linguistics
People obsessed with the shapes words make.
Pantographia
In April 1817 a woman in a black turban walked into a Gloucestershire village speaking a language no one recognised; within weeks Oxford scholars had studied her script, a Portuguese sailor had translated her backstory of pirates and peacock palanquins, and Bath had thrown her a ball.
The Man Who Counted the Posts
The man who single-handedly disciplined the English language could not walk past a post without touching it.
The Formosan
How did a blonde Frenchman convince 1700s London he was from Formosa?
The Reluctant Emperor
What kind of emperor reads fourteen languages, pays his own train fares, and orders a hundred telephones on the spot?
The Man No One Could Stop
Burton pulled a javelin through his own face and kept fighting, but his wife burned forty years of his writing to save his soul.