Eggplant.place

11d

Six centuries of secularism

When the first ‘how-to’ books began to explain the way the world worked, they paved the way for science and secularism

by William Eamon

https://aeon.co/essays/six-centuries-of-secularity-began-with-the-first-how-to-books?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=67079b5b03-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2025_12_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-4ef8a26106-72664972

Secularism at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/subject/21793

#books #old_manuscripts #literature

Ramon Llull/Raimundus Lullus (1232? - 1316; Encyclopedist)

This is a historical engraving of Ramon Llull (also known as Raimundus Lullus), a 13th-14th century Majorcan philosopher, theologian, and encyclopedist (1232?-1316), depicted with flowing beard, ornate Renaissance-era clothing, and pipe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramon_Llull#/media/File:Ramon_Llull.jpg

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108d

“…my habitual residence was on the blank and dreary northern shores of the Tay, near Dundee…”
—Mary Shelley, introduction to FRANKENSTEIN (1831 edn)

Mary Shelley (1797–1851) was born #OTD, 30 August. Prof Daniel Cook examines why Scotland mattered so much to Mary Shelley, & considers Shelley’s position in the Scottish Gothic tradition

@litstudies

https://www.nls.uk/collections/stories/literature-and-poetry/mary-shelley-and-the-scottish-gothic-tradition/

#Scottish #literature #gothic #Frankenstein #FrankensteinDay #MaryShelley

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94d

#OTD in 1756 German writer Benedikte Naubert was born.

She "anonymously published more than 50 historical novels and is considered a pioneer of the genre in the 1780s. Naubert wrote under the pseudonyms Verfasser des Walther von Montbarry, Verfasser der Alme, Verfasserin des Walther von Montbarry, and Fontanges. Today she is largely unknown, even in Germany."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedikte_Naubert

Books by Naubert at PG:

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/55311

#books #literature

"Benedikte Naubert with foster son, 1806"

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Edited 94d ago

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110d

In his darkroom he is finally alone
with spools of suffering set out in ordered rows.
The only light is red and softly glows,
as though this were a church and he
a priest preparing to intone a Mass.
Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh. All flesh is grass.

—Carol Ann Duffy, “War Photographer”
published in COLLECTED POEMS (Picador, 2019)

https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/carol-ann-duffy/collected-poems/9781447231752

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #warpoetry #photography #journalism

War Photographer
by Carol Ann Duffy

In his darkroom he is finally alone
with spools of suffering set out in ordered rows.
The only light is red and softly glows,
as though this were a church and he
a priest preparing to intone a Mass.
Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh. All flesh is grass.

He has a job to do. Solutions slop in trays
beneath his hands, which did not tremble then
though seem to now. Rural England. Home again
to ordinary pain which simple weather can dispel,
to fields which don’t explode beneath the feet
of running children in a nightmare heat.

Something is happening. A stranger’s features
faintly start to twist before his eyes,
a half-formed ghost. He remembers the cries
of this man’s wife, how he sought approval
without words to do what someone must
and how the blood stained into foreign dust.

A hundred agonies in black-and-white
from which his editor will pick out five or six
for Sunday’s supplement. The reader’s eyeballs prick
with tears between the bath and pre-lunch beers.
From the aeroplane he stares impassively at where
he earns his living and they do not care.

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108d

100 years of women’s lives & writings workshop
23 Sep, online – free

The National Library of Scotland will discuss literature & archives in the library that are inspired by the lives of women. The examples chosen are from the NLS’s ‘Dear Library’ centenary exhibition.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/100-years-of-womens-lives-and-writings-workshop-tickets-1003525460667

#Scottish #literature #writing #womenwriters #archives

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110d

Opening Lines: TREASURE ISLAND

On BBC Sounds: former Head of Channel Four Drama & Controller of BBC Drama Production John Yorke explains why Robert Louis Stevenson’s TREASURE ISLAND has a profound & lasting impact even in the age of Minecraft, Reality TV & YouTube

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002hl0j

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #Victorian #RobertLouisStevenson #Kidlit #ChildrensLiterature #TreasureIsland

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93d

Gustave Doré’s Haunting Illustrations of Dante’s Divine Comedy

"Many artists have attempted to illustrate Dante Alighieri’s epic poem the Divine Comedy, but none have made such an indelible stamp on our collective imagination as the Frenchman Gustave Doré."

https://www.openculture.com/2025/08/gustave-dores-illustrations-of-dantes-divine-comedy.html

Books illustrated by Doré at PG:

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=+Gustave+Dor%C3%A9

#books #literature

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107d

Old gods and goddesses who have lived so long
Through time and never found eternity,
Fettered by wasting wood and hollowing hill,
You should have fled our ever-dying song…

—Edwin Muir, “To the Old Gods”
📷 Ballachulish Figure, c728–524 BCE

https://www.nms.ac.uk/discover-catalogue/a-mysterious-iron-age-figure-from-ballachulish

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #archaeology #IronAge #EdwinMuir

To the Old Gods
by Edwin Muir

Old gods and goddesses who have lived so long
Through time and never found eternity,
Fettered by wasting wood and hollowing hill,

You should have fled our ever-dying song,
The mound, the well, and the green trysting tree.
They have forgotten, yet you linger still.

Goddess of caverned breast and channeled brow,
And cheeks slow hollowed by millennial tears,
Forests of autumn fading in your eyes,

Eternity marvels at your counted years
And kingdoms lost in time, and wonders how
There could be thoughts so bountiful and wise

As yours beneath the ever-breaking bough
And vast compassion curving like the skies.

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An early Iron Age wooden carved figure of a woman or girl, standing in front of a wall of woven twigs and branches. The figure is blackened with age, and the wood has twisted and elongated due to the lack of proper preservation when it was discovered in a peatbog in 1880. Carved from a single block of alder, at the time of its discovery it stood 1.4 metres tall (just under 5 feet). The figure has a large, heavy head with inset quartz pebbles for eyes, large ears, a distinct nose and mouth and a round chin.

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109d

What was Jane Austen’s best novel? These experts think they know

To mark the 250th anniversary of her birth, we’re pitting Jane Austen’s much-loved novels against each other in a battle of wit, charm and romance.

https://theconversation.com/what-was-jane-austens-best-novel-these-experts-think-they-know-252669

Jane Austen at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/68

#books #literature

Back-view watercolour of Jane Austen by her sister Cassandra Austen, c. 1804.

The small watercolor shows Jane Austen seated with her back to the viewer, her figure turned slightly to the side in a quiet, reflective pose. She wears a simple, high-waisted empire-line gown, with a bonnet tied under her chin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Austen#/media/File:JaneAustenCassandraWatercolour.jpg

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93d

Speculative Fiction: Beyond a Novel’s Entertainment Value

The classroom is a place to equip students to better understand the world as it was and is. Speculative fiction can help.

By: Camille Tinnin

https://daily.jstor.org/speculative-fiction-beyond-a-novels-entertainment-value/?utm_source=mcae&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=jstordaily-09112025

Speculative fiction at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/subject/3772

#books #literature

Alien invasion featured in the novel The War of the Worlds (1897) by H. G. Wells, illustrated by Henrique Alvim Corrêa in 1906.

A towering Martian tripod dominates the composition, its spindly, mechanical legs stretching across the ground. At its apex sits the rounded, bulbous body of the machine, from which long, flexible appendages extend like probing tentacles. The tripod looms over fleeing human figures, who appear small, fragile, and panicked in contrast to the immense alien war machine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fiction#/media/File:The_War_of_the_Worlds_by_Henrique_Alvim_Corr%C3%AAa,_original_graphic_15.jpg

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109d

I pulled all my mother’s expectations
with me, like a child’s kite, giddy with stir
of spring…

—Lynn Valentine, “St Kilda Crossing”
from DON’T. EVEN. ASK. TOO. HOT.: New Writing Scotland 42 (ASL, 2024)

Today, 29 August, marks the 95th anniversary of the final evacuation of St Kilda. People had lived there for over 2000 years but, by the early 20th century, life had become too difficult to sustain. In 1930 the islanders petitioned for help to leave

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #StKilda

ST KILDA CROSSING
by Lynn Valentine

I pulled all my mother’s expectations
with me, like a child’s kite, giddy with stir
of spring. Because she was cancer-cracked
I turned tourist by proxy, crouched into cleits
looking for leavings of last century.

I photographed fawn smallness of Soays
felt the crash of wind-whipped stacs,
my pockets salt-filled. I leant
on those islands as my mother leant on me,
filled my lungs with their breeze
and leaping green language of sea.

I tried to hold my breath for days,
took it back to my mother, exhaled
island air on her weakened frame –
whispered broken stories of birds and rain.

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109d

Whan du telt me hoo du thowt o ‘luck’
as nae mair as chance, de happy hubbelskju
o aentropie, I thowt onnly o de ben-end
o my grandmidder’s hoose an aa her talismans
o tat…

—Roseanne Watt, “Lukkie”

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/lukkie/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Shetland #Shetlandic #Scots #Scotslanguage

Lukkie
Roseanne Watt

Whan du telt me hoo du thowt o ‘luck’
as nae mair as chance, de happy hubbelskju
o aentropie, I thowt onnly o de ben-end
o my grandmidder’s hoose an aa her talismans
o tat. Inbi, luck wis acht an lenned lik coins,
hot fae de löf. Dere wis wyes aboot it:
a sixpence fir de scratchcairds; tree skoilts
o a gingernut wid gie dee a wish; a dram
onnly ivvir gied sungaets roond de room.
Ee time, ower supper, shö telt me hoo shö won
an aamos fae a haafman; a beaded bag
fir a skurtfoo o her luck at sea. I browt him
tae de dance dat week, but someen took him
fae de cloakroom. Less. Dere’s joost some tings
dat du canna keep a haad o. Dat’s true enoff.
It seems tae me wir luck his aye been wattir
cupped by hands at prayer, in a langwich
at his mair wirds fir ill-luckit tings as fair.
Nivir leet, shö says. De lotto’s demoarn.
Can I git dee a gingernut?

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93d

Whaur yon broken brig hings owre;
Whaur yon water maks nae soun’;
Babylon blaws by in stour:
Gang doun wi’ a sang, gang doun…

—“Song”, by William Soutar (1898–1943)
published in William Soutar: Collected Works vol. 1 (Tippermuir Books, 2024)

https://tippermuirbooks.co.uk/product/william-soutar-collected-works-vols-1-2/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #WilliamSoutar

Song
William Soutar

Whaur yon broken brig hings owre;
Whaur yon water maks nae soun’;
Babylon blaws by in stour:
Gang doun wi’ a sang, gang doun.

Deep, owre deep, for onie drouth:
Wan eneuch an ye wud droun:
Saut, or seelfu’, for the mouth;
Gang doun wi’ a sang, gang doun.

Babylon blaws by in stour
Whaur yon water maks nae soun’:
Darkness is your only door;
Gang doun wi’ a sang, gang doun.

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64d

How Close Did We Come to Losing Beowulf Forever?

Robert Bartlett on a Vital Work of the Western Canon That Barely Survived Multiple Disasters

https://lithub.com/how-close-did-we-come-to-losing-beowulf-forever/?utm_source=Klaviyo&utm_medium=campaign&utm_id=01K79M748M3MD2TD26V5CEP1Y5&_kx=3MZUehzXM-41qlWAMPUiuNZadX2p0SByuNf_t0eMLB0.U5D8ER

Beowulf at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/subjects/search/?query=Beowulf

#books #literature #old_manuscripts

The first folio of the heroic epic poem Beowulf, written primarily in the West Saxon dialect of Old English. Part of the Cotton MS Vitellius A XV manuscript currently located within the British Library. This is a digital photographic copy of the folio. Text shown according to https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43521/beowulf-old-english-version:

WE GARDE na in geardagum, þeodcyninga, [129] þrym gefrunon, hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon. Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum,monegum mægþum, meodosetla ofteah, egsode eorlas. Then the feast was found, he asked for it, grew under the clouds, the gods, until each of those sitting around him heard the sound of the horn, gomban gyldan. That was a good king. After that, he was remembered, walking in the fields, the good one sent to the king; the fire on the king who had long been dead. His life, the ruler of the people, the lord of the world, was taken away; Beowulf was quick to spring forth, Scyld's son, into the lands of the dead. Thus shall men go forth to good deeds, from pious gifts to their fathers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beowulf#/media/File:Beowulf_Cotton_MS_Vitellius_A_XV_f._132r.jpg

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93d

Dr Gerard McKeever – Scotch Novels

Recorded on 4 September 2025 at the Edinburgh Sir Walter Scott Club.
Dr Gerard McKeever, lecturer in modern Scottish literature at the University of Edinburgh, speaks about Walter Scott’s relationship with Scotland, particularly through the lens of his so-called “Scotch Novels”.

@litstudies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twvrXYw1Sus

#Scottish #literature #WalterScott #SirWalterScott #19thcentury #romanticism

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106d

How Ancient Receipts Ushered in the Dawn of the Written Word

Moudhy Al-Rashid on the Earliest Forms of Writing

https://lithub.com/how-ancient-receipts-ushered-in-the-dawn-of-the-written-word/?utm_source=Klaviyo&utm_medium=campaign&utm_id=01K3ZYGG3XWVBD76518FBBFB0S&_kx=3MZUehzXM-41qlWAMPUiuNZadX2p0SByuNf_t0eMLB0.U5D8ER

#books #literature #history

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104d

Aye Write 2025
6–16 November, Glasgow

Tickets are now on sale for Aye Write, which celebrates its twentieth anniversary this year with a packed programme featuring 180 writers from Scotland & around the world

https://www.glasgowlife.org.uk/whats-on/aye-write

#Scottish #literature #books #bookfestival #Glasgow #AyeWrite

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106d

Honoré de Balzac’s La Comédie Humaine is a Hindu mandala

Balzac’s realism is not merely descriptive but architectural: a literary mandala of modern society

By Harsh Trivedi

https://theconversation.com/honore-de-balzacs-la-comedie-humaine-is-a-hindu-mandala-262151?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20August%2030%202025%20-%203501835679&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20August%2030%202025%20-%203501835679+CID_60b46bbc765e5b5e7094f351d239b461&utm_source=campaign_monitor_uk&utm_term=Honor%20de%20Balzacs%20La%20Comdie%20Humaine%20is%20a%20Hindu%20mandala

La Comédie Humaine at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=La+Com%C3%A9die+humaine

#books #literature

Épreuve des Employés (p. 145) corrigée de la main de Balzac.

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Com%C3%A9die_humaine#/media/Fichier:BALZAC_Corrections2.jpg

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106d

A birthday 🧵 for Violet Jacob (1863–1946) – poet, novelist, short story writer, & key figure in the 20th-century Scottish renaissance & Scots language revival – born #OTD, 1 September

1/8

https://www.scottishwomenwritersontheweb.net/writers-a-to-z/violet-jacob

#Scottish #literature #Scots #Scotslanguage #19thCentury #20thcentury #WomenWriters #VioletJacob

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106d

Ellisland, 1791

Dear Sir:

Thou eunuch of language; thou Englishman, who never was south the Tweed; thou servile echo of fashionable barbarisms; thou quack, vending the nostrums of empirical elocution…

—Robert Burns, Letter to a critic

Today, 1 September, is World Letter-Writing Day 📮

https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/thou-pickle-herring-in-the-puppet

#Scottish #literature #LettersofNote #correspondence #RobertBurns #18thcentury #critics #insults

Ellisland, 1791

Dear Sir:

Thou eunuch of language; thou Englishman, who never was south the Tweed; thou servile echo of fashionable barbarisms; thou quack, vending the nostrums of empirical elocution; thou marriage-maker between vowels and consonants, on the Gretna-green of caprice; thou cobler, botching the flimsy socks of bombast oratory; thou blacksmith, hammering the rivets of absurdity; thou butcher, embruing thy hands in the bowels of orthography; thou arch-heretic in pronunciation; thou pitch-pipe of affected emphasis; thou carpenter, mortising the awkward joints of jarring sentences; thou squeaking dissonance of cadence; thou pimp of gender; thou Lyon Herald to silly etymology; thou antipode of grammar; thou executioner of construction; thou brood of the speech-distracting builders of the Tower of Babel; thou lingual confusion worse confounded; thou scape-gallows from the land of syntax; thou scavenger of mood and tense; thou murderous accoucheur of infant learning; thou ignis fatuus, misleading the steps of benighted ignorance; thou pickle-herring in the puppet-show of nonsense; thou faithful recorder of barbarous idiom; thou persecutor of syllabication; thou baleful meteor, foretelling and facilitating the rapid approach of Nox and Erebus.

R.B.

Robert Burns | Letter to a critic, 1791 | The Works of Robert Burns, Volume 4

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105d

The First Angsty Telepath: George Eliot’s “The Lifted Veil”

The double-whammy curse of clairvoyance and telepathy may be too much for a sensitive Victorian soul...

By Ruthanna Emrys and Anne M. Pillsworth

https://reactormag.com/the-first-angsty-telepath-george-eliots-the-lifted-veil/?utm_source=Klaviyo&utm_medium=campaign&utm_id=01K3RBABKENS84DQBASVYSTQ3G&_kx=3MZUehzXM-41qlWAMPUiuNZadX2p0SByuNf_t0eMLB0.U5D8ER

The Lifted Veil at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2165

#books #literature

Title page of The Lifted Veil and Brother Jacob by George Eliot.

https://archive.org/details/liftedveilandbr00eliogoog/

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105d

An lùib na droighne
anns an dris-choille
tha meas an fhoghair
toradh mo ghràidh…

—Niall O’Gallagher, “Crindreas”

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/crindreas/

#Scottish #literature #Gaelic #Gaidhlig #poem #poetry

Crindreas
Niall O’Gallagher

An lùib na droighne
anns an dris-choille
tha meas an fhoghair
toradh mo ghràidh

is dealt na maidne
a’ fàgail taise
a’ gleansadh air a
craiceann làn.

Tha brìgh na deirce
mìlse nas seirbhe
na gèire deilge
a’ stailceadh làimh’

ach dh’aindeoin bhioran
bu mhi a spioladh
is le mo bhilean
bhlaisinn àgh.

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Bramble
Niall O’Gallagher

Translated by Deborah Moffatt

Amongst the thorns
in the thicket of brambles,
the autumn berry
is my heart’s desire,

the damp sheen
of the morning dew
gleaming bright on
its full ripe skin.

The sap of the sweet berry
is sharper than the thorn
that pierces the thin skin
of the plundering hand,

but I would pick my fill,
in spite of the pricks
that my lips might taste
the glory of the bramble.

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1y

American artist, author, translator, and illustrator Wanda Gág was born #OTD in 1893.

"Millions of Cats" (1928), tells the story of an old man and an old woman who decide to get a cat. The book's unique illustrations, which Gág created using lithographic crayon, made it a classic of children's literature. Gág wrote and illustrated several other children's books, including "The Funny Thing" and "Snippy and Snappy."

"Millions of cats" will be available at PG pretty soon.

#books #literature

Portrait of the artist Wanda Gág in December 1916

Unknown author - Kerlan Collection, University of Minnesota

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Illustration from "Cats by the millions" by Wanda Gág.

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92d

PictCon1
8 November, Perth
In-person tickets £20–30.00; tickets to access audio recordings of the events £6.00

A one-day science fiction convention in Perth, with a focus on SFF books, films & games produced in Scotland or by Scots. Featuring panel discussions, workshops & interviews.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/pictcon1-tickets-926790704947

#Scottish #literature #film #games #sciencefiction #scifi #fantasy #SFF