An e-book is a specialised type of e-text.
In computing, an e-book (electronic book) is the digital media equivalent of a conventional printed book. Such documents are either read on personal computers, or on dedicated hardware devices known as e-book devices or e-book readers.
Advantages
---> In e-books text can be searched automatically, and cross-referenced using hyperlinks. This feature is very helpful especially when referring certain kinds of text books and dictionaries.
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---> Text-to-speech software can be used to automatically convert e-books to spoken books. In addition, e-books may be read in low light or even total darkness, with a back-lit device.
---> It costs nothing to replicate an e-book. Copies can be made instantly and in as great a quantity as desired.
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--->In e-books Errors in texts may be easily and quickly corrected, and may even be pushed to users to update their copies of works in-place, rather than requiring a separate errata.
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Tuesday, September 4, 2007
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (January 27, 1832 – January 14, 1898), better known by the pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican clergyman and photographer.
His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass as well as the poems "The Hunting of the Snark" and "Jabberwocky", all considered to be within the genre of literary nonsense.
His facility at word play, logic, and fantasy has delighted audiences ranging from children to the literary elite, and beyond this his work has become embedded deeply in modern culture, directly influencing many artists.
There are societies dedicated to the enjoyment and promotion of his works and the investigation of his life in many parts of the world including North America, Japan, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand.
His biography has recently come under much question as a result of what some call the "Carroll Myth".
Dodgson's family was predominantly northern English, with some Irish connections. Conservative and High Church Anglican, most of Dodgson's ancestors were army officers or Church of England clergymen.
Young Dodgson was born in the little parsonage of Daresbury in Warrington, Cheshire, the oldest boy but already the third child of the four-and-a-half year old marriage. Eight more were to follow and, remarkably for the time, all of them – seven girls and four boys (including Edwin H. Dodgson) – survived into adulthood. When Charles was 11, his father was given the living of Croft-on-Tees in north Yorkshire, and the whole family moved to the spacious Rectory. This remained their home for the next twenty-five years.
In his early years, young Dodgson was educated at home. His "reading lists" preserved in the family testify to a precocious intellect: at the age of seven the child was reading The Pilgrim's Progress. He also suffered from a stammer – a condition shared by his siblings – that often influenced his social life throughout his years. At twelve he was sent away to a small private school at nearby Richmond, where he appears to have been happy and settled. But in 1845, young Dodgson moved on to Rugby School. Scholastically, though, he excelled with apparent ease. "I have not had a more promising boy his age since I came to Rugby" observed R.B. Mayor, the Mathematics master.
He left Rugby at the end of 1849 and, after an interval which remains unexplained, went on in January 1851 to Oxford, attending his father's old college, Christ Church. He had only been at Oxford two days when he received a summons home. His mother had died of "inflammation of the brain" – perhaps meningitis or a stroke – at the age of forty-seven.
His early academic career veered between high-octane promise and irresistible distraction. He may not always have worked hard, but he was exceptionally gifted and achievement came easily to him. In 1852 he received a first in Honour Moderations, and shortly after he was nominated to a Studentship, by his father's old friend Canon Edward Pusey. However, a little later he failed an important scholarship through his self-confessed inability to apply himself to study. Even so, his talent as a mathematician won him the Christ Church Mathematical Lectureship, which he continued to hold for the next twenty-six years. The income was good, but the work bored him. Many of his pupils were older and richer than he was, and almost all of them were uninterested. However, despite early unhappiness, Dodgson was to remain at Christ Church, in various capacities, until his death.
From a young age, Dodgson wrote poetry and short stories, sending them to various magazines and enjoying moderate success. Between 1854 and 1856, his work appeared in the national publications, The Comic Times and The Train, as well as smaller magazines like the Whitby Gazette and the Oxford Critic. Most of this output was humorous, sometimes satirical, but his standards and ambitions were exacting. "I do not think I have yet written anything worthy of real publication (in which I do not include the Whitby Gazette or the Oxonian Advertiser), but I do not despair of doing so some day", he wrote in July 1855.
In 1856 he published his first piece of work under the name that would make him famous. A very predictable little romantic poem called "Solitude" appeared in The Train under the authorship of "Lewis Carroll". This pseudonym was a play on his real name; Lewis was the anglicised form of Ludovicus, which was the Latin for Lutwidge, and Carroll being an anglicised version of Carolus, the Latin for Charles.
In 1856, Dodgson took up the new art form of photography, first under the influence of his uncle Skeffington Lutwidge, and later his Oxford friend Reginald Southey.
He soon excelled at the art and became a well-known gentleman-photographer, and he seems even to have toyed with the idea of making a living out of it in his very early years.
To promote letter writing Carroll invented The Wonderland Postage-Stamp Case in 1889. This was a cloth-backed folder with twelve slots, two marked for inserting the then most commonly used 1d. stamp, and one each for the other current denominations to 1s. The folder was then put into a slip case decorated with a picture of Alice on the front and the Cheshire Cat on the back. All could be conveniently carried in a pocket or purse. When issued it also included a copy of Carroll's pamphletted lecture, Eight or Nine Wise Words About Letter-Writing.
He also appears to have invented, and certainly popularised, the Word Ladder (or "doublet" as it was known at first): a form of brain-teaser which is still popular today: the game of changing one word into another by altering one letter at a time, each successive change always resulting in a genuine word. For instance, CAT is transformed into DOG by the following steps: CAT, COT, DOT, DOG.
Over the remaining twenty years of his life, throughout his growing wealth and fame, his existence remained little changed. He continued to teach at Christ Church until 1881, and remained in residence there until his death. His last novel, the two-volume Sylvie and Bruno, was published in 1889 and 1893 respectively. Its extraordinary convolutions and apparent confusion baffled most readers and it achieved little success. He died at his sister's home in Guildford on January 14, 1898 of pneumonia following influenza. He was a fortnight away from turning sixty-six years old. He is buried in Guildford at the Mount Cemetery.
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
• Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (includes Jabberwocky)
• The Hunting of the Snark
• Rhyme? And Reason? (also published as Phantasmagoria)
• A Tangled Tale
• Alice's Adventures Under Ground
• Sylvie and Bruno
• Sylvie and Bruno Concluded
• Three Sunsets and Other Poems
• Pillow Problems
• The Game of Logic
• Symbolic Logic Part I. Part II published post-humously
• An Elementary Treastise on Determinants, With Their Application to Simultaneous Linear Equations and Algebraical Equations
• What the Tortoise Said to Achilles
• Euclid and his Modern Rivals (1879)
• Facts
His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass as well as the poems "The Hunting of the Snark" and "Jabberwocky", all considered to be within the genre of literary nonsense.
His facility at word play, logic, and fantasy has delighted audiences ranging from children to the literary elite, and beyond this his work has become embedded deeply in modern culture, directly influencing many artists.
There are societies dedicated to the enjoyment and promotion of his works and the investigation of his life in many parts of the world including North America, Japan, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand.
His biography has recently come under much question as a result of what some call the "Carroll Myth".
Early life
Antecedents
Dodgson's family was predominantly northern English, with some Irish connections. Conservative and High Church Anglican, most of Dodgson's ancestors were army officers or Church of England clergymen.
Young Charles
Young Dodgson was born in the little parsonage of Daresbury in Warrington, Cheshire, the oldest boy but already the third child of the four-and-a-half year old marriage. Eight more were to follow and, remarkably for the time, all of them – seven girls and four boys (including Edwin H. Dodgson) – survived into adulthood. When Charles was 11, his father was given the living of Croft-on-Tees in north Yorkshire, and the whole family moved to the spacious Rectory. This remained their home for the next twenty-five years.
In his early years, young Dodgson was educated at home. His "reading lists" preserved in the family testify to a precocious intellect: at the age of seven the child was reading The Pilgrim's Progress. He also suffered from a stammer – a condition shared by his siblings – that often influenced his social life throughout his years. At twelve he was sent away to a small private school at nearby Richmond, where he appears to have been happy and settled. But in 1845, young Dodgson moved on to Rugby School. Scholastically, though, he excelled with apparent ease. "I have not had a more promising boy his age since I came to Rugby" observed R.B. Mayor, the Mathematics master.
Oxford
He left Rugby at the end of 1849 and, after an interval which remains unexplained, went on in January 1851 to Oxford, attending his father's old college, Christ Church. He had only been at Oxford two days when he received a summons home. His mother had died of "inflammation of the brain" – perhaps meningitis or a stroke – at the age of forty-seven.
His early academic career veered between high-octane promise and irresistible distraction. He may not always have worked hard, but he was exceptionally gifted and achievement came easily to him. In 1852 he received a first in Honour Moderations, and shortly after he was nominated to a Studentship, by his father's old friend Canon Edward Pusey. However, a little later he failed an important scholarship through his self-confessed inability to apply himself to study. Even so, his talent as a mathematician won him the Christ Church Mathematical Lectureship, which he continued to hold for the next twenty-six years. The income was good, but the work bored him. Many of his pupils were older and richer than he was, and almost all of them were uninterested. However, despite early unhappiness, Dodgson was to remain at Christ Church, in various capacities, until his death.
Dodgson the artist
The author
From a young age, Dodgson wrote poetry and short stories, sending them to various magazines and enjoying moderate success. Between 1854 and 1856, his work appeared in the national publications, The Comic Times and The Train, as well as smaller magazines like the Whitby Gazette and the Oxford Critic. Most of this output was humorous, sometimes satirical, but his standards and ambitions were exacting. "I do not think I have yet written anything worthy of real publication (in which I do not include the Whitby Gazette or the Oxonian Advertiser), but I do not despair of doing so some day", he wrote in July 1855.
In 1856 he published his first piece of work under the name that would make him famous. A very predictable little romantic poem called "Solitude" appeared in The Train under the authorship of "Lewis Carroll". This pseudonym was a play on his real name; Lewis was the anglicised form of Ludovicus, which was the Latin for Lutwidge, and Carroll being an anglicised version of Carolus, the Latin for Charles.
The photographer
In 1856, Dodgson took up the new art form of photography, first under the influence of his uncle Skeffington Lutwidge, and later his Oxford friend Reginald Southey.
He soon excelled at the art and became a well-known gentleman-photographer, and he seems even to have toyed with the idea of making a living out of it in his very early years.
The inventor
To promote letter writing Carroll invented The Wonderland Postage-Stamp Case in 1889. This was a cloth-backed folder with twelve slots, two marked for inserting the then most commonly used 1d. stamp, and one each for the other current denominations to 1s. The folder was then put into a slip case decorated with a picture of Alice on the front and the Cheshire Cat on the back. All could be conveniently carried in a pocket or purse. When issued it also included a copy of Carroll's pamphletted lecture, Eight or Nine Wise Words About Letter-Writing.
He also appears to have invented, and certainly popularised, the Word Ladder (or "doublet" as it was known at first): a form of brain-teaser which is still popular today: the game of changing one word into another by altering one letter at a time, each successive change always resulting in a genuine word. For instance, CAT is transformed into DOG by the following steps: CAT, COT, DOT, DOG.
The later years
Over the remaining twenty years of his life, throughout his growing wealth and fame, his existence remained little changed. He continued to teach at Christ Church until 1881, and remained in residence there until his death. His last novel, the two-volume Sylvie and Bruno, was published in 1889 and 1893 respectively. Its extraordinary convolutions and apparent confusion baffled most readers and it achieved little success. He died at his sister's home in Guildford on January 14, 1898 of pneumonia following influenza. He was a fortnight away from turning sixty-six years old. He is buried in Guildford at the Mount Cemetery.
Works
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
• Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (includes Jabberwocky)
• The Hunting of the Snark
• Rhyme? And Reason? (also published as Phantasmagoria)
• A Tangled Tale
• Alice's Adventures Under Ground
• Sylvie and Bruno
• Sylvie and Bruno Concluded
• Three Sunsets and Other Poems
• Pillow Problems
• The Game of Logic
• Symbolic Logic Part I. Part II published post-humously
• An Elementary Treastise on Determinants, With Their Application to Simultaneous Linear Equations and Algebraical Equations
• What the Tortoise Said to Achilles
• Euclid and his Modern Rivals (1879)
• Facts
John Keats
John Keats ( 31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was one of the principal poets of the English Romantic movement. During his short life, his work received constant critical attacks from the periodicals of the day, but his posthumous influence on poets such as Alfred Tennyson has been immense. Elaborate word choice and sensual imagery characterize Keats's poetry, including a series of odes that were his masterpieces and which remain among the most popular poems in English literature. Keats's letters, which expound on his theory of aethestics of "negative capability", were among the most celebrated by any men of letters
John Keats was born in 1795 at 85 Moorgate in London, where his father, Thomas Keats, was a hostler. The pub is now called "Keats The Grove", only a few yards from Moorgate station. Keats was baptised at St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate and lived happily for the first seven years of his life. The beginnings of his troubles occurred in 1804, when his father died from a fractured skull after falling from his horse. His mother, Frances Jennings Keats, remarried soon afterwards, but quickly left the new husband and moved herself and her four children (a son had died in infancy) to live with Keats' grandmother, Alice Jennings. There, Keats attended a school that first instilled in him a love of literature. In 1810, however, his mother died of tuberculosis, leaving him and his siblings in the custody of their grandmother.
Keats' grandmother appointed two guardians to take care of her new "charges", and these guardians removed Keats from his old school to become a surgeon's apprentice. This continued until 1814, when, after a fight with his master, he left his apprenticeship and became a student at King's College London. During that year, he devoted more and more of his time to the study of literature. Keats travelled to the Isle of Wight in the spring of 1819, where he spent a week. Later that year he stayed in Winchester. It was in Winchester that Keats wrote Isabella, St. Agnes' Eve and Lamia. Parts of Hyperion and the five-act poetic tragedy Otho The Great were also written in Winchester.
Following the death of his grandmother, he soon found his brother, Tom Keats, entrusted to his care. Tom was suffering, as his mother had, from tuberculosis. Finishing his epic poem "Endymion", Keats left to work in Scotland and Ireland with his friend Charles Brown. However, he too began to show signs of tuberculosis infection on that trip, and returned prematurely. When he did, he found that Tom's condition had deteriorated, and that Endymion had, as had Poems before it, been the target of much abuse from the critics. On 1 December 1818, Tom Keats died from his disease, and John Keats moved again, to live in Brown's house in Hampstead. There he lived next door to Fanny Brawne, where she had been staying with her mother. He then quickly fell in love with Fanny. However, it was overall an unhappy affair for the poet; Keats' ardour for her seemed to bring him more vexation than comfort. The later (posthumous) publication of their correspondence was to scandalise Victorian society. In the diary of Fanny Brawne was found only one sentence regarding the separation: "Mr. Keats has left Hampstead." Fanny's letters to Keats were, as the poet had requested, destroyed upon his death.
The Spanish Steps, Rome, Italy, seen from Piazza di Spagna. John Keats lived in the house in the right foreground.
This relationship was cut short when, by 1820, Keats began showing worse signs of the disease that had plagued his family. On the suggestion of his doctors, he left the cold airs of London behind and moved to Italy with his friend Joseph Severn. Keats moved into a house on the Spanish Steps, in Rome, where despite attentive care from Severn and Dr. John Clark, the poet's health rapidly deteriorated. He died in 1821 and was buried in the Protestant Cemetery, Rome. His last request to be buried under a tomb stone reading, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." His name was not to appear on the stone. Despite these requests, however, Severn and Brown also added the epithet: "This Grave contains all that was mortal, of a YOUNG ENGLISH POET, who on his Death Bed, in the Bitterness of his heart, at the Malicious Power of his enemies, desired these words to be Engraven on his Tomb Stone" along with the image of a lyre with broken strings.
Shelley and Byron erroneously blamed his death on an article published shortly before in the Quarterly Review, with a scathing attack on Keats's Endymion; "snuffed out by an article" was Byron's phrase. The offending article was long believed to have been written by William Gifford, though later shown to be the work of John Wilson Croker. Keats' death inspired Shelley to write the poem Adonais.
His introduction to the work of Edmund Spenser, particularly The Faerie Queene, was to prove a turning point in Keats' development as a poet; it was to inspire Keats to write his first poem, Imitation of Spenser. He befriended Leigh Hunt, a poet and editor who published his first poem in 1816. In 1817, Keats published his first volume of poetry entitled simply Poems. Keats' Poems was not well received, largely due to his connection with the controversial Hunt. Keats produced some of his finest poetry during the spring and summer of 1819; in fact, the period from September 1818 to September 1819 is often referred to among Keats scholars as the Great Year, or the Living Year, because it was during this period that he was most productive and that he wrote his most critically acclaimed works. Several major events have been noted as factors in this increased productivity: namely, the death of his brother Tom, the critical reviews of Endymion, and his meeting of Fanny Brawne. The famous odes he produced during the spring and summer of 1819 include: Ode to Psyche, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on Melancholy, and To Autumn.
Keats developed his poetic theories, chief among them Negative Capability and The Mansion of Many Apartments, in letters to friends and family. In particular, he stated he wished to be a "chameleon poet" and to resist the "egotistical sublime" of Wordsworth's writing. Oscar Wilde, the aestheticist non pareil was to later write: "[...] who but the supreme and perfect artist could have got from a mere colour a motive so full of marvel: and now I am half enamoured of the paper that touched his hand, and the ink that did his bidding, grown fond of the sweet comeliness of his charactery, for since my childhood I have loved none better than your marvellous kinsman, that godlike boy, the real Adonis of our age[...] In my heaven he walks eternally with Shakespeare and the Greeks."
William Butler Yeats was intrigued by the contrast between the "deliberate happiness" of Keats's poetry and the sadness that characterised his life. He wrote in Ego Dominus Tuus (1915):
I see a schoolboy when I think of him,
With face and nose pressed to a sweet-shop window,
For certainly he sank into his grave
His senses and his heart unsatisfied,
And made – being poor, ailing and ignorant,
Shut out from all the luxury of the world,
The coarse-bred son of a livery-stable keeper –
Luxuriant song.
Wallace Stevens described Keats as the "Secretary for Porcelain" in Extracts from Addresses to the Academy of Fine Ideas.
Let the Secretary for Porcelain observe
That evil made magic, as in catastrophe,
If neatly glazed, becomes the same as the fruit
Of an emperor, the egg-plant of a prince.
The good is evil's last invention.
Lord Byron wrote (in a parody of the nursery rhyme 'Who killed Cock Robin?') on Keats' death in 1821:
Who kill'd John Keats?
"I," says the Quarterly,
So savage and Tartarly;
"'Twas one of my feats."
Who shot the arrow?
"The poet-priest Milman
(So ready to kill man),
Or Southey, or Barrow."
Keats was mentioned in The Smiths song "Cemetry Gates": "Keats and Yeats are on your side, while Wilde is on mine". Dan Simmons's science-fiction novels of the "Hyperion Cantos" feature a character with the cloned body of John Keats, as well as his personality (reconstructed and programmed into an AI). Some of the main themes of these novels, as well as their names, draw upon John Keats's poems "Hyperion" and "Endymion". In pop singer Natasha Bedingfield's 2005 single "These Words," Keats is mentioned along with Byron and Shelley.
Two films about Keats's life are in pre-production as of July 2007: a period drama about Keats's romance with Fanny Brawne titled 'Bright Star', directed by Jane Campion, and a mockumentary 'grunge' musical based on Keats's letters and set in Seattle at the beginning of the 1990s, titled 'Negative Capability', directed by Daniel Gildark.
"Keats in Hampstead," a play, written and directed by James Veitch and based on the poet's time at Wentworth Place, premiered in the garden of Keats House in July 2007.
A Radio play "The Mask Of Death" on the final days of John Keats in Rome written by the Indian English poet Gopi Kottoor captures the last days of the young poet as revealed through his circle of friends (Severn), his poetry and letters.
The largest collection of Keats's letters, manuscripts, and other papers is in the Houghton Library at Harvard University. Other collections of such material will be found at the British Library; Keats's House, Hampstead; Keats-Shelley Memorial House, Rome; and the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York.
• Addressed to Haydon text
• Addressed to the Same text
• Asleep! O sleep a little while, white pearl! text
• A Song About Myself
• Bards of Passion and of Mirth text
• Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art (1819)
• Calidore (a fragment)
• The Day Is Gone, And All Its Sweets Are Gone
• Dedication. To Leigh Hunt, Esq.
• A Dream, After Reading Dante's Episode Of Paolo And Francesca text
• A Draught of Sunshine
• Endymion: A Poetic Romance (1817)
• Epistle to John Hamilton Reynolds
• Epistle to My Brother George
• The Eve of Saint Mark
• The Eve of St. Agnes (1819) text
• The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream (1817)
• Fancy (poem)
• Fill For Me A Brimming Bowl text
• Fragment of an Ode to Maia
• Give Me Women, Wine, and Snuff
• Happy Is England! I Could Be Content
• Hither, Hither, Love
• How Many Bards Gild The Lapses Of Time!
• The Human Seasons
• Hymn To Apollo
• Hyperion (1818)
• I had a dove
• I stood tip-toe upon a little hill
• If By Dull Rhymes Our English Must Be Chain'd
• Imitation of Spenser text
• In Drear-Nighted December
• Isabella or The Pot of Basil
• Keen, fitful gusts are whisp’ring here and there
• La Belle Dame sans Merci (1819) text
• Lamia (1819)
• Lines (poem)
• Lines on Seeing a Lock of Milton's Hair
• Lines on The Mermaid Tavern
• Meg Merrilies
• Modern Love (Keats)
• O Blush Not So!
• O Solitude! If I Must With Thee Dwell
• Ode (Keats)
• Ode on a Grecian Urn (1819) text
• Ode on Indolence (1819)
• Ode on Melancholy (1819) text
• Ode to a Nightingale (1819) text
• Ode to Apollo
• Ode to Fanny
• Ode to Psyche (1819)
• Oh! how I love, on a fair summer's eve
• On Death
• On Fame text
• On First Looking into Chapman's Homer (1816) text
• On Leaving Some Friends At An Early Hour
• On Peace (1814) text
• On receiving a curious Shell
• On Seeing the Elgin Marbles for the First Time
• On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again
• On the Grasshopper and Cricket
• On the Sea text
• The Poet (a fragment)
• A Prophecy - To George Keats in America
• Robin Hood
• Sharing Eve's Apple
• Sleep and Poetry
• A Song of Opposites
• Specimen of an Induction to a Poem
• Staffa
• Stanzas
• Think Not of It, Sweet One
• This Living Hand
• To —
• To a Cat
• To A Friend Who Sent Me Some Roses
• To a Lady seen for a few Moments at Vauxhall
• To A Young Lady Who Sent Me A Laurel Crown
• To Autumn
• To Ailsa Rock
• To Autumn (1819) text
• To Byron text
• To Charles Cowden Clarke
• To Chatterton
• To Fanny
• To G.A.W. (Georgiana Augusta Wylie)
• To George Felton Mathew
• To Georgiana Augusta Wylie
• To Haydon
• To Homer
• To Hope
• To John Hamilton Reynolds
• To Kosciusko
• To My Brother
• To My Brothers
• To one who has been long in city pent
• To Sleep
• To Solitude
• To Some Ladies
• To the Nile
• Two Sonnets on Fame
• When I have fears that I may cease to be (1818) text
• Where Be Ye Going, You Devon Maid?
• Where's the Poet?
• Why did I laugh tonight?
• Woman! when I behold thee flippant, vain
• Written in Disgust of Vulgar Superstition
• Written on a Blank Space
• Written on a Summer Evening
• Written on the Day that Mr Leigh Hunt Left Prison
• Written Upon the Top of Ben Nevis
• You say you love
Life
John Keats was born in 1795 at 85 Moorgate in London, where his father, Thomas Keats, was a hostler. The pub is now called "Keats The Grove", only a few yards from Moorgate station. Keats was baptised at St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate and lived happily for the first seven years of his life. The beginnings of his troubles occurred in 1804, when his father died from a fractured skull after falling from his horse. His mother, Frances Jennings Keats, remarried soon afterwards, but quickly left the new husband and moved herself and her four children (a son had died in infancy) to live with Keats' grandmother, Alice Jennings. There, Keats attended a school that first instilled in him a love of literature. In 1810, however, his mother died of tuberculosis, leaving him and his siblings in the custody of their grandmother.
Keats' grandmother appointed two guardians to take care of her new "charges", and these guardians removed Keats from his old school to become a surgeon's apprentice. This continued until 1814, when, after a fight with his master, he left his apprenticeship and became a student at King's College London. During that year, he devoted more and more of his time to the study of literature. Keats travelled to the Isle of Wight in the spring of 1819, where he spent a week. Later that year he stayed in Winchester. It was in Winchester that Keats wrote Isabella, St. Agnes' Eve and Lamia. Parts of Hyperion and the five-act poetic tragedy Otho The Great were also written in Winchester.
Following the death of his grandmother, he soon found his brother, Tom Keats, entrusted to his care. Tom was suffering, as his mother had, from tuberculosis. Finishing his epic poem "Endymion", Keats left to work in Scotland and Ireland with his friend Charles Brown. However, he too began to show signs of tuberculosis infection on that trip, and returned prematurely. When he did, he found that Tom's condition had deteriorated, and that Endymion had, as had Poems before it, been the target of much abuse from the critics. On 1 December 1818, Tom Keats died from his disease, and John Keats moved again, to live in Brown's house in Hampstead. There he lived next door to Fanny Brawne, where she had been staying with her mother. He then quickly fell in love with Fanny. However, it was overall an unhappy affair for the poet; Keats' ardour for her seemed to bring him more vexation than comfort. The later (posthumous) publication of their correspondence was to scandalise Victorian society. In the diary of Fanny Brawne was found only one sentence regarding the separation: "Mr. Keats has left Hampstead." Fanny's letters to Keats were, as the poet had requested, destroyed upon his death.
The Spanish Steps, Rome, Italy, seen from Piazza di Spagna. John Keats lived in the house in the right foreground.
This relationship was cut short when, by 1820, Keats began showing worse signs of the disease that had plagued his family. On the suggestion of his doctors, he left the cold airs of London behind and moved to Italy with his friend Joseph Severn. Keats moved into a house on the Spanish Steps, in Rome, where despite attentive care from Severn and Dr. John Clark, the poet's health rapidly deteriorated. He died in 1821 and was buried in the Protestant Cemetery, Rome. His last request to be buried under a tomb stone reading, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." His name was not to appear on the stone. Despite these requests, however, Severn and Brown also added the epithet: "This Grave contains all that was mortal, of a YOUNG ENGLISH POET, who on his Death Bed, in the Bitterness of his heart, at the Malicious Power of his enemies, desired these words to be Engraven on his Tomb Stone" along with the image of a lyre with broken strings.
Shelley and Byron erroneously blamed his death on an article published shortly before in the Quarterly Review, with a scathing attack on Keats's Endymion; "snuffed out by an article" was Byron's phrase. The offending article was long believed to have been written by William Gifford, though later shown to be the work of John Wilson Croker. Keats' death inspired Shelley to write the poem Adonais.
His introduction to the work of Edmund Spenser, particularly The Faerie Queene, was to prove a turning point in Keats' development as a poet; it was to inspire Keats to write his first poem, Imitation of Spenser. He befriended Leigh Hunt, a poet and editor who published his first poem in 1816. In 1817, Keats published his first volume of poetry entitled simply Poems. Keats' Poems was not well received, largely due to his connection with the controversial Hunt. Keats produced some of his finest poetry during the spring and summer of 1819; in fact, the period from September 1818 to September 1819 is often referred to among Keats scholars as the Great Year, or the Living Year, because it was during this period that he was most productive and that he wrote his most critically acclaimed works. Several major events have been noted as factors in this increased productivity: namely, the death of his brother Tom, the critical reviews of Endymion, and his meeting of Fanny Brawne. The famous odes he produced during the spring and summer of 1819 include: Ode to Psyche, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on Melancholy, and To Autumn.
Keats developed his poetic theories, chief among them Negative Capability and The Mansion of Many Apartments, in letters to friends and family. In particular, he stated he wished to be a "chameleon poet" and to resist the "egotistical sublime" of Wordsworth's writing. Oscar Wilde, the aestheticist non pareil was to later write: "[...] who but the supreme and perfect artist could have got from a mere colour a motive so full of marvel: and now I am half enamoured of the paper that touched his hand, and the ink that did his bidding, grown fond of the sweet comeliness of his charactery, for since my childhood I have loved none better than your marvellous kinsman, that godlike boy, the real Adonis of our age[...] In my heaven he walks eternally with Shakespeare and the Greeks."
William Butler Yeats was intrigued by the contrast between the "deliberate happiness" of Keats's poetry and the sadness that characterised his life. He wrote in Ego Dominus Tuus (1915):
I see a schoolboy when I think of him,
With face and nose pressed to a sweet-shop window,
For certainly he sank into his grave
His senses and his heart unsatisfied,
And made – being poor, ailing and ignorant,
Shut out from all the luxury of the world,
The coarse-bred son of a livery-stable keeper –
Luxuriant song.
Wallace Stevens described Keats as the "Secretary for Porcelain" in Extracts from Addresses to the Academy of Fine Ideas.
Let the Secretary for Porcelain observe
That evil made magic, as in catastrophe,
If neatly glazed, becomes the same as the fruit
Of an emperor, the egg-plant of a prince.
The good is evil's last invention.
Lord Byron wrote (in a parody of the nursery rhyme 'Who killed Cock Robin?') on Keats' death in 1821:
Who kill'd John Keats?
"I," says the Quarterly,
So savage and Tartarly;
"'Twas one of my feats."
Who shot the arrow?
"The poet-priest Milman
(So ready to kill man),
Or Southey, or Barrow."
Keats was mentioned in The Smiths song "Cemetry Gates": "Keats and Yeats are on your side, while Wilde is on mine". Dan Simmons's science-fiction novels of the "Hyperion Cantos" feature a character with the cloned body of John Keats, as well as his personality (reconstructed and programmed into an AI). Some of the main themes of these novels, as well as their names, draw upon John Keats's poems "Hyperion" and "Endymion". In pop singer Natasha Bedingfield's 2005 single "These Words," Keats is mentioned along with Byron and Shelley.
Two films about Keats's life are in pre-production as of July 2007: a period drama about Keats's romance with Fanny Brawne titled 'Bright Star', directed by Jane Campion, and a mockumentary 'grunge' musical based on Keats's letters and set in Seattle at the beginning of the 1990s, titled 'Negative Capability', directed by Daniel Gildark.
"Keats in Hampstead," a play, written and directed by James Veitch and based on the poet's time at Wentworth Place, premiered in the garden of Keats House in July 2007.
A Radio play "The Mask Of Death" on the final days of John Keats in Rome written by the Indian English poet Gopi Kottoor captures the last days of the young poet as revealed through his circle of friends (Severn), his poetry and letters.
The largest collection of Keats's letters, manuscripts, and other papers is in the Houghton Library at Harvard University. Other collections of such material will be found at the British Library; Keats's House, Hampstead; Keats-Shelley Memorial House, Rome; and the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York.
The Fantastic works by John keats
• Addressed to Haydon text
• Addressed to the Same text
• Asleep! O sleep a little while, white pearl! text
• A Song About Myself
• Bards of Passion and of Mirth text
• Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art (1819)
• Calidore (a fragment)
• The Day Is Gone, And All Its Sweets Are Gone
• Dedication. To Leigh Hunt, Esq.
• A Dream, After Reading Dante's Episode Of Paolo And Francesca text
• A Draught of Sunshine
• Endymion: A Poetic Romance (1817)
• Epistle to John Hamilton Reynolds
• Epistle to My Brother George
• The Eve of Saint Mark
• The Eve of St. Agnes (1819) text
• The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream (1817)
• Fancy (poem)
• Fill For Me A Brimming Bowl text
• Fragment of an Ode to Maia
• Give Me Women, Wine, and Snuff
• Happy Is England! I Could Be Content
• Hither, Hither, Love
• How Many Bards Gild The Lapses Of Time!
• The Human Seasons
• Hymn To Apollo
• Hyperion (1818)
• I had a dove
• I stood tip-toe upon a little hill
• If By Dull Rhymes Our English Must Be Chain'd
• Imitation of Spenser text
• In Drear-Nighted December
• Isabella or The Pot of Basil
• Keen, fitful gusts are whisp’ring here and there
• La Belle Dame sans Merci (1819) text
• Lamia (1819)
• Lines (poem)
• Lines on Seeing a Lock of Milton's Hair
• Lines on The Mermaid Tavern
• Meg Merrilies
• Modern Love (Keats)
• O Blush Not So!
• O Solitude! If I Must With Thee Dwell
• Ode (Keats)
• Ode on a Grecian Urn (1819) text
• Ode on Indolence (1819)
• Ode on Melancholy (1819) text
• Ode to a Nightingale (1819) text
• Ode to Apollo
• Ode to Fanny
• Ode to Psyche (1819)
• Oh! how I love, on a fair summer's eve
• On Death
• On Fame text
• On First Looking into Chapman's Homer (1816) text
• On Leaving Some Friends At An Early Hour
• On Peace (1814) text
• On receiving a curious Shell
• On Seeing the Elgin Marbles for the First Time
• On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again
• On the Grasshopper and Cricket
• On the Sea text
• The Poet (a fragment)
• A Prophecy - To George Keats in America
• Robin Hood
• Sharing Eve's Apple
• Sleep and Poetry
• A Song of Opposites
• Specimen of an Induction to a Poem
• Staffa
• Stanzas
• Think Not of It, Sweet One
• This Living Hand
• To —
• To a Cat
• To A Friend Who Sent Me Some Roses
• To a Lady seen for a few Moments at Vauxhall
• To A Young Lady Who Sent Me A Laurel Crown
• To Autumn
• To Ailsa Rock
• To Autumn (1819) text
• To Byron text
• To Charles Cowden Clarke
• To Chatterton
• To Fanny
• To G.A.W. (Georgiana Augusta Wylie)
• To George Felton Mathew
• To Georgiana Augusta Wylie
• To Haydon
• To Homer
• To Hope
• To John Hamilton Reynolds
• To Kosciusko
• To My Brother
• To My Brothers
• To one who has been long in city pent
• To Sleep
• To Solitude
• To Some Ladies
• To the Nile
• Two Sonnets on Fame
• When I have fears that I may cease to be (1818) text
• Where Be Ye Going, You Devon Maid?
• Where's the Poet?
• Why did I laugh tonight?
• Woman! when I behold thee flippant, vain
• Written in Disgust of Vulgar Superstition
• Written on a Blank Space
• Written on a Summer Evening
• Written on the Day that Mr Leigh Hunt Left Prison
• Written Upon the Top of Ben Nevis
• You say you love
Joanne "Jo" Murray née Rowling
Joanne "Jo" Murray née Rowling OBE (born 31 July 1965), who writes under the pen name J. K. Rowling, is an English writer and author of the Harry Potter fantasy series. The Potter books have gained worldwide attention, won multiple awards, and sold over 325 million books. The last four books have been consecutively the fastest-selling books in history, a record which the final book currently holds.
The 2007 Sunday Times Rich List estimated Rowling's fortune at £545 million, ranking her as the 136th richest person and the thirteenth richest woman in Britain. In 2006, Forbes named Rowling the second-richest female entertainer in the world and ranked her as the forty-eighth most powerful celebrity of 2007.
Although she writes under the pseudonym "J. K. Rowling", pronounced like rolling, she actually has no middle name making her full name simply "Joanne Rowling". Before publishing her first book, London-based publisher, Bloomsbury feared that the target audience of young boys might be reluctant to buy books written by a female author. It requested that Rowling use two initials, rather than reveal her first name. As she had no middle name, she chose K. for Kathleen as the second initial of her pseudonym, from her paternal grandmother, Kathleen Ada Bulgen Rowling. The name Kathleen has never been part of her real name. Following her marriage, her official legal name is Joanne Murray. She calls herself "Jo" and claims, "No one ever called me 'Joanne' when I was young, unless they were angry".
Early life
Rowling was born to Peter James Rowling and Anne Rowling née Volant on 31 July 1965 at Yate, Gloucestershire, England, 10 miles (16.1 km) northeast of Bristol. Her sister Dianne (Di) was born at their home when Rowling was 23 months old. She attended St Michael's Primary School, a school founded almost 200 years ago by famed abolitionist William Wilberforce and education reformer Hannah More. Her elderly headmaster at St. Michaels, Alfred Dunn, was claimed as the inspiration for the character Dumbledore.
As a child, Rowling enjoyed writing fantasy stories, which she often read to her sister. "I can still remember me telling her a story in which she fell down a rabbit hole and was fed strawberries by the rabbit family inside it," she recalls, "Certainly the first story I ever wrote down (when I was five or six) was about a rabbit called Rabbit. He got the measles and was visited by his friends, including a giant bee called Miss Bee".
In 1995, Rowling completed her manuscript for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone on an old manual typewriter. Upon the enthusiastic response of Bryony Evans, a reader who had been asked to review the book’s first three chapters, the Fulham-based Christopher Little Literary Agents agreed to represent Rowling in her quest for a publisher. The book was handed to twelve publishing houses, all of which rejected it. A year later she was finally given the green light (and a £1500 advance) by editor Barry Cunningham from the small publisher Bloomsbury. The decision to take Rowling on was apparently largely due to Alice Newton, the eight-year-old daughter of the company’s chairman, who was given the first chapter to review by her father, and immediately demanded the next. Although Bloomsbury agreed to publish the book, Cunningham says that he advised Rowling to get a day job, since she had little chance of making money in children’s books. Soon after, Rowling received an £8000 grant from the Scottish Arts Council to enable her to continue writing.
The following spring, an auction was held in the United States for the rights to publish the novel, and was won by Scholastic Inc., for $105,000. Rowling has said she “nearly died” when she heard the news. In June 1997, Bloomsbury published Philosopher’s Stone with an initial print-run of one thousand copies, five hundred of which were distributed to libraries. Today, such copies are valued between £16,000 and £25,000.
Five months later, the book won its first award, a Nestlé Smarties Book Prize. In February, the novel won the prestigious British Book Award for Children’s Book of the Year, and later, the Children’s Book Award. In October 1998, Scholastic published Philosopher’s Stone in the US under the title of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: a change Rowling claims she now regrets and would have fought if she had been in a better position at the time.
In December 1999, the third novel, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, won the Smarties Prize, making Rowling the first person to win the award three times running. She later withdrew the fourth Harry Potter novel from contention to allow other books a fair chance. In January 2000, Prisoner of Azkaban won the inaugural Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year award, though it lost the Book of the Year prize to Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf.
The title of the seventh Harry Potter book was revealed 21 December 2006 to be Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. On 1 February 2007 Rowling wrote on a bust in her hotel room at the Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh that she had completed the seventh book in that room on 11 January 2007. Later in February 2007, Neil Blair, a lawyer with Rowling's literary agency, announced that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will not be released as an e-book, just as Rowling has not allowed the first six Potter books to be so released. The seventh and final book of the series was released on July 21, 2007 (0:00 BST) and became the fastest-selling book of all time.
All seven volumes of the "Harry Potter" series, one for each of Harry’s school years, have broken sales records. The last four have been, consecutively, the fastest-selling books in history, grossing more in their opening 24 hours than blockbuster films. The series, totalling 4,195 pages, has been translated into 65 languages.
Rowling said she is "left wing" and that there is a certain amount of "political stuff" in Harry Potter, but that "every reader will bring their own agenda to the book." Several articles have noted influences of Rowling's heroine, author Jessica Mitford, whom Rowling describes as a "self-taught socialist," and noted leftist themes in Harry Potter, like cooperation among the magical races, anti-racism, and opposition to the slavery of House elves. Rowling's three unforgivable spells—killing, torture, and enslavement—are also cited as influenced by her prior work with Amnesty International. After the publication of Deathly Hallows, Rowling responded to queries about metaphors in the books for ethnic cleansing, "Well, it is a political metaphor. But … I didn't sit down and think, 'I want to recreate Nazi Germany,' in the—in the wizarding world. Because—although there are—quite consciously overtones of Nazi Germany, there are also associations with other political situations. So I can't really single one out."
In October 1998, Warner Bros. purchased the film rights to the first two novels for a seven-figure sum. A film version of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was released on 16 November 2001 and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets on 15 November 2002. Both were directed by Chris Columbus. The 4 June 2004 film of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was directed by Alfonso Cuarón. The fourth film, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, was directed by yet another new director, Mike Newell. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was released on 11 July 2007. David Yates is the director, and Michael Goldenberg its screenwriter, having taken over the position from Steven Kloves. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is in pre-production, scheduled for release on 21 November 2008. David Yates will direct again, and Kloves will return to screenwrite it. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is expected to be released sometime in 2010.
In contrast to the treatment of most authors by Hollywood studios, Warner Bros took considerable notice of Rowling's desires and thoughts, as she was able to secure it in the contract. One of her principal stipulations was the films be shot in Britain with an all-British cast, which has been adhered to strictly. In an unprecedented move, Rowling also demanded that Coca-Cola, the victor in the race to tie-in their products to the film series, donate $18 million to the American charity Reading is Fundamental, as well as a number of community charity programs.
Rowling has stated that she plans to continue writing after the publication of the final Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. She declared in a December 2005 interview that she will most likely not use a new pen name as the press would quickly discover her true identity.
In 2006, Rowling revealed that she had completed a few short stories and another children's book (a "political fairy story") about a monster, aimed at a younger audience than Harry Potter readers.
She is not planning to write an eighth Harry Potter book, but has said she will be writing an "encyclopedia" of the wizarding world consisting of various unpublished material and notes. Any profits from such a book would be given to charity. When asked on 6 July 2007 whether she would ever write an eighth Harry Potter novel Rowling confirmed that she only ever planned to write seven books in the series but also that she could not rule it out entirely. "Um, I think that Harry's story comes to quite a clear end in Book Seven but I've always said that I wouldn't say 'never'. I can't say I'll never write another book about that world just because I think what do I know, in ten years' time I might want to return to it but I think it's unlikely". In a recent interview, she said she "wants to fall in love with another idea...", also stating that "Harry Potter was the experience of a lifetime".
In an interview published on 26 July 2007, Rowling said that she wants to dedicate "lots" of her time to her family, but is currently "sort of writing two things", one for children and the other for adults. She did not give any details about the two projects but did state that she was excited because the two book situation reminds her of writing the Philosopher's Stone, explaining how she was then writing two books until Harry took over.
In August 2007, it was widely reported that Rowling had been spotted working on a crime novel in Edinburgh, Scotland by the wife of crime novelist Ian Rankin. Shortly after, however, Rankin dismissed this as a joke.
On 26 December 2001, Rowling married Neil Michael Murray (born 30 June 1971), an anaesthesiologist, in a private ceremony at her Aberfeldy home. This was a second marriage for both Rowling and Murray, as Murray had previously been married to Dr. Fiona Duncan in 1996. They separated in 1999 and divorced in the summer of 2001. Rowling and Murray's son David Gordon Rowling Murray was born on 24 March 2003. Shortly after Rowling began writing Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince she took a break from working on the novel to care for him in his early infancy. Rowling's youngest child, daughter Mackenzie Jean Rowling Murray, to whom she dedicated Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, was born 23 January 2005.
Rowling contributes substantially to charities that combat poverty and social inequality. She also gives to organizations that aid children, one parent families, and multiple sclerosis research. Rowling said, "I think you have a moral responsibility when you've been given far more than you need, to do wise things with it and give intelligently."[69]
On 1 August and 2 August 2006 she read alongside Stephen King and John Irving at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. Profits from the event were donated to the Haven Foundation, a charity that aids artists and performers left uninsurable and unable to work, and the medical NGO Médecins Sans Frontières. In May 2007, Rowling gave US$495,000 to a reward fund of over $4.5 million for the safe return of a young British girl, Madeleine McCann, who was kidnapped in Portugal. In January 2006, Rowling went to Bucharest to raise funds for the Children's High Level Group, an organization devoted to enforcing the human rights of mentally ill children in Eastern Europe, where mental institutions have been known to use caged beds.
• In June 2000, Queen Elizabeth II made Rowling an officer of the Order of the British Empire.
• In July 2000, the University of Exeter (of which she is a graduate) awarded her an honorary DLitt degree.
• In April 2006, the asteroid (43844) Rowling was named in her honour. The name was submitted to the International Astronomical Union by astronomer Dr. Mark Hammergren, who had been a fan of the Harry Potter series since 2004.
• In May 2006, the newly-discovered Pachycephalosaurid dinosaur Dracorex hogwartsia, currently at the Children's Museum in Indianapolis, was named in honour of her world.
• In June 2006, the British public named Rowling “the greatest living British writer” in a poll by The Book Magazine. Rowling topped the poll, receiving nearly three times as many votes as the second-place author, fantasy writer Terry Pratchett.
• In July 2006 Rowling received a Doctor of Laws (LLD) honorary degree from University of Aberdeen for her "significant contribution to many charitable causes" and "her many contributions to society".
• At the end of a Harry Potter Blue Peter Special (broadcast 20 July 2007), J.K. Rowling's third appearance on the show, she was presented, by Gethin Jones, a Gold Blue Peter Badge. This, the highest award given by the show, reduced her to tears. She recounted being told on her previous appearance, when she got a silver badge, that she wouldn't get the gold unless she saved lives.
1. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (26 June 1997; titled Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in the United States)
2. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2 July 1998)
3. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (8 July 1999)
4. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (8 July 2000)
5. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (21 June 2003)
6. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (16 July 2005)
7. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (21 July 2007)
• Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (supplementary book) (2001)
• Quidditch Through the Ages (supplementary book) (2001)
• "The first It Girl: J.K. Rowling reviews Decca: the Letters of Jessica Mitford ed by Peter Y Sussman", The Daily Telegraph 26 July 2006
• Introduction to "Ending Child Poverty" in Moving Britain Forward. Selected Speeches 1997-2006 by Gordon Brown, Bloomsbury (2006)
• Foreword to the anthology Magic, edited by Gil McNeil and Sarah Brown, Bloomsbury (2002)
The 2007 Sunday Times Rich List estimated Rowling's fortune at £545 million, ranking her as the 136th richest person and the thirteenth richest woman in Britain. In 2006, Forbes named Rowling the second-richest female entertainer in the world and ranked her as the forty-eighth most powerful celebrity of 2007.
Name
Although she writes under the pseudonym "J. K. Rowling", pronounced like rolling, she actually has no middle name making her full name simply "Joanne Rowling". Before publishing her first book, London-based publisher, Bloomsbury feared that the target audience of young boys might be reluctant to buy books written by a female author. It requested that Rowling use two initials, rather than reveal her first name. As she had no middle name, she chose K. for Kathleen as the second initial of her pseudonym, from her paternal grandmother, Kathleen Ada Bulgen Rowling. The name Kathleen has never been part of her real name. Following her marriage, her official legal name is Joanne Murray. She calls herself "Jo" and claims, "No one ever called me 'Joanne' when I was young, unless they were angry".
Early life
Rowling was born to Peter James Rowling and Anne Rowling née Volant on 31 July 1965 at Yate, Gloucestershire, England, 10 miles (16.1 km) northeast of Bristol. Her sister Dianne (Di) was born at their home when Rowling was 23 months old. She attended St Michael's Primary School, a school founded almost 200 years ago by famed abolitionist William Wilberforce and education reformer Hannah More. Her elderly headmaster at St. Michaels, Alfred Dunn, was claimed as the inspiration for the character Dumbledore.
As a child, Rowling enjoyed writing fantasy stories, which she often read to her sister. "I can still remember me telling her a story in which she fell down a rabbit hole and was fed strawberries by the rabbit family inside it," she recalls, "Certainly the first story I ever wrote down (when I was five or six) was about a rabbit called Rabbit. He got the measles and was visited by his friends, including a giant bee called Miss Bee".
Harry Potter books
In 1995, Rowling completed her manuscript for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone on an old manual typewriter. Upon the enthusiastic response of Bryony Evans, a reader who had been asked to review the book’s first three chapters, the Fulham-based Christopher Little Literary Agents agreed to represent Rowling in her quest for a publisher. The book was handed to twelve publishing houses, all of which rejected it. A year later she was finally given the green light (and a £1500 advance) by editor Barry Cunningham from the small publisher Bloomsbury. The decision to take Rowling on was apparently largely due to Alice Newton, the eight-year-old daughter of the company’s chairman, who was given the first chapter to review by her father, and immediately demanded the next. Although Bloomsbury agreed to publish the book, Cunningham says that he advised Rowling to get a day job, since she had little chance of making money in children’s books. Soon after, Rowling received an £8000 grant from the Scottish Arts Council to enable her to continue writing.
The following spring, an auction was held in the United States for the rights to publish the novel, and was won by Scholastic Inc., for $105,000. Rowling has said she “nearly died” when she heard the news. In June 1997, Bloomsbury published Philosopher’s Stone with an initial print-run of one thousand copies, five hundred of which were distributed to libraries. Today, such copies are valued between £16,000 and £25,000.
Five months later, the book won its first award, a Nestlé Smarties Book Prize. In February, the novel won the prestigious British Book Award for Children’s Book of the Year, and later, the Children’s Book Award. In October 1998, Scholastic published Philosopher’s Stone in the US under the title of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: a change Rowling claims she now regrets and would have fought if she had been in a better position at the time.
In December 1999, the third novel, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, won the Smarties Prize, making Rowling the first person to win the award three times running. She later withdrew the fourth Harry Potter novel from contention to allow other books a fair chance. In January 2000, Prisoner of Azkaban won the inaugural Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year award, though it lost the Book of the Year prize to Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf.
The title of the seventh Harry Potter book was revealed 21 December 2006 to be Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. On 1 February 2007 Rowling wrote on a bust in her hotel room at the Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh that she had completed the seventh book in that room on 11 January 2007. Later in February 2007, Neil Blair, a lawyer with Rowling's literary agency, announced that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will not be released as an e-book, just as Rowling has not allowed the first six Potter books to be so released. The seventh and final book of the series was released on July 21, 2007 (0:00 BST) and became the fastest-selling book of all time.
All seven volumes of the "Harry Potter" series, one for each of Harry’s school years, have broken sales records. The last four have been, consecutively, the fastest-selling books in history, grossing more in their opening 24 hours than blockbuster films. The series, totalling 4,195 pages, has been translated into 65 languages.
Rowling said she is "left wing" and that there is a certain amount of "political stuff" in Harry Potter, but that "every reader will bring their own agenda to the book." Several articles have noted influences of Rowling's heroine, author Jessica Mitford, whom Rowling describes as a "self-taught socialist," and noted leftist themes in Harry Potter, like cooperation among the magical races, anti-racism, and opposition to the slavery of House elves. Rowling's three unforgivable spells—killing, torture, and enslavement—are also cited as influenced by her prior work with Amnesty International. After the publication of Deathly Hallows, Rowling responded to queries about metaphors in the books for ethnic cleansing, "Well, it is a political metaphor. But … I didn't sit down and think, 'I want to recreate Nazi Germany,' in the—in the wizarding world. Because—although there are—quite consciously overtones of Nazi Germany, there are also associations with other political situations. So I can't really single one out."
Harry Potter films
In October 1998, Warner Bros. purchased the film rights to the first two novels for a seven-figure sum. A film version of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was released on 16 November 2001 and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets on 15 November 2002. Both were directed by Chris Columbus. The 4 June 2004 film of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was directed by Alfonso Cuarón. The fourth film, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, was directed by yet another new director, Mike Newell. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was released on 11 July 2007. David Yates is the director, and Michael Goldenberg its screenwriter, having taken over the position from Steven Kloves. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is in pre-production, scheduled for release on 21 November 2008. David Yates will direct again, and Kloves will return to screenwrite it. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is expected to be released sometime in 2010.
In contrast to the treatment of most authors by Hollywood studios, Warner Bros took considerable notice of Rowling's desires and thoughts, as she was able to secure it in the contract. One of her principal stipulations was the films be shot in Britain with an all-British cast, which has been adhered to strictly. In an unprecedented move, Rowling also demanded that Coca-Cola, the victor in the race to tie-in their products to the film series, donate $18 million to the American charity Reading is Fundamental, as well as a number of community charity programs.
After Harry Potter
Rowling has stated that she plans to continue writing after the publication of the final Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. She declared in a December 2005 interview that she will most likely not use a new pen name as the press would quickly discover her true identity.
In 2006, Rowling revealed that she had completed a few short stories and another children's book (a "political fairy story") about a monster, aimed at a younger audience than Harry Potter readers.
She is not planning to write an eighth Harry Potter book, but has said she will be writing an "encyclopedia" of the wizarding world consisting of various unpublished material and notes. Any profits from such a book would be given to charity. When asked on 6 July 2007 whether she would ever write an eighth Harry Potter novel Rowling confirmed that she only ever planned to write seven books in the series but also that she could not rule it out entirely. "Um, I think that Harry's story comes to quite a clear end in Book Seven but I've always said that I wouldn't say 'never'. I can't say I'll never write another book about that world just because I think what do I know, in ten years' time I might want to return to it but I think it's unlikely". In a recent interview, she said she "wants to fall in love with another idea...", also stating that "Harry Potter was the experience of a lifetime".
In an interview published on 26 July 2007, Rowling said that she wants to dedicate "lots" of her time to her family, but is currently "sort of writing two things", one for children and the other for adults. She did not give any details about the two projects but did state that she was excited because the two book situation reminds her of writing the Philosopher's Stone, explaining how she was then writing two books until Harry took over.
In August 2007, it was widely reported that Rowling had been spotted working on a crime novel in Edinburgh, Scotland by the wife of crime novelist Ian Rankin. Shortly after, however, Rankin dismissed this as a joke.
Current personal life
On 26 December 2001, Rowling married Neil Michael Murray (born 30 June 1971), an anaesthesiologist, in a private ceremony at her Aberfeldy home. This was a second marriage for both Rowling and Murray, as Murray had previously been married to Dr. Fiona Duncan in 1996. They separated in 1999 and divorced in the summer of 2001. Rowling and Murray's son David Gordon Rowling Murray was born on 24 March 2003. Shortly after Rowling began writing Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince she took a break from working on the novel to care for him in his early infancy. Rowling's youngest child, daughter Mackenzie Jean Rowling Murray, to whom she dedicated Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, was born 23 January 2005.
Philanthropy
Rowling contributes substantially to charities that combat poverty and social inequality. She also gives to organizations that aid children, one parent families, and multiple sclerosis research. Rowling said, "I think you have a moral responsibility when you've been given far more than you need, to do wise things with it and give intelligently."[69]
Other donations
On 1 August and 2 August 2006 she read alongside Stephen King and John Irving at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. Profits from the event were donated to the Haven Foundation, a charity that aids artists and performers left uninsurable and unable to work, and the medical NGO Médecins Sans Frontières. In May 2007, Rowling gave US$495,000 to a reward fund of over $4.5 million for the safe return of a young British girl, Madeleine McCann, who was kidnapped in Portugal. In January 2006, Rowling went to Bucharest to raise funds for the Children's High Level Group, an organization devoted to enforcing the human rights of mentally ill children in Eastern Europe, where mental institutions have been known to use caged beds.
Honours
• In June 2000, Queen Elizabeth II made Rowling an officer of the Order of the British Empire.
• In July 2000, the University of Exeter (of which she is a graduate) awarded her an honorary DLitt degree.
• In April 2006, the asteroid (43844) Rowling was named in her honour. The name was submitted to the International Astronomical Union by astronomer Dr. Mark Hammergren, who had been a fan of the Harry Potter series since 2004.
• In May 2006, the newly-discovered Pachycephalosaurid dinosaur Dracorex hogwartsia, currently at the Children's Museum in Indianapolis, was named in honour of her world.
• In June 2006, the British public named Rowling “the greatest living British writer” in a poll by The Book Magazine. Rowling topped the poll, receiving nearly three times as many votes as the second-place author, fantasy writer Terry Pratchett.
• In July 2006 Rowling received a Doctor of Laws (LLD) honorary degree from University of Aberdeen for her "significant contribution to many charitable causes" and "her many contributions to society".
• At the end of a Harry Potter Blue Peter Special (broadcast 20 July 2007), J.K. Rowling's third appearance on the show, she was presented, by Gethin Jones, a Gold Blue Peter Badge. This, the highest award given by the show, reduced her to tears. She recounted being told on her previous appearance, when she got a silver badge, that she wouldn't get the gold unless she saved lives.
Bibliography
1. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (26 June 1997; titled Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in the United States)
2. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2 July 1998)
3. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (8 July 1999)
4. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (8 July 2000)
5. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (21 June 2003)
6. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (16 July 2005)
7. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (21 July 2007)
• Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (supplementary book) (2001)
• Quidditch Through the Ages (supplementary book) (2001)
Articles
• "The first It Girl: J.K. Rowling reviews Decca: the Letters of Jessica Mitford ed by Peter Y Sussman", The Daily Telegraph 26 July 2006
• Introduction to "Ending Child Poverty" in Moving Britain Forward. Selected Speeches 1997-2006 by Gordon Brown, Bloomsbury (2006)
• Foreword to the anthology Magic, edited by Gil McNeil and Sarah Brown, Bloomsbury (2002)
Jane Austen
Jane Austen (16 December 1775–18 July 1817) was an English novelist whose works include Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion. Her social commentary and masterful use of both free indirect speech and irony eventually made Austen one of the most influential and honoured novelists in English literature. Her novels were all written and set around the Regency Era. She never married and died at age 41.
Jane Austen was born in 1775 at a rectory in Steventon, Hampshire, one of two daughters of the Reverend George Austen (1731–1805) and his wife Cassandra (née Leigh) (1739–1827). Her brothers James and Henry followed in their father's path and joined the Anglican clergy (the latter towards the end of his life after a successful career as a banker), while her brothers Francis and Charles both pursued naval careers. There was also a brother with a disability, George, who did not live with the Austens. Her sister was named Cassandra, like their mother, and Austen tended to follow this naming practice in her novels, with eldest daughters named after their mothers.
She was very close to her sister Cassandra throughout her life. The abundant correspondence between them provides historians with the greatest insight into Jane's thoughts. Cassandra destroyed many of the letters after Jane's death, likely upon Jane's request. Cassandra drew the only undisputed life portrait of Jane, a somewhat rudimentary, coloured sketch that currently resides in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
In 1783, Austen was educated briefly by a relative in Oxford, then in Southampton; finally, from 1785–1786, she attended the Reading Ladies boarding school in the Abbey gatehouse in Reading, Berkshire.
She began her first novel in 1789. Her family life was conducive to writing; the Austen family often enacted plays, which gave Jane an opportunity to present her stories. They also borrowed novels from the local library, which influenced her writing. She was encouraged to write, especially by her brother Henry, who wrote a little himself. Her stories took as their theme the limited provincial world in which she lived for the first twenty-six years of her life. Jane loved to write her novels in peace and she only shared them with her family when they were performing plays.
In 1796, Jane Austen had a flirtation with Tom Lefroy, later Lord High Justice of Ireland, who was a younger relative of a friend of hers. Jane Austen wrote two letters to Cassandra mentioning him. In a letter dated 9 January 1796, she wrote:
"After I had written the above, we received a visit from Mr. Tom Lefroy and his cousin George. The latter is really very well-behaved now; and as for the other, he has but one fault, which time will, I trust, entirely remove—it is that his morning coat is a great deal too light. He is a very great admirer of Tom Jones, and therefore wears the same coloured clothes, I imagine, which he did when he was wounded". ”
On 16 January 1796, there is another mention:
"Friday. -- At length the day is come on which I am to flirt my last with Tom Lefroy, and when you receive this it will be over. My tears flow as I write at the melancholy idea".
It does not seem to have been a serious relationship and the love affair did not last long. However, it has been suggested that Austen might have had him in mind when she created the character Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice.
In 1801, following her father's retirement, the family moved to the fashionable spa city of Bath, which provides the setting for many of her novels. However, Jane Austen, like her character Anne Elliot, seemed to have "persisted in a disinclination for Bath." Her dislike may have been influenced by the family's precarious financial situation and from being uprooted from her settled existence in the country.
In 1802, Austen received a marriage proposal from a wealthy, but "big and awkward" man named Harris Bigg-Wither, the younger brother of her friends Catherine and Alethea Bigg, and six years her junior. The marriage would have freed her from some of the constraints and dependency she experienced as a spinster. She initially accepted his offer, only to change her mind and refuse him the following day.
After the death of her father in 1805, Austen, her sister and her mother lived in Southampton with her brother Frank and his family for several years, before moving to Chawton in 1809. Here, her wealthy brother Edward had an estate with a cottage, where his mother and sisters lived. This house is now a museum and is a popular site for tourists and literary pilgrims alike. Austen wrote her later novels there. It wasn't until 1811, six years before her death, that a novel she had written, Sense and Sensibility, was published, and it was at the expense of her brother Henry and his wife Eliza.
In 1816, she began to suffer from ill health. In May 1817, she moved to Winchester to be closer to her doctor. Jane's condition worsened, and on 18 July 1817, she died at the age of forty-one and was buried in Winchester Cathedral. It is now thought by some that she may have suffered from Addison's disease, a failure of the adrenal glands that was common in the 19th century due to its being a frequent complication of tuberculosis. The disease was at that time unnamed. Others, such as biographer Carol Shields, have hypothesized that she died from breast cancer.
England's first truly important female novelist, Jane Austen had difficulty in establishing a reputation for herself, despite the fact that she counted the Prince Regent among her admirers of the time. A novelist of manners, her work dealt with a limited social circle in society—that of the provincial gentry and the upper classes. As she stated in a letter to her niece, Anna: 'Three of four families in a country village are the very thing to work on.' She explored their relationships, values and shortcomings with detachment and irony, and her restrained satire of social excesses of the period was perhaps nearer to the classically minded moralizing of the eighteenth century than to the new age of Romantic rebellion and potential sentimentalism.
Austen's best-known work is Pride and Prejudice, which is viewed as an exemplar of her socially astute novel of manners. Austen also wrote a satire of the popular Gothic novels of Ann Radcliffe, Northanger Abbey, which was published posthumously in 1818. Adhering to a common contemporary practice for female authors, Austen published her novels anonymously; this kept her out of leading literary circles.
Austen's novels of manners, especially Emma, are often cited for their perfection of form. Modern critics continue to unearth new perspectives on Austen's keen commentary regarding the predicament of unmarried genteel English women in the late 1790s and early 1800s, a consequence of inheritance law and custom, which usually directed the bulk of a family's fortune to eldest male heirs.
Although Austen's career coincided with the Romantic movement in literature, she was not an intensely passionate Romantic and the social turbulence of early nineteenth-century England was barely touched upon in novels which concentrated on the everyday life and ostensibly trivial aspects of genteel society—balls, trips, dances, and an unending procession of marriage proposals. Thus, it could be argued she was more neo-classical in outlook. Passionate emotion usually carries danger in an Austen novel: the young woman who exercises twice a day is more likely to find real happiness than one who irrationally elopes with a capricious lover. Austen's artistic values had more in common with David Hume and John Locke than with her contemporaries William Wordsworth and Lord Byron.
Within her limited field, however, she did create a memorable range of characters whose dealings with love, marriage, courtship and social or personal rivalries were treated with a remarkable degree of objectivity and psychological depth. Although Austen did not promote passionate emotion as did other Romantic movement writers, she was also sceptical of its opposite—excessive calculation and practicality often leads to disaster in Austen novels (for example, Maria Bertram's marriage of convenience to the wealthy but dull Mr. Rushworth has an unhappy conclusion). Her close analysis of character displayed both a warm sense of humour and a hardy realism: vanity, selfishness and a lack of self-knowledge are among the faults most severely judged in her novels (e.g. in the case of Wickham and the flighty Lydia in Pride and Prejudice).
Among Austen's influences were Henry Fielding, Samuel Richardson, Walter Scott, Samuel Johnson, William Cowper, George Crabbe and Fanny Burney.
Austen owed much in particular to both Richardson and Fielding with regard to her concept of the novel. Her first work, Elinor and Marianne, (later modified and published as Sense and Sensibility) was epistolary in technique. Her choice of a third-person omniscient narrator showed the influence of Fielding but, unlike the latter, she did not allow the narrator to intrude so much during the course of the story. Indeed, direct comments on the part of the narrator are rare, Austen preferring to let subtle nuance and dialogue illuminate her attitude to the characters and unfolding events. Verbal and situational irony are frequently combined with superbly structured dialogues to reinforce judgments which would otherwise have to be made explicitly. Criticized for being repetitive, her plots are nonetheless well structured, and reveal a sincere love of perfection and minutiae of detail that she believed was one of the prerogatives of any potential writer.
• Northanger Abbey (1798) -
• Sense and Sensibility (1811)
• Pride and Prejudice (1813)
• Mansfield Park (1814)
• Emma (1816)
• Persuasion (1818) posthumous
• Lady Susan (novella)
• The Watsons (incomplete novel)
• Sanditon (incomplete novel)
• The Three Sisters
• Love and Freindship [the misspelling of "friendship" in the title is famous]
• The History of England
• Catharine, or the Bower
• The Beautifull Cassandra
In popular culture, Austen's novels have been adapted in a great number of film and television series, varying greatly in their faithfulness to the originals.
• Pride & Prejudice (2005 film), starring Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennet and Matthew Macfadyen as Mr. Darcy. Knightley's performance earned an Academy Award nomination, and the film was nominated for three additional categories (Original Score, Art Direction and Costume Design).
• Pride and Prejudice: A Latter-Day Comedy (2003), a modern-day independent film adaptation.
• Bride & Prejudice (2004), a Bollywood adaptation.
• Bridget Jones's Diary (2001), a modernized loose novel adaptation by Helen Fielding, which was made into a movie starring Renée Zellweger in the Elizabeth-inspired role of Bridget; Colin Firth, literally as Mr. (Mark) Darcy; and Hugh Grant as the Wickham-inspired Daniel. The 1995 BBC TV film is specifically referenced in the book and subsequent movie, intentionally naming Mr. Darcy after the Pride and Prejudice character. Zellweger's performance in the movie earned an
Academy Award nomination.
• Pride and Prejudice (1995 TV serial), BBC TV series starring Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth Bennet and Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy.
• Pride and Prejudice (1980 TV serial) (1980), BBC TV series starring Elizabeth Garvie as Elizabeth Bennet and David Rintoul as Mr. Darcy.
• First Impressions (1959), a Broadway musical adaptation.
• Pride and Prejudice (1952 TV serial), starring Ann Baskett as Elizabeth Bennet and Peter Cushing as Mr. Darcy.
• Pride and Prejudice (1940 film), starring Greer Garson as Elizabeth Bennet and Laurence Olivier as Mr. Darcy.
• Emma (1996 film), 1996 film directed by Douglas MacGrath and starring Gwyneth Paltrow as Emma and Jeremy Northam as Knightley.
• Emma (1996 TV drama), 1996 UK TV film starring Kate Beckinsale as Emma.
• Clueless (1995 film), modernization of the novel starring Alicia Silverstone in a California high school setting, directed by Amy Heckerling.
• Emma (1972 TV serial), 1972 UK TV film starring Doran Godwin as Emma.
• Emma (1960 TV serial), starring Diana Fairfax as Emma.
• Emma (1948 film), starring Judy Campbell as Emma.
• Sense and Sensibility (2007 TV serial), BBC series starring as Hattie Morahan as Elinor Dashwood and Charity Wakefield as Marianne Dashwood
• Kandukondain Kandukondain (2000), a contemporary Indian film set in the present, based on the same plot, starring Tabu as Sowmya (Elinor Dashwood), Aishwarya Rai as Meenakshi (Marianne Dashwood), with Ajit as Manohar (Edward Ferrars), Abbas as Srikanth (Willoughby) and Mammootty as Captain Bala (Colonel Brandon).
• Sense and Sensibility (1995 film), film starring Emma Thompson as Elinor Dashwood, Kate Winslet as Marianne Dashwood, with Hugh Grant as Edward Ferrars and Alan Rickman as Colonel Brandon. Directed by Ang Lee, this film was hugely successful.
• Sense and Sensibility (1981 TV serial), BBC series starring Irene Richard as Elinor Dashwood and Tracey Childs as Marianne Dashwood
• Sense and Sensibility (1971 TV serial), BBC series starring Joanna David as Elinor Dashwood and Ciaran Madden as Marianne Dashwood
• Persuasion (2007 TV drama), film, filmed in Bath in September 2006 for ITV, with Sally Hawkins as Anne, Rupert Penry-Jones as Wentworth, and Anthony Stewart Head as Sir Walter Elliot, and Julia Davis.
• Persuasion (1995 film), made-for-television film (which was released in US theatres by Sony Pictures Classics) starring Amanda Root as Anne and Ciarán Hinds as Captain Wentworth.
• Persuasion (1971 series), BBC miniseries starring Anne Firbank as Anne and Bryan Marshall as Captain Wentworth.
• Persuasion (1960 series), BBC miniseries starring Daphne Slater as Anne and Paul Daneman as Captain Wentworth.
• Mansfield Park (2007 TV drama), based on the novel, directed by Iain B. MacDonald. With Billie Piper as Fanny
• Mansfield Park (1999 film), based on the novel, directed by the Canadian Patricia Rozema, and starring Frances O'Connor, Embeth Davidtz, Sheila Gish and Harold Pinter.
• Metropolitan (1990 film) loose adaptation, written and directed by Whit Stillman, and starring Edward Clements, Carolyn Farina, Taylor Nichols, and Chris Eigeman (Jane Austen is also mentioned throughout the film)
• Mansfield Park (1983 TV serial) based on the novel, starring Sylvestra Le Touzel, Nicholas Farrell, and Anna Massey in 1983
• Northanger Abbey (2007 TV drama), based on the novel, directed by Jon Jones and released in 2007, starring Felicity Jones as heroine Catherine Morland and JJ Fields as dashing Henry Tilney.
• Northanger Abbey (1986 film), based on the novel, directed by Giles Foster and released in 1986, starring Peter Firth in the role of Henry Tilney.
• The 1980 film Jane Austen in Manhattan is about rival stage companies who wish to produce the only complete Austen play "Sir Charles Grandison" (from the Richardson novel of the same title), which was rediscovered in 1980.[6]
• A semi-biographical 2007 film Becoming Jane, was directed by Julian Jarrold and stars Anne Hathaway as Jane. The film is based around her factual romance with young Tom Lefroy, who later became Lord High Justice of Ireland, played by James McAvoy. It is based loosely around the few facts that are available from this period of her life, mainly from letters to her only sister Cassandra.
• Another 2007 semi-biographical film, this one produced by the BBC for television, Miss Austen Regrets. It focuses on the last few years of Austen's life, in which she looks back on her life and loves. Jane Austen is played by Olivia Williams.
Life
Jane Austen was born in 1775 at a rectory in Steventon, Hampshire, one of two daughters of the Reverend George Austen (1731–1805) and his wife Cassandra (née Leigh) (1739–1827). Her brothers James and Henry followed in their father's path and joined the Anglican clergy (the latter towards the end of his life after a successful career as a banker), while her brothers Francis and Charles both pursued naval careers. There was also a brother with a disability, George, who did not live with the Austens. Her sister was named Cassandra, like their mother, and Austen tended to follow this naming practice in her novels, with eldest daughters named after their mothers.
She was very close to her sister Cassandra throughout her life. The abundant correspondence between them provides historians with the greatest insight into Jane's thoughts. Cassandra destroyed many of the letters after Jane's death, likely upon Jane's request. Cassandra drew the only undisputed life portrait of Jane, a somewhat rudimentary, coloured sketch that currently resides in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
In 1783, Austen was educated briefly by a relative in Oxford, then in Southampton; finally, from 1785–1786, she attended the Reading Ladies boarding school in the Abbey gatehouse in Reading, Berkshire.
She began her first novel in 1789. Her family life was conducive to writing; the Austen family often enacted plays, which gave Jane an opportunity to present her stories. They also borrowed novels from the local library, which influenced her writing. She was encouraged to write, especially by her brother Henry, who wrote a little himself. Her stories took as their theme the limited provincial world in which she lived for the first twenty-six years of her life. Jane loved to write her novels in peace and she only shared them with her family when they were performing plays.
In 1796, Jane Austen had a flirtation with Tom Lefroy, later Lord High Justice of Ireland, who was a younger relative of a friend of hers. Jane Austen wrote two letters to Cassandra mentioning him. In a letter dated 9 January 1796, she wrote:
"After I had written the above, we received a visit from Mr. Tom Lefroy and his cousin George. The latter is really very well-behaved now; and as for the other, he has but one fault, which time will, I trust, entirely remove—it is that his morning coat is a great deal too light. He is a very great admirer of Tom Jones, and therefore wears the same coloured clothes, I imagine, which he did when he was wounded". ”
On 16 January 1796, there is another mention:
"Friday. -- At length the day is come on which I am to flirt my last with Tom Lefroy, and when you receive this it will be over. My tears flow as I write at the melancholy idea".
It does not seem to have been a serious relationship and the love affair did not last long. However, it has been suggested that Austen might have had him in mind when she created the character Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice.
In 1801, following her father's retirement, the family moved to the fashionable spa city of Bath, which provides the setting for many of her novels. However, Jane Austen, like her character Anne Elliot, seemed to have "persisted in a disinclination for Bath." Her dislike may have been influenced by the family's precarious financial situation and from being uprooted from her settled existence in the country.
In 1802, Austen received a marriage proposal from a wealthy, but "big and awkward" man named Harris Bigg-Wither, the younger brother of her friends Catherine and Alethea Bigg, and six years her junior. The marriage would have freed her from some of the constraints and dependency she experienced as a spinster. She initially accepted his offer, only to change her mind and refuse him the following day.
After the death of her father in 1805, Austen, her sister and her mother lived in Southampton with her brother Frank and his family for several years, before moving to Chawton in 1809. Here, her wealthy brother Edward had an estate with a cottage, where his mother and sisters lived. This house is now a museum and is a popular site for tourists and literary pilgrims alike. Austen wrote her later novels there. It wasn't until 1811, six years before her death, that a novel she had written, Sense and Sensibility, was published, and it was at the expense of her brother Henry and his wife Eliza.
In 1816, she began to suffer from ill health. In May 1817, she moved to Winchester to be closer to her doctor. Jane's condition worsened, and on 18 July 1817, she died at the age of forty-one and was buried in Winchester Cathedral. It is now thought by some that she may have suffered from Addison's disease, a failure of the adrenal glands that was common in the 19th century due to its being a frequent complication of tuberculosis. The disease was at that time unnamed. Others, such as biographer Carol Shields, have hypothesized that she died from breast cancer.
Works
England's first truly important female novelist, Jane Austen had difficulty in establishing a reputation for herself, despite the fact that she counted the Prince Regent among her admirers of the time. A novelist of manners, her work dealt with a limited social circle in society—that of the provincial gentry and the upper classes. As she stated in a letter to her niece, Anna: 'Three of four families in a country village are the very thing to work on.' She explored their relationships, values and shortcomings with detachment and irony, and her restrained satire of social excesses of the period was perhaps nearer to the classically minded moralizing of the eighteenth century than to the new age of Romantic rebellion and potential sentimentalism.
Austen's best-known work is Pride and Prejudice, which is viewed as an exemplar of her socially astute novel of manners. Austen also wrote a satire of the popular Gothic novels of Ann Radcliffe, Northanger Abbey, which was published posthumously in 1818. Adhering to a common contemporary practice for female authors, Austen published her novels anonymously; this kept her out of leading literary circles.
Austen's novels of manners, especially Emma, are often cited for their perfection of form. Modern critics continue to unearth new perspectives on Austen's keen commentary regarding the predicament of unmarried genteel English women in the late 1790s and early 1800s, a consequence of inheritance law and custom, which usually directed the bulk of a family's fortune to eldest male heirs.
Although Austen's career coincided with the Romantic movement in literature, she was not an intensely passionate Romantic and the social turbulence of early nineteenth-century England was barely touched upon in novels which concentrated on the everyday life and ostensibly trivial aspects of genteel society—balls, trips, dances, and an unending procession of marriage proposals. Thus, it could be argued she was more neo-classical in outlook. Passionate emotion usually carries danger in an Austen novel: the young woman who exercises twice a day is more likely to find real happiness than one who irrationally elopes with a capricious lover. Austen's artistic values had more in common with David Hume and John Locke than with her contemporaries William Wordsworth and Lord Byron.
Within her limited field, however, she did create a memorable range of characters whose dealings with love, marriage, courtship and social or personal rivalries were treated with a remarkable degree of objectivity and psychological depth. Although Austen did not promote passionate emotion as did other Romantic movement writers, she was also sceptical of its opposite—excessive calculation and practicality often leads to disaster in Austen novels (for example, Maria Bertram's marriage of convenience to the wealthy but dull Mr. Rushworth has an unhappy conclusion). Her close analysis of character displayed both a warm sense of humour and a hardy realism: vanity, selfishness and a lack of self-knowledge are among the faults most severely judged in her novels (e.g. in the case of Wickham and the flighty Lydia in Pride and Prejudice).
Literary Influences
Among Austen's influences were Henry Fielding, Samuel Richardson, Walter Scott, Samuel Johnson, William Cowper, George Crabbe and Fanny Burney.
Austen owed much in particular to both Richardson and Fielding with regard to her concept of the novel. Her first work, Elinor and Marianne, (later modified and published as Sense and Sensibility) was epistolary in technique. Her choice of a third-person omniscient narrator showed the influence of Fielding but, unlike the latter, she did not allow the narrator to intrude so much during the course of the story. Indeed, direct comments on the part of the narrator are rare, Austen preferring to let subtle nuance and dialogue illuminate her attitude to the characters and unfolding events. Verbal and situational irony are frequently combined with superbly structured dialogues to reinforce judgments which would otherwise have to be made explicitly. Criticized for being repetitive, her plots are nonetheless well structured, and reveal a sincere love of perfection and minutiae of detail that she believed was one of the prerogatives of any potential writer.
Novels
• Northanger Abbey (1798) -
• Sense and Sensibility (1811)
• Pride and Prejudice (1813)
• Mansfield Park (1814)
• Emma (1816)
• Persuasion (1818) posthumous
Shorter works
• Lady Susan (novella)
• The Watsons (incomplete novel)
• Sanditon (incomplete novel)
Juvenilia
• The Three Sisters
• Love and Freindship [the misspelling of "friendship" in the title is famous]
• The History of England
• Catharine, or the Bower
• The Beautifull Cassandra
Filmography
In popular culture, Austen's novels have been adapted in a great number of film and television series, varying greatly in their faithfulness to the originals.
Pride and Prejudice
• Pride & Prejudice (2005 film), starring Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennet and Matthew Macfadyen as Mr. Darcy. Knightley's performance earned an Academy Award nomination, and the film was nominated for three additional categories (Original Score, Art Direction and Costume Design).
• Pride and Prejudice: A Latter-Day Comedy (2003), a modern-day independent film adaptation.
• Bride & Prejudice (2004), a Bollywood adaptation.
• Bridget Jones's Diary (2001), a modernized loose novel adaptation by Helen Fielding, which was made into a movie starring Renée Zellweger in the Elizabeth-inspired role of Bridget; Colin Firth, literally as Mr. (Mark) Darcy; and Hugh Grant as the Wickham-inspired Daniel. The 1995 BBC TV film is specifically referenced in the book and subsequent movie, intentionally naming Mr. Darcy after the Pride and Prejudice character. Zellweger's performance in the movie earned an
Academy Award nomination.
• Pride and Prejudice (1995 TV serial), BBC TV series starring Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth Bennet and Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy.
• Pride and Prejudice (1980 TV serial) (1980), BBC TV series starring Elizabeth Garvie as Elizabeth Bennet and David Rintoul as Mr. Darcy.
• First Impressions (1959), a Broadway musical adaptation.
• Pride and Prejudice (1952 TV serial), starring Ann Baskett as Elizabeth Bennet and Peter Cushing as Mr. Darcy.
• Pride and Prejudice (1940 film), starring Greer Garson as Elizabeth Bennet and Laurence Olivier as Mr. Darcy.
Emma
• Emma (1996 film), 1996 film directed by Douglas MacGrath and starring Gwyneth Paltrow as Emma and Jeremy Northam as Knightley.
• Emma (1996 TV drama), 1996 UK TV film starring Kate Beckinsale as Emma.
• Clueless (1995 film), modernization of the novel starring Alicia Silverstone in a California high school setting, directed by Amy Heckerling.
• Emma (1972 TV serial), 1972 UK TV film starring Doran Godwin as Emma.
• Emma (1960 TV serial), starring Diana Fairfax as Emma.
• Emma (1948 film), starring Judy Campbell as Emma.
Sense and Sensibility
• Sense and Sensibility (2007 TV serial), BBC series starring as Hattie Morahan as Elinor Dashwood and Charity Wakefield as Marianne Dashwood
• Kandukondain Kandukondain (2000), a contemporary Indian film set in the present, based on the same plot, starring Tabu as Sowmya (Elinor Dashwood), Aishwarya Rai as Meenakshi (Marianne Dashwood), with Ajit as Manohar (Edward Ferrars), Abbas as Srikanth (Willoughby) and Mammootty as Captain Bala (Colonel Brandon).
• Sense and Sensibility (1995 film), film starring Emma Thompson as Elinor Dashwood, Kate Winslet as Marianne Dashwood, with Hugh Grant as Edward Ferrars and Alan Rickman as Colonel Brandon. Directed by Ang Lee, this film was hugely successful.
• Sense and Sensibility (1981 TV serial), BBC series starring Irene Richard as Elinor Dashwood and Tracey Childs as Marianne Dashwood
• Sense and Sensibility (1971 TV serial), BBC series starring Joanna David as Elinor Dashwood and Ciaran Madden as Marianne Dashwood
Persuasion
• Persuasion (2007 TV drama), film, filmed in Bath in September 2006 for ITV, with Sally Hawkins as Anne, Rupert Penry-Jones as Wentworth, and Anthony Stewart Head as Sir Walter Elliot, and Julia Davis.
• Persuasion (1995 film), made-for-television film (which was released in US theatres by Sony Pictures Classics) starring Amanda Root as Anne and Ciarán Hinds as Captain Wentworth.
• Persuasion (1971 series), BBC miniseries starring Anne Firbank as Anne and Bryan Marshall as Captain Wentworth.
• Persuasion (1960 series), BBC miniseries starring Daphne Slater as Anne and Paul Daneman as Captain Wentworth.
Mansfield Park
• Mansfield Park (2007 TV drama), based on the novel, directed by Iain B. MacDonald. With Billie Piper as Fanny
• Mansfield Park (1999 film), based on the novel, directed by the Canadian Patricia Rozema, and starring Frances O'Connor, Embeth Davidtz, Sheila Gish and Harold Pinter.
• Metropolitan (1990 film) loose adaptation, written and directed by Whit Stillman, and starring Edward Clements, Carolyn Farina, Taylor Nichols, and Chris Eigeman (Jane Austen is also mentioned throughout the film)
• Mansfield Park (1983 TV serial) based on the novel, starring Sylvestra Le Touzel, Nicholas Farrell, and Anna Massey in 1983
Northanger Abbey
• Northanger Abbey (2007 TV drama), based on the novel, directed by Jon Jones and released in 2007, starring Felicity Jones as heroine Catherine Morland and JJ Fields as dashing Henry Tilney.
• Northanger Abbey (1986 film), based on the novel, directed by Giles Foster and released in 1986, starring Peter Firth in the role of Henry Tilney.
Non-book based
• The 1980 film Jane Austen in Manhattan is about rival stage companies who wish to produce the only complete Austen play "Sir Charles Grandison" (from the Richardson novel of the same title), which was rediscovered in 1980.[6]
• A semi-biographical 2007 film Becoming Jane, was directed by Julian Jarrold and stars Anne Hathaway as Jane. The film is based around her factual romance with young Tom Lefroy, who later became Lord High Justice of Ireland, played by James McAvoy. It is based loosely around the few facts that are available from this period of her life, mainly from letters to her only sister Cassandra.
• Another 2007 semi-biographical film, this one produced by the BBC for television, Miss Austen Regrets. It focuses on the last few years of Austen's life, in which she looks back on her life and loves. Jane Austen is played by Olivia Williams.
Ian Lancaster Fleming
Ian Lancaster Fleming (May 28, 1908 – August 12, 1964) was a British author, journalist and Second World War Navy Commander. Fleming is best remembered for creating the character of James Bond and chronicling his adventures in twelve novels and nine short stories. Additionally, Fleming wrote the children's story Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and two non-fiction books.
Ian Fleming was born in Mayfair, London, to Valentine Fleming, a Member of Parliament, and his wife Evelyn Ste Croix Fleming (née Rose). Ian was the younger brother of travel writer Peter Fleming and the older brother of Michael and Richard Fleming (1910–77). He also had an illegitimate half-sister, the cellist Amaryllis Fleming.
Fleming was educated at Durnford School in Dorset, Eton College, and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He won the Victor Ludorum at Eton two years running, something that had been achieved only once before him. He found Sandhurst to be uncongenial, and after an early departure from there, his mother sent him to study languages on the continent. He first went to a small private establishment in Kitzbühel, Austria run by the Adlerian disciples Ernan Forbes Dennis and his American wife, the novelist Phyllis Bottome, to improve his German and prepare him for the Foreign Office exams, then to Munich University, and, finally, to the University of Geneva to improve his French. He was unsuccessful in his application to join the Foreign Office, and subsequently worked as a sub-editor and journalist for the Reuters news service, including time in 1933 in Moscow, and then as a stockbroker with Rowe and Pitman, in Bishopsgate. He was a member of Boodle's, the gentleman's club in St. James's Street, from 1944 until his death in 1964.
His marriage in Jamaica in 1952 to Anne Charteris, daughter of Lord Wemyss and former wife of Viscount Rothermere, was witnessed by his friend, playwright Noel Coward.
As the DNI's personal assistant, Fleming's intelligence work provided the background for his spy novels. In 1953, he published his first novel, Casino Royale. In it he introduced secret agent James Bond, also famously known by his code number, 007. The double '00' indicating that he has a licence to kill. Bond appears with the beautiful heroine Vesper Lynd, who was modelled on SOE agent Christine Granville[citation needed]. Ideas for his characters and settings for Bond came from his time at Boodle's. Blade's, M's club (at which Bond is an occasional guest), is partially modelled on Boodle's and the name of Bond's arch enemy, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, was based on a fellow member's name.
Initially Fleming's Bond novels were not bestsellers in America, but when President John F. Kennedy included From Russia With Love on a list of his favourite books, sales quickly jumped. Fleming wrote 14 Bond books in all: Casino Royale (1953), Live and Let Die (1954), Moonraker (1955), Diamonds are Forever (1956), From Russia With Love (1957), Dr. No (1958), Goldfinger (1959), For Your Eyes Only (1960), Thunderball (1961), The Spy Who Loved Me (1962), On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1963), You Only Live Twice (1964), The Man With The Golden Gun (1965), and Octopussy/The Living Daylights (1966).
In the late 1950s, the financial success of Fleming's James Bond series allowed him to retire to Goldeneye, his estate in Saint Mary Parish, Jamaica. The name of the house and estate where he wrote his novels has many sources. Notably, Ian Fleming himself cited Operation Goldeneye, a plan to bedevil the Nazis should the Germans enter Spain during World War II. He also cited the 1941 novel, Reflections in a Golden Eye by Carson McCullers. The location of the property may also have been a factor--Oracabessa, or "Golden head". There is also a Spanish tomb on the property with a bit of carving that looks like an eye on one side. It is likely that most or all of these factors played a part in Fleming's naming his Jamaican home. In Ian Fleming's interview published in Playboy in December 1964, he states, "I had happened to be reading Reflections in a Golden Eye by Carson McCullers, and I'd been involved in an operation called Goldeneye during the war: the defense of Gibraltar, supposing that the Spaniards had decided to attack it; and I was deeply involved in the planning of countermeasures which would have been taken in that event. Anyway, I called my place Goldeneye." The estate, next door to that of Fleming's friend and rival Noel Coward, is now the centerpiece of an exclusive resort by the same name.
The Spy Who Loved Me (1962) stylistically departs from other books in the Bond series as it is written in the first person perspective of the (fictional) protagonist, Vivienne Michel, whom Fleming credits as co-author. It is the story of her life, up until when James Bond serendipitously rescues her from the wrong circumstance at the wrong place and time.
Besides writing twelve novels and nine short stories featuring James Bond, Fleming also wrote the children's novel Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He also wrote a guide to some of the worlds most famous cities in "Thrilling Cities" and a novel on diamond smuggling entitled "The Diamond Smugglers".
In 1961, he sold the film rights to his already published as well as future James Bond novels and short stories to Harry Saltzman, who, with Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli, co-produced the film version of Dr. No (1962). For the cast, Fleming suggested friend and neighbour Noël Coward as the villain Dr. Julius No, and David Niven or, later, Roger Moore as James Bond. Both were rejected in favour of Sean Connery, who was both Broccoli and Saltzman's choice. Fleming also suggested his cousin, Christopher Lee, either as Dr. No or even as James Bond. Although Lee was selected for neither role, in 1974 he portrayed assassin Francisco Scaramanga, the eponymous villain of
The successful Dr. No was followed by From Russia with Love (1963), the second and last James Bond movie Ian Fleming saw.
During the Istanbul Pogroms, which many Greek and some Turkish scholars attributed to secret orchestrations by Britain, Fleming wrote an account of the events, "The Great Riot of Istanbul", which was published in the The Sunday Times on 11 September 1955.
Fleming was a bibliophile who collected a library of books that had, in his opinion, "started something", and therefore were significant in the history of western civilization. He concentrated on science and technology, e.g. On the Origin of Species, yet he also collected sociological milestones such as Mein Kampf and Scouting for Boys. He was a major lender to the 1963 exhibition Printing and the Mind of Man. Currently, some six hundred books from Fleming's collection are in the Lilly Library at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, U.S.A.
In March 1960, Fleming met John F. Kennedy through Marion Oates Leiter who was a mutual friend and invited to dinner. Leiter had introduced Kennedy to Fleming's books during his recovery from an operation in 1955. After dinner Fleming related his ideas on discrediting Fidel Castro that were reported to Central Intelligence Agency chief Allen Welsh Dulles who gave the ideas serious consideration.[3]
Fifty-six-year-old Ian Fleming died of a heart attack on the morning of August 12, 1964, in Canterbury, Kent, England, and was later buried in the churchyard of Sevenhampton village, near Swindon. Upon their own deaths, Fleming's widow, Ann Geraldine Mary Fleming (1913–1981), and son Caspar Robert Fleming (1952–1975), were buried next to him. Sadly, Caspar committed suicide with a drug overdose.
1. Casino Royale1
2. Live and Let Die
3. Moonraker²
4. Diamonds Are Forever
5. From Russia with Love
6. Dr. No
7. Goldfinger
8. For Your Eyes Only³
9. Thunderball4
10. The Spy Who Loved Me5
11. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
12. You Only Live Twice
13. The Man with the Golden Gun6
14. Octopussy and The Living Daylights7
• Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
• The Diamond Smugglers
• Thrilling Cities
• Fleming kept a scrapbook containing notes and ideas for future James Bond stories. It included fragments of possible short stories or novels featuring Bond hat were never published. Excerpts from some of these can be found in The Life of Ian Fleming by John Pearson.
• The author Geoffrey Jenkins worked with Fleming on a James Bond story idea between 1957 and 1964. After Fleming's death, Jenkins was commissioned by Bond publishers Glidrose Productions to turn this story, Per Fine Ounce, into a novel, but it was never published.
• In 1960 Fleming was commissioned by the Kuwait Oil Company to write a book on the country and its oil industry. The typescript is titled State of Excitement: Impressions of Kuwait but was never published due to Kuwait government disapproval. According to Fleming: "The Oil Company expressed approval of the book but felt it their duty to submit the typescript to members of the Kuwait Government for their approval. The Sheikhs concerned found unpalatable certain mild comments and criticisms and particularly the passages referring to the adventurous past of the country which now wishes to be 'civilised' in every respect and forget its romantic origins."
• Goldeneye: The Secret Life of Ian Fleming, 1989. A TV movie starring Charles Dance as Fleming. The movie focuses on Fleming's life during World War II, and his love life, and the factors that led to his creation of James Bond.
• Spymaker: The Secret Life of Ian Fleming, 1990. A TV movie starring Jason Connery (son of Sean) as the writer in a fanciful dramatisation of his career in British intelligence. His life is depicted with the kind of Bond-like action and glamour that Fleming secretly wished he could have had.
• Ian Fleming: Bondmaker, 2005. A TV documentary/drama by Wall to Wall first broadcast on BBC in August 2005. Laurence Olivier Theatre Award-winning British actor Ben Daniels portrays Ian Fleming.
Biography
Ian Fleming was born in Mayfair, London, to Valentine Fleming, a Member of Parliament, and his wife Evelyn Ste Croix Fleming (née Rose). Ian was the younger brother of travel writer Peter Fleming and the older brother of Michael and Richard Fleming (1910–77). He also had an illegitimate half-sister, the cellist Amaryllis Fleming.
Fleming was educated at Durnford School in Dorset, Eton College, and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He won the Victor Ludorum at Eton two years running, something that had been achieved only once before him. He found Sandhurst to be uncongenial, and after an early departure from there, his mother sent him to study languages on the continent. He first went to a small private establishment in Kitzbühel, Austria run by the Adlerian disciples Ernan Forbes Dennis and his American wife, the novelist Phyllis Bottome, to improve his German and prepare him for the Foreign Office exams, then to Munich University, and, finally, to the University of Geneva to improve his French. He was unsuccessful in his application to join the Foreign Office, and subsequently worked as a sub-editor and journalist for the Reuters news service, including time in 1933 in Moscow, and then as a stockbroker with Rowe and Pitman, in Bishopsgate. He was a member of Boodle's, the gentleman's club in St. James's Street, from 1944 until his death in 1964.
His marriage in Jamaica in 1952 to Anne Charteris, daughter of Lord Wemyss and former wife of Viscount Rothermere, was witnessed by his friend, playwright Noel Coward.
Writing career
As the DNI's personal assistant, Fleming's intelligence work provided the background for his spy novels. In 1953, he published his first novel, Casino Royale. In it he introduced secret agent James Bond, also famously known by his code number, 007. The double '00' indicating that he has a licence to kill. Bond appears with the beautiful heroine Vesper Lynd, who was modelled on SOE agent Christine Granville[citation needed]. Ideas for his characters and settings for Bond came from his time at Boodle's. Blade's, M's club (at which Bond is an occasional guest), is partially modelled on Boodle's and the name of Bond's arch enemy, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, was based on a fellow member's name.
Initially Fleming's Bond novels were not bestsellers in America, but when President John F. Kennedy included From Russia With Love on a list of his favourite books, sales quickly jumped. Fleming wrote 14 Bond books in all: Casino Royale (1953), Live and Let Die (1954), Moonraker (1955), Diamonds are Forever (1956), From Russia With Love (1957), Dr. No (1958), Goldfinger (1959), For Your Eyes Only (1960), Thunderball (1961), The Spy Who Loved Me (1962), On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1963), You Only Live Twice (1964), The Man With The Golden Gun (1965), and Octopussy/The Living Daylights (1966).
In the late 1950s, the financial success of Fleming's James Bond series allowed him to retire to Goldeneye, his estate in Saint Mary Parish, Jamaica. The name of the house and estate where he wrote his novels has many sources. Notably, Ian Fleming himself cited Operation Goldeneye, a plan to bedevil the Nazis should the Germans enter Spain during World War II. He also cited the 1941 novel, Reflections in a Golden Eye by Carson McCullers. The location of the property may also have been a factor--Oracabessa, or "Golden head". There is also a Spanish tomb on the property with a bit of carving that looks like an eye on one side. It is likely that most or all of these factors played a part in Fleming's naming his Jamaican home. In Ian Fleming's interview published in Playboy in December 1964, he states, "I had happened to be reading Reflections in a Golden Eye by Carson McCullers, and I'd been involved in an operation called Goldeneye during the war: the defense of Gibraltar, supposing that the Spaniards had decided to attack it; and I was deeply involved in the planning of countermeasures which would have been taken in that event. Anyway, I called my place Goldeneye." The estate, next door to that of Fleming's friend and rival Noel Coward, is now the centerpiece of an exclusive resort by the same name.
The Spy Who Loved Me (1962) stylistically departs from other books in the Bond series as it is written in the first person perspective of the (fictional) protagonist, Vivienne Michel, whom Fleming credits as co-author. It is the story of her life, up until when James Bond serendipitously rescues her from the wrong circumstance at the wrong place and time.
Besides writing twelve novels and nine short stories featuring James Bond, Fleming also wrote the children's novel Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He also wrote a guide to some of the worlds most famous cities in "Thrilling Cities" and a novel on diamond smuggling entitled "The Diamond Smugglers".
In 1961, he sold the film rights to his already published as well as future James Bond novels and short stories to Harry Saltzman, who, with Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli, co-produced the film version of Dr. No (1962). For the cast, Fleming suggested friend and neighbour Noël Coward as the villain Dr. Julius No, and David Niven or, later, Roger Moore as James Bond. Both were rejected in favour of Sean Connery, who was both Broccoli and Saltzman's choice. Fleming also suggested his cousin, Christopher Lee, either as Dr. No or even as James Bond. Although Lee was selected for neither role, in 1974 he portrayed assassin Francisco Scaramanga, the eponymous villain of
The Man with the Golden Gun.
Neither Saltzman nor Broccoli expected Dr. No to be much of a success, but it was an instant sensation and sparked a spy craze through the rest of the 1960s.The successful Dr. No was followed by From Russia with Love (1963), the second and last James Bond movie Ian Fleming saw.
During the Istanbul Pogroms, which many Greek and some Turkish scholars attributed to secret orchestrations by Britain, Fleming wrote an account of the events, "The Great Riot of Istanbul", which was published in the The Sunday Times on 11 September 1955.
Later life
Fleming was a bibliophile who collected a library of books that had, in his opinion, "started something", and therefore were significant in the history of western civilization. He concentrated on science and technology, e.g. On the Origin of Species, yet he also collected sociological milestones such as Mein Kampf and Scouting for Boys. He was a major lender to the 1963 exhibition Printing and the Mind of Man. Currently, some six hundred books from Fleming's collection are in the Lilly Library at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, U.S.A.
In March 1960, Fleming met John F. Kennedy through Marion Oates Leiter who was a mutual friend and invited to dinner. Leiter had introduced Kennedy to Fleming's books during his recovery from an operation in 1955. After dinner Fleming related his ideas on discrediting Fidel Castro that were reported to Central Intelligence Agency chief Allen Welsh Dulles who gave the ideas serious consideration.[3]
Fifty-six-year-old Ian Fleming died of a heart attack on the morning of August 12, 1964, in Canterbury, Kent, England, and was later buried in the churchyard of Sevenhampton village, near Swindon. Upon their own deaths, Fleming's widow, Ann Geraldine Mary Fleming (1913–1981), and son Caspar Robert Fleming (1952–1975), were buried next to him. Sadly, Caspar committed suicide with a drug overdose.
Selected works
James Bond books
1. Casino Royale1
2. Live and Let Die
3. Moonraker²
4. Diamonds Are Forever
5. From Russia with Love
6. Dr. No
7. Goldfinger
8. For Your Eyes Only³
9. Thunderball4
10. The Spy Who Loved Me5
11. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
12. You Only Live Twice
13. The Man with the Golden Gun6
14. Octopussy and The Living Daylights7
childern's story
• Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
Non-fiction
• The Diamond Smugglers
• Thrilling Cities
Unfinished/unpublished works
• Fleming kept a scrapbook containing notes and ideas for future James Bond stories. It included fragments of possible short stories or novels featuring Bond hat were never published. Excerpts from some of these can be found in The Life of Ian Fleming by John Pearson.
• The author Geoffrey Jenkins worked with Fleming on a James Bond story idea between 1957 and 1964. After Fleming's death, Jenkins was commissioned by Bond publishers Glidrose Productions to turn this story, Per Fine Ounce, into a novel, but it was never published.
• In 1960 Fleming was commissioned by the Kuwait Oil Company to write a book on the country and its oil industry. The typescript is titled State of Excitement: Impressions of Kuwait but was never published due to Kuwait government disapproval. According to Fleming: "The Oil Company expressed approval of the book but felt it their duty to submit the typescript to members of the Kuwait Government for their approval. The Sheikhs concerned found unpalatable certain mild comments and criticisms and particularly the passages referring to the adventurous past of the country which now wishes to be 'civilised' in every respect and forget its romantic origins."
Biographical films
• Goldeneye: The Secret Life of Ian Fleming, 1989. A TV movie starring Charles Dance as Fleming. The movie focuses on Fleming's life during World War II, and his love life, and the factors that led to his creation of James Bond.
• Spymaker: The Secret Life of Ian Fleming, 1990. A TV movie starring Jason Connery (son of Sean) as the writer in a fanciful dramatisation of his career in British intelligence. His life is depicted with the kind of Bond-like action and glamour that Fleming secretly wished he could have had.
• Ian Fleming: Bondmaker, 2005. A TV documentary/drama by Wall to Wall first broadcast on BBC in August 2005. Laurence Olivier Theatre Award-winning British actor Ben Daniels portrays Ian Fleming.
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626) was an English philosopher, statesman, and essayist, but is best known as a philosophical advocate and defender of the scientific revolution. Indeed, his dedication brought him into a rare historical group of scientists who were killed by their own experiments.
His works established and popularized an inductive methodology for scientific inquiry, often called the Baconian method or simply, the scientific method. In the context of his time such methods were connected with the occult trends of hermeticism and alchemy.
Nevertheless, his demand for a planned procedure of investigating all things natural marked a new turn in the rhetorical and theoretical framework for science, much of which still surrounds conceptions of proper methodology today.
Bacon was knighted in 1603, created Baron Verulam in 1618, and created Viscount St Alban in 1621; without heirs, both peerages became extinct upon his death. He has been credited as the creator of the English essay.
Francis Bacon was born at York House, Strand, London. He was the youngest of five sons of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal under Elizabeth I. His mother, Ann Cooke Bacon, was the second wife of Sir Nicholas. She was a member of the Reformed or Puritan Church, and a daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke. Her sister married William Cecil, Lord Burghley, the chief minister of Queen Elizabeth I.
Biographers believe that Bacon received an education at home in his early years, and that his health during that time, as later, was delicate. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1573 at the age of twelve, living for three years there with his older brother Anthony.
At Cambridge he first met the Queen, who was impressed by his precocious intellect, and was accustomed to call him "the young Lord Keeper".
There also his studies of science brought him to the conclusion that the methods (and thus the results) were erroneous. His reverence for Aristotle conflicted with his dislike of Aristotelian philosophy, which seemed to him barren, disputatious, and wrong in its objectives.
Bacon's works include his Essays, as well as the Colours of Good and Evil and the Meditationes Sacrae, all published in 1597. His famous aphorism, "knowledge is power", is found in the Meditations. He published The Proficience and Advancement of Learning in 1605. Bacon also wrote In felicem memoriam Elizabethae, a eulogy for the queen written in 1609; and various philosophical works which constitute the fragmentary and incomplete Instauratio magna, the most important part of which is the Novum Organum (published 1620). Bacon also wrote the Astrologia Sana and expressed his belief that stars had physical effects on the planet. He is also known for The New Atlantis, a utopian novel he wrote in 1626.
Bacon did not propose an actual philosophy, but rather a method of developing philosophy; he wrote that, whilst philosophy at the time used the deductive syllogism to interpret nature, the philosopher should instead proceed through inductive reasoning from fact to axiom to law. Before beginning this induction, the inquirer is to free his mind from certain false notions or tendencies which distort the truth. These are called "Idols"[9] (idola), and are of four kinds: "Idols of the Tribe" (idola tribus), which are common to the race; "Idols of the Den" (idola specus), which are peculiar to the individual; "Idols of the Marketplace" (idola fori), coming from the misuse of language; and "Idols of the Theatre" (idola theatri), which result from an abuse of authority. The end of induction is the discovery of forms, the ways in which natural phenomena occur, the causes from which they proceed.
Bacon's somewhat fragmentary ethical system, derived through use of his methods, is explicated in the seventh and eighth books of his De augmentis scientiarum (1623). He distinguishes between duty to the community, an ethical matter, and duty to God, a purely religious matter. Any moral action is the action of the human will, which is governed by reason and spurred on by the passions; habit is what aids men in directing their will toward the good. No universal rules can be made, as both situations and men's characters differ.
Bacon distinctly separated religion and philosophy, though the two can coexist. Where philosophy is based on reason, faith is based on revelation, and therefore irrational — in De augmentis he writes that "the more discordant, therefore, and incredible, the divine mystery is, the more honour is shown to God in believing it, and the nobler is the victory of faith." And yet he writes in "The Essays: Of Atheism" that "a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion", suggesting he continued to employ inductive reasoning in all areas of his life, including his own spiritual beliefs.
Bacon contrasted the new approach, of the development of science, with that of the Middle Ages. He once said, to top it all off: "Men have sought to make a world from their own conception and to draw from their own minds all the material which they employed, but if, instead of doing so, they had consulted experience and observation, they would have the facts and not opinions to reason about, and might have ultimately arrived at the knowledge of the laws which govern the material world."
On the three "modern" inventions
In Bacon's work Novum Organum, he cites three world-changing inventions in the West, but does not seem to be aware that they all hail from China.
"Printing, gunpowder and the compass: These three have changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world; the first in literature, the second in warfare, the third in navigation; whence have followed innumerable changes, in so much that no empire, no sect, no star seems to have exerted greater power and influence in human affairs than these mechanical discoveries." - Novum Organum
"For our ordinances and rites we have two very long and fair galleries. In one of these we place patterns and samples of all manner of the more rare and excellent inventions; in the other we place the statues of all principal inventors. There we have the statue of your Columbus, that discovered the West Indies, also the inventor of ships, your monk that was the inventor of ordnance and of gunpowder, the inventor of music, the inventor of letters, the inventor of printing, the inventor of observations of astronomy, the inventor of works in metal, the inventor of glass, the inventor of silk of the worm, the inventor of wine, the inventor of corn and bread, the inventor of sugars; and all these by more certain tradition than you have. Then we have divers inventors of our own, of excellent works; which, since you have not seen) it were too long to make descriptions of them; and besides, in the right understanding of those descriptions you might easily err. For upon every invention of value we erect a statue to the inventor, and give him a liberal and honorable reward. These statues are some of brass, some of marble and touchstone, some of cedar and other special woods gilt and adorned; some of iron, some of silver, some of gold."
Bacon's ideas about the improvement of the human lot were influential in the 1630s and 1650s among a number of Parliamentarian scholars. During the Restoration, Bacon was commonly invoked as a guiding spirit of the new-founded Royal Society. In the nineteenth century his emphasis on induction was revived and developed by William Whewell, among others.
Bacon was ranked #90 on Michael H. Hart's list of the most influential figures in history.
Several authors, such as A .L. Rowse, Rictor Norton, and Alan Stewart, accept the possibility that he had homosexual inclinations. Nieves Mathews, author of Francis Bacon: The History of a Character Assassination, argues that the sources are not conclusive :
(1) a quote from the private diary of Simonds D'Ewes (a disputable source since he was Bacon's enemy in Parliament),
(2) a quote from Brief Lives by John Aubrey (written after Bacon's passing): he "was a pederast" and "had ganimeds and favourites",
(3) a note by Ann Bacon in which she expressed disapproval of the friends Francis and Anthony were associating with (since one was a "Papist" and money was owned to her sons).
Beginning early in the 20th century in the U.S.A., a number of metaphysical organizations, such as the I AM Activity, The Bridge to Freedom, The Temple of The Presence, and various others began making the claim that Francis Bacon had never died. They claimed that soon after completing the "Shake-Speare" plays, he had feigned his own death on Easter Sunday 1626 and then traveled extensively outside of England, eventually attaining his physical Ascension on May 1, 1684 in the region of the Carpathian Mountains. The belief is that Bacon took on the name "Saint Germain" as an Ascended Master, and is now known as "The Chohan of the Seventh Ray of Freedom" for the Earth and, since May 1, 1954, is the Hierarch for the "Dawning Golden Age" in the current two thousand year cycle of the Age of Aquarius. Under the name "Saint Germain", Bacon is considered a central figure in the "Ascended Master Teachings", and they claim that he teaches about "The One" (a Source that is a "Universal All-Pervading Presence of Life"), the "Individualized I AM Presence" (the "Self-Conscious Immortal Identity" of each person streaming from "The One" to the lower matter planes), and complete "Divine Freedom" from all human limitation.
Since the 1800s, many scholars have suggested that Bacon was the author of the works attributed to Shakespeare. Francis Carr has suggested that Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays and Don Quixote.
One theory based on Bacon's cipher was published by Edward Clark in a late 19th century book called The Tale of the Shakspere Epitaph by Francis Bacon and referred to an inscription on a bust of Shakespeare which used a mixture of letter-shapes. Unfortunately the stone had crumbled and been replaced more than half a century earlier, so Clark had to rely on copies. He was building on an article by Hugh Black in The North American Review suggesting that the inscription concealed the sentence, "FRA BA WRT EAR AY", an abbreviation of "Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays."
His works established and popularized an inductive methodology for scientific inquiry, often called the Baconian method or simply, the scientific method. In the context of his time such methods were connected with the occult trends of hermeticism and alchemy.
Nevertheless, his demand for a planned procedure of investigating all things natural marked a new turn in the rhetorical and theoretical framework for science, much of which still surrounds conceptions of proper methodology today.
Bacon was knighted in 1603, created Baron Verulam in 1618, and created Viscount St Alban in 1621; without heirs, both peerages became extinct upon his death. He has been credited as the creator of the English essay.
Early life
Francis Bacon was born at York House, Strand, London. He was the youngest of five sons of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal under Elizabeth I. His mother, Ann Cooke Bacon, was the second wife of Sir Nicholas. She was a member of the Reformed or Puritan Church, and a daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke. Her sister married William Cecil, Lord Burghley, the chief minister of Queen Elizabeth I.
Biographers believe that Bacon received an education at home in his early years, and that his health during that time, as later, was delicate. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1573 at the age of twelve, living for three years there with his older brother Anthony.
At Cambridge he first met the Queen, who was impressed by his precocious intellect, and was accustomed to call him "the young Lord Keeper".
There also his studies of science brought him to the conclusion that the methods (and thus the results) were erroneous. His reverence for Aristotle conflicted with his dislike of Aristotelian philosophy, which seemed to him barren, disputatious, and wrong in its objectives.
Works and philosophy
Bacon's works include his Essays, as well as the Colours of Good and Evil and the Meditationes Sacrae, all published in 1597. His famous aphorism, "knowledge is power", is found in the Meditations. He published The Proficience and Advancement of Learning in 1605. Bacon also wrote In felicem memoriam Elizabethae, a eulogy for the queen written in 1609; and various philosophical works which constitute the fragmentary and incomplete Instauratio magna, the most important part of which is the Novum Organum (published 1620). Bacon also wrote the Astrologia Sana and expressed his belief that stars had physical effects on the planet. He is also known for The New Atlantis, a utopian novel he wrote in 1626.
Bacon did not propose an actual philosophy, but rather a method of developing philosophy; he wrote that, whilst philosophy at the time used the deductive syllogism to interpret nature, the philosopher should instead proceed through inductive reasoning from fact to axiom to law. Before beginning this induction, the inquirer is to free his mind from certain false notions or tendencies which distort the truth. These are called "Idols"[9] (idola), and are of four kinds: "Idols of the Tribe" (idola tribus), which are common to the race; "Idols of the Den" (idola specus), which are peculiar to the individual; "Idols of the Marketplace" (idola fori), coming from the misuse of language; and "Idols of the Theatre" (idola theatri), which result from an abuse of authority. The end of induction is the discovery of forms, the ways in which natural phenomena occur, the causes from which they proceed.
Bacon's somewhat fragmentary ethical system, derived through use of his methods, is explicated in the seventh and eighth books of his De augmentis scientiarum (1623). He distinguishes between duty to the community, an ethical matter, and duty to God, a purely religious matter. Any moral action is the action of the human will, which is governed by reason and spurred on by the passions; habit is what aids men in directing their will toward the good. No universal rules can be made, as both situations and men's characters differ.
Bacon distinctly separated religion and philosophy, though the two can coexist. Where philosophy is based on reason, faith is based on revelation, and therefore irrational — in De augmentis he writes that "the more discordant, therefore, and incredible, the divine mystery is, the more honour is shown to God in believing it, and the nobler is the victory of faith." And yet he writes in "The Essays: Of Atheism" that "a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion", suggesting he continued to employ inductive reasoning in all areas of his life, including his own spiritual beliefs.
Bacon contrasted the new approach, of the development of science, with that of the Middle Ages. He once said, to top it all off: "Men have sought to make a world from their own conception and to draw from their own minds all the material which they employed, but if, instead of doing so, they had consulted experience and observation, they would have the facts and not opinions to reason about, and might have ultimately arrived at the knowledge of the laws which govern the material world."
On the three "modern" inventions
In Bacon's work Novum Organum, he cites three world-changing inventions in the West, but does not seem to be aware that they all hail from China.
"Printing, gunpowder and the compass: These three have changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world; the first in literature, the second in warfare, the third in navigation; whence have followed innumerable changes, in so much that no empire, no sect, no star seems to have exerted greater power and influence in human affairs than these mechanical discoveries." - Novum Organum
"For our ordinances and rites we have two very long and fair galleries. In one of these we place patterns and samples of all manner of the more rare and excellent inventions; in the other we place the statues of all principal inventors. There we have the statue of your Columbus, that discovered the West Indies, also the inventor of ships, your monk that was the inventor of ordnance and of gunpowder, the inventor of music, the inventor of letters, the inventor of printing, the inventor of observations of astronomy, the inventor of works in metal, the inventor of glass, the inventor of silk of the worm, the inventor of wine, the inventor of corn and bread, the inventor of sugars; and all these by more certain tradition than you have. Then we have divers inventors of our own, of excellent works; which, since you have not seen) it were too long to make descriptions of them; and besides, in the right understanding of those descriptions you might easily err. For upon every invention of value we erect a statue to the inventor, and give him a liberal and honorable reward. These statues are some of brass, some of marble and touchstone, some of cedar and other special woods gilt and adorned; some of iron, some of silver, some of gold."
Posthumous reputation
Bacon's ideas about the improvement of the human lot were influential in the 1630s and 1650s among a number of Parliamentarian scholars. During the Restoration, Bacon was commonly invoked as a guiding spirit of the new-founded Royal Society. In the nineteenth century his emphasis on induction was revived and developed by William Whewell, among others.
Bacon was ranked #90 on Michael H. Hart's list of the most influential figures in history.
Several authors, such as A .L. Rowse, Rictor Norton, and Alan Stewart, accept the possibility that he had homosexual inclinations. Nieves Mathews, author of Francis Bacon: The History of a Character Assassination, argues that the sources are not conclusive :
(1) a quote from the private diary of Simonds D'Ewes (a disputable source since he was Bacon's enemy in Parliament),
(2) a quote from Brief Lives by John Aubrey (written after Bacon's passing): he "was a pederast" and "had ganimeds and favourites",
(3) a note by Ann Bacon in which she expressed disapproval of the friends Francis and Anthony were associating with (since one was a "Papist" and money was owned to her sons).
Francis Bacon in popular culture
Beginning early in the 20th century in the U.S.A., a number of metaphysical organizations, such as the I AM Activity, The Bridge to Freedom, The Temple of The Presence, and various others began making the claim that Francis Bacon had never died. They claimed that soon after completing the "Shake-Speare" plays, he had feigned his own death on Easter Sunday 1626 and then traveled extensively outside of England, eventually attaining his physical Ascension on May 1, 1684 in the region of the Carpathian Mountains. The belief is that Bacon took on the name "Saint Germain" as an Ascended Master, and is now known as "The Chohan of the Seventh Ray of Freedom" for the Earth and, since May 1, 1954, is the Hierarch for the "Dawning Golden Age" in the current two thousand year cycle of the Age of Aquarius. Under the name "Saint Germain", Bacon is considered a central figure in the "Ascended Master Teachings", and they claim that he teaches about "The One" (a Source that is a "Universal All-Pervading Presence of Life"), the "Individualized I AM Presence" (the "Self-Conscious Immortal Identity" of each person streaming from "The One" to the lower matter planes), and complete "Divine Freedom" from all human limitation.
Bacon and Shakespeare
Since the 1800s, many scholars have suggested that Bacon was the author of the works attributed to Shakespeare. Francis Carr has suggested that Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays and Don Quixote.
One theory based on Bacon's cipher was published by Edward Clark in a late 19th century book called The Tale of the Shakspere Epitaph by Francis Bacon and referred to an inscription on a bust of Shakespeare which used a mixture of letter-shapes. Unfortunately the stone had crumbled and been replaced more than half a century earlier, so Clark had to rely on copies. He was building on an article by Hugh Black in The North American Review suggesting that the inscription concealed the sentence, "FRA BA WRT EAR AY", an abbreviation of "Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays."
Charles John Huffam Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens (February 1812 – 9 June 1870), pen-name "Boz", was the foremost English novelist of the Victorian era, as well as a vigorous social campaigner. Considered one of the English language's greatest writers, he was acclaimed for his rich storytelling and memorable characters, and achieved massive worldwide popularity in his lifetime. Later critics, beginning with George Gissing and G. K. Chesterton, championed his mastery of prose, his endless invention of memorable characters and his powerful social sensibilities, but writers such as George Henry Lewes, Henry James and Virginia Woolf fault his work for sentimentality, implausible occurrence and grotesque characters.
The popularity of Dickens' novels and short stories has meant that not one has ever gone out of print. Dickens wrote serialised novels, the usual format for fiction at the time, and each new part of his stories was eagerly anticipated by the reading public.
Charles Dickens was born in Landport, Portsmouth in Hampshire, the second of eight children to John Dickens (1786–1851), a clerk in the Navy Pay Office at Portsmouth, and his wife Elizabeth Dickens (née Barrow,1789–1863) on February 7, 1812. When he was five, the family moved to Chatham, Kent. In 1822, when he was ten, the family relocated to 16 Bayham Street, Camden Town in London. He spent his time outdoors, reading voraciously with a particular fondness for the picaresque novels of Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding. His family was moderately wealthy, and he received some education at the private William Giles's school in Chatham. This time of prosperity came to an abrupt end, however, when his father, after spending far too much money entertaining and retaining his social position, was imprisoned at Marshalsea debtors' prison.The 12-year-old Dickens began working ten hour days in a Warren's boot-blacking factory, located near the present Charing Cross railway station. He earned six shillings a week pasting labels on the jars of thick polish. This money paid for his lodgings in Camden Town and helped him to support his family. The shocking conditions of the factory made an ingrained impression on Dickens. After a few months, his family was able to leave Marshalsea, but their financial situation did not improve until later, partly due to money inherited from his father's family. Dickens's mother did not immediately remove him from the boot-blacking factory, owned by a relation of hers, and he never forgave her for this.
Resentment of his situation and the conditions under which working-class people lived became major themes of his works, championing the causes of the poor and oppressed. As Dickens wrote in David Copperfield, judged to be his most patently autobiographical novel, "I had no advice, no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation, no assistance, no support, of any kind, from anyone, that I can call to mind, as I hope to go to heaven!" He eventually attended the Wellington House Academy in North London.
In May 1827, Dickens began work in the office of Ellis and Blackmore as a law clerk. This was a junior office position, but it came with the potential of helping him up to the Bar. It was here that he gained his detailed knowledge of the law and the poor's suffering at the hands of its many injustices, together with a loathing of inefficient bureaucracy which stayed with him for the rest his life. He showed his contempt for the lawyer's profession in his many literary works.At the age of seventeen, he became a court stenographer and, in 1830, met his first love, Maria Beadnell. It is believed that she was the model for the character Dora in David Copperfield. Maria's parents disapproved of the courtship and effectively ended the relationship when they sent her to school in Paris.
In 1834, Dickens became a political journalist, reporting on parliamentary debate and travelling across Britain by stagecoach to cover election campaigns for the Morning Chronicle. His journalism, in the form of sketches which appeared in periodicals from 1833, formed his first collection of pieces Sketches by Boz which were published in 1836 and led to the serialization of his first novel, The Pickwick Papers, in March 1836. He continued to contribute to and edit journals throughout much of his subsequent literary career. Dickens's keen perceptiveness, intimate knowledge and understanding of the people and tale-spinning genius was quickly to gain him world renown and wealth.
On 2 April 1836, he married Catherine Thompson Hogarth (1816–1879), the daughter of George Hogarth, editor of the Evening Chronicle. After a brief honeymoon in Chalk, Kent, they set up home in Bloomsbury, where they produced ten children:
• Charles Culliford Boz Dickens (6 January 1837–1896).
• Mary Angela Dickens (6 March 1838–1896).
• Kate Macready Dickens (29 October 1839–1929).
• Walter Landor Dickens (8 February 1841–1863). Died in India.
• Francis Jeffrey Dickens (15 January 1844–1886).
• Alfred D'Orsay Tennyson Dickens (28 October 1845–1912).
• Sydney Smith Haldimand Dickens (18 April 1847–1872).
• (Sir) Henry Fielding Dickens (15 January 1849–1933).
o Henry Charles Dickens (1882–1966), barrister. (Grandson)
? Monica Dickens (1915–1992). (Great-granddaughter)
• Dora Annie Dickens (16 August 1850–April 1851).
• Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens (13 March 1852–23 January 1902).
He migrated to Australia, and became a member of the New South Wales state parliament. He died in Moree, New South Wales.
Also in 1836, Dickens accepted the job of editor of Bentley's Miscellany, a position that he would hold until 1839, when he fell out with the owner. His success as a novelist continued, however, producing Oliver Twist (1837-39), Nicholas Nickleby (1838-39), The Old Curiosity Shop and, finally, Barnaby Rudge as part of the Master Humphrey's Clock series (1840-41) -- all published in monthly instalments before being made into books.
In 1842, Dickens travelled with his wife to the United States and Canada, a journey which was successful in spite of his support for the abolition of slavery. The trip is described in the short travelogue American Notes for General Circulation and is also the basis of some of the episodes in Martin Chuzzlewit. Shortly thereafter, he began to show interest in Unitarian Christianity, although he remained an Anglican, at least nominally, for the rest of his life. Dickens's work continued to be popular, especially A Christmas Carol written in 1843, the first of his Christmas books, which was reputedly written in a matter of weeks. After living briefly abroad in Italy (1844) and Switzerland (1846), Dickens continued his success with
Dombey and Son (1848)
David Copperfield (1849-50)
Bleak House (1852-53)
Hard Times (1854)
Little Dorrit (1857)A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
Great Expectations (1861)
Dickens was also the publisher and editor of, and a major contributor to, the journals Household Words (1850–1859) and All the Year Round (1858-1870).
In 1856, his popularity had allowed him to buy Gad's Hill Place. This large house in Higham, Kent, had a particular meaning to Dickens as he had walked past it as a child and had dreamed of living in it. The area was also the scene of some of the events of Shakespeare's Henry IV, part 1 and this literary connection pleased him. In 1857, in preparation for public performances of The Frozen Deep, a play on which he and his protégé Wilkie Collins had collaborated, Dickens hired professional actresses to play the female parts. With one of these, Ellen Ternan, Dickens formed a bond which was to last the rest of his life. The exact nature of their relationship is unclear, as both Dickens and Ternan burned each other's letters, but it was clearly central to Dickens's personal and professional life. On his death, he settled an annuity on her which made her a financially independent woman. Claire Tomalin's book, The Invisible Woman, set out to prove that Ellen Ternan lived with Dickens secretly for the last 13 years of his life, and has subsequently been turned into a play by Simon Gray called Little Nell. When Dickens separated from his wife in 1858, divorce was almost unthinkable, particularly for someone as famous as he was, and so he continued to maintain her in a house for the next 20 years until she died. Although they appeared to be initially happy together, Catherine did not seem to share quite the same boundless energy for life which Dickens had. Nevertheless, her job of looking after their ten children, and the pressure of living with a world-famous novelist and keeping house for him, certainly did not help. Catherine had her sister Mary move in to help her, but there were rumours that Charles was romantically linked to his sister-in-law, possibly fuelled by the fact that she remained at Gadshill to look after the younger children when Catherine left. An indication of his marital dissatisfaction was when, in 1855, he went to meet his first love, Maria Beadnell. Maria was by this time married as well, but seemed to have fallen short of Dickens's romantic memory of her.
On 9 June 1865, while returning from France with Ternan, Dickens was involved in the Staplehurst rail crash in which the first seven carriages of the train plunged off a bridge that was being repaired. The only first-class carriage to remain on the track was the one in which Dickens was travelling. Dickens spent some time tending the wounded and the dying before rescuers arrived. Before leaving, he remembered the unfinished manuscript for Our Mutual Friend, and he returned to his carriage to retrieve it. Typically, Dickens later used this experience as material for his short ghost story The Signal-Man in which the central character has a premonition of his own death in a rail crash. When he undertook an English tour of readings (1869–1870), he became ill and five years to the day after the Staplehurst crash, on 9 June 1870, he died at home at Gad's Hill Place after suffering a stroke, after a full, interesting and varied life. He was mourned by all his readers. Contrary to his wish to be buried in Rochester Cathedral, he was laid to rest in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. The inscription on his tomb reads: "He was a sympathiser to the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed; and by his death, one of England's greatest writers is lost to the world." Dickens's will stipulated that no memorial be erected to honour him. The only life-size bronze statue of Dickens, cast in 1891 by Francis Edwin Elwell, is located in Clark Park in the Spruce Hill neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the United States of America.
• The Pickwick Papers
• The Adventures of Oliver Twist
• The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby
• The Old Curiosity Shop
• Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty
• The Christmas books:
o A Christmas Carol
o The Chimes
o The Cricket on the Hearth
o The Battle of Life
o The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain
• The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit
• Dombey and Son
• David Copperfield
• Bleak House
• Hard Times: For These Times
• Little Dorrit
• A Tale of Two Cities
• Great Expectations
• Our Mutual Friend
• No Thoroughfare
• The Mystery of Edwin Drood
• The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices
• Sketches by Boz
• Boots at the Holly-tree Inn: And Other Stories
• Reprinted Pieces
• The Haunted House
• The Mudfog Papers
• The Village Coquettes
• The Fine Old English Gentleman
• American Notes: For General Circulation
• Pictures from Italy
• The Life of Our Lord: As written for his children
• A Child's History of England
• The Frozen Deep
• Speeches, Letters and Sayings
The popularity of Dickens' novels and short stories has meant that not one has ever gone out of print. Dickens wrote serialised novels, the usual format for fiction at the time, and each new part of his stories was eagerly anticipated by the reading public.
Life
Charles Dickens was born in Landport, Portsmouth in Hampshire, the second of eight children to John Dickens (1786–1851), a clerk in the Navy Pay Office at Portsmouth, and his wife Elizabeth Dickens (née Barrow,1789–1863) on February 7, 1812. When he was five, the family moved to Chatham, Kent. In 1822, when he was ten, the family relocated to 16 Bayham Street, Camden Town in London. He spent his time outdoors, reading voraciously with a particular fondness for the picaresque novels of Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding. His family was moderately wealthy, and he received some education at the private William Giles's school in Chatham. This time of prosperity came to an abrupt end, however, when his father, after spending far too much money entertaining and retaining his social position, was imprisoned at Marshalsea debtors' prison.The 12-year-old Dickens began working ten hour days in a Warren's boot-blacking factory, located near the present Charing Cross railway station. He earned six shillings a week pasting labels on the jars of thick polish. This money paid for his lodgings in Camden Town and helped him to support his family. The shocking conditions of the factory made an ingrained impression on Dickens. After a few months, his family was able to leave Marshalsea, but their financial situation did not improve until later, partly due to money inherited from his father's family. Dickens's mother did not immediately remove him from the boot-blacking factory, owned by a relation of hers, and he never forgave her for this.
Resentment of his situation and the conditions under which working-class people lived became major themes of his works, championing the causes of the poor and oppressed. As Dickens wrote in David Copperfield, judged to be his most patently autobiographical novel, "I had no advice, no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation, no assistance, no support, of any kind, from anyone, that I can call to mind, as I hope to go to heaven!" He eventually attended the Wellington House Academy in North London.
In May 1827, Dickens began work in the office of Ellis and Blackmore as a law clerk. This was a junior office position, but it came with the potential of helping him up to the Bar. It was here that he gained his detailed knowledge of the law and the poor's suffering at the hands of its many injustices, together with a loathing of inefficient bureaucracy which stayed with him for the rest his life. He showed his contempt for the lawyer's profession in his many literary works.At the age of seventeen, he became a court stenographer and, in 1830, met his first love, Maria Beadnell. It is believed that she was the model for the character Dora in David Copperfield. Maria's parents disapproved of the courtship and effectively ended the relationship when they sent her to school in Paris.
In 1834, Dickens became a political journalist, reporting on parliamentary debate and travelling across Britain by stagecoach to cover election campaigns for the Morning Chronicle. His journalism, in the form of sketches which appeared in periodicals from 1833, formed his first collection of pieces Sketches by Boz which were published in 1836 and led to the serialization of his first novel, The Pickwick Papers, in March 1836. He continued to contribute to and edit journals throughout much of his subsequent literary career. Dickens's keen perceptiveness, intimate knowledge and understanding of the people and tale-spinning genius was quickly to gain him world renown and wealth.
On 2 April 1836, he married Catherine Thompson Hogarth (1816–1879), the daughter of George Hogarth, editor of the Evening Chronicle. After a brief honeymoon in Chalk, Kent, they set up home in Bloomsbury, where they produced ten children:
• Charles Culliford Boz Dickens (6 January 1837–1896).
• Mary Angela Dickens (6 March 1838–1896).
• Kate Macready Dickens (29 October 1839–1929).
• Walter Landor Dickens (8 February 1841–1863). Died in India.
• Francis Jeffrey Dickens (15 January 1844–1886).
• Alfred D'Orsay Tennyson Dickens (28 October 1845–1912).
• Sydney Smith Haldimand Dickens (18 April 1847–1872).
• (Sir) Henry Fielding Dickens (15 January 1849–1933).
o Henry Charles Dickens (1882–1966), barrister. (Grandson)
? Monica Dickens (1915–1992). (Great-granddaughter)
• Dora Annie Dickens (16 August 1850–April 1851).
• Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens (13 March 1852–23 January 1902).
He migrated to Australia, and became a member of the New South Wales state parliament. He died in Moree, New South Wales.
Also in 1836, Dickens accepted the job of editor of Bentley's Miscellany, a position that he would hold until 1839, when he fell out with the owner. His success as a novelist continued, however, producing Oliver Twist (1837-39), Nicholas Nickleby (1838-39), The Old Curiosity Shop and, finally, Barnaby Rudge as part of the Master Humphrey's Clock series (1840-41) -- all published in monthly instalments before being made into books.
In 1842, Dickens travelled with his wife to the United States and Canada, a journey which was successful in spite of his support for the abolition of slavery. The trip is described in the short travelogue American Notes for General Circulation and is also the basis of some of the episodes in Martin Chuzzlewit. Shortly thereafter, he began to show interest in Unitarian Christianity, although he remained an Anglican, at least nominally, for the rest of his life. Dickens's work continued to be popular, especially A Christmas Carol written in 1843, the first of his Christmas books, which was reputedly written in a matter of weeks. After living briefly abroad in Italy (1844) and Switzerland (1846), Dickens continued his success with
Dombey and Son (1848)
David Copperfield (1849-50)
Bleak House (1852-53)
Hard Times (1854)
Little Dorrit (1857)A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
Great Expectations (1861)
Dickens was also the publisher and editor of, and a major contributor to, the journals Household Words (1850–1859) and All the Year Round (1858-1870).
In 1856, his popularity had allowed him to buy Gad's Hill Place. This large house in Higham, Kent, had a particular meaning to Dickens as he had walked past it as a child and had dreamed of living in it. The area was also the scene of some of the events of Shakespeare's Henry IV, part 1 and this literary connection pleased him. In 1857, in preparation for public performances of The Frozen Deep, a play on which he and his protégé Wilkie Collins had collaborated, Dickens hired professional actresses to play the female parts. With one of these, Ellen Ternan, Dickens formed a bond which was to last the rest of his life. The exact nature of their relationship is unclear, as both Dickens and Ternan burned each other's letters, but it was clearly central to Dickens's personal and professional life. On his death, he settled an annuity on her which made her a financially independent woman. Claire Tomalin's book, The Invisible Woman, set out to prove that Ellen Ternan lived with Dickens secretly for the last 13 years of his life, and has subsequently been turned into a play by Simon Gray called Little Nell. When Dickens separated from his wife in 1858, divorce was almost unthinkable, particularly for someone as famous as he was, and so he continued to maintain her in a house for the next 20 years until she died. Although they appeared to be initially happy together, Catherine did not seem to share quite the same boundless energy for life which Dickens had. Nevertheless, her job of looking after their ten children, and the pressure of living with a world-famous novelist and keeping house for him, certainly did not help. Catherine had her sister Mary move in to help her, but there were rumours that Charles was romantically linked to his sister-in-law, possibly fuelled by the fact that she remained at Gadshill to look after the younger children when Catherine left. An indication of his marital dissatisfaction was when, in 1855, he went to meet his first love, Maria Beadnell. Maria was by this time married as well, but seemed to have fallen short of Dickens's romantic memory of her.
On 9 June 1865, while returning from France with Ternan, Dickens was involved in the Staplehurst rail crash in which the first seven carriages of the train plunged off a bridge that was being repaired. The only first-class carriage to remain on the track was the one in which Dickens was travelling. Dickens spent some time tending the wounded and the dying before rescuers arrived. Before leaving, he remembered the unfinished manuscript for Our Mutual Friend, and he returned to his carriage to retrieve it. Typically, Dickens later used this experience as material for his short ghost story The Signal-Man in which the central character has a premonition of his own death in a rail crash. When he undertook an English tour of readings (1869–1870), he became ill and five years to the day after the Staplehurst crash, on 9 June 1870, he died at home at Gad's Hill Place after suffering a stroke, after a full, interesting and varied life. He was mourned by all his readers. Contrary to his wish to be buried in Rochester Cathedral, he was laid to rest in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. The inscription on his tomb reads: "He was a sympathiser to the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed; and by his death, one of England's greatest writers is lost to the world." Dickens's will stipulated that no memorial be erected to honour him. The only life-size bronze statue of Dickens, cast in 1891 by Francis Edwin Elwell, is located in Clark Park in the Spruce Hill neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the United States of America.
Novels
• The Pickwick Papers
• The Adventures of Oliver Twist
• The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby
• The Old Curiosity Shop
• Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty
• The Christmas books:
o A Christmas Carol
o The Chimes
o The Cricket on the Hearth
o The Battle of Life
o The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain
• The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit
• Dombey and Son
• David Copperfield
• Bleak House
• Hard Times: For These Times
• Little Dorrit
• A Tale of Two Cities
• Great Expectations
• Our Mutual Friend
• No Thoroughfare
• The Mystery of Edwin Drood
• The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices
Short story collections
• Sketches by Boz
• Boots at the Holly-tree Inn: And Other Stories
• Reprinted Pieces
• The Haunted House
• The Mudfog Papers
nonfiction, poetry, and plays
• The Village Coquettes
• The Fine Old English Gentleman
• American Notes: For General Circulation
• Pictures from Italy
• The Life of Our Lord: As written for his children
• A Child's History of England
• The Frozen Deep
• Speeches, Letters and Sayings
William Blake
William Blake (November 28, 1757 – August 12, 1827) was an English poet, visionary, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognized during his lifetime, Blake's work is today considered seminal and significant in the history of both poetry and the visual arts. He was voted 38th in a poll of the 100 Greatest Britons organized by the BBC in 2002.
According to Northrop Frye, who undertook a study of Blake's entire poetic corpus, his prophetic poems form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language." Others have praised Blake's visual artistry, at least one modern critic proclaiming Blake "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced." Once considered mad for his idiosyncratic views, Blake is highly regarded today for his expressiveness and creativity, and the philosophical vision that underlies his work. As he himself once indicated, "The imagination is not a State: it is the Human existence itself."
While his visual art and written poetry are usually considered separately, Blake often employed them in concert to create a product that at once defied and superseded convention. Though he believed himself able to converse aloud with Old Testament prophets, and despite his work in illustrating the Book of Job, Blake's affection for the Bible was accompanied by hostility for the established Church, his beliefs modified by a fascination with Mysticism and the unfolding of the Romantic Movement around him. Ultimately, the difficulty of placing William Blake in any one chronological stage of art history is perhaps the distinction that best defines him.
William Blake was born in 28A Broad Street, Golden Square, London, England on 28 November 1757, to a middle-class family. He was the third of seven children, who consisted of one girl and six boys, two of whom died in infancy. Blake's father, James, was a hosier. He never attended school, being educated at home by his mother. The Blakes were Dissenters, and are believed to have belonged to the Moravian church. The Bible was an early and profound influence on Blake, and would remain a source of inspiration throughout his life.
Blake began engraving copies of drawings of Greek antiquities purchased for him by his father (a further indication of the support his parents lent their son), a practice that was then preferred to actual drawing. Within these drawings Blake found his first exposure to classical forms, through the work of Raphael, Michelangelo, Marten Heemskerk and Albrecht Dürer. His parents knew enough of his headstrong temperament that he was not sent to school but was instead enrolled in drawing classes. He read avidly on subjects of his own choosing. During this period, Blake was also making explorations into poetry; his early work displays knowledge of Ben Jonson and Edmund Spenser.
On 4 August 1772, Blake became apprenticed to engraver James Basire of Great Queen Street, for the term of seven years. At the end of this period, at the age of 21, he was to become a professional engraver.
In 1782, Blake met John Flaxman, who was to become his patron, and Catherine Boucher, who was to become his wife. At the time, Blake was recovering from a relationship that had culminated in a refusal of his marriage proposal. Telling Catherine and her parents the story, she expressed her sympathy, whereupon Blake asked her, "Do you pity me?" To Catherine's affirmative response he responded, "Then I love you." Blake married Catherine – who was five years his junior – on 18 August 1782 in St. Mary's Church, Battersea. Illiterate, Catherine signed her wedding contract with an 'X'. Later, in addition to teaching Catherine to read and write, Blake trained her as an engraver; throughout his life she would prove an invaluable aid to him, helping to print his illuminated works and maintaining his spirits throughout numerous misfortunes.
At this time George Cumberland, one of the founders of the National Gallery, became an admirer of Blake's work. Blake's first collection of poems, Poetical Sketches, was published around 1783. After his father's death, William and his brother Robert opened a print shop in 1784, and began working with radical publisher Joseph Johnson. Johnson's house was a place of meeting for some of the leading intellectual dissidents of the time in England: Joseph Priestley, scientist; Richard Price, philosopher; John Henry Fuseli; Mary Wollstonecraft, an early feminist; and Thomas Paine, American revolutionary. Along with William Wordsworth and William Godwin, Blake had great hopes for the American and French revolution and wore a red liberty cap in solidarity with the French revolutionaries, but despaired with the rise of Robespierre and the Reign of Terror in the French revolution. Blake illustrated Original Stories from Real Life (1788; 1791) by Mary Wollstonecraft. They seem to have shared some views on sexual equality and the institution of marriage, but there is no evidence proving without doubt that they actually met. In 1793's Visions of the Daughters of Albion, Blake condemned the cruel absurdity of enforced chastity and marriage without love and defended the right of women to complete self-fulfillment.
In 1788, at the age of 31, Blake began to experiment with relief etching, a method he would use to produce most of his books, paintings, pamphlets and of course his poems, including his longer 'prophecies' and his masterpiece the "Bible". The process is also referred to as illuminated printing, and final products as illuminated books or prints. Illuminated printing involved writing the text of the poems on copper plates with pens and brushes, using an acid-resistant medium. Illustrations could appear alongside words in the manner of earlier illuminated manuscripts. He then etched the plates in acid in order to dissolve away the untreated copper and leave the design standing in relief (hence the name). This is a reversal of the normal method of etching, where the lines of the design are exposed to the acid, and the plate printed by the intaglio method. Relief etching, which Blake invented, later became an important commercial printing method. The pages printed from these plates then had to be hand-colored in water colors and stitched together to make up a volume. Blake used illuminated printing for most of his well-known works, including Songs of Innocence and Experience, The Book of Thel, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and Jerusalem.
Blake's marriage to Catherine remained a close and devoted one until his death. There were early problems, however, such as Catherine's illiteracy and the couple's failure to produce children. Gilchrist refers to "stormy times" in the early years of the marriage. It is possible that at one point, in accordance with the beliefs of the Swedenborgian Society, Blake suggested bringing in a concubine. Catherine was distressed at the idea, and Blake promptly withdrew it. Blake taught her to write, and she helped him to colour his printed poems.
Blake believed that the joy of man glorified God and that the religion of this world is actually the worship of Satan. He thought of Satan as Error and the 'State of Death’. Blake believes that orthodox Christians, partly because of their denial of earthly joy, are actually worshipping Satan.
Blake was against the sophistry of theological thought that excuses pain, admits evil and apologises for injustice. He abhorred attempts to buy bliss in the next world with self-denial in this.
He saw the concept of 'sin' as a trap to bind men’s desires (the briars of Garden of Love), and believed that restraint in obedience to a moral code imposed from the outside was against the spirit of life, writing:
Abstinence sows sand all over
The ruddy limbs & flaming hair,
But Desire Gratified
Plants fruits & beauty there.
He did not hold with the doctrine of God as Lord, an entity separate from and superior to mankind. This is very much in line with his belief in liberty and equality in society and between the sexes.
Assessment
Creative mindset
Northrop Frye, commenting on Blake's consistency in strongly held views, notes that Blake "himself says that his notes on [Joshua] Reynolds, written at fifty, are 'exactly Similar' to those on Locke and Bacon, written when he was 'very Young'. Even phrases and lines of verse will reappear as much as forty years later. Consistency in maintaining what he believed to be true was itself one of his leading principles ... Consistency, then, foolish or otherwise, is one of Blake's chief preoccupations, just as 'self-contradiction' is always one of his most contemptuous comments".
From a young age, William Blake claimed to have seen visions. The earliest instance occurred at the age of about eight or ten in Peckham Rye, London, when he reported seeing a tree filled with angels "bespangling every bough like stars." According to Blake's Victorian biographer Gilchrist, he returned home to report his vision, but only escaped being thrashed by his father through the intervention of his mother. Though all the evidence suggests that his parents were largely supportive, his mother seems to have been especially so, and several of Blake's early drawings and poems decorated the walls of her chamber.
On another occasion, Blake watched haymakers at work, and thought he saw angelic figures walking among them. In later life, his wife Catherine would recall the time he saw God's head "put to the window". The vision, Catherine reminded her husband, "Set you ascreaming."
Blake claimed to experience visions throughout his life. They were often associated with beautiful religious themes and imagery, and therefore may have inspired him further with spiritual works and pursuits. Certainly, religious concepts and imagery figure centrally in Blake's works. God and Christianity constituted the intellectual center of his writings, from which he drew inspiration. In addition, Blake believed that he was personally instructed and encouraged by Archangels to create his artistic works, which he claimed were actively read and enjoyed by those same Archangels.
In a letter to William Hayley, dated May 6, 1800, Blake writes:
"I know that our deceased friends are more really with us than when they were apparent to our mortal part. Thirteen years ago I lost a brother, and with his spirit I converse daily and hourly in the spirit, and see him in my remembrance, in the region of my imagination. I hear his advice, and even now write from his dictate."
In a letter to John Flaxman, dated September 21, 1800, Blake writes:
"[The town of] Felpham is a sweet place for Study, because it is more spiritual than London. Heaven opens here on all sides her golden Gates; her windows are not obstructed by vapours; voices of Celestial inhabitants are more distinctly heard, & their forms more distinctly seen; & my Cottage is also a Shadow of their houses. My Wife & Sister are both well, courting Neptune for an embrace... I am more famed in Heaven for my works than I could well conceive. In my Brain are studies & Chambers filled with books & pictures of old, which I wrote & painted in ages of Eternity before my mortal life; & those works are the delight & Study of Archangels."
In a letter to Thomas Butts, dated April 25, 1803, Blake writes:
"Now I may say to you, what perhaps I should not dare to say to anyone else: That I can alone carry on my visionary studies in London unannoy'd, & that I may converse with my friends in Eternity, See Visions, Dream Dreams & prophecy & speak Parables unobserv'd & at liberty from the Doubts of other Mortals; perhaps Doubts proceeding from Kindness, but Doubts are always pernicious, Especially when we Doubt our Friends."
In A Vision of the Last Judgement Blake writes: "What," it will be Questioned, "When the Sun rises, do you not see a round disk of fire somewhat like a Guinea?" Oh no, no, I see an innumerable company of the Heavenly host crying, "Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord God Almighty."
William Wordsworth wrote: "There was no doubt that this poor man was mad, but there is something in the madness of this man which interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott.", whilst others accept him as mystic and visionary.
• c.1788: All Religions Are One
o There Is No Natural Religion
• 1789: Songs of Innocence
o The Book of Thel
• 1790–1793: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
• 1793: Visions of the Daughters of Albion
o America: a Prophecy
• 1794: Europe: a Prophecy
o The First Book of Urizen
o Songs of Experience
• 1795: The Book of Los
o The Song of Los
o The Book of Ahania
• c.1804–c.1811: Milton: a Poem
• 1804–1820: Jerusalem: The Emanation of The Giant Albion
• 1783: Poetical Sketches
• 1789: Tiriel
• 1791: The French Revolution
• 1797: The Four Zoas
• 1791: Mary Wollstonecraft, Original Stories from Real Life
• 1797: Edward Young, Night Thoughts
• 1805-1808: Robert Blair, The Grave
• 1808: John Milton, Paradise Lost
• 1819-1820: John Varley, Visionary Heads
• 1821: R.J. Thornton, Virgil
• 1823-1826: The Book of Job
• 1825-1827: Dante, The Divine Comedy (Blake died in 1827 with these watercolours still unfinished)
According to Northrop Frye, who undertook a study of Blake's entire poetic corpus, his prophetic poems form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language." Others have praised Blake's visual artistry, at least one modern critic proclaiming Blake "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced." Once considered mad for his idiosyncratic views, Blake is highly regarded today for his expressiveness and creativity, and the philosophical vision that underlies his work. As he himself once indicated, "The imagination is not a State: it is the Human existence itself."
While his visual art and written poetry are usually considered separately, Blake often employed them in concert to create a product that at once defied and superseded convention. Though he believed himself able to converse aloud with Old Testament prophets, and despite his work in illustrating the Book of Job, Blake's affection for the Bible was accompanied by hostility for the established Church, his beliefs modified by a fascination with Mysticism and the unfolding of the Romantic Movement around him. Ultimately, the difficulty of placing William Blake in any one chronological stage of art history is perhaps the distinction that best defines him.
Early life
William Blake was born in 28A Broad Street, Golden Square, London, England on 28 November 1757, to a middle-class family. He was the third of seven children, who consisted of one girl and six boys, two of whom died in infancy. Blake's father, James, was a hosier. He never attended school, being educated at home by his mother. The Blakes were Dissenters, and are believed to have belonged to the Moravian church. The Bible was an early and profound influence on Blake, and would remain a source of inspiration throughout his life.
Blake began engraving copies of drawings of Greek antiquities purchased for him by his father (a further indication of the support his parents lent their son), a practice that was then preferred to actual drawing. Within these drawings Blake found his first exposure to classical forms, through the work of Raphael, Michelangelo, Marten Heemskerk and Albrecht Dürer. His parents knew enough of his headstrong temperament that he was not sent to school but was instead enrolled in drawing classes. He read avidly on subjects of his own choosing. During this period, Blake was also making explorations into poetry; his early work displays knowledge of Ben Jonson and Edmund Spenser.
Apprenticeship to Basire
On 4 August 1772, Blake became apprenticed to engraver James Basire of Great Queen Street, for the term of seven years. At the end of this period, at the age of 21, he was to become a professional engraver.
Marriage and early career
In 1782, Blake met John Flaxman, who was to become his patron, and Catherine Boucher, who was to become his wife. At the time, Blake was recovering from a relationship that had culminated in a refusal of his marriage proposal. Telling Catherine and her parents the story, she expressed her sympathy, whereupon Blake asked her, "Do you pity me?" To Catherine's affirmative response he responded, "Then I love you." Blake married Catherine – who was five years his junior – on 18 August 1782 in St. Mary's Church, Battersea. Illiterate, Catherine signed her wedding contract with an 'X'. Later, in addition to teaching Catherine to read and write, Blake trained her as an engraver; throughout his life she would prove an invaluable aid to him, helping to print his illuminated works and maintaining his spirits throughout numerous misfortunes.
At this time George Cumberland, one of the founders of the National Gallery, became an admirer of Blake's work. Blake's first collection of poems, Poetical Sketches, was published around 1783. After his father's death, William and his brother Robert opened a print shop in 1784, and began working with radical publisher Joseph Johnson. Johnson's house was a place of meeting for some of the leading intellectual dissidents of the time in England: Joseph Priestley, scientist; Richard Price, philosopher; John Henry Fuseli; Mary Wollstonecraft, an early feminist; and Thomas Paine, American revolutionary. Along with William Wordsworth and William Godwin, Blake had great hopes for the American and French revolution and wore a red liberty cap in solidarity with the French revolutionaries, but despaired with the rise of Robespierre and the Reign of Terror in the French revolution. Blake illustrated Original Stories from Real Life (1788; 1791) by Mary Wollstonecraft. They seem to have shared some views on sexual equality and the institution of marriage, but there is no evidence proving without doubt that they actually met. In 1793's Visions of the Daughters of Albion, Blake condemned the cruel absurdity of enforced chastity and marriage without love and defended the right of women to complete self-fulfillment.
Relief etching
In 1788, at the age of 31, Blake began to experiment with relief etching, a method he would use to produce most of his books, paintings, pamphlets and of course his poems, including his longer 'prophecies' and his masterpiece the "Bible". The process is also referred to as illuminated printing, and final products as illuminated books or prints. Illuminated printing involved writing the text of the poems on copper plates with pens and brushes, using an acid-resistant medium. Illustrations could appear alongside words in the manner of earlier illuminated manuscripts. He then etched the plates in acid in order to dissolve away the untreated copper and leave the design standing in relief (hence the name). This is a reversal of the normal method of etching, where the lines of the design are exposed to the acid, and the plate printed by the intaglio method. Relief etching, which Blake invented, later became an important commercial printing method. The pages printed from these plates then had to be hand-colored in water colors and stitched together to make up a volume. Blake used illuminated printing for most of his well-known works, including Songs of Innocence and Experience, The Book of Thel, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and Jerusalem.
Later life and career
Blake's marriage to Catherine remained a close and devoted one until his death. There were early problems, however, such as Catherine's illiteracy and the couple's failure to produce children. Gilchrist refers to "stormy times" in the early years of the marriage. It is possible that at one point, in accordance with the beliefs of the Swedenborgian Society, Blake suggested bringing in a concubine. Catherine was distressed at the idea, and Blake promptly withdrew it. Blake taught her to write, and she helped him to colour his printed poems.
Eternal Glory.
Blake believed that the joy of man glorified God and that the religion of this world is actually the worship of Satan. He thought of Satan as Error and the 'State of Death’. Blake believes that orthodox Christians, partly because of their denial of earthly joy, are actually worshipping Satan.
Blake was against the sophistry of theological thought that excuses pain, admits evil and apologises for injustice. He abhorred attempts to buy bliss in the next world with self-denial in this.
He saw the concept of 'sin' as a trap to bind men’s desires (the briars of Garden of Love), and believed that restraint in obedience to a moral code imposed from the outside was against the spirit of life, writing:
Abstinence sows sand all over
The ruddy limbs & flaming hair,
But Desire Gratified
Plants fruits & beauty there.
He did not hold with the doctrine of God as Lord, an entity separate from and superior to mankind. This is very much in line with his belief in liberty and equality in society and between the sexes.
Assessment
Creative mindset
Northrop Frye, commenting on Blake's consistency in strongly held views, notes that Blake "himself says that his notes on [Joshua] Reynolds, written at fifty, are 'exactly Similar' to those on Locke and Bacon, written when he was 'very Young'. Even phrases and lines of verse will reappear as much as forty years later. Consistency in maintaining what he believed to be true was itself one of his leading principles ... Consistency, then, foolish or otherwise, is one of Blake's chief preoccupations, just as 'self-contradiction' is always one of his most contemptuous comments".
Blake's Visions
From a young age, William Blake claimed to have seen visions. The earliest instance occurred at the age of about eight or ten in Peckham Rye, London, when he reported seeing a tree filled with angels "bespangling every bough like stars." According to Blake's Victorian biographer Gilchrist, he returned home to report his vision, but only escaped being thrashed by his father through the intervention of his mother. Though all the evidence suggests that his parents were largely supportive, his mother seems to have been especially so, and several of Blake's early drawings and poems decorated the walls of her chamber.
On another occasion, Blake watched haymakers at work, and thought he saw angelic figures walking among them. In later life, his wife Catherine would recall the time he saw God's head "put to the window". The vision, Catherine reminded her husband, "Set you ascreaming."
Blake claimed to experience visions throughout his life. They were often associated with beautiful religious themes and imagery, and therefore may have inspired him further with spiritual works and pursuits. Certainly, religious concepts and imagery figure centrally in Blake's works. God and Christianity constituted the intellectual center of his writings, from which he drew inspiration. In addition, Blake believed that he was personally instructed and encouraged by Archangels to create his artistic works, which he claimed were actively read and enjoyed by those same Archangels.
In a letter to William Hayley, dated May 6, 1800, Blake writes:
"I know that our deceased friends are more really with us than when they were apparent to our mortal part. Thirteen years ago I lost a brother, and with his spirit I converse daily and hourly in the spirit, and see him in my remembrance, in the region of my imagination. I hear his advice, and even now write from his dictate."
In a letter to John Flaxman, dated September 21, 1800, Blake writes:
"[The town of] Felpham is a sweet place for Study, because it is more spiritual than London. Heaven opens here on all sides her golden Gates; her windows are not obstructed by vapours; voices of Celestial inhabitants are more distinctly heard, & their forms more distinctly seen; & my Cottage is also a Shadow of their houses. My Wife & Sister are both well, courting Neptune for an embrace... I am more famed in Heaven for my works than I could well conceive. In my Brain are studies & Chambers filled with books & pictures of old, which I wrote & painted in ages of Eternity before my mortal life; & those works are the delight & Study of Archangels."
In a letter to Thomas Butts, dated April 25, 1803, Blake writes:
"Now I may say to you, what perhaps I should not dare to say to anyone else: That I can alone carry on my visionary studies in London unannoy'd, & that I may converse with my friends in Eternity, See Visions, Dream Dreams & prophecy & speak Parables unobserv'd & at liberty from the Doubts of other Mortals; perhaps Doubts proceeding from Kindness, but Doubts are always pernicious, Especially when we Doubt our Friends."
In A Vision of the Last Judgement Blake writes: "What," it will be Questioned, "When the Sun rises, do you not see a round disk of fire somewhat like a Guinea?" Oh no, no, I see an innumerable company of the Heavenly host crying, "Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord God Almighty."
William Wordsworth wrote: "There was no doubt that this poor man was mad, but there is something in the madness of this man which interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott.", whilst others accept him as mystic and visionary.
Illuminated books
• c.1788: All Religions Are One
o There Is No Natural Religion
• 1789: Songs of Innocence
o The Book of Thel
• 1790–1793: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
• 1793: Visions of the Daughters of Albion
o America: a Prophecy
• 1794: Europe: a Prophecy
o The First Book of Urizen
o Songs of Experience
• 1795: The Book of Los
o The Song of Los
o The Book of Ahania
• c.1804–c.1811: Milton: a Poem
• 1804–1820: Jerusalem: The Emanation of The Giant Albion
Non-Illuminated
• 1783: Poetical Sketches
• 1789: Tiriel
• 1791: The French Revolution
• 1797: The Four Zoas
Illustrated by Blake
• 1791: Mary Wollstonecraft, Original Stories from Real Life
• 1797: Edward Young, Night Thoughts
• 1805-1808: Robert Blair, The Grave
• 1808: John Milton, Paradise Lost
• 1819-1820: John Varley, Visionary Heads
• 1821: R.J. Thornton, Virgil
• 1823-1826: The Book of Job
• 1825-1827: Dante, The Divine Comedy (Blake died in 1827 with these watercolours still unfinished)
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