In 1889 Robert Browning recorded his voice on an Edison phonograph, months before he died

historyThe Public Domain Review1889 · London, England

In 1889 Robert Browning recorded his voice on an Edison phonograph, months before he died

the gist

On April 7, 1889, the poet Robert Browning recorded his voice at a dinner party in London, using an Edison phonograph brought by the company's sales manager, Colonel Gouraud. Reluctant at first, he began reciting his poem How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix, then admitted he could not remember his own verses. He said he would never forget the wonderful invention. Browning died just under eight months later. When the cylinder was played in 1890, on the anniversary of his death, before a gathering of admirers, it was said to be the first time a voice had been heard from beyond the grave. The recording is one of the earliest surviving of a major English poet and a rare chance to hear a Victorian literary figure speak.

so what

It captures the moment recorded sound first gave ordinary voices, and even famous poets, a permanence beyond the page. Hearing a Victorian poet's flustered, laughing voice makes his work feel closer.

fun fact

How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix was first published in 1845 in Dramatic Romances.

more on this

background

Robert Browning (7 May 1812 – 12 December 1889) was an English poet and playwright whose dramatic monologues put him high among the Victorian poets. He was noted for irony, characterisation, dark humour, social commentary, historical settings and challenging vocabulary and syntax.

His early long poems Pauline (1833) and Paracelsus (1835) were acclaimed, but his reputation dwindled for a time – his 1840 poem Sordello was seen as wilfully obscure – and took over a decade to recover, by which time he had moved from Shelleyan forms to a more personal style. In 1846, he married fellow poet Elizabeth Barrett and moved to Italy. By her death in 1861, he had published the collection Men and Women (1855). His Dramatis Personae (1864) and book-length epic poem The Ring and the Book (1868–1869) made him a leading poet. By his death in 1889, he was seen as a sage and philosopher-poet who had fed into Victorian social and political discourse. Societies for studying his work survived in Britain and the US into the 20th century.

From Wikipedia: Robert Browning (CC BY-SA 4.0) ↗

see

Herbert Rose Barraud / Adam Cuerden, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Herbert Rose Barraud, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Julia Margaret Cameron, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

key facts

Born: 7 May 1812
Died: 12 December 1889
Known as: playwright, poet

Facts: Wikidata (CC0)

Image: The Public Domain Review

source: The Public Domain Review ↗

historyThe Public Domain Review1909 · United States

D. W. Griffith’s A Corner in Wheat (1909)

the gist

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.

how it works

To corner a market, a trader buys up most of the available supply and the futures contracts that promise more. Anyone who has to deliver the commodity must then buy from the cornerer at whatever price is demanded. The trader profits until the stock is released or the scheme collapses.

so what

A century on, it still shows how markets can be rigged by someone who controls supply, and how the people at either end, farmers and eaters, pay for it. It also helped establish editing as a way to argue a point, not just tell a story.

the bigger pattern

Corners have recurred whenever supply could be locked up, from the Hunt brothers' attempt on silver in 1979 to 1980 to the 'Black Friday' gold panic of 1869. Many such schemes end by collapsing, and the response is often new rules on speculation.

fun fact

In the film the Wheat King dies by falling into a grain elevator and being buried in the wheat he hoarded, an ending borrowed from Norris's novel The Octopus.

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