Arthur Conan Doyle’s “No picnic at Vaalkranz.” in The Great Boer War (1900)   

Doyle was knighted for his service during the Boer War (1899-1902), in which he served as a medical doctor. Much of Doyle’s The Great Boer War was written in hospital tents where he treated the wounded and diseased. The memories are a nationalistic view of a war...

Louis Wain’s “Pussies Preparing for a Picnic” (1919)

These clever Pussies have come for a picnic in a motor car, they are on their very best behaviour, and have brought a tablecloth and plates with them, and one thing I am certain, their plates will be quite clean when the have finished dinner, because they are sure to...

Kate Atkinson’s Behind the Scenes at the Museum (1995)

Atkinson’s satirizes a Sunday School outing by making it a continuous set of missteps that leave the three Lennox children, Clifford, Babs, and Bunty, in such a rush to the train station that only two of them make it. The problem is that Nell Lennox, their...

Green Perspectives

Hallowell and Levy’s Green Perspectives is an anthology of readings aimed at engaging students with current ecological issues and the history of the environmental movement. It is chronologically organized from 1850 through 1993 and focuses on the American...

Amy Colter’s The Secret Garden Cookbook (1999)

Colter’s The Secret Garden Cookbook is mainly a collection of high calory, sugary and fatty foods. She starts with Burnet’s essential food path and never wanders far off. “You can trifle with your breakfast and seem to disdain your dinner,”...

Modern Drama: Selected Plays from 1879 to the Present

Modern Drama: Selected Plays from 1879 to the Present is published by Longman Publishing Group   This is a comprehensive and balanced anthology offering a collection of 25 works of modern and contemporary drama from the 1870s through the early 1990s.  It features a...

James [Jacques] Tissot’s Picnic on the Grass (1881/82)

Elizabeth Newton and her children enjoy a birthday party in Tissot’s garden in St. John Wood, London. The partygoers sit on cushions beside a picnic cloth laden with food and drinks prominently placed in the immediate foreground. The children are of secondary...

Russell Lee’s The Blessing at Dinner on the Grounds at the All-Day Community Sing, Pie Town, New Mexico (1940)

Featured Image: Russell Lee. The Blessing at Dinner on the Grounds at the All-Day Community Sing, Pie Town, New Mexico (1940). Courtesy Library of Congress. LC-USF33- 012785-M5 [P&P] Also, Dinner on the Grounds, Nell Choate Jones. Church Supper (1945) Greenville...

Anthony Trollope’s Phineas Redux (1874)

Trollope’s Phineas Redux is the fourth book in the Phineas Finn Series. It was among his most popular novels. Numerous hunt scenes and references suggest Finn’s plight evading his enemies. A halt during a fox hunt provides the opportunity for a simple picnic lunch in...

Fred Barnard’s Mr. Pickwick’s Picnic in The Pickwick Papers (1870c)

Pickwick’s picnic on a hunt in Dingley Dell is part of an abortive hunting expedition. It’s famous for Pickwick getting drunk and Sam Weller’s discussion of veal pies, pronounced “weal” in Weller’s Cockney accent. This picnic is...