Here's a precursor to Disney's Tower of Terror attraction.

We're honored that The Wild Swan blog dubbed us "the mind-ninja and time traveler librarian that shares a really interesting and not really well known selection of imagery of forgotten books in a funny way, giving them life again."

From The Book of Nature Myths, 1902.

How to one-up a 1960s aficionado: "Well, when it comes to the sixties, there's nothing like the literal sixties — the decade beginning 60 CE.  Take the wedge, for example; how can one compare the 1960s' wedge-heel shoe to Gaius Suetonius Paulinus defeating the rebels at the Battle of Watling Street using a flying wedge formation?  Sure, there was the Nehru Jacket, but you should have seen what Nero was wearing!  Granted, the Civil Rights movement took a lot of gall, but so did Civilis when he led the uprising of Gaul.  Imagine comparing the Grateful Dead to the Dead Sea Scrolls — if I may be so 'blunt.'"

"This may surprise you, but I use a yellow crayon." —Phil Robinson, Tai Chi: the Way of Balance in an Unbalanced World

Q: "How long must I endure this?" (Nasby in Exile by David Ross Locke, 1882)

"I render you odious and invidiously," from Striking and Picturesque Delineations of the Scenery Around Loch-Earn by Angus McDiarmid, 1877.

From Mémoires Récréatifs, Scientifiques et Anecdotiques du Physicien-Aéronaute E.G. Robertson, 1831.

The broken windows at Apsley House, 1831, from Hyde Park from Domesday-Book to Date by John Ashton, 1896.

"Behind the chair of the sleeping man I saw a child."  From In a Sea Bird's Nest by Frances Clare, 1896.

"Evil tidings," from The White Cat by Ernest Warren and illustrated by H. Ludlow, 1882.

From Backsheesh! or, Life and Adventures in the Orient by Thomas Wallace Knox, 1875.

Here's a precursor to the traditional mayhem at Walmart on Black Friday, from St. Nicholas magazine, 1921.

Pisa is the capital of leaning towers?  Baloney!

"She took the helm and he the sail; the boat drave with a sudden wind across the deeps."  From Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson, 1898.  A hi-res version of the image is here or here.

"They were disguised as storks," from Dicks' English Library of Standard Works, 1884.

From Southerly Busters by Ironbark, 1878.

Campfires and hearth fires are connected through what physicists now call "quantum entanglement," as we see in The Hudson by Wallace Bruce and illustrated by Alfred Fredericks, 1894.

"The very ticking of the clock filled us with alarms," from Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, 1897.

From Berlin Under the New Empire by Henry Vizetelly, 1879.

The Fool in books, from Cassell's Library of English Literature, edited by Henry Morley, 1883.

Saint Betty: "You know, the nun who taught the lepers how to sing." —Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982)

Here's a precursor to the phenomenon of Google Books scanners' accidental hand photos, from The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 1874.

"'And from balloons,' she said.  'And from balloons,' he answered."  From Gryll Grange by Thomas Love Peacock, 1896.

From The Works of Charles Dickens, Household Edition.

Here's a precursor to the maxim that "it is better to look good than to feel good," from The Oxford Thackeray.  The caption reads, "And upon me honour and conshience, now I'm dthressed, but I look intirely ginteel."

"You're always thinking something is something else."

The text reads, "The secret to getting back on one's feet lies in simple inversion.  Cats famously land on their feet by using a pinhole to project an inverted image."  [For the Wild Swan.]

From Midsummer Eve by S. C. Hall, 1870.

"It also bears repeating that writers about leisure give very little attention to work."

"Somber, gloomy, desolate without," from The White Cat by Ernest Warren and illustrated by H. Ludlow, 1882.

"Don't take this the wrong way, but I really can't make this any simpler than I already have."

You've heard of "throwing someone to the wolves," but did you know the practice was a precursor to Daylight Savings?  The caption reads, "Threw them to the wolves to gain time."  From A Boyar of the Terrible by Frederick J. Whishaw, 1896.

"'It burns bravely,' laughed the old woman."  From Bladys of the Stewponey by Sabine Baring-Gould and illustrated by F. H. Townsend, 1897.

From The Writings in Prose and Verse of Rudyard Kipling, 1897.

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Here's a precursor to Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar (1963), from Poets' Wit and Humour by William Henry Wills, 1882.

"M. Giraumont — 'hates authors,'" from Dicks' English Library of Standard Works, 1884.

"One is justified in judging that something is funny if and only if one finds oneself or others laughing or inclined to laugh in that spontaneous, unforced way which is characteristic of humor."

See also this collection of 112 cocktail recipes to be drunk in remembrance of the dead: Of Drinking in Remembrance of the Dead.

Forget trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.  Here's how to fit a starlike peg in a round hole.

An illustration from Comic History of Greece by Charles Snyder (1898).  The caption reads: "Then the plunge in consommé."

From Mémoires Récréatifs, Scientifiques et Anecdotiques du Physicien-Aéronaute E.G. Robertson, 1831.

"The chaplain gives up the sea, to Katherine's great satisfaction."  From Dicks' English Library of Standard Works, 1884.

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The Cabinet of Gems of Books (1875) reminds us of a gem of a book:

An illustration from The Letters of Charles Dickens (1893).

"During all that time she never turned a page," from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë and illustrated by Frederick Henry Townsend, 1897.

"I found myself sitting bolt upright in bed, while a roar like the crack of doom rang in my ears," from With the Colours by Richard Mounteney Jephson, 1881.

"Oh horrors!"  From Alter Ejusdem by James Archibald Sidey, 1877.

From The New Hyperion by Edward Strahan, 1875.

"Indubitably."

"I am dying, beloved—and shall soon go into the dark unknown."  From The Sign of the Spider by Bertram Mitford, 1896.

Yes, you may . . . on one condition:

It's not that cats were bigger in 1882; it's the people who were tiny.

From Poets' Wit and Humour by William Henry Wills, 1882.

From Lays of Ind by Aliph Cheem, 1883.

"He was quite unchanged, the dear old Moon!"  From Fairy Tales from Hans Andersen (1906) by Gordon Browne.

"Within this awful volume lies the mystery of mysteries."  From Golden Thoughts from Golden Fountains, engraved by the Brothers Dalziel, 1868.

"Melt the magic halls away," from The Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott, 1870.

"Braving the elements," from Sunshine and Storm in the East by Annie Brassey, 1881.

The cartels have been maintaining a high level since at least 1884, as we see in The Doctor's Family by Henry Frith.

"No humbugge," from Dicks' English Library of Standard Works, 1884.

"It bears repeating: you can't escape or ignore the way you were raised."

Here's a precursor to Bewitched, as if Tabitha's future grandchild were speaking:

"That cloud foreshoweth a bloody dukkeripen," from Lavengro; The Scholar, the Gypsy, the Priest by George Henry Borrow, 1896.

"One of the nine genii shooting a dog in the heavens," from Social Life of the Chinese by Justus Doolittle, 1867.

"The defiant ampersand still visible on his forehead." —Brian Joseph Davis, Portable Altamont

Here's a vintage example of the idiom "you'll eat your words," from Young Americans in Japan by Edward Greey, 1882.

"The Dark-Circle": an illustration from an 1875 issue of Wide World magazine.

"Bud, Blossom, Berry, are you there?  Appear!"  From The Kitchen Maid by Mary F. Guillemard and illustrated by J. Bernard Partridge 1896.

"He took a shining date out of the moolah's beard."  From The Tragedy of the Korosko by Arthur Conan Doyle, 1898.

Even back in 1878, folks longed for simpler times.  From The National and Domestic History of England by William Hickman Smith Aubrey.  The caption reads, "Bucklersbury in 'simple time.'"

Here's a rare view of the backside of a halo, or perhaps a precursor to Margaret Atwood's "halo in reverse" (Lady Oracle, 1987), from Im Reiche des Aeolus by Adolph von Pereira, 1883.

Momus suggests that there are "few tales which would not be improved by the addition of the phrase 'suddenly, a shot rang out.'"
Decide for yourself as we alter the opening lines of . . .

Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom Robbins

If this typewriter can't do it, then fuck it, it can't be done.  Suddenly, a shot rings out.

(Thanks, June!)

From The Crimson Fairy Book by Andrew Lang, 1903.

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"She looked up ... then she looked down."  [But then did she look all around?]  From Jess by Henry Rider Haggard, 1896.

From The Baby's Museum by Uncle Charlie, 1882.

"The sough of the ocean," from Southerly Busters by Ironbark, 1878.

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From Ballads of the Bench and Bar by James Balfour Paul, 1882.