History: July 2007 Archive Page

On a balmy morning in June, Rebecca Miller, a petite 26-year-old actress and Brown University graduate, was perched on a wooden bench in the East Village, just a block from the apartment she shares with her fiancé, a theater director, and two cats. By the looks of her outfit, she was firmly grounded in the 21st century, just another hip lass with loose curls, a scoop-necked top and denim skirt with naughty front slits.

Then she opened her mouth, and it was if one had been transported back--oh, 150 years or so. --Lizzy Ratner --The New Victorians (New York Observer)

Yes, as we all know, the Victorians held unmarried cohabiting theatre people in the highest social esteem.

An article about neo-Victorians that doesn't refer to The Diamond Age, the Goth aesthetic, or SteamPunk? Tosh!

This article takes a rather thin concept and stretches it rather unimpressively.

[Update: when I mentioned this article, and Miller's function as an example, my wife said "150 years ago, she would have been the daughter who humiliated her family and ruined all of her sisters' chance of respectable marriages."]

"The development of literacy was certainly helped by the introduction of paper, which was made from rags," says Dr Marco Mostert, a historian at the Centre for Medieval Studies, Utrecht University and one of the organisers of this year's International Medieval Congress at the University of Leeds.

"These rags came from discarded clothes, which cost much less than the very expensive parchment which was previously used for books. In the 13th century, so it is thought, as more people moved into urban centres, the use of underwear increased -- which caused an increase in the number of rags available for paper-making." --From Rags to Riches, Or How Undergarments Improved Medieval Literacy (Alpha Galileo)

Filing this for a future "history of the book" unit. Via Language Log.

W. R. Hearst, New York Journal, N.Y.: "Everything is quiet. There is no trouble here. There will be no war. I wish to return. "Remington."

"Remington, Havana: "Please remain. You furnish the pictures, and I'll furnish the war. "W. R. Hearst." --Not likely sent: The Remington-Hearst ''telegrams'' (W. Joseph Campbell, PhD | Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly)

Campbell deconstructs this oft-quoted but thinly sourced anecdote about the power of yellow journalism.

I had previously blogged the same author's analysis of the "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" story (which survives mostly intact).