Nineteenth Century Europe
Word With a Past: Shoddy
In the early nineteenth century British textile manufacturers began to recycle woolen rags into a an inexpensive woolen cloth. The rags were shredded into fibers, mixed with new wood, and then spun and woven into the cloth, which was known as “shoddy”–a term that may have come from an old word meaning divide.* The process…
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Two Poets, Eight Centuries, One Poetic Masterpiece
Save Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is one of those books that some scholars love to be snotty about. Literary critics of a certain stamp dismiss it as bad poetry, apparently on the grounds that people love it who don’t otherwise read poetry.* Persian linguists rightly point out that Fitzgerald’s translation…
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Florence Nightingale Does the Math*
Florence Nightingale is best known for her heroic efforts in the Crimean War,** where she threw open windows, scrubbed filthy floors and equally filthy men,*** bullied doctors and officers on the spot, fought with the British Army’s military director, and saved lives. She returned home a heroine. Victorian Britain loved to celebrate a celebrity. Nightingale…
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