Michael Hancher

Thanks! Looking forward to it.

How Macaulay contributed to three innovations: the construction of English as an academic discipline in Great Britain and India; the diffusion of English as a language of science and bureaucracy, especially in India; and the international advance of “meritocracy” in education and professional life.

Macaulay and English in India This book traces how the English language emerged from the nineteenth century not only as an imperial and bureaucratic language but also as a global one. It highlights the role of Thomas Babington Mac...

To be published by Routledge this month: Macaulay and English in India. Details at www.routledge.com/Macaulay-and....

A close-up of a person wearing teal gloves holding a small metal type punch engraved with an ampersand symbol. In the background, part of the person’s face is softly out of focus.

A bearded man wearing teal gloves uses a green rubber air blower to clean a small metal type punch. He sits at a desk with an open wooden case filled with neatly arranged metal punches, while a computer monitor displaying a magnified image is visible in the background.

🔎 Rare 18th-century punches used to create the original Baskerville typeface have been digitised and released online.
Designers, historians and the wider public now have the opportunity to study the physical tools that shaped modern typography.
🔗https://loom.ly/1ulLaFI

27 Books Coming in March

The NYT has included True Color in their "books to read in March" round-up! Of course: True Color is out March 31, so you'll have to read it really, really fast to stay compliant with the NYT's demands. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/27/b...

Kristin Bluemel's book "Enchanted Wood: Engraving a Place for Women Artists in Rural Britain" focuses on artists Gwen Raverat, Agnes Miller Parker, Clare Leighton, and Joan Hassall.

And it is available in paperback!

www.upress.umn.edu/978151791477...

Is that what Grice meant by “meaning\NN”? <https://www.jstor.org/stable/2182440> Or do we now know what people would probably mean by the term “stochastic hamartia,” if they used it?

“In essence, **stochastic hamartia** is a tragic downfall caused by the fatal convergence of a minor human weakness and a random, chaotic, or unpredictable world.”
Full text and some ingredients at <https://z.umn.edu/stochastic_hamartia>. (No mention of archery.)

What does “stochastic hamartia” mean? Right now AI Overview explains the “concept” (evidently it's a concept as well as a term) in 290 words, ending with the following summary:

stochastic hamartia
I'm pretty sure that today I coined the term "stochastic hamartia." (Google Search reports zero instances of use.) I made it up because both of these important words are archery-related, and so they might belong together.

Much baggage on that horse, explained in Chapter 7 of ohiostatepress.org/books/titles....

Macaulay and English in India. Proofed and indexed. Due out next month. www.routledge.com/Macaulay-and...

Could be an excellent watercolor.

Could be an excellent watercolor

A good, old-fashioned (viz., New Historicist) take on Gatsby, re-imagining the idea of illustration, Grangerizing the book anew. new.artsmia.org/exhibition/g...

Small things add up.

Bronze owl in a door gate.

Owl carved into stone.

Owl carved into stone above a door in Walter Library.

Owl sculpted into a heating grate.

Four of the over 225 owls carved, chiseled, and sculpted into the walls, doors, columns, light fixtures, and grates of Walter Library at the University of Minnesota.

Portrait by Millais.

Excellent, many thanks. Good to see the asterisk at the very end.*
---------------------------------------------------------------
* For the full story see "Arrays of Asterisks" in A History of Punctuation in English Literature, 3 vols. (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming January 2028).

Yes, Dalziel. I was wondering who designed the handsome cover -- apparently John Leighton. Details and citations at King, Edmund M. B. "Leighton, John [pseud. Luke Limner] (1822–1912), artist and book cover designer." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Yes, not fancy, more utility. It looks to me like a rebinding in expectation of heavy use, as for a library -- and the binder thoughtfully preserved the handsome covers (though trimmed in the process, most obviously at the top). I still see starched cloth, which would have been sturdier than paper.

Paper? or cloth? (In the photos it looks like starched cloth.) And the same covers are repeated on the original binding? This was a trade binding? How are the edges treated? I have seen original covers preserved inside a fancy rebinding, but this is not that? Handsome design. Designer known?

Alice & Co. at the Saint Paul Winter Carnival
@patrickleary.bsky.social @theotherprofessor.bsky.social

Colby Book Prize Nomination - The Research Society for Victorian Periodicals (RSVP) Application portal

Last call! Colby Book Prize nominations are due TOMORROW, 31 January. This prize is awarded to a book published during the preceding year that most advances our understanding of the #19thC British press. If you recently read a book that fits that description, we want to know!

Engen is excellent. Also useful, as you may already know:
Houfe, The Dictionary of British Book Illustrators and Caricaturists, 1800-1914
McNeil, Artist Biographies Master Index

Engen, Dictionary of Victorian Wood Engravers, 18.

We're now accepting applications for our 2026 Patrick Leary Resource Development Grants and Mitchell Dissertation Prize! Both awards offer 💵 for tools and research relating to the #19thC periodical press. More information about each award can be found in the thread below.

With a few hours to go in the tax year, I wanted to make sure I got an extra donation in to @wikimediafoundation.org and to @archive.org, among a range of other causes. Wish I could manage more, but this is at least something I know I can do.

Yes, “the meaning depends on the context,” always. But in this context, or in any context, does AI have a sense of humor?

Alfred, Lord Tennyson Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, The flying cloud, the frosty light: The year is dying in the night; Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true. Ring out the grief that saps the mind For those that here we see no more; Ring out the feud of rich and poor, Ring in redress to all mankind. Ring out a slowly dying cause, And ancient forms of party strife; Ring in the nobler modes of life, With sweeter manners, purer laws. Ring out the want, the care, the sin, The faithless coldness of the times; Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes But ring the fuller minstrel in. Ring out false pride in place and blood, The civic slander and the spite; Ring in the love of truth and right, Ring in the common love of good. Ring out old shapes of foul disease; Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of peace. Ring in the valiant man and free, The larger heart, the kindlier hand; Ring out the darkness of the land, Ring in the Christ that is to be.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

As ever - sharing Tennyson’s exhortation to leave the old year dying in the night.

In gratitude, fellow travelers. #everynightapoem