I’m more than ready for the third season of Downton Abbey to begin Sunday night on PBS. I’ve watched the rerun of season 2 (that last scene of Matthew and Lady Mary gets me every time), looked at the preview clips online, tried to ignore the spoilers coming from across the pond and thumbed through the glossy pages of the Downton Abbey engagement calendar I gave my mother for Christmas. So far, though, I have resisted buying a “Free Bates” T-shirt and/or coffee mug, but I have signed a petition to get the guy out of prison.
Then there are the books, and not just the official companion volumes. Last year about this time I wrote “Up with Downton: more reading,” and it was my most popular blog post of the year. I mentioned titles by Kate Morton, R.E. Delderfield, Elswyth Thane and Phillip Rock, among others, noting that Rock’s The Passing Bells trilogy was sadly out of print.
Not any more. HarperCollins is publishing Rock’s novels with the tagline, “Before there was Downton Abbey, there was Abingdon Pryory.” It’s the grand home of the Greville family, headed by the Earl of Stanmore, and World War I changes the lives of the household, upstairs and downstairs. My favorite characters are the servant girl Ivy and the Grevilles’ American cousin, Martin, who becomes a war correspondent. The story continues in Circles of Time and The Future Arrived.
Fay Weldon, the British novelist and screenwriter who penned the original Upstairs Downstairs pilot, begins a late-Victorian/Edwardian family saga this month 
with Habits of the House. It introduces the aristocratic but financially-strapped Earl of Dilberne, who decides to marry off his son Arthur to American meat-packing heiress Minnie O’Brien. The servants evidently have plenty to gossip about, as St. Martins’ Press will publish the second volume in the “Love and Inheritance” series, Long Live the King, in May.
I’m planning to read Weldon’s books because I enjoy her witty writing, although UK reviewers have dubbed this one lightweight dish. It can’t possibly be lighter than American writer T. J. Brown’s Summerset Abbey (Gallery Books, digital arc via NetGalley), the first in a 
trilogy charting the lives of English sisters Rowena and Victoria Buxton and the governess’s daughter Prudence Tate beginning in 1913. I’m halfway through this soap bubble, and I keep yawning. I’m thinking of abandoning it and watching the 1995 DVD of Edith Wharton’s The Buccaneers, which I reread last year. Really, Sunday can’t come soon enough.
On a Clear Day I Can Read Forever 
I loved Passing Bells Trilogy, read it years ago, then picked it up months ago when I needed a hit of things British. Our DVD player died, but won’t be replacing that until we redo our living room, So need to finish season 2 of DA!
Can’t wait for Sunday!
Thanks for sharing…Will be on the lookout for Passing Bells Trilogy!!
I just wanted you to know I ordered this trilogy on Amazon…Real paperback books were less expensive than Kindle so I went for them!! The last book in the trilogy will be released in Feb so it is on advance order for me but maybe I will be done with the first two by then! I also purchased the companion book to Call the Midwife…on sale at Target. I am looking forward to reading Jennifer Worth’s books of her work in the East End of London right after WW2. Have you read her works?
Hope you enjoy the books. I gave the first one to friends for Christmas!
Oh joy, thanks for the great recommendations! Can’t order fast enough. To the beloved Delderfield, let me add my endorsement to anything by a 30s and 40s novelist, Howard Spring…especially The Houses In Between. Starts with the Crystal Palace and ends with WWII, great writing. They were reprinted a decade or so ago. Then there are four Cazelet Chronicles by Elizabeth Jane Howard, lots of generations and good story lines. The Jalna books are all similar period but based in Canada. Thanks, Nancy! Also The Camomile Lawn. Not necessarily nobility but all pretty upper class England between the wars.
Oh, Linda, don’t you just love the Cazalet Chronicles and Mary Wesley?! The Camomile Lawn is a particular favorite of both me and my mom. I hadn’t thought of the Jalna novels in years; I borrowed my grandmother’s library card when I was a visiting her one summer when I was about 13-14, and checked out one Jalna book after another from the little library near her house. I also had forgotten about The Crystal Palace, etc. I love English family sagas. China Court. Shake Down the Stars. Trespasses. The Parrot Cage. I’ve got stacks that I reread. And now there’s Kate Morton!
Nancy, did you see the BBC version of Camomile Lawn? Available on Netflix. When Downton was down, I went to old English movies. Gosford Park, not so old but set in period, anything with Maggie Smith 🙂 and please do tell me you’ve read all of E.F.Bensen’s Lucia books, one of life’s greatest pleasures. And I’m pretty happy with The Moreland Chronicles, although so far they have taught me a lot more about WWI than I really wanted to know. At least they have lots of characters and go on forever. Like being presented with a box of Godiva chocolates!
I have the DVD of Camomile Lawn; happened to catch part of it on a London trip years ago and then found DVD few years back. Also Coming Home, based on the Rosamund Pilcher novel, and, of course, Brideshead Revisited and Gosford Park. Have you read Julian Fellowes’ novels — Snobs and Past Imperfect? They’re what 30-plus Morland books?! I know I have missed some. More for the TBR! Oh, and I just got Fay Weldon’s Habits of the House for my nook, and I’ve changed my ringtone on cell to Downton Abbey theme. Obviously, I’m obsessed, or possessed!