Cox's Fragmenta II

Cox's Fragmenta II PDF Author: Simon Murphy
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0752479156
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 115

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Book Description
A presumptuous bear imposing on a coachful of ladies, how to behave in the British Museum, the dangers of dallying with a black-eyed girl and the Royal Navy's inaugural biscuit machine are just some of the masterpieces of understated journalism collected by Francis Cox and contained in his Fragmenta. At ninety-four volumes, Cox's scrapbook has to be one of the largest collections of journalistic ephemera ever. For sixty years during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries he accumulated articles on everything from duels to playhouses, and foreign travel to warfare. Following on from the success of the first volume, Simon Murphy has selected more bizarre stories to create another delightful historical miscellany which will intrigue and amuse.

Cox's Fragmenta II

Cox's Fragmenta II PDF Author: Simon Murphy
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0752479156
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 115

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Book Description
A presumptuous bear imposing on a coachful of ladies, how to behave in the British Museum, the dangers of dallying with a black-eyed girl and the Royal Navy's inaugural biscuit machine are just some of the masterpieces of understated journalism collected by Francis Cox and contained in his Fragmenta. At ninety-four volumes, Cox's scrapbook has to be one of the largest collections of journalistic ephemera ever. For sixty years during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries he accumulated articles on everything from duels to playhouses, and foreign travel to warfare. Following on from the success of the first volume, Simon Murphy has selected more bizarre stories to create another delightful historical miscellany which will intrigue and amuse.

Cox's Fragmenta

Cox's Fragmenta PDF Author: Simon Murphy
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0752462334
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 111

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Book Description
Erotic misdemeanours in an Irish bean-field, the recipe for a frog barometer fresh from the French court, a parrot convicted of heresy and burnt at the stake in Spain and a Dutch stage effect for ejecting a wig (by means of a spring) during Hamlet’s ghost scene are just some of the masterpieces of understated journalism collected by Francis Cox and contained in his Fragmenta. At ninety-seven volumes, Cox’s scrapbook has to be one of the largest collections of journalistic ephemera ever. For sixty years during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries he accumulated articles on everything from duels to playhouses, and foreign travel to warfare. Simon Murphy has selected the most amusing and bizarre to create an historical miscellany which will intrigue and delight.

Directory of Rare Book and Special Collections in the UK and Republic of Ireland

Directory of Rare Book and Special Collections in the UK and Republic of Ireland PDF Author: Karen Attar
Publisher: Facet Publishing
ISBN: 1783300167
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 609

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Book Description
This directory is a handy on-volume discovery tool that will allow readers to locate rare book and special collections in the British Isles. Fully updated since the second edition was published in 1997. this comprehensive and up-to-date guide encompasses collections held in libraries, archives, museums and private hands. The Directory: Provides a national overview of rare book and special collections for those interested in seeing quickly and easily what a library holds Directs researchers to the libraries most relevant for their research Assists libraries considering acquiring new special collections to assess the value of such collections beyond the institution,showing how they fit into a ‘unique and distinctive’ model. Each entry in the Directory provides background information on the library and its purpose, full contact details, the quantity of early printed books, information about particular subject and language strengths, information about unique works and important acquisitions, descriptions of named special collections and deposited collections. Readership: Researchers, academic liaison librarians and library managers.

The Vampire

The Vampire PDF Author: Nick Groom
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300240813
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
An authoritative new history of the vampire, two hundred years after it first appeared on the literary scene Published to mark the bicentenary of John Polidori’s publication of The Vampyre, Nick Groom’s detailed new account illuminates the complex history of the iconic creature. The vampire first came to public prominence in the early eighteenth century, when Enlightenment science collided with Eastern European folklore and apparently verified outbreaks of vampirism, capturing the attention of medical researchers, political commentators, social theorists, theologians, and philosophers. Groom accordingly traces the vampire from its role as a monster embodying humankind’s fears, to that of an unlikely hero for the marginalized and excluded in the twenty-first century. Drawing on literary and artistic representations, as well as medical, forensic, empirical, and sociopolitical perspectives, this rich and eerie history presents the vampire as a strikingly complex being that has been used to express the traumas and contradictions of the human condition.

Modern Enchantments

Modern Enchantments PDF Author: Simon During
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674263138
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
“A history of “secular,” or non-supernatural, or entertainment magic as an important but neglected constituent of modern culture” (Nicholas Daly). Magic, Simon During suggests, has helped shape modern culture. Devoted to this deceptively simple proposition, During’s superlative work, written over the course of a decade, gets at the aesthetic questions at the very heart of the study of culture. How can the most ordinary arts—and by “magic,” During means not the supernatural, but the special effects and conjurings of magic shows—affect people? Modern Enchantments takes us deeply into the history and workings of modern secular magic, from the legerdemain of Isaac Fawkes in 1720, to the return of real magic in nineteenth-century spiritualism, to the role of magic in the emergence of the cinema. Through the course of this history, During shows how magic performances have drawn together heterogeneous audiences, contributed to the molding of cultural hierarchies, and extended cultural technologies and media at key moments, sometimes introducing spectators into rationality and helping to disseminate skepticism and publicize scientific innovation. In a more revealing argument still, Modern Enchantments shows that magic entertainments have increased the sway of fictions in our culture and helped define modern society’s image of itself. Praise for ModernEnchantment “During documents the extent to which magic and magical thinking have pervaded, and continue to pervade, secular life . . . the author examines 19th- and 20th-century theatrical magic and “commercial conjuring” with great sensitivity to the social and cultural context in the Western world. Equally fascinating is the analysis of magic and early film.” —R. Sugarman, Choice “A richly informed, warmly argued addition to the growing number of books in which writers worry at the pervasive blurring of distinctions between act and appearance, organic consciousness and artificial intelligence, imagination and empirical experience, illusion and thought, reality TV and real life, dreams and money.” —Marina Warner, Financial Times “During moves confidently across three centuries of magic (and covers aspects of a few more besides). The sheer wealth of historical detail he provides is impressive, but no less impressive is the subtlety of his argumentation, and the suggestiveness of his claims . . . This extremely significant piece of work will appeal to literary critics, historians, and not least, devotees of magic.” —Nicholas Daly, author of Modernism, Romance, and the Fin de Siècle: Popular Fiction and British Culture, 1880–1914

Empire

Empire PDF Author: Jeremy Paxman
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0670919608
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 437

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Book Description
From the bestselling author of The English comes Empire, Jeremy Paxman's history of the British Empire accompanied by a flagship 5-part BBC TV series, for readers of Simon Schama and Andrew Marr. The influence of the British Empire is everywhere, from the very existence of the United Kingdom to the ethnic composition of our cities. It affects everything, from Prime Ministers' decisions to send troops to war to the adventurers we admire. From the sports we think we're good at to the architecture of our buildings; the way we travel to the way we trade; the hopeless losers we will on, and the food we hunger for, the empire is never very far away. In this acute and witty analysis, Jeremy Paxman goes to the very heart of empire. As he describes the selection process for colonial officers ('intended to weed out the cad, the feeble and the too clever') the importance of sport, the sweating domestic life of the colonial officer's wife ('the challenge with cooking meat was "to grasp the fleeting moment between toughness and putrefaction when the joint may possibly prove eatable"') and the crazed end for General Gordon of Khartoum, Paxman brings brilliantly to life the tragedy and comedy of Empire and reveals its profound and lasting effect on our nation and ourselves. 'Paxman is witty, incisive, acerbic and opinionated . . . In short, he carries the whole thing off with panache bordering on effrontery' Piers Brendon, Sunday Times 'Paxman is a magnificent historian, and Empire may be remembered as his finest work' Independent on Sunday Jeremy Paxman was born in Yorkshire and educated at Cambridge. He is an award-winning journalist who spent ten years reporting from overseas, notably for Panorama. He is the author of five books including The English. He is the presenter of Newsnight and University Challenge and has presented BBC documentaries on various subjects including Victorian art and Wilfred Owen.

The British Museum Quarterly

The British Museum Quarterly PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 474

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Book Description


English Books 1475-1900

English Books 1475-1900 PDF Author: Charles James Sawyer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Best books
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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Book Description


Agency

Agency PDF Author: William Gibson
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101986956
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “ONE OF THE MOST VISIONARY, ORIGINAL, AND QUIETLY INFLUENTIAL WRITERS CURRENTLY WORKING”* returns with a sharply imagined follow-up to the New York Times bestselling The Peripheral. William Gibson has trained his eye on the future for decades, ever since coining the term “cyberspace” and then popularizing it in his classic speculative novel Neuromancer in the early 1980s. Cory Doctorow raved that The Peripheral is “spectacular, a piece of trenchant, far-future speculation that features all the eyeball kicks of Neuromancer.” Now Gibson is back with Agency—a science fiction thriller heavily influenced by our most current events. Verity Jane, gifted app whisperer, takes a job as the beta tester for a new product: a digital assistant, accessed through a pair of ordinary-looking glasses. “Eunice,” the disarmingly human AI in the glasses, manifests a face, a fragmentary past, and a canny grasp of combat strategy. Realizing that her cryptic new employers don’t yet know how powerful and valuable Eunice is, Verity instinctively decides that it’s best they don’t. Meanwhile, a century ahead in London, in a different time line entirely, Wilf Netherton works amid plutocrats and plunderers, survivors of the slow and steady apocalypse known as the jackpot. His boss, the enigmatic Ainsley Lowbeer, can look into alternate pasts and nudge their ultimate directions. Verity and Eunice are her current project. Wilf can see what Verity and Eunice can’t: their own version of the jackpot, just around the corner, and the roles they both may play in it. *The Boston Globe

General Catalogue of Printed Books

General Catalogue of Printed Books PDF Author: British Museum. Department of Printed Books
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English imprints
Languages : en
Pages : 560

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Book Description