The Dusty Bookcase

With sadness, I report that 2023 was another year in which all my favourite acquisitions were purchased online. This is not to suggest that ...

I didn't know her. How could I? We were born one hundred and forty-six years apart, and yet I think of Maria Monk each and every...

Not my pool, sadly, but that belonging to a friend and old work colleague. Today's  Saturday Star features a piece by Nick Patch on ...

Last Tuesday's post marked the one thousandth since this blog began. I saw it coming, took my eye off the ball, and didn't notic...

Honoured to be today's Bookshelf feature over at Patti Abbott's blog . Amongst other things, I reveal the purpose behind all th...

My newest acquisition: Maria Monk's Daughter: An Autobiography Mrs. L. St. John Eckel New York: Published for the Author b...

Maria Monk was born 195 years ago today in Dorchester, Lower Canada (now Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec). The "Awful Disclosures...

Hard to get much work done this past weekend, what with the din drifting across the border, so it seems somehow appropriate that I came ...

The Globe , 18 December 1909 William Briggs may be gone, but the publisher's words are as true today as they were a century ago. Books a...

Much of these past two months has been consumed by research into Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk , its supposed author and the clergymen who...