There are still a few places here if anyone is interested.

http://www.anglia.ac.uk/ruskin/en/home/faculties/alss/deps/english_media/research/research_activities/elizabeth_taylor_conference.html

Thanks, Jem!

Elizabeth Taylor is one of the holes in my reading... Note to Self: order some next time you're in the bookshop.

The conference looks great too.

Emma, there is also a programme about her this afternoon with David Baddiel - note to self DO NOT FORGET!!!
I am slowly reading and re-reading my way through them for the conference. Read Mrs Palfrey At The Claremont in one sitting last week - pure delight! Now I'm starting At Mrs Lippincote's. And hope to have read A View of the Harbour too before next Saturday, so wish me luck.

I wish I'd taken notes because some of her techniques are so great! I may go back through the books I've read and do just that when there is a lull in my life!

One of my (many!) reading holes too - must make amends when I can. The programme is on Radio 4 at 4pm, today. They've been trailing it all week so I don't think I'll forget!

One interesting remark made by a member of the discussion group was that she felt Virago had done a disservice to ET with their covers. I have to agree. No man would pick one of those books up with those dreadful covers. I wouldn't have myself had I not been familiar with her writing.
I was reminded of discussions on WW about "pink" covers. Not that I'm saying that because men won't read her makes her any the less of a writer, obv, but it may go some way to explaining why she hasn't had the readership in numbers she deserves.

It was lovely to hear David Baddiel, one of the original "lads" talk about her writing with such enthusiasm. "Muscular" was how he describes her writing. Also, and you know he speaks as a writer, the way she can have conversations among seven or eight people and every voice is individual.

She is a brilliant novelist, but I think her short stories are even better than the novels.

Yes, I was sorely tempted by the short fic, but I'm only half-way through Elizabeth Bowen's, having been diverted by Rose Tremain, and Grace Paley's another... so I don't dare.

But Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont has just arrived...

Thanks for posting this, Jem. I wish I could attend as it does look interesting.

Really looking forward to it!

This was a really good day. Nicola Baumann was the keynote speaker and was talking about the trouble she has got into with the family for revealing ET's affair.

Glad it was good, Jem.

I've just finished Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont. Beautiful, beautiful novel...

It was suggested that ET isn't liked by all because she is believed to be bleak. Which would be okay if she were seen as a modernist, but not okay because she is writing in the domestic sphere. Funny, isn't it? She is bleak but she's also very funny. Some suggested that it's the reason she isn't in the cannon because she can't be placed in any sort of category.

It's damned hard for any woman to get into the canon, and yes, domesticity doesn't help - apparently small-scale stuff about small lifes. The fact that it's also about universal human experience gets missed.

And her style is very understated - absolutely beautiful, but Elizabeth Bowen, say, is more radical to read, as well as more wide-ranging in setting and stuff (says Emma, who's only just read her first Elizabeth Taylor ): you're more conscious of the daring of Bowen, I suppose, which maybe gets you more readily admitted to the self-conscious end of the canon which is measured by your contribution to the progress of literature, if you like.

Well, I haven't read any Bowen for years - which would be the one to start with?

<Added>

Just realised I've got at least three Bowens on my shelf that I must have read some time in my life!