Monday, May 20, 2013


Wuthering Heights is a novel by Emily Brontë, written between October 1845 and June 1846,  and published in 1847 under the pseudonym "Ellis Bell."  It was her first and only published novel: she died aged 30 the following year.  The decision to publish came after the success of her sister Charlotte's novel, Jane Eyre. After Emily's death, Charlotte edited the manuscript of Wuthering Heights, and arranged for the edited version to be published as a posthumous second edition in 1850.  Wuthering Heights is the eponymous farmhouse on the Yorkshire moors where the story unfolds.  Its core theme is the enduring love between the heroine, Catherine Earnshaw, and her father's adopted son, Heathcliff and how it eventually destroys their lives and the lives of those around them.  Although Wuthering Heights is now widely regarded as a classic of English literature, it received mixed reviews when first published, and was considered controversial because its depiction of mental and physical cruelty was so unusually stark.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuthering_Heights

Even before she started writing mature fiction, Emily Brontë composed poems of intensity and accomplishment.  However, she is remembered today for Wuthering Heights.  The circumstances of its appearance in December 1847 by a house of questionable reputation are a remarkable story in themselves.  The novel came out under a pseudonym, Ellis Bell.  If—as there is evidence to think—Emily Jane Brontë hoped that her pen name would prevent the world from knowing her real one, that hope was doomed, for the world was already enthralled with a novel by Currer Bell, Jane Eyre, the product of Emily’s older sister Charlotte.  It would be only time before publishers, reviewers, critics, and the curious would learn the identities of the Bells, Currer (Charlotte), Ellis (Emily), and Acton (Anne Brontë).  http://englishmatters.gmu.edu/issue8/lathbury/lathbury_body.htm

Contemporary reviews of Wuthering Heights  http://wuthering-heights.co.uk/reviews.htm

wuther  verb (used without object) British Dialect  (of wind) to blow fiercely.
Origin:  1846; variant of dial. and Scots whither, Middle English ( Scots ) quhediren; compare Old Norse hvitha squall of wind   http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/wuther 

Katharine Kyes Leab and Daniel J. Leab American Book Prices Current Exhibition Catalogue Awards  These awards are given annually in recognition of excellence in the publication of catalogues and brochures that accompany exhibitions of library and archival materials, as well as for electronic exhibitions of such materials.  They are administered by the Exhibition Awards Committee of the ALA/ACRL Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS), whose operating expenses are covered by a generous endowment from Katharine Kyes Leab and Daniel J. Leab, editors of American Book Prices Current.   2013 winners: 
Category 1 Winner (Expensive)  Not awarded
Category 2 Winner (Moderately expensive)  Hoover Institution Library and Archives at Stanford University for “A Century of Change: China 1911-2011."
Category 3 Winner (Inexpensive)  “Medicine of the Maumee: A History of Health Care in Northwest Ohio,” submitted by the Ward M. Canaday Center for Special Collections at the University of Toledo, Mercy College of Ohio, Mercy Toledo and ProMedica Toledo.
Category 4 Winner (Brochures)  Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University for their brochure entitled “Remembering Shakespeare.”
Category 5 Winner (Electronic exhibition)   Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin for “The Greenwich Village Bookshop Door: A Portal to Bohemia, 1920-1925,” available online.
Category 5 Honorable Mention (Electronic exhibition)  Cuban Heritage Collection at the University of Miami Libraries for “Cuban Theater in Miami: 1960-1980,” available online.
http://www.ala.org/acrl/awards/publicationawards/leabawards

Molten rock below the surface of the Earth that rises in volcanic vents is known as magma, but after it erupts from a volcano it is called lava.  Originating many tens of miles beneath the ground, the ascending magma commonly contains some crystals, fragments of surrounding (unmelted) rocks, and dissolved gases, but it is primarily a liquid composed principally of oxygen, silicon, aluminum, iron, magnesium, calcium, sodium, potassium, titanium, and manganese.  Magmas also contain many other chemical elements in trace quantities.  Upon cooling, the liquid magma may precipitate crystals of various minerals until solidification is complete to form an igneous or magmatic rock.
http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Glossary/LavaFlows/description_lava_flows.html

Conceived and designed in the late 1920's but not actually built until 1945, the Dymaxion House was Buckminster Fuller's solution to the need for a mass-produced, affordable, easily transportable and environmentally efficient house.  The word "Dymaxion" was coined by combining parts of three of Bucky's favorite words:  DY (dynamic), MAX (maximum), and ION (tension).  The house used tension suspension from a central column or mast, sold for the price of a Cadillac, and could be shipped worldwide in its own metal tube.  Toward the end of WW II, Fuller attempted to create a new industry for mass-producing Dymaxion Houses.  Bucky designed a home that was heated and cooled by natural means, that made its own power, was earthquake and storm-proof, and made of permanent, engineered materials that required no periodic painting, reroofing, or other maintenance.  You could easily change the floor plan as required - squeezing the bedrooms to make the living room bigger for a party, for instance.  Downdraft ventilation drew dust to the baseboards and through filters, greatly reducing the need to vacuum and dust.  O-Volving Shelves required no bending; rotating closets brought the clothes to you.  The Dymaxion House was to be leased, or priced like an automobile, to be paid off in five years.  

See photos of twentieth century prefab homes from the futuristically-named Lustron, Dymaxion, Aluminaire, Airoh and Futuro to the lesser known, conventionally-styled prefabs like Gunnison Homes:   http://www.flickr.com/groups/prefabhomes/pool/7942851@N08/

Recognizing and naming America
Martin Waldseemüller’s 1507 world map grew out of an ambitious project in St. Dié, near Strasbourg, France, during the first decade of the sixteenth century, to document and update new geographic knowledge derived from the discoveries of the late fifteenth and the first years of the sixteenth centuries.  Waldseemüller’s large world map was the most exciting product of that research effort, and included data gathered during Amerigo Vespucci’s voyages of 1501–1502 to the New World.  Waldseemüller christened the new lands "America" in recognition of Vespucci ’s understanding that a new continent had been uncovered as a result of the voyages of Columbus and other explorers in the late fifteenth century.  This is the only known surviving copy of the first printed edition of the map, which, it is believed, consisted of 1,000 copies.  Waldseemüller’s map supported Vespucci’s revolutionary concept by portraying the New World as a separate continent, which until then was unknown to the Europeans.  It was the first map, printed or manuscript, to depict clearly a separate Western Hemisphere, with the Pacific as a separate ocean.  The map represented a huge leap forward in knowledge, recognizing the newly found American landmass and forever changing the European understanding of a world divided into only three parts—Europe, Asia, and Africa.  See image at:  http://www.loc.gov/rr/geogmap/waldexh.html

No comments: