Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods by William T. Cox (1910)

Source.

The Fairy Tales of Science by John Cargill Brough (1857)

Source. A book that decides to tell some lessons of elementary science in the language of alchemy, magic and fairy stories.

"In the year 1746, an ingenious Dutchman actually managed to coax him into a glass bottle, coated within and without with metal, but the Spirit soon escaped from his narrow prison by passing through the limbs and body of the experimentalist, who received such a violent shock that he was compelled to take to his bed. This incident, however, did not deter the philosopher from prosecuting his inquiries, and his endeavours to construct a secure prison were eventually crowned with success.

Six years after this, an American sage summoned the now docile Spirit from the clouds during a thunderstorm, by means of a boy's kite, and thus proved the identity of lightning and that force which for two thousand years was regarded as an emanation peculiar to rubbed amber.

The nineteenth century was heralded in by the announcement of a still greater fact. A learned Italian now found that he could dispense with all the old machinery of incantation, and evoke the Amber Spirit by the action of acids upon metals. He piled up alternate disks of zinc and copper, kept separate by the interposition of moistened pasteboard, and with this simple apparatus he obtained absolute control over the movements of the Spirit. He compelled him to travel along metal wires of any length; to force asunder the elementary atoms of water; to bring to light substances hitherto unknown, and to perform a hundred other feats equally wonderful. The Spirit was vanquished—the lightning was chained—and man reigned supreme."

Things Imagined for Malls

Source. 

Source.

Source.

Queens, NY. "Grace explained to me that the bronze statue we admired in the Mall “represents the Chinese cowboy. He’s depicted as a gentle, playful child, much different than the Macho Men of the American West.” Source.

Source.

Source.

Part of Mamilla Mall's Biblical Series. Source.

Source.

 Living Statue. Source.

Source.

A Kidnapped Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum (1904)

A Kidnapped Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum.

Poems of Shel Silverstein

1 Where the Sidewalk Ends
2 Weird-Bird
3 The Toucan
4 Smart
5 Sick
6 Rain
7 One Inch Tall
8 It's Dark In Here
9 Forgotten Language
10 Danny O'Dare
11 Boa Constrictor

Adult
1 The Devil and Billy Markham

c/f Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree: The Animated Film Narrated by Shel Himself (1973)

The Adventures of Peter Pan - J. M. Barrie

Chapter 1 - Peter Breaks Through
Chapter 2 - The Shadow
Chapter 3 - Come Away, Come Away!

Chapter 4 - The Flight
Chapter 5 - The Island Come True
Chapter 6 - The Little House
Chapter 7 - The Home Under The Ground
Chapter 8 - The Mermaids' Lagoon
Chapter 9 - The Never Bird
Chapter 10 - The Happy Home
Chapter 11 - Wendy's Story
Chapter 12 - The Children Are Carried Off
Chapter 13 - Do You Believe In Fairies?
Chapter 14 - The Pirate Ship
Chapter 15 - "Hook Or Me This Time"
Chapter 16 - The Return Home
Chapter 17 - When Wendy Grew Up

For a transcript of the Disney Film: Go Here.

World in 2000 as Predicted in 1910

Thanks Sean Dixon for Facebooking this. And thanks Sad and Useless for posting.

Illustrations by French artist Villemard in 1910 of how he imagined the future to be in the year 2000.

Unavoidable.

See also: Predictions of the Year 2000 from The Ladies Home Journal of December 1900

Peter Pan in Kensington gardens by J.M. Barrie ; with drawings by Arthur Rackham (1918 edition)

Source.

Illustrations and photos.

The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen, by Rudolph Erich Raspe

Source.

Interview with with Shigeru Miyamoto, Creater of Super Mario (in Three Volumes)

I saw this article posted by Sheila Heti on Facebook. A fascinating talk of the conceptualization behind Super Mario Brothers, with the video game designer speaking as the (humble? unaffected?) auteur. This article is divided into three volumes and multiple parts, accessible from the links below.

Volume 1

• Mario Couldn't Jump At First
• The Reason Mario Wears Overalls
• I Saw A Pipe On The Way Home From The Office
• Letting Everyone Know It Was A Good Mushroom
• Allowing Novices To See the Ending Too
• A Medal for Skilled Players
• A Block Floating In Mid-Air Is Unnatural
• Capturing That Mario-Esque "Smell"
• The Correct Way to Enjoy An Action Game

Volume 2

• It All Began In 1984
• I'd Never Heard Of Pac-Man
• It Started With A Square Object Moving
• Adjusting the Map In A Daily Cycle
• Applying A Single Idea To Both Land And Sky
• No Rest After Completing Super Mario Bros.
• Persistence Led To Mario Riding A Dinosaur
• Coming Up With Ideas Together For Twenty-Five Years
• The Three Of Us Got Sucked Into The Development Process
• There's Something New To Discover After Playing Many Times

Volume 3

• Solving Multiple Problems with Bubbles
• Shouting "Roasted Riceball"?!
• With His Wife on His Shoulders!
• The Peer-Evaluated Super Guide
• New Courses Two Weeks Before Deadline
• Heart-racing Coin Battles
• Finding Your Own Way To Play

Henry Darger, The Vivian Girls and The Realms of the Unreal

At the folk art museum.
Hidden in Henry's Room: The Secret Life of a Janitor
Google Images.

"At the heart of Darger’s work is the massive tale, The Story of the Vivian Girls, in what is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion. Begun around 1910, In the Realms of the Unreal took Darger over twenty years to complete and provided the foundation for his art for the rest of his life. The story follows the misadventures of his seven heroines—the Vivian sisters, aged five to eight—as they fight countless battles in a war of good against evil.

Through tracing, carbon copying, and collage, Darger appropriated elements of popular culture to create the mural-sized collages and drawings that illustrated the fantastical scenes of In the Realms of the Unreal . He lifted settings, figures, flora, and fauna from children’s books, comics, newspapers, and magazines. Breathing life info the figures, he added personalized touches that divorced them from their original contexts: little girls gained penises or were given bird or butterfly wings and ram horns to form “Blengiglomeanean Spirits,” creatures who aided the Vivian girls in battle.

Darger was a fervent collector, and his one bedroom apartment was filled with his writings, art, and source materials. His complex drawings, which were stitched together to form compositions up to nine and a half feet in length, were so large that they could not be opened in the small apartment. Instead, they were stored in a stack on the artist’s bed; Darger himself slept in a chair. Yet there was an underlying order to this seemingly chaotic environment. Darger’s attention to detail can be seen in the way he handled his supplies. He attached individual labels to small paint pots to identify the colors inside. He gave whittled down pencils extending devices so that every last stub could be used. He transformed coloring books or even city phonebooks into receptacles for his collected imagery, filling every page with clippings and bundling the scrapbooks in stacks bound by twine." Source.

Taxidermy Links

The premier North American folk art for translating of non-sustenance-based trophy killings into macabre or totemistic souvenirs. Links to techniques and pictures. Now also refashioned as ironic craft.

• Crappy Taxidermy
• Demon Kitty Designs
• The black market work of an outlaw taxidermist
• The World's Most Awkward Taxidermy
• Walter Potter's Museum of Curiosities
• New and Used Taxidermy Collectibles on Ebay.
• Bad Taxidermy Pool at Flikr.
• The Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists.
• Ravishing Beast Taxidermy Lisa Black (Steam punk influence).
• Custom Creature Taxidermy Arts (Rogue taxidermy).
• Methods in the Art of Taxidermy by Oliver Davie (1900).
• Advanced Wildlife Design.
• Wikipedia article.
• Top Hat Taxidermy ("The World's Leading Realtor of Taxidermy").
• Swedish Skvader Museum.
• Man Faces Charges For Creating Strange Mutant Taxidermy (article).
• Cats away! Artist turns his dead pet into flying helicopter after it is killed by a car
• Taxidermy Mice Chess Set
• Fake Taxidermy - Robotic Hunting Trophies
• Man Arrested For Taxidermy-ing Together Mutant Animals From Illegal/Endangered Species
• c/f Extreme embalming, because what is a corpse, if not a poseable action figure?
• c/f French artist starts fortnight inside bear

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Film here.

Script here.

L. Frank Baum's original novel here.

Introduction
1. The Cyclone
2. The Council with the Munchkins
3. How Dorothy Saved the Scarecrow
4. The Road Through the Forest
5. The Rescue of the Tin Woodman
6. The Cowardly Lion
7. The Journey to the Great Oz
8. The Deadly Poppy Field
9. The Queen of the Field Mice
10. The Guardian of the Gates
11. The Emerald City of Oz
12. The Search for the Wicked Witch
13. The Rescue
14. The Winged Monkeys
15. The Discovery of Oz, the Terrible
16. The Magic Art of the Great Humbug
17. How the Balloon Was Launched
18. Away to the South
19. Attacked by the Fighting Trees
20. The Dainty China Country
21. The Lion Becomes the King of Beasts
22. The Country of the Quadlings
23. Glinda The Good Witch Grants Dorothy's Wish
24. Home Again

Edward Gorey - Poems, Stories Online and Miscellania

• Poems by Edward Gorey
• The Disrespectful Summons (In full, with Illustrations)
• The Doubtful Guest (In full, with Illustrations)
• The Raging Tide (In full, with Illustrations)
• The Wuggly Ump (In full, with Illustrations)
• The Insect God
• Gashlycrumb Tinies (Text only)
• * Same, with original Illustrations
• Limericks
• "There was a young curate whose brain/ Was deranged from the use of cocaine;"
• Scans from "The Recently Deflowered Girl."
• When Edward Gorey Illustrated Dracula: Two Masters of the Macabre, Together
• T. S. Eliot’s Iconic Vintage Verses About Cats, Illustrated and Signed by Edward Gorey

                                *

Flip Through Gorey Titles Cheaply and as Loudly as You Wish on Amazon

• Amphigorey (Perigee)
• The Twelve Terrors of Christmas
• The Doubtful Guest
• The Recently Deflowered Girl: The Right Thing to Say on Every Dubious Occasion
• The Epiplectic Bicycle
• The Blue Aspic
• The West Wing
• The Other Statue

  

  Gorey Costume Design 
  for Jonathan Harker, Dracula

• The Hapless Child
• The Remembered Visit: A Story Taken from Life
• The Black Doll: A Silent Screenplay
• The Curious Sofa: A Pornographic Work by Ogdred Weary
• Edward Gorey's Dracula: A Toy Theatre: Die Cut, Scored and Perforated Foldups and Foldouts
• The Haunted Looking Glass (New York Review Books Classics)
• The Willowdale Handcar: or the Return of the Black Doll
• The Glorious Nosebleed
• The Eclectic Abecedarium
• Cautionary Tales for Children
• The Gilded Bat
• The Utter Zoo: An Alphabet by Edward Gorey
• The Headless Bust: A Melancholy Meditation for the False Millennium
• The Haunted Tea-Cosy: A Dispirited and Distasteful Diversion for Christmas
• The Unstrung Harp
• The Iron Tonic: Or, A Winter Afternoon in Lonely Valley
• The War of the Worlds
• The Wuggly Ump
• The Dong with a Luminous Nose

                         *
Miscellania

• PBS Interview
• Quotes
• Fantod Deck (Online Tarot Deck, Gorey's Illustrations)
• Edward Gorey’s Letters and Illustrated Envelopes
• The Betrayed Confidence: Edward Gorey’s Weird and Whimsical Vintage Illustrated Postcards

19th Century Naturalist Ernst Haeckel - Holiday Greeting Cards with Tentacles

Source.

The Goblin's Christmas by Elizabeth Anderson (1908)

Available, in full.

Goblins, broomsticks, Christmas. 

Mervyn Peake, Poetry

Linger now with me, thou Beauty
Simple, Seldom and Sad
The Frivolous Cake

More poems.
Nonsense poetry.

Folk Art Canada

Delightful.

What a Cake of Soap Will Do (1890)

From Open Collections Program: Women Working: 1800-1930--an interesting collection of old catalogs targeting a primarily North American homemaker readership--the below comes from Proctor and Gamble: What a Cake of Soap Will Do. This illuminated manuscript is a twenty-three page ad in rhyming verse, flowery prose, with printer's ornaments, drawer-ly illustrations.

Loads of pause can be had herein at the generous scribbler's verve expended on, in one instance, the scene of attendees at a magic lantern show (beloved pets + circus animals) exchanging stories about Ivory Soap's purity.

If Ivory's point has not been landed  by the time the Elders of  Brownies have commented about the scourge of dandruff afflicting country fairies, then one is either likely not the intended audience--or dead inside.

Mark also the family doctor who tests the validity of product claims himself; the village of trades cast as characters--like main street America back in the day was verbatim smurf village; the liberal sprinkling of Gibson girls, English lords, and a whole host of by-the-numbers fancy stock types. An enjoyable, only slightly sinisterly commercial, testament to a time when ads were not solely a *visual* medium. Also, a case for, maybe, why they should be.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

In full, with original illustrations, at project Gutenberg.

I Down the Rabbit-Hole
II The Pool of Tears
III A Caucus-Race and a Long Tale
IV The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill
V Advice from a Caterpillar
VI Pig and Pepper
VII A Mad Tea-Party
VIII The Queen's Croquet-Ground
IX The Mock Turtle's Story
X The Lobster Quadrille
XI Who Stole the Tarts?
XII Alice's Evidence





c/f 1903 film version . . . .