Saturday 4 June 2011

(Brighton Jolly)

BELATED GREETINGS
FROM
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
BRIGHTON

I had a great time, lots of drinks, games, crazy golf and sunburn....

And when I got back I went to the British Library and saw...



Which was very entertaining, lots of first drafts, big models, a Tardis and a steampunk K9 - and a first English edition of Cyrano de Bergerac's 'Journeys to the Sun and Moon'

and...

A whole bunch of alternative reality stuff written by the Brontes. They invented islands and peopled them and wrote stories about them until they were in their mid twenties. Most of the writing was lost but some notebooks and maps remain.

One of the maps

(Incidentally, until I was sixteen I drew maps and wrote about an island called Igren)

Also, of course the British library is wonderful to look round, there are Johnson, Austen, Bronte, Milton manuscripts and all sorts.

And then, on the way home, I wandered into a bookshop and found an anthlogy of C18th chapbooks - the sort of thing a good Grub street hack could toss off in fifteen minutes  - rather like this post I'm afraid.

yours


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