I'm keeping reading Shklovsky. This paragraph is not that funny for a non-Russian ear, but it reminded me of two great anecdotes I want to share. (01/03)
literature
“Laidlaw is the melancholy heir to Marlowe. Reads like a breathless scalpel cut through the bloody heart of a city’ – Denise Mina
William McIlvanney discusses and reads from his LAIDLAW trilogy at Dundee Literary Festival 2013, in conversation with Russel D. McLean
@bookstodon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K879j3KVFvo
#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #CrimeFiction #WilliamMcIlvanney
#OTD in 1857.
Eugène Sue's extended fiction Les Mystères du peuple is condemned on charges of offending morals and religion, the author having died on August 3.
According to Umberto Eco, parts of Sue's book Les Mystères du peuple served as a source for Maurice Joly in his 1864 work Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, a book attacking Napoleon III and his political ambitions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Sue
Unveiling Lady Scott
Walter Scott, French Influence & Transcultural Connections
Free online from 26 Nov–10 Dec 2025
Céline Sabiron sheds new light on Walter Scott’s work by investigating the French influence of his wife, Charlotte Charpentier & argues that she, as a knowledgeable art & literature enthusiast, greatly assisted him in his work as his secretary, amanuensis, & proofreader
https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/unveiling-lady-scott/312FE027B29B98DEA13AEFD0A39EA095
#Scottish #literature #18thcentury #romanticism #WalterScott
Polish poet, dramatist, painter, sculptor, and philosopher Cyprian Norwid was born #OTD in 1821.
Considered a "rising star" in his youth, Norwid's original, nonconformist style was not appreciated in his lifetime. Partly due to this, he was excluded from high society. His work was rediscovered and appreciated only after his death by the Young Poland movement of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.
Burns and Nature
21 January, Glasgow – free
An exploration of Robert Burns’s relationship to nature, told through poetry, spoken word & film.
This event, presented in partnership with the Centre for Robert Burns Studies at the University of Glasgow, will examine Burns’s relationship to place, his life as a farmer, & his perspective on humanity’s relationship to the natural world.
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/burns-and-nature-tickets-1975112411391
#Scottish #literature #18thcentury #RobertBurns #poetry #environmentalism #nature
Computer’s First Christmas Card: a Poetry/Coding workshop
4 December, Mitchell Library, Glasgow – free
Inspired by Edwin Morgan’s poem ‘The Computer’s First Christmas Card’, attendees at this Poetry/Coding workshop will code a festive poem & leave with a handmade Christmas card! There will also be a chance to see some items from the Edwin Morgan collection.
No experience of coding or creative writing necessary.
"If the fifteenth century discovered America to the Old World, the nineteenth is discovering woman to herself."
"Woman's Political Future" Speech
American writer Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was born #OTD in 1825.
She was an abolitionist, suffragist, poet, teacher, public speaker, and writer, one of the first African American women to be published in the United States.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Ellen_Watkins_Harper
Books by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/345
I’m trying to entice my book club into reading Arcadia (Stoppard) with me, as well as Fleming’s analysis of the play. They probably won’t go along.
Philistines!
I’ll go it alone.
Investigating Irish & Scottish Women Writers of Children’s Literature
12 December, Edinburgh University – free
A one-day symposium exploring regional & national identities in children’s literature c.1750–1940 – an era of major cultural & political upheaval in Ireland & Scotland
#Scottish #Irish #literature #childrensliterature #kidlit #womenwriters #identity
Guillaume Apollinaire’s Trailblazing Caligrams, 1913
The form is part of the message in French writer Guillaume Apollinaire's "caligrams", in which the shape of the words on the page creates meaning.
by Paul Sorene
Caligrames at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/55569
Edited 333d ago
The night tinkles like ice in glasses.
Leaves are glued to the pavement with frost.
The brown air fumes at the shop windows,
Tries the doors, and sidles past…
—Norman MacCaig, “November night, Edinburgh”
published in The Poems of Norman MacCaig (Birlinn, 2011)
https://birlinn.co.uk/product/the-poems-of-norman-maccaig/
#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #November #winter #Edinburgh #normanmacCaig
Edited 353d ago
#OTD in 1922.
Sinclair Lewis's satirical novel Babbitt is published by Harcourt, Brace & Company.
It is a satirical novel about American culture and society that critiques the vacuity of middle class life and the social pressure toward conformity. The controversy provoked by Babbitt was influential in the decision to award the Nobel Prize in Literature to Lewis in 1930.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babbitt_(novel)
Babbitt at PG:
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/1156
Italian poet, writer, and philosopher Dante Alighieri died #OTD in 1321.
Dante is known for establishing the use of the vernacular in literature at a time when most poetry was written in Latin, which was accessible only to educated readers. His use of the Florentine dialect for works such as The New Life and Divine Comedy helped establish the modern-day standardized Italian language.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_Alighieri
Books by Dante Alighieri at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/507
Edited 2y ago
American novelist, essayist, and short story writer F. Scott Fitzgerald was born #OTD in 1896.
He is most famous for his novels that capture the Jazz Age and Roaring Twenties, a time of economic prosperity, cultural change, and excess following World War I. Although he achieved temporary popular success and fortune in the 1920s, Fitzgerald received critical acclaim only after his death.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._Scott_Fitzgerald
Books by F. Scott Fitzgerald at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/420
Edited 2y ago
Who Was the Real Good King Wenceslas Behind the Christmas Carol?
Good King Wenceslas is one of the most popular Christmas carols, but who was the real Bohemian duke behind the heartwarming story?
by Elizabeth Morgan
https://www.thecollector.com/real-good-king-wenceslas-christmas-carol-2/
Christmas Carol at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46
Questions on the Beautiful
Few great visual artists are especially good writers, Eugène Delacroix was one of the exceptions.
By Alice Gribbin
https://www.alicegribbin.com/p/delacroix-the-beautiful
Delacroix at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/47658
#OTD in 1846.
Astronomers Urbain Le Verrier, John Couch Adams and Johann Gottfried Galle collaborate on the discovery of Neptune.
There is evidence that Neptune was seen and recorded by Galileo Galilei in 1613, Jérôme Lalande in 1795, and John Herschel in 1830, but none are known to have recognized it as a planet at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_of_Neptune
Neptune at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=neptune&submit_search=Search
English poet, playwright, critic, Nobel Prize laureate T. S. Eliot was born #OTD in 1888.
Eliot first attracted widespread attention for his poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" from 1914 to 1915, which, at the time of its publication, was considered outlandish. It was followed by The Waste Land, "The Hollow Men", "Ash Wednesday", and Four Quartets. He was awarded the 1948 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Books by T. S. Eliot at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/599
#OTD in 1859, Wilkie Collins’s novel, The Woman in White, begins serialization in the magazine "All the Year Round". This magazine was edited by Charles Dickens.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Woman_in_White_(novel)
The novel at PG:
English author, screenwriter, and producer Elinor Glyn died #OTD in 1943.
She was specialised in romantic fiction, which was considered scandalous for its time, although her works are relatively tame by modern standards. She popularized the concept of the it-girl, and had tremendous influence on early 20th-century popular culture and, possibly, on the careers of Rudolph Valentino, Gloria Swanson and, especially, Clara Bow.
Books by Elinor Glyn at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/1762
Spanish philosopher, novelist, and poet George Santayana died #OTD in 1952.
The Sense of Beauty (1896), with a foreword by Arthur Danto, was his first book on aesthetics written in the United States. The Life of Reason recounts the “imaginative” path by which cultures and societies have been shaped. The great philosophical work in which he expounds his ontology and epistemology is The Realms of Being, which establishes four “regions” or domains of reality.
#OTD in 1915.
P. G. Wodehouse's story "Extricating Young Gussie" is published in The Saturday Evening Post (U.S.). It introduces as characters Jeeves and Bertie.
It was published in the United Kingdom in the January 1916 edition of The Strand Magazine. It was included in the collection The Man with Two Left Feet (1917).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extricating_Young_Gussie
Extricating Young Gussie at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7471
"Nothing is given so profusely as advice."
Maxim 110.
French author François de La Rochefoucauld was born #OTD in 1613.
He was a French moralist of the era of French Classical literature and author of Maximes and Memoirs which portrays the callous nature of human conduct, with a cynical attitude towards putative virtue and avowals of affection, friendship, love, and loyalty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_de_La_Rochefoucauld_(writer)
Books by François de La Rochefoucauld at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/5749
The £7.5m book at centre of Small Prophets plot
Birds of America, published in the mid-19th Century by ornithologist artist John James Audubon, is one of the library's more valuable treasures.
by Marc Waddington
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c77edrr8jg2o
Audubon at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/41878
