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A selection of photos posted on Instagram by the Slightly Foxed staff.

Hello! This is day 4 of my #FoxedFive takeover and

Hello! This is day 4 of my #FoxedFive takeover and I’m Michelle of @Bookmusings.⁠
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A few years ago a used copy of a Slightly Foxed quarterly magazine ended up in my possession. I don’t remember exactly how I acquired it, especially being in the U.S., but I do remember devouring it and enthusiastically posting about it on my Instagram feed. I couldn’t believe there was a magazine devoted to rediscovering lesser known published works. Thus my love affair with @foxedquarterly started and my “to read” book list expanded with each new edition. Today I’m featuring the Slightly Foxed quarterly magazine and hope you too will experience its charms. May your book list increase and your shelves bulge with slightly foxed volumes as you’ll discover long forgotten treasures.

Welcome to day 3 of my #FoxedFive takeover. I’m

Welcome to day 3 of my #FoxedFive takeover. I’m Michelle of @Bookmusings and today I’m featuring two memoirs.⁠
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Written by E. H. Shepard, the illustrator of Winnie the Pooh and The Wind in the Willows, these charming memoirs were just the thing to pull me out of a reading slump. In the first volume, Drawn from Memory, Shepard describes his Victorian childhood. The second volume, Drawn from Life, continues the story of his life through school, his marriage and the start of his career. Lovely illustrations are sprinkled throughout the books which add a charm of their own. If you are in the mood for reading evocative, humorous, and charming books I highly recommend these two memoirs.

Hello! This is day 2 of my #FoxedFive takeover and

Hello! This is day 2 of my #FoxedFive takeover and I’m Michelle of @Bookmusings.⁠
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Have you ever wondered what quotes and observations others choose to write down and preserve? ⁠
Today I’m featuring An Englishman’s Commonplace Book by Roger Hudson. Filled with delightful quotes, observations, and musings this slim book is perfect for those times you just want to flip through and read a few lines. Reading the wide variety of topics I found myself laughing at some and sharing others with those around me. ⁠
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Do you write down quotations? I have a few notebooks filled and I sometimes underline (the horror!) in my books as I’m reading them.

Happy spring! Welcome to the spring edition of the

Happy spring! Welcome to the spring edition of the #FoxedFive takeover. I’m Michelle of @Bookmusings and I’m taking over Slightly Foxed Instagram this week to post about my favorite five @foxedquarterly things. I’ll share a favorite each day and at the end of the week there will be a giveaway where one lucky winner will be sent all my favorites. ⁠
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I am drawn to books about nature and village life specifically those depicting a way of life that’s disappearing. John Moore’s Brensham Trilogy chronicles the people and events in and around Elmbury, an English market town. The memoirs are peppered with stories and interesting topics offering a portrait of English town and rural life at the beginning of 20th Century. Reading this trilogy evokes delightful nostalgia for a time and way of life I’ve never experienced but sometimes wish I had.⁠
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Let me know in a comment below some of your favorite books set in and revolving around villages or small towns please.

‘Q proved a man impossible to dislike, and a dip

‘Q proved a man impossible to dislike, and a diplomat who cut through the petty jealousies and quarrels of academic life and succeeded in organizing the English Faculty. He was also the most notable English literary critic of his time, his influence paramount until the unfortunate false dawn of F. R. Leavis. Literature, Q believed, ‘is not an abstract Science, to which exact definitions can be applied. It is an Art rather, the success of which depends on personal persuasiveness, on the author’s skill to give as on ours to receive.’ His argument was trenchant and forceful. ‘Remember,’ he told his students,⁠
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‘ . . . that you are English and to go always for the thing – casting out of your vocabulary all such words as ‘tendencies’, ‘influences’, ‘revivals’, ‘revolts’. ‘Tendencies’ did not write The Canterbury Tales; Geoffrey Chaucer wrote them. ‘Influences’ did not make The Faerie Queene: Edmund Spenser made it: as a man called Ben Jonson wrote The Alchemist, a man called Sheridan wrote The Rivals . . .’⁠
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The series of his published lectures are among the most persuasive illuminations of genius any English critic has ever produced.’ Derek Parker states his case for Q’s legacy in Issue 21 Slightly Foxed magazine.⁠
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Our series of recommendations for good reading via the magazine’s archives has brought us to a writer Daphne du Maurier ‘admired among all others’, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, whose works were published under the pseudonym ‘Q’.⁠
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Du Maurier was far from Q’s only admirer. Helene Hanff enjoyed a volume of lectures by Quiller-Couch, and was inspired to seek out all the titles he recommended. This led to a correspondence with an antiquarian bookshop in London that lasted many years, and these letters became the beloved 84, Charing Cross Road.⁠
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You’ll find Derek Parker’s full article available to read for free on the Slightly Foxed website and we do hope you’ll enjoy it. Link in bio 🔗⁠
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Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch’s bookplate, kindly supplied by Dr Geoffrey Vevers, appeared on the contents page of Slightly Foxed Issue 21.⁠

‘A bunch of flowers, some tobacco, a shirt; and

‘A bunch of flowers, some tobacco, a shirt; and then one morning, a poem, neatly pinned to the pillow . . .’⁠
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‘My companions were artists from a travelling circus, temporarily stranded by the weather, including an asthmatic ventriloquist who talked in his sleep (and ours), four dwarfs who shared one bed, and a white-whiskered bird-tamer who slept by himself, fully clothed, in top hat and boots.⁠
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Another inmate was Avelino, a student from Ronda, who occupied a dark little room down the passage. He was a tense young man, with the soft eyes of a lemur and a tormented blue-furred face. He used to creep nervously about on the tips of his toes, fingering a rosary made of plum stones.⁠
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Perhaps he saw in me someone lost to heaven, a sorry exile without god or country; anyway, I soon became the object of his inexhaustible attention, a chosen burden for charity.⁠
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Tirelessly, speechless and self-effacing, for a week he was my day-long shadow. If I was eating in a café, I’d see him watching me from the doorway, and when I left I’d find that he’d paid the bill. If I was fiddling in the street, he’d march silently up and down, dropping pennies into my hat as he passed. If I was writing in my room he’d suddenly steal up behind me and place a lighted cigarette between my lips. There were also the discreet little gifts I’d find laid on my bed: a bunch of flowers, some tobacco, a shirt; and then one morning, a poem, neatly pinned to the pillow, freshly written in a copper-plate hand: ‘He sleeps, the young man, far from his home and people, forgetting his doleful life, not knowing that tomorrow his music will be torn by the winds and scattered above the rooftops.’’ Laurie Lee, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning.⁠
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If you’re in need of a good book or a present for someone you’re fond of, we highly recommend Laurie Lee’s second memoir. As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning is No. 54 in our series of Slightly Foxed Editions and is available to buy from the SF online bookshop at foxedquarterly.com

‘The glimpse of the wheeling honey buzzard . . .

‘The glimpse of the wheeling honey buzzard . . .’⁠
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‘As the sun dipped lower and lower behind the trees the powerful magic of the scene held him all the more. This place was surely far more lovely than Thoreau’s pond he talked so much about. There was something mysterious, almost a little sinister about it. Why should it be set away in the heart of this ancient forest? The deer drank here perhaps, and all the woodland creatures, foxes, badgers, stoats and the like, pheasants, too, and all the wild forest birds. When Robin looked again in his magic mirror he saw no white clouds sailing, he saw a sky of rarest aquamarine and, as he watched, against that background a bird swam into view, a wide-winged bird, which wheeled and wheeled in vast circles.⁠
Robin looked up at the sky above and saw the whole scene, only more distinctly now and in clearer and more vivid colours. The bird was wheeling like a buzzard, the sunlight shining on the spread fingers of the wide-extended rigid wings. Could it be a honey buzzard? If so, perhaps it had a nest somewhere in the forest . . .’⁠
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BB’s Brendon Chase is one of the great children’s books, a bewitching blend of adventure and natural history, high jinks and skilled bushcraft. Robin’s hunt for the elusive honey buzzard’s nest is one of many escapades, providing not only great suspense and intrigue but remarkably finely observed detail from the natural world. Brendon Chase is just the thing for anyone who has caught themselves eyeing up the nearest patch of woodland and wondering what fun might lie there.⁠
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Denys Watkins-Pitchford (1905–90), who wrote under the pseudonym ‘BB’, was the author of more than sixty books for adults and children. BB was both a writer and an illustrator, and his charming original illustrations decorate his books. But above all he was a countryman, whose intimate and unsentimental knowledge of animals, birds and plants, as well as his gifts as a storyteller, make his books unique.

‘What a thriller “A Poet’s Haven” is! Your

‘What a thriller “A Poet’s Haven” is! Your guest was so interesting and his account just enthralling. These podcasts go from strength to strength.’⁠
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The latest episode of the Slightly Foxed podcast – all about Barrie Cooke’s remarkable archive of poets’ correspondence – was released on 15 March and, if you haven’t yet heard it, we recommend tuning in to discover a treasure trove of revelatory writings and a friendship forged in poetry and nature.⁠
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The artist Barrie Cooke had fishing in common with Ted Hughes, and mud and art in common with Seamus Heaney. Dr Mark Wormald, a scholar on the life and writings of Ted Hughes, has brought to light an extraordinary haul of poems, letters and drawings documenting a decades-long triangular friendship. He describes the spine-tingling discovery of Barrie’s cardboard box stuffed with correspondence and traces its history, starting with the first supper at Barrie’s Kilkenny home, Jerpoint House, where the trio forged their friendship, Seamus began Station Island and a poet’s haven flourished. From Ted’s dream of a burning fox man, climbing into Carrowkeel passage tombs and visits from Robert Lowell and Tom Paulin to fishing diaries, pike spoons and a stuffed trout, subsurface treasures are dredged up as our literary sifting takes us off the beaten track.⁠
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Link in bio 🔗⁠
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@pembroke1347 @cambridgeuniversity @faberbooks @seamusheaneyestate

‘Rambles round the shire . . .’⁠ .⁠ ‘Bef

‘Rambles round the shire . . .’⁠
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‘Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,⁠ ⁠
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.⁠ ⁠
A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,⁠ ⁠
And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire;⁠ ⁠
A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread⁠ ⁠
The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head.’ From G. K. Chesterton’s ‘The Rolling English Road’⁠
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Simon Palmer’s meandering and winding countryside road, ‘Braithwaite Lane’, appears on the cover of Slightly Foxed Issue 25. Simon’s watercolours have been widely exhibited in one-man and group exhibitions over the last four decades. More of his work can be seen at simonpalmerartist.co.uk and you can purchase Simon's pieces from JHW Fine Art and the @portlandgallery.

Applications for this position have now closed. Do

Applications for this position have now closed. Do please keep your eyes peeled for more opportunities to join the Slightly Foxed team in the future 🦊💕📚
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We’re hiring! Join the Slightly Foxed team | April 2021⁠
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Slightly Foxed is looking for a friendly, enthusiastic person to join their London office in a full-time entry level administrative position. We need a lively, well-organized person who enjoys communicating with customers, genuinely takes satisfaction in preparing and dispatching orders, enjoys gift-wrapping, and is happy to hand-write cards and messages to be sent with orders.⁠
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Slightly Foxed prides itself on its personal, friendly and high-end service, which is something that our readers love so, in this role, you’ll be a very important part of the team. You will be responsible for taking orders over the phone, processing and packing orders, gift-wrapping, stock management and general day-to-day office administration among other things.⁠
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The SF office is dog-friendly so there may a couple of dogs on the premises at any time.⁠
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If you like the sound of this and the prospect working with some of the friendly faces above, please visit the Slightly Foxed website to review our job advertisement in full and apply: foxedquarterly.com/join-slightly-foxed-team⁠
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Our great thanks to the brilliant Posy Simmonds for the wonderful illustrations of the Slightly Foxed office and staff which appeared in Slightly Foxed Issue 60, December 2018.⁠

‘Revisiting one of the great literary road trips

‘Revisiting one of the great literary road trips . . .’⁠
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‘How much we miss movement in our suddenly still, stay-at-home pandemic era. Gone the footloose and fancy-free travel of our rose-tinted imaginations, replaced by domestic gloom, pessimistic prospects and shrinking horizons. There seems something pleasingly necessary, then, about revisiting one of the great literary road trips, which celebrates movement for the sake of it and revels in youthful, devil-may-care vagabondism in a Europe basking in its last years of peace.⁠
Not for Laurie Lee a narrowing world of masks, Covid tests and self-isolation. In 1935, staring across the rooftops of London, the 20-year-old made a life-changing discovery: ‘I could go anywhere I liked in the world. There was nothing to stop me, I would be penniless, free and could just pack up and walk away.’ Europe was wide open, ‘a place of casual frontiers, no questions and almost no travellers’. Bliss, in other words.’⁠
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Justin Marozzi on the wanderlust inspired by Laurie Lee’s As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning in his preface to our latest Slightly Foxed Edition. Justin’s piece also appears as an article in Issue 69 of Slightly Foxed magazine.

‘It was sheltered down on the ‘new land’; th

‘It was sheltered down on the ‘new land’; the April sun shone full on us there. Nora and I each went with a pail of ‘sets’ and laid them along in the furrow, and later Walter came and hitched the horses to the plough and covered them in . . .⁠ ⁠
The ridges were split over the potatoes. The plough floundered through the shifty soil as through soot; it drove up, almost smothering the breast, which could hardly push it aside. The plough was like a boat whose prow foundered in the spray; there was nothing for the coulter to cut nor the share to cut – no terra firma; it could only go nosing through the soft mass of earth like a mole, with Walter all the while leaning over it in an attitude of emergency, and keeping up a crooning chant of admonition, loudening to a clear command as one horse or the other inclined to error. That is what he meant by saying it ploughed ‘numb’ – this dark smother of fertility that covered our seed potatoes in the luring April weather.’ Adrian Bell, The Cherry Tree⁠
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Greetings from Slightly Foxed where the team in the office are looking forward to an extended Easter weekend and the prospect of a healthy dose of fresh air, feasting and, most importantly, much good reading. Adrian Bell’s The Cherry Tree is an old favourite of ours that we return to again and again to provide that much needed escape through its pages to the Suffolk countryside. Our Slightly Foxed Edition is available to buy from the SF online bookshop.⁠
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The Slightly Foxed office is closed from 5.30 p.m. today (Wednesday 31 March) until 9.30 a.m. on Wednesday 7 April for the Easter break. However, our online shop is open all hours as always, so do feel free to order books, pick up a tote bag, invest in some bookplates, acquire a notebook, renew your subscription – or, indeed, take out a new subscription – while we’re away, and we’ll send out all orders as soon as we’re back at the packing desk.

‘A place of laughter, kindness and a little wick

‘A place of laughter, kindness and a little wickedness . . .’⁠⁠
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The White Horse Bookshop is a proudly independent bookshop in Marlborough, Wiltshire and is high on our list of bookish destinations to visit when we can. In the meantime, it was a pleasure to speak to @whitehorse_bookshop bookseller Angus to learn more . . .⁠⁠
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Please tell us about your bookshop. What makes it special?⁠⁠
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‘The White Horse Bookshop has been at its present site since 1949 (having opened six years previously just down the road – who would open a bookshop during a world war?!). It’s situated on Marlborough High Street in a 400-year-old building, over three floors, including the recent addition of a gallery space to the rear of the building and a renovated art studio space for the art classes we hold throughout the year.⁠⁠
I’m not sure that it’s my place to say what makes us special but, if pushed, I would say that it’s the ambience of the place. As a bookshop we try to stock what our customers want, rather than pushing our own agenda, and are very active in our wish to make everyone feel welcome and to be a place of laughter, kindness and a little wickedness, when we can get away with it.’⁠⁠
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What are your top picks for spring 2021?⁠⁠
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‘Firstly, it has to be the new Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun. And Joan Didion’s Let Me Tell You What I Mean. Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Committed is going to be very big I feel – a book which is apparently very intellectual but also terrifically readable is usually a winner!’⁠⁠
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For more from our current Bookshop of the Quarter, visit the Slightly Foxed website: foxedquarterly.com/stockists⁠⠀⁠⁠
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#ChooseBookshops #BooksAreMyBag #SlightlyFoxed #WhiteHorseBookshop #Marlborough #Wiltshire #Booksellers #Bookshop #ShopLocal #IndieBookstore #BookshopsOfInstagram #BookShopping #Bookshelves #PrettyBookPlaces #IndieBookshop #SharingAWorldOfShops #Bookshops #BookShelfie #ShopIndie #IndependentBookstore #ReadersOfInstagram #BooksAreMagic #MoreBooksLessAlgorithm #ReadersOfIG #BookRecommendations #KazuoIshiguro #JoanDidion #VietThanhNguyen #ReadingTime #BookCommunity

‘Spring's first dandelion . . .’⁠ .⁠ ‘Si

‘Spring's first dandelion . . .’⁠
.⁠
‘Simple and fresh and fair from winter's close emerging,⁠
As if no artifice of fashion, business, politics, had ever been,⁠
Forth from its sunny nook of shelter’d grass—innocent, golden,⁠ calm⁠
as the dawn,⁠
The spring's first dandelion shows its trustful face.⁠’⁠
Walt Whitman, ‘The First Dandelion⁠’⁠
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Rosie Sanders’s ‘Dandelions and other flowers’ appeared on the cover of Issue 49 of Slightly Foxed magazine⁠.⁠
@rosiesanders.4apple is a Devon-based painter and printmaker specializing in plants. Her often bold and powerful watercolours of flowers express life and energy and sometimes fragility, not just depiction or imitation. Always innovative, her work challenges the boundaries and perceptions of contemporary botanical art. She exhibits regularly with @jonathancoopergallery of Park Walk Gallery in London.⁠
For more of her work, visit her website rosiesanders.com or follow her @rosiesanders.4apple

‘When not in Hoxton Square or at my desk at home

‘When not in Hoxton Square or at my desk at home, I’ve been looking at local area maps rather than office floor plans and casting about for new walks. Time to visit Highgate Cemetery, which I’m ashamed to say I’ve not been to before. Admission is currently by timed ticket and is just the thing for a stroll in the fresh air – but with a quest for notable names thrown in.⁠
I booked a slot for the East Cemetery, where Karl Marx is famously laid to rest, but there are plenty of other, more literary names to discover ‒ William Foyle, co-founder of the eponymous bookshop, the playwright Peter Shaffer, the novelist Alan Sillitoe. Leslie Stephen, father of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell, and first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, lies not far from the final resting-place of George Eliot, whose headstone also bears her married name, Mary Ann Cross. Her irregular life and lack of Christian faith meant that she wasn’t buried in Westminster Abbey. Not far from her is the publisher John Chapman, whose lodger she was for a spell and for whom she worked as an assistant editor.⁠
The author Douglas Adams is here as well. To my delight I see a pot full of pens resting in front of his headstone, each one a tribute from a fan of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. How fitting those pens are. Adams left behind an archive of 67 boxes of notebooks, letters, scripts, poems and to-do lists (a selection is soon to be published by @unbounders).’ Anna, Harringay, 26 March 2021⁠
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From the chaos of the Slightly Foxed office to the peace and quiet of Highgate Cemetery and on to the proof-scattered editor’s desk, we bring you the latest instalment of the Editor’s diary, with guest appearance from office Fox Anna, editorial assistant and all around good egg. We hope you enjoy Gail and Anna’s diary entries and wish you all a restful weekend full of strong coffee and good reading.

‘Barrie said, ‘Just have a browse’, and I br

‘Barrie said, ‘Just have a browse’, and I browsed his bookshelves. And there was a shelf full of all Ted’s books, inscribed personally, which I was very excited about. But below that there was a shelf of all of Seamus Heaney’s books, all personally inscribed, and I said, ‘What’s this about?’ and he said, ‘Oh, Ted and I had fishing in common but Seamus and I have mud and art in common.’’ Dr Mark Wormald on some remarkable discoveries he made while visiting the artist Barrie Cooke in County Sligo and the extraordinary friendship between Barrie, Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney.⁠
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For more on this friendship forged in mud, art and fishing, listen to Episode 29 of the Slightly Foxed podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts.⁠
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For those of you who are new to podcasts, you can listen to ours on the Slightly Foxed website or by searching for Slightly Foxed on @applepodcasts, @spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Radio Public and many other available podcast apps.

‘She knew spring was coming . . .’⁠ .⁠ ‘

‘She knew spring was coming . . .’⁠
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‘After Francie had come in and closed the door quietly behind her – the way you are supposed to in a library – she looked quickly at the little golden brown pottery jug which stood at the end of the librarian’s desk. It was a season indicator. In the fall it had a few sprigs of bittersweet and Christmas time it held holly. She knew spring was coming, even if there was snow on the ground, when she saw pussy willow in the bowl.’ Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn⁠
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Blossom has begun to bloom and scatter itself across the streets of East London and Hoxton Square is finally turning green after months of leafless trees. All these signs of the new season makes us rather hopeful for sunnier days to come and lunchtimes spent reading on the grass.⁠
When we came across Yvonne Skargon’s ‘Pussy Willow’, which appeared in Issue 29 of Slightly Foxed magazine, while browsing the archives last week we were immediately reminded of Betty Smith’s Francie in this sweet little scene and the anticipation and joy of catching sight of the librarian’s seasonal botanical display.⁠ ⁠
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Yvonne Skargon was inspired by renowned wood engravers John O’Connor and Blair Hughes-Station to take up wood engraving and went on to teach at the @royalcollegeofart. At printers W. S. Cowell she illustrated and designed books and book-jackets, but is perhaps better known for engravings of her cats who appear in her best-selling books The Importance of Being Oscar and Lily & Hodge & Dr Johnson.

‘And now I was on my journey, in a pair of thick

‘And now I was on my journey, in a pair of thick boots and with a hazel stick in my hand . . .’⁠
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‘It was a bright Sunday morning in early June, the right time to be leaving home. My three sisters and a brother had already gone before me; two other brothers had yet to make up their minds. They were still sleeping that morning, but my mother had got up early and cooked me a heavy breakfast, had stood wordlessly while I ate it, her hand on my chair, and had then helped me pack up my few belongings. There had been no fuss, no appeals, no attempts at advice or persuasion, only a long and searching look. Then, with my bags on my back, I’d gone out into the early sunshine and climbed through the long wet grass to the road. I was propelled, of course, by the traditional forces that had sent many generations along this road – by the small tight valley closing in around one, stifling the breath with its mossy mouth, the cottage walls narrowing like the arms of an iron maiden, the local girls whispering, ‘Marry, and settle down.’ Months of restless unease, leading to this inevitable moment, had been spent wandering about the hills, mournfully whistling, and watching the high open fields stepping away eastwards under gigantic clouds . . .⁠
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And now I was on my journey, in a pair of thick boots and with a hazel stick in my hand. Naturally, I was going to London, which lay a hundred miles to the east; and it seemed equally obvious that I should go on foot. But first, as I’d never yet seen the sea, I thought I’d walk to the coast and find it. This would add another hundred miles to my journey, going by way of Southampton. But I had all the summer and all time to spend . . . Through the solitary morning and afternoon I found myself longing for some opposition or rescue, for the sound of hurrying footsteps coming after me and family voices calling me back.⁠
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None came. I was free.’⁠
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Laurie Lee’s As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning is the latest addition to the Slightly Foxed Editions list and is available to buy from the Slightly Foxed website or your local independent bookshop.

Niki Bowers, ‘“Spring Green” Tulips’⁠
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Niki Bowers trained and worked for many years as a graphic designer, later turning to printmaking. Using traditional methods, linocut prints are made from multiple blocks, hand-cut and printed in limited editions. These original prints reflect the landscape and wildlife of her native rural Norfolk. Plant forms both wild and cultivated find their way into most prints.⁠
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‘“Spring Green” Tulips’ appears on the cover of Issue 69 of Slightly Foxed magazine. To see more, please visit nikibowers.co.uk or cambridgegallery.co.uk / @cca_gallery

P is for Portis, Charles | ‘There are many defin

P is for Portis, Charles | ‘There are many definitions of what makes a great work of literature, but for my money a great book must do one thing above all else: it must create a world of its own, with its own unique atmosphere and moral universe. It must invent that world and transport you into it, and make you believe in it, from first sentence to last . . .⁠
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The last sentence of True Grit, spoken by its narrator and heroine, Mattie Ross, declares that ‘this ends my true account of how I avenged Frank Ross’s [her father’s] blood over in the Choctaw Nation when snow was on the ground’. That phrase ‘true account’ is vital to the fiction. Mattie’s story has all the authority of the truth-teller who has successfully created that other world, the one in which, like the Wedding Guest, you cannot choose but believe, even though you know it’s an illusion, that Mattie does not exist, that the real voice belongs to Charles Portis, the enigmatic recluse who wrote the novel in 1968.⁠
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Look at Mattie’s concluding sentence again. The casual geographical precision and the simple, telling detail about the weather make it sound almost banal – ironically so after you have just read her amazing account of her adventures, while on another level the biblical cadences will make you prick up your ears.’⁠
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We’ve travelled through the magazine’s archives and landed in the wild west to provide some weekend reading. Christopher Rush’s piece on the ‘incredible and enthralling adventures’ of True Grit by Charles Portis appeared in Slightly Foxed Issue 39. You’ll find the full article available to read for free on the Slightly Foxed website and we do hope you’ll enjoy it. Link in bio 🔗

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