Snagged from eBay, a large crisp engraving of Etruria Hall and Works as seen from the railway. Listed as printed 1849, but possibly sketched on the spot at any point in time from the 1830s-1848?

Cryptobotany Books, three anthologies of short stories of strange plants and fungi, most from the 1880s and 90s.

For a later sustained take on the theme, check out Frank Belknap Long’s 1940s ‘John Carstairs, Curator of the Interplanetary Botanical Gardens’ horror-pulp series. Although that was very much a wartime boys’ series.

I’m pleased to announce the publication and availability of my new book: H. G. Wells in the Potteries: North Staffordshire and the genesis of The Time Machine (2017). In 6″ x 9″ format, a 35,000 word scholarly essay from a highly experienced source-hunter. With footnotes and over 50 illustrations. Plus a closely annotated edition of the Potteries short-story “The Cone”, and more. Lots of new discoveries, and the book should please Wellsians and Stokies alike.

Online bonus, an index for the book:

Promotional video:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bbBkRiHWUQ?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

Public domain illustrations from the novel “Etidorhpa” (1895). Moral: don’t eat the magic mushrooms offered by a strange faceless man…

Lovecraft and his circle knew it…

“that strange old novel “Etidorhpa” once pass’d around our Kleicomolo circle and perus’d with such varying reactions”.

Ruskin’s partial watercoloured sketch of Dudley Castle and environs, 1840-49. Possibly previously un-identified in terms of place, as it’s labelled “View of a Colliery at the Edge of a Town”.

The castle seen from the same direction, same profile and details…

Snagged from an eBay listing…

“A photographic advertising card for the “Crazy Clock” during the Illuminations in Burslem” in the 1950s.

How can Warrillow’s major book the History of Etruria be totally unavailable in Stoke-on-Trent libraries? Have all the copies been stolen over the years?

Extracted at hi-res from public domain books:

“The Potteries from Basford” engraved by T.A. Prior after a picture by F.W. Hulme, published in The Land We Live In, about 1870. On the ridge just north of Basford Bank, looking across Etruria.

“View of The Potteries, from Etruria South, Newcastle Road” engraved by T. Wrighton after a picture by F. Calvert, published by W. Emans in Picturesque Views in Staffordshire & Shropshire, 1830. In the Basford Bank cutting, looking across Etruria and Cliffe Vale. The theatre-like stylisation of the picture means that the road through Etruria appears much closer than it actually was.

And here they are with a quick colorising:

Two views of Burslem’s Queen St., and the ancient Bride Stones.

Queen Street features in my novel The Spyders of Burslem. One can see signs for “Longs” and what looks like “Doughty’s Reading Rooms” alongside the Wedgwood Institute. The steepled tower, long-gone, is remarkable. These three pictures were found in the marvellously illustrated The origin and history of the Primitive Methodist Church, and extracted at the highest resolution. They’re public domain, so feel free to re-use. The first half of the book is worth looking at for the wealth of local topographical pictures of Burslem and the Moorlands, even if one has no interest in the history of primitive Methodism. One wonders if the original paste-ups for the book are yellowing deep in some obscure Methodist archive, and might be found and their pictures scanned at hi-res?

I’ve discovered that the British Newspaper Archive online service has no coverage of The Sentinel from 30th December 1881 to 1st January 1889. The microfilm apparently has no such gap, as Stoke-on-Trent City Archives states they keep… “Staffordshire Sentinel, later Evening Sentinel, now Sentinel, from 1854, on microfilm. Staffordshire Advertiser, 1795-1973, on microfilm.” I’d suspect that the British Newspaper Archive’s digitisation contractor accidentally skipped a decade-sized block of the microfilm boxes, when building the online archive.

A public domain map of North Staffordshire, extracted at the highest res (8Mb PNG, 3115px), from “A history of the North Staffordshire Hounds”…

News of a new book, now pre-ordering on Amazon. The very substantial Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, Volume XIII: Derbyshire and Staffordshire will be a comprehensive survey presented as a 500-page £100 hardcover from the British Academy and Oxford University Press. To be published 1st October 2017.

Picture: doorway in the town of Stafford, Staffordshire.