Clarissa and friends

Mrs. Dalloway, now there's one back in the Top 10, re-read on the back of the Pallant House exhibition that made me feel all Bloomsbury again.
It's been a long time. Virginia's place in the top echelon has never been in doubt but they years, as it were, pass while other things get read and I had always thought To the Lighthouse was the masterpiece. Well, it isn't. They simply do not write novels like that any more, however many insist on trying.
Locked into themselves and their various pities, one doesn't even mind their social status and whatever because most of us who can afford the time to be so literary can't really claim to identify with the down-trodden victims of Dickens, Zola, Giles Winterbourne, Esther Waters or Paul Morel. There should be plenty more of a Virginia revival to come this autumn.

And neither must we feel bad about thinking up Top 10's, even if they contain over a hundred titles, because Julian Barnes admits to it in Keeping an Eye Open, his essays on (mainly French) painting, even if it is a pointless, harmless thing to do.

And if you ever felt a bit behind in your work, don't fret. Last week I received an acknowledgement from The British Library for the copy of The Perfect Book I sent them in late May. And now arrives the order for 5 copies for the other copyright libraries. I suppose demand for it must have been overwhelming. Well, it's lucky I can still furnish their order, isn't it.