Captain of the 11
George Calderon c.1901
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
George Calderon, 1912
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920Recent Comments
- Patrick Miles on Guest Post by John Pym: A Soviet film of ‘The Lady with the Little Dog’ Many, many thanks for reprising, Johnnie, for I know how busy you are. How serendipitous that you had just seen a 'live' performance of Murnau's b&w Sunrise! I gather from... (March 14, 2025 at 10:21 am)
- John Pym on Guest Post by John Pym: A Soviet film of ‘The Lady with the Little Dog’ March 8, 2025: Last evening, I watched a digital transfer of a black-and-white movie, made by an expatriate German in California nearly a hundred years ago, in a packed town... (March 10, 2025 at 4:36 pm)
- Patrick Miles on Guest Post by John Pym: A Soviet film of ‘The Lady with the Little Dog’ Your response here is (obviously) deeply informed... Thank you very much indeed. In comparing the coach ride to Simferopol in Heifitz's film with the chariot race in Ben-Hur... (March 5, 2025 at 10:01 am)
- John Pym on Guest Post by John Pym: A Soviet film of ‘The Lady with the Little Dog’ Black-and-white camerawork was, I suspect, as natural to the director of The Lady with the Little Dog as breathing in and out or eating his breakfast. I doubt that he was... (February 28, 2025 at 11:01 pm)
- Patrick Miles on Guest Post by John Pym: A Soviet film of ‘The Lady with the Little Dog’ We are deeply favoured and honoured to publish on Calderonia the eminent film critic John Pym's magnificent tribute to Heifitz's film The Lady with the Little Dog, perfectly... (February 24, 2025 at 10:56 am)
Tag Archives: Anton Chekhov
Does computer typesetting produce a ‘chaotic system’?
Like me, I expect you have wondered why a modern commercially published book that is to all appearances superbly produced can neverthless have typographical garbage and weird other phenomena in it, or why odd entries in its Index are consistently … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian literature, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Anton Chekhov, butterfly effect, chaology, chaos theory, comments, determinism, garbage, George Calderon, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, glitches, Grant Richards, italics, John Aubrey: My Own Life, morpho butterflies, PDF files, printers, proofs, publishers, random events, roman, Ruth Scurr, Sam&Sam, Sam2, Two Plays by Tchekhof, typesetting
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The Editor-in-Chief
It is a truth universally forgotten until too late, that as soon as we call a kettle black we start turning into a pot. I know too much about Constance Garnett, her husband Edward and his father Richard. There … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Anton Chekhov, Charles Dickens, Constance Garnett, cricket, D.H. Lawrence, Duckworth, editors, Edward Garnett, Edward Thomas, H.E. Bates, Helen Smith, John Galsworthy, Jonathan Cape, Joseph Conrad, kettles, pots, publishers readers, Richard Garnett, T. Fisher Unwin, T.E. Lawrence, William Heinemann
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Aleksei Remizov: the Imp has landed!
On 23 April 1914 Bertram Christian, of the publishers James Nisbet & Co. Ltd, wrote to George Calderon suggesting that he produce for them a volume of stories by the Russian writer Aleksei Remizov (1877-1957). There had been a glowing … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian literature, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Aleksei Remizov, Andrei Belyi, Anton Chekhov, Bertram Christian, biography, Brian Murphy, Columbia University Press, comments, Demon Feasts, fairy tales, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, George Calderon, Il'ia Tolstoi, James Nisbet & Co. Ltd, kenosis, Lev Tolstoi, Marakulin, Michel Fokine, modernism, Nikolai Gogol, Roger Keys, Russian Orthodoxy, Sisters of the Cross, St Petersburg, Stephen Graham, strastoterpets, Tahiti, Times Literary Supplement
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Far End: a new Calderonian world
The greatest pleasure to have come out of the hair-tearing ordeal of obtaining permission to publish quotations from scores of letters to George and Kittie written a hundred years ago (see 17 April 2017) has been to correspond with Mrs … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged Acton Reynald, Anne Douglas Sedgwick, Anton Chekhov, Basil de Sélincourt, biography, Bruce Richmond, Chipping Norton, comments, Far End, Foxwold, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Goncourt Brothers, Hugh Walpole, Ivan Turgenev, Kingham, Kittie Calderon, Lady Ottoline Morrell, Laurence Binyon, Petersfield, Sir Edward Grey, The Encounter, The Great War, Victoria Cholmondeley, World War I, Ypres
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Russia (continued)
Chapter four of my biography, ‘Who Had He Been?’, relates amongst other things what George did in Russia between 12 October 1895 and the summer of 1897. I think it will be a revelation to a lot of people. It … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary, Uncategorized
Tagged Alexander III, Anton Chekhov, ARLS, Armistice Festival, biographies, biography, Clara Calderon, comments, Friedrich Nietzsche, G.W.F. Hegel, George Calderon, George Orwell, Joseph Stalin, Khodynka Field, Kittie Calderon, Konstantin Pobedonostsev, Lev Tolstoi, Monthly Review, Moscow, Nicholas II, Olga Novikoff, Pall Mall Gazette, Percy Lubbock, Petr Kropotkin, Sergei Stepniak-Kravchinskii, St Petersburg, Standard, The Great War, Vladimir Putin, W.T. Stead, World War I, Ypres
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Whoosh and bang!
A correspondent reminds me that on 7 July I wrote: Since the last approach I made to any of the 31 publishers on my A list was 1 June, I am inclined to think I should wait until at least … Continue reading
Punching on
The campaign to publish continues to develop in unpredictable ways. I have lost three publishers, through no fault of their own. One of them does no real marketing, but saddest of all is the fact that Giles de la Mare, … Continue reading
‘He was away, far away…’
The S.S. Aguila, a cruise ship of the Yeoward Line, dropped anchor off Funchal, the capital of Madeira, on 31 March 1913, probably around lunchtime. There were twenty-nine passengers aboard, including George Calderon. Within a couple of hours he was sitting … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged acacias, Acton Reynald, African Tulip, Anton Chekhov, Archie Ripley, biographies, biography, Botanical Gardens Funchal, bougainvillea, cable cars, Canary Islands, Charles Lambe, Clara Butt, comments, Dardanelles, Funchal, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Harold Dowdall, Jim Corbet, Kittie Calderon, Las Palmas, Lesbia Corbet, Levada do Norte, Lisbon, Liverpool, Madeira, Manchester, Mary Downdall, Monarch butterfly, Monte, Monte Palace Hotel, Nina Astley, Nina Corbet, Portugal, R.M.S. 'Orsova', Reginald Astley, Revolt, S.S. Aguila, Spain, Tahiti, The Canary Islands, The Fountain, The Great War, Trinity College Oxford, Tropical Gardens Funchal, Well Walk, wicker toboggans, World War I, Yeoward Line
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Another wildcard!
After fifty years practice, I have no difficulty transliterating Russian into the Roman alphabet using three different Anglo-American systems; it’s so automatic I can practically switch my brain off as I do it… But I cannot hold the hundred or so … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Aldwych Theatre, Anton Chekhov, bibliography, biography, comments, Frederick Lloyd, George Calderon, Hubert Harben, J.P. Wearing, Kittie Calderon, Mary Jerrold, Modern Humanities Research Association, Novello Theatre, Philip Harben, Strand Theatre, The Cherry Orchard, The Fountain, The London Stage, The Seagull, Theatre Royal Glasgow
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Publishing
After nearly fifty years of contact with publishers, I could bore for England on the subject…which means that I must make sure I don’t! I will try to keep this short and focussed on the task of finding the right … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Personal commentary
Tagged Anton Chekhov, biographies, biography, comments, George Calderon, Harvey Pitcher, John Murray, Kittie Calderon, publishers, publishing, Sam&Sam, self-publishing, The Great War, World War I, writing mania
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Some ‘announcements’
I am staggered that my Introduction has passed its latest grilling, been tweaked yet again, and finalised as version 8. Deep down, though, I know I can’t write this sort of thing. To quote another favourite tag of Chekhovians, from Three … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian literature, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Anton Chekhov, biographies, biography, Calderonia, Clare Hopkins, comments, George Calderon, Grant Richards, guest posts, Harvey Pitcher, Laurence Senelick, Three Sisters, Times Literary Supplement, Trinity College Oxford, William Lyon Phelps
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Biography’s unheard dimension
Biography is words. Personally, I hear words when I am writing rather than being focussed on their soundless written form — which is probably why I am less than 100% consistent in my presentation of the hieroglyphs on paper. I … Continue reading →