Search Results

“... charge was false, but in the following year the political world was rocked by the poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury in the Tower by agents of the wife of the king’s then leading minister, Overbury’s enemy the Earl of Somerset. The stories that came out, of the drugging of tarts and jellies and wine smuggled into the Tower, roused an intensity of interest ...”

“... and Pollard’s Inquiry into the Nature of Certain 19th-Century Pamphlets, the exposé that dished Thomas J. Wise, forger of rare editions. It all seemed to contradict the rants of intellectuals about the barrenness of American culture. Many of the angelheaded hipsters whom I met busied themselves in learning Old Church Slavonic or translating ...”

“... children went to school three months a year; the richest inhabitant was said to be ‘Doc’ Cogswell, based on the fact that his brother owed him $15,000. The locals began with the conviction that the Wrights were more than slightly insane, then gradually became persuaded that while that might well be true, it wasn’t the whole story: the brothers were ...”