FW-Themed Essays: On Tobacco pals, children and libraries

[selenak]

Three essays in the anthology "Mehr als ein Soldatenkönig", edited by Jürgen Kloosterhuis and Frank Göse and focused on Friedrich Wilhelm I. of Prussia, were of particular interest to the salon. Here are my reviews:


( Jürgen Kloosterhuis: The Tobacco College Painting and its mysteries )

( Sören Schlueter: FW as a father (to people not Fritz or Wilhelmine) )

( Isabelle Bosch: FW's daughters as mirrored in their libraries )

Candide

[cahn]

[original source: These two threads.]

I finally broke down and bought Voltaire's Candide with proper footnotes so that I could read something by Voltaire now that I'm, like, reading his biography and helping to write fic about him and such :P I'd tried my completely-footnote-less copy last year at around this time, and gave up because although I was enjoying it, I could see that I was missing quite a lot.

I chose this one under the vague idea that "critical edition" was what I wanted, and also I read the sample and thought the footnotes were probably decent enough, whereas most other editions I tried in the five minutes I looked around had no footnotes. I don't know that I'm totally content with the notes now that I have them (they are sort of short) but they're actually not too bad for my uses, as I need them to explicate things I didn't know I was missing, and once I know I'm missing them I can go look them up or ask in salon :) It's the stuff I don't know I'm missing that bothers me...

( The first several chapters are relevant to our fandom :) )

( That's it for Fritz-related hilariousness, but a couple of random other comments: )

( Brief discussion of the plot and philosophy, with quotes from Orieux and Arianrhod. )