Peter Roget, the man who created Roget's Thesaurus was born in England in 1779. He was a physician and he worked as a doctor for most of his life. Like other intellectuals of his generation, he was a man of many interests and he was proficient in a variety of subjects. He invented a slide …
In Focus: The Detection Club
The Detection Club was founded in 1930 by a group of leading detective novelists, Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ronald Knox, Freeman Wills Crofts, G K Chesterton and Anthony Berkely. Berkley was the driving force behind its creation. The club had twenty-six members in all, and Chesterton was its first president. It’s the oldest and …
In Focus: Slightly Foxed: Podcast and Magazine
Slightly Foxed is a publishing house, a podcast and a literary magazine. I would enthusiastically recommend all of them. The idea behind all three is to promote good writing, to shine a light on books that, to quote the editors, “are no longer new and fashionable, but have a lasting appeal”. The magazine is a …
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In Focus: Project Gutenberg
July 4, 1971, saw the creation of the world’s first e-book when Michael Hart, typed the American Declaration of Independence into a mainframe computer at the University of Illinois and sent it off to about a hundred users via ARPANAET, the precursor to the Internet. With this, was born Hart’s vision of making literature “as …
In Focus: Encyclopaedia Britannica
The Encyclopaedia Britannica has stood as a towering monument to human knowledge for over two hundred and fifty years. First published in Edinburgh in 1768, it grew from a modest three volumes to a vast compendium spanning dozens of volumes at its peak in the 20th century. The Britannica's origins were humble. It was conceived …
between the pages 