A year of British Newspaper Archive (BNA) Tweets made by Ed King

I set out with a simple aim: to make a Twitter entry for one article each day from the British Newspaper Archive, and to do this for a year.  I managed to create 349 tweets, between 30 November  2012 and 18 December 2013. (Remember, the links on Twitter will take you directly to view  the page and article, if you have already subscribed to the BNA. If you have not yet subscribed, then you will need to do so, to view the article of your choice.) 


Please forgive any Tweets of a personal nature, not connected to the BNA.  349 tweets is not quite one Tweet a day, but nearly.

Hopefully, you can see all my my Tweets made in 2012-2013 at my Twitter account:

 https://twitter.com/embk11

Newspapers contain details of all subjects – that’s the easy part. More challenging was to select an article for each day, which might resonate with the Twitter audience.  The subjects frequently selected themselves.  For example:

 

·         Names mentioned in any recent television or radio programme;

·       - natural phenomena (storms, floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions) ;

·         famous people;

·         authors;

·          collectors (e.g. Sir Hans Sloane)

·         Criminal acts or accounts of trials and court sentences

·         names or subjects or events  in books that I was reading;

·         events that happened ‘on this day’, but many years ago;

·          popular entertainment;

·         maps;

·       war reports;

·         royalty;

·       shipping;

·     illustrations of buildings;

·    engineering achievements - especially ships and the railways

    Advertisements (these were the lifeblood of many newspapers, and there are millions of them, so selecting some of these was fun. )

Here are some articles that I found memorable:

·         Atlantic cable laying of the 1860s.

·         A review of Trollope’s great novel, the Prime Minister ; plenty of resonances today!

·         A Prussian siege battery before Paris.

·         The dash for the South Pole – map and reports

·         Boulton and Watt new fire engine, 1779.

·         Liptons’ teas are the best

·         Pony rides on Weston Sands.

·         Aldeburgh election poem 

·         Bowling the cheese on Cooper’s Hill

·         England vs. Australia: 1^st Test Match – collapse by England

·         Ballet in elk skins; Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring

·         New dining saloon of The Flying Scotsman

·         Mr. (John) Harrison’s timekeeper (longitude)

·         Funeral of Florence Nightingale

·         Burgess’ essence of anchovies (and many more on the same page)

·         Funeral procession of the Duke of Wellington

The whole list of Tweets, is at my Twitter account at: https://twitter.com/embk11

Have fun searching for what you want. (Remember, the links will take you directly to view  the page and article if you have already subscribed to the BNA. If you have not yet subscribed, then you will need to do so, to view the article of your choice.) 

So, what has it been like to tweet an article from the BNA for a whole year?

It was a great voyage of exploration. The glory of being able create simple searches which then trawls vast tracts of texts, for the user to receive answers in seconds was, and remains, awe inspiring. It is truly impossible to do the range of these searches (and subsequent Tweets) by conducting  a manual reading of each newspaper. It was also great to be able to limit the search quickly by filtering to just one newspaper; or to delimit the search by time rapidly with the date filters. It will be indispensable for any serious research to look at all of the search results for famous persons – be they monarchs, businessmen, authors, Bishops, military figures, aristocrats, farmers, actors, singers, and many tens of thousands more. Nor should the pictorial elements of newspapers be ignored. Many had engravings from the 1830s onwards, and from the 1860s, newspapers such as the Graphic or the Illustrated Police News has large numbers of illustrations in every issue. The reproduction of photographs in newspapers from the late 1880s vastly increased the images, to the point today where we live in a visually dominated media.
For me, both the voyage of exploration and the results have been equally gratifying.

Edmund King
June 2014

Poetry in newspapers (8)

From: Newcastle Courant Saturday 17 June 1749 page 2, col.3.

The Rake. A poem.

"Quo semel est imbuta recens, servabit odorem tester diu"
Hor. Ep. II. l. 62.

How wild is Youth! How wicked and prophane,
Where savage nature only governs man?
And unreform'd by Education steers
The two-legged Monster in his greener Years!
How base to others? To himself unjust;
Mad in his Cups, and daring in his Lust:
Bold, stubbon, haughty, insolent and pert,
Slighting to Age and scoffing to Desert:
Sage in Opinion, handsome in Conceit,
Rash in his Judgement, foolish in his Wit,
Void of all Care, and destitute of Grace,
Vain in his Air, fantastick in his Dress
In talk contentious, when provok'd, a Bear,
Fickle in Love, a Tyrant to the Fair:
Hot in pursuit of all his Desires,
Makes vig'rous Onsets tho' he quickly tires;
Esteems no merit, but the Worth that dwells
Within some Fencer's Hands, or Dancer's Heels:
In night Adventures does his Courage shew,
And sticks at nothing that a Rake can do.
Thus headstrong Man that rakes away his Youth,
Undisciplin'd in Virtue and in Truth;
Tho' Age reforms him, yet he still retains
Some Tincture of his Lusts within his veins.

[Signed:] AMICUS

Poetry in 19th century newspapers (7)

From the Morning Chronicle of Thursday 23 September 1841, the ballad below about adulterated flour  is printed at the end of the article entitled: "The adulterated flour in Staffordshire".

"Prepared at the Union Mill
With a engine of great power,
And handy quite as any pill,
'Tis ready to be mix'd with flour.
Such miracles by it are wrought,
That by its power alone
Mankind may very soon be taught
To make their bread of stone.

CHORUS
"O there's a way found out at last,
To thin the people faster,
All other schemes are surpassed,
By Copeland's Magic Plaster.

"Likewise by one James Bea-d-ore, who
The truth to tell more plain,
Was once a flour dealer too
Residing in Stoke Lane;
But not content with selling flour,
And wishing to thrive faster,
He dabble in the magic power,
And mix'd it up with plaster.

CHORUS - O there's a way, &c.

"But in defence it is set up -
It's like a lawyer's rigs -
The plaster was intended but
to fatten up the pigs;
But people are so apt to guess,
And many guess quite shrewd,
The pigs that were to eat the mess
Are the swinish multitude.

CHORUS - O there's a way, &c.

Poetry in 19th Century Newspapers (6)

Robert Browning. Evelyn Hope

Published in The Bristol Mercury Saturday, January 12, 1856; Issue 3434.

Verse 1

Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead-

Sit and watch by her side an hour.

That is her book-shelf, this her bed;

She plucked that piece of geranium-flower,

Beginning to die too, in the glass.

Little has been changes, I think-

The shutters are shut, no light many pass

Save two long rays through the hinge’s chink.

Verse 7

I loved you, Evelyn, all the while;

My heart seemed full as it could hold;

There was a place and to spare for the frank young smile

And the red young mouth and the hair’s young gold.

So, hush I will give you this leaf to keep;

See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand.

There that is our secret! go to sleep;

You will wake, and remember, and understand.

[ends]

Poetry in 19th century newspapers (5)

Brighton Patriot and Lewes Free Press etc (Brighton, England), Tuesday, April 7, 1835; Issue 7.

REMONSTRANCE
Addressed to a young Lady at Lewes, for wearing Tory colours on the 9th March, 1835.

The Sullen purple's used to hide
The gloomy tyrants savage pride;
A veil to cover Royal Shame,
And deck full many a hated name.
O pluck the servile badge away,
'Tis neither lovely, glad, nor gay.

Leave stern rough man to war and strife;
Woman, the softening diadem of life,
Why should she seek to show a zeal
That man, and only man, can feel.
Love love the calm; away he flies
When Discord's ugly storma arise.

But if the wish inspires thy heart
In politics to take a part,
Chose virtue's* side, - nor e'er be found
On tryanny's+ accursed ground.
Side not with those who made thee slave,
But those who generous freedom gave.

O pluck that servile badge away,
'Tis neither innocent nor gay;
Britannia treads it in the dust,
With hate as deep as it is just.
Then give me leave to deck thy hair
With something worthy to be there.

Nor earth the color can supply
Soft as thine onw mild gentle eye.
The wreath my hand would twine for you
Should be of Heven's unfading blue./
It has endured, and shall endure,
Fit emblem for the brave and pure.

OTHEGREEN.

* Radicals + Tories / Kemp

Middlesbrough Gazette Sat March 3 , 1877

Poetry in Nineteenth Century Newspapers (4)

Birmingham Daily Post (Birmingham, England), Wednesday, February 24, 1858

On Hearing of the Introduction of Foreign Spies into Our Police Force

By H.Y.

Verses 8 and 9

In air a spirit midway stands,
Its voice falls on the wave;
In dark despair its outstretched hands
Are reaching far to save
From death the Queen of many lands

From wave to wave its voice is borne;
Salt tears from ocean flow;
A dry, a wailing tune forlorn
It echoes sadly low-
The crown is lost by Albion worn.