Apart from that, how did you enjoy the visit?

Sorry, but I keep finding Blackgang Chine out-takes. This one's from The Quiver and a serialised inspirational novel Borne Back, by Emma E Hornibrook, another late-Victorian writer with more credits than you'd think (cue bibliography).

When London meets Japan

The author Douglas Sladen - writer of the May 1895 Windsor Magazine piece "Odd Scenes in Japanese Streets" - rang bells, though I've never written about him on JSBlog. It eventually dawned on me that I'd mentioned him in A Wren-like Note as a neighbour of Maxwell Gray after she moved to Richmond.

The Reades' ministry: Blackgang and Punrooty

Another Blackgang, Isle of Wight, story: "Mr. Charles Reid, at Blackgang, in the Isle of Wight, is indefatigable in calling the sinner to sobriety.” notes the author of Drink: the Vice and the Disease, in the October 1875 London Quarterly Review. This one-liner spins off into an unusual saga of 19th century missionary activity by unlikely people in unlikely places.

Ouida: The Little Earl, Bimbi, and an elegy for Shanklin

The Little Earl is a fable by Ouida (Maria Louise Ramé) telling of a young French earl's 'walkabout' in the Isle of Wight - a kind of 'Prince and the Pauper' experience that teaches him a hard lesson to take on at eight: "I see I am nothing. It is the title they give me, and the money I have got, that make the people so good to me. When I am only me, you see how it is."

London Society: a Devonshire Savages sighting

The Devonshire Savages: a me-too hatchet job on a Devon rural family from an 1878 edition of London Society, a monthly periodical billed as publishing "light and amusing literature for the hours of relaxation", but which often had features and fiction that were anything but.

Mrs. Disney Leith: bibliography

Another annotated bibliography with an Isle of Wight connection: Mrs. Disney Leith is one of the several names in the literature for the Scottish author Mary Charlotte Julia Leith (née Gordon, 1840-1926) a.k.a. Mary Gordon a.k.a. "M. C. J. L." a.k.a. Mary Leith. Her chief route into history is as the first cousin of the poet Swinburne, who she corresponded with, and later recalled in memoirs.

More Holme Lee children's illustrations

Further to Harriet Parr: bibliography, "Tuflongbo", and a dog's life, here are some more of the off-the-wall illustrations from the handful of 1860s children's fairytale books by the prolific Shanklin, Isle of Wight, novelist Parr (who wrote as Holme Lee).

Shanklin Home of Rest

Further to the previous post, I checked out Shanklin Home of Rest as planned. Its history turns out to be quite well-documented. But I'm always of the opinion that there's never any harm in another take on a topic - especially as this, it turns out, ties in with a previous Shanklin post on JSBlog.

Rambles Through England: Isle of Wight

Rambles Through England: Isle of Wight is a rather idealised description of an 1890s Isle of Wight visit by the uncredited correspondent of the Fleet Street based Ludgate Monthly - launched in 1891 as "a new illustrated threepenny magazine". A deal of it is pretty standard stuff - feel free to skim - but it's a pleasant account of touring the Wight in more genteel days, with a few topics worthy of commentary, such as the uncommon account of the decor of Mrs Harvey's Home of Rest in Shanklin, and the procedures for getting to visit Osborne House when Queen Victoria was alive.

A Vision of Communism

The works of Bertha Thomas (1845-1918) continue to produce a crop of surprises. A while back I mentioned Maxwell Gray's excursion into post-apocalyptic SF, After the Crash; and now I find Bertha Thomas too moved into borderline SF/fantasy on occasion, as in her 1873 A Vision of Communism, which interested me for its strong similarities to a classic 20th century SF story.

Bertha Thomas: bibliography

A spinoff from the previous post that may be of use/interest to someone. Even a brief search for works by Bertha Thomas (1845-1918) finds she was a greatly more varied and prolific writer than you'd expect from the handful of novels that appear in most credits. I got on the trail, and at the end of an evening I found myself with a detailed bibliography: what she wrote; what about; and where (if possible) to find it.

The House on the Scar: A Tale of South Devon

I offer Bertha Thomas's 1890 The House on the Scar: A Tale of South Devon as a regional curiosity worth reading if you're into Victorian melodramatic romances. I found it syndicated in the Sydney Mail, starting in the Jan 18, 1890 issue, and it turned out to be in the Internet Archive. Set in the South Hams, Devon, it's one of the few - but apparently popular - novels by the Worcestershire-born author Bertha Thomas (1845-1918).

Ferny Bank House of Rest for Women in Business

Back in 2010 I picked up and ran with the topic of a short piece in the Western Morning News - Holiday retreat offered women a break from urban life – and men (Peter Carroll, WMN, Nov 13th 2010) - where there seemed to be a great deal more to tell. This is the story of the Ferny Bank House of Rest for Women in Business, a holiday home for working women, founded in 1878, that operated on Babbacombe Downs in the last quarter of the 19th century.

Thomas Dalling Barleé in Dawlish and elsewhere

I just had a spot of déjà vu on seeing Thomas Dalling Barleé's 1837 Miscellaneous Poetry, where I found the address of Lady Watson for the previous post South Devon Railway: 1844 NIMBY list. The subscriber list is quite a nice window on the great and the good of 1837 Dawlish - James 'Sea Lawn Gap' Powell is there - as well as the author's family in Suffolk and social circuit in Bath. But the name Barleé definitely rang bells from somewhere else.

Memorials of Exmouth

Memorials of Exmouth by the Rev. William John Wesley Webb (aka the Rev. William Everitt) is a pleasant and eclectic late 19th century compendium of Exmouth history and trivia - as the author describes it, a "scrap-book ... put together as a History for the Parishioner rather than a Guide to the Visitor. The latter, however, may get from it as much as he cares to know".

Blackgang: a whale of a chine

There aren't many roles for whale skeletons in literature, but one appears in Maxwell Gray's 1913 novel Something Afar (published in the USA as The Desire of the Moth), where the author gets in a reference to her native Isle of Wight and a description (fancifully embroidered by Blanche, the protagonist's wife) of the celebrated whale skeleton at Blackgang Chine.

Blackgang Chine, March 2015

Finally, after years of visiting the Isle of Wight, and many walks starting or finishing at the Blackgang Chine bus stop by the giant smuggler, we visited the Blackgang Chine theme park itself. And an interesting visit it turned out to be ...

Alum Bay

On 31st March - a gusty and cold, but bright, day - we took the bus from Newport to Alum Bay, whose beach I haven't visited since around 1970. Out of season, the chairlift doesn't operate, and I was worried about the climb (what with cough, etc). I was very pleased to find no problems - altogether a pleasant visit to a location rich in geological and literary assocations.

Rocked in the cradle of the deep

"He had, besides, many plans of the utmost importance to occupy his mind. There was his long-pondered invention to be perfected, the oscillating berth that was going to do away with seasickness".
- Stephen French Whitman, Children of Hope: A Novel (1916)

Joe and the Jolly Gist

It's an unlikely jump from Victorian inspirational book to Cumbrian dialect stories, but J Milner Fothergill's 1888 The Will Power; Its Range in Action does exactly that. It's a bit of a curiosity, a collection of examples of will power in action, from history and literature, and described by its physician author as "not a metaphysical enquiry, but a practical book, which it is hoped will be found useful by many, especially those entering into the battle of life".