Ronald Firbank

Five Novels

The fairly young and entirely alive Mrs Shamefoot wants nothing more than to have a memorial stained-glass window erected in her honour in an English cathedral. From this premise, the inimitable Ronald Firbank extends his witty, eccentric Vainglory, with a crowded cast of hilariously drawn characters - Winsome Brooks, Lady Anne Pantry, Miss Wookie, Mrs Barrow of Dawn and Mrs Steeple - a riot of parties, and a bottomless sense of the ridiculous. Admired by Auden, Forster and Waugh, Firbank's fine comic skill, quick-fire dialogue and descriptive flights of fancy are perfectly captured in Vainglory, his first and longest novel, as well as in two novellas included here: Inclinations and Caprice.

with Inclinations and Caprice

Vainglory

Mistura de aristocrata fin-de-siècle e escritor de vanguarda, o inglês Ronald Firbank (1886-1926) é o autor de nove romances curtos, produzidos no intervalo de pouco mais de uma década. Sua obra, apesar de cultuada por escritores e críticos literários da Europa e dos Estados Unidos, nunca havia sido editada no Brasil. Este volume reúne três de suas principais novelas, Imodéstia, Capricho e Inclinações, escritas entre 1915 e 1917. Com humor fino, diálogos curtos e ágeis, Firbank cria, nas três novelas, um retrato da sociedade inglesa de seu tempo, por meio de um mosaico literário composto por uma coleção de trechos de conversas e detalhes curiosos da vida ao redor. Em vez do aprofundamento psicológico e da interiorização do personagem mediados pelo narrador ou da densidade analítica que marcam a prosa da época, seu texto se aproxima dos movimentos e estocadas ligeiras da comédia. Por trás dos diálogos aparentemente frívolos, com divertidos debates sobre roupas ou decoração, flores e obras de arte, Firbank revela uma estrutura intelectual bastante densa. Sua prosa surpreende pela liberdade desimpedida, moral e formal, com que aborda temas como a religiosidade, a sexualidade e a ascensão social. Em Imodéstia, a sra. Shamefoot, casada com um importante homem público, concentra todas suas energias no projeto de erigir um vitral violeta, homenageando a si própria, na catedral de uma cidade do interior da Inglaterra. Em Capricho, a srta. Sinquier, filha de um clérigo, foge da casa paterna no meio rural para encenar Shakespeare em Londres. Na novela Inclinações, uma garota de família tradicional parte em viagem pela Grécia para acompanhar uma romancista mais velha, ignorando a natureza do interesse da escritora por ela. O projeto gráfico Desenvolvido por Joana Figueiredo, o projeto gráfico do livro inspirou-se no universo rico, exagerado e fantasioso de Firbank, com suas inúmeras referências artísticas, para reunir as novelas em um único volume, encadernado em capa dura e envolvido por uma sobrecapa que reproduz a obra Apoteose da rosa, de Joseph Stella (1877-1946).

Imodéstia, capricho, inclinações

The Complete Firbank

Alan Hollinghurst is a great champion of Firbank's work and writes an introduction to this collection of three of his favourite Firbank novels.

Three Novels

With an introduction by Alan HollinghurstNeither her Gaudiness the Mistress of the Robes, or her Dreaminess the Queen were feeling quite themselves. In the Palace all was speculation . . .Ronald Firbank, described by Alan Hollinghurst as 'one of the most important figures in British fiction in the twentieth century', first published The Flower Beneath the Foot in 1923. Set on the eve of a royal wedding at the fantastical court of King Willie and Her Dreaminess the Queen of Pisuerga, this is an absurd and often melancholy tale of love.An innovative and much-praised novelist, Ronald Firbank has earned his place in the 'canon of camp' and continues to dazzle in this unmissable cult classic.

Being a Record of the Early Life of St. Laura de Nazianzi

The Flower Beneath the Foot

Valmouth

The story of an elderly woman's obsession with acquiring a cathedral stained-glass window.

Being a Record of the Early Life of St. Laura de Nazianzi and the Times in which She Lived

Vainglory. (New edition.).

In Vainglory, we follow the luckless struggles of Mrs. Shamefoot-that fashionable but discontented London hostess-to get herself immortalized in a stained-glass cathedral window.The scenes are laid out in London drawing rooms and English country houses with the inevitable aroma of a cathedral as indefinable as piety, and such characters:Miss Compostella, an actress, "although so private looking," Lady Listliss, "who had the look of a person who discovered something she ought not to know, probably brought about by merely putting two and two together," Claud Harvester, "who had gone about here and there tinting his personality after the fashion of Venetian glass," Bishop Henedge, "who obtained his preferment solely on account of his beautiful long legs, and the really reassuring way of blowing his nose; to hear him do it was to realize the exact meaning of conviction."Here is the Firbank touch. Here is the deft humor that defies imitation, and here is fancy at its best.

Prancing Nigger

The Flower Beneath the Foot [and] Prancing Nigger

Two Novels

Caprice

Two Stories

When Widows Love ; & A Tragedy in Green

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Flower Beneath the Foot" (Being a record of the early life of St. Laura de Nazianzi and the times in which she lived) by Ronald Firbank. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

Being a record of the early life of St. Laura de Nazianzi and the times in which she lived

Miss O'Brookomore became evasive. "I want you to repress yourself a little for a few days. Be more discreet." "Because ----" "Professor and Mrs. Cowsend have the rooms next ours..." "Buz! Let them!" "Also, the Arbanels are here on their honeymoon....You never saw such ghosts on their rambles." "Who is Mr. Arbanel?" "He's very blase." Miss Collins clasped her hands. "I'd give almost anything to be blase." Young Mabel Collins, naively wily-wise before her very tender years, daughter of a dreaded and dull Yorkshire estate, needs experience - needs to get out into the world. At her first soiree, she is introduced to the renowned eccentric biographer Geraldine O'Brookomore, who is just about to start out for Greece on the trail of her latest quarry, the romantic early traveller Catherine "Kitty" Kettler. It is decided that Mabel will be the perfect companion for her trip. Ronald Firbank's wildly accentuated style, brimful of strange exclamations and bursts of hilariously intense conversation, takes us with them as they move around the famous Greek landscape, meeting along the way many English and European expatriates with equally striking preoccupations and attitudes: "I heard the flowers scream as I picked them!" Mrs. Erso-Ennis was saying as she scattered a shower of blossoms upon the floor. Their whole escapade cannot help but be eventful: Across a vivid, a perfectly pirate sea, Salamis showed shimmering in the sun. Miss Arne held out arms towards it. "It's like a happy ending!" she breathed. There will be no such happy ending for their friend, the actress Miss Arne. Salamis' sea will be a witness to....what? An accident? A murder? Mabel, though, has something else on her mind: the dashing Count Pastorelli, disapproved of heartily by Geraldine, has been pursuing her... This, Firbank's second novel, with its hints of the Sapphic and the scandalous, was first published in 1916. The Glasgow Herald's reviewer said "Mr. Ronald Firbank's fiction bears a strong resemblance to the work of the Futurists in painting." He certainly was, in the oddness of his depiction and in his stripping-down of narrative and conversation to their bizarre bare bones, a master of the avant-garde well before his time. This edition includes an extra chapter, written much later in 1925.

Inclinations

Valmouth. The Princess Zoubaroff

Valmouth, a southern English coastal resort, has a generous supply of well-furnished and well-connected relics of society. Hare-Hatch House, inhabited by good friends Eulalia Hurstpierpoint and Elizabeth Thoroughfare, is one of the great centres of local social attention. Coming on a visit, Lady Parvula de Panzoust encounters members of several castes there, ranging from the Tooke family who are in service, through the omnipresent exotic masseuse-cum-herbalist Mrs Yajñavalkya, to those of her own status who buzz around the house gossiping and defaming, hinting and declaiming, each other's secret business and hidden predilections always the tasty subject. Indeed, Parvula herself is on something of a private mission of an amatory nature! As the season progresses, the question of who will marry Mrs Thoroughfare's son Dick, just returned from the sea, becomes an absorbing question. Will young Thetis Tooke, single-minded and passionate, recapture his attention permanently? Or will Mrs Yajñavalkya's protégé Niri-Esther steal his favour? The already agitated currents begin to stir forcefully... Valmouth, Ronald Firbank's celebrated fourth novel, was first published in 1919. Its waves of exclamatory dialogue, eccentric description and outrageous characters confirmed his unique position as high-camp chronicler of his age in all its hilarious, sharp-tongued erraticism.

Ronald Firbank

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