1.
Penguin Books
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Penguin Books is a British publishing house. It was founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, Penguins success demonstrated that large audiences existed for serious books. Penguin also had a significant impact on public debate in Britain, through its books on British culture, politics, the arts, and science. Penguin Books is now an imprint of the worldwide Penguin Random House and it is one of the largest English-language publishers, formerly known as the Big Six, now the Big Five. The first Penguin paperbacks were published in 1935, but at first only as an imprint of The Bodley Head with the books originally distributed from the crypt of Holy Trinity Church Marylebone, Penguin Books has its registered office in the City of Westminster, London, England. However the question of how publishers could reach a larger public had been the subject of a conference at Rippon Hall, inexpensive paperbacks did not initially appear viable to Bodley Head, since the deliberately low price of 6d. This helped Allen Lane purchase publication rights for some works more cheaply than he otherwise might have done since other publishers were convinced of the short term prospects of the business. By March 1936, ten months after the launch on 30 July 1935. It was Frost who in 1945 was entrusted with the reconstruction of Penguin Inc after the departure of its first managing director Ian Ballantine, from the outset, design was essential to the success of the Penguin brand. In the central panel, the author and title were printed in Gill Sans. The initial design was created by the then 21-year-old office junior Edward Young, series such as Penguin Specials and The Penguin Shakespeare had individual designs. Lane actively resisted the introduction of images for several years. Some recent publications of literature from that time have duplicated the original look, from 1937 and on, the headquarters of Penguin Books was at Harmondsworth west of London and so it remained until the 1990s when a merge with Viking involved the head office moving to London. Paper rationing was the problem of publishers during wartime, with the fall of France cutting off supply of esparto grass. This was particularly advantageous to Penguin who as a volume printer had enjoyed a successful year that year. Further in a deal with the Canadian Government, Penguin had agreed to publish editions for their armed forces for which they were paid in tons of paper. Penguin would receive 60 tons a month from Paper Supply in return for 10 titles a month in runs of 75,000 at 5d, however demand was exceeding supply on the home front leading Lane to seek a monopoly on army books made specifically for overseas distribution. This dominance over the paper supply put Penguin in a strong position after the war as rationing continued
2.
United Kingdom
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The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom or Britain, is a sovereign country in western Europe. Lying off the north-western coast of the European mainland, the United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. The Irish Sea lies between Great Britain and Ireland, with an area of 242,500 square kilometres, the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world and the 11th-largest in Europe. It is also the 21st-most populous country, with an estimated 65.1 million inhabitants, together, this makes it the fourth-most densely populated country in the European Union. The United Kingdom is a monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. The monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 6 February 1952, other major urban areas in the United Kingdom include the regions of Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester. The United Kingdom consists of four countries—England, Scotland, Wales, the last three have devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in their capitals, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, respectively. The relationships among the countries of the UK have changed over time, Wales was annexed by the Kingdom of England under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. A treaty between England and Scotland resulted in 1707 in a unified Kingdom of Great Britain, which merged in 1801 with the Kingdom of Ireland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922, leaving the present formulation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, there are fourteen British Overseas Territories. These are the remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in the 1920s, British influence can be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former colonies. The United Kingdom is a country and has the worlds fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP. The UK is considered to have an economy and is categorised as very high in the Human Development Index. It was the worlds first industrialised country and the worlds foremost power during the 19th, the UK remains a great power with considerable economic, cultural, military, scientific and political influence internationally. It is a nuclear weapons state and its military expenditure ranks fourth or fifth in the world. The UK has been a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since its first session in 1946 and it has been a leading member state of the EU and its predecessor, the European Economic Community, since 1973. However, on 23 June 2016, a referendum on the UKs membership of the EU resulted in a decision to leave. The Acts of Union 1800 united the Kingdom of Great Britain, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have devolved self-government
3.
London
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London /ˈlʌndən/ is the capital and most populous city of England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south east of the island of Great Britain and it was founded by the Romans, who named it Londinium. Londons ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its 1. 12-square-mile medieval boundaries. London is a global city in the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, research and development, tourism. It is crowned as the worlds largest financial centre and has the fifth- or sixth-largest metropolitan area GDP in the world, London is a world cultural capital. It is the worlds most-visited city as measured by international arrivals and has the worlds largest city airport system measured by passenger traffic, London is the worlds leading investment destination, hosting more international retailers and ultra high-net-worth individuals than any other city. Londons universities form the largest concentration of education institutes in Europe. In 2012, London became the first city to have hosted the modern Summer Olympic Games three times, London has a diverse range of people and cultures, and more than 300 languages are spoken in the region. Its estimated mid-2015 municipal population was 8,673,713, the largest of any city in the European Union, Londons urban area is the second most populous in the EU, after Paris, with 9,787,426 inhabitants at the 2011 census. The citys metropolitan area is the most populous in the EU with 13,879,757 inhabitants, the city-region therefore has a similar land area and population to that of the New York metropolitan area. London was the worlds most populous city from around 1831 to 1925, Other famous landmarks include Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Piccadilly Circus, St Pauls Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square, and The Shard. The London Underground is the oldest underground railway network in the world, the etymology of London is uncertain. It is an ancient name, found in sources from the 2nd century and it is recorded c.121 as Londinium, which points to Romano-British origin, and hand-written Roman tablets recovered in the city originating from AD 65/70-80 include the word Londinio. The earliest attempted explanation, now disregarded, is attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae and this had it that the name originated from a supposed King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. From 1898, it was accepted that the name was of Celtic origin and meant place belonging to a man called *Londinos. The ultimate difficulty lies in reconciling the Latin form Londinium with the modern Welsh Llundain, which should demand a form *lōndinion, from earlier *loundiniom. The possibility cannot be ruled out that the Welsh name was borrowed back in from English at a later date, and thus cannot be used as a basis from which to reconstruct the original name. Until 1889, the name London officially applied only to the City of London, two recent discoveries indicate probable very early settlements near the Thames in the London area
4.
Western canon
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The Western canon is the body of books, music, and art that scholars generally accept as the most important and influential in shaping Western culture. Some examples of media such as cinema have attained a precarious position in the canon. There has been a debate over the nature and status of the canon since at least the 1960s, much of which is rooted in critical theory, feminism, critical race theory. The Bible, a product of Middle Eastern culture, has been a force in shaping Western culture, and has inspired some of the great monuments of human thought, literature. Although the term is associated with the Western canon, it can be applied to works of literature, music and art, etc. from all traditions. Historically, the word refers to a work of a high standard produced in order to obtain membership of a Guild or Academy. The first writer to use the classic was Aulus Gellius. Such classification began with the Greeks’ ranking their cultural works, with the word canon, contemporarily, the Western canon defines the best of Western culture. In the ancient world, at the Alexandrian Library, scholars coined the Greek term Hoi enkrithentes to identify the writers in the canon. There has been a debate over the nature and status of the canon since at least the 1960s, much of which is rooted in critical theory, feminism, critical race theory. Classicist Bernard Knox made direct reference to this topic when he delivered his 1992 Jefferson Lecture, some intellectuals have championed a high conservative modernism that insists that universal truths exist, and have opposed approaches that deny the existence of universal truths. Many argued that law was the repository of timeless truths. Bloom further comments, But one thing is certain, wherever the Great Books make up a part of the curriculum. His book was cited by some intellectuals for its argument that the classics contained universal truths. Defenders maintain that those who undermine the canon do so out of political interests. Ironically, the tradition is now regarded as oppressive. The texts once served a function, now we are told that it is the texts which must be unmasked. One of the objections to a canon of literature is the question of authority
5.
Odyssey
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The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the Odyssey is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second-oldest extant work of Western literature, the Iliad is the oldest. Scholars believe the Odyssey was composed near the end of the 8th century BC, somewhere in Ionia, the poem mainly focuses on the Greek hero Odysseus, king of Ithaca, and his journey home after the fall of Troy. It takes Odysseus ten years to reach Ithaca after the ten-year Trojan War. In his absence, it is assumed Odysseus has died, and his wife Penelope and son Telemachus must deal with a group of suitors, the Mnesteres or Proci. The Odyssey continues to be read in the Homeric Greek and translated into languages around the world. Many scholars believe the poem was composed in an oral tradition by an aoidos, perhaps a rhapsode. The details of the ancient oral performance and the conversion to a written work inspire continual debate among scholars. The Odyssey was written in a dialect of Greek—a literary amalgam of Aeolic Greek, Ionic Greek. Among the most noteworthy elements of the text are its non-linear plot, in the English language as well as many others, the word odyssey has come to refer to an epic voyage. The Odyssey has a lost sequel, the Telegony, which was not written by Homer and it was usually attributed in antiquity to Cinaethon of Sparta. In one source, the Telegony was said to have stolen from Musaeus by either Eugamon or Eugammon of Cyrene. The Odyssey begins ten years after the end of the ten-year Trojan War, and Odysseus has still not returned home from the war. Odysseus protectress, the goddess Athena, requests to Zeus, king of the gods, to finally allow Odysseus to return home when Odysseus enemy, then, disguised as a Taphian chieftain named Mentes, she visits Telemachus to urge him to search for news of his father. He offers her hospitality, they observe the suitors dining rowdily while the bard Phemius performs a poem for them. Penelope objects to Phemius theme, the Return from Troy, because it reminds her of her missing husband and that night Athena, disguised as Telemachus, finds a ship and crew for the true prince. The next morning, Telemachus calls an assembly of citizens of Ithaca to discuss what should be done with the suitors. Accompanied by Athena, he departs for the Greek mainland and the household of Nestor, most venerable of the Greek warriors at Troy, now at home in Pylos
6.
Robert Graves
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Robert von Ranke Graves was an English poet, novelist, critic and classicist. He produced more than 140 works, Irish literature deeply affected Graves White Goddess theories, specifically the genre aisling. He earned his living from writing, particularly historical novels such as I, Claudius, King Jesus, The Golden Fleece. He also was a prominent translator of Classical Latin and Ancient Greek texts, his versions of The Twelve Caesars and The Golden Ass remain popular, for their clarity, Graves was awarded the 1934 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for both I, Claudius and Claudius the God. Graves was born into a family in Wimbledon, then part of Surrey. Gravess mother was from a recently ennobled German family, the eldest daughter of Heinrich von Ranke, a professor of medicine at the University of Munich and she was also a greatniece of the German historian Leopold von Ranke. At school, Graves was enrolled as Robert von Ranke Graves and in Germany his books are published under that name but before and during the First World War, the name caused him difficulties. In August 1916 an officer who disliked him spread the rumour that he was a spy, the problem resurfaced in a minor way in the Second World War, when a suspicious rural policeman blocked his appointment to the Special Constabulary. Gravess eldest half-brother, Philip Perceval Graves, achieved note as a journalist and his brother, Charles Patrick Graves, was a writer. Among the masters his chief influence was George Mallory, who introduced him to contemporary literature, in his final year at Charterhouse, he won a classical exhibition to St Johns College, Oxford but did not take his place there until after the war. At the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, Graves enlisted almost immediately and he published his first volume of poems, Over the Brazier, in 1916. He developed a reputation as a war poet and was one of the first to write realistic poems about experience of frontline conflict. In later years, he omitted his war poems from his collections, at the Battle of the Somme, he was so badly wounded by a shell-fragment through the lung that he was expected to die and was officially reported as having died of wounds. He gradually recovered and, apart from a spell back in France. One of Gravess friends at this time was the poet Siegfried Sassoon, in 1917, Sassoon rebelled against the conduct of the war by making a public antiwar statement. Graves feared Sassoon could face a court martial and intervened with the authorities, persuading them that Sassoon was suffering from shell shock. As a result, Sassoon was sent to Craiglockhart, a hospital in Edinburgh. Graves also suffered shell shock, or neurasthenia as it was then called, but he was never hospitalised for it, I thought of going back to France
7.
Dorothy L. Sayers
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Dorothy Leigh Sayers was a renowned English crime writer, poet, playwright, essayist, translator, and Christian humanist. She was also a student of classical and modern languages, however, Sayers herself considered her translation of Dantes Divine Comedy to be her best work. She is also known for her plays, literary criticism, Sayers was an only child, born on 13 June 1893 at the Headmasters House, Christ Church Cathedral School, Oxford. Her father, the Rev. Henry Sayers, M. A. was a chaplain of Christ Church, when she was six, he started teaching her Latin. She grew up in the village of Bluntisham-cum-Earith in Huntingdonshire after her father was given the living there as rector. From 1909 she was educated at the Godolphin School, a school in Salisbury. Her father later moved to the living of Christchurch, in Cambridgeshire. In 1912, Sayers won a scholarship to Somerville College, Oxford where she studied modern languages and she finished with first-class honours in 1915. Women could not be awarded degrees at that time, but Sayers was among the first to receive a degree when the position changed a few years later and her experience of Oxford academic life eventually inspired her penultimate Peter Wimsey novel, Gaudy Night. Her father was from Littlehampton, West Sussex, and her mother was born at The Chestnuts, Millbrook, Hampshire, to Frederick Leigh, Sayerss Aunt Amy, her mothers sister, married Henry Richard Shrimpton. Sayerss first book of poetry was published in 1916 as OP, I by Blackwell Publishing in Oxford. Her second book of poems, Catholic Tales and Christian Songs, was published in 1918, later, Sayers worked for Blackwells and then as a teacher in several locations, including Normandy, France. Sayerss longest employment was from 1922 to 1931 as a copywriter at S. H, bensons advertising agency, located at International Buildings, Kingsway, London. Sayers was quite successful as an advertiser and her collaboration with artist John Gilroy resulted in The Mustard Club for Colmans Mustard and the Guinness Zoo advertisements, variations of which still appear today. One famous example was the Toucan, his bill arching under a glass of Guinness, with Sayerss jingle and she used the advertising industry as the setting of Murder Must Advertise, where she describes the role of truth in advertising. The firm of Pyms Publicity, Ltd, now, Mr. Pym is a man of rigid morality—except, of course, as regards his profession, whose essence is to tell plausible lies for money— How about truth in advertising. Of course, there is truth in advertising. Theres yeast in bread, but you cant make bread with yeast alone, is like leaven, which a woman hid in three measures of meal
8.
Minimalism
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In visual arts, music, and other mediums, minimalism is a style that uses pared-down design elements. Minimalism began in post–World War II Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s, prominent artists associated with minimalism include Donald Judd, John McCracken, Agnes Martin, Dan Flavin, Robert Morris, Anne Truitt, and Frank Stella. It derives from the reductive aspects of modernism and is interpreted as a reaction against abstract expressionism. Minimalism in music often features repetition and iteration such as those of the compositions of La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, the term minimalist often colloquially refers to anything that is spare or stripped to its essentials. It has accordingly been used to describe the plays and novels of Samuel Beckett, the films of Robert Bresson, the stories of Raymond Carver, and the automobile designs of Colin Chapman. The word was first used in English in the early 20th century to describe a 1913 composition by the Russian painter Kasimir Malevich of a square on a white ground. Guggenheim Museum curated by Lawrence Alloway also in 1966 that showcased Geometric abstraction in the American art world via Shaped canvas, Color Field, in the wake of those exhibitions and a few others the art movement called minimal art emerged. Minimal art is inspired in part by the paintings of Barnett Newman, Ad Reinhardt, Josef Albers, and the works of artists as diverse as Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Giorgio Morandi. Minimalism was also a reaction against the painterly subjectivity of Abstract Expressionism that had been dominant in the New York School during the 1940s and 1950s. The philosopher or art historian who can envision me—or anyone at all—arriving at aesthetic judgments in this way reads shockingly more into himself or herself than into my article. They very explicitly stated that their art was not about self-expression, in general, minimalisms features included geometric, often cubic forms purged of much metaphor, equality of parts, repetition, neutral surfaces, and industrial materials. Robert Morris, a theorist and artist, wrote a three part essay, Notes on Sculpture 1-3, originally published across three issues of Artforum in 1966. In these essays, Morris attempted to define a conceptual framework and formal elements for himself and these essays paid great attention to the idea of the gestalt - parts. Bound together in such a way that create a maximum resistance to perceptual separation. Morris later described an art represented by a marked lateral spread, the general shift in theory of which this essay is an expression suggests the transition into what would later be referred to as postminimalism. Stellas decisions about structures on the front surface of the canvas were therefore not entirely subjective, in the show catalog, Carl Andre noted, Art excludes the unnecessary. Frank Stella has found it necessary to paint stripes, there is nothing else in his painting. Because of a tendency in art to exclude the pictorial, illusionistic and fictive in favor of the literal, there was a movement away from painterly
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Typeface
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In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font was a set of type, one piece for each glyph. In modern usage, with the advent of digital typography, font is frequently synonymous with typeface, in particular, the use of vector or outline fonts means that different sizes of a typeface can be dynamically generated from one design. The word font derives from Middle French fonte melted, a casting, the term refers to the process of casting metal type at a type foundry. In a manual printing house the word font would refer to a set of metal type that would be used to typeset an entire page. Unlike a digital typeface it would not include a definition of each character. A font when bought new would often be sold as 12pt 14A 34a, meaning that it would be a size 12-point font containing 14 uppercase As, given the name upper and lowercase because of which case the metal type was located in, otherwise known as majuscule and minuscule. The rest of the characters would be provided in quantities appropriate for the distribution of letters in that language. Some metal type characters required in typesetting, such as dashes, spaces and line-height spacers, were not part of a specific font, line spacing is still often called leading, because the strips used for line spacing were made of lead. In the 1880s–90s, hot lead typesetting was invented, in which type was cast as it was set, either piece by piece or in entire lines of type at one time. In European alphabetic scripts, i. e. Latin, Cyrillic and Greek, the main properties are the stroke width, called weight, the style or angle. The regular or standard font is sometimes labeled roman, both to distinguish it from bold or thin and from italic or oblique. The keyword for the default, regular case is often omitted for variants and never repeated, otherwise it would be Bulmer regular italic, Bulmer bold regular, Roman can also refer to the language coverage of a font, acting as a shorthand for Western European. Different fonts of the same typeface may be used in the work for various degrees of readability and emphasis. The weight of a font is the thickness of the character outlines relative to their height. A typeface may come in fonts of many weights, from ultra-light to extra-bold or black, four to six weights are not unusual, many typefaces for office, web and non-professional use come with just a normal and a bold weight which are linked together. If no bold weight is provided, many renderers support faking a bolder font by rendering the outline a second time at an offset, the base weight differs among typefaces, that means one normal font may appear bolder than some other normal font. For example, fonts intended to be used in posters are often quite bold by default while fonts for long runs of text are rather light, therefore, weight designations in font names may differ in regard to the actual absolute stroke weight or density of glyphs in the font
10.
Breakfast at Tiffany's (novella)
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Breakfast at Tiffanys is a novella by Truman Capote published in 1958. The main character, Holly Golightly, is one of Capotes best-known creations, in autumn 1943, the unnamed narrator becomes friends with Holly Golightly. The two are tenants in an apartment in Manhattans Upper East Side. Holly is a girl turned New York café society girl. As such, she has no job and lives by socializing with men, who take her to clubs and restaurants. According to Capote, Golightly is not a prostitute but an American geisha, Holly likes to shock people with carefully selected tidbits from her personal life or her outspoken viewpoints on various topics. Over the course of a year, she reveals herself to the narrator. Joe Bell, A bartender acquainted with both Fred and Holly, Mag Wildwood, Hollys friend and sometime roommate, a fellow socialite and model. Rusty Trawler, A presumably wealthy man, thrice divorced, well known in society circles, josé Ybarra-Jaegar, A Brazilian diplomat, who is the companion of Mag Wildwood and, later, of Holly. Doc Golightly, A veterinarian from Texas, whom Holly married as a teenager, O. J. Berman, A Hollywood agent, who has discovered Holly and groomed her to become a professional actress. Salvatore Sally Tomato, A convicted racketeer, whom Holly visits weekly in Sing Sing prison, madame Sapphia Spanella, Another tenant in the brownstone. Yunioshi, A photographer, who lives in an apartment on the top floor of the brownstone where Holly lives, in early drafts of the story Holly was named Connie Gustafson, Capote later changed her name to Holiday Golightly. He apparently based the character of Holly on several different women, capote’s biographer Gerald Clarke wrote half the women he knew. claimed to be the model for his wacky heroine. Clarke also wrote of the similarities between the author himself and the character, Capote was also unsuccessfully sued for libel and invasion of privacy by a Manhattan resident named Bonnie Golightly who claimed that he had based Holly on her. According to the biographer of Joan McCracken, McCracken had a violent dressing room outburst after learning of the death of her brother. McCrackens biographer suggests that Capote used this event as a model for a scene in which Holly reacts to her brothers death overseas, McCracken and her husband Jack Dunphy were close friends of Capote, and Dunphy became Capotes companion after his divorce from the actress. In the novella, Holly Golightly is also depicted singing songs from Oklahoma, accompanying herself on a guitar, and owning The Baseball Guide, which was edited by McCrackens uncle. Breakfast at Tiffanys was originally sold to Harpers Bazaar for $2,000, yet Hearst ordered Harpers not to run the novella anyway
11.
The Great Gatsby
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The story primarily concerns the young and mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his quixotic passion and obsession for the beautiful former debutante Daisy Buchanan. Progress was slow, with Fitzgerald completing his first draft following a move to the French Riviera in 1924 and his editor, Maxwell Perkins, felt the book was vague and persuaded the author to revise over the next winter. First published by Scribners in April 1925, The Great Gatsby received mixed reviews and sold poorly, in its first year, Fitzgerald died in 1940, believing himself to be a failure and his work forgotten. However, the experienced a revival during World War II. Today, The Great Gatsby is widely considered to be a literary classic, in 1998, the Modern Library editorial board voted it the 20th centurys best American novel and second best English-language novel of the same time period. Set on the prosperous Long Island of 1922, The Great Gatsby provides a social history of America during the Roaring Twenties within its fictional narrative. Fitzgerald educates his readers about the society of the Roaring Twenties by placing a timeless. Fitzgeralds visits to Long Islands north shore and his experience attending parties at mansions inspired The Great Gatsbys setting, today, there are a number of theories as to which mansion was the inspiration for the book. One possibility is Lands End, a notable Gold Coast Mansion where Fitzgerald may have attended a party, many of the events in Fitzgeralds early life are reflected throughout The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald was a man from Minnesota, and like Nick, he was educated at an Ivy League school. Fitzgerald is also similar to Jay Gatsby, in that he fell in love while stationed far from home in the military, Fitzgerald became a second lieutenant, and was stationed at Camp Sheridan, in Montgomery, Alabama. There he met and fell in love with a wild seventeen-year-old beauty named Zelda Sayre, Zelda finally agreed to marry him, but her preference for wealth, fun, and leisure led her to delay their wedding until he could prove a success. Like Nick in The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald found this new lifestyle seductive and exciting, in many ways, The Great Gatsby represents Fitzgeralds attempt to confront his conflicting feelings about the Jazz Age. Like Gatsby, Fitzgerald was driven by his love for a woman who symbolized everything he wanted, even as she led him toward everything he despised. In her book Careless People, Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby, based on her forensic search for clues, she asserts that the two victims in the Hall-Mills murder case inspired the characters who were murdered in The Great Gatsby. The main events of the novel take place in the summer of 1922, Nick Carraway, a Yale graduate and veteran of the Great War from the Midwest—who serves as the novels narrator—takes a job in New York as a bond salesman. Nick drives around the bay to East Egg for dinner at the home of his cousin, Daisy Fay Buchanan, and her husband, Tom and they introduce Nick to Jordan Baker, an attractive, cynical young golfer with whom Nick begins a romantic relationship. She reveals to Nick that Tom has a mistress, Myrtle Wilson, who lives in the valley of ashes, not long after this revelation, Nick travels to New York City with Tom and Myrtle to an apartment Tom keeps for his affairs with Myrtle and others
12.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
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The Picture of Dorian Gray is a philosophical novel by Oscar Wilde, first published complete in the July 1890 issue of Lippincotts Monthly Magazine. The magazines editor feared the story was indecent, and without Wildes knowledge, the content, style, and presentation of the preface made it famous in its own right, as a literary and artistic manifesto. The only novel written by Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray exists in several versions, as literature of the 19th century, The Picture of Dorian Gray is an example of Gothic fiction with strong themes interpreted from Faust. Through Basil, Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, and he soon is enthralled by the aristocrats hedonistic worldview, newly understanding that his beauty will fade, Dorian expresses the desire to sell his soul, to ensure that the picture, rather than he, will age and fade. The wish is granted, and Dorian pursues a life of varied and amoral experiences, while staying young and beautiful, all the while his portrait ages. The plot of the varies between each of the published versions. The summary below deals with the longest version, the 1891 novel, however, certain episodes described—in particular Dorians encounter with, and murder of, James Vane—do not appear in the version originally submitted by Wilde to Lippincotts. While sitting for the painting, Dorian listens to Lord Henry espousing his hedonistic world view and this prompts Dorian to wish that the painted image of himself would age instead of himself. Under the hedonist influence of Lord Henry, Dorian fully explores his sensuality and he discovers the actress Sibyl Vane, who performs Shakespeare plays in a dingy, working-class theatre. Dorian approaches and courts her, and soon proposes marriage, the enamoured Sibyl calls him Prince Charming, and swoons with the happiness of being loved, but her protective brother, James, warns that if Prince Charming harms her, he will murder him. Dorian invites Basil and Lord Henry to see Sibyl perform in Romeo, Sibyl, too enamoured with Dorian to act, performs poorly, which makes both Basil and Lord Henry think Dorian has fallen in love with Sibyl because of her beauty instead of her acting talent. Embarrassed, Dorian rejects Sibyl, telling her that acting was her beauty, without that, on returning home, Dorian notices that the portrait has changed, his wish has come true, and the man in the portrait bears a subtle sneer of cruelty. Conscience-stricken and lonely, Dorian decides to reconcile with Sibyl, but he is too late, Dorian then understands that, where his life is headed, lust and good looks shall suffice. Dorian locks the portrait up, and over the eighteen years, he experiments with every vice. One night, before leaving for Paris, Basil goes to Dorians house to ask him about rumours of his self-indulgent sensualism, Dorian does not deny his debauchery, and takes Basil to see the portrait. The portrait has become so hideous that Basil is only able to identify it as his work by the signature he affixes to all his portraits, Basil is horrified, and beseeches Dorian to pray for salvation. In anger, Dorian blames his fate on Basil, and stabs him to death, Dorian then calmly blackmails an old friend, the scientist Alan Campbell, into using his knowledge of chemistry to destroy the body of Basil Hallward. Alan later kills himself over the deed, to escape the guilt of his crime, Dorian goes to an opium den, where James Vane is unknowingly present
