Launch

We’re holding our launch at the Morris Hall, Bellstone, Shrewsbury on Thursday 8th December, 6.00-8.30pm. After the welcoming biscuit (and all that that implies) and ceremony with raffle there’s going to be a discussion/seminar – about publishing and self-publishing and how the new technologies are changinging the book industry. We particularly want to explore how writers of local and family histories, autobiographies and memoirs can take advantage, but all writers and interested parties are very welcome. Send us an email at info@youcaxton.co.uk if you think you can make it. We need an idea of numbers.

As a bit of fun, there’ll be a ‘potential book raffle’. More on that later.

Strange coincidence – or question of probability?

The other day, Gerald Mothershaw, author of local history The Parish of Hodnet, told Steve an anecdote about his army years in the 1950s. Gerald told how he was leaving camp in Aldershot on his bicycle when a man hailed him from a window and asked him to post a letter. It was addressed to a Wendy Cave of Wem (Shropshire, home town of William Hazlitt). Steve rang his aunt Wendy who happens to be a Cave and, yes, it was her, probably from his Uncle John. Steve says it’s a lovely coincidence but perhaps it’s something weirder, see the birthday problem. Although it is a small world – if you live in Shropshire.

Thoughts on writing local histories and memoirs

We  have started a blog about writing and self publishing with the focus on local and family histories and memoirs. Bob will be writing most of the content but we hope Steve will have time to contribute his wisdom on matters relating to printing and publishing technology. Bob’s first entries have addressed the use of suspense and the advantages of detailed reseach and of visiting places written about. You can find it here.

The Parish of Hodnet, some interesting memorabilia

We are presently working on a book by Gerald Mothershaw, based around the little Shropshire village of Hodnet, once home to Bishop Heber, he of ‘From Greenland’s Icy Mountains’ fame. A prolific local writer, Mr. Mothershaw has constructed a compendium of local lives and anecdotes. The first chapter is taken  from the Brattleboro Reformer Newspaper, Canada 1839, the story of a wealthy and mysterious visitor to the village who marries a local girl. Another chapter features an idyllic account of childhood in the village between the wars by a Eva Starkey. Other chapters, written by Mr Mothershaw himself, include a brief life of Elizabeth Vernon who married Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, probably the ‘fair youth’ of Shakespeare’s sonnets. (Shakepeare dedicated his poem The Rape of Lucrece to Wriothesley in fulsome terms: ‘The love I dedicate to your lordship is without end … What I have done is yours; what I have to do is yours; being part in all I have, devoted yours.’) It is hoped that sales of the book will contribute towards the upkeep of Hodnet Church.

Why Caxton?

William Caxton (c. 1422 – 1491) the first English-language printer and publisher, was also the first English self-publisher. His first book The recuyell of the historyes of Troye (1473) was his own translation of a French romance and he published several other of his own translations in the eighteen years before his death.

John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, and us

We have been delighted to discover that Mike Willmott, a well-known Shrewsbury editor  and colleague, is the descendent of illegitimate progeny of John Wilmot, 1647-1680, Second Earl of Rochester. John Wilmot was perhaps the most licentious of the Restoration poets, in fact much of his output is too flagrant to post on this blog. Mike is himself a poet although nothing should be inferred from his antecendents. Bob takes a particular interest in John Wilmot because Wilmot was at  one time appointed ranger and keeper of Woodstock Park by Charles II – and Woodstock is where Simon Hatley the ‘real’ Ancient Mariner came from. Rochester once ran naked in the Park with a companion, ‘upon a Sunday afternoon, expecting that several of the female sex would be spectators but not one appear’d’. We’ll leave it there.