we'd need in place. Mea culpa, everyone - I wasn't clear, and I should have been. ( I'll try to make up for that now. )

Someone has suggested that we post a list of the entries in the order they appear in Stoker. Here it is; it will be updated as we go along, and linked to in the user info. You'll notice that not all of the entries have been dated by Stoker.

( Read more... )

Welcome aboard, everyone! I'm very glad so many people are interested; I was expecting maybe twenty, at most. (Although if you know anyone else you think might like to join, feel free to spread the word.) Anyway, since there's quite a few of us, I thought a post for introductions or general discussions or whatever else you want to say might come in handy at this point.

To start us off with, then, here's a review of Dracula from the year it was published: "The Baron de B.-W", writing in Punch. (There's mention of the ending, but only in a very general sense.)

( 'I wants to make your flesh creep,' might Mr. BRAM STOKER well say as a preface to his latest book... )

"The idea came to me in a nightmare. One evening I was dining with Henry Irving when I ate a little too much dressed crab and I spent all night long dreaming these weird dreams about a dead-alive man preying on the living!"

(Dracula itself starts on the 3rd of May. Check the userinfo if you're curious about what this community is. )