Eggplant.place

1y

Poem of the week: A Sonnet to the Noble Lady, the Lady Mary Wroth by Ben Jonson

"A strategically flattering tribute to a pioneering female writer is lifted by authentic warmth and admiration"

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/apr/07/poem-of-the-week-a-sonnet-to-the-noble-lady-the-lady-mary-wroth-by-ben-jonson

Ben Jonson at PG

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/1269

#poetry #authors #books #literature

Erato, Muse of Lyrical Poetry by Charles Meynier (French, 1768–1832). "Erato is the muse of lyric poetry in Greek mythology. She is often depicted holding a small kithara or lyre, a stringed musical instrument, here seen resting against a tree in the lower left. She is writing with an arrow given to her by a winged Eros or Cupid, the god of love. This painting belongs to a cycle of five works commissioned by businessman François Boyer-Fonfréde for his home in Toulouse."

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1y

"Men with common minds seldom break through general rules. Prudence is ever the resort of weakness; and they rarely go as far as as they may in any undertaking, who are determined not to go beyond it on any account."

Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796)

~Mary Wollstonecraft (27 April 1759 – 10 September 1797)

Mary Wollstonecraft at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/84

#books #literature

Wollstonecraft in 1790–1791, by John Opie

Wollstonecraft is depicted in a three-quarter view, her body turned slightly to the side while her face looks directly toward the viewer. Her expression is calm, serious, and contemplative, suggesting deep intelligence and moral conviction.

She wears a simple white garment, likely a muslin or linen dress with a soft, open collar.

Her dark hair is loosely gathered under a soft, dark cap or bonnet, with curls escaping naturally around her face.

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

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1y

#art #history: imagine being such a gifted author that one of your most radical & inventive novels was mainly a product of automatic writing? best known, perhaps, for providing the screenplay that would become alain resnais' 'hiroshima mon amour' - which is not a bad place to start if you've not yet become acquainted with marguerite duras (born #otd in 1914) - she largely escaped acclaim outside of france. this is regrettable. (threadish)
#margueriteDuras #literature #illustration #france

digital pencil & ink sketch of french author, marguerite duras, in her younger days.
she looks towards the ground to her left, a slight smile on her lips. hair is beautifully swept back & piled atop her head.
colours are pale turquoise, pale rose, black, off-white & crimson.

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digital black & (off) white pencil & ink sketch of french author, marguerite duras, in her younger days.
she looks towards the ground to her left, a slight smile on her lips. hair is beautifully swept back & piled atop her head.

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1y

1876 | Laurel Springs, NJ

Looking Up

Walt Whitman has a happy hour.

https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/happiness/looking

Whitman at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/600

#books #literature

An 1862 photograph of Whitman taken by Mathew Brady.

Whitman is shown seated, with a relaxed, almost casual posture. His expression is thoughtful but unforced — a slight, knowing look in his eyes suggests both introspection and resilience.

He wears plain, slightly rumpled clothing: an open-collared shirt.

Whitman’s hair is tousled and his beard is full and flowing, giving him a weathered, natural look that breaks from the more polished, formal portraits typical of the era.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Whitman#/media/File:Walt_Whitman_-_Brady-Handy_restored.png

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1y

Leigh Hunt, the Unstoppable Critic

Convicted and imprisoned for libeling the Prince Regent, Hunt capitalized on his incarceration by turning his prison cell into a newsroom and grand salon.

By: Emily Zarevich

https://daily.jstor.org/leigh-hunt-the-unstoppable-critic/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Lit%20Hub%20Daily:%20April%207%2C%202025&utm_term=lithub_master_list

#books #literature #journalism

James Henry Leigh Hunt, by Benjamin Robert Haydon (died 1846).

Hunt is shown in a half-length view, typically with his head turned slightly to one side.

His expression is gentle, intelligent, and somewhat introspective.

His features are finely drawn—delicate mouth, straight nose, and bright, expressive eyes that suggest warmth and wit.

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185d

The 19th-century Gaelic poet & songwriter Màiri Nic a’ Phearsain (Mary MacPherson) – known as Màiri Mhòr nan Òran (Great Mary of the Songs) – was born #OTD, 10 March 1821. Much of her work was political & was especially focused on the struggle for land rights

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https://www.thenational.scot/news/19145415.mairi-mhor-nan-oran-celebrating-one-greatest-gaelic-poets/

#Scottish #literature #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #19thcentury #Victorian #history #landrights

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213d

Dorothy Parker: Sharp-Witted Writer, Bitter Professor

Dorothy Parker’s year as a visiting professor shows how a celebrated literary voice struggled to adapt to the realities of academic teaching.

By: Emily Zarevich

https://daily.jstor.org/dorothy-parker-sharp-witted-writer-bitter-professor/

#books #literature #education

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1y

The Author of ‘Anne of Green Gables’ Lived a Far Less Charmed Life Than Her Beloved Heroine

L.M. Montgomery created a classic of children’s literature, but what about her lesser-known works?

By V.M. Braganza (from the archive)

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/lm-montgomery-anne-green-gables-life-180981839/?utm_source=smithsoniandaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial&lctg=93133550

L. M. Montgomery at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/36

#books #literature

Lucy Maud Montgomery, 14. During this period, as she put it in her diary, she had begun to harbor “dreams of future fame.” Courtesy University of Guelph

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213d

Saltire Sessions: Gerda Stevenson

The Saltire Society talks to Gerda Stevenson – actress, writer, director & musician – about storytelling in its different forms, Scots language, loss & Gerda’s new short story collection CAT WUMMIN, published by Luath Press.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l93GKY8DeaM

#Scottish #literature #Scots #Scotslanguage #womanwriters

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143d

"Liberty lends us her wings and Hope guides us by her star."

Villette (1853)

~Charlotte Brontë (21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855) was an English novelist, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters, who first published her work under the pseudonym Currer Bell.

Charlotte Brontë at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/408

#books #literature

Portrait of Charlotte Brontë

An engraved portrait of Charlotte Brontë with auburn hair, wearing a dark dress with lace cuffs and collar and a red ribbon at the neck. She holds a small book and gazes directly at the viewer with a calm, composed expression.

Painted by Evert A. Duyckinck, based on a drawing by George Richmond

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charlotte_Bront%C3%AB#/media/File:Charlotte_Bronte_coloured_drawing.png

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213d

I nod and nod to my own shadow and thrust
A mountain down and down.
Between my feet a loch shines in the brown,
Its silver paper crinkled and edged with rust…

—Norman MacCaig, “Climbing Suilven”
from BETWEEN MOUNTAIN AND SEA: Poems From Assynt (Birlinn, 2018)

https://birlinn.co.uk/product/between-mountain-and-sea/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #climbing #hillwalking #Suilven #Sutherland #20thcentury #NormanMacCaig

Norman MacCaig
Climbing Suilven

I nod and nod to my own shadow and thrust
A mountain down and down.
Between my feet a loch shines in the brown,
Its silver paper crinkled and edged with rust.
My lungs say No;
But down and down this treadmill hill must go.

Parishes dwindle. But my parish is
This stone, that tuft, this stone
And the cramped quarters of my flesh and bone.
I claw that tall horizon down to this;
And suddenly
My shadow jumps huge miles away from me.

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86d

New research proposes Dante’s Inferno modelled a planetary impact 500 years before modern science!

by Asmae Ourkiya

https://www.egu.eu/news/1777/new-research-proposes-dantes-inferno-modelled-a-planetary-impact-500-years-before-modern-science/

Inferno by Dante Alighieri at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=inferno

#Books #literature #Science

Dante's Inferno, as illustrated by Botticelli.

Sandro Botticelli's c. 1480s illustration for Dante's Inferno, depicting the funnel-shaped descending circles of Hell in cross-section, packed with tiny figures suffering their respective torments, narrowing down to Satan at the very bottom.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_Comedy_Illustrated_by_Botticelli#/media/File:Sandro_Botticelli_-_La_Carte_de_l'Enfer.jpg

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1y

75 Years Ago, The Martian Chronicles Legitimized Science Fiction

By Sam Weller

https://lithub.com/75-years-ago-the-martian-chronicles-legitimized-science-fiction/

Ray Bradbury at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/41269

#books #literature #sciencefiction

Ray Bradbury.

Bradbury is captured in mid-speech or thought, leaning slightly forward toward what appears to be a microphone.

The strong side-light highlights his aquiline nose, high cheekbone, and neatly combed hair, while his trademark horn-rimmed glasses rest firmly on his face.

He wears a dark jacket and collared shirt; the lapel and collar peek out just enough to suggest formal, mid-century attire.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Ray_Bradbury#/media/File:Ray_Douglas_Bradbury.jpg

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1y

I couldn’t touch a stop and turn a screw,
And set the blooming world a-work for me,
Like such as cut their teeth—I hope, like you—
On the handle of a skeleton gold key…

—“Thirty Bob a Week”, by the 19th-century poet, playwright & novelist John Davidson (1857–1909) – born #OTD, 11 April. A 🎂 🧵

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Page images from THE YELLOW BOOK vol. 2, 1894 – available on @gutenberg_org

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/41876/41876-h/41876-h.htm#Page_99

#Scottish #literature #poetry #19thCentury #Victorian #Modernist #Modernism #workingclass

John Davidson
Thirty Bob a Week

I couldn’t touch a stop and turn a screw,
And set the blooming world a-work for me,
Like such as cut their teeth—I hope, like you—
On the handle of a skeleton gold key.
I cut mine on a leek, which I eat it every week:
I’m a clerk at thirty bob as you can see.

But I don’t allow it’s luck and all a toss;
There’s no such thing as being starred and crossed;
It’s just the power of some to be a boss,
And the bally power of others to be bossed:
I face the music, sir; you bet I ain’t a cur!
Strike me lucky if I don’t believe I’m lost!

For like a mole I journey in the dark,
A-travelling along the underground
From my Pillar’d Halls and broad suburban Park
To come the daily dull official round;
And home again at night with my pipe all alight
A-scheming how to count ten bob a pound.

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212d

A White Historian Claimed That Black People ‘Had No History.’ This Trailblazing Scholar Dedicated His Life to Proving Otherwise

Carter G. Woodson, the “father of Black history,” founded the celebration now known as Black History Month in 1926. A prolific writer and activist, he viewed his efforts to educate the public as a “life-and-death struggle”

by Meilan Solly

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/a-white-historian-claimed-that-black-people-had-no-history-this-trailblazing-scholar-dedicated-his-life-to-proving-otherwise-180988144/?utm_source=smithsoniandaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial&lctg=93133550

Carter G. Woodson at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/3835

#books #literature #blackhistorymonth

The formal portrait shows Dr. Carter Woodson in a suit and patterned tie, representing him as a distinguished scholar and educator.

During the dawning of the twentieth century, it was widely-presumed that people of African descent had little history besides the subjugation of slavery. Of course, it is obvious today that Africans have significantly impacted the development of the social, political and economic structures of not just the United States but also the world. Credit for the evolving awareness of the true place of blacks in history can, in large part, be bestowed upon one man, Dr. Carter G. Woodson. Dr. Woodson's parents had been enslaved, so he understood the importance of a proper education. Though he didn't begin his formal education until the age of 20, he earned his high school diploma, bachelor's and master's degrees in the span of a few years. Then, in 1912, he became the second African American to earn a PhD from Harvard and was the first person of enslaved parents to earn a PhD in history!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_G._Woodson#/media/File:Dr._Carter_G._Woodson_(1875-1950),_Carter_G._Woodson_Home_National_Historic_Site,_1915._(18f7565bf62142c0ad7fff83701ca5f6).jpg

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143d

Today is Charlotte Brontë’s birthday.

Do you love her poetry, or know her only through Jane Eyre?

Her first novel was rejected, but the next changed #literature. She had to publish under a man’s name, Currer Bell, because in the 1840s a woman writer could be dismissed before anyone had even read the first page.

One of the most famous authentic portraits of Charlotte was drawn by George Richmond in 1850 👇

#books #writers #bookstodon #reading #janeeyre #bronte #charlottebronte @bookstodon

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1y

"Lost, yesterday, somewhere between Sunrise and Sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever."

'Lost, Two Golden Hours' in Common School Journal November 1844

~Horace Mann (May 4, 1796 – August 2, 1859)

Horace Mann at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/70681

#books #literature

Original daguerreotype of Rep. Mann (Mass.) from Mathew Brady's a studio, c. 1849

Mathew Benjamin Brady - This image is available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID cph.3g07396. This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing.

Horace Mann, head-and-shoulders portrait, three-quarters to right. Whig and Free Soil Congressman from Massachusetts, 1848-1853; President of Antioch College.

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

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212d

Nan Shepherd (1893–1981) was born #OTD, 11 Feb. Recently her nature writing & her memoir THE LIVING MOUNTAIN have gained attention—but she was also an important modernist novelist. Charlotte Peacock weighs her contribution to Scotland’s literary renaissance

A 🎂 🧵

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https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2020/12/quiet-pioneer-the-novels-of-nan-shepherd-1893-1981/

#Scottish #literature #NanShepherd #modernist #modernism #20thCentury #NatureWriting #memoir #WomenWriters

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211d

Gave yet another lecture. God, I’m boring.
Said all the same old things I’ve said before
With touches of “however-ing” and “therefore-ing”.
Dear God, it’s true, I’m just an ancient bore…

—Douglas Dunn, “Thursday”
published in THE NOISE OF A FLY (Faber, 2019)

https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571333820-the-noise-of-a-fly/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #academia

Thursday
Douglas Dunn

Gave yet another lecture. God, I’m boring.
Said all the same old things I’ve said before
With touches of “however-ing” and “therefore-ing”.
Dear God, it’s true, I’m just an ancient bore.

If only I could tap my old exuberance,
High spirits that I plied in days before,
Then maybe I would find a kind deliverance
From the curse of being such a bloody bore.

For I’m the model of a modern academic.
I’m absolutely super at ennui.
I’m just stunning when it comes to a polemic,
And boredom’s snoredom’s what I guarantee.

I’m putting extra pennies in my pension.
Retirement beckons and the garden calls,
That beautiful, botanical dimension
Where boiler-suited pensioners scratch their balls.

But I’ve a problem. It’s called “work ethic”, so
I’ll slog on with the daily, dreary toil.
Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, what a lousy way to go,
To work all day then burn the midnight oil.

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212d

Thanks to funding from the Scottish government, ASL is offering free class sets of Donald S. Murray’s play SEQUAMUR – one of the set texts for Higher English – to secondary schools in Scotland. See our website for details:

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/free-publications/sequamur/

#Scottish #literature #drama #Higher #HigherEnglish #school #secondaryschool

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143d

Alistair MacLean (1922–1987) – author of The Guns of Navarone, Ice Station Zebra, Where Eagles Dare, etc. – was born #OTD, 21 April, 1922. A native Gaelic speaker, he grew up near Inverness. @NeilDrysdale looks at MacLean’s remarkable life

@bookstodon

1/5

https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/past-times/2390095/from-arctic-convoys-to-far-east-vj-day-missions-alistair-macleans-life-was-a-real-life-thriller/

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #thriller #film #movies #actionmovies #Gaidhligh #Gaelic