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Bill mentioned enjoying “The Polygon Papers,” a series which ran in The Knickerbocker, but whose author wasn’t credited (at least in the few indexes and tables of contents I consulted). I Googled “polygon papers” and came up with only one reference (to a math paper, imagine that!).

So then I started poking about in Google Books, and see that a 1971 bibliography assigns authorship to Henry William Herbert, also known as Frank Forester, an English-born and English-educated author who emigrated to the US ca. 1830 “to escape his debts.”

Ok. That seems reasonable. But as I looked down the list of books, I saw something a bit unexpected: Statistics of the Class of 1837 of Yale University. There, on page 13, is the entry for

Horace Benjamin Colton, Elba, New York. Transformed in 1837 by assuming the incognito of William Henry Herbert. [Note the transposition of the names.] {some omitted information} Corresponded during most of this time [1837-1849] unknown with various Magazines, particularly with the Knickerbocker, in which among other things he published the “Polygon Papers.” Returned to Lockport and resumed his own name, and is now engaged there in Banking business, 1850.

Wow. So which is it? Confounding matters is a contemporary notice of a book called Bankrupt Stores, edited by Harry Franco which seems to indicate the review thinks that Harry Franco and the author of the “Polygon Papers” is the same person.

… from the slight notice we have been able to take of it, we should consider well worthy of the graphic pen of the celebrated author of the Polygon papers of the Knickerbocker Magazine.

However, “Harry Franco” is really Charles Frederick Briggs, a journalist and author who wrote about life in New York City and edited a magazine with Edgar Allen Poe. Briggs, as Harry Franco, was also a contributor to The Knickerbocker, but he was given a byline for at least one article (”Playing on One String,” April, 1846), and, according to a citation at The Vault at Pfaff’s, was part of the Knickerbocker crowd.

That Franco was given bylines makes me think that he was not the author of the “Polygon Papers.” However, I’m uncertain who was. Was the bibliographer (William Mitchell Van Winkle) incorrect? Or, was Mr. Colton stretching the truth?

Not my normal posting, but since this was inspired by the Ann Arbor Art Fairs (currently under way), I thought it might fit pretty well.

(CC) Rights

(Sources: I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER? and Bill Liao’s Flickr. Editing by Bill Tozier.)

Bill tagged me with a four things meme, though he already knows most of the answers! But I will play along — now I must try to figure out a way to answer in Odd Ends style (if there is such a thing).

Four jobs I’ve had:

1. Game room attendant
2. MIS wrangler (in the early ’80s I was the Management Information System, being the only one in the 30 person office who could run Lotus 1-2-3)
3. Factory service engineer
4. Heat treatment process researcher

Four movies I can watch over and over:

1. The Philadelphia Story
2. 1776
3. Some Like it Hot
4. There is no fourth one. I don’t watch movies much.

Four places I’ve lived:

1. Cincinnati, Ohio
2. Altoona, Pennsylvania
3. Glasgow, Kentucky
4. King of Prussia, Pennsylvania

Four TV shows I love:

I don’t like to watch TV, but if I’m in the same room with it, I usually won’t turn off

1. Cash in the Attic
2. Changing Rooms
3. Law and Order
4. Whatever someone else is watching

Four places I’ve vacationed:

1. Duck, North Carolina
2. Juneau, Alaska
3. St. Pete Beach, Florida
4. Maryhill, Washington

Four of my favorite dishes:

1. Unagi sushi
2. Pumpkin pie (but only my mother’s recipe)
3. Anything that starts with bacon, onions, and curry powder (cf. Bill’s #2 for this section)
4. Spinach

Four sites I visit daily:

1. DP
2. ucomics.com
3. comics.com
4. Google news

Four places I would rather be right now:

1. The desert
2. The desert
3. The desert
4. The desert

Four bloggers I am tagging:

None, sorry. Most Odd Ends visitors come via search engines, so if you’re reading this, consider yourself tagged!

Four books (or series) I love:

1. W. A. Clouston, Flowers from a Persian Garden
2. R. A. Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
3. L. M. Bujold, Vorkosigan Saga
4. T. Pratchett, Discworld Series

Four games I can play over and over again:

1. Scrabble
2. Settlers of Cataan
3. RoboRally
4. Sudoku

I enjoyed reading Certain Personal Matters so much at DP that I wanted to be sure to tell you about it when it posted to Project Gutenberg.

It’s a group of about 40 essays written by H. G. Wells for the Pall Mall Gazette at the end of the 19th century. In it you’ll find some hints of his novels of speculative fiction (”Of a Book Unwritten” and “The Extinction of Man”), hints of other peoples’ novels of speculative fiction (”From an Observatory”), and many (often humorous) observations on how life was lived and books were written in the 1890’s.

Some things haven’t much changed…

Not a little has been written regarding the rapid destruction of the vast white-pine forests with which nature has covered large districts of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. It is true that this denudation has progressed at a rate with which nothing of a like character in the history of the world is comparable. It is also true, doubtless, that the clearing away of dense forest areas has been attended with some inconvenient climatic results, and particularly with some objectionable effects upon the even distribution of rainfall and the regularity of the flow of rivers. But most persons who have been alarmed at the rapidity of forest destruction in the white-pine belt have wholly overlooked the great compensating facts. It happens that the white-pine region is not especially fertile, and that for some time to come it is not likely to acquire a prosperous agriculture. But adjacent to it and beyond it there was a vast region of country which, though utterly treeless, was endowed with a marvelous richness of soil and with a climate fitted for all the staple productions of the temperate zone. This region embraced parts of Illinois, almost the whole of Iowa, southern Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, and parts of Montana–a region of imperial extent. Now, it happens that for every acre of pine land that has been denuded in Michigan, northern Wisconsin, and northern Minnesota there are somewhere in the great treeless region further south and west two or three new farm-houses. The railroads, pushing ahead of settlement out into the open prairie, have carried the white-pine lumber from the gigantic sawmills of the Upper Mississippi and its tributaries; and thus millions of acres of land have been brought under cultivation by farmers who could not have been housed in comfort but for the proximity of the pine forests. The rapid clearing away of timber areas in Wisconsin has simply meant the rapid settlement of North and South Dakota, western Iowa, and Nebraska.

The settlement of these treeless regions means the successful growth on every farm of at least several hundred trees. Without attempting to be statistical or exact, we might say that an acre of northern Minnesota pine trees makes it possible for a farmer in Dakota or Nebraska to have a house, farm buildings, and fences, with a holding of at least one hundred and sixty acres upon which he will successfully cultivate several acres of forest trees of different kinds. Even if the denuded pine lands of the region south and west of Lake Superior would not readily produce a second growth of dense forest–which, it should be said in passing, they certainly will–their loss would be far more than made good by the universal cultivation of forest trees in the prairie States. It is at least comforting to reflect, when the friends of scientific forestry warn us against the ruthless destruction of standing timber, that thus far at least in our Western history we have simply been cutting down trees in order to put a roof over the head of the man who was invading treeless regions for the purpose of planting and nurturing a hundred times as many trees as had been destroyed for his benefit! There is something almost inspiring in the contemplation of millions of families, all the way from Minnesota to Colorado and Texas, living in the shelter of these new pine houses and transforming the plains into a shaded and fruitful empire.

Miriam Burstein (The Little Professor) remarks on the difficulty of disentangling History from the same period’s Literature, and getting students to recognize primary-source context instead of pop culture-source context.

There’s also a link to an interesting Victorian Web essay which explains why so many 19th century books appear in multiple parts (at least the UK versions). I had no idea.

Seeing as how Odd Ends has mostly 19th century (and related) content seen through my own context, and as I am neither historian nor literary critic, I can only hope that I’m not contributing to Dr Burstein’s “sobs of agony.” Odd Ends gets many search engine hits during exam and paper time…