Patrick Leary @patrickleary.bsky.social · 27/09/2026Interesting, I'd like to see that. Ten years earlier, in his memoir, he mentions meeting John Lane and reels off the names of the Yellow Book's contributors, but contends, oddly, that all periods of English literature, including the '90s', are somehow the same. 021
Patrick Leary @patrickleary.bsky.social · 21/09/2026I'm so sorry for your loss, Rebecca. This is our beloved Bean (at right) with her best buddy, Abi. They met up for playdates every week. Both are gone now, but they made us, and each other, very happy for a long time. 161
Patrick Leary @patrickleary.bsky.social · 06/09/2026Our Iga's constant companion is called Snuggle... 120
Patrick Leary @patrickleary.bsky.social · 06/09/2026Well, as you’re kind enough to ask…here she is with her best pal, Snuggle. 000
Patrick Leary @patrickleary.bsky.social · 01/09/2026Peter Coviello in The Defector, courtesy of Rusty Foster: defector.com/dolly-joseph... 051
Patrick Leary @patrickleary.bsky.social · 24/08/2026Palm Springs, first visit there and everywhere I turned the sky was doing something awe-inspiring. 260
Patrick Leary @patrickleary.bsky.social · 21/08/2026OK, my pick would be the chapter on "Authorship" that Andrew Nash and I wrote for Vol. 6 of the Cambridge History of the Book in Britain. Ran into Andrew in London earlier this year and we agreed to feel pretty good about that one. 3130
Patrick Leary @patrickleary.bsky.social · 27/07/2026Who can forget this scene from The Hound of the Baskervilles? I can, and did. With thanks to the amazing @arkhamlibrarian.bsky.social for another pulp take on a Victorian classic! 1193
Patrick Leary @patrickleary.bsky.social · 24/07/2026They’ve still got quite a ways to go, as you know, but it’s a start! 120
Patrick Leary @patrickleary.bsky.social · 23/07/2026So happy to be in Dublin for this year’s @rs4vp.org meeting. Here posing with Sir Isaac amid the empty shelving of the soon to be renovated Old Library…and searching in vain for someone to explain to me why the letter J is missing from all the shelves. #RSVP2026 4254
Patrick Leary @patrickleary.bsky.social · 17/07/2026I’m more or less particular about my particulates, and these have been particularly unwelcome. 0101
Patrick Leary @patrickleary.bsky.social · 04/04/2026A curious bookshop find: a 1915 edition of Alice in Wonderland with a promotional tie-in to the silent movie starring Viola Savoy. It’s illustrated with stills from the film. 2140
Patrick Leary @patrickleary.bsky.social · 02/04/2026Jane Eyre reimagined in Classics Illustrated #39 (1947), cover by Harley Griffiths. There's just something about these 1940s-50s pulp and comic-book remediations of 19th-c. texts... 6307
Patrick Leary @patrickleary.bsky.social · 28/03/2026Here is @bushraamiwala.bsky.social firing up the crowd at Wilmette’s No Kings rally. #nokings #nokingswilmette 0223
Patrick Leary @patrickleary.bsky.social · 10/03/2026The humbug list is so interesting! The Claimant had been released from prison that same year, so perhaps the press's rehashing of the case helped to boost his numbers in the poll. Wilde had appeared in the center of Frith's RA painting in 1883: upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co... 030
Patrick Leary @patrickleary.bsky.social · 02/03/2026News of the imminent demise of the mass market paperback has sent my thoughts back to some of the more luridly packaged “classics” of my youth. 1327
Patrick Leary @patrickleary.bsky.social · 03/02/2026That’s so interesting. It reminds me of the way William Heinemann, in the following century, would sometimes include an extra spine label tipped in at the back for when the original one wore off. Here’s a copy of Max Berbohm’s AND EVEN NOW with what booksellers call the “spare label.” 110
Patrick Leary @patrickleary.bsky.social · 25/01/2026That's so interesting. Of course he had been in the public eye for well over 20 years at that point, and the frequent subject of the kind of celebrity interviews ("authors at home" etc.) that had become all the rage. Still, the difference from all the other prominent journalists is surprising. 130
Patrick Leary @patrickleary.bsky.social · 09/01/2026Thanks for this. I’m reminded that even in older movies glasses could be important signifiers. Mary (Donna Reed) doesn’t need glasses in Bedford Falls, but in the dystopian world of Pottersville she’s consigned to a bespectacled life as the old maid librarian. 130
Patrick Leary @patrickleary.bsky.social · 06/01/2026The wonderful scholar Brian Maidment, who died last year, wrote a very shrewd analysis of this caricature in his _Comedy, Caricature, and the Social Order, 1820-1850_, as well as in his definitive biography of Robert Seymour, the artist. Brian also chose it for the cover--it's irresistible. 2102
Patrick Leary @patrickleary.bsky.social · 28/12/2025When I heard Lydia give a talk about this at the 25th anniversary NAVSA conference in Bloomington a couple of years ago, I'd just been reading Morley's life of Richard Cobden, and this passage struck me as a good example of personal grief translated into political activism. 020
Patrick Leary @patrickleary.bsky.social · 10/12/2025Although Shirley Brooks of the Punch staff was a Tory he admired Mill's stance on female suffrage, and at Brooks's suggestion John Tenniel drew this mildly satiricial cartoon that appeared in the number for 30 March 1867. babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc... 062
Patrick Leary @patrickleary.bsky.social · 27/11/2025British newspapers of the period didn't carry front-page headlines in the modern sense, but individual articles did often have upper-case headings, and a quick search of the British Newspaper Archive turns up a lot of headings like this one from the Edinburgh Evening News of 2 June 1884 010
Patrick Leary @patrickleary.bsky.social · 26/10/2025I saw this sign today at a mall in Skokie, Illinois, listing prohibited behaviors. All seemed more or less OK til I got to #9: “Free speech activity not authorized in advance.” Shove it, Westfield Old Orchard. We won’t be asking your permission for “free speech activity.” 151
Patrick Leary @patrickleary.bsky.social · 19/10/2025Favorite sign at Wilmette, Illinois No Kings rally today: “If Kamala had won we’d all be at brunch right now.” 080
Patrick Leary @patrickleary.bsky.social · 19/10/2025Wilmette, Illinois on No Kings day — a righteously angry but joyful crowd of America-lovers. 041
Patrick Leary @patrickleary.bsky.social · 01/10/2025So sorry to hear that Jane Goodall has died. She was just here in Chicago for the “Becoming Jane” exhibit at the Field. I treasure the memory of meeting her in 1971, after a lecture she gave; she was kindly, I was in awe. Lately I learned that she’s the heroine of several kids’ books, & rightly so. 0130
Patrick Leary @patrickleary.bsky.social · 27/08/2025Lord Houghton's reminiscence (ca. 1879) about the Courvoisier execution in 1840. Interesting, but not surprising, that Thackeray omitted this rhyming song from his magnificent essay in Fraser's Mag. about what he called "the sickening, ghastly wicked scene": "Going to See a Man Hanged." #victorian 030
Patrick Leary @patrickleary.bsky.social · 19/08/2025How about the second stanza of Clive James's imperishable "The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered," with its happy phrase "the Edsels of the world of moveable type"? The whole poem would be great fun, of course, but a stanza would fit nicely on one smallish card. 030
Patrick Leary @patrickleary.bsky.social · 28/07/2025A pleasant Victorianist pastime: zooming in on the faces in Frith's "A Private View of the Royal Academy 1881" to see how many look familiar, then looking up the rest on the key to the painting: upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co... upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co... 1133
Patrick Leary @patrickleary.bsky.social · 25/07/2025Finally, the bringing together of the greatest history *brains* with a boatload of *cash*. Result: The Historians’ History of the World. This news just came my way (via a local bookshop) from Appleton’s Booklovers Magazine, November 1905. I sure hope it’s not too late to place my order. 2205
Patrick Leary @patrickleary.bsky.social · 22/07/2025Admiring the pollinator garden outside the local library yesterday I spotted this little guy among the yellow blossoms. Made my day. 2211
Patrick Leary @patrickleary.bsky.social · 12/07/2025Jason Camlot’s fascinating plenary lecture at #rsvp2025 on the figure of voice in C19 periodicals of speech and elocution #victorian #19th-c 0130
Patrick Leary @patrickleary.bsky.social · 12/07/2025Terrific panel on C19 periodical advertising at #rsvp2025. Here’s one of @vjctorianist.bsky.social ‘s slides, showing adverts vs sales in the Northern Star. #19th-c #victorian 0152
Patrick Leary @patrickleary.bsky.social · 30/05/2025A friend of mine is puzzling over this 1855 New York State census listing and I'm at a loss. The listed occupation appears to be "Phintion," which makes no sense to either of us, but we can't think of an alternative reading. Any ideas? 520
Patrick Leary @patrickleary.bsky.social · 30/05/2025One of the fundraising emails in my inbox today nicely illustrates, on its subject line, how typos can matter. Do better, Democratic Party of Illinois. 040
Patrick Leary @patrickleary.bsky.social · 26/05/2025With dear friend Rushmore DeNooyer at our 50th Brown University reunion this weekend. Such a moving experience. 040