Golden age  noun  the most flourishing period in the history of a nation, literature, etc.  *  Classical Mythology  the first and best of the four ages of humankind; an era of peace and innocence that finally yielded to the silver age.  (usually initial capital letters)  *  a period in Latin literature, 70 b.c. to a.d. 14, in which Cicero, Catullus, Horace, Vergil, Ovid, and others wrote; the first phase of Classical Latin.  *  the period in life after middle age, traditionally characterized by wisdom, contentment, and useful leisure.  *  the age at which a person normally retires.  https://www.dictionary.com/browse/golden-age 

Timbuktu is landlocked in the Sahara, and poor, but it’s a power house in art, architecture, and literature.  It’s located in the heart of Mali, in West Africa, and known for its rich cultural heritage, including ancient manuscripts that hold the history of Islam in West and North Africa.  Timbuktu is Mali West Africa’s cradle of knowledge.  In the 15th century, Timbuktu was known as the “city of gold,” a name born of the fact that much of the gold produced in mines of the Mali Empire moved by camel caravan through Timbuktu and across the desert to North Africa and Europe.  Timbuktu lay across the trans-Saharan trade routes between the Taoudenni salt mines deep in the Sahara and gold mines South of the Sahara. Crafts and textile industries also flourished in the city, including dozens of skilled tailors.  Timbuktu’s winding streets became known for the mud limestone architecture and ornate wooden doorways made by Moor craftsmen centuries ago.  The streets and doorways are still there and gold remains one of Mali’s most important exports.  El Hadj Djitteye  See pictures at https://medium.com/@elhadjdjitteye/the-golden-age-of-timbuktu-b4daecce33f0

In United States history, the Gilded Age was an era extending roughly from 1877 to 1896, which was sandwiched between the Reconstruction era and the Progressive Era.  It was a time of rapid economic growth, especially in the Northern and Western United States.  As American wages grew much higher than those in Europe, especially for skilled workers, and industrialization demanded an ever-increasing unskilled labor force, the period saw an influx of millions of European immigrants.  The rapid expansion of industrialization led to real wage growth of 60% between 1860 and 1890, and spread across the ever-increasing labor force.  The average annual wage per industrial worker (including men, women, and children) rose from $380 in 1880, to $564 in 1890, a gain of 48%.  Conversely, the Gilded Age was also an era of abject poverty and inequality, as millions of immigrants—many from impoverished regions—poured into the United States, and the high concentration of wealth became more visible and contentious.  Railroads were the major growth industry, with the factory system, mining, and finance increasing in importance.  Immigration from Europe, and the Eastern United States, led to the rapid growth of the West, based on farming, ranching, and mining.  Labor unions became increasingly important in the rapidly growing industrial cities.  Two major nationwide depressions—the Panic of 1873 and the Panic of 1893—interrupted growth and caused social and political upheavals.  Some well-known painters of the Gilded Age include:  Jules Breton, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, William Merritt Chase, John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Childe Hassam, John Henry Twachtman, and Maurice Prendergast.  The New York art world took a major turn during the Gilded Age, seeing an outgrowth of exhibitions and the establishment of major auction houses with a focus on American art.  The Gilded Age was pivotal in establishing the New York art world in the international art market.  See pictures at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilded_Age   

Alfred A. Knopf will publish Until August, the final (as far as we know) novel written by Nobel Prize–winning writer Gabriel García Márquez before his death in 2014, in 2024.  After years of rumors that there was an “an entire literary masterpiece, never seen by the public” locked away, Arc of the Covenant-style, inside the bowels of the writer’s archive at the University of Texas, it was confirmed last month by Penguin Random House that an unpublished Gabriel García Márquez novel not only exists, but will be on shelves across Latin America in 2024.  We can now add the shelves of North America (and most of the rest of the world) to that publication window, as Reagan Arthur, Knopf executive v-p and publisher, has acquired North American rights from the Carmen Balcells Literary Agency in Barcelona.  The book will be translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean and published by Knopf as part of a simultaneous global release in 2024.  Dan Sheehan  https://lithub.com/knopf-will-publish-gabriel-garcia-marquezs-final-novel/

News first week in June:  The first Pulitzer Prizes are awarded in four categories:  biography, history, editorial writing, and reporting (June 4, 1917) • 22-year-old Carson McCullers’s debut novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, is published (June 4, 1940) • Blessent mon cœur d’une langueur monotone—the second line of gun-toting love fiend Paul Verlaine’s 1866 poem “Chanson d’automne”—is broadcast over BBC Radio by the Allies as a coded message to the French Resistance (June 5, 1944) • The first English translation of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables is published in New York • George Orwell’s 1984 is published (June 8, 1949) • The Philadelphia Spelling Book becomes the first book ever copyrighted in the United States (June 9, 1790) Literary Hub June 4, 2023

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2769  June 5, 2023