elaby: (Default)
elaby ([personal profile] elaby) wrote2005-08-30 01:01 pm

The fine tradition of fandom

Okay, I'm reminded why I like this stuff.

In the earliest instance of fannish behavior that I've come across, Charles Lamb wrote to Coleridge about Burger's ballad "Lenore":

"Have you read the Ballad called 'Leonora' in the second Number of the 'Monthly Magazine'? If you have !!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

That's fourteen exclaimation points, folks. And it's this "rec" that made Coleridge, and then Wordsworth, read this and write things like "The Thorn," which I wrote a paper about a couple years ago.

Fandom never ends.