Tag Archives: Books

1933: Dreams of the Third Reich

Posted on May 26, 2020 by

A selection from Charlotte Beradt’s Dreams of the Third Reich. Beradt was a journalist in Germany when Hitler took power and, inspired by the first dream below “set out to collect the dreams the Nazi regime had generated”—which she did … Continue reading →

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1802: The Eagle

Posted on April 24, 2020 by

William Blake: Headpiece to “The Eagle,” an illustration for William Hayley’s Ballads Founded on Anecdotes Relating to Animals (1802).

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1966: Dublin Sky

Posted on April 19, 2020 by

Evelyn Hofer: Dublin Sky (1966); from Dublin: A Portrait (1967).

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2018: memo for labor

Posted on April 15, 2020 by

memo for labor you cannot separate the job from the house from the rent from the earth from the food from the healthcare from the water from the transit from the war from the schools from the prisons from the … Continue reading →

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1605: Not the Author of Don Quixote

Posted on April 12, 2020 by

According to Miguel de Cervantes, Miguel de Cervantes is not the author of Don Quixote. Nor was the book written in Spanish. Rather, Cervantes tells us, the true author is Cid Hamete Benengeli, the book was written in Arabic, and … Continue reading →

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1924: The Diamond Palace

Posted on April 4, 2020 by

Diamantový zámek visí nad červeným mořem… (O zlatých zámcích.) Illustration by Artuš Scheiner for a collection of Fairy Tales by Božena Němcová (1924). The first line of the caption means “the diamond palace hung over the red sea,” and I … Continue reading →

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1509: The Most Curious Book in the World

Posted on March 23, 2020 by

The following entry appears in Charles Carroll Bombaugh’s Gleanings from the Harvest Fields of Literature: A Melange of Excerpta, Curious, Humorous, and Instructive (1867): THE MOST CURIOUS BOOK IN THE WORLD The most singular bibliographic curiosity is that which belonged … Continue reading →

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1919: Queen Alice

Posted on March 1, 2020 by

Illustrations from a 1919 photoplay edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass (source). The photos are stills from the 1915 silent film adaptation of the books, which starred Viola Savoy as Alice.

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1906: Martyr

Posted on February 23, 2020 by

F. Holland Day – Saint Sebastian (1906) Although the traditional iconography shows Saint Sebastian pierced by arrows, this is not actually how he dies and becomes a martyr. The 13th century Legenda aurea, a collection of hagiographies by Jacobus de … Continue reading →

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1922: Seek the Kingdom of Heaven through Contempt of the World

Posted on December 21, 2019 by

Melchior Lechter’s frontispiece, title page, and first chapter title page for a 1922 edition of Thomas à Kempis’s Imitation of Christ. Written in the early 15th century, the work promotes piety, simplicity, and devotion as the key to a personal … Continue reading →

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