1.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He wrote the poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan and his critical work, especially on William Shakespeare, was highly influential, and he helped introduce German idealist philosophy to English-speaking culture. Coleridge coined many words and phrases, including suspension of disbelief. He was an influence on Ralph Waldo Emerson and American transcendentalism. Throughout his adult life Coleridge had crippling bouts of anxiety and depression, it has been speculated that he had bipolar disorder and he was physically unhealthy, which may have stemmed from a bout of rheumatic fever and other childhood illnesses. He was treated for these conditions with laudanum, which fostered a lifelong opium addiction, Coleridge was born on 21 October 1772 in the town of Ottery St Mary in Devon, England. He had previously been Master of Hugh Squiers School in South Molton, Devon, John Coleridge had three children by his first wife. Samuel was the youngest of ten by the Reverend Mr. Coleridges second wife, Anne Bowden, probably the daughter of John Bowden, Mayor of South Molton, Devon, Coleridge suggests that he took no pleasure in boyish sports but instead read incessantly and played by himself. At that school Coleridge became friends with Charles Lamb, a schoolmate, in fancy I can almost hear him now, exclaiming Harp. Pen and ink, boy, you mean, oh aye. the cloister-pump, I suppose. Be this as it may, there was one custom of our masters and he would often permit our theme exercises. To accumulate, till each lad had four or five to be looked over, throughout his life, Coleridge idealised his father as pious and innocent, while his relationship with his mother was more problematic. His childhood was characterised by attention seeking, which has linked to his dependent personality as an adult. He was rarely allowed to return home during the term. He later wrote of his loneliness at school in the poem Frost at Midnight, With unclosed lids, from 1791 until 1794, Coleridge attended Jesus College, Cambridge. In 1792, he won the Browne Gold Medal for an ode that he wrote on the slave trade, afterwards, he was rumoured to have had a bout of severe depression. His brothers arranged for his discharge a few months later under the reason of insanity and he was readmitted to Jesus College, at Jesus College, Coleridge was introduced to political and theological ideas then considered radical, including those of the poet Robert Southey. Coleridge joined Southey in a plan, soon abandoned, to found a utopian society, called Pantisocracy
2.
Sawing a woman in half
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Sawing a woman in half is a generic name for a number of stage magic tricks in which a person is apparently sawn or divided into two or more pieces. There remains a debate about the origin of sawing illusions, with some saying a magician named Torrini may have performed the first version in front of Pope Pius VII in 1809. However it is likely that the story is a fiction which has its roots in the writings of the famous French magician Jean Robert-Houdin. In his Memoirs, written in 1858, Robert-Houdin described an illusion performed by a magician named Torrini. Modern magic inventor and historian Jim Steinmeyer has concluded there was probably no real Torrini. It was suggested during a case in 1922 that the trick can be traced back to ancient Egypt. Wherever the idea originated, until the 1920s it remained just an idea for an effect and it is generally accepted that the first public performance of a sawing illusion was achieved by British magician P. T. Selbit in January 1921 at the Finsbury Park Empire theatre in London and his trick, which he billed as Sawing Through A Woman, was significantly different from what a modern audience would expect. Selbits assistant was locked inside a wooden crate and could not be seen. The question of who was the first woman to be sawn in half has received less publicity than the question of which magician first presented the illusion. In the public performance the role of victim was taken by principal assistant, later in 1921, Horace Goldin, a magician working in the United States, presented the first version which might look familiar to modern audiences. Goldins assistant lay in a box from which her feet, head, Goldin sawed through the middle of the box, inserting metal sheets to cover the cut ends, and then pushed the two halves a little way apart. This process was reversed, and the assistant released unharmed. Goldin later developed an illusion that dispensed with boxes and used a large buzzsaw. The success of Selbit and then Goldin led to more and more trying to imitate them with copies or improved versions of sawing illusions. By November 1921 the Thayer magic company in America was advertising a version for sale, a complete prop from Thayer would cost $175 or they would sell plans for $5. There are many sawing tricks with significant differences in their basic effect, in some, the illusion is merely of a blade passing through an assistants body, while in others it appears that the assistant is severed into two pieces that are moved apart. Some so-called sawing illusions do not actually involve a saw but instead use plain blades or blunt dividing panels, One major group of tricks involves an assistant in a box, which conceals his or her body from view while any cutting takes place
3.
Black and white
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Black and white, often abbreviated B/W or B&W, and hyphenated black-and-white when used as an adjective, is any of several monochrome forms in visual arts. Black-and-white images are not usually starkly contrasted black and white and they combine black and white in a continuum producing a range of shades of gray. Even when most studios had the capability to make color films they were not heavily utilized as using the Technicolor process was expensive, for the years 1940–1966, a separate Academy Award for Best Art Direction was given for black-and-white movies along with one for color. Television, Television program was first transmitted in black-and-white, scottish inventor John Logie Baird demonstrated the worlds first color television transmission on July 3,1928 using a mechanical process. Some color broadcasts in the US began in the 1950s, with color becoming common in industrialized nations during the late 1960s. In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission settled on a color NTSC standard in 1953, color television became more widespread in the U. S. between 1963 and 1967, when the CBS and ABC networks joined NBC in broadcasting full color schedules. Canada began airing color television in 1966 while the United Kingdom began to use a different color system from July 1967 known as PAL. The Republic Of Ireland followed in 1970, in China, black and white television sets were the norm until as late as the 1990s, color TVs not outselling them until about 1989. While seldom used now, many consumer camcorders have the ability to record in black-and-white. Photography, Photographs were either black-and-white or shades of sepia, color photography was originally rare and expensive and again often containing inaccurate hues. Color photography became more common from the mid-20th century, Today, black-and-white is a niche market for photographers who use the medium for artistic purposes. This can take the form of film or digital conversion to grayscale. For amateur use certain companies such as Kodak manufactured black-and-white disposable cameras until 2009, also, certain films are produced today which give black-and-white images using the ubiquitous C41 color process. Printing press, Most American newspapers were black-and-white until the early 1980s, The New York Times, some claim that USA Today was the major impetus for the change to color. In the UK, color was only introduced from the mid-1980s. Even today, many newspapers restrict color photographs to the front, similarly, daily comic strips in newspapers were traditionally black-and-white with color reserved for Sunday strips. Sometimes color is reserved for the cover, magazines such as Jet magazine were either all or mostly black-and-white until the end of the 2000s when it became all-color. Manga are typically published in black-and-white although now it is part of its image, many school yearbooks are still entirely or mostly in black-and-white
4.
Biographia Literaria
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The work is long and seemingly loosely structured, and although there are autobiographical elements, it is not a straightforward or linear autobiography. The work was intended as a mere preface to a collected volume of his poems, explaining and justifying his own style. In the first part of the work Coleridge is mainly concerned with showing the evolution of his philosophic creed, the author believed in the self-sufficing power of absolute Genius and distinguished between genius and talent as between an egg and an egg-shell. The book has essays on philosophy. In particular, it discusses and engages the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, being fluent in German, Coleridge was one of the first major English literary figures to translate and discuss Schelling, in particular. The later chapters of the deal with the nature of poetry. A critique on the qualities of Wordsworths poetry concludes the volume, the book contains Coleridges celebrated and vexed distinction between “imagination” and “fancy”. Chapter XIV is the origin of the famous concept of a “willing suspension of disbelief”. Critics have reacted strongly to the Biographia Literaria, early reactions were that it was a demonstration of Coleridges opiate-driven decline into ill health. Recent re-evaluations have given it more credit, while contemporary critics recognize the degree to which Coleridge borrowed from his sources, they also see in the work far more structure and planning than is apparent on first glance. This article incorporates text from a now in the public domain
5.
Wordsworth
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William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads. Wordsworths magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude, a poem of his early years that he revised and expanded a number of times. It was posthumously titled and published, before which it was known as the poem to Coleridge. Wordsworth was Britains Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death from pleurisy on 23 April 1850 and his sister, the poet and diarist Dorothy Wordsworth, to whom he was close all his life, was born the following year, and the two were baptised together. Wordsworths father was a representative of James Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale and, through his connections. He was frequently away from home on business, so the young William and his siblings had little involvement with him and remained distant from him until his death in 1783. However, he did encourage William in his reading, and in particular set him to commit to memory large portions of verse, including works by Milton, Shakespeare, William was also allowed to use his fathers library. William also spent time at his mothers house in Penrith, Cumberland, where he was exposed to the moors, but did not get along with his grandparents or his uncle. His hostile interactions with them distressed him to the point of contemplating suicide, Wordsworth was taught both the Bible and the Spectator, but little else. It was at the school in Penrith that he met the Hutchinsons, including Mary, after the death of his mother, in 1778, Wordsworths father sent him to Hawkshead Grammar School in Lancashire and sent Dorothy to live with relatives in Yorkshire. She and William did not meet again for nine years. Wordsworth made his debut as a writer in 1787 when he published a sonnet in The European Magazine and that same year he began attending St Johns College, Cambridge. He received his BA degree in 1791 and he returned to Hawkshead for the first two summers of his time at Cambridge, and often spent later holidays on walking tours, visiting places famous for the beauty of their landscape. In 1790 he went on a tour of Europe, during which he toured the Alps extensively, and visited nearby areas of France, Switzerland. In November 1791, Wordsworth visited Revolutionary France and became enchanted with the Republican movement and he fell in love with a French woman, Annette Vallon, who in 1792 gave birth to their daughter Caroline. Financial problems and Britains tense relations with France forced him to return to England alone the following year. The circumstances of his return and his subsequent behaviour raised doubts as to his wish to marry Annette. With the Peace of Amiens again allowing travel to France, in 1802 Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy visited Annette, the purpose of the visit was to prepare Annette for the fact of his forthcoming marriage to Mary Hutchinson
6.
Lyrical Ballads
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The immediate effect on critics was modest, but it became and remains a landmark, changing the course of English literature and poetry. A second edition was published in 1800, in which Wordsworth included additional poems, for another edition, published in 1802, Wordsworth added an appendix titled Poetic Diction in which he expanded the ideas set forth in the preface. They place an emphasis on the vitality of the voice that the poor use to express their reality. Using this language also helps assert the universality of human emotions, in the Advertisement included in the 1798 edition, Wordsworth explained his poetical concept, The majority of the following poems are to be considered as experiments. They were written chiefly with a view to ascertain how far the language of conversation in the middle, one of the main themes of Lyrical Ballads is the return to the original state of nature, in which people led a purer and more innocent existence. Wordsworth subscribed to Rousseaus belief that humanity was essentially good but was corrupted by the influence of society and this may be linked with the sentiments spreading through Europe just prior to the French Revolution. Poems marked were written by Coleridge, all poems were written by Wordsworth. For the 1800 edition, Wordsworth added several poems which make up Volume II, the poem The Convict was in the 1798 edition but Wordsworth omitted it from the 1800 edition, replacing it with Coleridges Love. Lewti or the Circassian Love-chaunt exists in some 1798 editions in place of The Convict, Lyrical Ballads 1798 at Project Gutenberg Lyrical Ballads 1800 vol.1 at Project Gutenberg Lyrical Ballads 1800 vol
7.
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
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The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is the longest major poem by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, written in 1797–98 and published in 1798 in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads. Modern editions use a revised version printed in 1817 that featured a gloss, along with other poems in Lyrical Ballads, it was a signal shift to modern poetry and the beginning of British Romantic literature. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner relates the experiences of a sailor who has returned from a sea voyage. The mariner stops a man who is on the way to a wedding ceremony, the mariners tale begins with his ship departing on its journey. Despite initial good fortune, the ship is driven south by a storm, the sailors change their minds again and blame the mariner for the torment of their thirst. On board are Death and the Night-mare Life-in-Death, a deathly-pale woman, with a roll of the dice, Death wins the lives of the crew members and Life-in-Death the life of the mariner, a prize she considers more valuable. Her name is a clue to the fate, he will endure a fate worse than death as punishment for his killing of the albatross. One by one, all of the members die, but the mariner lives on, seeing for seven days and nights the curse in the eyes of the crews corpses. Eventually, this stage of the curse is lifted after he appreciates the sea creatures swimming in the water. The bodies of the crew, possessed by spirits, rise again. The rotten remains of the sink in a whirlpool, leaving only the mariner behind. A hermit on the mainland had seen the ship and had come to meet it with a pilot and his boy. When they pull him from the water, they think he is dead, but when he opens his mouth, the hermit prays, and the mariner picks up the oars to row. The pilots boy goes crazy and laughs, thinking the mariner is the devil, the poem received mixed reviews from critics, and Coleridge was once told by the publisher that most of the books sales were to sailors who thought it was a naval songbook. Coleridge made several modifications to the poem over the years, in the second edition of Lyrical Ballads, published in 1800, he replaced many of the archaic words. On this second voyage Cook crossed three times into the Antarctic Circle to determine whether the great southern continent existed. Critics have also suggested that the poem may have inspired by the voyage of Thomas James into the Arctic. Some critics think that Coleridge drew upon Jamess account of hardship, according to William Wordsworth, the poem was inspired while Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Wordsworths sister Dorothy were on a walking tour through the Quantock Hills in Somerset
8.
Alexander Pope
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Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet. He is best known for his verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the second-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations after Shakespeare, Alexander Pope was born to Alexander Pope Senior, a linen merchant of Plough Court, Lombard Street, London, and his wife Edith, who were both Catholics. Ediths sister Christiana was the wife of the miniature painter Samuel Cooper. Pope was taught to read by his aunt, and went to Twyford School in about 1698/99 and he then went to two Catholic schools in London. Such schools, while illegal, were tolerated in some areas, in 1700, his family moved to a small estate at Popeswood in Binfield, Berkshire, close to the royal Windsor Forest. This was due to strong anti-Catholic sentiment and a statute preventing Catholics from living within 10 miles of either London or Westminster, Pope would later describe the countryside around the house in his poem Windsor Forest. He also studied languages and read works by English, French, Italian, Latin. After five years of study, Pope came into contact with figures from the London literary society such as William Wycherley, William Congreve, Samuel Garth, William Trumbull, at Binfield, he also began to make many important friends. One of them, John Caryll, was twenty years older than the poet and had many acquaintances in the London literary world. He introduced the young Pope to the ageing playwright William Wycherley and to William Walsh, a minor poet and he also met the Blount sisters, Teresa and Martha, both of whom would remain lifelong friends. From the age of 12, he suffered health problems, such as Potts disease. His tuberculosis infection caused other problems including respiratory difficulties, high fevers, inflamed eyes. He grew to a height of only 1.37 m. Pope was already removed from society because he was Catholic, although he never married, he had many female friends to whom he wrote witty letters. Allegedly, his lifelong friend Martha Blount was his lover, in May,1709, Popes Pastorals was published in the sixth part of Tonsons Poetical Miscellanies. This brought Pope instant fame, and was followed by An Essay on Criticism, published in May 1711, around 1711, Pope made friends with Tory writers John Gay, Jonathan Swift, Thomas Parnell and John Arbuthnot, who together formed the satirical Scriblerus Club. The aim of the club was to satirise ignorance and pedantry in the form of the fictional scholar Martinus Scriblerus and he also made friends with Whig writers Joseph Addison and Richard Steele. In March 1713, Windsor Forest was published to great acclaim, during Popes friendship with Joseph Addison, he contributed to Addisons play Cato, as well as writing for The Guardian and The Spectator
