the trumpet of the swan

bookish spinster. rebellious princess. hsp. she/her.

[soft-lovely]

Parker Library, Cambridge

[ladythomasina]

dozens of alternative titles that Lucy Moss & Toby Marlow considered for Six (because they were worried that that was too basic)

source

[kitsunetsuki-deactivated2026051]

Barry Lategan - Dress by Bill Gibb (Vogue UK 1970)

[ladythomasina]

my picks for @swiftiereaders' Album Challenge

some reasoning for each:

debut = Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery: a spirited and imaginative young girl grows up in the countryside (and it's green!)

Fearless = Little Women by Louisa May Alcott: now the girl is slightly older, but still creative and spirited. iconic emotions of American girlhood. falling in love with the boy next door. kissing in the rain.

Speak Now = I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith: another aspiring-writer heroine who romanticizes her life, but this time she gets a little more bruised by love. also this book is written in first person as Cassandra's diary, which ties into the "she wrote every song herself without collaborators" aspect of Speak Now

Red = The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford: we know this is a Taylor favorite because of her later song "The Bolter"! love continues to bruise our heroine, but she still wants it more than anything

1989 = Rules of Civility by Amor Towles: a twentysomething has madcap adventures with friends and boys in glamorous, shiny New York City

Reputation = The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid: our heroine has gotten a little hard-edged and cynical, the press has both praised her and hated her, but now she's taking control of the narrative and also admitting she is secretly vulnerable to love

Lover = A Room with a View by E.M. Forster: just an extremely sweet and optimistic love story. "You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal"

Folklore = Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë: a lyrical, gothic masterpiece, highly attuned to nature. less romantic, and more sad and troubling, than its popular reputation might suggest. also the "nested stories" structure of the novel nods to the "storytelling" themes of the album.

Evermore = The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë: couldn't resist giving Folklore's sister album a novel by Emily Brontë's sister! another troubling gothic story, but it's a little overlooked/underrated compared to its predecessor

Midnights = Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney: millennials entering their 30s and ruminating over life, love, friendship, fame, and how they got to where they are

The Tortured Poets Department = Possession by A.S. Byatt: the story of the tortured romance between 2 Victorian poets, and the "modern idiots" who are researching it in the present day. very long, dense, lyrical, and kind of polarizing.

The Life of a Showgirl = City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert: my favorite novel about showgirls!

[aeschylus-stan-account]

Unintentionally humorous moment in this Yiddish translation of King Lear: for "unburden'd, crawl towards death," the translator has "באַפֿרײַט פֿון לאַסט/מיר װעלן שלעפּ זיך דעם טאָיט אַנקעגן". For "crawl", the translator chose "drag myself", which is fine, except that the word in Yiddish is one you'll already know: "schlep".* "I will schlep myself toward death," said King Lear.

*granted, the word probably doesn't have the same connotation in Yiddish--it just means "to drag" and is appropriate, but to a modern reader? That's incredible.

[tikkunolamorgtfo]

“Okay, fine, I’ll accept the eventualities of old age and death—but I’m gonna complain about it the whole time.”

[shredsandpatches]

This is one million percent in character for Lear, of course.

[manyother]

This famous photo of Marilyn Monroe was taken on May 6, 1957 in New York City. The author of the picture is the legendary American photographer Richard Avedon.

[lookingbackatfashionhistory]

• Pair of Evening Shoes.

Designer/Maker: Shoe Craft Salon (New York)

Date: 1930-1939

Medium: Silk, leather and metal

[i-was-today-years-old-when]

i learned that two dim stars from the Big Dipper served as an ancient eye test. If you had lived in the time of the early Romans and could see them, you would have been eligible to be an archer in the Roman army (x)

[ancientsstudies]

UNESCO-Welterbe Markgräfliches Opernhaus Bayreuth by baroqueblockbuster.

[edwardian-girl-next-door]

Saturday, 5th June 1920

"Here we are in the prime of the year which I've thought of so often in January & December, always with pleasure... What I believe is that one brings out the taste of the month one's in by opposing it to another."

~ Virginia Woolf, The Diary of Virginia Woolf, vol. 2 (1920-1924), ed. Anne Olivier Bell & Andrew MacNiellie (1978)

[ladythomasina]

poster for an aviation festival in Riga, Latvia on June 5, 1932 (source)

(and if you have a spare $750 you can get the poster in a different color scheme on Ebay)

[sandovers]

Because children grow up, we think a child's purpose is to grow up. But a child's purpose is to be a child. Nature doesn't disdain what lives only for a day. It pours the whole of itself into the each moment. We don't value the lily less for not being made of flint and built to last. Life's bounty is in its flow, later is too late. Where is the song when it's been sung? The dance when it's been danced? It's only we humans who want to own the future, too. We persuade ourselves that the universe is modestly employed in unfolding our destination. We note the haphazard chaos of history by the day, by the hour, but there is something wrong with the picture. Where is the unity, the meaning, of nature's highest creation? Surely those millions of little streams of accident and wilfulness have their correction in the vast underground river which, without a doubt, is carrying us to the place where we're expected! But there is no such place, that's why it's called utopia. The death of a child has no more meaning than the death of armies, of nations. Was the child happy while he lived? That is a proper question, the only question. If we can't arrange our own happiness, it's a conceit beyond vulgarity to arrange the happiness of those who come after us.

Tom Stoppard, The Coast of Utopia

[thelastgoodcountry]

Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi

[silvertechnicolor]

Niagara (1953) dir. Henry Hathaway

The famous walk by Monroe’s character, Rose, in a black skirt and red sweater across the cobblestone street, holds the record for the longest walk in cinema history with around 116 feet of film. (x)

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Theodore Hancock, untitled (New York skyline), 1940s. Gouache on paper.

Photo: 1st Dibs

[garland-on-thy-brow]

Genders? Yes, of course I know them: first soprano, prima donna, tenor, secondo uomo, seconda donna, l'ultima parte, and the who-the-fuck seventh character.

[lookingbackatfashionhistory]

• Afternoon dress.

Date: 1910-1914

Place of origin: United States

Medium: Silk lace