Cox's Fragmenta: An Historical Miscellany - Tapa blanda

Edited by Simon Murphy, this book is chock full of the most bizarre and hilarious news stories printed between 1750 and 1830. From a recipe for a frog barometer to scathing theatre reviews, this historical miscellany will intrigue and delight. --Discover Britain

A fascinating new book of press cuttings from the 18th and 19th centuries tells of grave robbers and thieves sent to the gallows-along with other stories all too familiar today. When draper Francis Cox in 1834 he bequeathed his volumes of the painstakingly pasted clippings that had caught his eye over 50 years from the London and Birmingham press to the British Museum. This quirky collection passed to the British Library, where it remained largely undisturbed until writer Simon Murphy stumbled across it and decided to publish a selection from it, including articles on world cuisine and theatre. Cox apparently assembled the content at random, sometimes missing off the date or the name of the newspaper. The collection shows Cox lived in much tougher times - but not always so different from our own.... --Daily Express, International Express

As a happy few hours browsing the new online British Newspaper Archive proves, sifting through old publications can quickly reveal unusual gems... offers amusing glimpses into the more bizarre stories that our kin may have read about in the local paper. --Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine

Erotic misdemeanours in an Irish bean-field, the recipe for a frog barometer fresh from the French court, a parrot convicted of heresy and burnt at the stake in Spain and a Dutch stage effect for ejecting a wig (by means of a spring) during Hamlet's ghost scene are just some of the masterpieces of understated journalism collected by Francis Cox and contained in his Fragmenta. At ninety-seven volumes, Cox's scrapbook has to be one of the largest collections of journalistic ephemera ever. For sixty years during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries he accumulated articles on everything from duels to playhouses, and foreign travel to warfare. Simon Murphy has selected the most amusing and bizarre to create an historical miscellany which will intrigue and delight.