1.
The Golden Bowl (film)
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The Golden Bowl is a 2000 drama film directed by James Ivory. The screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala is based on the 1904 novel of the name by Henry James. Dignified but impoverished aristocrat Prince Amerigo, whose illustrious Italian family occupies the decaying Palazzo Ugolini in Florence, is engaged to American socialite Maggie Verver. Prior to their engagement, and unbeknownst to his fiancée, Amerigo had a long and passionate affair with Charlotte Stant, the two separated because of his lack of funds, but Charlotte is still in love with him. When she receives an invitation to the wedding, she seizes the opportunity to reunite with him, a few days before the ceremony, Amerigo and Charlotte wander into an antique store in search of a wedding gift from her to the couple. Proprietor A. R. Jarvis shows them an ancient bowl, carved from a piece of rock crystal and embroidered with gold, he asserts is flawless. Charlotte is indecisive about buying it, and Jarvis sets it aside until she makes up her mind, despite knowing Amerigo and Charlottes history, Aunt Fanny suggests the young woman and Adam would be a perfect match. The two eventually wed, much to the delight of Maggie, who had been concerned about her fathers loneliness, Fanny becomes aware of the illicit romance but, wanting to protect her niece from being hurt, says nothing. As time passes, however, Maggie becomes suspicious of the amount of time her husband, in search of an unusual gift for her father, Maggie chances to wander into Jarvis shop, and he shows her the bowl he had set aside for Charlotte years ago. Maggie agrees to buy it and asks that it be delivered to her home, when Jarvis discovers the barely discernible crack Amerigo had noticed, he brings it to Maggie himself, reveals the defect, and offers it at half price. The object suddenly becomes a symbol of rather than a beautiful work of art. With Fannys assistance, she is successful in convincing Adam to accelerate his plans and leave for the American city much earlier than planned. Charlotte, loathing the idea, resists and begins making a fool of herself in private and in public, as Maggie and Amerigo settle into their marriage at last, a newsreel shows Adam and an over-dressed Charlotte adapting to their new life in American City. R. Jarvis Director Ivory, producer Merchant, and screenwriter Jhabvala previously collaborated on screen adaptations of the Henry James novels The Europeans, Italian locations included Palazzo Borghese in Artena and Prince Massimos Castle in Arsoli. The soundtrack includes Moonstruck by Lionel Monckton and Ivan Caryll, Sarabande by Claude Debussy, when they refused, the company sold the film to Lions Gate. The film opened throughout Europe before going into limited release in the US on 27 April 2001 and it opened on five screens and earned $90,170 on its opening weekend. At its widest release in the US it played in 117 theatres and it eventually grossed $3,050,532 in the US and $2,703,146 in foreign markets for a total worldwide box office of $5,753,678. M. Forster, as opposed to the mass culture that has eclipsed these literary heroes
2.
Henry James
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Henry James, OM was an American-born British writer. He is regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism and he was the son of Henry James, Sr. and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James. He is best known for a number of novels showing Americans encountering Europe and his method of writing from a characters point of view allowed him to explore issues related to consciousness and perception, and his style in later works has been compared to impressionist painting. His imaginative use of point of view, interior monologue and unreliable narrators brought a new depth to narrative fiction, James contributed significantly to literary criticism, particularly in his insistence that writers be allowed the greatest possible freedom in presenting their view of the world. James claimed that a text must first and foremost be realistic, good novels, to James, show life in action and are, most importantly, interesting. In addition to his voluminous works of fiction he published articles and books of travel, biography, autobiography, and criticism, and wrote plays. James alternated between America and Europe for the first twenty years of his life, eventually he settled in England, becoming a British subject in 1915, James was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911,1912, and 1916. James was born at 2 Washington Place in New York City on 15 April 1843 and his parents were Mary Walsh and Henry James Sr. His father was intelligent, steadfastly congenial, and a lecturer and philosopher who had inherited independent means from his father, Mary came from a wealthy family long settled in New York City, and her sister Katherine lived with the family for an extended period of time. Henry, Jr. had three brothers, William who was one year his senior and younger brothers Wilkinson and Robertson, the family first lived in Albany and then moved to Fourteenth Street in New York City when James was still a young boy. His education was calculated by his father to him to many influences, primarily scientific and philosophical, it was described as extraordinarily haphazard. James did not share the usual education in Latin and Greek classics, Henry studied primarily with tutors and briefly attended a few schools while the family traveled in Europe. Their longest stays were in France, where Henry began to feel at home and became fluent in French, in 1860 the family returned to Newport. There Henry became a friend of the painter John La Farge, who introduced him to French literature, James later called Balzac his greatest master, and said that he had learned more about the craft of fiction from him than from anyone else. In the autumn of 1861 Henry received an injury, probably to his back and this injury, which resurfaced at times throughout his life, made him unfit for military service in the American Civil War. In 1864 the James family moved to Boston, Massachusetts to be near William, in 1862 Henry attended Harvard Law School, but realized that he was not interested in studying law. The future Supreme Court Justice, and with James and Annie Fields and his first published work was a review of a stage performance, Miss Maggie Mitchell in Fanchon the Cricket, published in 1863. About a year later, A Tragedy of Error, his first short story, was published, Jamess first payment was for an appreciation of Sir Walter Scotts novels, written for the North American Review
3.
Charles Scribner's Sons
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The firm published Scribners Magazine for many years. More recently, several Scribner titles and authors have garnered Pulitzer Prizes, National Book Awards, in 1978 the company merged with Atheneum and became The Scribner Book Companies. In turn it merged into Macmillan in 1984, Simon & Schuster bought Macmillan in 1994. By this point only the book and reference book operations still bore the original family name. The former imprint, now simply Scribner, was retained by Simon & Schuster, as of 2012, Scribner is a division of Simon & Schuster under the title Scribner Publishing Group which also includes the Touchstone Books imprint. The president of Scribner as of 2017 is Susan Moldow, the firm was founded in 1846 by Charles Scribner I and Isaac D. Baker as Baker & Scribner. After Bakers death, Scribner bought the remainder of the company, in 1865, the company made its first venture into magazine publishing with Hours at Home. In 1870, the Scribners organized a new firm, Scribner and Company, after the death of Charles Scribner I in 1871, his son John Blair Scribner took over as president of the company. His other sons Charles Scribner II and Arthur Hawley Scribner would also join the firm and they each later served as presidents. When the other partners in the sold their stake to the family. The company launched St. Nicholas Magazine in 1873 with Mary Mapes Dodge as editor and Frank R. Stockton as assistant editor, when the Scribner family sold the magazine company to outside investors in 1881, Scribner’s Monthly was renamed the Century Magazine. The Scribners brothers were enjoined from publishing any magazine for a period of five years, in 1886, at the expiration of this term, they launched Scribners Magazine. The firms headquarters were in the Scribner Building, built in 1893, on lower Fifth Avenue at 21st Street, both buildings were designed by Ernest Flagg in a Beaux Arts style. The childrens book division was established in 1934 under the leadership of Alice Dalgliesh and it published works by distinguished authors and illustrators including N. C. Wyeth, Robert A. Heinlein, Marcia Brown, Will James, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, as of 2011 the publisher is owned by the CBS Corporation. Simon & Schuster reorganized their adult imprints into four divisions in 2012, Scribner became the Scribner Publishing Group and would expand to include Touchstone Books which had previously been part of Free Press. The other divisions are Atria Publishing Group, Simon & Schuster Publishing Group, the new Scribner division would be led by Susan Moldow as president. Scott Fitzgerald Thomas Wolfe Simon & Schuster has published thousands of books from thousands of authors and this list represents some of the more notable authors from Scribner since becoming part of Simon & Schuster
4.
International Standard Book Number
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The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The initial ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966, the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108. Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure, however, this can be rectified later. Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines, the ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the US by Emery Koltay. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108, the United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978, an SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit 0. For example, the edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has SBN340013818 -340 indicating the publisher,01381 their serial number. This can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8, the check digit does not need to be re-calculated, since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an ebook, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, a 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces. Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is also done with either hyphens or spaces, figuring out how to correctly separate a given ISBN number is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for country or territory regardless of the publication language. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture, in other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations. Australia, ISBNs are issued by the library services agency Thorpe-Bowker
5.
Adultery
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Adultery is extramarital sex that is considered objectionable on social, religious, moral, or legal grounds. A single act of intercourse is generally sufficient to constitute adultery. Historically, many cultures have considered adultery to be a serious crime. Adultery often incurred severe punishment, usually for the woman and sometimes for the man, with penalties including capital punishment, mutilation, such punishments have gradually fallen into disfavor, especially in Western countries from the 19th century. In most Western countries, adultery itself is no longer a criminal offense, Adultery is not a ground for divorce in jurisdictions which have adopted a no-fault divorce model. In some societies and among certain religious adherents, adultery may affect the status of those involved. In countries where adultery is an offense, punishments range from fines to caning. A joint statement by the United Nations Working Group on discrimination against women in law and in states that. In Muslim countries that follow Sharia law for justice, the punishment for adultery may be stoning. There are fifteen countries in which stoning is authorized as lawful punishment, though in recent times it has been carried out only in Iran. In some jurisdictions, having sexual relations with the wife or the wife of his eldest son constitutes treason. The term adultery refers to acts between a married person and someone who is not that persons spouse. It may arise in criminal law or in family law, for instance, in the United Kingdom, adultery is not a criminal offense, but is a ground for divorce, with the legal definition of adultery being physical contact with an alien and unlawful organ. Extramarital sexual acts not fitting this definition are not adultery though they may constitute unreasonable behavior, the application of the term to the act appears to arise from the idea that criminal intercourse with a married woman. Tended to adulterate the issue of an innocent husband, and to expose him to support and provide for another mans. Thus, the purity of the children of a marriage is corrupted, the term adultery, rather than extramarital sex, implies a moral condemnation of the act, as such it is usually not a neutral term because it carries an implied judgment that the act is wrong. In the traditional English common law, adultery was a felony, although the legal definition of adultery differs in nearly every legal system, the common theme is sexual relations outside of marriage, in one form or another. Traditionally, many cultures, particularly Latin American ones, had double standards regarding male and female adultery
6.
Consciousness
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Consciousness is the state or quality of awareness, or, of being aware of an external object or something within oneself. Despite the difficulty in definition, many believe that there is a broadly shared underlying intuition about what consciousness is. Western philosophers, since the time of Descartes and Locke, have struggled to comprehend the nature of consciousness, the majority of experimental studies assess consciousness in humans by asking subjects for a verbal report of their experiences. The origin of the concept of consciousness is often attributed to John Lockes Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Locke defined consciousness as the perception of what passes in a mans own mind and his essay influenced the 18th-century view of consciousness, and his definition appeared in Samuel Johnsons celebrated Dictionary. Consciousness is also defined in the 1753 volume of Diderot and dAlemberts Encyclopédie, the earliest English language uses of conscious and consciousness date back, however, to the 1500s. This phrase had the meaning of knowing that one knows. In its earliest uses in the 1500s, the English word conscious retained the meaning of the Latin conscius. For example, Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan wrote, Where two, or more men, know of one and the fact, they are said to be Conscious of it one to another. The Latin phrase conscius sibi, whose meaning was more related to the current concept of consciousness, was rendered in English as conscious to oneself or conscious unto oneself. For example, Archbishop Ussher wrote in 1613 of being so conscious unto myself of my great weakness, Lockes definition from 1690 illustrates that a gradual shift in meaning had taken place. A related word was conscientia, which primarily means moral conscience, in the literal sense, conscientia means knowledge-with, that is, shared knowledge. The word first appears in Latin juridical texts by such as Cicero. Here, conscientia is the knowledge that a witness has of the deed of someone else, rené Descartes is generally taken to be the first philosopher to use conscientia in a way that does not fit this traditional meaning. Descartes used conscientia the way modern speakers would use conscience, in Search after Truth he says conscience or internal testimony. The dictionary meaning of the word consciousness extends through several centuries, B. inward awareness of an external object, state, or fact. The philosophy of mind has given rise to many stances regarding consciousness, something within ones mind is introspectively conscious just in case one introspects it. Introspection is often thought to deliver ones primary knowledge of ones mental life, an experience or other mental entity is phenomenally conscious just in case there is something it is like for one to have it
7.
Ecclesiastes
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Ecclesiastes is one of 24 books of the Tanakh or Hebrew Bible, where it is classified as one of the Ketuvim. It is among the canonical Wisdom Books in the Old Testament of most denominations of Christianity, the title Ecclesiastes is a Latin transliteration of the Greek translation of the Hebrew Kohelet, the pseudonym used by the author of the book. The author, introducing himself as son of David, king in Jerusalem discusses the meaning of life and he proclaims all the actions of man to be inherently hevel, meaning vain or futile, as both wise and foolish end in death. Kohelet clearly endorses wisdom as a means for a well-lived earthly life, in light of this senselessness, one should enjoy the simple pleasures of daily life, such as eating, drinking, and taking enjoyment in ones work, which are gifts from the hand of God. The book concludes with the injunction, Fear God, and keep his commandments, Ecclesiastes has had a deep influence on Western literature. It contains several phrases that have resonated in British and American culture, Ecclesiastes is presented as an autobiography of Kohelet. Kohelets story is framed by voice of the narrator, who refers to Kohelet in the person, praises his wisdom. Kohelet reports what he planned, did, experienced and thought and his journey to knowledge is, in the end, incomplete. The reader is not only to hear Kohelets wisdom, but to observe his journey towards understanding and acceptance of lifes frustrations and uncertainties, most, though not all, modern commentators regard the epilogue as an addition by a later scribe. Some have identified certain other statements as further additions intended to make the more religiously orthodox. The ten-verse introduction in verses 1, 2–11 are the words of the narrator, they set the mood for what is to follow. After the introduction come the words of Kohelet, as king he has experienced everything and done everything, but nothing is ultimately reliable. The only good is to partake of life in the present, everything is ordered in time and people are subject to time in contrast to Gods eternal character. The world is filled with injustice, which only God will adjudicate, God and humans do not belong in the same realm and it is therefore necessary to have a right attitude before God. People should enjoy, but should not be greedy, no-one knows what is good for humanity, righteousness, Kohelet reflects on the limits of human power, all people face death, and death is better than life, but we should enjoy life when we can. The world is full of risk, he gives advice on living with risk, mortals should take pleasure when they can, for a time may come when no one can. Kohelets words finish with imagery of nature languishing and humanity marching to the grave, the frame narrator returns with an epilogue, the words of the wise are hard, but they are applied as the shepherd applies goads and pricks to his flock. The original ending of the book was probably the words, The end of the matter but the text we have continues, Fear God and keep his commandments, according to rabbinic tradition, Ecclesiastes was written by Solomon in his old age
8.
Rebecca West
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Dame Cicely Isabel Fairfield DBE, known as Rebecca West, or Dame Rebecca West, was a British author, journalist, literary critic and travel writer. An author who wrote in many genres, West reviewed books for The Times, the New York Herald Tribune, the Sunday Telegraph, and the New Republic, time called her indisputably the worlds number one woman writer in 1947. She was made CBE in 1949, and DBE in 1959, in each case, Rebecca West was born Cicely Isabel Fairfield in 1892 in Kerry and grew up in a home full of intellectual stimulation, political debate, lively company, books and music. Her mother, Isabella, a Scotswoman, was an accomplished pianist and he never rejoined them and died impoverished and alone in a boarding house in Liverpool in 1906, when Cicely was 14. The rest of the moved to Edinburgh, Scotland, where Cicely was educated at George Watsons Ladies College. She had to school in 1907 due to a bout of tuberculosis. Cicely did not have any formal schooling after the age of 16, Letitia, who was the best educated of the three, became one of the first fully qualified female doctors in Britain, as well as a barrister at the Inns of Court. Winifred, the sister, married Norman Macleod, Principal Assistant Secretary in the Admiralty. Winnies two children, Alison and Norman, became involved in Rebeccas life as she got older. West trained as an actress in London, taking the name Rebecca West from the young heroine in Rosmersholm by Henrik Ibsen. She and Lettie became involved in the suffrage movement, participating in street protests. Meanwhile, West worked as a journalist for the feminist weekly Freewoman, in September 1912 West accused the famously libertine writer H. G. Wells of being the Old Maid among novelists in a provocative review in Freewoman of his novel Marriage. The review attracted Wellss interest and an invitation to lunch at his home, the two writers became lovers in late 1913. Their 10-year affair produced a son, Anthony West, born on 4 August 1914, West is also said to have had affairs with Charlie Chaplin and newspaper magnate Lord Beaverbrook. George Bernard Shaw said in 1916 that Rebecca West could handle a pen as brilliantly as ever I could, during the 1920s, West began a lifelong habit of visits to the U. S. to give lectures, meet artists, and get involved in the political scene. There, she befriended CIA founder Allen Dulles, Charlie Chaplin, Harold Ross of The New Yorker and her lifelong fascination with the United States culminated in 1948 when President Truman presented her with the Womens Press Club Award for Journalism, calling her the worlds best reporter. In 1930, at the age of 37, she married a banker, Henry Maxwell Andrews, Wests writing brought her considerable wealth, and by 1940 she owned a Rolls Royce and a grand country estate, Ibstone House, in the Chiltern Hills of southern England. As West grew older, she turned to political and social issues
The Golden Bowl public domain audiobook at LibriVox
