April 24, 2005
Ye Olde Linkes
A Variety of Ladies' Head Dresses, The New lady's magazine (1786). Click for larger image.
Ladies' headdresses at the Beinecke (via Jim Chevalier on C18-L).
Sharon posts a multitude of links on crime. She writes, "Has to come around sooner or later in an election campaign." Indeed. She has also scored a copy of Hanging not punishment enough (1701) and plans to make it available. Please do!
The Gutenberg Bible held at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin is available on CD-ROM. G. Zombie has one. Here it is online. There are a number of other copies online: two at the British Library, which one can compare; the Göttingen Gutenberg Bible (ca. 1454); and the Keio Gutenberg Bible. Bible links from the University of Calgary. See also The Oliver Cromwell Website and The Goodspeed New Testament Manuscript Collection (both via Plep).
Libraries as fingerprints at Historiological Notes.
The fantastic architectural drawings of Achilles G. Rizzoli (1896-1981) at Giornale Nuovo.
The Opium Wars (via Plep).
Britain's 18th-c canal system being restored (via Metafilter).
Click for larger image.
April 10, 2005
Two Romantic links
Elizabeth Inchbald. Click image for larger view.
The William Blake Archive has announced the publication of the electronic edition of Blake's 116 water-color illustrations to Thomas Gray's poems.
And this is marvellous: Before Victoria: Extraordinary Women of the British Romantic Era: an online exhibition related to an exhibition at the NY Public Library. (Which I wil be able to see! It is on until July 30 and we will be there in June). Here are two items which relate to Life Mask, a novel on which I posted a few weeks ago: a satire on Georgiana Cavendish, and an engraving of the Ladies of Llangollen (n.b. they have a cat). And be sure to see Anne Wagner's Friendship Album: the entire album has been digitalized, and it is beautiful.
Finis. Anne Wagner album. Click image for larger view.
April 03, 2005
Those were the days
The Juvenile Miscellany (1826-1836): Cover for 1828. Click for larger image.
Marking papers, still fighting a cold, hovering over at The Valve checking for comments on my comments, wondering how this ALSC issue is going to play out, particularly as I am an unregenerate race-class-gender kinda gal — but, the show must go on!
"Quack, Quack, Quack: The Sellers of Nostrums in Prints, Posters, Ephemera & Books." Doesn't seem to be much online, but here are some links to photos in the media.(via BoingBoing).
Visit Giornale Nuovo for misteraitch's post about George Psalmanazar (1679?-1763):
a man of uncertain origins who came to claim that he was a native of the island of Formosa (i.e. Taiwan). So little was known about this island in Europe at the turn of the eighteenth century, that Psalmanazar got away with an elaborately fanciful back-story, one which he eventually expanded into a marvellously inventive book-length Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa, which was published in London in 1704.
Read the post and see the novel illustrations of "Formosans" and their putative language.
A Small Gallery of Magazine Covers: covers of nineteenth-century children's magazines (lots of great illustrations, including the one above); old magazine covers from Nostalgiaville; "Magazine Covers and Cover Lines: An Illustrated History" by Gerald Grow, Ph.D. (has some nice late 18thc and 19thc covers) (all via growabrain. Check the post for other magazine links).
The original handwritten MSS of Madame Bovary will be online next year (also via growabrain. Be sure to see his other book links).
The Persistent Puppet: Pinocchio's Heirs in Contemporary Fiction and Film by Rebecca West. A lovely article about the century-old Italian tale and its successors (via Plep).
Ramelli's Machines: original drawings of 16thc machines (via Plep).
The rise of the English novel during the 18th century coincided with a growing pride in the landscape of Britain. As novels portrayed society, so maps and topographical views delineated the grandeur of Nature and the man–made elegance of new urban streets and squares. Town and country often provide the travelling backdrop to novels and poems, sometimes exerting such a strong a presence they almost become players in the plot.
From the British Library (via Plep).
Alexander Cruden and his concordance of the Bible (at Metafilter).
Moliere in English: translations by Timothy Mooney, online (via Plep).
Volcanoes, slugs and comets: rare scientific books at UCL (via C18-L, via Sharon).
Two posts by Sharon from some days back, Women’s history and gender history: what and why? and Alice Clark, working women’s historian. Loaded with her usual astute analysis, and links.
And, I don't usually post about ancient history, but this caught my eye: Welcome to the Obsolete Technology Website (via Plep).
from Ramelli's Machines
March 26, 2005
And I just went on South Beach
Bibi posts to a wonderful site about medieval and Renaissance food. Check out Gode Cookery, a large site with lots of links with intriguing names like A Tale of Two Tarts and Gentyll manly Cokere (from the manly Pepys).
Other tasty links:
Cressee, an Anglo-Norman recipe
Medieval and Anglo Saxon Recipes and Medieval European Recipes
Medieval Italian stew
Medieval and Renaissance Food Homepage
Recipes from Cariadoc's Miscellany
Monumenta Culinaria et Diaetetica Historica: Corpus of culinary & dietetic texts of Europe from the Middle Ages to 1800
The Medieval & Renaissance Cookery Webring Homepage
The Forme of Cury, A Roll Of Ancient English Cookery, Compiled, about A.D. 1390, by the Master-Cooks of King Richard II, Presented afterwards to Queen Elizabeth, by Edward Lord Stafford, and now in the Possession of Gustavus Brander, Esq. Illustrated with Notes, And a copious Index, or Glossary (facsimile)
The Renaissance at the Dinner Table
Sabina Welserin's cookbook (1553)
Food in Tudor England
Two fifteenth-century cookery-books
Jacobean Dinner Recipes
The Accomplisht Cook, or The Art & Mystery of Cookery (1685), and The Compleat Cook (1658): online facsimiles, Biblioteca de la Universitat de Barcelona.
Receipts of Pastry and Cookery For the Use of his Scholars?, by Ed. Kidder, 17-- (facsimile)
Lady Logie's Recipes
18th Century Cooking Equipment
Tallyrand's Culinary Fare: History of Cooking
Seeds for an 18th Century Historically Themed Garden
Jed Wentz's Favorite 18th Century recipes (Quince trifle, anyone?)
"Was death by fire common in Colonial kitchens?" (No.)
Three period restaurants at the fascinating Fortress Louisbourg, N.S. (we visited a few years back)
18thC Cuisine: a blog
Regency Collection: Recipes
Victorian Cake Recipes from Godey's Lady's Book (1860)
Update (12:19pm): Don't know how I could have forgotten to check with the unparallelled linker of things early-modern: Sharon has a great page of foodie links.
March 05, 2005
SF things
Ming The Merciless Visual Gallery (via Life in the Present). I had a friend who used to dress up as Ming the Merciless every chance he got. He was actually a very sweet fellow. I think he just liked the beard. This page is part of a discussion about Filipina-American poet Jessica Tarahata Hagedorn (b. 1949) and her poem "Ming the Merciless" on the OUP's Modern American Poetry site. Hagedorn also edited Charlie Chan is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction (Penguin, 1993).
Isabella at Magnificent Octopus has a wonderful post about things sf, including an extended discussion of Edwin A. Abbott's Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884) (available online).
Matthew Cheney and Gwenda Bond both point to a discussion at Night Shade Books called the Resurgence of the Small Press Zine in sf/f publishing. Cheney offers some thoughts on the complications of commercial publishing.
Joe Gordon, the man who was fired from Waterstone's in Edinburgh for blogging, is now writing the official blog for his new employer, Forbidden Planet (heads up from Emerald City, where there is also an interesting post about reviewers).
March 04, 2005
Something old
Frontispeice engraving from Adolph Christoph Bentz Philosophische Schau-Bühne Nurnberg, 1706.
Early Modern Carnival No. 4 is up at Philobiblon.
The Transatlantic 1790s, the project of six Grinnell College students: "This site is devoted to the literature and culture of the 1790s, primarily in Britain and the United States" (via Early Modern Notes).
The British Library asks scholars what 19thc newspapers they would like to see digitalized (also via Early Modern Notes).
The Reformed Librarie-Keeper (1650) by John Dury at Project Gutenberg (via wood s lot). A taste:
The Schooles of the Prophets, the Universities[,] must be setled, purged and reformed with wholsom constitutions, for the education of the sonnes of the Prophets, and the government of their lives and with the soundnes and purity of spirituall learning, that they may speak the true language of Canaan, and that the gibberidge of Scholastical Divinity may be banished out of their society. (48)
Over 90 megabytes online of information on alchemy in all its facets. Divided into over 1300 sections and providing tens of thousands of pages of text, over 2000 images, over 200 complete alchemical texts, extensive bibliographical material on the printed books and manuscripts, numerous articles, introductory and general reference material on alchemy.
(link from Life in the Present). Now please excuse me while I go to the kitchen and try to make some lunch money.
February 27, 2005
Streetprint
The Flowers of Maiden Lane, Pub. John Pitts, London, c1818 (Click on image for more information and a typscript of the text)
Jim Chevalier just posted the following to C18-L:
... this site has a variety of 'street literature' — including ballads, newspapers, etc. — much around our period.
It also uses a tool — the Streetprint engine — especially designed for this sort of thing that might interest anyone looking to put a collection of documents on-line.
Streetprint is open source:
A collection of British street literature needed an online home, a place where students and researchers could interact with these fragile texts as though they were sitting down with the original artifacts. The technological complexity of this task soon became a problem; specialists in centuries-old popular print are rarely internet wizards.
In search of an ideal solution, our team in the CRC Studio developed the Streetprint Engine, free software that gives researchers and collectors (like YOU!) easy-to-use tools to create powerful digital archives and share them on the web.
We broadened our focus along the way, creating a system which can now showcase much more than "street print." We like to think, however, that the ideals which underlie our first collection — finding value in the popular and the importance of public circulation, among others — remain at the core of the Streetprint Engine's mission.
What a wonderful idea. And a beautiful dovetailing of the web and print culture. Of all the texts that need to be digitalized, it seems to me that ephemera is close to the top of the list. It's certainly convenient to have canonical texts online, particularly for teaching, but the various projects, large and small, that digitalize street literature and other ephemera are invaluable. The Revolution and Romanticism collection at U of A contains a broadside about William Corder that I hadn't seen, quite possibly the only copy extant, and I probably would not have visited the collection and so might never have known of it.
February 22, 2005
George Washington Gets Extreme Makeover
Jim Chevalier posted to the C-18-L listserv with a link to this story: in essence,
a team of scientists is creating a trio of action figures of [George] Washington as part of a larger [US]$95 million educational effort to reintroduce the first president to America, hoping to illustrate who he was better than those countless portraits.
Jim adds to his post:
I don't know if it ever occured to anyone to do this in Washington's lifetime, but the idea wasn't entirely unknown in our period [c18th]. When Simon-Henri Linguet was still a celebrated lawyer, in addition to the hats, etc. sold as Linguet souvenirs, there were apparently little Linguet dolls. Why not Washington dolls?
I think we Canadians are missing the boat here. How about a Sir John A. Macdonald action figure, complete with glass of gin for those two-day filibusters?
A few minutes of googling later: Good god, there already is one! And, he seems to be holding something, and it looks like a glass. That is so much more fun than wooden dentures.
Bonus link:
January 30, 2005
Print links
Matthew Kirschenbaum posts about the first meeting of a Folger Institute Technologies of Writing seminar taught by Peter Stallybrass and Roger Chartier,
and G Zombie is taking a bookmaking class. I envy them both.
Check out Secular Books, an exhibit of medieval manuscripts at the Getty (via Rashomon). And see their many other exhibits, most on not – so – secular books. Worth a look: Comic Art: The Paris Salon in Caricature, and The Making of a Medieval Book.
Misteraitch posts beautiful figurative alphabets.
January 28, 2005
The performing arts
Garrick as Richard III [inside a gourd??]
Bibi points towards a guided tour of music halls, part of a larger site about performance in the U.K. called PeoplePlay UK: Theatre History Online. Nice pages on Restoration and c18th theatre: lots of graphics and goodies.
Too much of a yawn? Perhaps you'd like to check out buffology: "Every Buffy character, episode, cast member, writer and director and every word of every show, in a searchable database" (via BoingBoing).
WWW Virtual Library: Theatre and Drama.
International Theatre Resources from Artslynx.
Thai Elephant Orchestra (from Mirabilis).
January 24, 2005
Representations
From the Bottom Up: popular reading and writing in the Michael Zinman Collection of early American imprints (via Bostonia). A lot of these items are reprints of, or are very like, texts printed in the U.K.
At the same site, another exhibit: Picturing Women explores how women are figured, fashioned, turned into portraits, and told about in words and pictorial narrative.
January 12, 2005
Something old
The Scrap Album: Victorian Greeting Cards, Valentines, and Scraps (via Plep).
Check for the History Carnival tomorrow.
There is a thread at C18-L about monstrous births.
Watercolours of Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605) (featured at Giornale Nuovo).
Misteraitch has started a new weblog at which he is reproducing the essays of Isaac D’Israeli from his Curiosities of Literature, a wide-ranging work full of excellent advice, such as the following:
AMONG the Jesuits it was a standing rule of the order, that after an application to study for two hours, the mind of the student should be unbent by some relaxation, however trifling.
He also warns,
THE literary treasures of antiquity have suffered from the malice of men, as well as that of time. It is remarkable that conquerors, in the moment of victory, or in the unsparing devastation of their rage, have not been satisfied with destroying men, but have even carried their vengeance to books.
Though Misteraitch has rescued him from such a fate.
This is quite an inspiring project. I wonder if I have anything that is otherwise unavailable; one or two things, I think. Think how much we could add to the common pool if we all followed Misteraitch's lead.
December 15, 2004
Elementary
The Sherlock Holmes Society of London has made available hundreds of free MP3s of Sherlock Holmes radio plays (link from Boing Boing). Be sure to check out "Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula."
Illustration from "The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax." First published in the Strand Magazine, December 1911.
December 09, 2004
Dream Anatomy
Dream Anatomy, an online exhibit by the U.S. National Library of Medicine about the history of anatomical imagery, from 1500 to the present:
The interior of our bodies is hidden to us. What happens beneath the skin is mysterious, fearful, amazing. In antiquity, the body's internal structure was the subject of speculation, fantasy, and some study, but there were few efforts to represent it in pictures. The invention of the printing press in the 15th century-and the cascade of print technologies that followed-helped to inspire a new spectacular science of anatomy, and new spectacular visions of the body. Anatomical imagery proliferated, detailed and informative but also whimsical, surreal, beautiful, and grotesque — a dream anatomy that reveals as much about the outer world as it does the inner self.
Over the centuries anatomy has become a visual vocabulary of realism. We regard the anatomical body as our inner reality, a medium through which we imagine society, culture and the human condition.
Here is the gallery.
(Via Boing Boing).
December 07, 2004
Links loosely related
under the category of "creepy":
The Wilkie Collins Website (thanks to Plep).
Maud has an interesting post on Terry Eagleton's review, in The London Review of Books, of a new biography of Bram Stoker and the idea that Irish writers have historically rejected realism as a form, in Yeat's words, "for grocers and English vulgarians." Stoker practices what Eagleton calls "Protestant Gothic"; if anyone else had said it I would have dismissed it out of hand as an oxymoron.
China Mieville tells the Guardian, "I'm in this business for the monsters" (via Weirdwriter).
Skeletons of cartoon characters (from Boing Boing and picked up by No Fancy Name, Mirabilis, Bibi, Life in the Present, and anyone else who is a little twisted).
Ensor vs Khnopff at Giornale Nuovo. Scroll down for sweet-looking skeletons.
And finally, why I am not going to be an underwear model anytime soon.
December 05, 2004
Crime and punishment
More great links from Sharon, including one to a piece about murder ballads, a descriptive essay with several good links from a student of Michael Hancher's from what looks to be a great course on street literature. Of particular interest to me is the mention of two "murderous sweetheart" ballads, in one of which, "The Horrid Murder Committed by Mary Wilson," the murder was committed by a woman upon a man. Unfortunately that one is not reproduced, though the author does provide the reference. Very exciting to hear about; directly relates to a project I'm doing. But mum's the word.
Art below stairs
Claire points towards the webpage for a show, now closed, called Below Stairs: 400 Years of Servants' Portraits, and Sharon, in the comments, recommends Erddig Hall, "famous for its portraits of the servants of the house from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. (There is also a book, The Servants' Hall. Lots of pictures.)," while Natalie writes about Gwen John, sister of Augustus, one of whose earliest oils was of her cleaning woman, Mrs. Atkinson.
[The painting is "Heads of Six of Hogarth's Servants" by William Hogarth, c 1750-5, part of the Below Stairs exhibit. I've always liked this painting: the range of ages and faces, particularly the young boy at the top; the woman in the bottom right, the only one looking at the viewer; the old man, looking away from everyone else.]
November 28, 2004
Romantic women
The British Women Romantic Poets, 1789–1832: a digital initiative of the U.C. Davis General Library (via Plep).
Not always what you might expect.
November 14, 2004
UK history resource
A Vision of Britain Through Time: "A vision of Britain between 1801 and 2001. Including maps, statistical trends and historical descriptions." There is some earlier material, however; of particular interest to me is the section on Travellers' Tales ("Journeys around Britain, from the 12th to the 19th centuries"), which includes Daniel Defoe's A Tour through England and Wales divided into circuits or journeys (here's vol. 2). Though curiously, the sections about Wales have been left out. Who on earth would leave out Wales? (Though Sharon, to whom I owe the link, allows that "there are some doubts about how many of the places in Wales [Defoe] actually visited anyway").
Anyway, other travellers supply the lack. Here is George Borrow from Wild Wales (1854):
I departed for Swansea, distant about thirteen miles. Gutter Vawr consists of one street, extending for some little way along the Swansea road, the foundry, and a number of huts and houses scattered here and there. The population is composed almost entirely of miners, the workers at the foundry, and their families. For the first two or three miles the country through which I passed did not at all prepossess me in favour of Glamorganshire: it consisted of low, sullen, peaty hills. Subsequently, however, it improved rapidly, becoming bold, wild, and pleasantly wooded. The aspect of the day improved, also, with the appearance of the country. When I first started the morning was wretched and drizzly, but in less than an hour it cleared up wonderfully, and the sun began to flash out. As I looked on the bright luminary I thought of Ab Gwilym's ode to the sun and Glamorgan, and with breast heaving and with eyes full of tears, I began to repeat parts of it, or rather of a translation made in my happy boyish years:-
Each morn, benign of countenance,
Upon Glamorgan's pennon glance!
Afternoon in beauty clear
Above my own dear bounds appear!
Bright outline of a blessed clime,
Again, though sunk, arise sublime -
etc.
This reminds me of a joke — no, don't go — I heard one old fellow telling another in a pub in Bishopston, Gower, some years back:
An English tourist is walking about the hills of Wales, comes upon a local man, and greets him:
"I say! Do you suppose that we are going to see the sun today?"
"Oh, I hope so, sir. Not for me; I've seen the sun. But for my children."
And many more in this vein. I can tell you, after a few lagers and lime my breast was heaving and my eyes were full of tears.
November 09, 2004
Abbotsford
Film planned on life of Sir Walter Scott (thanks, Ed).
Other films based on Scott's works.
Bonus links on Scott:
The Walter Scott Digital Archive at Edinburgh U Library.
The Millgate Union Catalogue of Walter Scott Correspondence.
A web guide to Sir Walter Scott from literaryhistory.com, including critical articles and links.
Sir Walter Scott on the Victorian Web.
The Literary Gothic and Scott.
The Sir Walter Scott Way a 151 kilometre cross-country walk.
Splendour of Scott Country — A Full Day Tour.
The Scott Monument virtual tour.
Sir Walter Scott and Robert Burns Monuments in the Virtual Park, Central Park.
The Life of Sir Walter Scott by J.G. Lockhart (1848) (Also here).
Sir Walter Scott by Richard H. Hutton (1888).
The Life Of Sir Walter Scott by S. Fowler Wright (1932).
Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy by Andrew Lang.
Listed as a "Famous Freemason."
Links: etexts, articles.
Lotsa links, including etexts.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon's Female Portrait Gallery" of Scott's heroines.
Bibliography of Scottish literature.
Scott is listed on Fantastic Fiction for his ghost stories.
Scott's Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft.
Why do I care? Because I wrote a chapter on Scott's Heart of Mid-Lothian and while I was doing the research I developed a real affection for the old spendthrift.
November 07, 2004
Beautiful books
Have you seen the British Libraries Turning the Pages, digitalized books that you can "read" by, well, turning the pages? They have Jane Austen's History of England (thanks, Catalogue Blog) and Elizabeth Blackwell's A Curious Herbal, George III's copy, no less.
And this rather shockingly titled book, Goodbye Gutenberg, does indeed look beautiful (link via Matt Kirschenbaum, apparently no relation). Perhaps I will ask for it for the holidays, along with this, which was supposed to be on sale — according to a poster to C18-L — but no longer seems to be.
Rare Books Exhibition — The Restoration 1660-1700 (via Plep).
Albrecht Dürer woodcuts and engravings (via Plep).
October 26, 2004
Book exhibits
Plep highlights a series of wonderful virtual exhibits on the Monash University Library site (Australia): sf magazines and comics, yellowbacks (popular books from the second half of the 19th century, simply bound in boards, with highly-coloured graphics on the covers), and English Literature to 1800, including Poems by the most deservedly admired Mrs. Katherine Philips, the matchless Orinda: to which is added Monsieur Corneille's Pompey & Horace, tragedies, with several other translations out of French. (London : Printed by J.M. for H. Herringman, at the sign of the Blew Anchor in the Lower Walk of the New Exchange, 1667).
October 15, 2004
Dust-free archives
Bookninja posts a link that might interest any archivists out there (and you know who you are): the British Library is planning to archive the email "of the nation's top authors and scientists," though there is the ongoing problem of technological obsolescence. The BL is appealing to the general public for access to old computers; maybe I should tell them about those two Performas in the basement.
Bookbindings at the the University of Glasgow (link from Plep) and the British Library.
Women's Travel Writing, 1830–1930 (also from Plep).
Amanda writes, "There really is an archive for everything" as she points towards the Deliberately Concealed Garments Project: Clothing found hidden in buildings: "A research project based at the Textile Conservation Centre, University of Southampton exploring instances of and the practice of concealing garments in the fabric of buildings." This is so cool! Link from Household Opera.
September 06, 2004
Since the Jinker Boy
had a meltdown last night and I felt clumsy and useless, some links about things maternal and child-like:
The Ideals of Motherhood - Aesthetics of Form and Function in Hindu art (from Plep).
Philobiblon on older mothers in the 19thc, and women-friendly gnosticism.
Magic Pencil: contemporary children's book illustration at the British Library (from Plep).
And, another Alice link: The Background and History of Alice in Wonderland (also from Plep, who is going on holiday so go over and read your fill now).
August 27, 2004
Who, me morbid?
My Blair Witch photo of the cemetary at Bury St. Edmunds (July 2004). Click image for larger view.
Afterlife: the four seasons in Streatham Cemetery: lovely in a the opening of Six Feet Under sort of way (from web zen).
Thanatos.net: death mask gallery (from web zen).
The Body Revealed: Renaissance and Baroque Anatomical Illustration (from Plep).
Obituary Central (from Plep).
Cemetery art and photography (from Plep).
Death and Dying, part of the Victorian Dictionary (from Plep).
William Corder's death mask, the Moyses Hall Museum, Bury St. Edmunds
Illustrations
Seeing Is Believing: 700 years of scientific and medical illustration: an exhibition from the New York Public Library (2000). Nice site which allows you to look at some of the illustrations in detail (from Mirabilis).
Drolleries and two posts about Andrea Mantegnaat Giornale Nuovo.
August 20, 2004
Outcast images
A little while ago Mirabilis posted a link to the story Unique images of England's 'unseen' urban poor are unearthed in Tasmanian museum (registration required; sorry).
July 25, 2004
Women on the go
Made a quick visit to the National Portrait Gallery yesterday (and did you know that there is also one in the U.S.? Most confusing for googlers) and saw Off the Beaten Track: Three Centuries of Women Travellers. Aphra Behn and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu were featured, but I didn't buy the book because the exhibition was skewed towards the 19th and 20th centuries. While interesting, not my patch.
Had upscale Italian last night. That brings the tally of London meals to one Chinese, one Portuguese, one Thai, one Indian, and one Italian. Had English cooking elsewhere, mind — mainly at the conference, and with my relatives — though I did have an excellent Indian meal in Bury St. Edmunds.
This will probably be my last entry for a few days; am flying back to NYC this afternoon and will no doubt be prevented from having any keyboard time by the Jinker Boy. And quite rightly.
And, am about to eat my last pain chocolat and drink my last latte for awhile; back to low carbs. And not a moment too soon.
Yesterday's conversation with a just-woken Jinker Boy:
Me: Good morning, sweetie!
JB: Mummy.
Me: Did you have a nice sleep?
JB: [beat] Yiss.
Me: Mummy's coming home tomorrow!
JB: Why?
July 01, 2004
Some beautiful things
[Click illustration for larger view]
Wonderbound: centuries-old natural history books at the Smithsonian (via Plep).
A Case of Curiousities: the artist writes, "Taxidermy and assemblage inspired by 18th & 19th century French, German and Russian fairy tales, the curiosity cabinets (_wunderkammer_) of the 16th-19th centurys, Victorian grotesque taxidermy, Surrealism and a touch of the circus sideshow" (via Plep).
Jacob Cats' emblem-book, Proteus Ofte Minne-Beelden Verandert In Sinne-Beelden (1627) (at Giornale Nuovo).
Spring Surprises: Popular, Literary and Scientific Pop-up Books (via Plep).
Henry Purcell 1659-1695, "The Glory of the Temple and the Stage." With sound (via Plep).
Hamster Opera (via Mirabilis).
[Click illustration for full view]
June 27, 2004
Getting about
Trading Places: The East India Company and Asia, 1600–1843 (via Plep).
Visit 18th-century Italy at three Getty exhibitions.
Transportation Inventions & Events of the Enlightenment Period.
Hudson's Bay Company Digital Collection.
Digital maps of Scotland, 1560-1892.
South Sea Bubble Playing Cards, 1720.
Fantastic Voyages Quiz: "Over the years, many authors have written stories of journeys to the Moon. But which were really possible?"
June 22, 2004
Caxon, Shakespeare, and Children's lit.
Priceless Caxton book goes on show for first time. Book written by Benedictine monk in 1360 and printed by William Caxton in 1482 (via Mirabilis).
William Caxton stamps commemorating the 500th anniversary of printing in 1976.
Printing in England from William Caxton to Christopher Barker — An Exhibition: University of Glasgow, November 1976 — April 1977.
Caxton's Chaucer: compare the 1476 and 1483 editions held in the British Library.
18th and 19th Century Shakespearean Illustrations (via Plep).
Shakespeare Illustrated "explores nineteenth-century paintings, criticism and productions of Shakespeare's plays and their influences on one another."
How Shakespeare Prepared Manuscripts.
Intermingling illustration and text: hyper-illuminated criticism of Shakespeare's Works.
Alice and Beyond: English Children's Books (via Plep).
The Children's Literature Web Guide.
Authors & Illustrators on the Web.
Fairrosa Cyber Library of Children's Literature.
June 14, 2004
Spare the rod
Years ago I visited the Osborne Collection, when it was still on University Ave., with my 18thc women writers graduate seminar. I won't soon forget the story of the little girl who wanted the pretty coloured vase instead of sensible shoes: her mother bought her the vase, which turned out to be plain glass filled with coloured water, and she wore her too-small shoes, full of holes, all through that winter. Bet she learnt her lesson. Surprised Gorey missed it.
moleskinerie links to a wonderful website, Victorian Children's Activities: a digital collection of pieces from the Osborne Collection that showcases pop-ups, theatres, and other movable books.
May 22, 2004
Gender resources
Mary Robinson's "A Letter to the Women of England, on the Injustice of Mental Subordination": A Hypertext Edition (via wood s lot).
African American Women Writers of the 19th-Century.
The History of Rape: A Bibliography compiled by Stefan Blaschke (via wood s lot).
E-books by Women Writers, from Louisa May Alcott to Zitkala-S.
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility: Women and Computing.
The Center for Women and Change: Women's Resources.
"Trashing the Hallmark card mom" by Katy Read at Salon, with links to various mothers' organizations (via feministing.com).
April 16, 2004
And in the right corner...
A piece of literary vitriol from a writers’ spat nearly two centuries old graced the walls of the National Library of Scotland yesterday.
An assault by Lord Byron on Sir Walter Scott in 1809 is the centrepiece of an exhibition of manuscripts from the John Murray archive that will run until 10 May. It faces, across the room, Scott’s gentlemanly response.
The library is gearing up to buy the publisher’s archive for Scotland for £33 million. The exhibition marks the latest effort to highlight the attractions of the unique literary treasure trove.
The exhibition includes the original manuscript of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.
Byron penned the poem of over 1,000 lines after an unfavourable review of his Hours of Idleness in the Edinburgh Review of January 1808.
In it, he singled out Scott as a "prostituted muse and hireling bard" who dared to "foist his stale romance" on an unsuspecting public for "half-a-crown a line".
(Scott had once called Byron "the imp of fame" and "that young whelp, Lord Byron.")
Go to Scotsman.com for the whole story.
Via Mirabilis.ca.
Addendum (17/4/04): Edward Champion links to an article detailing plans to publish the unfinished novel Walter Scott was working on when he died. Reliquiae Trotcosienses: The Gabions of the Late Jonathan Oldbuck Esq of Monkbarns "came about after Scott was commissioned to write an account of Abbotsford’s collections museum items. However, instead of a guide book, he wrote a work of fiction in which he simultaneously mocked and exhibited his own bibliophilia and antiquarian knowledge."
I sense a new footnote coming to my Scott chapter.
February 13, 2004
And two from Plep
1. Positioning composers politically, for those who think art is "above politics." According to this, Wagner did not get such a bad rap after all.
2. "Cold Off The Presses is a growing collection of classic anarchist pamphlets and journals." I like that one of them is called Lucifer: The Light Bearer.
February 09, 2004
Latest overdue reviews
Ellen Brinks, Gothic Masculinity: effeminacy and the supernatural in English and German Romanticism (Bucknell, 2003), and
Peter K. Garrett, Gothic Reflections: narrative force in nineteenth-century fiction (Cornell, 2003).