January 2011
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Then I being left alone to the high cogitations of loue, hauing passed ouer a long and tedious night without sleepe, through my barren fortune, and aduerse constellation, altogether vncomforted and sorrowfull, by means of my vntimely and not prosperous loue, weeping, I recounted from point to point, what a thing vnequall loue is: and how fitly one may loue that dooth not loue: and what defence...
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I believe it to be a fact that the colored people of this country know and understand the white people better than the white people know and understand them.
- Anonymous, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912) [full text]
Wikipedia: The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
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Anonymous and Unknown
Apologies for the unplanned hiatus. The Project Gutenberg Project returns with a bang and perhaps the occasional whimper as we celebrate authors anonymous and/or unknown - some whose names are lost in the mists of time, others whose names were deliberately withheld due to the controversial nature of their works. Expect everything from the sublime to the profane; from the divine to the debauched.
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In one month a woman of ordinary intelligence, with the desire to learn, should be able to make perfectly, and serve attractively, enough simple dishes to supply the family table with sufficient variety, without troubling the mistress to plan and think for her.
- Mary Ronald, The Century Cook Book (1895) [full text]
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December 2010
70 posts
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“I’m so tired of Christmas I wish there never would be another one!” exclaimed a discontented-looking little girl.
- Louisa M. Alcott, ‘A Christmas Dream’ (1885) in The Louisa Alcott Reader [full text]
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Let no man deceive himself; if by vulgarity we mean coarseness of speech, rowdiness of behaviour, gossip, horseplay, and some heavy drinking, vulgarity there always was wherever there was joy, wherever there was faith in the gods. Wherever you have belief you will have hilarity, wherever you have hilarity you will have some dangers. And as creed and mythology produce this gross and vigorous life,...
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On Christmas
As I said before, everybody is prickly at Christmas time, especially one’s relations. And so, to make the season as festive as possible, we, in our sensible way, collect as many of these cheerful, sociable beings together as we can; and, in short, make a delightful family party. Holly? it is an insult to the tree to compare it in any way. No, I think the whole gathering resembles a hedgehog...
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Jo was the first to wake in the gray dawn of Christmas morning. No stockings hung at the fireplace, and for a moment she felt as much disappointed as she did long ago, when her little sock fell down because it was crammed so full of goodies.
- Louisa M. Alcott, Little Women (1868) [full text]
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The presentation of gifts on Christmas day was an English custom of very great antiquity; so great that, in 1419, the practice had become much corrupted, and the abuse had to be sternly repressed.
- John Ashton, A Righte Merrie Christmasse!!! The Story of Christ-tide (1894) [full text]
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In the round of our rational and mournful year one festival remains out of all those ancient gaieties that once covered the whole earth. Christmas remains to remind us of those ages, whether Pagan or Christian, when the many acted poetry instead of the few writing it.
- G.K. Chesterton, ‘Christmas and the Aesthetes’ (1905) in Heretics [full text]
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BITCH. A she dog, or doggess; the most offensive appellation that can be given to an English woman, even more provoking than that of whore, as may he gathered from the regular Billinsgate or St. Giles’s answer—“I may be a whore, but can’t be a bitch.”
- Francis Grose, Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue: A Dictionary of Buckish Slang, University Wit and Pickpocket...
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The quiet life lived by the Brontës in the vicarage on the edge of the village of Haworth in the West Riding of Yorkshire seems prosaic to the casual observer, but it had many weird elements of romanticism. The purple moors stretching away behind the grey stone vicarage, the grey sky, and the sun always half-frowning, and never sporting with nature here as it does over the mountains in...
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The Ethel of this story is a fascinating creature who would have a good time wherever there were a few males, but no longer could she voyage through life quite so jollily without attracting the attention of the censorious. Chaperon seems to be one of the very few good words of which our authoress had never heard.
- J.M. Barrie, Preface to The Young Visiters by Daisy Ashford (age 9) (1919) [full...
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Thus, my gentleman, not knowing what to do with his hands, was compelled to spend the evening stroking his whiskers. His whiskers were really fine, but he stroked them so assiduously that one got the feeling that the whiskers had come into the world first and afterwards the man in order to stroke them.
- Fyodor Dostoevsky, ‘The Christmas Tree and the Wedding’ (1848) in Best Russian...
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BOW-WOW. The childish name for a dog; also a jeering appellation for a man born at Boston in America.
- Francis Grose, Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue: A Dictionary of Buckish Slang, University Wit and Pickpocket Eloquence (1811) [full text]
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Mary Shelley had inherited from her mother the world’s frown.
- Clara H. Whitmore, Women’s Work in English Fiction (1909) [full text]
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BITCH BOOBY. A country wench. Military term.
- Francis Grose, Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue: A Dictionary of Buckish Slang, University Wit and Pickpocket Eloquence (1811) [full text]
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ARS MUSICA. A bum fiddle.
- Francis Grose, Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue: A Dictionary of Buckish Slang, University Wit and Pickpocket Eloquence (1811) [full text]
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I say said Mr Salteena excitedly I have had some tea in bed.
- Daisy Ashford (age 9), The Young Visiters (1919) [full text]
Thanks to Katie Coyle for this wonderful find.
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Last week on the Project Gutenberg Project
Forster on vulgarity
and a Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
two original manuscripts
Portuguese architecture and Alaskan shores
tenements and prisons
a history of English female writers
a child prodigy
a princess
and the horror! The horror!
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ARRAH NOW. An unmeaning expletive, frequently used by the vulgar Irish.
- Francis Grose, Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue: A Dictionary of Buckish Slang, University Wit and Pickpocket Eloquence (1811) [full text]
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FART CATCHER. A valet or footman, from his walking behind his master or mistress.
- Francis Grose, Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue: A Dictionary of Buckish Slang, University Wit and Pickpocket Eloquence (1811) [full text]
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Vulgarity, to him, had been the primal curse, the shoddy reticence that prevents man opening his heart to man, the power that makes against equality. From it sprang all the things that he hated—class shibboleths, ladies, lidies, the game laws, the Conservative party—all the things that accent the divergencies rather than the similarities in human nature.
- E.M. Forster, The Longest Journey (1907)...
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WELL-HUNG. The blowen was nutts upon the kiddey because he is well-hung; the girl is pleased with the youth because his genitals are large.
- Francis Grose, Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue: A Dictionary of Buckish Slang, University Wit and Pickpocket Eloquence (1811) [full text]
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APPLE DUMPLIN SHOP. A woman’s bosom.
- Francis Grose, Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue: A Dictionary of Buckish Slang, University Wit and Pickpocket Eloquence (1811) [full text]
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And at last, in its curved and imperceptible fall, the sun sank low, and from glowing white changed to a dull red without rays and without heat, as if about to go out suddenly, stricken to death by the touch of that gloom brooding over a crowd of men.
- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1902) [full text]
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Like Shakespeare Jane Austen knew the inner nature by intuition, and had learned its outward expression by observation. Character not only affects the speech of each one of her men and women, but determines their destiny and shapes the plot of the story.
- Clara H. Whitmore, Women’s Work in English Fiction (1909) [full text]
(Happy birthday, Jane!)
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The writings of many of the women considered in this volume have sunk into an oblivion from which their intrinsic merit should have preserved them. This is partly due to the fact that nearly all the books on literature have been written from a man’s stand-point.
- Clara H. Whitmore, Preface to Women’s Work in English Fiction (1909) [full text]
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On the characters of Jane Austen
They seldom use stereotyped words or phrases, yet their conversation is a crystal from which the whole mental horizon of the speaker shines forth. When Mrs. Bennet learns that Netherfield Park has been let to a single gentleman of fortune, her first exclamation comes from the heart—”What a fine thing for our girls!”
- Clara H. Whitmore, Women’s Work in English Fiction (1909) [full...
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I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror—of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision—he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath:
“‘The horror! The...
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There is hardly a story of Mrs. Gaskell’s which is not adorned by the friendship of the heroine for some other woman in the book.
- Clara H. Whitmore, Women’s Work in English Fiction (1909) [full text]
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I was about to kiss the princess again, when I arrived (very reluctantly) at the conclusion that I was awake.
- Anthony Hope, The Prisoner of Zenda (1894) [full text]
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Last week on the Project Gutenberg Project
recipes from 1390
anatomy from 1857
chemistry from 1661
stories from Hungary
a Dissertation on Dumplings
and Pepys on something pretty odde
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CHYKENS IN HOCCHEE. XXXIIII.
Take Chykenns and scald hem. take parsel and sawge withoute eny oþere erbes. take garlec an grapes and stoppe the Chikenns ful and seeþ hem in gode broth. so þat þey may esely be boyled þerinne. messe hem an cast þerto powdour dowce.
- The Master Chefs of King Richard II, The Forme of Cury (1390) [full text]
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GREWEL OF ALMAUNDES
Take Almaundes blaunched, bray hem with oot meel [1]. and draw hem up with water. cast þeron Safroun & salt &c.
[1] oot meel. oat-meal.
- The Master Chefs of King Richard II, The Forme of Cury (1390) [full text]
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