It’s not everyday that a book by a long-dead Nobel Prize winner comes to light. How fascinating!
A Pearl Buck Novel, New After 4 Decades [courtesy The New York Times]
Pearl S. Buck, circa 1932
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born on this day in 1859. In addition to being a physician and wildly famous author, he was quite the fashion plate.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1890.
QUOTE: “I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children.”
SOME WORKS: The Sherlock Holmes books; The Stark Munro Letters; The Maracot Deep; The Lost World; dozens of short stories.
A KEEPSAKE:
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle print by Pemberley Pond. $19.92
The frontispiece from Gentle Julia by Booth Tarkington. 1922. Illustrated by: C. Allan Gilbert and Worth Brehm.
Frontispiece of Gentle Julia by Booth Tarkington
[R]evolving Incarnations: A Questionnaire For Passionate Readers is an interview series done in classic Q&A format. Each entry features one intrepid writer/blogger/artist/creative mastermind as they take on the same 40 reading-themed questions and scenarios.
So far we’ve featured 3 amazing bloggers. If you missed any of their interviews, now is a great time to catch up!
Daily Rituals of Famous Authors [courtesy Huff Post Books]
Famous Authors’ Handwritten Outlines for Great Works of Literature [courtesy Flavorwire]
Ain’t no party like a Gatsby party T-shirt [courtesy Skreened]
Ain’t no party like a Gatsby party T-shirt. $24.99. Image courtesy Skreened.
“Vain trifles as they seem, clothes have, as they say, more important offices than to merely keep us warm. They change our view of the world and the world’s view of us.”-Virginia Woolf, Orlando
It is difficult to avoid peddling clichés when discussing Daphne du Maurier’s personal style: there’s just something so vigorously English about her look.
Daphne du Maurier
See what I mean? Her fresh-scrubbed bluntness still bewitches. Whatever the truth of her routine, she looks like a woman whose morning ablutions consisted of plunging her face into a cold stream, followed by a haphazard spritz of rose-water, mirror-less application of the perfect red lipstick, and a few deep breaths. Whether she spent the day at her typewriter or traipsing through fragrant fields with clever dogs gamboling at her heels, it’s obvious that she was sartorially prepared.
Daphne du Maurier and family
Check out that tweedy magnificence! Doesn’t it make you want to throw out all fussiness from your wardrobe, peel away the unnecessary layers of routine, to streamline, distill, simplify? That is one powerfully chic, easy, wearable silhouette. A put-it-on-and-forget-about-it-yet-look-better-than-everyone-else type of ensemble.
Daphne du Maurier at work
I don’t know many writers who look this crisply put together on the job, myself included. Yet, typewriter or no, she looks like a writer should look, doesn’t she? Serious, simply adorned, polished, comfortable. Ready to work, to create, to sweat it out, to answer an unexpected knock at the door without shame or a mad scramble for something suitable to wear. Every image of du Maurier seems to scream, “That, that was a woman who knew how to live.”
DAPHNE DU MAURIER (1907-1989)
SOME WORKS:
“Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.”–Daphne du Maurier
A Small Press Life: Books. Art. Writing. Life. Tea. 