Today marks the first equinox of 2012. Spring is finally here! While searching The Archive for content for our latest newsletter we discovered this quirky advert. It’s just one of thousands that feature in The British Newspaper Archive. The advert tricks the March Hare, Alice and the Mad Hatter to sell the gutsy famous Irish dry stout that we all know and love (ahem). This surreal re imagining of the famous Tea Party in ‘Alice in Wonderland’ appeared in many newspapers in the 1930s, and offers an insight into how adverts in old newspapers reflected the change in seasons and moods.
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Poetic descriptions of the vernal equinox are another feature of how newspapers previously reported the seasonal shift from darkness to light. For example, this lyrical story muses on how the King of Winter temporarily relinquishes his throne to the King of Spring – strangely, it seems the seasons tended to be kings.
Why not search The Archive yourself? I wonder what curiosities you’ll discover . . .
Happy searching!
Best wishes,
The British Newspaper Archive team
1 comments On March Equinox 2012 and Curiosities from the Archive
You’re doing a great job. Marx had to pawn his suit on weekends to get food then try and buy it out Mondays to go visit the library. Now he could’ve done it from the living room while cajoling with Lenchen.