Category: Fiction
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Using the Camera to Illustrate Fiction
Books in 1918 were starting to use real people portraying the characters instead of illustrations, as books had previously done for centuries prior: The two “illustrating photographers” employ a scout who is sent out to the locations where suitable models for the character required may be found, but most of the new models — and […]
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Prophesies Bigger ‘Tanks’ – By H.G. Wells
Famed novelist — and one of the only writers of the time who’s still read today — H.G. Wells penned this piece for NYT Sunday Magazine in 1917. The legendary science fiction author and futurist, who wrote such classic novels as The Time Machine in 1895 and The War of the Worlds in 1898, in this piece […]
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Must The Nickel Novel Die Out? It Is In Danger Now
This article is a nice appreciation of the nickel novel (also called the dime novel), which appeared to be on its way out but actually survived another 30 years or so. Not every age produces a Shakespeare, a Dante, a Kipling, or a man destined to have his name written high in large thirty-two candle […]
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How The World Would Be To-Day “Had History Been Written Otherwise”
There’s a genre of fiction called Alternate History which examines other possible historic timelines like what might have happened if the South won the Civil War. In this article, the Sunday Magazine looks at an alternate history where American states remained colonies of Great Britain, and the Fourth of July were known as Traitors’ Day. […]
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Is The Demand For Dickens As Great As It Used To Be?
Choice quote: The further downtown you go, the less of Dickens the second-hand book-dealers sell. Far down, Gorky, Tolstoy, Karl Marx — serious, revolutionary writers — are the ones who make the hit. Dickens with his come-gather-round-the-fire-and-we’ll-all-have-a-fine-time-spirit seems completely out of touch with the people down there. On the whole, judging from first and second […]
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James Lane Allen On “The Future Christmas”
Although the headline suggests the article is all about the future, in fact novelist James Lane Allen gives a detailed history of Christmas. He focuses on the symbols we associate with the holiday — the tree, Santa, etc — and explains their Pagan origins. He then speculates that in the future, Christmas will again be […]
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Amethyst Jones Gives An Account Of His Amours
Amethyst Jones, as far as I can tell, is a fictional character, the invention of author Frederic Pierpont Ladd. In this odd series, which the Magazine published on a regular basis, Ladd recounted the antics in Amethyst Jones’ love life. It reads a bit like a male version of Sex and the City: 1910. “I […]
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The Busiest Man Of His Age In The World
From November 20, 1910 THE BUSIEST MAN OF HIS AGE IN THE WORLD: Roger Sherman Hoar, Massachusett’s Young Legislator, has Enough Jobs for a Dozen Men. He is an Enthusiastic Suffragist Champion and Works Hard for Interests of that Cause. (PDF) When this article was written, 28 year old Roger Sherman Hoar was a lawyer, […]
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The Man Who Found The Truth
Beginning this week in 1910, the New York Times Magazine began publishing this short story by Leonid Andreyev, considered the Edgar Allen Poe of Russia. It was published serially over four weeks. A reviewer of the print edition on Amazon says: “The Man Who Found The Truth” (or “My Memoirs”) is a brilliant diamond that […]
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