Every sea of every ruined star
June 2, 2016 9:19 AM Subscribe
Lytton Strachey, in a sympathetic overview of his life and work, called him the Last Elizabethan. He was morbid, eccentric, and homosexual. His idiosyncratic and macabre style lives somewhere between Shakespeare and Lovecraft. In his short life he composed two complete blank-verse dramas (The Brides' Tragedy and Death's Jest-Book), dozens of shorter fragments, and scores of poems. Today, Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803-1849) is almost completely forgotten.
Not forgotten to those of us who read Sayers! This is awesome, thanks.
posted by PussKillian at 10:30 AM on June 2, 2016
posted by PussKillian at 10:30 AM on June 2, 2016
Specifically, readers of Have His Carcase, which led me to tracking down Death's Jest Book lo these many years ago. (Thanks to the internets, this is easier to do today.)
posted by Quasirandom at 12:06 PM on June 2, 2016
posted by Quasirandom at 12:06 PM on June 2, 2016
One could almost see Oscar Wilde as an especially brilliant parodic send-up of this guy.
posted by jamjam at 12:18 PM on June 2, 2016
posted by jamjam at 12:18 PM on June 2, 2016
Beddoes’ letters are fascinating too—the ‘Phantom Wooer’ site also has them (and a good many of his other writings) in copy-and-pastable form. His poignant & puzzling suicide note (mentioned in a couple of the articles linked in the FPP) is counted as letter 51.
posted by misteraitch at 12:55 PM on June 2, 2016
posted by misteraitch at 12:55 PM on June 2, 2016
Eminent Victorians. So much fun.
Yeah Strachey was my point of entry for this post and his chapter on Beddoes is great: it's funny and moving and reads almost like one of Borges's "notes upon imaginary books." It includes this early example of fair trade consumer politics:
Yeah Strachey was my point of entry for this post and his chapter on Beddoes is great: it's funny and moving and reads almost like one of Borges's "notes upon imaginary books." It includes this early example of fair trade consumer politics:
One day [Beddoes's dad] astonished the ladies of Clifton by appearing at a tea-party with a packet of sugar in his hand; he explained that it was East Indian sugar, and that nothing would induce him to eat the usual kind, which came from Jamaica and was made by slaves.and this defense of style for its own sake:
Take away the expression from the Satires of Pope, or from The Excursion, and, though you will destroy the poems, you will leave behind a great mass of thought. Take away the expression from Hyperion, and you will leave nothing at all. To ask which is the better of the two styles is like asking whether a peach is better than a rose, because, both being beautiful, you can eat the one and not the other.posted by theodolite at 1:11 PM on June 2, 2016 [4 favorites]
Not forgotten to those of us who read Sayers!
Or Reginald Hill.
posted by dannyboybell at 3:59 PM on June 2, 2016 [1 favorite]
Or Reginald Hill.
posted by dannyboybell at 3:59 PM on June 2, 2016 [1 favorite]
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You might say... I'm dying to.
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:58 AM on June 2, 2016 [1 favorite]