Biographical Dictionary of Provence edited by Harold Downing with Ianthe Pemberton
Author: Harold Dowling with Ianthe Pemberton
Publisher: Adrian Coates [this seems an unlikely project for Adrian but there we are]
Source book: Northbridge Rectory by Angela Thirkell
A scholarly tome; a valuable and practically unread work, this Dictionary absorbs Mr Downing and Miss Permberton for much, if not all of WWII. According to Mr Downing the Dictionary is a conspectus of the origins, the provenance, of the literature of the land of the Langue d’oc.
Funds had run out by the time the gifted researchers reached Falh-Féau and the publisher had decided not to lose any more money. The compilers had amassed material which would cover the ground as far as Félibre, but what with the war, and no prospect of publication, the whole project had had to be abandoned.
However, at the end of Northbridge Rectory, Walden Concord Porter, an extremely wealthy American of Porterville, Texas, who had encountered and disliked the dreadful Professor Gawky (who fancies herself an authority on Provençal literature), has made a very large donation towards a different authority (Mr Downing) to enable him to continue his work.
By the year of the coronation Mr Downing and Miss Pemberton have reached Mas-Moult, and Mr Downing hopes that the second half of the Dictionary will not take so long. On account of letters like W, X and Z.
Later, in What Did it Mean? Mr Downing is invited to give a series of lectures on Provençal poetry; the Lincoln Fish Doppelgänger Lectures, founded by an old alumnus of the Porter University at Porterville. He would have to fly to New York City, take another plane to Zenith, and a third to Porterville.
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