A Survey of Emily Dickinson’s Family Artifacts [courtesy of Flavorwire]
[Book Nerd Links] A Survey of Emily Dickinson’s Family Artifacts
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Tag Archives: History
[Book Nerd Art] Book ads from 19th-century France
[Intermezzo] Wherein I Offer You a Few Disjointed but Heartfelt Memories of My Dead Friend Frank on Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day
Dear World,
Frank died at 87 1/2 years old. Picture this: When he was a tow-headed little boy, just a toddler, his parents dressed him in short pants and a striped shirt and posed him on the hood of the family Model T, grinning. Feisty. He was named after a prominent ancestor, Benjamin Franklin, and they shared more than a name: both were brilliant, larger-than-life, charismatic. Actually, he came from a long line of characters: a grandfather who died, in his 90s, as the result of a bar fight, a father who was an early aviator. That family bred their men big, bold, and memorable. Frank, my Frank, my friend, came of age during the Great Depression. He had an older brother, equally brilliant; when it came time for Frank to attend college in ’37 or ’38, there was no money left. None. His brother had the degree that Frank would never get. He didn’t sweat it, moved on with life. Somewhere along the way he met a beautiful lady and they got married. Everything changed on 7 December 1941. Continue reading
[Book Nerd Links] Art, History, and a Very Funny Video
- WPA Wants You to Read [courtesy of the Paris Review]
- Product Capsule: First Christmas Card [courtesy of Retronaut]
- A Book Critic’s Hilarious Response to E.L. James as “Publishing Person of the Year” [courtesy of Flavorwire]
A Year in Books/Day 222: Queen of the Wits A Life of Laetitia Pilkington
- Title: Queen of the Wits A Life of Laetitia Pilkington
- Author: Norma Clarke
- Year Published: 2008 (Faber and Faber Limited)
- Year Purchased: September, 2012
- Source: My mom bought it for me in Ireland.
- About: If emotions could flash across time, whether born of sympathy or distaste, then Laetitia Pilkington would be knocked over by waves of righteous indignation sent her way from 21st century readers of Norma Clarke’s compelling biography. It would be all too easy to write off what happened to the 18th century writer and wit as just another example of the appalling, often violent double standard facing women of the time. It’s not that simple. She was a pet favourite of Jonathan Swift, a precocious young writer, budding intellectual, wife, mother, and beloved daughter. Whether she had an affair or not (and it is hard to tell if her explanation was pure cheek or plain truth) doesn’t matter within the context of her place and time; the fact that her ill-tempered husband, a curate with literary ambitions, was allowed to carry on dalliances without punishment or even censure, whilst she was publicly castigated as a whore, is the central theme of what became an extended nightmare for his wife. Continue reading
A Year in Books/Day 220: The Secret (No, Not That One)
- Title: The Secret The Strange Marriage of Annabella Milbanke and Lord Byron
- Author: Ashley Hay
- Year Published: 2000/This Edition: 2001 (Aurum Press Ltd)
- Year Purchased: 2002/2003
- Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
- About: This is way more interesting than the “self-help” book by Rhonda Byrne. It’s also real. We all know that Lord Byron (and his buddies) had some hellacious and salacious adventures. Carousing, hell-catting, what-have-you. They were a lot of things, but boring wasn’t one of them. With all of that knowledge in the back of our heads, you’d think that any biography focusing on his personal life couldn’t offer up an intriguing perspective. You’d be wrong, and thank goodness for that. History has certainly seen its share of romantic mismatches and marital disasters. The union between Lord Byron and Annabella Milbanke deserves a fairly high position on any informal ranking. Lest you worry that The Secret is trashy tabloid-esque fodder with a historical spin, fear not! Hay has written a fine exploration, taken from the couple’s journals and correspondence, that gives her subjects a respectful, though not heavy, seriousness.
- Motivation: We always hear of Byron and his conquests, yet few words are devoted to the women he loved; and most of those are given over to his sister, not his wife. An entire book dedicated to the odd, brief relationship he had with the out-flanked Miss Milbanke? Oh, yes please.
- Times Read: 1
- Random Excerpt/Page 38: “At the same time, she became convinced that Byron was about to announce his engagement to someone else-to the young lady, in fact, whom he had told he wanted to see no more of Annabella’s poems. All the light, all the spark, went out of her and out of her effervescent summer: she told her aunt of this imminent announcement so definitely that Lady Melbourne took the idea to Byron as a fact, not a rumour, and he was at a loss to explain its origins or its vehemence.”
- Happiness Scale: 8 1/2
Portrait of Annabella Byron (nee Anne Isabella Milbanke) (1792-1860) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
A Year in Books/Day 219: American Moderns
- Title: American Moderns Bohemian New York and the Creation of a New Century
- Author: Christine Stansell
- Year Published: 2000 (Metropolitan Books)
- Year Purchased: 2000
- Source: History Book Club
- About: American Moderns is one of my favourite non-fiction books. It was published on the edge of our own new century, and chronicles the birth and growing pains of the one then ending. The narrative focuses on the considerable contributions of the various bohemian elements that came to brilliant prominence in the promising light of this new era. Feminism, labor activism, and radical intellectualism, all action-oriented, fused together to form a progressive platform that, for the first time in America, allowed for a broad, increasingly inclusive, though still problematic, alternative to traditional and oppressive modes of being. These movements were peopled with characters worthy of grand, gritty fiction, including: Louise Bryant, Emma Goldman, John Reed, Hutchins Hapgood, Neith Boyce, Margaret Sanger, Randolph Bourne, Margaret Anderson, Max Eastman, Crystal Eastman, and Susan Glaspell. The resilience of the women is particularly striking. Stansell’s clear voice and excellent scholarship couldn’t be put to better use than they are here, in the complicated telling of this compelling, fractious, and momentous period of history.
- Motivation: I was thirteen or fourteen when I became interested in the history of activism and feminism. The only things that have changed since then are my knowledge and level of personal involvement in these areas. I also love the literature and pop culture of the earliest years of the twentieth century.
- Times Read: 3 or 4
- Random Excerpt/Page 28: “As women lingered at the edges of these urbane circles, they added a sense of themselves as heroines in a new story to bohemia’s increasing store of plots. Just as bohemian identity was intimately intertwined with its representation in print, so was being a New Woman: what one read shaped how one lived.”
- Happiness Scale: 10+++
Crystal Eastman was a noted anti-militarist, who helped found the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Dead Writers Round-Up: 14th-18th November
- Astrid Lindgren was born on 11/14/1907. “I have been very interested in labor movement. If I could have wished another life, I would have loved to be a pioneer woman in the beginning of labor movement.” (The Pippi Longstocking books)
- Booker T. Washington died on 11/14/1915. “If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.” (Up from Slavery; Working With the Hands)
- Marianne Moore was born on 11/15/1887. “If technique is of no interest to a writer, I doubt that the writer is an artist.” (Poems; Selected Poems; The Marianne Moore Reader) Continue reading
Inspiration Board: Everything Old is New Again
What follows is a mad cyclone of some of the oddly delectable bits and bobs setting my head and heart on fire this early November, vintage-style.
Maude Abrantes by Amedeo Modigliani, 1907
US Suffrage Map, 1920
Leatrice Joy
Joe Strummer. Always Joe Strummer.
Kiki de Montparnasse by Gustaw Gwozdecki, 1920
Louise Brooks, 1930
Opel Catalog, 1904
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow by Julia Margaret Cameron, 1868
Zelda Fitzgerald, 1922
Mabel Normand, 1917
Cover of The Yellow Book by Aubrey Beardsley, 1894
William Butler Yeats, 1908
Solita Solano and Djuna Barnes in Paris, 1922. Look familiar?
Norma Talmadge on the cover of Photoplay, December 1929
Clyde Fitch’s Greatest Comedy, Girls
A Year in Books/Day 218: Max Factor’s Hollywood Glamour
- Title: Max Factor’s Hollywood Glamour
- Author: Fred E. Basten (with Robert Salvatore & Paul A. Kaufman)
- Year Published: 1995 (W. Quay Hays)
- Year Purchased: 2003/2004
- Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
- About: Max Factor isn’t just a name on wands of mascara and tubes of lipstick found in the beauty aisle at your local grocery store. The Max Factor cosmetics line wasn’t invented and branded by impersonal, slick-suited admen in a glossy boardroom. He was a pioneer who not only shaped and defined the aesthetics of classic cinema (from glamour girls to tough guys and everything in between) but he brought make-up to the masses in a way that was, and is, distinctly modern. His genius for invention and marketing, as well as his humble beginnings in Central Europe, make his story a neat parallel to those of the movie moguls who were his contemporaries. Continue reading
A Small Press Life: Books. Art. Writing. Life. Tea. 