All posts by Bob Fowke
Self-Publishing Bournemouth
Self-Publishing Taunton
Self-Publishing Cirencester
Coleridge in Shrewsbury
Bob Fowke will be speaking on The Pirate and the Poet – Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Captain George Shelvock, in the Unitarian Church, High Street, Shrewsbury, at 2.00 pm on Sunday 10th January. The talk is in aid of the Shrewsbury Literary Festival.
In November 1794, Coleridge was out walking with William and Dorothy Wordsworth, seeking for a central concept for what he hoped would be a block-buster, gothic poem and Wordsworth suggested an episode from A Voyage Round the World by Way of the Great South Sea by Shrewsbury man (or pirate), Captn. George Shelvocke, where Shelvocke describes the shooting of an albatross by his Second Captain, Simon Hatley. From this suggestion grew the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, and Simon Hatley thus became the unsung model for Coleridge’s Mariner. Bob Fowke looks at the extraordinary story behind the poem, the pirate and the voyage.
Huckleberry Finn Self-Published
On 10 December 1884, Mark Twain self-published The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn with his nephew Charles Webster under the Charles Webster & Co. imprint. Twain was already a successful writer and wanted to maximise his profit. The book was written in dialect and broke new ground, away from more literary forms of writing. He was fortunate because the following year the book was ‘excluded’ by Concorde Public Library as being ‘trash, more suited to the slums than to intelligent, respectable people’. Subsequent publicity did nothing to harm sales and he went on to sell over 40,000 copies of the first edition.
Shrewsbury Library
Colin Sharp will be speaking on Button Gwinnett, Dubious Signatory of the American Declaration of Independence, on Monday 23rd November at 6.00 pm in Shrewsbury Library, to coincide with publication of Button Gwinnett, Failed Merchant, Plantation Owner, Mountebank, Opportunist Politician and Founding Father, his fascinating account of this little-known but remarkable figure. Gwinnett, from Wolverhampton, rose by dubious means to become one of the largest landowners in the State of Georgia and, in 1776, placed his signature on the Declaration of Independence and then became President of Georgia – before his last, unfortunate duel. Colin Gwinnett Sharp is a former Royal Navy Commander who first came to know of his forbear’s exceptional life whilst serving in the British Embassy in Washington DC.
Roundhay Garden Scene
14 October is the anniversary of the world’s oldest movie picture It was made in 1888 by Louis le Prince at the home of his brother-in-law Joseph Whitely at Roundhay in Leeds. It shows Louis’s son Adolphe, Joseph and Sarah Whitley and Harriet Hartley walking round on the lawn by the French windows.