Tuesday, March 6, 2012

A Year of Dickens: His Best Never-Used Titles

Today's edition of Shelf Awareness for Readers had the following Dickens-related story in it today and I couldn't resist sharing!
The fake library of Charles Dickens. According to Lists of Note, in 1851 Charles Dickens decided to fill two spaces in the study of his new house "with bookcases containing fake books, the witty titles of which he had invented. And so, on October 22nd, he wrote to a bookbinder named Thomas Robert Eeles and supplied him with the following 'list of imitation book-backs' to be produced."
My favorite is probably the first one, History of a Short Chancery Suit, but I also love Drowsy's Recollections of Nothing. 3 vols and Munchausen's Modern Miracles. 4 vols. And now that I've looked up "Hansard", I absolutely love Hansard's Guide to Refreshing Sleep. As many volumes as possible.


From Wikipedia --
Hansard is the name of the printed transcripts of parliamentary debates in the Westminster system of government. It is named after Thomas Curson Hansard, an early printer and publisher of these transcripts.
Having a chuckle,
K

5 comments:

  1. My husband could use that volume of Hansard's Guide to Refreshing Sleep! Thanks for sharing this fun bit of trivia - makes me smile.

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  2. Those are hilarious! I love the Virtues of Cold Tar and Bowwowdom. :)

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  3. There are so many DWJ that I am completely unaware of, and this is one of them. I'm happy I have such a huge backlist to dabble in, though :-)

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  4. Haha. Love it. When I was in law school I always fell asleep reading my caselaw textbooks. I'm sure parlimentary proceedings are about the same.

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