1.
Pulp magazine
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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
2.
Weird Tales
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Weird Tales is an American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine founded by J. C. Henneberger and J. M. Lansinger in March 1923, Henneberger sold his interest in the publisher, Rural Publishing Corporation, to Lansinger and refinanced Weird Tales, with Farnsworth Wright as the new editor. The first issue under Wrights control was dated November 1924, the magazine was more successful under Wright, and despite occasional financial setbacks it prospered over the next fifteen years. Under Wrights control the magazine lived up to its subtitle, The Unique Magazine, Lovecrafts Cthulhu mythos stories first appeared in Weird Tales, starting with The Call of Cthulhu in 1928. These were well-received, and a group of associated with Lovecraft wrote other stories set in the same milieu. Other well-liked authors included Nictzin Dyalhis, E. Hoffman Price, Robert Bloch, Edmond Hamilton wrote a good deal of science fiction for Weird Tales, though after a few years he used the magazine for his more fantastic stories, and submitted his space operas elsewhere. In 1938 the magazine was sold to William Delaney, the publisher of Short Stories, Weird Tales ceased publication in 1954, but since then numerous attempts have been made to relaunch the magazine, starting in 1973. The longest-lasting version began in 1988 and ran with a hiatus for over 20 years under an assortment of publishers. In the mid-1990s the title was changed to Worlds of Fantasy & Horror because of licensing issues, as of 2016, the most recent published issue was dated Spring 2014. In the late 19th century popular magazines typically did not print fiction to the exclusion of content, they would include non-fiction articles. In October 1896, the Frank A. Munsey companys Argosy magazine was the first to switch to printing only fiction and this is now regarded by magazine historians as having been the start of the pulp magazine era. Other titles that specialized in particular fiction genres followed, starting in 1915 with Detective Story Magazine, with Western Story Magazine following in 1919. C Henneberger, a journalist and magazine editor who had been publishing College Humor and Magazine of Fun, formed Rural Publishing Corporation of Chicago and their first venture was Detective Tales, a pulp magazine that appeared twice a month, starting with the October 1,1922 issue. It was initially unsuccessful, and as part of a refinancing plan Henneberger decided to publish another magazine that would allow him to some of his costs between the two titles. Henneberger had long been an admirer of Edgar Allan Poe, so he created a magazine that would focus on horror. Henneberger chose Edwin Baird, the editor of Detective Tales, to edit Weird Tales, Farnsworth Wright was first reader, and Otis Adelbert Kline also worked on the magazine, assisting Baird. Payment rates were low, usually between a quarter and a cent per word, the budget went up to one cent per word for the most popular writers. Sales were initially poor, and Henneberger soon decided to change the format from the standard size to large pulp
3.
H. P. Lovecraft
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Howard Phillips Lovecraft was an American author who achieved posthumous fame through his influential works of horror fiction. He was virtually unknown and published only in magazines before he died in poverty. Lovecraft was born in Providence, Rhode Island, where he spent most of his life, among his most celebrated tales are The Call of Cthulhu and The Shadow over Innsmouth, both canonical to the Cthulhu Mythos. Lovecraft was never able to support himself from earnings as author and editor and he saw commercial success increasingly elude him in this latter period, partly because he lacked the confidence and drive to promote himself. He subsisted in straitened circumstances in his last years, an inheritance was completely spent by the time that he died at age 46. Lovecraft was born on August 20,1890 in his home at 194 Angell Street in Providence. Both of his parents were of entirely English ancestry, and most of his ancestors had been in New England since the colonial period and his great-grandfather Joseph Lovecraft Jr. emigrated to Rochester, New York from Devon, England in 1831. Lovecraft maintained throughout his life that his father died in a condition of paralysis brought on by nervous exhaustion. It has been suggested that his fathers mental illness may have been caused by syphilis, all five resided together in the family home. Lovecraft was a prodigy, reciting poetry at the age of three and writing complete poems by six. His grandfather encouraged his reading, providing him with such as One Thousand and One Nights, Thomas Bulfinchs Age of Fable, and childrens versions of the Iliad. His grandfather also stirred the boys interest in the weird by telling him his own tales of gothic horror. Lovecraft was frequently ill as a child, and he attended school until he was eight years old because of his sickly condition. He read voraciously during this period and became enamored of chemistry. He produced several hectographed publications with a circulation, beginning in 1899 with The Scientific Gazette. Four years later, he returned to school at Hope High School. Beginning in his life, Lovecraft is believed to have suffered from sleep paralysis. Much of his work is thought to have been directly inspired by these terrors
4.
Horror fiction
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Horror is a genre of fiction which is intended to, or has the capacity to frighten, scare, disgust, or startle their readers or viewers by inducing feelings of horror and terror. Literary historian J. A. Cuddon has defined the horror story as a piece of fiction in prose of variable length, which shocks or even frightens the reader, or perhaps induces a feeling of repulsion or loathing. It creates an eerie and frightening atmosphere, Horror is frequently supernatural, though it can be non-supernatural. Often the central menace of a work of fiction can be interpreted as a metaphor for the larger fears of a society. The genre of horror has ancient origins with roots in folklore and religious traditions, focusing on death, the afterlife, evil, the demonic and these were manifested in stories of beings such as witches, vampires, werewolves and ghosts. 18th century Gothic horror drew on these sources with the seminal and controversial The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole and this marked the first incorporated elements of the supernatural instead of pure realism. In fact, the first edition was published disguised as a medieval romance from Italy discovered and republished by a fictitious translator. Once revealed as contemporary, many found it anachronistic, reactionary, or simply in poor taste — but it proved to be immediately popular. That first novel of Gothic horror inspired such works as Vathek by William Beckford, A Sicilian Romance, The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian by Ann Radcliffe and The Monk by Matthew Lewis. A significant amount of fiction of this era was written by women and marketed at a female audience. The Gothic tradition blossomed into the modern readers call horror literature in the 19th century. Each of these novels and novellas created an icon of horror seen in modern re-imaginings on the stage. The proliferation of periodicals, as early as the turn of the century. One writer who specialized in fiction for mainstream pulps such as All-Story Magazine was Tod Robbins, whose fiction dealt with themes of madness. Later, specialist publications emerged to give horror writers an outlet, including Weird Tales, influential horror writers of the early 20th century made inroads in these mediums. Early cinema was inspired by aspects of horror literature, and early horror cinema started a strong tradition of horror films. This imagery made these comics controversial, and as a consequence they were frequently censored, many modern novels claim an early description of the living dead in a precursor to the modern zombie tale, including Dennis Wheatleys Strange Conflict, H. P. Lovecraft stories such as Cool Air, In The Vault, richard Mathesons novel I Am Legend would also influence an entire genre of apocalyptic zombie fiction emblematic of the films of George A. Romero
5.
Weird fiction
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Weird fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction originating in the late 19th and early 20th century. It can be said to encompass the ghost story and other tales of the macabre, Weird fiction is distinguished from horror and fantasy in its blending of supernatural, mythical, and even scientific tropes. British authors who have embraced this style have often published their work in literary magazines even after American pulp magazines became popular. Popular weird fiction writers included Edgar Allan Poe, William Hope Hodgson, H. P. Lovecraft, Lord Dunsany, Arthur Machen, M. R. James, H. P. Lovecraft adopted the term from Sheridan Le Fanu and popularized it in his essays. In Supernatural Horror in Literature, Lovecraft defines the genre, The true weird tale has something more than secret murder, bloody bones, the pulp magazine Weird Tales published many such stories in the United States from March 1923 to September 1954. Although Lovecraft was one of the few early 20th-century writers to describe his work as weird fiction, for example, China Miéville often refers to his work as weird fiction. The following notable authors have described as writers of weird fiction. They are listed alphabetically by last name and it has been suggested by some, predominantly Ann and Jeff VanderMeer and China Mieville, that Weird fiction has seen a recent resurgence, a phenomenon they term the New Weird. Tales which fit this category, as well as discussion of the phenomenon. Cosmic horror Cthulhu Mythos Dark fantasy Gothic fiction Horror fiction List of genres Lovecraftian horror Occult detective Supernatural fiction Surrealism Urban fantasy Joshi, blog devoted to the English writer W. H. Hodgson, pioner in the weird tale. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature H. P
6.
Brown University
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Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine Colonial Colleges established before the American Revolution. At its foundation, Brown was the first college in the United States to accept students regardless of their religious affiliation and its engineering program was established in 1847 and was the first in the Ivy League. It was one of the early doctoral-granting U. S. institutions in the late 19th century, adding master, Browns New Curriculum is sometimes referred to in education theory as the Brown Curriculum and was adopted by faculty vote in 1969 after a period of student lobbying. In 1971, Browns coordinate womens institution Pembroke College was fully merged into the university, Pembroke Campus now operates as a place for dorms and classrooms. Undergraduate admissions is very selective, with a rate of 8.3 percent for the class of 2021. The University comprises The College, the Graduate School, Alpert Medical School, the School of Engineering, the School of Public Health, and the School of Professional Studies. The Brown/RISD Dual Degree Program, offered in conjunction with the Rhode Island School of Design, is a course that awards degrees from both institutions. Browns main campus is located in the College Hill Historic District in the city of Providence, the Universitys neighborhood is a federally listed architectural district with a dense concentration of Colonial-era buildings. On the western edge of the campus, Benefit Street contains one of the finest cohesive collections of restored seventeenth-, Browns faculty and alumni include eight Nobel Prize laureates, five National Humanities Medalists, and ten National Medal of Science laureates. Other notable alumni include eight billionaire graduates, a U. S. Supreme Court Chief Justice, to erect a public Building or Buildings for the boarding of the youth & the Residence of the Professors. Stiles and Ellery were co-authors of the Charter of the College two years later, there is further documentary evidence that Stiles was making plans for a college in 1762. On January 20, Chauncey Whittelsey, pastor of the First Church of New Haven, answered a letter from Stiles, should you make any Progress in the Affair of a Colledge, I should be glad to hear of it, I heartily wish you Success therein. Isaac Backus was the historian of the New England Baptists and an inaugural Trustee of Brown, Mr. James Manning, who took his first degree in New-Jersey college in September,1762, was esteemed a suitable leader in this important work. Manning arrived at Newport in July 1763 and was introduced to Stiles, stiless first draft was read to the General Assembly in August 1763 and rejected by Baptist members who worried that the College Board of Fellows would under-represent the Baptists. A revised Charter written by Stiles and Ellery was adopted by the Assembly on March 3,1764, in September 1764, the inaugural meeting of the College Corporation was held at Newport. Governor Stephen Hopkins was chosen chancellor, former and future governor Samuel Ward was vice chancellor, John Tillinghast treasurer, the Charter stipulated that the Board of Trustees be composed of 22 Baptists, five Quakers, five Episcopalians, and four Congregationalists. Of the 12 Fellows, eight should be Baptists—including the College president—and the rest indifferently of any or all Denominations, the Charter was not the grant of King George III, as is sometimes supposed, but rather an Act of the colonial General Assembly. In two particulars, the Charter may be said to be a uniquely progressive document, the oft-repeated statement is inaccurate that Browns Charter alone prohibited a religious test for College membership, other college charters were also liberal in that particular
7.
Relief
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Relief is a sculptural technique where the sculpted elements remain attached to a solid background of the same material. The term relief is from the Latin verb relevo, to raise, to create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that the sculpted material has been raised above the background plane. What is actually performed when a relief is cut in from a surface of stone or wood is a lowering of the field. The technique involves considerable chiselling away of the background, which is a time-consuming exercise. In other materials such as metal, clay, plaster stucco, ceramics or papier-mâché the form can be just added to or raised up from the background, and monumental bronze reliefs are made by casting. There are different degrees of relief depending on the degree of projection of the form from the field. There is also sunk relief, which was restricted to Ancient Egypt. However the distinction between high relief and low relief is the clearest and most important, and these two are generally the only used to discuss most work. Hyphens may or may not be used in all these terms, works in the technique are described as in relief, and, especially in monumental sculpture, the work itself is a relief. Reliefs are common throughout the world on the walls of buildings and a variety of settings. Relief is more suitable for depicting complicated subjects with figures and very active poses, such as battles. Most ancient architectural reliefs were painted, which helped to define forms in low relief. Rock reliefs are carved into solid rock in the open air. This type is found in cultures, in particular those of the Ancient Near East and Buddhist countries. A stele is a standing stone, many of these carry reliefs. The distinction between high and low relief is somewhat subjective, and the two are often combined in a single work. In particular, most later high reliefs contain sections in low relief, a low relief or bas-relief is a projecting image with a shallow overall depth, for example used on coins, on which all images are in low relief. Other versions distort depth much less and it is a technique which requires less work, and is therefore cheaper to produce, as less of the background needs to be removed in a carving, or less modelling is required
8.
Rhode Island
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Rhode Island, officially the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. Rhode Island is the smallest in area, the eighth least populous, and its official name is also the longest of any state in the Union. Rhode Island is bordered by Connecticut to the west, Massachusetts to the north and east, the state also shares a short maritime border with New York. It boycotted the 1787 convention that drew up the United States Constitution, on May 29,1790, Rhode Island became the 13th and last state to ratify the Constitution. Rhode Islands official nickname is The Ocean State, a reference to the fact that the state has several large bays, Rhode Island covers 1,214 square miles, of which 1,045 square miles are land. Despite its name, most of Rhode Island is located on the mainland of the United States, the official name of the state is State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, which is derived from the merger of four settlements. Rhode Island is now commonly called Aquidneck Island, the largest of several islands in Narragansett Bay, Providence Plantation was the name of the colony founded by Roger Williams in the area now known as the city of Providence. This was adjoined by the settlement of Warwick, hence the plural Providence Plantations and it is unclear how Aquidneck Island came to be known as Rhode Island, although there are two popular theories. Explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano noted the presence of an island near the mouth of Narragansett Bay in 1524, subsequent European explorers were unable to precisely identify the island that Verrazzano had named, but the Pilgrims who later colonized the area assumed that it was Aquidneck. A second theory concerns the fact that Adriaen Block passed by Aquidneck during his expeditions in the 1610s, historians have theorized that this reddish appearance resulted from either red autumn foliage or red clay on portions of the shore. The earliest documented use of the name Rhode Island for Aquidneck was in 1637 by Roger Williams, the name was officially applied to the island in 1644 with these words, Aquethneck shall be henceforth called the Isle of Rodes or Rhode-Island. The name Isle of Rodes is used in a document as late as 1646. Dutch maps as early as 1659 call the island Red Island, Williams was a theologian forced out of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Seeking religious and political tolerance, he and others founded Providence Plantation as a proprietary colony. Providence referred to the concept of providence, and plantation was an English term for a colony. State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations is the longest official name of any state in the Union, advocates for excising plantation asserted that the word specifically referred to the British colonial practice of establishing settlements which disenfranchised native people. Advocates for retaining the name argued that plantation was simply an archaic English synonym for colony, the referendum election was held on November 2,2010, and the people voted overwhelmingly to retain the entire original name. It shares a maritime border with New York State between Block Island and Long Island
9.
Cyclopean masonry
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The boulders typically seem unworked, but some may have been worked roughly with a hammer and the gaps between boulders filled in with smaller chunks of limestone. The most famous examples of Cyclopean masonry are found in the walls of Mycenae and Tiryns, the Cyclopean Wall of Rajgir in India is another great example. Similar styles of stonework are found in cultures and the term has come to be used to describe typical stonework of this sort. The term comes from the belief of classical Greeks that only the mythical Cyclopes had the strength to move the boulders that made up the walls of Mycenae. Plinys Natural History reported the tradition attributed to Aristotle, that the Cyclopes were the inventors of masonry towers, the walls are usually founded in extremely shallow beddings carved out of the bedrock. Between these boulders, smaller chunks of limestone fill the interstices, the exterior faces of the large boulders may be roughly hammer-dressed, but the boulders themselves are never carefully cut blocks. Very large boulders are typical of the Mycenaean walls at Mycenae, Tiryns, Argos, Krisa, somewhat smaller boulders occur in the walls of Midea, whereas large limestone slabs are characteristic of the walls at Gla. Cut stone masonry is used only in and around gateways, conglomerate at Mycenae and Tiryns, the second is characterized by polygonal stones, which fit against each other with precision. The third style includes structures in Phocis, Boeotia and Argolis and it is characterized by work made in courses and by stones of unequal size, but of the same height. This category includes the walls of Mycenae, the Lion Gate, the fourth style is characterized by horizontal courses of masonry, not always of the same height, but of stones which are all rectangular. This style is common in Attica, while Pecks first and possibly second and third styles conform to what archaeologists today would classify as cyclopean, the fourth now is referred to as ashlar and is not considered cyclopean. There is a detailed description of the Cyclopean styles at the Perseus Project. Pausanias described the Cyclopean walls of Mycenae and Tiryns, There still remain, however, parts of the city wall, including the gate and these, too, are said to be the work of the Cyclopes, who made for Proetus the wall at Tiryns. Going on from here and turning to the right, you come to the ruins of Tiryns, long ago small stones were so inserted that each of them binds the large blocks firmly together. The photograph above shows the difference between Cyclopean masonry, and the masonry of the Lion Gate. Apart from the Tirynthian and Mycenaean walls, other Cyclopean structures include some tombs in Greece. In Sicily there are many Cyclopean structures especially in the part of the island. In Cyprus, the Kition archaeological site in present-day Larnaca, has revealed cyclopean walls and it is thought to be the second largest in Europe after Athens
10.
Cthulhu
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Cthulhu is a fictional cosmic entity created by writer H. P. Lovecraft and first introduced in the short story The Call of Cthulhu, published in the American pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1928. Considered a Great Old One within the pantheon of Lovecraftian cosmic entities, Lovecraft depicts Cthulhu as a gigantic entity worshipped by cultists. Cthulhus appearance is described as looking like an octopus, a dragon and its name was given to the Lovecraft-inspired universe where it and its fellow entities existed, the Cthulhu Mythos. Lovecraft transcribed the pronunciation of Cthulhu as Khlûl′-hloo and said that the first syllable pronounced gutturally, the u is about like that in full, and the first syllable is not unlike klul in sound, hence the h represents the guttural thickness. An approximate IPA transcription, based on description and the non-IPA signs, would be. S. T. Joshi points out, however, that Lovecraft gave several differing pronunciations on different occasions, according to Lovecraft, this is merely the closest that the human vocal apparatus can come to reproducing the syllables of an alien language. Cthulhu has also been spelled in other ways, including Tulu, Katulu and Kutulu. The name is preceded by the epithet Great, Dead. Long after Lovecrafts death, the spelling pronunciation /kəˈθuːluː/ kə-THOO-loo became common, the role-playing game Call of Cthulhu has used the pronunciations klhul-hoo or tluhluh, or more recently kuh-THOO-loo. In The Call of Cthulhu, H. P. Cthulhus head is depicted as similar to the entirety of a gigantic octopus, simply looking upon the creature drives the viewer insane, a trait shared by many of the Great Old Ones and Outer Gods. Cthulhu, in the mythos, was born on the planet Vhrool in the 23rd nebula from Nug. At some later point he travelled to the binary star system of Xoth, where he mated with Idh-yaa. Idh-yaa later spawned four children, Gthanothoa, Ythogtha, Zoth-ommog, Cthulhu and his family, as well as his starspawn, travelled to Earth where Cthulhu mated with his sister Kassogtha, who spawned Nctosa and Nocathulu. Cthulhu and his spawn then built the great green stone city of Rlyeh on the sunken continent of Mu. Around this time a war started between the shoggoths, elder things, Great race of Yith, flying polyps, Mi-go and Cthulhu and his children. At the end of the war, they all decided to share the Earth, the short story asserts the premise that, while currently trapped, Cthulhu will eventually return. His worshippers chant Phnglui mglwnafh Cthulhu Rlyeh wgahnagl fhtagn Lovecraft conceived a detailed genealogy for Cthulhu, the short story The Dunwich Horror refers to Cthulhu, while The Whisperer in Darkness hints that one of his characters knows the creatures origins. The 1931 novella At the Mountains of Madness refers to the star-spawn of Cthulhu, august Derleth, a correspondent of Lovecraft, used the creatures name to identify the system of lore employed by Lovecraft and his literary successors, the Cthulhu Mythos
11.
R'lyeh
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Rlyeh is a fictional lost city that first appeared in the H. P. Lovecraft short story The Call of Cthulhu, first published in Weird Tales in June 1928. According to Lovecrafts short story, Rlyeh is a city in the South Pacific. The nightmare corpse-city of Rlyeh…was built in measureless eons behind history by the vast, there lay great Cthulhu and his hordes, hidden in green slimy vaults. Rlyeh is characterized by bizarre architecture likened to non-Euclidean geometry. loathsomely redolent of spheres, Lovecraft claims Rlyeh is located at 47°9′S 126°43′W in the southern Pacific Ocean. Writer August Derleth, a correspondent of Lovecraft and co-creator of the Cthulhu Mythos. The latter coordinates place the city approximately 5,100 nautical miles from the island of Pohnpei. Both locations are close to the Pacific pole of inaccessibility, a point in the ocean farthest from any land mass, in Brian Lumleys Primal Land short story The House of Cthulhu, the island is referred to as Arlyeh. Charles Strosss novella A Colder War implicitly locates Rlyeh in the Baltic Sea, the Tsuburaya Productions tokusatsu series Ultraman Tiga places Rlyeh in the South Pacific, and the series antagonist, Gatanozoa, was born there. Bloop Oceanic pole of inaccessibility A Colder War, Charles Stross
12.
New Orleans
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New Orleans is a major United States port and the largest city and metropolitan area in the state of Louisiana. The population of the city was 343,829 as of the 2010 U. S. Census, the New Orleans metropolitan area had a population of 1,167,764 in 2010 and was the 46th largest in the United States. The New Orleans–Metairie–Bogalusa Combined Statistical Area, a trading area, had a 2010 population of 1,452,502. The city is named after the Duke of Orleans, who reigned as Regent for Louis XV from 1715 to 1723, as it was established by French colonists and it is well known for its distinct French and Spanish Creole architecture, as well as its cross-cultural and multilingual heritage. New Orleans is also famous for its cuisine, music, and its celebrations and festivals, most notably Mardi Gras. The city is referred to as the most unique in the United States. New Orleans is located in southeastern Louisiana, straddling the Mississippi River, the city and Orleans Parish are coterminous. The city and parish are bounded by the parishes of St. Tammany to the north, St. Bernard to the east, Plaquemines to the south, and Jefferson to the south and west. Lake Pontchartrain, part of which is included in the city limits, lies to the north, before Hurricane Katrina, Orleans Parish was the most populous parish in Louisiana. As of 2015, it ranks third in population, trailing neighboring Jefferson Parish, La Nouvelle-Orléans was founded May 7,1718, by the French Mississippi Company, under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, on land inhabited by the Chitimacha. It was named for Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, who was Regent of the Kingdom of France at the time and his title came from the French city of Orléans. The French colony was ceded to the Spanish Empire in the Treaty of Paris, during the American Revolutionary War, New Orleans was an important port for smuggling aid to the rebels, transporting military equipment and supplies up the Mississippi River. Bernardo de Gálvez y Madrid, Count of Gálvez successfully launched a campaign against the British from the city in 1779. New Orleans remained under Spanish control until 1803, when it reverted briefly to French oversight, nearly all of the surviving 18th-century architecture of the Vieux Carré dates from the Spanish period, the most notable exception being the Old Ursuline Convent. Napoleon sold Louisiana to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, thereafter, the city grew rapidly with influxes of Americans, French, Creoles, and Africans. Later immigrants were Irish, Germans, and Italians, Major commodity crops of sugar and cotton were cultivated with slave labor on large plantations outside the city. The Haitian Revolution ended in 1804 and established the republic in the Western Hemisphere. It had occurred several years in what was then the French colony of Saint-Domingue
13.
Princeton University
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Princeton University is a private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The institution moved to Newark in 1747, then to the current site nine years later, Princeton provides undergraduate and graduate instruction in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and engineering. The university has ties with the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton has the largest endowment per student in the United States. The university has graduated many notable alumni, two U. S. Presidents,12 U. S. Supreme Court Justices, and numerous living billionaires and foreign heads of state are all counted among Princetons alumni body. New Light Presbyterians founded the College of New Jersey in 1746 in order to train ministers, the college was the educational and religious capital of Scots-Irish America. In 1754, trustees of the College of New Jersey suggested that, in recognition of Governors interest, gov. Jonathan Belcher replied, What a name that would be. In 1756, the moved to Princeton, New Jersey. Its home in Princeton was Nassau Hall, named for the royal House of Orange-Nassau of William III of England, following the untimely deaths of Princetons first five presidents, John Witherspoon became president in 1768 and remained in that office until his death in 1794. During his presidency, Witherspoon shifted the focus from training ministers to preparing a new generation for leadership in the new American nation. To this end, he tightened academic standards and solicited investment in the college, in 1812, the eighth president the College of New Jersey, Ashbel Green, helped establish the Princeton Theological Seminary next door. The plan to extend the theological curriculum met with approval on the part of the authorities at the College of New Jersey. Today, Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary maintain separate institutions with ties that include such as cross-registration. Before the construction of Stanhope Hall in 1803, Nassau Hall was the sole building. The cornerstone of the building was laid on September 17,1754, during the summer of 1783, the Continental Congress met in Nassau Hall, making Princeton the countrys capital for four months. The class of 1879 donated twin lion sculptures that flanked the entrance until 1911, Nassau Halls bell rang after the halls construction, however, the fire of 1802 melted it. The bell was then recast and melted again in the fire of 1855, James McCosh took office as the colleges president in 1868 and lifted the institution out of a low period that had been brought about by the American Civil War. McCosh Hall is named in his honor, in 1879, the first thesis for a Doctor of Philosophy Ph. D. was submitted by James F. Williamson, Class of 1877. In 1896, the officially changed its name from the College of New Jersey to Princeton University to honor the town in which it resides
14.
Eskimo
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The Eskimo are the indigenous peoples who have traditionally inhabited the northern circumpolar region from eastern Siberia, across Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. The two main peoples known as Eskimo are, the Alaskan Inupiat peoples, Greenlandic Inuit, and the mass-grouping Inuit peoples of Canada, and the Yupik of eastern Siberia and Alaska. The Yupik comprise speakers of four distinct Yupik languages, one used in the Russian Far East, a third northern group, the Aleut, is closely related to the Eskimo. They share a relatively recent common ancestor, and a language group, a member of an indigenous people inhabiting northern Canada, Alaska, Greenland, and eastern Siberia, and traditionally living by hunting seals and other Arctic animals and birds and by fishing. In its linguistic origins, the word Eskimo comes from Innu-aimun ayas̆kimew meaning a person who laces a snowshoe and is related to husky, so does not have a direct pejorative meaning. In Canada and Greenland, the term Eskimo is seen as pejorative by some and has been replaced by the term Inuit or terms specific to a particular nation or community. This has resulted in a trend whereby some Canadians and Americans believe that they should not use the word Eskimo and use the Canadian word Inuit instead, the Canadian Constitution Act of 1982, sections 25 and 35 recognized the Inuit as a distinctive group of aboriginal peoples in Canada. Under U. S. and Alaskan law, Alaska Native refers to all peoples of Alaska. As a result, the term Eskimo is still in use in Alaska, alternative terms, such as Inuit-Yupik, have been proposed, but none has gained widespread acceptance. Several earlier indigenous peoples existed in the region, the earliest positively identified North American Eskimo cultures date to 5,000 years ago. They appear to have developed in Alaska from people related to the Arctic small tool tradition in eastern Asia, similar artifacts have been found in Siberia that date to perhaps 18,000 years ago. The Yupik languages and cultures in Alaska evolved in place, beginning with the original pre-Dorset indigenous culture developed in Alaska, approximately 4000 years ago, the Unangan culture of the Aleut became distinct. It is not generally considered an Eskimo culture, approximately 1500–2000 years ago, apparently in Northwestern Alaska, two other distinct variations appeared. Inuit language became distinct and, over a period of centuries, its speakers migrated across Northern Alaska, through Canada. The distinct culture of the Thule people developed in northwestern Alaska and very quickly spread over the area occupied by Eskimo people. Two principal competing etymologies have been proposed for the name Eskimo, the most commonly accepted today appears to be the proposal of Ives Goddard at the Smithsonian Institution, who derives the term from the Montagnais word meaning snowshoe-netter or to net snowshoes. The word assime·w means she laces a snowshoe in Montagnais, Montagnais speakers refer to the neighbouring Mikmaq people using words that sound very much like eskimo. In 1978, Jose Mailhot, a Quebec anthropologist who speaks Montagnais, french traders who encountered the Montagnais in the eastern areas, adopted their word for the more western peoples and spelled it as Esquimau in a transliteration
15.
Lascar
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The Hindi word lashkar derives from al-askar, the Arabic word for a guard or soldier. The Portuguese adapted this term to lascarim, meaning Asian militiamen or seamen and this means that Indian, Malay, Chinese and Japanese crewmen were covered by the Portuguese definition. The British of the East India Company initially described Indian lascars as Black Portuguese or Topazes, Lascars served on British ships under lascar agreements. These agreements allowed shipowners more control than was the case in ordinary articles of agreement, the sailors could be transferred from one ship to another and retained in service for up to three years at one time. The name lascar was also used to refer to Indian servants, Indian seamen had been employed on European ships since the first European made the sea voyage to India. Vasco da Gama, the first European to reach India by sea, Portuguese ships continued to employ lascars from South Asia in large numbers throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, mainly from Goa and other Portuguese colonies in India. The Portuguese applied the term lascar to all sailors on their ships who were originally from the Indies, Lascar crewmen from South Asia are depicted on Japanese Namban screens of the sixteenth century. The Luso-Asians appear to have evolved their own pidgin Portuguese which was used throughout South, among other terms was topaze to describe Indo-Portuguese naval militia, especially from Bombay, Thana, and former Portuguese territories such as Diu, Damman, Cochin and the Hugli River. The term sepoy was used to describe South Asian military militia, another reason was war when conscription of British sailors by the Royal Navy was particularly heavy from Company ships in India. The expedition against Angria is one of the first references to the British use of Indo-Portuguese militia, however, in a report made after one month of the Committees existence, it was found that only 35 of the 250 recipients of aid were lascars. On Captain James Cooks ill-fated second voyage to the Pacific, the HMS Resolution, had lost so many men that she had to take on new crew in Asia to get back to England. Lascars were paid 5% of their fellow white sailors wages and were expected to work longer hours as well as being given food of often inferior quality. The lascars lived under conditions not unlike slavery, as shipowners could keep their services for up to three years at a time, moving them from one ship to the next on a whim, the ill-treatment of lascars continued into the 19th century. The British East India Company recruited seamen from areas around its factories in Bengal, Assam and Gujarat, as well as from Yemen, British Somaliland and they were known by the British as lascars. These seamen included South Asian sailors, who would go on to serve on British until the 1960s, between 1803 and 1813, there were more than 10,000 lascars from the Indian subcontinent visiting British port cities and towns. By 1842,3,000 lascars visited the UK annually, in 1873,3,271 lascars arrived in Britain. Throughout the early 19th century lascars visited Britain at a rate of 1,000 every year, Lascars would normally lodge in British ports in between voyages. Some settled in towns and cities in Britain, often because of restrictions such as the Navigation Act or due to being stranded as well as suffering ill treatment
16.
Non-Euclidean geometry
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In mathematics, non-Euclidean geometry consists of two geometries based on axioms closely related to those specifying Euclidean geometry. In the latter case one obtains hyperbolic geometry and elliptic geometry, when the metric requirement is relaxed, then there are affine planes associated with the planar algebras which give rise to kinematic geometries that have also been called non-Euclidean geometry. The essential difference between the geometries is the nature of parallel lines. In hyperbolic geometry, by contrast, there are many lines through A not intersecting ℓ, while in elliptic geometry. In elliptic geometry the lines curve toward each other and intersect, the debate that eventually led to the discovery of the non-Euclidean geometries began almost as soon as Euclids work Elements was written. In the Elements, Euclid began with a number of assumptions. Other mathematicians have devised simpler forms of this property, regardless of the form of the postulate, however, it consistently appears to be more complicated than Euclids other postulates,1. To draw a line from any point to any point. To produce a straight line continuously in a straight line. To describe a circle with any centre and distance and that all right angles are equal to one another. For at least a thousand years, geometers were troubled by the complexity of the fifth postulate. Many attempted to find a proof by contradiction, including Ibn al-Haytham, Omar Khayyám, Nasīr al-Dīn al-Tūsī and these theorems along with their alternative postulates, such as Playfairs axiom, played an important role in the later development of non-Euclidean geometry. These early attempts did, however, provide some early properties of the hyperbolic and elliptic geometries. Another example is al-Tusis son, Sadr al-Din, who wrote a book on the subject in 1298, based on al-Tusis later thoughts and he essentially revised both the Euclidean system of axioms and postulates and the proofs of many propositions from the Elements. His work was published in Rome in 1594 and was studied by European geometers and he finally reached a point where he believed that his results demonstrated the impossibility of hyperbolic geometry. His claim seems to have based on Euclidean presuppositions, because no logical contradiction was present. In this attempt to prove Euclidean geometry he instead unintentionally discovered a new viable geometry, in 1766 Johann Lambert wrote, but did not publish, Theorie der Parallellinien in which he attempted, as Saccheri did, to prove the fifth postulate. He worked with a figure that today we call a Lambert quadrilateral and he quickly eliminated the possibility that the fourth angle is obtuse, as had Saccheri and Khayyam, and then proceeded to prove many theorems under the assumption of an acute angle
17.
Cthulhu Mythos
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The Cthulhu Mythos is a shared fictional universe, based on the work of American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. The term was coined by August Derleth, a correspondent of Lovecraft, to identify the system of lore employed by Lovecraft. The name Cthulhu derives from a creature in Lovecraft literature from the short story The Call of Cthulhu. The writer Richard L. Tierney later applied the term Derleth Mythos to distinguish between Lovecrafts works and Derleths later stories, authors of Lovecraftian horror use elements of the Cthulhu Mythos in an ongoing expansion of the fictional universe. In his essay H. P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos, Price called the first stage the Cthulhu Mythos proper. This stage was formulated during Lovecrafts lifetime and was subject to his guidance, the second stage was guided by August Derleth who, in addition to publishing Lovecrafts stories after his death, attempted to categorize and expand the Mythos. An ongoing theme in Lovecrafts work is the complete irrelevance of mankind in the face of the horrors that apparently exist in the universe. Lovecraft made frequent references to the Great Old Ones, a pantheon of ancient, powerful deities from space who once ruled the Earth. This was first established in The Call of Cthulhu, in which the minds of the human characters deteriorated when afforded a glimpse of what exists outside their perceived reality. Lovecraft emphasized the point by stating in the sentence of the story that The most merciful thing in the world. Writer Dirk W. Mosig notes that Lovecraft was a mechanistic materialist who embraced the philosophy of cosmic indifferentism, Lovecraft believed in a purposeless, mechanical, and uncaring universe. Human beings, with their faculties, could never fully understand this universe. There have been attempts at categorizing this fictional group of beings, phillip A. David E. Schultz, however, believes Lovecraft never meant to create a canonical Mythos but rather intended his imaginary pantheon to merely serve as a background element. Lovecraft himself humorously referred to his mythos as Yog Sothothery, at times, Lovecraft had to remind readers that his mythos creations were entirely fictional. The view that there was no rigid structure is reinforced by S. T. here was never a rigid system that might be posthumously appropriated. He essence of the mythos lies not in a pantheon of imaginary deities nor in a collection of forgotten tomes. Price, however, believed that Lovecrafts writings could at least be divided into categories, many of Howards original unedited Conan stories also form part of the Cthulhu Mythos. Prices dichotomy dictates the second stage commenced with August Derleth, the principal difference between Lovecraft and Derleth being the latters use of hope and that the Cthulhu mythos essentially represented a struggle between good and evil
18.
Robert M. Price
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Robert McNair Price is an American theologian and writer, known for arguing against the existence of a historical Jesus. He taught philosophy and religion at the Johnnie Colemon Theological Seminary and he is a professor of biblical criticism at the Center for Inquiry Institute, and the author of a number of books on theology and the historicity of Jesus. A former Baptist minister, he was the editor of the Journal of Higher Criticism from 1994 until it ceased publication in 2003 and he has also written extensively about the Cthulhu Mythos, a shared universe created by the writer H. P. Lovecraft. He also co-wrote a book with his wife, Carol Selby Price, Mystic Rhythms, The Philosophical Vision of Rush and he is a religious skeptic, especially of orthodox Christian beliefs, occasionally describing himself as a Christian atheist. Price was born in Jackson, Mississippi in 1954 and moved to New Jersey in 1964 and he received a Master of Theological Studies in New Testament from Gordon–Conwell Theological Seminary in 1978. At Drew University he was awarded one Ph. D. in Systematic Theology in 1981 and he was pastor of the First Baptist Church in Montclair, New Jersey. Price believes that Christianity is a synthesis of mainly Egyptian, Jewish. Price challenges biblical literalism and argues for a more sceptical and humanistic approach to Christianity, Price acknowledges that outside the New Testament there are a small number of ancient sources who would testify that Jesus Christ was a person who really lived. Price argues that if critical methodology is applied with ruthless consistency, Price is quoted saying, There might have been a historical Jesus, but unless someone discovers his diary or his skeleton, well never know. Which is a position of agnosticism, he declared in a 1997 public debate, If there was a historical Jesus lying back of the gospel Christ, If there ever was a historical Jesus, there isnt one any more. He views Jesus of Nazareth as an invented figure conforming to the Mythic Hero Archetype and he argues that the comparisons were known at the time, as early church father Justin Martyr had admitted the similarities. He describes this approach as Euhemerism, and argues that most historical Jesus research today is also Euhemerist. Price argues that Jesus is like other ancient mythic figures, in that no mundane, accordingly, Jesus also should be regarded as a mythic figure. But, Price admits to some uncertainty in this regard and he writes at the conclusion of his 2000 book Deconstructing Jesus, There may have been a real figure there, but there is simply no longer any way of being sure. In Deconstructing Jesus Price points out, hat one Jesus reconstruction leaves aside, Jesus simply wears too many hats in the Gospels—exorcist, healer, king, prophet, sage, rabbi, demigod, and so on. But he cannot very well have all of them at the same time. In a discussion on euhemerism, Price cautiously asserts that a historical figure may ultimately lie at the root of the Christian religion. That figure would have eventually made into God through apotheosis
19.
Sonnet
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A sonnet is a poem in a specific form which originated in Italy, Giacomo da Lentini is credited with its invention. The term sonnet is derived from the Italian word sonetto, by the thirteenth century it signified a poem of fourteen lines that follows a strict rhyme scheme and specific structure. Conventions associated with the sonnet have evolved over its history, writers of sonnets are sometimes called sonneteers, although the term can be used derisively. The sonnet was created by Giacomo da Lentini, head of the Sicilian School under Emperor Frederick II, guittone dArezzo rediscovered it and brought it to Tuscany where he adapted it to his language when he founded the Siculo-Tuscan School, or Guittonian school of poetry. Other Italian poets of the time, including Dante Alighieri and Guido Cavalcanti, wrote sonnets, other fine examples were written by Michelangelo. The structure of a typical Italian sonnet of the included two parts that together formed a compact form of argument. First, the octave, forms the proposition, which describes a problem, or question, followed by a sestet, typically, the ninth line initiates what is called the turn, or volta, which signals the move from proposition to resolution. Even in sonnets that dont strictly follow the structure, the ninth line still often marks a turn by signaling a change in the tone, mood. Later, the abba, abba pattern became the standard for Italian sonnets, for the sestet there were two different possibilities, cde, cde and cdc, cdc. In time, other variants on this scheme were introduced. Petrarch typically used an abba, abba pattern for the octave, in English, both the English or Shakespearean sonnet, and the Italian Petrarchan sonnet are traditionally written in iambic pentameter. Early twentieth-century American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay also wrote mostly Petrarchan sonnets, on His Blindness by Milton, gives a sense of the Petrarchan rhyme scheme, Most Sonnets in Dantes La Vita Nuova are Petrarchan. Chapter VII gives sonnet O voi che per la via, with two sestets and two quatrains, and Ch. VIII, Morte villana, with two sestets and two quatrains and it was written by Paolo Lanfranchi da Pistoia and is addressed to Peter III of Aragon. It employs the rhyme scheme a-b-a-b, a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d-c-d and this poem is historically interesting for its information on north Italian perspectives concerning the War of the Sicilian Vespers, the conflict between the Angevins and Aragonese for Sicily. It congratulates Robert of Naples on his recent victory, there are also two poorly regarded sonnets by the Italian Dante de Maiano. By the late 17th century poets on increasingly relied on stanza forms incorporating rhymed couplets, and by the 18th century fixed-form poems – and, in particular, the resulting versification – less constrained by meter and rhyme patterns than Renaissance poetry – more closely mirrored prose. The Romantics were responsible for a return to many of the poems used during the 15th and 16th centuries. The sonnet however was used until the Parnassians brought it back into favor
20.
Kraken
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The Kraken is a legendary sea monster of giant size that is said to dwell off the coasts of Norway and Greenland. The sheer size and fearsome appearance attributed to the kraken have made it a common ocean-dwelling monster in various fictional works, 1752-1753 The English word kraken is taken from Norwegian. In Norwegian Kraken is the form of krake, a word designating an unhealthy animal or something twisted. In modern German, Krake means octopus, but can refer to the legendary kraken. There is a fish that is unmentioned, which it is scarcely advisable to speak about on account of its size. Most often in our tongue we call it hafgufa, nor can I conclusively speak about its length in ells, because the times he has shown before men, he has appeared more like land than like a fish. Then too, neither would it do for other fish if the hafgufa were of such a number as other whales, on account of their vastness, and how much subsistence that they need. But as soon as its stomach and mouth is full, then it locks together its jaws and has the fish all caught and enclosed, the creature was excluded from later editions. Kraken were also described by Erik Pontoppidan, bishop of Bergen. However, Pontoppidan also described the potential of the giant beast, it is said that if were to lay hold of the largest man-of-war. According to Pontoppidan, Norwegian fishermen often took the risk of trying to fish over kraken, Pontoppidan also proposed that a specimen of the monster, perhaps a young and careless one, was washed ashore and died at Alstahaug in 1680. By 1755, Pontoppidans description of the kraken had been translated into English and his excrements nurture in the following an army of lesser fish, and for this reason, fishermen plumb after his resting place. Could one doubt that this is the Leviathan of Job, montfort claimed that the first type, the kraken octopus, had been described by Norwegian sailors and American whalers, as well as ancient writers such as Pliny the Elder. The much larger type, the colossal octopus, was reported to have attacked a sailing vessel from Saint-Malo. Montfort later dared more sensational claims, the kraken is also depicted to have spikes on its suckers. In the earliest descriptions, however, the creatures were more crab-like than octopus-like, some traits of kraken resemble undersea volcanic activity occurring in the Iceland region, including bubbles of water, sudden, dangerous currents, and appearance of new islets. The legend of the kraken continues to the present day, with numerous existing in popular culture, including film, literature, television, video games. Narrator Ishmael adds, There seems some ground to imagine that the great Kraken of Bishop Pontoppodan may ultimately resolve itself into Squid, Pontoppidans description influenced Jules Vernes depiction of the famous giant squid in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea from 1870
21.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, FRS was Poet Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland during much of Queen Victorias reign and remains one of the most popular British poets. Tennyson excelled at penning short lyrics, such as Break, Break, Break, The Charge of the Light Brigade, Tears, Idle Tears, Tennyson also wrote some notable blank verse including Idylls of the King, Ulysses, and Tithonus. During his career, Tennyson attempted drama, but his plays enjoyed little success and he is the ninth most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Tennyson was born in Somersby, Lincolnshire, England and he was born into a middle-class line of Tennysons, but also had a noble and royal ancestry. His father, George Clayton Tennyson, was rector of Somersby, also rector of Benniworth and Bag Enderby, and vicar of Grimsby. Rev. George Clayton Tennyson raised a family and was a man of superior abilities and varied attainments, who tried his hand with fair success in architecture, painting, music. He was comfortably well off for a clergyman and his shrewd money management enabled the family to spend summers at Mablethorpe. Alfred Tennysons mother, Elizabeth Fytche, was the daughter of Stephen Fytche, vicar of St. James Church, Louth and rector of Withcall, Tennysons father carefully attended to the education and training of his children. Tennyson and two of his brothers were writing poetry in their teens and a collection of poems by all three was published locally when Alfred was only 17. One of those brothers, Charles Tennyson Turner, later married Louisa Sellwood, the sister of Alfreds future wife. Another of Tennysons brothers, Edward Tennyson, was institutionalised at a private asylum, Tennyson was a student of Louth Grammar School for four years and then attended Scaitcliffe School, Englefield Green and King Edward VI Grammar School, Louth. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1827, where he joined a society called the Cambridge Apostles. A portrait of Tennyson by George Frederic Watts is in Trinitys collection, at Cambridge, Tennyson met Arthur Henry Hallam and William Henry Brookfield, who became his closest friends. His first publication was a collection of his rhymes and those of his elder brother Charles entitled Poems by Two Brothers. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellors Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his first pieces, reportedly, it was thought to be no slight honour for a young man of twenty to win the chancellors gold medal. He published his first solo collection of poems, Poems Chiefly Lyrical in 1830, claribel and Mariana, which later took their place among Tennysons most celebrated poems, were included in this volume. Although decried by critics as overly sentimental, his verse soon proved popular and brought Tennyson to the attention of well-known writers of the day. In the spring of 1831, Tennysons father died, requiring him to leave Cambridge before taking his degree and he returned to the rectory, where he was permitted to live for another six years and shared responsibility for his widowed mother and the family
22.
Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany
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Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany was an Anglo-Irish writer and dramatist, notable for his work, mostly in fantasy, published under the name Lord Dunsany. More than eighty books of his work were published, and his oeuvre includes many hundreds of published stories, as well as successful plays, novels. He is best known for his 1924 fantasy novel The King of Elflands Daughter and he achieved great fame and success with his early short stories and plays, and during the 1910s was considered one of the greatest living writers of the English-speaking world. Born and raised in London, to the second-oldest title in the Irish peerage, Dunsany lived much of his life at what may be Irelands longest-inhabited house, Dunsany Castle near Tara, worked with W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory, received a doctorate from Trinity College, Dublin, was chess and pistol-shooting champion of Ireland. He died in Dublin after an attack of appendicitis, from a historically wealthy and famous family, Dunsany was related to many well-known Irish figures. He was a kinsman of the Catholic Saint Oliver Plunkett, the martyred Archbishop of Armagh and he was also related to the prominent Anglo-Irish unionist and later nationalist, Home Rule politician the Hon. Sir Horace Curzon Plunkett PC, KCVO, FRS, DL, JP and George Noble Plunkett, Papal Count and Republican politician, father of Joseph Mary Plunkett and his mother was a cousin of Sir Richard Burton, and he inherited from her considerable height, being 64. Plunketts only sibling, a brother, from whom he was later estranged, was the noted British naval officer. Edward Plunkett grew up at the properties, most notably Dunstall Priory in Shoreham, Kent and Dunsany Castle in County Meath. His schooling was at Cheam, Eton College and finally the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, the title passed to him at his fathers death at a fairly young age, in 1899, and Dunsany returned to Dunsany Castle after war duty, in 1901. In 1903, he met Lady Beatrice Child Villiers, youngest daughter of the 7th Earl of Jersey, living at Osterley Park and their only child, Randal, was born in 1906. The Dunsanys were socially active in both Dublin and London, and travelled between their homes in Meath, London and Kent, other than during World Wars I and II, and the Irish War of Independence. He was friendly with, for example, George William Russell, Oliver St. John Gogarty and, for a time, Dunsany was a keen hunter and sportsman, and was at one time the pistol-shooting champion of Ireland. He enjoyed cricket, provided the local cricket ground situated near Dunsany Crossroads and he was president of both the Irish Chess Union and the Kent County Chess Association for some years, and of Sevenoaks Chess Club for 54 years. Dunsany campaigned for animal rights, being known especially for his opposition to the docking of dogs tails and he was a supporter of Scouting over many years, serving as President of the Sevenoaks district Boy Scouts Association. He also supported the drama group, the Shoreham Players. Dunsany provided support for the British Legion in both Ireland and Kent, including grounds in Trim and poetry for the Irish branchs annual memorial service on a number of occasions, Dunsanys fame arose chiefly from his prolific writings, and he was involved with the Irish Literary Revival
23.
S. T. Joshi
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Sunand Tryambak Joshi, known as S. T. Joshi, is an Indian American literary critic, novelist, and a leading figure in the study of H. P. Lovecraft and other authors of weird and fantastic fiction. Joshi has compiled, edited or written over 200 books, detailed in the recent publication 200 Books by S. T. He is a significant bibliographer, having compiled bibliographies of Lovecraft, Bierce, Dunsany, Ramsey Campbell, William Hope Hodgson, Ray Bradbury and he has been general editor of the Horror Classics series for Dover Publications. Joshi is known for his style, and has been described by editor Ellen Datlow as the nastiest reviewer in the field. Most recently he has turned his attention to collecting and editing the works of H. L. Mencken and he currently resides in Seattle, Washington. Joshi discovered Lovecraft when he was 13 in the library in Muncie. He also wrote some Lovecraftian fiction such as the story The Recurring Doom, which can be found in Robert M. Joshi elected to become a freshman at Brown University, where he received a B. A. and M. A. in classics, primarily because of the holdings of Lovecraft books and manuscripts in the John Hay Library. He later did work at Princeton University from 1982 to 1984. His literary criticism is notable for its emphases upon readability and exploration of the dominant worldviews of the authors in question and his The Weird Tale looks at six acknowledged masters of horror and fantasy, and discusses their respective worldviews in depth and with authority. Aside from his biography of Lovecraft, Joshi regards this book as his most notable achievement to date, unutterable Horror, A History of Supernatural Fiction is a comprehensive history of supernatural fiction from Gilgamesh to the present day. Older claimed Lovecrafts image was unacceptable because of his racism, in response, Joshi stated “the WFA bust acknowledges Lovecraft’s literary status in the field of weird fiction and it says nothing about Lovecraft’s personality or character. I’m pretty sure this is not the message the World Fantasy Convention meant to send when they gave Okorafor the prize in the first place. In 1987, Joshi became the fifth Official Editor of the EOD amateur press association, Lovecraft particularly but which also examines weird and fantasy fiction in all its forms. He has maintained this role for more than two decades and is still Editor, Joshi edited the journals Lovecraft Studies and Studies in Weird Fiction, both published by Necronomicon Press, and Studies in the Fantastic, published by the University of Tampa Press. He is editor of Weird Fiction Review, and the Hippocampus Press journals Spectral Realms, Lovecraft Annual and he was formerly co-editor of Dead Reckonings. Joshi and Schultz are now progressively issuing volumes of H. P. Lovecrafts letters to individual correspondents through Hippocampus Press. Volumes already issued include Lovecrafts letters to Rheinhart Kleiner, Alfred Galpin, August Derleth, Robert E. Howard, James F. Morton, Elizabeth Toldridge, Joshi edited the five-volume set of Lovecrafts Collected Essays issued by Hippocampus Press from 2004-2006
24.
Guy de Maupassant
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Maupassant was a protégé of Flaubert and his stories are characterized by economy of style and efficient, effortless dénouements. He wrote some 300 short stories, six novels, three books, and one volume of verse. His first published story, Boule de Suif, is considered his masterpiece. Henri-René-Albert-Guy de Maupassant was born 5 August 1850 at the Château de Miromesnil (Castle Miromesnil and he was the first son of Laure Le Poittevin and Gustave de Maupassant, both from prosperous bourgeois families. When Maupassant was 11 and his brother Hervé was five, his mother, after the separation, Laure Le Poittevin kept her two sons. With the fathers absence, Maupassants mother became the most influential figure in the boys life. She was an exceptionally well-read woman and was fond of classical literature. From his early education he retained a marked hostility to religion, finding the place to be unbearable, he finally got himself expelled in his next-to-last year. In 1867, as he entered high school, Maupassant made acquaintance with Gustave Flaubert at Croisset at the insistence of his mother. Next year, in autumn, he was sent to the Lycée Pierre-Corneille in Rouen where he proved a good scholar indulging in poetry, in October 1868, at the age of 18, he saved the famous poet Algernon Charles Swinburne from drowning off the coast of Étretat. The Franco-Prussian War broke out soon after his graduation from college in 1870, in 1871, he left Normandy and moved to Paris where he spent ten years as a clerk in the Navy Department. During this time his only recreation and relaxation was boating on the Seine on Sundays and holidays, Gustave Flaubert took him under his protection and acted as a kind of literary guardian to him, guiding his debut in journalism and literature. At Flauberts home, he met Émile Zola and the Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev and he wrote and played himself in a comedy in 1875, À la feuille de rose, maison turque. In 1878, he was transferred to the Ministry of Public Instruction and became an editor to several leading newspapers such as Le Figaro, Gil Blas, Le Gaulois. He devoted his time to writing novels and short stories. In 1880 he published what is considered his first masterpiece, Boule de Suif, Flaubert characterized it as a masterpiece that will endure. This was Maupassants first piece of fiction set during the Franco-Prussian War, and was followed by short stories such as Deux Amis, Mother Savage. The decade from 1880 to 1891 was the most fertile period of Maupassants life, made famous by his first short story, he worked methodically and produced two or sometimes four volumes annually
25.
The Horla
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The story has been cited as an inspiration for Lovecrafts own The Call of Cthulhu, which also features an extraterrestrial being who influences minds and who is destined to conquer humanity. The word horla itself is not French, and is a neologism, in the form of a journal, the narrator, an upper-class, unmarried, bourgeois man, conveys his troubled thoughts and feelings of anguish. This anguish occurs for four days after he sees a superb three-mast Brazilian boat and impulsively waves to it, all around him, he senses the presence of a being that he calls the Horla. The torment that the Horla causes is first manifested physically, The narrator complains that he suffers from a fever. He wakes up from nightmares with the feeling that someone is watching him. Throughout the short story, the characters sanity, or rather. Initially, the narrator questions his sanity, exclaiming Am I going mad. After having found his glass of water empty, despite not having drunk from it and he later decides that he is not, in fact, going mad, since he is fully conscious of his state and that he could indeed analyze it with the most complete lucidity. The presence of the Horla becomes more and more intolerable to the protagonist and he feels so lost and possessed to the point that he is ready to kill either the Horla, or himself. The Horla is used as an extension of the plot in the short story The Theater Upstairs by Manly Wade Wellman, in Wellmans novel Sherlock Holmes War of the Worlds, Sherlock Holmes suggests to Professor Challenger that the events of The Horla might actually be true. The Bartimaeus Trilogy features horlas as powerful spirits, who appear as shadowy apparitions that cause madness in humans, the Horla is the inspiration for Robert Sheckleys short story The New Horla in his collection Uncanny Tales. Had he done this all to himself, or had a wayfarer, a burglar, camped out in his room. Or was he the victim of some Horla fond of tobacco, the movie Diary of a Madman is loosely based on The Horla. The Star Trek episode Wolf in the Fold features a Horla-like entity, the CBS Radio Mystery Theater adapted the story for episode 044, originally aired on February 22,1974. The Hall of Fantasy radio show aired an episode on September 5,1952, called The Shadow People, the Horla is episode 8 of Peter Lorres radio serial Mystery in the Air. The Horla was adapted for the radio program The Weird Circle. Horlas are mentioned or featured in stories from the Tales of the Shadowmen series. The Horla is also an influence on Mario Bavas story Telephone, the Horla is the title of a song from the British heavy metal band Angel Witch, appearing on their 2012 album As Above, So Below
26.
Arthur Machen
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Arthur Machen was a Welsh author and mystic of the 1890s and early 20th century. He is best known for his influential supernatural, fantasy, and his novella The Great God Pan has garnered a reputation as a classic of horror. He is also known for his leading role in creating the legend of the Angels of Mons. Machen was born Arthur Llewelyn Jones in Caerleon, Monmouthshire, though he referred to the area by the name of the medieval Welsh kingdom. The house of his birth, opposite the Olde Bull Inn in The Square at Caerleon, is adjacent to the Priory Hotel and is marked with a commemorative blue plaque. The beautiful landscape of Monmouthshire, with its associations of Celtic, Roman, and medieval history, made an impression on him. Machen was descended from a line of clergymen, the family having originated in Carmarthenshire. In his fathers library he found also the Waverley Novels, an edition of the Glossary of Gothic Architecture. At the age of eleven, Machen boarded at Hereford Cathedral School, family poverty ruled out attendance at university, and Machen was sent to London, where he sat exams to attend medical school but failed to get in. Machen, however, showed promise, publishing in 1881 a long poem Eleusinia on the subject of the Eleusinian Mysteries. In 1884 he published his work, the pastiche The Anatomy of Tobacco. This led to work as a translator from French, translating the Heptameron of Marguerite de Navarre, Le Moyen de Parvenir of Béroalde de Verville. Machens translations in a spirited English style became standard ones for many years, in 1887, the year his father died, Machen married Amelia Hogg, an unconventional music teacher with a passion for the theatre, who had literary friends in Londons bohemian circles. Hogg had introduced Machen to the writer and occultist A. E. Waite, Machen also made the acquaintance of other literary figures, such as M. P. Shiel and Edgar Jepson. Soon after his marriage, Machen began to receive a series of legacies from Scottish relatives that allowed him to devote more time to writing. Around 1890 Machen began to publish in magazines, writing stories influenced by the works of Robert Louis Stevenson. This led to his first major success, The Great God Pan and it was published in 1894 by John Lane in the noted Keynotes Series, which was part of the growing aesthetic movement of the time. Machens story was widely denounced for its sexual and horrific content and consequently sold well, Machen next produced The Three Impostors, a novel composed of a number of interwoven tales, in 1895
27.
The Three Impostors
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The Three Impostors is an episodic novel by British horror fiction writer Arthur Machen, first published in 1895 in The Bodley Heads Keynote Series. It was revived in paperback by Ballantine Books as the volume of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in June 1972. Publisher John Lane, wary of the following the trial of Oscar Wilde. Barring the omission of one word, Machen refused to comply, the novel incorporates several inset weird tales and culminates in a final denouement of deadly horror, connected with a secret society devoted to debauched pagan rites. Partly in response to criticism of the Stevensonian style of the book, Machen altered his approach in writing his next book, following the death of his first wife in 1899, Machen developed a greater interest in the occult, joining the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. L. Stevenson, to those curious researches in the byways of London which I have described already, and also, I hope, to a certain originality of experiment in the tale of terror. Two of the novels inset tales, The Novel of the Black Seal, in his survey Supernatural Horror in Literature, Lovecraft suggested that these stories perhaps represent the highwater mark of Machens skill as a terror-weaver. The Novel of the Black Seal has been cited as a model for some of Lovecrafts best-known stories, The Call of Cthulhu, The Dunwich Horror, and The Whisperer in Darkness. The story also bears resemblance to Lovecrafts story The Lurking Fear. Death. in Tales from the Crypt #20 is an adaptation of The Novel of the White Powder, with the change made that the poisonous medicine contains digestive enzymes, rather than a witchs brew. The Three Imposters, Project Gutenberg public domain text The Three Impostors, complete text The Three Impostors public domain audiobook at LibriVox
28.
A. Merritt
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Abraham Grace Merritt – known by his byline, A. Merritt – was an American Sunday magazine editor and a writer of fantastic fiction, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted him in 1999, its fourth class of two deceased and two living writers. Born in Beverly, New Jersey, he moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1894, originally trained in law, he turned to journalism, first as a correspondent and later as editor. He was assistant editor of The American Weekly from 1912 to 1937 under Morrill Goddard, as editor, he hired the unheralded new artists Virgil Finlay and Hannes Bok and promoted the work done on polio by Sister Elizabeth Kenny. His fiction, eight novels and a number of short stories, was only a sideline to his journalism career. One of the journalists of his era, Merritt made $25,000 per year by 1919. His financial success allowed him to pursue world travel—he invested in real estate in Jamaica and Ecuador—and exotic hobbies, like cultivating orchids and plants linked to witchcraft and magic. Merritt married twice, once in the 1910s to Eleanore Ratcliffe, with whom he raised an adopted daughter and he died suddenly of a heart attack, at his winter home in Indian Rocks Beach, Florida, in 1943. Merritts writings were influenced by H. Rider Haggard, Robert W. Chambers, Helena Blavatsky and Gertrude Barrows Bennett, with Merritt having emulated Bennetts earlier style. Merritts stories typically revolve around conventional pulp magazine themes, lost civilizations, hideous monsters and his heroes are gallant Irishmen or Scandinavians, his villains treacherous Germans or Russians and his heroines often virginal, mysterious and scantily clad. What sets Merritt apart from the pulp author, however, is his lush, florid prose style and his exhaustive, at times exhausting. Merritts fondness for micro-description nicely complements the pointillistic style of Boks illustrations, Merritts first fantasy story was published in 1917, Through the Dragon Glass in the November 14 issue of Frank Munseys All-Story Weekly. Dwellers in the Mirage, and Creep, Shadow, meanwhile, rather few of his stories appeared elsewhere, The Pool of the Stone God, The Woman of the Wood, The Metal Emperor, and The Drone Man. Merritt also contributed to the round robin story The Challenge from Beyond with Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, C. L. Moore, the Fox Woman and the Blue Pagoda combined an unfinished story with a conclusion written by Merritts friend Hannes Bok. The Fox Woman and Other Stories collected the same fragment, minus Boks conclusion, the book The Black Wheel was published in 1948, after Merritts death, it was written by Bok using previously unpublished material as well. Both these books were illustrated by Bok and published by the small press The New Collectors Group in hardcover. After Merritts death, Sam Moskowitz discovered a number of poems among his papers, though some may have been written by other authors, they were credited to Merritt when published. Merritt was an influence on H. P. Lovecraft and Richard Shaver
29.
The Moon Pool
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The Moon Pool is a fantasy novel by Abraham Merritt. It originally appeared as two stories in All-Story Weekly, The Moon Pool and its sequel, Conquest of the Moon Pool. These were then reworked into a novel released in 1919, the protagonist, Dr. Goodwin, would later appear in Merritts second novel The Metal Monster. Although Merritt did not invent the lost world novel—he followed in the footsteps of Bulwer-Lytton, Conan Doyle, Edgar Rice Burroughs, the plot concerns an advanced race which has developed within the Earths core. Eventually their most intelligent members create an offspring and this created entity encompasses both great good and great evil, but it slowly turns away from its creators and towards evil. The entity is called either the Dweller or the Shining One, and the reason they do not do so is simply that they continue to love it. The Dweller is in the habit of rising to the surface of the earth and capturing men and women which it holds in an unholy stasis and it increases its knowledge and power constantly, but has a weakness, since it knows nothing of love. The scientist Dr. Goodwin and the half-Irish, half-American pilot Larry OKeefe, eventually they meet a woman, beautiful and evil, named Yolara, who in essence serves the Shining One, and the handmaiden of the Silent Ones, beautiful and good, named Lakla. Both want OKeefe and eventually battle over him, there is also a race of very powerful and handsome Polynesian-like dwarves and a race of humanoids whom the Silent Ones developed from a semi-sentient froglike species. There develops a battle between the forces of good and evil with not only the world, but perhaps even the existence of good itself is at stake. But can the forces of good prevail using fear as a weapon, or will they have to rely upon love expressed by willing sacrifice. The book has published a number of times,1919, US. The original story was reprinted in The Mammoth Book of Fantasy by Mike Ashley, the Moon Pool is sometimes cited as an influence on The Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft, which may in turn have itself influenced Merritts later story Dwellers in the Mirage, in particular, The Moon Pool is partly set on Nan Madol, a location which would, some claim, later inspire Lovecrafts Rlyeh. The text is available via Project Gutenberg, the Moon Pool at Project Gutenberg The Moon Pool at the University of Virginia Featured Review, The Moon Pool, the SF Site The Moon Pool public domain audiobook at LibriVox
30.
William Scott-Elliot
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In 1893 he married Matilda Louise Travers, daughter of Dr Robert Boyle Travers F. R. C. S. of Farsid Lodge, Rostellan, County Cork, Ireland. Scott-Elliot was an East India Merchant and amateur anthropologist, an early member of the London Lodge of the Theosophical society, in 1893 he wrote The Evolution of Humanity, issued as part of the Transactions of the London Lodge. Scott-Elliot came into contact with theosophist Charles Webster Leadbeater who said he received knowledge about ancient Atlantis, Leadbeater transmitted his clairvoyant findings to Scott-Elliot, who undertook scholarly research to back them up. Despite Leadbeaters contributions, Scott-Elliot was listed as the author of the resulting book The Story of Atlantis. In 1899 he was awarded the T. Subba Row Medal for his contributions to esoteric science, in 1904 he added detail on Lemuria in The Lost Lemuria, attempting to use contemporary scientific evidence to back up Leadbeaters claims. Leadbeater and Scott-Elliot provided much more detail than Blavatsky on the lives of the supposed Atlantean and Lemurian root races, Scott-Elliot located Lemuria in the Pacific ocean, claiming that it was a gigantic landmass that eventually sank, leaving only small islands. The Lemurians were around fifteen feet tall, with skins and flat faces, no foreheads. They could see sideways like birds, and could walk backwards and forwards with equal ease and they reproduced with eggs, but interbred with animals to produce ape-like human ancestors. After the demise of Lemuria, new races emerged on Atlantis from the surviving ape-like creatures, the Toltecs were succeeded by First Turanians and then Original Semites. These later produced further sub-races, the Akkadians and Mongolians, a group of Akkadians migrated to Britain 100,000 years ago, where they built Stonehenge. Scott-Elliot also claimed that Atlantis split into two linked islands, one called Daitya, and the other Ruta, eventually only a remnant of Ruta remained, called Poseidonis, before that too disappeared. Scott-Elliots ideas were mentioned by Rudolf Steiner in the later published as Atlantis
31.
Donald Wandrei
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Donald Albert Wandrei was an American science fiction, fantasy and weird fiction writer, poet and editor. He was the brother of science fiction writer and artist Howard Wandrei. He had fourteen stories in Weird Tales, another sixteen in Astounding Stories and he was the co-founder of the prestigious fantasy/horror publishing house Arkham House. Wandrei was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, all of his grandparents were early Minnesota settlers. Donalds father, Albert Christian Wandrei, became editor of West Publishing Company. Donald grew up in his parents house at 1152 Portland Ave, St Paul and lived there most of his save for a stint in the Army and occasional sojourns in New York. He loved frequent rambles in the woods along the Minnesota River and he attended Central High in St Paul from 1921–24, during which he published short compositions in the school newspaper and avidly read the magazine Science and Invention. In 1923 and 1924 he also worked evenings at the Hill Reference Library and he attended the University of Minnesota. At that time he was influenced by a reading of Arthur Machens novel The Hill of Dreams. Wandrei graduated in 1928, with a BA in English, at the age of 16, Wandrei completed his short story The Red Brain, in which a mysterious Cosmic Dust sweeps through the universe, obliterating the stars. Wandrei started writing in 1926 and his career took off around 1932. In late 1927 he hitchhiked from Minnesota to Rhode Island to visit H. P, Lovecraft conducted him on a grand antiquarian tour of Providence and then on to similar tours in Boston, Salem and Marblehead. In 1925 Wandrei gave Clark Ashton Smith $50 so the Auburn poet could see Sandalwood through the press. Wandreis first book, begun at age 18 and published when he was but 20, was the poetry volume Ecstasy & Other Poems was published by W. Paul Cooks The Recluse Press in 1928. The books verse shows homage to Clark Ashton Smith and to Smiths poetic mentor George Sterling, Wandrei was active in pulp magazines until the late 1930s. He was a member of the Lovecraft Circle, as a friend and protégé of H. P. Lovecraft, corresponding with other members of the circle. As an accomplished poet, Wandrei was the first to write a series of sonnets for Weird Tales, “Sonnets of the Midnight Hours. ”Lovecraft liked the idea so much, he embarked on his own series, Fungi From Yuggoth. ”Robert E. Howard also wrote his own series with “Sonnets out of Bedlam. ”Wanreis second book and second book of verse) was Dark Odyssey illustrated with five illustrations by his brother Howard Wandrei. Wandreis only full-length fantastic novel, Dead Titans, Waken, written in 1932, was rejected successively by three publishers – Harpers, Kendall and John Day – and finally shelved indefinitely by its author
32.
Robert E. Howard
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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
33.
Conan the Barbarian
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The character was created by writer Robert E. Howard in 1932 via a series of fantasy stories published in Weird Tales magazine. Conan the Barbarian was created by Robert E. Howard in a series of stories published in Weird Tales magazine in 1932. For months, Howard had been in search of a new character to market to the burgeoning pulp outlets of the early 1930s, in October 1931, he submitted the short story People of the Dark to Clayton Publications new magazine, Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror. Some Howard scholars believe this Conan to be a forerunner of the famous character. In February 1932, Howard vacationed at a town on the lower Rio Grande. During this trip, he conceived the character of Conan and also wrote the poem Cimmeria. Having digested these prior influences after he returned from his trip, Howard rewrote a rejected story, replacing his existing character Kull of Atlantis with his new hero, and retitling it The Phoenix on the Sword. Howard also wrote The Frost-Giants Daughter, inspired by the Greek myth of Daphne, although The Frost-Giants Daughter was rejected, the magazine accepted The Phoenix on the Sword after it received the requested polishing. The Phoenix on the Sword appeared in Weird Tales cover-dated December 1932, editor Farnsworth Wright subsequently prompted Howard to write an 8, 000-word essay for personal use detailing the Hyborian Age, the fictional setting for Conan. Using this essay as his guideline, Howard began plotting The Tower of the Elephant, the publication and success of The Tower of the Elephant would spur Howard to write many more Conan stories for Weird Tales. By the time of Howards suicide in 1936, he had written 21 complete stories,17 of which had been published, following Howards death, the copyright of the Conan stories passed through several hands. Eventually, under the guidance of L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, the stories were edited, revised, for roughly forty years, the original versions of Howards Conan stories remained out of print. In 1977 the publisher Berkley Books issued three volumes using the earliest published form of the texts from Weird Tales, but these failed to displace the edited versions. In the 1980s and 1990s, the holders of the Conan franchise permitted Howards stories to go out of print entirely. The Gollancz edition mostly used the versions of the stories as published in Weird Tales, in 2003, another British publisher, Wandering Star Books, made an effort both to restore Howards original manuscripts and to provide a more scholarly and historical view of the Conan stories. It published hardcover editions in England, which were republished in the United States by the Del Rey imprint of Ballantine Books. The first book, Conan of Cimmeria, Volume One includes Howards notes on his fictional setting, as well as letters and this was followed by Conan of Cimmeria, Volume Two and Conan of Cimmeria, Volume Three. These three volumes combined include all of the original, unedited Conan stories, the various stories of Conan the Barbarian occur in the fictional Hyborian Age, set after the destruction of Atlantis and before the rise of the known ancient civilizations
34.
Michel Houellebecq
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Michel Houellebecq is a French author, filmmaker, and poet. Having written poetry and an essay on the horror writer H. P. Lovecraft, he published his first novel, Whatever. Atomised followed in 1998, and Platform in 2001 and he published a book of poems, The Art of Struggle, in 1996. After a publicity tour for Platform led to his being taken to court for inciting racial hatred, in 2010 he published the Prix Goncourt-winning La Carte et le Territoire, and in 2015, Submission. Houellebecq was born in 1956 on the French island of Réunion, the son of Lucie Ceccaldi, a French doctor born in Algeria of Corsican descent, and René Thomas and he lived in Algeria from the age of five months until 1961, with his maternal grandmother. His grandmothers maiden name was Houellebecq, which he took as his pen name, later, he went to Lycée Henri Moissan, a high school at Meaux in the north-east of Paris, as a boarder. He then went to Lycée Chaptal in Paris to follow courses in order to qualify for Grandes écoles. He began attending the Institut National Agronomique Paris-Grignon in 1975 and he started a literary review called Karamazov and wrote poetry. Houellebecq graduated as an agronomist in 1980, married and had a son, then he divorced, became depressed and his first poems appeared in 1985 in the magazine La Nouvelle Revue. Six years later, in 1991, he published an essay of the horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. Rester vivant, méthode appeared the year, and was followed by his first collection of poetry. He won the 1998 Prix Novembre for his second novel Les Particules Élémentaires and published as Atomised or, the novel became an instant nihilistic classic. Michiko Kakutani, however, described it in The New York Times as a deeply repugnant read, the novel won Houellebecq the International Dublin Literary Award in 2002. In 2000, Houellebecq published the short fiction Lanzarote, in which he develops a number of the themes he would explore in later novels, including fringe religions and his subsequent novel, Platform, earned him a wider reputation. It is a romance told mostly in the first-person by a 40-year-old male arts administrator, with sex scenes. The Possibility of an Island is a novel that cycles between three characters narratives, Daniel 1 and Daniels 24 and 25, neo-human clones of Daniel 1 and he later adapted and directed the film based on his novel. In 2008, Flammarion published Ennemis publics a conversation via e-mail between Michel Houellebecq and Bernard-Henri Lévy, Houellebecq has also released three music CDs on which he recites a selection of his poetry. Two of them, Présence de la mort and Établissement dun ciel dalternance were recorded with composer Jean-Jacques Birgé in 1996 for Radio France, Présence humaine, on Bertrand Burgalats Tricatel label, has a rock band backing him
35.
H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life
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H. P. Lovecraft, Against the World, Against Life is a work of literary criticism by French author Michel Houellebecq regarding the works of H. P. Lovecraft. The English-language edition for the American and UK market was translated by Dorna Khazeni, in some editions the book also includes two of Lovecrafts best known short stories, The Call of Cthulhu and The Whisperer in Darkness. In this early published work, Houellebecq reports having discovered Lovecraft as a teenager and being struck by how each story was, as he describes and he posits Lovecraft as an American existentialist for whom both life and death are meaningless. He also praises what he sees as Lovecrafts rejection of democracy and he notes the recurring image in Lovecrafts fiction of a mammoth, hideous city teeming with terrifying beings. Houellebecq’s acceptance of Schopenhauers philosophy had a influence on his reaction to Lovecraft
36.
Spacetime curvature
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In general relativity, the curvature of spacetime is expressed by the Einstein tensor in the Einstein field equations. These tensor equations determine how spacetime is warped by the presence of mass-energy, the curvature is highly significant in cosmology, as the shape of the universe affects its ultimate fate. Other hypotheses such as Kaluza-Klein theory and string theory involve a curved spacetime, extended into higher dimensions, in attempts to unify forces as a single phenomenon
37.
Silent film
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A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. The silent film era lasted from 1895 to 1936, in silent films for entertainment, the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, mime and title cards which contain a written indication of the plot or key dialogue. During silent films, a pianist, theatre organist, or, in large cities, pianists and organists would either play from sheet music or improvise, an orchestra would play from sheet music. The term silent film is therefore a retronym—that is, a term created to distinguish something retroactively, the early films with sound, starting with The Jazz Singer in 1927, were referred to as talkies, sound films, or talking pictures. A September 2013 report by the United States Library of Congress announced that a total of 70% of American silent feature films are believed to be completely lost, the earliest precursors of film began with image projection through the use of a device known as the magic lantern. This utilized a glass lens, a shutter and a persistent light source, such as a powerful lantern and these slides were originally hand-painted, but still photographs were used later on after the technological advent of photography in the nineteenth century. The invention of a practical photography apparatus preceded cinema by only fifty years, the next significant step towards film creation was the development of an understanding of image movement. Simulations of movement date as far back as to 1828 and only four years after Paul Roget discovered the phenomenon he called Persistence of Vision. This experience was further demonstrated through Rogets introduction of the thaumatrope, the first projected primary proto-movie was made by Eadweard Muybridge between 1877 and 1880. Muybridge set up a row of cameras along a racetrack and timed image exposures to capture the many stages of a horses gallop, the oldest surviving film was created by Louis Le Prince in 1888. It was a film of people walking in Oakwood streets garden. Edison also made a business of selling Kinetograph and Kinetoscope equipment, due to Edisons lack of securing an international patent on his film inventions, similar devices were invented around the world. The Lumière brothers, for example, created the Cinématographe in France, the Cinématographe proved to be a more portable and practical device than both of Edisons as it combined a camera, film processor and projector in one unit. In contrast to Edisons peepshow-style kinetoscope, which one person could watch through a viewer. Their first film, Sortie de lusine Lumière de Lyon, shot in 1894, is considered the first true motion picture, the invention of celluloid film, which was strong and flexible, greatly facilitated the making of motion pictures. This film was 35 mm wide and pulled using four sprocket holes and this doomed the cinematograph, which could only use film with just one sprocket hole. From the very beginnings of film production, the art of motion pictures grew into maturity in the silent era. Silent filmmakers pioneered the art form to the extent that virtually every style, the silent era was also pioneering era from a technical point of view
38.
The Call of Cthulhu (film)
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It is the first film adaptation of the famous Lovecraft story, and uses Mythoscope, a blend of vintage and modern filming techniques intended to produce the look of a 1920s-era film. The film is the length of a featurette, the film adheres very closely to Lovecrafts story, but there are a few changes. The sailors aboard the Emma first encounter the Alert abandoned at sea, rather than crewed by Cthulhu cultists, the narrator notes that Inspector Legrasse, who had directed the raid on cultists in backwoods Louisiana, died before the narrators investigation began. In the original story, the narrator does not seem to end in an asylum or experience any mysterious nightmares himself. Early on in production, Branney and Leman decided to film it as a black-and-white film, the official site says this was done to show what the film would have looked like had it been made in 1926, when the story was first published. In the DVD commentary the producers admit that shooting in black, when using black-and-white cinematography, a filmmaker does not need to pay particular attention to the materials and decoration of sets, as the colors will not appear in the final product. Despite the long-standing conventional wisdom that this story was inherently unfilmable and it holds 100% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes with an average rating of 7. 1/10 based on 6 reviews. Paul di Filippo of Science Fiction Weekly called it the best HPL adaptation to date, in their book Lurker in the Lobby, The Guide to the Cinema of H. P. this is Cthulhuian cinema that Howard would have loved
39.
Radio drama
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Radio drama is a dramatized, purely acoustic performance, broadcast on radio. Radio drama achieved widespread popularity within a decade of its development in the 1920s. By the 1940s, it was an international popular entertainment. With the advent of television in the 1950s, however, radio drama lost some of its popularity, however, recordings of OTR survive today in the audio archives of collectors and museums, as well as several online sites such as Internet Archive. As of 2011, radio drama has a presence on terrestrial radio in the United States. Much of American radio drama is restricted to rebroadcasts or podcasts of programs from previous decades, however, other nations still have thriving traditions of radio drama. In the United Kingdom, for example, the BBC produces and broadcasts hundreds of new plays each year on Radio 3, Radio 4. Like the USA, Australia ABC has abandoned broadcasting drama but New Zealand RNZ continues to promote, podcasting has also offered the means of creating new radio dramas, in addition to the distribution of vintage programs. Thanks to advances in recording and Internet distribution, radio drama was experiencing a revival in 2010. The terms audio drama or audio theatre are used synonymously with radio drama, however. Audio drama can also be found on CDs, cassette tapes, Radio drama traces its roots back to the 1880s, In 1881 French engineer Clement Ader had filed a patent for ‘improvements of Telephone Equipment in Theatres’. English-language radio drama seems to have started in the United States, a Rural Line on Education, a brief sketch specifically written for radio, aired on Pittsburghs KDKA in 1921, according to historian Bill Jaker. Newspaper accounts of the era report on a number of other experiments by Americas commercial radio stations. In February 1922, entire Broadway musical comedies with the original aired from WJZs Newark studios. Actors Grace George and Herbert Hayes performed a play from a San Francisco station in the summer of 1922. Aware of this series, the director of Cincinnatis WLW began regularly broadcasting one-acts in November, the success of these projects led to imitators at other stations. By the spring of 1923, original pieces written specially for radio were airing on stations in Cincinnati, Philadelphia. That same year, WLW and WGY sponsored scripting contests, inviting listeners to create original plays to be performed by those stations dramatic troupes
40.
Dr. Seuss
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Theodor Seuss Geisel was an American writer, cartoonist, animator, book publisher, and artist best known for authoring childrens books under the pen name Dr. Seuss. His work includes several of the most popular books of all time, selling over 600 million copies. Geisel adopted his Dr. Seuss pen name during his university studies at Dartmouth College and he left Oxford in 1927 to begin his career as an illustrator and cartoonist for Vanity Fair, Life, and various other publications. He also worked as an illustrator for advertising campaigns, most notably for Flit and Standard Oil and he published his first childrens book And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street in 1937. After the war, Geisel focused on books, writing classics such as If I Ran the Zoo. If I Ran the Circus, The Cat in the Hat and he published over 60 books during his career, which have spawned numerous adaptations, including 11 television specials, four feature films, a Broadway musical, and four television series. He won the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1958 for Horton Hatches the Egg, Geisels birthday, March 2, has been adopted as the annual date for National Read Across America Day, an initiative on reading created by the National Education Association. Geisel was born and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts, the son of Henrietta, all four of his grandparents were German immigrants. His father managed the brewery and was later appointed to supervise Springfields public park system by Mayor John A. Denison after the brewery closed because of Prohibition. Mulberry Street in Springfield, made famous in Dr. Seuss first childrens book And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, is less than a mile southwest of his home on Fairfield Street. He enrolled at Springfield Central High School in 1917 and graduated in 1921 and he took an art class as a freshman and later became manager of the school soccer team. Geisel attended Dartmouth College, graduating in 1925, at Dartmouth, he joined the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity and the humor magazine Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern, eventually rising to the rank of editor-in-chief. While at Dartmouth, he was caught drinking gin with nine friends in his room, at the time, the possession and consumption of alcohol was illegal under Prohibition laws, which remained in place between 1920 and 1933. As a result of this infraction, Dean Craven Laycock insisted that Geisel resign from all extracurricular activities, to continue work on the Jack-O-Lantern without the administrations knowledge, Geisel began signing his work with the pen name Seuss. He was encouraged in his writing by professor of rhetoric W. Benfield Pressey, upon graduating from Dartmouth, he entered Lincoln College, Oxford intending to earn a PhD in English literature. At Oxford, he met Helen Palmer, who encouraged him to give up becoming an English teacher in favor of pursuing drawing as a career. Making use of his time in Europe, he pitched a series of cartoons called Eminent Europeans to Life magazine and his first nationally published cartoon appeared in the July 16,1927 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. This single $25 sale encouraged Geisel to move from Springfield to New York City, later that year, Geisel accepted a job as writer and illustrator at the humor magazine Judge, and he felt financially stable enough to marry Helen
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Works related to The Call of Cthulhu at Wikisource
