“WELL-A-DAY, is this my SON TOM?” A macaroni was a man who “exceeded the ordinary bounds of fashion” — the name from the type of pasta which some had taken a liking to on their Grand Tour. In his essay “A Queer Taste for Macaroni” Dominic James explores: https://buff.ly/2KScNAg

In the prevailing anti-Catholic atmosphere of early-19th-century US, the publication of Maria Monk's revelations of nuns being forced to engage in sexual acts with priests became a sensation:

The Public Domain Review

Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk (1836)

Maria Monk's revelations of her time at the Hôtel-Dieu convent in Montreal, describing nuns forced to engage in sexual acts with priests and being...

Frontispiece to Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things (1904), a book of traditional Japanese ghost stories compiled by the great scholar and translator Lafcadio Hearn, who was born #onthisday in 1850. Read the book here:

The Public Domain Review

Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things (1904)

Deriving its title from the word for "ghost story" in Japanese this is a book by scholar and translator Lafcadio Hearn in which are compiled an arr...

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