i12bent:

Birthday of M. Surréalisme himself: André Breton (Feb. 18, 1896 - 1966)…

—

André Breton: Five Ways to Kill a Man

There are many cumbersome ways to kill a man.
You can make him carry a plank of wood
to the top of a hill and nail him to it. To do this
properly you require a crowd of people
wearing sandals, a cock that crows, a cloak
to dissect, a sponge, some vinegar and one
man to hammer the nails home.

Or you can take a length of steel,
shaped and chased in a traditional way,
and attempt to pierce the metal cage he wears.
But for this you need white horses,
English trees, men with bows and arrows,
at least two flags, a prince, and a
castle to hold your banquet in.

Dispensing with nobility, you may, if the wind
allows, blow gas at him. But then you need
a mile of mud sliced through with ditches,
not to mention black boots, bomb craters,
more mud, a plague of rats, a dozen songs
and some round hats made of steel.

In an age of aeroplanes, you may fly
miles above your victim and dispose of him by
pressing one small switch. All you then
require is an ocean to separate you, two
systems of government, a nation’s scientists,
several factories, a psychopath and
land that no-one needs for several years.

These are, as I began, cumbersome ways
to kill a man. Simpler, direct, and much more neat
is to see that he is living somewhere in the middle
of the twentieth century, and leave him there.

—

Photo: Henri Manuel

forgottenantiquities:

Girl’s own paper, 1906.

Girl’s Own Paper was a British story paper catering for girls and young women, published from 1880 until 1956.

adventures-of-the-blackgang:

The Wire and the Wave:
A Tale of the Submarine Telegraph

London,The Religious Tract Society,
n.d. (but probably 1890 or 1891), 288 pp.
First published in the Boy’s Own Paper, 1890.

hazel-motes:

BOY’S OWN PAPER  by old school paul, on Flickr

Now they don’t write articles like “Running a harmonica band” any more do they?

adventures-of-the-blackgang:

Boy’s Own Paper: Messing About In Boats - (1946)

adventures-of-the-blackgang:

To Windward of the Rocks; Boy’s Own Paper, 1891

(4000 x 5880)

lesleyannemcleod:

Tower of Cardiff Church Glamorganshire from Gentleman’s Magazine January 1818

books0977:

Egyptian Glide Oriental Tango Characteristic (1914). Alexander Maloof. Published by E.T. Paul Music Co., New York.

The brothers William Austin Starmer and Frederick Waite Starmer illustrated innumerable covers dating from the early 1900s to the 1940s. Their work was of consistently high quality and they were turning out nearly a quarter of all large format covers from the late 1890s to around 1919.

books0977:

The Dance Magazine, January 1928. Illustrator Jean Oldham. Dance team of Fowler and Tamara.

Addison Fowler and Florenz Tamara were one of America’s leading exponents of ballroom dancing in the mid 1920s through the early 1930s. Although they had an extensive repertoire it was Spanish themed dances that made their name. They were both attractive had a great knack of wearing deliciously evocative costumes.

fassbendmeover:

Joan and Clark on the set of Love on the Run, 1936