Originally published on The Dabbler in April 2012 - centenary month of the sinking of the Titanic - this long read analysis by literary professor and blogger Mark Richardson on a poem that dips into deep and strange waters to quite astonishing effect, is worth a repeat... Thomas Hardy first published The Convergence of the ... Read More...
Resuming our 1p Book Review feature, guest contributor and longtime Dabbler reader Joey Denham recommends a recent anti-western novel... Occasionally I’ll pick up a book because of its cover. It’s only natural. I did this a few years ago with Patrick deWitt’s The Sisters Brothers (2011), and again later with The Flame Alphabet (2012) by ... Read More...
Ever wondered why Americans have an enormous family turkey dinner just before having to do it all over again a few weeks later? Author and historian Peter Firstbrook explains Thanksgiving for a British audience, including why it's so close to Christmas... Today, millions of families throughout the United States will sit down ... Read More...
'Story Of My Life: The Trials and Triumphs of Sandy the Scrapper' was a tale penned for children by Edith Monro Armstrong in 1914, and revised again for publication in 1949. It gives a dog's eye view of Edwardian Canada. Bill Atkinson, who is working on a new edition of ... Read More...
Guest contributor Bill Atkinson shares a tale penned by an Edwardian lady about a little dog. It suggests that 100 years ago they had rather different ideas about what was deemed suitable for children's entertainment... Sandy was the favorite pet of Edith Monro Armstrong (b. 1874, d 1960), an Edwardian lady, Doctor's wife, chatelaine, accomplished ... Read More...
In this exclusive extract from Slightly Foxed's quarterly magazine, Andrew Hall examines the unusual literary career of J.L. Carr, a 'back-bedroom publisher of large maps and small books who, in old age, unexpectedly wrote six novels'... In July 1967 the schoolmaster and part-time novelist J. L. Carr took two years’ leave ... Read More...
In October last year Frank Key posted about the wonderful Puffin book The Pirates' Tale by Janet Aitchison, aged five and a half. He said in the piece: Janet Aitchison will be middle-aged by now... We can only hope she gets in touch if she sees this. And lo! and behold, ... Read More...
Terry Stiastny, a new John Murray author, on a visit to her publisher's historic home... Daylight falls into a below-stairs office at 50 Albemarle Street from an elaborate glass rotunda above. The rotunda has a strange quality: if you stand beneath the highest point of the dome and speak, you hear ... Read More...
Brisbane-based journalist Ben Atherton reveals how Dylan Thomas led him astray... Back in the good old days, when I was trying to get my first job on newspapers, a standard interview question was: "Why do you want to become a journalist?". The standard answer always began with platitudes about an "enjoyment" of ... Read More...
Dabblers will know that Noseybonk applied the principles of gamesmanship to the internet age in his Blogmanship book. From our friends at Slightly Foxed magazine, here's author Andrew Martin on the original 'Upmanship' books of Stephen Potter... I first encountered the work of Stephen Potter in a TV sketch show that conflated the great ... Read More...