I've started rereading Dickens's Our Mutual Friend (which is wonderful) because, as I was rereading Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd (also wonderful), I was struck by two sets of character resemblances: D's Bella Wilfer and H's Bathsheba Everdene (both of them adorable, charming, difficult, obnoxious, capricious, clever, and ignorant) and D's Bradley Headstone and H's Farmer Boldwood (both of them repressed, passionate, obsessive, manipulative, and doomed). Originally I'd been intending to write about Hardy's depiction of the countryside and its people and not to write about Dickens at all, but I can see that, once again, my books are starting to slap me around.

In the meantime, last week I ordered the only bio of Elizabeth Barrett Browning I could get my hands on--Rosalie Mander's slim Mrs. Browning: The Story of Elizabeth Barrett. Now I've started reading it, and thus far it is very annoying, mostly because as soon as the author says something interesting she drops the subject, leaving me to complain, "Hey, wait a minute! I want to know more about that!" For example, this is the opening paragraph of the biography:

Hope End, the house in sight of the Malvern Hills where Elizabeth was brought up, was in complete contrast to the character of her father who had had it built. Edward Barrett Moulton-Barrett was an austere man with puritanical standards, while Hope End looked like a "Kubla Khan" pleasure dome. It had minarets in concrete, turrets in cast iron, and a vast glass dome over the central hall where there was an organ, rich furnishings and stained glass in the windows.

And that's the last we hear about the contrast between stiff, proper Mr. Barrett and his crazy house. What could be more aggravating?

Moreover, the author is prone to both peculiar generalizations and prissy diction:

That Elizabeth with her intelligence and independence of mind should have submitted for so long to the doctrine of paternal omnipotence is surprising to a later generation, but it must be remembered that she was very fond of Papa and that she had the innocence often found in intellectuals.

So far I'm only up to page 10; and as you can see, I'm already maddened.