GA's Non-fiction (1869-1889)
Last revised: 24 Dec 2021
This bibliography (in two parts) is intended to help students of Grant Allen by listing everything from his pen and providing annotations for most items. A lot of Grant Allen's non-fiction first appeared anonymously. The unsigned articles he wrote for the big monthlies like the Cornhill, or the ones which he later collected in books under his own name, are easily identified. But his many dozens of contributions to the dailies and weeklies – particularly to the Daily News in the late 70s and the Pall Mall Gazette and the St James's Gazette in the early 80s – are another matter. I have taken a conservative position, listing unsigned contributions only where the attribution is certain, either because there are internal autobiographical references or because the article treats of subjects which GA took up again elsewhere in the same fashion. This has meant passing over numerous short essays and (especially) reviews which on stylistic grounds I am fairly sure, but not certain, are GA's work. At a guess, GA's total non-fiction output is understated in this bibliography by at least 15%. For example, it is certain that he contributed articles on natural history, as well as leaders and reviews, to the Daily News and the Globe, but I can trace none. (GA claimed that he wrote all the leaders relating to the Afghan war of 1878-9 in the Daily News.)
He also stated quite casually, almost in passing, in a note to a collection of Runciman's essays that he served for 'years' as the agony aunt on the working-class paper the Family Herald! This rather astonishing fact is well worth further investigation: one would like to know what sort of advice Allen gave to the readers of the Family Herald.
The Academy had some reviews signed, so GA's contributions to that weekly give some small notion of the extent and variety of his reviewing work, nearly all of which was anonymous. The recent extension of the Athenaeum index to 1893 has also uncovered a few more unsigned reviews.
My thanks to Michael Wynn, Chris Spurling, Victor Berch and others for contributing obscure items to this listing. A fuller list of acknowledgements is at the end. GA items are at this writing still turning up.
I seek eagerly more details and corrections. There is a section on unresolved problems at the end. Contact me by email.
All printed bibliographies of Allen's non-fiction are unsatisfactory. Even the New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature is slightly inaccurate and incomplete in its entries for GA's books. The bibliographies in the three volumes of the Dictionary of Literary Biography (Gale) which have articles on GA also have omissions and some minor errors. All of these ignore GA's uncollected work for the periodicals: given his relatively short writing career of 22 years, this output is astounding in its extent and range. The best available printed bibliography is by Phil Stephensen-Payne and Virgil Utter (Galactic Central Publications, 1999), but it too is extremely incomplete, and its contents (with the authors' permission) have been absorbed here. I have personally inspected nearly all the items listed below. In a few cases page numbers are missing because I have been unable to examine a run of the periodical in question, eg. because the British Newspaper Library's holding is 'unfit for use'.
The Library of Congress, the University of Toronto Library and the University of California libraries seem to hold the fullest collections of GA's books.
All items are signed 'Grant Allen', and books were published in one volume, unless stated otherwise. This assemblage of materials and the annotations are of course copyright. PM.
Abbreviations:
CIHM=Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions, Ottawa
Penn=Rare Books and Manuscripts, the Pennsylvania State University Libraries
CW=Chatto & Windus Archives, University of Reading Library
No man, probably, ever became by choice a professional writer, a “bookseller's hack,” as our ancestors bluntly but forcibly phrased it. A trade so ill-paid and so overworked would gain no recruits, except for dire necessity. Men are driven into literature, as they are driven into crime, by hunger alone. The most hateful of professions (as a profession, I mean), it becomes tolerable only from a sense of duty to wife and family, or the primary instinct of self-preservation. The wages are low; the prizes few and often fallacious; the work is so hard that it kills or disables most men who undertake it before they arrive at middle life. . . . – 'The Trade of Author' (1889).
Philosophy and science were the first loves of my youth. . . . I had a ten years' hard struggle for bread, into the details of which I don't care to enter. It left me broken in health and spirit, with all the vitality and vivacity crushed out of me. I suppose the object of this series of papers is to warn off ingenuous and aspiring youth from the hardest worked and worst paid of the professions. If so, I would say earnestly to the ingenuous and aspiring -- 'Brain for brain, in no market can you sell your abilities to such poor advantage. Don't take to literature if you've capital enough in hand to buy a good broom, and energy enough to annex a vacant crossing'. -- My First Book (1892).
1869
The Positive Aspect of Communism
This is less about communism that the state of sexual morality and what it portends. The youthful (and married) GA refers to 'the present chaotic state of public morality, in the restricted sense of the term, throughout Europe, and especially in its most highly civilised quarters, in a phenomenon full of import to those who would carefully decypher the enigma of history. … It was in France that the laxity of morals, now so prevalent throughout, first showed itself. I do not desire to condone or to palliate the loose and careless state of public feeling on this subject. . . . I merely wish to point out the latent cause by which it is produced, and the influence that it will probably exert on the history of the times. . . . the licentiousness which we see in the reign of Napoleon III. is complete and universal, and is infecting every relation of domestic life. (107) / … Communism, or some form of government closely resembling it, is the goal towards which every movement of the most civilised members of our race is at present tending' (109).
GA was a student at Merton, Oxford 1867-71 and briefly co-editor of this magazine, so minor that no information about it is included in the Waterloo Directory. It lasted for 2 issues. At the age of 20 he married Caroline Bootheway, who was 22, in Sep 1868.
1. Oxford University Magazine and Review, 2 (Dec 1869), 97-109.
1871-2
GA graduated in the summer of 1871 and taught Classics in schools at Brighton, Cheltenham (where his wife died in Mar 1872) and Reading. There exists a photograph of GA standing in a doorway at Brighton College.
1873-6
GA remarried (to Nellie Jerrard, daughter of a butcher at Lyme Regis) and taught at the short-lived Queen's College, Spanish Town, Jamaica.
1876
GA, possibly travelling alone, returned to England from Jamaica in the autumn of this year, probably via North America.
JULY 1876
Force and Energy
GA's first 'commercial' article. Using a distinction unknown to physicists then or now, it defines 'force' in a unique sense to mean 'attractive' power; and 'energy' to mean 'repulsive' power—these are the same uselessly sterile distinctions GA later elaborated into a whole book. Refers to Spencer as 'that profound and encyclopedic philosopher who has been the first in the history of our race to attempt the vast task of systematizing the whole circle of existences' (29). Probably a reworking of an untraced pamphlet GA says he circulated in 1875.
1. Canadian Monthly and National Review, 10 (July 1876), 20-31.
1877
Physiological Aesthetics
As GA wrote, 'the title alone will be enough for most people'. This treatise, which tries explain aesthetics in terms of the physiology of the senses, was partly drafted in Jamaica and cost GA 120 pounds to have published. It was dedicated to Herbert Spencer, 'the greatest of living philosophers'. It fell mostly on deaf ears but it secured him the attention of influential men and launched him on his career as a scientific and general writer.
1. London: Henry S. King, 1877.
2. New York: D. Appleton, 1877.
3. New York/London: Garland, 1977. The Decadent Consciousness: A Hidden Archive of Late Victorian Literature series. [Facsimile of the King, 1877 ed.]
4. Ottawa: CIHM, 1984. Four microfiches of the King, 1877 ed. Copy in the University of Saskatchewan Library. Series #05060.
5. Boston: Elibron, 2001. [Facsimile of the King, 1877 ed., in print & eBook formats.]
OCTOBER 1877
Mr Sully on Physiological Aesthetics
The editor of Mind from 1876 was GA's friend George Croom Robertson, Grote Professor of Mind and Logic, UC London. Mind was the first UK psychology journal. This piece challenged some points in Sully's review of GA's first book.
1. Mind, 1 (Oct 1877), 574-578.
NOVEMBER 1877
Carving a Cocoa-nut
First 'commercial' UK publication. How quite advanced aesthetic considerations control the manufacture and decoration of even the simplest of utensils. 'it brought me in twelve guineas. That was the very first money I earned in literature. I had been out of work for months, the abolition of my post in Jamaica having thrown me on my beam-ends, and I was overjoyed at so much wealth poured suddenly in upon me.' Leslie Stephen was ed. (from Apr1871- Dec 1882), then James Payn, Jan 83-Jun 96. The Cornhill's circulation was about 12,000 copies/month. Tone described in the Wellesley Index as 'polite entertainment coupled with information of the least disconcerting kind'. (quot. Waterloo, 2, 1261.)
1. Cornhill Magazine, 36 (Oct 1877), 461-472. Unsigned.
Aesthetic Analysis of an Obelisk
Allen's first appearance (probably pirated) in this US magazine, founded 1872.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 36 (Nov 1877), 589-600. Signed 'G.A.'
2. Popular Science Monthly Supplement, 7-12 (1878), 152-159.
1878
JANUARY 1878
Dissecting a Daisy
Appeal of flowers to human aesthetic sensibilities, even though they evolved in parallel with, and to appeal to, insects.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 37 (Jan 1878), 61-75. Signed 'G.A.'.
2. Popular Science Monthly Supplement, 7-12 (1878), 329-338.
Development of the Sense of Colour
1. Mind, 3 (Jan 1878), 129-132.
FEBRUARY 1878 (GA's 30th birthday)
APRIL 1878
Note-deafness
1. Mind, 3 (Apr 1878), 157-167.
2. La surdite musicale. [A summary in French]. Revue philosophique de la France et de l'etranger, 5 (1878), 574-575.
3. Living Age, 137 (11 May 1878), 353-358.
An Epicurean Tour
The great merits of food in America. Says conclusively that he was sent 'during the summer of last year', ie 1877, on a scientific mission to America by a 'learned society' to collect meteorological statistics. He arrived first in NY and was apparently travelling alone. (Clodd, 57 says his wife preceded him to England by some months.) Obviously this was en route for his return to England but the other personal details may be invented.
First piece for the Belgravia. This was read later (in the 1890s) almost entirely for its short fiction, but in its earlier years it published miscellaneous articles. GA got his start in fiction there. The editor was M.E. Braddon from 1866 to Feb 1876 and again Jan1890-1893. Chatto had the editorial role from 1876 and the firm was the owner. G.A. Sala was a frequent contributor. Designed for a genteel lady public.
1. Belgravia: A London Magazine, 35 (Apr 1878), 154-166. Unsigned.
MAY 1878
The Origin of Flowers
Mostly on coloration and fertilisation; probably part of GA's work on the evolution of colour senses.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 37 (May 1878), 534-550. Signed 'G.A.'
2. Popular Science Monthly Supplement, 13-20 (1878), 151-161.
3. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science and Art, 28 (Aug 1878), 129-141. Unsigned.
The Book of the Week. Tropical Nature
Long review of A.R. Wallace's Tropical Nature. Obviously by GA as it mentions the common fallacy that tropical forests are colourful—which he used in a following essay. GA's natural, conversational style had not yet emerged in these London pieces: he adopts the stiff, pompous verbose style current in this type of journalism; eg this sample: ' [Wallace] desires a certain evidence for the invisible and immaterial with such fervour, that he has been occasionally tempted to seek a proof by the illogical method of employing his eyes and his fingers to see and to handle it. His coquetry with that special form of necromancy which calls itself Spiritualism will be fresh in the memory of many readers…' (379) etc etc.
London, 3 (18 May 1878), 378-9. Unsigned.
JUNE 1878
The Great Tropical Fallacy
Jaundiced denunciation of the supposed 'romance' of the tropics, drawing on GA's experiences in Jamaica.
1. By J. Arbuthnot Wilson. Belgravia: A London Magazine, 35 (June 1878), 413-425.
2. By J. Arbuthnot Wilson. Popular Science Monthly Supplement, 13-20 (1878), 200-206.
3. Living Age, 138 (20 July 1878), 174-181.
4. By J. Arbuthnot Wilson. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science and Art, 28 (Aug 1878), 217-224.
JULY 1878
The Origin of the Sublime
1. Mind, 3 (July 1878), 324-339.
2. L'Origine du sublime. [A summary in French.] Revue philosophique de la France et de l'etranger, 6 (1878), 431-432.
AUGUST 1878
The Origin of Fruits
1. Cornhill Magazine, 38 (Aug 1878), 174-188. Signed 'G.A.'
2. Popular Science Monthly, 13 (Sep 1878), 597-611.
Hellas and Civilisation
1. Gentleman's Magazine, 243 (Aug 1878), 156-170.
2. Popular Science Monthly Supplement, 13-20 (1878), 398-406.
OCTOBER 1878
Colour in Painting
1. Cornhill Magazine, 38 (Oct 1878), 476-493. Signed 'G.A.'
2. Color in Painting. Popular Science Monthly Supplement (Addendum), 13-20 (1878), 14-24.
Among the Thousand Islands
Details of 'camping out' in considerable luxury on the privately owned Mathison Island, presumably in the summer of 1877. He refers in passing to the Canadian farmer 'that mild modern Vandal with a tinge of Methodism' who has produced 'a Philistine paradise of agricultural wealth and prosperity, where every man eats roast beef and pudding under his own vine and fig-tree, while nobody troubles his head about useless trifles like the picturesque and the beautiful' (415). And at this early date, of the habits of the American young woman: 'Engaged couples start alone to spend a week at some hotel among the Hudson Highlands or the Adirondacks, and no New York society is convulsed by their shocking conduct. The result is that American women, perfectly independent and free in their outward movements, are hedged round by a cordon of self-constraint and self-possession which the boldest Lothario would never venture to transgress. It you want to know what were the emotions of a Greek who felt himself turning into stone under the petrifying gaze of the Gorgon Medusa, you have only to watch the freezing glance of an American maiden who faintly suspects you of a contemplated incursion beyond that magic and circumscribed circle' (420). He says he was accompanied by his wife, but since he also says that he had no idea where the 'delightful region' of the Islands was 'until I came here' (despite having being born there!), the whole episode may be fictitious. Was this evasion to protect his identity? The second article with this title describes his July 1886 visit.
1. By J. Arbuthnot Wilson. Belgravia: A London Magazine, 36 (Oct 1878), 412-423.
NOVEMBER 1878
Nation-making: a Theory of National Characters
The GM was owned by Bradbury Evans and Co. from 1877 to 1905, and Chatto & Windus 1905-1907. Directed at a middle to upper class public of fair education.
1. Gentleman's Magazine, 243 (Nov 1878), 580-591.
2. Popular Science Monthly Supplement (Addendum), 13-20 (1878), 121-127.
The Colour-Sense
Letter to editor announcing thesis of his next book: that a lack of colour terms results from 'a defect of language closely connected with the small number of dyes or artificial pigments known to the various tribes. To establish this result I have sent a number of circular letters to missionaries, Government officials, and other persons having relations with native uncivilised races in all parts of the world; and their answers to my queries, framed so as to distinguish carefully between perception and language, in every case bear out the theory. . .'
1. Nature, 19 (14 Nov 1878), 32.
The “Diversions of Priestley”
Powerful pieces describing and denouncing horrible experiments on animals using vanadium as a poison. In the third piece he refers to Cromwell Mortimer's experiments with a laurel-water infusion, showing that it was lethal to dogs. GA uses this as a means of suicide in Under Sealed Orders.
London, 4 (2 Nov 1878), 422-3; (9 Nov 1878), 447-8; (16 Nov 1878), 471-2. Unsigned.
1879
The Colour-sense: Its Origin and Development. An Essay in Comparative Psychology
More than half of this book is devoted to a close description of the evolution of colour vision in insects, birds and animals. The interaction between the means of vegetable reproduction (flowers and fruits) and insects, birds and animals in facilitating this is explained as the ultimate cause of colour vision. However, the actual occasion of the book—chapters 11 onwards deal with it—was a lively if brief debate of the day about whether humans' colour vision evolved in historical times. The case for this was first put by William Gladstone in a paper which pursued an anti-evolutionary argument (Nineteenth Century, 2 (1877).) He claimed that the Homeric poems show little awareness of colour, and that the philological evidence is that 3000 years ago people could not distinguish red, blue, green and yellow. GA had no problem demolishing this argument. His treatise, for which he made exhaustive inquiries of people as far away as Burma, earned him 30 pounds. GA wrote sardonically: 'as it took me only eighteen months, and involved little more than five or six thousand references, this result may be regarded as very fair pay for an educated man's time and labour.'
1. London: Truebner, 1879. English and Foreign Philosophical Library, vol. X.
2. Boston: Houghton, Osgood, 1878. English and Foreign Philosophical Library vol. 14. Reprinted 1879.
3. Der Farbensinn, sein Ursprung und seine Entwicklung. [Translation into German]. Leipzig: Guenther, 1880. Series Darwinistische Schriften. Nr. 7. Reprinted 1887.
4. Der Farbensinn. [Translation into German]. Jetzt, Leipzig: A. Kroener, [nd].
5. Second edition. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Truebner, 1892. Reprinted 1897. English and Foreign Philosophical Library, vol. 10.
6. Ottawa: CIHM, 1980. Four microfiches of the Truebner, 1879 ed. Copy in the Douglas Library, Queen's University. Series #05017.
7. Ottawa: CIHM, 1984. Four microfiches of the Kegan Paul, 1892 ed. Copy in the University of Saskatchewan Library. Series #28976.
JANUARY 1879
Down the Rapids
A trip by river boat along the St Lawrence from Kingston to Montreal. 'Winter creeps on apace, and we must obey the inexorable law which brings all men, great and small, back to the solemn mists of London streets.' Must refer to the same homeward bound trip in the autumn of 1877, though here too he mentions his wife. Also notable for some observations on black servants – better than being served by whites, as the former don't mind being treated as inferiors.
1. By J.Arbuthnot Wilson. Belgravia: A London Magazine, 37 (Jan 1879), 288-296.
How Plants Provide for the Future
1. New York Observer and Chronicle, 57:1 (2 Jan 1879), 8.
FEBRUARY 1879
GA writes to his friend Nicholson, asking him to help him to any kind of literary employment.
MARCH 1879
Violets and Primroses
A standard botanical account, stressing the reproductive arrangements.
1. London: The Conservative Weekly Journal, 5 (22 Mar 1879), 230. [Unsigned; attribution probable.]
The Adventures of an English Christian Name
Origin of the name 'John' and its equivalents in other languages.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 39 (Mar 1879), 323-334. Signed 'G.A.'
Why Do We Eat our Dinner?
Physiology and chemistry of nutrition and digestion.
1. Belgravia: A London Magazine, 38 (Mar 1879), 31-43.
2. Popular Science Monthly, 14 (Apr 1879), 799-810.
3. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science and Art, 29 (May 1879), 592-599.
APRIL 1879
[Letter replying to A.R. Wallace's review of The Colour-sense]
Wallace's fairly critical, closely-argued review had appeared in the issue of 3 Apr 1879. He spoke highly of GA's clarity of expression. GA objected to some points, though rather cringingly noting that no one who knew Wallace 'could for one moment imagine him capable of intentionally misrepresenting the humblest opponent in the smallest particular; and I owe him many thanks for much kind and appreciative criticism' (581). Is there an ironical tone here?
1. Nature, 19 (24 Apr 1879), 580-581.
Review of] Habit and Intelligence: a Series of Essays on the Laws of Life and Mind by John Joseph Murphy
1. Mind, 4 (Apr 1879), 274-278.
Mr G.S. Hall on the Perception of Colour
1. Mind, 4 (Apr 1879), 267-268.
2. Le Sens de la couleur. [A summary in French.] Revue philosophique de la France et de l'etranger, 2:17 (July/Dec 1878), 303.
MAY 1879
[Review of] Evolution, Old and New by Samuel Butler
The Academy gave science special prominence. CE Dobell was ed. 78-81; J.S. Cotton, 81-96; Charles Hind Nov 96-1903.
1. Academy: A Weekly Review of Literature, Science, and Art, 15 (17 May 1879), 426-427.
A Problem in Human Evolution
On the loss of body hair in humans. GA's first appearance in the great journal of radicalism, agnosticism, scientism and all progressive causes. John Morley (also ed. of the Pall Mall Gazette) was ed Jan 1867- Oct 1882; T.H.S. Escott (N82-Ju86), then Frank Harris (Jul86-Oct94), then WL Courtney, Dec94-. GA contributed 29 articles to it, including all his most incendiary ones in the Harris tenure. Its circulation was around 2500/month.
1. Fortnightly Review, 31 (May 1879), 778-786.
2. Popular Science Monthly, 15 (June 1879), 250-258.
3. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science and Art, 30 (July 1879), 57-62.
Half an Hour at Didcot Junction
Reflections on the history of a man's name spotted while waiting for a train.
1. By J.Arbuthnot Wilson. Belgravia: A London Magazine, 38 (May 1879), 287-299.
The Colour Sense in Insects; Its Development and Reaction
Report of a short paper delivered at this weekly evening meeting. Based on points made in The Colour-sense.
1. Notices of the Proceedings of the Meetings of the Members of the Royal Institution of Great Britain with Abstracts of the Discourses Delivered at the Evening Meetings, IX (1879-1881), 30 May 1879, 201-202.
JUNE 1879
'Pleased with a Feather'
A tiny feather pulled idly from a cushion starts a meditation on the evolution of feathers and birds, even though 'a murky London winter afternoon is not exactly a good opportunity for the pursuit of natural history. . . . I rise listlessly from my easy chair; perambulate the drawing-room in a sulky mood; peer at the Japanese fans on the mantel-shelf; re-arrange for the twentieth time those queer little pipkins we brought on our last vacation ramble from Morlaix; pull about my wife's old Chelsea in a savage fit of tidiness; and finally relapse upon the sofa with a fixed determination to be inconsolably miserable for the rest of the day' (712).
1. Cornhill Magazine, 39 (June 1879), 712-722. Signed 'G.A.'
2. Popular Science Monthly, 15 (July 1879), 366-376.
A Fragment from Keats
Minute & clever reading of lines from Eve of St Agnes.
1. Gentleman's Magazine, 244 (June 1879), 676-686.
The Physiology of Memory
Promotes an explanation about nerve pathways, due first to Bain.
1. Journal of Education, 1 (1 June 1879), 106-107.
JULY 1879
The Origin of the Sense of Symmetry
1. Mind, 4 (July 1879), 301-316.
2. L'Origine du sens de la symetrie. [Summary in French]. Revue philosophique de la France et de l'etranger, 8 (1879), 442.
The Human Face Divine
How the 'prominent muzzle of the original semi-human ape grew slowly into that most beautiful of earthly forms – the Human Face divine.' The 'most human' face is that of the 'civilised Aryan; the most simian is that of the African Bushman.' Those of negroes, Andaman islanders, and Indian hill-tribesmen are 'more brutish' and 'to put it in the truest way, more ape-like' (167). At first sight, Chinese and Japanese are a problem: they are prognathous and noseless, signs of primitivism, yet have are quite civilised. How to explain? They seem civilised, but actually show 'every mark of arrested development. The Chinese language is in the most infantile state of human speech, known as the monosyllabic; the writing is not alphabetical, the civilisation is stationary, the mental powers almost purely imitative.' (180) A valuable illustration of the point that, just as racism based on cultural/political factors was falling into decline, an even cruder set of prejudices was being reinforced by Darwinian biology. It is not absolutely certain this is by GA, but the style matches his. Identified as GA in Wellesley.
1. New Quarterly Magazine, 2 n.s (July 1879), 166-182. Unsigned.
[Note on the Burmese Sense of Colour]
1. Mind, 4 (July 1879), 299.
Some New Books
Reviews Eliot's Theophrastus Such; Browning's Dramatic Idylls; Stevenson's Travels with a Donkey. GA was disgusted with Stevenson's ill-treatment of his donkey: 'above all, if he had not used that wooden goad, with its eighth of an inch of pin . . . most Englishmen will feel pained rather than amused by the description of poor Modestine's many stripes, or of her foreleg “no better that raw beef on the inside”.'
1. Fortnightly Review, 32 (July 1879), 144-154.
AUGUST 1879
Among the Blue Mountains
A chatty, circumstantial account of a holiday trip from Kingston up to the Port Royal Hills, apparently immediately after GA arrived in Jamaica. “I have more than once admitted that I am somewhat prejudiced against the tropics, but I freely allow that the Port Royal Hills are beautiful” (352). He stays at Mango Top, on a mountain below St Catherine's Peak, among a “little colony of officials” (355). “Nevertheless, though we idle away our time pleasantly enough, I cannot for a moment pretend that life among the Jamaican hills is really enjoyable. . . . In short, let alone heat, negroes, and atrocious cookery, the mosquito is by himself enough to poison life in the West Indies” (357).
1. By J.Arbuthnot Wilson. Belgravia: A London Magazine, 39 (Aug 1879), 345-357.
Justice to William
GA was inundated with letters after his earlier piece, and here extends his exposition to another first name.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 40 (Aug 1879), 202-212. Signed 'G.A.'
OCTOBER 1879
GA fell very ill and his friends raised a subscription to send him to the Riviera over the winter. He left this month.
DECEMBER 1879
The History of Haconby
An imaginary English settlement, whose entire history in outline, from the remotest times, is sketched here.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 40 (Dec 1879), 707-721. Signed 'G.A.'
A Sidelight on Gray's 'Bard'
1. Gentleman's Magazine, 245 (Dec 1879), 721-734.
1880
FEBRUARY 1880
Chippers of Flint
The long evolution of stone and bone implements.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 41 (Feb 1880), 189-200. Signed 'G.A.'
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science and Art, 31 (May 1881), 599-608.
MARCH 1880
The Philosophy of Drawing-rooms
GA's first article on interior decoration; offers an insight into later-Victorian taste; he recommends pulling out pallid marble fireplaces, for example. Arthur Liberty (the shop was founded 1875) combined the aesthetic and commercial; it was very different to the anti-commercial and anti-technological aesthetic of the Arts and Crafts movement. This was more GA's inspiration.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 41 (Mar 1880), 312-326. Signed 'G.A.'
APRIL 1880
Pain and Death
1. Mind, 5 (Apr 1880), 201-216.
2. La douleur et la mort. [Summary in French.] Revue philosophique de la France et de l'etranger, 10 (1880), 233-235.
MAY 1880
A Pilgrimage to Vallauris
A trip out from Cannes to visit to the much-admired pottery in the hills, headed then by a Clement Massier. He was one of 3 brothers who worked in their father's company. Clement was born in 1845, and was famous for his lustre glazes. He was a figure in the Art Nouveau movement. Died 1917. Picasso was to work here later, and it is still operating.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 41 (May 1880), 557-570. Signed 'G.A.'
The English Chronicle
1. Gentleman's Magazine, 246 (May 1880), 543-559.
Wintering in Hyeres
GA's friends paid for him to winter there after his serious illness, from Oct 1879 to May 1880. Some good glimpses of a barely recognisable Riviera.
1. By J.Arbuthnot Wilson. Belgravia: A London Magazine, 41 (May 1880), 41-52.
JUNE 1880
Geology and History
An impressively wide-ranging account of how geology, especially industrial resources and building materials, have influenced agriculture, manufactures, art and science. Egypt: granite and Nile mud. Greece: marble. China: kaolin clay. Assyria & upper India: sun-dried brick. 'To the Caen stone, the Bath stone, and the Portland stone we owe half our cathedrals and abbeys, whose delicate tracery could never have been wrought in Rowley rag or Whin Sill basalt. The architecture of granite or hard limestone regions is often massive and imposing, but it always lacks the beauty of detailed sculpture or intricate handicraft. The marble lattice-work of the Taj or the 'prentice's pillar' of Roslyn Chapel is only possible in a soft and pliable material' (507). GA wrote only twice for Fraser's, which had a circulation of about 6000.
1. Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country, 21 (June 1880), 769-780.
2. Popular Science Monthly, 17 (Aug 1880), 495-507.
3. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science and Art, 32 (Aug 1880), 228-236.
A Sprig of Crowfoot
The leaves of a semi-aquatic plant. This essay marks the beginning of GA's astonishing output of middles for the up-market daily press. The SJG first appeared 31 May 1880 as a direct Conservative competitor to the PMG (now Liberal) and edited by Frederick Greenwood, 1880-8 and Sidney Low 1888-97.
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (23 June 1880), 12-13. Unsigned.
2. A Sprig of Water Crowfoot. The Evolutionist at Large (1881).
Microscopic Brains
What is the thinkable universe of an ant? Largely one of smell.
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (25 June 1880), 12-13. Unsigned.
2. The Evolutionist at Large (1881).
A Wayside Berry
Reproductive strategies of the strawberry.
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (29 June 1880), 12-13. Unsigned.
2. The Evolutionist at Large (1881).
In Summer Fields
Instinctive enmities among animals.
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (30 June 1880), 12-13. Unsigned.
2. The Evolutionist at Large (1881).
JULY 1880
[Review of] The Religion of the Future by John Beattie Crozier
1. Mind, 5 (July 1880), 432-434.
Cimabue and Coal-scuttles
On 'savage' versus 'civilised' tastes in the decorative arts and interior decoration.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 42 (July 1880), 61-76. Signed 'G.A.'
“The Venerable Bede”
1. Gentleman's Magazine, 247 (July 1880), 84-100.
A Study of Bones
The evolution of tail-bones of various animals.
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (3 July 1880), 12-13. Unsigned.
2. The Evolutionist at Large (1881).
Slugs and Snails
Why natural selection has removed the shell, in slugs.
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (6 July 1880), 12-13. Unsigned.
2. The Evolutionist at Large (1881).
Cuckoo-pint
'In the bank which supports the hedge, beside this little hanger on the flank of Black Down, the glossy arrow-headed leaves of the common arum form at this moment beautiful masses of vivid green foliage. “Cuckoo-pint” is the pretty poetical old English name for the plant; but village children know it better by the equally quaint and fanciful title of “lords and ladies” . . . there is hardly a plant in the field around me which has not a history as strange as this one.' Relationship with GMag article needs checking.
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (8 July 1880), 12-13. Unsigned.
2. The Evolutionist at Large (1881).
Blue Mud
The blue lias mud and fossils at Lyme Regis.
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (10 July 1880), 13. Unsigned.
2. The Evolutionist at Large (1881).
Speckled Trout
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (13 July 1880), 12-13. Unsigned.
2. The Evolutionist at Large (1881).
Berries and Berries
Various kinds of fruity berries which attract birds.
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (15 July 1880), 13. Unsigned.
2. The Evolutionist at Large (1881).
Distant Relations
The tadpole as the most primitive vertebrate.
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (20 July 1880), 13. Unsigned.
2. The Evolutionist at Large (1881).
Among the Heather
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (23 July 1880), 13. Unsigned.
2. The Evolutionist at Large (1881).
3. Library of the World's Best Literature, vol. 1. ed. Warner. J.A. Hill, 1902.
Dodder and Broomrape
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (26 July 1880), 13. Unsigned.
2. The Evolutionist at Large (1881).
Flat Fish
Covers much of the ground of a Cornhill article on Soles.
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (30 July 1880), 13. Unsigned.
AUGUST 1880
The Education of Young Astronomers
1. Science, 1:7 (August 1880), 82.
A Pretty Land-shell
On the oddities of the Cyclostoma snail.
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (3 Aug 1880), 14. Unsigned.
2. The Evolutionist at Large (1881).
[Review of] The West Indies by Charles H. Eden
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (3 Aug 1880), 14. Unsigned.
Dog's Mercury and Plantain
Examples of 'degraded' plants.
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (4 Aug 1880), 13-14. Unsigned.
2. The Evolutionist at Large (1881).
The Origin of Walnuts
Survival mechanisms in nuts.
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (7 Aug 1880), 13. Unsigned.
2. The Evolutionist at Large (1881).
Butterfly Psychology
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (11 Aug 1880), 13. Unsigned.
2. The Evolutionist at Large (1881).
Butterfly Aesthetics
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (14 Aug 1880), 13. Unsigned.
2. The Evolutionist at Large (1881).
Bindweed
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (18 Aug 1880), 13. Unsigned.
2. The Evolutionist at Large (1881).
Dogs and Masters
'Probably the most forlorn and abject creature to be seen on the face of the earth is a masterless dog'.
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (20 Aug 1880), 13. Unsigned.
2. The Evolutionist at Large (1881).
Thistles
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (25 Aug 1880), 13. Unsigned.
Blackcock
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (28 Aug 1880), 13. Unsigned.
2. The Evolutionist at Large (1881).
[Review of] The Past in the Present by Arthur Mitchell
Apparently GA's first review for the Athenaeum.
1. Athenaeum, 28 Aug 1880, 274-6. Unsigned.
A Jamaica Hurricane
'The town of Kingston, Jamaica – a ruinous mass of flat wooden shops and houses, in every stage of decay – stands on a low basking plain, scarcely a foot or two above the level of the sea, and stretching inland with hardly a perceptible rise. . . . The damage that may be done by one of these tornadoes can only be fully understood by those who know the peculiarities of West Indian architecture. Kingston is a town of decayed wooden houses, built for the most part of nothing but Venetian blinds. The lower portion of each wall is composed of brick, above which a few posts give support to the roof, while the interspaces are filled up with jalousies, once green, but generally faded to an indescribable dusty olive hue. From the days of emancipation onward most of these tenements have been in a progressive state of decay . . . the whole population, some 40,000 in number, mostly negroes of the most idle and improvident class, live closely crowded in tumble-down houses, many of them originally built for wealthy merchants or planters . . . To sleep in the dust of the streets and to eat yam cooked over an open fire will be no novelty and no great hardship to three-fourths of the population of Kingston. But English ladies and children may suffer terribly from exposure, dearth of suitable food, and inevitable fever'.
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (31 Aug 1880), 12-13. Unsigned.
SEPTEMBER 1880
Landowning and Copyright
1. Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country, 21 (Sep 1880), 343-356.
The Dog's Universe
1. Gentleman's Magazine, 247 (Sep 1880), 287-301.
2. Appleton's Magazine, 9 (Dec 1880), 545-552.
The Ways of Orthodox Critics
Spencer claimed he fed GA the materials for this article. Duncan, ed., 211. Josiah Royce warned William James that this was an 'ill-natured storm of words'. See Correspondence of William James, eds. Ignas K. Skrupskelis & Elizabeth M. Berkley. University Press of Virginia, 1997, 5, 554.
1. Fortnightly Review, 34 (Sep 1880), 273-299.
The Growth of Sculpture
Evolution of painting and sculpture in the earliest civilisations – formed especially by the nature of the materials to hand. GA's first fully signed piece for the Cornhill.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 42 (Sep 1880), 273-293.
2. Appleton's Journal, 9 (Nov 1880), 420-432.
Aesthetic Feeling in Birds
1. Popular Science Monthly, 17 (Sep 1880), 650-663.
A Doubtful British Mollusc
Letter about a continental snail picked up 'when I was a schoolboy' at Kinver, near Stourbridge, close to the grounds of Enville, where there are foreign shrubs. This area is only about 20km from Birmingham. This letter is addressed from 'Broad Street, Lyme Regis'.
1. Nature, 22 (9 Sep 1880), 435.
On Cornish Cliffs
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (7 Sep 1880), 12-13. Unsigned.
2. The Evolutionist at Large (1881).
Nasturtium
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (16 Sep 1880), 13. Unsigned. Attribution probable.
“Claims of Long Descent”
Resemblances between donkey and zebra. Mentions mules in Jamaica.
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (20 Sep 1880), 12-13. Unsigned.
Another “Missing Link”
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (23 Sep 1880), 12-13. Unsigned. Attribution probable.
OCTOBER 1880
Aesthetic Evolution in Man
Draws on the Descent, 1871: also combines eugenic ideas. Insists that the beauty of the female form must be the 'central standard' for people. The beautiful must be defined as 'the healthy, the normal, the strong, the perfect, and the parentally sound' otherwise race suicide beckons.
1. Mind, 5 (Oct 1880), 430-464.
2. Popular Science Monthly, 18 (Jan 1881), 339-356.
3. L'evolution esthetique chez l'homme. [Summary in French.] Revue philosophique de la France et de l'etranger, 11 (1881), 104-105.
Are We Englishmen?
1. Fortnightly Review, 34 (Oct 1880), 472-487.
Why Keep India?
A thorough assault on one of the verities of Victorian life, doubtless based on GA's statistical work for Hunter. London magazine had defined the tone of the Contemporary well; it may be by GA: 'solid almost beyond digestibility. Apparently there is in modern man a capacity for the absorption of heavy literature such as his ancestors never dreamed of; the more serious and opaque a literature is the better is he able to accept and assimilate it.' Circulation about 4000. GA wrote 4 pieces for it.
1. Contemporary Review, 38 (Oct 1880), 544-556.
Rural America
'There is no scenery, no history, no antiquities, no associations, no architecture, no beauty of any kind – nothing to tempt any human being out of his road'. Matches similar comments in Babylon.
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (1 Oct 1880), 12-13. Unsigned.
An American Farm
More assaults on rural American life: 'that well-known centre of culture, the Fitch University'; jokes about the name 'Melissa'; 'we have in every part of England a varied national life, close communication with real centres of thought and culture, infinite interweaving of classes and interests. The squire goes for half the year to London, and fills the hall for the other half with guests from distant shires. The parson has taken his degree at Oxford or Cambridge, and diffuses among his people a constant civilising influence. The farmer himself generally knows London and the seaside towns, goes on Sundays to a church adorned with mediaeval art, and catches frequent glimpses of a life and a society far more elevated than his own. But in rural America the whole existence of the people rolls on for ever in one unvaried and unlovely round, and all their thoughts, beliefs, and aspirations are cast in one monotonous mould.' A good deal more on the same lines.
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (4 Oct 1880), 12-13. Unsigned.
The Riviera in the Rough
Mentions Hyeres several times; obviously a memory of his stay. On Bornes as an undiscovered Riviera town. 'There was no house in the place in which an Englishman could even rough it with considerable discomfort. There was no shop where he could get – I do not say tea or biscuits, but meat, or white bread, or butter, or any milk save goat's. The native population lives wholly on black bread, olive-oil, and very sour vin du pays. The little rustic villages of the remoter corners are charming and picturesque in themselves. . . .'
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (13 Oct 1880), 12-13. Unsigned.
Along the Musquash River
Real American forest: 'This charmed land is one which a boy who has lived in it can never forget. . . . If there is anything to rouse a spark of poetry latent in the youth of Jefferson County, it is this. But perhaps it would be too rash to suppose that any poetry at all can in any way come out of the ordinary life of rural America' (12).
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (14 Oct 1880), 12-13. Unsigned.
Fairies and Historical Fact
Repeats points about mythological origins he makes elsewhere – eg about 'fairy pipes'.
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (16 Oct 1880), 12. Unsigned.
Occidental Culture
A mocking account of 'Fitch University'. 'The students pass through their three years without for a moment suspecting the gigantic sham of which they form a part. They see the world, so far as it can be seen in the saloons and bars of Sicily – a small pork-exporting and sugar-distributing country town, with wooden plank sidewalks, frame houses and 7,000 uninteresting inhabitants' (12).
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (19 Oct 1880), 12-13. Unsigned.
St Thomas
Clearly a reminiscence of this Danish colony during GA's passage to Jamaica, or perhaps his return voyage. 'After fifteen days' tossing on the bosom of the Atlantic, the West Indian passenger is usually not sorry to get a little respite from his sufferings in the calm harbour of St. Thomas. Fair the bosom of the Atlantic may perhaps be, but smooth it certainly is not; and repose upon it is often difficult and sometimes impossible. The passenger has seen no land worth speaking of since he left behind him the Wolf Rock Lighthouse on the furthest seaward outlier of the Scillies. He has had three nights of interminable agony as the vessel cut diagonally across the chops of Biscay; he has tried to get up a languid interest in the Azores. . . At last, on a morning more baking than all the mornings that have gone before, he wakes up in the midst of a Dutch oven…./ the people are all Anglicised negroes, with a touch of American smartness wholly lacking in the listless laisser-aller British nigger of Jamaica, the sauntering Spanish nigger of Cuba, or the independent and relapsing African of Haiti. Inside, the town of St Thomas looks very much like all other West Indian towns, except for its unusual briskness of trade . . . . The houses are mean and shabby-looking, though not quite so bad as in may other tropical American towns. The smells are terrific, the dirt undisguised, and the heat past human endurance. A broiling sun pours down upon the whole festering mass of unwashed humanity, crowded negro huts, narrow lanes, decaying rubbish, and dry dust; and the total effect is unsatisfactory. In short, all the picturesqueness of St Thomas fades into a dreary reality upon nearer view. . . . Nobody ever dreams of living at St Thomas unless he has business in the town; and then his one object is to save up money and go away again.'
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (23 Oct 1880), 12-13. Unsigned.
A Western Medicine-man
Another mocking piece about the semi-quack Dr Muller of the town of Sicily, Mid-West. 'He headed his neat business card…with a quotation from Mr Herbert Spencer, accompanied by the remark in large capitals that "Electricity is Life"', etc.
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (25 Oct 1880), 12. Unsigned.
NOVEMBER 1880
Decorative Decorations
Another piece on the newly-emerging 'aesthetic' principles of interior decoration.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 42 (Nov 1880), 590-600. Signed 'G.A.'
2. Appleton's Magazine, 10 (Feb 1881), 169-175.
Evolution and Geological Time
1. Gentleman's Magazine, 247 (Nov 1880), 563-579.
[Review of] Island Life by Alfred Russel Wallace
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (4 Nov 1880), 13. Unsigned.
Surnames and Places
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (19 Nov 1880), 13. Unsigned.
Unsuspected Welshmen
The range of Welsh patronymics.
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (22 Nov 1880), 12. Unsigned.
Character in Animals
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (25 Nov 1880), 12. Unsigned.
Untrodden Provence
'The road ends abruptly at St Tropez, a quaint old-fashioned harbour . . . Even to Frenchmen this curious corner of the world is still almost unknown…. Within a few miles of the town you can lose yourself in trackless forests' (13).
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (30 Nov 1880), 12-13. Unsigned.
DECEMBER 1880
On the Downs
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (4 Dec 1880), 12. Unsigned.
In a Chalk-pit
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (8 Dec 1880), 12-13. Unsigned.
The Weald of Kent
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (11 Dec 1880), 11-12. Unsigned.
Beside the Glen
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (23 Dec 1880), 11-12. Unsigned.
On the Crest of the North Downs
1. St James's Gazette, 1 (30 Dec 1880), 12-13. Unsigned.
Lyme Regis; a Splinter of Petrified History
The topography of this region, and the origin of the local names.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 42 (Dec 1880), 709-720. Unsigned.
[Review of] Island Life by A.R. Wallace
A much longer piece than the one in Nov. St. James's Gazette
1. Fortnightly Review, 34 (Dec 1880), 773-784.
2. Mr Wallace's “Island Life.” Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science and Art, 33 (Feb 1881), 254-262.
The Ethics of Copyright
GA wrote only 3 pieces for Macmillan's.
1. Macmillan's Magazine, 43 (Dec 1880), 153-160.
1881
Anglo-Saxon Britain
A short history and sketch of Britain under the early English conquerors, rather from the social than the political point of view.
1. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, [1881]. Reprinted 1884, 1891, [1901], 1904, 1910. Early Britain.
2. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge/New York: E & J.B. Young, [1881]. Reprinted 1884, [1891?], 1901.
3. [New edition.] Anglo-Saxon Britain by the Late Grant Allen, B.A. with Map. Published under the Direction of the General Literature Committee. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge/New York: E.S. Gorham, 1904, 1910. Early Britain.
The Evolutionist at Large
Contains an opening poem and 22 essays, all of which are reprinted from the St James's Gazette; where they appeared between 23 June 1880 and 7 Sep 1880. The first work GA put into Andrew Chatto's hands, & probably accepted because of work for the Belgravia. 'We shall be willing to undertake the publication of it [ ] in an attractive form at our own risk, and to pay you a royalty of 15 per cent of the publishing price on every copy sold'.
20 June 1881: 'Yes the Evolutionist has been uniformly well spoken of: we have published but a few books that have been so favourably reviewed: nevertheless, we have so far sold only 416 copies – this after very extensive (much more extensive than usual) advertising'.
14 Oct 1881: 'We had hoped that the sales would have been larger but as you say perhaps the title the Evolutionist has been against its popularity. We are still keeping it before the public and hope the demand for it may improve as it becomes better known'.
Chatto was still paying tiny royalties 13 years later, as he said on 5 July 1894: 'a statement of the sales of your Evolutionist at Large and Colin Clout's Calendar for the last two years, together with our cheque for L3.19.4d that being the amount due to you after deducting various small charges.' He received 12s 2d royalties for the year 1896-7.
1. London: Chatto & Windus, 1881.
2. New York: J Fitzgerald, [1881]. Humboldt Library of Popular Science Literature, vol. 2, #26.
3. [Together with Vignettes from Nature and Force and Energy.] New York: Humboldt Publishing Co, [1889].Humboldt Library of Science.
4. Revised by Rev. E. Purcell. London: Chatto & Windus, 1884.
5. Ottawa : CIHM, 1981. One microfiche of the Fitzgerald, 1881 ed. Copy in the Morisset Library, University of Ottawa. Series #26392.
6. Ottawa : CIHM, 1982. Three microfiches of the Chatto & Windus, 1884 ed. Copy in the Hamilton Public Library. Series #26900.
Vignettes from Nature
Contains a Preface and 22 essays reprinted from the Pall Mall Gazette where they appeared between 13 May and 18 Oct 1881, except for two essays which cannot be traced: 'Sedge and Woodrush' and 'A Big Fossil Bone' which probably appeared elsewhere in the PMG. GA's second collection of essays; according to the Preface they 'form the record of a single summer's stray thoughts on Nature from an easy-going, half-scientific, half-aesthetic standpoint. . . . They have no pretension to be any more than popular expositions of current evolutionary thought.' Their connecting theme is indeed evolution itself: how it, and it alone, can explain what the naturalist and the geologist studies, and how it has brought into existence the fantastic profusion of organisms, lifestyles and landscapes in which they live.
Oct 12 [1881]: 'I write now to ask whether the Evolutionist was so far a failure as to indispose you to republish this series. I am afraid you will hardly like to undertake it, but at any rate I thought I ought to give you the 'first refusal'. Many of my friends thought the title of the Evolutionist ill chosen: and it is just possible that the Vignettes might take better, and so might help to sell the previous volume. Has it been going off any better since I last heard?'
Oct 15 [1881]: I am afraid there would be some difficulty about including the articles from the St James's, as I imagine the diplomatic relations between the two evening papers are a trifle strained. But I could include one or two very similar articles from the Pall Mall itself, which did not appear under the title of Vignettes, and which would help to make up a volume the same size as the Evolutionist'.
23 Dec 1881: 'We submitted the proof sheets of the Evolutionist at Large as well as Vignettes from Nature to [America] in the hope of their making an offer . . . for an edition for the American market but without success, probably on account of the ease with which so small a volume could be piratically reprinted in the States. We did not know however that this had been already done. We fear that there is no help for it. Theoretically we believe that the Canadian law forbids the importation into the Dominion of American reprints of English copyright books except upon payment of a royalty to the author, but in practice nothing seems to come of it'.
18 May 1882: 'We have the pleasure of enclosing you our cheque for L15.1.6d for royalties for Vignettes from Nature . . .' .
1. London: Chatto & Windus, 1881.
2. New York: Fitzgerald, 1882. Humboldt Library of Popular Science Literature, vol. 2, #33.
3. Naturstudien: Bilder zur Entwickelungslehre. [Translation into German.] Leipzig: Quandt & Händel, 1883.
4. [Together with The Evolutionist at Large and Force and Energy.] New York: Humboldt Publishing Co, [1889].Humboldt Library of Science.
5. Ottawa : CIHM, 1980. Three microfiches of the Chatto & Windus, 1881 ed. Copy in the National Library of Canada. Series #05090.
6. Ottawa : CIHM, 1984. One microfiche of the copy of the Fitzgerald, 1882 ed. Copy in the Douglas Library, Queen's University. Series #27573.
Sedge and Woodrush
First periodical publication untraced.
1. Vignettes from Nature (1881).
A Big Fossil Bone
First periodical publication untraced.
1. Vignettes from Nature (1881).
JANUARY 1881
London Clay
Blames the dirty-yellow look of London buildings on the absence of good stone within 50 miles, or even decent clay for 'good honest red brick'.
1. St James's Gazette, 2 (6 Jan 1881), 12. Unsigned.
More about London Clay
Fossils in clay – mentions stupidity of marsupial vs. placental mammals.
1. St James's Gazette, 2 (10 Jan 1881), 12-13. Unsigned.
A Sandy Heath
1. St James's Gazette, 2 (13 Jan 1881), 12-13. Unsigned.
Glacial Epochs
'It is a curious question how far the severe cold of the last three winters is due to merely temporary or casual causes, and how far it may betoken a possible alteration in our climate as a whole' (12).
1. St James's Gazette, 2 (22 Jan 1881), 12-13. Unsigned.
A Gate in the Cliffs
The geology of the Eocene strata on the downs.
1. St James's Gazette, 2 (25 Jan 1881), 12-13. Unsigned.
Missing the Scent
Southern Britain in the Miocene period.
1. St James's Gazette, 2 (31 Jan 1881), 11-12. Unsigned.
Annals of Churnside. I.—King's Peddington
The first of 11 essays on the topography and local history of the Lyme Regis area, where his wife's family lived: 'a sunny corner of a southern shire whose exact position its present historian has no intention whatsoever of disclosing, seeing that he himself has taken up his abode there'. This was probably GA's first piece for the PMG. Eds. Frederick Greenwood, 65-80, H.V. May 80-81, John Morley 81-3, Stead 83-9, E.T. Cook 89-92, etc. The PMG was Conservative in tone at this point. It was a 'commuter train' evening paper, circulation about 8000. Stead introduced an index, but it ceased from the Jan 1889 issues.
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 33 (31 Jan 1881), 10-11. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
Monaco and Monte Carlo*
Taking the reader into 'bad company' from Hyeres. A sight-seeing piece done in GA's most fluent, man of the world style. Judging by GA's description of the casino, the facilities and gardens were more impressive then than now. Otherwise the scenes in the gaming rooms are barely different to today.
1. By J.Arbuthnot Wilson. Belgravia: A London Magazine, 43 (Jan 1881), 311-324.
Getting Married in Germany
1. Atlantic Monthly, ? (Jan 1881), 43-??
FEBRUARY 1881
Annals of Churnside. II.—Manbury Castle
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 33 (3 Feb 1881), 10. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
[Review of] Freaks and Marvels of Plant Life by M.C. Cooke
1. Academy: A Weekly Review of Literature, Science, and Art, 21 (4 Feb 1881), 85-86.
On the Plain
Pliocene deposits in southern England.
1. St James's Gazette, 2 (4 Feb 1881), 13. Unsigned.
Annals of Churnside. III.—The Roman Road
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 33 (14 Feb 1881), 10. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
Butterflies and Alpine Flowers
1. St James's Gazette, 2 (19 Feb 1881), 11-12. Unsigned.
Annals of Churnside. IV.—The Roman Villa
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 33 (23 Feb 1881), 10. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
Sight and Smell in Insects
1. St James's Gazette, 2 (25 Feb 1881), 11-12. Unsigned.
The Origin of London
Why London was founded on its site, and its role as seaport and administrative centre.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 43 (Feb 1881), 169-182. Signed 'G.A.'
Aesthetics in the Seven Dials
How to encourage at least the rudiments of an aesthetic sense in the East End: GA's idea is to get them working at handicrafts themselves, eg making and decorating a book cover. This magazine was founded 1878. W.E. Henley was ed. in 1881.
1. The Magazine of Art, 4 (Feb 1881), 145-148.
MARCH 1881
Bronze Celts and Copper Celts
Imitation celts or hatchets as votive objects.
1. St James's Gazette, 2 (3 Mar 1881), 12. Unsigned.
Annals of Churnside. V.—Peddington and Churney
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 33 (3 Mar 1881), 10. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
The Beginnings of Spring in the West Country
The first piece collected in Colin Clout's Calendar.
1. St James's Gazette, 2 (9 Mar 1881), 12-13. Unsigned.
2. The Beginning of Spring. Colin Clout's Calendar (1882).
Annals of Churnside. VI.—Sherborne Lane
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 33 (11 Mar 1881), 10. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
In the Fields: March
1. St James's Gazette, 2 (12 Mar 1881), 12-13. Unsigned.
The Sense of Sight in Fishes
1. St James's Gazette, 2 (15 Mar 1881), 12-13. Unsigned.
Submerged Forests
1. St James's Gazette, 2 (19 Mar 1881), 12. Unsigned.
Annals of Churnside. VII.—Danes' Hill
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 33 (19 Mar 1881), 10. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
A Terraced Hill-side
Agricultural terraces above a bend in the Avon.
1. St James's Gazette, 2 (21 Mar 1881), 12. Unsigned.
Annals of Churnside. VIII.—Domesday Book
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 33 (26 Mar 1881), 10-11. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
Catkins and Almond Blossom
1. St James's Gazette, 2 (28 Mar 1881), 12. Unsigned.
2. Colin Clout's Calendar (1882).
Who Were the Fairies?
Explained as a memory of the struggles between the new invader Celts and the earlier short Neolithic peoples, and of the last gap of ghost worship over the ancient tumuli.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 43 (Mar 1881), 335-348. Signed 'G.A.'
The Genesis of Genius
Answering some criticisms made by William James in 'Great Men, Great Thoughts and the Environment,' Atlantic Monthly, 46 (Oct 1880), 441-459, itself commenting in part on GA's two earlier articles in the Gentleman's Magazine in 1878. James wrote to W.D. Howells of this response (6 Nov 1880): “I knew that G.A. who is at bottom a good fellow whom one can't but like, would not be dumb.” Correspondence of William James, eds. Ignas K. Skrupskelis & Elizabeth M. Berkley. University Press of Virginia, 1997, 5, 141.
1. Atlantic Monthly, 47 (Mar 1881), 371-381.
APRIL 1881
A British Isle
Botanising on Lundy.
1. St James's Gazette, 2 (1 Apr 1881), 12. Unsigned.
Spring Flowers
1. St James's Gazette, 2 (4 Apr 1881), 12. Unsigned.
2. Colin Clout's Calendar (1882).
East Winds
1. St James's Gazette, 2 (5 Apr 1881), 11-12. Unsigned.
[Letter to William James]
10 South Parade. Bath. April 6. 81. Dear Dr James, Many thanks for the ms. of the Reply. I have read it with interest, and am sorry it was not published. It would have formed a natural close to the episode: and, as opener of the debate, you were fairly entitled to the opener's privilege.—I do trust courtesy is not an “unscientific motive.” Is not due respect between man and man the final ethical outcome of Spencerianism?—The article about Boston in the St James's was mine in skeleton, as you rightly surmise: but the editor (more editorum) hashed it up to that I can hardly answer for its histology. I am not sure whether you are not poking fun at me when you talk about my diagnosing Boston at a distance: but I am more of an American that you perhaps are aware. I was born and brought up in Canada; I got my first Latin at New Haven (Conn.) from a Yale Tutor; and though I have now been for many years in England, I spent the summers of '67, '74, and '75 in the States and Canada. I have often been to Boston, and have heard your father and many other Boston celebrities. – You must forgive me for tootling in the St. James's. It is my misfortune, not my fault. I have to make my living out of journalism, and I must turn out my article daily for daily bread: under which circumstances a man cannot always measure his words. – As to the emphasis question, I don't know that it is quite enough to say that we do feel interested in such and such a question, and that that gives the question its importance. When I was at Oxford I thought the Derby and the Waterloo Cup the two most important events of the year. But the real question is, what ought we to interest ourselves in; what, to a philosophic mind, ought to seem the most important—the differences that separate John Smith from John Noakes, or the differences that separate both from Ah Ling and Inashie.—However, I must not reopen the debate. With renewed thanks for your letter, I am, Yours very sincerely, Grant Allen.
[The reference to the Boston article is probably to one of those on rural America written in 1880.]
1. Correspondence of William James, eds. Ignas K. Skrupskelis & Elizabeth M. Berkley. University Press of Virginia, 1997, 5, 158-9.
Annals of Churnside. IX.—The Stone Pier
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 33 (8 Apr 1881), 11. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
The New Biology
Darwinism encourages much more specific classification of organisms.
1. St James's Gazette, 2 (8 Apr 1881), 12. Unsigned.
Colour in Nature
Why first buds in Spring tend to be red in hue.
1. St James's Gazette, 2 (13 Apr 1881), 12. Unsigned.
Annals of Churnside. X.—Churney Abbey
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 33 (18 Apr 1881), 10-11. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
In the Fields: April
1. St James's Gazette, 2 (20 Apr 1881), 12. Unsigned.
Return of the Swallows
Probably the piece praised by the obituarist.
1. St James's Gazette, 2 (26 Apr 1881), 12. Unsigned.
2. Colin Clout's Calendar (1882).
[Review of] Contributions to the History of the Development of the Human Race by Lazarus Geiger
1. Mind, 6 (Apr 1881), 278-281.
MAY 1881
Annals of Churnside. XI.—The Decline and Fall of King's Peddington
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 33 (9 May 1881), 10-11. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
Vignettes from Nature. I.—Red Campion and White
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 33 (13 May 1881), 11-12. Unsigned.
2. Vignettes from Nature (1881).
Vignettes from Nature. II.—Butterfly Hunting Begins
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 33 (14 May 1881), 10-11. Unsigned.
2. Butterfly-hunting Begins. Vignettes from Nature (1881).
Vignettes from Nature. III.—Red Campion Again
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 33 (21May 1881), 11-12. Unsigned.
2. Vignettes from Nature (1881).
Vignettes from Nature. IV.—The Hedgehog's Hole
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 33 (25 May 1881), 10-11. Unsigned.
2. Vignettes from Nature (1881).
Vignettes from Nature. V.—On Musbury Castle
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 33 (30 May 1881), 11. Unsigned.
2. Vignettes from Nature (1881).
The Epicure in Jamaica
'I shall make no apology for discoursing here upon the various means whereby an enlightened epicure – that's me again – endeavoured to alleviate the culinary misfortunes of five years' exile in Jamaica'. The visitor first supposes there is nothing fit to eat, and he must live on 'ground beetles and baked boots'. The blacks live off boiled yam and salt-fish all the year. The country grows nothing for the white population. All the flour is imported. There are few cattle, just some scrawny sheep. The turtle soup, though plentiful, is no good. The fish is badly dressed. The crab is good. Other seafood is rare. He thinks little of 'pepper-pot': 'I acknowledge a prejudice in favour of dishes made some time during the present half-century'. None of the tropical fruits are worth anything except the ones everyone is used to anyway in Europe. 'The rest never appear at table, and wisely: the sour-sops and sweet-sops are faint sickly things; the custard apples are pappy and nauseous; the nase berries are very much like brown sugar and water; and the granadillas are about as good as over-ripe gooseberries' (293). All animal food had to be eaten within 12 hours. Very frequently the table was thrown 'wholly on the mercy of Messrs. Crosse and Blackwell or the Portland Tinned Meat Company' (298). '…to the last we often sighed for an English mutton chop or a good steak, done thick, brown and juicy. Clean white bread, real French rolls, tender meat,//and a white servant to wait on one, all seemed too deliciously neat and cleanly to be really true. Farewell to the gritty and fly-bespangled loaves, to the suspicious foreign bodies in the soup, to the flying ants which obstinately immolated themselves in the sherry, to the queer interest surrounding the dubious mammalian bones in the curried chicken' (298-9).
1. By J. Arbuthnot Wilson. Belgravia: A London Magazine, 44 (May 1881), 285-299.
JUNE 1881
The Romance of a Wayside Weed
The hairy wood-spurge as a dogged survivor from the south, in the equable micro-climate around Bath.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 43 (June 1881), 703-716. Signed 'G.A.'
2. Flowers and Their Pedigrees (1883).
Vignettes from Nature. VI.—Fallow Deer
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 33 (4 June 1881), 10-11. Unsigned.
2. Vignettes from Nature (1881).
[Review of ] Anthropology by Edward Tylor
1. Athenaeum, 11 June 1881, 785-6. Unsigned.
Vignettes from Nature. VII.—Veronica
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 33 (14 June 1881), 10-11. Unsigned.
2. Vignettes from Nature (1881).
Vignettes from Nature. VIII.—Guelder Rose
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 33 (17 June 1881), 11. Unsigned.
2. Vignettes from Nature (1881).
Vignettes from Nature. IX.—The Heron's Haunt
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 33 (25 June 1881), 10-11. Unsigned.
2. Vignettes from Nature (1881).
3. Library of the World's Best Literature, vol. 1. ed. Warner. NY: Hill, 1902.
JULY 1881
Vignettes from Nature. X.—A Bed of Nettles
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 34 (4 July 1881), 11-12. Unsigned.
2. Vignettes from Nature (1881).
3. Chautauquan, 11 (Jul 1890), 504.
4. Journeys Through Bookland. A New and Original Plan for Reading, Applied to the World's Best Literature for Children By Charles H. Sylvester. Chicago: Bellows-Reeve Company, 1909, 9, 209-215. Reprinted Edwin Bellows, 1922.
Vignettes from Nature. XI.—Loosestrife and Pimpernel
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 34 (11 July 1881), 11-12. Unsigned.
2. Vignettes from Nature (1881).
Vignettes from Nature. XII.—The Carp Pond
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 34 (14 July 1881), 11-12. Unsigned.
2. Vignettes from Nature (1881).
Vignettes from Nature. XIII.—A Seaside Weed
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 34 (23 July 1881), 11. Unsigned.
2. Seaside Weeds. Vignettes from Nature (1881).
[Review of Pepacton by John Burroughs]
Mentions his repeated theme again that in the US there is plenty of nature but no getting at it for the pedestrian: no paths or byways, or stiles, or foot bridges. The English landscape by comparison is so rural, bosky and mellow. However, he allows there is 'native wild scenery', the saving of America from the point of view of culture and the picturesque.
1. Academy: A Weekly Review of Literature, Science, and Art, 20 (16 July 1881), 43-4.
AUGUST 1881
Beside the Cromlech
Welsh Celtic 'fairy' stories attached to Neolithic cromlechs.
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 34 (5 Aug 1881), 11. Unsigned.
2. Vignettes from Nature (1881).
Camping Out on the St. Lawrence
Short piece on trends in Canadian tourism.
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 34 (8 Aug 1881), 11. Unsigned.
Englishmen and Welshmen
On the relatively few generations between modern men and the heathen British.
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 34 (15 Aug 1881), 11. Unsigned.
Vignettes from Nature. XIV.—A Common Object of the Country
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 34 (17 Aug 1881), 11. Unsigned.
2. The Donkey's Ancestors. Vignettes from Nature (1881).
Sussex
The first in the 'county' series. There was no general introduction to the series as there is in the book.
1. St James's Gazette, 3 (27 Aug 1881), 12. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
Vignettes from Nature. XV.—A Mountain Tarn
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 34 (27 Aug 1881), 11-12. Unsigned.
2. Vignettes from Nature (1881).
Kent and Surrey
1. St James's Gazette, 3 (31 Aug 1881), 13. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
The Daisy's Pedigree
The daisy, aster etc. as the most advanced form of flower, as a 'rayed composite'.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 44 (Aug 1881), 168-181. Signed 'G.A.'
2. Flowers and Their Pedigrees (1883).
A Family History
The large rose family: the flowers, but also the apple, strawberry, almond etc.
1. Belgravia: A London Magazine, 45 (Aug 1881), 158-174.
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science and Art, 34 (Oct 1881), 500-511.
3. Flowers and their Pedigrees (1883).
SEPTEMBER 1881
Hampshire
1. St James's Gazette, 3 (5 Sep 1881), 12-13. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
Wilts and Berkshire
1. St James's Gazette, 3 (7 Sep 1881), 13. Unsigned.
2. Wilts and Berks. County and Town in England (1901).
Dorsetshire
1. St James's Gazette, 3 (10 Sep 1881), 13. Unsigned.
2. Dorset. County and Town in England (1901).
Vignettes from Nature. XVI.—Wild Thyme
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 34 (13 Sep 1881), 11-12. Unsigned.
2. Vignettes from Nature (1881).
A Welsh Roadside
Remnants of the Ice Age visible in Welsh stone walling.
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 34 (17 Sep 1881), 11. Unsigned.
2. Vignettes from Nature (1881).
Somerset
1. St James's Gazette, 3 (22 Sep 1881), 12. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
Northumberland
1. St James's Gazette, 3 (27 Sep 1881), 12. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
Vignettes from Nature. XVII.—The Fall of the Leaf
Deciduous trees as a newcomer as a consequence of 'hard times at the Pole'.
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 34 (27 Sep 1881), 11-12. Unsigned.
2. Vignettes from Nature (1881).
Old English Clans
Clan names as revealed in surviving place-names, especially their endings.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 44 (Sep 1881), 329-344. Signed 'G.A.'
Mr Cimabue Brown on the Defensive
Cimabue Brown was a stereotypical aesthete mocked by George du Maurier in Punch. A hymn of praise in favour of Morris, the 'aesthetic revolution' and the revival of interior decorating in the new style. GA claims the revolution in 'anti-Victorian' taste will be permanent. GA's decorative-arts taste was formed in the period between the 'Arts and Crafts' movement and 'Art Nouveau' which began to gather force in the late 80s.
1. Belgravia: A London Magazine, 45 (Sep 1881), 284-297. Unsigned.
OCTOBER 1881
Devonshire
1. St James's Gazette, 3 (4 Oct 1881), 12-13. Unsigned.
2. Devon. County and Town in England (1901).
Cornwall
1. St James's Gazette, 3 (13 Oct 1881), 12. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
Bedfordshire
1. St James's Gazette, 3 (18 Oct 1881), 13. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
Vignettes from Nature. XVIII.—The Fall of the Year
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 34 (18 Oct 1881), 11-12. Unsigned.
2. Vignettes from Nature (1881).
Spider Hunting on the Riviera
How to hunt for a highly-concealed trapdoor spider's nest.
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 34 (19 Oct 1881), 11. Unsigned.
Yorkshire
1. St James's Gazette, 3 (25 Oct 1881), 12. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901). [end of 31 Oct vol]
Sight and Smell in Vertebrates
1. Mind, 6 (Oct 1881), 453-471.
2. La vue et l'odorat chez les Vertebres. [Summary in French.] Revue philosophique de la France et de l'etranger, 12 (1881), 657-658.
NOVEMBER 1881
Cumberland
1. St James's Gazette, 3 (1 Nov 1881), 12. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
Huntingdonshire and Northamptonshire
1. St James's Gazette, 3 (9 Nov 1881), 12. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
Mangoes
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 34 (11 Nov 1881), 11-12. Unsigned.
Lincolnshire
1. St James's Gazette, 3 (16 Nov 1881), 12. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
Gorse
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 34 (23 Nov 1881), 11-12. Unsigned.
Gloucestershire
1. St James's Gazette, 3 (24 Nov 1881), 12-13. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
The Story of Wulfgeat
1. Gentleman's Magazine, 251 (Nov 1881), 551-561.
Some English Place Names
How names have been distorted and changed by different waves of invaders.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 44 (Nov 1881), 555-569. Signed 'G.A.'
DECEMBER 1881
Oxfordshire
1. St James's Gazette, 3 (1 Dec 1881), 12. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
[Review of ] Suicide by Enrico Morselli.
1. Athenaeum, 3 Dec 1881, 742. Unsigned.
Shropshire
1. St James's Gazette, 3 (9 Dec 1881), 12-13. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
Derbyshire
1. St James's Gazette, 3 (17 Dec 1881), 12. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
Mistletoe
The evolution of this parasite.
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 34 (19 Dec 1881), 10-11. Unsigned.
Nottinghamshire
1. St James's Gazette, 3 (23 Dec 1881), 12. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
What is a Grape?
GA jumped aboard this illustrated magazine of science early on. It was edited by his friend R.A. Proctor until his death in 1888. For his lengthy series called 'A Naturalist's Year', Proctor gave GA pride of place on the first page of many issues
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 1 (23 Dec 1881), 152-154.
2. Nature Studies (1883).
The Boar's Head
The pagan roots of the Christmas custom.
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 34 (24 Dec 1881), 11. Unsigned.
1882
The Colours of Flowers, as Illustrated in the British Flora
A short technical work promoting a theory about the evolution of coloured petals from flattened, specialised stamens, in a specific sequence from yellow, through white, to red, purple, lilac, mauve and blue; praised by Darwin.
1. Nature, 26 (27 July 1882), 299-304; (3 Aug 1882), 323-326; (10 Aug 1882), 346-350; (17 Aug 1882), 371-375.
2. London: Macmillan, 1882.
3. London/ New York: Macmillan, 1891.
4. Ottawa: CIHM, 1980. Three microfiches of the Macmillan, 1882 ed. Copy in the National Library of Canada. Series #05018.
Colin Clout's Calendar. The Record of a Summer, April-October
Contains a Preface and 39 essays, mostly reprinted from the St James's Gazette where they appeared between 9 Mar 1881 and 13 Oct 1882. The following 11 essays did not appear in St James's Gazette and have not been located: 'The Trout Jump', 'Rhubarb Sprouts', 'The Swallows Again', 'The Submerged Forest', 'A Summer Trip', 'The Mole at Home' [check other piece of this name], 'July Flowers', 'White Rabbits and White Hares', 'The Origin of Grouse', 'Some Alpine Climbers', 'Thor's Hammer'. 'Colin Clout' alludes to Skelton's anti-clerical poem of the C16th—nearly all these essays are overtly Darwinistic.
Oct 10th [1882]: Gentlemen, I shall be very glad to publish Colin Clout's Calendar on the terms you mention . . . I can make it up to a bigger book than Vignettes – in fact as much bigger as you like. . . '.
1 May 1883: 'We have much pleasure in enclosing you a cheque for L10.0 .0 the amount we have received from Messrs Funk Wagnall's for royalties in account of Colin Clout's Calendar'.
Andrew Chatto recommended he ask L10 for the German translation rights for each of these 3 volumes.
1. London: Chatto & Windus, 1882. Reprinted 1883.
2. New York: Funk & Wagnall's, [1883]. Standard Library, #86.
3. A New Edition. London: Grant Richards, 1901.
4. A New Edition. London: Chatto & Windus, 1901.
5. Ottawa: CIHM, 1981. Three microfiches of the Chatto & Windus, 1883 ed. Copy in the University of British Columbia Library. Series #05016.
6. Ottawa: CIHM, 1983. Three microfiches of the Funk & Wagnall's, 1883 ed. Copy in the Douglas Library, Queen's University. Series #27568.
JANUARY 1882
Rutland
1. St James's Gazette, 4 (9 Jan 1882), 6. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
A Winter Weed
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 1 (13 Jan 1882), 217-218.
2. Nature Studies (1883).
Cambridgeshire
1. St James's Gazette, 4 (20 Jan 1882), 6-7. Unsigned.
2. Cambridgeshire and Ely. County and Town in England (1901).
Herefordshire
1. St James's Gazette, 4 (27 Jan 1882), 4-5. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
Hyacinth Bulbs
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 1 (27 Jan 1882), 261-262.
2. Hyacinth-bulbs. Popular Science Monthly, 20 (Apr 1882), 817-820.
3. The Chautauquan: a Monthly Magazine, 4 (Mar 1884), 351-352.
4. Nature Studies (1883).
The Colours of Flowers
GA's introduction (and popularisation) of his thesis that petals are adapted stamens and that their colours evolved from yellow, through white, to red, purple, lilac, mauve and blue.
MS. 16pp. Penn.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 45 (Jan 1882), 19-34.
2. The Coloration of Flowers. Library of the World's Best Literature, vol. 1. ed Warner. J.A. Hill, 1902.
3. The Colors of Flowers. Living Age, 152 (4 Feb 1882), 296-305.
[Review of] Life, Letters and Journals of Sir Charles Lyell, ed. Lyell
1. Fortnightly Review, 37 (Jan 1882), 69-87.
2. Sir Charles Lyell. Popular Science Monthly, 20 (Mar 1882), 591-609.
An English Shire
Topography and history of Sussex.
1. Gentleman's Magazine, 252 (Jan 1882), 49-70.
2. Science in Arcady (1892).
FEBRUARY 1882
Cuckoo-pint
Two articles of this name; one reprinted in Evolutionist at Large. Exact relationship between the two articles (other in St James's Gazette, 1 (8 July 1880), 12-13) of this name is not known. This one says it was 'A lecture delivered at the Midland Institute, Birmingham.'
It starts: 'Close by the hedge-side there runs a little streamlet known to the village children for two miles around by the strangely pleonastic title of the Bourne Brook.' FTP version starts the same. This appears to be an extended and revised version of the former. But how can this be the lecture? Check in EAL.
1. Gentleman's Magazine, 30 (254) (Feb 1883), 152-165.
2. Flowers and Their Pedigrees (1883).
Cheshire
1. St James's Gazette, 4 (4 Feb 1882), 6. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
Lancashire
1. St James's Gazette, 4 (17 Feb 1882), 5-6. Unsigned. [last in vol]
2. County and Town in England (1901).
[Review of] The Making of England by John Richard Green
1. Academy: A Weekly Review of Literature, Science, and Art, 21 (18 Feb 1882), 111-112.
Our ancestors. 1- The Stone Age Men
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 1 (24 Feb 1882), 351-352.
2. Scientific American, 46 (20 May 1882), 316.
3. Nature Studies (1883).
[Review of] A Lady's Cruise in a French Man-of-War by Constance F. Gordon Cumming
1. Athenaeum, 25 Feb 1882, 245-6. Unsigned.
MARCH 1882
[Review of] L'homme et les sociétés by Gustave Le Bon
1. Athenaeum, 4 Mar 1882, 285-6. Unsigned.
The Origin of English Towns
1. St James's Gazette, 4 (10 Mar 1882), 5-6. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
Our ancestors. 2- The Celts
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 1 (10 Mar 1882), 402-403.
2. Nature Studies (1883).
No Vegetables
English plant food contrasted badly with American, Canadian and Jamaican. GA later defended his opinion in a letter to the editor signed 'The Peccant Author', PMG, 35 (23 Mar 1882), 3.
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 35 (15 Mar 1882), 4-5. Unsigned.
Vignettes from Nature
Sarcastic letter in response to Carpenter's letter: 'with all due deference to Dr Carpenter, for whose supreme authority on all matters of biological fact I have, of course, the profoundest respect', 'as I was writing for popular readers, not for biological critics like Dr Carpenter, I felt bound to use the vague but comprehensible language of ordinary life'. William Boyd Carpenter (1841-1918) was known as 'the silver-tongued bishop of Ripon' (DNB).
1. Nature, 25 (16 Mar 1882), 459.
A Dainty Flower
Narcissus flowers; refers to his stay at Hyères two seasons earlier.
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 35 (18 Mar 1882), 4-5. Unsigned.
Hastings
1. St James's Gazette, 4 (21 Mar 1882), 5-6. Unsigned.
2. Hastings and St Leonards. County and Town in England (1901).
The First Daffodil
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 1 (24 Mar 1882), 443-444.
2. Nature Studies (1883).
The Decay of Criticism
1. Fortnightly Review, 37 (Mar 1882), 339-351.
APRIL 1882
The Story of a Stickleback
Covers much the same ground as 'The Theory of Tittlebats', and he uses that phrase.
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 35 (6 Apr 1882), 4-5. Unsigned.
Grey Wethers
'Sacred stones' on Salisbury Plain: GA used this title again in 1886.
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 35 (12 Apr 1882), 4. Unsigned.
The Beetle's View of Life
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 1 (14 Apr 1882), 508-509.
2. Nature Studies (1883).
Brighton
1. St James's Gazette, 4 (15 Apr 1882), 5-6. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
Colin Clout's Calendar. I.—Primrose Time
1. St James's Gazette, 4 (22 Apr 1882), 6. Unsigned.
2. Colin Clout's Calendar (1882).
Colin Clout's Calendar. II.—Wild Hyacinths
1. St James's Gazette, 4 (26 Apr 1882), 6. Unsigned.
2. Colin Clout's Calendar (1882).
Norwich
1. St James's Gazette, 4 (27 Apr 1882), 5-6. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
Our ancestors. 3- The Teutons
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 1 (28 Apr 1882), 550-551.
2. Nature Studies (1883).
Obituary: Charles Darwin
1. Academy: A Weekly Review of Literature, Science, and Art, 21 (29 Apr 1882), 306-307.
MAY 1882
Colin Clout's Calendar. III.—The Green Leaf
1. St James's Gazette, 4 (2 May 1882), 5-6. Unsigned.
2. Colin Clout's Calendar (1882).
St Albans
1. St James's Gazette, 4 (5 May 1882), 5-6. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
Colin Clout's Calendar. IV.—The Flowering of the Grasses
1. St James's Gazette, 4 (8 May 1882), 6-7. Unsigned.
2. Colin Clout's Calendar (1882).
The Mole at Home
'Here in the barton of Colway Farm': Adaptations in this primitive mammal. GA used this title in Colin Clout's Calendar, 1882. Possibly the same piece.
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 35 (11 May 1882), 4. Unsigned.
Colin Clout's Calendar. V.—The Clover Blooms
1. St James's Gazette, 4 (15 May 1882), 5-6. Unsigned.
2. Colin Clout's Calendar (1882).
Green Coco-Nuts
On the appeal of fresh coconut milk in the West Indies; very similar to 'The Milk in the Coco-nut'.
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 35 (20 May 1882), 4. Unsigned.
[Review of ] Studies in the Theory of Descent by August Weismann. Translated and Edited by Raphael Mendola, Part III
1. Academy: A Weekly Review of Literature, Science, and Art, 21 (20 May 1882), 361-362.
Colin Clout's Calendar. VI.—Early Seedtime
1. St James's Gazette, 4 (23 May 1882), 6. Unsigned.
2. Colin Clout's Calendar (1882).
Wells and Taunton
1. St James's Gazette, 4 (24 May 1882), 6. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
Colin Clout's Calendar. VII.—Foes in the Hayfield
'This week must be marked not with chalk but with charcoal in the Fasti of the farm, for one of our annual plagues has duly recurred in full vigour. The yellow-rattle has got somehow or other into the Three-cornered Croft, and nothing seems to be of any use to get rid of it.'
1. St James's Gazette, 4 (30 May 1882), 6. Unsigned.
2. Colin Clout's Calendar (1882).
Casters and Chesters
How these English town names hint at even earlier origins than the Roman.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 45 (May 1882), 419-434. Signed 'G.A.'
2. Science in Arcady (1892).
The Great Classical Fallacy*
The fallacy is that British architecture of the 18thC—cold, pallid, stark—looked anything like the polychromatic reality of Greek and Roman buildings, especially in their interiors. GA elaborates this idea with his usual zest and wealth of illustration.
1. The Magazine of Art, 5 (May 1882), 282-289.
An English Weed
How the structures of goose-grass are best explained in Darwinian terms. GA's footnote says it was originally a lecture given at the London Institution, Finsbury Circus, in Feb 1881. Here revised.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 45 (May 1882), 542-554.
2. Cleavers. Flowers and Their Pedigrees (1883).
JUNE 1882
Our Ancestors. 4- The Final Mixture
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 2 (2 June 1882), 4-5.
2. Nature Studies (1883).
Honey Ants
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science 2 (3 Jun 1882), 66-67.
2. Scientific American, 47 (12 Aug 1882), 101.
3. Nature Studies (1883).
Colin Clout's Calendar. VIII.—Haymaking Begins
1. St James's Gazette, 4 (6 June 1882), 6. Unsigned.
2. Colin Clout's Calendar (1882).
Colin Clout's Calendar. IX.—June Flowers
1. St James's Gazette, 4 (6 June 1882), 5-6. Unsigned.
2. Colin Clout's Calendar (1882).
An East Anglian River
On the prismatic beauty of the mud flats in Suffolk, probably at Aldeburgh.
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 35 ( 8 June 1882), 4.
York
1. St James's Gazette, 4 (13 June 1882), 6. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
June Flowers
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 2 (16 June 1882), 41-42.
Colin Clout's Calendar. X.—Cherries are Ripe
1. St James's Gazette, 4 (17 June 1882), 6. Unsigned.
2. Colin Clout's Calendar (1882).
Colin Clout's Calendar. XI.—Dog-rose and Brambles
1. St James's Gazette, 4 (24 June 1882), 6. Unsigned.
2. Colin Clout's Calendar (1882).
York
This second article deals with the later history of the town, since the Norman conquest.
1. St James's Gazette, 4 (26 June 1882), 5-6. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
Colin Clout's Calendar. XII.—Sundew and Butterwort
1. St James's Gazette, 4 (30 June 1882), 5-6. Unsigned.
2. Colin Clout's Calendar (1882).
JULY 1882
Colin Clout's Calendar. XIII.—Thistledown Blows
1. St James's Gazette, 5 (8 July 1882), 6. Unsigned.
2. Colin Clout's Calendar (1882).
July Flowers
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 2 (14 July 1882), 111-112.
Colin Clout's Calendar. XIV.—Scarlet Geraniums
1. St James's Gazette, 5 (15 July 1882), 5-6. Unsigned.
2. Colin Clout's Calendar (1882).
Exeter
1. St James's Gazette, 5 (17 July 1882), 5-6. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
Colin Clout's Calendar. XV.—Rain on the Root Crops
1. St James's Gazette, 5 (21 July 1882), 6. Unsigned.
2. Colin Clout's Calendar (1882).
A Squirrel's Nest
1. St James's Gazette, 5 (31 July 1882), 6. Unsigned.
2. Colin Clout's Calendar (1882).
[Review of] Ants, Bees and Wasps: a Record of Observations on the Habits of the Social Hymenoptera by J. Lubbock
1. Academy: A Weekly Review of Literature, Science, and Art, 22 (15 July 1882), 51.
From Fish to Reptile
Evolution of the amphibians.
MS. 17pp. Penn.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 46 (July 1882), 21-37. Signed 'G.A.'
[Review of] L'Heredite Psychologique by Th. Ribot
1. Mind (July 1882), 413.
AUGUST 1882
Newcastle-on-Tyne
1. St James's Gazette, 5 (1 Aug 1882), 6. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
Colin Clout's Calendar. XVI.—Hops Blossom
1. St James's Gazette, 5 (3 Aug 1882), 6. Unsigned.
2. Colin Clout's Calendar (1882).
The Departure of the Swifts
1. St James's Gazette, 5 (5 Aug 1882), 6. Unsigned.
2. Colin Clout's Calendar (1882).
Colin Clout's Calendar. XVII.—Waterside Weeds
1. St James's Gazette, 5 (9 Aug 1882), 6. Unsigned.
2. Colin Clout's Calendar (1882).
Tavistock
1. St James's Gazette, 5 (15 Aug 1882), 6. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
Colin Clout's Calendar. XVIII.—Asparagus Berries
1. St James's Gazette, 5 (17 Aug 1882), 6. Unsigned.
2. Colin Clout's Calendar (1882).
Colin Clout's Calendar. XIX.—The Kerning of the Wheat
1. St James's Gazette, 5 (24 Aug 1882), 6. Unsigned.
2. Colin Clout's Calendar (1882).
[Review of] Country Sketches in Black and White by J.E. Panton
1. Athenaeum, 26 Aug 1882, 265. Unsigned.
Colin Clout's Calendar. XX.—Plums Ripen
1. St James's Gazette, 5 (31 Aug 1882), 6. Unsigned.
2. Colin Clout's Calendar (1882).
The Welsh in the West Country
1. Gentleman's Magazine, 253 (Aug 1882), 179-197.
SEPTEMBER 1882
Some American Colonists
Wood-sorrel, etc – plants which have moved from west to east.
1. St James's Gazette, 5 (7 Sep 1882), 6. Unsigned.
2. Colin Clout's Calendar (1882).
Colin Clout's Calendar. XX1.—The Pear Harvest
1. St James's Gazette, 5 (13 Sep 1882), 6. Unsigned.
2. Colin Clout's Calendar (1882).
Our Four-legged Gypsies
Shy indigenous wild animals: 'Very few people, comparatively speaking, of all those who habitually live in towns, I suspect, have ever seen a live lizard in this country'.
1. St James's Gazette, 5 (23 Sep 1882), 6. Unsigned. Attribution probable.
The Isle of Portland
1. St James's Gazette, 5 (29 Sep 1882), 6. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
[Review of] Animal Intelligence and Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution by G.J. Romanes
1. Academy: A Weekly Review of Literature, Science, and Art, 22 (23 Sep 1882), 225-226.
Monkshood
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 2 (29 Sep 1882), 289-290.
2. Nature Studies (1883).
The Philosophy of a Visiting Card*
The mere name Edgar B. Chadwick on a card supplies GA with enough 'mental food' to fill a five-hour rail journey.
MS. 17pp. Penn.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 46 (Sep 1882), 273-290. Signed 'G.A.'
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science and Art, 36 (Nov 1882), 646-658. Unsigned.
Who was Primitive Man?
This was GA's last piece for the Fortnightly under Morley; THS Escott took over as editor in Nov.
1. Fortnightly Review, 38 (Sep 1882), 308-322.
2. Popular Science Monthly, 22 (Nov 1882), 94-108.
3. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science and Art, 36 (Nov 1882), 577-587.
OCTOBER 1882
Barrows
The two types of barrows on the Downs: long and round, capping every rounded crest and a natural turning point for a walk.
1. St James's Gazette, 5 (3 Oct 1882), 6. Unsigned. Attribution probable.
Boots and Scorpions
Fallacies about conditions of life in the tropics.
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 36 (11 Oct 1882), 4. Unsigned.
The Weeds of Lodmoor
1. St James's Gazette, 5 (13 Oct 1882), 6. Unsigned.
2. Colin Clout's Calendar (1882).
Maiden Castle
1. St James's Gazette, 5 (17 Oct 1882), 6. Unsigned.
2. County and Town in England (1901).
Teasel Philosophy
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 2 (27 Oct 1882), 352-353.
Our Winter Visitors
'One day last week I noticed a plump young woodcock skulking stealthily among the sweetgales and sedges by the boggy patch in the valley . . .' Winter bird visitants. This is apparently the last article in the St James's Gazette. Allen had also contributed 45 pieces to the Pall Mall as well by this point.
1. St James's Gazette, 5 (28 Oct 1882), 6. Unsigned. Attribution probable.
NOVEMBER 1882
A Corner of Devon
How new names of places were acquired in medieval, or more recent times.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 46 (Nov 1882), 557-570. Unsigned.
The Pedigree of Wheat
1. Macmillan's Magazine, 47 (Nov 1882), 29-41.
2. The Origin of Wheat. Flowers and Their Pedigrees (1883).
3. Popular Science Monthly, 22 (Mar 1882), 662-677.
Prof Owen on Primitive Man
Letter objecting to Owen's misattribution of a quotation: 'Prof. Owen would hardly have spoken in the same lofty magisterial tone had he attributed those opinions to their real authors, whose reputation can take care of itself' (31).
1. Nature, 27 (9 Nov 1882), 31.
DECEMBER 1882
The Isle of Portland
The geology and topography of this area, and the particular suitability of this oolitic limestone for building.
MS. 18pp. Penn.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 46 (Dec 1882), 723-738. Unsigned.
A Naturalist's Year. I.—Autumn Buds
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 2 (8 Dec 1882), 448-449.
A Naturalist's Year. 2- Ants and Aphids
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 2 (15 Dec 1882), 463-464.
A Naturalist's Year. 3- The Mistletoe Bough
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 2 (22 Dec 1882), 477-478.
The Philistine Turns
MS. Penn
1. Belgravia, 49 (Dec 1882), 174. Unsigned.
Writer insists he is a 'philistine' and leaves all 'aestheticism' to his wife and daughters. GA covers his tracks thoroughly here since his interest in the decorative arts was well-known.
1883
Flowers and Their Pedigrees
Contains an 'Introductory' and 8 reprinted essays, all located. 'I have taken some half-dozen of familiar English weeds or flowers, and tried thus to make them yield up the secret of their own origin.' The Introductory also dismisses talk of the tropics 'with a certain forced ecstasy of language' in favour of 'our Scotch hillsides, our English gorse-clad commons, or our beautiful dappled meadows and//cornfields, all aglow with the infinite wealth of poppies, bluebottles, foxgloves, ox-eye daisies, and purple fritilliaries' (1-2). In his introduction to the 2nd ed, GA hits back at his carping critics in Nature and elsewhere: the 'microscopical critic' or 'learned and tedious person who goes about the world proclaiming to everybody that you don't know something because you don't happen to mention it'.
GA had a royalty of 1s a copy sold (Longmans archives, Reading). His royalties were about L28 in 1884/5 and 574 copies were sold and apparently only a few pounds thereafter.
1. London: Longmans, Green, 1883.
2. New York: D. Appleton, 1884. Reprinted 1922.
3. Second Edition. London: Longmans, Green, 1886. Reprinted 1896.
4. Ottawa : CIHM, 1980. Three microfiches of the Appleton, 1884 ed. Copy in the University of Waterloo Library. Series #05036.
5. Ottawa : CIHM, 1983. Three microfiches of the Longman's, 1883 ed. Copy in the D.B. Weldon Library, University of Western Ontario. Series #27754.
Nature Studies. By Grant Allen, Andrew Wilson, Thomas Foster, Edward Clodd, and Richard A. Proctor.
Contains essays by GA which all first appeared in Knowledge between 23 Dec 1881 and 29 Sep 1882 except for 'The Origin of Buttercups'.
1. London: Wyman, [1883].
2. New York: Funk & Wagnall's [1883]. Issued in hardback and paperback.
3. Naturstudien. Bilder zur Entwickelungslehre. Uebers. Von Ernst Huth. [Translation into German.] Leipzig: Quandt & Händel, 1883.
4. New Edition. London: Longman's, Green, 1884. Reprinted 1899, 1903.
JANUARY 1883
A Naturalist's Year. IV.—Winter Heliotrope
1. Knowledge, 3 (12 Jan 1883), 20-21.
A Naturalist's Year. 5- Gorse Blossoms
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 3 (26 Jan 1883), 49-50.
[Review of] On Mr Spencer's Unification of Knowledge by Malcolm Guthrie
1. Mind, 8 (Jan 1883), 116-118.
[Review of] Five Fountains: The Kingdom of Hawaii, Its Volcanoes and the History of its Missions by Constance F. Gordon Cumming.
1. Athenaeum, 13 Jan 1883, 45-6. Unsigned.
FEBRUARY 1883
A Mountain Tulip
An Arctic survivor from the Ice Age. Longman's started in Feb 82 and lasted till 1905.
1. Longman's Magazine, 1 (Feb 1883), 409-420.
2. Flowers and Their Pedigrees (1883).
A Naturalist's Year. 6- The Peewit Cries
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 3 (9 Feb 1883), 81-82.
A Naturalist's Year. 7- Willow Catkins
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 3 (23 Feb 1883), 112-113.
MARCH 1883
A Naturalist's Year. 8- Snowdrop and Snowflake
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 3 (9 Mar 1883), 143-144.
A Naturalist's Year. 9- Charr Jump
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 3 (23 Mar 1883), 175-176.
The Shapes of Leaves 1.—General Principles
GA's second technical article for Nature, which was severely criticised by professional botanists for imprecision and inaccuracy.
1. Nature, 27 (8 Mar 1883), 439-442.
The Shapes of Leaves II.—Extreme and Intermediate Types
1. Nature, 27 (15 Mar 1883), 464-466.
The Shapes of Leaves III.—Origin of Types
1. Nature, 27 (22 Mar 1883), 492-495.
The Shapes of Leaves IV.—Special Types in Special Environments
1. Nature, 27 (29 Mar 1883), 511-514.
APRIL 1883
Springtide, North and South
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 5 Apr 1883, 4.
This article shows GA was in Italy in the spring of 1883.
'On the salt-marsh meadows along the narrow strip between the olive gardens and the Mediterranean, the ground is now positively whitened by the innumerable clumps of perfumed jonquils, in such a broad sheet that one can see them distinctly as a great cream-coloured patch from half a mile away, exactly as one can sometimes see a field of golden charlock or of scarlet trifolium on an opposite English hillside. Among the inland pinewoods, splendid flaunting masses of crimson and lilac anemones spring out of the rocky crannies, Persephone's own favourites, which led her wandering footsteps astray among the flowery fields of Enna. Tall asphodels raise their heads between the banked-up olive terraces; and in the plain below beside the cypress wall the dotted cherry and almond trees make on glorious mantling show of delicate pinky-white blossom. That is the true Southern springtide, the read springtide of the Mediterranean – the artificial spring tide of our imitative Northern poets. Strange that till the present century hardly any English versifier – save Shakespeare, in a stray note or two – ever ventured to put on paper the real features of our warping English March or of our fickle English April. The calendar of our poets, especially as regards spring, is borrowed, or was borrowed till the end of the eighteenth century, not from the daily reports of the Meteorological Office – pardon the obvious anachronism – but from the “classical” calendar of Virgil and Theocritus. Stranger still that the absurd defiance of plain observation thus introduced should have infected even the vocabulary and the stock phrases of everyday life, so that we talk to-day of a “perpetual spring” as the ideal of a perfect climate: whereas if we every thought of what we were saying (which we don't do) we would certainly talk instead of a perpetual summer. The common expression is correct enough in the mouth of a South European, for whom spring is the delightful middle breathing space between the draughty chilliness of open winter and the sweltering aridity of high August noontide; but it is simply ridiculous on the alien lips of the remote Hyperborean Briton. Nobody who took his language and his ideas direct from nature could ever dream of holding up as the model of a delicious climate that alternation of swirling, dusty nor'-easters and boisterous, drenching sou'-westers which we in England recognise as spring. The ver perpetuum of the Roman poet meant something very different indeed from that.
The pedigree of the conventional poetical English spring, however, goes further back even than the Virgilian days. Enthusiastic travellers used once to spend much ingenuity in demonstrating that the scenery and accessories of the Eclogues were all of them still to be recognised in the immediate neighbourhood of Mantua. That a few of Virgil's more obvious local points were indeed borrowed from his native place nobody can deny; but these were mere patchwork touches introduced into a general artificial poetical picture, whose wider background was purely conventional, exactly as Shenstone or Thomson might introduce stray rustic English strokes from the Leasowes or from Marlborough Cstle among the nyphs and sylvan grots and pastoral glades and stucco fountains of their sham Italian scenery. Meliboeus may inquire the nearest way to Halesowen, and Phyllis may weave herself a wreath of Midland lady-smocks, but they are none the more English Hodge and Betty for all that. So any one who really knows the Lombard plain knows it is not thence that our pseudo-classical poets really borrowed those valuable theatrical properties of theirs – the vernal gales and the blooming Eden of fantastic April. The Lombard plain is still in fact what once it was in name – a Gallia Cisalpina, a little outlying patch of Northern Europe, straggling out of due place beyond the Alps. It is the central level of France over again, bar only a few more markedly Southern trees, and a very distinctly Southern type of architecture. As one passes from the coast between Marseilles and Genoa on the one hand, or from Rome and Florence or the leg of Italy on the other, into the well-watered basin of the Po, one feels at once that one has crossed from the true grey hilly Mediterranean country into a familiar land of green trees, green meadows, and green pastures. Instead of the powdery dry cistus and the dusty dry lavender, the Sicilian goat and Theocritean goatherds of the Riviera, you come unexpectedly once more upon almost English beeves and oaks and grass lands, and fields moist with the perpetual dampness of artificial Southern scenery. The whole conventional pastoral background comes to us from still further afield, from the basking white rocks and dry hillsides of the Theocritean Sicily. The stock adjectives and the fanciful almanac of the Queen Anne poets cannot be made to fit with anything actual in the Lombard plain any more than they can be made to fit with the dusty spring and the uncertain summer of our real practical English seasons – not those invented for us by adaptive Thomson. As well look for fauns and dyads in the sacred groves of Epping Forest, as well expect to find Collins really invoking chaste Eve with his oaten stop from the summit of a five-barred gate, or the ingenious Mr Gray wooing a corporeal muse among the storied urns and animated busts of Stoke Poges churchyard as hoe to find the originals of the Virgilian bucolic scenery in the essentially Northern valley of the Po. It rather here among the dry hills and sage-grey olive groves beside the Mediterranean, that one gets at last in the midst of the real prime models for our literary eighteenth century spring. That is one of the greatest delights of the otherwise rather arid and often disappointing Southern scenery; the familiar images and descriptions of classical poetry begin for the first time to live before one, to assume a concrete and natural reality in one's mind. The arbutus ceases to be an abstraction and becomes a visible shrub: the cicada no longer bears company with the wyvern or the hippogriff, but chirps most audibly and undeniably in the neighbouring thicket. There you have the true enchantment of it. 'What! pork pies!' exclaimed an enthusiastic American tourist in the railway refreshment room at Liverpool. 'How delightful! By all means let us have a pork pie. Why, you know, one reads about them in Dickens!' We sober English, to the manner born, laugh quietly, of course, at the association; but, after all, there is really something enviable in the conditions which permit one to invest even the staple product of Melton Mowbray with a genuine and picturesque literary interest.' This article inspired a poem from Alfred Austin. See The Autobiography of Alfred Austin Poet Laureate 1835-1910. 2 vols. London: Macmillan, 1911, II, 184.See published letter from GA to Austin, 18 Feb 1885.
A Naturalist's Year. 10- Ptarmigan
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 3 (6 Apr 1883), 203-204.
A Naturalist's Year. 11- Marsh Marigold
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 3 (20 Apr 1883), 231-232.
Mr Grant Allen's Article on “The Shapes of Leaves”
GA here valiantly responds to technical criticism of these articles by F.O. Bower thus: 'It seems to me that such roughly accurate language is permissible in popular writing, where one's main object is to insist only on the general principle involved.' However, he was mauled further in the same issue of Nature (12 Apr 1893), 554-5 by W.T. Thiselton Dyer, in a fairly long article 'Deductive Biology'. (Dyer was a botanical heavyweight, about to become Director of Kew Gardens.) GA never contributed articles again to Nature.
1. Nature, 27 (12 Apr 1883), 552.
Leaves and Their Environment
Wonders aloud whether botany is becoming too technical. Shouldn't amateurs be 'publishing their own little guesses or glimpses for what they may be worth? No doubt they will often go demonstrably wrong….'(605).
1. Nature, 27 (26 Apr 1883), 604-5.
MAY 1883
Provence, by Olive and Pinewood
1. By J. Arbuthnot Wilson. Belgravia: A London Magazine, 50 (May 1883), 286-297.
A Scribbler's Apology
The social utility of the writer, compared to other trades, and whether he can justify his existence. GA's first of several excursions on this theme. GA watches a shoemaker at work from his study window and envies his 'solid, tangible, undeniably useful result of his day's labour' 538. He wonders what account he could give: 'I have contributed a column of political abuse to my daily paper, and I have written half an unfavourable review, for a weekly journal, of a foolish and vulgar sensational novel' 539. What, really, can be said for the scribbling trade, especially for a socialist? The standard journalist, the news-reporter, can be defended; but what of 'those whom I am wont to call, in my own private dialect, the tootlers; that is to say, the good folk who write a tootle about nothing in particular for the mere gratification of idle people. Sometimes the tootle takes the form of a third leader – that wonderful social leader in all the daily papers, which begins with a fresh squabble in the St Pancras Vestry, goes on to consider the history of vestries in general from the days of the Stone Age onward, alludes playfully to our Aryan ancestors, digresses into the constitution of the Athenian demes, discourses casually of Roman municipia, is learned on the subject of early French communes, and ends abruptly with an amusing anecdote of Courbet. Sometimes the tootle becomes a middle in a weekly paper, sometimes it assumes the guise of an amusing review, sometimes it presents itself to the candid reader as the present article. But whatever it may be, it tootles merely; it contains nothing on earth really calculated to do any kind of solid good or impart any kind of serious information to any human being whatsoever. Now, the vast mass of our current literature consists entirely of such tootles; and the question naturally arises, Has the tootler any sufficient excuse to give for his persistent daily appearance in answer to the clanging dinner-bell of collective humanity?' 542. One answer is that the tootler fills a want – the wants of the dailies and the weeklies, and behind them the wants of readers. But for a socialist that is not much of an answer. What account might he give to a Revolutionary tribunal? For tootling is really a truckling to the rich. It offers nothing to the 'cobblers of Northampton, or to the saw-grinders of Sheffield' 543. That is the 'worst and darkest count in the whole indictment': that he scribbles for the idlest class. 544. Defines himself as 'an individualist of the utterest school, and firmly believe in the divine right of everybody to be left alone in his own devices . . . . Let the wheat and the tares grow together till the harvest' 544.
Consoles himself with the thought that he is only like any other labourer who produces items of useless luxury. 'Indeed it is but a relatively small portion of the world's population that is employed in providing or distributing really useful things -- bread, meat, clothing, science, poetry. The remainder produce stuff like mother-of-pearl card-cases, malachite boxes, ivory-handled brushes, crests and monograms, or papier-mache monstrosities; in preserving game, breeding bull-dogs, manufacturing lawn tennis bats, or dressing young ladies' hair; in growing champagne, hunting sealskins, diving for pearls, grubbing for diamonds, shooting humming-birds, or pulling out ostrich-feathers all the world over.' 545. Half the world's labour is wasted in extracting and manufacturing costly materials: gold, silver, ivory, jade, agate, onyx, porphyry, tortoise-shell, polished granite, marble, lacquer, mosaic, buhl , velvet, Russia leather, porcelain, bronze, ormolu. Yet he distinguishes between the nasty, cruel luxuries, like sealskin jackets and Strasburg pie, and the harmless ones. 'I also hold that it is a low and a dirty trade for any man to purvey distinctly bad and degrading literature – literature calculated to make the world something wickeder and worse than it actually is, literature like some of the repulsive novels which we have seen more than once befouling the shelves of our libraries during the last few years'. 546. Unfortunately he gives no examples. But he has to be content to be a relatively harmless luxury, though he knows he is 'a mere useless excrescence on the face of society' 547. The scribbler is just 'a member of the proletariate – a true working-man – and for the most part a journeyman labourer. Like his fellows, he cannot pick and choose; he must take the work that the world imposes upon him. As a rule he does not adopt his useless trade of malice prepense; he drifts into it unawares by mere stress of wind and weather much as other labourers drift into other disreputable or laborious occupations.' 548. Only when, paradoxically, he is doing a little better that he can afford to develop a tender conscience and then he comes to the conclusion that after all he is no worse than his neighbours.
Or is there a little more to be said? Well, people must be amused. And some of those the tootler amuses may belong to the useful classes. Quotes a personal illustration: 'I confess it was with a glow of pleasure that once in a third-class carriage I saw a workman in his muddy clothes reading one of the papers to which I contribute; and when I asked him why he bought it, received the answer, “Because I always read the articles about so-and-so,” these being, in fact the very series that I am engaged upon.' 549. Everybody at least reads the daily paper, and the scribbler can produce work as little hurtful and as much helpful as possible. 'With that negative sort of self-approval, it seems to me, he must be content to plod his way in the humble hope that at the end he may escape utter condemnation at the hands of collective labouring humanity' 550.
We note that there is no sense here of exasperation that he must serve the public with what it wants, despite his own wishes.
Note that James Payn replaced Stephen as editor in Jan 1883, to 1896. Stephen tried to reassure Allen over this article: 'You have made a distinct place for yourself and have done a real service in spreading some popular notions of science. Few journalists can say as much for themselves.
I have often thought over your problem and have answered it pretty much to my own satisfaction. I cannot think any man blameworthy for making his living in any honest way: & I think journalism indifferent honest if does not lie or pander to clearly evil tastes. The question might arise if one claimed to be a man of genius, capable of moving the world. I am happily quite clear that that is not my vocation. I am certain that I can do much more good by bringing up my children decently than if I reduced them to poverty and ignorance in order that I might try my hand at inventing a new bit of metaphysical moonshine. I don't flatter myself that it matters two straws to the world whether I write or dig in my garden; but it makes a difference to my own little world, where I can really produce some effect. . . .' [Penn, Misc. letters to GA, M-Z]
MS. 13pp. Penn.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 47 (May 1883), 538-550. Unsigned.
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, 38 (July 1883), 126-135. Unsigned.
A Geological Excursion
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 3 (4 May 1883), 259-260.
A Naturalist's Year. 12- Two Little Greenish Flowers
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 3 (11 May 1883), 276-277.
A Naturalist's Year. 13- The Blackcap Sings
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 3 (25 May 1883), 303-304.
The Origin of Buttercups
1. From Buttercups to Monk's-hood. Popular Science Monthly, 23 (May 1883), 65-68.
2. Nature Studies (1883).
JUNE 1883
A Naturalist's Year. 14- Among the Grasses
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 3 (8 June 1883), 336-337.
A Naturalist's Year. 15- Concerning Bats
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 3 (22 June 1883), 367-368.
A London Breathing-place
Richmond Park – its flora and fauna.
1. The Art Journal, 35 (June 1883), 169-172.
JULY 1883
A Naturalist's Year. XVI.—About Variation
How anti-Darwinians are quite unaware of how many large groups of species 'interosculate', especially in plants.
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 4 (6 July 1883), 1-2.
A Naturalist's Year. XVII.—Crabs and Lobsters
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 4 (20 July 1883), 33-34.
Strawberries
The English wild strawberry and the white potentilla, the 'barren strawberry'.
1. Longman's Magazine, 2 (July 1883), 305-314.
2. Flowers and Their Pedigrees (1883).
[Review of] Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development by Francis Galton
Mentions Galton's tone into his inquiry on the efficacy of prayer: 'These are narrated with a quaint, scientific naivete, which is not intended, doubtless, to be ironical, but which is as perfect a specimen of irony, in the pure Greek sense of the word, as we ever remember to have seen. The transparent candour, reverence, and scientific precision of Mr Galton's reasoning will prove (quite unintentionally) a thousand times more annoying to dogmatism than any other tone that could possibly have been adopted. Abuse the dogmatists can stand, but gentle persuasion and clear logic are really too trying' 31. Allen probably learnt from this.
1. Academy: A Weekly Review of Literature, Science, and Art, 24 (14 July 1883), 30-31.
AUGUST 1883
A Naturalist's Year. XVIII.—Wasps and Flowers
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 4 (3 Aug 1883), 65-66.
A Naturalist's Year. XIX.—A Rabbit's Skull
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 4 (17 Aug 1883), 97-98.
A Naturalist's Year. XX.—Wild Peas
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 4 (31 Aug 1883), 129-130.
SEPTEMBER 1883
A Naturalist's Year. XXI.—The Barn Owl Flies
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 4 (14 Sep 1883), 161-162.
A Naturalist's Year. Blackberries are Ripe
Items in this series from here had no number.
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 4 (28 Sep 1883), 193-194.
An American Wild Flower
1. North American Review, 137 (Sep 1883), 296-305.
Seeds, Eggs, and Germs
Discusses sudden outbreaks of disease and blights, etc.
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 35 (15 Sep 1883), 4. Unsigned. Attribution probable.
The Composition of a Very Mixed People
A second leader on some head-measuring activities of the Anthropometric Committee of the British Association. GA claimed in an interview in 1892 that he contributed to the Pall Mall only the second signed article ever to appear in a London daily paper. Actually the first two signed were by Richard Jefferies and Frederic Harrison. Another in between these two by 'A Bulgarian' was signed with a pen-name. After Harrison, another leader 'Alpine Gossip' was signed with initials. Then came GA. These pieces were called 'turnovers' in that they came directly after the main leader and encouraged the reader to turn the page.
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 35 (25 Sep 1883), 1-2.
On and Off Shore
Hastings as an old fishing village.
1. The Art Journal, 35 (Sep 1883), 285-288.
OCTOBER 1883
A Naturalist's Year. The Shrews Die
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 4 (12 Oct 1883), 224-225.
A Naturalist's Year. Chestnuts Fall
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 4 (26 Oct 1883), 251-252.
Idiosyncrasy
On the inheritance of talent: GA follows Spencer in promoting a Lamarckian explanation: 'functionally produced modifications'. 'There are places like Central Africa, where the physical conditions do not tend to produce any great diversity of occupation; and here the general average of intelligence does not rise very high. On the other hand, there are places, like Greece, Italy, the West European peninsulas and islands, where the physical conditions tend to differentiate the population. . . and here the general average of intelligence tends to rise very high indeed' (397). Lamarckism must be right: 'Granted this principle, we can understand why a Phidias appeared in Greece, a Raffaelle in Italy, a Watt in Britain; without it, we can not understand why they should not all have appeared in Iceland or in New Guinea just as well' (402). He also quotes the example of the eye's evolution against spontaneous variation. GA also believed that mulattoes tended to be intellectually above the average for either Negroes or Europeans. Darwin, of course, thought half-breeds were morally inferior to either.
1. Mind, 8 (Oct 1883), 487-505.
2. Idiosyncrasie. [Summary in French]. Revue philosophique de la France et de l'etranger, 17 (1884), 233-234.
3. Popular Science Monthly, 24 (Jan 1884), 387-403.
Honeysuckle
1. Gentleman's Magazine, 255 (Oct 1883), 313-322.
The Lake George Tour
1. By J. Arbuthnot Wilson. Belgravia: A London Magazine, 51 (Oct 1883), 413-423.
The Dormouse at Home
GA's first appearance in this richly produced, sumptuously illustrated magazine on the best paper. Comyns Carr was the first ed.
1. English Illustrated Magazine, 1 (Oct 1883), 22-27.
NOVEMBER 1883
A Naturalist's Year. Under False Colours
The Volucella fly mimics the bumble-bee.
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 4 (16 Nov 1883), 297-298.
A Naturalist's Year. The Reign of Evergreens
How deciduous trees in England are a recent innovation, 'a mere temporary accident of the here and now'.
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 4 (30 Nov 1883), 327-328.
DECEMBER 1883
A Naturalist's Year. The Robin Comes for Crumbs
The last in this series.
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 4 (14 Dec 1883), 355-356.
Corn Cockles
1. English Illustrated Magazine, 1 (Dec 1883), 164-170.
Mr Darwin on Instinct
Comments on omitted section of the Origin, now published by Romanes in Mental Evolution in Animals.
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 38 (11 Dec 1883), 1-2.
1884
Biographies of Working Men
Potted biographies of Thomas Telford, stone-mason; George Stephenson, engineer; John Gibson, sculptor; William Herschel, bandsman [sic; astronomer]; Jean Francois Millet, painter; James Garfield, canal-boy [sic]; Thomas Edward, shoemaker. GA notes his debt for the factual information to Samuel Smiles and similar 'moral uplift' biographers. The life of Gibson is obviously the source of the main character in Babylon.
1. London/New York: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge/E & J B Young, 1884. People's Library.
2. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1885. Reprinted 1890. People's Library.
3. Ottawa: CIHM, 1980. Three microfiches of the SPCK, 1885 ed. Copy in the Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Library, Dalhousie University.. Series #05010.
4. Ottawa: CIHM, 1986. Three microfiches of the SPCK/Young, 1884 ed. Copy in the Douglas Library, Queen's University.. Series #58890. Page images at http://www.canadiana.org/cgi-bin/ECO/mtq?id=e2b89dc9a7&doc=58890. [Accessed Dec 2000].
JANUARY 1884
The Ancestry of Birds
1. Longman's Magazine, 3 (Jan 1884), 284-297.
2. Popular Science Monthly, 24 (Mar 1884), 606-618.
3. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, 39 (Feb 1884), 223-231.
Earthquake Weather
Phenomena connected with earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
MS. 12pp. Penn.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 2 (Jan 1884), 42-54. Unsigned.
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, 39 (Mar 1884), 307-314. Attributed in error to 'Richard Proctor.'
Seven Year Sleepers
On whether the 'toad in a hole' can survive immurement for long periods, and on hibernation generally.
MS. The Toad-in-a-Hole. ?? pp. Penn.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 2 (Jan 1884), 82-93.Unsigned.
2. Falling in Love (1889).
Migrations of Birds
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 5 (4 Jan 1884), 1-2.
The Garden Snail
1. Gentleman's Magazine, 256 (Jan 1884), 25-34.
FEBRUARY 1884
[Review of] Mental Evolution in Animals by G.J. Romanes. With a Posthumous Essay on Instinct by Charles Darwin
1. Academy: A Weekly Review of Literature, Science, and Art, 25 (23 Feb 1884), 134-135.
The Evolution of Flowers. 1- The Starting-point
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 5 (1 Feb 1884), 64-65.
The Evolution of Flowers. 2- First Steps
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 5 (22 Feb 1884), 114-115.
The Humming-Bird's Relatives
1. English Illustrated Magazine, 1 (Feb 1884), 306-312.
MARCH 1884
The Milk in the Coco-nut
A light-hearted piece on the habits of this tree, with a new ease of manner for the Cornhill. He had three articles and a story in this one vol.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 2 (Mar 1884), 296-307. Unsigned.
2. The Milk in the Cocoa-nut. Popular Science Monthly, 25 (May 1884), 50-60.
3. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, 39 (May 1884), 657-664.
4. Falling in Love (1889).
The Evolution of Flowers. 3- Integration Begins
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 5 (7 Mar 1884), 137-139.
The Evolution of Flowers. 4- Side Branches
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 5 (21 Mar 1884), 175-176.
APRIL 1884
[Review of] Dynamic Sociology, or Applied Social Science, as Based upon Statical Sociology and the Less Complex Sciences by Lester F. Ward.
1. Mind, 9 (Apr 1884), 305-311.
British Buttercups
1. Macmillan's Magazine, 49 (Apr 1884), 419-426.
The Evolution of Flowers. 5- True Lilies
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 5 (4 Apr 1884), 220-221.
The Evolution of Flowers. 6- Tulip and Fritillary
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 5 (25 Apr 1884), 290-291.
MAY 1884
Our Debt to Insects
The insect colour sense responsible for vivid flower colours in nature, and colours of insects themselves.
1. Gentleman's Magazine, 256 (May 1884), 452-469.
2. Popular Science Monthly, 25 (July 1884), 332-347.
3. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, 40 (July 1884), 11-21.
The Evolution of Flowers. Lilies and Rushes
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 5 (30 May 1884), 386-387.
The Common Newt
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 5 (9 May 1884), 321-322.
The Growth of Brain-Power
1. Phrenological Journal and Science of Health, 78 (May 1884), 273.
JUNE 1884
The Extinction of Species
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 5 (13 June 1884), 427-428.
An Ancient Lake Bottom
1. Longman's Magazine, 4 (June 1884), 183-195.
JULY 1884
The Evolution of Flowers. Some Higher Lilies
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 6 (4 July 1884), 10-11.
AUGUST 1884
The Sense of Taste
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 6 (8 Aug 1884), 105-106.
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, 40 (Nov 1884), 590-591.
Sunflowers
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 6 (22 Aug 1884), 147.
Hickory-nuts and Butternuts
The protective measures evolved by plants to preserve their nut seeds.
1. Popular Science Monthly, 25 (Aug 1884), 433-439.
SEPTEMBER 1884
More about Sunflowers
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 6 (5 Sep 1884), 193-194.
Statistics of Barataria - 1
'Do what you will, the races will get mixed. Take an example where pride of race and prejudice are at the very worst; where one might naturally imagine that intermixture would be hardest and tardiest; where the very name of miscegenation is scouted and detested. In Jamaica…'
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 6 (19 Sep 1884), 231-233.
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, 40 (Dec 1884), 839-841.
[Review of] Ancient and Modern Britons: A Retrospect in 2 Vols by Anon
1. Academy: A Weekly Review of Literature, Science, and Art, 26 (6 Sep1884), 147-148.
2. Saturday Review, 58 (1884), 117. [Calls it 'a large and useless book'. Attribution possible. ]
The Australian Bower Birds
Description of a bower sent to him intact from Australia.
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 45 (26 Sep 1884), 3-4.
OCTOBER 1884
Grass of Parnassus
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 6 (3 Oct 1884), 280-281.
Ivy
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 6 (31 Oct 1884), 353-354.
Queer Flowers
On carnivorous plants and their habits.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 3 (Oct 1884), 397-409. Unsigned.
2. Popular Science Monthly, 26 (Dec 1884), 177-187.
3. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, 40 (Dec 1884), 807-814.
4. Friends' Intelligencer, 47 (3 Jan 1885), 749.
Thunderbolts
Neolithic hatchets and arrowheads as 'thunderbolts'; and real lightning phenomena.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 3 (Oct 1884), 337-366. Unsigned.
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, 41 (Jan 1885), 58-67.
3. Falling in Love (1889).
NOVEMBER 1884
Honey-dew
Ants, aphids and their relations with the plants they feed upon.
1. Longman's Magazine, 5 (Nov 1884), 35-47.
2. Falling in Love (1889).
Statistics of Barataria - 2
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 6 (21 Nov 1884), 415-416.
Fertilisation of Broad Beans
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 6 (7 Nov 1884), 376.
DECEMBER 1884
Food and Feeding
On taste, appetising and non-appetising foods.
MS. 15pp. Penn.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 3 (Dec 1884), 617-633. Unsigned.
2. Popular Science Monthly, 26 (Feb 1885), 468-482.
This version starts: 'When a man and a bear meet together casually in an American forest..'
3. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, 41 (Feb 1885), 155-164. Unsigned.
This version starts as PSM.
4. Strange Food. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, 50 (Aug 1889), 265-270.
Apparently an abridgement of the above five years later. This version starts: 'That what is one man's food…'
5. Falling in Love (1889).
[Review of] Custom and Myth by Andrew Lang
“learned, lucid and profoundly logical essays. . .remarkable for his candour and studied moderation.”
1. Academy: A Weekly Review of Literature, Science, and Art, 26 (20 Dec 1884), 404-405.
1885
Charles Darwin
A generally admired short study which still stands up very well. It contains a chapter on the theory of courtship. GA comments on deductive reasoning are striking: 'The English intelligence in particular shows itself as a rule congenitally incapable of appreciating the superior logical certitude of the deductive method. Englishmen will not even believe that the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the squares on the containing sides until they have measured and weighed, as well as they are able, rude experimental devices, a few selected pieces of rudely shaped rectangular paper'. GA's weakness for deductive arguing, taken from his hero Spencer, was undoubtedly GA's Achilles heel as an original scientific theoriser. One of the best features is that GA does justice to Darwin's predecessors.
According to the Longmans archives (Reading) GA received a flat L100 for this.
1. London: Longman's, Green, 1885. Reprinted 1886, 1888. English Worthies Series, ed. Andrew Lang.
2. New York: D. Appleton, 1885. Reprinted 1893, 1895.
3. Charles Darwin . . . traduit de l'anglais sur l'edition de 1886 par P-L Le Monnier. Paris: De Guillaumin, 1886.
4. Charles Darwin: His Life and Work. New York: Humboldt, [1886]. Humboldt Library of Science, #80.
5. Ottawa : CIHM, 1980. Three microfiches of the Longman's, Green, 1885 ed. in the Harriet Irving Library, University of New Brunswick. Series #05014.
6. Ottawa : CIHM, 1980. Three microfiches of the De Guillaumin, 1886 ed. Copy in the Bibliotheque nationale du Quebec. Series #05013.
7. Ottawa : CIHM, 1981. Three microfiches of the Longman's, Green, 1888 ed. Copy in the National Library of Canada. Series #26237.
Preface
1. The Miscellaneous and Posthumous Works of Henry Thomas Buckle. A New and Abridged Edition Edited by Grant Allen. 2 vols. London: Longmans, Green, 1885.
2. Ottawa: CIHM, 1983. 1+5+1 microfiches of the Longman's, 1885 ed. Copy in the University of Toronto Library. Series #09820-09822.
JANUARY 1885
Go to the Ant
A wide-ranging essay on the more colourful habits of ants.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 4 (Jan 1885), 68-80. Unsigned.
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, 41 (Mar 1885), 416-423. Unsigned.
3. Falling in Love (1889).
FEBRUARY 1885
De Banana
On the banana as one of the very oldest cultivated crops.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 4 (Feb 1885), 182-193. Unsigned.
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, 41 (Apr 1885), 529-536. Unsigned.
3. Falling in Love (1889).
[Letter to Alfred Austin, 18 Feb 1885]
On GA's 'Spring' article, pub. in April 1883. 'The Nook, Horsham Road, Dorking. Feb. 18, 1885. Dear Sir – I have just read your beautiful and vigorous answer to an old Pall Mall article of mine upon the English spring. I cannot but be glad that I first penned the calumny in question, since it has called forth so felicitous a rejoinder. But I can't resist the impulse to write and tell you that the poetical conjecture as to my origin and habits contained in the opening lines is unfortunately by no means the correct one. The muse has misled you. Pegasus has gone astray. As a matter of sober truth, I am a Canadian by birth, brought up in a very wild and beautiful part of Canada (on one of the Thousand Islands), but I believe I love English soil and English flowers and English seasons with a love as great as even you do. Most probably you have never before heard my name: but for many years I have watched each successive English spring with the closest observation, chronicling the first arrival of coltsfoot or arum or celandine or primrose in my own diary (chiefly in Devonshire) and contributing rural articles to the Pall Mall and St James's, which have since been reprinted under the titles of Vignettes from Nature and Colin Clout's Calendar. Pray kindly excuse these personal details: but I am at once so proud of having called forth your graceful poem, and so touched by the wicked accusation of Cockneydom, that I couldn't avoid writing to vindicate my anonymous self. As to the main argument, that the eighteenth-century poets took their “ethereal” spring from the Latin poets rather than from English nature, -- why, in spite of your dissent, I stick to it still. Nobody loves the English spring better than I do: but it is not, I maintain, the same as the Italian one. The article in question was written at Lyme, Dorset, just after my return from an Italian trip, when I happened to feel the distinction between the two very acutely.
Here is a great pother all about a poetical peg on which to hang a pretty set of verses! Pray excuse it, and don't take the trouble to acknowledge this purely personal letter. When a poet hurls iambics at our devoted heads, we little people must needs answer, crassa Minerva, in own fashion. – Yours very faithfully, GRANT ALLEN.' Austin adds: 'The same post brought me his charming book Colin Clout's Calendar, with the following inscription in it: Poetae . Claro . Veris . Britannici . Vindicatori . Munusculum . Qualecunque . D .D. Paenitentiae . Pignus . Obscurus . Ignotus . Innominatus . Auctor.'
1. The Autobiography of Alfred Austin Poet Laureate 1835-1910. 2 vols. London: Macmillan, 1911, II, 193-4.
MARCH 1885
A Very Old Master
Neolithic arts and crafts
1. Cornhill Magazine, 4 (Mar 1885), 254-266. Unsigned.
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, 41 (May 1885), 601-608. Unsigned.
3. Falling in Love (1889).
Primroses and Cowslips
1. English Illustrated Magazine, 2 (Mar 1885), 403-410.
APRIL 1885
Big Animals
On the successive evolution of large species, and their extinction. Has a very effective passage on the mistakes made in confusing periods of geological time:
'Such a picture is really just as absurd, or , to speak more correctly, a thousand times absurder, than if one were to speak of those grand old times when Homer and Virgil smoked their pipes together in the Mermaid Tavern. . . .
1. Cornhill Magazine, 4 (Apr 1885), 405-419. Unsigned.
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, 41 (June 1885), 778-786. Unsigned.
3. Falling in Love (1889).
A Fish-eating Plant
The bladderwort, which traps tiny fish in its small bladders, which are like eel-traps.
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 41 (9 Apr 1885), 4-5.
JUNE 1885
Genesis
Plants accumulate materials for growth by the agency of chlorophyll; animals steal protoplasm from plants. 'Variation under the influence of the environment . . . aided by natural selection, does all the rest' (559).
1. Gentleman's Magazine, 258 (June 1885), 546-559.
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, 42 (Aug 1885), 228-237.
3. The Hand of God (1909).
JULY 1885
Concerning Clover
1. Gentleman's Magazine, 259 (July 1885), 40-52.
2. Popular Science Monthly, 28 (Nov 1885), 73-84.
The First Potter
Origin of ceramics in clay-plastered gourds, etc. GA had an instinctively graceful style, evident in his most bread-and-butter productions: 'That is the great merit of pottery, viewed as an historical document: it retains its shape and peculiarities unaltered through countless centuries, for the future edification of unborn antiquaries. Litera scripta manet, and so does baked pottery. The hand itself that formed that rude bowl has long since mouldered away, flesh and bone alike, into the soil around it; but the print of its fingers, indelibly fixed by fire into the hardened clay, remains for us still to tell the tale of that early triumph of nascent keramics' (265).
1. Longman's Magazine, 6 (July 1885), 262-269.
2. Falling in Love (1889).
AUGUST 1885
Unparliamentary Boroughs
'Burghs' 'burys' and 'boroughs' in place names.
MS. 10pp. Penn.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 5 (Aug 1885), 174-184. Unsigned.
The Birth of Mountains
The geology of the Swiss Alps.
MS. 9pp. Penn.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 5 (Aug 1885), 185-195. Unsigned.
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, 42 (Oct 1885), 503-509. Unsigned.
Fossil Food
The origin of our salt supply.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 5 (Aug 1885), 142-153. Unsigned.
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, 42 (Oct 1885), 556-563. Unsigned.
3. Falling in Love (1889).
SEPTEMBER 1885
Birds and Flowers
Birds, especially humming-birds, just as important as insects in fertilisation. [July-Sep reel has an index at the start]
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 42 (7 Sep 1885), 1.
OCTOBER 1885
The Alleged Ingenuity of Swallows
Rejects claims for their special cleverness (then being made in the Times), but gives several illustrations of their ingenuity, drawn mostly from Romanes' work.
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 42 (7 Oct 1885), 1.
The Recipe for Genius
Something of a parody of Galton's Hereditary Genius. Genius emerges from a wide admixture of racial and professional antecedents, and cannot easily be bred for..
1. Cornhill Magazine, 5 (Oct 1885), 406-415. Unsigned.
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, 42 (Dec 1885), 804-810. Unsigned.
3. Falling in Love (1889).
NOVEMBER 1885
The Dispersion of Seeds
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 1 (1 Nov 1885), 3-5.
[Review of] Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence edited by Elizabeth Carey Agassiz.
1. Academy: A Weekly Review of Literature, Science, and Art, 28 (7 Nov 1885), 309-310.
Dr William B. Carpenter
Carpenter was a Unitarian biologist/physiologist, long outstripped by the progress of biology and his own religious limitations, and GA is good on the difficulties of this. 'Unitarian orthodoxy is in its own way about as stiffly and rigorously orthodox as any other form of dogma to be found anywhere within the hundred and three sects of Britain. Fuller creeds are often more elastic. The very minimizing of the demands made upon the credence of the individual believer seems to render the necessity for holding fast to that irreducible minimum an absolute necessity of the properly trained Unitarian mind. Hence it happens that such men as Dr Carpenter, while ready to go up to certain points with perfect frankness, seem to shut off steam, as though automatically, the moment they reach the prescribed end of their mental tether. 'He who says A,' a wise French proverb tells us, 'must also say B'.' Carpenter was one of the 'last austere survivors of the pre-Darwinian scientific school' 2.
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 42 (13 Nov 1885), 1-2.
[Review of] That Very Mab [by Andrew Lang & May Kendall]
In 'My Lares and Penates' GA says he prizes his review copy because 'one likes to think how one so early recognized the advent of a great poet…. When May Kendall's name becomes as well known as it is sure to be some day, it will please one to remember that one saluted the rising sun betimes' (720). Another instance of GA's ability to spot non-existent talent. Curiously he doesn't mention Lang's part in this, although there are hints that he knew in the review.
1. Longman's Magazine, 7 (Nov 1885), 83-87.
Ogbury Barrows
Interesting account of GA's own participation in opening the Long Barrow and the Round Barrow, which are adjacent but in age at least 5000 years apart.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 5 (Nov 1885), 512-522. Unsigned.
2. Falling in Love (1889).
Fish out of Water
On walking and flying fish species.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 5 (Nov 1885), 523-532. Unsigned.
2. The Fish that Climbs a Tree. New York Times, 28 Dec 1885, 3
3. Popular Science Monthly, 28 (Jan 1886), 334-342.
4. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, 43 (Jan 1886), 81-86. Unsigned.
5. Falling in Love (1889).
DECEMBER 1885
Superfine English
On pedantry in English usage; the etymological fallacy, etc.
MS. 9pp. Penn.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 5 (Dec 1885), 626-635. Unsigned.
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, 43 (Feb 1886), 177-182. Unsigned.
Concerning Keepsakes
1. Longman's Magazine, 7 (Dec 1885), 186-195.
[Review of] The Races of Britain by J. Beddoe
1. Athenaeum, 12 Dec 1885, 771-2. Unsigned.
1886
Common Sense Science
Contains a Preface and 28 essays. The preface reads: "These little essays, now specially addressed to an American public, are mostly endeavors to place before American readers some of the latest results of modern science, in simple, clear, and intelligible language. Myself born in America [sic], I am glad thus on a return visit to my native land [sic] to contribute somewhat to the formation of that great mass of thought which must ultimately quicken and inform the whole world of civilization. Dating as I do from Thoreau's town, I trust I may have caught some slight echo of Thoreau's inspiration. Concord, Mass., June, 1886." These essays are thin in content; many are either sketches for later pieces or simplified versions of published articles to which an American 'top-dressing' has been added. None of them were apparently ever published separately, or in the UK at all, and when they were written is unknown. A major mystery in GA bibliography.
1. Boston: D. Lothrop, [1886].
2. Ottawa : CIHM, 1980. Four microfiches of the Lothrop, 1886 ed. Copy in the D. B. Weldon Library, University of Western Ontario. Series #05019.
Second Nature
Straightforward Lamarckism or actually Samuel-Butlerism: 'habit is that which by use has become natural to us; nature is habit handed down from our ancestors, and ingrained bodily in the very structure of our brains and muscles and nervous systems' (8). Cf children of acrobats, born with supple limbs; musicians' children; mountaineers. Also, 'every wrong act indulged in . . . helps to stereotype the evil practice itself . . . every habit thus thoughtlessly or wickedly formed is liable to be transmitted to our children after us' (16) eg drunkenness.
1. Common Sense Science (1886).
Memory
On the fantastic store-house of distinct facts stored in even the least retentive brain. A simpler version of 'A Thinking Machine'.
1. Common Sense Science (1886).
Self-consciousness
The destructive nature of this psychological state, which is egotism turned inside out; and the least self-conscious writers are the ones which last.
1. Common Sense Science (1886).
Attainable Ideals
On being realistic about one's goal in life: several examples are taken from Biographies of Working Men, though rather to teach the opposite lesson.
1. Common Sense Science (1886).
Instinct and Reason
Instinct offered as 'wired-in' inherited intelligence on Lamarckian principles.
1. Common Sense Science (1886).
Sleep
Conventional explanation that sleep is for organ restoration and repair.
1. Common Sense Science (1886).
Holly and Mistletoe
Covers the same ground as other articles on these plants.
1. Common Sense Science (1886).
Knowledge and Opinion
Thin essay arguing that the core facts of science are incontrovertible.
1. Common Sense Science (1886).
The Winter Rest
Nine-tenths of all indigenous species are hibernating in the winter – and hibernation is relatively recent a habit, since the Ice Age.
1. Common Sense Science (1886).
Mountains
Quotes numerous amusing instances of the fear and distaste for mountains, or even British hills, in the 18thC. Eg in Gilbert White.
1. Common Sense Science (1886).
Home-life
The home as a narrow and constricting force, in large cities; it stifles the gregarious impulse.
1. Common Sense Science (1886).
The Balance of Nature
Nature as 'a vast interlacing whole' which is readily disrupted. Huxley's example of ecology: old maids, cats and clover in fields.
1. Common Sense Science (1886).
The Horse and His Pedigree
The evolution of the horse and related species is better understood and documented that for almost any other creature.
1. Common Sense Science (1886).
The Best Policy
Honesty as the glue of society.
1. Common Sense Science (1886).
The English People
Celtic and Teutonic elements
1. Common Sense Science (1886).
Big and Little
On scales of size and time – up and down
1. Common Sense Science (1886).
The Origin of Bowing
Courtesies as remnants of more slavish behaviour.
1. Common Sense Science (1886).
English Chalk Downs
How these were formed and their later weathering.
1. Common Sense Science (1886).
Spring Blossoms
Nearly all are tuberous and so do not rely on the immediate sources of nutrition.
1. Common Sense Science (1886).
The Earth's Interior
Shows how little was known in his time about the inner structure of the Earth – dismisses idea of liquid mantle.
1. Common Sense Science (1886).
2. Chautauquan, 13 (May 1891), 268.
Nuts and Nutting
Covers the familiar ground of the reproductive strategies of plants that rely on nuts.
1. Common Sense Science (1886).
Amusements
The calmer amusements of middle age.
1. Common Sense Science (1886).
The Pride of Ignorance
1. Common Sense Science (1886).
Inhabited Worlds
1. Common Sense Science (1886).
Brick and Stone
A simplified version of the essay 'Geology and History' published in 1880.
1. Common Sense Science (1886).
Evening Flowers
Such flowers are white or sometimes yellow and perfumed to attract moths.
1. Common Sense Science (1886).
Beauty
Beauty is a good eugenic guide – clearly a preliminary version of the article 'Falling in Love'.
1. Common Sense Science (1886).
Genius and Talent
A preliminary draft of the article 'Genius and Talent' published in the Fortnightly Review, Aug. 1888.
1. Common Sense Science (1886).
JANUARY 1886
A Thinking Machine
The brain. GA does a good job of describing the appalling extent of the contents of a well-stocked brain: his own for example. It's remarkable how few of the difficulties which he mentions in understanding how the brain stores information have been resolved 120 years later.
1. Gentleman's Magazine, 260 (Jan 1886), 30-41.
2. What One Small Head Knows [extract]. New York Times, 21 Feb 1886, 13-14.
3. Popular Science Monthly, 28 (March 1886), 596-605.
4. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, 43 (Mar 1886), 389-394.
5. The Hand of God (1909).
Grey Wethers
Massive sandstone blocks on Salisbury Plain, the remnants of a sandstone coat worn off from the underlying chalk.
MS. 10pp. Penn.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 6 (Jan 1886), 72-81. Unsigned.
2. Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, 37 (Jan 1886), 94-103.
Stonehenge
1. The Week [Toronto], 3:8 (Jan 1886), 119.
FEBRUARY 1886
Soles and Turbot
MS. 13pp. Penn.
On the evolution and variety of the flat-fish species.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 6 (Feb 1886), 184-196. Unsigned.
2. The Science of Flat-fish, or Soles and Turbot. Popular Science Monthly, 29 (May 1886), 107-117. Unsigned.
MARCH 1886
Some Sea-serpents, Original and Selected
Whether the mythical 'sea-serpent' can well be explained by one out of the variety of large sea beasts.
MS. 13pp. Penn
1. Cornhill Magazine, 6 (Mar 1886), 314-328. Unsigned.
A Mount Washington Sandwort
A closely written botanical essay based on GA's personal observations in New England.
1. Popular Science Monthly, 30 (Mar 1887), 590-600.
APRIL 1886
Scores and Tallies
On the origins of arithmetic and the decimal system.
MS. 12pp. Penn
1. Cornhill Magazine, 6 (Apr 1886), 436-448. Unsigned.
2. Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, 37 (Apr 1886), 420-431.
JULY 1886
British and Foreign
How all the present flora and fauna of Britain, including the humans, are relatively recent arrivals, since the last Ice Age. So is language; GA quotes: 'English is Dutch, spoken with a Welsh accent'.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 7 (July 1886), 93-102. Unsigned.
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, 44 (Sep 1886), 392-397. Unsigned.
3. Falling in Love (1889).
AUGUST 1886
Thistles
1. Longman's Magazine, 8 (Aug 1886), 384-393.
2. Popular Science Monthly, 30 (Nov 1886), 101-198.
3. How the Thistle Travels. Christian Union, 34 (9 Dec 1886), 32.
SEPTEMBER 1886
Generation after Generation
1. Gentleman's Magazine, 261 (Sep 1886), 254-266.
America Revisited. An Interview with Mr Grant Allen
GA talks to editor (Stead, presumably) about his eight months away [since Jan 1886?]. His first return for 11 years. Struck by the Ice Age effects, scouring the landscape. Opines that the soil is not that fertile. The agricultural parts of the East Coast are barbarous. 'Barbarous only in the sense of leading a life that is destitute of almost all the conveniences and appliances of civilization. They lead a life of unceasing toil in spacious solitudes, labouring all the year round without the stimulus or the privileges of conversation.' 'They have less leisure than the English labourer, and they dwell more apart. They have no books excepting religious publications of a low intellectual type and the newspaper. The result is that every one who can live in towns flies from the country as from a pest-smitten city. The overcrowding of the great urban centres is one of the most difficult problems before American society. No one will remain on land longer than is necessary to enable him to get into the town'. There are many rural murders and mad women. There is no love of country living. 'Within sixteen miles of Boston the country is almost in a state of aboriginal wildness. You strike the forest primeval and the natural wilds within a few hours after leaving the largest cities.' 'I remember being very much amused at the frank astonishment expressed by a young cultured American when he learned that it was absolutely possible in England for a couple of literary men to live and enjoy life as far from London as the village of Dorking.' 'The purely agricultural landscape is desolation itself. All the indefinable beauties which add a charm to the English landscape do not exist in the great expanse of treeless, hedgeless, plain, crossed here and there by roads, about as uninteresting as a cabbage garden, and by no means so well cultivated'.
Have you written anything while you have been away?'
'Absolutely nothing,' said Mr Grant Allen. 'For eight months I have been solely occupied in regaining my health. But now I am once more buckling to work again'.
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 44 (18 Sep 1886), 4.
The Ethics of Dog-owning
Muzzling of dogs was an issue of the time and GA speaks up for more controls, especially against the spread of rabies.
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 44 (27 Sep 1886), 1-2.
2. Pall Mall Budget, 30 Sep 1886, 10-11.
OCTOBER 1886
Falling in Love
GA writes against a eugenic proposal of 'man-breeding' as proposed by Sir George Campbell at the Anthropological Section of the BAAS, 1886, where he spoke against 'foolish ideas about love and tastes of young people.' Better trust to the forces of sexual selection; the 'inherited instinct' is a far superior impulse. Beauty is a good guide to excellent eugenic qualities. Instinct, being biologically based, is a surer guide. The results of selective breeding in animals – the race-horse, say – are not particularly admirable.
1. Fortnightly Review, 40 (Oct 1886), 452-462.
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, 44 (Dec 1886), 767-774.
3. Falling in Love (1889).
The History of James
The third in this series of the origin of Christian names.
MS. 9pp. Penn.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 7 (Oct 1886), 392-401. Unsigned.
2. Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, 38 (Oct 1886), 430-439.
The Isolation of London
An unusual explicitly political piece, but really about the parasitical nature of London, and the complete divorce of its political sentiments (conservative) from the mood of the 'real' centres of population. GA's gift for striking generalisation and metonymy is shown here: 'In the middle ages…London stood pretty well in the virtual centre of all that was then most civilized and populous within the four walls of Britain. Kent and the hop country, Norfolk and the worsted country, Bristol and the cloth country, all conveniently grouped around her. As yet Birmingham was nothing; Liverpool was nothing; Manchester was nothing; Lancashire and Yorkshire were but moor and wold; Warwickshire and Staffordshire were mostly occupied by inferior farm lands. Trade pointed eastward by Thames mouth to Flanders and the Continent; Clyde and Mersey led, so far, nowhere on earth save to the waste Atlantic.' 1
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 44 (9 Oct 1886), 1-2.
DECEMBER 1886
Surrey Mill-wheels
In praise of the country around Dorking: 'If you don't believe it, walk on your own legs from Dorking station, through Westcott Heath, the Rookery [Malthus' house – pulled down], and Tillingbourne Glen to Leith Hill Tower, and back by the way of Cold Harbour and Ockley…' Also mentions Milton Court mill, Castle mill, Gomshall mill pond.
1. English Illustrated Magazine, 4 (Dec 1886), 175-183.
American Jottings
The differing effects of the Ice Age in the North American continent and in Europe.
1. Fortnightly Review, 46/40ns (Dec 1886), 721-736.
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, 45 (Feb 1887), 159-169.
Laisser-faire in Literature
Speaks against university English, on the grounds that classics are hated because they were taught to boys. Mentions he was a classics teacher until 'fate first happily released me from that intolerable servitude to a false system'. 'May we never live to see examination papers set in the High on Wordsworth's ode on the Intimations of Immortality, or frightened undergraduates heckled in viva voce over the precise signification of the fourth line in the eighth stanza of the Grammarian's Funeral.'
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 44 (2 Dec 1886), 5.
1887
America Revisited
1. Critic: The Weekly Review of Literature and the Arts [New York], 9 (1886), 201-??.
JANUARY 1887
Obituary: Prof. Edward L. Youmans
Edward Livingstone Youmans. GA mentions specifically of the PSM that 'he endeavoured to do full justice to the natural rights of the alien writer' (77).
1. Academy: A Weekly Review of Literature, Science, and Art, 31 (29 Jan 1887), 76-77.
[Review of] In the Wrong Paradise, and Other Stories by Andrew Lang
Praises these stories generously as light but pregnant contributions to the 'literature' of anthropology. 'Mr. Lang can never help being amusing. If he were to write a Plane Trigonometry for the Use of Schools, sines and cosines would wink at us solemnly with a merry twinkle, and isoceles triangles would skip before our eyes like the little hills of Hebrew Psalmist' 22.
1. Academy: A Weekly Review of Literature, Science, and Art, 31 (8 Jan 1887), 22.
Calabogie
Travel by train to a lake in backwoods Canada in 1886.
MS. 12pp. Penn.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 8 (Jan 1887), 37-47. Unsigned.
Bird's Nest Soup
'The Chinese make soup of dried saliva' – Darwin.
MS. 9pp. Penn
1. Cornhill Magazine, 8 (Jan 1887), 72-80. Unsigned.
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science and Art, 45 (Mar 1887), 371-377. Unsigned.
The White Mountains
Travel in New Hampshire in 1886.
1. Longman's Magazine, 9 (Jan 1887), 283-296.
[Review of] Les problemes de l'esthetique contemporaine by M. Guyau
1. Mind, 12 (Jan 1887), 119-122.
FEBRUARY 1887
Strictly Incog.
Mimicry and camouflage among insects and elsewhere.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 8 (Feb 1887), 142-157. Unsigned.
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science and Art, 45 (Apr 1887), 476-485. Unsigned.
3. Falling in Love (1889).
Our Noble Selves
A hymn in praise of the latest age as a nest of singing birds: brilliant new writers who labour 'under the fatal defect of being young.' 'Writers and thinkers of prime magnitude positively swarm upon the pavements of London: if you want a poet, an essayist, a philosopher, a romancer, you can hire him anywhere in the Temple or at the clubs for the modest remuneration of a guinea a page' (462). Again GA has an unerring ability to praise the now-forgotten or mostly forgotten, though his generous demand for more, not less, log-rolling is impressive. 'You may see people open their eyes wide in astonishment if you speak of Herbert Spencer as the greatest philosopher that ever lived; and yet they are not in the least astonished if you say the same thing about Aristotle or Kant or even Bacon' (464). Well, yes…
1. Fortnightly Review, 47 (Feb 1887), 210-224. Unsigned.
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science and Art, 45 (Apr 1887), 459-468. Unsigned.
How Local Option Works in Canada
About the working of the Scott Act (prohibition) in and around Kingston – 'in upper Canada (Ontario as people now absurdly call it').
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 45 (21 Feb 1886), 1-2.
MARCH 1887
The Joy of Living
'Life, it is to be feared, bores most men . . . To be much amused or interested in anything is 'bad form' from Numicius downward' (638). But there is nothing boring in the round of the botanist's year.
1. Murray's Magazine, 1 (Mar 1887), 394-405.
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science and Art, 45 (May 1887), 638-645.
The British Hedgehog
1. The Hour Glass, 1 (Mar 1887), 88-91.
Wotton House
Tour of Evelyn's house and grounds in Surrey.
1. The Magazine of Art, 10 (Mar 1887), 145-150.
2. The Church Magazine (Philadelphia), (Mar 1887), --
APRIL 1887
The Theory of Tittlebats
Habits, especially reproductive, of the stickleback fish.
MS. 13pp. Penn.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 8 (Apr 1887), 404-418. Unsigned.
2. Popular Science Monthly, 31 (Oct 1887), 825-838.
The Complexity of Things
The difficulties of meteorology and predicting micro-climates.
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 2 (1 Apr 1887), 121-123.
MAY 1887
Among the 'Thousand Islands'
A visit in July, presumably of 1886. 'I speak with the pardonable partiality of a native. I am indeed an aboriginal of this very district, born at Kingston, the threshold of the St Lawrence, and 'raised' (as we say, beyond the Atlantic) on the biggest and longest of the Thousand Islands. . . . I am not, I will admit, a patriotic Canadian—in so small a community, patriotism runs perilously near to provincialism—but I must allow that a warm corner still exists in my heart for the rocks and reaches of the Thousand Islands.' Mentions Wolfe Island where 'I spent a rustic boyhood with the raccoons and the sunfish.'
1. Longman's Magazine, 10 (May 1887), 61-71.
2. Popular Science Monthly, 31 (July 1887), 346-355.
JUNE 1887
The Progress of Science from 1836 to 1886
A survey illustrating GA's formidable range of reference and extraordinary gift for synthesis – he misses little.
1. Fortnightly Review, 47 (June 1887), 868-884.
2. Darwin and Evolution [extract of pp.870-871]. New York Times, 3 July 1887, 13-14.
3. Popular Science Monthly, 31 (Aug 1887), 503-518.
4. A Half-century of Science by T.H. Huxley F.R.S. and Grant Allen. New York: J Fitzgerald, 1888. Humboldt Library of Science, #96.
5. Ottawa: CIHM, 1980. One microfiche of the J. Fitzgerald, 1888 ed. Copy in the Douglas Library, Queen's University. Series #08974.
JULY 1887
Pure Gold
How the supply of mined gold in the world, fairly fixed for ages, has expanded hugely in recent times.
MS. 13pp. Penn.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 9 (July 1887), 36-52. Unsigned.
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science and Art, 46 (Sep 1887), 313-321. Unsigned.
What is the Object of Life?
'Life as a whole, therefore, has no object, any more than the revolution of the planets has an object'. At the biological level, life has the object of self-preservation and then race-preservation. 'The final residuum, the pessimists pure and simple, remain alive because it is so very troublesome and difficult to commit suicide. Besides, they always want to do something or other special tomorrow. The plot-interest of life is sufficient to deter them: usually it takes the form of a wife and children, acquired, no doubt, before the duty of checking the multiplication of the human race became quite apparent to their emancipated understandings' (471). The highest ideal that people live for (admittedly few indeed) 'is the greatest happiness of all' (472).
1. Forum, 3 (July 1887), 466-472.
2. The Hand of God (1909).
3. http://www.atheists.org/Atheism/roots/allen/objectoflife.html [Accessed Jan 2001].
To Dorking by Coach
'London may be said to stop short at Dorking. Beyond that point begins the Surrey Weald, which is still country, pure and simple, unabsorbed yet by the spider-like claws of that devouring national cancer, which Cobbett loved to call 'the wen'. A drive by coach from Piccadilly to the White House in Dorking High Street thus leads one through the entire panorama of southern suburbs, which begin to be beautiful and to suggest the country only after the road has passed Epsom. . . . I always consider that London shows signs of failing in any given direction with the last gin-palace;// the country begins when the first genuine old-fashioned inn hangs out its swinging sign-board honestly to the four open winds of heaven. Judged by this home-made standard, there is really little to detain us till we reach Leatherhead, for even Epsom is now purely suburban, a town of straggling metropolitan villas, much inhabited by that floating population which lives in London and sleeps outside it… (284-5). All around is familiar ground to English art and English literature . . . above rise the wooded slopes of Norbury Park, with their antique giant yews, the Druid's grove, commemorated in George Meredith's mystical poem The Woods of Westermain. . . . The Burford Bridge Hotel, close by the crossing, is a famous old-fashioned country inn, close to the very slope of Box Hill. Keats wrote 'Endymion' in its parlour, they say. . . .(287) The steep slide on the left is covered with box trees; in front rise the delightful woods of Deepdene, and the three sandstone hills upon whose sides and feet the town of Dorking itself is built. We rattle up the one long High Street of the dear old-fashioned country town, and in a few miles reach the White Horse, one of the few antique coaching-houses still left intact in England.(288). 'The road, indeed, running by necessity from village to village, follows almost exactly the junction of the two strata, with all the regularity of a geological map. For there are few or no towns or villages on the waterless chalk; but just at the point where it joins the tertiaries, town after town was early placed by the first settlers of primeval Surrey, because they could have on// the one hand, the advantage of water-supply, and on the other hand the great grazing-ground of the chalk at their very door. Croyden, Carshalton, Sutton, Cheam, Ewell, Epsom, Ashtead, and Leatherhead, all thus follow one another in a single long line upon the very junction of the two formations. . . . The Dorking road itself, being, of course, predetermined in its route by the lie of the villages, strikes this curious line of continuous population at the town of Ewell and continues along it, with chalk on the left and tertiaries on the right, the whole way as far as Leatherhead.'
1. The Magazine of Art, 10 (July 1887), 283-288.
AUGUST 1887
[Contribution to] Fine Passages in Verse and Prose; Selected by Living Men of Letters
'I don't think I can do more than to say that to me very modern poetry, and especially contemporary poetry, is the most satisfying.' He offers Morris, Arnold, Lang and Dobson. In prose, Spencer: 'his style, which purely literary critics so greatly misunderstand, is the most perfect instrument for its particular purpose ever fashioned by the intellect of man.'
1. Fortnightly Review, 48/42ns (Aug 1887), 300.
The Woes of an English Author. A Pathetic Letter from Grant Allen
Reprints a letter pub. in the American Critic, 184 (9 Jul 1887), 19. Does not explain why it was dated 2 years earlier. 'The Nook, Horsham-road, Dorking, July 7, 1885. Dear Sir, -- I am sorry to say I cannot comply with your request. I make it a rule never to send my autograph to collectors; and as even to refuse is in this case practically to comply (if one signs one's own name), I generally leave all letters on the subject absolutely unanswered. In your case, however, as you set forward to some extent a public plea, I will partially break through my rule, so far as to say I do not think my own handwriting can ever be of any interest to anybody anywhere. If people really cared about my work, they would buy my books; which they don't. For ten years I have been fighting a hard battle against poverty, in writing scientific works; and now I am just being compelled to retire from the hopeless contest and take to penny-a-lining for a livelihood at vulgar stories. A world that won't find me in bread can't be very anxious to get my autograph. Against Americans, in particular, I feel, not unnaturally, a certain moral prejudice. They may perhaps read my books – I don't know whether they do or not – but at any rate they buy them in pirated editions, which never bring me in a penny. (Stop: one publisher once sent me 50 dols., and another 100 dols., as the American contribution towards my support.) I don't blame the publishers – they are not protected themselves; but I do blame you, the American people, for not making a juster law upon this matter. On me personally the want of copyright presses very hardly – exceptionally hardly; and for two reasons. In the first place, while there is only a very small and non-paying audience in England for popular scientific books, there is a very large and paying audience in America, among your well-educated middle classes. In the second place, I feel it all the harder because I was myself born in America, brought up on one of the Thousand Islands, and taught my first rudiments of higher education beneath the shadow of the elms at Yale College, New Haven. But just because I have the misfortune to be a British subject – a misfortune for which I am in no way accountable, and which, if possible, I would gladly shuffle off – I can get no protection for the labour of my hands and brain in a great country for which I still feel a deep and enduring affection, in spite of its systematically robbing me of three-fourths of my paltry income. Under these circumstances I have to work far too hard for my living, and for those dependent upon me, to find time for writing my name over and over again on behalf of collectors of autographs. As a rule, I am glad enough to lay down the pen out of my//aching fingers as soon as the day's work is fairly over. You will therefore excuse me my refusal to comply with your request, and you are quite at liberty to place this letter in any library in all America, where it may stand a chance of rousing one American to a sense of the injustice you are nationally committing against the poor, hard-worked, underpaid, struggling young English authors. Yours very faithfully, Grant Allen.'
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 46 (1 Aug 1887), 6-7.
SEPTEMBER 1887
A Fossil Continent
Marsupials as one branch of an ancient mammalian family. A concreteness of opening typical of GA's manner: 'If an intelligent Australian colonist were suddenly to be translated backward from Collins Street, Melbourne, into the flourishing woods of the secondary geological period – say about the precise moment of time when the English chalk downs were slowly accumulating, speck by speck, on the silent floor of some long-forgotten Mediterranean – the intelligent colonist would look around him with a sweet smile of cheerful recognition, and say to himself in some surprise, “Why, this is just like Australia.”' (666).
1. Cornhill Magazine, 9 (Sep 1887), 258-270. Unsigned.
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science and Art, 46 (Nov 1887), 666-674. Unsigned.
3. Falling in Love (1889).
OCTOBER 1887
The Cause of Character
Light piece on inheritance of psychological traits.
MS. 11pp. Penn.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 9 (Oct 1887), 414-427. Unsigned.
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science and Art, 46 (Dec 1887), 803-811.
3. The Hand of God (1909).
My Lares and Penates*
An extremely interesting autobiographical piece for those interested in the details of GA's life at Dorking. It is a conducted tour of his house and contents, written in a chatty mode specifically for an American audience: he says that English readers “sniff too suspiciously at personal detail”. Clodd did not use it. GA calls his house “a modest Surrey cottage” and later “a pretty wee Queen Anne cottage, with tiny balcony and wooden porch … on the outskirts of a quiet, sleepy little English country town”. GA was in Canada and at Harvard in '86. Mentions an “Indian bronze bell my brother brought me home from Allahabad” – this brother predeceased him. He mentions a number of reviews he wrote which have not been traced: one of Darwin's Earthworms, of Geikie's Geology for the St James's Gazette, De Candolle's Cultivated Plants and De Nadaillac's Prehistoric America for the Pall Mall, Maudsley's Pathology of Mind for the Athenaeum, Tylor's Anthropology. Later he says that “a scribbler's life is much like a galley-slave's. . .besides all my other work, I review on an average about 365 volumes per annum, or 366 in leap-year. This not only helps to stock one's library, but also keeps one fairly up to date in the matter of literature” 723. Since so few of GA's reviews have been traced, this suggests the impossibility of a really exhaustive bibliography of his work. Mentions volumes of “my share in Sir William Hunter's great Gazetteer of the Indian Empire” and later “letters from Hunter, under whom I worked for two years in that dreary Indian Statistical Department.” This article also shows GA's considerable interest in interior decoration: Morris, Liberty, etc and he takes pride in keepsakes from all over the world, especially Japan. Allen obviously took considerable satisfaction in having beautiful things about him , especially in his study. His Teiss microscope was a present from several friends, including Darwin and Spencer. He concludes: “Accept it, I beg of you, not in any carping or unfriendly spirit, but as the confidential afternoon small-talk of a humble English journeyman journalist, anxious to exhibit to you something of his own life, as an illustrative specimen of the life of the class in which he is included. Literature in England (save for a few great names) is a hard trade, but it has, by the way, its incidental consolations. I have tried here to put a few of them before you. Do not think too harshly of me for my garrulous confidences . . .”
1. American Magazine, 6 (Oct 1887), 717-725.
2. Pall Mall Gazette, 46 (4 Oct 1887), 13. [Extracts.]
Publication of these extracts led to a letter from GA to the editor (Stead), printed in the issue of 6 Oct 1887, 7, as follows: Sir, I cannot refrain from expressing my profound regret at your publication on Tuesday of certain passages from an article of mine in a Transatlantic review. The article was written on a special American suggestion for a local American magazine to suit a peculiar American taste, and I would rather have cut off my right hand than have had it printed here in England. The appearance of these extracts in particular, apart from their redeeming context, has caused me most acute discomfort. The article itself contains a distinct proviso that it was not intended for English readers.—Faithfully yours, etc. Grant Allen. The editor pointed out that the American Magazine circulated simultaneously in England and America.
NOVEMBER 1887
On an African Hilltop
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 46 (29 Nov 1887), 1-2. Unsigned.
DECEMBER 1887
American Cinquefoils
Pontellias. 'a recent trip to America has made me realize you all far better than I ever did before; it has made me feel your individuality as I never hitherto felt it' (189).
1. Popular Science Monthly, 32 (Dec 1887), 189-199.
In an African Metropolis
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 46 (3 Dec 1887), 1-2. Unsigned.
Winter in Algeria. – III. “A First Glimpse of Inner Islam”
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 46 (17 Dec 1887), 1-2. Unsigned.
1888
Force and Energy. A Theory of Dynamics
This short monograph on physics is peculiar and revealing. In his preface GA is defensively modest about it; but he inscribed a friend's copy: 'It contains my main contribution to human thought. And I desire here to state that, when you and I have passed away, I believe its doctrine will gradually be arrived at by other thinkers.' In fact, he was extremely proud of it. He repeated similar convictions on his dead-bed, according to his son: 'I want no memorial over my remains; tell those who care for anything that I may have done to buy a copy of Force and Energy' (Clodd, 50). But all he does is to describe the most obvious conceptualizations of the time, as developed by Joule, Kelvin, Maxwell, etc. All GA adds are some useless verbal distinctions of his own, without using any mathematics – a serious weakness. Non-readers can rest assured that GA did not anticipate Einstein. He has nothing to say on the equivalence of mass and energy, on relativity, on the origins of the sun's heat, or on atomic theory. The book confirms the impression that GA was a popularizer and a careful observer, not an original thinker, except perhaps in botany, and capable of serious errors of judgement – about his own talents, as well as others'. It exposes his intellectual weaknesses: dogmatism and a rage to systematize everything. It was crucified in reviews by Karl Pearson and Oliver Lodge.
According to Longmans archives (Reading) GA received a generous 25% royalty on the price of copies sold over 400. The print run was 1000, but probably the total sales were under the 400 mark.
The Clodd Diary (1 Nov 1885) records: 'Read a good deal of MS of Force and Energy which Allen lent me'.
MS not located.
1. London/New York: Longmans, Green, 1888.
2. [Together with Vignettes from Nature and The Evolutionist at Large.] New York: Humboldt Publishing Co, [1889].Humboldt Library of Science, #106.
3. Ottawa: CIHM, 1980. Three microfiches of the Longmans, Green, 1888 ed. Copy in the D.B. Weldon Library, University of Western Ontario. Series #05038.
Periodical contributions in 1888; by month where known
Marseilles
First periodical publication not traced. A long account of the history and interesting features of the city.
1. The Picturesque Mediterranean: Its Cities, Shores and Islands. With Illustrations by J. MacWhirter, J. Fullerlove, etc. 2 vols. London: Cassell, 1888-91, I, 46-68.
JANUARY 1888
Evolution
MS. 12pp. Penn.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 10 (Jan 1888), 34-47. Unsigned.
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science and Art, 47 (Mar 1888), 364-372. Unsigned.
3. Falling in Love (1889).
The Gospel According to Darwin. – I.
Darwin stuck to biology and any extensions of his theory are to be found only in others. God has withdrawn into the background. The 'object' of all life is only self-preservation followed by race-preservation.
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 47 (5 Jan 1888), 1-2.
Winter in Algeria. IV. – July in January
Speaks of trapdoor spiders and the lush scenery.
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 47 (9 Jan 1888), 2-3. Unsigned.
The Gospel According to Darwin. – II.
For the fall of man, Darwin substituted the rise of man, adding to human dignity. 'Is it not a fact that in all the higher animals co-operation, and the first rudiments of ethical feeling – sociality, sympathy, parental affection, the sodality of the sexes – count for much as factors in the success of the species?' 2.
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 47 (12 Jan 1888), 1-2.
Winter in Algeria. V. – A Moorish Museum
Account of the museum and the cast of St Geronimo, who was buried in liquid concrete by the Moors.
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 47 (13 Jan 1888), 5. Possibly also 19 Jan.
FEBRUARY 1888 GA's 40th birthday
MARCH 1888
Studies from Life. 1.—The Newt Pond
Amphibious animals – and plants, like the water-crowfoot. This magazine was founded 1860. Manly Christianity and literary excellence were its watchwords. Gladstone contributed his series on 'The Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture' to it.
1. Good Words: A Weekly Magazine, 29 (Mar 1888), 229-232.
In Memoriam: James Cotter Morison
Note addressed from Birmandreis, Algeria, 9 Mar. A brief and generous obituary. 'Like many other Celts – for he was an Aberdonian Scot by descent – he needed to some extent the active stimulus of intercourse with other brilliant minds to bring his own brilliancy up to full flashing point' 3.
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 47 (13 Mar 1888), 2-3.
APRIL 1888
A Glimpse of North Africa
North Africa as being historically part of Europe. There was a detailed resume of this article under the title of 'L'Algerie vue par un Anglais,' Le Temps, 5 April 1888.
1. Contemporary Review, 53 (Apr 1888), 526-536.
2. Living Age, 177 (5 May 1888), 259-265.
In the Dark Continent
Wintering (1887/8?) in Algiers at the Villa du Palmier. GA was reported back in England by May 88.
MS. 12pp. Penn.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 10 (Apr 1888), 362-374. Unsigned.
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science and Art, 48 (July 1888), 116-123. Unsigned.
MAY 1888
Studies from Life. II.—The Bread-stuff of the Desert
Writing in December, in Algeria, also on the date-palm. A good example of GA adapting a theme to his market – this one is more superficial. He contributed nothing more to Good Words, even though it looks as though this was intended to be a series.
1. Good Words: A Weekly Magazine, 29 (May 1888), 381-388.
Of Dates
MS. 11pp. Penn.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 10 (May 1888), 520-532. Unsigned.
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science and Art, 48 (July 1888), 27-34. Unsigned.
Sunday at Concord
Visit to Walden, etc. GA seems to come more to terms with his North American background here, in a more compliant way. Of the cry of the whip-poor-will: 'We had not heard him before since our return to America; time and place conspired to reinforce the mystic dreamings of childish recollections. Once, twice, thrice the three words harshly spoken, fell plain and distinct upon our ears as human articulation, then they faded away slowly in the distance, and nothing was left much the buzz of the insects and the faint rustling of Hester Prynn's ghostly gown against the steep parapet of the wooden staircase.'
1. Fortnightly Review, 49 (May 1888), 675-??.
Revolt of the Celt
1. Universal Review, 1 (May 1888), 269-280.
JUNE 1888
Surrey Farms
Essay based on an exhibition of drawings by Biscombe Gardner of out of the way places in Surrey. Illustrations show Temple Farm, Capel and a farmhouse at Ockley. Points out that before recent times 'there was nothing else to be done with Surrey. The soil of the country, half cold Weald clay, half dry and barren sandstone, was given over during the golden ages of agriculture to charcoal forest on the south and to gorse and heather on the open and breezy central moorland' 5. Still as rustic and remote as Somerset.
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 47 (22 June 1888), 5-6.
JULY 1888
Mammoth Hunting in Siberia
MS. 12pp. Penn.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 11 (July 1888), 64-76. Unsigned.
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science and Art, 48 (Sep 1888), 308-315.
Evolving the Camel
Article set in Algeria – sight of a caravan sets GA off on a description of the two 'biological islands' of the camel species.
1. Longman's Magazine, 12 (July 1888), 296-307.
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science and Art, 48 (Sep 1888), 392-399.
3. Popular Science Monthly, 34 (Dec 1888), 192-202.
Gourds and Bottles
Melons, cucumbers, gourds, and their relation to primitive North African pottery.
1. Popular Science Monthly, 33 (July 1888), 310-322.
AUGUST 1888
Genius and Talent
Mentions the case of John Gibson, sculptor, who studied in Rome, humbly. under Canova; surely the original of the character in Babylon. Macaulay: 'the special endowments of a marvellous memory, great command of mere language, a certain ready amount of specious brilliancy, and a singular ability for calling up and adorning concrete images' (346). One of GA's most wide-ranging and stylish essays. This also marks GA's reappearance in the Fortnightly: Frank Harris had been editor since Jul 1886 and continued until Oct 1894.
1. Fortnightly Review, 50 (Aug 1888), 240-255.
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, 48 (Oct 1888), 448-458.
3. Popular Science Monthly, 34 (Jan 1889), 341-356.
This version starts: 'Let it be granted that a vast deal of nonsense has been talked about everywhere…'
SEPTEMBER 1888
Obituary: Richard A. Proctor
A short account noting sadly 'that his performance unhappily somehow fell short of his natural powers was due to the fact that the necessity for earning a living by the work of his brains compelled him to waste upon popularising results and upon magazine articles a genius capable of the highest efforts.' Also mentions 'the ridiculous disparity of native endowment between himself and his critics'.
1. Academy: A Weekly Review of Literature, Science, and Art, 34 (22 Sep 1888), 193.
OCTOBER 1888
The Great American Language
MS. 11pp. Penn.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 11 (Oct 1888), 363-377. Unsigned.
A Living Mystery
An earlier version of 'The Mystery of Birth' – both on vegetal and animal reproduction.
1. Popular Science Monthly, 33 (Oct 1888), 730-739.
DECEMBER 1888
Surrey Farmhouses
Deals with the villages of the Surrey Weald: Capel, Ockley, Cobbett on Chilworth, etc.
1. English Illustrated Magazine, 6 (Dec 1888), 154-171.
Mud and Continents
While on holiday in northern Italy in November, noticed the effect of alluvial deposits being brought down from the Alps, in filling up lakes.
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 12/4 (1 Dec 1888), 25-30.
1889
Falling in Love, with Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science. **
Reprints 21 essays from the Fortnightly, Cornhill and Longman's, all located. The introduction says, among other things 'I do not approve of novels. They are for the most part a futile and unprofitable form of literature; and it may be profoundly regretted that the mere blind laws of supply and demand should have diverted such an immense number of the ablest minds in England, France, and America from more serious subjects to the production of such very frivolous and, on the whole, ephemeral works of art.” C- check this.
1. London: Smith, Elder, 1889.
2. A New Edition. London: Smith, Elder, 1891.
3. New York: D. Appleton, 1890.
4. New York[?]: Books for Libraries, 1977. [Facsimile of the Smith, Elder, 1891 ed.]
5. New York[?]: Arno, 1977.
6. Ottawa : CIHM, 1980. Four microfiches of the Appleton, 1890 ed. Copy in the Harriet Irving Library, University of New Brunswick. Series #05034.
7. Ottawa: CIHM, 1982. Four microfiches of the Smith, Elder, 1889 ed. Copy in the University of British Columbia Library. Series #17940.
8. Ottawa: CIHM, 1983. Four microfiches of the Smith, Elder, 1891 ed. Copy in the Metropolitan Toronto Library, Sciences and Technology Department. Series #22827
JANUARY 1889
The Harvest Mouse: a Miniature Monkey
The tiniest mammal in Britain, equivalent to the spider-monkeys; living in the miniature forest of wheat stalks.
1. Good Words: A Weekly Magazine, 30 (Jan 1889), 40-44.
Hazel and Filbert
1. Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, 12/4 (1 Jan 1889), 49-51.
Do Actors Feel?
Review of Masks or Faces? by William Archer.
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 49 (7 Jan 1889), 3.
A Biologist on the Woman Question
The twin bogeys of national degeneration and the flight from motherhood merge here, with an interesting twist: 'Woman in our species is the sex specially told off to bear the chief strain of reproduction, which in the human race is peculiarly long, severe, and exhausting. . . . [reformists] forget that the question has been taken by nature out of the individual's hands altogether: that unless the new arrangements are such as// will produce the maximum of healthy children (even at the risk of over-population – Malthus and starvation will take care of that) the community which adopts them will fail in the struggle. . . . You 'educate' your women at the expense of their reserve fund; and after all you find they marry, and make very unsatisfactory and physically inefficient mothers . . . You can never tell that till the time comes: and then many of your seemingly healthy Girton and Nuneham girls break down utterly.'
But he ends: 'If these ideas seem in any way conservative, I trust nobody will ever quote them as my 'views' on the subject. . . . I am not such a fool as to say what I really think about such a subject as the relation of the sexes in this intolerant nineteenth century. If I did, my conclusions would certainly not be conservative; but I am wise enough, happily, to keep those to myself, locked up in the safe recesses of my inner consciousness.'
1. Pall Mall Gazette, 49 (11 Jan 1889), 1-2.
MARCH 1889
The Adaptiveness of Nature
1. North American Review, 148 (Mar 1889), 355-359.
Desert Sands
Flora and fauna found there, especially in the Algerian Sahara.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 12 (Mar 1889), 303-314. Unsigned.
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science and Art, 49 (Apr 1889), 541-548. Unsigned.
3. Falling in Love (1889).
The Trade of Author
This is certainly by GA as it rehearses all his themes – it may have been written after The British Barbarians was rejected. Some phrases reappear, almost word for word in Dumaresq's Daughter (1891), Some very clever touches. His central question: 'How does it arrive that the wage of the average author, usually a person of some little education and some modest intelligence, falls so infinitely below the average wage of the other learned professions to which in like manner men bring but their brains and the skill of their fingers'?
"A barrister, whose special skills are known only to a handful of people, can mark his brief 100 guineas. A medical specialist charges 25 shillings a minute for his time. Even an unknown water-colourist can charge thirty pounds for a square of paper. How odd it is, muses Allen, that by contrast a writer 'known to half the world in a dozen countries' draw the pay of 'one-twentieth of the income earned by the man known nowhere but in a narrow circle in the city of London?' It seems inexplicable.
He mentions the case of the American enthusiast who finds the object of his admiration in an eight-roomed cottage among the remotest recesses of suburban Middlesex' or 'among the monotonous and dreary desert of a London back street. … Why in this one particular trade should comparative fame and considerable reputation bring with it so very, very little in the way of substantial and solid reward as pounds sterling?'…
The answer is specific disadvantages under which the author labours. Puts the blame for the low rewards for literature on two distinctive competitors: the Competition of the Dead, the Incursions of the Amateur. 'it is easy to understand why no man outside the walls of Colney Hatch ever voluntarily and deliberately devotes himself to the trade of authorship.' The causes are not the meanness of publishers or the circulating libraries.
First, in literature the works of the dead are freely available to drive down the living writer's price. In law or medicine you cannot consult professionally the brilliant minds of the past; you must put your problem in the hands of those who are currently in the market now, inferior though they may be. The most-read authors are the ones who names have been diffused the most, and whether they still living concerns few readers. 'But who will care to buy a new book by a rising author when he can get the pick of Thackeray, and Dickens, and Carlyle, and Macaulay any day for a shilling?'
Second, in authorship there are no entry requirements, no arduous apprenticeship, no capital, credentials or training. No one would entrust his legal case to the Archbishop of Canterbury, but in letters an amateur imports his established reputation. 'If a great doctor, a well-known soldier, a popular painter, a familiar singer or actor or beauty writes a book, it sells, not only as well as the average book of the professional author, but a great deal better'. And the professional writer suffers from another kind of amateur too: the many who write for pleasure, or any motive other than making a living: that depresses wages too.
The author must suit the market in exactly the way of the baker and the grocer. You cannot force the market, and it is a 'fastidious and capricious' market. 'If you don't supply what the public wants, somebody else will step in and oust you; and the somebody else will survive in the struggle for life, while you go to the wall or into the workhouse. That is the gospel according to Darwin and Malthus applied to art. “Saltavit et placuit” is all the epitaph you can ever hope for; and not to please is simply fatal.' The Latin phrase means 'he danced and gave pleasure,' and is taken from an ancient Roman grave-stone found on the Riviera of a 12-year-old boy from the North. It is likely that Allen was aware of the sexual innuendo, and expected his readers to be so as well.
'In the actual practical world we all live in, the author must work for his daily wage like any other journeyman labourer. . . . You might as well tell the baker's man, as he goes his round, he should aim at elevating the taste of the back streets by supplying the people with Vienna bread and French rolls of the daintiest pattern.' No, the author, if he survives at all 'learns to take his place beside the maker of hats and the importer of latest Paris fashions, as a unit in a trade that lives by pleasing.'
'Why, then, do men write for pay at all? Well, because they must live somehow. The profession is recruited almost entirely, I believe, from the actual or potential failures of other callings. . . . Some of us are schoolmasters or college tutors; some of us are doctors who failed to draw patients; some of us are “stickit ministers” or disfrocked parsons; a vast proportion are briefless barristers. When a man who knows how to put an English sentence grammatically together has no other resource left in life, he sells himself, body and soul, in the last resort to the public press, and produces the fabric they call literature.'
'We have to deal here with a crowded trade, in which competition is exceptionally and fatally severe – a trade which kills off its workmen faster than any sweating system ever devised by human ingenuity – a trade compared with which (I speak seriously) match-making and silvering and house-painting and coal-mining are healthy and congenial light occupations. . . . The hours are long, the strain is severe, the pace is killing, and the pay is inadequate.'
'But oftener still – and this is far more annoying – the world makes little complimentary speeches . . . “how I did laugh over that clever essay on the Ethics of Bores!” pumped up perforce with a nervous headache in response to an urgent demand from an employer for a humorous article.'
But, Allen consoles himself, there is always the remote chance of hitting the jackpot, of hitting the public's taste fair and square, of finding the thing spot on the hide of the 'pachydermatous public'. For the author who manages that, freedom is at hand. 'For when once an author has attained success, he is free indeed. He may say what he likes. He may tell the truth at last, and no man will curb him. From its favourites the public will suffer anything. Carlyle gave it abuse, Ruskin gives it nonsense, but it smiles benignly.'
1. Fortnightly Review, 51/45 (Feb 1889), 261-274. Unsigned. [Unattributed in Wellesley Index, vol 2.]
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science and Art, 49 (Mar 1889), 395-404. Unsigned.
MAY 1889
Individualism and Socialism
GA has a lot of savage fun with a prospectus from an 'Individualist League,' headed by an Earl of Wemyss, owner of 62,000 acres. Whoever had send this to him 'had heard me described by somebody else as an Individualist (which is quite true) and because he thereupon jumped at once to the illogical and practically erroneous conclusion that I must therefore be necessarily opposed to what calls itself Socialism (which is of course a profound mistake') 3. The Individualism of the pamphlet is in fact a 'fine old crusted Toryism, tricked out as Individualism' – a doll of Privilege tricked out and under false pretences' 11. The men who control most of the land and the natural resources cannot be Individualists; the idea is absurd. But GA is also wary of socialism: 'We do not believe [we Individualists] that one man ought to pay for another man's books, or beer, or preaching, or amusement' 11. 'We do not believe that the State…should take aught from any man for any purpose save for the most necessary public objects of // defence against external or internal enemies' 11-12.
1. Contemporary Review, 55 (May 1889), 730-741.
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science and Art, 49 (June1889), 851-859.
3. Individualism and Socialism. Reprinted from Contemporary Review of May 1889. Glasgow: Scottish Land Restoration League, [1889 or 1890].
4. Individualism and Socialism. Reprinted from Contemporary Review of May 1889. Glasgow/Bradford/London/Westminster: 'Land Values' Publication Department, [1907?]
Woman's Place in Nature
Taking a biologically determinist position, GA proves to his own satisfaction that “this very necessity for telling off at least a certain considerable number of the women for the arduous duties of human maternity, prevents the possibility of women as such ever being really in any deep sense the race. It is human to till, to build, to navigate, to manufacture; and these are the functions that fall upon man.” (263)
1. Forum, 7 (May 1889), 258-263.
Right and Left
On handedness.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 12 (May 1889), 551-560. Unsigned.
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science and Art, 49 (June1889), 846-851. Unsigned.
3. Falling in Love (1889).
A Hill-top Stronghold
Why Fiesole and other towns in Italy and England were built as citadels.
1. Longman's Magazine, 14 (May 1889), 32-42.
2. Science in Arcady (1892).
JULY 1889
The Potato's Place in History
MS. 15pp. Penn.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 13 (July 1889), 46-58. Unsigned.
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science and Art, 50 (Sep 1889), 317-324. Unsigned.
AUGUST 1889
Grouse and Ptarmigan
MS. 15pp. Penn.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 13 (Aug 1889), 186-201. Unsigned.
SEPTEMBER 1889
Glan Conway
1. English Illustrated Magazine, 7 (Sep 1889), 848-857.
Tropical Education
The value of the tropics for a liberal education, strikingly like Aldous Huxley's well-known essay 'Wordsworth in the Tropics'. Men who know the tropics in their formative years are like a higher brotherhood; they have taken the Tropical Tripos. The tropics are the norm of nature – how things have been for most of geological time. And they can be a liberal education on social issues. 'Thousands of questions, social, political, economical, ethical, present themselves at once in new and more engaging simple aspects. . . . How are slums conceivable or East Ends possible where every man can plant his own yam and cocoa-nut, and reap their fruit four-hundred-fold? How can Mrs Grundy thrive where every woman may rear her own ten children on her ten-rood plot without aid or assistance from their indeterminate fathers?' (483). Having educated ourselves in the North, 'having first read them, we must read ourselves out of them.' We must go back to the Tropics, where 'we shall learn and unlearn much, coming back, no doubt, with shattered faiths and broken gods, and strangely disconcerted European prejudices' (484). It helps us get away from the 'reduced gentlewoman's outlook': 'views formed in the Tropics correct this refractive influence by a certain genial and tolerant virile expansion, not to be learned at the Common, Clapham' (487). It is based on GA's Jamaica experiences; at the close he says: 'I am pleading here only for their educational value, in small doses. Spending two or three years there in the heyday of life is very much like reading Herodotus – a thing one is glad one had once to do, but one would never willingly do again for any money.'
1. Longman's Magazine, 14 (Sep 1889), 478-489.
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science and Art, 50 (Oct 1889), 538-545.
3. Science in Arcady (1892).
OCTOBER 1889
Plain Words on the Woman Question
The primary need is to share the 'burden of maternity' as widely as possible. He wants to see women emancipated (more than most do themselves) to become mothers of at least 4. Women should be ashamed to say they don't want to be mothers. Emancipate women, but not as a 'dulled a spiritless epicene automaton'.
1. Fortnightly Review, 52/46 (Oct 1889), 448-458.
2. Popular Science Monthly, 36 (Dec 1889), 170-181.
3. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science and Art, 50 (Nov 1889), 670-677.
4. With remarks by E.C. Walker. Chicago: M. Harman, 1900. Light Bearer Library. 'Fiat Lux!' New series vol. 1, 9.
Weeds
MS. 13pp. Penn.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 13 (Oct 1889), 417-428. Unsigned.
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science and Art, 50 (Nov 1889), 657-664. Unsigned.
The Bronze Axe
On the development of working in hard metals.
MS. 12pp. Penn.
1. Cornhill Magazine, 13 (Oct 1889), 518-528. Unsigned.
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science and Art, 50 (Dec 1889), 796-801. Unsigned.
3. Science in Arcady (1892).
DECEMBER 1889
Practical Religion
That the core and origin of all religions is worship and sacrifice. In seeking its origins, it is fatal to mix it up with matters of cosmology, metaphysics, ethics, etc.
1. Fortnightly Review, 52 (Dec 1889), 776-788.
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science and Art, 51 (Feb 1890), 145-153.
3. The Hand of God (1909).
From Moor to Sea
Dartmouth, Dartmoor and their surroundings.
1. English Illustrated Magazine, 7 (Dec 1889), 143-157.
From Africa
North African arts and crafts. Opens with a description of the Algerian villa: 'with a magnificent view across the ravine to the wine-press opposite, and a glimpse down the valley toward the distant peaks of the dim blue Atlas on the eastern horizon. It is white, and Moorish, and deliciously African, and it has horseshoe arches, and tiled facades, and a squat flat roof'. 'It is easy to make a home beautiful if you will only try to do it yourself. Art after all is no mystery. A few pots of paint, a few planks of pine, a few model sheets of good oriental patterns, a few scraps and squares of tile or marble, and you can turn with a little patience and perseverance work as rich and dainty as the Alhambra itself. With fifteen shillings, and the spare evenings of a single month, any man or woman possessed of average brains and fingers can make and set up an oriental cabinet or corner cupboard that would be cheap indeed at a shop for twenty guineas' (137)
1. Gentleman's Magazine, 267 (Dec 1889), 547-557.
2. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science and Art, 51 (Jan 1890), 131-137.
[CONTINUED IN ANOTHER FILE]
PHOTOGRAPHS AND PORTRAITS OF GA
Only seven published images of GA have been located. Two are sketches, one by George Hutchinson and the other a lithograph by Will Rothenstein. One photo by Elliott and Fry was reproduced by Clodd first in the Memoir; copyright of the other photo, showing GA seated at his desk with his microscope, is with the Hulton Getty Picture Collection. There are reproductions of what may be an uncropped version of the same photo in other sources, showing GA at his desk with both his microscope and typewriter on display. There is a unique photo (source unknown) showing GA at a much younger age, heavily bearded, printed in W. Blackburn Harte, 'Some Canadian Writers of To-day,' The New England Magazine, 9:1 (Sep 1890), 26, 33-34. Finally, a photograph taken at Brighton College of the masters of that school shows GA at the age of 21 immediately after leaving Oxford, and is reproduced on this site.
In the Bodleian Library, Oxford. MS.Autogr.b.9, 275 is a large scrapbook containing an excellent informal sharp portrait snapshot of GA, probably never published. Unfortunately the Bodleian, with its legendary generosity, wants a huge fee to reproduce it, even for purely scholarly purposes, so it will have to stay in its file maybe for another 100 years.
NON-FICTION: PROBLEMS AND UNLOCATED ITEMS. Help eagerly sought
None of the numerous essays in GA's collection Common Sense Science (Boston,1886) have ever been traced to a first periodical publication in either the US or the UK. A major mystery which I'm very eager to solve.
GA claimed in his article 'Lares and Penates' (1887) that he was then reviewing one volume every day. He also details some titles of books that he had reviewed. Presumably most of these reviews were unsigned. More information is sought.
None of the probably extensive work GA did anonymously for the Daily News in 1878-9 has been traced.
There could be an article 'Life and its Varieties' in Great Thoughts June 1891. This 'series' was advertised as forthcoming in the PMG of 31 Dec 1890, for the first issue of Great Thoughts of 3 January 1891.
Penn holds article [?} MSS titled 'The Emancipated Woman', 'Three Little Fables', 'Venetian Sketches', 'Narcissus and Daffodil' [possibly the same as 'A Dainty Flower'], 'The Amateur Americans', 'The New Woman Movement', 'Jamaican Reminiscences', and 'The Philistine Turns' (pub. anonymously in Belgravia (Dec 1882). Publication details, if any, of the others are sought.
A Persistent Nationality' was collected in Science in Arcady. According to GA's preface, it was not published first in the UK. Any evidence of a UK publication?
GA reviewed 'Fiona Macleod's' (W. Sharp) Pharais in the 'Westminster' [which?] at some point in the first half of 1894. Not located
GA wrote a letter, as did others, on the subject 'Literature in the Highlands' for something called The Highland News early in 1896'. Not located.
The publication of 'The New Hedonism' in 1894 resulted in references in the Speaker in 15, 22, and 29 December 1894. It is not clear if they are by GA or reactions to the essay.
There are apparently letters from GA, probably about the Wilde trials, in the Daily Chronicle of 10 Aug and 13 Aug 1895.
GA gave a talk to the Westbourne Park Institute on 11 October 1892 on the subject 'The Novel as She is Wrote'. Ever published?
GA once noted that he served for 'years' as the agony aunt on the Family Herald and contributed essays to it. Any information?
Acknowledgements
I am grateful for the help of the following people in preparing this bibliography. Several of them supplied me with information from their own researches about obscure GA items which I would never have found myself: Jack Adrian, Mike Ashley, Victor Berch (for many details of extremely obscure items), Pierre Coustillas, Sabine Ernst, Chris Gosling, Colin Harris, Toni Johnson-Woods, Richard Landon, Graham Law (for many obscure, syndicated items), Bernie Lightman, Barbara Arnett Melchiori (particularly for locating, summarising and copying some Allen items in the Cambridge University Library, and for letting me see draft chapters of her book on Allen), a Private Collector (for information and copies of unique items in his collection), Susan Rhoads, Nicholas Ruddick (for many most useful discussions), Terence Rodgers, Sandra Stelts, and Chris Willis.
I would like to record my considerable debt to Phil Stephensen-Payne, a science fiction bibliographer, whose own work on Allen was developed to a late stage before we became aware of each other's labours. His completed working bibliography (Galactic Central Publications, 1999) offered a valuable means of cross-checking items. However, numerous items have been located in periodicals since Phil's bibliography was published two years ago. I would also like to thank the helpful staff of the Newspaper Library Colindale, where many of these items were located in August 2001.