Of Leaving the Library

I am writing this in Duke Humfrey's, in which I have spent nearly twelve hours (don't worry, I did squeeze in a 45 minute break for lunch), finishing off a nearly 20,000 word chapter draft for my supervisor.

My fingers feel as if they're about to drop off, and my shoulders are killing me, but I have a wonderful feeling of jubilation at having completed the draft, nevertheless. I am off now to pick up some takeaway (no chance I'm cooking after this!), and sink gratefully into bed. Sir W may have said in his 1600 essay 'Of Sleepe' that

'Fame neuer knew a perpetuall Bedpresser',

but when it's well-deserved (and sometimes when it's not) a bit of bedpressing is a wonderful thing!

Of Beginnings

Having dithered about whether or not to start a blog for some time, the lure of having yet another type of procrastination eventually won out. Or, rather, I thought it would be good training for me (and my thesis) to be forced to write a little something everyday, even if that something is also a great opportunity to actually write something that isn't at all academic... And I can't help feeling that the subject of my dissertation, the charming yet feckless young essayist Sir William Cornwallis the Younger (who was 22 - the same age I am now - when his essays were published), would have approved. After all, his anecdotal and meandering essays on subjects ranging from love to books are in some ways forerunners to today's blogosphere! 

In a nod to Sir W, I am going to sign off all my posts with a short extract or sentence from his writing, while his essays also give me my blog post title format - 'Of...' I am beginning with the opening sentence of one of my very favourites of his essays, the charming 'Of Sleepe' (first published in 1600). I must admit that Sir W's sentiments here could quite easily be taken for my own!

'My custome is about this time of day to sleepe, to auoide which now, I choose to write: so, if this be a drowsie stile, and sleepily done, yet if it be not worse then sleepe, I goe not backward, for it serues in sleeps room.'