Really good anthologies

[Twit 2]

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/111/1119589/gigantic-cinema/9781787332652.html

Just read this beauty. A feast of stunning and eclectic writing featuring weather, from poetry to philosophy to diary entries to anonymous writing. The selections are wonderful and the presentation is a delight. Footnotes have been kept to the back with just the author written at the bottom of the page so that the texts can both speak for themselves better but also merge together to make a more shifting, appropriately cloud-like mosaic. There's Lucretius, Sappho, Sei Shonagon, Rabelais, Derek Mahon, Varlam Shalamov, Shakespeare, Conrad, all rubbing shoulders. An absolute joy to read.

[Smeraldina Rima]

I appreciated this, despite obviously not understanding it all, and agreeing with each text until agreeing with the counterarguments:









Each extract has a short introduction that summarises the concerns of the text, highlights counterarguments and recommends further reading. This is a representative introduction to the first extract (and if this extract seems uninteresting the other extracts might not):

[Astronaut Omens]

Not quite an anthology this one, it's really a piece of literary theory I suppose, but the extracts from literature he uses to get his point across are are all quite long- some complete short stories, essays, poems etc.- and really well chosen, so it feels very anthologyish:
Friedrich Kittler- Gramophone, Film, Typewriter.

Kittler wrote many books about media, and in this book he blends a history of each of the 3 media technologies in the title, with a look at the way writers and artists responded to them- highlights include Rilke imagining hearing "primal sounds" by 'playing' a human skull with a gramophone needle, a surreal story about Salmo Friedlander about trying to capture the voice of the long-dead Goethe by building a model of the poet's vocal cords and lungs, a poem written by Nietzche on an early typewriter, and a short essay by Heidegger about typewriters which I found neatly encapsulates in just a couple of pages a lot of what's both good and frustrating about that philosopher: Here is the opening bit..

Man himself acts [handelt] through the hand [Hand]; for the hand is, together with the word, the essential distinction of man. Only a being which, like man, "has" the word (μύϑοϛ, λόγος), can and must "have" "the hand." Through the hand occur both prayer and murder, greeting and thanks, oath and signal, and also the "work" of the hand, the "hand-work," and the tool. The handshake seals the covenant. The hand brings about the "work" of destruction. The hand exists as hand only where there is disclosure and concealment. No animal has a hand, and a hand never originates from a paw or a claw or talon. Even the hand of one in desperation (it least of all) is never a talon, with which a person clutches wildly. The hand sprang forth only out of the word and together with the word. Man does not "have" hands, but the hand holds the essence of man, because the word as the essential realm of the hand is the ground of the essence of man. The word as what is inscribed and what appears to the regard is the written word, i.e., script. And the word as script is handwriting.

It is not accidental that modern man writes "with" the typewriter and "dictates" [diktiert] (the same word as "poetize" [Dichten]) "into" a machine. This "history" of the kinds of writing is one of the main reasons for the increasing destruction of the word. The latter no longer comes and goes by means of the writing hand, the properly acting hand, but by means of the mechanical forces it releases. The typewriter tears writing from the essential realm of the hand, i.e., the realm of the word. The word itself turns into something "typed." Where typewriting, on the contrary, is only a transcription and serves to preserve the writing, or turns into print something already written, there it has a proper, though limited, significance. In the time of the first dominance of the typewriter, a letter written on this machine still stood for a breach of good manners. Today, a hand-written letter is an antiquated and undesired thing; it disturbs speed reading. Mechanical writing deprives the hand of its rank in the realm of the written word and degrades the word to a means of communication. In addition, mechanical writing provides this "advantage," that it conceals the handwriting and thereby the character. The typewriter makes everyone look the same....

[Astronaut Omens]

This old Pelican:

has some pieces by the great idiosyncratic essayist-thinkers of that time like Robert Burton and Thomas Browne, but it also has lots of nice pieces which, whilst not always amazing as literature, have a really good time-capsule quality about them, e.g. the explorer Peter Mundy writing about his experience of drinking tea in China:

Chaa, what it is.
The people there give us a certaine Drinke called Chaa, which is only water with a kind of herbe boyled in itt. It must bee Drancke warme and is accompted wholesome..

and a letter by Henry Oxiden defending a neighbour on a charge of witchcraft.

[mothman]

The Penguin Science Fiction Omnibus edited by Brian Aldiss, pub. 1974.



My earliest exposure to "hard" (classic) SF. So many good stories. Sadly the only ebook available is a later reprint which omits some stories and replaces them with newer ones.

Command Performance by Walter M Miller
Sole Solution by Eric Frank Russell
The Snowball Effect by Katherine MacLean
Track 12 by J G Ballard
Lot by Ward Moore
The Short Short Story of Mankind by John Steinbeck
Skirmish by Clifford Simak
Grandpa by James H Schmitz
The Half Pair by Bertram Chandler
Nightfall by Isaac Asimov
The End of Summer by Algis Budrys
Poor Little Warrior by Brian Aldiss
The Monkey Wrench by Gordon R Dickson
The First Men by Howard Fast
Counterfeit by Alan E Nourse
The Greater Thing by Tom Godwin
Build Up Logically by Howard Schoenfeld
The Liberation of Earth by William Tenn
An Alien Agony by Harry Harrison
The Tunnel Under the World by Frederik Pohl
The Store of the Worlds by Robert Sheckley
Jokester by Isaac Asimov
Pyramid by Robert Abernathy
The Forgotten Enemy by Arthur C Clarke
The Wall Around the World by Theodore Cogswell
Before Eden by Arthur C Clarke
Protected Species by H B Fyfe
The Rescuer by Arthur Porges
I Made You by Walter M Miller Jr.
The Country of the Kind by Damon Knight
MS Found in a Chinese Fortune Cookie by C M Kornbluth
The Cage by A Bertram Chandler
Eastward Ho by William Tenn
The Windows of Heaven by John Brunner
Common Time by James Blish
Fulfilment by A E van Vogt.

[Smeraldina Rima]

The Poorhouse Fugitives: Self-taught poets and poetry in Victorian Britain edited by Brian Maidment (1987)



https://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9780856359705

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction
List of Illustrations


1 CHARTISTS AND RADICALS

Introduction

The Twa Weavers - Alexander Rodger
A Bundle of Truths - Alexander Rodger
Whisperings for the Unwashed - William Thom

Chartist Lyrics

When the World is Burning - Ebenezer Jones
The Gathering of the People - W.J. Linton
The Steam King - E.P. Mead
Labour Song - James Syme
The Song of the Low - Ernest Jones
A Chartist Chorus - Ernest Jones

Just Instinct and Brute Reason - A Manchester Operative
The Black Hole of Calcutta - Ebenezer Elliott
The Press - Ebenezer Elliott
The Awakening of the People - Gerald Massey
Two Chartist Songs - Thomas Cooper

Melodrama, Pathos, and Narrative

Song - Ebenezer Elliott
Revenge - W.J. Linton
The Food-Rioter Banished - William Thom

Historical Narratives

Leawood Hall - Ernest Jones
Bob Thin, or the Poorhouse Fugitive - W.J. Linton

Later Radical Lyrics

Preawd Tum's Prayer - Joseph Ramsbottom
Ten Heawrs a Day - Joseph Ramsbottom
Mother Wept - Joseph Skipsey
The Stars are Twinkling - Joseph Skipsey
Get Up - Joseph Skipsey


2 THE PARNASSIANS

Introduction

Poems of Social Indignation

Steam at Sheffield - Ebenezer Elliott
The Village Patriarch - Ebenezer Elliott
The Death of the Factory Child - J.C. Prince
Patriotism - George Richardson

Philosophical, Discursive and Historical Poems

The Mind - Charles Swain
Night - Thomas Cleaver
The Purgatory of Suicides - Thomas Cooper
The Isles of Britain - Elijah Ridings

'Such Gems as Morland Drew'

A Spring Song - John Bethune
Summer Morning - Thomas Miller
My Own Hills - Robert Story
The Mossy Stane - Robert Nicoll
My Latest Publication - Edward Capern

The City Observed, the City Repressed

A Winter Night in Manchester - Philip Connell
Manchester - J.B. Rogerson
The Lowly Bard - Fanny Forrester
The City Singers - J.L. Owen
Salford Bridge - William Billington

Dedicatory, Celebratory, and Memorial Poems

The Poet's Corner - Alexander Wilson
Robin Burns - Gerald Massey
Gerald Massey - William Billington
To the Memory of William Billington - George Hull
To the Memory of Ebenezer Elliott - Richard Furness

Genius and Intemperance

The Sabbath Peal - Thomas Nicholson
John Barleycorn's Diary - Cornelius McManus
Genius and Intemperance - John Nicholson

The Subject of Poetry

The Minstrel's Lot - J B Rogerson
The Poesy - J.C. Prince
The Poet's Sabbath - J.C. Prince
The Poet's Mission - Ernest Jones
Sonnet to Poesy - James Waddington
Genius - James Waddington
The Brooklet - Joseph Skipsey
The Minstrel - Joseph Skipsey
Random Thoughts on Poetry - J.C. Prince
Preface - Gerald Massey
The Uses and Pleasures of Poetry for the Working Classes - Janet Hamilton
The Poet, as Seer and Singer - Joseph Skipsey


3 LOWLY BARDS AND HOMELY RHYMERS

Introduction

Poems from 'The People's Journal'

Sonnets - Henry F. Lott
Sonnets - Henry F. Lott
My Friend's Library - Henry F. Lott
The November Primrose - John Dacres Devlin
Fellow Workers - 'Marie'
Heroisms - 'Marie'
Labour - 'Marie'
The People's Sabbath Prayer - Ebenezer Elliott
The Dream of the Artisan - G.R. Emerson

'We Are Low' Poems

We Are Lowly - Robert Nicoll
We May Be Low, We May Be Poor - Thomas Blackah

Lancashire Bards

Homely Rhymes on Bad Times - Samuel Bamford
The Bard's Reformation - Samuel Bamford
Farewell to My Cottage - Samuel Bamford
The Landowner - Samuel Bamford
Simple Minstrelsy - Elijah Ridings
My Uncle Tum - Elijah Ridings
Cultivate Your Men - Edwin Waugh
The Man of the Time - Edwin Waugh
I've Worn My Bits o'Shoon Away - Edwin Waugh
Homely advoice to th' Unemployed - Samuel Laycock
The Shurat Weaver's Song - Samuel Laycock
Bowton's Yard - Samuel Laycock
What! Another Cracked Poet - Samuel Laycock
Sorrowin - Joseph Ramsbottom
Coaxin - Joseph Ramsbottom

Some Other Local Bards

Rhymes for the Times - Janet Hamilton
A Warkin' Mon's Reflections - Janet Hamilton
The People - Thomas Ince
A Workman's Home - Thomas Ince
The Factory Girl - Bill o'th Hoylus End
A Labourer's Song - James Dawson
A Song of Labour - Alexander Anderson
The Toiler's Wife - George Hull


4 THE METROPLITAN RESPONSE TO SELF-TAUGHT WRITING

Introduction

English Bards and Scotch Reviewers - Lord Byron
Burns - Thomas Carlyle
Lives and Works of our Unlettered Poets - Robert Southey
The Pursuit of Knowledge Under Difficulties - G.L. Craik
Corn Law Rhymes - Thomas Carlyle
Ebenezer Elliott - George Gilfillan
The Condition of the Working Class In England - Friedrich Engels
Homes and Haunts of the British Poets - William Howitt
Burns and his School - Charles Kingsley
Review of Evans's Lancashire Orators - Anon.
The Influence of Poetry on the Working Classes - F.W. Robertson
A Biographical Sketch of Gerald Massey - (Samuel Smiles)
A Hedge-side Poet - Diane Mulock
The Peerage of Poverty - Edwin Paxton Hood


5 THE DIFFICULTIES OF APPEARING IN PRINT

Introduction

Journals - John Clare
The Difficulties of Appearing in Print - Charles Fleming
Alton Locke - Charles Kingsley
The Poet's Dream - Elijah Ridings
Prefaces and letters - J.C. Prince
A Sketch of the Author's Life - William Heaton
Advertisement to Poems of John Nicholson - W. Dearden
Preface to Beggar Manuscripts - Thomas Ince
Unpublished letters to Edwin Waugh - Various authors


6 THE DEFENCE OF THE DIALECT

Introduction

North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell

Goosegrave Penny Readings - Ben Brierley
Writing in the Dialect - Joseph Ramsbottom
The Lancashire Dialect - Ben Brierley
Introduction Essay on Dialect - George Milner
The Dialect in Distress - Joseph Cronshaw

Suggested Further Reading
Index of Authors Represented

A review from 1988: