Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
George Calderon c.1901
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
Captain of the 11
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
George Calderon, 1912Recent Comments
- John Pym on Two anniversaries We are all, followers and occasional contributors, beholden to you, Patrick, for reminding us for ten years that the past is worth remembering and for keeping alive the... (August 17, 2024 at 1:06 pm)
- Patrick Miles on A second Family Bible Very many thanks for fleshing that point out -- and so entertainingly! (I love your reference to creative writing courses, which are a phobia of mine.) Although several... (August 2, 2024 at 11:03 am)
- Laurence Brockliss on A second Family Bible When I say that the British Republic of Letters was dead by 1880, I don't mean to imply that thereafter there were no men and women outside universities, institutes and... (August 2, 2024 at 9:19 am)
- Patrick Miles on A second Family Bible Thank you for devoting valuable time to writing this fascinating Comment. If I may say so, it is awe-inspiring to see the author of a monumental work standing back from that... (July 31, 2024 at 5:32 pm)
- Laurence Brockliss on A second Family Bible Male Professionals in Nineteenth Century Britain was a new departure for me. For most of my adult life I have worked on seventeenth and eighteenth century France. It is also... (July 24, 2024 at 11:31 am)
Category Archives: Edwardian character
A TLS review!!!
I was rendered soundless and motionless last Thursday when a stalwart subscriber emailed to tell me that a full-length review of George Calderon: Edwardian Genius had appeared that morning in The Times Literary Supplement. A Zen moment indeed. For consider: … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Personal commentary
Tagged Anglo-Russian cultural relations, Anton Chekhov, Ballets Russes, biographies, biography, Calderonia, Charlotte Jones, comments, Constance Garnett, George Calderon, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, Kittie Calderon, Laurence Binyon, Laurence Sterne, life-writing, modernism, Nina Corbet, Professor Rose of Leipzig, reviews, Russomania, Tahiti, The Seagull, Times Literary Supplement, TLS, Tristram Shandy, William John Rose
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And Professor Rose was not German!
Probably the biggest remaining mystery of George’s biography is: what happened to all his papers associated with researching Slavonic folklore and primitive religions? The book Demon Feasts (or whatever it would have been entitled) was, after all, to be his … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Personal commentary
Tagged Basil Pares, Bernard Pares, biographies, biography, Cambridge, Canada, comments, Congress for the History of Religions, Demon Feasts, folklore, Fritz Epstein, George Calderon, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, history of religions, Kittie Calderon, Leipzig, Manitoba, Mass., Michael Pursglove, Minnedosa, mysteries, Oxford, Percy Lubbock, Poland, Professor Rose of Leipzig, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, serendipity, Silesia, SSEES, The Great War, William John Rose, World War I, Ypres, Zbigniew Folejewski
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Rochelle Townsend’s ‘Uncle Vanya’
In my introduction to these four posts about the ‘mystery’ Misses and Misters who feature in my biography of George Calderon and the world of Edwardian Anglo-Russian cultural relations, I said that after Michael Pursglove’s magnificent post about the ‘mysterious’ … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Aldwych Theatre, Anton Chekhov, authorship, Chekhov on the British Stage, collaborators, comments, Constance Garnett, English premieres, George Calderon, Herbert Grimwood, Incorporated Stage Society, L.P. Hartley, Michael Pursglove, Rochelle Townsend, stage managers, translation, Uncle Vanya, Victoria & Albert Museum
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Guest post: Michael Pursglove on the ‘forgotten translators’
My interest in early translations from Russian, and especially in their translators, began when I was setting to work on my translation of Turgenev’s Virgin Soil in 2014. It became clear that this would be the first new translation of … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Personal commentary, Uncategorized
Tagged Alexander Pushkin, Alfred Knox, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Anna Karenina, Anna Kern, Anton Chekhov, Beatrix Tollemache, Charles Townsend, East-West Review, Eugène Gothi, George Sand, Ivan Goncharov, Ivan Turgenev, James Heard, James Muckle, Jerome K. Jerome, Lev Tolstoi, Marguerite Bryant, Michael Pursglove, Michel Delines, Mikhail Ashkinazi, Nadine Jarintzoff, Oliver Goldsmith, Ramsay Macdonald, Rochelle Townsend, The Precipice, The Vicar of Wakefield, Three Men in a Boat, Uncle Vanya, Virgin Soil, Wilhelm Goldschmidt
2 Comments
The ‘mystery’ Misses and Misters
The academics are off campus now until September/October, when Sam&Sam plan a new marketing storm in their direction, so we are concentrating on selling boxes of six copies to more bookshops. If you know any near you who might be … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Personal commentary
Tagged Amazon, Anton Chekhov, biographies, biography, comments, East-West Review, George Calderon, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, John Polkinghorne, marketing, Michael Pursglove, Mrs Shapter, P.H. Calderon, Professor Rose, Rochelle Townsend, Sam&Sam, Uncle Vanya, What Can We Hope For?
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From the diary of a writer-publisher: 2
18 April The shortlist for this year’s James Tait Black Memorial Prize (biography) has been announced. Strong contenders are hip-hop artist Akala’s debut Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire and Susannah Walker’s The Life of Stuff: A … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian literature, Personal commentary
Tagged Agency for the Legal Deposit Libraries, Andrew Tatham, biographies, biography, Calderón, Calderonia, comments, copyright libraries, Dardanelles, doorstops, Gallipoli, George Calderon, James Tait Black Prize, legal deposits, marketing, owls, publishers, quangos, Sam&Sam, Sam2, Spanish Ambassador, The Great War, Tinker, Victor Meldrew, World War I
2 Comments
From the diary of a writer-publisher: 1
27 March Took the train asap to Daunt Books in Hampstead. They had emailed that ‘unfortunately we haven’t sold a copy and if you don’t collect them they will be given to a charity shop’. That’s £180 worth of books! … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian literature, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged biographies, biography, comments, Dardanelles, Daunt Books, Ed Maggs, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Germany, GPO, Hampstead Heath, independent publishing, Maggs Bros. Ltd, Post Office, Stig Abell, string, The Great War, Times Literary Supplement
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Inestimable Russianist 3: Harvey Pitcher
(This series is timed to coincide with the 2019 Annual Conference of the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies at Robinson College, Cambridge.) Hale and hearty in his eighty-third year, Harvey Pitcher is not only one of this … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Academe, Anton Chekhov, BASEES, biographies, biography, comments, communication, Emma Dashwood, emotional networks, Ferdinand Mount, George Calderon, Glasgow University, governesses, Harvey Pitcher, John Dewey, Joint Services School of Linguists, lack of communication, Lady with the Little Dog, Leningrad, Michael Pursglove, Mikhail Bakhtin, Oxford University, Russia, Russianists, St Andrews University, The Smiths of Moscow, USSR
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George’s thought for the day
Some time ago a reader asked me whether I thought George Calderon subscribed to Thomas Carlyle’s theory of the ‘great man’ in history. This theory was certainly popular with the Victorians and, as the reader pointed out, George’s extreme individualism … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged baptism, biography, bookmark, comments, cypher, George Calderon, great man, humanity, Jesus Christ, John Polkinghorne, John the Baptist, Kittie Calderon, library, manuscripts, original sin, religion, shorthand, sin, theology, Thomas Carlyle
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The Errata, Corrigenda and Addenda
George Calderon: Edwardian Genius has now been out for just over five months. I started ‘proofreading’ the book the moment I received it from Clays on 4 June 2018; it’s been ‘hoovered’ many times since. Now seems the right moment … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged addenda, bibliography, biographies, biography, comments, corrections, corrigenda, editing, errata, formatting, George Calderon, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, Index, indie publishing, John Pym, mistakes, proofreading, publishing, Sam&Sam, typography, typos
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A slim classic
In a very stimulating review of my book in the annual Report of George’s old college, Trinity Oxford, Michael Alexander writes: ‘Should a biographer tell all that has been found, or select to streamline the story? It depends.’ He is right. … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged Alessandro Falcetta, Armistice, biographies, biography, brevity, comments, Craiglockhart, George Calderon, Graham Greene, Harold Owen, James Rendel Harris, Jon Stallworthy, length, Michael Alexander, Ors, PTSD, publishers, Sambre and Oise Canal, Siegfried Sassoon, The Great War, Trinity College Oxford, Vincent van Gogh, Wilfred Owen, World War I
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A real biography
I don’t think I have read a new biography — or any biography — since Helen Smith’s The Uncommon Reader: A Life of Edward Garnett, which I wrote about on 1 June 2018. Given that I was constantly reading biographies as they … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian literature, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Alessandro Falcetta, Armenia, biographies, biography, Brer Rabbit, Carole Spencer, comments, Congregationalism, Congress for the History of Religions, Corsica, cows, Darwinism, Edward Garnett, existentialism, George Calderon, Helen Smith, Jesus Christ, literary theory, mysticism, Nonconformism, Plymouth, Quakerism, Rendel Harris, Ruth Scurr, Søren Kierkegaard, Times Literary Supplement, William Littleboy, Woodbrooke
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The 150th anniversary of a very remarkable man
One hundred and fifty years ago today, early in the morning, Clara Calderon (aged thirty-two) gave birth to George Leslie Calderon at 9 Marlborough Place, St John’s Wood. If not present at the actual birth, his father the Victorian painter … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Amelia Storey, anniversaries, Arabella Court, biographies, birthplace, Clara Calderon, Dardanelles, Frank Calderon, Gallipoli, George Calderon, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, John Calderon, Marlborough Place, Philip Hermogenes Calderon, readers, Sam&Sam
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First biography of Gallipoli war hero
Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not. Wilfred Owen Although at 45 well over-age, George Calderon was determined in 1914 to get to the Front. He signed up on 4 August 1914 and went with the Blues … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Achi Baba, Anton Chekhov, biographies, biography, British Expeditionary Force, comments, Dardanelles, Gallipoli, George Calderon, King's Own Scottish Borderers, Kittie Calderon, KOSB, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, Royal Horse Guards, Tahiti, The Blues, The Great War, Third Battle of Krithia, Twelve Tree Copse, World War I, Ypres
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The War Is Over
I went to attend the Armistice commemoration on Sunday in my home town of Sandwich, whence my grandfather set out for Gallipoli in 1915 and whither he fortunately returned from Ypres in 1918. This was the programme: As you can … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Armistice, Book of Common Prayer, comments, Gallipoli, George Calderon, memorialisation, memory, National Memorial Arboretum, Peter Jackson, Remembrance Sunday, Sandwich, St Clement's Church, The Great War, They Shall Not Grown Old, World War I, Ypres
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The War again
As readers of George Calderon: Edwardian Genius will know (go on, try it!), George and Kittie were very close to the Pym family, whose home was Foxwold at Brasted Chart in Kent. Violet Pym was Kittie’s niece by her first marriage and, … Continue reading →