Hesketh's book sounds very tempting--methinks I shall add it to my neverending list of amazon "saved" books (I try and empty as much of it as I can come Christmas).

I was perusing your library (just realized your image is from Gawain and the Green Knight--hoping to work that into nightstand rotation very soon!) and saw Memoirs of a Georgian Rake. It looks equally appetizing. I don't think, off the top of my head, I can counter your Smith of Smiths with a recommendation of my own...was going to use Aubrey's Brief Lives but I see you have that one. Man is it funny.

Actually, a really good source for somewhat under-known books is Michael Dirda...he's a reviewer for the Washington Post and has several volumes of reviews out. His latest book, Classics for Pleasure, is sort of an alternative canon. He mentions Petronius, Aubrey, Georgette Heyer, Jacob Burckhardt (his Renaissance essay), Gawain, and quite a few others. Actually, in his penultimate book, "Bound to Please", he wrote a review of a book you might like called "The Lunar Men". It's about a group of men--Darwin's grandfather, Wedgwood, James Watt, and some others--and their interactions, experiments, and lives in general in 18th c. England. Lots of anecdotes and such. The author, Jenny Uglow, also wrote a biography of Hogarth that was wonderful. It too has lots of stories, anecdotes, and scenes from London in the reign of George II (one of those kings no one notices, which is perhaps fortunate, as he died on the toilet). She goes into detail about the play, "The Beggar's Opera", and Sam Johnson makes a few appearances, as do Joshua Reynolds, Garrick, and some other Literary Club alums.

Lähettänyt: uncultured 2:42 am (EST) Jul 5, 2008

Re Smith of Smiths:

Never heard of this, what exactly is it? It's not on Gutenberg (or my other internet resource, www.archive.org, which has online editions of Thraliana, Walpole's letters, and the journals of Charles Greville). I found a few pages of preview on amazon but no description.

Speaking of Greville, he's not too bad a diarist, though the only editions I can find are reprints of a 1908 volume that, though it advertises "Hitherto Unpublished Extracts", is fairly clean and decent, though it does an excellent job of describing country house weekends and some minor scandals such as duels, eccentricities, and things of that nature. But maybe he just didn't put that sort of thing in his diary.

I suspect that between Boswell, Pepys, and Casanova, I've become quite spoiled in terms of what I expect from a diarist, and when combined with the spate of unbowdlerized translations that have come out in the past 10-20 years (the Pevear-Volkohnsky team tackling Russia and Dumas, the new Proust editions, etc.), I've really gotten finicky about reading the "correct" edition of something. War and Peace alone found me in the bookstore with the Briggs and P-V editions open to the same page, comparing and contrasting...Modern biography is the same way, each new version advertising newly found documents, secret letters, private information previous biographers were bribed to keep out, etc etc. It makes me quite neurotic, literarily.

Just to throw one more question out before I finish--Have you checked out Casanova's Memoirs? He's a great memoirist--I'm reading Volumes 1-2 right now, and he's in Turkey contemplating an offer to marry a Muslim aristocrat's daughter. It's surely exaggerated, but great fun. It's the Willard Trask translation; prior to him translations were based on an edition that was not only censored, but altered as well.

Lähettänyt: uncultured 1:57 am (EST) Jul 3, 2008

How interesting re: Thrale's marginalia! Does she write entire anecdotes and such, or is it more restricted to brief phrases, like "How very true indeed!"? I have the '93 FS edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson, which, at least, provides names whenever Boswell says something like "a mutual acquaintance who loved to drink..." or "A man who constantly lusted after women..." (and oftentimes it turns out Boswell is speaking of himself...haha, not very surprising, I guess).

I just found this incredible website, www.archive.org, while doing a search for Walpole's letters--I'm finding all sorts of long lusted-after diaries and books from the 18th century. They have a VERSION of Thraliana--not the two volume edition from 1951 (put out by Oxford I think) but a separate, earlier version from 1913 that always has the phrase "With Hitherto Unpublished Extracts" in the title. Also have the Letters from Princess Lieven to Metternich--Lieven was pretty nasty customer, but she apparently was very smart and spot on re: gossip and England at the time. Just thought you'd be interested!

Lähettänyt: uncultured 2:44 am (EST) Jun 13, 2008

Django, I have been interested in the FS edition of the Arabian Nights since I did not take it as a renewal offering several years ago. As you have both the FS and EP editions which one would you recommend? You mention you prefer the FS translation, but what about the bindings, illustrations, fonts, etc? I would appreciate any comments you have on both editions. Thank you.

P.S. I also posted this on the Arabian Nights thread in the Easton Press group.

Lähettänyt: LucasTrask 8:45 pm (EST) Jun 5, 2008

yes, I did add them all manually because I already had most of the details on the computer in a list before LT existed, so I just needed to copy and paste.
I wonder why you can't transfer the details, isn't it automatic? As for the cover art - well I don't have a scanner and don't really like those flat pics so always try to do something a bit artsy. At the moment I'm struggling with the Age of Illumination, have made several attempts at it but am never satisfied.
You should normally be able to choose them from the "member uploaded covers" thing.

Lähettänyt: overthemoon 2:16 pm (EST) May 29, 2008

thanks Django - I have just returned from a press trip but will have a look as soon as I get my photos uploaded etc.
I was very interested to see that he was the Gill of the Gill Sans, didn't realise that!

Lähettänyt: overthemoon 2:12 pm (EST) May 29, 2008