Post-blogging Nehemiah Wharton’s letters and post-tweeting other things

At Investigations of a Dog, Gavin Robinson (as seen on Twitter!) has started post-blogging the letters of Nehemiah Wharton, a sergeant in the Parliamentary army during the English Civil War. The first letter is up: 16 August 1642. Gavin provides context and interpretation, but he's also transcribing the letters in full since the published transcriptions apparently aren't very good. Even without aeroplanes it should be interesting!

It's been a while since I've noted any new post-blogging initiatives here. The concept is alive and well, but I think it has really taken off on Twitter. I follow a number of 'post-tweeting' accounts there, mostly military in nature: @the_60s_at_50, @missilecrisis62, @gallipoli_live, @ukwarcabinet, and @RealTimeWWII. The last two are my favourites, and are long term projects: the former (run by the National Archives) is up to this day in 1942, the latter this day in 1940. Here are the last three tweets from each, to give a flavour of what they do:

Even more than post-blogging, post-tweeting can convey a sense of the immediacy of events as they happened. But post-blogging is better for providing context and interpretation. There's a place for both.

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