CRAIG CONLEY (Prof. Oddfellow) is recognized by Encarta as “America’s most creative and diligent scholar of letters, words and punctuation.” He has been called a “language fanatic” by Page Six gossip columnist Cindy Adams, a “cult hero” by Publisher’s Weekly, a “monk for the modern age” by George Parker, and “a true Renaissance man of the modern era, diving headfirst into comprehensive, open-minded study of realms obscured or merely obscure” by Clint Marsh. An eccentric scholar, Conley’s ideas are often decades ahead of their time. He invented the concept of the “virtual pet” in 1980, fifteen years before the debut of the popular “Tamagotchi” in Japan. His virtual pet, actually a rare flower, still thrives and has reached an incomprehensible size. Conley’s website is OneLetterWords.com.
The British Library's Prevention Advisory Centre reminds us that even "lost (hidden)" books are vulnerable to "mould growth in microclimate." There's a long British tradition of concern with the unseen, going back not only as far as Shakespeare but Chaucer as well.
Henry from the comics had an Austrian brother, apparently. This is from 1933, a year after Henry's debut but a year before the comic's syndication. Could be an homage or purely coincidental. From Die Muskete.
We love how the presenter of these stories by the ghost of O. Henry handles any skeptical readers. We've reproduced about half of the preface, but it's all delightful. From My Tussle With the Devil by O. Henry's Ghost [via a Ouija board], 1918.
You might naturally have assumed that "unfriending" is a newfangled term of social media. But "un-friends" go back at least as far as 1899's The Lost Pibroch by Neil Munro.