1.
Charles Dickens
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Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the worlds best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era and his works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the twentieth century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories enjoy lasting popularity, born in Portsmouth, Dickens left school to work in a factory when his father was incarcerated in a debtors prison. Dickenss literary success began with the 1836 serial publication of The Pickwick Papers, within a few years he had become an international literary celebrity, famous for his humour, satire, and keen observation of character and society. His novels, most published in monthly or weekly instalments, pioneered the publication of narrative fiction. The instalment format allowed Dickens to evaluate his audiences reaction, and he modified his plot. For example, when his wifes chiropodist expressed distress at the way Miss Mowcher in David Copperfield seemed to reflect her disabilities and his plots were carefully constructed, and he often wove elements from topical events into his narratives. Masses of the poor chipped in hapennies to have each new monthly episode read to them, opening up. Dickens was regarded as the literary colossus of his age and his 1843 novella, A Christmas Carol, remains popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every artistic genre. Oliver Twist and Great Expectations are also adapted, and, like many of his novels. His 1859 novel, A Tale of Two Cities, set in London, Dickens has been praised by fellow writers—from Leo Tolstoy to George Orwell and G. K. Chesterton—for his realism, comedy, prose style, unique characterisations, and social criticism. On the other hand, Oscar Wilde, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf complained of a lack of depth, loose writing. The term Dickensian is used to something that is reminiscent of Dickens and his writings. Charles John Huffam Dickens was born on 7 February 1812, at 1 Mile End Terrace, Landport in Portsea Island and his father was a clerk in the Navy Pay Office and was temporarily stationed in the district. He asked Christopher Huffam, rigger to His Majestys Navy, gentleman, Huffam is thought to be the inspiration for Paul Dombey, the owner of a shipping company in Dickenss eponymous Dombey and Son. In January 1815 John Dickens was called back to London, when Charles was four, they relocated to Sheerness, and thence to Chatham, Kent, where he spent his formative years until the age of 11. His early life seems to have been idyllic, though he himself a very small. Charles spent time outdoors but also read voraciously, including the novels of Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding, as well as Robinson Crusoe
Charles Dickens
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Dickens in New York, 1867
Charles Dickens
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Charles Dickens's birthplace, 393 Commercial Road, Portsmouth
Charles Dickens
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2 Ordnance Terrace,
Chatham, Dickens's home 1817 – May 1821
Charles Dickens
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Illustration by Fred Bernard of Dickens at work in a shoe-blacking factory after his father had been sent to the
Marshalsea, published in the 1892 edition of Forster's Life of Dickens
2.
A Tale of Two Cities
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A Tale of Two Cities is a novel by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. In 1775, a man flags down the nightly mail-coach on its route from London to Dover, the man is Jerry Cruncher, an employee of Tellsons Bank in London, he carries a message for Jarvis Lorry, a passenger and one of the banks managers. Mr. Lorry sends Jerry back to deliver a response to the bank. The message refers to Alexandre Manette, a French physician who has released from the Bastille after an 18-year imprisonment. Once Mr. Lorry arrives in Dover, he meets with Dr. Manettes daughter Lucie, Lucie has believed her father to be dead, and faints at the news that he is alive, Mr. Lorry takes her to France to reunite with him. In the Paris neighborhood of Saint Antoine, Dr. Manette has been given lodgings by his former servant Ernest Defarge and his wife Therese, owners of a wine shop. He does not recognize Lucie at first but does see the resemblance to her mother through her blue eyes and long golden hair. Mr. Lorry and Lucie take him back to England, in 1780, French émigré Charles Darnay is on trial for treason against the British Crown. The key witnesses against him are two British spies, John Barsad and Roger Cly, who claim that Darnay gave information about British troops in North America to the French, with Barsads eyewitness testimony now discredited, Darnay is acquitted. In Paris, the hated and abusive Marquis St. Evrémonde orders his carriage driven recklessly fast through the streets, hitting and killing the child of a peasant. The Marquis throws a coin to Gaspard to compensate him for his loss, as the Marquiss coach drives off, the coin is flung back into his coach by an unknown hand, enraging the Marquis. Arriving at his country château, the marquis meets with his nephew and heir, Out of disgust with his aristocratic family, Darnay has shed his real surname and adopted an anglicized version of his mothers maiden name, DAulnais. The following passage records the Marquis principles of aristocratic superiority, Repression is the only lasting philosophy. The dark deference of fear and slavery, my friend, observed the Marquis, will keep the dogs obedient to the whip, as long as this roof, looking up to it, shuts out the sky. That night, Gaspard, who followed the Marquis to his château by riding on the underside of the carriage, stabs, Gaspard leaves a note on the knife saying, Drive him fast to his tomb. After nearly a year on the run, he is caught, in London, Darnay gets Dr. Manettes permission to wed Lucie, but Carton confesses his love to Lucie as well. Knowing she will not love him in return, Carton promises to embrace any sacrifice for you, Stryver, the barrister who defended Darnay and with whom Carton has a working relationship, considers proposing marriage to Lucie, but Mr. Lorry talks him out of the idea. On the morning of the marriage, Darnay reveals his name and family lineage to Dr. Manette
A Tale of Two Cities
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Cover of serial Vol. V, 1859
A Tale of Two Cities
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"The Sea Rises", an illustration for Book 2, Chapter 21 by "
Phiz "
A Tale of Two Cities
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The seamstress and Carton, an illustration for Book 3, Chapter 15 by
John McLenan (1859)
A Tale of Two Cities
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Illustration from a serialised edition of the story, showing three
tricoteuses knitting, with the Vengeance standing in the center.
3.
Great Expectations
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Great Expectations is the thirteenth novel by Charles Dickens and his penultimate completed novel, a bildungsroman that depicts the personal growth and personal development of an orphan nicknamed Pip. It is Dickens second novel, after David Copperfield, to be narrated in the first person. The novel was first published as a serial in Dickens weekly periodical All the Year Round, in October 1861, Chapman and Hall published the novel in three volumes. Great Expectations is full of extreme imagery—poverty, prison ships and chains and these include the eccentric Miss Havisham, the beautiful but cold Estella, and Joe, the unsophisticated and kind blacksmith. Dickenss themes include wealth and poverty, love and rejection, Great Expectations, which is popular both with readers and literary critics, has been translated into many languages and adapted numerous times into various media. Upon its release, the novel received universal acclaim. Although Dickens contemporary Thomas Carlyle referred to it disparagingly as that Pip nonsense, later, George Bernard Shaw praised the novel, as All of one piece and consistently truthful. During the serial publication, Dickens was pleased with public response to Great Expectations and its sales, when the plot first formed in his mind, he called it a very fine, new and grotesque idea. On Christmas Eve, around 1812, Pip, an orphan who is seven years old, encounters an escaped convict in the village churchyard, while visiting the graves of his parents. Pip now lives with his elder sister and her kind husband Joe Gargery. The convict scares Pip into stealing food and a file, early on Christmas morning Pip returns with the file, a pie and brandy. During Christmas dinner, at the moment Pips theft is about to be discovered, soldiers arrive, Joe and Pip accompany them as they recapture the convict who is fighting with another escaped convict. The first convict confesses to stealing food from the smithy, a year or two later, Miss Havisham, a wealthy spinster who still wears her old wedding dress and lives as a recluse in the dilapidated Satis House, asks Pumblechook to find a boy to visit. Pip visits Miss Havisham and falls in love with her adopted daughter Estella, Pip visits Miss Havisham regularly, until he is old enough to learn a trade. Joe accompanies Pip for the last visit, when she gives the money for Pip to be bound as apprentice blacksmith, Joes surly assistant Dolge Orlick is envious of Pip and dislikes Mrs Joe. When Pip and Joe are away from the house, Mrs Joe is brutally attacked, Orlick is suspected of the attack. Mrs Joe becomes kind-hearted after the attack, Biddy arrives to help with her care. Four years into Pips apprenticeship, Mr Jaggers, a lawyer, Pip is to leave for London, presuming that Miss Havisham is his benefactor, and visits her
Great Expectations
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Title page of Vol. 1 of first edition, July 1861
Great Expectations
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Charles Dickens, c. 1860
Great Expectations
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Advertisement for Great Expectations in
All the Year Round.
Great Expectations
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Charles Dickens, Jr. (in 1874), possibly the model for Herbert Pocket
4.
Romance (heroic literature)
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As a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance is a type of prose and verse narrative that was popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Popular literature also drew on themes of romance, but with ironic, satiric or burlesque intent. Still, the image of medieval is more influenced by the romance than by any other medieval genre, and the word medieval evokes knights, distressed damsels, dragons. Originally, romance literature was written in Old French, Anglo-Norman, Occitan, and Provençal, during the early 13th century, romances were increasingly written as prose. In later romances, particularly those of French origin, there is a tendency to emphasize themes of courtly love. Unlike the later form of the novel and like the chansons de geste, the earliest forms were invariably in verse, but the 15th century saw many in prose, often retelling the old, rhymed versions. Many influences are clear in the forms of chivalric romance, the epics of Charlemagne, unlike such ones as Beowulf, already had feudalism rather than the tribal loyalties, this was to continue in romances. The romance form is distinguished from the epics of the Middle Ages by the changes of the 12th century. This occurred regardless of congruity to the material, Alexander the Great featured as a fully feudal king. Chivalry was treated as continuous from Roman times, historical figures reappeared, reworked, in romance. The entire Matter of France derived from known figures, and suffered somewhat because their descendents had an interest in the tales that were told of their ancestors, unlike the Matter of Britain. Hereward the Wakes early life appeared in chronicles as the embellished, romantic adventures of an exile, complete with rescuing princess, fulk Fitzwarin, an outlaw in King Johns day, has his historical background a minor thread in the episodic stream of romantic adventures. The earliest medieval romances dealt heavily with themes from folklore, which diminished over time, morgan le Fay never loses her name, but in Le Morte dArthur, she studies magic rather than being inherently magical. Still, fairies never completely vanished from the tradition, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a late tale, but the Green Knight himself is an otherworldly being. In Italy there is the story called Il Bel Gherardino and it is the most ancient prototype of an Italian singing fairy tale by an anonymous Tuscan author. It tells the story of a young Italian knight, depleted for its magnanimitas, other examples of Italian poetry tales are Antonio Puccis literature, Gismirante, Il Brutto di Bretagna or Brito di Bretagna and Madonna Lionessa. Another work of a second anonymous Italian author that is worth mentioning is Istoria di Tre Giovani Disperati e di Tre Fate, some romances, such as Apollonius of Tyre, show classical pagan origins. Tales of the Matter of Rome in particular may be derived from such works as the Alexander Romance
Romance (heroic literature)
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Yvain fighting
Gawain. Medieval illumination from
Chrétien de Troyes 's romance,
Yvain, le Chevalier au Lion
Romance (heroic literature)
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Holger Danske, or Ogier the Dane, from the Matter of France
Romance (heroic literature)
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A knight rescues a lady from a dragon.
5.
Hero
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The concept of the hero was first founded in classical literature. It is the main or revered character in heroic epic poetry celebrated through ancient legends of a people, often striving for military conquest and living by a continually flawed personal honor code. The definition of a hero has changed throughout time, and the Merriam Webster dictionary defines a hero as a person who is admired for great or brave acts or fine qualities. The word hero comes from the Greek ἥρως, hero, warrior, before the decipherment of Linear B the original form of the word was assumed to be *ἥρωϝ-, hērōw-, R. S. P. Beekes has proposed a Pre-Greek origin. According to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, the Indo-European root is *ser meaning to protect, according to Eric Partridge in Origins, the Greek word Hērōs is akin to the Latin seruāre, meaning to safeguard. Partridge concludes, The basic sense of both Hera and hero would therefore be protector, the word hero is used in English to refer either explicitly to male heroes or as a gender neutral form. The use of the male form hero as a gender neutral substantive is a modern advent, see also Gender neutrality in English. A classical hero is considered to be a warrior who lives and dies in the pursuit of honor, each classical heros life focuses on fighting, which occurs in war or during an epic quest. Classical heroes are commonly semi-divine and extraordinarily gifted, like Achilles, or, alternatively, are like Beowulf, evolving into heroic characters through their perilous circumstances. While these heroes are incredibly resourceful and skilled, they are often foolhardy, court disaster, risk their followers lives for trivial matters, during classical times, people regarded heroes with the highest esteem and utmost importance, explaining their prominence within epic literature. Hector was a Trojan prince and the greatest fighter for Troy in the Trojan War, Hector acted as leader of the Trojans and their allies in the defense of Troy, killing 31,000 Greek fighters, offers Hyginus. Hector was known not only for his courage but also for his noble, indeed, Homer places Hector as peace-loving, thoughtful as well as bold, a good son, husband and father, and without darker motives. However, his familial values conflict greatly with his aspirations in The Iliad. Hector is ultimately betrayed by the gods when Athena appears disguised as his ally Deiphobus and convinces him to take on Achilles, Achilles was a Greek Hero who was considered the most formidable military fighter in the entire Trojan War and the central character of The Iliad. He was the child of Thetis and Peleus, making him a demi-god and he wielded superhuman strength on the battlefield and was blessed with a close relationship to the Gods. Achilles famously refuses to fight after his dishonoring at the hands of Agamemnon, Achilles was known for uncontrollable rage that defined many of his bloodthirsty actions, such as defiling Hectors corpse by dragging it around the city of Troy. Achilles plays a role in The Iliad brought about by constant de-humanization throughout the epic. Heroes in myth often had close but conflicted relationships with the gods, thus Heracless name means the glory of Hera, even though he was tormented all his life by Hera, the Queen of the Gods
Hero
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Sir Galahad, a hero of
Arthurian legend, detail of a painting by
George Frederic Watts
Hero
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Hera suckling Heracles as an infant.
Hero
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The four heroes from the 16th-century Chinese novel
Journey to the West
Hero
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Ivan Tsarevich, a hero of
Russian folklore.
6.
Sir Walter Scott
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Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet, FRSE was a Scottish historical novelist, playwright and poet. Many of his works remain classics of both English-language literature and of Scottish literature, famous titles include Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, Old Mortality, The Lady of the Lake, Waverley, The Heart of Midlothian and The Bride of Lammermoor. A prominent member of the Tory establishment in Edinburgh, Scott was an member of the Highland Society. He survived a bout of polio in 1773 that left him lame. To cure his lameness he was sent in 1773 to live in the rural Scottish Borders at his grandparents farm at Sandyknowe, adjacent to the ruin of Smailholm Tower. Here he was taught to read by his aunt Jenny, and learned from her the speech patterns and many of the tales and legends that characterised much of his work. In January 1775 he returned to Edinburgh, and that went with his aunt Jenny to take spa treatment at Bath in England. In the winter of 1776 he went back to Sandyknowe, with another attempt at a cure at Prestonpans during the following summer. In 1778, Scott returned to Edinburgh for private education to him for school. In October 1779 he began at the Royal High School of Edinburgh and he was now well able to walk and explore the city and the surrounding countryside. His reading included chivalric romances, poems, history and travel books and he was given private tuition by James Mitchell in arithmetic and writing, and learned from him the history of the Church of Scotland with emphasis on the Covenanters. Scott began studying classics at the University of Edinburgh in November 1783, at the age of 12, in March 1786 he began an apprenticeship in his fathers office to become a Writer to the Signet. While at the university Scott had become a friend of Adam Ferguson, Scott met the blind poet Thomas Blacklock, who lent him books and introduced him to James Macphersons Ossian cycle of poems. During the winter of 1786–87 the 15-year-old Scott saw Robert Burns at one of these salons, for what was to be their only meeting. When Burns noticed a print illustrating the poem The Justice of the Peace and asked who had written the poem, only Scott knew that it was by John Langhorne, and was thanked by Burns. When it was decided that he would become a lawyer, he returned to the university to study law, first taking classes in Moral Philosophy, after completing his studies in law, he became a lawyer in Edinburgh. As a lawyers clerk he made his first visit to the Scottish Highlands directing an eviction and he was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in 1792. He had an unsuccessful love suit with Williamina Belsches of Fettercairn, as a boy, youth and young man, Scott was fascinated by the oral traditions of the Scottish Borders
Sir Walter Scott
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Raeburn 's portrait of Sir Walter Scott in 1822.
Sir Walter Scott
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Signature
Sir Walter Scott
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Scott's childhood at Sandyknowes, in the shadow of
Smailholm Tower, introduced him to the tales and folklore of the
Scottish Borders.
Sir Walter Scott
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The Scott's family home in
George Square, Edinburgh
7.
Jules Verne
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Jules Gabriel Verne was a French novelist, poet, and playwright. Verne is generally considered a literary author in France and most of Europe. Verne has been the second most-translated author in the world since 1979 and he has sometimes been called the Father of Science Fiction, a title that has also been given to H. G. Wells and Hugo Gernsback. His parents were Pierre Verne, an originally from Provins, and Sophie Allote de la Fuÿe. In 1829, the Verne family moved some hundred meters away to No.2 Quai Jean-Bart, three sisters, Anna, Mathilde, and Marie, would follow. In 1834, at the age of six, Verne was sent to boarding school at 5 Place du Bouffay in Nantes, the teacher, Mme Sambin, was the widow of a naval captain who had disappeared some 30 years before. Mme Sambin often told the students that her husband was a shipwrecked castaway, the theme of the Robinsonade would stay with Verne throughout his life and appear in many of his novels, including The Mysterious Island, Second Fatherland, and The School for Robinsons. In 1836, Verne went on to École Saint‑Stanislas, a Catholic school suiting the pious religious tastes of his father, Verne quickly distinguished himself in mémoire, geography, Greek, Latin, and singing. In the same year,1836, Pierre Verne bought a house at 29 Rue des Réformés in the village of Chantenay on the Loire River. In his brief memoir Souvenirs d’enfance et de jeunesse, Verne recalled a deep fascination with the river and with the many merchant vessels navigating it. He also took vacations at Brains, in the house of his uncle Prudent Allotte, a retired shipowner, who had gone around the world and served as mayor of Brains from 1828 to 1837. Verne took joy in playing interminable rounds of the Game of the Goose with his uncle, and both the game and his uncles name would be memorialized in two late novels. It is now known that the legend is a tale invented by Vernes first biographer, his niece Marguerite Allotte de la Füye. In 1840, the Vernes moved again to an apartment at No.6 Rue Jean-Jacques-Rousseau. In the same year Verne entered another school, the Petit Séminaire de Saint-Donatien. His unfinished novel Un prêtre en 1839, written in his teens, from 1844 to 1846, Verne and his brother were enrolled in the Lycée Royal in Nantes. After finishing classes in rhetoric and philosophy, he took the baccalauréat at Rennes, however, his father took it for granted that Verne, being the firstborn son of the family, would not attempt to make money in literature but would instead inherit the family law practice. In 1847, Vernes father sent him to Paris, primarily to begin his studies in law school, and secondarily to distance him temporarily from Nantes
Jules Verne
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Photograph by
Nadar c. 1878
Jules Verne
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Nantes from Île Feydeau, around the time of Verne's birth
Jules Verne
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The Lycée Royal in Nantes (now the Lycée Georges-Clemenceau), where Jules Verne studied
Jules Verne
–
Aristide Hignard
8.
H. Rider Haggard
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Sir Henry Rider Haggard, KBE, known as H. Rider Haggard, was an English writer of adventure novels set in exotic locations, predominantly Africa, and a pioneer of the Lost World literary genre. He was also involved in agricultural reform throughout the British Empire and his stories, situated at the lighter end of Victorian literature, continue to be popular and influential. His father was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, to British parents and this was because his father, who perhaps regarded him as somebody who was not going to amount to much, could no longer afford to maintain his expensive private education. After failing his entrance exam, he was sent to a private crammer in London to prepare for the entrance exam for the British Foreign Office. During his two years in London he came into contact with people interested in the study of psychical phenomena. In 1875, Haggards father sent him to what is now South Africa to take up a position as assistant to the secretary to Sir Henry Bulwer. In 1876 he was transferred to the staff of Sir Theophilus Shepstone and it was in this role that Haggard was present in Pretoria in April 1877 for the official announcement of the British annexation of the Boer Republic of the Transvaal. Indeed, Haggard raised the Union flag and read out much of the following the loss of voice of the official originally entrusted with the duty. At about that time, Haggard fell in love with Mary Elizabeth Lilly Jackson, in 1878 he became Registrar of the High Court in the Transvaal, and wrote to his father informing him that he intended to return to England and marry her. His father forbade it until Haggard had made a career for himself, and by 1879 Jackson had married Frank Archer, when Haggard eventually returned to England, he married a friend of his sister, Marianna Louisa Margitson in 1880, and the couple travelled to Africa together. They had a son named Jack and three daughters, Angela, Dorothy and Lilias, Lilias Rider Haggard became an author, edited The Rabbit Skin Cap and I Walked By Night, and wrote a biography of her father entitled The Cloak That I Left. Moving back to England in 1882, the couple settled in Ditchingham, Norfolk, later they lived in Kessingland and had connections with the church in Bungay, Suffolk. Haggard turned to the study of law and was called to the bar in 1884 and his practice of law was desultory and much of his time was taken up by the writing of novels which he saw as being more profitable. Haggard lived at 69 Gunterstone Road in Hammersmith, London, from mid-1885 to circa April 1888 and it was at this Hammersmith address that he completed King Solomons Mines. Haggard was heavily influenced by the larger-than-life adventurers whom he met in Colonial Africa, most notably Frederick Selous, Haggard belonged to the Athenaeum, Savile, and Authors clubs. Years later, when Haggard was a successful novelist, he was contacted by his love, Lilly Archer. She had been deserted by her husband, who had embezzled funds entrusted to him and had fled bankrupt to Africa, Haggard installed her and her sons in a house and saw to the childrens education. Lilly eventually followed her husband to Africa, where he infected her with syphilis before dying of it himself, Lilly returned to England in late 1907, where Haggard again supported her until her death on 22 April 1909
H. Rider Haggard
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Sir H. Rider Haggard
H. Rider Haggard
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Portrait of H. Rider Haggard c. 1902
H. Rider Haggard
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Blue plaque, 69 Gunterstone Road, London
H. Rider Haggard
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Vanity Fair, 1887
9.
Victor Hugo
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Victor Marie Hugo was a French poet, novelist, and dramatist of the Romantic movement. He is considered one of the greatest and best-known French writers, outside France, his best-known works are the novels Les Misérables,1862, and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame,1831. In France, Hugo is known primarily for his collections, such as Les Contemplations. He produced more than 4,000 drawings and also campaigned for causes such as the abolition of capital punishment. He is buried in the Panthéon in Paris and his legacy has been honoured in many ways, including his portrait being placed on French currency. Victor Hugo was the son of Joseph Léopold Sigisbert Hugo and Sophie Trébuchet, his brothers were Abel Joseph Hugo. He was born in 1802 in Besançon in the region of Franche-Comté. On 19 November 1821, Léopold Hugo wrote to his son that he had conceived on one of the highest peaks in the Vosges Mountains. This elevated origin, he went on, seems to have had effects on you so that your muse is now continually sublime, Hugos childhood was a period of national political turmoil. Napoleon was proclaimed Emperor of the French two years after Hugos birth, and the Bourbon Monarchy was restored before his 13th birthday, since Hugos father was an officer, the family moved frequently and Hugo learned much from these travels. On a childhood trip to Naples, Hugo saw the vast Alpine passes and the snowy peaks, the magnificently blue Mediterranean. Though he was five years old at the time, he remembered the six-month-long trip vividly. They stayed in Naples for a few months and then headed back to Paris, at the beginning of her marriage, Hugos mother Sophie followed her husband to posts in Italy and Spain. Thereafter she dominated Hugos education and upbringing, as a result, Hugos early work in poetry and fiction reflect her passionate devotion to both King and Faith. It was only later, during the leading up to Frances 1848 Revolution. Young Victor fell in love and, against his mothers wishes, because of his close relationship with his mother, Hugo waited until after her death to marry Adèle in 1822. Adèle and Victor Hugo had their first child, Léopold, in 1823, on 28 August 1824, the couples second child, Léopoldine was born, followed by Charles on 4 November 1826, François-Victor on 28 October 1828, and Adèle on 24 August 1830. Hugos eldest and favourite daughter, Léopoldine, died aged 19 in 1843, on 4 September, she drowned in the Seine at Villequier, pulled down by her heavy skirts when a boat overturned
Victor Hugo
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Woodburytype of Victor Hugo by
Étienne Carjat, 1876.
Victor Hugo
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Illustration by
Luc-Olivier Merson for
Notre-Dame de Paris (1881), showing the recently restored
galerie des chimères.
Victor Hugo
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Victor Hugo in 1853
Victor Hugo
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Portrait of "
Cosette " by
Émile Bayard, from the original edition of
Les Misérables (1862)
10.
Thomas Mayne Reid
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Thomas Mayne Reid, was a Scots-Irish American novelist. Captain Reid wrote many adventure novels akin to those written by Frederick Marryat and he was a great admirer of Lord Byron. These novels contain action that takes place primarily in untamed settings, the American West, Mexico, South Africa, the Himalayas and his father wanted him to become a Presbyterian minister, so in September 1834 he enrolled at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution. Although he stayed for four years, he could not motivate himself enough to complete his studies and he headed back home to Ballyroney to teach school. In December 1839 he boarded the Dumfriesshire bound for New Orleans, Louisiana, shortly afterward he found a job as a clerk for corn factor, or trader in the corn market. He stayed in New Orleans for six months and it is said that he left his position for refusing to whip slaves. From New Orleans, Reid traveled to Tennessee, on a plantation near Nashville, he tutored the children of Dr. Peyton Robertson, who some Reid biographers have confused with the Doctors father, General James Randolph Robertson. Following Dr. Robertsons death, Reid founded a private school in Nashville. In 1841 he found work as a clerk for a dealer in either Natchez, Mississippi or Natchitoches. Although Reid later claimed to have several trips to the West during this period of his life. In late 1842 Reid arrived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he began his career writing both prose and poetry for the Pittsburgh Morning Chronicle under the pen-name The Poor Scholar. His earliest verifiable work was a series of poems called Scenes in the West Indies. In early 1843, Reid moved to Philadelphia, where he remained for three years and it was in Philadelphia that he met Edgar Allan Poe and the two became drinking companions for a time. Poe would later call Reid a colossal but most picturesque liar and he fibs on a surprising scale but with the finish of an artist, and that is why I listen to him attentively. When the Mexican-American War began in the spring of 1846, Reid was working as a correspondent for the New York Herald in Newport, at this time he began using the pen-name Ecolier, in addition to the Poor Scholar. On November 23,1846, Reid joined the First New York Volunteer Infantry as a second lieutenant, in January 1847 the regiment left New York by ship. The New Yorkers camped for several weeks at Lobos Island before taking part in Major General Winfield Scotts invasion of Central Mexico, using the pseudonym Ecolier, Reid was a correspondent for the a New York newspaper, Spirit of the Times, which published his Sketches by a Skirmisher. On September 13, at the Battle of Chapultepec, the young Irish-born officer received a thigh wound while leading a charge
Thomas Mayne Reid
–
Thomas Mayne Reid
11.
Sax Rohmer
–
Arthur Henry Ward, better known as Sax Rohmer, was a prolific English novelist. He is best remembered for his series of novels featuring the master criminal Dr. Fu Manchu, born in Birmingham to a working-class family, Arthur Ward initially pursued a career as a civil servant before concentrating on writing full-time. He worked as a poet, songwriter and comedy writer for music hall performers before creating the Sax Rohmer persona. Like his contemporaries Algernon Blackwood and Arthur Machen, Rohmer claimed membership to one of the factions of the qabbalistic Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Rohmer also claimed ties to the Rosicrucians, but the validity of his claims has been questioned. His doctor and family friend Dr R. Watson Councell may have been his only connection to such organisations. His first published work came in 1903, when the short story The Mysterious Mummy was sold to Pearsons Weekly, Rohmers main literary influences seem to have been Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle and M. P. Shiel. He gradually transitioned from writing for music performers to concentrating on short stories. In 1909 he married Rose Elizabeth Knox and he published his first book Pause. After penning Little Tich in 1911 he issued the first Fu Manchu novel, The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu and it was an immediate success, with its fast-paced story of Denis Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie facing the worldwide conspiracy of the Yellow Peril. The first three Fu Manchu books were published in the four years 1913–17, but it was not until 1931 that Rohmer returned to the series with The Daughter of Fu Manchu. The reason for the interval was that Rohmer wanted to be well and truly done with the series after The Si-Fan Mysteries. The first three books had been filmed by Stoll in the twenties as a pair of serials. In 1928, Rohmer bowed to pressure and agreed to write a novel as a serial for Colliers. Paramount had the first Warner Oland picture gearing up for production, there was public demand for the characters return. Rohmers first effort at reviving the Fu Manchu property was eventually reworked as The Emperor of America, the original intent had been for the head of the organisation to be Fu Manchus daughter. He kept Head Centre as a criminal mastermind to combat Drake Roscoe. He would later return to Drake Roscoe and his female supervillain for the Sumuru series, in the meantime, he tried again to focus his energies on what was first titled Fu Manchus Daughter for Colliers in 1930, but with an older Nayland Smith as the protagonist once more. The results were better and jump-started the series in the process
Sax Rohmer
–
Sax Rohmer
12.
Edgar Wallace
–
Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace was an English writer. Born into poverty as an illegitimate London child, Wallace left school at age 12 and he joined the army at age 21 and was a war correspondent during the Second Boer War, for Reuters and the Daily Mail. Struggling with debt, he left South Africa, returned to London and he signed with Hodder and Stoughton in 1921 and became an internationally recognised author. After an unsuccessful bid to stand as Liberal MP for Blackpool in the 1931 general election, Wallace moved to Hollywood and he died suddenly from undiagnosed diabetes, during the initial drafting of King Kong. Wallace was such a writer that one of his publishers claimed that a quarter of all books in England were written by him. As well as journalism, Wallace wrote screen plays, poetry, historical non-fiction,18 stage plays,957 short stories, more than 160 films have been made of Wallaces work. He is remembered for the creation of King Kong, as a writer of the imagination, for the J. G. Reeder detective stories. Wallace was born at 7 Ashburnham Grove, Greenwich, to actors Richard Horatio Edgar and Mary Jane Polly Richards, Wallaces mother was born in 1843, in Liverpool, to an Irish Catholic family. Marys family had been in business, and she worked in the theatre as a stagehand, usherette. Marys husband, Captain Joseph Richards, was born in Liverpool, in 1838. He and his father John Richards were both Merchant Navy captains, and his mother Catherine Richards came from a mariner family, when Mary was eight months pregnant, in January 1868, her husband died at sea. After the birth, destitute, Mary took to the stage, Richard Horatio Edgar and Polly had a broom cupboard style sexual encounter during an after-show party. During her confinement she had asked her midwife to find a couple to foster the child, the midwife introduced Polly to her close friend, Mrs Freeman, a mother of ten children, whose husband George Freeman was a Billingsgate fishmonger. On 9 April 1875, Polly took Edgar to the semi-literate Freeman family, pollys young son Wallace, then known as Richard Horatio Edgar Freeman, had a happy childhood and a close bond with 20-year-old Clara Freeman, who became a second mother to him. By 1878, Polly could no longer afford the small sum she had been paying the Freemans to care for her son and, instead of placing the boy in the workhouse, Polly never visited Wallace again as a child. By his early teens, Wallace had held numerous jobs such as newspaper-seller at Ludgate Circus near Fleet Street, milk-delivery boy, rubber factory worker, shoe shop assistant. A plaque at Ludgate Circus commemorates Wallaces first encounter with the newspaper business and he was dismissed from his job on the milk run for stealing money. In 1894, he engaged to a local Deptford girl, Edith Anstree
Edgar Wallace
–
Edgar Wallace (1928)
Edgar Wallace
–
Edgar Wallace c. 1898–1902
Edgar Wallace
–
Plaque in
Fleet Street, London, commemorating Edgar Wallace who worked there as for the Daily Mail before finding fame as an author.
Edgar Wallace
–
The Edgar Wallace pub, Essex Street, off
Strand, London
13.
Robert Louis Stevenson
–
Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer. His most famous works are Treasure Island, Kidnapped, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, a literary celebrity during his lifetime, Stevenson now ranks as the 26th most translated author in the world. M. Barrie, and G. K. Chesterton, who said of him that he seemed to pick the word up on the point of his pen. Stevenson was born at 8 Howard Place, Edinburgh, Scotland, on 13 November 1850, to Thomas Stevenson, a lighthouse engineer. He was christened Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson, at about age 18, Stevenson was to change the spelling of Lewis to Louis, and in 1873, he dropped Balfour. Lighthouse design was the profession, Thomass father was the famous Robert Stevenson. Indeed, even Thomass maternal grandfather, Thomas Smith, had been in the same profession, however, Roberts mothers family were not of the same profession. Margarets natal family, the Balfours, were gentry, tracing their lineage back to a certain Alexander Balfour who had held the lands of Inchyra in Fife in the fifteenth century. Margarets father, Lewis Balfour, was a minister of the Church of Scotland at nearby Colinton, and her siblings included the physician George William Balfour, Stevenson spent the greater part of his boyhood holidays in his maternal grandfathers house. Now I often wonder, wrote Stevenson, what I inherited from this old minister, I must suppose, indeed, that he was fond of preaching sermons, and so am I, though I never heard it maintained that either of us loved to hear them. Lewis Balfour and his daughter both had weak chests, so they often needed to stay in warmer climates for their health, Stevenson inherited a tendency to coughs and fevers, exacerbated when the family moved to a damp, chilly house at 1 Inverleith Terrace in 1851. The family moved again to the sunnier 17 Heriot Row when Stevenson was six years old, illness would be a recurrent feature of his adult life and left him extraordinarily thin. Contemporary views were that he had tuberculosis, but more recent views are that it was bronchiectasis or even sarcoidosis, Stevensons parents were both devout and serious Presbyterians, but the household was not strict in its adherence to Calvinist principles. His nurse, Alison Cunningham, was fervently religious. Her Calvinism and folk beliefs were a source of nightmares for the child. But she also cared for him tenderly in illness, reading to him from Bunyan, Stevenson recalled this time of sickness in The Land of Counterpane in A Childs Garden of Verses, dedicating the book to his nurse. In any case, his frequent illnesses often kept him away from his first school and he was a late reader, first learning at age seven or eight, but even before this he dictated stories to his mother and nurse. He compulsively wrote stories throughout his childhood and his father was proud of this interest, he had also written stories in his spare time until his own father found them and told him to give up such nonsense and mind your business
Robert Louis Stevenson
–
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
–
Daguerreotype portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson as a young child
Robert Louis Stevenson
–
Stevenson's childhood home in Heriot Row
Robert Louis Stevenson
–
Robert Louis Stevenson at the age of seven
14.
Novel
–
A novel is any relatively long piece of written narrative fiction, normally in prose, and typically published as a book. The genre has also described as possessing, a continuous. This view sees the novels origins in Classical Greece and Rome, medieval, early modern romance, the latter, an Italian word used to describe short stories, supplied the present generic English term in the 18th century. The romance is a closely related long prose narrative, Romance, as defined here, should not be confused with the genre fiction love romance or romance novel. Other European languages do not distinguish between romance and novel, a novel is le roman, der Roman, il romanzo, a novel is a long, fictional narrative which describes intimate human experiences. Most European languages use the word romance for extended narratives, fictionality is most commonly cited as distinguishing novels from historiography. However this can be a problematic criterion, historians would also invent and compose speeches for didactic purposes. Novels can, on the hand, depict the social, political and personal realities of a place and period with clarity. Even in the 19th century, fictional narratives in verse, such as Lord Byrons Don Juan, Alexander Pushkins Yevgeniy Onegin, vikram Seths The Golden Gate, composed of 590 Onegin stanzas, is a more recent example of the verse novel. Both in 12th-century Japan and 15th-century Europe, prose fiction created intimate reading situations, on the other hand, verse epics, including the Odyssey and Aeneid, had been recited to a select audiences, though this was a more intimate experience than the performance of plays in theaters. A new world of Individualistic fashion, personal views, intimate feelings, secret anxieties, conduct and gallantry spread with novels, the novel is today the longest genre of narrative prose fiction, followed by the novella, short story, and flash fiction. However, in the 17th century critics saw the romance as of epic length, the length of a novel can still be important because most literary awards use length as a criterion in the ranking system. Urbanization and the spread of printed books in Song Dynasty China led to the evolution of oral storytelling into consciously fictional novels by the Ming dynasty, parallel European developments did not occur for centuries, and awaited the time when the availability of paper allowed for similar opportunities. By contrast, Ibn Tufails Hayy ibn Yaqdhan and Ibn al-Nafis Theologus Autodidactus are works of didactic philosophy, in this sense, Hayy ibn Yaqdhan would be considered an early example of a philosophical novel, while Theologus Autodidactus would be considered an early theological novel. Epic poetry exhibits some similarities with the novel, and the Western tradition of the novel back into the field of verse epics. Then at the beginning of the 18th century, French prose translations brought Homers works to a wider public, longus is the author of the famous Greek novel, Daphnis and Chloe. Romance or chivalric romance is a type of narrative in prose or verse popular in the circles of High Medieval. In later romances, particularly those of French origin, there is a tendency to emphasize themes of courtly love
Novel
–
Madame de Pompadour spending her afternoon with a book, 1756.
Novel
Novel
–
Paper as the essential carrier:
Murasaki Shikibu writing her
The Tale of Genji in the early 11th century, 17th-century depiction
Novel
–
Chaucer reciting
Troilus and Criseyde: early-15th-century manuscript of the work at
Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
15.
Pulp magazine
–
Pulp magazines were inexpensive fiction magazines that were published from 1896 to the 1950s. The term pulp derives from the wood pulp paper on which the magazines were printed, in contrast. The typical pulp magazine had 128 pages, it was 7 inches wide by 10 inches high, the pulps gave rise to the term pulp fiction in reference to run-of-the-mill, low-quality literature. Pulps were the successors to the penny dreadfuls, dime novels, although many respected writers wrote for pulps, the magazines were best known for their lurid, exploitative, and sensational subject matter. The first pulp was Frank Munseys revamped Argosy Magazine of 1896, with about 135,000 words per issue, on paper with untrimmed edges. In six years Argosy went from a few thousand copies per month to over half a million, Street & Smith, a dime novel and boys weekly publisher, was next on the market. Seeing Argosys success, they launched The Popular Magazine in 1903, due to differences in page layout however, the magazine had substantially less text than Argosy. Haggards Lost World genre influenced several key pulp writers, including Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, Talbot Mundy and Abraham Merritt. Street and Smiths next innovation was the introduction of specialized genre pulps, with each focusing on a particular genre, such as detective stories, romance. At their peak of popularity in the 1920s and 1930s, the most successful pulps could sell up to one million copies per issue, in 1934, Frank Gruber says there were some 150 pulp titles. The most successful pulp magazines were Argosy, Adventure, Blue Book and Short Stories, although pulp magazines were primarily an American phenomenon, there were also a number of British pulp magazines published between the Edwardian era and World War II. Notable UK pulps included Pall Mall Magazine, The Novel Magazine, Cassells Magazine, The Story-Teller, The Sovereign Magazine, Hutchinsons Adventure-Story and Hutchinsons Mystery-Story. The German fantasy magazine Der Orchideengarten had a format to American pulp magazines, in that it was printed on rough pulp paper. During the Second World War paper shortages had a impact on pulp production, starting a steady rise in costs. Beginning with Ellery Queens Mystery Magazine in 1941, pulp magazines began to switch to digest size, in 1949, Street & Smith closed most of their pulp magazines in order to move upmarket and produce slicks. The pulp format declined from rising expenses, but even more due to the competition from comic books, television. In a more affluent post-war America, the price gap compared to slick magazines was far less significant, in the 1950s, mens adventure magazines began to replace the pulp. The format is still in use for some lengthy serials, like the German science fiction weekly Perry Rhodan, many titles of course survived only briefly
Pulp magazine
–
Cover of the pulp magazine Spicy Detective Stories (April 1935, vol. 2, no. 6) featuring "Bullet from Nowhere" by
Robert Leslie Bellem
Pulp magazine
–
Cover of the pulp magazine Dime Mystery Book Magazine, January 1933
16.
Progressive Era
–
The Progressive Era was a period of widespread social activism and political reform across the United States, from the 1890s to the 1920s. The main objectives of the Progressive movement were eliminating problems caused by industrialization, urbanization, immigration, the movement primarily targeted political machines and their bosses. By taking down these corrupt representatives in office a further means of democracy would be established. They also sought regulation of monopolies and corporations through antitrust laws and these antitrust laws were seen as a way to promote equal competition for the advantage of legitimate competitors. Many progressives supported prohibition in the United States, ostensibly to destroy the power of local bosses based in saloons. At the same time, womens suffrage was promoted to bring a purer female vote into the arena, many activists joined efforts to reform local government, public education, medicine, finance, insurance, industry, railroads, churches, and many other areas. Progressives transformed, professionalized and made scientific the social sciences, especially history, economics, in academic fields the day of the amateur author gave way to the research professor who published in the new scholarly journals and presses. The national political leaders included Theodore Roosevelt, Robert M, La Follette, Sr. and Charles Evans Hughes on the Republican side, and William Jennings Bryan, Woodrow Wilson and Al Smith on the Democratic side. Yet, leaders of the movement also existed far from presidential politics, jane Addams, Grace Abbott, Edith Abbott and Sophonisba Breckinridge were among the most influential Progressive Era reformers. Initially the movement operated chiefly at local levels, later, it expanded to state, Progressives drew support from the middle class, and supporters included many lawyers, teachers, physicians, ministers and business people. Some Progressives strongly supported scientific methods as applied to economics, government, industry, finance, medicine, schooling, theology, education, reformers felt that old-fashioned ways meant waste and inefficiency, and eagerly sought out the one best system. S. Magazines were not a new medium but they became more popular around 1900. It was an age of Mass media, thanks to the rapid expansion of national advertising, the cover price fell sharply to about 10 cents. One cause was the coverage of corruption in politics, local government and big business. They were journalists who wrote for magazines to expose social and political sins. They relied on their own investigative journalism reporting, muckrakers often worked to expose social ills and corporate, the journalists who specialized in exposing waste, corruption, and scandal operated at the state and local level, like Ray Stannard Baker, George Creel, and Brand Whitlock. Other like Lincoln Steffens exposed political corruption in many large cities, Roosevelt gave these journalists their nickname when he complained they were not being helpful by raking up all the muck. The Progressives were avid modernizers, with a belief in science and they looked to education as the key
Progressive Era
–
Presidents
Theodore Roosevelt, 1901-09 (left),
William Howard Taft, 1909-13 (center), and
Woodrow Wilson, 1913-21 (right) are often referred to as the "Progressive Presidents"; their administrations saw intense social and political change in American society.
Progressive Era
Progressive Era
Progressive Era
–
"The Awakening" Suffragists were successful in the West; their torch awakens the women struggling in the East and South in this cartoon by Hy Mayer in Puck Feb. 20, 1915
17.
Adventure (magazine)
–
Adventure was an American pulp magazine that was first published in November 1910 by the Ridgway company, an offshoot of the Butterick Publishing Company. Adventure went on to one of the most profitable and critically acclaimed of all the American pulp magazines. The magazines first editor was Trumbull White, he was succeeded in 1912 by Arthur Sullivant Hoffman, in its first decade, Adventure carried fiction from such notable writers as Rider Haggard, Rafael Sabatini, Baroness Orczy, Damon Runyon and William Hope Hodgson. Tuttle, Gordon MacCreagh, Henry S. Whitehead, Hugh Pendexter, Robert J. Pearsall, in 1912, Hoffman and his assistant, the novelist Sinclair Lewis created a popular identity card with a serial number for readers. If the bearer were killed, someone finding the card would notify the magazine who would in turn notify the next of kin of the hapless adventurer, the popularity of the card amongst travelers led to the formation of the Adventurers Club of New York. The original New York Adventurers Club led to clubs in Chicago, Los Angeles, Copenhagen. Hoffman also was secretary of an organization named the Legion that had Theodore Roosevelt Jr. as one of its vice presidents, Hoffmans group would later provide a model for the organisation of the American Legion after the war. Adventures letters page, The Camp-Fire featured Hoffmans editorials, background by the authors to their stories, at Hoffmans suggestion, a number of Camp-Fire Stations - locations where other readers of Adventure could meet up - were established. Robert Kenneth Jones notes that Adventure readers. often wrote in to report on meeting new friends through these stations, by 1924, there were Camp-Fire Stations established across the US and in several other countries, including Britain, Australia, Egypt and Cuba. Adventure also offered Camp-Fire buttons which readers wore, several of Adventures fiction writers also wrote material for this column on their respective areas of expertise, including Gordon MacCreagh, Captain A. E. Dingle and George E. Holt. Lost Trails, which helped people locate missing relatives and friends, old Songs Men Have Sung, by Robert W. Gordon, which was dedicated to discussing American folk-songs. Gordon would later run the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress, Hoffman encouraged the details of his writers fiction to be as factually accurate as possible-mistakes would frequently be pointed out and criticised by the magazines readers. In 1915 the publishers attempted to reach women readers with a new title, in addition, Adventure under Hoffman also showcased the work of several famous artists, including Rockwell Kent, John R. Neill, Charles Livingston Bull, H. C. By 1924, Adventure was regarded, in the words of Richard Bleiler, after Hoffmans departure, his successors usually followed the template for the magazine that he had set down. In 1934, Adventure was bought by Popular Publications, throughout the 1930s, Adventure included fiction by Erle Stanley Gardner, Donald Barr Chidsey, Raymond S. Spears, Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, Luke Short, and Major George Fielding Eliot. Adventure continued to publish pieces by noted figures, including future film producer Val Lewton. During Adventures 25th anniversary in 1935, TIME Magazine praised Adventure as being the No.1 pulp. artists on the publication during the 1930s and 1940s included Walter M. Baumhofer, Hubert Rogers, Rafael De Soto, Lawrence Sterne Stevens and Norman Saunders. The magazines main editor in the 1940s was Kenneth S. White, nevertheless, this version of Adventure did sometimes publish fiction by noted authors, including a story by Norman Mailer, The Paper House in the December 1958 issue
Adventure (magazine)
–
Cover of the first issue, November 1910
18.
Argosy (magazine)
–
Argosy, later titled The Argosy and Argosy All-Story Weekly, was an American pulp magazine from 1882 through 1978, published by Frank Munsey. It is the first American pulp magazine, the magazine began as a childrens weekly story–paper entitled The Golden Argosy. Munsey put most of his money, around $500, into purchasing stories for the magazine, once he was in New York, the stockbroker backed out, and Munsey decided to release his New York friend from involvement, since they were now hopelessly underfunded. Munsey then pitched the magazine to a New York publisher, and managed to convince him to publish the magazine, the first issue was published on December 2,1882, and came out weekly. The first issue was eight pages, cost five cents, and included the first installments of serialized stories by Horatio Alger, Jr. and Edward S. Ellis. Other authors associated with Argosy s early days include Annie Ashmoore, W. H. W. Campbell, Harry Castlemon, Frank H. Converse, George H. Coomer, Mary A. Denison, Malcolm Douglas, Colonel A. B. Ellis, J. L. Harbour, D. O. S. Lowell, Oliver Optic, Richard H. Titherington, Edgar L. Warren and Matthew White, five months after the first issue, the publisher went bankrupt and entered receivership. By placing a claim for his salary, Munsey managed to assume control of the magazine. Munsey borrowed $300 from a friend in Maine, and managed to scrape along as he learned the fundamentals of the publishing industry. Munsey found that children had been a mistake, as they did not stay subscribed for any length of time. Additionally, children did not have money to spend, which limited the number of advertisers interested in reaching them. In December 1888 the title was changed to The Argosy, publication switched from weekly to monthly in April 1894, at which time the magazine began its shift towards pulp fiction. It eventually published its first all-fiction issue in 1896, the all-fiction Argosy launched a new genre of magazines, and is considered the pioneer among pulp magazines. The magazine switched back to a publication schedule in October 1917. In January 1919, The Argosy merged with Railroad Mans Magazine, prior to World War One, The Argosy had several notable writers, including Upton Sinclair, Zane Grey, Albert Payson Terhune, Gertrude Barrows Bennett, and former dime novelist William Wallace Cook. The All-Story Magazine magazine was another Munsey pulp, debuting in January 1905, this pulp was published monthly until March 1914. Effective March 7,1914, it changed to a weekly schedule, in May 1914, All-Story Weekly was merged with another story pulp, The Cavalier, and used the title All-Story Cavalier Weekly for one year. Editors of All-Story included Newell Metcalf and Robert H. Davis, in 1920, All-Story Weekly was merged into The Argosy, resulting in a new title, Argosy All-Story Weekly, which published works in a number of literary genres, including science fiction and Westerns
Argosy (magazine)
–
The Argosy, April 1906
Argosy (magazine)
–
The All-Story (June 1912), containing part five of six of
Edgar Rice Burroughs ' "
Under the Moons of Mars "
Argosy (magazine)
–
Argosy All-Story Weekly cover for the story "
The Metal Monster " by
A. Merritt (August 7, 1920)
19.
Blue Book (magazine)
–
Blue Book was a popular 20th-century American magazine with a lengthy 70-year run under various titles from 1905 to 1975. It was a magazine to Redbook. In its early days, Blue Book also carried a supplement on theatre actors called Stageland, the magazine was aimed at both male and female readers. For the next 45 years, it was known as The Blue Book Magazine, Blue Book Magazine, Blue Book, the title was shortened with the February 1952 issue to simply Bluebook, continuing until May 1956. With a more exploitative angle, the magazine was revived with an October 1960 issue as Bluebook for Men, in its 1920s heyday, Blue Book was regarded as one of the Big Four pulp magazines, along with Adventure, Argosy and Short Stories. The early publishers were Story-Press Corporation and Consolidated Magazines, followed in 1929 by McCall, publications took over the reins in October 1960, Hanro was the publisher from August 1964 until March 1966 and then the QMG Magazine Corporation, beginning April 1967. The succession of editors included Karl Edward Harriman, Donald Kennicott, Maxwell Hamilton and Andre Fontaine in the mid-1950s, Maxwell Hamilton returned for the 1960 revival, followed by B. R. Ampolsk in 1967. Cover artists during the 1930s included Dean Cornwell, Joseph Chenoweth, Henry J. Soulen and Herbert Morton Stoops, the first Blue Book contributors included science-fiction authors George Allan England and William Hope Hodgson, as well as the Freelances in Diplomacy series by Clarence H. New a series of early spy stories, rider Haggard and Albert Payson Terhune also published work in Blue Book. In addition to Tarzan, Burroughts published material about Nyoka, the Jungle Girl in Blue Book, Nyoka first appeared in The Land of Hidden Men, a 1929 Blue Book short story by Burroughs. The characters of Sax Rohmer, James Oliver Curwood, and Zane Grey appeared in Blue Book, Adventure fiction was a staple of Blue Book, in addition to Burroughs, P. C. Wren, H. Bedford-Jones, Achmed Abdullah, George F. Worts, Lemuel De Bra and William L. Chester all published in the magazine. Sea stories were popular in Blue Book, and George Fielding Eliot, Captain A. E. Dingle. Writers during the 1940s included Nelson S. Bond, Max Brand, Gelett Burgess, Eustace Cockrell, Irvin S. Cobb, Robert A. Heinlein, MacKinlay Kantor, Willy Ley, Theodore Pratt. Ivan Sanderson, Luke Short, Booth Tarkington, Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, Philip Wylie, Blue Book managed to attract fiction from a number of authors who did not normally publish in pulp magazines, including Georges Simenon, Shelby Foote and William Lindsay Gresham. An anthology of stories from the magazine is Best Sea Stories from Bluebook, pulp historian Ed Hulse has stated that between the 1910s and the 1950s Blue Book achieved and sustained a level of excellence reached by few other magazines. An Index to Blue Book Magazine, compiled by Mike Ashley, Victor A. Berch, Sax Rohmer in Blue Book Magazine
Blue Book (magazine)
–
Blue Book
Blue Book (magazine)
20.
Edgar Rice Burroughs
–
Edgar Rice Burroughs was an American writer best known for his creations of the jungle hero Tarzan and the heroic Mars adventurer John Carter, although he produced works in many genres. Burroughs was born on September 1,1875, in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Major George Tyler Burroughs, a businessman and Civil War veteran. His middle name is from his grandmother, Mary Rice Burroughs. Burroughs was of almost entirely English ancestry, with a line that had been in North America since the early colonial era. Through his grandmother Mary Rice, he was descended from Edmund Rice and he once remarked, I can trace my ancestry back to Deacon Edmund Rice. The Burroughs side of the family was also of English origin, many of his ancestors fought in the American Revolution. He had other ancestors who settled in Virginia during the colonial period, Burroughs was educated at a number of local schools, and during the Chicago influenza epidemic in 1891, he spent half a year at his brothers ranch on the Raft River in Idaho. He then attended Phillips Academy, in Andover, Massachusetts, graduating in 1895, and failing the entrance exam for the United States Military Academy at West Point, he became an enlisted soldier with the 7th U. S. Cavalry in Fort Grant, Arizona Territory. After being diagnosed with a problem and thus ineligible to serve. After his discharge, Burroughs worked a number of different jobs and he drifted and worked on a ranch in Idaho. He found work at his fathers firm in 1899 and he married his childhood sweetheart, Emma Hulbert, in January 1900. In 1904, he left his job and worked regularly, first in Idaho. By 1911, after seven years of low wages, he was working as a pencil-sharpener wholesaler, by this time, he and Emma had two children, Joan, who later married the Tarzan film actor James Pierce, and Hulbert. During this period, he had spare time and began reading pulp fiction magazines. In 1929 he recalled thinking that. if people were paid for writing rot such as I read in some of those magazines, in 1913, Burroughs and Emma had their third and last child, John Coleman Burroughs, later known for his illustrations of his fathers books. In the 1920s Burroughs became a pilot, purchased a Security Airster S-1, Burroughs divorced Emma in 1934, and in 1935 he married the former actress Florence Gilbert Dearholt, the former wife of his friend Ashton Dearholt. Burroughs adopted the Dearholts two children and he and Florence divorced in 1942. Burroughs was in his late 60s and was in Honolulu at the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
Edgar Rice Burroughs
–
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Edgar Rice Burroughs
–
Bookplate of Edgar Rice Burroughs showing Tarzan holding the planet Mars, surrounded by other characters from Burroughs' stories and symbols relating to his personal interests and career
Edgar Rice Burroughs
–
Typsescript letter, with Tarzana Ranch letterhead, from Edgar Rice Burroughs to
Ruthven Deane, explaining the design and significance of his bookplate.
21.
Talbot Mundy
–
Talbot Mundy was an English-born American writer of adventure fiction. Based for most of his life in the United States, he wrote under the pseudonym of Walter Galt. Best known as the author of King of the Khyber Rifles, Mundy was born to a conservative middle-class family in Hammersmith, London. Educated at Rugby College, he left with no qualifications and moved to British India and he relocated to East Africa, where he worked as an ivory poacher and then as the town clerk of Kisumu. In 1909 he moved to New York City in the U. S. where he found living in poverty. A friend encouraged him to writing about his life experiences. He soon began selling stories and non-fiction articles to a variety of pulp magazines, such as Argosy, Cavalier. In 1914 Mundy published his first novel, Rung Ho. soon followed by The Winds of the World and King of the Khyber Rifles, all of which were set in British India and drew upon his own experiences. Critically acclaimed, they were published in both the U. S. and U. K, becoming a U. S. citizen, in 1918 he joined the Christian Science new religious movement, and with them moved to Jerusalem to establish the citys first English-language newspaper. Returning to the U. S. in 1920, he began writing the Jimgrim series, spending time at the Theosophical community of Lomaland in San Diego, California, he became a friend of Katherine Tingley and embraced Theosophy. Many of his novels produced in the years, most notably Om, The Secret of Ahbor Valley and The Devils Guard. He also involved himself in various failed business ventures, including an oil drilling operation in Tijuana, during the Great Depression he supplemented his career writing novels and short stories by authoring scripts for the radio series Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy. In later life he suffered from diabetes, eventually dying of complications arising from the disease and his work has been cited as an influence on a variety of later science-fiction and fantasy writers, and he has been the subject of two biographies. Mundy was born as William Lancaster Gribbon on 23 April 1879 at his home of 59 Milson Road. The following month he was baptised into the Anglican denomination of Christianity at the local St. Matthews Church and his father, Walter Galt Gribbon, had been born in Leeds, Yorkshire as the son of a porcelain and glass merchant. Gribbon had studied at Oxford Universitys St. Johns College and then trained as a barrister before relocating to Swansea, after his first wifes death, he married Mundys mother, Margaret Lancaster, in Nantyglo in July 1878. A member of an English family based in Wales, she was the brother of the politician John Lancaster, after a honeymoon in Ilfracombe, Devon, the newly married couple moved to Hammersmith, where Mundy was their first child. They would have three children, Walter Harold, Agnes Margaret, and Florence Mary, although the latter died in infancy
Talbot Mundy
–
Mundy, c. 1917
Talbot Mundy
–
Mundy was educated at Rugby School, pictured
Talbot Mundy
–
Mundy was active in the East African ivory trade
Talbot Mundy
–
The February 1912 issue of Adventure, where Mundy's "The Soul of a Regiment" first appeared. According to Taves, it was Mundy's first magazine story "to mark him as a writer to watch and to merit a cover illustration."
22.
Johnston McCulley
–
Johnston McCulley was the author of hundreds of stories, fifty novels, numerous screenplays for film and television, and the creator of the character Zorro. McCulley started as a reporter for The Police Gazette and served as an Army public affairs officer during World War I. An amateur history buff, he went on to a career in pulp magazines and screenplays, aside from Zorro, McCulley created many other pulp characters, including Black Star, The Spider, The Mongoose, and Thubway Tham. Born in Ottawa, Illinois, and raised in Chillicothe, Illinois, he died in 1958 in Los Angeles, California, some of McCulleys tales are available from Wildside Press and Altus Press. Pulp Adventures Inc. has published two oversized trade paperback reprinting many of the original Zorro stories. McCulleys Zorro character, reminiscent of Baroness Orczys Scarlet Pimpernel, was first serialized in the story The Curse of Capistrano in 1919 in the pulp magazine All-Story Weekly, Zorro became his most enduring character, appearing in four novels. The first appeared in 1919 and the second in 1922, after there was a significant gap before the appearance of the third novel. The appearance of the 1920 Douglas Fairbanks silent movie The Mark of Zorro, the popularity of the character led to three novellas appearing in Argosy, The Further Adventures of Zorro, Zorro Rides Again, and The Sign of Zorro. In between, he wrote other novels and stories set in early Spanish California which did not have Zorro as the lead character. The last full-length novel, The Sign of Zorro, appeared in 1941, Republic optioned the character for a serial, Zorros Fighting Legion, which was released in 1939 and was well received. Over the coming decade Republic released three other serials connected in some way with the Zorro character. In 1940, The Mark of Zorro remake starring Tyrone Power and Linda Darnell made the character much more known to the public at large. McCulley made an arrangement with the pulp West Magazine to produce a brand new Zorro short story for every issue, the first of these stories appeared in July 1944 and the last one appeared in July 1951, the final issue of the publication. Fifty-three adventures in all were published in West, an additional story appeared in Max Brands Western Magazine in the May 1954 issue. The final Zorro story appeared in Short Story Magazine in April 1959, after McCulleys death, Black Star first appeared in the Street & Smith pulp Detective Story Magazine on 5 March 1916. Black Star was what was termed a gentleman criminal, in that he does not commit murder, nor does he permit any of his gang to kill anyone. He does not threaten women, always keeps his word, and is invariably courteous and he is always seen in a black cloak and a black hood on which is embossed a jet black star. The Black Star and his gang used vapor bombs and vapor guns which rendered their victims instantly unconscious, the character lasted through the end of 1930
Johnston McCulley
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The cover of "The Curse of Capistrano"
23.
Carl Richard Jacobi
–
Carl Richard Jacobi was an American journalist and author. He also write stories crime and adventure which appeared in such pulps as Thrilling Adventures, Complete Stories, Top-Notch, Short Stories, The Skipper, Doc Savage and he also produced some science fiction, mainly space opera, published in such magazines as Planet Stories. He was one of the last surviving pulp-fictioneers to have contributed to the legendary American horror magazine Weird Tales during its glory days and his stories have been translated into French, Swedish, Danish and Dutch. Jacobi was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1904 and lived throughout his life. He was a reader, gulping down at an early age quantities of Jules Verne, Edgar Allan Poe, H. G. Wells as well as the Frank Merriwell. He was always a writer, at his high school he earned good pocket-money concocting his own dime novels. He attended the University of Minnesota from 1927 to 1930, majoring in English Literature and he wrote of this period on Thrilling Wonder Stories that I tried to divide my time between rhetoric courses and the geology lab. As an underclassman I was somewhat undecided whether future life would find me studying rocks and his first stories were published while he was at the University. Long before graduation he made his first professional sale, a short tale, Rumbling Cannon. This ought to have paid around fifty dollars but Jacobi received not a cent since the pulp folded soon after the story was published, both stories were later sold to Amazing Stories and Weird Tales respectively and marked his debut in professional magazines. Mive brought him payment of 25 dollars, mive was praised by H. P. Lovecraft commended Jacobis work to Derleth and thereby helped set up the long-term relationship Arkham House would have with Jacobi. Beginning in 1928, Jacobi corresponded with adventure-pulp veteran Arthur O. Friel and his early story The Monument was submitted only once - to Farnsworth Wright of Weird Tales. It was not submitted subsequently but was discovered in a filing cabinet when R and he also served on the staff of the Minnesota Ski-U-Mah, a campus humor magazine. Jacobi met August Derleth in January 1931 when Derleth was visiting Minneapolis to see Donald Wandrei, though Derleth and Jacobi corresponded for 40 years thereafter, Jacobi saw him but a few times in St Paul and never visited Derleths home of Sauk City, Wisconsin. Over the following summer, when Derleth worked briefly as an editor for Fawcett Publications, outside Minneapolis and he owned his own private retreat, a cabin at Minnewashta in the Carver country outlands of Minneapolis. His intimate familiarity with the terrain and environment there provided the setting for many of his most distinguished stories, from 1932 until Jacobis death in 1997, pulp writer Hugh B. Jacobi and Cave often criticised and improved each others stories and his stories were translated into French, Swedish, Danish and Dutch. Many of his tales were published in anthologies edited by Derleth, though best known for his macabre fiction, Jacobi also wrote science fiction, weird-menace yarns and adventure stories
Carl Richard Jacobi
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Carl Richard Jacobi
24.
H. Bedford-Jones
–
Henry James OBrien Bedford-Jones was a Canadian historical, adventure fantasy, science fiction, crime and Western writer who became a naturalized United States citizen in 1908. After being encouraged to try writing by his friend, writer William Wallace Cook, Bedford-Jones began writing dime novels, Bedford-Jones cited Alexandre Dumas as his main influence, and wrote a sequel to Dumas The Three Musketeers, DArtagnan. He wrote over 100 novels, earning the nickname King of the Pulps and his works appeared in a number of pulp magazines. In addition to writing fiction, Bedford-Jones also worked as a journalist for the Boston Globe, Bedford-Jones was a friend of Erle Stanley Gardner and Vincent Starrett. Bedford-Jones at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database Ashley, Mike, whos Who in Horror and Fantasy Fiction. King of the Pulps, The Life and Writings of H. Bedford-Jones
H. Bedford-Jones
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Bedford-Jones's "The Artificial Honeymoon" was the cover story in the July 1940 Weird Tales
25.
War novel
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Many war novels are historical novels. The war novels origins are in the poetry of the classical and medieval periods, especially Homers The Iliad, Virgils The Aeneid, sagas like the Old English Beowulf. Other important influences on the war included the tragedies of dramatists such as Euripides, Seneca the Younger, Christopher Marlowe. Euripedes The Trojan Women is a disturbing play on the theme of wars horrors. A Notable non-western example of war novel is Luo Guanzhongs Romance of the Three Kingdoms, an example of one such work is Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausens Simplicius Simplicissimus, a semi-autobiographical account of the Thirty Years War. World War I produced a number of war novels, by writers from countries on all sides of the conflict. One of the first and most influential of these was the 1916 novel Le Feu by the French novelist, barbusses novel, with its open criticism of nationalist dogma and military incompetence, initiated the anti-war movement in literature that flourished after the war. Of equal significance is the work of Ernst Jünger, In Stahlgewittern. The work not only provides for a perspective of the War. One example of type of novel is Virginia Woolfs Mrs. Dalloway, in which a key subplot concerns the tortuous descent of a young veteran, Septimus Warren Smith, toward insanity. In 1924, Laurence Stallings published his war novel, Plumes. The 1920s saw the so-called war book boom, during which men who had fought during the war were finally ready to write openly and critically about their war experiences. Novels about World War I appeared less in the 1930s, though during this decade historical novels about earlier wars became popular, margaret Mitchells Gone with the Wind, which recalls the American Civil War, is an example of works of this trend. World War II gave rise to a new boom in contemporary war novels, among more recent European novels is Ukraine - In the Time of War, by Sonia Campbell-Gillies which has seen a sudden upsurge in demand since the annexation of Crimea by Russia. Ukraines war-torn history is mirrored in the struggle for survival, freedom, Ukrainian literature is scarce since the Ukrainian language was banned during occupation by various forces. The previous volume Le sursis (1945, The Reprieve, explores the ramifications of the appeasement pact that Great Britain, another significant French war novel was Pierre Boulles Le Pont de la rivière Kwaï. He served as an agent under the name Peter John Rule and helped the resistance movement in China, Burma. He served in the cavalry in 1940 and even took part in an attack on horseback against tanks, Greenes later The End of the Affair is set mainly during the flying bomb raids on London of 1944
War novel
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Battle of Waterloo 1815
War novel
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Battle of Britain (1941),
Paul Nash
War novel
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Bomb damage in London, England during World War II
War novel
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South Korean refugees mid-1950
26.
Crime novel
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Crime fiction is the literary genre that fictionalises crimes, their detection, criminals, and their motives. It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other such as historical fiction or science fiction. Crime fiction has multiple subgenres, including fiction, courtroom drama, hard-boiled fiction. Suspense and mystery are key elements that are ubiquitous to the genre. In Italy people commonly call a story about detectives or crimes giallo, better known are the earlier dark works of Edgar Allan Poe. Wilkie Collins epistolary novel The Woman in White was published in 1860, french author Émile Gaboriaus Monsieur Lecoq laid the groundwork for the methodical, scientifically minded detective. The evolution of locked room mysteries was one of the landmarks in the history of crime fiction, the Sherlock Holmes mysteries of Arthur Conan Doyle are said to have been singularly responsible for the huge popularity in this genre. A precursor was Paul Féval, whose series Les Habits Noirs features Scotland Yard detectives, the best-selling crime novel of the nineteenth century was Fergus Humes The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, set in Melbourne, Australia. The evolution of the print mass media in the United Kingdom, like the works of many other important fiction writers of his day—e. g. Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens—Arthur Conan Doyles Sherlock Holmes stories first appeared in form in the monthly Strand magazine in the United Kingdom. Later a set of stereotypic formulae began to appear to cater to various tastes, Crime fiction can be divided into the following four branches, The cozy mystery, a subgenre of detective fiction in which profanity, sex, and violence are downplayed or treated humorously. The whodunit, the most common form of detective fiction, the historical whodunnit, also a subgenre of historical fiction. The police procedural, the detective is a member of the police, the forensic crime fiction, similar to the police procedural. The detective the reader follows is usually a medical examiner or pathologist—they must use the evidence left on the body. This subgenre was first introduced by Patricia Cornwell, the legal thriller, the major characters are lawyers and their employees, and they become involved in proving their cases. The spy novel, the characters are spies, usually working for an intelligence agency. The caper story and the novel, the stories are told from the point of view of the criminals. The parody or spoof When trying to pigeon-hole fiction, it is difficult to tell where crime fiction starts
Crime novel
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Sherlock Holmes, pipe-puffing hero of crime fiction, confers with his colleague
Dr. Watson; together these characters popularized the genre.
27.
Sea story
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The settings of nautical fiction vary greatly, including merchant ships, liners, naval ships, fishing vessels, life boats, etc. along with sea ports and fishing villages. When describing nautical fiction, scholars most frequently refer to novels, novellas and these works are sometimes adapted for the theatre, film and television. There were 18th century and earlier precursors that have nautical settings, because of the historical dominance of nautical culture by men, they are usually the central characters, except for works that feature ships carrying women passengers. For this reason, nautical fiction is often marketed for men, stylistically, readers of the genre expect an emphasis on adventure, accurate representation of maritime culture, and use of nautical language. What constitutes nautical fiction or sea fiction, and their constituent naval, nautical or sea novels, some scholars chose to expand the definition of what constitutes nautical fiction. In so doing, this article highlights what critics describe as the conventional definition for the genre. First because of the opportunities brought by the sea and then through the influence of the Romantic movement. Tobias Smolletts The Adventures of Roderick Random, published in 1748, is a novel partially based on Smolletts experience as a naval-surgeon’s mate in the British Navy. Critic Margaret Cohen describes Coopers The Pilot as the first sea novel and Marryats adaptation of that style, James Fenimore Cooper wrote, what is often described as the first sea novel, The Pilot, in response to Walter Scotts The Pirate. Cooper was frustrated with the inaccuracy of the nautical culture represented in that work, as well as offering a critique of American politics. The prominence of the genre also influenced non-fiction, the more famous French novelist Alexandre Dumas made no secret of his admiration for Cooper and wrote Le Capitaine Paul as a sequel to Coopers Pilot. Another French novelist who had a seafarer background was Edouard Corbière, the author of numerous novels, including Les Pilotes de lIroise. In Britain, the genesis of a nautical fiction tradition is attributed to Frederick Marryat. Frederick Marryats career as a novelist stretched from 1829 until his death in 1848, with many set at sea, thematically Marryat focuses on ideas of heroism, proper action of officers, and reforms within the culture of the navy. Marryats novels encouraged the writing of novels from veterans of the Napoleonic wars during the 1830s. Baker, Captain Chamier, Captain Glascock, Edward Howard, and William J. Neale, the genre also inspired a number of popular mass-market authors, like American Ned Buntline, Britain Charles Kingsley and Frenchman Jules Verne. Mellvilles fiction frequently involves the sea, with his first five novels following the adventures of seamen, often a pair of male friends. However, Moby-Dick is his most important work, sometimes called the Great American Novel, in this work, the hunting of a whale by Captain Ahab, immerses the narrator Ishmael in a spiritual journey, a theme which is developed again in Conrads much later Heart of Darkness
Sea story
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An illustration from a 1902 printing of
Moby Dick, one of the renowned American sea novels
Sea story
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J. M. W. Turner, The Battle of Trafalgar (circa. 1806). Turner's seascapes reflect the Romantic movement's new attitude to the sea
Sea story
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The original cover of Cooper's The Pilot, printed in 1823.
Sea story
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The Polish cover to Joseph Conrad's 1904 novel
Lord Jim
28.
Robinsonade
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Robinsonade is a literary genre that takes its name from the 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. The success of this novel spawned so many imitations that its name was used to define a genre, the word robinsonade was coined by the German writer Johann Gottfried Schnabel in the Preface of his 1731 work Die Insel Felsenburg. It is often viewed as a subgenre of survivalist fiction, Robinson Crusoe and robinsonades share plot elements with William Shakespeares The Tempest, but the story emphasis and story message are markedly different. Later works expanded on and explored this mythology, in the archetypical robinsonade, the protagonist is suddenly isolated from the comforts of civilization, usually shipwrecked or marooned on a secluded and uninhabited island. He must improvise the means of his survival from the resources at hand. Some of the themes include, Isolation A new beginning for some of the characters Encounters with natives or apparent natives Commentary on society See also themes for subgenres below. Unlike Thomas Mores Utopia and romantic works which depicted nature as idyllic, Crusoe made it unforgiving, the protagonist survives by his wits and the qualities of his cultural upbringing, which also enable him to prevail in conflicts with fellow castaways or over local peoples he may encounter. However, he manages to wrest survival and even an amount of civilisation from the wilderness. Works that followed went both in the more utopian direction and the dystopian direction, there are many works which do not fall into one of the listed subgenres. Swiss Family Robinson, for example, is not a robinsonade proper because it sees nature as more bountiful than in Robinson Crusoe, the robinsonade genre also includes many space-travel science fiction works. The basic premise is that our astronauts arrive at new worlds, terraform them if necessary, then live and prosper there, a classic example of an SF robinsonade which has all the elements of the robinsonade proper is Tom Godwins The Survivors. Another recent example is Andy Weirs 2012 The Martian, dewey Decimal Classification and Relative Index, however, exempts the The Revelation of John and other biblical apocalyptic passages from this cataloging rule. Robinson Crusoe on Mars is the story of the survivor of a ship crash on the planet Mars. Enemy Mine is the SF story of a human and enemy alien who crash land on a barren planetoid, the Martian is the story of a human astronaut stranded on Mars after a storm forces the rest of the crew to depart and the effort to recover him. The first appearance of a space-faring Robinson family was in a book published by Gold Key Comics, The Space Family Robinson. Space Family Robinson was published as a total of 59 issues, the first issue was published in December 1962. With issue #15, the Lost in Space title was added to the cover, rather than sue CBS or Irwin Allen, Western decided to reach a settlement which allowed them to use Lost in Space for the title of the comic book. Since CBS and Irwin Allen licensed shows to Western, Western didnt want to antagonize them, also, the TV show title probably helped sales of the comic book
Robinsonade
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Robinson Crusoe in an 1887 illustration
29.
John Buchan
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John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir GCMG GCVO CH PC was a Scottish novelist, historian and Unionist politician who served as Governor General of Canada, the 15th since Canadian Confederation. He eventually wrote propaganda for the British war effort in the First World War, in 1935 he was appointed Governor General of Canada by King George V, on the recommendation of Prime Minister of Canada R. B. Bennett, to replace the Earl of Bessborough and he occupied the post until his death in 1940. Buchan proved to be enthusiastic about literacy, as well as the evolution of Canadian culture, Buchan was born in Perth, Scotland. He was the first child of John Buchan—a Free Church of Scotland minister—and Helen Jane Buchan, Buchan was brought up in Kirkcaldy, Fife, and spent many summer holidays with his maternal grandparents in Broughton, in the Scottish Borders. The childhood he and his sister, Anna, shared was documented in her memoir, Unforgettable, after attending Hutchesons Grammar School, Buchan was awarded a scholarship to the University of Glasgow at age 17, where he studied classics, wrote poetry, and became a published author. With a junior Hulme scholarship, he moved on in 1895 to study Literae Humaniores at Brasenose College, Oxford, where his friends included Hilaire Belloc, Raymond Asquith, and Aubrey Herbert. It was at around the time of his graduation from Oxford that Buchan had his first portrait painted, together, Buchan and his wife had four children, Alice, John, William, and Alastair, two of whom would spend most of their lives in Canada. With the outbreak of the First World War, Buchan went to write for the British War Propaganda Bureau and he continued to write fiction, and in 1915 published his most famous work, The Thirty-Nine Steps, a spy-thriller set just prior to World War I. The novel featured Buchans oft used hero, Richard Hannay, whose character was based on Edmund Ironside, a sequel, Greenmantle, came the following year. Buchan then enlisted in the British Army and was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Intelligence Corps. It was difficult for him, given his close connections to many of Britains military leaders, following the close of the war, Buchan turned his attention to writing on historical subjects, along with his usual thrillers and novels. Robert Graves, who lived in nearby Islip, mentioned his being recommended by Buchan for a position at the newly founded Cairo University. In a 1927 by-election, Buchan was elected as the Unionist Party Member of Parliament for the Combined Scottish Universities, politically, he was of the Unionist-Nationalist tradition, believing in Scotlands promotion as a nation within the British Empire. Buchan remarked in a speech to parliament, I believe every Scotsman should be a Scottish nationalist, if it could be proved that a Scottish parliament were desirable. He found himself profoundly affected by John Morleys Life of Gladstone, after the United Free Church of Scotland joined in 1929 with the Church of Scotland, Buchan remained an active elder of St. Columbas Church in London, as well as of the Oxford Presbyterian parish. In 1933 and 1934 Buchan was further appointed as the King George Vs Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, beginning in 1930 Buchan aligned himself with Zionism and the related Palestine All Party Parliamentary Group. In recognition of his contributions to literature and education, on 1 January 1932, in 1935 Buchans literary work was adapted for the cinema with the completion of Alfred Hitchcocks The 39 Steps, starring Robert Donat as Richard Hannay, though with Buchans story much altered
John Buchan
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His Excellency the Right Honourable the Lord Tweedsmuir GCMG GCVO CH PC
John Buchan
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John Buchan, circa 1936
John Buchan
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Mackenzie King delivers an address at the installation of Lord Tweedsmuir as
Governor General of Canada, 2 November 1935
John Buchan
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The Lord Tweedsmuir in
Native headdress, 1937
30.
Eric Ambler
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Eric Clifford Ambler OBE was an influential British author of thrillers, in particular spy novels who introduced a new realism to the genre. He also worked as a screenwriter, Ambler used the pseudonym Eliot Reed for books co-written with Charles Rodda. Ambler was born in London into a family of entertainers who ran a puppet show, both parents also worked as music hall artists. Later he studied engineering at Northampton Polytechnic in Islington, and served a traineeship with an engineering company, however, his upbringing as an entertainer proved dominant and he soon moved to writing plays and other works. By the early 1930s he was a copywriter at an agency in London. After resigning he moved to Paris, where he met and married Louise Crombie, like numerous like-minded people in different countries, Ambler was shocked and disillusioned by the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939. When World War II broke out, Ambler entered the army as a private soldier and he was commissioned into the Royal Artillery in 1941. He was soon reassigned to photographic units and he ended the war as a Lieutenant-Colonel and assistant director of the army film unit. He did not resume writing under his own name until 1951, five of his six early works are regarded as classic thrillers. He created the 1960 American detective TV series Checkmate, Ambler divorced Crombie in 1958, marrying British-born film producer, screenwriter and longstanding right arm of Alfred and Alma Hitchcock, Joan Harrison the same year. The couple moved to Switzerland in 1969 and back to Britain 16 years later, Harrison died in 1994 in London. In 2008, his estate transferred all of Amblers copyrights and other legal and commercial rights to Owatonna Media, Owatonna Media sold these copyrights on to Coolabi Plc in 2009, but retained a master licence in radio and audio rights. These rights are commercially licensed in the UK and abroad, Amblers best known works are probably The Mask of Dimitrios, which was made into a film in 1944, and The Light of Day, filmed in 1964 as Topkapi. He was also a screenwriter and lived in Los Angeles in his later years. Amongst other classic movies based on his work are Journey into Fear, starring Joseph Cotten, and he wrote the screenplay for A Night to Remember about the sinking of the Titanic, along with many other screenplays, particularly those concerning stories and adventures at sea. He published his autobiography in 1985, Here Lies Eric Ambler and this plot is used, for example, in Journey into Fear, Epitaph for a Spy, The Mask of Dimitrios, Passage of Arms, The Light of Day and Dirty Story. Published with a chapter on John Bodkin Adams removed because of libel concerns, edgar Award for Best Critical/Biographical Work,1987. Contains eight stories mostly written in 1939–40 while Ambler awaited his call to military duty, Six ingenious detective stories featuring Dr Jan Czissar, a refugee Czech detective formerly of the Prague police
Eric Ambler
–
Eric Ambler
31.
Ian Fleming
–
Ian Lancaster Fleming was an English author, journalist and naval intelligence officer who is best known for his James Bond series of spy novels. Fleming came from a family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co. Educated at Eton, Sandhurst and, briefly, the universities of Munich and Geneva and his wartime service and his career as a journalist provided much of the background, detail and depth of the James Bond novels. Fleming wrote his first Bond novel, Casino Royale, in 1952 and it was a success, with three print runs being commissioned to cope with the demand. Eleven Bond novels and two short-story collections followed between 1953 and 1966, the novels revolved around James Bond, an officer in the Secret Intelligence Service, commonly known as MI6. Bond was also known by his number,007, and was a commander in the Royal Naval Reserve. The Bond stories rank among the series of fictional books of all time. Fleming also wrote the childrens story Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang and two works of non-fiction, in 2008, The Times ranked Fleming 14th on its list of The 50 greatest British writers since 1945. Fleming was married to Ann Charteris, who was divorced from the second Viscount Rothermere owing to her affair with the author, Fleming and Charteris had a son, Caspar. Fleming was a smoker and drinker for most of his life. Two of his James Bond books were published posthumously, other writers have since produced Bond novels, Flemings creation has appeared in film twenty-six times, portrayed by seven actors. Ian Fleming was born on 28 May 1908, at 27 Green Street in the wealthy London district of Mayfair and his mother was Evelyn St Croix Rose, and his father was Valentine Fleming, the Member of Parliament for Henley from 1910. As an infant he lived, with his family, at Braziers Park in Oxfordshire. Fleming was the grandson of the Scottish financier Robert Fleming, who founded the Scottish American Investment Trust, in 1914, with the start of the First World War, Valentine joined C Squadron, Queens Own Oxfordshire Hussars, and rose to the rank of major. He was killed by German shelling on the Western Front on 20 May 1917, because the family owned an estate at Arnisdale, Valentines death was commemorated on the Glenelg War Memorial. Flemings elder brother Peter became a writer and married actress Celia Johnson. Fleming also had two brothers, Michael and Richard, and a younger maternal half-sister born out of wedlock, cellist Amaryllis Fleming. Amaryllis was conceived during an affair between John and Evelyn that started in 1923, some six years after the death of Valentine
Ian Fleming
–
Ian Fleming
Ian Fleming
–
The
Glenelg War Memorial, listing
Valentine Fleming
Ian Fleming
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Eton College: Fleming's alma mater from 1921 to 1927
Ian Fleming
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The Admiralty, where Fleming worked in the
Naval Intelligence Division during the Second World War
32.
Science fiction
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Science fiction often explores the potential consequences of scientific and other innovations, and has been called a literature of ideas. Science fiction is difficult to define, as it includes a range of subgenres and themes. Author and editor Damon Knight summed up the difficulty, saying science fiction is what we point to when we say it, a definition echoed by author Mark C. Glassy, who argues that the definition of science fiction is like the definition of pornography, you do not know what it is, in 1970 or 1971William Atheling Jr. According to science fiction writer Robert A, rod Serlings definition is fantasy is the impossible made probable. Science fiction is the improbable made possible, Science fiction is largely based on writing rationally about alternative possible worlds or futures. Science fiction elements include, A time setting in the future, in alternative timelines, a spatial setting or scenes in outer space, on other worlds, or on subterranean earth. Characters that include aliens, mutants, androids, or humanoid robots, futuristic or plausible technology such as ray guns, teleportation machines, and humanoid computers. Scientific principles that are new or that contradict accepted physical laws, for time travel, wormholes. New and different political or social systems, e. g. utopian, dystopian, post-scarcity, paranormal abilities such as mind control, telepathy, telekinesis Other universes or dimensions and travel between them. A product of the budding Age of Reason and the development of science itself. Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan considered Keplers work the first science fiction story and it depicts a journey to the Moon and how the Earths motion is seen from there. Later, Edgar Allan Poe wrote a story about a flight to the moon, more examples appeared throughout the 19th century. Wells The War of the Worlds describes an invasion of late Victorian England by Martians using tripod fighting machines equipped with advanced weaponry and it is a seminal depiction of an alien invasion of Earth. In the late 19th century, the scientific romance was used in Britain to describe much of this fiction. This produced additional offshoots, such as the 1884 novella Flatland, the term would continue to be used into the early 20th century for writers such as Olaf Stapledon. In the early 20th century, pulp magazines helped develop a new generation of mainly American SF writers, influenced by Hugo Gernsback, the founder of Amazing Stories magazine. In 1912 Edgar Rice Burroughs published A Princess of Mars, the first of his series of Barsoom novels, situated on Mars
Science fiction
–
A futuristic setting is a common but not a necessary hallmark of science fiction. A common thread in science fiction is exploring the potential consequences of scientific and other innovations on people's lives.
Science fiction
–
H. G. Wells
Science fiction
–
Jules Verne
Science fiction
–
Arthur C. Clarke
33.
Fantasy
–
Fantasy is a fiction genre set in an imaginary universe, often but not always without any locations, events, or people from the real world. Most fantasy uses magic or other elements as a main plot element, theme. Magic and magical creatures are common in many of these imaginary worlds, in popular culture, the fantasy genre is predominantly of the medievalist form. In its broadest sense, however, fantasy works by many writers, artists, filmmakers. Fantasy is studied in a number of disciplines including English and other studies, cultural studies, comparative literature, history. The identifying trait of fantasy is the reliance on imagination to create narrative elements that do not have to rely on history or nature to be coherent. This differs from realistic fiction in that whereas realistic fiction has to attend to the history and natural laws of reality, an author applies his or her imagination to come up with characters, plots, and settings that are impossible in reality. Fantasy has often compared with science fiction and horror because they are the major categories of speculative fiction. Fantasy is distinguished from science fiction by the plausibility of the narrative elements, a science fiction narrative is unlikely, though seeming possible through logical scientific and/or technological extrapolation, whereas fantasy narratives do not need to be scientifically possible. The imagined elements of fantasy do not need an explanation to be narratively functional. Authors have to rely on the suspension of disbelief, an acceptance of the unbelievable or impossible for the sake of enjoyment. Despite both genres heavy reliance on the supernatural, fantasy and horror are distinguishable, horror primarily evokes fear through the protagonists weaknesses or inability to deal with the antagonists. Beginning perhaps with the earliest written documents, mythic and other elements that would come to define fantasy. MacDonald was an influence on both J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. The other major fantasy author of this era was William Morris, lord Dunsany established the genres popularity in both the novel and the short story form. Many popular mainstream authors also began to write fantasy at this time, including H. Rider Haggard, Rudyard Kipling and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Indeed, juvenile fantasy was considered more acceptable than fantasy intended for adults, nathaniel Hawthorne wrote fantasy in A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys, intended for children, though works for adults only verged on fantasy. Political and social trends can affect a societys reception towards fantasy, in the early 20th century, the New Culture Movements enthusiasm for Westernization and science in China compelled them to condemn the fantastical shenmo genre of traditional Chinese literature
Fantasy
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Fairy tales and legends, such as
Dobrynya Nikitich 's rescue of Zabava Putyatichna from the dragon
Gorynych, have been an important source for fantasy.
Fantasy
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Many works are unclear as to the belief of the authors in the marvels they contain, as in the enchanted garden from the
Decameron.
34.
Robert E. Howard
–
Robert Ervin Howard was an American author who wrote pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. He is well known for his character Conan the Barbarian and is regarded as the father of the sword, Howard was born and raised in Texas. He spent most of his life in the town of Cross Plains with some time spent in nearby Brownwood, a bookish and intellectual child, he was also a fan of boxing and spent some time in his late teens bodybuilding, eventually taking up amateur boxing. From the age of nine he dreamed of becoming a writer of adventure fiction, thereafter, until his death by suicide at age 30, Howards writings were published in a wide selection of magazines, journals, and newspapers, and he had become successful in several genres. Although a Conan novel was published in 1934, his stories never appeared in book form during his lifetime. The main outlet for his stories was the pulp magazine Weird Tales, with Conan and his other heroes, Howard created the genre now known as sword and sorcery, spawning many imitators and giving him a large influence in the fantasy field. Howard remains a highly read author, with his best works still reprinted, howard’s suicide and the circumstances surrounding it have led to speculation about his mental health. His mother had been ill with tuberculosis his entire life, and upon learning she had entered a coma from which she was not expected to wake, he walked out to his car and shot himself in the head. Howard was born January 22,1906 in Peaster, Texas, the son of a traveling country physician, Dr. Isaac Mordecai Howard. His early life was spent wandering through a variety of Texas cowtowns and boomtowns, Dark Valley, Seminole, Bronte, Poteet, Oran, Wichita Falls, Bagwell, Cross Cut, during Howards youth his parents relationship began to break down. The Howard family had problems with money which may have been exacerbated by Isaac Howard investing in get-rich-quick schemes, Hester Howard, meanwhile, came to believe that she had married below herself. Soon the pair were actively fighting, Hester did not want Isaac to have anything to do with their son. She had a strong influence on her sons intellectual growth. She had spent her early years helping a variety of sick relatives and she instilled in her son a deep love of poetry and literature, recited verse daily and supported him unceasingly in his efforts to write. Other themes began to appear at time which would later seep into his prose. Although he loved reading and learning, he found school to be confining, experiences watching and confronting bullies revealed the omnipresence of evil and enemies in the world, and taught him the value of physical strength and violence. Firsthand tales of gunfights, lynchings, feuds, and Indian raids developed his distinctly Texan, sports, especially boxing, became a passionate preoccupation. At the time, boxing was the most popular sport in the country, with a cultural influence far in excess of what it is today
Robert E. Howard
–
Howard in 1934
Robert E. Howard
–
Robert E. Howard at about five years old (circa 1911).
Robert E. Howard
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The Howard house in Cross Plains, Texas. Now the
Robert E. Howard Museum
Robert E. Howard
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Weird Tales (August 1928) featuring "Red Shadows," the first Solomon Kane story
35.
J.R.R. Tolkien
–
He was at one time a close friend of C. S. Lewis—they were both members of the informal literary discussion group known as the Inklings. Tolkien was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II on 28 March 1972, after Tolkiens death, his son Christopher published a series of works based on his fathers extensive notes and unpublished manuscripts, including The Silmarillion. Between 1951 and 1955, Tolkien applied the term legendarium to the part of these writings. While many other authors had published works of fantasy before Tolkien and this has caused Tolkien to be popularly identified as the father of modern fantasy literature—or, more precisely, of high fantasy. In 2008, The Times ranked him sixth on a list of The 50 greatest British writers since 1945, forbes ranked him the 5th top-earning dead celebrity in 2009. Tolkiens paternal ancestors were middle-class craftsmen who made and sold clocks, watches and pianos in London, the Tolkien family had emigrated from Germany in the 18th century but had become quickly intensely English. According to the tradition, the Tolkiens had arrived in England in 1756. Several families with the surname Tolkien or similar spelling live in northwestern Germany, mainly in Lower Saxony, however, this origin of the name has not been proven. A German writer has suggested that the name is likely to derive from the village of Tolkynen near Rastenburg. Although that village is far from Lower Saxony, its name is derived from the now-extinct Old Prussian language. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on 3 January 1892 in Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State to Arthur Reuel Tolkien, an English bank manager, the couple had left England when Arthur was promoted to head the Bloemfontein office of the British bank for which he worked. Tolkien had one sibling, his brother, Hilary Arthur Reuel. In another incident, a family servant, who thought Tolkien a beautiful child, took the baby to his kraal to show him off. When he was three, he went to England with his mother and brother on what was intended to be a family visit. His father, however, died in South Africa of rheumatic fever before he could join them and this left the family without an income, so Tolkiens mother took him to live with her parents in Kings Heath, Birmingham. Soon after, in 1896, they moved to Sarehole, then a Worcestershire village, Mabel Tolkien taught her two children at home. Ronald, as he was known in the family, was a keen pupil and she taught him a great deal of botany and awakened in him the enjoyment of the look and feel of plants. Young Tolkien liked to draw landscapes and trees, but his lessons were those concerning languages
J.R.R. Tolkien
–
Tolkien, aged 24 in 1916
J.R.R. Tolkien
–
1892 Christmas card with a coloured photo of the Tolkien family in Bloemfontein, sent to relatives in Birmingham, England
J.R.R. Tolkien
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Birmingham Oratory, where Tolkien was a parishioner and altar boy, (1902–1911)
J.R.R. Tolkien
–
King Edward's School in Birmingham, where Tolkien was a student (1900–1902, 1903–1911)
36.
Secondary world
–
A fictional universe is a self-consistent imaginary setting with events, and often other elements, that differ from the real world. It may also be called an imagined, constructed or fictional realm, fictional universes may appear in novels, comics, films, television shows, video games and other creative works. What distinguishes a fictional universe from a setting is the level of detail. A fictional universe has a continuity and internal logic that must be adhered to throughout the work. So, for instance, many books may be set in conflicting fictional versions of Victorian London, however, the various film series based on Sherlock Holmes follow their own separate continuities, and so do not take place in the same fictional universe. The history and geography of a universe are well-defined, and maps. When subsequent works are written within the universe, care is usually taken to ensure that established facts of the canon are not violated. Even if the fictional universe involves concepts such as magic that dont exist in the real world, a famous example of a detailed fictional universe is Arda, of J. R. R. Tolkiens books The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. He created first its languages and then the world itself, which he states was primarily linguistic in inspiration and was begun in order to provide the history for the Elvish tongues. Another, more recent, famous fictional universe is that of the Avatar film series, as James Cameron has invented an entire ecosystem, also, he commissioned a linguistics expert to invent the Navi language. Virtually every successful fictional TV series or comic book develops its own universe to keep track of the episodes or issues. Writers for that series must follow the story bible, which becomes the series canon. This creates a universe that future authors can write about. These stories about the universe or universes that existed before the retcon are usually not canonical, Crisis on Infinite Earths was an especially sweeping example. Some writers choose to introduce elements or characters from one work into another, for example, the character of Ursula Buffay from American sitcom Mad About You was also a recurring guest star in Friends, despite the two series having little else in common. Fellow NBC series Seinfeld also contained references to Mad About You. L. Frank Baum introduced the characters of Capn Bill and Trot, the two characters made a number of subsequent appearances in later Oz books. Sir Thomas Mores Utopia is one of the earliest examples of a fictional world with its own rules and functional concepts
Secondary world
–
Map of the
land of Oz, the fictional realm that is the setting for
L. Frank Baum 's "
Oz " series.
37.
Western fiction
–
Western fiction is a genre of literature set in the American Old West frontier and typically set from the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth century. Well-known writers of Western fiction include Zane Grey from the early 20th century, the genre peaked around the early 1960s, largely due to the popularity of televised Westerns such as Bonanza. Readership began to drop off in the mid- to late 1970s and has reached a new low in the 2000s, most bookstores, outside of a few west American states, only carry a small number of Western fiction books. The predecessor of the western in American literature emerged early with tales of the frontier, the most famous of the early 19th century frontier novels were James Fenimore Coopers five novels comprising the Leatherstocking Tales. Coopers novels were set in what was at the time the American frontier. As did his novel The Prairie, most later westerns would typically take place west of the Mississippi River, the Western as a specialized genre got its start in the penny dreadfuls and later the dime novels. Published in June 1860, Malaeska, the Indian Wife of the White Hunter is considered the first dime novel. These cheaply made books were successful and capitalized on the many stories that were being told about the mountain men, outlaws, settlers. Many of these novels were fictionalized stories based on people, such as Billy the Kid, Buffalo Bill, Wyatt Earp, Wild Bill Hickok. By 1900, the new medium of pulp magazines helped to relate these adventures to easterners, popularity grew with the publication of Owen Wisters novel The Virginian and especially Zane Greys Riders of the Purple Sage. The first Hopalong Cassidy stories by Clarence Mulford appeared in 1904, when pulp magazines exploded in popularity in the 1920s, Western fiction greatly benefited. Pulp magazines that specialised in Westerns include Cowboy Stories, Ranch Romances, Star Western, West, the simultaneous popularity of Western movies in the 1920s also helped the genre. In the 1940s several seminal Westerns were published, including The Ox-Bow Incident by Walter van Tilburg Clark, The Big Sky and The Way West by A. B. Guthrie, Jr. and Shane by Jack Schaefer. Many other Western authors gained readership in the 1950s, such as Ray Hogan, Louis LAmour, the genre peaked around the early 1960s, largely due to the tremendous number of Westerns on television. The burnout of the American public on television Westerns in the late 1960s seemed to have an effect on the literature as well, and interest in Western literature began to wane. Western novels, films and pulps gave birth to Western comics, which were popular, particularly from the late 1940s until circa 1967. Other notable long-running Marvel Western comics included Rawhide Kid Two-Gun Kid, DC Comics published the long-running series All-Star Western and Western Comics, and Charlton Comics published Billy the Kid and Cheyenne Kid. Magazine Enterprises Straight Arrow ran from 1950–1956, and Prize Comics Prize Comics Western ran from 1948–1956, fawcett Comics published a number of Western titles, including Hopalong Cassidy from 1948–1953
Western fiction
–
"As Wild felled one of the redskins by a blow from the butt of his revolver, and sprang for the one with the tomahawk, the chief's daughter suddenly appeared. Raising her hands, she exclaimed, 'Go back, Young Wild West. I will save her!'" (1908)
38.
Baroness Orczy
–
Baroness Emma Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála Emmuska Orczy de Orci, pen name as Baroness Orczy, was a Hungarian-born British novelist, playwright, and artist of noble origin. Some of her paintings were exhibited at the Royal Academy in London, Emmuska Orczy was born in Tarnaörs, Heves County, Hungary, and was the daughter of composer Baron Félix Orczy de Orci and Countess Emma Wass de Szentegyed et Cege. Her grandfather, Baron László Orczy was a councillor, and also knight of the Sicilian order of Saint George. Her maternal grandparents were the Count Sámuel Wass de Szentegyed et Cege, member of the Hungarian parliament, emmas parents left their estate for Budapest in 1868, fearful of the threat of a peasant revolution. They lived in Budapest, Brussels, and Paris, where Emma studied music unsuccessfully, finally, in 1880, the 14 year old Emma and her family moved to London where they lodged with their countryman, Francis Pichler, at 162 Great Portland Street. Orczy attended West London School of Art and then Heatherleys School of Fine Art, although not destined to be a painter, it was at art school that she met a young illustrator named Montague MacLean Barstow, the son of an English clergyman, they married in 1894. It was the start of a joyful and happy marriage for close on half a century, one of happiness and understanding, of perfect friendship. They had very little money and Orczy started to work with her husband as a translator, john Montague Orczy-Barstow, their only child, was born on 25 February 1899. She started writing soon after his birth but her first novel and she did, however, find a small following with a series of detective stories in the Royal Magazine. Her next novel, In Marys Reign, did better and she submitted her novelization of the story under the same title to 12 publishers. While waiting for the decisions of these publishers, Fred Terry and it was translated and produced in other countries, and underwent several revivals. This theatrical success generated huge sales for the novel, the last Pimpernel book, Mamzelle Guillotine, was published in 1940. None of her three subsequent plays matched the success of The Scarlet Pimpernel and she also wrote popular mystery fiction and many adventure romances. Her Lady Molly of Scotland Yard was an example of a female detective as the main character. Other popular detective stories featured The Old Man in the Corner, Orczys novels were racy, mannered melodramas and she favoured historical fiction. Critic Mary Cadogan states, Orczys books are highly wrought and intensely atmospheric, in The Nest of the Sparrowhawk, for example, a malicious guardian in Puritan Kent tricks his beautiful, wealthy young ward into marrying him by disguising himself as an exiled French prince. He persuades his widowed sister-in-law to abet him in this plot, in which she unwittingly disgraces one of her long-lost sons, even though this novel had no link to The Scarlet Pimpernel other than its shared authorship, the publisher advertised it as part of The Scarlet Pimpernel Series. Orczys work was so successful that she was able to buy a house in Monte Carlo, Orczy was a firm believer in the superiority of the aristocracy, as well as being a supporter of British imperialism and militarism
Baroness Orczy
–
Portrait of Baroness Emma Orczy by
Bassano
Baroness Orczy
–
H.M. Brock's cover of Baroness Orczy's THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER, popular edition, Greening & Co., Ltd., London, 1910.
39.
Leigh Brackett
–
Leigh Douglass Brackett was an American writer, particularly of science fiction, and has been referred to as the Queen of Space Opera. She was also a screenwriter, known for her work on films as The Big Sleep, Rio Bravo, The Long Goodbye. Leigh Brackett was born December 7,1915 in Los Angeles, California, on December 31,1946, at age 31, she married Edmond Hamilton in San Gabriel, California, and moved with him to Kinsman, Ohio. She died of cancer in 1978 in Lancaster, California, Brackett was first published in her mid-twenties, the science fiction story Martian Quest, appeared in the February 1940 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. Bracketts first novel, No Good from a Corpse, published in 1944, was a mystery novel in the tradition of Raymond Chandler. In 1946 Brackett married science fiction author Edmond Hamilton and Planet Stories published the novella Lorelei of the Red Mist, Brackett finished the first half before turning it over to Ray Bradbury, so that she could leave to work on The Big Sleep. Brackett returned to writing after her cinema work, in 1948. With Queen of the Martian Catacombs, Brackett created Eric John Stark that she returned to. Stark, an orphan from Earth, is raised by the semi-sentient aboriginals of Mercury and he is saved by a Terran official, who adopts Stark and becomes his mentor. When threatened, Stark reverts to the primitive NChaka, the “man without a tribe” that he was on Mercury, from 1949 to 1951, Stark appeared in three tales, published in Planet Stories, Queen, Enchantress of Venus and Black Amazon of Mars. With this last story, Bracketts period of writing high adventure ended, Bracketts stories adopted an elegiac tone, no longer celebrating the conflicts of frontier worlds but lamenting the passing of civilizations, concentrating more on mood than plot. The reflective, introspective nature of these stories is indicated in the titles, The Last Days of Shandakor, Last Call. was published in the final issue of Planet Stories, always Bracketts most reliable market for science fiction. Other stories trickled out over the decade and old stories were revised and published as novels. A new production of this period was one of Bracketts most critically acclaimed science fiction novels and this novel describes an agrarian, technophobic society that developed after a nuclear war. Most of Bracketts writing after 1955 was for the more lucrative film and she and her husband shared Guest of Honor duties at the 22nd World Science Fiction Convention in Oakland, California. This trilogy brought Eric John Stark back for adventures upon the planet of Skaith. Often referred to as the Queen of space opera, Brackett also wrote planetary romance, Bracketts Skaith combines elements of her other worlds with fantasy elements. Though the influence of Edgar Rice Burroughs is apparent in Bracketts Mars stories, her Mars is set firmly in a world of interplanetary commerce and competition
Leigh Brackett
–
Brackett in 1941
Leigh Brackett
–
The Brackett-Bradbury collaboration "Lorelei of the Red Mist" took the cover of Planet Stories in 1946
Leigh Brackett
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Brackett's novelette "Citadel of Lost Ships" was the cover story in the March 1943 issue of Planet Stories
Leigh Brackett
–
Brackett's novella "Black Amazon of Mars" was the cover story in the March 1951 issue of Planet Stories
40.
Marion Zimmer Bradley
–
Zimmer Bradleys first child, David R. Bradley, and her brother, Paul Edwin Zimmer, also became published science fiction and fantasy authors. Born on a farm in Albany, New York, during the Great Depression and she was married to Robert Alden Bradley from October 26,1949 until their divorce on May 19,1964. They had a son, David Robert Bradley, during the 1950s she was introduced to the cultural and campaigning lesbian group the Daughters of Bilitis. After her divorce, Bradley married numismatist Walter H. Breen on June 3,1964 and they had a daughter, Moira Greyland, who is a professional harpist and singer, and a son, Mark Greyland. In 1965, Bradley graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, afterward, she moved to Berkeley, California, to pursue graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley between 1965 and 1967. In 1966, she helped found and named the Society for Creative Anachronism and was involved in developing several local groups, Bradley and Breen separated in 1979 but remained married, and continued a business relationship and lived on the same street for over a decade. They officially divorced on May 9,1990, the year Breen was arrested on child molestation charges after a 13-year-old boy reported that Breen had been molesting him for four years and she had known about Breens sexual interests and previously accepted his sexual abuse of a 14-year-old boy. While she was attending the College for Teachers in Albany, Bradley became involved in Western esoteric tradition and she later completed the Rosicrucian correspondence course. In the late 1950s or early 1960s, Bradley and Walter H. Breen founded the Aquarian Order of the Restoration based on the work of Dion Fortune, by 1961 she was formally initiating others, including Ramfis S. Firethorn. Bradley was active in Darkmoon Circle, which was founded in 1978 by several women who were members of her Aquarian Order of the Restoration, Bradley renovated her garage to provide a meeting room for Darkmoon Circle as well as for other local Pagan groups. In 1981 Bradley, Diana L. Paxson, and Elisabeth Waters incorporated the Center for Non-Traditional Religion, in the 1990s Bradley said she would return to Christianity, telling an interviewer, I just go regularly to the Episcopalian church. I feel that Ive gotten past it, I would like people to explore the possibilities. After suffering declining health for years, Bradley died at Alta Bates Medical Center in Berkeley on September 25,1999 and her ashes were later scattered at Glastonbury Tor in Somerset, England. In 2014, her daughter, Moira Greyland, accused her of abuse from the age of 3 to 12. I didnt want to hurt anyone she had helped, so I just kept my mouth shut. Greyland also claimed that she was not the victim and that she was one of the people who reported her father, Walter H. Breen, for child molestation. By her own admission Bradley was aware of her husbands behavior although she chose not to report him, among the first was John Scalzi, who within a day of the allegations being made public, described the allegations as horrific. Hugo Award winner Jim C. Hines wrote All of which makes the revelations about Marion Zimmer Bradley protecting a child rapist and molesting her own daughter
Marion Zimmer Bradley
–
Marion Zimmer Bradley
41.
The Swiss Family Robinson
–
The Swiss Family Robinson is a novel by Johann David Wyss, first published in 1812, about a Swiss family shipwrecked in the East Indies en route to Port Jackson, Australia. Wyss presents adventures as lessons in a history way and physical sciences. This resembles other educational books for young ones published about the same time, over the years there have been many versions of the story with episodes added, changed, or deleted. Perhaps the best-known English version is by William H. G. Kingston, other English editions that claim to include the whole of the Wyss-Montolieu narrative are by W. H. Davenport Adams and Mrs H. B. The closest English translation to the original is William Godwins 1816 translation, although movie and television adaptations typically name the family Robinson, it is not a Swiss name. The German title translates as The Swiss Robinson which identifies the novel as part of the Robinsonade genre, the novel opens with the family in the hold of a sailing ship, weathering a great storm. The ships passengers evacuate without them, and William and Elizabeth, as the ship tosses about, the father - William - prays that God will spare them. The ship survives the night and the family finds themselves within sight of a desert island. The next morning, they decide to get to the island they can see beyond the reef, with much effort, they construct a vessel out of tubs. After they fill the tubs with food and ammunition and all articles of value they can safely carry. Two dogs from the ship named Turk and Flora swim beside them, the ships cargo of livestock, guns & powder, carpentry tools, books, a disassembled pinnace, and provisions have survived. Upon reaching the island, the set up a makeshift camp. The father knows that they must prepare for a time on the island. William and his oldest son Fritz spend the day exploring the island. The family spends the next few days securing themselves against hunger, William and Fritz make several trips to the ship in their efforts to bring ashore everything useful from the vessel. The domesticated animals on the ship are towed back to the island, there is also a great store of firearms and ammunition, hammocks for sleeping, carpenter’s tools, lumber, cooking utensils, silverware, and dishes. Initially they construct a treehouse, but as time passes, they settle in a permanent dwelling in part of a cave. Fritz rescues a young Englishwoman shipwrecked elsewhere on their island, the book covers more than ten years
The Swiss Family Robinson
–
Illustration for an English edition by
Harry Rountree (1907)
The Swiss Family Robinson
–
The Map of "New Switzerland."
42.
Frederick Marryat
–
Captain Frederick Marryat was a British Royal Navy officer, a novelist, and an acquaintance of Charles Dickens. Marryat was born in Great George Street, Westminster, London, the son of Joseph Marryat, a merchant prince and member of Parliament, and his American wife Charlotte, née von Geyer. After trying to run away to sea several times, Marryat was permitted to enter the Royal Navy in 1806 as a midshipman on board HMS Imperieuse, a frigate commanded by Lord Cochrane. The Imperieuse shifted to operations in the Scheldt in 1809, where Marryat contracted malaria, after recuperating, Marryat returned to the Mediterranean in the 74-gun HMS Centaur and again saved a shipmate by leaping into the sea after him. He then sailed as a passenger to Bermuda in the 64-gun HMS Atlas, and from there to Halifax, Nova Scotia on the schooner HMS Chubb, shortly thereafter, he moved to the frigate HMS Spartan, participating in the capture of a number of American ships. On 26 December 1812, he was promoted to lieutenant, and as served in the sloop HMS Espiegle. Marryat led four barges from the ship on a punishing raid to Orleans, Massachusetts on December 19,1814. Initially, Marryat cut out an American schooner and three sloops, but managed to escape with just one sloop, the local militia avoided casualties while killing one Royal marine. He was promoted to commander on 13 June 1815, just as peace broke out, Marryat then turned to scientific studies. He invented a lifeboat, which earned him a medal from the Royal Humane Society. Based on his experience in the Napoleonic Wars escorting merchant ships in convoys, he developed a practical, during his scientific studies in 1818, he described a new gastropod genus Cyclostrema with the type species Cyclostrema cancellatum Marryat,1818. Around this time, Marryat collaborated with George Cruikshank the caricaturist to produce The New Union Club, in 1820, Marryat commanded the sloop HMS Beaver and temporarily commanded HMS Rosario for the purpose of bringing back to England the despatches announcing the death of Napoleon on Saint Helena. He also took the opportunity to make a sketch of Napoleons body on his deathbed and his artistic skills were modest, but his sketches of shipboard life above and below deck have considerable charm. In 1823, he was appointed to HMS Larne and took part in an expedition against Burma in 1824 and he was promoted to command the 28-gun HMS Tees, which gave him the rank of post-captain. He was back in England in 1826, in 1829, he was commanding the frigate HMS Ariadne on a mission to search for shoals around the Madeira and Canary Islands. This was an exercise and, between that and the recent publication of his first novel The Naval Officer, he decided to resign his commission in November 1830. From 1832 to 1835, Marryat edited The Metropolitan Magazine, additionally, he kept producing novels, his biggest success came with Mr Midshipman Easy in 1836. He lived in Brussels for a year, travelled in Canada and the United States, then moved to London in 1839 and he was in North America in 1837 when the Rebellion of that year broke out in Lower Canada, and served with the British forces in suppressing it
Frederick Marryat
–
Portrait by
John Simpson, 1826
43.
The Children of the New Forest
–
The Children of the New Forest is a childrens novel published in 1847 by Frederick Marryat. It is set in the time of the English Civil War, the story begins in 1647 when King Charles I has been defeated in the civil war and has fled from London towards the New Forest. Parliamentary soldiers have been sent to search the forest and decide to burn Arnwood, the house of Colonel Beverley, the four orphan children of the house, Edward, Humphrey, Alice and Edith, are believed to have died in the flames. However, they are saved by Jacob Armitage, a local verderer, under Armitages guidance, the children adapt from an aristocratic lifestyle to that of simple foresters. After Armitages death, Edward takes charge and the children develop and expand the farmstead and they are assisted by a gypsy boy, Pablo, who they rescue from a pitfall trap. A sub-plot involves a hostile Puritan gamekeeper named Corbould who seeks to harm Edward, Edward also encounters the sympathetic Puritan, Heatherstone, placed in charge of the Royal land in the New Forest, and rescues his daughter, Patience, in a house-fire. Edward leaves the cottage and works as a secretary for Heatherstone, disillusioned by this, and by Patiences apparent rejection of his declarations of love, Edward flees to France. His sisters are sent away to be brought up as aristocratic ladies, the Children of the New Forest was written during Marryats years of retirement in Norfolk, and it was his last novel published during his lifetime. Marryat would sometimes travel to Hampshire to stay at his brother Georges country house, Chewton Glen and it was here that he gathered material for his novel, which is set in and around the real-life manor of Arnewood just south of the village of Sway. Three miles east of Arnewood is the town of Lymington which also features in Marryats novel. The story is centred on the four Beverley children who learn to survive on their own in the forest and it celebrates the ideals of chivalry and bravery, tempered by modesty. The four children in the novel eventually become ideal models of manhood and womanhood, Marryat had rather conservative political opinions, and his story favours the Royalist cause, following as it does the fortunes of the children of a Royalist officer. However, one of the major characters is a sympathetically portrayed Roundhead named Heatherstone. Marryat had been wounded several times in his career, he understood the nature of war. Marryat suggests that good governance lies somewhere between King Charless insistence on the right of kings and Parliaments unjustifiable execution of the monarch. The homecoming and reconciliation at the end of the story are deliberately associated with the restoration of the monarchy, the Children of the New Forest was one of the first historical novels written for a young audience, and the first such novel which has endured. It was particularly successful in fixing the image of the English Civil War as a quarrel of opposites, the BBC has adapted the novel four times for television. These series were first shown in 1955,1964,1977, the 1998 series had a major departure from the original plot
The Children of the New Forest
–
1911 illustrated edition
The Children of the New Forest
–
Arnwood and Lymington on
John Speed 's 1611 map of Hampshire
44.
Harriet Martineau
–
Harriet Martineau was a British social theorist and Whig writer, often cited as the first female sociologist. She earned enough to be supported entirely by her writing, a feat for a woman in the Victorian era. A young Princess Victoria enjoyed reading Martineaus publications, the queen invited Martineau to her coronation in 1838—an event which Martineau described, in great and amusing detail, to her many readers. Martineau said of her own approach to writing, when one studies a society, one must focus on all its aspects, including key political, religious and she believed a thorough societal analysis was necessary to understand womens status under men. The novelist Margaret Oliphant said as a lecturer and politician she was less distinctively affected by her sex than perhaps any other, male or female. Martineau introduced feminist sociological perspectives into her writing on otherwise overlooked issues such as marriage, children, domestic and religious life, the sixth of eight children, Harriet Martineau was born in Norwich, England, where her father Thomas was a textile manufacturer. A highly respected Unitarian, he was deacon of the Octagon Chapel. Harriets mother was the daughter of a sugar refiner and a grocer, the Martineau family was of French Huguenot ancestry and professed Unitarian views. Her uncle was the surgeon Philip Meadows Martineau, whom she had enjoyed visiting at his nearby estate, Martineau was closest to her brother James, who became a clergyman in the tradition of the English Dissenters. According to the writer Diana Postlethwaite, Harriets relationship with her mother was strained and lacking affection, Martineau claimed her mother abandoned her to a wet nurse. Her ideals on domesticity and the faculty for housewifery, as described in her book Household Education. Her mother urged all her children to be well-read, but at the time opposed female pedantics with a sharp eye for feminine propriety. Her daughters could never be seen in public with a pen in their hand and her mother strictly enforced proper feminine behaviour, pushing her daughter to hold a sewing needle as well as the pen. Martineau began losing her senses of taste and smell at an age, becoming increasingly deaf. It was the beginning of health problems in her life. In 1821 she began to write anonymously for the Monthly Repository, a Unitarian periodical, in 1829, the familys textile business failed. Martineau, then 27 years old, stepped out of the roles of feminine propriety to earn a living for her family. Along with her needlework, she began selling her articles to the Monthly Repository, earning accolades and her regular work with the Repository helped establish her as a reliable and popular freelance writer
Harriet Martineau
–
Harriet Martineau
Harriet Martineau
Harriet Martineau
–
Martineau in her later years.
Harriet Martineau
–
Harriet Martineau's name on the lower section of the Reformers memorial, Kensal Green Cemetery
45.
William Henry Giles Kingston
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William Henry Giles Kingston, often credited as W. H. G. Kingston, was an English writer of boys adventure novels. William Henry Giles Kingston was born in Harley Street, London on 28 February 1814 and he was the eldest son of Lucy Henry Kingston and his wife Frances Sophia Rooke, daughter of Sir Giles Rooke, Judge of the Court of Common Pleas. Kingstons paternal grandfather John Kingston was a Member of Parliament who staunchly supported the Abolition of the Slave Trade, despite having a plantation in Demerara. His father Lucy entered into the business in Oporto, and Kingston lived there for many years, making frequent voyages to England. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge and afterwards entered his fathers wine business and his first book was The Circassian Chief, a story published in 1844. While still living in Oporto, he wrote The Prime Minister, a historical novel and he was afterwards a zealous volunteer and worked actively for the improvement of the condition of seamen. But from 1850, his occupation was writing books for boys, or editing boys annuals. He started the Union Jack, a paper for boys, only a few months before his death and he rewrote Richard Johnsons 1596 book The Seven Champions of Christendom to bring the language into more contemporary English. His writings occupy nine pages and a half of the British Museum Catalogue and they were very popular, his tales were quite innocuous, but most of them proved ephemeral. On 4 August 1853, Kingston married Agnes Kinloch, daughter of Captain Charles Kinloch of the 52nd Light Infantry who had served in the Peninsular War as aide-de-camp to General Sir John Hope, Agnes Kinloch was privately educated, as was the custom of the time. She bore her husband eight children but all died early, Kingstons brother George Kingston was a Canadian professor, meteorologist, author, and public servant. He has been called the father of Canadian Meteorology for successfully promoting and organising one of Canadas first national scientific services, beginning in 1860, Kingston suffered a number of financial reverses resulting from his publishing activities and, by 1868, he was very nearly bankrupt. In fact, he was forced to accept a grant of £50 from the Royal Literary Fund and, the financial troubles continued and resulted in Kingston living as a recluse during the last ten years of his life. Beginning in the 1870s, Kingston entered into a contract with publishers Sampson Low and these are the works for which Kingston is most remembered today. They were all published under his name, but the translations were actually done by his wife Agnes Kinloch Kingston. The Verne books which Mrs. Kingston translated are, The Mysterious Island, Sampson Low et al.3 volumes,1875, reprinted by Scribner, Armstrong, new York,1 volume,1876 Michael Strogoff, Sampson Low et al. Lippincott,1879 Kingston died at his home at 3 Brondesbury Villas, Willesden, Middlesex on 5 August 1880. The cause of death was cited on his certificate as Cancer of Kidney, Time not known
William Henry Giles Kingston
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Kingston in an 1884 portrait
William Henry Giles Kingston
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Cover of In the Rocky Mountains written by W. H. G. Kingston
46.
Robert Michael Ballantyne
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Robert Michael Ballantyne was a Scottish author of juvenile fiction who wrote more than 100 books. He was also an accomplished artist, and exhibited some of his water-colours at the Royal Scottish Academy, Ballantyne was born in Edinburgh on 24 April 1825, the ninth of ten children and the youngest son, to Alexander Thomson Ballantyne and his wife Anne. In 1832-33 the family is known to have living at 20 Fettes Row. A UK-wide banking crisis in 1825 resulted in the collapse of the Ballantyne printing business the year with debts of £130,000. Ballantyne went to Canada aged 16, and spent five years working for the Hudsons Bay Company and his longing for family and home during that period impressed him to start writing letters to his mother. Ballantyne recalled in his autobiographical Personal Reminiscences in Book Making that To this long-letter writing I attribute whatever small amount of facility in composition I may have acquired, in 1847 Ballantyne returned to Scotland to discover that his father had died. He published his first book the year, Hudsons Bay, or, Life in the Wilds of North America. In 1856 he gave up business to focus on his literary career, for instance, he spent some time living with the lighthouse keepers at the Bell Rock before writing The Lighthouse, and while researching for Deep Down he spent time with the tin miners of Cornwall. In 1866 Ballantyne married Jane Grant, with whom he had three sons and three daughters, Ballantyne spent his later years in Harrow, London, before moving to Italy for the sake of his health, possibly suffering from undiagnosed Ménières disease. He died in Rome on 8 February 1894, a Greater London Council plaque commemorates Ballantyne at Duneaves on Mount Park Road in Harrow. One of the young men influenced by Ballantyne was Robert Louis Stevenson and he was so impressed with the story of The Coral Island that he based portions of his famous book Treasure Island on themes found in Ballantyne. He honoured Ballantyne in the introduction to Treasure Island with the poem, Notes Bibliography Quayle. Ballantyne the brave, a Victorian writer and his family
Robert Michael Ballantyne
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R. M. Ballantyne, c. 1890
47.
G. A. Henty
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George Alfred Henty was a prolific English novelist and war correspondent. He is best known for his adventure stories that were popular in the late 19th century. His works include The Dragon & The Raven, For The Temple, Under Drakes Flag, G. A. Henty was born in Trumpington, near Cambridge. He was a child who had to spend long periods in bed. During his frequent illnesses he became a reader and developed a wide range of interests which he carried into adulthood. He attended Westminster School, London, and later Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and he left the university early without completing his degree to volunteer for the Army Hospital Commissariat when the Crimean War began. He was sent to the Crimea and while there he witnessed the conditions under which the British soldier had to fight. His letters home were filled with descriptions of what he saw. His father was impressed by his letters and sent them to The Morning Advertiser newspaper which printed them and this initial writing success was a factor in Hentys later decision to accept the offer to become a special correspondent, the early name for journalists now better known as war correspondents. Shortly before resigning from the army as a captain in 1859 he married Elizabeth Finucane, Elizabeth died in 1865 after a long illness and shortly after her death Henty began writing articles for the Standard newspaper. In 1866 the newspaper sent him as their special correspondent to report on the Austro-Italian War where he met Giuseppe Garibaldi. He went on to cover the 1868 British punitive expedition to Abyssinia, the Franco-Prussian War, the Ashanti War, the Carlist Rebellion in Spain and he also witnessed the opening of the Suez Canal and travelled to Palestine, Russia and India. Henty was a supporter of the British Empire all his life, according to literary critic Kathryn Castle, Henty. exemplified the ethos of the new imperialism. Hentys ideas about politics were influenced by such as Sir Charles Dilke. Henty once related in an interview how his storytelling skills grew out of tales told after dinner to his children and he wrote his first childrens book, Out on the Pampas in 1868, naming the books main characters after his children. The book was published by Griffith and Farran in November 1870 with a title page date of 1871 and his childrens novels typically revolved around a boy or young man living in troubled times. These ranged from the Punic War to more recent conflicts such as the Napoleonic Wars or the American Civil War, Hentys heroes – which occasionally included young ladies – are uniformly intelligent, courageous, honest and resourceful with plenty of pluck yet are also modest. These virtues have made Hentys novels popular today among many Christians, Henty usually researched his novels by ordering several books on the subject he was writing on from libraries, and consulting them before beginning writing
G. A. Henty
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G. A. Henty, by
Elliott & Fry.
G. A. Henty
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Funerary monument,
Brompton Cemetery, London
G. A. Henty
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Cover of the 1902 first edition of To Herat and Cabul, A Story of the First Afghan War by G. A. Henty and illustrations by Charles A. Sheldon, published by
Blackie and Son Ltd., London.
48.
Treasure Island
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Treasure Island is an adventure novel by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, narrating a tale of buccaneers and buried gold. Treasure Island is traditionally considered a story and is noted for its atmosphere, characters. It is one of the most frequently dramatized of all novels and it was first published as a book on 14 November 1883, by Cassell & Co. A seaman with intact legs shows up, frightening Billy—who drinks far too much rum—into a stroke, and Billy tells Jim that his former shipmates covet the contents of his sea chest. After a visit from yet another man, Billy has another stroke and dies, Jim and his mother unlock the sea chest, finding some money, a journal, and a map. The local physician, Dr. Livesey, deduces that the map is of an island where a deceased pirate—Captain Flint—buried a vast treasure, the district squire, Trelawney, proposes buying a ship and going after the treasure, taking Livesey as ships doctor and Jim as cabin boy. PART II—THE SEA COOK Several weeks later, Trelawney sends for Jim and Livesey and introduces them to Long John Silver, a one-legged Bristol tavern-keeper whom he has hired as ships cook. They also meet Captain Smollett, who tells them that he dislikes most of the crew on the voyage, after taking a few precautions, however, they set sail on Trelawnys schooner, the Hispaniola, for the distant island. During the voyage, the first mate, a drunkard, disappears overboard, and just before the island is sighted, Jim—concealed in an apple barrel—overhears Silver talking with two other crewmen. They are all former gentlemen ofortune in Flints crew and have planned a mutiny, the men still on the ship, led by the coxswain Israel Hands, run up the pirate flag. The next morning, Silver appears under a flag of truce, offering terms that the captain refuses, at Smolletts refusal to surrender the map, Silver threatens an attack, and, within a short while, the attack on the stockade is launched. PART V—MY SEA ADVENTURE After a battle, the surviving mutineers retreat, having lost six men, when Livesey leaves in search of Gunn, Jim runs away without permission and finds Gunns homemade coracle. After dark, he goes out and cuts the ship adrift, the two pirates on board, Hands and OBrien, interrupt their drunken quarrel to run on deck, but the ship—with Jims boat in her wake—is swept out to sea on the ebb tide. Exhausted, Jim falls asleep in the boat and wakens the next morning, bobbing along on the west coast of the island, eventually, he encounters the ship, which seems deserted, but getting on board, he finds OBrien dead and Hands badly wounded. He and Hands agree that they will beach the ship at an inlet on the northern coast of the island, as the ship is finally beached, Hands attempts to kill Jim but is himself killed in the attempt. Then, after securing the ship as well as he can, Jim goes back ashore, once there, in utter darkness, he enters the blockhouse—to be greeted by Silver and the remaining five mutineers, who have somehow taken over the stockade in his absence. PART VI—CAPTAIN SILVER Silver and the others argue about whether to kill Jim and he tells Jim that, when everyone found the ship was gone, the captains party agreed to a treaty whereby they gave up the stockade and the map. In the morning, the doctor arrives to treat the wounded and sick pirates, after he leaves, Silver and the others set out with the map, taking Jim along as hostage
Treasure Island
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Stevenson's map of Treasure Island
Treasure Island
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First edition
Treasure Island
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Robert Louis Stevenson
Treasure Island
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Dead Chest Island as viewed from Deadman's Bay,
Peter Island
