Ooo! Ooo! Who wants to go with me to the Morgan Library & Museum to see the exhibit on Victorian Bestsellers?

Although today’s public may think of the bestseller as a relatively recent development generated by modern mass marketing, many of the literary formulas and publishing techniques of the bestseller actually date to the nineteenth century. Victorian Bestsellers explores the rise of this cultural phenomenon using original manuscripts, first editions, illustrated editions, and rare printed ephemera, drawn largely from the Morgan’s renowned literary collections.

The period covered by the exhibition (1837–1901) was a time of rapid social change and enormous economic upheaval, when new technologies, improved transportation systems, better living standards, and rising literacy rates greatly increased the market for fiction and other types of popular reading matter.

This morning Rob and I were standing in the kitchen. The classical radio station was playing the background as we waited for the opera to begin. As we were talking, I heard the announcer say, “And that was ‘The dance of the dolls’,” which immediately made my head turn to the radio, because dancing dolls sounds suspiciously like puppetry. He continued speaking, “And it was played by the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra.”

I just laughed. I mean, that’s as fine description of my last year as you can get in music.

It turns out that the piece is called Okon Fuoko. I’m going to have to track down a copy and listen to it with intent, because the plot does look like something which might be adapted to puppet stage. It’s like Petruchka in Japan.