- In The Chronicle Review, Thomas Bartlett explores the ongoing controversy over the Gospel of Judas, which was released last year to much fanfare. I guess I've missed most of the kerfluffle that's gone on since the original publication of the National Geographic translation, so this is a good way to catch up.
- Over at BookN3rd, Laura has a must-read post on gender and the rare book world, where she comments on the role of men and women in the biblio-community. Also quite a few excellent links.
- I watched a "Nova" episode ("Lord of the Ants") yesterday profiling one of my favorite authors ever, Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson. If you have a chance to see this show, do watch.
- Michael at Book Patrol notes that the Morgan Library will be displaying its three copies of the Gutenberg Bible simultaneously, through 28 September.
- Everyone else who blogs about books has already mentioned Robert Darnton's NYRB essay in the current issue; I hadn't yet simply because I haven't had a chance to read the whole thing. I will, and I think I'll have more to say about it once I have - I'm not sure I entirely agree with him so far.
- Travis posts another comment-rant he received recently, this one from a friend of the Brubakers.
- The folks at Houghton report that they've acquired a copy of the anonymous 1821 translation of Faust which some believe was translated by Coleridge.
- J.L. Bell had a useful Google Books moment the other day, discovering some mentions of Bartholomew Broaders, who played a bit-part in the Boston Massacre.
- BibliOdyssey's got a great miscellany up this week: images include Sri Lankan fish from an 1834 monograph, some drawings by Cruikshank and some early political cartoons, and a couple amazing Swammerdam engravings.
- The AP's Justin Pope interviews James Cuno, author of the forthcoming ("already controversial") book Who Owns Antiquity? Museums and the Battle for Our Ancient Heritage. One I'll have to read, sounds like.
Reviews
- This was the week for reviews of Simon Winchester's new book, The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom (HarperCollins). Here are a few: Washington Post, Boston Globe, Salon, The Inquirer.
- Alberto Manguel's The Library at Night was reviewed by Philip Hensher for The Telegraph. My review is forthcoming, I'm (finally!) reading the book now.
- Rick Ring reviews Richard Wendorf's beautifully-designed and excellently-written America's Membership Libraries.
- In the TLS, James Gould reviews Built by Animals: The Natural History of Animal Architecture.
Showing posts with label Coleridge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Coleridge. Show all posts
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Quick Links
Just to clear out my inbox a bit, a few things that have come through so far this week:
- The BL is hosting a conference regarding library security on 20 May sponsored by the Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche/Association of European Research Libraries (LIBER). "The aim of this conference is to share information on market intelligence, technology watch, trend analysis and research into collection security. It will provide a forum to share experience in managing risks to library collections, investigating incidents and preventing loss. International speakers from law enforcement organisations and national libraries as well as leading academics have been invited." Program and registration information here.
- The Friends of Coleridge have set up a site to document the ongoing debate over the attribution to Coleridge of an 1821 translation of Faust. This will be very useful; I'll check in often.
- Everett Wilkie noted on Ex-Libris yesterday this article about the new Pennsylvania State Library facility. He writes "One interesting aspect of the new library is that they seemed to have banned traditional writing instruments entirely from the reading room" (the article says "No pens or pencils are allowed here, lest graphite dust and stray ink mar its treasures. Instead, patrons can use laptop computers to take notes"). Not allowing even pencils is a step that I know of no other library taking (if there are others, I'd love to hear of them). Everyone's just supposed to have a laptop now? Of course it's entirely possible the author misunderstood the policy (she notes elsewhere in the piece that Franklin's "kite-and-key" experiment "resulted in the discovery of electricity", which is, of course, not the case).
- Paul van den Brink reports on MapHist that the Leiden Archives have digitized their Toonneel des Aerdrycks, ofte Nieuwe Atlas of 1659 (by Blaeu). Another very "high tech" viewer, but if the images will load on your computer it looks excellent. The website text is in Dutch.
- The BL is hosting a conference regarding library security on 20 May sponsored by the Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche/Association of European Research Libraries (LIBER). "The aim of this conference is to share information on market intelligence, technology watch, trend analysis and research into collection security. It will provide a forum to share experience in managing risks to library collections, investigating incidents and preventing loss. International speakers from law enforcement organisations and national libraries as well as leading academics have been invited." Program and registration information here.
- The Friends of Coleridge have set up a site to document the ongoing debate over the attribution to Coleridge of an 1821 translation of Faust. This will be very useful; I'll check in often.
- Everett Wilkie noted on Ex-Libris yesterday this article about the new Pennsylvania State Library facility. He writes "One interesting aspect of the new library is that they seemed to have banned traditional writing instruments entirely from the reading room" (the article says "No pens or pencils are allowed here, lest graphite dust and stray ink mar its treasures. Instead, patrons can use laptop computers to take notes"). Not allowing even pencils is a step that I know of no other library taking (if there are others, I'd love to hear of them). Everyone's just supposed to have a laptop now? Of course it's entirely possible the author misunderstood the policy (she notes elsewhere in the piece that Franklin's "kite-and-key" experiment "resulted in the discovery of electricity", which is, of course, not the case).
- Paul van den Brink reports on MapHist that the Leiden Archives have digitized their Toonneel des Aerdrycks, ofte Nieuwe Atlas of 1659 (by Blaeu). Another very "high tech" viewer, but if the images will load on your computer it looks excellent. The website text is in Dutch.
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Faustus Editor Responds
Frederick Burwick, one of the editors of Faustus, From the German of Goethe, Translated by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, has responded to my post regarding a review essay [PDF] critical of the attribution. Please see his comments here.
Monday, March 03, 2008
Scholars Urge Caution on Coleridge Attribution
In last weekend's links and reviews post I noted the TLS review of a new Oxford University Press edition of an 1821 translation of Goethe's Faustus, which has been attributed by Frederick Burwick and James C. McKusick to Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Not so fast, say Roger Paulin, William St Clair and Elinor Shaffer, who have rushed a 35-page review essay [PDF] into publication via the Institute of English Studies at the University of London's School of Advanced Study.
Paulin, St Clair and Shaffer take strong exception to the presentation of the volume as "containing a work of Coleridge not previously accepted as such. ... The attribution of Faustus to Coleridge is presented ... not as a hypothesis but as established fact. Nowhere in this volume is any indication given that the question is an open one, a decision that raises the scholarly stakes. If the attribution of the translation can be validated, the republication of Faustus would indeed be a major event. On the other hand, if Faustus is not a translation made by Coleridge, or is not likely to have been made by Coleridge, in whole or in part, then it is not only the reputation of the volume's editors that is hazarded but those of the managers, the academic advisers, and the Delegates of Oxford University Press who decided that it deserved to be published in the uncompromising form in which it has now appeared."
The team walks us through the entire "contemporaneous biographical documentary record" using transcriptions of letters between Coleridge and the publishers Boosey and Sons, the firm by which the Faustus edition in question was first published. From the correspondence they conclude, as they note previous scholars have also done: "The sequence seems clear. Booseys, who had heard that Coleridge had once intended to translate of Faust [sic] ... approached him with a proposal; Coleridge declined the invitation; Booseys thanked him and turned elsewhere, picking up some of Coleridge's suggestions. ... The conjecture [made by Burwick and McKusick] requires that, after the completed exchanges with Booseys in May 1820, there was another exchange, or series of exchanges, that are unrecorded. The conjecture requires that Coleridge changed his mind, took an initiative, decided to break an agreement that he had made in 1814 with the publisher Murray, went back to Booseys, and despite his earlier indignant protests that he would never accept anonymous subliterary jobbing work, and that he would never bargain, he nevertheless negotiated a publishing agreement. ... The conjecture also requires that Coleridge, a writer well known for his table talk and loose tongue, acted so far out of character that he never permitted a hint of his involvement with Faustus to pass his lips. Indeed it requires that he misled his closest friends over the remainder of his life." Well when you put it like that ...
The review essay includes several items of correspondence which appear rather damaging to the editors' claims if taken at face value. A letter from Maria Gisborne recording a 25 June 1820 visit with Coleridge reads in part "He should like to translate the Faust, but he thinks that there are parts which could not be endured in english and by the English, and he does not like to attempt it with the necessity of the smallest mutilation." And, the team notes, "For their conjecture to be sustained, Burwick and McKusick have to disregard or overturn explicit denials made by Coleridge near the end of his life" ("I need not tell you, that I never put pen to paper as translator of Faust," he said on 16 February 1833). A series of correspondence from Boosey and Sons to Goethe (through an intermediary) regarding the translation and publication of his works and some accompanying engravings fails entirely to mention Coleridge.
Another section of the review essay takes up the question of the engravings which appeared in the Boosey and Sons volume, reproductions of those done by Henry Moses in 1820. They take issue with the way the images have been portrayed by Burwick and McKusick - arguing, and fairly so in my view, that rather than seeing the engravings as simple illustrations to a printed text, it was the text which "presented itself as a piece of subliterary work that was a useful ancillary to the engravings." Burwick and McKusick have, they argue, "forced a modest text that was commissioned, designed, and manufactured to accompany an art publication into the conventions of a literary text with inserted illustrations."
But that's not all. Paulin, St Clair and Shaffer also claim that Burwick and McKusick have cherry-picked evidence from contemporary reviews to support their hypothesis - and the evidence for this is remarkably clear (see pp. 24-27).
The authors conclude their essay by suggesting several possible sources for the translation, including George Soane (who has been the accepted translator for quite some time), and by noting flatly "The case that Faustus is a work by Coleridge has not been made. The conclusion of the predecessors of Burwick and McKusick, who went over the ground with the information available in 1947 and decided that the piece was not written by him, has not been overturned. Indeed, the large amount of more recent research, and the new archival, unnoticed and other information that we ourselves have added, makes the attribution even less plausible." They suggest that the volume "could have been presented as a matter on which questions of attribution are more open - entitled, for example, 'Goethe's Faust: Translations, prefaces, engravings, analyses, and other writings associated with the early reception of Goethe's Faust into English.' ... As it is, with Faustus, From the German of Goethe, Translated by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, potential purchasers and readers should be warned. This volume is not what it appears to be. Nor is it consistent with the normal standards of Oxford University Press. We suggest that [OUP] should consider amending their website or including a reference to this review article."
The current OUP web-catalog text certainly doesn't leave any room for the reasonable doubt which I think has been inserted into the debate: "The major work of German literature, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust (1808), was translated into English by one of Britain's most capable mediators of German literature and philosophy, Samuel Taylor Coleridge." Not being by any stretch a Coleridge scholar, I don't have a dog in this fight - but I think the review essay does raise extremely serious questions about the attribution that I hope Burwick and McKusick (as well as OUP) will see fit to answer.
[Update: Please see Frederick's Burwick's reponse to this post in the comments]
Paulin, St Clair and Shaffer take strong exception to the presentation of the volume as "containing a work of Coleridge not previously accepted as such. ... The attribution of Faustus to Coleridge is presented ... not as a hypothesis but as established fact. Nowhere in this volume is any indication given that the question is an open one, a decision that raises the scholarly stakes. If the attribution of the translation can be validated, the republication of Faustus would indeed be a major event. On the other hand, if Faustus is not a translation made by Coleridge, or is not likely to have been made by Coleridge, in whole or in part, then it is not only the reputation of the volume's editors that is hazarded but those of the managers, the academic advisers, and the Delegates of Oxford University Press who decided that it deserved to be published in the uncompromising form in which it has now appeared."
The team walks us through the entire "contemporaneous biographical documentary record" using transcriptions of letters between Coleridge and the publishers Boosey and Sons, the firm by which the Faustus edition in question was first published. From the correspondence they conclude, as they note previous scholars have also done: "The sequence seems clear. Booseys, who had heard that Coleridge had once intended to translate of Faust [sic] ... approached him with a proposal; Coleridge declined the invitation; Booseys thanked him and turned elsewhere, picking up some of Coleridge's suggestions. ... The conjecture [made by Burwick and McKusick] requires that, after the completed exchanges with Booseys in May 1820, there was another exchange, or series of exchanges, that are unrecorded. The conjecture requires that Coleridge changed his mind, took an initiative, decided to break an agreement that he had made in 1814 with the publisher Murray, went back to Booseys, and despite his earlier indignant protests that he would never accept anonymous subliterary jobbing work, and that he would never bargain, he nevertheless negotiated a publishing agreement. ... The conjecture also requires that Coleridge, a writer well known for his table talk and loose tongue, acted so far out of character that he never permitted a hint of his involvement with Faustus to pass his lips. Indeed it requires that he misled his closest friends over the remainder of his life." Well when you put it like that ...
The review essay includes several items of correspondence which appear rather damaging to the editors' claims if taken at face value. A letter from Maria Gisborne recording a 25 June 1820 visit with Coleridge reads in part "He should like to translate the Faust, but he thinks that there are parts which could not be endured in english and by the English, and he does not like to attempt it with the necessity of the smallest mutilation." And, the team notes, "For their conjecture to be sustained, Burwick and McKusick have to disregard or overturn explicit denials made by Coleridge near the end of his life" ("I need not tell you, that I never put pen to paper as translator of Faust," he said on 16 February 1833). A series of correspondence from Boosey and Sons to Goethe (through an intermediary) regarding the translation and publication of his works and some accompanying engravings fails entirely to mention Coleridge.
Another section of the review essay takes up the question of the engravings which appeared in the Boosey and Sons volume, reproductions of those done by Henry Moses in 1820. They take issue with the way the images have been portrayed by Burwick and McKusick - arguing, and fairly so in my view, that rather than seeing the engravings as simple illustrations to a printed text, it was the text which "presented itself as a piece of subliterary work that was a useful ancillary to the engravings." Burwick and McKusick have, they argue, "forced a modest text that was commissioned, designed, and manufactured to accompany an art publication into the conventions of a literary text with inserted illustrations."
But that's not all. Paulin, St Clair and Shaffer also claim that Burwick and McKusick have cherry-picked evidence from contemporary reviews to support their hypothesis - and the evidence for this is remarkably clear (see pp. 24-27).
The authors conclude their essay by suggesting several possible sources for the translation, including George Soane (who has been the accepted translator for quite some time), and by noting flatly "The case that Faustus is a work by Coleridge has not been made. The conclusion of the predecessors of Burwick and McKusick, who went over the ground with the information available in 1947 and decided that the piece was not written by him, has not been overturned. Indeed, the large amount of more recent research, and the new archival, unnoticed and other information that we ourselves have added, makes the attribution even less plausible." They suggest that the volume "could have been presented as a matter on which questions of attribution are more open - entitled, for example, 'Goethe's Faust: Translations, prefaces, engravings, analyses, and other writings associated with the early reception of Goethe's Faust into English.' ... As it is, with Faustus, From the German of Goethe, Translated by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, potential purchasers and readers should be warned. This volume is not what it appears to be. Nor is it consistent with the normal standards of Oxford University Press. We suggest that [OUP] should consider amending their website or including a reference to this review article."
The current OUP web-catalog text certainly doesn't leave any room for the reasonable doubt which I think has been inserted into the debate: "The major work of German literature, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust (1808), was translated into English by one of Britain's most capable mediators of German literature and philosophy, Samuel Taylor Coleridge." Not being by any stretch a Coleridge scholar, I don't have a dog in this fight - but I think the review essay does raise extremely serious questions about the attribution that I hope Burwick and McKusick (as well as OUP) will see fit to answer.
[Update: Please see Frederick's Burwick's reponse to this post in the comments]
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Links & Reviews
Some weeks are full of noteworthy biblio-news. This was one.
- Ed Koster, the owner of David's Books (Ann Arbor, MI) has been charged along with three other men in a "book-selling scheme that involved hundreds of stolen textbooks from a nearby store." Police say Koster provided a "shopping list" of medical textbooks to be nabbed from Ulrich's Bookstore and several other local shops near the University of Michigan; the three suspects then allegedly stole the books and sold them to Koster "for cash to feed a heroin habit.""Koster, an Ann Arbor resident, faces up to 10 years in prison and/or a $25,000 fine if convicted. The others face the same potential sentences, along with a possible five-year prison sentence and/or $10,000 fine for the retail fraud charges." (h/t Shelf:Life)
- Travis comments on the charges brought against Mariners' Museum curator Lester Weber and his wife, Lori Child. Two posts: here and here.
- Simon Charles of the EEBO Text Creation Partnership reports that the partnership (between the Universities of Oxford and Michigan) is "is planning to extend its existing work to transcribe another 50,000 texts to add to the 25,000 full, searchable texts that will be online by next year." He writes: " In order to develop funding applications, the Oxford team of the EEBO-TCP is putting together a body of evidence to present to various funding bodies in the UK to demonstrate the importance of the full-text resource to the academic community. If you would like to show your support for these funding applications, please tell us whether you think the availability of additional texts would benefit the research community. Have you found the full texts useful in your work, in teaching or in research? Have you used them for any publications or projects? We are interested in how the EEBO full texts enrich the learning and research experience and would like to hear the views of users of the texts at all stages of study." Statements can be submitted here.
- At long last, Google Books has announced a feature by which users can flag unreadable pages. Dan Abbe reports "You'll now find a link next to all book pages on Google Book Search which allows you to submit an unreadable page to our team for review. There's no need to fill anything out – when you click this link, we'll detect the issue with the page you're looking at and get on the case." (h/t Dan Cohen)
- fade theory reports that Wayne Wiegand has received a fellowship to write A People’s History of the American Public Library, 1850-2000. Excellent news: good works on library history are few and far between.
- The Chicago Tribune notes that a "6-foot-high, 150-pound contemporary sculpture" known as Umanita (which has been in place outside the Newberry Library since 2005) was stolen last weekend. Police are investigating. (h/t NIUSC&RB)
- Scott Brown notes that Tim Toone's collection of 553 Harry Potter books (including translations into 63 languages) will sell in several lots at Bloomsbury on 28 February. More on Toone's collection here. Scott also has some thoughts on Ken Karmiole's shop in Santa Monica, CA, which he got to visit while in LA for the fair there. Ken's one of my favorite dealers to visit with at the Boston fair every year: great to talk to, excellent stock - a credit to the book-world. Scott also requests help in identifying a childrens' book artist, so contact him if you recognize the illustrations here.
- And one more Scott Brown bulletin: he has word that Quill and Brush has released a catalog [PDF] of some of the Rolland Comstock books they acquired after the collector's murder (which remains unsolved). The catalog includes an introduction by Nick Basbanes, who calls Comstock "easily one of the most unforgettable bibliophiles I have ever had the good fortune to meet."
- A copy of the death warrant for Mary, Queen of Scots will remain in England after the library of the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth Palace mustered up £72,485 in grants and donations to prevent its export. A private buyer had applied for permission to export the document in November, but was blocked by the government. Lambeth Palace librarian Richard Palmer said "The library is delighted to have played its part in saving this document for the nation. The warrant is now reunited with the papers with which it belongs and accessible for the benefit of all."
- Fragments of what is believed to be the "earliest dated Christian literary manuscript have been found at Deir al-Surian, an ancient monastery in the Egyptian desert," The Art Newspaper reports. The pieces are from the final page of "a codex written in Syriac (an Eastern Aramaic language) which was acquired by the British Museum library in the 19th century [ADD 12-150]." The document is a list of early Christian martyrs in Persia, and was written by a scribe in Edessa (in what is now Turkey). These new fragments were discovered along with hundreds of others "under a collapsed floor of a ninth-century tower." Much more background here. The Independent also wrote up the find this week, calling the fragments "the world's oldest missing page."
- The Philadelphia Bulletin profiles Katy Rawdon, archivist at the Barnes Foundation, which was founded in 1922 to "promote the advancement of education and the appreciation of the fine arts."
- Rick Ring made a fabulous find in the stacks this week, discovering some volumes of Romeyn Beck Hough's The American Woods, a thirteen-volume compilation "designed to contain specimens (in transverse, radial, and tangential sections) of all the native and naturalized species of woods in the united States and Canada." He also links to a digital version of Hough's work hosted by North Carolina State University.
- Ian Kahn has a first dispatch and a second dispatch from the Greenwich Village Book Fair ... more to come, surely.
- The Guardian profiles Colin St. John Wilson, the architect of the new British Library building, who died last year. (h/t Iconic Books)
- Edinburgh-based publisher Itchy Coo (how about that for a name?) wants to translate the Harry Potter canon into the Scots dialect, according to a report in The Scotsman. J.K. Rowling "has not yet been approached for the go-ahead."
- The Times prints an extract from Frances Wilson's The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth, to be published in the UK by Faber & Faber in March.
- Staff at the the New York Public Library have started a blog. I've added a link. (h/t Jessamyn West)
Reviews
- In the TLS Kelly Grovier reviews a new edition of an 1821 edition of Goethe's Faust, published anonymously but now attributed to Samuel Taylor Coleridge by scholars Frederick Burwick and James C. McKusick (building off a case begun by Paul Zall in the 1970s). A fascinating backstory to this one.
- In the Boston Globe, Michael Kenney has a joint review of Edward Lengel's new edition of This Glorious Struggle: George Washington's Revolutionary War Letters and Mark Puls' Henry Knox: Visionary General of the American Revolution. J.L. Bell add his comments to Kenney's review here. I'm anxious to read both of these books.
- Richard Cox comments on another new title I'm keen to read as well: Bill Hayes' The Anatomist: A True Story of Gray’s Anatomy. Cox writes "Those interested in archives will be interested in the book because of the author’s exploration into the modest amount of material left behind by Gray contrasted with the extraordinary evidence about Gray in the extensive pile of letters and diaries provided by [H.V.] Carter [Gray's illustrator]. As it turns out, Carter’s archives have been little tapped by historians of medicine and other scholars, and Hayes provides considerable commentary on his observations about the nature of diary writing."
- Stacy Schiff reviews Jerome Charyn's Johnny One-Eye for the New York Times, concluding "Charyn hasn’t woven a taut narrative from a lurching plot. What he has done is to create a rollicking tale in which — true to the dictates of the genre [the picaresque] — our hapless rogue makes good."
- In the Washington Post, Thomas Ryan reviews How the South Could Have Won the Civil War, a new alternative history by Bevin Alexander. From the review, this sounds more like a paean to Stonewall Jackson than anything else, and this sentence is enough to keep me away from the book: "Alexander's opinions are firmly stated, but his assertions are not always well documented."
- Also in the Post, Stephen Budiansky reviews Drew Gilpin Faust's This Republic of Suffering, which has become a minor sensation as a scholarly book which seems to be selling well.
- For the Boston Glode, Matthew Price reviews Joseph Wheelan's Mr. Adams' Last Crusade, about JQA's post-presidential career in the House.
- Nick Basbanes' new collection of essays, Editions and Impressions, is reviewed by Martin Rubin in the LATimes. Rubin enjoyed the book: "The essays are radiant with [Basbanes'] joy in discovering and exploring the byways of the book world. And what a world it is, full of fascinating characters and interesting tales, which Basbanes, with his experience covering 'every imaginable kind of story as a newspaper reporter,' is perfectly fitted to evoke."
- In The Scotsman, Emma Crichton-Miller reviews Peter Ackroyd's Poe: A Life Cut Short.
- Marjorie Kehe reviews Thomas DeWolf's Inheriting the Trade for the Christian Science Monitor. DeWolf's relative James was "the head of the most successful slave-trading family in American history," and features prominently in Marcus Rediker's recent The Slave Ship. DeWolf's book complements a recent documentary film, "Tracing the Trade," made by another family member.
- Ed Koster, the owner of David's Books (Ann Arbor, MI) has been charged along with three other men in a "book-selling scheme that involved hundreds of stolen textbooks from a nearby store." Police say Koster provided a "shopping list" of medical textbooks to be nabbed from Ulrich's Bookstore and several other local shops near the University of Michigan; the three suspects then allegedly stole the books and sold them to Koster "for cash to feed a heroin habit.""Koster, an Ann Arbor resident, faces up to 10 years in prison and/or a $25,000 fine if convicted. The others face the same potential sentences, along with a possible five-year prison sentence and/or $10,000 fine for the retail fraud charges." (h/t Shelf:Life)
- Travis comments on the charges brought against Mariners' Museum curator Lester Weber and his wife, Lori Child. Two posts: here and here.
- Simon Charles of the EEBO Text Creation Partnership reports that the partnership (between the Universities of Oxford and Michigan) is "is planning to extend its existing work to transcribe another 50,000 texts to add to the 25,000 full, searchable texts that will be online by next year." He writes: " In order to develop funding applications, the Oxford team of the EEBO-TCP is putting together a body of evidence to present to various funding bodies in the UK to demonstrate the importance of the full-text resource to the academic community. If you would like to show your support for these funding applications, please tell us whether you think the availability of additional texts would benefit the research community. Have you found the full texts useful in your work, in teaching or in research? Have you used them for any publications or projects? We are interested in how the EEBO full texts enrich the learning and research experience and would like to hear the views of users of the texts at all stages of study." Statements can be submitted here.
- At long last, Google Books has announced a feature by which users can flag unreadable pages. Dan Abbe reports "You'll now find a link next to all book pages on Google Book Search which allows you to submit an unreadable page to our team for review. There's no need to fill anything out – when you click this link, we'll detect the issue with the page you're looking at and get on the case." (h/t Dan Cohen)
- fade theory reports that Wayne Wiegand has received a fellowship to write A People’s History of the American Public Library, 1850-2000. Excellent news: good works on library history are few and far between.
- The Chicago Tribune notes that a "6-foot-high, 150-pound contemporary sculpture" known as Umanita (which has been in place outside the Newberry Library since 2005) was stolen last weekend. Police are investigating. (h/t NIUSC&RB)
- Scott Brown notes that Tim Toone's collection of 553 Harry Potter books (including translations into 63 languages) will sell in several lots at Bloomsbury on 28 February. More on Toone's collection here. Scott also has some thoughts on Ken Karmiole's shop in Santa Monica, CA, which he got to visit while in LA for the fair there. Ken's one of my favorite dealers to visit with at the Boston fair every year: great to talk to, excellent stock - a credit to the book-world. Scott also requests help in identifying a childrens' book artist, so contact him if you recognize the illustrations here.
- And one more Scott Brown bulletin: he has word that Quill and Brush has released a catalog [PDF] of some of the Rolland Comstock books they acquired after the collector's murder (which remains unsolved). The catalog includes an introduction by Nick Basbanes, who calls Comstock "easily one of the most unforgettable bibliophiles I have ever had the good fortune to meet."
- A copy of the death warrant for Mary, Queen of Scots will remain in England after the library of the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth Palace mustered up £72,485 in grants and donations to prevent its export. A private buyer had applied for permission to export the document in November, but was blocked by the government. Lambeth Palace librarian Richard Palmer said "The library is delighted to have played its part in saving this document for the nation. The warrant is now reunited with the papers with which it belongs and accessible for the benefit of all."
- Fragments of what is believed to be the "earliest dated Christian literary manuscript have been found at Deir al-Surian, an ancient monastery in the Egyptian desert," The Art Newspaper reports. The pieces are from the final page of "a codex written in Syriac (an Eastern Aramaic language) which was acquired by the British Museum library in the 19th century [ADD 12-150]." The document is a list of early Christian martyrs in Persia, and was written by a scribe in Edessa (in what is now Turkey). These new fragments were discovered along with hundreds of others "under a collapsed floor of a ninth-century tower." Much more background here. The Independent also wrote up the find this week, calling the fragments "the world's oldest missing page."
- The Philadelphia Bulletin profiles Katy Rawdon, archivist at the Barnes Foundation, which was founded in 1922 to "promote the advancement of education and the appreciation of the fine arts."
- Rick Ring made a fabulous find in the stacks this week, discovering some volumes of Romeyn Beck Hough's The American Woods, a thirteen-volume compilation "designed to contain specimens (in transverse, radial, and tangential sections) of all the native and naturalized species of woods in the united States and Canada." He also links to a digital version of Hough's work hosted by North Carolina State University.
- Ian Kahn has a first dispatch and a second dispatch from the Greenwich Village Book Fair ... more to come, surely.
- The Guardian profiles Colin St. John Wilson, the architect of the new British Library building, who died last year. (h/t Iconic Books)
- Edinburgh-based publisher Itchy Coo (how about that for a name?) wants to translate the Harry Potter canon into the Scots dialect, according to a report in The Scotsman. J.K. Rowling "has not yet been approached for the go-ahead."
- The Times prints an extract from Frances Wilson's The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth, to be published in the UK by Faber & Faber in March.
- Staff at the the New York Public Library have started a blog. I've added a link. (h/t Jessamyn West)
Reviews
- In the TLS Kelly Grovier reviews a new edition of an 1821 edition of Goethe's Faust, published anonymously but now attributed to Samuel Taylor Coleridge by scholars Frederick Burwick and James C. McKusick (building off a case begun by Paul Zall in the 1970s). A fascinating backstory to this one.
- In the Boston Globe, Michael Kenney has a joint review of Edward Lengel's new edition of This Glorious Struggle: George Washington's Revolutionary War Letters and Mark Puls' Henry Knox: Visionary General of the American Revolution. J.L. Bell add his comments to Kenney's review here. I'm anxious to read both of these books.
- Richard Cox comments on another new title I'm keen to read as well: Bill Hayes' The Anatomist: A True Story of Gray’s Anatomy. Cox writes "Those interested in archives will be interested in the book because of the author’s exploration into the modest amount of material left behind by Gray contrasted with the extraordinary evidence about Gray in the extensive pile of letters and diaries provided by [H.V.] Carter [Gray's illustrator]. As it turns out, Carter’s archives have been little tapped by historians of medicine and other scholars, and Hayes provides considerable commentary on his observations about the nature of diary writing."
- Stacy Schiff reviews Jerome Charyn's Johnny One-Eye for the New York Times, concluding "Charyn hasn’t woven a taut narrative from a lurching plot. What he has done is to create a rollicking tale in which — true to the dictates of the genre [the picaresque] — our hapless rogue makes good."
- In the Washington Post, Thomas Ryan reviews How the South Could Have Won the Civil War, a new alternative history by Bevin Alexander. From the review, this sounds more like a paean to Stonewall Jackson than anything else, and this sentence is enough to keep me away from the book: "Alexander's opinions are firmly stated, but his assertions are not always well documented."
- Also in the Post, Stephen Budiansky reviews Drew Gilpin Faust's This Republic of Suffering, which has become a minor sensation as a scholarly book which seems to be selling well.
- For the Boston Glode, Matthew Price reviews Joseph Wheelan's Mr. Adams' Last Crusade, about JQA's post-presidential career in the House.
- Nick Basbanes' new collection of essays, Editions and Impressions, is reviewed by Martin Rubin in the LATimes. Rubin enjoyed the book: "The essays are radiant with [Basbanes'] joy in discovering and exploring the byways of the book world. And what a world it is, full of fascinating characters and interesting tales, which Basbanes, with his experience covering 'every imaginable kind of story as a newspaper reporter,' is perfectly fitted to evoke."
- In The Scotsman, Emma Crichton-Miller reviews Peter Ackroyd's Poe: A Life Cut Short.
- Marjorie Kehe reviews Thomas DeWolf's Inheriting the Trade for the Christian Science Monitor. DeWolf's relative James was "the head of the most successful slave-trading family in American history," and features prominently in Marcus Rediker's recent The Slave Ship. DeWolf's book complements a recent documentary film, "Tracing the Trade," made by another family member.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Mr. Wordsworth ... in the Kitchen ... with the Butter Knife?
[Note: this is a long post]
There's been an ongoing discussion over on ExLibris lately that prompts this post, which is a short* examination of what seems to be a game of literary "Telephone". The discussion started - I think - with a post about binding errors [update: I'm reminded the original question dealt with what appeared to be an intentional misbinding] and what value (if any) they brought to books. It then slowly morphed into a conversation about shrink-wrapped books, and from there to the difference between "shrink-wrapped" and "unopened" (that is, a book in which the top and fore-edges of the leaves remain connected from where the sheets were folded into gatherings ... not to be confused with "uncut", where the page edges have not been trimmed straight by the binder. See here, the first and second images).
An anecdote, introduced into the thread at this point, starts us on our investigation. Wrote one member (all such of whom shall remain anonymous for our purposes: "There is an amusing story regarding Wordsworth and Coleridge at Dove Cottage which illustrates their different temperaments: Wordsworth was greatly annoyed to see Coleridge opening new books with the butter knife."
Ah, wrote another Ex-Libran "Smiling to think of the scene (was Dorothy in the doorway? - did she take sides? - I don't remember!)." But wait, said a third: "Unless my memory is playing tricks on me, it was Wordsworth, not Coleridge, who sliced open books with a butter knife. I have a feeling that Harriet Martineau may be the source of that story."
My curiosity then piqued (an effect almost unavoidable under the circumstances) I checked a few book indexes from my shelves and then clicked over to Google Books (which, as I think I've said before, I am coming to think of as a sort of "master index" even though it's not there yet). I found a few citations which named Wordsworth the buttered-knife fiend, and passed them on to the list. Not to be countered, however, the original poster who'd pointed the buttered blade at Coleridge replied "The particulars seem fraught with confusion & conflation. It does
appear that SOMEBODY committed the heinous deed, but the doctors disagree." Pasted below were three more citations, all naming Coleridge. And so the project was on. What's the root of this story? How's it gotten so snarled?
Off we go.
From what I've been able to determine so far - and this could change at any moment, mind you - the originator of this story seems to be Thomas De Quincey, who tells it in his The Lake Poets: Wordsworth and Southey (written 1830-40, but to be found in Volume II of The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey, 1889). On page 312 of that volume, De Quincey writes: "[Robert] Southey had particularly elegant habits (Wordsworth called them finical) in the use of books. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was so negligent, and so self-indulgent in the same case, that, as Southey, laughing, expressed it to me some years afterwards ... 'To introduce Wordsworth into one's library is like letting a bear into a tulip garden.'"
De Quincey continues, recounting the tale of the "first exemplification" he had of Wordsworth's 'less than gentle' treatment of books. It was, he writes, "early in my acquaintance with him, and on occasion of a book which (if any could) justified the too summary style of his advances in rifling its charms. On a level with the eye, when sitting at the tea-table in my little cottage at Grasmere, stood the collective works of Edmund Burke. The book was to me an eye-sore and an ear-sore for many a year, in consequence of the cacophonous title lettered by the bookseller upon the back - 'Burke's Works.' I have heard it said, by the way that, Donne's intolerable defect of ear grew out of his own baptismal name, when harnessed to his own surname - John Donne. No man, it was said, who had listened to this hideous jingle from childish years, could fail to have his genius for discord, and the abominable in sound, improved to the utmost. Not less dreadful than John Donne was 'Burke's Works'; which, however, on the old principle, that every day's work is no day's work, continued to annoy me for twenty-one years. Wordsworth took down the volume; unfortunately it was uncut; fortunately, and by a special Providence as to him, it seemed, tea was proceeding at the time. Dry toast required butter; butter required knives; and knives then lay on the table; but sad it was for the virgin purity of Mr. Burke's as yet unsunned pages, that every knife bore upon its blade testimonies of the service it had rendered. Did that stop Wordsworth? Did that cause him to call for another knife? Not at all; he
'Look'd at the knife that caus'd his pain:
And look'd and sigh'd, and look'd and sigh'd again';**
and then, after this momentary tribute to regret, he tore his way into the heart of the volume withis knife, that left its greasy honours behind it upon every page: and are they not there to this day? This personal experience first brought me acquainted with Wordsworth's habits in that particular especially, with his intense impatience for one minute's delay which would have brought a remedy..." De Quincey goes on to say that he'd purchase the Burke volume cheaply and wouldn't have mentioned the incident at all, "only to illustrate the excess of Wordsworth's outrages on books, which made him, in Southey's eyes, a mere monster..."
But what of Coleridge? Ah, De Quincey says in the next paragraph, "has Wordsworth done as Coleridge did, how cheerfully should I have acquiesced in his destruction (such as it was, in a pecuniary sense) of books, as the very highest obligation he could confer. Coleridge often spoiled a book; but, in the course of doing this, he enriched that book with so many and so valuable notes, from such a cornucopia of discursive reading, and such a fusing intellect, commentaries so many-angled and so many-coloured that I have envied many a man whose luck has placed him in the way of such injuries; and that man must have been a churl (though, God knows! too often this churl has existed) who could have found in his heart to complain."
I just couldn't resist quoting that at length; it had to be done. So, now, onward.
In Holbrook Jackson's The Anatomy of Bibliomania (1981, page 423), much of De Quincey's account is quoted verbatim. Heather J. Jackson in Marginalia (2001, page 95) references the same, noting that De Quincey "compares [Wordsworth] unfavorably with Coleridge." The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English (1993, page 781), summarizing De Quincey's work: "Coleridge is shown in all his intellectural grandeur and human weakness: simultaneously the most original English mind of his time and a compulsive plagiarist. Wordsworth's genius is fully honoured, but he is also the proud bibliophobe - sacreligiously cutting open precious pages with a used butter-knife on the kitchen table...".
Not all authors seem to have been so careful in their use of De Quincey, however. In How to Form a Library (1886) Henry Benjamin Wheatley comments (page 53) "Southey cared for his books, but Coleridge would cut the leaves with a butter knife..." Channeling Wheatley to a suspicious degree, Adrian Joline, in The Diversions of a Book-Lover (1903, page 27): "If I am not mistaken, Southey was careful with his books, but Coleridge would cut the leaves with a butter-knife, and De Quincey was merciless toward them." A.J.K. Esdaile, in Autolycus' Pack and Other Light Wares (1969 reprint, page 51), speaking of Samuel Johnson: "Let us trust that he did not, like Coleridge, cut books open at breakfast with the butter knife."
The examples abound, in biographies, newspaper articles, and works of literary criticism. For the most part, they convict Wordsworth; the earliest example I can find which places the blame on Coleridge is Wheatley's 1886 comment. That certainly doesn't mean earlier examples don't exist, just that I haven't come across them. I'd be interested to see other citations, either taking the story back earlier than De Quincey's account (presuming his truthfulness in having witnessed the event, these shouldn't exist), or finding pre-1886 examples naming Coleridge as the butterer (quite possible). I have not yet had a chance to read the newest account of the Wordsworth/Coleridge relationship (Adam Sisman's The Friendship), which may or may not contain this anecdote.
No matter what, this has been a fascinating examination, and it shows, I think, both the power of the new technologies (this little study could not, I suspect, have been done in a single morning to the same degree without Google Books) and the literary knots that exist out there just waiting to be untangled. And so, at long last, I must conclude on De Quincey's evidence, that it was indeed Mr. Wordsworth, in the kitchen, with the butter knife.
* Alright, not-so-short.
** A paraphrase, apparently, from Dryden's "Alexander's Feast".
There's been an ongoing discussion over on ExLibris lately that prompts this post, which is a short* examination of what seems to be a game of literary "Telephone". The discussion started - I think - with a post about binding errors [update: I'm reminded the original question dealt with what appeared to be an intentional misbinding] and what value (if any) they brought to books. It then slowly morphed into a conversation about shrink-wrapped books, and from there to the difference between "shrink-wrapped" and "unopened" (that is, a book in which the top and fore-edges of the leaves remain connected from where the sheets were folded into gatherings ... not to be confused with "uncut", where the page edges have not been trimmed straight by the binder. See here, the first and second images).
An anecdote, introduced into the thread at this point, starts us on our investigation. Wrote one member (all such of whom shall remain anonymous for our purposes: "There is an amusing story regarding Wordsworth and Coleridge at Dove Cottage which illustrates their different temperaments: Wordsworth was greatly annoyed to see Coleridge opening new books with the butter knife."
Ah, wrote another Ex-Libran "Smiling to think of the scene (was Dorothy in the doorway? - did she take sides? - I don't remember!)." But wait, said a third: "Unless my memory is playing tricks on me, it was Wordsworth, not Coleridge, who sliced open books with a butter knife. I have a feeling that Harriet Martineau may be the source of that story."
My curiosity then piqued (an effect almost unavoidable under the circumstances) I checked a few book indexes from my shelves and then clicked over to Google Books (which, as I think I've said before, I am coming to think of as a sort of "master index" even though it's not there yet). I found a few citations which named Wordsworth the buttered-knife fiend, and passed them on to the list. Not to be countered, however, the original poster who'd pointed the buttered blade at Coleridge replied "The particulars seem fraught with confusion & conflation. It does
appear that SOMEBODY committed the heinous deed, but the doctors disagree." Pasted below were three more citations, all naming Coleridge. And so the project was on. What's the root of this story? How's it gotten so snarled?
Off we go.
From what I've been able to determine so far - and this could change at any moment, mind you - the originator of this story seems to be Thomas De Quincey, who tells it in his The Lake Poets: Wordsworth and Southey (written 1830-40, but to be found in Volume II of The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey, 1889). On page 312 of that volume, De Quincey writes: "[Robert] Southey had particularly elegant habits (Wordsworth called them finical) in the use of books. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was so negligent, and so self-indulgent in the same case, that, as Southey, laughing, expressed it to me some years afterwards ... 'To introduce Wordsworth into one's library is like letting a bear into a tulip garden.'"
De Quincey continues, recounting the tale of the "first exemplification" he had of Wordsworth's 'less than gentle' treatment of books. It was, he writes, "early in my acquaintance with him, and on occasion of a book which (if any could) justified the too summary style of his advances in rifling its charms. On a level with the eye, when sitting at the tea-table in my little cottage at Grasmere, stood the collective works of Edmund Burke. The book was to me an eye-sore and an ear-sore for many a year, in consequence of the cacophonous title lettered by the bookseller upon the back - 'Burke's Works.' I have heard it said, by the way that, Donne's intolerable defect of ear grew out of his own baptismal name, when harnessed to his own surname - John Donne. No man, it was said, who had listened to this hideous jingle from childish years, could fail to have his genius for discord, and the abominable in sound, improved to the utmost. Not less dreadful than John Donne was 'Burke's Works'; which, however, on the old principle, that every day's work is no day's work, continued to annoy me for twenty-one years. Wordsworth took down the volume; unfortunately it was uncut; fortunately, and by a special Providence as to him, it seemed, tea was proceeding at the time. Dry toast required butter; butter required knives; and knives then lay on the table; but sad it was for the virgin purity of Mr. Burke's as yet unsunned pages, that every knife bore upon its blade testimonies of the service it had rendered. Did that stop Wordsworth? Did that cause him to call for another knife? Not at all; he
'Look'd at the knife that caus'd his pain:
And look'd and sigh'd, and look'd and sigh'd again';**
and then, after this momentary tribute to regret, he tore his way into the heart of the volume withis knife, that left its greasy honours behind it upon every page: and are they not there to this day? This personal experience first brought me acquainted with Wordsworth's habits in that particular especially, with his intense impatience for one minute's delay which would have brought a remedy..." De Quincey goes on to say that he'd purchase the Burke volume cheaply and wouldn't have mentioned the incident at all, "only to illustrate the excess of Wordsworth's outrages on books, which made him, in Southey's eyes, a mere monster..."
But what of Coleridge? Ah, De Quincey says in the next paragraph, "has Wordsworth done as Coleridge did, how cheerfully should I have acquiesced in his destruction (such as it was, in a pecuniary sense) of books, as the very highest obligation he could confer. Coleridge often spoiled a book; but, in the course of doing this, he enriched that book with so many and so valuable notes, from such a cornucopia of discursive reading, and such a fusing intellect, commentaries so many-angled and so many-coloured that I have envied many a man whose luck has placed him in the way of such injuries; and that man must have been a churl (though, God knows! too often this churl has existed) who could have found in his heart to complain."
I just couldn't resist quoting that at length; it had to be done. So, now, onward.
In Holbrook Jackson's The Anatomy of Bibliomania (1981, page 423), much of De Quincey's account is quoted verbatim. Heather J. Jackson in Marginalia (2001, page 95) references the same, noting that De Quincey "compares [Wordsworth] unfavorably with Coleridge." The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English (1993, page 781), summarizing De Quincey's work: "Coleridge is shown in all his intellectural grandeur and human weakness: simultaneously the most original English mind of his time and a compulsive plagiarist. Wordsworth's genius is fully honoured, but he is also the proud bibliophobe - sacreligiously cutting open precious pages with a used butter-knife on the kitchen table...".
Not all authors seem to have been so careful in their use of De Quincey, however. In How to Form a Library (1886) Henry Benjamin Wheatley comments (page 53) "Southey cared for his books, but Coleridge would cut the leaves with a butter knife..." Channeling Wheatley to a suspicious degree, Adrian Joline, in The Diversions of a Book-Lover (1903, page 27): "If I am not mistaken, Southey was careful with his books, but Coleridge would cut the leaves with a butter-knife, and De Quincey was merciless toward them." A.J.K. Esdaile, in Autolycus' Pack and Other Light Wares (1969 reprint, page 51), speaking of Samuel Johnson: "Let us trust that he did not, like Coleridge, cut books open at breakfast with the butter knife."
The examples abound, in biographies, newspaper articles, and works of literary criticism. For the most part, they convict Wordsworth; the earliest example I can find which places the blame on Coleridge is Wheatley's 1886 comment. That certainly doesn't mean earlier examples don't exist, just that I haven't come across them. I'd be interested to see other citations, either taking the story back earlier than De Quincey's account (presuming his truthfulness in having witnessed the event, these shouldn't exist), or finding pre-1886 examples naming Coleridge as the butterer (quite possible). I have not yet had a chance to read the newest account of the Wordsworth/Coleridge relationship (Adam Sisman's The Friendship), which may or may not contain this anecdote.
No matter what, this has been a fascinating examination, and it shows, I think, both the power of the new technologies (this little study could not, I suspect, have been done in a single morning to the same degree without Google Books) and the literary knots that exist out there just waiting to be untangled. And so, at long last, I must conclude on De Quincey's evidence, that it was indeed Mr. Wordsworth, in the kitchen, with the butter knife.
* Alright, not-so-short.
** A paraphrase, apparently, from Dryden's "Alexander's Feast".
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
New Coleridge Translation Discovered
James McKusick, dean of the University of Montana's Davidson Honors College, believes he's found a previously unknown work by English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge: "a substantial partial verse translation of Goethe's landmark tragic play, Faust, written in 1808." The Montana Forum reports that Coleridge's translation appears to have been made around 1820, and was published anonymously.
McKusick says of his find "Faust is generally agreed to be the greatest dramatic work of its time in any language, and the fact that it is translated in English by one of the leading poets and German translators is intrinsically important because it means this work came into English culture at an important point in the retelling of this legend clothed in the most beautiful language imagined."
The linked article goes into great detail about how McKusick and others have worked for decades to prove that the translation is that of Coleridge. Apparently the "smoking gun" came through the use of "stylometric analysis," in which texts are analysed for word count, use frequency and other stylistic devices that are unique to any author. Seems an interesting little story in and of itself; I'll be surprised if we don't see a book someday about the process.
McKusick's findings will be presented at a conference in California this March, and an edition of the translation (the first attributed) will be printed in September by Oxford University Press. It will be accompanied by "findings and supporting documentation" by McKusick and his research partner, Frederick Burwick.
McKusick says of his find "Faust is generally agreed to be the greatest dramatic work of its time in any language, and the fact that it is translated in English by one of the leading poets and German translators is intrinsically important because it means this work came into English culture at an important point in the retelling of this legend clothed in the most beautiful language imagined."
The linked article goes into great detail about how McKusick and others have worked for decades to prove that the translation is that of Coleridge. Apparently the "smoking gun" came through the use of "stylometric analysis," in which texts are analysed for word count, use frequency and other stylistic devices that are unique to any author. Seems an interesting little story in and of itself; I'll be surprised if we don't see a book someday about the process.
McKusick's findings will be presented at a conference in California this March, and an edition of the translation (the first attributed) will be printed in September by Oxford University Press. It will be accompanied by "findings and supporting documentation" by McKusick and his research partner, Frederick Burwick.
Thursday, August 24, 2006
BL Gets Coleridge Treasure Trove
The Guardian reports that the British Library has acquired an archive of materials relating to poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his extended family, thanks in part to a £250,000 donation from the National Heritage Memorial Fund. The collection, which comprises some 350 bound volumes and another 29 large archive boxes, was previously in private hands.
The article adds that a previously unknown manuscript verse by Coleridge was discovered in the files, as well as "letters, journals and courtroom notes of three generations of Coleridge judges," which offer insight into Victorian-era legal and social circles.
The British Library expects cataloging of the collection will take about a year.
(h/t Bibliophile Bullpen)
The article adds that a previously unknown manuscript verse by Coleridge was discovered in the files, as well as "letters, journals and courtroom notes of three generations of Coleridge judges," which offer insight into Victorian-era legal and social circles.
The British Library expects cataloging of the collection will take about a year.
(h/t Bibliophile Bullpen)
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)