Your letter was like the drawing up of a curtain.
— Robert Louis Stevenson
| The "centre of motion" | |
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Not a Progressive sort of person in this election year (see page 7)? Check out the Projective Movement. Unlike some political opinions, they're both necessary and complementary, at least for good handwriting, according to A Text-Book on Penmanship. It doesn't seem to be available for reading on the web, but a similar book by the same author with the elaborate title Illustrated lectures and lessons on the philosophy, physiology, psychology, pedagogy, and child study, training and practice of the theory and art of penmanship, which contains many of the same articles slightly revised, is available at Google Books. Various of Ellsworth's numerous books on writing can also be found in a few libraries; check out WorldCat to find one. They're worth reading if only for the elaborate pen drawings such as the one to the left. |
| Writing between the Lines | |
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Wondering about the more than 200 books Lexer Tami Orr (Writing between the Lines, page 8) has written? (And she still finds time for letters!) Here's a link to many of them. You can also read an interview with Tami at Home Education Magazine, and if you don't want to wait until the next issue of Lex to see what she's writing about, check out the magazine itself. |
| Another celebrity in LEX | |
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If Ray Nelson had only helped midwife LEX (page 10), that would certainly be something to celebrate in our book. But speaking of books, Ray has also written a number of them. Check out this list from fantasticfiction.co.uk, or even better, grab some at Powell's. |
| The World of Letters | |
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Lafayette, known to anyone familiar with either the history of the American Revolution or the names of streets, counties, and other places in the U.S., wrote numerous letters. Many, like the one in The World of Letters (page 14), were written to his wife Adrienne from his various war locations. Others, such as the collection to the left. were written to Thomas Jefferson. He also wrote to George Washington, whom he admired so much that he named his son Georges Washington de La Fayette (this volume is available at Google Books). Gutenberg also has Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette available for free reading. The site ushistory.org has a detailed (and rather gushy) description of Lafayette that includes excerpts from letters between Lafayette and Washington shortly before Lafayette returned to France. Cleveland State University has a collection of documents that includes letters to and from Lafayette, his wife, and several well-known Americans of the time, with transcriptions and scans of the originals. And if you've got a few thousand $ lying around idle, you can buy an 1816 letter from Lafayette complete with a note on the back from President James Monroe, who found it in the White House! |
| The write tools | |
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Stylus and tablet are now computer terms, but the concepts of writing-with and writing-on go back many centuries (page 17). There are numerous sites, both educational and commercial, devoted to the display or selling of such implements. The Medieval and Renaissance Material Culture site is a good place to start; despite the name, it includes links to many pictures of ancient Roman styli and wax tablets in museum collections and other locations, as well as those from Medieval and Renaissance times. The inkwell page is mostly from the 14th century and later. Other links on the same site include penners - not people who write with pens, but cases for holding pens; and scribes. An exhaustive history of writing with particular emphasis on ink can be found here. And if you're technically inclined (and know how to safely use ingredients ranging from sulphuric acid to "blue knolly gawalls"), here are some historical ink recipes. |
| Postal museums | |
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The National Postal Museum in the U.S. (page 20), part of the Smithsonian Institution, isn't the only one around; Wikipedia lists 44 of them. Others in the U.S. include the US Postal Museum in Marshall, Michigan, and the Delphos Museum of Postal History in Delphos, Ohio. In Canada, there's the Canadian Postal Museum. The U.K. has several, including The British Postal Museum & Archive, Bath Postal Museum, and the Inkpen Post Box Museum, which includes the outdoor display pictured to the left. |
| Clicking on the books on this page will take you to Powell's, the world's largest independent bookstore. You can also use the search engine to the left. Any purchase you make by following one of these links will help support LEX – not just these items but any book or DVD in their inventory. | |
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