Sally leaves a frosty boat and travels to Gloucestershire to meet her friend and fellow author Alice Jolly. They talk about Alice’s epic experimental novel, Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile, which is written in rolling free verse and recounts the life of an elderly maidservant in the Stroud Valley of the 19th century. They listen to clips from an extraordinary dramatisation of the book, and discuss spiritual autobiography, Christina Rossetti, the Psalms, and how the marginalised and dispossessed can find a posthumous voice in literature.
Further Reading
Sally’s friend Alice Jolly has won the V.S. Pritchett Memorial Prize and the PEN/Ackerley Prize. Her novel Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile was runner up for The Rathbones Folio Prize and longlisted for The Ondaatje Prize. She was awarded an O. Henry Award in 2021. You can find her books here:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Books-Alice-Jolly/s?rh=n%3A266239%2Cp_27%3AAlice+Jolly
The dramatization of Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile was created by the Red Dog Theatre Company, Jude Emmet, Kate Abraham and Simon Turner. You can find it here:
https://open.spotify.com/album/4lD6TzgomEztr9b8sU1CnY
https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Mary-Ann-Sate-Imbecile-Audiobook/B0B4TW92RL
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner was written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1797/98 and published in Lyrical Ballads, a collection of poems co-written with William Wordsworth; a revolutionary work considered to signal the beginning of British Romantic literature. This long poem recounts the experiences of a sailor who, in one of the most famous tales in literature, brings a curse upon himself and his shipmates when he kills an albatross. At the beginning of the poem, the mariner stops a guest on his way to a wedding, insisting that his story must be heard.
You can find the poem here, in a revised edition published in 1834:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43997/the-rime-of-the-ancient-mariner-text-of-1834
Christina Rossetti was a 19th century English writer of romantic, devotional and children’s poems, celebrated for the deceptive simplicity of her lyrical language. She was sister to the artist and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and part of the circle which formed around the artistic movement known as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Some of her best-known poems can be found here:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/christina-rossetti
Puddleglum appears in the children's fantasy series The Chronicles of Narnia by the Oxford writer C.S. Lewis; he’s a principal character in The Silver Chair and is mentioned briefly at the end of The Last Battle. Puddleglum is a "Marsh-wiggle"; they live in wigwams close to the river. Lewis claimed he based the character on his gardener.
The producer of the podcast is Andrew Smith: https://www.fleetingyearfilms.com
The extra voice in this episode is Emma Fielding
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Thanks to everyone who has supported us so far. Special thanks go to Violet Henderson, Kris Dyer, and Maeve Magnus.
A Reading Life, A Writing Life, with Sally Bayley