Roundtable

The Rest Is History

Christmas on Ellis Island, an unexpected Poe bestseller, and the question of a hyphen.

By Angela Serratore

Friday, December 18, 2015

Immigrants dining at Ellis Island, c. 1902. New York Public Library

• A very Ellis Island Christmas: “The press Ellis Island received during the holidays was especially colorful and, in the island’s early years, extremely positive. ‘Everyone from the tiniest baby to the oldest man received a gift, candy, oranges, toys, soap, handkerchiefs, etc. Not one was overlooked or passed by,’ journalists glowed.” (Atlas Obscura)

• As California faces a continued dry spell, a brief history of the Los Angeles River. (Los Angeles Review of Books)

• Is Moby Dick supposed to have a hyphen or not? (Smithsonian)

• Edgar Allan Poe’s only bestseller: “In 1839 Edgar Allan Poe accepted a somewhat sketchy writing job: remixing and condensing an existing book, Thomas Wyatt’s Manual of Conchology, into a cheaper version that would be useful to students. Wyatt’s Manual was beautiful and expensive, selling at the high price of $8; Poe’s was simple and could be bought for $1.50.” (Slate)

• A display of sexy paintings owned by royalty: “During the culturally repressive late-sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Spanish kings often secreted away their nude paintings in rooms known as salas reservadas, where they could enjoy them in private.” (New York Times)

• Arguments for and against Christmas trees: “As long as America has had Christmas trees, people have used them to tell other people who does and doesn’t matter, celebrating communal joy narrowly, sometimes belligerently, at somebody else’s expense.” (Paris Review Daily)

• Is Grace Farms the first architecturally significant megachurch? (New York Review of Books)