So exciting! New book on #reginaldfarrer !

This may not be exciting news to everyone, but it certainly is to me! A professor of art history at UTexas (Austin) has a study of Farrer, focusing on his Buddhism, to be released in January. Details here:

http://www.mhra.org.uk/news/sri-lanka-western-front-farrers-buddhism

And a link to the book blurb itself (from which I stole the cover illustration):

http://www.mhra.org.uk/publications/sicl-36

The Modern Culture of Reginald Farrer
Landscape, Literature and Buddhism
Michael Charlesworth

Less exciting, or at least not exciting in a good way, is the fact that this paperback carries a price tag of $99 (*gulp*). I will need to pitch all my spare change in a jar until January to afford it.

The blurb says that the book will consider, especially, three works: In Old Ceylon, which happens to be next up on my reading list; The Void of War, which I have in reprint; and the verse drama Vasanta the Beautiful, which I do not have but which is available in pdf from the Hathi Trust (which I may be able to read online in an annoying load-each-page separately fashion).

One hopes that Charlesworth will give at least a nod to Farrer's second novel, The Sundered Streams, which owed a lot to his brush with Buddhism just before or possibly during his conversion and includes a lengthy lecture from a Buddhist abbot visiting England.

Here's hoping that this will be the first pebble in an avalanche of Farrer-related doings in the run-up to the centenary of his death in 2020.