Henry James was an
American writer who lived in England for a long time, and dealt with
English society in much of his fiction. He is regarded as one of
the key figures of 19th-centuryliterary realism. He was the brother
of philosopher and psychologistWilliam James.
He died 100 years ago, on 28 February 1916.
Here you can read about his life and works in detail.
Harper Lee, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of To
Kill a Mockingbird, has died at age 89 yesterday.
Born on April 28, 1926, she grew up in Monroeville,
Alabama, where she was close friends with Truman Capote (whom she would later
help with his work on In Cold Blood). Her father was a lawyer, like
Atticus Finch, the hero of To Kill a Mockingbird.
She published itin 1960 and won the
Pulitzer Prize the following year. The 1962 film adaptation starring
Gregory Peck won three Academy Awards.
The book became a beloved classic and a mainstay on
assigned reading lists, but Harper Lee turned away from public life, and it seemed
unlikely she would publish again. In 2007, she suffered a stroke that led to
long-term health issues, which made it even more of a surprise in 2015 when her
publisher, HarperCollins, announced it would publish a manuscript found in a
safe deposit box that had served as an origin point for To Kill
a Mockingbird; that book, Go Set a Watchman, became an
instant bestseller last summer, despite controversy as to whether she had been
capable of consenting to its publication.
The new book catches up with the characters two decades later; Scout Finch
is a young woman living in New York City (as Harper Lee once did), home on a
visit to her family. Atticus, once a champion for civil rights in the
courtroom, now takes part in anti-integrationist meetings, to his daughter’s
horror and disappointment. Many readers were disappointed by a depiction of
Atticus as a racist, tainting the character’s image in the popular imagination
as a pioneer for equality.
Born in London,
England, on October 31, 1795, John Keats devoted his short life to the perfection
of poetry marked by vivid imagery, great sensuous appeal and an attempt to
express a philosophy through classical legend. In 1818 he went on a walking
tour in the Lake District. His exposure and overexertion on that trip brought
on the first symptoms of the tuberculosis which ended his life. Continue
readinghere.
Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England, on February
7, 1812, to John and Elizabeth Dickens. He was the second of eight children.
His father worked as a clerk for the Naval Pay office and was imprisoned for
debt when Charles was young. Charles Dickens went to work at a blacking
warehouse, managed by a relative of his mother, when he was twelve, and hisbrush
with hard times and poverty affected him deeply. Continue readinghere.
Here you can watch the British television film
adapted from Charles Dickens's novel The Old Curiosity Shop. It was first broadcast on 26
December 2007 on ITV.
“Charles Dickens excelled in
character; in the creation of characters of greater intensity than human
beings.”
"Winter is the time for comfort,
for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk
beside the fire: it is
the time for home." Edith Sitwell
