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Recommended reading for Taphophiles
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The
Tombstone Tourist : Musicians
Scott Stanton / Paperback 480 pages Published 2003
The final resting places of over 200 of the 20th
century's late musical greats, from Howlin' Wolf to Benny Goodman
to Janis Joplin. From France's Gothic Pere Lachaise Cemetery (where
the remains of Chopin and Jim Morrison lie) to Hollywood's Forest
Lawn (home to the bones of Karen Carpenter, Andy Gibb, and Liberace),
Profiled alphabetically, the life, music, death, shrines, archives,
and burial site of each musician is interesting and insightful, and
the black-and-white photographs are a nice touch.
This is a NEW Edition, with extra entries & new photos, some supplied
by The Adams Residence
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Mausoleums Lynn
F. Pearson
0 7478 0518 0 40 pp, 62 b/w ills.
Mausoleums – magnificent, monumental tombs – are often haunting, powerful
buildings in evocative sites. A substantial, well-illustrated gazetteer
of over 150 examples in Britain completes the book, leading the reader
on a journey from the remote Sinclair Mausoleum in the north of Caithness
– a tiny castle known as Harold’s Tower – to the hugely ornate Royal
Mausoleum at Windsor |
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Death,
Dissection and the Destitute
Ruth Richardson - Paperback - 464 pages 2nd Ed
(16 August, 2001)
Before 1832 dissection was a feared and hated punishment for murder.
The 1832 Anatomy Act requisitioned instead the corpses of the poor,
transferring the penalty from murder to poverty. The Anatomy Act contributed
to the terrible fear of the Victorian workhouse and influences attitudes
towards death even today. This analysis draws on many disciplines: the
fundamental issues of folklore and science, life and death, and the
political struggles surrounding ownership of the body in the 19th century. |
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East
Anglian Epitaphs
Raymond Lamont-Brown - Paperback - 48 pages (October 2000)
An exploration of the graveside witticisms and criticisms, puns and
lampoons found in the churchyards of East Anglia. The epitaphs reveal
facts about ancestry, emblems, symbols of life and death, and information
about people who lived centuries ago. |
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Buried
Alive: The Terrifying History of Our Most Primal Fear
Jan Bondeson - Hardcover - 256 pages (March 2001)
In the 1800s the number of contorted skeletons found in coffins led
to speculation that they were buried alive. This study brings to light
the various ways people ensured they were really dead before burial.
It also questions whether 21st-century criteria for determining death
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Famous
Graves
Lynn F. Pearson / Paperback / Published 1998 / 144 pp, 117 ills.
The graves of the famous are of abiding interest, both
for their often unexpected and unusual locations, and for the light
they throw on individual lives. This book gives fascinating details
of nearly one thousand graves of famous Britons at home and abroad,
and also a few foreigners buried on British soil. In highly readable
form, it conveys not only the 'where' but the 'why' of graves, using
crucial biographical information to provide an insight into famous lives
and their endings. The text helps the reader to locate specific graves,
it also features an easy-to-use index, an introduction to the history
of burial and cremation practices, and a glossary explaining obscure
funeral terms. Over a hundred B&W photographs of gravestones, mausolea,
cemeteries and churches illustrate the amazing history of funeral art
and the delightful craftsmanship of individual memorials. |
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Discovering
Epitaphs
Geoffrey N. Wright / Paperback / Published 1996/ 96 pp, 53 ills.
Inscriptions on gravestones yield fascinating information
about the dead, their lives and occupations and the way they died. There
may well be a verse epitaph of a philosophical or moralistic nature,
but wit and humour, sometimes unintentional, creep in to enliven the
sombre nature of the message. In this book, the late Geoffrey N. Wright
first traces the background history of churchyard memorials and then
describes many examples of inscriptions and epitaphs which somehow bring
us much closer to the people they commemorate and the communities in
which they lived. |
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Victorian
Undertaker
Trevor May / Paperback / Published 1996 |
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The Undertaking, Tales from the Dismal Trade.
Thomas Lynch
The American poet, Thomas Lynch, is also hired to
bury the dead, to cremate them and to tend to their families in a
small Michigan town where he serves as the funeral director. In the
conduct of these duties he has kept his eyes open and his ears tuned
to the vernacular sound of love and grief.
also in paperback
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The Permanent Series
Permanent
Italians : An Illustrated Guide to the Cemeteries of Italy
Judi Culbertson, Tom Randall / Paperback / Published 1996
Permanent
Londoners : Illustrated Guide to the Cemeteries of London
Judi Culbertson, Tom Randall / Paperback / Published 1991
Permanent
Parisians : An Illustrated Guide to the Cemeteries of Paris
Judi Culbertson, Tom Randall / Paperback / Published 1991
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London
Cemeteries: An Illustrated Guide & Gazetteer
Hugh Meller
This work records the cemeteries of London, describing their rich
variety of buildings, monuments, epitaphs and flora and fauna. It
also deals with cemetery history, planning, architecture and natural
history. Altogether, 103 cemeteries are covered, along with the famous
people buried there.
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Going
Out in Style : The Architecture of Eternity
Douglas Keister, Xavier Cronin
Depicts the endless variety of mausoleum styles in
cemeteries across the United States...the book features dozens of
full-color photographs portraying the majesty and mystique of the
private mausoleum
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Saving
Graces : Images of Women European Cemeteries
David Robinson
In many cemeteries, particularly in Europe, one can
find 19th-century sculptures of idealized images of women, elaborately
posed and sculpted with great care and artistic flair. David Robinson's
photographs capture the sensual beauty and mystery of these lifelike
sculptures. In her foreword, Joyce Carol Oates explores the many implications
of the grief-stricken, extremely provocative female figures - the
obsession with mortality, the rituals of mourning, the conflation
of death and the erotic, and the perfect female form as a male fantasy
and a symbol of status.
also
Beautiful Death : Art of the Cemetery
David Robinson, Dean R. Koontz / Hardcover / Published 1996
Intriguing look at death - and the way people attempt
to come to terms with it in funerary monuments and graveside gestures.
Robinson roamed the cemeteries of Europe, including Pere-Lachaise,
Montparnasse and Montmartre in Paris, the cemete ries of London and
village churchyards in England, the Jewish Cemetery in Prague, and
cemeteries across France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy
now out of print Find "Beautiful
Death : Art of the Cemetery" by David Robinson on BookFinder.com
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Epitaphs
and Images from Scottish Graveyards
Betty Willsher
This is an illustrated collection of epitaphs divided
into sections, such as death, resurrection, the professions and trades,
eulogies and epitaphs quaint and curious.
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Highgate Cemetery, Victorian Valhalla
Photographs by John Gay, Text by Felix Barker.
Excellent B&W Photos, well reseached history
of Highgate Cemetery.
now out of print
Find "Highgate
Cemetery, Victorian Valhalla" by Felix Barker on BookFinder.com
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Journal
of a Ghosthunter
Simon Marsden
During a year-long journey beginning in southern
Ireland and progressing through the British Isles, France and Germany
to the mountains of Transylvania, photographer Marsden sought out
Europe's most haunted locations. His black and white images reveal
the ruins where lost souls still roam.
The
Haunted Realm
Simon Marsden
Photographer Simon Marsden's interest in the supernatural
began in childhood as he played hide-and-seek in the attic of his
family's ancient house, ever vigilant for the appearance of the "family
ghost". It wasn't until later that he discovered the craft of
photography and developed an enduring fascination with the magic of
time and light, and the enigma of "reality" that these elements
conjure up.
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Awful
Ends
David M. Wilson
This anthology of funeral inscriptions, both real
and fictional, is gathered from sources all over the British Isles
and America.
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The
Art of Remembering
Harriet Frazer, Lucy Lambton (Introduction)
Published to coincide with an exhibition at Blickling
Hall, this book celebrates the skills of independent memorial makers
and lettering artists. It contains photographs of all 54 works in
the exhibition, along with essays on life, death, spirituality, the
English tradition of memorials and the controversy over churchyard
rules and regulations.
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The
Art of Death
Nigel Llewellyn
Paperback - 160 pages Reaktion Books
Visual culture in the English death ritual
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Death
in England
Peter Jupp (Editor), Clare Gittings (Editor)
A social history of death from the earliest times
to Diana, Princess of Wales. As we discard the 20th century taboo
about death, this book charts the story of the way in which our forebears
coped with a fundamental aspects of their daily lives. The book reveals
how attitudes, practices and beliefs about death have undergone constant
change: how, why and at what ages people died; plagues and violence;
wills and deathbeds; funerals and memorials; beliefs and bereavement.
This wide-ranging analysis of death in England is illustrated throughout
with photographs and images, their diversity reflecting and breadth
of issues and periods covered.
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Bearing
the Dead : The British Culture of Mourning from the Enlightenment
to Victoria (Literature in History)
by Esther Schor
Mourning as a cultural phenomenon has become opaque
to us in the twentieth century, Schor argues. This book is an effort
to recover the culture of mourning that thrived in English society
from the Enlightenment through the Romantic Age, and to recapture
its meaning. Mourning appears here as the social diffusion of grief
through sympathy, as a force that constitutes communities and helps
us to conceptualize history.
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Who's
Buried Where in England
Douglas Greenwood / Paperback 352 pages (July 12, 1999)/ Constable and
Robinson
ISBN: 0094793107
The final resting places of illustrious men and women exercise a mysterious
attraction to the traveller, and in this book the burial sites of over
350 prominent figures in English history are listed with a wealth of
interesting detail.
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