"But It's For Research!" Monday
Today I started reading Debbie Lee's Romantic Liars - Obscure Women Who Became Impostors and Challenged an Empire. Thus far, it's an intelligent and entertaining argument. In an era obsessed with "truths" (think of any Wordsworth poem or the Keats example Lee aptly uses in the first chapter, "'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' - that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know"). What's more, the book opens with an eighteenth-century example of cross-dressed sailor, Mary Ann Talbot/ John Taylor, which I seemed to have either missed or forgotten from the days when I read a lot of stories of cross-dressed eighteenth-century women.
Now for the excuses, I want to write more but am tired out. Of course, I'm not exhausted from anything useful like typing; I saw Up, cried during the whole thing, and now need to go to sleep. I hope to write more on the book (and Talbot!) later.
Links Cited:
Book Image @ Palgrave [www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx]
Debbie Lee's page @ WSU [www.libarts.wsu.edu/english/Debbie%20Lee.html]
Romantic Liars @ Palgrave [www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx]
"Ode on a Grecian Urn" by John Keats [englishhistory.net/keats/poetry/odeonagrecianurn.html]
The Life and Surprising Adventures of Mary Ann Talbot, in the Name of John Taylor (1809) @ U of Nebraska [digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi]
Image of Talbot @ "Women & The Sea: The Mariner Museum [www.mariner.org/women/timeline/index.htm]
Up @ Pixar [www.pixar.com/featurefilms/up/]