February 2012
25 posts
“Frankly, I’m fed up with politicians in Washington lecturing the rest of us...”
– —Bill Clinton, 1992
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Great Sound, What Do You Call It?
“Darling, won’t you put on the Klangophone this evening? I do so feel like dancing!”
Like any smart inventor, Thomas Edison knew that his new audio device needed a name, a catchy name. Lists of Note has the original cheat sheet of all of the rejected names for what eventially became the phonograph:
Didaskophone = Teaching speaker, Portable teacher Glottophone = Language...
10 Things You Don't Know About Dickens
@LaphamsQuart Named Benedict Cumberbatch from the grave. #10thingsyoudontknowaboutdickens
— Aidan Flax-Clark (@flaxclark) February 7, 2012
Oh won’t you join us over at @laphamsquart?
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WatchAll right everyone, what do we think about the new Great Expectations for Masterpiece Theatre?
Corollary: Can Gillian Anderson be in every Dickens adaptation? Madame Defarge, perhaps?
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This is the moment in which Jane Smiley convinces...
If you read one biography of Charles Dickens this year, seriously, make it Jane Smiley’s Charles Dickens: A Life, from the Penguin Lives series. (via LQ web editor michellelegro)
From Charles Dickens: A Life:
He made fun. He made fun of the Civil Service, he made fun of the courts of Chancery, he made fun of the aristocracy ad the factory owners and the bankers and managerial class. He...
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“If I turn into the street, I am followed by a multitude. If I stay at home, the...”
– Charles Dickens, one of the first celebrity authors, 1842
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The Giants of 19th Century Audio →
Otto von Bismarck like you’ve never heard him before!
January 2012
26 posts
“We have now obtained the doubleeyed or twin pictures, or Stereograph, if we may...”
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1859. The NYPL has perfected the art of nineteenth-century 3D.
John Tyler's Grandsons Are Still Alive!
Shut UP, history! You are so crazy!
mentalflossr:
Born in 1790, John Tyler was our 10th President. He took office in 1841 after William Henry Harrison died. And he has two living grandchildren!
Not great-great-great-grandchildren. Their dad was Tyler’s son.
How is this possible? The Tyler men have a habit of having kids very late in life. Lyon Gardiner Tyler, one President Tyler’s 15...
“When Dostoevsky met Dickens in 1862 — a meeting that is hard to imagine —...”
– Verlyn Klinkenborg, “The Whirling Sound of Planet Dickens” (via fwriction)
A Different Stripe: Elizabeth von Arnim in Downton... →
Oooh, that’s a good suggestion NYRB.
nyrbclassics:
We know we are jumping on the bandwagon, but we couldn’t resist. The New York Times ran a piece about the publishing world’s eager reaction to Downton Abbey, and we just had to chime in with our own related author. In the first episode of the new season the odious Molesley presents a…
Three line poems from the NYPD police blotter.
Why didn’t we think of this? WHY?
michellelegro:
“At 4 a.m. on an Upper East Side subway platform, a stare-down between two men was being held. One blinked, and Joseph Owens, 32, attacked.”
Félix Fenéon, meet @neofeneon: Three line poems from the NYPD police blotter.