Davina Morgan-Witts, BookBrowse editor

Each year, as the holiday season comes around and news becomes thin on the ground, we look back into history for a snapshot of the news in centuries past .....

Literary highlights (from a modern perspective) published in 1908, one hundred years ago, include The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame; War of the Classes and The Iron Heel by Jack London; Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery; The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck by Beatrix Potter; A Modern Utopia and The War in the Air by H G Wells; My Double Life by Sarah Bernhardt; The Man Who Was Thursday and All Things Considered by G K Chesterton;  A Room With a View by E M Forster; Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz by L Frank Baum; and the births of Ian Fleming and Louis L'Amour.  The Nobel Prize for Literature was won by German philosopher Rudolf Christoph Eucken.

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Davina Morgan-Witts, BookBrowse editor

Each year, as the holiday season comes around and news becomes thin on the ground, we look back into history for a snapshot of the news in centuries past. This time we travel to 1808:

In the USA, the Theatre St Philip opened in New Orleans.  In Germany, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe published the first part of Faust. In Britain, the first Royal Opera House in Covent Garden was destroyed by fire and Sir Walter Scott published Marmion, an epic poem about the Battle of Flodden Field.  In France, Francois Marie Charles Fourier (credited by modern scholars with originating the word feminisme) argued in his Theory of the Four Movements that the extension of the liberty of women was the general principle of all social progress, though he disdained 'equal rights'. Followers of Fourier would go on to establish about 30 socialist colonies based on his principles in various parts of the USA.

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Davina Morgan-Witts, BookBrowse editor

Each year, as the holiday season comes around and news becomes thin on the ground, we look back into history for a snapshot of the news in centuries past .....

1708 was a rather dull year for literature, at least from the perspective of modern-day readers looking for works by authors still well known today, but it was an important year for three historians who used their retirement to produce notable works:

The first volume of Theologian Joseph Bingham's 10 volume Antiquities of the Christian Church was published; on its completion in 1722 it provided an exhaustive and methodical account of the antiquities of the Christian Church.

Theater critic and theologian Jeremy Collier published the first volume of his Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain - which, while controversial, became widely used.

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Davina Morgan-Witts, BookBrowse editor

Each year, as the holiday season comes around and the news stories start to dry up, we look back into history for a snapshot of the news in centuries past. This year, we start in 1608 ....

While the early settlers at Jamestown struggled for survival, London was a hive of dramatic endeavor:

Ben Jonson's The Masque of Beauty and The Hue and Cry After Cupid were both published and performed for the first time. Thomas Heywood published The Rape of Lucrece; Thomas Middleton published The Family of Love, A Mad World, My Masters and A Trick to Catch the Old One; and William Shakespeare published King Lear - to name but a few.

Elizabethan dramatist and pamphleteer, Thomas Dekker, was also in fine voice, publishing two tracts: The Dead Term and The Bellman of London; and considering that he claimed credit for 240 plays during his 60-year lifetime, it seems likely that he turned out a few plays as well.

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Guest blogger: Jonathan Evison, author of 'All About Lulu'

For thirteen years I've been stocking the shelves at The Book Cathedral, and it is my love story. You will probably not remember me by my name, but call me Ishmael. Or Tom Jones, or Tom Sawyer, or Elmer Gantry, or McTeague, or The Idiot, if you like. You may not remember me for my wispy hair, or brick-shaped loafers, nor for the wealth of cat hair clinging to the seat of my faded dockers. I distinguish myself by my love of books, and by never using the search function--I've no need of it.

Ask me who's between Allende and Sherwood Anderson, and I shall tell you without pause, Martin Amis, between Sarte and Schulberg, Saunders, and at the end of the line, you'll find Zusak, unless of course we're out, in which case you'll find Zafon. Blindfold me and spin me around in circles, then set me straight and run my fingers down the spines, and I'll tell you when we get to Proust, or the shorter novels of Melville. Ask me where to find Silas Wegg and I shall point you to Dickens. Ask me where is Oskar and I'll tell you he's banging his tin drum between Golding and Graves. And if it's Sancho Panza you're after, you'll find him chasing windmills with Quixote just to the left of Chaucer.

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Davina Morgan-Witts, BookBrowse editor

Booklovers - mark your calendars for the impending arrival of the first novel by a masterful storyteller! Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese will be published in the USA by Knopf in February 3, 2009 and in the UK by Chatto & Windus in April. 

I was fortunate to be given a copy of Cutting For Stone last month and gorged myself on all 534 pages in less than two days.  Since then, I have passed my copy on to two friends (a difficult feat as it took some wrestling to separate the book from the first friend in order to pass it to the second!)

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