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Harry Crosby

Harry Crosby (June 4, 1898 – December 10, 1929) was an American heir, World War I veteran, bon vivant, poet, and publisher who for some epitomized the Lost Generation in American literature. He was the son of one of the richest banking families in New England, a Boston Brahmin, and the nephew of Jane Norton Grew, the wife of financier J. P. Morgan, Jr. As such, he was heir to a portion of a substantial family fortune. He was a volunteer in the American Field Service during World War I, and later served in the U.S. Ambulance Corps. He narrowly escaped with his life.

Profoundly affected by his experience in World War I, Crosby vowed to live life on his own terms and abandoned all pretense of living the expected life of a privileged Bostonian. In 1920 he met Mrs. Richard Peabody (née Mary Phelps Jacob), six years his senior. Their affair was the source of scandal and gossip among blue-blood Boston.

Mary (or Polly as she was called) divorced her alcoholic husband and to her family's dismay married Crosby. Two days later they left for Europe, where they devoted themselves to art and poetry. Both enjoyed a decadent lifestyle, drinking, smoking opium regularly, traveling frequently, and having an open marriage. Crosby wrote and published poetry that dwelled on the symbolism of the sun and explored themes of death and suicide.

He numbered among his friends some of the most famous individuals of the early 20th century, including Salvador Dalí, Ernest Hemingway, and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Polly took the name Caresse, and Crosby and she founded the Black Sun Press. It was the first to publish works by several struggling authors who later became famous, including James Joyce, Kay Boyle, Ernest Hemingway, Hart Crane, D. H. Lawrence, and René Crevel. Crosby died in 1929 as part of a murder–suicide or suicide pact.

Early life
Crosby (born Henry Sturgis Crosby — his parents Stephen Van Rensslaer Crosby and Henrietta Marion Grew later changed his middle name to Grew) was born in Boston's exclusive Back Bay neighborhood. He was the product of generations of blue-blood English and Dutch American families, descended from the Van Rensselaers, Schuylers, Morgans, and Grews. His uncle was J. Pierpont Morgan Jr., one of the richest men in America at that time. His father's mother was the great-granddaughter of Peggy Schuyler, sister-in-law of Alexander Hamilton. Also among Harry's ancestors were Revolutionary War General Philip Schuyler, and William Floyd, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

He had one sister, Katherine Schuyler Crosby, nicknamed Kitsa, who was born in 1901. They moved shortly after his birth to an estate that had, among other things, a dance floor that could accommodate 150 people. His mother instilled in him a love for poetry. He tossed water bombs off the upper stories of the house onto unsuspecting guests. The family spent its summers on the North Shore of Massachusetts at a second home in Manchester, about 25 mi from Boston. His religious, affectionate mother loved nature and was one of the founders of the Garden Club of America. His father, a banker, relived his days as a college football star through his Ivy League and Boston society connections.

As a child, he attended the exclusive Noble and Greenough School. In 1913, when he was 14 years old, his parents decided it was time to send him to the leading Massachusetts prep school, St. Mark's, from which he graduated in 1917.

World War I

At age 19, like many young men of upper-crust American society, Crosby volunteered to serve in the American Ambulance Service in France. Writers whose works he later published also served in the ambulance corps, including Ernest Hemingway and Malcolm Cowley. He arrived in France on July 7, 1917.

When America officially entered the War, the American Ambulance Service corps was integrated into the U. S. Army Ambulance Corps and Crosby enlisted. During the Battle of Verdun, he was very close to the front, and ferried wounded soldiers from the front lines to rear areas for three days without relief. On November 22, 1917, as Crosby and his best friend, Way "Spud" Spaulding, and another friend, Ben Weeden, were transporting several wounded soldiers to a medical aid station, Crosby's Ambulance 741 was hit by an artillery shell that landed 10 ft away, sending shrapnel ripping through the vehicle, completely destroying it. Miraculously, Crosby was unhurt, but Spaulding, following close behind in another ambulance, was struck in the chest by shrapnel. Crosby and Weeden were able to transport him to a hospital. After leaving Spaulding at the hospital in Beaulieu and returning to the aid station, Crosby was seen running in circles, lap after lap, without apparent purpose. Crosby declared later that that was the night he changed from a boy to a man. From that moment on, he never feared death. Spaulding was in intensive care for three months and was released from the hospital after six months.

Crosby wrote many letters home during the two years he was in France. Originally convinced that God had "ordained the war" to cleanse the world, his early reports home were good-spirited. Over time, however, he began to describe the horror of trench warfare and awful scenes of dead and dying soldiers.

"I saw the most gruesome sight I've ever seen. Lying on a blood-stained brancard was a man—not older than twenty I afterwards ascertained—suffering the agonies of hell. His whole right cheek was completely shot away so you could see all the insides of his face. He had no jaws, teeth, or lips left. His nose was plastered in. Blood was streaming all over. Under his eyes the skin was just dead blue...It took us an hour driving between two or three miles per hour to get him to his destination. Of course he couldn't yell as his mouth or what was left of it was a mere mass of pulp. For a while I was afraid our ambulance was to be turned into a hearse, but he was still alive when we got him there. Of course in typical French fashion the doctors held their usual debate of questioning whether it was the right hospital or where his papers were."

On August 23–25, 1918, during a battle near Orme, his section (Section Sanitaire 641, attached to the 120th French Division) evacuated more than 2000 wounded and was cited for bravery in the field while under heavy German bombardment. Crosby became in 1919 one of the youngest Americans to be awarded the Croix de guerre. Harry was happy to finally have a medal to prove his valor and wrote home, "Oh Boy!!!!!! won THE CROIX DE GUERRE. Thank God."

When the Armistice was signed, Crosby, like every other soldier, was anxious to go home, but waited for more than a month for orders. He wrote his mother, asking her to get "Uncle Jack" J.P. Morgan to intervene on his behalf. During the war, J.P. Morgan & Company had loaned $1.5 billion dollars (about $0 billion in today's dollars) to the Allies to fight against the Germans. On March 21, 1919, Crosby left Brest for Boston via Philadelphia and arrived home a hero.

Attends Harvard
After returning from World War I, Crosby attended Harvard University in the spring of 1919 under an accelerated program for veterans. He took 19 courses, six in French (which he read and spoke fluently) and six in English literature. The remainder of his courses were in fine arts, music, Spanish, and social ethics. Taking his studies very lightly, he thought he was going to fail, and paid a knowledgeable man who was familiar with what questions would be asked on the examinations to tutor him. He graduated with a bachelor of arts in 1921.

He yearned, though, to escape the rigidity of everyday life in Boston. His experience in France made it unbearable to live among what he called "dreary, drearier, dreariest Boston" and to put up with "Boston virgins who are brought up among sexless surroundings, who wear canvas drawers and flat-heeled shoes." He wanted to escape "the horrors of Boston and particularly of Boston virgins." Any sense of propriety was wiped out by a lust for living in the moment, forgetting all risks and possible consequences.

Meets Mrs. Richard Peabody
Crosby's mother invited Mrs. Richard Rogers Peabody (née Mary Phelps Jacob) to chaperone Crosby and some of his friends at a picnic on July 4, 1920, including dinner and a trip to the amusement park at Nantasket Beach. During dinner, Crosby never spoke to the girl on his left, breaking decorum. By some accounts, Crosby fell in love with the buxom Mrs. Peabody in about two hours, confessing his love for her in the Tunnel of Love at the amusement park. Two weeks later, they went to church together in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts and spent the night together. Their public relationship was a scandal among blue-blood Boston.

She was 28, six years older than Crosby, with two small children, and married. No matter what Crosby tried, Polly would not divorce Richard and marry him. Crosby took a job in Boston at the Shawmut National Bank, a job he disliked, and took the train to visit Polly in New York. In May 1921, when Polly would not respond to his demands, Crosby threatened suicide if Polly did not marry him. Polly's husband Richard Peabody was in and out of sanatoriums several times fighting alcoholism. In June 1921, she formally separated from him. Later that winter, Polly accepted weekend visits from Crosby, who took the midnight train home to Boston afterward. In December, Polly's husband Richard offered to divorce her, and in February 1922, their marriage was legally ended.

After eight months at the Shawmut National Bank, Crosby got drunk for six days and resigned on March 14, 1922. Crosby's uncle, J. P. Morgan, Jr., agreed to provide a position for Crosby in Paris at Morgan, Harjes et Cie. Crosby already spoke and read fluent French and moved to Paris in May. Polly preceded him there, but returned to the United States in July, angry and jealous. On September 2, 1922, Crosby proposed to Polly via transatlantic cable, and the next day bribed his way aboard the Aquitania for New York, which made a weekly six-day express run to New York.

Polly and Harry marry
On September 9, 1922, Crosby and Polly were married in the Municipal Building in New York City, and two days later they reboarded the RMS Aquitania and moved with her children to Paris. There, they joined the Lost Generation of expatriate Americans disillusioned by the loss of life in World War I and the moral and social values of their parents' generation. Crosby continued his work at Morgan, Harjes et Cie, the Morgan family's bank in Paris. They found an apartment at 12, Quai d'Orléans overlooking the Seine, on the exclusive Île Saint-Louis, and Polly donned her red bathing suit and row Crosby down the Seine in his dark business suit, formal hat, umbrella, and briefcase to the Place de la Concorde, where he walked the last few blocks to the bank on Place Vendôme. As she rowed back home, Polly, who was well endowed, enjoyed whistles, jeers, and waves from workmen. She said the exercise was good for her breasts.

After their first year in Paris, Polly shipped her children off to boarding schools in Gstaad. At the end of 1923, Crosby quit Morgan, Harjes et Cie and devoted himself to the life of a poet, and later, publisher.

Life as expatriates
Both of them were attracted to the bohemian lifestyle of the artists gathering in Montparnasse. Even by the wild standards of Paris in the 1920s, Crosby was in a league of his own. The couple lived a hedonistic and decadent life, including an open marriage and numerous affairs. They drank "oceans of champagne" and used opium, cocaine, and hashish. They wrote a mutual suicide pact and carried cremation instructions with them.

Polly and Crosby purchased their first race horse in June 1924, and then two more in April 1925. At the end of 1924, Crosby persuaded Polly to formally change her first name to Caresse, as he felt Polly was too prim and proper for his wife. They briefly considered Clytoris before deciding on Caresse. Crosby suggesting that her new name "begin with a C to go with Crosby and it must form a cross with mine." The two names intersected at right angles at the common "R," "the Crosby cross."

In 1924, they rented an apartment in the Faubourg St. Germain for six months from Princess Marthe Bibesco, a friend of Crosby's cousin Walter Berry, for 50,000 francs (the equivalent of $2,200, about $0 in today's dollars). When they moved in, they brought with them "two maids and a cook, a governess, and a chauffeur."

His inheritance, multiplied by the favorable exchange rate the American dollar enjoyed in postwar Europe, allowed them to indulge in an extravagant expatriate lifestyle. Crosby's trust fund provided them with US$12,000 per year (or $0 in today's dollars). Still, Crosby repeatedly overdrew his account at State Street Trust in Boston and at Morgan, Harjes, in Paris.

During 1929, Crosby wired his father, an investment banker, several times asking him to put more money from his inheritance into his account. In January, he asked his father to sell $4,000 ($0 today) worth "to make up for past extravagances in New York" In May, he noted in his diary that he had sold another $4,000 worth of stock "to enjoy life when you can". In mid-July, drunk on sherry cobblers, he sent a cable to his father, who was not pleased by it: "PLEASE SELL $10,000 WORTH OF STOCK. WE HAVE DECIDED TO LIVE A MAD AND EXTRAVAGANT LIFE"

His father complied, but not without rebuking his son for his spendthrift ways.

Lifestyle
The couple became known for hosting small dinner parties from their giant bed in their palatial townhouse on Île Saint-Louis, and afterward everyone was invited to enjoy their huge bathtub together, taking advantage of iced bottles of champagne near at hand.

They took extended traveling tours. In January 1925, they traveled to North Africa, where they first smoked opium, a habit to which they returned often. Crosby had tattoos on the soles of his feet—a cross on one and a pagan sun symbol on the other.

On November 19, 1925, Crosby and Polly rented a fashionable apartment on 19, Rue de Lille, where they remained for the rest of their time in Paris.

Crosby developed an obsessive fascination with imagery centering on the sun. His poetry and journals often focused on the sun, a symbol to him of perfection, enthusiasm, freedom, heat, and destruction. Crosby claimed to be a "sun worshiper in love with death." He often added a doodle of a "black sun" to his signature which also included an arrow, jutting upward from the "y" in Crosby's last name and aiming toward the center of the sun's circle: "a phallic thrust received by a welcoming erogenous zone."

Crosby met Ernest Hemingway on a skiing trip to Gstaad in 1926. In July 1927, Crosby and Hemingway visited Pamplona for the running of the bulls. Crosby wrote of Hemingway that "H. could drink us under the table." Harry and Caresse published the Paris edition of Hemingway's The Torrents of Spring. In early 1928, they traveled to the Middle East, visiting several countries.

In late 1928, they secured a 20-year lease on a medieval mill outside of Paris in Ermenonville for living quarters, which they named Le Moulin du Soleil ("The Mill of the Sun"). It had three old stone buildings, no electricity or telephone, and a single bathroom. The Crosbys added a racing course on which to play donkey polo and a small swimming pool. The millstream had slowed to a trickle. Inside the mill, Caresse converted the old washrooms and cellars into a large kitchen. The ground floor of the central mill tower served as a dining room, where guests sat on logs cut from the neighboring woods. The mill also contained a solid brass marine cannon that was rolled out for special guests, who were announced with a loud report. A whitewashed wall near the stairway served as a guest book. It was signed by many guests who included D. H. Lawrence, Douglas Fairbanks, the future George VI, and Eva Braun, Adolf Hitler's future wife.

They hosted wild parties at the mill, including drunken polo on donkeys, and entertained famous guests such as Salvador Dalí. Henry wrote in his journal:

"Mobs for luncheon—poets and painters and pederasts and divorcées and Christ knows who and there was a great signing of names on the wall at the foot of the stairs and a firing off of the cannon and bottle after bottle of red wine and Kay Boyle made fun of Hart Crane and he was angry and flung The American Caravan into the fire because it contained a story of Kay Boyle's (he forgot it had a poem of his in it) and there was a tempest of drinking and polo harra burra on the donkeys. and [sic] an uproar and a confusion so that it was difficult to do my work."

Crosby spent hours sunbathing naked atop the mill's turret. Contrary to fashion of the day, he did not wear a hat. He often wore a black carnation in his lapel, and was known to color his finger- and toenails. Crosby once hired four horse-drawn carriages and raced them through the Paris streets. They frequently dropped in at Drosso where they smoked opium.

Crosby experimented with photography and saw the medium as a viable art form before it was widely accepted as such. In 1929, he met Henri Cartier-Bresson in Le Bourget, where Cartier-Bresson's air squadron commandant had placed him under house arrest for hunting without a license. Crosby persuaded the officer to release Cartier-Bresson into his custody for a few days. The two men had an interest in photography, and Henry presented Henri with his first camera. They spent their time together taking and printing pictures at Crosby's home, Le Moulin du Soleil. Cartier-Bresson was attracted to Caresse and began a sexual relationship with her that lasted until 1931, two years after Harry's suicide.

Crosby also learned to fly solo in November 1929, when the aeroplane was so new that its spelling had not been agreed upon.

Extra-marital relationships
In 1923, shortly after their arrival in Paris, Caresse introduced Crosby to her friend Constance Crowninshield Coolidge, also a Boston Brahmin, an American expatriate. She was the niece of Frank Crowninshield, editor of Vanity Fair, and had been married to American diplomat Ray Atherton. Constance did not care what others thought about her. She loved anything risky and was addicted to gambling. Crosby nicknamed her the "Lady of the Golden Horse". She began a sexual relationship with Crosby that continued for several months. Harry rationalized their affair, telling Constance "One should follow every instinct no matter where it leads." But Crosby would not leave Caresse nor did Constance ask this of him. When Constance received a letter from Caresse who confessed that her affair with her husband had made her "very miserable", Constance wrote Harry and told him she would not see him any more. Harry was devastated by her decision. "Your letter was bar none the worst blow I have ever received...I wouldn't leave her under any circumstances nor as you say would you ever marry me." The three remained close friends, and on October 1, 1924, Constance married the Count Pierre de Jumilhac, although the marriage lasted only five years.

Harry and Caresse decided on an open marriage and had several lovers. He became legendary for his seductive abilities in some social circles in Paris, maintaining relationships with a variety of beautiful and doting young women.

Their wildness was in full flower during the drunken orgies of the annual Four Arts Balls (Bal des Quatz' Arts). In July 1927, he turned 10 live snakes loose on the dance floor. He wrote in his diary about it later:

"I remember two strong young men stark naked wrestling on the floor for the honor of dancing with a young girl...and I remember a mad student drinking champagne out of a skull which he had pilfered from my Library as I had pilfered it a year ago from the Catacombs...and in a corner I watched two savages making love...and beside me sitting on the floor a plump woman with bare breasts absorbed in the passion of giving milk to one of the snakes!"

One year, Caresse arrived topless riding a baby elephant and wearing a turquoise wig. The motif for the ball that year was Inca, and Crosby dressed for the occasion, covering himself in red ochre and wearing nothing but a loincloth and a necklace of dead pigeons.

Embracing the open sexuality offered by Crosby and his wife Caresse, Henri Cartier-Bresson fell into an intense sexual relationship with her that lasted until 1931.

Black Sun Press
In April, 1927, they founded an English language publishing company, first titled Éditions Narcisse, after their black whippet Narcisse Noir. They used the press as an avenue to publish their own poetry in small editions of finely made hardbound volumes.

They printed, on high-quality paper, limited quantities of meticulously produced, hand-manufactured books. Publishing in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s put the company at the crossroads for many American writers who were living abroad. In 1928, as Éditions Narcisse, they printed a limited edition of 300 numbered copies of "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe with illustrations by Alastair.

In 1928, they found they enjoyed the reception their initial works received, and decided to expand the press to serve other authors, renaming the company the Black Sun Press, following on Crosby's obsession on the symbolism of the sun. They rapidly gained notice for publishing beautifully bound, typographically flawless editions of unusual books. They took exquisite care with the books they published, choosing the finest papers and inks.

They published early works of several writers before they were well known, including James Joyce's Tales Told of Shem and Shaun (which was later integrated into Finnegans Wake). They published Kay Boyle's first book-length work, Short Stories, in 1929. and works by Hart Crane, D. H. Lawrence, Ezra Pound, Archibald MacLeish, Ernest Hemingway, Laurence Sterne, and Eugene Jolas. The Black Sun Press evolved into one of the most important small presses in Paris in the 1920s. After Crosby died in a suicide pact with one of his many lovers, Caresse Crosby continued publishing into the 1940s.

The Fire Princess
On July 9, 1928, Crosby met 20-year-old Josephine Noyes Rotch, the daughter of Arthur and Helen Ludington Rotch of Boston. Ten years his junior, Josephine was shopping in Venice at the Lido for her wedding dress. She had belonged to the Vincent Club and the Junior League and graduated from Lee School before she had attended Bryn Mawr College. After only two years at Bryn Mawr, she left because she planned to marry Albert Bigelow. "She was dark and intense...since the season of her coming out in 1926-1927, she had been known around Boston as fast, a 'bad egg'...with a good deal of sex appeal."

They met for sex as often as her eight days in Venice would allow. He later called her the "Youngest Princess of the Sun" and the "Fire Princess". She was also from a prominent Boston family which first settled in Provincetown, Massachusetts in 1690. Josephine inspired Crosby's next collection of poems, which he dedicated to her, titled Transit of Venus. In a letter dated July 24, 1928, Crosby detailed the affair to his mother, in whom he had always confided:

"I am having an affair with a girl I met (not introduced) at the Lido. She is twenty and has charm and is called Josephine. I like girls when they are very young before they have any minds."

Josephine and Crosby had an ongoing affair until June 21, 1929, when she married Albert Smith Bigelow. Their affair was over—until August, when Josephine contacted Crosby and they rekindled the affair as her husband became a first- year graduate student of architecture at Harvard. Unlike his wife Caresse, Josephine was quarrelsome and prone to fits of jealousy. She bombarded Crosby with half-incoherent cables and letters, anxious to set the date for their next tryst.

Visit to United States
On November 20, 1929, the Crosbys returned to the United States aboard the RMS Mauretania for a visit and the Harvard-Yale football game. Crosby and Josephine met and traveled to Detroit, where they checked into the expensive ($12 a day—about $0 today) Book-Cadillac Hotel as Mr. and Mrs Harry Crane. For four days, they took meals in their room, smoked opium, and had sex.

On December 7, 1929, the lovers returned to New York, where Josephine said she was going to return to Boston and her husband. Crosby's friend Hart Crane threw a party that evening to celebrate his completion after seven years of his poem, The Bridge. The Black Sun Press was scheduled to publish it the next week, and he wanted to bid Crosby and Caresse bon voyage, since they were due to sail back to France the next week. Among the guests present were Margaret Robson, Malcolm Cowley, Walker Evans, E. E. Cummings, and William Carlos Williams. The party went on until nearly dawn. Crosby and Caresse made plans to see Crane again before they left for Europe on December 10 to attend the popular Broadway play Berkeley Square.

On December 9, Josephine, who instead of returning to Boston, had stayed with one of her bridesmaids in New York, sent a 36-line poem to Harry Crosby, who was staying with Caresse at the Savoy-Plaza Hotel. The last line of the poem read "Death is our marriage".

On the same day, Harry Crosby wrote his final entry in his journal: "One is not in love unless one desires to die with one's beloved. There is only one happiness it is to love and to be loved."

Murder and suicide
On the evening of the play, December 10, 1929, Caresse, Crosby's mother Henrietta Grew, and Hart Crane met for dinner before the play, but Crosby did not show up, which was uncharacteristic of him as it was not like him to needlessly cause Caresse to worry. She called their friend Stanley Mortimer at his mother's apartment, whose studio Crosby was known to use for his trysts. He agreed to check his studio. Mortimer had to enlist help to break open the locked door and found Crosby and Josephine's bodies. Crosby was in bed with a .25 calibre bullet hole in his right temple next to Josephine, who had a matching hole in her left temple, in what appeared to be a suicide pact. Crosby was still clutching the Belgian automatic pistol in one hand, Josephine in the other.

The steamship tickets he had bought that morning for the return to Europe with Caresse were in his pocket. The coroner also found in his pocket a cable from Josephine addressed to Crosby on the RMS Mauretania. The coroner reported that Crosby's toenails were painted red, and that he had a Christian cross tattooed on the sole of one foot and a pagan icon representing the sun on the other.

Crosby's wedding ring was found crushed on the floor, not on his finger, where he always promised Caresse it would remain. Caresse refused to witness the carnage and begged Archibald MacLeish, who was in town from his farm, to take charge. While waiting for the doctors to finish their examination, MacLeish wondered if Crosby's literary aspirations had not contributed to his death.

"As I sat there looking at his corpse, seating myself where I wouldn't have to see the horrible hole in back of his ear, I kept saying to him: you poor, damned, dumb bastard. He was the most literary man I ever met, despite the fact that he'd not yet become what you'd call a Writer. I never met anyone who was so imbued with literature; he was drowned in it. I think I'm close to deciding literature is the one thing never to be taken seriously..."

Crosby's suicide, along with Hart Crane's suicide two and a half years later, were cited by later writers as emblematic of the Lost Generation.

Scandal follows
The next day, the headlines revealed all: Tragedy and Disgrace. There was no suicide note, and newspapers ran sensational articles for many days about the murder or suicide pact—they could not decide which. The New York Times front page blared, "COUPLE SHOT DEAD IN ARTISTS' HOTEL; Suicide Compact Is Indicated Between Henry Grew Crosby and Harvard Man's Wife. BUT MOTIVE IS UNKNOWN. He Was Socially Prominent in Boston—Bodies Found in Friend's Suite." The New York newspapers decided it was a murder-suicide.

Gretchen Powell had lunch with Crosby the day of his death. Her memory of the luncheon supported the notion that Josephine was one of Crosby's many passing fancies. She related that Crosby had told her, "the Rotch girl was pestering him; he was exasperated; she had threatened to kill herself in the lobby of the Savoy-Plaza if he didn't meet her at once."

The deaths polarized the several prominent families affected. The Rotch family considered Josephine's death to be murder. Josephine's erstwhile husband Albert Bigelow blamed Crosby for "seducing his wife and murdering her because he couldn't have her."

Crosby's poetry possibly gave the best clue to his motives. Death was "the hand that opens the door to our cage the home we instinctively fly to." His death mortified proper society. Crosby's biographer Geoffrey Wolff wrote, "He had meant to do it; it was no mistake; it was not a joke. If anything of Harry Crosby commands respect, perhaps even awe, it was the unswerving character of his intention." Crosby's death, given the macabre circumstances under which it occurred, scandalized Boston's Back Bay society.

Legacy
Crosby as a poet was never more than a minor literary figure while he lived, and was remembered more for his scandalous suicide over his creative efforts. He has greater importance as a co-founder of the Black Sun Press, which Caresse continued to operate after his death. She also established, with Jacques Porel, a side venture, Crosby Continental Editions, that published paperback books by Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and Dorothy Parker, among others. The paperback books did not sell well, and Crosby Continental closed in 1933. The Black Sun Press, however, continued publishing into the 1950s. The Black Sun Press produced finely crafted books in small editions, including works by, among others, D. H. Lawrence, Archibald MacLeish, James Joyce, Kay Boyle, and Hart Crane.

Crosby's friend Crane committed suicide less than two years later. Malcolm Cowley, whom Crosby had published, wrote in his 1934 book Exile's Return, that the death of "Harry Crosby becomes a symbol" of the rise and fall of the Jazz Age. He recited the excesses typified by Crosby's extravagant lifestyle as evidence of the shallowness of society during that era. When he edited and reissued the book in 1951, he softened his opinion of Crosby somewhat. "I had written at length about the life of Harry Crosby, who I scarcely know," he wrote, "in order to avoid discussing the more recent death of Hart Crane, whom I know so well that I couldn't bear to write about him."

In 1931, Caresse also published Torchbearer, a collection of his poetry with an afterword by Ezra Pound, and Aphrodite in Flight, a 75-paragraph-long prose-poem and how-to manual for lovers that compared making love to a woman to flying planes. Caresse published a boxed set of Crosby's work titled Collected poems of Harry Crosby containing Chariot of the Sun with D. H. Lawrence's introduction, Transit of Venus with T. S. Eliot's introduction, Sleeping Together with Stuart Gilbert's introduction, and Torchbearer in 1931. It was hand-set in dorique type; only 50 copies were printed.

During 1931 and 1932, Caresse collaborated with Harry's mother Henrietta to publish letters he had written to his family while serving in France from the summer of 1917 until he returned home in 1919. Henrietta added a chronology and brief preface to the letters. The book War Letters was published in a unnumbered edition of 125 copies. , a leather-bound edition of the book was priced from $2,000 to $3,500.

Caresse Crosby edited and published Crosby's diaries and papers. She wrote and published Poems for Harry Crosby in 1931. She also published and translated some of the works of Hemingway, Faulkner, and Dorothy Parker, among others. The Black Sun Press enjoyed the greatest longevity among the several expatriate presses founded in Paris during the 1920s. Through 1936, it published nearly three times as many titles as did Edward Titus through his Black Manikin Press.

Books printed by the Black Sun Press are valued by collectors. Each book was hand-designed, beautifully printed, and illustrated with elegant typeface. A rare volume published by the Black Sun Press of Hart Crane's book-length poem The Bridge, including photos by Walker Evans, was sold by Christie's in 2009 for US$21,250. In 2009, Neil Pearson, an antiquarian books expert, said "A Black Sun book is the literary equivalent of a Braque or a Picasso painting—except it's a few thousand pounds, not 20 million."

Ladders to the Sun: Poems by Harry Crosby, a collection of Harry Crosby's poetry, was published by Soul Bay Press in April 2010.

In 2004, Fine Line Features optioned Andrea Berloff's first screenplay Harry and Caresse. Lasse Hallström was initially attached to direct and Leslie Holleran was attached as a producer.

Works

 * Sonnets for Caresse. (1925) Paris, Herbert Clarke.
 * Sonnets for Caresse. (1926) 2nd Edition. Paris, Herbert Clarke.
 * Sonnets for Caresse. (1926) 3rd Edition. Paris, Albert Messein.
 * Sonnets for Caresse. (1927) 4th Edition. Paris, Editions Narcisse.
 * Red Skeletons. (1927) Paris, Editions Narcisse.
 * Chariot of the Sun. (1928) Paris, At the Sign of the Sundial.
 * Shadows of the Sun. (1928) Paris, Black Sun Press.
 * Transit of Venus. (1928) Paris, Black Sun Press (2nd edition 1929).
 * Mad Queen. (1929) Paris, Black Sun Press.
 * Shadows of the Sun-Series Two. (1929) Paris, Black Sun Press.
 * The Sun. (1929) Paris, Black Sun Press (Miniature book).
 * Sleeping Together. (1929) Paris, Black Sun Press. (500 copies printed)
 * Shadows of the Sun-Series Three. (1930) Paris, Black Sun Press.
 * Aphrodite in Flight: Being Some Observations on the Aerodynamics of Love. (1930) Paris, Black Sun Press.
 * Collected Poems of Harry Crosby. (4 Volumes: Chariot of the Sun, Transit of Venus, Sleeping Together, and Torchbearer). (1931) Paris, Black Sun Press
 * War Letters. Preface by Henrietta Crosby. (1932) Paris, Black Sun Press. 125 unnumbered copies.

title: Harry Crosby


text:
Eric Stenbock

Count Eric Stanislaus (or Stanislaus Eric) Stenbock ( – ) was a Baltic Swedish poet and writer of macabre fantastic fiction.

Life
Stenbock was the count of Bogesund and the heir to an estate near Kolga in Estonia. He was the son of Lucy Sophia Frerichs, the daughter and heiress of Johann Andreas Frerichs, a Manchester cotton tycoon, and Count Erich Stenbock, of a distinguished Swedish noble family of the Baltic German House of nobility in Reval. The family rose to prominence in the service of King Gustav Vasa: Catherine Stenbock was the third and last consort of Gustav Vasa and Queen consort of Sweden between 1552 and 1560. Stenbock's great-grandfather was Baron Friedrich von Stuart (1761–1842) from Courland. Immanuel Kant was a great-great-granduncle of Stenbock.

Stenbock's father died suddenly while he was one year old; his properties were held in trust for him by his grandfather Magnus. Eric's maternal grandfather died while Eric was quite young, also, in 1866, leaving him another trust fund.

Stenbock attended Balliol College in Oxford but never completed his studies. While at Oxford, Eric was deeply influenced by the homosexual Pre-Raphaelite artist and illustrator Simeon Solomon. He is also said to have had a relationship with the composer and conductor Norman O'Neill and with other "young men".

In Oxford, Stenbock also converted to Roman Catholicism taking for himself the name Stanislaus. Some years later Eric also admitted to having tried a different religion every week in Oxford. At the end of his life, he seemed to have developed a syncretist religion containing elements of Catholicism, Buddhism and idolatry.

In 1885, Count Magnus died, upon which Stenbock, as the oldest living male relative, acceded to the status of Count and to the possession of the family's estates in Estonia. Eric traveled to and lived in Kolga for a year and a half; he returned to England in the summer of 1887, during which time he sank deeper into alcoholism and drug addiction.

Stenbock behaved eccentrically. He kept snakes, lizards, salamanders and toads in his room, and had a "zoo" in his garden containing a reindeer, a fox, and a bear. When he traveled, he invariably brought with him a dog, a monkey, and a life-sized doll. This doll he referred to as "le Petit Comte" ("the little Count") and told everyone that it was his son; he insisted it be brought to him daily, and—when it was absent—he asked about its health. (Stenbock's family believed an unscrupulous Jesuit had been given large amounts of money by the Count for the "education" of this doll.)

Work
Stenbock lived in England most of his life, and wrote his works in the English language. He published a number of books of verse during his lifetime, including Love, Sleep, and Dreams, 1881, and Rue, Myrtle, and Cypress (1883). In 1894, Stenbock published The Shadow of Death, his last volume of verse, and Studies of Death, a collection of short stories.

Death
On 26 April 1895 Stenbock died from cirrhosis of the liver at his mother's home, Withdeane Hall, near Brighton; his death went unnoticed in the press, aside from a brief mention in The Times (30 April 1895). Stenbock had named More Adey as his literary executor. On 1 May the burial service was held in the Brighton Extra Mural Cemetery.

Legacy
The band Current 93 made an album of the same name of incidental music inspired by Stenbock's Faust story. Stenbock's legacy is supported by the invitation-only Stenbock Society, notable like Stenbock himself for its infrequent activity.

Marc Almond and Michael Cashmore released the two-track CD Gabriel & The Lunatic Lover in 2008 with two songs based on Stenbock's poems by the same name. This was followed in 2011 by the album Feasting with Panthers which included two more adaptations, "Sonnet XI" and "The Song of the Unwept Tear". All four poems were adapted and translated by Jeremy Reed.

Strange Attractor Press published a collection of Stenbock's short stories, poems, and essays, Of Kings and Things in 2019.

Poetry

 * Love, sleep & dreams : a volume of verse. - Oxford : A. Thomas Shrimpton & Son ; Simpkin Marshall & Co, 1881?
 * Myrtle, rue and cypress : a book of poems, songs and sonnets. - London : [privately printed by] Hatchards, 1883
 * The shadow of death : poems, songs, and sonnets. - London : The Leadenhall Press, 1893

Short story collections

 * Studies of death : romantic tales (London : David Nutt, 1894)

Biographies and other

 * Adlard, John. Stenbock, Yeats and the Nineties ; with an hitherto unpublished essay on Stenbock by Arthur Symons and a bibliography by Timothy d'Arch Smith. - London : Cecil & Amelia Woolf, 1969
 * Costelloe, Mary. Christmas with Count Stenbock / [edited by] John Adlard ; frontispiece by Max Beerbohm. -London : Enitharmon, 1980. - Contains letters by Mary Costelloe
 * Reed, Jeremy. A hundred years of disappearance : Count Eric Stenbock. - [Great Britain? : J. Reed, 1995]

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Eric Stenbock


text:
Talk:Mumbai

Metropolitan Area mentioned is wrong. It should be 6,328 sq Km instead.
Source MMRDA

Sister Cities Incorrect
For some reason this article lists NYC as a sister city of mumbai. It cites a leading Indian news paper article which indeed reports the same. But I think the source is incorrect. For some reason only Indian sources report NYC as a sister city of Mumbai. I went to the wiki page for NY Sister Cities and failed to find Mumbai or Bombay there. I double checked that pages citation: https://www.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/875-22/mayor-adams-signs-sister-city-agreement-between-new-york-city-athens-greece It does not list Mumbai either. I think the original Indian news paper made a mistake, and everyone just sourced that. Since page is semi protected I'm hoping someone can make this edit, and confirm my process of checking this. 24.5.185.64 (talk) 21:21, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Please fix city population in text box
can someone please fix the megacity population data it's given as IN-MH478,447 which doesn't make sense but the right figure is 12,478,447 the sources in the introduction and in the text box can verify that. 2409:40E0:1024:D901:8000:0:0:0 (talk) 20:23, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 4 July 2024
Please correct the final sentence of the first paragraph, which states that "Mumbai has the highest number of billionaires out of any city in Asia." and links to a separate wiki page that lists several sources estimating the number of billionaires in global cities, only one of which lists Mumbai ahead of other asian cities such as Moscow, Beijing, and Hong Kong. Ideally this citation would go directly to the Hunun Research Insitute source, or would acknowledge the diversity of estimates available from sources such as Forbes and Henley & Partners Veryhappyhedgehog (talk) 14:35, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

 * ✅ Added a note. TheNuggeteer (talk) 13:49, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

Proposal to Replace the Image
Hello, can we replace these two images, [2 in the Infobox with [[:File:Panoramic view of Taj Palace Hotel and Taj Tower with the iconic Gateway of India in the background (cropped).jpg|this one]]? It covers all three major structures at Gateway of India and will allow us to have slot for another image. iMahesh ( talk ) 10:50, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Mumbai


text:
Talk:Money laundering

Too much has been overhauled from last year
This article is missing things, it used to explain "smurf" "spin-dry" etc.

I'm not saying you need to include every countries variant slang, but, it used to be super relevant to the USA.

It is kind of disappointing when an article gets to improved, but loses some of the readability.

It's a great article, but, I think that there were a few overzealous removals when editing.

Signed - Grumpy 49.184.195.195 (talk) 12:24, 8 May 2022 (UTC)

Missing info on newer techniques for anti-money laundering
Please add some more info on newer technologies, such as AI ones, possibly in a new separate subsection. Recently featured this in 2022 in science:

"News outlets report about the first fully self-supervised anti-money laundering AI software using contemporary suboptimal datasets, LaundroGraph (24 Nov/26 Oct)."

Also see the recently added section Applications of artificial intelligence.

Prototyperspective (talk) 10:56, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Research Process and Methodology - SP24 - Sect 201 - Thu
— Assignment last updated by Kennethlamkl4997 (talk) 00:51, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Money laundering


text:
Talk:Game show

entire categories of popular formats seem to be missing
This article seems to concentrate almost entirely on quiz/trivia shows when there is a whole galaxy of game show formats that have exploded in popularity in recent years. Cooking competition shows such as Chopped (TV series) or Cutthroat Kitchen are clearly game shows, as are shows like The Voice (franchise) and American Idol. Contestants compete with one another to win a prize on all of these shows, and that's what a game show is, so it seems odd that all this is just basically ignored. I thought I'd ask here if there was some reason the article scope is seemingly restricted in this manner before actually doing anything. Thoughts? Beeblebrox (talk) 19:47, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Let's Play videos
Regarding the disputed lead, are Let's Play videos really a type of game show, or just a type of show that's about games? Is the "demonstrative gameshow" a meaningful subgenre?

They don't seem to fit the where contestants compete for rewards definition, and aren't mentioned or worked into the history in the body of the article. Belbury (talk) 19:57, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

 * I concur. But, the genre itself is evolving with technology. For instance, back in the 1990s, the show Johnny Arcade was essentially a hybrid, featuring contestants demoing Nintendo games (in the mold of 'Let's play') while competing for prizes (usually the chance to take home said games). In today's marketplace, streamers are hosts serving as the faces of titles/developers/companies (i.e., corporate sponsors). The same setup has just moved online. 72.174.131.123 (talk) 23:58, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
 * There are certainly connections between all these things, but that doesn't mean they're all the same thing. Johnny Arcade sounds like an edge case, but I'd say that when you removed the contestants, it definitely stopped being a game show.
 * In the absence of any sources to suggest that Let's Play videos are considered to be a type of game show, I'll remove the statement about them. Belbury (talk) 14:17, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Fair. The ludological definition still stands as 'participatory or demonstrative', but is moot in this case with this edit cycle. It actually reads better without declension. 72.174.131.123 (talk) 20:02, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Game show


text:
Talk:Junk food news

Untitled
The top ten junk food news items for 2000 were:

 * 1) Survivor (television series)
 * 2) Elian Gonzalez
 * 3) The millionaire bride (Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?)
 * 4) Britney Spears
 * 5) Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
 * 6) Whitewater and the private lives of the Clintons
 * 7) Napster
 * 8) Tie: The Ellen Degenerese and  Anne Heche break up & JonBenét Ramsey
 * 9) Rickey Martin's sexuality
 * 10) Tie: Brad Pitt's wedding & Dot-coms and IPOs

I removed this because plenty of people think at the very least Whitewater, Napster and the dotcoms are valid news stories with adequate reason to be on CNN. Also, is "Junk Food News" always capitalized, or should it be at junk food news? Tokerboy

I agree that the list doesn't belong in the wikipedia. It isn't relevant to me.

 * The junk food factor of Whitewater and the private lives of the Clintons was that it dragged on so long with no result when there was soooo much other scandel surrounding the Clintons. European sensibilies laughed themselves to tears and then they cried over fundamentalist puritanical America's obsession with their presidents sex game cum-staining of an

adult womans dress. There are serious problems in America that one network could have got audience but no every single channel and show had crap on about complicated finacial shenagins instead of slam dunk political corruption.

 * After Enron don't some dot-com bubble economy profits look like a RICO case. Think about some of the scams or smoke and mirror morality. The rot in America starts at the top and continues down till it is stopped by the fifth check and balance of the American Constitution.

 * Napster is very important indeed; but the way the story was framed, has us celebrating Mickey Freedom Day with non violent resistance, civil disobediance, Satyagraha and down right uncivil disobedience. the spectrum of opposition is huge the responses will be diverse. I heard one guy wanted to kill Sonny Bono. User:Two16

This article can never be NPOV. I vote for its deletion. -- Zoe
 * I disagree. Googling reveals 2,640 hits for "junk foods news" (with quotation marks).  Many of them seem to about actual news related to junk foods, but some of the biggest hits are Project Censored and related ideas.  It seems to be a term actually used by actual, non-insane people, so I think it deserves to exist.  A list like what I removed is here inherently POV, and no such list should exist, but the idea, I think, should still be explained.  Maybe if we take something pretty obviously junk food news, that even people interested in it agree is pretty irrelevant (like Cruise/Kidman), we can describe what is junk food news and why people still pay attention to "news" magazines that are dedicated more or less solely to it.  In any case, it's a real term... I don't see why it should be deleted. Tokerboy

So, Toker, please explain how it can be NPOV. One man's junk food is another man's worthwhile information. -- Zoe, who is really unhappy right now.
 * Of course, but that's true of a lot of things. One man's punk band is another man's sell-outs, one man's science is another man's Satan-inspired trash...  All I'm saying is that it's a real term used to describe real things in a complex way and is therefore worthy of an encyclopedia article. Tokerboy
 * Whether it is or isn't, it isn't your call to take it off the Votes for deletion page. -- Zoe
 * I never took it off Votes for Deletion. According to history it was the Cunctator. Tokerboy

Yes Zoe and you're not going to be able to get rid of this article simply because it stretches your capacity to understand the wikipedia. If we stopped writing articles every time that somebody felt uncomfortable with the communities ability to write NPOV we would never have articles on any contravercial topic. Just think of abortion and SUV. Try taking a look at where an article links (or is linked from) and you will have a much better idea about its validity. Google is good but it only catelogues what people have made web sites about. Think before you reflexively crap on something you don't understand. If you want to learn go to votes for deletion are see my specific comments there. Also actually read NPOV all the way to the end. Then check out Jimbo's principles also on this site. Rise and shine sleepy head! Two16

 * Look. I put this on votes for deletion, which allows us to discuss it.  If it's the consensus that it stay, fine, though I would disagree with the consenus.  But it's not somebody else's right to arbitrarily remove it from the votes for deletion page without discussion.

This article does average more than 50 hits a day, which is more than most of the articles I work on. I got here by following a link in Wikipedia:Fringe theories. I would think it's OK to keep it. -- Margin1522 (talk) 17:30, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Would yo-yo news be considered JFN? I thought about the stock market and similar. For economics and others with a personal interest, it's important to always be updated.

Tags
I've tagged this for references and OR. In particular, the list of examples needs to be sourced. Dhaluza 10:17, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * This article was a close paraphrase of an original article by Jensen (which can also be found on the web, although I didn't cite it for copyright reasons). So I put it back into Jensen's words, added footnotes, and removed the references and OR tags. --Margin1522 (talk) 17:26, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Carl Jensen
Does this Carl Jenson have an Wikipedia-article. And if yes, which Carl Jensen is he? --80.109.39.94 (talk) 17:56, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Reaction?
I'd be surprised if there were no critics of this concept. Surely someone has pointed out that the first duty of a newspaper is to turn a profit, so that they can stay in business. A newspaper that's closed cannot do "hard-hitting investigative journalism". A newspaper that keeps the money flowing by running a few pages of popular fluff to pay the bills can also do investigative journalism. WhatamIdoing (talk) 09:32, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

Title of the article? Confusing
The phrase "junk food news" reads to me as "news about junk food". I would expect to read an article about reporters and magazines and newspapers etc who take it is their job to cover the vast junk food industry (the fast food restaurants, big corporations that push sugar bombs in the supermarket aisles, etc.). It's hard to get past that immediate reaction to what the article will be about to see that, in fact, that's not what it is about. Rather, it is about junk journalism or junk news. I advocate changing the title of the article to either of those. I've also done some internet googling to see if outside sources frequently refer to this type of journalism as "junk food news" and I'm not really finding a lot to correspond to that. Novellasyes (talk) 15:24, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

 * I quite agree. I think the article should be called 'junk news' or 'junk journalism,' of course it should be explained that it is derived from Jensons longer 'junk food news' but I agree that it is kind of confusing for people. RekNek42 (talk) 07:12, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

 * I also agree that the term "Junk food news" is historic and not a current usage. I propose we change the article title to "Junk news". Grorp (talk) 03:37, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

I just read most of the article. It looks like as of 24 March 2022, started to add content to this page. Beforehand, the page was about "Junk food news". The content RekNek42 added was about "Junk news" (a slightly different concept). I suppose, ideally, RekNek42 would have used the redirect Junk news and made it a full blown article with the Howard/Oxford content, rather than shoehorning it into Junk food news, but we have to work with what we see today.

Project Censored's definition of "junk food news" was more about non-essential crap that we shouldn't waste our time on (the counterpoint to media-censored content we never hear about), and that contrasts with Howard's/Oxford's definition of "junk news" which is about misleading, skewed and/or deliberately false news. Those two aren't the same terms.

The short term solution for this article would be to put "Junk food news" as a section of "Junk news" (a new name for this article). "Junk news" is such a common term nowadays and "junk food news" is not. I propose that we rename the page to "Junk news" and take the older content and put it in a section called "Junk food news", which is a subset of "Junk news".

Since Project Censored was still churning out content under the label of "Junk food news" as recently as 2019, we can't exactly call it historic. And I really don't think "Junk news" was spawned from "junk food news"; I think "junk" was just a normal adjective. There does seem to be a lot of crossover with "fake news", "false news" and perhaps other terms -- some of which have their own articles in Wikipedia. Even the Howard writings occasionally use the terms "junk news" and "fake news" interchangeably.

So, what say you two (Novellasyes for bringing up the topic and RekNek42 as the author of most of the new content)?

Grorp (talk) 03:04, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

 * This is a good distinction. Your point is that are three distinct things that could be meant by "junk food news": (1) News about food like this. (2) Pink-slime journalism. (3) News that is pointless. It isn't necessarily harmful in and of itself (whereas perhaps pink slime journalism is). It's the news equivalent of an empty calorie. "Non-essential crap we shouldn't waste our time on." Anyway, I agree with re-naming the article but now, having found that pink slime article, not sure how to balance a "junk news" article with that pink slime article. Novellasyes (talk) 13:08, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

 * It's now looking like the junk news info that was added by (who did the work as a student on a course and doesn't seem to have continued editing in Wikipedia) is sort of a WP:CONTENTFORK of the Fake news article. The Fake news article covers a lot of this stuff. Now I'm thinking 'merge' the additions to Fake news, but oh the work! Not something I want to do. And change the Junk news redirect to Fake news instead of Junk food news. Grorp (talk) 00:37, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

 * For sure, it would be a lot of work. More the work of making the right distinctions and associating those distinctions with the right descriptive phrases! I am going to think on this. Novellasyes (talk) 21:20, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

 * I compared RekNek42's additions against Fake news. Seems like most, if not all, of the concepts are included in that article. So I reverted this article back to its pre-WP:CONTENTFORK and reverted the Junk news redirect back to Fake news where it was previously. Grorp (talk) 00:22, 27 October 2022 (UTC)
 * You are the best!! Novellasyes (talk) 14:32, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

title: Talk:Junk food news


text:
Five-pin bowling

Five-pin bowling is a bowling variant which is played in Canada, where many bowling alleys offer it, either alone or in combination with ten-pin bowling. It was devised around 1909 by Thomas F. Ryan in Toronto, Ontario, at his Toronto Bowling Club, in response to customers who complained that the ten-pin game was too strenuous. He cut five tenpins down to about 75% of their size, and used hand-sized hard rubber balls, thus inventing the original version of five-pin bowling.

Gameplay
The balls in five pin bowling are small enough to fit in the hand and therefore typically have no fingerholes, although the Canadian 5 Pin Bowlers Association (C5PBA) has approved balls with thumb holes.

At the end of the lane there are five pins arranged in a V. They are midway in size between duckpins and ten pins, and they have a heavy rubber band around their middles to make them move farther when struck.

Unlike any other form of bowling popular in North America, the pins in five-pin bowling are worth different scoring point values, depending on their location in the V-formation. The centre pin is worth five points if knocked down, those on either side, three each, and the outermost pins, two each, giving a total of 15 in each frame.

In each frame, each player gets three attempts to knock all five pins over. Knocking all five pins down with the first ball is a strike, worth 15 points, plus the score achieved by the player's first two balls of the next frame are added to the score for the strike; the count in the frame where the first strike was bowled is left blank until the bowler makes their first delivery of the next frame. As those points are also counted in their own frame, in effect they count double. A player who takes two balls to knock all the pins down gets a spare, which means the first ball of the next frame counts double. When a bowler bowls two strikes in succession, within a game, the bowler has scored a "double". When a double has been bowled, the count for the first strike is 30 points plus the value of the pins bowled down with the first ball of the frame following the second strike. When a bowler bowls three strikes in succession, within a game, the bowler has scored a "triple" (also called a "turkey"). In scoring three successive strikes, the bowler is credited with 45 points in the frame where the first strike was bowled. As in ten-pin, if either of these happen in the last frame, the player gets to take one or two shots at a re-racked set of pins immediately.

A perfect score is 450, requiring 12 consecutive strikes bowled in the same game without fouling. It does not happen as frequently as in tenpin bowling. The C5PBA sanctions from 15 to 30 perfect games annually. Originally the pins counted as (from left to right) 4 - 2 - 1 - 3 - 5 points. In 1952 the president of the Canadian Bowling Association proposed changing the scoring system to 2 - 3 - 5 - 3 - 2. That was accepted in the west in 1952, in Ontario in 1953, and in the rest of Canada in 1954.

In 1967 the Canadian Bowling Congress decided to abolish the counter pin (the left counter pin had to be knocked down to score any points). The counter pin was the right 2-pin for left-handed bowlers. The rule change went in effect in 1968 in eastern Canada, but the Western Canada 5-pin Bowling Association rejected the change, and as a result there were no national championships until 1972 after the west accepted abolishing the counter pin. (Although some leagues continued with the counter pin system for several more years.)

Five-pin bowling allows for more strategy in its play than the ten-pin variant, because of the differing point values for each pin. For example: If a player fails to score a strike in 10-pin bowling, it is less important how the player chooses to resolve the remaining pins, as all pins are valued the same, and knocking down more results in higher points. In five-pin bowling on the other hand, if a player misses a strike, he or she has to make a strategic decision as to which set of remaining pins they should attempt to knock down (beyond simply trying for them all), which allows players a means to minimize their losses after a mistake, by aiming for the higher-scoring group of pins, or for the lower but perhaps more easily struck group.

Terminology

Five-pin bowlers use a number of terms to denote the results of a throw:

 * "[number]-pack": Term for a number of consecutive strikes; e.g. six consecutive strikes is a "six-pack". Also referred to as "[number]-bagger" (e.g. six-bagger).
 * "10 the hard way": After the third ball, having a frame score of 10 where the remaining pins are a 3-pin and a 2-pin that are not "neighbours".
 * "Aces" (A): taking out the headpin and both three pins but leaving the two corner pins. Also referred to as "bed posts", "goal posts" or "channel 11".
 * "Chop" or "chop-off" (denoted "c/o"): Hitting the headpin and the 3 and 2 pins on one side on the first ball, leaving the other 3 and 2 pins on the other side.
 * "Clean game": Finishing a game with a strike or spare in every frame.
 * "Corner-pin": Leaving only the left corner pin or right corner pin standing on the first ball is denoted by an "L" or an "R" respectively on a score sheet.
 * "Fifteen": When all pins are knocked down after the third ball. Also referred to as a "clean up".
 * "Headpin" (denoted H on a score sheet): punching out the headpin on the first ball. This is the most dreaded result on the first ball, as converting the spare resulting from punching out the headpin (a "headpin-spare") is extremely difficult to achieve.
 * "Punch": Hitting only one pin when two or more pins are remaining (commonly known as a "cherry" on the 2nd or 3rd ball)
 * "Split" (S): Taking out the headpin and one of the three-pins, scoring 8 on the first ball. Difficult to obtain a spare on the second ball but if accomplished, this is known as a "split-spare". Many bowling associations will offer a special pin for this achievement.
 * "Strike out": Finishing the game with Three or more strikes.
 * "Turkey": Three consecutive strikes
 * "Wood" or "deadwood": The pins left on the lane, usually after throwing the first two balls of a frame. This originates from when bowling pins were typically made of wood and not acrylic.

Major tournaments
There are four groups overseeing the major tournaments in five pin bowling.
 * Canadian Five Pin Bowler's Association (C5PBA): The C5PBA is the body that governs the rules and regulations of the game. The C5PBA operates three major national tournaments.  The showcase tournament is the "Open", a scratch tournament that involves both teams and singles. The national finals of the Open span three to four days and culminate with a stepladder format to determine national champions in men's singles, women's singles, men's teams, women's teams, and mixed teams.  There is a second tournament known as The Youth Challenge, which is shorter than the Open in length, but involves a similar format to the Open, this tournament is for youth bowlers between the ages of 12 and 19. The Inter-Provincial, which replaced the High Low Doubles, became a national event in 2008 and is a pins over average (POA) team format.
 * Bowl Canada: Bowl Canada is the body that represents the bowling centre owners. The organization previously operated under Bowling Proprietors Association of Canada (BPAC).  Bowl Canada oversees Youth Bowling Canada (YBC) and Club 55+ (formerly the Golden Age Bowler's Club).  Both organizations feature national championships. The YBC national championship is known as the "Four Steps to Stardom" while the Club 55+ national championship is known as the "Team Triples".  Bowl Canada also runs the National Classified Championships, a scratch tournament where bowlers are qualify through their bowling centre within average categories.  In 2016, the National Classified was replaced with a handicap-format tournament known as the Bowl Canada Cup while the Team Triples was updated to a four-person handicap-format team known as the "Club 55+ Cup". Bowl Canada runs the Canadian qualifying for the AMF World Cup and the various five-pin TV shows such as CBC's Championship Five Pin Bowling and the TSN Pins Game.  In 2006, the CBC series and the TSN series were consolidated into one tournament, the Canadian Bowling Championships. As of 2009, TSN dropped the Canadian Bowling Championships from its televised schedule.
 * The Master Bowlers Association of Canada: The MBAC is a unique organization that serves as the technical branch of the sport and provides a single national championship with both total pinfall (Tournament division) and pins over average (Teaching Division) divisions. A third branch of this organization involves the Seniors Division (over 55yrs). Typically the Teaching and Senior Division bowlers hold mid- to lower-range bowling averages. Bowlers in the Teaching Division are required to serve as coaches in YBC. The Master Bowlers operate under a strict dress code including a standard shirt in the provincial colours with the bowler's name embroidered on the back.
 * The Western Canadian Bowling Tour has grown in size and now has five major cash tournaments. The 'Autumn Open is held in Calgary, Alberta at Paradise Lanes. The TPC at Sherwood is at Sherwood Bowl in Sherwood Park, Alberta. Joining the WCBT in 2022 was the Manitoba Open, which is played at St. James Lanes in Winnipeg. The Regina Classic is played at the Golden Mile Bowling Center in Regina, Saskatchewan. The Heritage Traditional is played in Red Deer, Alberta at Heritage Lanes. The season is now capped off by the WCBTour Championship in August, where the Top 12 players with membership for the season go and compete in a filmed tournament to determine the Tour Champion.

Qualifying for a national championship usually requires three qualifying rounds.

 * League, House or Centre round: for most provinces, this is usually not required for the C5PBA Open or C5PBA Youth Challenge.
 * Zone round: the number of centres in each zone varies, but the zones are set up geographically. In some provinces and tournaments, the zone round may be bypassed.
 * Provincial championships: the winners of the zone round qualify for the provincial finals. For most tournaments, Ontario runs two provincial finals—a north provincial (Northern Ontario) and a south provincial (Ontario).

Each province also offers a number of tournaments that conclude with the provincial finals. The tournaments, formats and prize offerings vary by province. These tournaments are operated through the Provincial Bowling Proprietors Association, local and provincial five pin associations, and individual bowling centres.

Facts and figures

 * At first, bowling pins used in five-pin were made of plastic-coated maple. Today's pins are made of a hard plastic and often feature UV-glow capability for black light glow bowling operations. The pin makes a "clack" sound when hit by the ball. The base of the plastic pin can be separated from the rest of the pin. The neck stripes on plastic pins are actually a red plastic tape that wears off with use and can be replaced. In 2011, the C5PBA approved a new pin base. The new base adds 1/8 inch of height to the pin, raises the pin's center of gravity, and lowers the contact area with the lane. This new base has a dark color, so pins with the new base may appear to the bowler as floating above the lane.
 * In 1990, the Canadian 5 Pin Bowlers Association sanctioned the use of personalized bowling balls. Before then, only bowling balls supplied by the bowling centre were allowed to be used.
 * Many five pin tournaments scored by handicap usually use a scoring basis of "pins over average", which is the difference between the outcome of a game and the bowler's established average. It accumulates over the number of games bowled. This statistic can be negative.
 * Several popular automatic scoring systems have five pin versions. On most string type pinsetters, automatic scoring equipment is connected directly to the pinsetter circuitry. Scoring cameras can be used on both types of pinsetting installations. Most systems mount the camera mounted between lanes as in tenpin; however the ProScore system—when installed on free-fall—reads scores using a set of five electronic eyes mounted above the pindeck.
 * Bowling centres with convertible pinsetters usually will set specific hours as to when their convertible lanes will support five-pin or ten-pin. Convertible machines may support duckpin bowling instead of ten-pin when in ten-pin mode. String pinsetters are not sanctioned by the USBC for ten-pin play, partially because a "stringsetter" cannot handle an "off-spot" pin situation.
 * Some five-pin centres have installed lane protection devices. The device is a sheet of plexiglas mounted vertically about six inches (15 cm) above the lane and is located just past the target arrows on the lane. This device discourages bowlers from lofting the ball and damaging the lane—which is more prevalent in small ball bowling. A ball that knocks the plexiglas loose or flies over the plexiglas guard is worth zero points under C5PBA rules.
 * A foul line violation in five-pin results in a 15-point penalty. Pins knocked over during a violating delivery count. The penalty is assessed at the end of the game. This compares to a zero score for the ball in other bowling disciplines.
 * Some believe that the hockey term "five-hole" (the space between the goaltender's legs) is taken from five-pin bowling. Knocking out the headpin (worth 5 points) by itself leaves a large hole through which it is easy to put the next one or two balls without hitting anything.
 * Five-pin bowling is played in all Canadian provinces and territories. However, in Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, unlike in the rest of the country, five-pin is not the dominant form of bowling. In Quebec, five-pin is known as "cinq quilles" (five pins) in French, while "Petites Quilles" refers to the duckpin game. There is only one five-pin bowling alley in all of New Brunswick, whereas in Nova Scotia, the Worcester, Massachusetts–originated sport of candlepin bowling is more popular given that five-pin bowling alleys are located primarily on army bases. Nunavut has only one five-pin bowling alley.  It is a two-lane facility located at CFS Alert and also happens to be the world's most northerly bowling lanes. As a result, this alley is only accessible to military personnel and visitors to the base.
 * Five-pin bowling was one of four sports featured on the Canadian Inventions: Sports series issued by Canada Post stamps on August 10, 2009.
 * In 2007, five-pin bowling was ranked #4 during the CBC miniseries The Greatest Canadian Invention.

title: Five-pin bowling