wertherfieber

All I can say is that Goethe fellow must have had some hot shit publicist.

richardson to thread, mb

I hear that On The Road has inspired a road trip or two.

haha, i've been talking about going from the east coast to the west coast next autumn and everyone says "like in on the road? are you hitchhiking?"

josh idno if richardson is quite what you're looking for, i dunno how far this extends beyond say harry potter - that said, 'pamela' did kind of invent as a new thing the "bestseller", supposedly - ? - "The excited public response is a familiar story. Puffed in newspapers like the Weekly Miscellany and controversially endorsed from the pulpit of Saint Saviour's Southwark, Pamela took the nation by storm. In Bath, Alexander Pope and Fielding's future patron Ralph Allen were reportedly 'high in its praises', and in London the Gentleman's Magazine saw no point in printing the 'several Enconiums' it received on the novel, 'it being judged in Town as great a Sign of Want of Curiousity not to have read Pamela, as not to have seen the Frenchand Italian Dancers.' More sensational scenes of reading were played out elsewhere. In Preston, readers of a newspaper serialisation were said to have rung the church bells and hoisted the steeple flag when the wedding installment came in, and in Essex 7-year-old Harry Campbell ('perhaps the youngest of Pamela's Converts', wrote Aaron Hill) was discovered convulsed by sobs on hearing her suicidal thoughts being read aloud. As the vogue spread onwards and outwards, an army of entrepreneurial opportunists and freeloading hacks prepared to cash in. Richardson would later complain that the novel 'gave Birth to no less than 16 Pieces, as Remarks, Imitations, Retailings of the Story, Pyracies, &c.', and it was rapidly translated into every imaginable medium. There were prints and plays, a ballad-opera and a heroic poem, and even (if surviving newspaper advertisements are to be believed) a thriving trade in fashionably themed merchandise and catchpenny sideshows: 'a new Fan, representing the principal adventures of her Life, in Servitude, Love, and Marriage'; 'a curious piece of Wax-work, representing the Life of that fortunate Maid, from the Lady's first taking her to her Marriage'."

if that counts then see also Uncle Tom's Cabin, um.

Sales of madeleines and weak tea skyrocketed after Proust.

getting there, tom

Fear of Flying?

Iliad, etc.

Oh, what was that prototypical Byron text? Not Don Juan I don't think, something no one would ever want to read now was popular -- especially the French translation? -- and lead to the Romantic archetype of the Byronic hero etc. Right?

i thought the FUTURE question turned out better than this one, chris.

I can think of two, off-hand. The first and lesser is George du Maurier's 'Trilby', which spawned great enthusiasm and a hat. More significant was Wilkie Collins' 'Woman in White' which, at least according to the Penguin Classics introduction, had people going ape with interest, and spawned a whol industry of "unlicensed" knock-offs - 'Woman in White' shawls and scarves, perfumes, copycat re-enactments, etc.

i) do you think that "this kind of real effect" is likely to lead to comparable examples - like, i have no idea what connectives might be available in studying the reception of 'werther' and that of harriet beecher stowe. - i mean, what do you want to do with your examples? it seems like the books might render themselves irrelevant - that y'might as well be comparing wertherfieber to tulipomania, say.

ii) can someone explain the difference between a fedora and a trilby?

google image search dude

I tried that but I couldn't tell any difference.

most but not all of the trilbys i saw had sort of upturned brims where the fedoras didn't. there seemed to be some other differences, like the trilbys tended to be less flat, the inside part angling out more toward the brim, with the brim a little narrower and closer to the uh big part of the hat.

apparently the fedora was also named after a play.