In his book A Tour through the Eastern Counties of England (1722), Daniel Defoe writes on hops and the hope trade at Stourbridge Fair in 1722, but also discusses some details of the brewing industry, such as the difference between ales and beers (as the terms were then used). He marveled at the woollen goods on sale, but also at other commodities that interested him more… namely, hops… More beneath the cut.
Well, I got word last week about this, and I was very excited, but I was also traveling in buses with seats of unusual size (not to mention, inhumane design–shudder)… But now, well: “The Clockworks of Hanyang” is being included (as a reprint) in Sean Wallace’s upcoming The Mammoth Book of Steampunk Adventures. The whole TOC is here, and it looks like the story will be in excellent company, a delightful and flattering turn of events indeed! (The timing was especially delightful and encouraging as I’d just finished drafting another story (novelette, actually) in the same world that I’ve mentioned working on… …
Just read a wonderful piece over at the excellent beer history blog Zythophile on the historical changes undergone by the terms “ale” and “beer”: I used to think that their merger into synonymity was pretty much complete in Georgian England at the latest, agreeing with the historian WH Chaloner, who wrote in 1960, reviewing Peter Mathias’s great book The brewing industry in England, 1700-1830: “By the end of the seventeenth century the terms ‘ale’ (originally a sweetish, unhopped malt liquor) and the newer ‘beer’ (a bitter, hopped malt liquor) had come to describe more or less identical products following the victory …
In my recent post about the economics of brewing and the consolidation of breweries in London in the wake of the Gin Craze, I mentioned that I’m searching for sources on beer under the Habsburgs. I haven’t found all that much, but maybe that shouldn’t be a surprise: after all, wine was preferred in Habsburg Vienna, and the kind of taxation that marginalized wines in England only affected wine consumption in the Habsburg Empire more slowly… though the eventual stratification we see in England does eventually appear in the Habsburg domains as well, and for the same reasons: ‘Modest’ is …
I’m trying to get a handle on London Brewing during the 1700s (especially during the Gin Craze), as part of the research for the novel I’m writing set at that time. What’s interesting is how English brewing transitioned from being primarily a small-scale industry, to being a large-scale industrial business with international reach, during this precise time. I found an interesting bit of information about the transition which is worth talking about: From 1748 to 1830, the transition is massive: brewing went from almost 60% smaller business, to 15% smaller business, even though the scale of production (and, presumably, demand on …
I’m working on a couple of novels at the moment, but, well… I should actually say, I’d been working on a couple of novels lately. Around Christmas or so, I got stalled on both, and stopped making forward progress. I couldn’t figure out why, so I took some time off and worked on shorter stories, and on getting some of my short stories sent out. (I have a large stock of finished/polished-up short stories I need to send out, but always seem to procrastinate about actually sending them anywhere.) But soon, stuck turned into stalled, turned into Steam. Anyway, Mrs. …
The first truly great masterpiece to demonstrate the possibilities available when working with oil paint, so they say, was the van Eyck brothers’ Altarpiece of Ghent. (The elder brother, Hubert, apparently did the general design, and his brother Jan painted it after the brother’s death.) I ran across a reference during my studies of the history of Belgium, and found it interesting, though it is (at present) very unlikely to turn up in my novel. A little research turned up a few worthwhile links, though: Here’s an NPR piece on it (supposedly) being the most stolen artwork in history, and …
When my friend, fellow Poundian, and coworker Jason Silvis left South Korea–I think in 2005–he gave me a copy of William T. Vollmann’s You Bright and Risen Angels, I imagine probably because the SFnal elements and the sheer challenge of the book would appeal to me. He had given the book a good hard try, but–at least from the pencil markings he’d made–didn’t get very far into it. Having just finished reading the book, I can see why. It’s a flawed book, even for a first novel, and not easy reading by any stretch of the imagination… or, rather, I …
This post is one in a series of readings I’m posting of each poem in Ezra Pound’s The Cantos, a few at a time. The readings are atypical, for reasons made clear in my first post in this series. This post continues my work on the “Chinese” Cantos, covering Canto LV, but may also interest people more interested in SF, fantasy, and so on. It includes a discussion of some pulp and weird authors contemporaneous to Pound, such as Robert Howard (specifically Conan) and Tolkien and H.P. Lovecraft. The puzzle, here, is a question: What does Pound’s Chinese Cantos have in …
By the way, in case it sounds like I was only talking about other people in yesterday’s post, I wasn’t. Even in the specific subject of writing for kids, I’m as guilty as anyone, though of course I end up crusading against the madness of Kitty Farmer, and in league with the likes of Ms. Pomeroy: Here’s some proof: A couple of years ago I collaborated with a colleague of mine (Haeyoung Kim) on a series of educational books titled Reading Street. (I posted about the books when they first came out, here.) One of the artists who contributed to the …