Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Captain of the 11
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
George Calderon, 1912
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
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
George Calderon c.1901
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906Recent Comments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: short stories
‘Lady with a Little Dog’ (Concluded)
IV And Anna Sergeyevna began coming to see him in Moscow. Every two or three months she would leave S., telling her husband she was going to consult a professor about her female complaint – and her husband believed her … Continue reading →
‘Lady with a Little Dog’ (Continued)
III Back home in Moscow, everything already felt like winter: the stoves had been lit, and when the children were getting ready for school and drinking tea in the morning, it was dark and Nanny lit the lamp for a … Continue reading →
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Personal commentary
|
Tagged Anna Sergeevna, Anton Chekhov, Dmitrii Gurov, Harvey Pitcher, Lady with a Little Dog, love, love stories, Moscow, Pomeranian dogs, provincial life, Saratov, short stories, sturgeon, translation, von Diederitz, Yalta
|
Leave a comment
‘Lady with a Little Dog’ translated by Harvey Pitcher
I Word went round that a newcomer had turned up on the Promenade: a lady with a little dog. Dmitrii Dmitrich Gurov had already spent a fortnight in Yalta and become used to its ways, and he too had begun … Continue reading →
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Modern parallels
|
Tagged Anna Sergeevna, Anton Chekhov, Dmitrii Gurov, Harvey Pitcher, Lady with a Little Dog, love, love stories, Oreanda, Pomeranian dogs, sex, short stories, translation, von Diederitz, Yalta
|
Leave a comment
‘The world’s best short story’: A new translation
Long-term followers of Calderonia may recall my post five years ago devoted to Harvey Pitcher, in a series called ‘Inestimable Russianists’. I quoted Harvey saying at the time (he was then in his eighty-third year) that he was just putting … Continue reading →
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Personal commentary
|
Tagged agapē, Aleksandr Chudakov, Anton Chekhov, comments, Derwent May, eros, falling in love, Harvey Pitcher, Inestimable Russianists, Lady with a Little Dog, love, Moscow, Russian literature, Saratov, seduction, short stories, Søren Kierkegaard, translation, translators, women, Yalta
|
Leave a comment
From the diary of a writer-publisher: 30
15 August 2024 I have seriously to consider binning Twitter (‘X’). I recently started receiving Tweets from Elon Musk, which I either skimmed or did not read at all. This was a mistake, because the bots decided that my ‘tolerance’ … Continue reading →
Posted in Personal commentary
|
Tagged 'The Retiral', cats, cigars, concrete, D.H. Lawrence, Elon Musk, euphemisms, free speech, haikus, Katherine Mansfield, locks, Lucy Caldwell, men writers, Newcastle upon Tyne, Penelope Lively, Rupert Murdoch, sheds, short stories, Tessa Hadley, The Times, trains, Twitter, Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, women writers, York
|
Leave a comment
Short story: ‘Crox’
Posted in Personal commentary
|
Tagged adolescence, Crocs, Crox, fashion, half-term, love, mothers, rules, schooldays, sex, shoe shops, shop girls, short stories, smoking, taste, teenagers
|
2 Comments
From the diary of a writer-publisher: 26
7 November 2023 Ukraine must win. There is no alternative, because Putin will never offer a true peace, only a breather before making another attempt to destroy Ukraine as a sovereign state then torture, murder, deport and imprison its people. … Continue reading →
Posted in Edwardian character, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
|
Tagged Alexander Lukashenka, Anton Chekhov, Berkers, Brest, Cambridge Young Chekhov Company, comments, Crocs, Crox, dedicatees, Donald Trump, Edinburgh, Fathers and Children, Garry Kasparov, gene pools, George Calderon, glasnost', Gothic, Ivan Turgenev, Jane Austen, Jonathan Routh, Kaliningrad, Matt Dimmick, NATO, Nicolson Square, old age, Olga Knipper-Chekhova, pavements, perestroika, Remembrance Sunday, Rob Roy, rubber bands, Russia, Scotland, Scott Monument, Scottish Rationalism, shop girls, short stories, Stephan Roman, Taiwan, The Great War, Ukraine, USA, Ventnor, Vladimir Putin, Volodymr Zelensky, Walter Scott, Wilfred Owen, World War I, Xi Jinping
|
Leave a comment
Very Old Cambridge Tales 4: ‘First Love’
Morning placed his misty paws on the window sill and peered in through the latticed casement. Stephen May (2 yr Maths) was asleep with his mouth slightly open like a baby. He groaned, awoke, and looked at the ceiling. Then, … Continue reading →
Posted in Uncategorized
|
Tagged bedders, Cambridge, college life, First Love, girls, love, mathematics, May Balls, pornographic films, porters, sex, short stories, suicides, university life, Very Early Cambridge Tales, wardrobes, workmen
|
3 Comments
From the diary of a writer-publisher: 25
27 September 2023 There can be no surer sign of age than picking up litter on the way to buy the daily newspaper… I have done this for the last four mornings, including a banana skin. 2 October I have … Continue reading →
Posted in Personal commentary
|
Tagged Adolf Hitler, Alexander Pushkin, Angela Merkel, Anton Chekhov, bananas, BASEES Conference, biographies, C.F. Clay, Cambridge University Press, chrestomathies, Clays of Bungay, Death of a Poet, English literature, Finland, First Love, George Calderon, Greater Russia, John Clay, Kittie Calderon, literary criticism, litter, Mikhail Lermontov, New York Times, newspapers, Percy Lubbock, poetry, prosody, readers, Richard Clay II, Russian Empire, Sauli Niinisto, short stories, To the Slanderers of Russia, Very Early Cambridge Tales, Vladimir Putin
|
Leave a comment
From the diary of a writer-publisher: 24
29 July 2023 As followers may recall, I always believed that the Russian Army was less than enthusiastic about Putin’s war — which is one reason he and Shoigu had to use private armies — and that eventually military opposition … Continue reading →
Posted in Personal commentary
|
Tagged 'My First Communist', Alexander Pushkin, archives, As You Like It, British North Borneo, butterflies, Charles Fernyhough, Crox, Damian Grant, ephemerality, Evgenii Prigozhin, evolution, haiku, John Pym, Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum, letters, Malaysia, memory, palace revolutions, Parthenos sylvia lilacinus, publishers, Raffles Museum, RSC, Russia, Russian Army, Sabah, Sergei Shoigu, shaiku, short stories, silent majority, Singapore, sonnets, sub-species, The Clipper, the past, treason, Ukraine, Valerii Gerasimov, Vladimir Putin, war, William Shakespeare
|
Leave a comment
Writing’s weird workings…
My fortuitous review of Keith Dewhurst’s excellent novellas, combined with John Pym’s spontaneous submission of his post about Henry James’s story ‘The Death of the Lion’, has suddenly concentrated my mind on my current project and alerted me to things … Continue reading →
Guest post by John Pym: Henry James’s ‘The Death of the Lion’
An unnamed young Englishman, a lowly journalist with literary ambition, begins to tell a story (cast in the form of ‘meagre’ private notes): the author Neil Paraday is recuperating at home in the country from a grave illness; he’s published … Continue reading →
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
|
Tagged 'Terminations', 'The Altar of the Dead', 'The Death of the Lion', comments, commissioning editors, Frank Harris, gender, George Calderon, gossip columnists, Henry James, I. Zangwill, John Pym, journalism, Kittie Calderon, Leon Edel, literary hostesses, literary life, literary salons, literature, magazines, manuscripts, Neil Paraday, Peety, Phil May, pseudonyms, Scribner's Magazine, short stories, The Tatler, The Yellow Book, William Heinemann
|
2 Comments
From the diary of a writer-publisher: 21
7 January Almost themed, one could say, in Calderonia, Cambridge academic Ruth Scurr has written a meaty review in today’s Spectator of Claire Harman’s experiment in biography All Sorts of Lives: Katherine Mansfield and the Art of Risking Everything. Anyone who writes … Continue reading →
Posted in Edwardian literature, Personal commentary
|
Tagged Alexander Vampilov, Anton Chekhov, armaments, baseline studies, biodiversity, biographies, biography, birds, Bottengoms Fram, butterflies, Calderonia, Cambridge, Cambridge City Council, Cambridge Theatre Company, Church of England, Church Times, Claire Harman, claustrophobia, Clays of Bungay, comments, conservation, cyber warfare, death, ecosystems, entrapment, Erich Ludendorff, Francis Kilvert, funerals, General Douglas Haig, General Foch, ghosts, hackers, Henry Vaughan, Ice Cold in Alex, James Miles, John Constable, Katherine Mansfield, last, Last Summer in Chulimsk, Next to Nature, paranoia, Peter Hall, Ronald Blythe, Russia, Ruth Scurr, Sam&Sam, security certificates, servers, short stories, Siberia, Spring Offensive 1918, Suffolk, Sylvia Syms, T.S. Eliot, The Great War, The Spectator, The Times, The Web, Tree Belt, Ukraine, Victim, wildlife, wildlife corridors, wildlife havens, World War I
|
Leave a comment
Henry James: Edwardian writer par excellence?
No series of posts about the ‘Edwardian Era’ would be complete without a reference to Henry James, often regarded as its greatest novelist. I have always admired his short stories. I have read ‘Daisy Miller’ every few years since 1974 … Continue reading →
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Personal commentary
|
Tagged A Room with a View, Acton Reynald, affluence, Ann Veronica, Anton Chekhov, Battle of the Somme, Cambridge Daily News, Coal Strike 1912, comments, conscience, Daisy Miller, Dardanelles, dialogue, E.M. Forster, ethics, F.R. Leavis, Gallipoli, George Calderon, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, H.G. Wells, Henry James, human body, Joseph Conrad, journalism, Kittie Calderon, Lady Corbet, Lady with a Little Dog, Laurence Brockliss, loquaciousness, mobility, morality, Mudie's Library, Nina Corbet, novels, psychology, renunciation, sex life, short stories, Tahiti, The Ambassadors, The Edwardian Era, The Edwardians, The Great War, The Lady with the Little Dog, The Wings of the Dove, travel, What Maisie Knew, World War I
|
2 Comments
From the diary of a writer-publisher: 17
24 January 2022 I have received several emails commiserating with me over my ‘anxiety’ and ‘nightmares’ about marking examination papers. The writers clearly assume I am Dr Robinson in my story Ghoune — that the story is strictly autobiographical and … Continue reading →
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian literature, Personal commentary
|
Tagged 'Ghoune', 'Sleep and Death', A.J.A. Symons, Alexander I, Amazon, Andrew Tatham, angina, Anton Chekhov, Anton Chekhov: A Short Life, archivists, Baron Corvo, BASEES, BASEES Conference, biographies, biography, birds, butterflies, Cambridge Tales, Carole Angier, Cheshire Cat, Chris Packham, Clays of Bungay, comments, conservation, death, democracy, examinations, Frederick Rolfe, George Calderon, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, George Sandison, heart attacks, Kittie Calderon, NATO, Niccolo Machiavelli, page margins, printers, RSPB, Sam&Sam, short stories, Speak, Speckled Wood, Taganrog, The Edwardians, The Holocaust, The Quest for Corvo: An Experiment iin Biography, trimming, typesetting, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, W.G. Sebald, W.H. Hudson, Winterwatch
|
Leave a comment
From the diary of a writer-publisher: 32
9 February 2025 I have unsubscribed from Twitter after ten years or so. It was useful for marketing Sam&Sam books, especially George Calderon: Edwardian Genius in 2018, but I think the quality of Tweets and even images was far higher … Continue reading →