1.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a Russian-American novelist and entomologist. His first nine novels were in Russian, and he achieved prominence after he began writing English prose. He was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction seven times, Nabokov was an expert lepidopterist and composer of chess problems. Nabokov was born on 22 April 1899, in Saint Petersburg, b to a wealthy and his father was a leader of the pre-Revolutionary liberal Constitutional Democratic Party and authored numerous books and articles about criminal law and politics. His cousins included the composer Nicolas Nabokov and his paternal grandfather, Dmitry Nabokov, had been Russias Justice Minister in the reign of Alexander II. His paternal grandmother was the Baltic German Baroness Maria von Korff, Vladimir was the familys eldest and favorite child, with four younger siblings, Sergey, Olga, Elena and Kiril. Sergey would be killed in a Nazi concentration camp in 1945, Olga is recalled by Ayn Rand as having been a supporter of constitutional monarchy who had first awakened Rands interest in politics. Nabokov spent his childhood and youth in Saint Petersburg and at the country estate Vyra near Siverskaya and his childhood, which he had called perfect and cosmopolitan, was remarkable in several ways. The family spoke Russian, English, and French in their household and he relates that the first English book his mother read to him was Misunderstood by Florence Montgomery. In fact, much to his fathers chagrin, Nabokov could read. While the family was nominally Orthodox, they felt no religious fervor, Nabokovs adolescence was also the period in which his first serious literary endeavors were made. In 1916, Nabokov had his first collection of published, Stikhi. At the time, Nabokov was attending Tenishev school in Saint Petersburg and they lived at a friends estate and in September 1918 moved to Livadiya, at the time part of the Ukrainian Republic, Nabokovs father became a minister of justice in the Crimean Regional Government. After the withdrawal of the German Army and the defeat of the White Army and they settled briefly in England and Vladimir enrolled in Trinity College, Cambridge, first studying zoology, then Slavic and Romance languages. His examination results on the first part of the Tripos, taken at the end of year, were a starred first. He sat the second part of the exam in his third year, Nabokov feared that he might fail the exam, but his script was marked second-class. His final examination result was second-class, and his BA conferred in 1922, Nabokov later drew on his Cambridge experiences to write several works, including the novels Glory and The Real Life of Sebastian Knight. In 1920, Nabokovs family moved to Berlin, where his set up the émigré newspaper Rul. Nabokov followed them to Berlin two years later, after completing his studies at Cambridge
2.
Harcourt (publisher)
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Harcourt was a United States publishing firm with a long history of publishing fiction and nonfiction for adults and children. The company was last based in San Diego, California, with offices in New York City and Orlando. From 1919 to 1982, it was based in New York City, Houghton Mifflin acquired Harcourt in 2007. It incorporated the Harcourt name to form Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, as of 2012, all Harcourt books that have been re-released are under the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt name. The Harcourt Childrens Books division left the name intact on all of its books under that name as part of HMH, schools Education and Trade Publishing parts of Harcourt Education were sold by Reed Elsevier to Houghton Mifflin Riverdeep Group. Harcourt Assessment and Harcourt Education International were acquired by Pearson, the education and information company. The company later moved to New York City, where it became a test publisher, much of the companys success was based on the work of Arthur S. Otis. He was best known for the tests he developed for the U. S. Army. Millions of World War I draftees took Otis tests, World Book Company became the first publisher of group-administered tests measuring mental ability when it published Otiss Group Intelligence Scale in 1918. Otis became a World Book employee in 1921, by 1960, World Book had a portfolio of educational tests, including the Stanford Achievement Test, the Metropolitan Achievement Test and the Otis Mental Ability Test. Alfred Harcourt and Donald Brace were friends at Columbia College of Columbia University in New York, the two worked for Henry Holt and Company before founding their own publishing company in 1919, Harcourt, Brace & Howe, along with editor Will David Howe. After Howe left the company in 1921, the changed the name to Harcourt. The name Harcourt, Brace & World was introduced in 1931, by 1960, Harcourt Brace led the market in high school textbook publishing, but had little presence in the elementary school market. This strategic action improved the position of Harcourt Brace because World Book was an elementary textbook publisher. In 1970, the company was known as Harcourt Brace Jovanovich and that same year, the company acquired The Psychological Corporation. Under Jovanovichs leadership, the company diversified into non-publishing businesses such as insurance and it also bought several theme parks—including SeaWorld, which it acquired in 1976 for $46 million. The company divested its theme park division in 1989 for $1.1 billion, Harcourt also published mass-market paperback books with Pyramid Books, which it bought out in 1974 and renamed Jove Books. It sold this section to the Putnam Berkley Group in 1979, in 1991, General Cinema Corporation, a diversified company, acquired Harcourt Brace Jovanovich for more than $1.5 billion
3.
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
4.
Drama
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Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning action, which is derived from I do, the two masks associated with drama represent the traditional generic division between comedy and tragedy. They are symbols of the ancient Greek Muses, Thalia, Thalia was the Muse of comedy, while Melpomene was the Muse of tragedy. Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the mode has been contrasted with the epic. The use of drama in a narrow sense to designate a specific type of play dates from the modern era. Drama in this sense refers to a play that is neither a comedy nor a tragedy—for example and it is this narrower sense that the film and television industries, along with film studies, adopted to describe drama as a genre within their respective media. Radio drama has been used in both senses—originally transmitted in a performance, it has also been used to describe the more high-brow. The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production, the structure of dramatic texts, unlike other forms of literature, is directly influenced by this collaborative production and collective reception. The early modern tragedy Hamlet by Shakespeare and the classical Athenian tragedy Oedipus Rex by Sophocles are among the masterpieces of the art of drama, a modern example is Long Days Journey into Night by Eugene O’Neill. Closet drama describes a form that is intended to be read, in improvisation, the drama does not pre-exist the moment of performance, performers devise a dramatic script spontaneously before an audience. Western drama originates in classical Greece, the theatrical culture of the city-state of Athens produced three genres of drama, tragedy, comedy, and the satyr play. Their origins remain obscure, though by the 5th century BCE they were institutionalised in competitions held as part of celebrating the god Dionysus. The competition for tragedies may have begun as early as 534 BCE, tragic dramatists were required to present a tetralogy of plays, which usually consisted of three tragedies and one satyr play. Comedy was officially recognized with a prize in the competition from 487 to 486 BCE, five comic dramatists competed at the City Dionysia, each offering a single comedy. Ancient Greek comedy is traditionally divided between old comedy, middle comedy and new comedy, following the expansion of the Roman Republic into several Greek territories between 270–240 BCE, Rome encountered Greek drama. While Greek drama continued to be performed throughout the Roman period, from the beginning of the empire, however, interest in full-length drama declined in favour of a broader variety of theatrical entertainments. The first important works of Roman literature were the tragedies and comedies that Livius Andronicus wrote from 240 BCE, five years later, Gnaeus Naevius also began to write drama. No plays from either writer have survived, by the beginning of the 2nd century BCE, drama was firmly established in Rome and a guild of writers had been formed
5.
Russia
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Russia, also officially the Russian Federation, is a country in Eurasia. The European western part of the country is more populated and urbanised than the eastern. Russias capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a range of environments. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, the East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, in 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus ultimately disintegrated into a number of states, most of the Rus lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion. The Soviet Union played a role in the Allied victory in World War II. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the worlds first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the second largest economy, largest standing military in the world. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic, the Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russias extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the producers of oil. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. The name Russia is derived from Rus, a state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants Русская Земля. In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus by modern historiography, an old Latin version of the name Rus was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия, comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Kievan Rus, the standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is Russians in English and rossiyane in Russian. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians
6.
Translation
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Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. While interpreting—the facilitating of oral or sign-language communication between users of different languages—antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature, there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh into Southwest Asian languages of the second millennium BCE. Translators always risk inappropriate spill-over of source-language idiom and usage into the target-language translation, on the other hand, spill-overs have imported useful source-language calques and loanwords that have enriched the target languages. Indeed, translators have helped substantially to shape the languages into which they have translated, because of the laboriousness of translation, since the 1940s engineers have sought to automate translation or to mechanically aid the human translator. The rise of the Internet has fostered a world-wide market for services and has facilitated language localization. Translation studies systematically study the theory and practice of translation, the English word translation derives from the Latin word translatio, which comes from trans, across + ferre, to carry or to bring. Thus translatio is a carrying across or a bringing across, in this case, the Germanic languages and some Slavic languages have calqued their words for the concept of translation on translatio. The Romance languages and the remaining Slavic languages have derived their words for the concept of translation from an alternative Latin word, traductio, the Ancient Greek term for translation, μετάφρασις, has supplied English with metaphrase — as contrasted with paraphrase. Metaphrase corresponds, in one of the more recent terminologies, to formal equivalence, nevertheless, metaphrase and paraphrase may be useful as ideal concepts that mark the extremes in the spectrum of possible approaches to translation. Discussions of the theory and practice of translation reach back into antiquity, the ancient Greeks distinguished between metaphrase and paraphrase. Literally graceful, it were an injury to the author that they should be changed, Dryden cautioned, however, against the license of imitation, i. e. of adapted translation, When a painter copies from the life. He has no privilege to alter features and lineaments, despite occasional theoretical diversity, the actual practice of translation has hardly changed since antiquity. The grammatical differences between languages and free-word-order languages have been no impediment in this regard. The particular syntax characteristics of a source language are adjusted to the syntactic requirements of the target language. When a target language has lacked terms that are found in a language, translators have borrowed those terms. However, due to shifts in ecological niches of words, an etymology is sometimes misleading as a guide to current meaning in one or the other language. For example, the English actual should not be confused with the cognate French actuel, the Polish aktualny, the Swedish aktuell, the translators role as a bridge for carrying across values between cultures has been discussed at least since Terence, the 2nd-century-BCE Roman adapter of Greek comedies. The translators role is, however, by no means a passive, mechanical one, the main ground seems to be the concept of parallel creation found in critics such as Cicero
7.
Blank verse
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Blank verse is poetry written with regular metrical but unrhymed lines, almost always in iambic pentameter. The first documented use of verse in the English language was by Henry Howard. He was possibly inspired by the Latin original, as classical Latin verse did not use rhyme, or he may have inspired by the Italian verse form of versi sciolti. The play Arden of Faversham is an example of end-stopped blank verse. The 1561 play Gorboduc by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville was the first English play to use blank verse, christopher Marlowe was the first English author to make full use of the potential of blank verse. Miltonic blank verse was imitated in the 18th century by such poets as James Thomson. Romantic English poets such as William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley, among American poets, Hart Crane and Wallace Stevens are notable for using blank verse in extended compositions at a time when many other poets were turning to free verse. Marlowe and then Shakespeare developed its potential greatly in the late 16th century, Shakespeare developed this feature, and also the potential of blank verse for abrupt and irregular speech. For example, in exchange from King John, one blank verse line is broken between two characters, My lord. Shakespeare also used enjambment increasingly often in his verse, and in his last plays was given to using feminine endings, all of this made his later blank verse extremely rich and varied. This very free treatment of blank verse was imitated by Shakespeares contemporaries, however, Shakespearean blank verse was used with some success by John Webster and Thomas Middleton in their plays. Ben Jonson, meanwhile, used a blank verse with less enjambment in his great comedies Volpone. Blank verse was not much used in the poetry of the 17th century until Paradise Lost, in which Milton used it with much license. What though the field be lost, All is not lost, the unconquerable Will, And study of revenge, immortal hate, And courage never to submit or yield, Milton also wrote Paradise Regained and parts of Samson Agonistes in blank verse. The best examples of verse from this time are probably John Drydens tragedy All for Love. An example notable as much for its failure with the public as for its subsequent influence on the form is John Dyers The Fleece. At the close of the 18th century, William Cowper ushered in a renewal of blank verse with his volume of kaleidoscopic meditations, The Task, published in 1784. After Shakespeare and Milton, Cowper was the influence on the next major poets in blank verse
8.
Robert Falcon Scott
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On the first expedition, he set a new southern record by marching to latitude 82°S and discovered the Polar Plateau, on which the South Pole is located. During the second venture, Scott led a party of five which reached the South Pole on 17 January 1912, on their return journey, Scotts party discovered plant fossils, proving Antarctica was once forested and joined to other continents. Before his appointment to lead the Discovery Expedition, Scott had followed the career of an officer in the Royal Navy. Having taken this step, his name became associated with the Antarctic. Following the news of his death, Scott became a celebrated hero, in the closing decades of the 20th century, Scott became a figure of controversy, with questions raised about his competence and character. Scott was born on 6 June 1868, the child out of six and elder son of John Edward and Hannah Scott of Stoke Damerel. Scotts father was a brewer and magistrate, there were also naval and military traditions in the family, Scotts grandfather and four uncles all having served in the army or navy. John Scotts prosperity came from the ownership of a small Plymouth brewery which he inherited from his father, Robert Falcon Scotts early childhood years were spent in comfort, but some years later, when he was establishing his naval career, the family would suffer serious financial misfortune. In accordance with the tradition, Robert and his younger brother Archie were predestined for careers in the armed services. Having passed these exams Scott began his career in 1881. In July 1883, Scott passed out of Britannia as a midshipman, by October, he was en route to South Africa to join HMS Boadicea, the flagship of the Cape squadron, the first of several ships on which he served during his midshipman years. On this occasion,1 March 1887, Markham observed Midshipman Scotts cutter winning that race across the bay. Markhams habit was to collect likely young naval officers with a view to their undertaking polar exploration work in the future and he was impressed by Scotts intelligence, enthusiasm and charm, and the 18-year-old midshipman was duly noted. In March 1888 Scott passed his examinations for sub-lieutenant, with four first class out of five. His career progressed smoothly, with service on ships and promotion to lieutenant in 1889. In 1891, after a spell in foreign waters, he applied for the two-year torpedo training course on HMS Vernon. He graduated with first class certificates in both the theory and practical examinations, a small blot occurred in the summer of 1893 when, while commanding a torpedo boat, Scott ran it aground, a mishap which earned him a mild rebuke. According to Huntford, Scott disappears from records for eight months
9.
British Museum
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The British Museum is dedicated to human history, art and culture, and is located in the Bloomsbury area of London. The British Museum was established in 1753, largely based on the collections of the physician, the museum first opened to the public on 15 January 1759, in Montagu House, on the site of the current building. Although today principally a museum of art objects and antiquities. Its foundations lie in the will of the Irish-born British physician, on 7 June 1753, King George II gave his formal assent to the Act of Parliament which established the British Museum. They were joined in 1757 by the Old Royal Library, now the Royal manuscripts, together these four foundation collections included many of the most treasured books now in the British Library including the Lindisfarne Gospels and the sole surviving copy of Beowulf. The British Museum was the first of a new kind of museum – national, belonging to neither church nor king, freely open to the public, sloanes collection, while including a vast miscellany of objects, tended to reflect his scientific interests. The addition of the Cotton and Harley manuscripts introduced a literary, the body of trustees decided on a converted 17th-century mansion, Montagu House, as a location for the museum, which it bought from the Montagu family for £20,000. The Trustees rejected Buckingham House, on the now occupied by Buckingham Palace, on the grounds of cost. With the acquisition of Montagu House the first exhibition galleries and reading room for scholars opened on 15 January 1759. During the few years after its foundation the British Museum received several gifts, including the Thomason Collection of Civil War Tracts. A list of donations to the Museum, dated 31 January 1784, in the early 19th century the foundations for the extensive collection of sculpture began to be laid and Greek, Roman and Egyptian artefacts dominated the antiquities displays. Gifts and purchases from Henry Salt, British consul general in Egypt, beginning with the Colossal bust of Ramesses II in 1818, many Greek sculptures followed, notably the first purpose-built exhibition space, the Charles Towneley collection, much of it Roman Sculpture, in 1805. In 1816 these masterpieces of art, were acquired by The British Museum by Act of Parliament. The collections were supplemented by the Bassae frieze from Phigaleia, Greece in 1815, the Ancient Near Eastern collection also had its beginnings in 1825 with the purchase of Assyrian and Babylonian antiquities from the widow of Claudius James Rich. The neoclassical architect, Sir Robert Smirke, was asked to draw up plans for an extension to the Museum. For the reception of the Royal Library, and a Picture Gallery over it, and put forward plans for todays quadrangular building, much of which can be seen today. The dilapidated Old Montagu House was demolished and work on the Kings Library Gallery began in 1823, the extension, the East Wing, was completed by 1831. The Museum became a site as Sir Robert Smirkes grand neo-classical building gradually arose
10.
South Pole
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The South Pole, also known as the Geographic South Pole or Terrestrial South Pole, is one of the two points where the Earths axis of rotation intersects its surface. It is the southernmost point on the surface of the Earth, situated on the continent of Antarctica, it is the site of the United States Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station, which was established in 1956 and has been permanently staffed since that year. The Geographic South Pole should not be confused with the South Magnetic Pole, the South Pole is at the center of the Southern Hemisphere. For most purposes, the Geographic South Pole is defined as the point of the two points where the Earths axis of rotation intersects its surface. However, the Earths axis of rotation is actually subject to very small wobbles, the geographic coordinates of the South Pole are usually given simply as 90°S, since its longitude is geometrically undefined and irrelevant. When a longitude is desired, it may be given as 0°, at the South Pole, all directions face north. For this reason, directions at the Pole are given relative to grid north, along tight latitude circles, clockwise is east, and counterclockwise is west, opposite to the North Pole. The Geographic South Pole is located on the continent of Antarctica. It sits atop a featureless, barren, windswept and icy plateau at an altitude of 2,835 metres above sea level, and is located about 1,300 km from the nearest open sea at Bay of Whales. The ice is estimated to be about 2,700 metres thick at the Pole, the polar ice sheet is moving at a rate of roughly 10 metres per year in a direction between 37° and 40° west of grid north, down towards the Weddell Sea. Therefore, the position of the station and other artificial features relative to the geographic pole gradually shift over time. The Geographic South Pole is marked by a stake in the ice alongside a small sign, these are repositioned each year in a ceremony on New Years Day to compensate for the movement of the ice. The sign records the respective dates that Roald Amundsen and Robert F. Scott reached the Pole, followed by a quotation from each man. A new marker stake is designed and fabricated each year by staff at the site, the Ceremonial South Pole is an area set aside for photo opportunities at the South Pole Station. It is located around 180 metres from the Geographic South Pole, Amundsens Tent, The tent was erected by the Norwegian expedition led by Roald Amundsen on its arrival on 14 December 1911. It is currently buried beneath the snow and ice in the vicinity of the Pole and it has been designated a Historic Site or Monument, following a proposal by Norway to the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting. In 1820, several expeditions claimed to have been the first to have sighted Antarctica, with the very first being the Russian expedition led by Faddey Bellingshausen and Mikhail Lazarev. The first landing was probably just over a year later when American Captain John Davis, the basic geography of the Antarctic coastline was not understood until the mid-to-late 19th century
