The British Library Digitizes Its Collection of Obscene Books (1658–1940)

Many peo­ple are cheat­ed out of an authen­tic edu­ca­tion in Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture because of a long­stand­ing puri­tan­i­cal approach to its cura­tion. One might spend a life­time read­ing the tra­di­tion­al canon with­out ever, for exam­ple, learn­ing much about the long his­to­ry of pop­u­lar porno­graph­ic British writ­ing, a genre that flour­ished in the 18th and 19th cen­turies as the pop­u­lar­i­ty of the nov­el explod­ed. Every­one knows the Mar­quis de Sade, even if they haven’t read him, not least because he lent his name to psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic the­o­ry. Many of us have read Voltaire’s randy satire, Can­dide. But few know the name John Cle­land, author of Fan­ny Hill, a bawdy British nov­el pub­lished in 1748, over forty years before de Sade’s Jus­tine.

A book that serves up its own wealth of psy­cho­sex­u­al insights, Fan­ny Hill does not dis­ap­point either as porno­graph­ic writ­ing or as enter­tain­ing fic­tion. Cle­land wrote the book while in debtors’ prison, after he “boast­ed to James Boswell, him­self no mean pornog­ra­ph­er… that he could write a sex­u­al­ly excit­ing sto­ry of ‘a woman of plea­sure’ with­out using a sin­gle ‘foul’ word,” writes John Suther­land at The Guardian. Cle­land suc­ceed­ed, in a nar­ra­tive loaded with crude­ly Shake­speare­an puns and euphemisms. The word­play in the title character’s name, an Angli­ciza­tion of mons vener­is (mound of Venus), will be imme­di­ate­ly appar­ent to speak­ers of British Eng­lish.


Upon its pub­li­ca­tion, how­ev­er, Cle­land was pros­e­cut­ed for “cor­rupt­ing the king’s sub­jects,” and the book was “duly buried and went on to become a cen­turies-long under­ground best­seller.” Such was the fate of many an obscene British nov­el. Thou­sands of these became prop­er­ty of the British Library, which “kept its dirt­i­est books locked away from the rest of its col­lec­tions,” notes Brig­it Katz at Smith­son­ian. “All vol­umes deemed to be in need of extra safe­guard­ing so that mem­bers of the pub­lic couldn’t get their hands on the saucy stories—or try to destroy them—were placed in the library’s ‘Pri­vate Case.’” Now, they are being dig­i­tized and made avail­able to Gale sub­scribers.

2,500 vol­umes from the Pri­vate Case col­lec­tion have become part of Gale’s Archives of Sex­u­al­i­ty and Gen­der research library, the first time much of this mate­r­i­al has been avail­able. “Pret­ty much any­thing to do with sex,” says British Library cura­tor Mad­dy Smith, was locked away “until around 1960, when atti­tudes to sex­u­al­i­ty were chang­ing.” Librar­i­ans only began cat­a­logu­ing this mate­r­i­al in the 1970s, but most of it remained obscure and fair­ly inac­ces­si­ble. The col­lec­tion dates to 1658. It includes a series called the Mer­ry­land Books, writ­ten in the 1740s by authors who took pseu­do­nyms like “Roger Pheuquewell” and described “the female anato­my metaphor­i­cal­ly as land ripe for explo­ration.”

It is not over­all a body of work giv­en to sub­tleties. Aside from some excep­tions, like Tele­ny or The Reverse of the Medal, a trag­ic gay romance attrib­uted to Oscar Wilde, these are also large­ly books “writ­ten by men, for men,” about women, Smith points out. “It’s to be expect­ed, but look­ing back, that’s what is shock­ing, how male-dom­i­nat­ed it is, the lack of female agency.” She might have also point­ed out that many women in the mid-18th cen­tu­ry were writ­ing and pub­lish­ing pop­u­lar nov­els, large­ly read by women, with frank com­ing-of-age descrip­tions of sex­u­al edu­ca­tion, seduc­tion, and even rape. And both men and women wrote about homo­sex­u­al­i­ty and gen­der flu­id­i­ty in ways that might sur­prise us.

The response to such books tend­ed to be moral­is­tic correction—as in the best-sell­ing Pamela, or Virtue Reward­ed by Samuel Richard­son—or las­civ­i­ous satire, as in the Mer­ry­land Books, Fan­ny Hill, and Hen­ry Fielding’s Shamela, a par­o­dy that turns Richardson’s chaste hero­ine into a schem­ing pros­ti­tute. These two nov­els were mas­sive­ly pop­u­lar and show the form as we know it devel­op­ing as a lit­er­ary con­ver­sa­tion between men about women’s sup­posed vices or virtues. We should read mid-18th cen­tu­ry porno­graph­ic lit­er­a­ture as an essen­tial part of the for­ma­tion of the British nov­el tra­di­tion.

At the Gale online col­lec­tion of these British Library trea­sures, one can do just that, then reach back a cen­tu­ry ear­li­er and for­ward 200 years to 1940, the last date in the Gale col­lec­tion, which “makes avail­able approx­i­mate­ly one mil­lion pages of con­tent that’s been locked away for many years, avail­able only via restrict­ed access.” (We must note that access is still restrict­ed to Gale sub­scribers). These pages come not only from the British Library but also from The Kin­sey Insti­tute and the New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine, who have both sup­plied a share of text­books and schol­ar­ly mono­graphs on sex. The “obscen­i­ty” of this mate­r­i­al lies in the eyes of its keepers—much will seem unre­mark­able today, and some can still seem plen­ty scan­dalous.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read 14 Great Banned & Cen­sored Nov­els Free Online: For Banned Books Week 2014

A Com­plete Dig­i­ti­za­tion of Eros Mag­a­zine: The Con­tro­ver­sial 1960s Mag­a­zine on the Sex­u­al Rev­o­lu­tion

John Waters Reads Steamy Scene from Lady Chatterley’s Lover for Banned Books Week (NSFW)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Alice in Wonderland, Hamlet, and A Christmas Carol Written in Shorthand (Circa 1919)

For hun­dreds of years before the reg­u­lar use of dic­ta­tion machines, word proces­sors, and com­put­ers, many thou­sands of court records, cor­re­spon­dence, jour­nal­ism, and so on cir­cu­lat­ed in trans­la­tion. All of these texts were orig­i­nal­ly in their native lan­guage, but they were tran­scribed in a dif­fer­ent writ­ing sys­tem, then trans­lat­ed back into the stan­dard orthog­ra­phy, by stenog­ra­phers using var­i­ous kinds of short­hand. In Eng­lish, this meant that a mess of irreg­u­lar, pho­net­i­cal­ly non­sen­si­cal spellings turned into a stream­lined, order­ly sym­bol­ic sys­tem, impen­e­tra­ble to any­one who had­n’t stud­ied it thor­ough­ly.

I do not know the rates of accu­ra­cy in short­hand writ­ing or trans­la­tion. Nor do I know how many orig­i­nal short­hand man­u­scripts still exist for comparison’s sake. But for cen­turies, short­hand sys­tems were used to record lec­tures, let­ters, and inter­views, and to write edicts, essays, arti­cles, etc., in Impe­r­i­al Chi­na, ancient Greece and Rome, and mod­ern Europe, North Amer­i­ca, and Japan.

The prac­tice reached a peak in the late nine­teenth and ear­ly 20th cen­turies, when stenog­ra­phy became a growth indus­try. Jack El-Hai at Won­ders and Mar­vels explains.

A cen­tu­ry ago, hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple around the world reg­u­lar­ly used short­hand. Sec­re­taries, stenog­ra­phers, court reporters, jour­nal­ists and oth­ers depend­ed on the elab­o­rate short­hand sys­tems that Isaac Pit­man and John Robert Gregg devel­oped in the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, and count­less schools and pub­lish­ers seized the busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ty to train them. Tal­ent­ed prac­ti­tion­ers could write at speeds up to 280 words per minute.

The texts of sys­tems like Pit­man and Gregg’s “grew increas­ing­ly com­plex,” then increas­ing­ly sim­pli­fied dur­ing lat­ter half of the 20th cen­tu­ry. “In 1903, the pub­lish­ers of the Gregg method released the first nov­el entire­ly ren­dered in shorthand—an 87-page edi­tion of Let­ters from a Self-Made Mer­chant to His Son by George Horace Latimer.”

More lit­er­a­ture in short­hand fol­lowed, mark­ing the Gregg sys­tem’s most baroque peri­od. Ten years lat­er saw the pub­li­ca­tion of Wash­ing­ton Irving’s The Leg­end of Sleepy Hol­low, then, in 1918, with Alice in Won­der­land, Ham­let, and A Christ­mas Car­ol, and sto­ries like Guy de Maupassant’s “The Dia­mond Neck­lace,” Edgar Allan Poe’s “A Descent into the Mael­ström.” All of this lit­er­ary short­hand is writ­ten in what is known as “Pre-Anniver­sary” Gregg, which con­tained the largest num­ber of sym­bols and devices. In 1929, a year-late “Anniver­sary Edi­tion” began a peri­od of sim­pli­fi­ca­tion that cul­mi­nat­ed in 1988, a cen­tu­ry after the system’s first pub­li­ca­tion.

The lit­er­a­ture pub­lished in Gregg short­hand joined in a his­to­ry of short­hand “used by (or to pre­serve the work of) every­one from Cicero to Luther to Shake­speare to Pepys,” writes the Pub­lic Domain Review. And yet, the “util­i­tar­i­an func­tion of short­hand sits a lit­tle odd­ly per­haps with lit­er­a­ture, giv­en the nov­el or the poem is a form asso­ci­at­ed with a dif­fer­ent realm: that of leisure.” One should not have to train in a spe­cial­ized phone­mic orthog­ra­phy to read and enjoy Alice in Won­der­land, but, on the off chance that you did so train, there is at least much enjoy­able and edi­fy­ing mate­r­i­al with which to prac­tice, or show off, your skills.

It would, I main­tain, be a fas­ci­nat­ing exer­cise to com­pare trans­la­tions of these well-known works from the short­hand with their orig­i­nals man­u­scripts writ­ten in the pho­net­ic chaos of the Eng­lish we rec­og­nize. Whether or not you have the skill to under­take this exper­i­ment, you can see many of these Gregg’s short­hand edi­tions here and at the Inter­net Archive. Just click on the embeds above to see larg­er images and view and down­load a vari­ety of for­mats.

via The Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Behold Lewis Carroll’s Orig­i­nal Hand­writ­ten & Illus­trat­ed Man­u­script for Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land (1864)

Has the Voyn­ich Man­u­script Final­ly Been Decod­ed?: Researchers Claim That the Mys­te­ri­ous Text Was Writ­ten in Pho­net­ic Old Turk­ish

Learn 48 Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More 

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Hear a Six-Hour Mix Tape of Hunter S. Thompson’s Favorite Music & the Songs Name-Checked in His Gonzo Journalism

Of all the musi­cal moments in Hunter S. Thomp­son’s for­mi­da­ble cor­pus of “gonzo jour­nal­ism,” which one comes most read­i­ly to mind? I would elect the scene in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas when Thomp­son’s alter-ego Raoul Duke finds his attor­ney “Dr. Gonzo” in the bath­tub, “sub­merged in green water — the oily prod­uct of some Japan­ese bath salts he’d picked up in the hotel gift shop, along with a new AM/FM radio plugged into the elec­tric razor sock­et. Top vol­ume. Some gib­ber­ish by a thing called ‘Three Dog Night,’ about a frog named Jere­mi­ah who want­ed ‘Joy to the World.’ First Lennon, now this, I thought. Next we’ll have Glenn Camp­bell scream­ing ‘Where Have All the Flow­ers Gone?’ ”

But Dr. Gonzo, his state even more altered than usu­al, real­ly wants to hear only one song: Jef­fer­son Air­plane’s “White Rab­bit.” He wants “a ris­ing sound,” and what’s more, he demands that “when it comes to that fan­tas­tic note where the rab­bit bites its own head off,” Duke throw the radio in the tub with him.

Duke refus­es, explain­ing that “it would blast you right through the wall — stone-dead in ten sec­onds.” Yet Dr. Gonzo, who insists he just wants to get “high­er,” will have none of it, forc­ing Duke to engage in trick­ery that takes to a new depth the book’s already-deep lev­el of crazi­ness. Such, at the time, was the pow­er of not just drugs but of the even more mind-alter­ing prod­uct known as music.

Noth­ing evokes a peri­od of recent his­to­ry more vivid­ly than its songs, espe­cial­ly in the case of the 1960s and ear­ly 1970s that Thomp­son’s prose cap­tured with such improb­a­ble elo­quence. Now, thanks to Lon­don’s NTS Radio (they of the spir­i­tu­al jazz and Haru­ki Muraka­mi mix­es), you can spend a good six hours in that Thomp­son­ian peri­od when­ev­er you like by stream­ing their Hunter S. Thomp­son Day, con­sist­ing of two three-hour mix­es com­posed by Edu Vil­lar­roel, cre­ator of the Spo­ti­fy playlist “Gonzo Tapes: Too Weird To Live, Too Rare To Die!” Both that playlist and these mix­es fea­ture many of the 60s names you might expect: not just Jef­fer­son Air­plane but Buf­fa­lo Spring­field, Jimi Hen­drix, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Cream, Cap­tain Beef­heart, and many more besides.

Those artists appear on one par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant source for these mix­es, Thomp­son’s list of the ten best albums of the 60s. But Hunter S. Thomp­son Day also offers deep­er cuts of Thomp­so­ni­ana as well, includ­ing pieces of Ter­ry Gilliam’s 1998 film adap­ta­tion of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as well as clips from oth­er media in which the real Thomp­son appeared, in ful­ly gonzo char­ac­ter as always. Vil­lar­roel describes these mix­es as “best served with a cou­ple tabs of sun­shine acid, tall glass of Wild Turkey with ice and Mez­cal on the side,” but you may well derive a sim­i­lar expe­ri­ence from lis­ten­ing while par­tak­ing of anoth­er pow­er­ful sub­stance: Thomp­son’s writ­ing, still so often imi­tat­ed with­out ever repli­cat­ing its effect, which you can get start­ed read­ing here on Open Cul­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the 10 Best Albums of the 1960s as Select­ed by Hunter S. Thomp­son

Bill Mur­ray Explains How He Pulled Him­self Out of a Deep, Last­ing Funk: He Took Hunter S. Thompson’s Advice & Lis­tened to the Music of John Prine

Hunter S. Thomp­son Remem­bers Jim­my Carter’s Cap­ti­vat­ing Bob Dylan Speech (1974)

Hunter S. Thomp­son Inter­views Kei­th Richards, and Very Lit­tle Makes Sense

Read 11 Free Arti­cles by Hunter S. Thomp­son That Span His Gonzo Jour­nal­ist Career (1965–2005)

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Day: Stream Sev­en Hours of Mix­es Col­lect­ing All the Jazz, Clas­si­cal & Clas­sic Amer­i­can Pop Music from His Nov­els

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

18 Classic Myths Explained with Animation: Pandora’s Box, Sisyphus & More

Greek myths have an incred­i­ble shelf life.

We may not retain all the play­ers’ names or the intri­ca­cies of the var­i­ous plot lines, but the cre­ative pun­ish­ments the gods—Zeus, in particular—visited upon those who dis­pleased them have pro­vid­ed mod­ern mor­tals with an endur­ing short­hand for describ­ing our own woes.

Tempt­ed to sneak a peek inside a lover’s diary? Take a tee­ny swig from the liquor cab­i­net whilst hous­esit­ting? Go snoop­ing in your teenager’s Inter­net his­to­ry?

DON’T DO IT, PANDORA!!!

But if curios­i­ty com­pels you to explore beyond the famous punch­lines of mythology’s great­est hits, TED-Ed’s ani­mat­ed Myths from Around the World series is a rec­om­mend­ed rum­mage.

Aver­ag­ing around five min­utes per tale, each episode is packed tight as a snake in a can of mixed nuts. Pre­pare to be sur­prised by some of the tid­bits that come spring­ing out.

Take Pandora’s box, above.

(Actu­al­ly it was a jar, but why quib­ble?)

Not to unleash too many major spoil­ers, but how many of us remem­bered that the thing con­tained a bit of good along with all that evil?

Or that the ves­sel she wasn’t allowed to open was but one of many gifts the gods bestowed upon her at birth? In fact, Zeus gave her two presents, that pret­ty box, jar, what­ev­er, and—wait for it—an irre­press­ibly inquis­i­tive nature.

Or the close con­nec­tion between Pan­do­ra and Prometheus? Zeus con­ceived of Pan­do­ra as a ret­ri­bu­tion for Prometheus steal­ing fire and return­ing it to earth.

Remem­ber Prometheus?

No, not the guy who’s doomed to spend his life rolling a mas­sive rock uphill, only to have it roll back down before he reach­es the top. That’s Sisy­phus, as in Sisyphean task, like laun­dry or clean­ing the cat lit­ter.

Prometheus is the Titan who winds up chained to a rock so Zeus can send a hun­gry vulture—some say eagle—to devour his liv­er once a day.

(Which kind of puts the cat lit­ter in per­spec­tive.)

In addi­tion to ancient Greek crowd pleasers, the 18-episode Myths from Around the World playlist delves into the famil­iar stuff of Norse, Chi­nese, and ancient Egypt­ian leg­ends, as well as less wide­ly known Cam­bo­di­an and Irish tales.

Each video’s descrip­tion has a link to a full Ted-Ed les­son, with the usu­al com­ple­ment of quizzes, resources and oppor­tu­ni­ties for teacher cus­tomiza­tion.

Watch the full playlist here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Myth of Sisy­phus Won­der­ful­ly Ani­mat­ed in an Oscar-Nom­i­nat­ed Short Film (1974)

Greek Myth Comix Presents Homer’s Ili­ad & Odyssey Using Stick-Man Draw­ings

Con­cepts of the Hero in Greek Civ­i­liza­tion (A Free Har­vard Course) 

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, this March. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Haruki Murakami Announces an Archive That Will House His Manuscripts, Letters & Collection of 10,000+ Vinyl Records

Image by wakari­m­a­sita, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

It has become the norm for notable writ­ers to bequeath doc­u­ments relat­ed to their work, and even their per­son­al cor­re­spon­dence, to an insti­tu­tion that promis­es to main­tain it all, in per­pe­tu­ity, in an archive open to schol­ars. Often the insti­tu­tion is locat­ed at a uni­ver­si­ty to which the writer has some con­nec­tion, and the case of the Haru­ki Muraka­mi Library at Toky­o’s Wase­da Uni­ver­si­ty is no excep­tion: Muraka­mi grad­u­at­ed from Wase­da in 1975, and a dozen years lat­er used it as a set­ting in his break­through nov­el Nor­we­gian Wood.

That book’s por­tray­al of Wase­da betrays a some­what dim view of the place, but Muraka­mi looks much more kind­ly on his alma mater now than he did then: he must, since he plans to entrust it with not just all his papers but his beloved record col­lec­tion as well. If you want­ed to see that col­lec­tion today, you’d have to vis­it him at home. “I exchanged my shoes for slip­pers, and Muraka­mi took me upstairs to his office,” writes Sam Ander­son, hav­ing done just that for a 2011 New York Times Mag­a­zine pro­file of the writer. “This is also, not coin­ci­den­tal­ly, the home of his vast record col­lec­tion. (He guess­es that he has around 10,000 but says he’s too scared to count.)”

Hav­ing announced the plans for Waseda’s Muraka­mi Library at the end of last year, Muraka­mi can now rest assured that the count­ing will be left to the archivists. He hopes, he said at a rare press con­fer­ence, “to cre­ate a space that func­tions as a study where my record col­lec­tion and books are stored.” In his own space now, he explained, he has “a col­lec­tion of records, audio equip­ment and some books. The idea is to cre­ate an atmos­phere like that, not to cre­ate a repli­ca of my study.” Some of Murakami’s stat­ed moti­va­tion to estab­lish the library comes out of con­vic­tions about the impor­tance of “a place of open inter­na­tion­al exchanges for lit­er­a­ture and cul­ture” and “an alter­na­tive place that you can drop by.” And some of it, of course, comes out of prac­ti­cal­i­ty: “After near­ly 40 years of writ­ing, there is hard­ly any space to put the doc­u­ments such as man­u­scripts and relat­ed arti­cles, whether at my home or at my office.”

“I also have no chil­dren to take care of them,” Muraka­mi added, “and I didn’t want those resources to be scat­tered and lost when I die.” Few of his count­less read­ers around the world can imag­ine that day com­ing any time soon, turn 70 though Muraka­mi did last month, but many are no doubt mak­ing plans even now for a trip to the Wase­da cam­pus to see what shape the Muraka­mi Library takes dur­ing the writer’s life­time, espe­cial­ly since he plans to take an active role in what goes on there. “Muraka­mi is also hop­ing to orga­nize a con­cert fea­tur­ing his col­lec­tion of vinyl records,” notes The Vinyl Fac­to­ry’s Gabriela Helfet. Until he does, you can have a lis­ten to the playlists, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, of 96 songs from his nov­els and 3,350 from his record col­lec­tion — but you’ll have to recre­ate the atmos­phere of his study your­self for now.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A 3,350-Song Playlist of Music from Haru­ki Murakami’s Per­son­al Record Col­lec­tion

A 96-Song Playlist of Music in Haru­ki Murakami’s Nov­els: Miles Davis, Glenn Gould, the Beach Boys & More

A 26-Hour Playlist Fea­tur­ing Music from Haru­ki Murakami’s Lat­est Nov­el, Killing Com­menda­tore

Stream Big Playlists of Music from Haru­ki Murakami’s Per­son­al Vinyl Col­lec­tion and His Strange Lit­er­ary Worlds

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Became a DJ on a Japan­ese Radio Sta­tion for One Night: Hear the Music He Played for Delight­ed Lis­ten­ers

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Gustave Doré’s Haunting Illustrations of Dante’s Divine Comedy

Infer­no, Can­to X:

Many artists have attempt­ed to illus­trate Dante Alighier­i’s epic poem the Divine Com­e­dy, but none have made such an indeli­ble stamp on our col­lec­tive imag­i­na­tion as the French­man Gus­tave Doré.

Doré was 23 years old in 1855, when he first decid­ed to cre­ate a series of engrav­ings for a deluxe edi­tion of Dan­te’s clas­sic.  He was already the high­est-paid illus­tra­tor in France, with pop­u­lar edi­tions of Rabelais and Balzac under his belt, but Doré was unable to con­vince his pub­lish­er, Louis Hachette, to finance such an ambi­tious and expen­sive project. The young artist decid­ed to pay the pub­lish­ing costs for the first book him­self. When the illus­trat­ed Infer­no came out in 1861, it sold out fast. Hachette sum­moned Doré back to his office with a telegram: “Suc­cess! Come quick­ly! I am an ass!”

Hachette pub­lished Pur­ga­to­rio and Par­adiso as a sin­gle vol­ume in 1868. Since then, Doré’s Divine Com­e­dy has appeared in hun­dreds of edi­tions. Although he went on to illus­trate a great many oth­er lit­er­ary works, from the Bible to Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” Doré is per­haps best remem­bered for his depic­tions of Dante. At The World of Dante, art his­to­ri­an Aida Audeh writes:

Char­ac­ter­ized by an eclec­tic mix of Michelan­ge­lesque nudes, north­ern tra­di­tions of sub­lime land­scape, and ele­ments of pop­u­lar cul­ture, Doré’s Dante illus­tra­tions were con­sid­ered among his crown­ing achieve­ments — a per­fect match of the artist’s skill and the poet­’s vivid visu­al imag­i­na­tion. As one crit­ic wrote in 1861 upon pub­li­ca­tion of the illus­trat­ed Infer­no: “we are inclined to believe that the con­cep­tion and the inter­pre­ta­tion come from the same source, that Dante and Gus­tave Doré are com­mu­ni­cat­ing by occult and solemn con­ver­sa­tions the secret of this Hell plowed by their souls, trav­eled, explored by them in every sense.”

The scene above is from Can­to X of the Infer­no. Dante and his guide, Vir­gil, are pass­ing through the Sixth Cir­cle of Hell, in a place reserved for the souls of heretics, when they look down and see the impos­ing fig­ure of Far­i­na­ta degli Uber­ti, a Tus­can noble­man who had agreed with Epi­cu­rus that the soul dies with the body, ris­ing up from an open grave. In the trans­la­tion by John Cia­r­di, Dante writes:

My eyes were fixed on him already. Erect,
he rose above the flame, great chest, great brow;
he seemed to hold all Hell in dis­re­spect

Infer­no, Can­to XVI:

As Dante and Vir­gil pre­pare to leave Cir­cle Sev­en, they are met by the fear­some fig­ure of Gery­on, Mon­ster of Fraud. Vir­gil arranges for Gery­on to fly them down to Cir­cle Eight. He climbs onto the mon­ster’s back and instructs Dante to do the same.

Then he called out: “Now, Gery­on, we are ready:
bear well in mind that his is liv­ing weight
and make your cir­cles wide and your flight steady.”

As a small ship slides from a beach­ing or its pier,
back­ward, back­ward — so that mon­ster slipped
back from the rim. And when he had drawn clear

he swung about, and stretch­ing out his tail
he worked it like an eel, and with his paws
he gath­ered in the air, while I turned pale.

Infer­no, Can­to XXXIV:

In the Ninth Cir­cle of Hell, at the very cen­ter of the Earth, Dante and Vir­gil encounter the gigan­tic fig­ure of Satan. As Cia­r­di writes in his com­men­tary:

He is fixed into the ice at the cen­ter to which flow all the rivers of guilt; and as he beats his great wings as if to escape, their icy wind only freezes him more sure­ly into the pol­lut­ed ice. In a grotesque par­o­dy of the Trin­i­ty, he has three faces, each a dif­fer­ent col­or, and in each mouth he clamps a sin­ner whom he rips eter­nal­ly with his teeth. Judas Iscar­i­ot is in the cen­tral mouth: Bru­tus and Cas­sius in the mouths on either side.

 Pur­ga­to­rio, Can­to II:

At dawn on East­er Sun­day, Dante and Vir­gil have just emerged from Hell when they wit­ness The Angel Boat­man speed­ing a new group of souls to the shore of Pur­ga­to­ry.

Then as that bird of heav­en closed the dis­tance
between us, he grew brighter and yet brighter
until I could no longer bear the radi­ance,

and bowed my head. He steered straight for the shore,
his ship so light and swift it drew no water;
it did not seem to sail so much as soar.

Astern stood the great pilot of the Lord,
so fair his blessed­ness seemed writ­ten on him;
and more than a hun­dred souls were seat­ed for­ward,

singing as if they raised a sin­gle voice
in exi­tu Israel de Aegyp­to.
Verse after verse they made the air rejoice.

The angel made the sign of the cross, and they
cast them­selves, at his sig­nal, to the shore.
Then, swift­ly as he had come, he went away.

 Pur­ga­to­rio, Can­to IV:

The poets begin their labo­ri­ous climb up the Mount of Pur­ga­to­ry. Part­way up the steep path, Dante cries out to Vir­gil that he needs to rest.

The climb had sapped my last strength when I cried:
“Sweet Father, turn to me: unless you pause
I shall be left here on the moun­tain­side!”

He point­ed to a ledge a lit­tle ahead
that wound around the whole face of the slope.
“Pull your­self that much high­er, my son,” he said.

His words so spurred me that I forced myself
to push on after him on hands and knees
until at last my feet were on that shelf.

Pur­ga­to­rio, Can­to XXXI:

Hav­ing ascend­ed at last to the Gar­den of Eden, Dante is immersed in the waters of the Lethe, the riv­er of for­get­ful­ness, and helped across by the maid­en Matil­da. He drinks from the water, which wipes away all mem­o­ry of sin.

She had drawn me into the stream up to my throat,
and pulling me behind her, she sped on
over the water, light as any boat.

Near­ing the sacred bank, I heard her say
in tones so sweet I can­not call them back,
much less describe them here: “Asperges me.”

Then the sweet lady took my head between
her open arms, and embrac­ing me, she dipped me
and made me drink the waters that make clean.

Par­adiso, Can­to V:

In the Sec­ond Heav­en, the Sphere of Mer­cury, Dante sees a mul­ti­tude of glow­ing souls. In the trans­la­tion by Allen Man­del­baum, he writes:

As in a fish pool that is calm and clear,
the fish draw close to any­thing that nears
from out­side, it seems to be their fare,
such were the far more than a thou­sand splen­dors
I saw approach­ing us, and each declared:
“Here now is one who will increase our loves.”
And even as each shade approached, one saw,
because of the bright radi­ance it set forth,
the joy­ous­ness with which that shade was filled.

Par­adiso, Can­to XXVIII:

Upon reach­ing the Ninth Heav­en, the Pri­mum Mobile, Dante and his guide Beat­rice look upon the sparkling cir­cles of the heav­en­ly host. (The Chris­t­ian Beat­rice, who per­son­i­fies Divine Love, took over for the pagan Vir­gil, who per­son­i­fies Rea­son, as Dan­te’s guide when he reached the sum­mit of Pur­ga­to­ry.)

And when I turned and my own eyes were met
By what appears with­in that sphere when­ev­er
one looks intent­ly at its rev­o­lu­tion,
I saw a point that sent forth so acute
a light, that any­one who faced the force
with which it blazed would have to shut his eyes,
and any star that, seen from the earth, would seem
to be the small­est, set beside that point,
as star con­joined with star, would seem a moon.
Around that point a ring of fire wheeled,
a ring per­haps as far from that point as
a halo from the star that col­ors it
when mist that forms the halo is most thick.
It wheeled so quick­ly that it would out­strip
the motion that most swift­ly girds the world.

Par­adiso, Can­to XXXI:

In the Empyre­an, the high­est heav­en, Dante is shown the dwelling place of God. It appears in the form of an enor­mous rose, the petals of which house the souls of the faith­ful. Around the cen­ter, angels fly like bees car­ry­ing the nec­tar of divine love.

So, in the shape of that white Rose, the holy
legion has shown to me — the host that Christ,
with His own blood, had tak­en as His bride.
The oth­er host, which, fly­ing, sees and sings
the glo­ry of the One who draws its love,
and that good­ness which grant­ed it such glo­ry,
just like a swarm of bees that, at one moment,
enters the flow­ers and, at anoth­er, turns
back to that labor which yields such sweet savor,
descend­ed into that vast flower graced
with many petals, then again rose up
to the eter­nal dwelling of its love.

You can access a free edi­tion of The Divine Com­e­dy fea­tur­ing Doré’s illus­tra­tions at Project Guten­berg. A pub­lished edi­tion (The Dore Illus­tra­tions for Dan­te’s Divine Com­e­dy) can be pur­chased online. Final­ly, a Yale course on read­ing Dante in trans­la­tion appears in the Lit­er­a­ture sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of 1500 Free Online Cours­es.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Octo­ber 2013.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Free Course on Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

An Illus­trat­ed and Inter­ac­tive Dante’s Infer­no: Explore a New Dig­i­tal Com­pan­ion to the Great 14th-Cen­tu­ry Epic Poem

Visu­al­iz­ing Dante’s Hell: See Maps & Draw­ings of Dante’s Infer­no from the Renais­sance Through Today

Artists Illus­trate Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy Through the Ages: Doré, Blake, Bot­ti­cel­li, Mœbius & More

A Dig­i­tal Archive of the Ear­li­est Illus­trat­ed Edi­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy (1487–1568)

Alber­to Martini’s Haunt­ing Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy (1901–1944)

Watch the Trailers for Tolkien and Catch-22, Two New Literary Films

For decades, fans of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings won­dered if the books could ever become a film. The Bea­t­les and John Boor­man both tried to get adap­ta­tions off the ground in the 1960s and 70s, and ani­ma­tor Ralph Bak­shi came up with his own cin­e­mat­ic inter­pre­ta­tion, if only a par­tial one, in 1978. But now we live in a world rich with Lord of the Rings and Lord of the Rings-relat­ed mate­r­i­al on film, thanks to the efforts of direc­tor Peter Jack­son and his col­lab­o­ra­tors on not just the adap­ta­tions of The Fel­low­ship of the RingThe Two Tow­ers, and The Return of the King, but three whole fea­ture films bring­ing the rel­a­tive­ly brief tale The Hob­bit to the screen.

What remains for the Tolkien-inspired film­mak­er today? None, so far, have proven brave enough to take on the likes of The Sil­mar­il­lion, the for­bid­ding­ly mythopoe­ic work pub­lished a few years after the writer’s death. But the Finnish direc­tor Dome Karukos­ki, whose last pic­ture told the sto­ry of male-erot­i­ca illus­tra­tor Tom of Fin­land, has found mate­r­i­al in the writer’s life.

Going by the trail­er above, Tolkien deals not just with the writ­ing of The Lord of the Rings, described by star Nicholas Hoult as “a sto­ry about jour­neys, the jour­neys we take to prove our­selves,” about “adven­tures” and “potent mag­ic, mag­ic beyond any­thing any­one has ever felt before.”

It’s also, says Hoult-as-Tolkien, a sto­ry about “what it means to love, and to be loved.” That fits with anoth­er appar­ent sto­ry­line of Tolkien itself, that of the man who dreamed up Mid­dle-Earth­’s rela­tion­ship with Edith Bratt, the girl he met as a teenag­er who would become his wife — not long after which he received the let­ter sum­mon­ing him to France to fight in the First World War, where he man­aged to sur­vive the Bat­tle of the Somme. An equal­ly skilled writer of anoth­er tem­pera­ment might have pro­duced an endur­ing nov­el of the war, but Tolkien, as his gen­er­a­tions of read­ers know, went in anoth­er direc­tion entire­ly. A gen­er­a­tion lat­er, Joseph Heller proved to be that skilled writer of a dif­fer­ent tem­pera­ment, and six­teen years after com­ing back from the Sec­ond World War, he pro­duced Catch-22.

Heller’s nov­el has also made it to the screen a few times: Mike Nichols direct­ed a fea­ture-film adap­ta­tion in 1970, the pilot for a tele­vi­sion series aired three years lat­er, and now we await a Catch-22 minis­eries that will air on Hulu this May. Christo­pher Abbott stars as Cap­tain John Yos­sar­i­an, the hap­less bom­bardier with no aim in the war but to stay out of har­m’s way, and George Clooney (also one of the series’ direc­tors) as Lieu­tenant Scheis­skopf, one of the book’s cast of high­ly mem­o­rable minor char­ac­ters. The series’ six episodes should accom­mo­date more of that cast — and more of the forms Heller’s elab­o­rate satire takes in the nov­el — than a movie can. If, as a result, you need to con­sult Heller’s large-for­mat hand­writ­ten out­line for the book, by all means do — and have a look at Tolkien’s anno­tat­ed map of Mid­dle-Earth while you’re at it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

110 Draw­ings and Paint­ings by J.R.R. Tolkien: Of Mid­dle-Earth and Beyond

Dis­cov­er J.R.R. Tolkien’s Per­son­al Book Cov­er Designs for The Lord of the Rings Tril­o­gy

Map of Mid­dle-Earth Anno­tat­ed by Tolkien Found in a Copy of Lord of the Rings

Hear J.R.R. Tolkien Read From The Lord of the Rings and The Hob­bit

J.R.R. Tolkien Expressed a “Heart­felt Loathing” for Walt Dis­ney and Refused to Let Dis­ney Stu­dios Adapt His Work

Joseph Heller’s Hand­writ­ten Out­line for Catch-22, One of the Great Nov­els of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Hear Neil Gaiman Read Aloud 15 of His Own Works, and Works by 6 Other Great Writers: From The Graveyard Book & Coraline, to Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven & Dickens’ A Christmas Carol

Neil Gaiman is a sto­ry­teller. That title encom­pass­es quite a few pur­suits, most of which seem­ing­ly involve writ­ing — writ­ing nov­els, writ­ing radio dra­mas, writ­ing com­ic books — but he also occa­sion­al­ly tells sto­ries the old-fash­ioned way: speak­ing aloud, and to an audi­ence of rapt lis­ten­ers. Tra­di­tion­al­ly, such sto­ry­telling hap­pened in a cir­cle around the camp­fire, but as a sto­ry­teller of the 21st cen­tu­ry — albeit a mas­ter of time­less tech­niques who uses those tech­niques to deal with time­less themes — Gaiman can tell sto­ries to the entire world. Today we’ve gath­ered all of Gaiman’s stream­able read­ings, both video and audio, in one place.

Near­ly every type of text at which he has tried his hand appears in this col­lec­tion, from nov­els (The Grave­yard Book) to novel­las (Cora­line) to poet­ry (“Instruc­tions,” above) to man­i­festos (“Mak­ing Good Art”). Suit­able as his voice and deliv­ery are to his own work, Gaiman’s live sto­ry­telling tal­ent also extends to the works of oth­ers, as you’ll find out if you lis­ten to the selec­tions on the sec­ond list below.

The mate­r­i­al varies wide­ly, from non­sense or near-non­sense poet­ry like Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham and Lewis Car­rol­l’s “Jab­ber­wocky” to the work of his friend Ursu­la K. Le Guin to a clas­sic like Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” whose Goth­ic atmos­phere will no doubt appeal to Gaiman’s fans.

And Gaiman cer­tain­ly has his fair share of fans. If you already count your­self in that group, you’ll need lit­tle con­vinc­ing to do a binge-lis­ten of his read­ings here. But if you aren’t yet famil­iar with Gaiman’s work in all its var­i­ous forms, you might con­sid­er using these pieces of video and audio as an entry­way into his nar­ra­tive world, with its emo­tion­al chiaroscuro, it mod­ern-day mythol­o­gy, and its unflag­ging sense of humor. There’s plen­ty of Neil Gaiman out there to read, of course, but with his style of sto­ry­telling, some­times he must sim­ply be heard — if not around an actu­al camp­fire, then on that largest camp­fire ever cre­at­ed, the inter­net. These texts will be added to our list, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

His own work
Works by oth­ers
  • A Christ­mas Car­ol by Charles Dick­ens — Free Audio
  • Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss — Free Video
  • “Democ­ra­cy” by Leonard Cohen — Free Video
  • “How It Seems to Me,” a Poem by Ursu­la K Le Guin — Free Video
  • “Jab­ber­wocky” by Lewis Car­roll — Free Video
  • “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe — Free Video 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

18 Sto­ries & Nov­els by Neil Gaiman Online: Free Texts & Read­ings by Neil Him­self

Neil Gaiman Reads His Man­i­festo on Mak­ing Art: Fea­tures the 10 Things He Wish He Knew As a Young Artist

Where Do Great Ideas Come From? Neil Gaiman Explains

Neil Gaiman Teach­es the Art of Sto­ry­telling in His New Online Course

Aman­da Palmer Ani­mates & Nar­rates Hus­band Neil Gaiman’s Uncon­scious Mus­ings

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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