Crossover Cover: Enter Sir Robert

 

A resemblance is noted between Mr. Scratcherd’s studio and Mr. Krook’s Rag and Bottle Warehouse near Lincoln’s Inn. There is also a reference to “those depressed hangers-on of titled families, like the Bonds’ old cousin the Honorable Juliana Starter, youngest of old Lord Mickleham’s eighteen children and formerly Lady-in-Waiting to Princess Louisa Christina, daughter of Prince Louis of Cobalt and one of the Hatz-Reinigens; or, to compare small things with great, Miss Volumnia Dedlock: only neither of these ladies had families to complicate their lives, not being married.” Sir Robert Graham belonged to a Dining Society at Oxford that also included “that young Lord Lundy who became Governor of New South Wales later.” Like Thirkell's other novels, this book is set in the titular locale of Anthony Trollope's The Chronicles of Barsetshire. Mr. Krook and Volumnia Dedlock are from Charles Dickens’ Bleak House. Dickens’ novel is also mentioned as a real book here, but we can assume it’s based on a true story, particularly since Thirkell has crossover references to it in some of her other novels. Lord Mickleham is from Anthony Hope’s The Dolly Dialogues. Lord Lundy is the title character of a poem in Hillaire Belloc’s Cautionary Tales for Children.

This crossover is one of over a thousand included in my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3, coming this summer from Meteor House! All three volumes are AUTHORIZED companions to Win Scott Eckert's Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2! 

Crossover Cover: Miss Bunting

 

In this novel by Angela Thirkell, set like many of her works in Anthony Trollope's Barsetshire, Dr. Dale, the rector of Hallbury in Barsetshire, asks Bishop Joram if he worked in Borrioboola-Gha, but Joram says it was Mngangaland. Borrioboola-Gha is from Charles Dickens’ novel Bleak House.

This crossover is one of hundreds covered in my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3, which will be published by Meteor House! All three volumes are AUTHORIZED companions to Win Scott Eckert's Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2!

Crossover TV Episode: Zenana

 

Are you a fan of the classic Universal monster movies?

Then you'll love this episode of Endeavour, which has a nod to The Wolf Man, as well as Charles Dickens' Bleak House!

For more information, be sure to pick up a copy of my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3 when Meteor House publishes it! All three volumes are AUTHORIZED companions to Win Scott Eckert's Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2!

Crossover Cover: The Old Bank House

 

In this novel by Angela Thirkell set in Anthony Trollope's fictional English county of Barsetshire, the Times runs correspondence about the need for a College of Empire Economics in Borrioboola-Gha, from Charles Dickens' Bleak House.

This crossover is one of hundreds covered in my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3, to be published by Meteor House! All three volumes are AUTHORIZED companions to Win Scott Eckert's Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2!

Crossover Cover: Northbridge Rectory

 

Captain Powell-Jones, an officer in the Barsetshires and expert on Welsh languages, eats his food and thinks but poorly of a place where no one has probably heard of Morgan ap Kerrig, or Crumlinwallinwer, or Mewlinwillinwodd. Sir Alwyn Talbot is the ex-Principal of the Board of Tape and Sealing Wax. Barsetshire, the setting of many of Thirkell’s novels, is from the works of Anthony Trollope. Morgan ap Kerrig, Crumlinwallinwer, and Mewlinwillinwodd are mentioned in Charles Dickens’ Bleak House. The Tape and Sealing-Wax Office appears in four books by William Makepeace Thackeray: Vanity Fair, The Newcomes, The Bedford Row Conspiracy, and The History of Samuel Titmarsh and the Great Hoggarty Diamond. 

This crossover is one of hundreds covered in my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3, to be published by Meteor House! Much like the first two volumes, this one is an official and AUTHORIZED companion to Win Scott Eckert's Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2!

Crossover Cover: Ten Lords A-Leaping

Besides Kim Newman's "A Shambles in Belgravia," which Win included in the original Crossovers, this anthology includes the story "Ten Lords A-Leaping" by Jake Arnott. Friedrich Engels brings Lord Beckworth, a friend of a friend, to meet Karl Marx. Beckworth tells the two nine generations of Beckworths before him have fallen to their death. Two days later, when they pay call on him, Inspector Bucket tells them Beckworth has taken a fatal fall. Marx and Engels finally expose the killer, whom Bucket takes into custody. A week later, Engels meets with Marx outside the British Museum, where the latter says goodbye to a young man with a tweed cap of a type Engels does not recognize. The youth has recently left university and currently resides in Montague Street. He is interested in criminology, and Marx discerns from their conversation he wishes to be a detective. Marx adds, "He is working on a puzzle presented to him by a high-born friend of his from college, a superstitious observance of an ancient family known as 'the Musgrave Ritual.'" Engels and Marx were both real people, and among the first major leaders of the modern Communist party. Inspector Bucket is from Charles Dickens’ Bleak House. Bucket, middle-aged during the events of Dickens’ novel, must be pushing hard against retirement in this story. The young man is, of course, Sherlock Holmes. William S. Baring-Gould dated "The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual" to October 2, 1879, so the story must end on that date and begin in late September.

 

Crossover of the Week

1940

THE DEVIL’S NEST 

            The jungle lord Ki-Gor joins an expedition to the valley known as the Devil’s Nest to find Brendan Barnes, the American heir to a great fortune. Barnes tells the group that his family has been associated for years with the Jellyby Foundation in London, and therefore received regular reports on the Foundation’s work in Borrioboola-Gha and other parts of Africa. One of Ki-Gor’s traveling companions, Dr. John Moore of MI6’s Department Q, refers to an expedition funded by a patron of the Royal Geographic Society to a nearby valley where a dinosaur allegedly exists: “Too close a follower of that old crackpot Challenger, I suppose...This is the Congo, not some cloud-shrouded neverland like Maple White Land.”

            Short story by Duane Spurlock in Jungle Tales, Volume 1, Ron Fortier, ed., Airship 27 Productions, 2012. Ki-Gor the jungle lord’s adventures were originally chronicled by several authors using the pen name “John Peter Drummond” in Jungle Stories from 1939 to 1954. In Charles Dickens’ Bleak House, Mrs. Jellyby is a self-styled philanthropist who tries to ship downtrodden Britishers off to the African colony of Borrioboola-Gha so that they and the natives can earn money through coffee growing. Moore is wrong about the dinosaur in the valley, and he is also wrong about Professor George Edward Challenger not having actually discovered Maple White Land, as his discovery of the plateau was recounted in Edward Malone’s account (edited by Arthur Conan Doyle) entitled The Lost World.