Feminist three-deckers.
#CharlotteSmith's The Young Philosopher, 1798: an excess of plot over character but maybe one of her best novels, loyal to the thinking of #Wollstonecraft, constructive and energetic.
#AnneBrontë's Tenant of Wildfell Hall, 1848 -- powerful and intense, resembling C18 or 1790s or perhaps 1820s writing. As good (and original) as people say it is!
#ThomasHardy's Tess -- first time I have re-read it since teenage Hardy phase. #books #reading #bookstodon

#RSPB birdwatch weekend. I just read #CharlotteSmith's posthumously published Natural History of Birds, Intended Chiefly for Young Persons, 1807 -- it's delightful, with passages from her own observations and some of her poems -- influenced by Cowper, who was the dedicatee of one of her significant works, The Emigrants. Her real area of expertise was #botany, but this one is not written as a dialogue, so it is easier to take in for modern readers, and must be online somewhere. #Romanticism