Early Modern Dandies
My new favorite thing: Hark! A Vagrant. Terribly clever comics about literary and historical figures. And pictures of dandies. Really, I can’t do much more than explain that it’s been 24 hours since I discovered Kate’s site and I have not stopped laughing since then. Be sure to check out the archives for all the good stuff. (Click the picture for a larger version of this comic.)
Filed under authors, comics, dandies, drawing, history, humor | Comment (0)
Links
My only New Year’s resolution was to do a better job getting links posts up every week.
— I’ve mentioned that I’m working on a paper on medieval bestiaries. With excellent timing from Cake Wrecks, (though this one isn’t a wreck) here is what might be my favorite cake ever. This might be a slightly creepy sentiment for a modern wedding, so I’m happy to report that it was actually for an SCA event. The same artist has created some very cool cakes that look like old books, using edible prints made from digital editions of early printed works. Maybe I should consider this for my book history graduation party.
— Via Deeplinking, the new Book Cover Archive. Beautifully designed, you can browse based on a number of categories like genre, author, artist, and publisher. I could look at these all day. They have a blog, and did I mention that you can make suggestions?
— Audra shares some awesome clips of parchment production from the TV show Dirty Jobs.
— I knew The Secret must have some use.
— From Paper Cuts, stray questions for Paul Collins. You’ll definitely want to read this short piece for the bit about the bald mice.
— The Guardian begins a seven-part series on the 1000 novels you must read, starting Saturday, 17 January. It’s free with the paper copy, but not sure if it will be online, as well – probably not?
— From Bibliodyssey, The Jewel Book and the Birds of New Zealand (you can check out some of my older posts for a bit of background on this book – Part I and Part II).
— I walked down to Gosh! comics yesterday morning and requested a copy of this awesomeness, which should be available next week. Now if only Spider-Man were regulating the banks.
Filed under Spider-Man, bestiaries, birds of new zealand, book art, book covers, books, cakes, comics, jewels, links, novels, parchment, unicorns, vellum | Comments (2)Reading the Funnies
As a book historian you spend a lot of time thinking about the relationships between orality, literacy, and imagery. For instance, the practice of reading aloud in communal settings. Sunday’s All Things Considered has a slam-dunk on that front, with a story about New York mayor Fiorello LaGuardia reading the Sunday comics during his weekly radio broadcasts after a newsboy strike had halted circulation.
- Image from the Library of Congress.