The first crossword puzzle appeared December 21, 1913 in the FUN pages of The New York World, Pulitzer’s paper. It was the creation of Liverpool-born journalist, Arthur Wynne, originally called a word-cross but misprinted shortly after to its familiar form, an early victim to own imposition of anarchic plasticity onto language. With understated transatlantic modesty, Wynne claimed crosswords were as old as Pompei. Back home, old poet Housman would name these the “days when heaven was falling, / The hour when earth’s foundations fled.” The world would be at war half a year later.

© 2025 Johns Hopkins University Press When Wallace Thurman announced his engagement to Louise Thompson in 1928, after just two months of courtship, tongues wagged: Harlem’s audacious “young upstart” was to marry the typewriter of his forthcoming novel, The Blacker the Berry (1929). [1] Alain Locke—the self-appointed “mid-wife” of America’s New Negro Renaissance, which Thurman represented—immediately wrote to tell Thompson “how much I envy any man who has you for both a wife and secretary.” [2]...

Strong and Weak Ties: The Joyce Circle and the Press-Cutting Bureau In a letter to Harriet Shaw Weaver dated December 18, 1937, James Joyce’s secretary Paul Léon described how Finnegans Wake (1939) in its final phase required multiple accomplices to reach completion: it takes some five or six other people to check the corrections, verify the additions and read the proofs. Himself, he does the composing part quite alone and from what I hear of Mr. Joyce, he works daily to about five in the...

No tengo sino libros que leo, marco con lápiz y acaban medio desencuadernados si los frecuento demasiado. (I only own books that I read, mark with pencil, and that end up with broken spines because I read them so much.) —Victoria Ocampo, “De la cartilla al libro” (From Notebook to Book) (1959) In the second volume of her Testimonios, Victoria Ocampo recalls how her friend, Virginia Woolf, insisted that she must “guardar el dinero para la revista [ Sur] y los libros” (save money for her journal [...

© 2021 Johns Hopkins University Press In February 1928, the popular magazine Estampa published an unassuming centerfold photograph of a large group of people strolling through Madrid. [1] The jovial crowd pictured is so large that they take over the sidewalk and spill into the avenue (fig. 1). At the center of the image, cheerful female dressmakers walk with synchronized steps. Nearby pedestrians take note of the group’s energetic display for the photographer and pause to look at them. This...

Southern Vancouver Island’s 100-kilometer-long BC-14 Highway slides predominantly east to west along British Columbia coastline through traditional Coast Salish territory. Beneath the old-growth trees that are the marrow of this lush ecosystem is the small, unincorporated community of Shirley, and the Cook Kettle Press (fig.1). Though small, the press is a regional hotbed of letterpress activity. As a print shop, it provides opportunities for artists to use its space and equipment. It also acts...