So there is a recently disassembled block of lethal chocolate dark matter in my kitchen, next to a radioactively green bowl of booze-filled icing with lumps of butter in it that are refusing to die. Man. The recipe for the tiny death brownies was not too clear on how hard the process of making them is on your wrists ( Read more... )

So this evening I was looking through Eighteenth Century Collections Online, to which my university now offers access, to see if I could turn up Lewis Theobald's 1719 adaptation of Richard II, because I am obsessive, as you all know by now, and also it looks pretty hilariously bad.

I did not find it, alas, but I did turn up a text called Old ( Read more... )

So a while back I ordered, with the Amazon gift certificate I got for my birthday, the Penguin Book of English Folk Songs, edited by Ralph Vaughan Williams and A.L. Lloyd, figuring that given the number of times it's cited in the liner notes to Martin Carthy's albums, it would probably be a Good Thing, and, as it arrived today, I can say that ( Read more... )

I thought I'd dick around in iTunes for a while, because making thematic playlists looks very appealing when one has a dissertation to write.

( English/Scottish history as it looks on my playlist, minus things on CDs stolen by CERTAIN PEOPLE WHOM I DON'T THINK ARE READING THIS BUT, IF THEY ARE, KNOW WHO THEY ARE )

This one's for the Chaucerians, balladry fans, people interested in premodern feminism(s), and intertextuality geeks out there, which probably covers most of you, really. It's a mid-to-late 17th century broadside which is most likely of an earlier ballad, as there are references to it being called in for being "disorderly" in 1600. I found a ( Read more... )

( The playlist from the last public post )

sinnocenti has the perfect icon for this one... ;)

Anyway, yesterday I got Eliza Carthy's Rough Music, which is, incidentally, a wonderful album, and I totally recommend it to all and sundry. It was, as it happens, an educational experience, because one of the tracks on it is a long and depressing but wonderfully performed ballad called "The Unfortunate ( Read more... )