Incunabula

On May 29, 2018June 1, 2018 By bookramblings142In Book TalesLeave a comment

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A bit of an oddity for this blog, but as this is framed and on the wall by my desk it seemed wrong not to discuss this piece of history. I only have one page, a complete book would be well beyond my means so this is my only example of an incunable; that is a book printed up to the year 1500. The Latin term incunabula is translatable as cradle so is appropriate to relate to works from the birth of printing. Johannes Gutenberg, inventor of the printing press, started in 1450 in Mainz, Germany, and in 1452 he completed work on his most famous production, what is now known the world over as the Gutenberg Bible. Nowadays we think of printing as mass production, and in a way for its time this was the case however just 180 copies of the bible were printed by Gutenberg so each book printed in this period would only have had tiny numbers produced. This is printing but not as we know it.

In Britain printing didn’t arrive until William Caxton set up his printing press in 1476 at Westminster, initially intending to print his own translations of books. He had started printing in Bruges, Belgium having learnt how to do it in Cologne, but came back to England in order to meet demand for his books. His first title ultimately became his most famous however and he will be forever associated with Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

According to the Incunabula Short Title Catalogue; maintained by the British Library; in the first 50 years of printing just under thirty thousand different editions of various titles were printed in 18 different countries in a total of 282 printing towns. The ISTC as it is known is an attempt to catalogue every known incunabula, it is almost complete and makes a fantastic reference database for this period. My page is from Super sapientiam Salomonis, a commentary on the books of the Wisdom of Solomon by Robertus Holkot. It was printed by Heinrich Gran in 1494 in the town of Hagenau, which was in Germany then but is now part of France. According to the ISTC there are 104 copies of the book held in institutions around the world, one of which has been scanned and made available on the internet. My page can therefore be seen here in the copy of the complete work held in Munich via the MDZ (Das Münchener DigitalisierungsZentrum) an archive started in 1997 and which provides an unrivalled collection especially of early works in a digital form.

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One immediate difference can be seen between my page and the digital copy and that is in the red letter h in the top left. This is because this page has been rubricated, that is the red letter has been hand written by a scribe who would have been employed specifically to add red letters to printed texts as indeed they would have done to handwritten manuscripts before the introduction of the printing press. These specialists were responsible for the beautiful initial lettering in medieval texts and their skill lasted for several decades after printing took over, hand embellishing the basic printed works which could only be in a single colour and it does mean that every copy is different. Rubrication is from the Latin rubico which means ‘to colour red’ and the red letter used to indicate something special gave us the phrase ‘a red letter day’ which is a date of particular importance as these days would be marked on the ecclesiastical calendar in red rather the usual black.

I bought my page from a small shop in the world’s first book town, Hay On Wye, roughly 20 years ago. Back then there was a shop that specialised in ancient bibles and other old books and they just had a few loose pages from different incunabula for sale. Sadly the shop no longer exists but I’m very pleased I bought this as an example of printing history, it is after all 524 years old and one of the oldest man made objects I possess. The paper isn’t actually as grey as it appears in the photographs. The page is framed and behind glass so I couldn’t use flash because all I would have got would be glare off the glass. The true colour is much closer to the digital image from Munich.

Apothecary Melchior

On May 22, 2018February 26, 2019 By bookramblings142In Reviews2 Comments

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The Apothecary Melchior series by Indrek Hargla is pretty well unknown in the UK but very popular in his native Estonia. He is probably best known there for his fantasy and ‘alternative history’ stories but Melchior is Hargla’s foray into medieval crime making him the closest Estonian equivalent of Ellis Peters here in the UK with her Brother Cadfael tales. The Melchior novels are set in the capital, Tallinn, in the early 1400’s as the city was going through a massive building programme, with the city walls mostly constructed along with some of the significant buildings but others parts are clearly still being worked on including the main square.

Although there are now six novels in the series only two have so far been translated into English and are published by Peter Owen however as can be seen from the covers these don’t look like part of a series. It seems an odd choice by the publisher to make them look so unlike and they are also translated by different people.

… and the Mystery of St. Olaf’s Church – Original title Apteeker Melchior ja Oleviste mõistatus published 2010 – translated in 2015 by Adam Cullen
… and the Ghost of Rataskaevu Street – Original title Apteeker Melchior ja Rataskaevu viirastus published 2010 – translated in 2016 by Christopher Moseley

I was first introduced to the books by my Estonian friend who gave me the second book for my birthday last year, it had to be book two as she couldn’t find a translation of the first one in Estonia. One of the problems I have found with translations from Estonian is their variable quality; so whilst I enjoy the books I have read in translation, quite often I find myself having to reread sections to be sure I have understood what is being said. This was not a problem with The Ghost of Rataskaevu Street, I sat and read it quite quickly, especially on the one day when out in the Estonian countryside there was just torrential rain so getting out and enjoying the area was not possible. Unfortunately the translation of The Mystery of St. Olaf’s Church is not as good so this may explain the change of translator for the second novel. The book is still perfectly readable but the flow of the narrative seems forced at times and I’m inclined to blame the translator rather than the author here as Hargla had been writing for many years before these books and they both came out in the same year so it’s not a case of the original authorship style changing. My friend also loves the series and I doubt she would have if she had started with this one.

Melchior is in the classic tradition of the amateur sleuth who finds himself drawn into mysteries and providing assistance to the city authorities and through him we learn about the power conflicts in the city as the Teutonic knights in their castle are slowly losing control to the expanding city council along with the rivalries between the various religious bodies that still held enormous influence at the time. Whilst reading it, the first book appears to be misnamed for a long time, as very little appears to happen at St Olaf’s and it is only at the conclusion that the church’s role in the story is explained. At the start the book seems like a simple mystery as to who murdered one of the knights in the castle itself. Melchior gets involved due to his specialist knowledge as an apothecary making him one of the few scientifically trained people in the city and he sees it initially as a way of currying favour with the city fathers who need the murder solving quickly to keep the knights happy. In turn he looks for their assistance in opening the main city pharmacy which would catapult him up the social standings in Tallinn. The book is set in 1409, thirteen years before such a pharmacy was actually opened in the city so we know he isn’t going to get anywhere with that plan soon. Without giving any of the plot away, the story moves around the city introducing each of the power brokers in the place and ultimately reaches a denouement at St Olaf’s at the other end of Pikk, one of the longest streets in Tallinn.

The Ghost of Rataskaevu Street starts out much closer to home for Melchoir as this is where his home and small shop are situated. The tale is darker than the first book with rivalries between senior families leading to some pretty horrific situations for some of the protagonists, it is also more character driven than the first. We see a greater strata of the city’s population from the highest nobles of the Merchant Guilds to shop and bar keepers, sailors, servants and serfs. The Guilds are now getting more powerful, as would be the case all over Europe at this time but especially in the Hanseatic League which included Estonia and whose merchants controlled large parts of international trade in Northern Europe. By 1419 which is when this book is set they had recently built a guild house in the centre of the city and this alongside the City Hall was where power was slowly drifting away from the knights in their castle on Toompea Hill. The families involved in the story are senior guild members and this makes solving the crimes more difficult as Melchior must be very careful not to annoy the very people he is investigating.

One of the joys of reading the books after visiting Tallinn is that most of the places mentioned are still standing and the city looks much as it did 700 years ago, except obviously a lot cleaner that it would have been at the time.

A general view of the city from the castle on Toompea

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The Long Leg gateway, entrance to the castle seen from the end of Rataskaevu Street

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St Olaf’s church on Pikk

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The Guild Hall

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and finally the Apothecary in the main square that Melchior so wants to found. As said above this opened in 1422 and it is now the oldest still working pharmacy in the world.

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Seek out the Melchior stories, I hope that Peter Owen will get round to the others soon.

According to a chart in the i newspaper last week Estonian’s spend more time on average reading books than any other nation in Europe and Estonian authors certainly produce a wide range of work which I will be dipping into again in future blogs.

Under Milk Wood – Dylan Thomas

On May 15, 2018November 18, 2019 By bookramblings142In Book Tales2 Comments

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Yesterday was International Dylan Thomas day and marked the anniversary of the first ever performance of the great Welsh poet’s final work; Under Milk Wood. This show on 14th May 1953 was also the only time Thomas was recorded on stage giving any sort of performance of the work and sadly he was to die before the classic BBC recording starring Richard Burton was broadcast on the 25th January 1954. I have the vinyl recording of that original performance and it is playing now as I type this with Thomas’s distinctive voice taking four parts, that of 1st voice, Reverend Eli Jenkins, 2nd drowned and 5th drowned. The rest of the cast are Dion Allen, Allen F Collins, Roy Poole, Sada Thompson and Nancy Wickwire and between them they play the remaining 50 parts.

The recording was more accidental than intentional, there was a recording scheduled for 1954 with Caedmon but Thomas’s death prevented that happening. However somebody left a tape recorder at the front of the stage with the microphone probably nearer to Thomas than the other cast members mainly for their own use to record the first performance. As a single microphone on a device intended for amateur recordings it does remarkably well in picking up not only all the actors but also the audience and has left us with a remarkable historical record. Caedmon therefore used this for their release of Under Milk Wood. The New York audience clearly didn’t know what to expect from this Welsh poet and you can hear them gradually realise that it is intentionally funny and the way the actors bounce partial sentences between themselves gives a delightful rhythm to the blank verse.

Under Milkwood is subtitled ‘A Play for Voices’ which sounds an odd description until you realise that it was intended to be a radio play for the BBC so there are no stage directions, it was always intended to be read by the cast not acted.

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My printed copy is the 1972 Folio Society first edition of the work and, as usual for Folio, it is a lovely edition. It restores the text back to the original broadcast script with some extra lines which he left out originally, probably due to running time, added as an appendix. Although Thomas did deliver the script to the BBC he was still fiddling with it up to his death as he gave various readings in an attempt to earn enough money to pay off his debts, specifically a large back payment owed for income tax. So the typescripts are full of corrections and amendments and he never did come to what he regarded as a satisfactory conclusion to the piece, which had always been rushed as he only finished the ending included on the album minutes before they started the performance and kept changing this at subsequent performances. As Douglas Cleverdon (the BBC producer of the 1954 broadcast version) notes in his introduction to the Folio edition.

Two stage readings of Under Milk Wood were scheduled for 24 and 25 October at the Kaufmann Auditorium, New York. Under a mixture of alcohol, sleeping pills and cortisone drugs, Dylan was already in a near state of collapse. He managed to write another page for the closing sequence of the script; to take part on the two readings, and to edit a shortened version for publication in the American magazine Mademoiselle. On 5 November he was taken to hospital in a coma, and died four days later.

If he had survived the play would undoubtedly have been further amended, on the back of one page of the manuscript is a section entitled “More Stuff for Actors to Say” and there are parts of the Caedmon recording that were subsequently removed so it was definitely still a work in progress at least as far as Thomas was concerned even after he had submitted the ‘final version’ to the BBC.

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One final thing that should be mentioned is the setting of the play in a small Welsh village of Llareggub. This has the advantage of looking like a Welsh place name without being one, you don’t get a double g in Welsh. However anyone looking closely at the name and especially if you spell it backwards will see that here is another joke by Dylan Thomas. For this reason early editions of the script spell the village differently and even the Caedmon recording uses Lareggub when referring to the place in the notes. The fantasy author Terry Pratchett paid homage to Dylan Thomas when he named the equivalent of Wales on the Discworld Llamedos.

You can hear the first part of the performance I’m listening to on youtube here It starts with Thomas as First Voice setting the scene.

Moomins: The Comic Strip

On May 8, 2018May 8, 2018 By bookramblings142In Sets and Series1 Comment

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Tove Jansson wrote her first Moomin book ‘The Moomins and the Great Flood’ (original Swedish title Småtrollen och den stora översvämningen) during WWII and it was published in 1945, Småtrollen translates as small troll. By the second book ‘Comet in Moominland’ (1946) the original Swedish title has Mumintrollet rather than Småtrollen and the Moomins had truly arrived. Interestingly those of us reading the Moomin stories in English didn’t get the first book until 2005 as a 60th anniversary limited edition which is a distinctly odd way to have it’s first English translation.

My younger brother read the Moomins in the early 1970’s as a child but they somehow passed me by, I remember the covers of his books but I don’t think I ever opened them. The first time I really became aware of the Moomins was when I lived in Stockholm whilst subcontracting on IT systems for Swedish company Dagab in the mid 1990’s. By then in Scandinavia you could hardly turn a corner in a shopping area without encountering the familiar white characters and a recent visit showed that the interest is even greater now.

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My interest was taken by the comic strip versions rather than the books, these were originally written and illustrated by Tove from 1954 for the Evening News in the UK and this gave them a huge following. By 1957 however workload from what Tove regarded as her ‘real’ career as an artist meant that she got her younger brother Lars involved and from 1960 he took over as sole writer and artist until the strip finally ended in 1975. Despite not really being a fan of comic strips or graphic novels I love the simple drawings and the tightness of script imposed by the comic strip format to the Moomin tales and if anything I prefer the work by Lars to Tove as there is more humour although the drawings are not as precise. Suggesting this however is probably heresy to true ‘Moominites’. The first strip was published on 20th September 1954, but before that the Evening News ran teaser panels for a week such as the one at the top of this blog.

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Since 2006 Canadian publisher Drawn and Quarterly had been issuing collections of the cartoon strips at the rate of roughly one a year, although volume 10 came out in August 2015 and nothing since. Emails and attempts to contact the company via their facebook page regarding further volumes have been ignored. After all they have still only reached 1964 of what was described as ‘The Complete Lars Jansson Comic Strip’ and there would still need to be 8 to 10 (difficult to tell how they would choose to split the cartoons into the books) more volumes to complete the set. It is important at this point to emphasise that the comic strip stories are not retelling the nine books by Tove, what we have here is 73 more Moomin tales, 14 of which are by Tove, 7 by the brother and sister in combination and 52 by Lars, so there are 32 Moomin stories written after 1964 that are not currently in print and therefore not available to purchase and read.

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Although I have tagged this essay as “children’s books” and certainly they can be, and are, read by children it is easy to forget how dark a lot of the subject matters covered are, not just in the books but also in the comic strips. From the very first comic strip story where it becomes clear that Moomintroll believes himself to be an orphan and is being put upon by lots of other characters taking advantage of his good nature it is clear that this is not just a simple tale for children. After the end of the series of strips making up ‘Moomin and the Brigands’ he finds his parents when they rescue him whilst he is trying to drown himself to get away from the hordes of people making his life miserable that have eventually driven him from his own home.

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Charles Sutton from Associated Newspapers recognised the more adult possibilities in one of his letters to Tove before the strips were finally commissioned and it is clear that she took this advice to heart when she signed the contract for 7 years worth of cartoons.

It has come to my mind, that your “Moomin” family could make an interesting comic strip, which would not necessarily be aimed at children. It is obvious that the Moomin family appeals to children, but we think these wonderful creatures could be used in comic strip form to satirise our so-called civilised lifestyle.

The Moomin cartoon feature film ‘Moomins on the Riviera’ released in 2014 was based on the third comic strip tale written and illustrated by Tove in 1955, rather than one of her books. This meant that the story was new to most of the people who saw it, as the books are far better known, even though the comic strips were syndicated widely through Europe. In line with the less childlike cartoons Moominpappa at one point has a terrible hangover and Moomintroll himself becomes extremely jealous of Snorkmaiden’s admirers and is not impressed by her tiny bikini which actually looks very daring despite the fact that normally, like Moomintroll, she doesn’t wear any clothes at all. You can see the trailer for the film here.

As an example of Lars Jansson’s work the cartoon below shows Moominpappa being as selfless as ever and willing to put himself out for the good of the family…

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This story has him become totally obsessed with the television and it controls his life (along with all the family as they have to do what he sees as correct according to the adverts) for a while until he finally is brought back to reality.

Hopefully Drawn and Quarterly will eventually start issuing the books again, but until then at least we have access to 10 volumes covering 41 tales. As an aside to this blog, there was a fascinating documentary about the life and work of Tove Jansson which includes an interview with Lars and also his daughter Sophia, who now controls the vast Moomin empire, made by the BBC in 2013. At the time of writing this blog it is still available on youtube.

Conrad’s Congo

On May 1, 2018May 2, 2018 By bookramblings142In Reviews1 Comment

In 1890 naturalised Briton, although Polish born, Captain Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski left England to take command of the steamship Roi des Belges on the River Congo. He had gained his Master of the British Merchant Marine certificate four years earlier and had had a previous command of a ship called the Otago but this was to be his most significant position, at least as far as it’s mark on his later life. He had begun his maritime career back in 1875 as a trainee seaman on the barque Mont Blanc and had worked his way up the ranks on various vessels over the following years and hoped this would be a stepping stone to command of larger ships but it wasn’t to be. Amongst the possessions he took with him for an expected 3 years away in the Congo was a manuscript for a novel he was working on and it was this, along with the ill health that followed his African adventure that largely kept his away from future seagoing, would make the name of Joseph Conrad. ‘Almayer’s Folly’ was published in 1895, 15 months after he left his final marine post and a stream of novels and stories were to follow including the novella ‘Heart of Darkness’ based on his time in the Congo and published in 1899.

Although I will refer to Heart of Darkness several times during this essay, the book that has prompted me to write is ‘Conrad’s Congo’ published by the Folio Society in 2013 which gathers for the first time in one volume letters and diaries by Conrad relating to his ill-fated trip, along with the short story ‘An Outpost of Progress’ which also draws on his time in Congo. The book is bound in cloth blocked with a design by Neil Gower of the Roi des Belges steaming along the Congo. At 256 pages it is more than twice the length of Heart of Darkness and includes some fascinating contemporary photographs.

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The Congo at the time was being run a private fiefdom by King Leopold II of Belgium and the astonishing cruelty against and exploitation of the people there was without parallel even amongst other colonies. It only started to be reigned in after the report into what was happening there by Roger Casement became public and eventually the Belgian government stripped Leopold of his autocratic control. It is estimated that of Congo’s 20 million population in 1880 this was roughly halved by 1920 mainly from famine and disease as all able bodied people were forced to work collecting ivory, rubber or other commodities to enrich Leopold meaning there was nobody to hunt, fish or plant crops. Part of Casement’s report is included as an appendix to the book and makes disturbing reading even though I already knew some of the background.

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The cover of the Penguin Popular Classics edition of Heart of Darkness was chosen by somebody who wanted a dark jungle view but managed to select not only the wrong country but even the wrong continent as the painting is a detail from Hunter in Brazilian Jungle by Marrin J Heade, so the plants growing are completely wrong for Africa.

Conrad’s Congo starts off with a series of letters initially with Albert Thys, deputy director of the Belgian Company of the Upper Congo as he tries to get a job with them then moves on to letters to his distant cousin (although referred to as uncle in the letters) Aleksander Poradowski then living in Belgium and when he dies soon after this correspondence starts the letters continue to his widow Marguerite (written to as aunt) and it is she that helps get him the captaincy he is looking for. In Heart of Darkness this is fictionalised in the tale told by Marlow (a thinly disguised Conrad) in which he says

“I am sorry to own I began to worry them. This was already a fresh departure for me. I was not used to get things that way, you know. I always went my own road and on my own legs where I had a mind to go. I wouldn’t have believed it of myself; but, then–you see–I felt somehow I must get there by hook or by crook. So I worried them. The men said ‘My dear fellow,’ and did nothing. Then–would you believe it?–I tried the women. I, Charlie Marlow, set the women to work–to get a job. Heavens! Well, you see, the notion drove me. I had an aunt, a dear enthusiastic soul. She wrote: ‘It will be delightful. I am ready to do anything, anything for you. It is a glorious idea. I know the wife of a very high personage in the Administration, and also a man who has lots of influence with,’ etc. She was determined to make no end of fuss to get me appointed skipper of a river steamboat, if such was my fancy.

Six months after approaching Thys, Conrad had his job and his letters to his ‘aunt’ continue through his voyage to the Congo talking about the trip but also his first impression of colonial Africa as he works his way along to coast encountering French ships. The letters hint at a growing romantic link between the two as the tone becomes more playful such as might be written between two lovers separated by distance. On arrival at Matadi he finds that the Roi des Belges is 200 miles away and there is no way to get there up the river due to the rapids between the coast and the station where the ship awaits him so Conrad is forced to walk to his boat and this is covered in ‘The Congo Diary’ which makes up the next section of the book. It is in this short work where he meets Roger Casement and we first read of the casual cruelty inflicted on the natives and hints as to the fate of the majority of the colonialists.

On the road today passed a skeleton tied up to a post. Also white man’s grave – no name. Heap of stones in the form of a cross.

The short Congo Diary is immediately followed with ‘The Up-river book’ which covers his first trip on the Roi des Belges and is largely technical notes presumably to assist him in future trips such as this part of the entry for the 3rd August 1890.

Always keep the high mountain ahead crossing over to the left bank. To port of highest mount a low black point. Opposite a long island stretching across. The shore is wooded –

As you approach the shore the black point and the island close in together – No danger – steering close to the mainland between the island and the grassy sandbank, towards the high mount.

There are also numerous sketch maps of sections of the river which are also included in the Folio edition. The endpapers of this book have maps for both The Congo Diary and The Up-river Book so that you can follow the journeys.

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Unlike in Heart of Darkness where Marlow on having walked to his boat just as Conrad did, the Roi des Belges was clearly ready to sail as they set off a couple of days after he arrived. In the story Marlow found his ship had sunk a few days earlier so was obliged to spend many months getting it out of the water and repaired before they could do anything. The enforced break affords Conrad the chance to set up his plot for the rest of the story and also to make various observations about the conditions the natives are under. In reality he was off from Kinshasa to Stanley Falls almost immediately. This section of the Folio book is frankly not very readable and in truth was not intended to be so as it is really just notes on the route to avoid the numerous sandbanks and rocky snags that litter the river. Conrad’s sketch maps are interesting with their dotted lines indicating the correct path between islands especially the long section dealing with the clearly complicated Lulanga river passage, this takes 7 maps and several pages of notes to get through so it must have had a justified reputation for difficulty in navigation.

At the end of The Up-river book we are back to a small section of correspondence as letters have caught up with Conrad at Stanley Falls. One of these is highly significant as the letter to Marguerite includes the first mention that he has been very ill with dysentery as well as fever (malaria) and that there is a mutual dislike between him and the manager of the station he is based at so there is little hope of any advancement in his career. It is quite clear from the letter that the manager of the station that Marlow finds himself at is modelled on the real Monsieur Delcommune. This is how Marlow describes him..

He was commonplace in complexion, in features, in manners, and in voice. He was of middle size and of ordinary build. His eyes, of the usual blue, were perhaps remarkably cold, and he certainly could make his glance fall on one as trenchant and heavy as an axe. But even at these times the rest of his person seemed to disclaim the intention. Otherwise there was only an indefinable, faint expression of his lips, something stealthy–a smile–not a smile–I remember it, but I can’t explain. It was unconscious, this smile was, though just after he had said something it got intensified for an instant. It came at the end of his speeches like a seal applied on the words to make the meaning of the commonest phrase appear absolutely inscrutable. He was a common trader, from his youth up employed in these parts–nothing more. He was obeyed, yet he inspired neither love nor fear, nor even respect. He inspired uneasiness. That was it! Uneasiness. Not a definite mistrust–just uneasiness–nothing more. You have no idea how effective such a… a… faculty can be. He had no genius for organizing, for initiative, or for order even. That was evident in such things as the deplorable state of the station. He had no learning, and no intelligence.

The last letter in this section is to the publisher Thomas Fisher Unwin who was acting as Conrad’s literary agent and mentions the short story ‘An Outpost of Progress’ based on his experience at the station which makes up the next section of the Folio volume.

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Conrad would be invalided out of the Congo by the end of 1890 to the relief not only to himself but also to Delcommune who wanted rid of him, and never recovered his health. Malaria is one of those persistent diseases that keeps flaring back up and it would afflict him several times back in England. The remainder of the Folio book is letters he sent long after his return, including 3 to Roger Casement at the end of 1903 just before the Casement report was published in February 1904, along with extracts from articles he wrote, followed by 2 appendices. The first of these is a series of five short testaments about Conrad written by people who met him including John Galsworthy and Bertrand Russell and then finally the extracts from Casement’s report that was mentioned earlier.

All in all a fascinating book which gives an insight into the creation of Heart of Darkness and which even if you have never read the novella provides an overview of the awful situation in the Congo under Belgian control and it should be recommended if only for the historical record.

First Folio: 2

On April 24, 2018May 10, 2018 By bookramblings142In Book Tales2 Comments

Yesterday, 23rd April 2018, was the 402nd anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare and whilst we don’t have his date of birth, he was baptised 454 years ago on 26th April 1564 so this is a good week to look at his works. Monday was also the UNESCO recognised International World Book Day, as not only did Shakespeare die on the 23rd April 1616 but that is also the date that the great Spanish author Cervantes died and that is why the 23rd April (also St. George’s day) was chosen. Although they died on the same date, they didn’t die on the same day, Cervantes was 10 days earlier. Catholic Spain had already adopted the Gregorian calendar by then, however protestant England was still using the Julian calendar so there was a 10 day difference in dates between the two countries.

It may come as a surprise to most people but there isn’t a definitive version of most, if not all, of Shakespeare’s plays. The plays were documents under constant review as performances took place during his lifetime and numerous copies have survived until today. This means that modern performances can pick and choose sections from versions of the play being produced to create a suitable text for their needs. Also several of the plays are very long so now it is rare to see them performed complete, especially with falling audience attention spans. Some of the plays were published whilst Shakespeare was alive, but that was not through his doing and these are quite often inaccurate as either they were taken from actors notes or in extreme cases written down from memory by somebody in the audience. This means that we could easily have ended up with no accurate record of Shakespeare’s works at all if it wasn’t for two members of his main group of players John Heminges and Henry Condell.

The Lord Chamberlain’s Men later renamed The King’s Men in 1603 after James I came to the throne, were Shakespeare’s main troupe although other groups of actors are known to have performed his works. However these men worked most closely with Shakespeare and he was also an actor in the group so they knew his works intimately. Heminges and Condell along with Shakespeare are three of the nine men included in the Royal Patent that formally named the players The King’s Men so were significant individuals and good sources for the plays. The book is called the First Folio because it was the first edition of any of the plays to be printed folio sized, i.e. much larger than the quarto editions of individual plays that had appeared up until then and as said above were notoriously unreliable. A good example of this between a ‘bad quarto’ one probably written down by an audience member; a ‘good quarto’ one taken from actors notes or performance copies; and the First Folio can be seen here.

There are a total of 36 plays included in the First Folio out of the 38 existing works nowadays accepted as being by Shakespeare, ‘Pericles, Prince of Tyre’ and ‘The Two Noble Kinsmen’ are missing from the book. Both of these are regarded ny modern scholarship as collaborations rather than entirely by Shakespeare which may explain their absence. Eighteen plays had been published before the First Folio, however a few of these are notoriously unreliable so this was effectively the first appearance in print of over half of Shakespeare’s works and this was 7 years after his death. His modern reputation almost entirely relies on this single publication which perpetuates his work in a way he would never have expected especially due to his own reluctance to publish and therefore make his work available to other companies.

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An original copy is worth a small fortune, one sold 12 years ago for £2.8 million and it must be worth considerably more now, so I clearly don’t own one of those. But mine is a lovely copy, quarter bound in leather, of the second edition of the Norton Facsimile. This volume was created with the assistance of the astonishing Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C. which holds 82 out of the known 235 copies of the First Folio. Each page was selected as the best example (or sometimes the least worst) from their enormous collection. One of the major problems is the amount of show through the pages where you can read the type on the other side of the page through the side you are looking at and this made photographing the works for this edition especially difficult. Also it was decided that where possible the most correct version of the text was used as it was known that the original book was corrected during printing back in 1623 so copies vary as they were produced.

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As such the reproduction is remarkably legible and easy to read and makes for interesting contrasts with my other versions of Shakespeare’s texts, two complete sets and three partial sets where the plays are in individual volumes. Some of these will be covered in later blogs especially the amazing Folio Society Letterpress Edition, probably the finest edition of Shakespeare ever printed, and certainly one of the most expensive at £295 per play. The introduction to the second edition is surprisingly dismissive of the scholarship that led to the first edition pointing out several errors. It is interesting to note that a third edition is in progress and it is hoped that the editor of that work will be kinder to their predecessors.

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Seen above is the opening of The Taming of the Shrew, a play I fell in love with when I was very young and the first Shakespeare play that I bought a copy of when I just 11 years old. I still have that book in which I wrote my name, year and form name at the front of so I must have taken it to school at some point, which is how I know I was that young when I bought it. On that basis The Taming of the Shrew seems a good place to mark the end of this first essay of mine on Shakespeare’s works and I look forward to examining other editions I have in future writings.

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as for the title of this essay, that is explained in First Folio 1

Fables from the Fountain

On April 17, 2018December 3, 2019 By bookramblings142In Book Tales2 Comments

OK this one needs a bit of an explanation before we get to the book. Back in 1957 the great science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke published a book of short stories that he had written over the preceding 4 years and had appeared in various places in that time. The stories were all linked as a series of tall tales told in a pub called the White Hart by one of the regulars there, Harry Purvis. I first came across the book in the mid 1970’s when I was about 11 or 12 during a period when I was avidly reading through not only Clarke’s work but that of the other two writers of the ‘big three’ in Sci-Fi, Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov. At first I wasn’t very interested, I was heavily into Sci-Fi and this was just a group of people in a pub telling stories, mind you some of them have a scientific base and they were funny so I persevered and grew to like the plot twists that were an invariable part of each tale. I no longer have the book, assuming I ever did, it could have been from the library, although I remember the cover well with a giant squid almost covering the pub and I have fond memories of the stories themselves.

I found out many years later that The White Hart was based on a real pub called the White Horse in London where Sci-Fi fans and writers used to meet up in the 50’s. These included John Christopher (The Death of Grass, The Tripods Trilogy etc.), John Wyndham (The Day of the Triffids, The Kraken Awakes etc.) and of course Arthur C Clarke himself. Appropriately the concept of Fables from the Fountain was dreamt up in a London pub by Ian Whates a few weeks after Clarke’s death in 2008 and the day after the Clarke award ceremony for the best new science fiction novel released in Britain. Whates had founded Newcon Press a couple of years earlier and conceived a homage to Tales from the White Hart with stories by current authors who had all in their own way been inspired by the great innovator that was Sir Arthur C Clarke.

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The various writers in the new book have taken pseudonyms to be characters who meet at the Fountain to swap stories. Unlike the original the tales are given from assorted standpoints, rather than always by Harry Purvis although it’s good to spot references to him in several of the narratives. Because of the nature of the tales it is difficult to say much about them, they are short because of the premise of the book that they are stories told over a pint or two. Some like Neil Gaiman’s brilliant piece are very short at 4½ pages, so it is hard to avoid giving away the twists and turns they manage in so few words. Rereading the book after almost seven years (it was published in May 2011) for this blog has been an interesting experience, I was surprised by how many I didn’t remember the ending to even if I instantly recognised the pre-amble.

There is high science represented and some truly awful puns, Professor Mackintosh explains how his life was saved by smoking, we find out surprising things about Muscovy Ducks, whilst Heisenburg, Schroedinger and surprisingly even William Blake get name checks. One of my favourites is ‘On the Messdecks of Madness’ by Raven about which I can say almost nothing without spoiling the enjoyment except it’s the only fantasy story I can recall that uses the great diarist Samuel Pepys’s admiralty career as a basis of the plot. Whilst another explains the 1908 Tunguska explosion and of course there is the obligatory Area 51 tale without which no collection of stories aimed at SF geeks would be complete.

The full list of stories are as follows, I’ve included the introduction here partly because the book does as well in the numbering of the index and also because Peter Weston’s introduction is definitely worth reading.

Introduction – Peter Weston
No Smoke without Fire – Ian Whates
Transients – Stephen Baxter
Forever Blowing Bubbles – Ian Watson
On the Messdecks of Madness – Paul Graham Raven
The Story Bug – James Lovegrove
“And Weep Like Alexander” – Neil Gaiman
The Ghost in the Machine – Colin Bruce
The Hidden Depths of Bogna – Liz Williams
A Bird in Hand – Charles Stross
In Pursuit of the Chuchunaa – Eric Brown
The Cyberseeds – Steve Longworth
Feathers of the Dinosaur – Henry Gee
Book Wurms – Andy West
The Pocklington Poltergeist – David Langford
The Last Man in Space – Andrew J Wilson
A Multiplicity of Phaedra Lament – Peter Crowther
The Girl With the White Ant Tattoo – Tom Hunter
The 9,000,000,001st Name of God – Adam Roberts

The copy I have is the hardback limited edition (number 61 of 200) and is signed by all 19 writers. At the time of writing the title is still available from Newcon Press, although now only in paperback and not signed from this link.

Now if you’ll excuse me it’s Tuesday; so it’s the get together night at the Fountain, Polish barmaid Bogna will be serving behind the bar and I can hear the call of a pint or three of Old Bodger, although I’ll be careful to avoid the Ploughman’s lunches.

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The Garden – Vita Sackville-West

On April 10, 2018April 10, 2018 By bookramblings142In Reviews2 Comments

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Well the weather still isn’t admitting it’s spring, it’s pouring down with rain as I write this, but maybe this will give it a prod in the right direction. The winter seems to be hanging on way too long when it is definitely time to think of that jewel of English houses, the garden.

Bubbles of colour striking through the bleak
Dun soil, surprising in a week,
As the low desert flowers after rain
Leap into being where they were not seen
Few hours before and soon are gone again
So in our English garden comes the Greek
Blue wind-flow’r cousin of the meek
Bashful anemone of English woods,
As thick as shingle strewn on Chesil Beach;
So comes the Lady Tulip, with her streak
Of pink that ribs her white; and through the green
Of young fine grass, The Glory of the Snow,
So blue, a smear of fallen sky; come each
In quick succession as they grow and blow
In liberal April, host to little guests;

Vita Sackville-West was a poet, a novelist, a prolific letter writer, a lover, but above all else was a gardener and amongst her works one of the least well known but most evocative of that side of her is a short collection of verse entitled The Garden. My copy is the first edition from 1946 published by Michael Joseph, which I bought from the shop at Vita’s own garden Sissinghurst Castle in Kent now run by the National Trust. Although she would live until 1962 this was her final book of verse, with 11 volumes of poetry preceding it and indeed she only wrote 3 novels after 1946, out of the 17 she produced in total, as she gradually faded from literary fashion.

Nowadays if Vita is remembered at all it is for two things, her garden at Sissinghurst and her 10 year affair with Virginia Woolf which was the inspiration for Virginia’s best known novel Orlando. I will cover this aspect of her life more fully when I write about Orlando in a later blog. But it is sufficient to say here that although Vita was married to novelist and diplomat Harold Nicholson they both had several same-sex relationships during the marriage and her relationship with Virginia brought her into contact with The Bloomsbury Group although she never appeared to be comfortable there and never became an accepted member.

Her time with Virginia however was probably the peak of both of their literary output. Whether this was coincidence, or the result of their two personalities so strongly bonded feeding off each other for inspiration we will never know; but certainly Vita would never have this vitality in her work again and Virginia although still as successful after they split had written her best by 1935 when they parted.

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As for this work, the book has 5 separate but linked poems, The Garden, Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn. The verse quoted above is from Spring and as suggested by the titles we progress through the year from winter planning…

– so in Winter
The Gardener sees what he will never see

Here, in his lamp-lit parable, he’ll scan
Catalogues bright with colour and with hope,
Dearest delusions of creative mind,
His lamp-lit walls, his lamp-lit table painting
Fabulous flowers flung as he desires.
Fantastic, tossed, and all from shilling packet
-An acre sprung from one expended coin,-
Visions of what might be.
We dream our dreams.
What should we be, without our fabulous flowers?
The gardener dreams his special own alloy
Of possible and the impossible.

The dreams of what will come after the cold and rain of winter has been banished lead on to awakening buds and early flowers in the quote from spring to summer where Vita clearly has a wasp problem, or at least a problem with wasps as there are 2 or 3 pages of verse complaining about them whilst enjoying the fruits of her labours. Oddly although Vita, rather than Harold, was the gardener of the two the poems always refer to ‘The Gardener’ as a man whenever a gender is required in the text.

But then in Autumn we find the gardener busy again

But in October, later, shall you stand
With paper sack of bulbs and plunge your hand
And carelessly fling your bulbs both large and small
To roll, to topple, settling sparse or thick,
Over the grass, and plant them where they fall,
(Legitimate device, a sanctioned trick,)
Thus in a drift as though by nature planned
Snowdrops shall blow in spreading tide,
Little white horses breaking on the strand
At edge of orchard; and the orange-eyed
Narcissus of the poets in a wide
Lyrical river flowing as you pass
Meandering along the path of grass

As for Vita’s actual garden it is presented as a series of ‘rooms’ each with their own theme, these are separated by hedgerows or walls and each allows for a glimpse into one or two adjacent rooms through carefully placed gaps. The division of the design between Vita and Harold appears to be that he came up with the rooms and the network of interconnects and Vita filled them with flowers to make best use of the deliberately restricted views out of each one. Fortunately it is possible to go high up one of the towers and look down on the patchwork to appreciate how cleverly the structure is put together and at ground level you are constantly getting glimpses of new vistas whilst being able to concentrate on the theme of the room you are in due to the clear boundaries imposed. The formal gardens are roughly 4 hectares (almost 10 acres) in size and are 1 of 145 Grade 1 listed gardens and parks in England. They were largely laid out through the 1930’s with the exception of the famous ‘white garden’ which was created after the war to replace a rose garden from the original plan. There is an excellent description of the entire garden in the Historic England listing for Sissinghurst. This compartmentalised structure to the garden is mirrored in the way the book is produced with what is basically one long poem split into the seasonal sections and preceded by the section just called The Garden which is the subject of this final quote

Much toil, much care, much love and many years
Went to the slow reward; a grudging soil
Enriched or lightened following its needs;
Potash and compost, stable dung, blood, bones,
Spent hops in jade-green sacks, the auburn leaves
Rotted and rich, the wood-ash from the hearth
For sticky clay; all to a second use
Turned in a natural economy,
And many a robin perched on many a sod
Watched double-trenching for his benefit
Through the companionable russet days,
But only knew the digger turned the worm
For him, and had no foresight of the frost
Later to serve the digger and his clod
Through winter months, for limitations rule
Robins and men about their worms and wars,
The robin’s territory; and man’s God.

I visited Sissinghurst many times when I lived in Kent and somewhere I have a box of photos I have taken there, but until I find and scan them a few of some other peoples shots will have to do to illustrate the work of a poet and artist of flowers. I first read this book of poetry in Vita’s own garden and it will always transport me back to warm summer days in the Garden of England in the late 1990’s.

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Siné – Massacre

On April 3, 2018April 2, 2018 By bookramblings142In Book Tales5 Comments

As this post goes up onto the blog I will be on my way to Hay on Wye to give a talk on the Gentle Art of Penguin Book Collecting as part of the Hay Independence celebrations for 2018, as part of the talk I’m going to cover the strange story of Siné’s Massacre in it’s only Penguin edition.

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The title of the cartoon on the cover is a sort of pun in French, dessin morbide means morbid drawing but mord translates as belly so the vampire biting the belly of his victim covers both meanings. The fact that this was chosen as the cover and therefore amongst the least controversial of the cartoons included says a lot about the content of the book. Through the rest of this blog I will include other cartoons from the book although I have been careful not to include the most offensive examples, Siné had a fascination with toilets, hangings, amputation, sex and the catholic church sometimes all in one cartoon and I don’t feel many of the cartoons are suitable even now.

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Given this controversial nature, why was he considered for a Penguin book dedicated to him? Well Penguin had a long history of publishing books of cartoons featuring selections of a particular artist, anything from Thelwell and his little girls at their pony club, through Osbert Lancaster, Peter Arno, Charles Addams (and his famous family) and Gerald Hoffnung with his musical fantasies to name just a few. On 5th October 1966 therefore a Penguin Books board meeting was convened to discuss the advisability of including Siné, as he was regarded as a major French cartoonist and a range that had the gentle work of Thelwell at one end and Siné at the other would definitely appear to be inclusive of all styles. It is worth pointing out that this board meeting would appear to have been very very late in the process, as the books had already been printed and were in the warehouse, orders had been placed but they hadn’t yet been distributed to retailers. So technically the book had not yet been published, but it really was a technicality at this point.

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Sir Allen Lane, the founder of the business back in 1935, was still chairman of the board at this time although he no longer had total autocratic control of the business as he once had. He had given way long ago to the consensus of the board of directors as he had had to due to the huge increase in the size of the company, which was way beyond the ability of one man to control; however he still thought of Penguin Books as his. Nevertheless the minutes of the meeting show that the overall position was to back Tony Godwin, then Chief Editor and therefore a board member, with some reservations expressed. Backing Godwin was particularly forcefully put by Charles Clark who felt that not doing so at such a late stage would put Godwin in an untenable position; Sir Allen was not happy but, at the meeting at least according to the minutes, backed the decision to publish.

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A draft press release was prepared announcing the publication on the 1st November 1966 which included a statement that the board were not in full agreement with the publication, however after the internal legal advisor was consulted it was decided to remove references to the disagreement and all was set for 3 weeks time. So far just a tale of a controversial book being prepared for publication, there had been several before at Penguin and there didn’t seem anything to make this different but the story was about to become bizarre…

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George Nicholls recalled in 1970 (after the death of Sir Allen Lane) the events of a night in October 1966 which is almost certainly unique in the annals of UK publishing. He was in bed, as it was around midnight, when the phone rang and he was summoned to the office. When he got there he found Sir Allen along with 3 other men and he wanted the warehouse unlocking, Nicholls had the keys so they set off. On the way the reason for the late night escapade became clear as Lane explained.

I’ve got Singleton round the back with the farm wagon, I’m going to pinch all those Siné’s … that bloody board outvoted me, but I’ll have my own back on them.

Nicholls was shocked but as he said Sir Allen was “the governor” so he did what he was told. After a while they managed to load all the palletised stock onto the trailer and then realised that there would be boxes ready for shipping in the distribution area so went and found all those as well and loaded them onto the truck. It took a few hours but eventually Nicholls locked up the warehouse again and Allan Lane set off with his cargo after saying to Nicholls that this would be their secret. What happened next is largely speculation, various accounts say that when Lane got back to his farm near Reading he had a large bonfire, some say the books were buried, others that he composted the lot and eventually spread it on his fields, what is certain is that the printed books were never seen again and Penguin never did officially publish Siné’s Massacre. Allen Lane also briefly vanished from the scene heading off on an impromptu holiday to Spain whilst things quietened down.

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The odd thing was that there was apparently no hue and cry about the missing books; it all seems to have been quietly ignored, the few orders that had come in were cancelled as the book was ‘out of stock’. I used to design warehouse systems so know that so much stock going astray would definitely be noticed very quickly especially with unfulfilled orders this close to the official publication date but nothing was said. The only copies that survived are the few examples that had been sent to people to get their opinions about publication and some trade samples that had made it to representatives on the road. It all adds up to this being one of the rarest, and consequently most valuable, paperbacks produced by Penguin in the last 60 years. Checking abebooks reveals only one copy available at the time of writing this, across all the dealers on there around the world, and that is priced at £145.

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The Devil’s Dictionary

On March 27, 2018November 18, 2019 By bookramblings142In ReviewsLeave a comment

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Although now recognised as an American classic The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce was never originally intended to even become a book and certainly not intended to be read like one. It is, as the title implies, a dictionary; but full of alternative definitions, normally humorous, often satirical and sometimes it has to be said just plain strange at least to modern readers. But before looking at the book itself it is a good idea to know something about Bierce himself and how it came to be written and that is not as simple a task as it sounds as implied by the first sentence of the book summary in my copy.

The life of Ambrose Bierce is a tissue of facts embroidered with legend.

Normally at least birth and death dates of a well known journalist and author such as Ambrose Bierce would at least be known but although we know that he was born in 1842 the best that can be done for his death is ‘probably 1914’ when he went to Mexico during the revolution and was never heard of again.

But lets backtrack over what is known. In 1861 he enlisted in the 9th Indiana Infantry and fought in the American Civil War apparently with distinction and it was thought that he would go to a military academy after the war and make that his career but he was already interested in writing. So in 1866 he apparently ‘tossed a coin to decide whether to stay in the army or become a journalist. Journalism won the toss.’ By this time his army career had brought him to San Francisco, and that is where he started to teach himself what he needed to know; and started writing pieces some of which made it to print. In 1868 he got his first regular journalistic job and in a roundabout way this was to lead to the book I have. The job wasn’t journalism as such in that it didn’t involve factual reporting of news, instead it was a page in the San Francisco News Letter entitled ‘Town Crier’ which was a humorous and satirical view of life in the city and Bierce was set on his path to fame. He would over much of the rest of his life continue to write satire for numerous publications and by 1869 he had included his first multiple definition entry of what would eventually be a book although at the time it was probably just a useful space filler for the Town Crier page.

Over the ensuing thirty plus years Bierce continued his definitions in his various columns in publications not just in America but also in England where he lived for 3½ years in the 1870’s. They became increasingly popular and also much copied with Bierce sometimes entitling them The Devil’s Dictionary or later on The Cynic’s Dictionary until the idea of combining them into a book came to him in 1903. By the time of publication however not only had his idea been stolen but even the title of his column had been used by a competitor to publish their own set of definitions so he was forced to use the title The Cynic’s Word Book when it came out in 1906. Oddly it only included 521 definitions for the letters A to L with an intention to have a second volume covering M to Z later on, however it didn’t sell well enough for this plan to be realised.

And so it stayed as an unfinished work until 1911 when Bierce was working on his collected works and volume 7 was entitled The Devil’s Dictionary, this time covering the entire alphabet and with 1000 definitions, some of which were specially written for the book especially at the end of the alphabet because over all of his columns Bierce had only reached the word shoddy.

Shoddy: n. (vulgus) A term that expresses the status of a large part of our society, and furnishes a weakly page of matter to many of our time-serving dailies.

*Weakly is as written and implies a certain disdain for many of his less talented rivals producing similar columns for other newspapers.

The collected works was also a financial failure but The Devils Dictionary was recognised as probably his finest work and after his death went on to be published as a standalone volume by several companies and establish itself as a major work of American humour.

We then leap forward to 1963 when Ernest Jerome Hopkins, after a long career as a journalist, became Professor Emeritus of Journalism at Arizona State University and after discovering that the title didn’t actually come with any specific work decided to have another look at The Devils Dictionary and some strange gaps in the words chosen. It rapidly became clear that by no means all of the definitions Bierce had written for his various columns had made it into the published book, almost certainly because at the time of compiling he had been living on the Eastern seaboard of America and a lot of the early material was 3000 miles away in California and no copies would have existed in reference libraries where he was. Over the next few years Hopkins unearthed a further 851 definitions left out of the 1911 book and in 1967 the Enlarged Dictionary was published. My copy is the Penguin Classics edition, first issued under this imprint in 1985 although Penguin printed their first edition in 1971 in their main series.

To conclude let’s have a few definitions taken at random from the book, I have literally just opened the book and picked a word for each of these so it should give a flavour of the work as a whole, some are funny, some are sharp and some are odd, I’ll let you decide which are which. In the case of long definitions I have just included the first part, some go on a lot longer than others.

Edible: adj. Good to eat and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.

Bald: adj. Destitute of hair from hereditary or accidental causes – never from age.

Riddle: n. Who elects our rulers?

Miss: n. A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that they are in the market.

Insurance: n. An ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating the man who keeps the table.

Dice: n. Small polka-dotted cubes of ivory, constructed like a lawyer to lie on any side, but commonly on the wrong one.

Fauna: n. A general name for the various beasts infesting any locality exclusive of domestic animals, travelling menageries and Democratic politicians.