This is the way the web works, this is what it's for.
This morning, I saw a "blinked" news item on Locus Online which led me to an entry in Rick Klefel's Agony Column all about an extraordinary new book called The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana, written by Jess Nevins and published by MonkeyBrain Books (awesome cover, Picacio!). Reading the sample entry--describing an early novel of the Chasseurs d'Afrique (kind of a gentleman's version of the Foreign Legion) titled Under Two Flags by one Ouida, neé Marie Louise de la Remée--convinced me to figure out how to put in a purchase request with my local library via their website.
Which, if you don't have the fifty bucks to buy that book right now (which is what I'd do if I had the fifty bucks), is what you should do too.
If it was in print, I'd also request a copy of Under Two Flags because of Nevins's description of the character Cigarette. It's Cigarette who merits the encylopedia entry, by the way, more than the book itself. And how could she not?
Cigarette wins the reader's affections almost immediately. She is a camp follower for the Chasseurs, but she is no whore. Rather, she is the Chasseurs' mascot and mother figure. Her mother was a camp follower and her father a soldier unknown to her. She was an infant during the 1848 revolt in Paris, sitting on the barriers and laughing as "La Marseilles" was sung and the bullets flew. After that she wandered to Africa with her mother, and then, after her mother's death, Cigarette attached herself to the Chasseurs. She is seventeen years old during the events of Under Two Flags. She is a patriot for France, devoted not to the government or the upper classes but to the people, to the soldiers, and to the country itself, and when she wins the Cross of the Legion of Honour, for gallantry on the battlefield, it is the crowning moment of her life and something she has dreamed about from when she was young.
{...}
Cigarette is beloved of the Chasseurs, feared and respected by the Arabs, a "swearing, killing, fighting, laughing, dancing bastard heroine," and a woman who can ride like a cavalryman, drink like a Zouave, and fight like a Chasseur.
While describing how cool a woman is by stressing how much like a man she is doesn't rest all that comfortably on my mind, in this case I'm willing to cut a little slack owing to the 1867 publication date.
The book's table of contents is online, and is tantalizing to say the least. My favorite entry titles (right this second, anyway) are: the list of various Captains that would leave a comics encyclopedia in the dust, starting with Captain Black, ranging through two(?) Nemos and ending with Captain Virex; an equally impressive list of Doctors, the best of which is Doctor Materialismus; Electric Elephant (Schwartz, wake up!); Arsène Lupin; Lord James Marauder; Martians (I) and Martians (II); six separate entries for Nameless Man; Nora van Snoop; and, of course, the Undying Thing.