Wednesday, September 30, 2026
On Pedantry
My friend and fellow pedant, Eric Thomson, detected a howler on the very first page of a book on pedantry —
Arnoud S. Q. Visser, On Pedantry: A Cultural History of the Know-it-All (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2025), p. 1:
‹Older
Despite the warnings of those around her, Dorothea married him, thus embarking on a short-lived, unhappy wedded life in a gloomy parsonage filled with books and silence.Mr. Casaubon, however, didn't live in a parsonage. See George Eliot, Middlemarch, Book 1, chapter 5:
Before he left the next day it had been decided that the marriage should take place within six weeks. Why not? Mr. Casaubon's house was ready. It was not a parsonage, but a considerable mansion, with much land attached to it. The parsonage was inhabited by the curate, who did all the duty except preaching the morning sermon.Id., Book 1, chapter 9:
Mr. Casaubon's home was the manor-house. Close by, visible from some parts of the garden, was the little church, with the old parsonage opposite.
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