"José Maria de Eça de Queiroz is generally considered to be the greatest Portuguese writer in the realist style. Zola considered him to be far greater than Flaubert
. Others rank him with Dickens, Balzac and Tolstoy.
... Eça worked in the Portuguese consular service and after two years' service at Havana was stationed at 53 Grey Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, from late 1874 until April 1879.
Eça, a cosmopolitan widely read in English literature, was not enamoured of English society, but he was fascinated by its oddity. He wrote: "Everything about this society is disagreeable to me - from its limited way of thinking to its indecent manner of cooking vegetables." As often happens when a writer is unhappy, the weather is endlessly bad. Nevertheless, he was rarely bored and was content to stay in England for some fifteen years. "I detest England, but this does not stop me from declaring that as a thinking nation, she is probably the foremost."
The Newcastle years were among the most productive of his literary career. He published the second version of
O Crime de Padre Amaro in 1876 and another celebrated novel, O Primo Basilio ("Cousin Basílio") in 1878, as well as working on a number of other projects. These included the first of his "Cartas de Londres" ("Letters from London").
[a plaque to Eça] was unveiled in Grey Street, Newcastle, in 2001 by the Portuguese ambassador."
(Wikipedia)
His books are published in English by
Dedalus.
I recently bought a book 'The History of The Beano' and the very first Beano, shown on the books' cover, has the Torelli Brothers' 'Tin Can Tommy: The Clockwork Boy' on the back cover. There are are a few more cartoons from the Torelli Brothers inside, including this 'Brave Captain Kipper' (the scan is awful, sorry) but there's not much information on them, either in the book or, curiously, on the internet. As the book says, their work looks very different from the rest of The Beano.
"José Maria de Eça de Queiroz is generally considered to be the greatest Portuguese writer in the realist style. Zola considered him to be far greater than Flaubert. Others rank him with Dickens, Balzac and Tolstoy.
I think that all of these pictures are of buildings in Newcastle that existed pre-1914, maybe pre-1900, and still exist now, bar maybe the last one, as I'm not sure where that is. The others are Stephenson Monument near Central Station, The Side, Eldon Square, Dog Leap Stairs, Central Station (from the west) and the Central pub in Gateshead.
These are pictures of Newcastle in the late 19th century and, top, Tynemouth in the 20th century. The buildings (in Tynemouth, Pilgrim Street, Sangate and Gateshead Quayside) have mostly been knocked down or, in the case of Tynemouth, burned down. The elephants, on Grey Steet, no longer exist, but Grey Street does. Not that there aren't a lot of good buildings in Newcastle still. That's the next post.
I'm going to make these 'egg' comics into a 16 page photocopied mini-comic (there are 10 pages so far) in the next few weeks. Let me know if you want a paper copy (richard@blackteeth.net).
The text is stolen from an earlier comic page of mine. It fits this story and I never printed the other appearence, so it's getting another chance.
I wouldn't normally post something like this, but as I've only today taken delivery of The Art of Herge, vol. 1 (I had a post bonanza this morning) this article bristled the hairs on my back.
The first in a series, as are the ones below that have Porfiry Petrovitch and the egg in them.
