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Post by dem bones on Feb 1, 2009 19:09:43 GMT
E. S. Turner - Boys Will Be Boys: The Story of Sweeney Todd, Deadwood Dick, Sexton Blake, Billy Bunter, Dick Barton, et. al (Michael Joseph, 1948: Penguin, 1976) Cover design by John Gorham/Danny Posner "after a B.O.P. cover painting by Hassall" Contents of the Michael Joseph edition
Author's Note Introduction By Captain C. B. Fry
Gothic Hangover The Demon Barber Rogues And Vagabonds Bravealls And Fearnots Jack Harkaway Not So Callow Cuckoo In The Nest Fifty-Five Years Of Sexton Blake More Detectives Pure Invention Britain Invaded Planets And Lost Cities Magnet And Gem Dundee School Wild West Vive Le Sport! Dick Barton
IndexBack cover testimonials for the Penguin edition. `It was a classic in its field when it first came out, and it remains a classic' - The Times
`There can be few men, however eminent or intellectual, who did not spend hours of their boyhood revelling in the glorious absurdities of comics. What thirty-year‑old can forget the joys of Beano, Lion or Eagle? How many fellows of fifty can remember without a pang the days when they devoured Adventure, Rover, Wizard or Hotspur? And which great-grandfather will swear he resisted the pull of the Magnet or Union Jack, the glow of the Gem or Comic Cuts? `For well over a century British youth has delighted in its own boisterous sub-literature. In a revised and updated edition of his splendid classic survey of the genre from Sweeney Todd and Wild Bill Hickok to Batman and the Incredible Hulk, E. S. Turner vividly recalls the brash heroes, the garish colours and the rich crisp smell of those nostalgic childhood pages' ‑ Sunday Express
`A beautifully balanced piece of work' - Spectator Not an anthology, but a treasure trove of short extracts from many rare titles and a compelling and very funny history of horror, Boys Own, war and detective fiction for the unwashed masses, much of which met with critical disdain and often public condemnation on it's publication. E. S. Swain takes us on a guided tour of this strange and terrible world, introducing several of the penny dreadful publishers and authors, many of whom - the notorious Salisbury Square crew - were almost equally as villainous as their dastardly creations. Taking their inspiration from the bloodthirsty horrors of M. G. Lewis's The Monk and plundering choice items from the fanciful annals of The Newgate Calendar, authors like George W. M. Reynolds, James Malcolm Rymer, Thomas Peckett Prest and several lurid contemporaries scandalised polite Victorian Society into paroxysms of outrage for fun if, often very little profit - that the servants or, worse, their own children should be reading this depraved filth celebrating cut-throats and murderers! Simply put, this would make my top ten favourite books of all time. Cover of the Michael Joseph edition
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Post by dem bones on Aug 30, 2011 17:32:45 GMT
E. S. Turner - Unholy Pursuits; The Wayward Parsons Of Grub Street (Book Guild Ltd , Temple House, 1998) Blurb Two centuries ago, a surprising number of Anglican clergymen were to be found moonlighting as journalists. Even more surprisingly, a number of them engaged in vicious mudslinging - or worse. The Reverend Sir Henry Bate Dudley, editor of the Morning Post, fought a string of duels, went to gaol for libelling a duke, and exercised a mysterious hold over the Prince Regent; the Reverend Dr William Dodd, unstoppable scribbler and spendthrift, was hanged for forgery; and the Reverend William Jackson committed suicide after being found guilty of high treason.
Here, in fascinating detail, are the histories of these and other susceptible divines who were lured away from the drudgeries of their parishes by the dangerous glitter of Grub Street.
E.S. Turner's latest book reveals historical scandals! Read all about it!
My current brainy book in the background. The subject matter appeals, but still might have given Unholy Pursuits a miss were it not for the name on the spine. Fifty years after publication of the indispensable Boys Will Be Boys, Mr. Turner, by now aged 89 and still hard at it, published this mischievous celebration of the lives and crimes of Reverend Sir Henry Bate Budley and the 'parsonical banditti.' It seems the duties of the average Eighteenth Century Anglican minister were so light as to allow him plenty of free time to engage in a second, more lucrative career, and those who weren't disposed to spending their days gaming, fishing and drinking themselves into the asylum took to editing scandal sheets, often with decidedly News Of The Screws results. With just the introduction and opening chapter behind me, already Unholy Pursuits is proving an invaluable, wickedly funny take on the early days of muckraking journalism, when men of the cloth were dishing the dirt rather than occasionally providing Sunday's screaming cover story with their amusing kinky sexploits. I doubt Ernest Sackville Turner (1909-2006) was capable of writing a dull book, but his What the Butler Saw: Two Hundred and Fifty Years of the Servant Problem (Penguin, 1962: revised edition, 2005) stands out as of particular interest to the domestics at Probert Towers.
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Post by pulphack on Aug 30, 2011 19:53:25 GMT
can i just echo what you say about the wonderful mr turner and his ability to turn his hand to making anything witty and entertaining. of course he had an abundance of material with boys pulps and grub street, but his book on advertising is also worth reading (it dates from around the same time as boys will be boys).
haven't read the grub street book, but - and i was sure i'd written about this before, maybe on the old board? - boys will be boys as been a favourite most of my life, after stumbling across it in the school library in 1977 - a newly issued reprint at that! that and a volume of the Magnet in Howard Baker reprint form probably sealed my fate. my mum used to read the magnet and gem, borrowed from her older brother, when she was a girl, and she persuaded me this would be worth a go. a third of a century later, the stories and characters described in boys will be boys still people the world in my head and cause me not to fit in too well with modern life. sexton blake, dixon hawke and nelson lee (the school master detective) - who needs ITV1 and BBC cop shows with tortured heroes and moody music when you can have lee, sidekick nipper and the remove of St Franks going up against the foul fiend that was Nerki The Magician?
i have also rwad some of mr Turner's journalism in old pick of punch collections, and can vouch that he showed a similar light and wry touch in the short form. this sense of hum ou must have helped him get close to his century and still be one of the sharpest tools in the box.
one of those writers who are unsung heroes, keeping on and producing great work whilst still flying under the general and literary radar.
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Post by dem bones on Sept 1, 2011 21:23:57 GMT
and i was sure i'd written about this before, maybe on the old board? You did! I remember because I was delighted to have found a fan of the book. Am almost certain we had an E. S. Turner thread, but it seems to have been among the casualties when suddenlaunch went gaga and began indiscriminately deleting the recent posts, hence our upping sticks to proboards. one of those writers who are unsung heroes, keeping on and producing great work whilst still flying under the general and literary radar. So true, and exactly the type of chap deserving some small acknowledgement on vault. Boys Will Be Boys and Peter Haining's Terror! A History Of Horror Illustrations From The Pulp Magazines fired my enthusiasm for the raw, wilder, often just plain downright weird examples of macabre fiction, in Turner's case much else besides. And he correctly credited Varney, the Vampyre to James Malcolm Rymer when Montague Summers and all those who cribbed from his work were insisting Thomas Prest!
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Post by dem bones on Apr 24, 2012 9:18:48 GMT
E. S. Turner - Roads To Ruin: The Shocking History Of Social Reform (Michael Joseph, 1950) Blurb:
THERE are always worthy and moderately gifted men who bawl out death and ruin upon every valuable change which the varying aspect of human affairs absolutely and imperiously requires," wrote the Rev. Sydney Smith.
This book selects a dozen social reforms which have long been an accepted part of our life and examines the opposition—"usually bitter and often bizarre, sometimes dishonest but, all too often honest"—which had to be countered by the "meddling fools" who forced these measures through.
The reforms dealt with are not the well-known reforms chronicled in the standard history books, like the battle against slavery and the widening of the franchise. This book tells the story (among others) of the long fight to persuade Englishmen that chimneys could be swept more humanely (and incidentally more efficiently) by pushing a brush instead of a small boy up the flue; that the disembowelling of traitors while still alive was not strictly necessary in the nineteenth century; that the nation would not become a moral cesspool by allowing men to marry their deceased wives' sisters; that a Saturday half-holiday would not hopelessly corrupt the working classes; that merchant ships ought not to be put into the Bay of Biscay loaded down to their deckline; that a husband ought not to be allowed to snatch his wife's earnings, even when he was not supporting her; that the music halls could still pay their way without a promenade for prostitutes; and that the Daylight Saving movement was not a sacrilegious plot against Greenwich Mean Time calculated to make Britain the laughing-stock of the world.
Here are reviewed arguments which today seem incredible: Why should a Government which had destroyed an Army by neglect in the Crimea insist on safeguarding the lives of a few mill workers who carelessly allowed themselves to be whirled round with the shafting? Why worry if dozens of innocent persons were killed in spring guns and mantraps so long as poachers were deterred? Why should not boys of ten be allowed to drink beer? Why abolish hanging, drawing and quartering, when it was really quite a humane punishment? Why ruin the sundial industry by introducing Summer Time—and in any case, why make the change at such an absurd time as 2 a.m., when the whole nation would have to get out of bed to fiddle with their alarm clocks?
All the reforms dealt with in this book were regarded as "the thin end of the wedge," the first step on the road to moral or national ruin. Some of them were carried through within living memory; none are older than the nineteenth century. They have been selected for the variety of their background and for the ingenuity and effrontery of the opposition levelled against them.
Of E. S. Turner's last book, Boys Will Be Boys, A. H. Campbell wrote in The Observer: "His patient research into the by-ways of juvenile fiction, his clear exposition and his delicately acid comments have produced a little classic of scholarship in fascinating literary by-ways. Mr. Turner embellishes his learning with an ironic commentary which is a pure delight." He has applied the same gifts of wit, irony and learning to this new study of some of the stranger by-ways of social reform. The result is a book with many a moral for the would-be reformer and many a wry chuckle for the ordinary reader.E. S. Turner - What The Butler Saw: 250 Years Of The Servant Problem (Michael Joseph, 1962) Design. Charles Goreham Blurb: This is a lively account of the Servant Problem over the last 250 years: a foray into a world where a gentleman with £2,000 a year was betraying his class if he did not employ six females and five males; where a lady could go to the grave without ever having picked up her nightdress, carried her prayer-book or made a pot of tea; where a very rich man had a Frenchman to comb his hair, another Frenchman to stir his soup, an Italian to make his pastry and six Englishmen to iron his Times.
It is the story of the housekeeper and the butler, the lady's maid and the valet, the cook and the coachman and everyone in the domestic hierarchy down to the `tweeny' and the 'tiger.' Their duties, often hard to credit, are described in detail and so are the customs of the housekeeper's room and the servants' hall. To a great extent the story is one of strife, with such notable pitched battles as that between masters and men over the exaction of vails, or tips. There is an account of the moral risks run by servants and of the ways in which mistresses struggled to keep them on the narrow path; and a chapter describing the strenuous efforts made to convince Victorian servants that God had appointed them to polish the silver and carry the slops.
The author also shows how the servant problem developed in America, where a 'help' (servant was a dirty word) would offer labour, but not servility, deference or affection. Then came the day of the millionaires and American society began to import scores of English butlers and sets of footmen, since no American would wear livery or powdered wig.
Here is social history from a fascinating angle; a book packed with droll information lightly handled — and with many a moral for our times.
It is also a book you may safely let your servants read.
Little joy on the paperback trail of recent weeks but Spitalfields market has seen a few of us ok for hard-covers. £1 a time for a boxed and very lovely Folio Society edition of The New Newgate Calendar (1960): Sapper's The Dinner Club (twenty-fourth impression), Ron Goulart's non-fiction The Assault On Childhood - will certainly be coming back to that one - and, incredibly, an E. S. Turner double strike. The blurbs are commendably thorough which is just as well because i can't begin to do the man's work justice. Had little time to devote to What The Butler Saw as yet, but am three chapters into Roads To Ruin and its already looking 'best of 2012' material. The obstacles faced by those eminently sensible people who campaigned to prevent the landed gentry laying man-traps willynilly across woodlands bordering their estates provide many a macabre chuckle. And what kind of mind would raise a humane argument for the retention of public hanging, drawing and quartering as a fit punishment for bolshy oiks? Presumably the kind who'd suggest we cage 'em behind electrified fences as punishment for liking football! Incidentally, the flip of Roads To Ruin runs an ad for the indispensable Boys Will Be Boys, and i was pleased to find an endorsement from Pamela Hansford Johnson, author of a particularly grim children's ghost story The Empty Schoolroom.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 4, 2017 17:29:11 GMT
E. S. Turner - The Shocking History Of Advertising (Penguin, 1968. Originally Michael Joseph, 1952. First Penguin edition, 1965). Detail from a painting by John Parry Blurb: Revised edition with new material "A brilliantly entertaining summary of the history of advertising in England and America: witty, adroit, urbane, writing an excellent prose, he is the ideal guide. An entertainment very few novels could hope to compete with, this volume: as a dispeller of tedium it is worth at least half a dozen visits to the cinema." - John Wain in The Observer This revised edition of a famous book takes account of recent developments in advertising and contains new material in several chapters.As featured in Paperback Fanatic #31!
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Post by clarence on Sept 16, 2017 20:28:35 GMT
I have just come across this thread in one of my (all too rare) visits to the Vault.
I remember E S Turner as a contributor to 'Punch' magazine when I first began to read it in the 1970's - I didn't know of his other writings, which seem interesting, to put it mildly ! Thank you all for your comments - I must try and read some of the books, if they are still available, and if, on a pensioner's income, I can afford them.
Clarence
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Post by dem bones on Sept 17, 2017 5:46:57 GMT
I have just come across this thread in one of my (all too rare) visits to the Vault. I remember E S Turner as a contributor to 'Punch' magazine when I first began to read it in the 1970's - I didn't know of his other writings, which seem interesting, to put it mildly ! Thank you all for your comments - I must try and read some of the books, if they are still available, and if, on a pensioner's income, I can afford them. Clarence Hi Clarence, I don't know how you feel about reading from a screen but you can download a free pdf of Mr. Turner's classic Boys Will Be Boys: The Story of Sweeney Todd, Deadwood Dick, Sexton Blake, Billy Bunter, Dick Barton, et. al HERE, courtesy of the labour of love that is the splendid Friardale website.
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Post by clarence on Dec 11, 2017 14:41:11 GMT
Good afternoon dem bones
I have just had a chance to glance through the book. Stirring stuff !! I remember reading some of these magazines when I was a boy in the early 1960's
Many thanks
Clarence
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Post by dem bones on Dec 11, 2017 17:30:46 GMT
Good afternoon dem bones I have just had a chance to glance through the book. Stirring stuff !! I remember reading some of these magazines when I was a boy in the early 1960's Many thanks Clarence You're very welcome, Clarence. Any thanks belongs to the team at Friardale for scanning and hosting so many delightful books and story papers.
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Post by dem bones on Mar 29, 2023 15:24:50 GMT
Latest find. A Vault hero on dos and don'ts of courtship throughout the centuries. E. S. Turner - A History of Courting (Pan 1958: originally Michael Joseph, 1954) Introduction Cave-man to Ovid Passion as a Fashion Parents' Choice All Five Senses 'What Kissing and Bussing!' Sinful Dalliance Fans and Masks Towards Sensibility Correspondence Course Bundling: Honi Soit... Romanticists— and Others Love Among the Prudes The New Woman Lost Love in America End of an Era 'Sex O'Clock' Wiles Again The Parlour Takes Wheels Lessons in the Dark 'Licence My Roving Hands' Guidance is Offered What's Wrong With Courting?Blurb: Down deep in hell there let them dwell and bundle on that bed, Then turn and roll without control Till all their lusts are fed.
That was how they did it in America in the 18th century. Bundling it was called. Not as naughty as it sounds.
In Moscow in 1952 they courted quite differently. It went like this: The boy was a collective farmer, and the girl a tractor driver working on the same night-shift. Sighed the girl: 'How wonderful it is to work on such a beautiful night under the full moon and do one's utmost to save petrol!' Exclaimed the boy: "The night inspires me to over-fulfil my quota by a higher and still higher percentage." Later he admitted: 'I fell in love with your working achievement from the very first moment.'
There's no end to the different methods employed in this enchanting game, practised by nearly all of us some time or other.
You'll love this book. It's instructive. It's fascinating!
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