BOTM November: STRONG POISON by Dorothy Sayers

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Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

In this thread, we choose one work of ~~literature~~ absolute crap and read/discuss it over a month. If you have any suggestions of books, choose something that will be appreciated by many people, and has many avenues of discussion. We'd also appreciate if it were a work of ~~literature~~ complete drivel that is easily located from a local library or book shop, as opposed to ordering something second hand off the internet and missing out on a week's worth of reading. Better yet, books available on e-readers.

Resources:

Project Gutenberg - http://www.gutenberg.org

- A database of over 17000 books available online. If you can suggest books from here, that'd be the best.

SparkNotes - http://www.sparknotes.com/

- A very helpful Cliffnotes-esque site, but much better, in my opinion. If you happen to come in late and need to catch-up, you can get great character/chapter/plot summaries here.

:siren:

For recommendations on future material, suggestions on how to improve the club, or just a general rant, feel free to PM the moderation team. :siren:

Past Books of the Month

[for BOTM before 2019, refer to archives]

2019:
January: Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
February: BEAR by Marian Engel
March: V. by Thomas Pynchon
April: The Doorbell Rang by Rex Stout
May: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
June: 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann
July: The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
August: Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay
September: Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay
October: Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado
November: The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
December: Moby Dick by Herman Melville

2020:
January: The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
February: WE by Yevgeny Zamyatin
March: The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini by Benvenuto Cellini
April: The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
May: Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Dame Rebecca West
June: The African Queen by C. S. Forester
July: The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale
August: The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, of Great Renown in Nottinghamshire, by Howard Pyle
September: Strange Hotel, by Eimear McBride
October:Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things (怪談)("Ghost Stories"), by Lafcadio Hearn
November: A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (And Some Bears) , by Matthew Hongoltz Hetling
December: Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants by John Drury Clark

2021:

January: The Mark of Zorro by Johnston McCulley
February: How to Read Donald Duck by Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart
March: Carrier Wave by Robert Brockway
April: The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brian
May: You Can't Win by Jack Black
June:Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
July:Can Such Things Be by Ambrose Bierce
August: Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
September:A Dreamer's Tales by Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany
October:We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

Current:

Book available here:
https://www.amazon.com/Strong-Poison-Dorothy-L-Sayers/dp/0062196200

About the book

Selachian posted:

The first Wimsey I ever picked up was Strong Poison, and I still think that's a good one to try. Sayers has improved by leaps and bounds from her early novels by then.

quote:

The novel opens with mystery author Harriet Vane on trial for the murder of her former lover, Phillip Boyes: a writer with strong views on atheism, anarchy, and free love. Publicly professing to disapprove of marriage, he had persuaded a reluctant Harriet to live with him, only to renounce his principles a year later and to propose. Harriet, outraged at being deceived, had broken off the relationship.

Following the separation, the former couple had met occasionally, and the evidence at trial pointed to Boyes suffering from repeated bouts of gastric illness at around the time that Harriet was buying poisons under assumed names, to demonstrate � so she said � a plot point of her novel then in progress.

. . . .

The trial results in a hung jury. As a unanimous verdict is required, the judge orders a re-trial. Lord Peter Wimsey visits Harriet in prison, declares his conviction of her innocence and promises to catch the real murderer. Wimsey also announces that he wishes to marry her, a suggestion that Harriet politely but firmly declines.

quote:

While Sayers was working on her first novel, Whose Body?, she began a relationship with John Cournos, a writer of Russian-Jewish background.[6] Cournos was an advocate of free love: he did not believe in marriage and did not want children.[7] Cournos pressed Sayers to have sex with contraception, but she, a High Anglican, resisted to avoid what she called "the taint of the rubber shop".[6] Their relationship foundered on the mismatch of expectations,[6] and within two years Cournos � apparently not believing in the ideas he had professed � had married somebody else.[7] Both Sayers and Cournos later wrote fictionalised versions of their relationship: Sayers in Strong Poison (1930) and Cournos in The Devil is an English Gentleman (1932).[6][7]

About the Author

quote:

Dorothy Leigh Sayers (/sɛərz/;[1] 13 June 1893 � 17 December 1957) was an English crime writer and poet. She was also a student of classical and modern languages.

She is best known for her mysteries, a series of novels and short stories set between the First and Second World Wars that feature English aristocrat and amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. She is also known for her plays, literary criticism, and essays. Sayers considered her translation of Dante's Divine Comedy to be her best work. Sayers' obituarist, writing in The New York Times in 1957, noted that many critics at the time regarded The Nine Tailors as her finest literary achievement.[2]

quote:

Gaudy Night has been described as "the first feminist mystery novel."[19] It is a novel that extensively discusses feminist positions. Sayers distanced herself from a feminist political labels, and preferred to be considered "simply human".[35] Crystal Downing notes that Sayers "refused to call herself a feminist, believing in practicing women's rights more than in preaching them."[36]

Nevertheless, a number of scholars have identified her as a feminist. Susan Haack calls her an "old-fashioned, humanistic, individualistic feminist."[37] Mo Moulton argues that Sayers "was not born a feminist; she became one, through bitter suffering and the stark realization of the precariousness of her position in a world which denied female sexuality in all sorts of ways."[38]

quote:

The poet W. H. Auden and the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein were notable critics of her novels.[39][40] A savage attack on Sayers' writing ability came from the American critic Edmund Wilson, in a well-known 1945 article in The New Yorker called "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?"[41] He briefly writes about her novel The Nine Tailors, saying "I declare that it seems to me one of the dullest books I have ever encountered in any field." Wilson continues "I had often heard people say that Dorothy Sayers wrote well ... but, really, she does not write very well: it is simply that she is more consciously literary than most of the other detective-story writers and that she thus attracts attention in a field which is mostly on a sub-literary level."

The academic critic Q. D. Leavis criticises Sayers in more specific terms in a review of Gaudy Night and Busman's Honeymoon, published in the critical journal Scrutiny, saying her fiction is "popular and romantic while pretending to realism."[42] Leavis argues that Sayers presents academic life as "sound and sincere because it is scholarly," a place of "invulnerable standards of taste charging the charmed atmosphere".[43] But, Leavis says, this is unrealistic: "If such a world ever existed, and I should be surprised to hear as much, it does no longer, and to give substance to a lie or to perpetuate a dead myth is to do no one any service really."[44] Leavis comments that "only best-seller novelists could have such illusions about human nature."[44]

The critic Sean Latham has defended Sayers, arguing that Wilson and Leavis simply objected to a detective story writer having pretensions beyond what they saw as her role of popular culture "hack".[39] Latham says that, in their eyes, "Sayers' primary crime lay in her attempt to transform the detective novel into something other than an ephemeral bit of popular culture".[39]

quote:

In 1920 Sayers entered into a passionate affair with Jewish Russian �migr� and Imagist poet John Cournos, who moved in London literary circles with Ezra Pound and his contemporaries. Cournos disdained monogamy and marriage and was dedicated to free love. Within two years the relationship had broken up. He then went on to marry a crime writer, which left Sayers embittered that he had not held to his own principles, feeling that he had been testing her, pushing her to sacrifice her own beliefs in submission to his own. He later confessed that he would have happily married Sayers if she had submitted to his sexual demands. Her experiences with Cournos formed the basis for her character of Harriet Vane. Cournos is fictionalised as Philip Boyes in the novel Strong Poison, though she didn't add intimate details from their affair. Cournos reflected upon the relationship in his novel The Devil is an English Gentleman (1932) and included many private details from the affair, adding whole sections from Sayers' private letters.[49]

In 1923 she began a relationship with former Denstone College pupil and part-time car salesman William "Bill" White[50] whom she presented to her parents. She had met him when he moved into the flat above hers in 24 Great James Street in December 1922.[51] Only when she discovered her pregnancy in June 1923, White admitted to already being married.[52][53] What happened next could have been from one of Sayers' fictional works:[54] White told his wife Beatrice about the pregnancy the following morning and asked her for help with the birth. Mrs White agreed to meet Sayers in London. Together they went to White's flat (he was then living off Theobalds Road) and found him with another woman. Sayers: "He's like a child in a power house, starting off machinery regardless of results. No woman on earth could hold him". In exchange for the promise never to see White again, Mrs White invited Sayers to a guest house in her hometown of Southbourne, Dorset during the last stages of pregnancy and arranged for her own brother, Dr Murray Wilson, to attend the birth at Tuckton Lodge, a nursing-home in Ilford Lane, Southbourne.[54] On 3 January 1924, at the age of 30, Sayers secretly gave birth to an illegitimate son, John Anthony (later surnamed Fleming).[55] John Anthony, "Tony", was given into care with her aunt and cousin, Amy and Ivy Amy Shrimpton, and passed off as her nephew to family and friends.[56][57][58] Details of these circumstances were revealed in a letter from Mrs White to her daughter Valerie, Tony's half-sister, in 1958 after Sayers' death.[59]

Tony was raised by the Shrimptons and was sent to a good boarding school. In 1935 he was legally adopted by Sayers and her then husband "Mac" Fleming. While still not revealing her identity as his mother, Sayers was constantly in contact with her son, provided him with good education and they maintained a close relationship.[60] John Anthony probably suspected Sayers' maternity since his youth but had proof only when he obtained his birth certificate applying for a passport. It is not known if he ever spoke to Sayers about the fact.[61] Much to Sayers' pride, Tony won a scholarship to Balliol College � the same Oxford college Sayers had chosen for Wimsey.

After publishing her first two detective novels, Sayers married Captain Oswald Atherton "Mac" Fleming, a Scottish journalist whose professional name was "Atherton Fleming".[62] The wedding took place on 13 April 1926[63] at Holborn Register Office, London. Fleming was divorced with two daughters.

Sayers and Fleming lived in the small flat at 24 Great James Street in Bloomsbury[64] that Sayers maintained for the rest of her life. Fleming worked as an author and journalist and Sayers as an advertising copywriter and author. Over time, Fleming's health worsened, largely due to his First World War service, and as a result he became unable to work.

Sayers was a friend of C. S. Lewis and several of the other Inklings. On some occasions Sayers joined Lewis at meetings of the Socratic Club. Lewis said he read The Man Born to Be King every Easter, but he said he was unable to appreciate detective stories. J. R. R. Tolkien read some of the Wimsey novels but scorned the later ones, such as Gaudy Night.[65]

quote:

Sayer's friendship with C. S. Lewis first began as a fan letter she had written in admiration of his Christian apologetic novel, The Screwtape Letters. Lewis later recounted, "[Sayers] was the first person of importance whoever wrote me a fan letter."[73] He expressed his mutual admiration in a responding letter, calling her The Man Born to be King a complete success and continued to read the play cycle every Holy Week thereafter.[74] Their ongoing correspondence discussed their writing and academic interests, providing one another with criticisms, suggestions, and encouragement. Carol and Philip Zaleski note, �Sayers had much in common with Lewis and Tolkien�s circle, including a love of orthodox Christianity, traditional verse, popular fiction, and debate.�[75]

Though the two became friends under the circumstance of shared academic and theological interests, they had their disagreements regarding the movement towards the ordination of women in the Church of England.[76] Lewis, in opposition to the movement, had written to Sayers in request that she would also speak up against it. However Sayers, unable to see any theological reason against such an ordination, declined, writing back in a letter, "I fear you would find me rather an uneasy ally."[77]

Sayers comments on Lewis' views of women in another letter, stating, "I do admit that he is apt to write shocking nonsense about women and marriage. (That, however, is not because he is a bad theologian but because he is a rather frightened bachelor.)�[77]

Pacing

:justpost:

Read as thou wilt is the whole of the law.

Please post after you read!

Please bookmark the thread to encourage discussion.

References and Further Materials

Suggestions for Future Months

These threads aren't just for discussing the current BOTM; If you have a suggestion for next month's book, please feel free to post it in the thread below also. Generally what we're looking for in a BotM are works that have

1) accessibility -- either easy to read or easy to download a free copy of, ideally both

2) novelty -- something a significant fraction of the forum hasn't already read

3) discussability -- intellectual merit, controversiality, insight -- a book people will be able to talk about.

Final Note:

Thanks, and we hope everyone enjoys the book!

# ? Nov 3, 2021 02:18

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# ? Apr 25, 2024 22:01

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

A lighter read for this month, something to help keep your mind off dealing with the relatives. I hope everyone enjoys the book!

if you've ever seen this in a bar:

Sayers wrote that slogan; it was her campaign.

quote:

Lord Peter's large income... I deliberately gave him... After all it cost me nothing and at the time I was particularly hard up and it gave me pleasure to spend his fortune for him. When I was dissatisfied with my single unfurnished room I took a luxurious flat for him in Piccadilly. When my cheap rug got a hole in it, I ordered him an Aubusson carpet. When I had no money to pay my bus fare I presented him with a Daimler double-six, upholstered in a style of sober magnificence, and when I felt dull I let him drive it. I can heartily recommend this inexpensive way of furnishing to all who are discontented with their incomes. It relieves the mind and does no harm to anybody.

quote:

George Orwell was highly critical of this aspect of the Wimsey books: "... Even she [Sayers] is not so far removed from Peg's Paper as might appear at a casual glance. It is, after all, a very ancient trick to write novels with a lord for a hero. Where Miss Sayers has shown more astuteness than most is in perceiving that you can carry that kind of thing off a great deal better if you pretend to treat it as a joke. By being, on the surface, a little ironical about Lord Peter Wimsey and his noble ancestors, she is enabled to lay on the snobbishness ('his lordship' etc.) much thicker than any overt snob would dare to do".[11] In fact, Sayers took the trouble to make the character halfway plausible by having his manner result from the stress of fighting in the Great War (which included an episode of being buried alive). Wimsey was not like that before the War, but afterward attempted to cope with his haunting memories by adopting �a mask of impenetrable frivolity�. Thus, it is Wimsey himself who is laying it on thick, since the character requires that type of mockery, either of himself or of public perceptions of his class.

Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 02:38 on Nov 3, 2021

# ? Nov 3, 2021 02:19

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

I really like how Sayers handles the opening pages -- that kind of multi-page info dump could be deadly in the wrong hands, but she breaks it up nicely with humor and character bits from the judge, jury, and spectators.

# ? Nov 3, 2021 15:15

Rand Brittain: Mar 25, 2013; "Go on until you're stopped."

It seems we must read as the mod's whimsy takes us.

I've always been a fan of Sayers, and to be honest I think the later books are the better ones. Gaudy Night is a particular favorite, although everybody knows that Murder Must Advertise is her best work.

Orwell is kind of right, though, when he points out that under a mild veil of parody Sayers takes Wimsey's inherent nobility completely at face value, although he doesn't share it with any other members of the Denver family except his mother.

# ? Nov 4, 2021 00:46

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Huh. Could Wimsey count as one of the origins of the Mary Sue character?

# ? Nov 4, 2021 17:36

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

anilEhilated posted:

Huh. Could Wimsey count as one of the origins of the Mary Sue character?

I mean, he would, except for Harriett Vane being right there, and for his various failings and complexities.

That's kinda one reason I think this book in particular is worth discussing. She's writing this stuff in the twenties, a hundred years ago. And parts of it are what today we'd consider extremely "tropey" but she's decades ahead of the tropes, and other parts are nuanced and complex far more than any modern day Mary Sue protagonist would be. Harriett Vane is no Honor Harrington.

# ? Nov 4, 2021 18:49

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

Sayers did have pretty strong feelings about Wimsey, and I have always thought there was a bit of author self-insert about Harriet.

(In connection to the article linked above, I have also read Thrones, Dominations, the unfinished Wimsey book that was finished by Jill Paton Walsh. It's ... okay, but not great. I haven't read Paton Walsh's original Wimsey books and I'm not really inclined to hunt them down.)

# ? Nov 4, 2021 22:00

Rand Brittain: Mar 25, 2013; "Go on until you're stopped."

That article is honestly pretty heavy on "oh yeah, Sayers was definitely in love with her own protagonist" and pretty light on textual evidence.

I think most of the analyses of Wimsey as perfect handsome prince tend to focus too much on his good looks, money, and breeding, and not enough on his actual wish-fulfillment quality of being A Man Who Understands And Is Genuinely Sympathetic To Women's Problems.

# ? Nov 5, 2021 01:12

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

I found a website with annotations for this book:

https://planetpeschel.com/the-wimsey-annotations/strong-poison/

# ? Nov 5, 2021 21:00

DreamingofRoses: Jun 27, 2013; Nap Ghost

Rand Brittain posted:

That article is honestly pretty heavy on "oh yeah, Sayers was definitely in love with her own protagonist" and pretty light on textual evidence.

I think most of the analyses of Wimsey as perfect handsome prince tend to focus too much on his good looks, money, and breeding, and not enough on his actual wish-fulfillment quality of being A Man Who Understands And Is Genuinely Sympathetic To Women's Problems.

Aka almost every romance novel hero. The disparaging attitude that so many critics take to that sort of thing grinds my gears a lot.

# ? Nov 6, 2021 20:16

Lawman 0: Aug 17, 2010

I'm gonna read this book whenever I managed to find it.

# ? Nov 8, 2021 14:38

Ben Nevis: Jan 20, 2011

Lawman 0 posted:

I'm gonna read this book whenever I managed to find it.

Yeah, I got this from the library, probably starting later this week.

# ? Nov 8, 2021 16:26

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

favorite side character in this: Eiluned Price

quote:

By the late 1920s, however, they had become firm friends again, and [Muriel St. Clair] Byrne and her partner Marjorie Barber won a cameo appearance as Harriet Vane�s best friends, Sylvia and Eiluned, in the 1929 Lord Peter Wimsey crime novel Strong Poison. (Eiluned, we learn, �scorns everything in trousers�, a classic euphemism if ever there was one.)

Great article here about the relationship Sayers had with Byrne and Barber:

https://the-toast.net/2016/06/07/dorothy-l-sayers-marjorie-barber/

Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 16:38 on Nov 8, 2021

# ? Nov 8, 2021 16:32

Primpin and Pimpin: Sep 2, 2011

I managed to grab this from my library system over the weekend. Never read anything by Sayers before, but I am a fan of the genre (albeit much lapsed from the whole practice of reading with any regularity). And wow. Books kind of rule? I really enjoyed Strong Poison and the characterization of especially Eiluned (as mentioned) and Ms. Murchinson. It reminds me of the show Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries. Women being real people and able to be appreciated and relied on by Wimsey hit perfectly and did not feel forced or fantastical. I also enjoyed combing over terminology of the times: a perm being called a wave, 'bus as shorthand for omnibus, among other things. Just a neat glimpse into language and how it changes or differs over time and distance.

# ? Nov 8, 2021 17:30

DreamingofRoses: Jun 27, 2013; Nap Ghost

Huh, oddly enough the only copy my library has of the ebook is already checked out. Which one of you goons is in Lexington?

Edit: rule of thumb, always check all of your resources since the non-Overdrive library app had the audiobook! Guess I know what I get to listen to at work today.

DreamingofRoses fucked around with this message at 13:15 on Nov 9, 2021

# ? Nov 9, 2021 13:13

Ben Nevis: Jan 20, 2011

Started this weekend, I'm about 100 pages in and rather enjoying it. I like the characters. The basic crime so far brings a bit to mind Gambit by Rex Stout and I'm quite curious to see if it's resolved similarly.

# ? Nov 15, 2021 18:43

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Oh, if people want to read other books in this series:

The first one is free on Gutenberg, but Harriett Vane won't be in that one and it's a little rougher overall:

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/58820

The rest should be available from libraries, people generally won't be checking these out since they're so old and somewhat dated.

The later you get in the series, the more improbable and somewhat silly the actual murder plots become, but the rest of the writing improves dramatically with each book, probably peaking in Gaudy Night.

Have His Carcase, Gaudy Night and Busman's Honeymoon continue the WImsey/Vane storyline but Murder Must Advertise and The Nine Tailors are also quite enjoyable.

# ? Nov 16, 2021 04:08

Ben Nevis: Jan 20, 2011

Finished this last night. I enjoyed the book overall, nicely humorous throughout. The mystery was OK, though much more of a howdunnit than a whodunnit.

# ? Nov 18, 2021 17:52

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

I strongly recommend the nine tailors, the five red herrings, and whose body.

# ? Nov 19, 2021 06:49

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

December suggestions?

# ? Nov 22, 2021 23:36

Zachack: Jun 1, 2000

I finished this a couple of nights ago and my thoughts are that the book was just ok. Divorced from any knowledge of what the standard at the time was, and not really reading many mysteries in general, I felt the book suffered from too much of Lord Whimsey talking to some British stereotypes, then moving on to the next batch, then again, then again, wait here's a chapter not covered in quote marks, back to people again. And it's not that this approach is inherently bad, but it felt like Sayers didn't have much to say other than a sort of "hey, do you <early 20th century Briton> remember what these people are like? Huh? HUH? Aren't they ridiculous?" And I appreciate that Sayers did a decent job with the variety, but at some level I just didn't care enough about quantity.

I do think the book gave a pretty good "feel" for some of the encounters and settings, such that 100 years and 6 seasons of Downton Abbey later I could easily grasp how things were supposed to look.

Also, was the mystery supposed to be solvable by the reader? The Who was pretty obvious to the point that I expected a twist, but the How seemed impossible to determine in advance.

# ? Nov 25, 2021 06:26

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Zachack posted:

Also, was the mystery supposed to be solvable by the reader? The Who was pretty obvious to the point that I expected a twist, but the How seemed impossible to determine in advance.

Sayer's target audience -- classically-educated Britons in the first half of the twentieth century -- would probably have been able to guess it, yes, but not so much based on in-book clues as based on their knowledge of the mithridates story from their classical educations. The "Mithridates, he died old" quote from A Shropshire Lad would've been something many of her readers would've been familiar with also.

quote:

A Shropshire Lad is a collection of sixty-three poems by the English poet Alfred Edward Housman, published in 1896. Selling slowly at first, it then rapidly grew in popularity, particularly among young readers. Composers began setting the poems to music less than ten years after their first appearance, and many parodists have satirised Housman's themes and poetic style.

quote:

edit: spoiler for solution

There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast, 60
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all that springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more, 65
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat; 70
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white�s their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.
�I tell the tale that I heard told. 75
Mithridates, he died old.

Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 12:02 on Nov 25, 2021

# ? Nov 25, 2021 11:53

Kangxi: Nov 12, 2016; "Too paranoid for you?"
"Not me, paranoia's the garlic in life's kitchen, right, you can never have too much."

Finished this one after dinner. One of my older family members was very enthusiastic.

It was all right. I liked it for what it was, a mystery well above average, but I don't have a very strong want to read anything else in the genre for a while as I burned myself out on those earlier this year.

# ? Nov 26, 2021 04:29

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Next month will probably be Hogfather by Terry Pratchett for some christmas fun unless I'm convinced otherwise.

# ? Nov 28, 2021 15:02

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Next month will probably be Hogfather by Terry Pratchett for some christmas fun unless I'm convinced otherwise.

Confirming: Hogfather by Terry Pratchett for December. I'll get a thread up soonish.

# ? Dec 3, 2021 02:33

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# ? Apr 25, 2024 22:01

Apsyrtes: May 17, 2004

sounds fun!

# ? Dec 3, 2021 16:43

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > BOTM November: STRONG POISON by Dorothy Sayers