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kaleidoscopes, cressets & anamorphosis - suggested reading
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To the List,
The kaleidoscopes mentioned here recently turned up twice in my
List-inspired reading of the past few days.
I re-read Marina Warner's comments on Hogg's Confessions in her truly
wonderfulFantastic Metamorphoses, Other Worlds, and was delighted by
this footnote:
In an article 'Nature's Magic Lantern' Hogg reviews his own experience
of meteorological illusions, and he discussed them with Sir David
Brewster, the physician, inventor of the kaleidoscope and even more
significantly, of the theory that led to stereoscopic photography.
(note 22, p 246)
The Dr Brewster information was welcome as was the promise of
"meteorological illusions" in Hogg's novel and other writings (cf PF's
parahelia). I was also encouraged to learn that Hogg's publisher was The
Cresset Press, as the possible source of that object in the Garh story.
Dr Brewster and his kaleidoscope turned up again in a book I turned to
in search of anamorphoses (satisfactorily), Devices of Wonder, from the
World in a Box to Images on a Screen (Barbara Maria Stafford and Fraces
Terpak, Getty 2001).
The main thrust of this note is to draw attention to these two books
that will please any Nabokovian (it is nearly gift time, you know).
Carolyn
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
The kaleidoscopes mentioned here recently turned up twice in my
List-inspired reading of the past few days.
I re-read Marina Warner's comments on Hogg's Confessions in her truly
wonderfulFantastic Metamorphoses, Other Worlds, and was delighted by
this footnote:
In an article 'Nature's Magic Lantern' Hogg reviews his own experience
of meteorological illusions, and he discussed them with Sir David
Brewster, the physician, inventor of the kaleidoscope and even more
significantly, of the theory that led to stereoscopic photography.
(note 22, p 246)
The Dr Brewster information was welcome as was the promise of
"meteorological illusions" in Hogg's novel and other writings (cf PF's
parahelia). I was also encouraged to learn that Hogg's publisher was The
Cresset Press, as the possible source of that object in the Garh story.
Dr Brewster and his kaleidoscope turned up again in a book I turned to
in search of anamorphoses (satisfactorily), Devices of Wonder, from the
World in a Box to Images on a Screen (Barbara Maria Stafford and Fraces
Terpak, Getty 2001).
The main thrust of this note is to draw attention to these two books
that will please any Nabokovian (it is nearly gift time, you know).
Carolyn
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm