Field trip: On location with Walter Scott's Fortunes of Nigel (1822)

("Camlet Moat", Fortunes of Nigel, via Illustrating Scott) 

This one has been a long time in the works: the discovery that part of Walter Scott's The Fortunes of Nigel (a winning title if ever there was one) took place in a location ten minutes down the road from where I live was one of the things that inspired me to finally start reading his work - and to go on an American Scrapbook field trip.

"Poor little Nellie Grant" and the Wedding of the Century

Nellie Grant, Algernon Sartoris (via)

Last year I took part in some filming for an episode of Heir Hunters, the BBC's genealogy / fortune-hunting reality-documentary show. Rather delightfully, the trail in this particular case led back to Nellie Grant, daughter of President Ulysses S. Grant, who married English rotter Algernon Sartoris at the White House in 1874 - and that's what I was brought in to talk about. The episode aired today and should be available here. It tells this remarkable story very nicely. But I thought it would also be interesting to share some of the primary source material that I uncovered during the course of my research for the episode - of which there's no shortage. This relationship made a large impact in Gilded Age America, and left an equally large footprint. While it's probably pretty banal to point out how contemporary the story feels, I still find it remarkable how much detail about this Transatlantic wedding - and the unhappy marriage that resulted - can be traced in the popular press, in the correspondence of the great and the good, and even in the literary history of the period. Celebrity wedding of the nineteenth century? I think it has a good claim to that title. What follows are a few highlights.

Countdown to Halloween: Nathaniel Covington Brooks, "Clara Lawson; or, The Rustic Toilet" (1836)

Today's story: the curiously named "Clara Lawson; or, The Rustic Toilet", written by Nathaniel Covington Brooks and published in Godey's Lady's Book in 1836, available here.

"A Drift-Log on the Mississippi" (1849-1850)

Or, a literary curiosity from The New Monthly Magazine and Humorist, 1849-50.

Belated Happy Birthday, Walter Scott

I missed Walter Scott's birthday - August 15th, for those of you who want to send a card next year. If this had been 1871 instead of 2012, I probably wouldn't have made that mistake.

"The wizard harp of the North" and International Copyright

So it appears that posts on international copyright in the nineteenth century are like buses: you wait and wait and then two come along at once.

American Scrapbook

This seems like a good place to start.