Surely, one sign that a person has achieved the level of “cultural saturation” that we sometimes call “fame” is when when independent sources start using that person’s name as a shorthand to characterize other people.
Here are three stories of people not Emperor Norton who — during Emperor Norton’s lifetime — were labelled in the California press as various kinds of "Emperor Norton":
an “Epistolary Emperor Norton” in 1867;
“the Emperor Norton of the News” in 1869; and
the “Healdsburg Emperor Norton” in 1878.
Read More
Students of Emperor Norton are familiar with his August 1869 Proclamation to “abolish and dissolve the Democratic and Republican parties.”
The Emperor Norton Trust has uncovered a previously unreported second Proclamation, from September 1876, in which the Emperor commands “the dissolution of the Republican and Democratic parties” — although for different reasons than he gave in 1869.
This second Proclamation further reinforces Emperor Norton’s longstanding antipathy to the major parties and to the U.S. party system — a posture which led Joshua Norton to declare himself an “independent candidate” for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1858 and to deliver a brief speech at a public “No Party” forum in 1875.
Read More