The Emperor Norton Trust

TO HONOR THE LIFE + ADVANCE THE LEGACY OF JOSHUA ABRAHAM NORTON

RESEARCH • EDUCATION • ADVOCACY

Filtering by Tag: California State Library

New Life for an 1879 Drawing of Emperor Norton

On 9 November 1879 — just two months before Emperor Norton's death — the San Francisco Chronicle published a Sunday front-page profile of the Emperor that was based on rare interview with the Emperor himself.

The profile was accompanied by a lovely drawing of the Emperor that was reproduced 60 years later for Allen Stanley Lane's 1939 biography, Emperor Norton: The Mad Monarch of America — but that has languished since then.

The Emperor's Bridge Campaign has had a new photographic print made of the drawing and has added a hi-res scan of it to ARENA, our digital ARchive of Emperor Norton in Art.

Learn more and see the drawing, after the flip.  

Read More

Two Traces of Allen Stanley Lane

For nearly 50 years, Allen Stanley Lane's 1939 biography of Emperor Norton was recognized as the standard reference on the subject. But, as often as Lane is cited in Norton studies and within "the Norton community" more generally, it appears that there is no online record of Lane — apart from references to the fact that he wrote his book.

There appears to be no mention of Lane's personal life — or of anything else he might have written or produced about Emperor Norton.

So it's been gratifying, over the last couple weeks, to have been "gifted" with a couple more documentary signs of Lane's existence.

Read More

© 2024 The Emperor Norton Trust  |  Site design: Alisha Lumea  |  Background: Original image courtesy of Eric Fischer