Raymond Scott: Artifacts from the Archives

Raymond Scott: Artifacts from the Archives (2017)

Webpage

Another book under copyright but can be legally downloaded.  It's a compilation of material related to Scott's electronic music.  (You know Scott's work even if the name is unfamiliar though mainly from his jazz-pop pieces rather than electronics.)

Uysses

James Joyce - Ulysses (1922)

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Today is Bloomsday so what else could I post?  This is the Egoist Press edition which appeared in October 1922 after Shakespeare & Co's edition that February.  It was printed from the same plates and includes several pages of errata that constitute almost a found poem.

Cultus Arborum

Hargrave Jennings (?) - Cultus Arborum: A Descriptive Account of Phallic Tree Worship (1890)

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Phallic tree worship?  Sure, why not - except this book is mainly a compendium of tree worship and little else.  Even a contemporary notice in the Theosophical Review griped as much ("we fear however that literary incubi will find too much about Tree Worship and too little about Phallicism to delay them long over the present exposition") before it then veers off on its own tangent.

The book was privately published with no author indication but some modern sources claim it was the work of occultist Hargrave Jennings (1817-1890).  This doesn't seem to be a particularly firm attribution but I'll leave it.

The Philosophy of Beards

T. S. Gowing - The Philosophy of Beards (1854)

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If you ever needed a defense of beards complete with a brief history of them - well here you go.  This traces the wearing of beards from Greece and Assyria up to the then-modern day, apparently missing few opportunities to promote beards.

Despite other sources the date of 1854 seems correct - at least there was a review in the 1854 Living Age.

Gowing is something of a mystery.  He's mentioned several times in connection with the Society of the Arts so was probably a member and he once presented a paper on Suffolk place names so possibly from there.

History of Christian Names

Charlotte Mary Yonge - History of Christian Names (1863)

Archive.org direct link (1884 revised edition)
Open Library main page

Skimming titles I thought this was religious but here "Christian name" just means first name or given name.  In fact many of these come from decidedly other religious traditions - Jewish, Greek, Norse, Germanic.  It doesn't take the form of a dictionary but groups them into what are considered roots and then described in a more or less narrative fashion.  So "Frey" gets a short history of its origins in Sanskrit and passage into various other languages.  Then into deities, various kings and rulers, some saints and before long we have an assortment of Frederick, Federico, Fritz, Frederica and so on.

It's safe to flag much of this as today not entirely reliable, not only being the product of 19th century philology but from an dedicated, though very well-read, enthusiast.  Parts of it are also clearly speculative.  Still on the whole it's pretty entertaining to read even if quite dense at times.

And if nothing else the glossary at the start will provide lots of names for your fantasy novel - Monegonde, Helmtac, Seoin, Valborg.

It won't come as a surprise that Charlotte Mary Yonge (1823-1901) was a novelist, quite popular and prolific but now mostly forgotten.  Little seems to have been reprinted and to get an idea of her story one 1943 biography (the most recent apparently) was subtitled "The History of an Uneventful Life".   Her first biography in 1903 was written by her friend Christabel Rose Coleridge, grand-daughter of Samuel.

A History of Pantomime

R.J. Broadbent - A History of Pantomime (1901)

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I've only read lightly about theatrical and acting history (aside from Elizabethan) but find it interesting because of how spotty and inadequate the records are, to say nothing of the changing terms that make comparisons tricky.  What would we think of David Garrick if we could see him today?  How exactly were classical Greek performances staged?  In any case this book traces pantomime from ancient origins (or at least Greek and Indian origins) up through Romans, mystery plays, the Italians, fairy tale versions and even its appearances in America.

I can find almost nothing about the author except he wrote a couple of other books including Annals of the Liverpool Stage.  This book is referenced in an odd mix of other works such as ones on Lewis Theobald, Busby Berkeley and religious performances.

Dreams from Beyond

Julie Novakova - Dreams from Beyond: Anthology of Czech Speculative Fiction (2016)

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Here's another book that's not public domain but is free to download.  SF from outside the Anglo-American tradition is slowly becoming more available in English translation and even reaching wider audiences.  (President Obama read Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem.)   I haven't read this one yet but it's loaded on my e-reader and looks promising.