Cornish Characters and Strange Events

This is a cabinet of curiosities for Cornwall, the Celtic peninsula that has always stood slightly apart from the rest of England. S. Baring-Gould, that indefatigable collector of the strange and wonderful, introduces us to a cast of characters who refuse to fit neatly into history: geologists raised by wolves (or so the stories go), naval heroes whose bravery became legend, inventors who changed the world from mining pits, and smugglers who combined fierce religious devotion with absolutely no regard for the king's revenue. The book opens with William Pengelly, a geologist whose adventurous upbringing sets the tone for what follows. But Baring-Gould also finds room for the eccentrics: men who built elaborate tombstones for themselves in their lifetimes, collectors of bizarre hobbies, and the occasional rascal. The landscape itself becomes a character here, the wild coast that bred hardy seamen and the mine shafts that produced both philosophers and fanatics. This is not mainstream history; it's the offbeat, often hilarious, sometimes melancholy story of people who lived at the edges of the ordinary.