Monograph

1996 March, Cullen Murphy, "Hello Darkness", The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 277, No. 3, pp. 22-24. I had never given much thought to the role of darkness in ordinary human affairs until I read a monograph prepared by John Staudenmaier, a historian of technology and a Jesuit priest, for a recent conference at MIT.

It may still be years before we see, what we all look forward to, the great and final book on Knossos. Meanwhile learned monographs on different sections of the subject have been fast accumulating. They form the principal contents of six successive Annuals of the British School at Athens, and a not inconsiderable portion of the six corresponding volumes of The Journal of Hellenic Studies.

The complex history of the Wirral Railway and the lines with which it was interlinked needs more lucid treatment than is given in this 39-page monograph - and clearer maps and an index.

Crooke made a few references to two of his monographs (1896a and 1896b) but did not take quotations from his own works.

It is among the most studied, monographed, celebrated and sent-up works of modern art, and perhaps as influential as any from the last century.