Monthly Archives: April 2026

Postcards and the making of an Irish identity

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Irish intellectuals tried to forge an Irish cultural identity distinct from being British by adopting Irish names, the use of the Irish language, and the use of the Gaelic alphabet, as distinct … Continue reading

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A postcard from 1899

An interesting example this, neatly showing a fusing of technologies – a late nineteenth century postcard, dated 25 November 1899, addressed to W H Scott, Engineer, Casterton VIC. As you would expect form the period the postcard is hand addressed … Continue reading

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Staring at shorthand…

Last Friday at the Athenaeum (Friday’s my cataloguing day) one of the items I catalogued was this a copy of ‘Psalms and Hymns’ published by James Nesbit and Co. James Nesbit never seem to have put publication dates on the … Continue reading

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Flappers

Clara Bow in 1921 – public domain via wikimedia commons Flappers. Usually when we hear the word flapper we think of young women in the 1920s with bobbed hair, short skirts who smoked, drank gin martinis, and might even have … Continue reading

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Sir Frizzle Pumpkin…

Up at the Athenaeum, one of the books I catalogued last Friday was Sir Frizzle Pumpkin, by James White. Knowing nothing about the book, I simply assumed it was an early Victorian children’s story – a sort of Alice in … Continue reading

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Postcards and encryption (again)

I’ve written before about how nineteenth century people sometimes obfuscated the text on postcards to hide a message from prying eyes, be it the maid servant, the postie or a family member. I’ve just come across this nice example from … Continue reading

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