A prince that Jane Austen despised was one of her first readers, the New York Times reports: “This month a graduate student working in the Royal Archives in Windsor Castle came across a previously unknown 1811 bill of sale from a London bookseller, charging the Prince Regent 15 shillings for a copy of Sense and Sensibility, Austen’s first novel. Oddly, the transaction took place two days before the book’s first public advertisement — making it what scholars believe to be the first documented sale of an Austen book.”
Michael Dirda recommends Wilkie Collins’s detective novel The Moonstone: “Published 150 years ago on July 16, 1868, in three volumes by Tinsley Brothers of London, Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone has been called, by T.S. Eliot no less, ‘the first, the longest and the best of modern English detective novels.’ But is it, in fact, the best? While I could argue for the greater merits of, say, Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles or Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, I wouldn’t do so with a whole lot of passion or conviction. The Moonstone is brilliantly constructed—no one can match Collins (1824-1889) for an intricately orchestrated plot—and perfect for a long summer holiday. Still, to enjoy it fully, you need to surrender to a slower narrative rhythm than you might be used to.”
The Atlantic reports on a new way to see distant planets.
The Trotskyite in the Gulag: “Varlam Shalamov’s short stories of life in the Soviet Gulag leave an impression of ice-sharp precision, vividness and lucidity, as though the world is being viewed through a high-resolution lens. His subject matter, as well as his complete lack of sentimentality, means that much of what is brought into focus is horrifying or pitiful.”
Rome’s subway expansion keeps digging up ancient treasure: “‘I found some gold rings. I found glasswork laminated in gold depicting a Roman god, some amphoras,’ says Gilberto Pagani, a bulldozer operator at the Amba Aradam metro stop, currently under construction not far from the Colosseum.”
A Reader Recommends: Our second reader recommendation (look for one every Wednesday) comes from Natalie Tyler. She writes: “I highly recommend the two independent but complementary novels by Evan Connell: Mrs. Bridge and Mr. Bridge. They are written in brief yet powerful vignettes that accumulate to present a powerful portrait of how lives can be filled with vacancy…I would recommend that you start with Mrs. Bridge, which was written and published a year before Mr. Bridge. I think that they are among the best-wrought works of the 20th century.”
Essay of the Day:
While we need a new appreciation of free speech in American society, what we also need, Ann Hartle argues, is a proper understanding of civility:
“Over the past few decades, we have heard repeated calls for greater civility in our public life. At the same time, the demand for greater civility is often exposed as the mask for an attempt to silence one’s opponents and to shut down free speech. Both things are true: civility has declined, and in some cases accusing one’s opponent of incivility is a way to silence him.
“Attempts to reconcile the practice of civility with the right of free speech increasingly lead in fact to restrictions on speech that are supposed to protect everyone—or at least certain groups—from being offended. This is especially so on college campuses. Precisely where one might expect the greatest freedom of speech, ‘safe spaces’ and ‘trigger warnings’ are now the norm.
“The conflict between civility and free speech cannot be resolved by any code of conduct or speech. The clash of my right to free speech and your right not to be offended leads to an impasse that is impossible to resolve on the level of rights. The impasse reveals our confusion over what civility is and what it is not. Civility is not a code of conduct but a virtue, a moral character that cannot be reduced to rules.
“If we wish to understand what civility is, we need to see it in its origins, its emergence as a new moral character at the beginning of the modern era. This character was first given expression in the Essays of Michel de Montaigne. Civility is actually the overcoming of the will to power, the natural desire to dominate others, not a mask for covering over that natural political attitude. Without civility, there is only the will to power. And in order for civility to exist, there must be something higher, more important, than politics.”
Photo: Gaztelugatxe (Read about this island in the Basque Country and view more photos here)
Poem: Mike Aquilina, “Callistus I”
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