Norman Lindsay’s The Picnic Gods  (1907)

Norman Lindsay’s The Picnic Gods  (1907)

A joke is also at Norman Lindsay’s The Picnic Gods  (1907) is a joke. Usually, Lindsay revels in titillation,  naked buxom women, and muscular men. He took as his mission to rid Australia of its prudish sensibilities, and the content of his paintings and etchings...
Foster, E. M. “The Curate’s Friend” (1904)

Foster, E. M. “The Curate’s Friend” (1904)

“The Curate’s Friend” is one of two of Forster’s coming-out stories published in The Celestial Omnibus. In “The Story of a Panic,” Pan appears in a whirlwind and rapes a young boy. In “The Curate’s Friend,” a Faun...
Laura Knight’s Picnics (1907-1912)

Laura Knight’s Picnics (1907-1912)

Knight developed her style while at the Lamorna Art Colony in west Cornwall.  She was nineteen years old and married to Harold Knight. Among more experienced artists and congenial surroundings, she realized the freedom of expression and technique that lasted...
Francis Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden (1911)

Francis Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden (1911)

The real secret of The Secret Garden is that with enough picnics and plenty of food, any youth will be happy. Burnett’s The Secret Garden picnics occur in a derelict walled garden where Colin Craven, a fearful, make-believe invalid, and his cousin, Mary Lennox,...
Booker T. Washington’s “All Day Meeting” (1911)

Booker T. Washington’s “All Day Meeting” (1911)

Washington’s “all day meeting” is also known as “dinner on the grounds.” It agrees with versions of meetings by William A. Clary, Edna Lewis, Bebe Meaders and maya Angelou. I’ve cited Washington’s whole passage because...
Maurice Baring’s Caligula’s Picnic (1911)

Maurice Baring’s Caligula’s Picnic (1911)

Before the picnic breaks up and all the guests are drowned in the Bay of Naples, peacock and eels are served. Baring’s sense of humor is satirical and macabre. Here is one of his jokes in Caligula’s Picnic, a one-act closet drama: Proteus: I once knew a...
Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome (1911)

Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome (1911)

One exception to the unremitting cold in Wharton’s Ethan Frome is a summer church picnic when Ethan and Mattie Silver first feel love for one another. When Mattie is forced to leave, Frome drives her to the train station. Along the way, they stop by the frozen...
E.M. Foster’s “The Curate’s Friend” (1911)

E.M. Foster’s “The Curate’s Friend” (1911)

The Curate’s Friend” is one of two Forster’s coming-out stories published in The Celestial Omnibus (1911). In “The Story of a Panic,” it’s Pan who rapes a young boy. But in “The Curate’s Friend,” it’s a Faun...
Thomas Hardy’s “Where the Picnic Was” (1913)

Thomas Hardy’s “Where the Picnic Was” (1913)

Hardy’s poems reveal an unhappy life with his wife, Emma Gifford. Perhaps the most definitive is “Where the Picnic Was,” in which he attempts to resolve their often “horrid shows” ends definitively: – But two have wandered far From...