As nuanced as a dry martini and as evocative as Proust’s madeleine, Joseph Goodrich’s The Paris Manuscript explores the intersection of art, passion, and deception with perceptive elegance. Ned is an old man, who has reluctantly agreed to move in with his daughter’s family. As he begins to clean out his own home, he discovers […]
What I’m Reading at Byrdcliffe: The Paris Manuscript
William Wordsworth might be the English writer most immediately associated with daffodils, but his sister Dorothy is the one who captured the spirit of this year’s daffodils, striving to hold their heads up against wind, rain, and yesterday evening, sleet: I never saw daffodils so beautiful they grew among the mossy stones about & about
Fables and Folk Stories is one of the myriad textbooks produced by Horace E. Scudder in a lengthy and varied literary career. The books is a conventional collection of well-known fairy tales, in keeping with Scudder’s stated pedagogical claim that “As soon as a child has learned to make out simple sentences, the wise teacher
What They Read at Byrdcliffe:Fables and Folk Stories
The weather’s nice enough to start clearing out our beds. IButt’s been a long, chilly, frustrating spring. But there’s nothing like a crocus to remind you that you still don’t miss the city. Then again, you should not forget Florence White’s sage warning in Flowers as Food: Receipts and Lore from Many Sources. (My copy
I’m not sure I’d go quite that far, but another ice storm might push me over the edge. Maria Theresa Earle (8 June 1836 – 27 February 1925)was born as Maria Theresa Villiers and wrote as as Mrs C. W. Earle. She published three Pot-Pourri gardening guides starting in 1897 with Pot-Pourri from a Surrey
Winter Weather Advisory March 25
Jessie L. Weston is now best known for her seminal study From Ritual to Romance, in which she argues that the entire mythos of the Holy Grail is in fact a coded memory of Celtic pagan rituals. Her theory, although largely discredited by academic Arthurian scholars, remains influential to this day. The Byrdcliffe Library contains
What They Read at Byrdcliffe: Jessie L. Weston’s Legends of the Wagner Dramas and Tristan and Iseult
Hervey White is not a man you’d be inclined to trust as a children’s book author. Instead, he was a true maverick, long before founding a colony that bore that name. Although White was one of the original founders of Byrdcliffe, his Maverick Colony broke free almost immediately, in 1905. The name Maverick was derived
What They Read at Byrdcliffe: Noll and the Fairies by Hervey White
So looking forward to reading with these other talented authors. Please come join us! No registration required, if you want to stop by live, but current NYC Covid safety protocols (mask and proof of vaccination) will be enforced.
More Fun Getting Back to LIVE Events
I took a brief detour from transcribing the Byrdcliffe Library’s card catalogue entries to search the Colony’s Guest Register for the names of writers visiting Byrdclffe, in support of an upcoming exhibition sponsored by the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild. As is so often the case when researching old libraries and old archives, I stumbled into a
What They May Have Read at Byrdcliffe — Mystery Edition
Thank you to everyone who has followed my new site! As promised, here’s a new Watson and Doyle story — not to mention a vintage recipe for cranberry aspic, just in time for the holidays!