How Reading Changed My Life by Anna Quindlen 

Home from school, suspended for bad behavior, I come to the end of To Kill a Mockingbird and hear the crack as Jem’s arm breaks as clear as I can hear the kitchen clock tick.  Lying on the beach listening to a transistor radio, I feel midway through Main Street the claustrophobia of small-town life, particularly for women, so acutely that the shiver runs all through me that’s said in superstitions to be a ghost walking over my grave.  And one afternoon in college I skip my seminar on writers of the Renaissance so I can finish Sons and Lovers, so swept away am I by the passion that a disappointed woman feels for her sons.  And I know that I will never, ever write as well as this, but that if anything even dimly like this power, to enthrall, to move, to light up the darkness of daily life, lies hidden like a wartime cryptogram within the Royal manual typewriter on my dorm room desk, I must try to make a go of it.  Why would anyone aspire to be president of the United States or of General Motors if they could write like D. H. Lawrence instead?  That’s what I remember thinking.  That’s not to say that I immediately set myself the work of constant writing; that, too, is a writer’s life story that I suspect.  But I did begin to think of myself as a writer, although I was not sure what sort of writer I was.  Like most young people, I went through a romance with poetry, enamored of the music and the rhythm of the words, and by the soothing notion that there need be so much less to the product than there was in even a slender novel.  In my own life, this romance fell in a predictable period.  It came after the end of elementary school, when poetry was something between a punishment and a spelling bee, “The Children’s Hour” committed to memory, and college, when I took a modern poetry course from the same professor who found Galsworthy beneath notice.  He had a fine, sonorous voice that rang in the small stuffy classroom, vying successfully with the sound of traffic on Broadway, and those half glasses that I still associate with intelligence even though I now wear, and loathe, them.  And when he read Ezra Pound’s “Hugh Selwyn Mauberley” aloud, dipping his out-sized shaggy head to the page—“For three years, out of key with his time/He strove to resuscitate the dead art/Of poetry; to maintain ‘The Sublime’/In the old sense. Wrong from the start”—I knew that, whatever else I might be, I was no poet.  My books from that course are full of painstaking marginalia, as though if I paid close enough attention the bird would fly in my breast.  But I didn’t have poetry in me.  I wrote fiction in college, and then for many years I wrote fact, as best I could gather, discern, and describe it, as a newspaper reporter.  Then I wrote fiction again.  Reading taught me how to do it all.  “Books are over,” the editor of a journal to be found only on the Internet told me one day at a conference on the future of the newspaper business.  Just my luck.  After all these years of reading books I’d finally written one; when I took time to alphabetize my shelves, it came between Proust and Ayn Rand, which seemed representative of how I’d read all my life, between the great and the merely engagingly popular.  I could still remember the time I had held my first hardcover book.  The Federal Express truck raised a cloud of gravel and dust on a country road as I ripped into the envelope, removed the book, and lifted it up and down in my outstretched hands, just to feel the heft of it, as though it was to be valued by weight.  I held it the way I’d seen babies held at religious ceremonies.  https://bookreadfree.com/10444/290634    

January 7, 2025, Toledo celebrated its 188th birthday and has adopted a brand new city flag.  Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz met with the artist Mark Yappeuying yesterday.  He put so much care into the details of this flag to tell Toledo's From Fort Industry to the Veteran's Sky Bridge and our rich history–this flag is an evolution of our past flags, connecting our past to our present and future.  You can read more about the flag's design on the City of Toledo's website (https://toledo.oh.gov/flag?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=mayor&utm_campaign=www) , and tune into the Wednesdays with Wade podcast (https://toledo.oh.gov/government/mayor/podcast?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=mayor&utm_campaign=www) to hear the artist speak about his design choices and how he believes this flag represents Toledo's past, present, and future.  Episode 59 https://toledo.oh.gov/government/mayor/podcast?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=mayor&utm_campaign=www  

Even though they are different words, trouper and trooper can both be used to describe one who perseveres through hardship or difficulty.  Trouper originates from one who is part of a theatre troupe and thus realizes the show must always go on.  Trooper originates from the designation given to soldiers and police officers, who are also no strangers to difficult conditions in the line of duty.  https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/usage-trooper-vs-trouper#:~:text=Trouper%20originates%20from%20one%20who,these%20triumphant%20actors'%20foot%20casts.    

Bitcoin (cyptocurrency) was first released on January 9, 2009. 

Proper noun  bitcoin

(uncountable, computing, finance) A decentralized cryptocurrency using blockchain technology. [from 2008] hypernym ▼quotations ▼

Noun  bitcoin (plural bitcoins or bitcoin)

(countable, computing, finance) A unit of the bitcoin (proper noun sense 1) cryptocurrency. synonyms ▲quotations ▼ https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bitcoin#English    

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2895  January 9, 2025

Thomas Shelton made his living from shorthand, teaching the subject in London over a period of thirty years while he developed his stenographical systems.  Shelton knew the stenography of John Willis and took over its geometrical basic principle for his own shorthand.  He published several books about shorthand which he sold from his house.  Shelton invented a new stenographical system and published it in 1626 in the book Short-Writing (in later editions since 1635 called "Tachygraphy", Ancient Greek for "speedy writing").  In Shelton's shorthand system every consonant was expressed by an easy symbol which sometimes still resembled the alphabetical letter.   The vowels were designated by the height of the following consonant.  Thus the B symbol with the L symbol written directly above meant "ball", while the B symbol with the L symbol below meant "bull".  A vowel at the word end was designated by a point in the suitable position.  For initial vowels there were additional symbols.  There were other symbols for frequent prefixes and suffixes as well as for consonant connections.  A disadvantage of Shelton's shorthand was that vowels and diphthongs were not always distinguished.  For example, the symbols for "bat" could mean "bait" or "bate" as well, and the symbols for "bot" could mean "boot" or "boat" as well.  This can only be decided from the context.  An advantage of his system was that it could be easily learnt.  Therefore, between 1626 and 1710 more than 20 editions of his "Tachygraphy" were printed.  German issues appeared between 1679 and 1743 and a French issue in Paris in 1681.   Shelton's shorthand was used, amongst others, by Samuel Pepys, Sir Isaac Newton, John Byrom and US-President Thomas Jefferson.  In the year of his death, 1650, Shelton published yet another shorthand system called "Zeiglographia", but it did not become as widespread as his "Tachygraphy".  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Shelton_(stenographer)

Peter Yarrow, a vocalist with the US folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary, died at age 86 January, 2025.  Yarrow took lead vocals on Puff, the Magic Dragon, The Great Mandella and Day Is Done, songs he either wrote or co-wrote with Noel Paul Stookey.  Stookey is the last surviving member of the group, as Mary Travers died in 2009.  https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/jan/07/peter-yarrow-of-folk-trio-peter-paul-and-mary-dies-aged-86   

The American flag flies at half-staff or at half-mast when the country or a state is in mourning.  The president, a state governor, or the mayor of the District of Columbia can order flags to fly at half-staff.  In most cases, an American flag flying at half-staff marks one of three observances:

·        The death of a government official, military member, or emergency first responder

·        A national tragedy

·        Memorial Day or another national day of remembrance

https://www.usa.gov/flag

Following former President Jimmy Carter's death Dec. 29, 2024, President Joe Biden declared a National Day of Mourning honoring the humanitarian leader Jan. 9, 2025 the day of Carter's funeral in Washington, D.C.  The tradition, which began with a one-day government shutdown following Abraham Lincoln's assassination in 1865, is one of many ways the United States honors its late presidents.  Biden's statement also declared all American flags displayed at public and military sites globally be flown at half-staff for 30 days following Carter's death.  Though a National Day of Mourning isn't recognized as an official federal holiday, meaning many of the businesses typically affected by national celebrations won't be closed, some organizations will be affected by the day of observance.  Here's what's open and what's closed on the National Day of Mourning this Thursday.  Mail will not be delivered Thursday.  In an executive order issued Dec. 30, Biden declared that all federal agencies would be closed Jan. 9 in honor of Carter's funeral, including the United States Postal Service.  All federal employees should be given the day off except for those most important to the country's "national security, defense, or other public need," according to the announcement.  The ruling also applies to all U.S. courts, including the Supreme Court.  Most banks will remain open Thursday because it is not an official federal holiday.  In a statement released Dec. 30, New York Stock Exchange Group president Lynn Martin announced that all markets would be closed Jan. 9 out of respect for President Carter.  Similar to most banks around the country, most public schools will remain open Thursday because it is not an official federal holiday.  However, in accordance with National Day of Mourning protocol, all organizations affiliated with the U.S. Department of Defense Education Activity, including all military schools, will be closed.  https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/national-international/national-day-of-mourning-closures/3807668/  The U.S. Navy Glee Club sang in the Jimmy Carter service in the Capitol.   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2894  January 8, 2025 

The Toledo Museum of Art announced Dec. 30, 2024 that parking will be free for all visitors beginning Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025 after receiving a donation.  The art museum said the "generous" donation is from the Taylor Automotive Family to honor the late Julie Taylor.  “Free parking is the amenity visitors request most often, and we’re excited to make it available to everyone,” Jennifer McCary, chief culture and brand experience officer at the museum said.  “It aligns with TMA’s long-standing commitment to free museum admission, honoring the vision of our founders, Edward Drummond and Florence Scott Libbey, and creating more opportunities for TMA to integrate art into the lives of others.”  According to the museum's website, parking was originally $10 for visitors and only free for members.  https://www.wtol.com/article/news/local/free-parking-toledo-museum-of-art/   

According to Southern tradition, eating black-eyed peas on New Year's Day will bring a year's worth of good luck and/or monetary gain.     

How to Make New Year's Black-Eyed Peas

Soak the peas overnight.

Cook the onions and garlic in oil, then cover with broth and water.

Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer.

Stir in the remaining ingredients.

Cook until the peas are tender and the meat falls off the bone. 

Place black-eyed peas into a large container and cover with several inches of cool water; let soak at room temperature, 8 hours to overnight. Drain and rinse; set aside.  Heat olive oil in a large stockpot over medium heat.  Add onion and garlic; cook and stir until onion becomes translucent, about 5 minutes.  Pour in broth and water; bring to a boil, then reduce heat to a simmer.  Stir in black-eyed peas, ham hocks, tomatoes, pepperoncini, bay leaf, garlic powder, thyme, salt, and pepper.  Cover and simmer until peas are tender, ham meat is falling off the bones, and broth is thickened, about 3 hours.  Find ingredients at https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/213029/new-year-black-eyed-peas/    

At Silent Book Club® there's no assigned reading.  SBC members gather in bars, cafés, bookstores, libraries, and online to read together in quiet camaraderie.  All readers are welcome—ebooks or audiobooks, poetry or prose, fiction or non-fiction . . .  it's BYOBook   https://silentbook.club/?srsltid=AfmBOor8CkZmyN5TDxU7arrk69q7U8R3nMWH41MCinxbe_iaABkcpY26   

Silent book club in Toledo, Ohio generally meets at Earth Coffehouse & Cafe (1447 N. Summit) the first Saturday of each month for two hours.  Times and locations sometimes vary, so check for event details.  The first and last half hour are for reading and chatting, but that middle hour is for silent reading.  Come join us!  In between meetings, we'll share bookish news.   

Earth An Ambitious Coffeehouse & Cafe  Open to the public weekdays 7:30am – 7pm, and Saturdays 10am – 4pm. Located inside TolHouse in the Historic Vistula District. https://earth.tolhouse.com/    

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2893  January 7, 2025

 

New Year's Eve (plural New Year's Eves)

The holiday occurring on the last day of the year, celebrated on December 31st in cultures following the Gregorian calendar

Related terms

New Year's Day

watchnight (not identical to New Year's Eve – New Year's Eve is the entire day before New Year's Day, whereas watch night is the night that begins at sundown on New Year's Eve and ends with sunrise on New Year's Day)

 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/New_Year%27s_Eve    

Revelers began celebrating New Year’s Eve in Times Square as early as 1904, but it was in 1907 that the New Year’s Eve Ball made its maiden descent from the flagpole atop One Times Square.  Seven versions of the Ball have been designed to signal the New Year.  The first New Year’s Eve Ball, made of iron and wood and adorned with one hundred 25-watt light bulbs, was 5 feet in diameter and weighed 700 pounds.  It was built by a young immigrant metalworker named Jacob Starr, and for most of the twentieth century the company he founded, sign maker Artkraft Strauss, was responsible for lowering the Ball.  As part of the 1907-1908 festivities, waiters in the fabled “lobster palaces” and other deluxe eateries in hotels surrounding Times Square were supplied with battery-powered top hats emblazoned with the numbers “1908” fashioned of tiny light bulbs.  At the stroke of midnight, they all “flipped their lids” and the year on their foreheads lit up in conjunction with the numbers “1908” on the parapet of the Times Tower lighting up to signal the arrival of the New Year.  The Ball has been lowered every year since 1907, with the exceptions of 1942 and 1943, when the ceremony was suspended due to the wartime “dimout” of lights in New York City.  Nevertheless, the crowds still gathered in Times Square in those years and greeted the New Year with a minute of silence followed by the ringing of chimes from sound trucks parked at the base of the tower—a harkening-back to the earlier celebrations at Trinity Church, where crowds would gather to “ring out the old, ring in the new.”  In 1920, a 400 pound Ball made entirely of wrought iron replaced the original.  In 1955, the iron Ball was replaced with an aluminum Ball weighing a mere 150 pounds.  This aluminum Ball remained unchanged until the 1980s, when red light bulbs and the addition of a green stem converted the Ball into an apple for the “I Love New York” marketing campaign from 1981 until 1988.  After seven years, the traditional glowing white Ball with white light bulbs and without the green stem returned to brightly light the sky above Times Square.  In 1995, the Ball was upgraded with aluminum skin, rhinestones, strobes, and computer controls, but the aluminum Ball was lowered for the last time in 1998.  The actual notion of a ball “dropping” to signal the passage of time dates back long before New Year’s Eve was ever celebrated in Times Square.  The first “time-ball” was installed atop England’s Royal Observatory at Greenwich in 1833.  This ball would drop at one o’clock every afternoon, allowing the captains of nearby ships to precisely set their chronometers (a vital navigational instrument).  Around 150 public time-balls are believed to have been installed around the world after the success at Greenwich, though few survive and still work.  The tradition is carried on today in places like the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, DC, where a time-ball descends from a flagpole at noon each day--and of course, once a year in Times Square, where it marks the stroke of midnight not for a few ships’ captains, but for over one billion people watching worldwide.  See pictures at https://timessquareball.net/ball-history/   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2892  December 31, 2024

Charles Vincent Emerson Starrett was born above his grandfather's bookshop in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.  His father moved the family to Chicago in 1889 where Starrett attended John Marshall High School.  Starrett landed a job as a cub reporter with the Chicago Inter-Ocean in 1905.  When that paper folded two years later he began working for the Chicago Daily News as a crime reporter, a feature writer, and finally a war correspondent in Mexico from 1914 to 1915.  Starrett turned to writing mystery and supernatural fiction for pulp magazines during the 1920s and 1930s.  In 1920, he wrote a Sherlock Holmes pastiche entitled The Adventure of the Unique "Hamlet".   Starrett on at least one occasion said that the press-run was 100 copies, but on others claimed 200; a study of surviving copies by Randall Stock documents 110.  This story involved the detective investigating a missing 1602 inscribed edition of Shakespeare's play Hamlet.   Starrett's most famous work, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, was published in 1933. Starrett was one of the founders of The Hounds of the Baskerville (sic), a Chicago chapter of The Baker Street Irregulars.  Starrett's horror/fantasy stories were written primarily for the pulp magazine Weird Tales, and are collected in The Quick and the Dead, (Arkham House, 1965).   His story "Penelope," published in the May 1923 issue of Weird Tales, was also featured in the anthology The Moon Terror (1927) anonymously edited by Farnsworth Wright, and published by the magazine.  Starrett's other writing included poetry, collected in Autolycus in Limbo, (Dutton, 1943), detective novels, such as Murder on 'B' Deck, (Doubleday, 1929, and others).   He had also created his own detective character, Chicago sleuth Jimmie Lavender, whose adventures usually first appeared in the pulp magazine Short Stories.  The name Jimmy Lavender (sic) was that of an actual pitcher for the Chicago Cubs; Starrett wrote to ask the ball player for permission to use his name for a gentleman detective, which the pitcher granted.  The stories are collected in The Case Book of Jimmie Lavender (Gold Label, 1944).  Starrett was a major enthusiast of Welsh writer Arthur Machen and was instrumental in bringing Machen's work to an American audience for the first time.   His influential weekly column "Books Alive" ran in the Chicago Tribune for 25 years.  He also wrote Best Loved Books of the 20th Century, a collection of 52 essays discussing popular works, published in 1955.   Among his film adaptions his 1934 story "Recipe for Murder", first published in Redbook magazine in one installment, was filmed as The Great Hotel Murder by Fox in 1935.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Starrett 

Starrett quote:  “When we are collecting books, we are collecting happiness.” 

Wiktionary Word of the Day for December 29:
overmorrow advective
(archaic) On the day after tomorrow. overmorrow noun  (archaic or obsolete)  The day after tomorrow. (obsolete, rare)  Of or relating to the day after tomorrow.    just-so story noun  A story which supposedly explains the beginning or early development of a current state of affairs; a myth, a pourquoi story. (literature)  A story, especially one for children, featuring animals as characters. (social sciences, especially anthropology, philosophy, chiefly derogatory)  An untestable explanation for something, such as a form of behaviour, a biological trait, or a cultural practice.  The English writer Rudyard Kipling, whose series of short stories called Just So Stories (published in book form in 1902) gave rise to the term, was born on December 30, 1865.  https://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2891  December 30, 2024

Penny Dreadfuls  The stories were reprints, or sometimes rewrites, of the earliest Gothic thrillers such as The Castle of Otranto or The Monk, as well as new stories about famous criminals.  The first ever penny blood, published in 1836, was called Lives of the Most Notorious Highwaymen, Footpads, &c.  The story continued over 60 issues, each eight pages of tightly-packed text with one half-page illustration.  Some of the most famous of these penny part-stories were The String of Pearls: A Domestic Romance (introducing Sweeney Todd, "the Demon Barber of Fleet Street"), The Mysteries of London (inspired by the French serial The Mysteries of Paris), and Varney the Vampire (1845–47).  Varney is the tale of the vampire Sir Francis Varney and introduced many of the tropes present in vampire fiction recognizable to modern audiences—it was the first story to refer to sharpened teeth for a vampire.  The popularity of penny dreadfuls among British children was challenged in the 1890s by the rise of competing literature.  Leading the challenge were popular periodicals published by Alfred Harmsworth.  Priced at one half-penny, Harmsworth's story papers were cheaper and, at least initially, were more respectable than the competition.  Harmsworth claimed to be motivated by a wish to challenge the pernicious influence of penny dreadfuls.  According to an editorial in the first number of The Half-penny Marvel in 1893:  It is almost a daily occurrence with magistrates to have before them boys who, having read a number of 'dreadfuls', followed the examples set forth in such publications, robbed their employers, bought revolvers with the proceeds, and finished by running away from home, and installing themselves in the back streets as 'highwaymen'.  This and many other evils the 'penny dreadful' is responsible for.  It makes thieves of the coming generation, and so helps fill our gaols. 

The Half-penny Marvel was soon followed by other Harmsworth half-penny periodicals, such as The Union Jack.  At first the stories were high-minded moral tales, reportedly based on true experiences, but it was not long before these papers started using the same kind of material as the publications they competed against.  From 1896, the cover of Illustrated Chips featured the long-running comic strip of the tramps Weary Willie and Tired Tim, with a young Charlie Chaplin among its readers.  A. A. Milne, the author of Winnie-the-Pooh, once said, "Harmsworth killed the penny dreadful by the simple process of producing the 'ha'penny dreadfuller'"  The quality of the Harmsworth/Amalgamated Press papers began to improve throughout the early 20th century, however.  By the time of the First World War, papers such as Union Jack dominated the market in the UK.  The penny dreadfuls were also challenged by book series such as The Penny Library of Famous Books launched in 1896 by George Newnes which he characterized as "penny delightfuls" intended to counter the pernicious effects of the penny dreadfuls, and such as the Penny Popular Novels launched in 1896 by W. T. Stead.  Two popular characters to come out of the penny dreadfuls were Jack Harkaway, introduced in the Boys of England in 1871, and Sexton Blake, who began in the Half-penny Marvel in 1893.  In 1904, the Union Jack became "Sexton Blake's own paper", and he appeared in every issue thereafter, up until the paper's demise in 1933.  In total, Blake appeared in roughly 4,000 adventures, right up into the 1970s.  Harkaway was also popular in America and had many imitators.  The fictional Sweeney Todd, the subject of both a successful musical by Stephen Sondheim and a feature film by Tim Burton, first appeared in an 1846/1847 penny dreadful titled The String of Pearls: A Romance by James Malcolm Rymer and Thomas Peckett Prest.  The penny dreadfuls inspired the British comics that began to emerge in the 1870s.  Describing penny dreadfuls as "a 19th-century British publishing phenomenon", the BBC adds, their "very disposability (the booklets' bargain cover price meant they were printed on exceptionally flimsy paper) has made surviving examples a rarity, despite their immense popularity at the time."  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_dreadful   

This week's theme:  No el  

equative (EK-wuh-tiv) 

adjective:  Expressing identity or a degree of comparison. 

noun:  A case in some languages indicating equivalence or similarity between two things. 

[From Latin aequare (to make equal).  Earliest documented use:  1913.]

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg   

http://librarianmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2890  December 24, 2024

Penny Dreadfuls  The stories were reprints, or sometimes rewrites, of the earliest Gothic thrillers such as The Castle of Otranto or The Monk, as well as new stories about famous criminals.  The first ever penny blood, published in 1836, was called Lives of the Most Notorious Highwaymen, Footpads, &c.  The story continued over 60 issues, each eight pages of tightly-packed text with one half-page illustration.  Some of the most famous of these penny part-stories were The String of Pearls: A Domestic Romance (introducing Sweeney Todd, "the Demon Barber of Fleet Street"), The Mysteries of London (inspired by the French serial The Mysteries of Paris), and Varney the Vampire (1845–47).  Varney is the tale of the vampire Sir Francis Varney and introduced many of the tropes present in vampire fiction recognizable to modern audiences—it was the first story to refer to sharpened teeth for a vampire.  The popularity of penny dreadfuls among British children was challenged in the 1890s by the rise of competing literature.  Leading the challenge were popular periodicals published by Alfred Harmsworth.  Priced at one half-penny, Harmsworth's story papers were cheaper and, at least initially, were more respectable than the competition.  Harmsworth claimed to be motivated by a wish to challenge the pernicious influence of penny dreadfuls.  According to an editorial in the first number of The Half-penny Marvel in 1893:  It is almost a daily occurrence with magistrates to have before them boys who, having read a number of 'dreadfuls', followed the examples set forth in such publications, robbed their employers, bought revolvers with the proceeds, and finished by running away from home, and installing themselves in the back streets as 'highwaymen'.  This and many other evils the 'penny dreadful' is responsible for.  It makes thieves of the coming generation, and so helps fill our gaols. 

The Half-penny Marvel was soon followed by other Harmsworth half-penny periodicals, such as The Union Jack.  At first the stories were high-minded moral tales, reportedly based on true experiences, but it was not long before these papers started using the same kind of material as the publications they competed against.  From 1896, the cover of Illustrated Chips featured the long-running comic strip of the tramps Weary Willie and Tired Tim, with a young Charlie Chaplin among its readers.  A. A. Milne, the author of Winnie-the-Pooh, once said, "Harmsworth killed the penny dreadful by the simple process of producing the 'ha'penny dreadfuller'"  The quality of the Harmsworth/Amalgamated Press papers began to improve throughout the early 20th century, however.  By the time of the First World War, papers such as Union Jack dominated the market in the UK.  The penny dreadfuls were also challenged by book series such as The Penny Library of Famous Books launched in 1896 by George Newnes which he characterized as "penny delightfuls" intended to counter the pernicious effects of the penny dreadfuls, and such as the Penny Popular Novels launched in 1896 by W. T. Stead.  Two popular characters to come out of the penny dreadfuls were Jack Harkaway, introduced in the Boys of England in 1871, and Sexton Blake, who began in the Half-penny Marvel in 1893.  In 1904, the Union Jack became "Sexton Blake's own paper", and he appeared in every issue thereafter, up until the paper's demise in 1933.  In total, Blake appeared in roughly 4,000 adventures, right up into the 1970s.  Harkaway was also popular in America and had many imitators.  The fictional Sweeney Todd, the subject of both a successful musical by Stephen Sondheim and a feature film by Tim Burton, first appeared in an 1846/1847 penny dreadful titled The String of Pearls: A Romance by James Malcolm Rymer and Thomas Peckett Prest.  The penny dreadfuls inspired the British comics that began to emerge in the 1870s.  Describing penny dreadfuls as "a 19th-century British publishing phenomenon", the BBC adds, their "very disposability (the booklets' bargain cover price meant they were printed on exceptionally flimsy paper) has made surviving examples a rarity, despite their immense popularity at the time."  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_dreadful   

This week's theme:  No el  

equative (EK-wuh-tiv) 

adjective:  Expressing identity or a degree of comparison. 

noun:  A case in some languages indicating equivalence or similarity between two things. 

[From Latin aequare (to make equal).  Earliest documented use:  1913.]

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg   

http://librarianmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2890  December 24, 2024