What can an 1848 sea-serpent sighting tell us about the workings of the mid-19th-century newspaper industry? Sixty feet long!Awfully strong!It held its course straight on, for right or for wrong,And many a brave tar on board of the Daedalus,Thought to himself if he comes here he’ll settle us. … Its size and its hues,All who…
Category: Miscellaneous
Lies and Litigation, Part Two: the cost of the Autographs
Part One of this post can be found here. Last year, I acquired a partial copy of Geraldine of Desmond from John’s Bookshop in Athlone. It was the only original Crumpe novel that I’ve ever seen for sale, and I was keen to own one for myself. It’s not in perfect condition, but this is…
Lies and Litigation, Part One; or, When is a First Edition Not a First Edition?
It’s 1831. You’re a recently-published novelist, and you suspect that your publisher – who has a bit of a dubious reputation in the business – is withholding the proceeds from your book. Worse still, you’ve asked repeatedly for the return of a manuscript, and he’s refused to provide it. There can only be one solution:…
Guest Post: The Real-Life Houses That Inspired Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice
Today’s guest post has been written by Will Leary, a former student of English with Film at University College Dublin. Will is especially interested in the crossovers between the two mediums of literature and film, particularly film adaptations of novels. Whom amongst us hasn’t dreamt of traversing the hallways of Pemberley? Or longed to take…
Teaching A Neural Network to Write 19th-Century Book Titles
This post is inspired by one of my all-time favourite blogs, AI Weirdness, whose author Janelle Shane uses machine learning to develop new and strange approaches to familiar tasks. The blog showcases her experiments in training neural networks on large textual datasets, in order to create names for guinea pigs, generate new college courses, and…
Then and Now: Trinity College Gates
This view of the corner of College Green in Dublin comes from The Illustrated Dictionary of Dublin, a guidebook by Strangways and Cosgrave, and dates to around 1895. To the of the picture is the front entrance to Trinity College, and in among the throng of pedestrians and omnibuses you can also see a few…
Found: Two Unknown Letters by Thomas Moore, 1845
On Tuesday March 25th, 1845, the poet Thomas Moore sat down in his study at Sloperton, in Wiltshire, to write a short – and somewhat confused – thank-you note to an old friend. The letter’s recipient pinned it carefully into a collection of treasured documents, but apart from herself, a handful of library staff members,…
Reading Sherlock Holmes in Context
Today’s feature is a guest post on social networks in the Sherlock Holmes novella The Sign of the Four, by former student Helen Kirrane. Helen studied English at University College Dublin. Her research interests are late Victorian gothic fiction, the literature of the fin de siècle, and the aesthetic movement. First published in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine…
Fun with Search Terms
Today, out of curiosity, I decided to take a peek at the search terms that people have found The Sea of Books with, over the year that our blog has been in existence. The results were intriguing, but suggest to me that I may want to think about doing some kind of search engine optimisation……
Cat got your collar?
Unsure of how to wear regurgitated lace? Well, Cranford’s Mrs Forrester has the answer. In Chapter 8 of Elizabeth Gaskell’s celebrated novel, Mrs Forrester advises us on how to retrieve a prized piece of lace from the belly of your pet. “Of course, your ladyship knows that such lace must never be starched or ironed. Some people wash…
Image Gallery of the Week: Kisses
Happy Valentine’s Day to all of our readers! We may have gone quiet for a while, but we’ve not been idle – just busy working on a few new projects. As an apology, please enjoy a selection of our favourite kisses from Flickr Commons! Some of these are quite romantic… others, not so much. (Perhaps…
Quotation of the Week: Impressions of Ireland
This week’s quotation is provided by Sydney Owenson/Lady Morgan’s The Wild Irish Girl: A National Tale (1806). Fed up with his son Horatio’s feckless behaviour, The Earl of M dispatches him to Connaught where he hopes he will focus on his legal studies. Upon his arrival in Dublin, Horatio writes a letter to a friend to share his initial impressions of Ireland… “…I feel the…
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