In library-land they throw around words & phrases like roman a clef, nom de plume, pseudonym, ghost-writer, and pen name – but none of those really fit this situation. This is not a straight-forward title-change, nor an identity crisis. I’m really harking back to my original name for this blog. Without going into the whys and wherefores of how I ended up as The Mistress of Ancient Revelry, and why I’m now returning to my verbal roots, let’s pay a visit to my constant friend, the Oxford English Dictionary…
luminous
1) Full of light; emitting or casting light; shining, bright
2) transf. and fig.; said esp. of writers, expressions, literary treatment, etc.
page
1) A boy or youth employed as the personal attendant and messenger of a person of high rank…[or a] servant in a royal or noble household…having a particular ceremonial function
2) The material written or printed on one side of a leaf of a book, etc.
3) A regular page or column in a newspaper or magazine set aside for a particular topic.�
4) Computing. An electronic document containing text and/or images and viewed on-screen
5) intr. To leaf through a book, newspaper, etc.; to read or look through the contents of a book, newspaper, etc.
So however we put those two words together, it seems like I can still have a ceremonial function, though as The Luminous Page instead of The Mistress of Ancient Revelry. If you read “page” as the object, not the person, then it conjures up images both of illuminated manuscripts and of computer monitors that use liquid crystals displays that bend light.
Over the months that I’ve written blog posts, I’ve tried to articulate (at least to myself) exactly how my diverse readings tastes somehow form a coherent thread. One aspect of that was the recurring thought about returning to the name I had originally chosen for my blog title. As we go on from here, and I continue to refine that answer, I’ll still be a voice you can rely on, the messenger that shines a beam onto authors, websites, and events that you may be unfamiliar with, or wish to revisit. Please visit as often as you like to leaf through the contents of my blog and, I hope, linger for a while.
So now that we’re all the the same page (you, me, and the original name), have a little fun with ten famous novels and their first titles. If you have quirky interests, read about the Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year. And for those of Nordic extraction (or even quirkier interests) download the essay on translating titles from English to Swedish.
Meanwhile, The Luminous Page (formerly known as The Mistress of Ancient Revelry) will continue weaving the spell of books, art, and magic.
Public domain photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
