Do I really think I am going to possibly find 493 Viragos? Very wishful thinking. Whenever I start thinking of Persephone Books, it usually puts me in mind of my growing collection of Viragos. I should say, my slowly growing, collection. In the past I have lamented not finding a complete list of the Viragos that have been published. I'm a little slow sometimes, as I was given the link to the Virago home page (thanks Pam). If you read the "welcome paragraph" on that first page, you will eventually come across a link to the complete list. I finally took the time to read the information on the page! Previously I only saw that timeline on their website, and thought that surely there must be more books than this...
According to the list there are about 524 Viragos! I printed out the list--highlighting and printing won't work by the way. It throws the formatting completely off. So I diligently cut and pasted each group of titles. Now that I know which books they have published, I can look up the ones that sound interesting and try and find those books. Now comes the next stumbling block. Many of the older titles are out of print, and when I look them up in Amazon there is no description of the contents. How do I know I will like the story? I guess it is back to simply trying my luck at the used bookstore. I don't actually think I will ever own all or at the least most of these titles--though wouldn't that be cool? I can pass on most of the more current authors like Margaret Atwood or Kaye Gibbons or Joyce Carol Oates as I have many of their books already and they are easy to find in other editions. It is the unknown or hard to find authors I am interested in.
Of course this made me want to drop by the used bookstore last night to try my luck. My luck was zilch. I went to two used bookstores that are fairly close together in location. One I thought would not have any Viragos, and they didn't. I usually can find one or two at my favorite used bookstore, however. Nothing. Not a single one. Typical, isn't it. Just when you set your mind on doing something (in my case finding something), it just doesn't happen. Oh well. I guess I will go back to watching for them on Bookmooch (usually there are several in the UK--but I try and only mooch from the US), or happening upon them by chance at the used bookstore. I didn't leave empty handed though. As I am currently reading Mariana by Monica Dickens, I thought it would be fun to read her autobiographical One Pair of Hands about her job working as a cook-general for the English upper classes. I also spotted Emile Zola's Theresa Raquin, which is a "grim tale of adultery, murder and revenge in a nightmarish setting." Upon publication it sounds as though the press slammed it, calling it "putrid literature", "a quagmire of slime and blood", and a "sewer". All publicity is good publicity, right? Apparently it was an immediate success. I'm looking forward to reading it.
By the way. I am planning on choosing one of my Viragos as my next read. I just have to finish one book. At the moment I am trying to decide whether to choose Elizabeth and Her German Garden by Elizabeth von Arnim or The Sleeping Beauty by Elizabeth Taylor. Both are on this list of books that I always talk about and never read. If I really do want to read the books on that list this year, I better get going. So far I have only started Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy (and I need to get back to reading it). I suppose I should concentrate on reading the Viragos that I own rather than worrying about acquiring more. I guess in my case it is the thrill of the hunt--finding something you thought you would never find!