British Author Challenge June 2022: Jackie Kay & E. F. Benson

Jackie Kay was born in Edinburgh in 1961 to a Scottish mother and Nigerian father. She was adopted as a baby by a white Scottish couple, John and Helen Kay, who had previously adopted one of Jackie's brothers.

As a teenager, Kay briefly worked as a cleaner for David Cornwell, who is better known by his pen name John le Carré.

Kay studied English at the University of Sterling and published her first book of poetry in 1991. She has since published multiple poetry collections, novels, plays, and a biography of blues singer Bessie Smith. Her work has garnered a number of awards, and she was the Scots Makar from 2016 to 2021.

Selected works
Trumpet
Red Dust Road
Wish I Was Here
Adoption Papers
Why Don't You Stop Talking: Stories
Bessie Smith
Darling: New and Selected Poems
The Frog Who Dreamed She Was an Opera Singer
Bantam

E. F. Benson was born in Berkshire in 1867. He attended King's College, Cambridge and published his first book, Sketches from Marlborough*, in 1888.

Benson was a very prolific writer, producing dozens of novels, short stories, and non-fiction books, in addition to several plays. He is perhaps best remembered as the author of the Mapp and Lucia series of novels.

In addition to being a writer, Benson was also an athlete, and represented in England in figure skating.

Benson died of throat cancer in 1940 and is buried in Rye, East Sussex.

*Fun fact: PaulCranswick is the only person who has cataloged this book on LT.

Selected works
Mapp and Lucia series
Dodo series
David Blaize series
Mrs. Ames
The Freaks of Mayfair
An Autumn Sowing
Paying Guests
The Collected Ghost Stories of E.F. Benson
Fine Feathers And Other Stories
Crescent and Iron Cross
The life of Alcibiades
As We Were
Our Family Affairs

It will be Bessie Smith and Mrs Ames for me all being well.

>2 amanda4242: Interesting fact that I hadn't especially noticed but unfortunately it is somewhere at my mum's house and not with me in Malaysia.

Jackie Kay's Trumpet was my choice.

I'll try Benson's Queen Lucia.

I have penciled in Miss Mapp for June.

>3 PaulCranswick: Sketches from Marlborough looks to be a pretty obscure book: no one has it on Goodreads, it's not on Project Gutenberg, and there are fewer than two dozen listings for it on WorldCat. I did find it on Google books, so I may give it a read. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Sketches_from_Marlborough/-WhDAQAAMAAJ?hl=e...

The Adoption Papers by Jackie Kay

I have a love/hate relationship with modern poetry--mostly I love to hate it--but Kay's poetry about her adoption by a white Scottish couple is a winner in my book.

>8 amanda4242: Hope the Scottish couple were good to Jackie Kay - the Scots in America were kind of variable.

>9 m.belljackson: It's definitely not all sunshine and roses, but the adoptive mother sounds fiercely loving and protective.

>8 amanda4242: I think I've heard her reading from that volume Ananda.

Reading Miss Mapp. Fun read.

I completed Miss Mapp, it was a hoot. Pure comedy.

>13 Kristelh: I have a Mapp and Lucia omnibus I may get to later in the month, but I've decided to start with David Blaize since it's been sitting on my e-reader for years.

>14 amanda4242: that one looks good, too bad, its not available in any of my sources.

>15 Kristelh: It's on Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/48315

On Jackie Kay's childhood and parents, her memoir Red Dust Road is excellent and her adoptive parents sound great. Her memoir is about growing up in Scotland, but also about meeting her biological parents, though meeting her father was clearly quite a difficult experience.

>17 elkiedee: That sounds interesting. I'll have to see if I can track down a copy.

The July thread is up!

https://www.librarything.com/topic/342539

David Blaize by E. F. Benson

A story of idyllic school days set before WWI. It's all cricket, Latin lessons, pranks, and love between school boys. Of course Benson practically trips over himself to make sure we understand that it's the "right" sort of love, all while being coy about what the "wrong" sort is. Not my usual sort of book, but a very pleasant read.

David Blaize and the Blue Door by E. F. Benson, illustrated by H. J. Ford

That was...strange. In this prequel to David Blaize, a very young David goes through a mysterious blue door one night and interacts with his toys come to life. I guess it's trying to be a kind of Alice's Adventures In Wonderland thing, but it doesn't quite hit the mark.