This is incredibly cool:

The Old Bailey Proceedings Online makes available a fully searchable, digitised collection of all surviving editions of the Old Bailey Proceedings from 1674 to 1913, and of the Ordinary of Newgate’s Accounts, 1690 to 1772. It allows access to over 210,000 trials and biographical details of approximately 3,000 men and women executed at Tyburn, free of charge for non-commercial use.

In addition to the text, accessible through both keyword and structured searching, this website provides digital images of all 190,000 original pages of the Proceedings, 5,000 pages of Ordinary’s Accounts, advice on methods of searching this resource, information on the historical and legal background to the Old Bailey court and its Proceedings, and descriptions of published and manuscript materials relating to the trials covered. Contemporary maps, and images have also been provided.

The Old Bailey Proceedings Online link -

I haven’t spent much time exploring it yet, but I love that all the adverts and front matter are included and fully searchable.  I also like the suggestion from the Observer’s article that one could productively use the archive to search for criminal ancestors!

I love that the DVD cover of Becoming Jane doesn’t actually feature Jane at all. And wow, that is a bad picture of James McAvoy. You’re not selling it to me, Beeb.

In a pretty amazing coincidence given the date, a book called The Shadow of Marriage: Singleness in England 1914-60 by Katherine Holden caught my eye at work today. I ordered it up from the library and hope to get stuck into it on Monday.

The book will be particularly interesting to read in light of the Daily Mail’s last-ditch and rather transparently desperate attempt to spin the findings of a very sad study about suicide into a cautionary fable against the perils of spinsterhood.

I am well into the first book from my giant to-read list – Saturday by Ian McEwan. I am completely absorbed thus far, which makes my bus journey to work much less painful. I have a small mountain of McEwan, largely because I read The Child in Time for a postmodernism module at university, loved it, and promptly took advantage of a 3-for-2 offer at Waterstones. I hope they are all as engrossing.

Secondhand bookshops are some of my favourite places in the world. I love a good (or even a bad) new bookshop too, but there’s something uniquely appealing about a shop full of books that have passed through others’ hands before finding their way to mine. The problem is that once I go into these places, all too many books find their way into my hands and before I know it, I’ve got over 400 books living with me in one room, double-stacked on a very large yet not-large-enough bookcase.

In an effort to free up some space (and hopefully some cash), I’m going to read through as many of the unread books I own as possible this year, selling or donating any which I don’t want to keep. And then, no doubt, buying more books with the proceeds!

The books are listed below, and will be struck through as I read. Wish me luck!

1. Angier, Natalie
   The Canon: The Beautiful Basics of Science
2. Anzaldua, Gloria
   Borderlands/La Frontera
3. Arnott, Jake
   The Long Firm
4. Atwood, Margaret
   The Blind Assassin
5. Austen, Jane
   Mansfield Park
6. Barker, Juliet
   The Brontes
7. Barker, Pat
   The Ghost Road (The Regeneration Trilogy)
8. Barker, Pat
   The Eye in the Door
9. Barker, Pat
   Regeneration
10. Barthes, Roland
    Mythologies
11. Battles, Matthew
    Library
12. Beauman, Sally
    The Landscape of Love
13. Beauvoir, Simone de
    All Men Are Mortal
14. Beauvoir, Simone de
    The Second Sex (Vintage Classics)
15. Bernieres, Louis De
    Birds Without Wings
16. Carter, Angela
    Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman
17. Carter, Angela
    American Ghosts and Old World Wonders
18. Carter, Angela
    Black Venus
19. Carter, Angela
    The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories
20. Chippindale, Peter
    “Observer”: What Is Islam?
21. Clarke, Susanna
    Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
22. Colette
    Cheri (Le Livre De Poche)
23. Collective, Cambridge Women’s Peace
    My Country Is the Whole World: An Anthology of Women’s Work on Peace and War
24. Collins, Wilkie
    The Woman in White (Penguin Classics)
25. Conrad, Joseph
    The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale (English Library)
26. Conrad, Joseph
    Heart of Darkness
27. Dawkins, Richard
    The Ancestor’s Tale
28. Dickens, Charles
    The Old Curiosity Shop (English Library)
29. Dunn, Jane
    Elizabeth and Mary: Cousins, Rivals, Queens
30. Faber, Michel
    The Crimson Petal and the White
31. Faulks, Sebastian
    Birdsong
32. Faulks, Sebastian
    On Green Dolphin Street
33. Foreman, Amanda
    Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire
34. Fowles, John
    The Magus
35. Frankl, Viktor E.
    Man’s Search for Meaning
36. Fraser, Antonia
    The Weaker Vessel (Women in History)
37. Fraser, Antonia
    The Six Wives of Henry VIII (Women in History)
38. Fraser, Antonia
    Marie Antoinette
39. Gaiman, Neil
    Stardust
40. Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn
    The Life of Charlotte Bronte
41. Geras, Adele
    Facing the Light
42. Godwin, William
    Caleb Williams (Oxford World’s Classics)
43. Golden, Arthur
    Memoirs of a Geisha
44. Gould, Steven
    Jumper
45. Gould, Steven
    Reflex
46. Gristwood, Sarah
    Arbella: England’s Lost Queen
47. Hawthorne, Nathaniel
    The Scarlet Letter (Penguin Popular Classics)
48. Hollinghurst, Alan
    The Folding Star
49. Hosseini, Khaled
    The Kite Runner
50. Hunt, Tristram
    Building Jerusalem: The Rise and Fall of the Victorian City
51. Jackson, Kevin
    Invisible Forms: A Guide to Literary Curiosities
52. Kingston, Maxine Hong
    The Woman Warrior (Picador Books)
53. Klein, Naomi
    No Logo
54. Kostova, Elizabeth
    The Historian
55. Lamott, Anne
    Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
56. Levi, Primo
    The Drowned and the Saved (Abacus Books)
57. Leyser, Henrietta
    Medieval Women: A Social History of Women in England 450-1500 (Women in History)
58. Lynch, Scott
    The Lies of Locke Lamora (Gollancz S.F.)
59. Manguel, Alberto
    In Another Part of the Forest: Anthology of Male Gay Fiction (Flamingo Original)
60. McEwan, Ian
    Amsterdam
61. McEwan, Ian
    First Love, Last Rites
62. McEwan, Ian
    Saturday
63. McEwan, Ian
    Enduring Love
64. McEwan, Ian
    In Between the Sheets
65. McGregor, Jon
    If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things
66. Mukherjee, Bharati
    Jasmine
67. Mukherjee, Bharati
    The Middleman and Other Stories
68. Murakami, Haruki
    Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche
69. Nicholls, David
    Starter for Ten
70. O’Farrell, Maggie
    The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
71. O’Neill, Jamie
    At Swim, Two Boys
72. Ohba, Tsugumi
    Death Note – Volume 4
73. Ohba, Tsugumi
    Death Note – Volume 5
74. Ohba, Tsugumi
    Death Note: Volume 2 (Death Note)
75. Ohba, Tsugumi
    Death Note: Volume 3 (Death Note)
76. Ohba, Tsugumi
    Death Note: v. 6 (Death Note)
77. Ohba, Tsugumi
    Death Note volume 1
78. Picard, Liza
    Dr. Johnson’s London: Everyday Life in London in the Mid 18th Century
79. Plath, Sylvia
    Letters Home: Correspondence
80. Plath, Sylvia
    The Journals of Sylvia Plath, 1950-1962
81. Quincey, Thomas De
    The Confessions of an English Opium-eater: And Other Writings (Oxford World’s Classics)
82. Ray, Rebecca
    A Certain Age
83. Reed, A.W.
    Maori Myths and Legendary Tales
84. Reichs, Kathy
    Deja Dead
85. Renault, Mary
    The Last of the Wine
86. Renault, Mary
    Funeral Games
87. Renault, Mary
    The Mask of Apollo
88. Renault, Mary
    The Praise Singer
89. Rich, Adrienne
    Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution
90. Robinson, Marilynne
    Gilead
91. Russell, Bertrand
    History of Western Philosophy (Routledge Classics)
92. Russell, Bertrand
    Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects (Routledge Classics)
93. See, Lisa
    Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
94. Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft
    Frankenstein: Or, the Modern Prometheus (Penguin Classics)
95. Smith, Dodie
    I Capture the Castle
96. Sommers, Christina
    Vice and Virtue in Everyday Life: Introductory Readings in Ethics
97. Sterne, Laurence
    A Sentimental Journey (Penguin Classics)
98. Storr, Anthony
    Solitude (Flamingo S.)
99. Swift, Graham
    Waterland
100. Tillyard, S.K.
     Aristocrats: Caroline, Emily, Louisa and Sarah Lennox, 1750-1832
101. Tolstoy, L.N.
     War and Peace
102. Truss, Lynne
     Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
103. Waley, Arthur
     Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China
104. Warner, Marina
     Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism
105. Wollstonecraft, Mary
     A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Penguin Classics)
106. Wollstonecraft, Mary
     A Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark: AND Memoirs of the Author of the “Rights of Woman” (Classics)
107. Woolf, Virginia
     Orlando: A Biography (Vintage Classics)
108. Granta: The First 21 Years
109. The Creative Writing Coursebook: Forty Authors Share Advice and Exercises for Fiction and Poetry
110. The Vintage Book of Historical Feminism
111. Beowulf: A New Translation
112. Eirik the Red and Other Icelandic Sagas (Oxford World’s Classics)