By Doug Boilesen 2012
This is the Phonographia Library of PhonoLiterature.
In June of 1888 Edison's wrote that his "Perfected Phonograph" will soon be able to record "on four cylinders eight inches long, with a diameter of five... the whole of “Nicholas Nickleby” in phonogram form."
PhonoLiterature, however, is not about books on phonograph records but about its library of books, poetry, plays, 'sketches,' and short stories with at least one phonograph in each written work.
The importance of the phonograph in these books runs the gamut, from the single word of "gramophone" in T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland to the existential impact of the phonograph as seen in The Record by Ray Bradbury where the playing of a phonograph record saves humanity from extinction.
Some of the books have illustrations of the phonograph. Some have references to songs that were phonograph records. But whatever the degree of connection all are enjoyed by Friends of the Phonograph as each is an example of how the phonograph has been part of popular culture since December 6, 1877 when Edison's tinfoil phonograph repeated back to him "a little piece of practical poetry" - "Mary had a Little Lamb."
Select from the following bookshelf or use the alphabetized PhonoLiterature list in Phonographia's Table of Contents.
"a live phonograph...in the Land of Oz" by L. Frank Baum , 1913 |
The Christmas Secret by David Delamare, 1991 |
|||||
Tea Rex by Molly Idle, 2013 |
Curious George Goes to the Hospital by Margret Rey & H.A. Rey, 1966
|
The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger, 2003 |
||||
|
|
|||||
Scandal and A Gold Slipper by Willa Cather, (Youth and the Bright Medusa) 1920 |
The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather 1915 |
Coming, Aphrodite! by Willa Cather, (Youth and the Bright Medusa) 1920
|
Another Adventure of Elsie and the Bunny by Cadbury Ltd., 1920 |
|||
|
||||||
The Phonograph of Jean Bouvet by Henry S. Kingwell and written for the Talking Machine World, 1915 |
The Phonograph and the Graft by O. Henry McClure's Magazine, February 1903 (Disclaimer) |
|||||
|
||||||
The Jukebox Man by Jacqueline K. Ogburn, 1998 |
Good Night Sesame Streetm by David Korr and Michael J. Smollin, 1978 |
What Happened To Mary, Episodes I and VII, August 1912 and January 1913 |
||||
Dead Musicians poem by Siegfried Sassoon, 1918 |
The Phonograph Witness. A Drama in Five Acts by George W. Hill, 1883 |
|||||
How among the frozen words Pantagruel found some odd ones, by Francois Rabelais, 1653 |
Round the Fire: VIII The Story of the Japanned Box, by A. Conan Doyle, 1899
|
|||||
Mr. Openeer's Christmas, The Phonoscope, November 1899 |
The Phonogram, June 1900 |
How We Gave a Phonograph Party The Phonoscope,1899 |
||||
The Phonograph in Country Towns The Phonogram, October 1891 |
The Fateful Phonograph: Or, The Younger Brother's Revenge From the Chicago Tribune as seen in The Red Cloud Chief p. 2, January 29, 1880
Newspaper image provided by University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Lincoln, NE |
The Valentines' Victrola by Harriet Lummis Smith, 1919 |
The Magic of Melody by Edgar March - Maclean's Magazine, August 15, 1933 |
|||
Pleasures of Music by Jacques Barzun, 1951. |
Black Hole Blues by Janna Levin, 2016 |
|||||
The Revenge of Analog by David Sax, 2016 |
Keeping Time by Tim Dooley, 2008 |
No Escape from Black Holes? by Dennis Overbye - The New York Times June 6, 2016 |
||||
"Columbia and Victor" - A Vaudeville Act, 1918 |
The Big Book of Time by William Edmonds, 1994 |
|||||
Lost in the Grooves - Love letters to Albums by Cooper & Smay, 2005 |
Hauntiques by Thomas Kingsley Troupe, 2016 |
The Phonograph in Le Trocaderoscope, Paris, 1878 |
||||
Just Imagine by Nick Sharrat and Pippa Goodhart, 2014 |
Phantoms & Phonographs by Ami Diane, 2019
|
|||||
Art & Max by David Wiesner, 2010 |
Hail to Grandmas by Dana Moseley, San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle, 1985 |
|||||
The Phonograph on the Side of Justice and Truth - A French Play, c. 1891, The Talking Machine World, 1907 |
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, 2014 |
McBroom's Ghost by Sid Fleischman, 1971 |
"Fair Fiction" PhonoLiterature (2)
Samantha at the World's Fair by Josiah Allen's Wife,1893
|
The Century World's Fair Book for Boys and Girls by Tudor Jenks, 1893
|
|||||
Love and Other Consolation Prizes - Seattle World's Fairs 1909 and 1962 |
Welcome to Samantha's World 1904 |
Phonographia