About : Brandon Cummerbund is an Edwardian wag, gastronome, gargler and semi-retired topiarist whose salutary tales, bizarre friends and chaotic household have entertained those in the Twitterverse for, ooh … more than a year. He can be followed at twitter.com/CummerbundEsq and his tweets are regular herded onto http://russbravo.wordpress.com
Cummerbundery Vol 1: The Collected Tweets of Brandon Cummerbund provides a brief introduction to the considered work, breakfasts and nonsense of this eccentric gent. Enjoy. His agent, the Rt Hon Russ Bravo, may be contacted for speaking engagements at the above blog.
May Newsletter | Proboscis [...] Cummerbundery Volume 1: The Collected Tweets of Brandon Cummerbund by Russ Bravo http://diffusion.org.uk/?p=1870 Granville Arcade: empty spaces and meeting places… Comment posted on 5-20-2010 at 09:08
Selected and Introduced for Short Work by Stephen Bury, Head of European and American Collections at the British Library
Thomas Carlyle, ‘Hudson’s Statue’ in Latter-day Pamphlets (1850)
The writer and historian, Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), is an acquired taste – Pursewarden, in Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet (1962), described his work as “haggis of the mind”. Nor have Carlyle’s ideas on democracy endeared him to the 20th and 21st centuries.
‘Hudson’s Statue’, dated 1st July 1850, is the seventh in the series, Latter-day Pamphlets. George Hudson was a railway speculator – the ‘Railway King’ – and Carlyle uses the proposal to make a statue of him as the armature of a pamphlet that explores whom his contemporaries think are heroic, and therefore worthy of worship. As Hudson’s speculative empire burst in 1849, the statue was never built, but this does not stop Carlyle making it into a – literally – obscene reality, and which he remorselessly uses to examine mid-nineteenth century England.
Today, when there are doubts about the USA prescribing one-man one-vote democracy for all cultures, we can begin to see some point in Carlyle’s caustic rant. And at a time we hero-worship minor celebrities or make proposals for the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, ‘Hudson’s Statue’ can be usefully – if not pleasurably – re-read. Are we any less gullible than those Englishmen who subscribed £25,000 to erect a statue in honour of this speculator and scoundrel?
The only reference that the modern reader might struggle with is Daniel Lambert (1770-1809), a Leicestershire man, who became notoriously fat and charged admission for the public to see him.
About : The Rake’s Progress follows Tom Rakewell as wealthy merchant’s son in his downward spiral from young man of fashion to gambler, drunk, debtor and lunatic.
William Hogarth (1697-1764) was one of England’s foremost artists working as a painter, printmaker and engraver. His work is probably best known for its social commentary and satiric look on British social and cultural mores on the mid 1700s.
First Published June 1735
Public Domain version sourced from Project Gutenberg
About : The Harlot’s Progress describes the path of Moll Hackabout from country innocent newly arrived in London to prostitute, prison inmate, mother and finally victim of venereal disease.
William Hogarth (1697-1764) was one of England’s foremost artists working as a painter, printmaker and engraver. His work is probably best known for its social commentary and satiric look on British social and cultural mores on the mid 1700s.
First Published April 1732
Public Domain version sourced from Project Gutenberg
Arrey Mbongaya Ivo Hogarth's satire is very relevant today. Poverty has embedded prostitution and propelled prostitutes on an onward march towards destruction… Comment posted on 8-17-2008 at 18:21
About : Industry and Idleness contrasts two apprentices, one who’s hard work leads him to a life of wealth and power; the other whose idleness drives him to criminality and execution.
William Hogarth (1697-1764) was one of England’s foremost artists working as a painter, printmaker and engraver. His work is probably best known for its social commentary and satiric look on British social and cultural mores on the mid 1700s.
First Published June 1735
Public Domain version sourced from Project Gutenberg
Short Work consists of public domain texts sourced from Project Gutenberg re-published as Diffusion eBooks. As the title suggests, each is a short work of fiction, poetry or prose intended to be enjoyed in those frequent moments of inbetween-ness that punctuate modern life. The initial selection includes works of satire, experimental writing and poetry chosen for their continuing power to affect the way we see the world.
Update (13/04/2008) : We’ve invited several friends and collaborators to choose their own public domain texts to re-publish as Diffusion eBooks which we’ll be posting every month or so. Today we’ve added the first of these, selected and introduced by technology critic and journalist Bill Thompson, who has chosen Three Essays by Samuel Johnson.
About : 36 short stories in Saki’s final collection to be published before the First World War and his death. Each story, in one way or another, turns on the presence or role of an animal and its relationship to the humans in the narrative, acutely dissecting their foibles and pretensions.
First Published in 1914 by John Lane, The Bodley Head
Public Domain Text from Project Gutenberg
Saki (Hector Hugh Munro) was born in 1870 and killed by a sniper’s bullet in 1916. His acerbic and macabre short stories lampoon and satirise the mores of upper and middle class Edwardian British society.
About : A Modest Proposal For Preventing The Children Of Poor People In Ireland Being A Burden To Their Parents Or Country, And For Making Them Beneficial To The Public – Swift’s biting satire on social inequality and the political expediency of charity and the Poor Laws.
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[...] off is “Cummerbundery Volume 1: The Collected Tweets Of Brandon Cummerbund” by Russ Bravo, an eBook compiling various tweets…
Comment posted on 10-7-2010 at 09:12
[...] Cummerbundery Volume 1: The Collected Tweets of Brandon Cummerbund by Russ Bravo http://diffusion.org.uk/?p=1870 Granville Arcade: empty spaces and meeting places…
Comment posted on 5-20-2010 at 09:08