Anna Alma-Tadema, teenaged daughter of the more famous Lawrence, shows her prodigious talent in these paintings of the Drawing Room at 1A Holland Park and her father’s library at Townsend House (1880s),
“Of aal the fish there iss in the sea,” said Para Handy, “nothing bates the herrin’; it’s a providence they’re plentiful and them so cheap!”
Neil Munro (1863–1930) – journalist, novelist, short-story writer, & poet – was born #OTD, 3 June. Rigby’s Encyclopaedia of Herring discusses Munro’s PARA HANDY stories, as well as giving the full text of the tale “The Herring – A Gossip”
Neil Munro was also a very fine historical novelist – & possibly the first who really knew the history, language & culture of the Highlands from the inside. In “The Ell-Wand & The Sword”, Ronnie Renton examines Munro’s JOHN SPLENDID and THE NEW ROAD
David Robb discusses James Hogg’s short stories “Mary Burnet”, “The Brownie of the Black Haggs”, & “Strange Letter of a Lunatic” at our 2017 Schools Conference
During the Peninsular War a wounded soldier recuperates in a remote location. He falls in love with the daughter of the house, but her family hides a terrible secret…
“Widely respected – & regularly attacked (once physically) – in her lifetime, she is now largely neglected; an intriguing aside to feminism or to agnosticism. Dixie deserves better.”
Florence Dixie – novelist, poet, dramatist, war correspondent, campaigning journalist, suffragist, & more – was born #OTD, 25 May. Valentina Bold explores Dixie’s roving life
What Scotsman was caught up in a civil war before the age of twenty? Wrote a book that became the inspiration for an Oscar-winning film? Met a runaway teenager in Paris and married her against the wishes of his family? Lost his ranch to raiding Apaches?
Our book EMPIRES & REVOLUTIONS: Cunninghame Graham & His Contemporaries contains essays exploring ideas of revolution, emancipation, equality, & liberty in the works of RBCG & other Scottish writers of the period—in print & online via Project MUSE
According to the Guinness Book of Records, Sherlock Holmes has been portrayed on screen more than any other literary character. Olivia Rutigliano ranks the 100 best, worst, & strangest screen portrayals of the great detective…
“Holmes’s stories […] have a surprisingly grounded view of crime, & one that arguably fits better into the hardboiled tradition of Hammett & Chandler than the cozy tradition of Christie.”
Doyle didn’t just write #CrimeFiction … Alan Brown looks at Arthur Conan Doyle’s “vain, volatile, & brilliant” Scottish adventurer-scientist-explorer & dinosaur hunter Professor George Edward Challenger
After THE LOST WORLD, Challenger’s other adventures include the novels THE POISON BELT and THE LAND OF MIST, & the short stories “The World Screamed” & “The Disintegration Machine”. Alan Brown digs deeper into Doyle’s #sciencefiction
(Conan Doyle personally preferred Professor Challenger over Sherlock Holmes – even dressing up as the Professor for a photograph of Challenger’s Amazonian expedition)
When Doyle killed Sherlock Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls, “20,000 people cancelled their subscriptions to the Strand”. Public pressure – & a huge fee – brought Holmes back from the dead; did this fictional immortality influence Doyle’s spiritualism?
In 1912, “Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the world’s most celebrated fictional detective, had turned detective himself in an actual murder case – in the process liberating a man who had spent nearly twenty years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.”
In March 1927, Arthur Conan Doyle put together a list of his own top 12 Sherlock Holmes stories, sealed it in an envelope, & left it with the editor of the Strand magazine…
“THE DYNAMITER is a hugely inventive & brilliant book, at once a political thriller, a blackly comic satire, & a female adventure”
Robert Louis Stevenson & Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne married #OTD, 19 May, 1880. In this article, Prof Penny Fielding explores the dangerous #collaboration between RLS & his wife: granting female agency on the page & in life
CFP: ‘We Are Amused’: Victorian Humour & the Digital
7–8 Nov, Université Caen Normandie
Exploring intersections between #19thcentury#humour & the digital, & investigating the migration of jokes, squibs, spoofs & parodies, verbal & visual, from the pages of #Victorian comic periodicals to 21st-century screens
The Scottish Novel in 1824
1 July, University of Edinburgh – free
This one-day in-person symposium marks the bicentenary of 1824, an ‘annus mirabilis’ in the history of Scottish fiction that saw the publication of two experimental masterpieces: James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs & Confessions of a Justified Sinner, & Walter Scott’s Redgauntlet.