CMYF members can join our online Book Group for a friendly discussion 5 times a year. All meetings are at 15:00 UK local time, international members are very welcome.
Next Book Group meeting : 14 December 2024
The topic is food: Can you bring to the table your favourite meals from the books? Or your least favourite meal … Or you could come up with a menu for an occasion that is only referred to glancingly. Or how did mass catering in the 19th century work?
Book Group meetings in 2025
| Date | Title |
| 9 February 2025 | Henrietta’s Wish |
| 10 May 2025 | The Young Stepmother |
| 9 August 2025 | A Review of Nieces and Come to Her Kingdom |
| 8 November 2025 | The Chaplet of Pearls |
| 13 December 2025 | Discussion on dress in CMY novels |
Previous Book Group meetings
9 November 20924 Under the Storm
This is one of CMY’s late books, when (it has to be admitted) she was past her best and, following her brother’s financial difficulties, was finding it necessary to undertake work which perhaps did not allow her the luxury of indulging in full-length novels. She had also begun to feel that she had lost touch with the younger generation of girls, so was turning to historical fiction – apart of course from the last links of the linked novels.
It is also clear that the publishing intention of the National Society (in full: The National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church throughout England and Wales), while very dear to her heart, forced these late books into a length and an overall theme which differed in emphasis from the earlier ones. There is more overt church teaching than her Keble-instilled habit in the books of her maturity of reserve on religious matter. Publishing strictures required her to be more explicit, the stories had to be shorter, and they were aimed at a different class from the readership of The Monthly Packet. She was not writing for the daughters of the gentry and professional classes but for the lower classes of the kind she taught in her Sunday school.She had to be more didactic and less empathetic – compare Steadfast with Felix Underwood, his sister Patience with Wilmet, to see the difference.
Lesser they may be, but these late books of CMY are still perfectly competent and recognizably hers. We have only to compare Under the Storm, with its Robinsonade details of how the family survive, with the much earlier The Children of the New Forest (Marryat, 1847) to see how careful CMY was with historic detail and, indeed, with the realism of cottage living. Not for her the anachronistic fields of potatoes or the comfortably-equipped, if modest, cottage in the New Forest. CMY may not have had much experience of cottage dwelling, but she has a sounder grasp than Marryat of what the children’s life would have been like.
So – for our discussion of Under the Storm we might look further afield for our comparisons than just the book itself. The following questions might be considered:
1. How does Under the Storm stand up as a historical novel?
2. Does it work as a Robinsonade (i.e. book following Robinson Crusoe’s desert island living)
3. How does Steadfast compare with Felix?
4. Was it necessary to kill Steadfast off? Should he have been given a more prosaic ‘happy’ ending?
5. Does the story depend on CMY’s need to inculcate high Anglican values?
6. Was CMY self-indulgent over the names she gives the Kenton children?