extravagance
It is awfully silly that anyone should even be able (or allowed!) to halve their bank account in one fell swoop, on account of printed paper, and I really am very embarrassed about how much I just spent...
For I really did spend an awful lot of money this afternoon. An awful lot. A shameful lot. Back when I had the new bathroom installed in my house... well, I can't actually remember quite how much that did cost. But this was certainly in the same order of magnitude. I'll tell you that the last three of the four figures that I paid this afternoon were £500, but the first digit is just too embarrassing to mention.
But, ooh, didn't I do well?!
What I bought this afternoon was a set of six bound folio volumes, covering the first six years (1907-1913) of the 'Votes For Women' newspaper, the principal organ of the suffragette movement. (It did limp on irregularly for another three volumes after these, up to 1918: but, when the war came, the campaign got largely put to one side in the national interest, so it's these earlier volumes that contain all the stuff that actually matters).
This stuff is exceedingly rare, and hugely collectable. Which is reasonable enough, and not only because -- aside from the occasional important article -- none of it has ever been reprinted. But reflect for a moment on just how staggeringly significant this thing is, from an historical point of view. We are, after all, talking about the principal document that charted the transition of more than half of the population into citizenship -- that's surely got to be significant, if anything is! Indeed, I recently noticed that someone or other had compiled a list of the 200 most significant publications of all time, and this was in the list, alongside the Gutenberg Bible, Shakespeare's first folio, and Newton's Principia. And I spotted a couple of individual weekly issues on eBay recently, and each one of those went for more than £100 on its own. And now I have an unbroken run of, what, about three hundred such issues!
Hey, other people will buy things like cars: the gift that continues to take, take, take, what with cost of fuel and tax and whatnot. And people seem to regard that as natural: sure, you'll spend thousands of pounds on a car, and then throw it in a ditch. Me, I'm perfectly happy to ride a bicycle, so that I can then buy books, which will then give, give, give, as I actually get to work on reading them.
For I really did spend an awful lot of money this afternoon. An awful lot. A shameful lot. Back when I had the new bathroom installed in my house... well, I can't actually remember quite how much that did cost. But this was certainly in the same order of magnitude. I'll tell you that the last three of the four figures that I paid this afternoon were £500, but the first digit is just too embarrassing to mention.
But, ooh, didn't I do well?!
What I bought this afternoon was a set of six bound folio volumes, covering the first six years (1907-1913) of the 'Votes For Women' newspaper, the principal organ of the suffragette movement. (It did limp on irregularly for another three volumes after these, up to 1918: but, when the war came, the campaign got largely put to one side in the national interest, so it's these earlier volumes that contain all the stuff that actually matters).
This stuff is exceedingly rare, and hugely collectable. Which is reasonable enough, and not only because -- aside from the occasional important article -- none of it has ever been reprinted. But reflect for a moment on just how staggeringly significant this thing is, from an historical point of view. We are, after all, talking about the principal document that charted the transition of more than half of the population into citizenship -- that's surely got to be significant, if anything is! Indeed, I recently noticed that someone or other had compiled a list of the 200 most significant publications of all time, and this was in the list, alongside the Gutenberg Bible, Shakespeare's first folio, and Newton's Principia. And I spotted a couple of individual weekly issues on eBay recently, and each one of those went for more than £100 on its own. And now I have an unbroken run of, what, about three hundred such issues!
Hey, other people will buy things like cars: the gift that continues to take, take, take, what with cost of fuel and tax and whatnot. And people seem to regard that as natural: sure, you'll spend thousands of pounds on a car, and then throw it in a ditch. Me, I'm perfectly happy to ride a bicycle, so that I can then buy books, which will then give, give, give, as I actually get to work on reading them.