The academics are off campus now until September/October, when Sam&Sam plan a new marketing storm in their direction, so we are concentrating on selling boxes of six copies to more bookshops. If you know any near you who might be candidates, please contact me through my website, http://www.patrickmiles.co.uk. After that, we must seriously tackle the U.S. market, which has huge potential, of course. (American followers and viewers, you can always buy the book online through http://www.samandsam.co.uk.)
Our other top priority is getting the new book, What Can We Hope For? (see my last diary post), to Amazon by 22 July, so that we can submit copies to reviewers in the last week of August and bring it out on 16 October, John Polkinghorne’s eighty-ninth birthday. Sam2 is just completing the typesetting, using a new programme, and though I say it myself we have two cracking alternative covers for buyers to choose from.
Altogether, I think now is the time to stop posting personal views or diary items for a while and present some solid research that has emerged from the publication of my biography of George Calderon on 7 September last year.
To be more precise, it is research that has emerged from Michael Pursglove’s essay on my book that appeared in the New Year issue of East-West Review (see quotation and link below) and from a subsequent email correspondence between us.
In the first post, Michael Pursglove himself will present his research on the ‘mysterious’ Mrs Rochelle Townsend, who produced wildly popular translations of Russian classics in the first quarter of the twentieth century but like all too many translators has dropped out of cultural history. I will follow this up with what I think will be the first appraisal of Mrs Townsend’s 1914 translation of Uncle Vanya, of which I’ve acquired a copy from the V&A Theatre Museum. After that, I will reveal the identity of the ‘mysterious’ Mrs Shapter (p. 105 of my book) and Professor Rose of Leipzig (p. 426). The first has even led to me to buy some fascinating letters of George’s father, the painter P.H. Calderon, that recently appeared on the market.
I hope Calderonia’s readers will find these visits to Victorian and Edwardian times interesting, and not mind if I keep them up for a few weeks each as we beaver away on the priority activities that I referred to at the beginning of this post. And, as always, do leave a Comment whenever you feel moved to!
SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS
‘The book is written with great assurance and the reader always feels in safe hands. I liked the idea of it being a story and I read it the same way I would read a novel.’ Harvey Pitcher, writer
‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian
‘The effort of detection, it must be said, was worth it. The biography is a delight to read.’ Emeritus Professor Laurence Brockliss, The London Magazine
‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’ Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter
‘This comprehensive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography, which the author describes as a “story” rather than an academic biography…’ Michael Pursglove, East-West Review
‘It is bound to remain the definitive account.’ Laurence Senelick, Fletcher Professor of Drama, Tufts University
‘Presents the Edwardian age, and Calderon in particular, as new and forward-looking.‘ Emeritus Professor Michael Alexander, in Trinity College, Oxford, Report 2017-18
LAURENCE BROCKLISS’s review in The London Magazine appears here.
A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.
A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.
Related
George Calderon c.1901
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Captain of the 11
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
George Calderon, 1912
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
The ‘mystery’ Misses and Misters
The academics are off campus now until September/October, when Sam&Sam plan a new marketing storm in their direction, so we are concentrating on selling boxes of six copies to more bookshops. If you know any near you who might be candidates, please contact me through my website, http://www.patrickmiles.co.uk. After that, we must seriously tackle the U.S. market, which has huge potential, of course. (American followers and viewers, you can always buy the book online through http://www.samandsam.co.uk.)
Our other top priority is getting the new book, What Can We Hope For? (see my last diary post), to Amazon by 22 July, so that we can submit copies to reviewers in the last week of August and bring it out on 16 October, John Polkinghorne’s eighty-ninth birthday. Sam2 is just completing the typesetting, using a new programme, and though I say it myself we have two cracking alternative covers for buyers to choose from.
Altogether, I think now is the time to stop posting personal views or diary items for a while and present some solid research that has emerged from the publication of my biography of George Calderon on 7 September last year.
To be more precise, it is research that has emerged from Michael Pursglove’s essay on my book that appeared in the New Year issue of East-West Review (see quotation and link below) and from a subsequent email correspondence between us.
In the first post, Michael Pursglove himself will present his research on the ‘mysterious’ Mrs Rochelle Townsend, who produced wildly popular translations of Russian classics in the first quarter of the twentieth century but like all too many translators has dropped out of cultural history. I will follow this up with what I think will be the first appraisal of Mrs Townsend’s 1914 translation of Uncle Vanya, of which I’ve acquired a copy from the V&A Theatre Museum. After that, I will reveal the identity of the ‘mysterious’ Mrs Shapter (p. 105 of my book) and Professor Rose of Leipzig (p. 426). The first has even led to me to buy some fascinating letters of George’s father, the painter P.H. Calderon, that recently appeared on the market.
I hope Calderonia’s readers will find these visits to Victorian and Edwardian times interesting, and not mind if I keep them up for a few weeks each as we beaver away on the priority activities that I referred to at the beginning of this post. And, as always, do leave a Comment whenever you feel moved to!
SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS
‘The book is written with great assurance and the reader always feels in safe hands. I liked the idea of it being a story and I read it the same way I would read a novel.’ Harvey Pitcher, writer
‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian
‘The effort of detection, it must be said, was worth it. The biography is a delight to read.’ Emeritus Professor Laurence Brockliss, The London Magazine
‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’ Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter
‘This comprehensive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography, which the author describes as a “story” rather than an academic biography…’ Michael Pursglove, East-West Review
‘It is bound to remain the definitive account.’ Laurence Senelick, Fletcher Professor of Drama, Tufts University
‘Presents the Edwardian age, and Calderon in particular, as new and forward-looking.‘ Emeritus Professor Michael Alexander, in Trinity College, Oxford, Report 2017-18
LAURENCE BROCKLISS’s review in The London Magazine appears here.
A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.
A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.
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