Archive:  1-5 / 6-10 / 11-15


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An Eternal Stranger: Harman Blennerhassett

Like mournful echo from the silent tomb, That pines away upon the midnight air, Whilst the pale moon breaks out with fitful gloom, Fond memory turns, with sad but welcome care, To scenes of desolation and despair, Once bright with all that beauty could bestow, That peace could shed, or youthful fancy know. From The Deserted Isle, by Margaret Blennerhassett. Harman Blennerhassett was a clever but eccentric Irish republican who "married" his niece, became involved in an abortive but notorious plot to make Texas independent, and ended up buried in Guernsey.
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What Sarah Fyers saw from a window in Gibraltar

Sarah Fyers was with her father with the garrison in Gibraltar in 1801, a few days before her wedding to Cornelius Mann, when she witnessed the first part of the Battle of Algeciras from the breakfast room. A handwritten copy of her eyewitness account is in the Dobree-Mann collection held at the Library. She was a close relation by marriage of James de Saumarez, who played a crucial part in the battle and eventual victory.
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Jacques Le Batard

The Gazette de L'Isle de Guernesey, of which the Priaulx Library has copies to view, published an unusual announcement in July of 1795. The newspaper reproduced in its entirety the sentence passed in the Royal Court upon a Frenchman from St Germain in Normandy, called Jacques Le Batard. The results of criminal trials were not normally published in the Gazette. Why this one?
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The Escape of Avicia Lernaise: from Edith Carey's notebooks


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