Jewish Deportations -- Periods Of Captivitiy -- Three -- 605 / 597 / 587 BC

 

 

If we use the dates, 600 - 580 BC, that's an incredible "narrow period of time" in the big scheme of things. But it's much more complicated than that: AI prompt: 

Historians divide the Jewish / Biblical / Babylonian deportations into three events (605, 597, and 587) -- this is an incredibly short period of time -- about 20 - 30 years. Could one argue that from the perspective of the average Jew, he and/or his family was constantly o the move during those thirty years? 

Greeks and Egyptians during this period of time.

During this period, the Greeks were in a period of development, Greek city-states were rising; developing its political systems, including the first democracy in Athens. This period is marked by the rise of Greek civilization.

The Babylonians at this time: the Chaldean Empire, the last independent Mesopotamian power and was at its height around 600 BC under rulers like Nebuchadnezzar II.

So, the Jews were "squeezed" by the Babylonians to the east/south and the Egyptians to the west. Egypt and Babylonian empires were fighting for control of the Levant. Egypt installed vassal kings in Judah to try to hold back the Babylonians / Chaldeans.

This period, 605 - 580 BC: three periods of captivity / deportations of the Jews:  

• first deportation, 605 BC: the prophet Daniel was taken in this first wave;
• the poorest of the poor stayed behind; 
• famine, think Gaza these days; a significant portion of the population stayed behind;
• second deportation: 597 BC: the prophet Ezekial was taken in this second wave.
• following a subsequent rebellion by King Jehoiakim and the short reign of his son Jehoiachin, Nebuchadnezzar besieged / captured Jersulaem, exiled the King Jehoiachin and the prophet Ezekial, and thousands of the wealthiest, influential, and skillful craftsmen.
• third deportation: 587 BC: after the final rebellion by King Zedekiah, the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and Solomon's Temple; 
• the majority of the remaining population was forcibly removed to Babylon. This was when Jeremiah had had enough and fled to Egypt, somewhere between 585 to 582 BC.

Some escaped deportation to Babylon by fleeing to Egypt -- including the prophet Jeremiah, around  585 - 582 BC.

Jeremiah:

• b. 650 BC, Anathoth, Judah, a village near Jerusalem;
• began his ministry around 627 BC
• fled to Egypt: 585, he would have been 65 years old by the time he fled?
• taken there forcibly by a group of Judeans
• death: after 587 BC -- traditional date: 570 BC -- 80 years old? Wow?

Cosmo Sapiens: Human Evolution From The Origin Of The Universe -- John Hands -- c. 2016

Cosmo Sapiens: Human Evolution From The Origin Of The Universe -- John Hands -- c. 2016

Chapter 31. Conclusions and Reflections on the Emergence and Evolution of Humans.

 

1. Human anatomical and genetic characteristics differ only in degree from those of other primates. What distinguishes us .....reflective consciousness ... not only does an adult modern human know but also it knows that it knows.

2. This is key .... the emergence of reflective consciousness -- was not merely degree but it marked a change of kind from the evolution of inanimate matter.

3. It is not possible to trace the lineage of the rise of consciousness to the point that consciousness became conscious of itself from a specific prehuman ancestor.

4. 

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

28.1

28.2

28.3

28.4 

28.5

29.

29.1

29.2

29.3

29.4

29.5

29.6

30.

30.1

30.2

30.3

30.4

31.

32..

33. 

34.

35. While humans have been shaped by their genetic inheritance and their cultural environment, their possession of self-reflective consciousness has given them a unique capacity to transcend both. 

Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and The World, Malcolm Harris, c. 2023

Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and The World, Malcolm Harris, c. 2023.

This book inspired me to re-read the history of California. Along the way, I learned a lot of new words, and a lot of new jargon. 

Book for the weekend. Just arrived. Amazon. Published 2023. 

Author's bio. Something tells me this will be a history of Palo Alto of which few are aware. LOL. 

The author appears to be a bit farther to the left than Nancy Pelosi, and a bit crazier than Hunter S Thompson. This should be fun! 

Introduction and first few pages of chapter 1: really, really good writing. I'm impressed.

Chapter 1.1
To Whom Time Is Money

Dates:

• 1789: George Washington inaugurated as first US president; beginning of French Revolution/ 
• '49ers: 1849: gold discovered
• 1859: Nevada, silver discovered
• 1869: Transcontinental Railroad completed
• 1889: North and South Dakota statehood
• 1899 -- three wars --
• Spanish-American war: ends; Treaty of Paris
• Philippine-American war begins
• Second Boer War in South Africa begins 
•  
• 1919: end of WWI; Treaty of Versailles signed 
• 1969: first man on the moon; Bruce graduates from high school
• 1929: the Great Crash
• 1939: Germans invade Poland; generally considered to be the start of WWII
• 1989: fall of the Berlin Wall; generally considered the end of the Cold War 
• 1999: eve of the "Y2K" problem 

Ohlone Indians.
General John C. Fremont
San Francisco Bay: South Bay
the short-lived Bear Republic -- p. 12 - 13
Johann Sutter, p. 19 -- Sacramento Valley, via Vancouver, Hawaii; from Europe
introduced the concept of time to the Indians; the bell;
1848: James Marshall, working for Sutter, found gold
Andres Castillero; land grant to an ancient cinnabar (mercury ore) mine

Mercury helps isolate gold by forming an amalgam, a mixture where mercury dissolves gold from crushed ore. After mixing the finely powdered ore with mercury, the amalgam is heated, which vaporizes the mercury and leaves behind the gold. This process, often called amalgamation, was historically used to separate gold from other materials.

The practice of using mercury to isolate gold is not attributed to a single discoverer, as the technique was developed independently in different cultures. The Incas in the Andes used mercury amalgamation to refine gold for centuries before its use in Europe, and the technique was also known in ancient Greece. However, the large-scale industrial use of mercury amalgamation for ore processing began with Bartolomé de Medina in 1554 in Mexico for silver, a process later adapted for gold. 

explanation of how the '49ers affected the Alta California Indians way of life as opposed to the Spanish and the Mexicans.

"placer" (river bottom sand / sandstone) first mention, p. 17, along with jumping claims

the quick history of California statehood; via compromise to balance Texas; 

The Compromise of 1850 was a legislative package that addressed the issue of slavery after California applied for statehood as a free state, which threatened the balance between free and slave states. The compromise admitted California as a free state, established a Texas-New Mexico boundary, and organized the Utah and New Mexico territories under popular sovereignty, while also abolishhing the slave trade in Washington, DC, and enacting a stricter Fugitive Slave Act.

 1850: the Foreign Miners' Tax Act, p. 17.

Interesting, bottom of page 18 and top of page 19: Louisiana senator Judah P Benjamin. Connects with Fremont.

The story of how Americans literally took all this land from Mexico without any formal treaty. Of course, that begs the question, how did Spain, and then Mexico, acquire this land in the first place?

Plantation economy, p. 19. 

Bottom of page 19: capitalist work around the world.

"The Age of Empire was dead." p. 20.

"Beginning in the 1840's the whole world became a British colony." -- p. 20.

British economic system -- need to quote -- genericity -- not in the dictionary -- p. 20. Even Google Gemini cannot answer the question.

Amadeo Giannini, The Bank of Italy / Bank of America. Story begins on page 33 -- but his story begins a page or two earlier.

Chapter 1.1 completed. An incredible chapter.

Chapter 1.2
The Combine
Leland Stanford 

Lelad Stanford: a slacker. Born, 1824, Albany, NY. The fourth of seven sons.

Grandfather, Lyman Stanford, fortune with a shop near a toll-road stop along the  Erie Canal. 

Eldest brother, Josiah, Jr, first of the sons to go out west; was a forty-niner. Wow. Made him money selling shovels, not panning for gold.

Leland was the last brother to get out to California.

Michigan City --> Michigan Bluff (Placer County). Wiki. 

Midway between Sacramento and Reno. The town was founded by gold miners. Mining began in earnest in 1853, and town was shipping $100,000 in gold per month by 1858. Leland Stanford ran a store in the town from 1853 to 1855. After hydraulic mining was banned, the town entered decline. The town is now registered as California Historical Landmark #402.

Leland started a tavern.

Rose to governor for one two-year term.

Moved to Sacramento.

The Associates: Leland Stanford and three fellow shopkeepers. Associates were abstemious.

Luck: Leland was GOP, and Abraham Lincoln had just been elected president.

1859: New-York Tribune founding editor and leading Republican Horace Greeley -- went out to California via Yosemite. Became huge railroad proponent.

Story of the transcontinental railroad.

Sierra Nevadas.

The Gadsen Purchase.

Theodore Judah: railroad engineer from Troy, NY.

The Associates raised a piddly $20,000 to execute Judah's plan.

Leland: governor, 1861 - 1863. Called himself governor for the rest of his life.

Civil wars at that time: China, Mexico, US, and the beginnings of Japan.  

1862: Pacific Railway Act -- chartered the Union Pacific to build west from the Missouri River (ultimately from Omaha, NE) and the Central Pacific to build to the east until they met somewhere in the middle.

1864: the Pacific Railway Act of 1864. 

1869: Ogden, Utah. Central Pacific meets the Union Pacific. Laid telegraph lines at the same time!

Money from around the world poured into the railroad scheme. 

Global financial upset things, 1873.

Railroads folded. Central Pacific survived; owners -- the Associates-controlled railroad subsume the Central, earning the budding monopoly the Combine (combined the Central Pacific with the Southern Pacific). 

The Combine was an octopus: timber, communications, wine, mining, large commodity farmers, fruit growers, stage coach lines, and wheat exporters. Frank Norris and the Associates: 1901 novel, The Octopus. Wiki. The Octopus and the Story of California.

Then the story of The Octopus, 1880s fictionalized account, Mussel Slough, an irrigation ditch in California's wheatful Central Valley. Leland Stanford was a very, very bad man. Makes me think of Noah Cross in Chinatown. 

Then several pages on joint-stock ownership. Fascinating. Need to read again and again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sailed  

 

 

 

 

Like a Rolling Stone: A Memoir, Jann S Wenner, September 13, 2022.

 Like a Rolling Stone: A Memoir, Jann S Wenner, September 13, 2022. 

Part One: Beginnings

Chapter 1 -- Rainbow Road 

rural suburbs of San Rafael, CA -- county seat, Marin County

Ruth Naomi "Sim" Simmons
Edward Wenner

Originally NYC

US military during WWII -- stateside
she: New Orleans, a quartermaster, US Navy
he: Lt, Monroe, LA -- Army Air Corps; taught pilots how to bomb targets

Married, 1943 -- NYC

Jann b. January 7, 1946.

At the edge of the generation that would become:
the largest,
the best educated,
the wealthiest
in American history.

 

In NYC, his pediatrician -- Dr Spock.

Parents started a company in the Bay Area -- BABY FORMULAS

custom-made bottles of formulas for Bay Area hospitals

Two sisters:
Kate, b. 1947;
Martha, b. 1949

Jann was a problem child; expelled from school early on, twice 

His parents, with others, founded Marin Country Day -- private school

Summer camp: Camp Lagunitas -- rented later by the Grateful Dead

Mother: Democrat activist; with Alan Cranston
ultimately led to Pat Brown, Jerry Brown

First record player he recalls: 78 rpm GARRARD!!

BABY FORMULAS: ultimately 90% of all babies within 125 miles of San Francisco hospitals -- p. 9

Mentioned Robert Heinlein -- p. 9

 

A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens, 1855

A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens, 1855.

Gutenberg Project. In PDF, full book here. 

Set in London, Paris, 1775 -- one year before 1776.

• April 19, 1775: battles of Lexington and Concord
• July 4, 1776: Declaration of Independence

France:

• King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette
• archduchess of Austria, Vienna; major principality of Holy Roman Empire
• last queen of France before the fall of the monarchy
• 15th child of Empress Maria Theresa, ruler of the Hapsburg monarchy
• Maria Theresa's husband: Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor

England:

• King George III
• Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz
• bor into the ruling family; Hanover
• married for 57 years; 15 children; 13 survived into adulthood

Book The First
Recalled To Life

 Chapter 1
The Period

Very first page; second paragraph: reference to the events in America (1775)

""Sister of the shield and trident" refers to Britannia, the female personification of Britain. The phrase is most famously used by Charles Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities to compare Britain to France, with the shield representing military strength and the trident symbolizing naval power. 

Second page: grisly scene of a teenager burned alive before being tortured, and the the description of the guillotine. 

The first chapter, only two and a half pages, gives an overview of London and Paris. French monarchy in absolute control; the British monarchy apparently can't control London. 

Chapter 2
The Mail

This chapter introduces the protagonist of the story, a passenger in a carriage -- The Dover Mail -- likely traveling from Dover to London. Shooter's Hill is mentioned, located in southeast London, southside of the Thames, and on the southeast edge of Greenwich.

The passenger of interest: Mr Jarvis Lorry.

Apparently The Dover Mail was heading out of London when a rider, Jerry, approached the carriage to give Mr Lorry a message. Lorry was an employee off Tellson's Bank.

Message: wait at Dover for Mam'selle.

Reply from Lorry: recalled to life.

So, Mr Jarvis Lorry, of Tellson's Bank was heading to Dover (probably to Paris) when he was urgently recalled to London by his employer. But he would have to go to Dover -- complete the route -- and then wait for "Mam'selle." 

Chapter 3
The Night Shadows 

 "The shadows of the night," page 17, back to the carriage on the southeast side of London. It sounds like "Lorry" is transporting cash to Dover, probably to France. Interesting name, "Lorry," as a transporter. Etymology of lorry: apparently first seen in England in 1830. A Tale Of Two Cities was published in 1859. 

Lorry with an imaginary conversation with himself. He was 45 years old, remembering a death / a burial eighteen years earlier. Huge amount of symbolism. A very "difficult" vignette / an imaginary conversation. Apparenlty talking about someone buried alive for 18 years.  

Important books published between 1850 and 1870 include Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities (1859) and Great Expectations (1861), Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace (1869), and Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865). Other key publications were Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859) and John Stuart Mill's On Liberty (1859). 

Chapter 4
The Preparation

The coach is called the Concord coach, possibly named after Concord, New Hampshire. This might be the coach in which he will cross using the ferry from Dover.

It is incredibly difficult for Google Gemini to find the meaning of "drawer" in this chapter.

"... digging, digging, digging." Reappears -- major use of this phrase in previous chapter.

Mam'selle, Miss Manette, arrives by coach to meet Mr Lorry in the restaurant.

Not more than 17 years of age. She reminds him of a passage a very long time ago, perhaps 15. years ago. 

Miss Manette was told by letter by the bank to meet Mr Lorry in Paris for an inheritance from her long-dead father. Tellson Bank is a bank of both Paris and London.

Page 25: "curtsied in those days." Takes place in 1755, first chapter begins in "winter, 1755." The book as published in 1859. Almost exactly one hundred years later. 

Apparently Miss Manette's father has been found alive, 18 years after his supposed death -- "brought back to life... after 18 years."

At end of chapter another woman servant runs into the room and yells at other servants to get Ms Manette packed for trip to Paris.

Mr Lorry seems to be robot business man.

Chapter 5
The Wine-Shop

Now in Paris. Opens with bizarre episode of wine casket spilling.

Paris: everyone starving.

Opens in wine-shop / inn / bar. In the Sait Antoin district.

Monsieur Defarge -- wine-store owner.

Worked for Ms Maette's father many, many years earlier

Her old father lives upstairs.

 

 

 

Scotland's Second Sight

Link here.

Wiki. 

AI prompt: 

How does Robert Kirk describe "second sight" in "The Secret Commonwealth" (1961)?

 "Second sight" is specifically related to Scotland.

"Second sight" is a subset -- primary cultural -- of "the sixth sense," of ESP. 

 

Paraphrasing Samuel Johnson --

From the inroduction, p. xvii, Everyman's Library, Johnson and Boswell:

How would you interpret this paragraph written by Samuel Johnson: Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses; whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking begins. Far from me and from my friends, be such frigid philosophy as ay conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any groud which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. That man is little to be envied, whose patiotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose peity would ot grow warmer among the ruins of Iona.

 

Modern paraphrase: Anything that lifts our minds above the immediate pull of our senses—anything that lets the past, the far-off, or the future outweigh the present—raises us toward the dignity of true thought. Let me and my friends never be so coldly rational that we could walk, indifferent and unmoved, over places hallowed by wisdom, courage, or virtue. A person deserves little admiration whose patriotism is not stirred on the plain of Marathon, or whose piety does not deepen among the ruins of Iona.

Explaation, plain language:

“Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses…” 
Johnson says that true thinking begins when we rise above immediate, physical sensations and let memory, imagination, and reflection guide us. 

He rejects a “frigid philosophy.” He doesn’t want a cold, emotionless outlook that treats historical or sacred places as ordinary ground. 

Great places should move us. A truly appreciative mind should feel stirred:
Marathon = site of the famous battle where Athenians resisted Persian invasion; symbol of courage and freedom. 

Iona = an early center of Christian learning and spirituality in Scotland. 

His point: A person who feels nothing in such places is missing an essential human response—patriotism, reverence, imagination, connection to history.

In essence

Johnson is saying:

A mature mind should be capable of rising above the senses, and a worthy heart should be moved by places where great human deeds or spiritual acts occurred.

Samuel Johnson: A Journey to the Western Islands AND James Boswell, The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides

I first came across this book in the early 2000s. I forget exactly when; it gained more poignancy for me after I spent several weeks (months?) in northern England between 2002 and 2004. 

Samuel Johnson:  A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, the heart of England; James Boswell, The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, born in Edinburgh, Scotland; the heart of Scotland. 

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The Book Page

Johnson's Boswell

Transition to Romanticism ("Johnson's Boswell") 

From a biography of Samuel Johnson.

• Johnson was the old man, the established writer.
• Boswell was just starting out.

“They (Samuel Johnson and Boswell) first met in the back parlour of Tom Davies’s bookshop on the afternoon of Monday, 16 May 1763.  

Johnson was born in 1709, so Johnson was 54 and Boswell was 24.  If Johnson had been born in 1680 and Boswell in 1710, the difference between them would merely have been the difference between youth and middle age; but since Johnson’s birth date was 1709 and Boswell’s 1740 they are separated by one of those seismic cracks in the historical surface. 

Boswell is a new man in Johnson’s world; he (Boswell) belongs to the epoch of Rousseau (Romanticism; whereas Johnson was still classical); all the attitudes that we associate with the end of the eighteenth century – the onset of ‘sensibility,’ the obsession with the individual and the curious, the swelling tide of subjective emotion – are strongly present in him. Where Johnson still belongs to the world of Aristotle and Aquinas, the world of the giant system-builders, Boswell inhabits the ruins of that world. Where Johnson instinctively proceeds by erecting a framework and then judging the particular instance in relation to that framework, Boswell is the sniffing bloodhound who will follow the scent of individuality into whatever territory it leads him. The fascination of their dialogue, that dialogue of mind, heart and voice round which Boswell organized his great Life, is that is it not merely between two very different men but between two epochs.  In its pages, Romantic Europe speaks to Renaissance Europe, and is answered.” – Samuel Johnson, A Biography, John Wain, p. 229 – 230.

But the book today -- November 14, 2025, actually two books, in one volume, from Everyman's Library, #253, c. 2002:

• Samuel Johnson:  A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, the heart of England;
• James Boswell, The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. born in Edinburgh, Scotland; the heart of Scotland.

The journey, 1773, three years before the US Revolution (1776); August - November. 

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Notes

Introduction

Johnson: melancholy, "Black Dog," 
Boswell: young, Romanticist

At the time of the journey, 1773, Johnson in his 60s; Boswell in his 20s. 

Macpherson (Scottish); Ossian, Earse

Johnson's recollection and Jacobites

• Stuart restoration 
• Jacobite rising of 1745: wiki.

The terms refer to two distinct events: the Jacobite Restoration, which was the reinstatement of the Stuart monarchy in 1660 under Charles II, and the Jacobite Uprisings, a series of unsuccessful rebellions from 1689 to 1746 that aimed to restore the deposed Stuart line (the "Jacobites") to the British throne after the Glorious Revolution. The "restoration" was a successful return to monarchy, while the Jacobite efforts were a series of failed attempts to reverse the 1688 deposition of James II and VII. 

The Clearances: wiki. 1750 - 1860 -- so in 1773, Johnson was right in the middle of it, but touring the islands would not have seen much (if any) of it.

The Highland Clearances were the forced evictions of tens of thousands of tenants in the Scottish Highlands and Islands, primarily between 1750 and 1860 . Landowners, seeking higher incomes, replaced small-scale farming with large sheep farms, displacing crofters who were often forced to emigrate overseas or move to the coastal areas for work in industries like fishing or kelp harvesting. The evictions were often brutal, with homes being burned and families separated, leading to starvation, hardship, and a massive wave of emigration.

Economy: in short, the Highlands and Island had begun to move from an economic system which was regulated by a sense of mutual obligations to one in which the relationship between landlord and tenant was expressed in cash. Through the Clearances and from the consequences of the failure of the 1745 uprising were very real. Page xvi. Mass emigration had already begun; in fact, Flora Macdonald and her husband left for America shortly after the Johnson-and-Boswell visit. 

Aphorism: "They make a desert and call it peace. Page xvii.

Iona: the crade of Christianity in Scotland where St Columba built a monastery, lived and died. Iona moved both men deeply. For Johnson: provoked what is surely the prime justification of travel, p. xvii.

Link here.

I often feel / sense exactly what  Johnson / Boswell sensed when they visited those holy places and the Highlands and the Islands of Scotland when I am walking at night (sometimes also during the day) on a beautiful night with clear skies and looking at the stars realizing that we -- on earth -- may be the only such intelligent life on a multi-colored rock -- in the universe. It is almost overwhelming what goes through my mind at that time. I am only able to hold that thought for seconds. It is so overwhelming, so powerful, I cannot hold that thought for more than a few seconds, certainly less than a minute.

 

 

The Rings Of Saturn, W. G. Sebald, Translated By Michael Hulse, c. 1995, German; English Translation, 1998

The Rings Of Saturn, W. G. Sebald, Translated By Michael Hulse, c. 1995, German; English Translation, 1998

From the book jacket: 

A fictional account of a walking tour through England's East Anglia, Sebald's home for more than twenty years. The Rings of Saturn explores Britin's pastoral and imperial past. Its ten strange and beautiful chapters, with their curious archive of photographs, consider dreams and reality. As the narrator walks, a company of ghosts keeps him company -- Thomas Browne, Swinburne, Chateaubriand, Joseph Conrad, Borges -- conductors between the past and the present.

Chapter I

In August 1992 when the dog days were drawing to an end, I set off to walk the county of Suffolk, in the hope of dispelling the emptiness that takes hold of me whenever I have completed a long stint of work. 

Chapter II

It was on a grey, overcast day in August 1992 that I travelled down to the coast in one of the old diesel trains, grimed with oil and soot up to the windows, which ran from Norwich to Lowestoft at that time. 

Chapter III

Three or four miles south of Lowestoft the coastline curves gently into the land.

Chapter IV

The rain clouds had dispersed when, after dinner, I took my first walk around the streets and lanes of the town.

Chapter V

On the second evening of my stay in Southwold, after the late news, the BBC broadcast a documentary about Roger Casement, who was executed in a London prison in 1916 for high treason.

Chapter VI

Not far from the coast, between Southwold and Walberswick, a narrown iron bridge crosses the river Blyth where a long time ago shiops heavily lade with wool made their way seaward.

Chapter VII

It had grown uncommonly sultry and dark when at midday, after resting on the beach, I climbed to Dunwich Heath, which lies forlorn above the sea.

Chapter VIII

The day after my visit to Middleton I fell into conversationt with a Dutchman named Cornelis de Jong in the bar of the Crown Hotel in Southwold. 

 Chapter IX

After Oxford, I headed inland travelling on one of the Eastern Counties Omnibus Company's red buses, going through Woodbridge to Yoxford where I set out on foot in a north-westerly direction along the old Roman road, into the thinly populated countryside that lies to the south of Harleston.

Chapter X

Amongst the miscellaneous papers left by Sir Thomas Browne treating such diverse subjects as practical and ornamental horticulture, the urns found at Brampton in Norfolk, the making of artificial hills and burrows, the several plants mentioned in Scripture, the Saxon tongue, the pronouncements of the Oracle at Delphos, the fish eaten by our Savior, the behaviour of insects, hawks and falconry, and a case of boulimia centenaris which occurred in Yarmouth, amongth these and various other tracts, there is also to be found a catalogue of remarkable books, Musæum Clausum or Bibliotheca Abscondita listing pictures, antiquities and sundry singular items that may have formed part of a collection put together by Browne but were more likely products of his imagination, the inventory of a treasure house that existed purely in his head and to which there is no access except through the letters on the page.  

See this link. 

Sir Thomas Browne, physician, 1605 - 1682 (who was born about a decade before William Shakespeare died). Describes bulimia in a woman who was 100 years old.

 

 

100 Best or 100 Most Important Or 100 "Something"

Some years ago, some contributor provided this list over at Reddit. I'm not sure exactly how the poll was worded, but this is the contributor's "top" 100 books. 

I've highlighted in bold those that I have had in my personal library at least for some years before I ran out of shelves and donated them to others. 

• Ulysses, Joyce
• Hamlet, Shakespeare
• Moby Dick, Melville
• In Search of Lost Time, Proust
• The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevsky
• Don Quixote, Cervantes
• Anna Karenina, Tolstoy
• Lolita, Nabokov
• Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon
• Blood Meridian, McCarthy
• Ficciones, Borges
• 100 Years of Solitude, Garcia Marquez
• Infinite Jest, Wallace
• Stoner, Williams -- I've seen this book fairly often at discount book stores, have paged through it, at the recommendation of the owner of the story, but have never bought it or read more than a few pages.
• The Trilogy, Beckett
• The Divine Comedy, Dante
• The Trial, Kafka
• East of Eden, Steinbeck
• King Lear, Shakespeare
• Odyssey, Homer
• To the Lighthouse, Woolf
• Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky
• War and Peace, Tolstoy
• The Recognitions, Gaddis
• 2666, Bolano
• Catch-22, Heller
• Journey to the End of the Night, Celine
• Pale Fire, Nabokov
• The Magic Mountain, Mann
• Paradise Lost, Milton
• Middlemarch, Elliot
• Mason & Dixon, Pynchon
• Iliad, Homer
• The Remains of the Day, Ishiguro
• The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner
• The Stranger, Camus
• The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer
• The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde
• Macbeth, Shakespeare
• If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, Calvino
• Wuthering Heights, Brontë
• The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald
• Aeneid, Vergil
• Frankenstein, Shelley
• Siddhartha, Hesse
• Beloved, Morrison
• The Waves, Woolf
• Othello, Shakespeare
• Giovanni's Room, Balwin
• Madame Bovary, Flaubert
• Tale of Genji, Murasaki Shikibu
• Heart of Darkness, Conrad
• The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck
• Slaughterhouse-V, Vonnegut
• Invisible Cities, Calvino
• The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien
  The Flowers of Evil, Baudelaire
• Leaves of Grass, Whitman
• The Plague, Camus
  The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, Mishima
• The Savage Detectives, Bolano
• Pride and Prejudice, Austen
• Absalom, Absalom, Faulkner
• Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf
• Invisible Man, Ellison
• Native Son, Wright
• Jane Eyre, Brontë
• The Tunnel, Gass
• Dubliners, Joyce
• J R, Gaddis
• The Man Without Qualities, Musil
• Suttree, McCarthy
• Finnegans Wake, Joyce
• The Metamorphosis, Kafka
• The Master and Margarita, Bulgakov
• Satantango, Krasznahorkai
• Oresteia, Aeschylus
  The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway
• Underworld, DeLillo
• The Count of Monte Cristo, Dumas
• Under the Volcano, Lowry
  For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hemingway
• Midnight's Children, Rushdie
• Les Miserables, Hugo
  A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce
• The Rings of Saturn, Sebald
• My Struggle, Knausgaard
• The Left Hand of Darkness, LeGuin
• The Last Samurai, DeWitt
• Metamorphoses, Ovid
  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain
• Night Wood, Barnes
• Faust, Goethe
  Post-Humous Memoirs of Bras Cubas, Machado de Assisi
• Things Fall Apart, Achebe
  The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy Gentleman, Sterne
• The Tartar Steppe, Buzzati
• Life: A User's Manual, Perec
• Dead Souls, Gogol
• Emma, Austen      

To this list I would add:

• Fear and Loathing In America or Hell's Angels, Hunter S Thompson
• Catcher in the Rye, Salinger
• The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer
• A Journal of the Plague Year, Daniel Defoe
• The Portrait of A Lady, Henry James
• The Beast in the Jungle, Henry James
• Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, John Le Carré

The Rings of Saturn also showed up at this link at The [London] Telegraph.

Journal -- Notes -- Shakespeare -- Neville -- James Joyce -- Northeast Monarchy -- The Gulf -- An American Sea

The Real Shakespeare:  Sir Henry Neville

James Joyce bio 

British monarchy: pictorial history

Northeast monarchy

The Gulf: An American Sea