The Copybook

Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.

1171

Engraving by William Nutter, based on a miniature by Samuel Shelley. From the National Portrait Gallery, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Ladies’ Diary Clay Lane

A long-lived annual of riddles, rhymes and really hard maths aimed specifically at Georgian Britain’s hidden public of clever women.

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1172

Via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.

John Dalton Clay Lane

At fifteen John Dalton was a village schoolmaster in Kendal; at forty he had published the first scientific theory of atoms.

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1173

Via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.

Undoubting Thomas Elfric of Eynsham

Abbot Elfric praised St Thomas for demanding hard evidence for the resurrection.

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1174

© Nchatzitou, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.

Heracles and the Mares of Diomedes Clay Lane

Eurystheus pits his cousin against a son of Ares and some man-eating horses.

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1175

© Mujaddara, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0.

Perilous Waters Clay Lane

King Saul’s jealousies drove those who loved him away, but David was a very different kind of leader.

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1176

© Wolfgang Pehlemann, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0.

The Price of Treachery Clay Lane

A Danish soldier in the seventeenth century imposes the severest sentence he can think of.

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