The title of this blog comes from a line in Charles F. Briggs's novel The Trippings of Tom Pepper. Over at LeavesofGrass.org, Mitch Gould has figured out why the hero of has the name he does. "Tom Pepper" seems to have been a character in folklore, "who, according to nautical tradition, was kicked out of hell for being a bigger liar than His Satanic Majesty." The innocent-seeming lies of Briggs's hero are the novel's inciting force, so the reference to folklore must be the motive behind his name.
Recently printed
- "Havel's Specter," The Nation, 9 April 2012
- An Introduction to "A Game of Hide-and-Seek," 14 February 2012
- "Fair and Balanced," The Nation, 6 February 2012
- "Lost in the Meritocracy," New York Times Book Review, 1 May 2011
- "Tea and Antipathy," The New Yorker, 20/27 December 2010
- "The Early Literature of New York's Moneyed Class," The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of New York, 2010
- "Beer Buddies," Bookforum, February/March 2010
- "Terms of Infringement," The National (Abu Dhabi), 21 January 2010
- "Semantic Time Travel," New York Times Magazine, 10 January 2010
- "Against Camel Case," New York Times Magazine, 29 November 2009
Friends and Points of Reference
- BibliOdyssey
- Book Bench, The
- Book, The
- Bookride
- Brainiac
- Brian Sholis
- Clews: Historic True Crime
- Critical Mass
- Daily Dish, The
- David Bromwich
- Dead Critics
- Different Stripe, A
- Earworms
- Em Dashes
- First Word, The
- Freebird Books and Goods
- Great Whatsit, The
- Henry Alford
- House of Mirth
- I've Been Reading Lately
- If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger . . .
- Intellectual Affairs
- J. Fitzsimmons Building, LLC
- Jacket Mechanical
- 50 Watts
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- Koreanish
- Laura Miller
- Light Reading
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- Maud Newton
- Mission Creek Pilates
- My Life and Thoughts
- N+1
- New York Review of Books
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- New Yorker
- NYR Blog
- Open Letters Monthly
- Open University
- Panopticist
- Paper Cuts
- Patell and Waterman's History of New York
- Persephone Post
- Philo Biblos
- Pinakothek
- Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society
- Liz Brown
- Raw Thought
- Real Climate
- Rest Is Noise, The
- Scott Sherman
- Stacey D'Erasmo
- Streetsblog
- This Week in Petroleum
- Thought Catalog
- Three Percent
- Towle Road
- Triple Canopy
- Vanderblog
- Veer's The Skinny
- We Witnessed the Apocalypse
- Literary Detective
- Charles Petersen
Search
19th Century Online
- 19th Century in Print (Library of Congress)
- 19th Century in Print (Cornell)
- 19th Century in Print (Michigan)
- American Journeys: Eyewitness Accounts of Early American Exploration and Settlement
- American Periodicals (RSAP)
- Appleton's Cyclopedia
- Archives of Maryland Online
- Audubon's Birds of America
- Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1841-1902)
- Byron Collection of NYC Images
- Castle Garden
- Chronicling America
- Cities in the Americas
- Colonial Connecticut Records, 1636-1776
- David Rumsey Historical Map Collection
- Davies Project (American Libraries Before 1876)
- Digital Fraktur
- Documenting the American South
- Electronic Texts in American Studies
- Farber Gravestone Collection
- Haymarket Affair Digital Collection
- Historical U.S. Census Data Browser
- Home Economics Archive (HEARTH)
- Internet Library of Early Journals (U.K.)
- Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789
- Legacy Tobacco Documents (20th C)
- Letters of Delegates to the Continental Congress, 1774-1789
- Modernist Journals Project
- Moving Uptown: 19th-Century Views of Manhattan
- National Portrait Gallery (U.S.)
- New York State Library's historical documents
- Old Sturbridge Village, History Learning Lab
- Peter Force's American Archives, 1774-1776
- Pocahontas Archive
- Realms of Gold: Map Catalog of the American Philosophical Society
- Smithsonian I.R.I.S. (Pre-1877 exhibition records)
- Smithsonian Photography Initiative
- The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record
- The Lost Museum
- Times of London, 1785-1985
- Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture
- Virtual New York City
- Voting America
- Washington State Digital Archives
- Wright American Fiction (1851-1875)
About
- This blog is written by Caleb Crain. There's an email address for me at the top of my bio page. For older posts on this blog, please check the online archives. A selection of the blog's posts, spanning six years, has also been collected as a book, titled The Wreck of the Henry Clay.
