origin of "scholar's mistress" expression

[John F. Eldredge]

In the novel "Our Lady of Darkness", Fritz Leiber uses the expression
"scholar's mistress", referring to books and papers piled on a bed,
taking up the space where a second person would otherwise lie. A Google
search for this term turns up mostly references to the novel, and I
haven't found any that predate the publication of the novel. I did find a
few earlier cases that referred to an actual person, rather than a pile
of books. Did Fritz Leiber coin this expression?

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <epdhqd...@mid.individual.net>,

He may have done. A quick google shows references only to
Leiber's book or to blogs reading "I picked up this phrase
somewhere last year...."

I suppose we could refer to the pile of books and things that
slowly accumulate on Hal's side of our bed as "the writer's
husband," since he gets up in the morning and sits at his desk
all day, whereas I stay in bed (because of the CFS) except to get
up and find a book I need for a reference. And then I have to
get up and clear them all off in the evening.

--
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at gmail dot com

[Peter Trei]

Wouldn't that be 'The writer's lover'? (which is also gender neutral).

I also googled around a bit, with the same result. I did find one other
metaphorical 'scholar's mistress', in referring to Logic. "It should be the
scholar's mistress."

pt

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <f64692aa-508c-4107...@googlegroups.com>,

Peter Trei <pete...@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Friday, June 2, 2017 at 1:00:04 PM UTC-4, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>> In article <epdhqd...@mid.individual.net>,
>> John F. Eldredge <jo...@jfeldredge.com> wrote:
>> >In the novel "Our Lady of Darkness", Fritz Leiber uses the expression
>> >"scholar's mistress", referring to books and papers piled on a bed,
>> >taking up the space where a second person would otherwise lie. A Google
>> >search for this term turns up mostly references to the novel, and I
>> >haven't found any that predate the publication of the novel. I did find a
>> >few earlier cases that referred to an actual person, rather than a pile
>> >of books. Did Fritz Leiber coin this expression?
>>
>> He may have done. A quick google shows references only to
>> Leiber's book or to blogs reading "I picked up this phrase
>> somewhere last year...."
>>
>> I suppose we could refer to the pile of books and things that
>> slowly accumulate on Hal's side of our bed as "the writer's
>> husband," since he gets up in the morning and sits at his desk
>> all day, whereas I stay in bed (because of the CFS) except to get
>> up and find a book I need for a reference. And then I have to
>> get up and clear them all off in the evening.
>
>Wouldn't that be 'The writer's lover'? (which is also gender neutral).

Yes, except that in this case he *is* my husband. :)

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <oqxM2...@kithrup.com>,

And, in fact, "mistress" is not gender-neutral, assuming as it
does that all scholars are male, which has not been true as far
back as St. Catherine of Alexandria, who (so it's told) was
martyred for out-arguing a city-full of pagan philosophers.

[-dsr-]

Scholar is gender-neutral. "Mistress" is not. We can recognize that any
gender of scholar may honorably have a mistress in these enlighten'd days,
so long as they have clear consent from all involved parties.

I don't think of books as a category as being gendered, though.

-dsr-

[Greg Goss]

The metaphor refers to the pile of stuff. What/who is in your bed
when your husband is elsewhere.
--
We are geeks. Resistance is voltage over current.

[art...@yahoo.com]

On Friday, June 2, 2017 at 10:08:07 PM UTC-4, -dsr- wrote:

> Scholar is gender-neutral. "Mistress" is not. We can recognize that any
> gender of scholar may honorably have a mistress in these enlighten'd days,
> so long as they have clear consent from all involved parties.

So the moon is female?

[Robert Carnegie]

But we're speaking of the corpus that joins you
in bed when your husband is out of it! (The bed.)

I think I lost a post that may be better shorter,
about the phrase which somehow gives an impression
of wide use without having it - perhaps, perhaps
not, because it was thought of by Fritz Leiber
instead of by Shakespeare, or by me instead of
Fritz Leiber.

One I saw /once/ that may be simply unjust - although
that wouldn't stop a meme - was "the Irish disease",
which apparently meant alcoholism. Or else it was
that in that case no one else got a turn...

[Juho Julkunen]

In article <9f6a8fe1-80d3-4339...@googlegroups.com>,
art...@yahoo.com says...

Most of the time.

--
Juho Julkunen

[Robert Carnegie]

La donna e mobile.

[Kevrob]

Often, but not always.

Helios/Apollo/Sol the male, Selene/Artemis/Luna the female?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lunar_deities

Kevin R

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <9f6a8fe1-80d3-4339...@googlegroups.com>,

Depends on whom you ask. _Luna_ is a feminine noun.

In Tolkien's mythology, on the other hand, the sun is feminine
and the moon masculine, and there's a tale in _The Silmarillion_
about how after Varda made the sun and moon to light the way for
the Elves crossing back to Middle-earth, she put a female and
male Maia in charge of them, and the moon is in love with the sun
and keeps trying to get near her, and gets burnt.

(Or something like that; it's been a while.)

[Jack Bohn]

I turned to _The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac_ by Eugene Field, which should have it, if anyone. The phrase isn't there, and it doesn't quite approach the concept. He does cover some wives who are jealous of their husband's books (that is, jealous of the books for having the attention and care of the husband, not jealous of the husband for having a book she wants), and the joys of reading in bed (really, in the days when that involved some type of flame, it *should* have been treated as texting and driving is today), but nothing so impecunious as having to use the bedroom for a study.

Of the workroom, he tells a story that illustrates my tendencies:

"The particular thing that excited De Quincey's choler was interference with his books and manuscripts, which he piled atop of one another upon the floor and over his desk, until at last there would be but a narrow little pathway from the desk to the fireplace and from the fireplace to the door; and his writing-table—gracious! what a Pelion upon Ossa of confusion it must have been!

Yet De Quincey insisted that he knew 'just where everything was,' and he merely exacted that the servants attempt no such vandalism as 'cleaning up' in his workshop. Of course there would presently come a time when there was no more room on the table and when the little pathway to the fireplace and the door would be no longer visible; then, with a sigh, De Quincey would lock the door of that room and betake himself to other quarters, which in turn would eventually become quite as littered up, cluttered up, and impassable as the first rooms."


--
-Jack