December 2010
107 posts
5 tags
Dec 24th
22 notes
5 tags
Dec 24th
3 tags
“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]
Dec 24th
11 notes
5 tags
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,...
Dec 24th
23 notes
4 tags
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...
Dec 24th
11 notes
4 tags
Dec 24th
32 notes
3 tags
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]
Dec 24th
10 notes
4 tags
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...
Dec 24th
4 tags
Dec 24th
19 notes
3 tags
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]
Dec 24th
4 tags
Dec 24th
4 tags
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]
Dec 24th
13 notes
4 tags
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]
Dec 24th
5 tags
Dec 24th
54 notes
5 tags
Dec 24th
5 tags
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]
Dec 24th
19 notes
5 tags
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]
Dec 24th
5 tags
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,...
Dec 24th
4 tags
Dec 24th
3 tags
“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]
Dec 24th
5 tags
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...
Dec 23rd
11 notes
4 tags
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...
Dec 22nd
8 notes
5 tags
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...
Dec 21st
5 notes
5 tags
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...
Dec 21st
26 notes
5 tags
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...
Dec 21st
5 tags
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]
Dec 21st
7 notes
4 tags
Mary Shelley had inherited from her mother the world’s frown. - Clara H. Whitmore, Women’s Work in English Fiction (1909) [full text]
Dec 21st
8 notes
5 tags
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]
Dec 20th
6 tags
Dec 20th
28 notes
6 tags
Dec 20th
5 tags
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]
Dec 20th
4 notes
3 tags
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.
Dec 20th
16 notes
1 tag
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!
Dec 20th
3 notes
6 tags
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]
Dec 20th
11 notes
1 tag
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!
Dec 20th
5 tags
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...
Dec 20th
4 tags
Dec 19th
5 notes
4 tags
Dec 19th
3 tags
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.
Dec 19th
5 tags
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]
Dec 18th
15 notes
4 tags
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)...
Dec 17th
5 notes
5 tags
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]
Dec 17th
24 notes
5 tags
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]
Dec 17th
5 tags
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]
Dec 17th
5 tags
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]
Dec 17th
5 tags
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]
Dec 17th
5 tags
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]
Dec 17th
5 tags
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...
Dec 17th
6 tags
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]
Dec 17th
21 notes
6 tags
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]
Dec 17th