Stanford’s Another Look series, which was founded in 2012 to be a magnet for book lovers at Stanford, the Bay Area and beyond, has chosen Dorothy Strachey’s 1949 novel, Olivia, as the focus of its autumn webinar, which will take place next week.

Dorothy Strachey (Image credit: Courtesy National Portrait Gallery London)

The series, which is sponsored by Continuing Studies, focuses on short works that can be read in a few sittings – overlooked classics, forgotten masterpieces or books that simply hadn’t gotten the attention they merited.

The 128-page novel, Olivia, traces the intense emotional currents among the girls and teachers in a finishing school outside Paris. Olivia, a 16-year-old English girl, finds herself falling under the spell of the charismatic Mademoiselle Julie, a founder of the school. It was the only novel written by Strachey, who was a member of the Bloomsbury group, a circle of English artists, writers and intellectuals who met during the first half of the 20th century.

“Olivia is a unique novel about love and education, and how the two conspire to render literature relevant to our lives,” said Robert Pogue Harrison, the Rosina Pierotti Professor in Italian Literature and director of Another Look.

Harrison chooses the Another Look books in consultation with others, particularly Tobias Wolff, the founding director of the series, who is also a professor emeritus of English at Stanford and a National Medal of Arts winner.

Harrison will lead the webinar discussion on Olivia, joined by Wolff and Maria Florence Massucco, a PhD candidate in Italian studies who specializes in the 20th-century novel. Panelists will discuss the book among themselves for an “insider’s take” on the novel. Then the discussion is opened up to the audience, which includes Stanford faculty, students and book lovers everywhere, from around the Bay Area and the world.

The webinar, which is free and open to the public, will take place from 5 to 6:30 p.m. (PT) on Wednesday, Oct. 13. Register here.