#OTD in 1875.
Bizet's Carmen premiered at the Opéra-Comique in Paris, with mezzo-soprano Célestine Galli-Marié in the title role. It is an opera in four acts by the French composer Georges Bizet. The libretto was written by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen
Carmem at IMSLP:
https://imslp.org/wiki/Carmen_(Bizet,_Georges)
Ali Smith: The book that changed me as a teenager
“Liz Lochhead’s Memo for Spring… I found a book so slim it had no spine, just hinges, and was by a woman who was young, Scottish and a poet (at this point in time a rare combination). The poems in it were so good, gripping and clear, written in a kind of Scottish English I knew was close to my own, but I’d never read in any book”
#Scottish #literature #poetry #20thcentury #womenwriters #LizLochhead #AliSmith
Jack Kerouac’s 37 metre-long, first draft scroll of On the Road to be auctioned
The draft – one of the Beat Generation’s defining artefacts – will be part of a wider sale of pieces from the Jim Irsay Collection at Christie’s in March
Naval Reserve Enlistment photograph of Jack Kerouac
#OTD in 1912.
Frieda Weekley meets D. H. Lawrence in Nottingham. She met D. H. Lawrence, a former student of her husband's; they soon fell in love and eloped to Germany. During their stay Lawrence was arrested for spying; after the intervention of Frieda's father, the couple walked south over the Alps to Italy. In 1914, following her divorce, Frieda and D.H. Lawrence married.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frieda_Lawrence
D.H. Lawrence at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/123
‘He contains the whole of literature’: is Dickens better than Shakespeare?
After rereading the entire works of the great Victorian novelist during the pandemic, Peter Conrad became convinced – whisper it – that Dickens is an even greater writer than that other British literary giant, the Bard.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/mar/02/is-dickens-better-than-shakespeare
Shakespeare at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/65
Charles Dickens at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/37
Entwinings
Literature and History, Fathers and Sons, Writers and Readers
by Adam Garfinkle
https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/place-and-revolution/articles/entwinings
Wharton & Fitzgerald & Stoddard at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/104
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/420
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/3837
Kirkcudbright Book Festival 2026
5–8 March
Kirkcudbright Book Festival celebrates local & national voices, local history, Scottish culture, children’s authors, crime fiction, nature and the environment & much more – full programme online now
https://www.kbtbookfestival.org/full-programme
#Scottish #literature #kidlit #crimefiction #naturewriting #ScottishCulture #bookfestival #Kirkcudbright
2026 is Agnes Owens’ centenary year, & Polygon will publish 7 new editions of her novels & short stories in collaboration with the Agnes Owens Archive – also launching this year. These new editions will be introduced by some of Scotland’s finest contemporary writers.
#Scottish #literature #womenwriters #20thcentury #workingclass #workingclasswriters #AgnesOwens
In March 1881.
Ambrose Bierce contributes to the weekly satirical San Francisco magazine The Wasp & resumes his column "Prattle" and the series of cynical definitions which he first calls The Devil's Dictionary.
Bierce's witty definitions were imitated & plagiarized for years before he gathered them into books, first as The Cynic's Word Book in 1906 & then in a more complete version as The Devil's Dictionary in 1911.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil%27s_Dictionary
#OTD in 1914 (dated February).
Publication of the first issue of New Numbers, a quarterly collection of work by the Dymock poets in England edited by Lascelles Abercrombie with Wilfrid Gibson. It containing poems such as Brooke's "The Soldier", published in 1915.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymock_poets
The Soldier at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/48306/pg48306-images.html#v-the-soldier
The Post-Millennial Poe, or, Edgar Allan Holmes?
In life, Edgar Allan Poe was best known as a literary critic. Today, he’s best remembered for his disquieting tales…but that may be changing.
By: Matthew Wills
https://daily.jstor.org/the-post-millennial-poe-or-edgar-allan-holmes/
This part really stuck with me while doing an immersive read of Paradise Lost tonight.
@bookstodon @reading #classiclit #ClassicLiterature #fiction #johnmilton #literature
On Being Ill at 100: Virginia Woolf’s ‘best essay’ still shapes how we read sickness
Woolf argues that illness is ‘the great confessional’ which is never talked about in literature.
by Lucyl Harrison
Virginia Woold at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/89
When you have walked through a town, as an infantryman
you’ll never go through streets the same way again.
There is shoulder-ache from rifle-sling, and sore
butt-bruise, of bolt, on hip and thigh…
—“Infantryman”, by Colin McIntyre (1927–2012) – born #OTD, 27 January
Published in FROM THE LINE: Scottish War Poetry 1914–1945
https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/volumes/from_the_line/
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) was born #OTD in 1832.
An interesting comment from one proofreader at @DProofreaders : "It is said that Queen Victoria enjoyed the Alice books so much that she sent for all the author's works, and was then appalled to find herself confronted by mathematics."
"Curiosa mathematica, Part I: A new theory of parallels" by Dodgson, Charles L. coming soon at PG.
Lewis Carroll at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/7
“It is a bold move to be so morally unflinching, especially in the face of a perceived aesthetic orthodoxy that so often privileges distance and irony, but in Glyph we see a major British writer answering the call of the day when so many others have equivocated or turned away.”
—GLYPH by Ali Smith: bearing witness to the war in Gaza
#OTD in 1888.
During Joseph Conrad's career at sea as Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, he departs from Bangkok for Sydney in his first command as master, on the British barque Otago. This provides a basis for his novella The Shadow Line (1916).
It was first published as a serial in New York's Metropolitan Magazine in the English Review and published in book form in 1917 in the UK and America.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shadow_Line_(novel)
The Shadow Line at PG:
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/451
“If these children need me in days of sunshine,
how much more do they need me in days of darkness?”
—Jane Haining
You rose each day at 5 a.m. to go
to market for their food, sliced your leather
luggage into strips they’d use for soles
on worn-out shoes…
“In Days of Darkness”, a poem by Stuart A. Paterson for Holocaust Memorial Day
https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/days-darkness/
#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Holocaust #HolocaustRemembrance #HolocaustMemorialDay
Happy birthday Shakespeare (born #OTD in 1564)!
#OTD in 1932. To mark Shakespeare's birthday:
The Royal Shakespeare Company's new theatre opens at Stratford-upon-Avon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Shakespeare_Company
The Folger Shakespeare Library opens in Washington, D.C.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folger_Shakespeare_Library
Shakespeare at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/65
Reading Scotland with Gioia Angeletti: Early 19th-century Scottish Migration Literature
3 Feb, free online
Examining how Scotland’s experience of “internal colonialism” after the 1707 Union shaped its literary engagement with empire & migration during the long eighteenth century
@litstudies
https://www.scotland.uni-mainz.de/reading-scotland/
#Scottish #literature #18thcentury #19thcentury #migration #empire #imperialism #colonialism #nationalidentity
What Is Rousseau’s Social Contract Theory? (Definition & Criticisms)
Rousseau’s social contract theory advocates for collective sovereignty, freedom, and equality through the general will for a just society.
By Viktoriya Sus
https://www.thecollector.com/rousseau-social-contract-theory-definition/
The Social Contract at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46333
The Authorship Debate: Who Is the Real Shakespeare?
The Shakespeare Authorship Debate concerns the ongoing mystery as to the true author of the plays, sonnets and other works attributed to William Shakespeare of Stratford Upon Avon.
By Lauren Jones
https://www.thecollector.com/the-authorship-debate-who-is-the-real-shakespeare/
Shakespeare at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/65
7 Out-of-This-World Facts About Ray Bradbury’s ‘The Martian Chronicles’
The fix-up novel, which turns 75 this year, would become one of Bradbury’s most famous books—and inspire future scientists.
By Lorna Wallace
https://www.mentalfloss.com/ray-bradbury-martian-chronicles-book-facts
In February 1929.
The first of Margery Allingham's crime novels to feature Albert Campion, The Crime at Black Dudley (U.S. title: The Black Dudley Murder), is published in the UK. It introduces Albert Campion, her misleadingly vapid detective, who would go on to appear in another 18 novels and many short stories over the next 30 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crime_at_Black_Dudley
Books by Margery Allingham at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=Margery+Allingham&submit_search=Search
From February to August 1929.
Voltaire's Candide (1759) is held to be obscene by the United States Customs Service in Boston.
Immediately after its secretive publication, the book was widely banned because of its religious blasphemy, political sedition, and intellectual hostility hidden under a thin veil of naivety.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candide
Candide at PG:
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/19942
