In Great Expectations Pip, Joe and Mr Wopsle visit a tavern, where a few drinks are consumed. Joe’s sobering-up methods are somewhat unconventional but perhaps worth a try? Joe went all the way home with his mouth wide open, to rinse the rum out with as much air as possible. #wotlarx
Tag: charles dickens
Insult of the Week: Blockhead
It seems ‘blockhead’ was a popular insult in the nineteenth century. In our corpus Emma tops the league table of blockheads with three, but Austen also employs it in Mansfield Park and Sense and Sensibility, where the caddish Willoughby proclaims: though I have been always a blockhead, I have not been always a rascal So…
Nineteenth-century lolz
In Great Expectations, Pip’s note-writing looks remarkably like a (drunk?) text message: MI DEER JO i OPE U R KR WITE WELL i OPE i SHAL SON B HABELL 4 2 TEEDGE U JO AN THEN WE SHORL B SO GLODD AN WEN i M PRENGTD 2 U JO WOT LARX AN BLEVE ME INF…
The Sea of Books 