victorian

103d

The Man Who Gave Away His Birthday – a Useless Information podcast

Robert Louis Stevenson was born #OTD, 13 November – but it’s not, strictly speaking, his birthday: in 1891 he gave the day to Annie Ide, the 14-year-old daughter of the US Commissioner to Samoa, who was unfortunate enough to have been born on Christmas Day

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https://uselessinformation.org/annie-louisa-ide-cockran/

#Scottish #literature #19thCentury #Victorian #RobertLouisStevenson #RLSDay

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95d

The lights from the parlour and kitchen shone out
Through the blinds and the windows and bars;
And high overhead and all moving about,
There were thousands of millions of stars…

—Robert Louis Stevenson, “Escape at Bedtime”
from A CHILD’S GARDEN OF VERSES (1885)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Childrensliterature #kidlit #childhood #children #19thcentury #Victorian #RobertLouisStevenson #WorldChildrensDay

Escape at Bedtime
by Robert Louis Stevenson

The lights from the parlour and kitchen shone out
Through the blinds and the windows and bars;
And high overhead and all moving about,
There were thousands of millions of stars.
There ne’er were such thousands of leaves on a tree,
Nor of people in church or the Park,
As the crowds of the stars that looked down upon me,
And that glittered and winked in the dark.

The Dog, and the Plough, and the Hunter, and all,
And the star of the sailor, and Mars,
These shone in the sky, and the pail by the wall
Would be half full of water and stars.
They saw me at last, and they chased me with cries,
And they soon had me packed into bed;
But the glory kept shining and bright in my eyes,
And the stars going round in my head.

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93d

The City is of Night; perchance of Death…

James “B.V.” Thomson (1834–1882) – poet, journalist, translator, anarchist, atheist – was born #OTD, 23 Nov, in Port Glasgow. Best known for his long poem THE CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT, he influenced TS Eliot & is seen as a progenitor of Modernism

1/4

https://psychogeographicreview.com/the-city-of-dreadful-night/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Victorian #19thcentury #modernism #TSEliot

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1y

Fossil hunter, folklorist, evangelist, stonemason, newspaper editor, social justice campaigner, & geologist, Hugh Miller (1802–1856) – born #OTD, 10 Oct – deserves to be remembered in the company of Carlyle, Ruskin, Matthew Arnold & JS Mill as one of the leading moral & social thinkers of the 19th century

A 🎂🧵

1/4

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #Victorian #geology #fossil #HughMiller

A faded 19th-century sepia photograph of Hugh Miller. He is standing, dressed in workman's overalls, his shirt-sleeves rolled up. He has bushy hair and large sideburns, and his left elbow is propped up on a carved gravestone. His right hand rests on a large stonemason's maul, and he holds a chisel in his left hand.

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83d

Robert Louis Stevenson died #OTD, 3 December, in 1894, aged 44. He is buried on Mt Vaea, on the island of Upolu in Samoa 🇼🇸 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

📷 Thomas Andrew (1855–1939): Burial of Robert Louis Stevenson, 1894 / Le maliu o Tusitala i le tausaga 1894
🧵

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https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Burial_and_grave_of_Robert_Louis_Stevenson_in_Samoa,_1894.jpg

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #Victorian #RobertLouisStevenson #Samoa #Tusitala

A black-and-white photograph, showing the burial of Robert Louis Stevenson. About thirty or forty people – a few are of European origin but most are Samoan – stand solemnly in a thickly wooded area around what must be Stevenson's coffin, draped in cloth and leaves.

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82d

“What sprang forth from Carlyle’s pen was not a dry account of the French Revolution, but a book brimming with passion and philosophy, one that offered a new style of storytelling that influenced a generation of Victorian writers.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) was born #OTD, 4 Dec. His THE FRENCH REVOLUTION established him as one of the most important social & cultural commentators of his day

🧵

1/7

https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2009/marchapril/feature/the-voracious-pen-thomas-carlyle

#Scottish #literature #Victorian #19thcentury #history #ThomasCarlyle

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66d

“If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it they are wrong. I do not say ‘give them up,’ for they may be all you have; but conceal them like a vice, lest they should spoil the lives of better and simpler people.”

—Robert Louis Stevenson, “A Christmas Sermon”

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#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #Victorian #RobertLouisStevenson #Christmas

A double-page spread of an ornate layout of Stevenson’s “A Christmas Sermon” – a limited edition with gilded title, rules & initial capitals, by John Henry Nash (San Francisco, 1928)

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64d

“Of old, Edinburgh University was the scene of heroic snowballing; and one riot obtained the epic honours of military intervention.”

—Robert Louis Stevenson, PICTURESQUE NOTES: EDINBURGH (1878)

🎨 : “Snowballing Outside Edinburgh University”, by Samuel Bough (1822–1878). Watercolour on paper, 1853

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Download PICTURESQUE NOTES as a free ebook from @gutenberg_org

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/382

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #Victorian #RobertLouisStevenson #Edinburgh #winter

“Snowballing Outside Edinburgh University”, by Samuel Bough (1822–1878). Watercolour on paper.

A mid-nineteenth-century street scene in Edinburgh. At a street corner, on either side of the road, two groups of youths are throwing snowballs at each other. Some people watch from windows; other onlookers stand by. On one side of the street two women and a child hurry past.

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1y

The City is of Night; perchance of Death…

James “B.V.” Thomson (1834–1882) – poet, journalist, translator, anarchist, atheist – was born #OTD, 23 Nov, in Port Glasgow. Best known for his long poem THE CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT, he influenced TS Eliot & is seen as a progenitor of Modernism

1/3

https://psychogeographicreview.com/the-city-of-dreadful-night/

#Scottish #literature #poetry #Victorian #19thCentury #modernism #TSEliot

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54d

Work in progress.
I'm slightly obsessed with turn-of-the-(19th)century theatre/pantomime/circus playbills at the moment, so I'm re-creating posters and ads for more recent productions (and products) in that style.

#graphics #movies #davidlynch #victorian

Eraserhead film poster recreated as a Victorian playbill

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39d

The strange case of Robert Louis Stevenson

Alastair Benn is joined by Professor Leo Damrosch, author of Storyteller: The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson, to explore the life & legacy of the celebrated writer, including one of his most enduring literary achievements, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnJ2R6EgzZ0

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #Victorian #RobertlouisStevenson #JekyllandHyde

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36d

Some good things have come from Davos …

“It was here that Robert Louis Stevenson overcame his writer’s block and finished Treasure Island; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle started skiing in the Alps; and Thomas Mann thought of the idea for The Magic Mountain”

1/5

https://lithub.com/a-brief-literary-history-of-davos/

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #Victorian #RobertLouisStevenson #SirArthurConanDoyle #Davos #writersblock #skiing #ThomasMann

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27d

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: The Read with Reece Shearsmith

Currently available on the BBC iPlayer: Reece Shearsmith narrates Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic work of gothic horror

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0027pdf

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #Victorian #RobertLouisStevenson #horror #gothic

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334d

“its power as a starter in crowd psychology comes from Mackay’s insistence on humanising the follies he describes. No macroeconomic constructs here – just good old greed, optimism, superstition & cunning plans”

—Charles Mackay (1814–1889) was born #OTD, 27 March – best remembered today for his 1841 book Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds

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https://www.peterharrington.co.uk/blog/the-great-and-awful-book-of-human-folly-charles-mackays-popular-delusions-2/

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #Victorian #psychology #masspsychology #economics #stockmarket #bubbles

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16d

Robert Louis Stevenson’s short story “The Bottle Imp” was first published (in English) on this day, 8 Feb, 1891, in the New York Herald. It was originally published in Samoan translation as “‘O le Fagu Aitu” in the missionary magazine O le sulu Samoa (The Samoan Torch)

A 👿 🧵

1/10

#Scottish #literature #shortstory #RobertLouisStevenson #19thcentury #Victorian #Pacific #Samoa #Hawaii #supernatural

A newspaper clipping from 1891, showing a title and the opening few lines of Robert Louis Stevenson’s short story "The Bottle Imp"

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17d

Call for papers
The Incredible Nineteenth Century: Science Fiction, Fantasy, & Fairy Tale
1–2 May, free online

Presentations invited on any aspect of science fiction, fantasy, or fairy tale in the long 19th century as well as modern reinterpretations of the 19th century in literature & media. Deadline 4 April.

@litstudies

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSciz7ZLd8jRxjMF05TQCf2UGuNmYFN_4N0Whs4jgWZaYVDVXQ/viewform?pli=1

#Literature #19thcentury #Victorian #sciencefiction #fantasy #fairytale #SFF #specfic #steampunk #callforpapers

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330d

Andrew Lang (1844–1912) was born #OTD, 31 March. An extraordinarily prolific anthropologist, writer & literary critic, he is best remembered today for collecting & editing fairy stories from around the world

A 🎂 🧵

1/6

https://universityofglasgowlibrary.wordpress.com/2016/05/20/the-man-of-letters-in-fairyland-andrew-lang/

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #Victorian #kidlit #fairytale #AndrewLang

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256d

James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879) was born #OTD, 13 June. As a physicist, he ranks alongside Newton & Einstein (“He achieved greatness unequalled”—Max Planck; “I stand on the shoulders of Maxwell”—Albert Einstein).

Maxwell also wrote poetry: “Rigid Body Sings” is based on “Comin’ Through the Rye” by Robert Burns

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45774/in-memory-of-edward-wilson-who-repented-of-what-was-in-his-mind-to-write-after-section

#Scottish #literature #poetry #19thcentury #Victorian #Scots #Scotslanguage #Physics #science #physicist

In Memory of Edward Wilson, Who Repented of what was in his Mind to Write after Section
BY JAMES CLERK MAXWELL

Rigid Body (sings).

Gin a body meet a body
Flyin’ through the air,
Gin a body hit a body,
Will it fly? and where?
Ilka impact has its measure,
Ne’er a ane hae I,
Yet a’ the lads they measure me,
Or, at least, they try.

Gin a body meet a body
Altogether free,
How they travel afterwards
We do not always see.
Ilka problem has its method
By analytics high;
For me, I ken na ane o’ them,
But what the waur am I?

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319d

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 🎂 🧵

1/3

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.

And it’s often very cold and very wet;
And my missis stitches towels for a hunks;
And the Pillar’d Halls is half of it to let—
Three rooms about the size of travelling trunks.
And we cough, my wife and I, to dislocate a sigh,
When the noisy little kids are in their bunks.

But you never hear her do a growl or whine,
For she’s made of flint and roses, very odd;
And I’ve got to cut my meaning rather fine
Or I’d blubber, for I’m made of greens and sod:
So p’rhaps we are in hell for all that I can tell,
And lost and damn’d and served up hot to God.

I ain’t blaspheming, Mr. Silvertongue;
I’m saying things a bit beyond your art:
Of all the rummy starts you ever sprung
Thirty bob a week’s the rummiest start!
With your science and your books and your the’ries about spooks,
Did you ever hear of looking in your heart?

I didn’t mean your pocket, Mr., no!
I mean that having children and a wife,
With thirty bob on which to come and go,
Isn’t dancing to the tabor and the fife;
When it doesn’t make you drink, by Heaven! it makes you think,
And notice curious items about life.

I step into my heart and there I meet
A god-almighty devil singing small,

Who would like to shout and whistle in the street,
And squelch the passers flat against the wall;
If the whole world was a cake he had the power to take,
He would take it, ask for more, and eat them all.

And I meet a sort of simpleton beside—
The kind that life is always giving beans;
With thirty bob a week to keep a bride
He fell in love and married in his teens;
At thirty bob he stuck, but he knows it isn’t luck;
He knows the seas are deeper than tureens.

And the god-almighty devil and the fool
That meet me in the High Street on the strike,
When I walk about my heart a-gathering wool,
Are my good and evil angels if you like;
And both of them together in every kind of weather
Ride me like a double-seated “bike”.

That’s rough a bit and needs its meaning curled;
But I have a high old hot un in my mind,
A most engrugious notion of the world
That leaves your lightning ’rithmetic behind:
I give it at a glance when I say “There ain’t no chance,
Nor nothing of the lucky-lottery kind.”

And it’s this way that I make it out to be:
No fathers, mothers, countries, climates—none!—
Not Adam was responsible for me;
Nor society, nor systems, nary one!
A little sleeping seed, I woke—I did, indeed—
A million years before the blooming sun.

I woke because I thought the time had come;
Beyond my will there was no other cause:
And everywhere I found myself at home
Because I chose to be the thing I was;
And in whatever shape, of mollusc, or of ape,
I always went according to the laws.

I was the love that chose my mother out;
I joined two lives and from the union burst;
My weakness and my strength without a doubt
Are mine alone for ever from the first.
It’s just the very same with a difference in the name
As “Thy will be done.” You say it if you durst!

They say it daily up and down the land
As easy as you take a drink, it’s true;
But the difficultest go to understand,
And the difficultest job a man can do,
Is to come it brave and meek with thirty bob a week,
And feel that that’s the proper thing for you.

It’s a naked child against a hungry wolf;
It’s playing bowls upon a splitting wreck;
It’s walking on a string across a gulf
With millstones fore-and-aft about your neck:
But the thing is daily done by many and many a one . . .
And we fall, face forward, fighting, on the deck.

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281d

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

1/3

https://dangerouswomenproject.org/2017/01/06/a-dangerous-collaboration/

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #Victorian #RobertLouisStevenson #RLS #WomenWriters

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262d

“[Milne’s] cryogenics story, ‘Ten Thousand Years in Ice’, in which a survivor from an ancient advanced civilisation is revived in the present, unintentionally became one of science fiction’s great literary hoaxes”

Robert Duncan Milne (1844–1899) was born #OTD, 7 June, in Cupar, Fife. He emigrated to the USA & became America’s first full-time writer of science fiction

1/5

https://theconversation.com/remembering-the-lost-father-of-american-science-fiction-and-his-scottish-roots-78968

#Scottish #literature #sciencefiction #scifi #Victorian #19thcentury

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278d

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) was born #OTD, 22 May, at 11 Picardy Place, Edinburgh – a 🎂 🧵

On BBC Sounds: Bridget Kendall explores Conan Doyle’s life & work – the doctor & literary superstar who changed Crime fiction forever

1/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p054419v

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #Victorian #Crimewriting #CrimeFiction #Sherlock #SherlockHolmes #SherlockHolmesDay #ArthurConanDoyle

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276d

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?

Buckle up – it’s going to be a long, wild 🧵 …

1/18

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #20thcentury #Victorian #Edwardian

A still from THE MISSION (1986). Robert De Niro, with a black beard and swept-back dark hair, stands in a haze of smoke in a jungle scene. He is dressed in a black shirt, and is holding a rapier out in front of him in his right hand. His left is on his hip, in a fencer's fighting stance. He looks unsmilingly along the length of his sword to whatever faces him.

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275d

A Restless Intellect

“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 (1855–1905) – novelist, poet, dramatist, war correspondent, campaigning journalist, suffragist, & more – was born #OTD, 25 May. Valentina Bold explores Dixie’s roving life

@litstudies

1/2

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2021/12/a-restless-intellect-florence-dixie-1855-1905/

#Scottish #literature #Victorian #19thcentury #womenwriters

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257d

McGonagall Salon(agall)
24 June, Edinburgh & online – free

The Edinburgh Literary Salon & the International Ghost Society – Edinburgh’s newest & most easily-distracted paranormal investigation society – present an interactive journey through the life & poetic gems of William McGonagall, including a playable big screen RPG, hidden Easter eggs, & a virtual McGonagall experience

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/junes-mcgonagall-salonagall-tickets-1407703903269

#Scottish #literature #poetry #19thcentury #Victorian #Dundee #McGonagall

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