Authors Electric

Julia Jones’s moving post of 9th January  about discovering long lost letters between her mother and grandmother came into my mind recently as I, too, sat down to look through some family memorabilia.  Wonderfully silly visual joke from Kate Corner's scrapbook. Opening an enormous, scruffy, leather-bound scrapbook dating from 1855, I was stunned. I can’t even remember what I expected: some dull, holy verses extolling faith and humility, a few cut-outs depicting blowsy roses, nature walks described in spidery handwriting, that sort of thing… Caricature from Kate Corner's scrapbook. Instead, a wealth of well-drawn caricatures greeted my eyes, some wonderfully silly visual jokes... ... and two beautifully and comically illustrated invitations, framed as the planned outings of an exclusive club called the Fraternitye of Noviomagians.  Noviomagus Anniversary Meeting 1st July 1856. By George Godwin. Soberer items appeared in between: many carefully scrawled poems I haven’...

London coffee-house 1674 ‘On the first day of this month, I met Mr Hooke at Child’s coffee house in St Paul’s Churchyard after he had addressed the new Philosophical club within the Royal Society. We stayed until 11 pm, eating meat and drinking chocolate.' (1 January, 1676) From  John Aubrey My Own Life by Ruth Scurr . I challenge anyone to find a better way of spending New Year’s Day. It has everything: a lecture from one of the founding fathers of modern physics, an evening spent in conversation with the great man, sustenance – how well-cooked isn’t mentioned, but the dinner sounds solid enough – accompanied by, oh joy, a steady supply of hot chocolate. Somehow this last detail sharpens the immediacy of the scene (though that may say more about the place of chocolate in my own life than in John Aubrey’s or Robert Hooke’s). I belong to a very small book group. There are three of us. So disorganised are we that managing four meetings a year is good going; agreeing ...