“How very suddenly you all quitted the European Union in June! It must have been a most agreeable surprise to Mr. Farage to see you all join him so unexpectedly; for, if I recollect right, he has been at odds with the EU for many a year. He and Mr. Johnson, and his fellows…
Month: June 2016
Visual Tropes Gallery of the Week: Men falling off of things
Men. Now, I don’t want to come across as sexist or anything, but it’s time someone came out and said it: the problem with men is, that they are always – and I mean, CONSTANTLY – falling off of things. You literally can’t take them anywhere. Especially not anywhere that involves a moderately elevanted surface,…
Image of the Week: A Plunge into Space
Born in County Down, Robert Cromie (1855-1907) published his science fiction novel A Plunge into Space in 1890 at the age of 35. The text does pretty much what it says on the tin and follows an expedition to Mars and while it doesn’t feature in our project’s corpus, it is perhaps a good example of Irish fin…
Insult of the Week: A “stiff-necked, arrogant imbecile, pig-headed numskull”
This week’s insult is brought to you by Charles Dickens’ Bleak House. During an ongoing feud between Mr Lawrence Boythorn and Sir Leicester Dedlock over “the green pathway by the old parsonage-house” (that neither man actually seems to want), Boythorn explains their exchanges on the subject “The fellow, by his agent, or secretary, or somebody,…
Dowries and Dowagers; or, Conjectures on Why Lady Catherine de Bourgh is So Rude
It’s one of Pride and Prejudice‘s pivotal and iconic scenes. Lady Catherine de Bourgh, who’s incensed at “an alarming report” about her nephew’s likelihood of marrying “a young woman without family, connections, or fortune”, travels to Longbourn to confront Elizabeth, confident of being able to persuade or bully her into dropping any matrimonial ambitions in…
Caturday, vol. III: the cattening
Today’s Caturday collection has been compiled with the assistance of my own two felines, who have been industriously wrecking the place while I work. Thank you, Kaylee and River! Previous Caturday posts can be found here.
“Well imagined and happily represented”: a review of Pride and Prejudice from 1813
****WARNING: READERS SHOULD BE ADVISED THAT THE REVIEW BELOW CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, AND ALSO LOTS OF THOSE ANNOYING Ss THAT LOOK LIKE Fs**** The author of a review of Pride and Prejudice which appeared in The British Critic in 1813, the year that the novel was first published, gives a very positive…
Image of the Week: A slice of Mrs. Weston’s wedding-cake
This weeks image is inspired by a short scene in Jane Austen’s Emma. Concerned for the digestive health of the guests at Miss Taylor’s wedding, Mr. Woodhouse tries to dissuade them from eating the wedding-cake… There was no recovering Miss Taylor—nor much likelihood of ceasing to pity her; but a few weeks brought some alleviation…
Insult of the week: a crop-eared English Whig
In chapter 11, we find young Englishman Edward Waverley enjoying – or trying to enjoy – a convivial evening with his host, Baron Bradwardine, and three other Scottish companions: bailiff Duncan MacWheeble, and the pugnacious young lairds of Balmawhapple and Killancureit. Prodigious quantities of drink are consumed, and Waverley manfully does his best to keep…
“A man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose”
This week’s quotation is provided by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s first Sherlock Holmes novella, A Study in Scarlet (1887). In chapter 2, the world’s most famous detective warns Dr. Watson of the dangers of filling one’s brain-attic with too much lumber … “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to…
Insult of the Week: an ass and her panniers
The terminally bored aristocrat Lady Delacour, of Maria Edgeworth’s 1800 novel Belinda, declares in chapter 4 that the only reason she has made it through the last few years is her cherished enmity with her foewoman, Mrs. Luttridge: I cannot count the number of extravagant things I have done on purpose to eclipse her. We…
The Sea of Books 