Pictures of D. K. Broster: an important poll

[regshoe]

Background: I have recently started editing Wikipedia, and I'm really enjoying this new-found power. I can add a link to the new gay musical Kidnapped adaptation to the book's article! I can make sure everyone reading about Archibald Cameron knows he appears in Flight of the Heron! And one of the things I'd like to do is to add some more stuff and a photograph to D. K. Broster's article, which is nice and informative but which looks a bit bare at the moment.

I've come across several pictures of her in the various research I've been doing, and I thought it'd be nice to share them with all of you; and it could serve the additional purpose of helping me choose which one to use for the Wikipedia page. So here goes:

Photo 1. was printed in The Bookman vol. 66 issue 395, August 1924, although the photograph itself must be quite a bit earlier based on how young she looks—given the academic dress, perhaps her student days in the late 1890s?

Photo 2. was printed in The Illustrated London News vol. 165 issue 4,467, December 1924.

Photo 3. was printed in The Junior Book of Authors, 1934.

Photo 4. (top middle picture) was printed in The Home: An Australian Quarterly vol. 18 no. 2, February 1937. It shows Broster at a literary party given by Heinemann, her publishers.

Photo 5. was printed in The Dictionary of Literary Biography, British Children’s Writers 1914-1960, 1996 (more access-restricted than the older sources; you may need to use the Log In And Borrow button to view the picture, although I hope not). Obviously that publication is long afterwards, but I think it's probably the latest of these photos.

Poll #28688

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 22

View Respondents

Which is your favourite photo of D. K. Broster?

View Answers

1. The Bookman, 1924
5 (22.7%)

2. The Illustrated London News, 1924
11 (50.0%)

3. The Junior Book of Authors, 1934
10 (45.5%)

4. The Home, 1937
4 (18.2%)

5. The Dictionary of Literary Biography, 1996
3 (13.6%)

Another photo of which I was unaware; tell me about it in a comment!
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[liriaen]

With option 1, I went “whoa is that Aleister Crowley up there on top?!” Hahaha! My eyes.

[regshoe]

Hee, I had not paid any attention to the other pictures :D That is a rather dramatically-lit one.

[dr_zook]

Ha, no! That's Mr... Oliver Onions. Wow, what a name. :D

[liriaen]

Oliver Onions!!!? Who had the 1980 #1 hit in Germany and other European countries, ’Santa Maria’? That’s insane!! (Yeah, yeah, alright.)

[dr_zook]

OMG!! What's his sidekick looking for in that fish trap-- his balls?? Sounds like they went missing indeed!

[liriaen]

That was a massive hit, I’ll have you know, young’un. Also successfully covered by Roland Kaiser.

[dr_zook]

I do remember vaguely indeed... thank you (?) for unearthing that memory, haha. :*

[sanguinity]

Will you have free choice of these photos, or do you have to take pub-date into account?

She looks so stern in all her photos!

Editing wikipedia is great fun -- until you end up in an edit war with some yahoo who won't even read the sources links you supply! I used to do a ton of wikipedia editing a couple of decades back, before I burned out arguing with yahoos. Now I mostly only lift my hand to it when someone is egregiously wrong on Wikipedia omg.

...or, y'know, when Hornblower needs his most embarrassing nickname added to his Wikipedia page. ;-)

P.S. I like you Wikipedia handle.

[regshoe]

I think I have free choice—I've been reading the rules about using copyrighted pictures and it seems you are allowed to with certain restrictions (it's only in that one article, it's not usurping the purpose of the original image, etc.).

Oh dear, I have not got into any edit wars yet, kind of hoping it stays that way...

Looking up Hornblower, I am very amused to see that when I start typing his name into the Wikipedia search bar he's the second Horatio suggested, after Nelson XD But I can't tell which is the most embarrassing nickname?

P.S. I like you Wikipedia handle.

Hee, thank you! Regshoe was taken, and they wouldn't let me slightly modify it, so I had to think of something else.

[sanguinity]

Edit wars are more frequent in some parts of Wikipedia than others. I burned out on correcting Native American stuff, where editors kept quoting old racist books as an authority that superseded what the tribes themselves have to say.

Embarrassing nicknames: Horny, as he is called by his shipmates. Although canonically he's more embarrassed to be called Horry (which you might not have seen yet?)

[regshoe]

Ah, I see (and that is horrible, I'm sorry you had to deal with it!). Yeah, I think I'll stick to fairly low-stakes topics at least for now...

Huh, I had assumed that Horny would not have the sexual meaning at that period (I don't think I've ever encountered it outside the internet, so I'd sort of categorised it as 'probably very recent and/or American'), but the OED has examples going back to the 1880s, and a slang term might well be quite a bit older than its earliest written example, so perhaps it does! No, I don't think I've come across Horry yet. I think perhaps he should be nicknamed Ratio, because he's so good at mathematical calculating?

[sanguinity]

I can't speak for Forester's accuracy, but at least as used in the books, Horny doesn't appear to have sexual connotations. But that doesn't stop the sniggers among the contemporary audience. Hell, Hornblower itself causes sniggers among the contemporary audience.

'Ratio is more common on the TV side of the fandom, since it's used in the TV series. Partly because first names are used more freely in the TV show, but presumably also because Horny was deemed too distracting to modern audiences... ;-)

[dr_zook]

Yay for making that Wiki entry top-notch! 🥳

[regshoe]

:D

[liriaen]

I’d be really curious if there are any photos of hers in the public domain that show her as anything less than stern and statuesque.

[regshoe]

I have not found any yet! I suppose stern seriousness was the proper attitude for Official Author Photos in those days, or perhaps she just wasn't very fond of getting her photo taken.

[sovay]

Photo 1 is the least authorly-looking, therefore I like it best for purposes of Wikipedia.

[regshoe]

That's fair!

[tgarnsl]

I hope you don't mind me adding but Photo 1 — given that I think I can see her M.A. hood, I suspect it may be closer to 1924 than her student days. I assume she eventually received her full qualification for her B.A./M.A. when Oxford finally allowed women to graduate in 1920 (woo-hoo. /s) Contemporary photos of the first female graduates show many of them with the white fur-trimmed BA hoods, which hers does not appear to be.

...and once again I show I know too much about University dress.

[regshoe]

Ooh, good detective work, thank you! Yes, she received her M.A. in 1920, amongst the first women graduates at Oxford—this photo could well have been taken then (I thought she looked younger than that, but it is difficult to tell in a grainy black-and-white photo).

[luzula]

Your detective work is really giving some good results! But hmm, if there were pictures of her in journals in 1924, how does that square with people thinking her books were written by a man?

[regshoe]

It's being a good project! I don't know—some people definitely did think she was a man, though I don't know if the mistake was really all that widespread (I've come across it a few times in my research). I guess they just hadn't seen those journals?

[luzula]

Of course--if one happened to miss those journal issues, it's not like one could search the web. : )

[black_bentley]

She looks very stern in all of those!

And, speaking of Kidnapped, I got tickets :DDD

[regshoe]

I know! Perhaps that was the way to do Official Author Photos back then, or perhaps she just didn't much like getting her photo taken.

And, speaking of Kidnapped, I got tickets :DDD

Aah, hooray :D

[sanguinity]

Oo! I hope you'll do a write-up of the show for those of us who can't travel to see it!

[black_bentley]

I'm not sure I'm terribly good at write-ups (especially when I enjoy something, I have no idea what to say... /o\) but I'll do my best!

I'm going to one of the Edinburgh performances, so it's in a few weeks' time :DDD

[sanguinity]

Ah! No pressure, if write-ups aren't your thing -- I don't want to introduce any stress into the occasion! Enjoy yourself, have a good time, and I'll just sit here gently expiring from envy. :-)

[starshipfox]

I love all the research you've done on Broster, and it's brilliant to be able to compare these pictures!

[regshoe]

It's a fun project, and yes, it certainly is :)