Vote for your favorite mystery author.

The Library of Congress is asking readers to vote for their favorite authors who have attended the National Book Festival in its 10-year history.  Mystery author possibilities include Nevada Barr, Louis Bayard, Laura Lippman, Walter Mosley, and Scott Turow. Diana Gabaldon currently leads in the voting.

This year's festival is scheduled for September 25.

Geoffrey Household this week on BBC Radio 7.

This week on BBC Radio 7, an Englishman takes a potshot at an unnamed dictator (read Hitler) and goes on the run in Geoffrey Household's classic Rogue Male (1939, now back in print from NYRB Classics). Go here for the schedule or to listen; episodes can usually be heard for a week after broadcast.

About the image: Peter O'Toole in Rogue Male (dir. Clive Donner, 1976)

The Ladykillers: Coming up on BBC Radio 7.

An adaptation of the famous Alec Guinness comedy The Ladykillers, in which some eccentric characters masquerading as musicians plan a bank heist, is featured tomorrow on BBC Radio 7 and stars Edward Petherbridge. Go here for the schedule or to listen; episodes can usually be heard for a week after broadcast.

About the image: Alec Guinness in The Ladykillers (dir. Alexander Mackendrick, 1955)

New edition, Georges Simenon's Pedigree.

New York Review of Books Classics has just reissued Pedigree by Georges Simenon, a book based on his childhood in Liège, Belgium, that weighs in at more than 500 pages. Appreciations of Pedigree can be found here and here.

Product of the day: Police line shower curtain.

The police line shower curtain from Kikkerland.

Our Congress at work: Comic books and juvenile delinquency.

The Center for Legislative Archives (part of the National Archives) offers online some covers of comic books that apparently were part of the proceedings of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency in spring 1954.

About the image: Terrors of the Jungle, Sept. 1954, Star Publications.  Center for Legislative Archives, National Archives

Peripatetic remains.

On WSKG's Off the Page, Cornell University emeritus professor Michael Kammen discusses his book Digging Up the Dead: A History of Notable American Reburials, including the fairly well-known cases of John Paul Jones and Edgar Allan Poe, but also mentioning an attempt to steal Abraham Lincoln's remains.

Justice Crater: Disappeared today in 1930.

On August 6, 1930, New York Supreme Court justice Joseph Crater left a Times Square-area restaurant and was never seen again. On its blog, Overlook Press discusses Peter Quinn's new novel The Man Who Never Returned, which sets PI Fintan Dunne on the trail of Crater. This Web page features several stories by the New York Times regarding Crater's disappearance; the film The Judge Steps Out (1949; dir. Boris Ingster) and the CSI: New York episode "The Cost of Living" are both drawn from the case. Crater was declared dead in 1939.

About the image: Gary Sinise in "The Cost of Living," CSI: New York,  2008.

Anthony Horowitz on All Things Considered.

Foyle's War creator Anthony Horowitz talks to All Things Considered about his Alex Rider series and also writes about his recommended thriller: Goldfinger by Ian Fleming.

About the image: More Bloody Horowitz, by Anthony Horowitz, due out in September 2010 (note the portrait of the author in the background).

Radio New Zealand talks to the Kinkster.

Radio New Zealand chats with author, musician, and Texas gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman, who talks about some projects he is doing with Billy Bob Thornton, among other topics. Friedman is currently on tour in California.

On the trail of Sam Spade.

Staff members of the San Francisco Public Library go on the trail of Sam Spade in San Francisco.

P. D. James, John Meade Falkner this week on BBC Radio 7.

This week BBC Radio 7 airs John Meade Falkner's ghostly tale of possession, The Lost Stradivarius (1895), along with various P. D. James works (An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, A Taste for Death). Go here for the schedule or to listen; episodes can usually be heard for a week after broadcast

Happy birthday, Blanche Knopf.

Blanche Knopf, who cofounded the publishing firm named for her husband Alfred in 1915 and worked with writers such as Dashiell Hammett and James M. Cain, was born today in New York City in 1894. John Thornton, who is working on a biography of the Knopfs at UT-Austin, discusses his work here.

Philip K. Dick, neo-Nazis, and the FBI.

The blog Letters of Note features letters from science fiction author Philip K. Dick to the FBI regarding individuals approaching him to place coded messages in his books.

San Francisco mysteries.

The San Francisco History Center has guest edited the July/August issue of the NextReads San Francisco newsletter, listing mysteries set in the city by the bay. (Hat tip to What's on the 6th Floor, which promises future posts on mystery-related topics)

About the image: Scene from Vertigo (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)

An American Writers Museum?

BookTV talks to Malcolm O'Hagan, president of the proposed American Writers Museum that would honor the literary heritage of the United States (let's hope genre fiction authors would be equally recognized).

Bulldog Drummond this week on BBC Radio 7.

Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond, Sapper's adventurous ex-World War I captain, is featured this week on BBC Radio 7, read by Julian Rhind-Tutt (The Heat of the Sun, etc.). Go here for the schedule or to listen; episodes can usually be heard for a week after broadcast.

Rue Nicaise, 1800: The first modern police investigation?

On the Wonders and Marvels blog, Catherine Delors discusses the Rue Nicaise bombing of 1800 that attempted to end the life of Napoleon, stating that it is "considered the first modern police investigation." The case is the basis for Delors's new novel For the King.

About the image: Napoleon at Fontainebleu, ca. 1814. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

"Buchan and Modernity."

On the Great War blog, George Simmers reports on the "Buchan and the Idea of Modernity" conference held at University of London on July 10, which included discussions of the Richard Hannay novels Mr. Standfast (1919) and The Three Hostages (1924) and Buchan as a Scottish writer.  (Go here to see the conference program)

About the image: John Buchan, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Ian Fleming continues to sell well at auction.

The recent healthy prices for the works of Ian Fleming continued at the Sotheby's July 15th English literature auction when a copy of Diamonds Are Forever (1956) went for £1,875 (approximately $2,870).

Other items of interest:
• Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953): £4,000 (approximately $6,123)

• Deck plan of first-class accommodations on the RMS Titanic: £13,750 (approximately $21,050)

The celebrated, signed Beeton's Christmas Annual copy of A Study in Scarlet (1887) by Arthur Conan Doyle—estimated between £250,000 and £400,000 (approximately $383,000 to $612,000)—failed to sell.

(Hat tip to PhiloBiblos)

Noel Coward turns detective this week on BBC Radio 7.

Mad dogs and Englishman detect ... Actor-director-playwright-composer Noel Coward adds investigator to his long resume in Marcy Kahan's Design for Murder this week on BBC Radio 7. Go here for the schedule or to listen; episodes can usually be heard for a week after broadcast.

About the image: Noel Coward in Our Man in Havana (dir. Carol Reed, 1959)

Happy birthday, Joseph Hansen.

Joseph Hansen, creator of groundbreaking gay investigator Dave Brandstetter, was born today in Aberdeen, South Dakota, in 1923. He was nominated for Edgars for "The Anderson Boy" and "McIntyre's Donald," for a Shamus for Gravedigger (1982), and for a Shamus for "Merely Players." He also received the lifetime achievement award from the Private Eye Writers of America and Lambda Literary Awards for A Country of Old Men (1991) and Living Upstairs (1993). Four of his poems were set to music in a piece called Vocalese by composer Richard Rodney Bennett, best known for his scores for Murder on the Orient Express and Four Weddings and a Funeral. Hansen died in 2004.

"almost all the folksay about homosexuality is false. So I had some fun turning cliches and stereotypes on their heads."—Joseph Hansen, qtd. in Contemporary Authors.

The near-detonation of Doctor Doolittle.

Joseph Pugh of the UK's National Archives discusses entertaining aspects of the archives' records relating to film, including an attempt by explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes (a cousin of Ralph) to blow up the set of Doctor Doolittle.

About the image: Rex Harrison, apparently not a favorite of Sir Ranulph Fiennes. Doctor Doolittle, dir. Richard Fleischer, 1967.

Some of the Strand's rare mystery offerings.

Some of the Strand Bookstore's rare mystery-related offerings:

• Edward Gorey, 1st ed., Beastly Baby (1962): $750.

• Mickey Spillane, 1st ed., I, the Jury (1947):  $650.

• Rex Stout, limited ed., Corsage: A Bouquet of Rex Stout and Nero Wolfe (1977, includes article "Why Nero Wolfe Likes Orchids" by "Archie Goodwin" and last interview with Stout): $350.

• Black Mask "forgotten man" Raoul Whitfield, 1st ed., Silver Wings (1930):  $1100.

Graphic arts picks from the Seminary Co-op.

Staff from Chicago's Seminary Co-op Bookstore pick their favorite graphic works (listed here and here), such as Strange Suspense: The Steve Ditko Archives (vol. 1), The Cartoon Introduction to Economics (if only this had been published before I suffered through my micro-macro econ course),  and Donald Westlake's and Darwyn Cooke's Parker: The Hunter. My favorite is Action Philosophers ("Plato! Wrestling Superstar of Ancient Greece!").
(Thanks to UChiBLOGo)

Gorey book reissued.

Today New York Review of Books Classics reissues Three Ladies by the Sea, a collaboration between Edward Gorey and Rhoda Levine that has been out of print since the 1970s. As Goreyana notes, the book is dedicated to Emma Watson (daughter of Julie Andrews) and composer Sandy Wilson (best known for The Boy Friend). NYRB Classics offers a preview of Gorey's drawings for the book here.

Brother Cadfael this week on BBC Radio 7.

Ellis Peters's ex-soldier monk is featured this week on BBC Radio 7, in Light on the Road to Woodstock (drawn from Peters's A Rare Benedictine, 1988, which focuses on what led Brother Cadfael to join the Benedictines). Go here for the schedule or to listen; episodes can usually be heard for a week after broadcast.

Philadelphia bad boy gets his own literary society.

The crusading George Lippard (1822–54), a friend of Edgar Allan Poe and a member of the Philadelphia Gothic school with works such as the best-selling The Quaker City; or, the Monks of Monk Hall (1844), now has his own literary society, thanks to Edward Pettit. (Hat tip to PhiloBiblos. About the image: Author-journalist George Lippard, ca. 1850. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.)

Not much mystery action at June 23rd Bloomsbury auction.

The June 23rd Bloomsbury auction that received press for the lack of interest in some of the Steinbeck items also displayed tepid attention to the mystery-related offerings:

• James Grady signed works, including books from the Condor series (Six Days of the Condor, etc.): Unsold.

• M. R. James, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary: Unsold.

• Ross Macdonald, The Far Side of the Dollar, $300 (valued bet. $1000 and $1500); Sleeping Beauty, $150 (valued bet. $500 and $700) ; proof of The Instant Enemy, with "Boucher" written and circled in red pencil (probably critic-writer Anthony Boucher), $150; Self-Portrait, signed by Macdonald and Eudora Welty, $150.

• Horace McCoy, They Shoot Horses, Don't They? Copy owned by John Dos Passos, valued bet. $1200 and $1800: Unsold.

• Mary Roberts Rinehart, signed card: Unsold.

There was also a completely delightful inscribed copy of Christopher Morley's I Know a Secret for Dorothy Parker, in which Morley drew pixies (valued bet. $1200–1800, unsold).

TLS: Judith Flanders on authors of the first female detectives.

In the June 18 Times Literary Supplement, British novelist and journalist Judith Flanders discusses the first known female fictional detectives, particularly those pertaining to Experiences of a Lady Detective (aka Revelations of a Lady Detective, 1884; attributed to W. S. Hayward, but there is controversy about that); accounts based on the Constance Kent case (most recently the subject of Kate Summerscale's The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher); and a convincing unmasking of the pseudonymous Andrew Forrester Jr. (The Female Detective, ca. 1863). Unfortunately, Flanders's piece only appears to be available in the TLS print edition. Clues 25.1 (2006) and 26.3 (2008) featured articles that discussed Victorian female sleuths; the author of one, Dagni Bredesen of Eastern Illinois University, is working on scholarly editions of The Female Detective and Revelations of a Lady Detective.

Also of interest in the June 18th TLS: Michael Dirda's recollections as an assistant editor of the Washington Post Book World: "Elmore Leonard confessed that he was tired of being asked to review gritty crime novels, so I talked him into writing about the latest Anita Brookner" (16). Readers might also peruse Jonathan Barnes's June 23rd discussion (available online) of Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Creeping Man" (1923), in the context of a review for the 56-volume The Complete Works of Arthur Conan Doyle (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009).

Update: Bredesen's scholarly edition of The Female Detective and Revelations of a Lady Detective has been published under the title The First Female Detectives.

About the image: The Mutiny of the Thunder (1878) by W. S. Hayward, one of the authors discussed in Judith Flanders's June 18th TLS article.

Pamela Branch this week on BBC Radio 7.

On BBC Radio 7 this week, ex-Dr. Who David Tennant reads Pamela Branch's The Wooden Overcoat (1951, rpt. Rue Morgue P, 2006)—where inconvenient bodies litter the Asterisk Club, a home for wrongfully acquitted murderers. Go here for the schedule or to listen; episodes can usually be heard for a week after broadcast.

Hildegarde Withers returns.

Welcome reissues from Rue Morgue Press include The Puzzle of the Silver Persian (1934) by Stuart Palmer, in which Hildegarde Withers, the intrepid schoolteacher-sleuth, encounters murder on a passenger ship. Also out:  The Yellow Violet (1942) by Frances Crane and Corpse Diplomatique (1950) by Delano Ames, not to mention the sorely needed reissues of the works of Manning Coles, such as Drink to Yesterday (1940).

About the image: Edna May Oliver, who played Hildegarde Withers in three films, NYPL.

Philip MacDonald and Patrol; John Buchan and D. H. Lawrence.

On the Great War blog, George Simmers discusses Philip MacDonald's novel Patrol (1927; films 1929, 1934). The talented MacDonald is probably best known for The List of Adrian Messenger (1959, film 1963) and Warrant for X (aka The Nursemaid Who Disappeared, adapted as the film Twenty-Three Paces to Baker Street [dir Henry Hathaway, 1956]).

Simmers follows up this post with speculation on the identity of a character in John Buchan's Richard Hannay novel Mr. Standfast (1919): Could it be a thinly disguised D. H. Lawrence?

About the image: Victor McLaglen in The Lost Patrol (adapted from Philip MacDonald's Patrol, dir. John Ford, 1934)

Wait Wait Don't Tell Me and Jessica Fletcher.

The "Bluff the Listener" segment of the June 26th episode of NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me posited an out-of-control Angela Lansbury in one Cabot Cove, Maine: "She accuses everyone she doesn't like of murder."

The sensational world of Victorian yellowbacks.

The Lazy Scholar peruses some lurid Victorian yellowbacks for our edification (see also some text on and images from these editions designed for the railway reader from a British Library exhibition on Victorian books).

About the image: Cover of Alice Wilde, the Raftsman's Daughter, by Metta Fuller Victor (aka mystery author Seeley Regester). Emory Digital Library.

Robert Louis Stevenson this week on BBC Radio 7; happy birthday, Eric Ambler.

In "The Short History of Gothic" series, BBC Radio 7 is featuring Robert Louis Stevenson's "Markheim" (1885), read by Notting Hill's Hugh Bonneville, in which a thief receives an unsettling surprise. Go here for the schedule or to listen; episodes can usually be heard for a week after broadcast.

Let's also remember that espionage master and screenwriter Eric Ambler (Journey into Fear, A Coffin for Dimitrios, etc.) was born today in London in 1909 and recall Michael Gilbert's words about him in Crime in Good Company: "[Ambler] says that he was an unpleasant child, but produces no evidence of this beyond a single attempt to blow up his own house with nitroglycerin."
About the image: Robert Louis Stevenson, NYPL

Edna St. Vincent Millay's home now open to the public.

As the Albany Times-Union reports, Steepletop (the Austerlitz, NY, home of poet, Provincetown Players member, and Pulitzer Prize recipient Edna St. Vincent Millay) has been opened to the public.

As I noted in my spring 2003 article in Mystery Scene, "'Me and Eddie Poe': Edna St. Vincent Millay's Dips into Mystery," Millay had a short-lived flirtation with mystery stories, including one, "Murder in the Fishing Cat," that eventually was reprinted in EQMM.

About the image: Edna St. Vincent Millay, NYPL

Author portraits at Sotheby's.

Among other results, the June 17th auction at Sotheby's resulted in $5,000 for a signed pen-and-ink portrait of Arthur Conan Doyle;  a whopping $98,500 for an inscribed pen-and ink portrait of F. Scott Fitzgerald; and $2500 for a lot of inscribed British and Irish author portraits, which included G. K. Chesterton and E. Phillips Oppenheim.
About the image: E. Phillips Oppenheim, NYPL

50 Best Summer Reads: Donna Leon, Erin Hart, Lee Child, etc.

The Independent's picks for the 50 Best Summer Reads include Donna Leon, About Face; Erin Hart, False Mermaid; Lee Child, 61 Hours; Michele Giuttari, A Death in Calabria; Harlan Coben, Caught; and Paul van Loon, Alfie the Werewolf.

Graham Greene's picks, neglected books.

The Neglected Books blog discusses Graham Greene's 1940s picks of neglected literary works, which include Arthur Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger adventure The Poison Belt; Roy Horniman's Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal (aka the Alec Guinness film Kind Hearts and Coronets); Conan Doyle brother-in-law E. W. Hornung's Raffles, The Amateur Cracksman; William Babington Maxwell's The Case of Bevan Yorke (Maxwell was the son of Mary Elizabeth Braddon); Arthur Morrison's The Hole in the Wall (Morrison is best known for Martin Hewitt: Investigator and A Child of the Jago); and Anthony Hope's The King's Mirror (Hope is best known for The Prisoner of Zenda).

Sayers, Thurston this week on BBC Radio 7.

This week, BBC Radio 7 continues its salute to Ian Carmichael with Dorothy L. Sayers's Gaudy Night and Busman's Honeymoon. Also this week: Irish-born Katherine Cecil Thurston's espionage novel The Masquerader (aka John Chilcote, 1904), which appeared on US bestseller lists in 1904 and 1905, and was adapted for film in 1933 (starring Ronald Colman). Go here for the schedule or to listen; episodes can usually be heard for a week after broadcast.

About the image: Ronald Colman, NYPL

Unsolved mysteries in Canadian history.

The University of Victoria, the Université de Sherbrooke, and U-Toronto's Ontario Institute for Studies in Education have produced a neat multimedia site, "Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History," including a discussion of the mysterious suicide of Canadian diplomat Herbert Norman in 1957. (Thanks to the AHA blog)

Loot: Inside a US Customs warehouse of stolen antiquities.

The History Blog discusses the New York Post's peek inside a US Customs warehouse that stores stolen antiquities.

A few mystery selections from Monash University.

From recent virtual exhibitions at Monash University in Australia:
• Cover of Inside Detective magazine (ca. 1930s)
• Cover of Thrilling Detective magazine (ca. early 1950s)
• Cover of Mark Gaile's The Skeleton Murders (ca. 1940s)
• Cover of Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Dead Men's Shoes (ca. 1878)
• Cover of Enid Blyton's The Mystery of the Vanished Prince (1954)

About the image: Cartoon of Mary Elizabeth Braddon from Punch, 1881

A virtual tour of Horace Walpole's house.

Yale University's Lewis Walpole Library offers a virtual tour of the house and grounds of Strawberry Hill, the residence of Horace Walpole, who wrote the first gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto (1764). You also can catch the "Horace Walpole and Strawberry Hill" exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum until July 4th.

About the image: Horace Walpole, 4th earl of Orford, NYPL.

Valancourt continues Richard Marsh reissues with The Goddess (1900).

Valancourt Books continues its reissues of the mystery works of The Beetle's Richard Marsh (1857—1915) with The Goddess: A Demon (1900), in which the savage murder of a gambler suggests a supernatural cause. It's edited by Minna Vuohelainen, who published an article in Clues 25.4 (2007) on Marsh's possibly autobiographical prison narrative "For Debt" (1902). Read the sniffy piece "The Yarning School" (The Academy, Nov. 3, 1900), which discusses Marsh's place in the type of literature that "begin[s] a story anywhere and continu[es] without art or insight, but with reckless invention" (423), along with authors such as Fergus Hume (The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, 1886).

Val McDermid, £10, and a mystery bookshop.

The Guardian gives Val McDermid £10 to spend in a mystery bookstore. See Val talk about Agatha Christie; her love for the Penguin green-backed novels; and one of her favorite American mystery writers, Alaska resident John Straley.

Literary groups: Are they popular?

In Dirda's Reading Room, the Washington Post's Michael Dirda inquires about the popularity of literary groups, especially those centered on 19th-century works, mentioning the Jules Verne Society, the Ghost Story Society, and the Baker Street Irregulars (but missing the good folks at Gaslight). Societies such as the American Chesterton Society, which holds an annual conference, also are fairly active.

About the image: Jules Verne, NYPL.

NPR wants your selections of best thrillers.

NPR is asking for reader nominations for the best thrillers, limited to three choices per post. Its definition? "Thrillers are more visceral, more oriented towards action and suspense."
About the image: Richard Hannay (Robert Donat) receives an unpleasant surprise in The 39 Steps (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1935)—which should be on at least a few lists.

Priestley on Dunkirk; Sharan Newman; the Lusitania and the LOC; place and the crime novel.

• J. B. Priestley (playwright, Dangerous Corner, 1932; An Inspector Calls, 1945, among numerous other works) comments on the WWII evacuation from Dunkirk in this June 1940 BBC broadcast.

• Sharan Newman discussed her new nonfiction book The Real History of the End of the World with Fred Stella on Common Threads (part 1 here, part 2 here). 

• This invoice reveals that the Library of Congress ordered, among other items, the Psychical Research Society Journal, which was being shipped via the Lusitania in 1914. (thank you to PhiloBiblos)

• This piece for the Australian Broadcasting Co.'s Book Show discusses the importance of place in the crime novel.

About the image: Alastair Sim in An Inspector Calls (dir. Guy Hamilton, 1954)

Possession at 20.

On Fine Books and Collections, Nicholas Basbanes talks to A. S. Byatt on the 20th anniversary of her literary detection novel Possession.

Lots of mystery goodies this week on BBC Radio 7.

All sorts of mystery goodies this week on BBC Radio 7:

• G. K. Chesterton's wise Father Brown appears in  "The Arrow of Heaven" (from The Incredulity of Father Brown, 1926), "The Mistake of the Machine" (from The Wisdom of Father Brown, 1914), "The Curse of the Golden Cross" (from The Incredulity of Father Brown), "The Actor and the Alibi" (from The Secret of Father Brown, 1927), and "The Absence of Mr. Glass" (from The Wisdom of Father Brown).

• Nuns experience strange passions in the Himalayas in Rumer Godden's Black Narcissus (1939).

• The late Ian Carmichael as Lord Peter Wimsey investigates a corpse in an East Anglian church in Dorothy L. Sayers's The Nine Tailors (1934).

• Young Emil attempts to track down his stolen money in an adaptation of Erich Kästner's Emil and the Detectives (1930).

Go here for the schedule; episodes can usually be heard online for a week after broadcast.

About the image: David Farrar in Black Narcissus (dir. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1947)

A glimpse of Eleanor Taylor Bland.

Libby Fischer Hellman revealed the sad news of the passing at age 65 of Eleanor Taylor Bland, creator of the Marti MacAlister series and a thoroughly delightful person. I remember her well in the early days of Malice Domestic, usually with a grandson in tow and up to some sort of mischief.

In the course of my editing numerous scholarly journals, there was an interview with Eleanor in Storytelling: A Critical Journal of Popular Narrative 5.3 (2006) by Norlisha F. Crawford (University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh). Here are two excerpts:

NFC: Let's talk a little about your work as it fits into the traditions of African American literature.  . . . Is there a conscious nod on your part of the cultural ancestry of the South and values passed on from the South to the North?

ETB:  I think it is just ingrained in what we are and what we do. I really do, as an African American woman, because I am also German, Scot[tish], and Irish. But as an African American woman, those are just my connections. I have never been to Europe; I have been to the South. Those are the people I know.  . . .  I just think it [Southern cultural ways] is just, for me, the norm. This is my environment; this is where I live. If I didn't write it like this, then I couldn't do it; I'd be writing about a white person. That is where we come from; that's our heritage; that is who we are, as black people. I couldn't not do that. (190–91; emphasis in original)

ETB: . . .  I thought about [Rosa Parks] a lot as she was honored with a place in the Rotunda. Can you imagine? She was on the verge of being evicted from the home she rented [in Detroit], at one point [in 1994]. . . . [N]ow, in death, people are honoring her and bringing flowers. Give me my flowers while I am alive.  . . . Honors are nice, but honor your heroes when they are alive and can smell the flowers. When you can see their faces smiling as they enjoy them. (195–96)

Valancourt reissues Sheridan Le Fanu's first novel.

Valancourt Books has reissued Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's The Cock and Anchor (1845), which is, according to Stewart M. Ellis's Mainly Victorian, "an excellent 'costume' romance of old Dublin in the eighteenth century, abounding with exciting adventures, highway robberies, murders, and hair-breadth escapes" (144). Le Fanu (1814–73), famous for his supernatural tales, was the great-nephew of playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan (The School for Scandal, etc.) and, according to the Dictionary of National Biography (1892), was "a man of handsome presence and great charm of manner" (397).

About the image: Title page from Le Fanu's The Cock and Anchor (illus. Brinsley Le Fanu, London: Downey, 1895).

Dracula takes a big bite of cash: Over $63K.

At Bloomsbury's Books and Manuscripts auction on May 27th, a first edition of Bram Stoker's Dracula inscribed to the wife of William Schwenck Gilbert (as in Gilbert and Sullivan) went for approximately $63,637. In addition, a first-edition presentation copy of H. G. Wells's The Time Machine went for approximately $1,226, a 1902 edition of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles was sold for approximately $217, and—perhaps appropriately—a pirated edition of Oscar Wilde's Lord Arthur Savile's Crime reaped a mere $29.

About the image: Frank Langella as Dracula assures us he "love[s] New York. Especially in the evening." I Love New York ad campaign, ca. 1978.

Andrew Lane on a teenaged Sherlock Holmes.

Andrew Lane, who received the blessing of the Conan Doyle estate to write a series with a teenaged Sherlock Holmes, discusses the first book, Death Cloud, in The Scotsman. It will be published this week. (Hat tip to PhiloBiblos)