Angelic Rodgers
  • The Octave Thanet Project
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact

An Adventure in Photography, 1893

2/20/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
My entertainment this morning is Octave Thanet's An Adventure in Photography, published in 1893. This book is for purchase, and I can snag a signed first edition for around $125 (granted, the description indicates it needs to be rebound) or an unsigned for $40.

The book opens with a lovely indication of Octave and Jane's relationship, and the narrative parts of the book are a sweet glimpse into their home life and common interests, complete with dialogue.
Picture
THPlenty of pictures here of Thanford and surrounding areas in Clover Bend, including this one, which strikes me on a personal level. My paternal grandfather was a tenant farmer in Arkansas.
Picture
I have many reasons for my starts and stops on this project; understandably when it was necessary for me to work for other people during Dani's medical school and residency, I simply didn't have the time or emotional energy to work on it consistently.

However, I'm also very aware that one factor contributing to the seventeen year gap between declaring I would pursue the project and yesterday when I finally sat down and started is that Octave Thanet is a contradictory character and there's a ton of things about her that are going to be uncomfortable. The very fact that she owned a plantation in Arkansas is prickly for me, as is her fairly well-documented anti-suffrage position. 

But, that's the goal of this journey--to figure her out. Her one published biography is older than I am, after all, and perhaps a fellow lesbian and Arkansan by choice can add to our understanding of her life and how she lived it.
0 Comments

    About this project:

    I've been saying since 2004 that I was going to write a critical biography of Octave Thanet (Alice French). This blog is the start of that work and will include notes, links to research, and other OT related tidbits.

    Archives

    March 2021
    February 2021

    Categories

    All
    1878
    1879
    1880
    1884
    1885
    1887
    1888
    1893
    Arkansas
    Catholicism
    Chicago Railroad Strike 1877
    Civil War
    Clover Bend
    Dialect
    Digital Texts
    Domestic Violence
    Economics
    Essays
    Howells
    Image Of The South
    Knitters In The Sun
    Lost Texts
    Native American
    Photography
    Poor
    Racial Stereotypes
    Realism
    Research Tools
    Seminole
    Southern Myth
    Suffrage
    Tenant Farming
    Tenements
    The Atlantic Monthly
    Unionization
    Witchcraft

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • The Octave Thanet Project
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact