Word: plumbings
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...PLUMB CAME to Harvard in the Fall of to give a lecture on 18th century Britain. He lacked the exotic superciliousness conventionally ascribed to Cambridge dons; he appeared to be a short, erudite, well-dressed man, and he entertained his audience in a subdued way. Certainly his lecture was more interesting than most given within the History Department...
...first essay in his most recent book, In the Light of History, consisted basically of what he said a year ago. In both he discussed the development of an intellectual apparatus paralleling the developing bourgeoisie that littered the 18th century English countryside. Plumb is currently the foremost historian of the period, and consequently his essays carry a good bit of authority. But it is an authority conveyed in a very light tone. And as the world suffers from no lack of authoritarians, the addition of any easy-mannered tone to its histories has to be counted as an extra asset...
...PLUMB WRITES ABOUT everything from Detroit today to insane asylums for the last half millenium, and in case anyone objects that the two really are not so different, he throws in reflections on Samuel Pepys's diaries, Victorian social habits, and the tempo of life in Edwardian England...
...LARGE PART OF Plumb's advantage comes from the nature of the history he studies. A liberal, an intellectual historian, a biographer of great men, Plumb's interests lend themselves to a more stylish treatment than do the concerns of some Marxist or mathematically inclined historians. Of course, plenty of men with Plumb's interests fail as literary stylists, and it is to Plumb's eternal credit that he writes as well as he does. The liberal essayist is a dying breed, and the essay itself seems to be a declining form, not replaced, certainly, by the new journalism...
...source. Upon losing a long legal fight, Farr was jailed in November. Last week, after 46 days, he was freed by an order from U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, pending the outcome of a new appeal. Just before his release, TIME Correspondent Timothy Tyler visited Farr to plumb his mood and discover the kind of life he led in the Los Angeles county jail...