PhilPaine.com

Back in 1987, I read Thomas Bur­nett Swan­n’s Day of the Mino­taur, and enjoyed it, but did not fol­low through with any more of his books until recent weeks. Now, read­ing four more of his nov­els gives me a bet­ter appre­ci­a­tion of this odd fan­ta­sy writer, who descends more from the Pre-Raphaelites, Lord Dun­sany, and James Branch Cabell than the more usu­al fan­ta­sist’s pat­ri­mo­ny of Tolkien and Howard. Read more »

When Wal­ter Scott pub­lished the first of his nov­els, Waver­ley, in 1814, he was already well-known as a poet. The book was so spec­tac­u­lar­ly suc­cess­ful that it launched him on a career as a nov­el­ist known in every cor­ner of the world. His influ­ence in 19th Cen­tu­ry Cana­da, for instance, was such that nobody with pre­ten­tion to edu­ca­tion was with­out a set of “Waver­ley nov­els”. When I worked on var­i­ous Ontario farms, I often saw them in Vic­to­ri­an-era farm­hous­es. I found a com­plete set in a barn, for which I nego­ti­at­ed pay­ment in hay bal­ing. That set (gor­geous­ly bound) is long gone, but now I have anoth­er, acquired in a small Ontario town. Many of the scenes and char­ac­ters of Scot­t’s nov­els are pre­served in Toron­to street names. Any­one famil­iar with Cana­di­an his­to­ry knows that in the 19th Cen­tu­ry, its lit­er­ary icons were, in descend­ing order of impor­tance: the Bible, Rob­by Burns*, Shake­speare, Scott, and Dick­ens. Read more »

19235. (James Boswell) Boswell’s Lon­don Jour­nal, 1762–1763 [ed. F. A. Pot­tle]
19236. (Eric Lin­klater) White-Maa’s Saga
19237. [2] (Charles Dar­win) The Ori­gin of Species by Means of Nat­ur­al Selec­tion
19238. (Steve King­stone) How Pres­i­dent Lula Changed Brazil [arti­cle]
19239. (Isaac White) Review of Scott Pil­grim vs. the World [film review]
19240. (Thomas Bur­nett Swann) The Minikins of Yam
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