{"id":37946,"date":"2020-05-02T05:34:43","date_gmt":"2020-05-02T02:34:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tentaclii.wordpress.com\/?p=37946"},"modified":"2022-09-03T10:32:15","modified_gmt":"2022-09-03T10:32:15","slug":"william-waldorf-astor-1848-1919","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/2020\/05\/02\/william-waldorf-astor-1848-1919\/","title":{"rendered":"William Waldorf Astor (1848-1919)"},"content":{"rendered":"

S. T. Joshi’s blog<\/a> has updated. He’s rescued sixteen of the best weird stories by the first William Waldorf Astor (1848-1919), the post-1892 owner of The Pall Mall Gazette<\/em> in London. These are now published in a new 358-page volume titled The Ghosts of Austerlitz and Others<\/em>. It has a Kindle edition nicely priced at a mere $4, and has a Joshi-penned biography of Astor. <\/p>\n

The Pall Mall Gazette<\/em> is a familiar name to anyone who has looked into the early life of H.G. Wells. Under Astor’s new ownership, and the conservative editorship of his new editor Henry Crust, the Gazette<\/em> provided a congenial home for paid essays and humour pieces by the impoverished H.G. Wells at an absolutely crucial time in his pre-fame career. If Wells had not had a bare living from the post-1892 Gazette<\/em> under William Waldorf Astor, we might not have had The Time Machine<\/em> in 1894-95 — and the history of science-fiction could have looked very different.<\/p>\n

I seem to recall the Gazette<\/em> also published Kipling, and that there was an anthology a year ago<\/a> of various strange stories gleaned from the Gazette<\/em>. Presumably Astor’s liking for the weird made it a congenial home for the likes of Wells, Kipling and others. More on such matters will no doubt be found in Joshi’s biographical essay.<\/p>\n

The Wikipedia portrait of Astor at the end of his life is not at all flattering. So here is my repaired, enlarged and colourised picture of him in his prime. Here he might be aged around age 42-ish — about the time when he purchased the Gazette<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Joshi’s new blog post also has new news on the ongoing series of annotated Lovecraft letters…<\/p>\n

Later this year we should be publishing Letters to Rheinhart Kleiner and Others<\/em> (including letters to Arthur Harris, James Larkin Pearson, Winifred V. Jackson, Arthur Leeds, and Paul J. Campbell).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

S. T. Joshi’s blog has updated. He’s rescued sixteen of the best weird stories by the first William Waldorf Astor …<\/p>\n

Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,18,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kipling","category-new-books","category-scholarly-works"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37946"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56400,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37946\/revisions\/56400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}