Extracts from Gosschen's Diary  

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A Scheme for abolishing all Words is one of the wittiest and smartest comments on semantics. (Illustration: extreme close-up from the movie "The Big Swallow" (1901), produced and directed by James Williamson (1855-1933)
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A Scheme for abolishing all Words is one of the wittiest and smartest comments on semantics. (Illustration: extreme close-up from the movie "The Big Swallow" (1901), produced and directed by James Williamson (1855-1933)

John Wilson's "Extracts from Gosschen's Diary" is a lurid account of a murder published anonymously in Blackwood's Magazine in 1818. A man stabs a woman to death, talks of the corpse's blue eyes, golden hair, and white breasts, and describes the feeling of perfect happiness the murder gives him. Although he stabs her repeatedly, the woman never cries out.

According to Tales of Terror from Blackwood's Magazine this tale was written by John Wilson, an influential editor and writer of the time who published much of his work under the pseudonym "Christopher North."

The story is a possible inspiration for Robert Browning's poem Porphyria's Lover and an acknowledged one for Browning's friend and fellow poet Bryan Procter who based his 1820 "Marcian Colonna" on this source, but added a new detail; after the murder, the killer sits up all night with his victim.

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