Robert Lewis (later “Louis”) Balfour Stevenson (1850-1894) was born in Edinburgh. At the age of seventeen he enrolled at Edinburgh
University to study engineering, with the aim--his father
hoped--of following him in the family firm.
However, he abandoned this course of studies and made the compromise of
studying law. He “passed advocate” in
1875 but did not practice since by now he knew he wanted to be a writer. His first published work was an essay called “Roads”,
and his first published volumes were works of travel writing. His first
published volume, An
Inland Voyage (1878), is an account of the journey he made by canoe
from Antwerp to northern France, in which prominence is given to the author and
his thoughts. A companion work, Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes (1879),
gives us more of his thoughts on life and human society. Stevenson has an important place in the
history of the short story in the British Isles: the form had been elaborated and developed in
America, France and Russia from the mid-19th century, but it was Stevenson who initiated
the British tradition. His first published fictional narrative was
“A Lodging for the Night” (1877), a short story originally published in a
magazine, like other early narrative works, such as “The Sire De Malétroit’s
Door” (1877), “Providence and the Guitar” (1878), and “The Pavilion on the
Links” (1880). They have an affinity
with the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in their setting in the labyrinthine modern city, and
the subject matter of crimes and guilty secrets involving respectable members
of society. Stevenson continued to write
short stories all his life, and notable titles include: “Thrawn Janet” (1881),
“The Merry Men” (1882), “The Treasure of Franchard” (1883), “Markheim” (1885),
which, being a narrative of the Double, has certain affinities with Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
“Olalla” (1885), which like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde originated
in a dream also deals with the possibility of degeneration. The above short narratives were all collected
in The
Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables in 1887. Weir of Hermiston, Stevenson’s very Scottish romance,
was written when Stevenson was far away on the other side of the world. His decision to sail around the Pacific in 1888, living on various islands for short periods,
then setting off again (all the time collecting material for an anthropological
and historical work on the South Seas which was never fully completed), was
another turning point in his life. In
1889 he and his extended family arrived at the port of Apia in the Samoan islands and they decided to build a house and settle. This choice brought him health, distance from
the distractions of literary circles, and went towards the creation of his
mature literary persona: the traveller,
the exile, very aware of the harsh sides of life but also celebrating the joy
in his own skill as a weaver of words and teller of tales. He wrote about the Pacific islands in several
of his later works: Island Nights’ Entertainments already
referred to; In
the South Seas (1896), essays
that would have gone towards the large work on the area that he planned; and
two other narratives with a South Sea setting: The
Wrecker (1892), and The
Ebb-Tide (1894). http://robert-louis-stevenson.org/life/ Read about the Robert Louis Stevenson
Museum at http://rlsmuseum.org/
COMPLETE
COLLECTION OF POEMS by Robert Louis
Stevenson Select poems from Child's
Garden of Verses, New
Poems, Songs
of Travel, and Underwoods--or
browse titles alphabetically. Link to
biography at http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/stevenson/stevenson_ind.html
The 10 Best Books of 2016 and 100 notable titles
that you shouldn’t miss. Also, look for
special recommendations for lovers of mysteries, graphic novels, audiobooks,
romance, poetry, memoirs, and science fiction and fantasy from The Washington
Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/entertainment/2016-best-books/?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_sa-books-535pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory The Washington Post is a daily newspaper, and was founded on December 6,
1877.
WHAT’S IN A BRAND NAME? by James Surowiecki
In October of 1955,
a marketing researcher at Ford named Robert Young wrote the poet Marianne Moore
a curious letter. Ford had designed a
new car, which it hoped would revolutionize the industry, and it was struggling
to find a good name. Young said that the
options his division had come up with were “characterized by an embarrassing
pedestrianism.” Perhaps a poet could
devise something to convey, “through association or other conjuration, some
visceral feeling of elegance, fleetness, advanced features and design.” In the following months, Moore sent Ford a
long list of suggestions that were anything but pedestrian: Intelligent Bullet, Ford Fabergé, Mongoose
Civique, Bullet Cloisoné, Utopian Turtletop.
Ford, unsurprisingly, didn’t go for any of them. Instead, after considering more than six
thousand names, it settled on one that has since become a byword for
failure: Edsel. Still, in going to such lengths to find a
great name, Ford was ahead of the curve.
Corporate branding is now big business, and companies routinely spend
tens of millions of dollars rebranding themselves or coming up with names for
new products. And good monikers are
still defined by Young’s precept that a name should somehow evoke the
fundamental qualities that you hope to advertise. If only Tribune Publishing—the media company
that owns the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune—had
followed this simple rule. In 2016,
Tribune announced that it was reinventing itself as a “content curation and
monetization company focused on creating and distributing premium, verified
content” (whatever that means) and giving itself a new name: Tronc.
The name, which stands for Tribune Online Content, was ridiculed at the
time and hasn’t done the company any favors since. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/11/14/whats-in-a-brand-name
Frankenstein's monster, sometimes known as Frankenstein, is a fictional
character whose fictional creator was Victor Frankenstein. The monster first appeared, without any name,
in Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Shelley's
title thus compares Victor Frankenstein to the mythological character Prometheus who fashioned humans out of clay and
gave them fire. Although nameless in
Shelley's novel, the creature took on the name "Frankenstein" in
later years. In Shelley's Gothic story, Victor Frankenstein builds the
creature in his laboratory through an ambiguous method
consisting of chemistry and alchemy.
Shelley describes the monster as 8-foot-tall (2.4 m), hideously
ugly, but sensitive and emotional. The
monster attempts to fit into human society, but is shunned, which leads him to
seek revenge against his creator. See
pictures and find a list of monster portrayals from 1823-2015, and monster
appearances in media at
See Why 'Frankenstein' Is the Greatest Horror Novel
Ever by Susan J. Wolfson and Ronald
Levao
Mary Shelley was just a
teenager when she began writing Frankenstein in 1816. The circumstances of its genesis are well
known: in 1815 the volcano known as
Mount Tambora, in Indonesia, erupted, causing a drop in the average global
temperature of around 0.5 degrees Celsius. This led to a subsequent failure of many
crops. 1816 was ‘The Year Without a
Summer’ (Byron documented the event in his poem ‘Darkness’). Shelley, along with her poet-husband Percy
Bysshe, went to stay at Lake Geneva with none other than Byron, and a young man
named John Polidori. To occupy the time,
the four of them held a competition to see who could come up with the best
ghost story. From this event, we got not
only what is arguably the first science fiction novel, Frankenstein, but
the first vampire novel too--Polidori’s The Vampyre, which appeared in 1819, a year after Frankenstein. https://interestingliterature.com/2012/12/04/frankenstein-the-most-misread-novel/
Welcome to Interesting Literature, an online library of all that is most interesting and
captivating about literature. Here
you’ll find fun facts, interesting research into writers and their work, and
blog posts which seek to capture the most fascinating facets of the
literary world. Interesting Literature was set
up in 2012 by Dr Oliver Tearle, Lecturer in English at Loughborough University
and freelance writer. The aim is simple:
to uncover the little-known interesting facts about the world of books,
and to shine a light on some of the more curious aspects of literature. In 2016, Interesting Literature also became a book, The
Secret Library: A Book-Lovers’ Journey Through Curiosities of History,
which contains all sorts of hidden gems from the world of literature, such as
the ancient parody of Homer’s Iliad, the
surprising identity of England’s first female dramatist, and the bestselling
nineteenth-century American novel that predicted radio stations, credit cards,
and electronic broadcasting. Unless
otherwise stated, all posts are written by Oliver Tearle. https://interestingliterature.com/about-us/
“Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for
granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be
swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in
parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly,
and with diligence and attention.” ― Francis Bacon, The Essays http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/28623-read-not-to-contradict-and-confute-nor-to-believe-and
Refute vs Confute - What's the difference? As verbs the
difference between refute and confute is
that refute is to prove (something) to be false or incorrect while confute is to show (something or someone)
to be false or wrong; to disprove or refute.
http://wikidiff.com/confute/refute
Nursery Rhyme Headlines #3 December 9, 2016 by Wrong
Hands
https://wronghands1.com/ cartoons by John Atkinson
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 1665
December 16, 2016 On this date in
1899, Noël Coward,
English actor, playwright, and composer, was born. On this date in 1988, Anna
Popplewell, English actress, was born.
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