Dilapidated structures of Southern Jersey

Regular readers might be aware that I love taking photos, especially of buildings, historic sites and -- as my wife and I refer to them -- "falling-down things."

Here are some photos I took in mid-December 2010, during a leisurely drive that Joan and I made from my old hometown of Clayton, New Jersey, to Atlantic City. There was a lot of squalor and abandoned property along the route, plus one very creepy sight.

"A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband"

Back in May, I mentioned my love at first sight for this 1917 book by Louise Bennett Weaver and Helen Cowles Le Cron titled "A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband." It's stuffed with newspaper clippings, scrawled recipes, pamphlets and other goodies. This book was referred to regularly and kept in someone's kitchen for a long time.

I could get a month's worth of blog entries out of this treasure. But, instead, how about one Super Blog Entry™ sampling some of recipes, illustrations and ephemera tucked away inside the book?

Here goes...

1. A newspaper clipping titled "Helps for Homemakers" has been glued to the inside front cover. Some of the "Helps":

• The bits of bread that the children leave, dry in the oven and grind up to mix with hard boiled eggs for the first baby chick feed.
• The white of an egg will remove chewing gum from anything, including hair, without leaving a trace.
• Wash lettuce, spinach and greens in salted water and worms and insects will not adhere to them.
• Soak old newspapers in water, squeeze out surplus water, form into balls, allow to dry and use for kindling the fire instead of wood.

2. Here's a recipe from a label for canned peas that was tucked away inside the book:

Cardinal Salad¹
2 large beets
Lettuce
Radishes for garnish
2 tbsp. vinegar
2 large tomatoes
Mayonnaise made with the vinegar from beets
1 can wax beans
1 can canned Peas
1 can asparagus tips
Boil beets until tender, cover with vinegar, let stand over-night. Drain off vinegar; use it in making the mayonnaise. Arrange tomato slices, wax beans, asparagus, peas, and red mayonnaise in little rose like nests of lettuce leaves and garnish with hard cooked eggs and red radishes.

3. An index-sized card from The Country Gentleman magazine (based in Philadelphia) contains recipes for lemon butterscotch pie and made-in-a-minute chocolate cake on one side. Here's an excerpt from the magazine's pitch to potential subscribers on the reverse side: "I'm sending you these delicious recipes -- on a card the size for your file -- to show you just two of the reasons why more folks read The Country Gentleman than any other agricultural publication. ... You can receive this splendid magazine for the next 9 months for only 25 cents. Simply slip your quarter into the inclosed [sic] card and mail at our expense now."

4. A handwritten recipe on a scrap of paper:

Fluffy Chicken Loaf
4 cups cooked diced chicken
2 cups cooked rice
2 cups soft bread crumbs
¼ cup pimento cut fine
1 can (4 oz.) sliced mushrooms
2 t. salt
½ t. sage
2½ C. chicken broth
4 eggs, well beaten
Combine chicken with rice, crumbs, pimento, mushrooms + season. Put mixture in loaf pan. Combine² with beaten eggs. Pour over chicken mix. Bake until firm in mod. oven 350º F about 1 hr. Garnish with pimento. Serve with mushroom sauce.

5. The book itself is a mixture of a fictional family's narrative along with recipes and housekeeping tips. Here's an excerpt from the chapter titled "After the Football Game":

"There are the men now," said Mrs. Dixon, rolling up the hose she had been darning. "Good!" said Bettina. "The dinner is just ready for them, and I'm glad they didn't keep us waiting."

"Hello! Hello!" shouted Frank and Bob, letting in a gust of cold air as they opened the door. "Whew! It's cold!"

"How was the game?"

"Fine! 39 to 0 in favor of Blake!"

"Not very exciting, I should think."

"Still, Frank here wanted to bet me that Blake would be badly beaten!"

"Frank!" said Charlotte in exasperation. "Is that the way you show your loyalty to your home college?"

"Shame on you, Frank!" grinned Bob. "Well, dinner ready? I'm about starving!"

"Bettina has a regular 'after-the-game' dinner tonight," said Charlotte. "Just the kind to make a man's heart rejoice!"

6. There is a pamphlet titled "How to Remove Stains" that was published by 1926 by the Women's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences³ in Scranton, Pennsylvania. It addresses techniques for removing a variety of stains, including blood, candle wax, fly paper, fruits and berries, grass, grease, iodine, mildew and perspiration. It states that the pamphlet is reprinted from "Care of Clothing," one of the textbooks in The Women's Institute Course in Dressmaking and Design.

7. Someone wrote what might be a Thanksgiving dinner menu (including roast turkey, red beet rosettes, filling, giblet gravy, lemon sweet potatoes, cauliflower, pumpkin pie) on the inside of a sample sympathy card from Messenger Corporation in Auburn, Indiana. The advertising pitch on the back of the sympathy card states:

1913-1938
Silver Anniversary Commemorating
25 Years of Service to Morticians
FLORAL DESIGN No. 241
The Floral Series is especially designed for discriminating Funeral Directors who offer the newest things first. The intrinsic value of the Floral Series can not be computed on a dollars and cents basis. Their use will perpetuate our leadership by setting new acknowledgment standards for you competitors to follow.

Prices (which include cards and matching envelopes) ranged from $11 for 500 to $150 for 10,000.

8. There's a loose newspaper clipping with the headline "Teen-Age Party". It suggests a party menu of cheese-stuffed frankfurters wrapped in bacon on hot rolls, relish tray, cole slaw, and these ice cream bars:

ICE CREAM BARS
½ cup unsifted regular flour
¼ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
1 large egg
1 cup dark brown sugar, packed
¾ cup coarsely broken walnuts
On wax paper, thoroughly stir together the flour, baking soda and salt. In a medium mixing bowl, beat egg until foamy; gradually beat in brown sugar. Fold in flour mixture and walnuts. Turn into well-greased 8 by 8 by 2 inch baking pan; bake in a moderate (350 degrees) oven until cake tester comes out clean -- about 20 minutes.

Allow to stand on wire rack until warm, cut into 16 bars and remove with spatula to wire rack until cold. Serve these bars, with their moist sweet bottom and meringue-link crust, with vanilla ice cream.

9. Finally, here's "I'll Have A Sandwich!" -- an undated pamphlet for Nucoa margarine.⁴ The pamphlet was produced by The Best Foods, Inc., out of New York City. Some of the 58 suggestions for using Nucoa included in the pamphlet are:

• Sweetheart: Sliced bananas, oranges or other fresh fruit on whole wheat bread with Nucoa-honey spread.
• Cannibal: Raw chopped steak highly seasoned with salt, pepper and chopped onion on pumpernickel bread with Nucoa-chili sauce.
• Hindu hot: Any left over meat -- topped with chopped pickles, salted peanuts -- dip in batter seasoned with curry powder -- saute in Nucoa-garlic. Serve on whole wheat.
• And all sorts of other suggestions with names like Salami Special, Country Cousin, Tuna Trifles, Baltimore Special, Snappy Lamb, Dutch Supper, Sardine Grill and Polka Dot.

Here's the illustration from the back of the pamphlet:

October 9 addendum

This is now one of the most-viewed blog entries in Papergreat history, thanks to the wonders of StumbleUpon.

If you're reading this on your first visit to the site and are intrigued by the idea of a blog about everyday ephemera, I recommend that you check out this entry to see a wide sampling of the blog's offerings and/or follow @Papergreat on Twitter to get a link to each day's new post.

Thanks for reading!

Footnotes
1. The Cardinal Salad recipe contains a note: "Tru-Tone Eye-Petized Recipe Patent Applied For U.S.P. & L. Co."
2. Is there something missing there? Should it say "Combine chicken broth with beaten eggs"?
3. The Women's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences was founded by Mary Brooks Picken
4. Nucoa margarine is still around. But it's apparently only available in certain regions of the United States. And, even worse, it sounds like the ingredients were modified recently, which led to a great outcry. There's a Facebook page titled "Bring Back Original Nucoa Margarine" and the comments section on this April 2010 article on The Vegetarian Resource Group Blog are full of hate and vitriol for what Nucoa has become.

Old booklet for Harrisburg's Capital Roller Rink

Here's a fun piece of ephemera to get things rolling again on the blog (pun possibly intended). It's an undated and staplebound eight-page booklet touting Capital Roller Rink in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Best guess is that it's from the early 1950s.

Capital Roller Rinker had its grand opening on September 3, 1948, according to this short article from the October 16, 1948, issue of The Billboard:

"More than 1,000 skaters plus 300 spectators attended the September 3 opening of Capital Roller Rink, located outside the city limits of Harrisburg on Hershey Road, according to Carl J. Taggesell, Capital professional.

"Capital, operated by A.L. Runk, of Mechanicsburg, Pa., is a 93 by 225-foot brick building with an 88 by 193-foot skating surface.

"Opening night program featured special numbers and exhibitions by skaters from Pottstown, Pa., and Mechanicsburg. A new electric organ has been installed, with Mrs. Stone, formerly of Pittsburgh, at the console.¹ Capital is a member of the Roller Skating Rink Operators' Association of the United States. Skating classes are under the direction of Taggesell."

The blue booklet has a bonanza of great period details, including:

• The rink was open for public skating from 8 to 11 p.m. every evening (except Mondays). There were skating matinees from 2 to 4:30 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays.
• The rink featured Hammond organ music.

• Here's an excerpt from Runk's letter on the first page of the booklet: "There are thousands of skating rinks in the United States, a fact that proves the skating public wants a clean, well managed Rink for their enjoyment. ... The management sincerely hopes that our many patrons will cooperate and thusly we can maintain a fine reputation that you will enjoy and your friends and children may also learn to enjoy with you. I assure you this is our policy -- to give you a clean wholesome skating rink in a refined atmosphere for your skating pleasure."
• The following dress regulations were required, in order to maintain the rink's standards:
  
  • GENTLEMEN: Men are permitted to wear sport shirts with or without ties. We suggest a tie be worn with dress shirt. Sweaters permitted if worn over sport or dress shirt. Dungarees or T shirts will not be allowed.
  • LADIES: Ladies are permitted to wear dress slacks, skating costumes finger-tip length and street clothes. Blue jeans, pedal pushers and shorts will not be allowed. Neatness of dress is appreciated and we ask that it be adhered to at all times.
• The rink's conduct rules ban smoking on the skating surface (but apparently not elsewhere in the rink). Also, the rules state: "Positively no intoxicating liquors allowed on premises. Intoxicated persons will not be admitted. Vulgar, profane or lewd talk will not be permitted."
• The general-admission price was 25 cents, with "Floor Service" costing either 10 cents or 35 cents, depending on the session.

If you're interested in more about roller-skating ephemera, Mel Kolstad recently had a great blog entry on this topic on Ephemeraology. And here's a link to a wonderful and wide-ranging collection of more than 100 roller-skating labels and logos on Flickr.

I'd especially be interested in hearing any memories that people having of Capital Roller Rink in Harrisburg. How long did it remain open? How did evolve as an entertainment center over the decades? What is that building being used for now? I'd love to know more of this slice of history on wheels.

Footnote
1. Here's what I pictured in my head when I read of Mrs. Stone the organ player. Big-time points if you can identify that reference.

So much ephemera, so little time! (The Fall/Winter Preview)

I wonder if I could get a federal grant that would allow me to spend all of my time blogging about ephemera?

Maybe I should ask Matthew Lesko to look into that for me, because it's about the only way I'd have any hope of researching and writing about all the great pieces of paper I have squirreled away in the basement.¹

But the reality is that this is a hobby blog, and so work, family time, raising a sixth-grader, yardwork, catering to the needs of five demanding cats² and watching the Philadelphia Phillies usually come first.

Throw in a home PC meltdown, some extra-long days in the newsroom, and a hurricane, and it can sometimes be hard to achieve my personal goal of one Papergreat post per day.

There's some fun stuff coming down the pike, though! I have a to-do list that I hope keeps you coming back regularly.

Consider this a fall and winter preview³ for Papergreat:

• An old guide for the Capital Roller Rink in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
• Seth Seiders and his 1920s advice for the "Pivot Man" (featuring a cameo by Al Capone)
• A collection of sci-fi and fantasy fanzines from the 1950s through 1970s
• Part 2 of "The books and papers of Elbert Nostrand Carvel"
• A look at the "Romper Room Song Book"

• More selections from a full box of travel-related ephemera (pictured at right) that's going to take me years to get through.
• An employee pass for the 1935 Electric & Radio Show in Philadelphia
• The contents of "A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband"
• Some pages from an old program for the York Opera House, generously provided to me by Jim Lewin of The York Emporium⁴
• The beautiful frontispiece of "Told Under the Green Umbrella"
• A memoir of a Victorian childhood by someone named C.L. Timings
• Recipes, recipes and more recipes
• Delving a bit into the world of vinyl records with band marches by the Spring Garden Band and a collection of square dances
• A battered 1910 Wanamaker diary
• A somewhat disturbing old advertisement for Excelsior ginger ale
• More old receipts
• A stack of military technical manuals
• Several 1940s issues of The York-Hoover Herald
• Photos of the trip the Otto family finally made to Roadside America
• More poultry ephemera than you can shake a stick at⁵
• The complete history of the Steve Jeltz Fan Club
• A 1940 issue of Strength and Health magazine
• Multiple pieces of ephemera from someone's 1971 trip to Las Vegas for The Showmen's League of America banquet and ball (warning: may contain clowns)

Another reason it's often hard for me to get around to writing is that I'm easily sent spiraling off on a tangent when I'm sorting through papers or leafing through books for possible sale.

For example, the second book I grabbed this afternoon was "The Copper Box," a 1923 hardcover novel by J.S. Fletcher. Flipping to the first page inside, I found a neat record of the book's ownership history:

In the middle, in pencil, is written: "Dear Dickie - Many, many happy returns of a most important day, and much love. From Aunt Midge 9/23/27"

At the top of the page, William H. Young of Union, West Virginia, stamped the book on June 6, 1958. And someone attached some 1957 Christmas Seals for decoration.

And, on 7/24/76, the book was inscribed as being in the possession of John Brake of Greenville, Virginia. (Who is probably also the John Brake who published a 1,276-page book titled "The History of Greenville, Virginia, 1732-1994".)

Footnotes

1. It also doesn't help -- my wife would surely and correctly add -- that sometimes I add to the collection of ephemera in the basement faster than I can write about it.
2. In order, from heaviest to lightest: Salem, Mitts, Mr. Bill, Floyd and Huggles.
3. Remember those Fall Preview issues of TV Guide in the 1980s? Weren't they cool? Everything looked so promising: Tales of the Gold Monkey, Manimal, Misfits of Science, The Powers of Matthew Star, AfterMASH, It's Your Move, Automan... Well, maybe not AfterMASH.
4. The York Emporium, by the way, was recently named to a list of the the 20 best independent and used bookstores in the United States. Very well-deserved.
5. OK, I'll admit it. Between the square dances and the poultry, I'm a bit afraid I'm scaring some of you away.

Restoring telephone service after Hurricane Hazel in 1954

As Hurricane Irene bears down on the East Coast this weekend, I dug up this 46-page, magazine-style report that was published by the The Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania¹ and The Diamond State Telephone Company² 57 years ago, in the wake of Hurricane Hazel.

Here's the Wikipedia summary of Hazel:

Hurricane Hazel was the deadliest and costliest hurricane of the 1954 Atlantic hurricane season. The storm killed as many as 1,000 people in Haiti before striking the United States near the border between North and South Carolina, as a Category 4 hurricane. After causing 95 fatalities in the US, Hazel struck Canada as an extratropical storm, raising the death toll by 81 people, mostly in Toronto.

One thing I find interesting about this killer storm is that it struck in mid-October. I don't think many people realize that a significant hurricane can strike that "late" in the Atlantic hurricane season. (If this ends up being an active season in the Atlantic, Irene might be just the start. Shudder.)

The report has a map detailing the path of Hazel through Pennsylvania that October:

The text with that map states: "Lashing out with 100-mile winds at her baleful eye, along a path between Carlisle and Lewistown, blasting forest giants down a 200-mile corridor, ravaging with enormous damage Philadelphia's famous Main Line, grounding power and telephone wires in fantastic and perilous tangles, brushing against an east-bound cold front to deluge the Pittsburgh area with 3.56 inches of water and to flood rivers and creeks -- Hazel was one of the most ruinous storms in the history of Bell of Pennsylvania and Diamond State."

The report states that almost 75 percent of the 127,335 telephones that were knocked out by Hazel in Pennsylvania and Delaware had service restored within 48 hours. (Most phone lines were knocked down by falling trees.)

Here are two additional photos from the report, along with their captions:

Above: HURRICANE HARRIED. Hank Fritz (below), Cable Splicer, and Bud Butler, Helper, both of Main Line District, both veterans of 12 days in New England with Hurricane Edna, put their experience to work in their home state, as they repair Hazel damage.

Above: GETTING THE PICTURE. District report center at Wilkes-Barre, one of six in Central Area, feeds information to area report center in Harrisburg. Pictured in Operation Hazel, Nancy Miller, General Clerk; Ralph Bigelow, Supervising Field Engineer; Barbara Puchalsky and Barbara Kompinski, Clerks; Elizabeth Hebert, Confidential Stenographer; Marie Trudnak, Senior Clerk; Theresa Partika, Chief Draftswoman; and Sammy Viccica, Installation Foreman.

Footnotes
1. The Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania is now known as Verizon Pennsylvania.
2. The Diamond State Telephone Company is now known as Verizon Delaware.

Keeping score at the 1982 Little League World Series

As the 65th annual Little League World Series continues this week in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania, and huge buzz¹ continues to surround the Keystone Little League team from Clinton County, I am reminded of the Little League World Series games our family attended in the early 1980s when we were living in nearby Montoursville.

We made it to multiple World Series games in 1981 and 1982 at Howard J. Lamade Stadium. My favorite part, as a 10- and 11-year-old, was how the stadium became a melting pot for baseball players and fans from all over the world -- Europe, Asia, South America, Canada...

The Little League World Series was also where I made my first foray into learning how to keep score in baseball -- a skill that would come in handy during my later career in sports journalism.

One of my first scorekeeping efforts came at the Little League World Series championship game on August 28, 1982, when Kirkland, Washington, defeated Chiayi, Taiwan, 6-0. I sat with thousands of others on the outfield hill at the stadium as Cody Webster (pictured at the top of today's post), Mark Swain and Mark Peterson helped lead Kirkland to the title-game victory, which snapped Taiwan's run of five straight Little League World Series crowns.²

In retrospect, I'd say my scorekeeping skills as an 11-year-old were OK. My first mistake was clearly using a pen instead of a pencil, given that mistakes were inevitable. Also, I got a nice assist from my dad on the Taiwanese names on that side of the scorecard.

This prepared me well for my later professional coverage of the South Penn League, Adams County Little League tournaments, high school baseball and softball in southcentral Pennsylvania, and a couple Baltimore Orioles games.

Here, for posterity, is my full scoresheet from the 1982 Kirkland-Taiwan game. Below that is the Kirkland team picture that was included as part of a four-page program insert on the eight teams in that year's tournament.³

Footnotes
1. Check out this great blog entry on Keystone Little League by York Daily Record/Sunday News business editor Cathy Hirko on The Southpaw.
2. ESPN produced a "30 for 30" documentary on the Kirkland Little League team's championship and its aftermath. I haven't seen it, but this New York Daily News article gives it a mixed review.
3. Fun tidbit: The Latin American representative in 1982 was Coquivacoa Little League of Maracaibo, Venezuela, which included future major-leaguer Wilson Álvarez.

Requiem for a 129-year-old encyclopedia volume

I'm a sucker for an old book that seems to be beyond help or hope. Earlier this year, our family was strolling through the Market & Penn Street Farmers' Market¹ in York, visiting old friends and shopping for vegetables.

We came across a shelf full of free used magazines, most of which were 5 to 15 years old. Sitting on the bottom shelf, sticking out like a sore thumb, was a lone, warped volume of an 1882 encyclopedia set:

VOL. XIV
STRANGULATION
VEGETABLE

Clearly, this book couldn't be left behind any longer. It came as absolutely no surprise to my wife that I snapped up the battered book and asked her for a quarter to drop into the styrofoam cup labeled "Donations."²

The book is in bad shape. The back cover is warped and doesn't lay flat; the spine is half-detached from the binding; and two pages, including the title page, are fully separated from the binding.

But it's still a book.

It's 800+ pages are just one volume in a larger compendium -- published in America by S.W. Green's Son from the Edinburgh and London edition of Chambers's Encyclopædia -- of Western civilization's knowledge in the late 19th century.

Some of the contents:

SUHL, a t. of Prussia, province of Saxony, and government of Erfurt, is situated on a small stream, called the Lauter, in a romantic valley on the s.w. side of the Thuringian forest, 32 m. s.s.w. of Erfurt. The Suhl, which in the Sorb-Wendish dialect means salt, is probably derived from the salt springs, formerly much worked. Mining is extensively carried on in the neighborhood, and has been so for centuries. The principal manufactures are iron and steel wares, chemical preparations, paper, and leather. Suhl, celebrated in the days of chivalry as the "arsenal of Germany," still maintains its ancient reputation as manufactory of arms. Pop. '75 10,721. Its history is very interesting; see Werther's Sieben Bücher der Chronik der Stadt Suhl (1847).

TORPEDO. During the war between Great Britain and the United States in 1812-14, this name was applied to certain mysterious boats invented by Fulton and other Americans for the purpose of navigating beneath the surface of the water, and injuring the the bottoms of hostile vessels. In those days of hand-to-hand naval war, these designs (which, by the way, were failures) were looked upon as little less than diabolical. The progress of destructive weapons during half a [century] has removed this aversion.

TOTEM. The ruder races of men are found divided into tribes, each of which is usually named after some animal, vegetable, or thing which is an object of veneration or worship to the tribe.³ This animal, vegetable or thing is the totem or god of the tribe. ... Numerous tribes with totems exist in America, in Australia, the South Pacific islands, and in central Asia; and there are some reasons for thinking that such tribes were once numerous even in Europe among races belonging to what is called the Indo-European division of the human family.⁴

VAMPIRE (Ger. vampyr), called also by the Servians vukodlak, and by the Wallachians murony, is, according to the popular belief of the Slavonic, Romanic, and Greek population of the Lower Danube and the Thessalian peninsula, a blood-sucking ghost.⁵ In the mythology of the ancient Greeks, beings of a similar nature existed - the Lamias, beautiful phantom women who, by all sorts of voluptuous delusions, allured youths to them in order to feast on their fresh, young, and pure blood and flesh. And among Greek Christians there is a belief that the bodies of those who have died in excommunication are kept by the devil in a kind of life; that they go forth from their graves by night and suddenly destroy other men, and also by other means procure food, and thus keep themselves in good condition. They are called Burkolakkä, or Tympanitä; and the only way of escaping from their molestation is by digging up their unwashed corpses and burning them, after the removal of the excommunication.

Sweet dreams!

Footnotes
1. Established 1866.
2. I also snagged a 1958 issue of the religious magazine Horizons and two 1970s issues of The Workbasket. Score!
3. Wow.
4. Wow again.
5. This encyclopedia was published in 1882 -- 15 years before the publication of Bram Stoker's "Dracula."

Happy 125th birthday, Ruth Manning-Sanders

On this date 125 years ago -- August 21, 1886 -- Ruth Vernon Manning was born to John Edmondson Manning and Emma Manning (nee Brock) in Swansea, Wales. Ruth, the youngest of the three Manning girls, grew up to marry artist George Sanders, become Ruth Manning-Sanders and create a rich literary legacy of more than 90 books (and hundreds of retold folk and fairy tales) during the 102 years of her life.¹

Happy birthday, Ruth!

While no book has ever been written about Ruth Manning-Sanders, many have written independently about her contributions to children's literature and folklore, the outstanding quality of her work and her legacy.

So for her birthday today, here is some commentary and praise about Manning-Sanders that I have gathered, interspersed with some photos of the many Manning-Sanders volumes that I am proud and fortunate to have sitting on my bookshelves.

Judith Ridge: "a fantastically eccentric and effective way with language"

Judith Ridge has mentioned Manning-Sanders several times in her blog entries on Misrule, the home of Australian children's books online.

In the June 29, 2010, post "Old Favorites, New Audience," Ridge discusses reading Manning-Sanders stories to a group of contemporary young children:

I decided, though, to read them a story that has stayed with me — dare I say, haunted me! — for more than thirty years. She's perhaps not all that well known or remembered these days, but Ruth Manning-Sanders was one of the most popular authors among my friends. I remember whenever we'd go to the Auburn Library, we'd go straight to the M shelves to borrow (and re-borrow) one of her wonderful collections of folk tales.² I loved A Book of Folk and Fairy Tales, A Book of Princes and Princesses — I love all of them, but I especially loved A Book of Ghosts and Goblins and in that book, I most especially loved the story "Golden Hair". ... So I read "Golden Hair" to the kids at Oxley Park and I can tell you — this ghost story has not lost a shred of its power to enthrall. And that actually doesn't surprise me. Manning-Sanders was an extraordinary writer, with a fantastically eccentric and effective way with language*.³ It was as much the power of her language as it was her stories that captured our imagination as children — and the children in that classroom at Oxley Park, far from Wales and the west country of England where she lived and worked her days.

Ridge also writes about Manning-Sanders in the blog entries "How Diana Wynne Jones changed my life (In Memoriam)" and "Lucy Mangan's Biblio-Attachments."

I strongly recommend that you check out her website and blog.

TimT: "She comes across as an affectionate aunt"

On the Will Type For Food blog, TimT wrote about Manning-Sanders in the March 29, 2009, post "Ruth Manning-Sanders, revisited." Here's an excerpt:

I'm currently reading Folk and Fairy Tales, as retold by Ruth Manning-Sanders. Right through infants, primary and high school I can remember reading books of fairy tales retold by her: she was a prolific reteller of other people's stories. Check out the selected bibliography of her works on Wikipedia - and it's just a selected bibliography! - including such curios as A Book of Magic Horses. I lost touch with Ruth there for a while, but I'm glad to have got this book of Folk and Fairy Tales from the Flinders Street bookstore. She comes across as an affectionate aunt - a little prim and proper, but never trying to educate her readers. Unlike other writers - say, Thurber or Kipling - she never looks for the 'moral of the story'. In the introduction she writes:

It is the prime requisite of the fairy tale that it should end happily. I remember as a small girl hurling the book I had been reading across the floor in a rage, because the heroine, instead of marrying the hero and living happily ever after, just went and died. A thing she had no right to do.

I also love this anonymous comment on TimT's blog entry, which gets to the root of how Manning-Sanders' legacy is spanning multiple generations: "I came across this blog when searching for old RMS books. I just remembered getting every single one from the library when I was a little girl and devouring them. Now I want my little daughter to discover them too and am looking for the old editions with illustrations as I remember them."

Marcus Crouch: "Every present-day story-teller must be in her debt"

In the February 1989 edition of Junior Bookshelf, Marcus Crouch wrote a tribute to Manning-Sanders in the wake of her death the previous October. Some excerpts:

Her personal preference seems to have been for the humorously bizarre, and she had a liking for dragons, ogres and other grotesques. She liked humble, unheroic heroes, simple people keeping their end up by means of cunning and persistence. ... Every present-day story-teller must be in her debt. Her work is peculiarly suited to the domestic, one-to-one story-telling session. It forges a link between speaker and hearer whose strength is best appreciated in the home rather than the hall and classroom. ... For many long-lived writers, death is followed by eclipse. I hope that publishers will [continue to re-release Manning-Sanders'] priceless treasury of folk-tales. We would all be the poorer for their loss.

I'll second that! It would be great if a modern publisher could reprint Manning-Sanders' anthologies (although only if they remain paired with the wonderful illustrations by Robin Jacques).

Footnotes
1. Information for this section comes from Manning-Sanders' Wikipedia biography, of which I have served as the primary author and culled from a wide range of sources.
2. The library is also where I discovered Manning-Sanders, as I detailed in this previous post.
3. Ridge has footnotes in her blogs, too. This particular one is related to Manning-Sanders:

"*I didn't think of that as a child reader, but I discovered it from the inside years later when I was working at The School Magazine and discovered, to my astonishment and delight, that we had unpublished Manning-Sanders stories on file — and I got to edit some of them! Not that you'd dare do much more than a light run-through for fear of disrupting her delicately, yet complexly constructed prose. Apparently the long-lived Manning-Sanders had a similarly long-living daughter, who sent her mother's unpublished stories to the School Magazine — and I'll leave it at that for Jonathan Shaw to fill out the story in the comments!"

Unfortunately, Mr. Shaw has NOT yet "filled out the story" in the comments of Ridge's blog entry.