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Home , Edward Dickens, Epitaph to a Dog, George Knightley, Mary Dickens, The Confidential Clerk, The Long Voyage

ACQUAINTANCES

1. - Charles John Huffam Dickens About the writer:

Born Charles John Huffam Dickens 7 February 1812 Landport, Portsmouth, England

9 June 1870 (aged 58) Died Gad's Hill Place, Higham, Kent, England

Resting place Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey

Occupation Writer

Ethnicity English

Citizenship UK

The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, A Notable Christmas Carol, , work(s) , , ,

Spouse(s) Catherine Thomson Hogarth

Charles Dickens, Jr., , Kate Children Perugini, Walter Landor Dickens, , Alfred D'Orsay Tennyson Dickens, Sydney Smith Haldimand Dickens, , Dora Annie Dickens, and

Oliver Twist

Frontispiece, first edition 1838 Design by George Cruikshank

Author(s)

Original title Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress

Illustrator George Cruikshank

Country England

Language English

Series Monthly: February 1837 – April 1839

Genre(s) Historical-Fiction Social criticism

Publisher Serial: Bentley's Miscellany Book: Richard Bentley

Publication date 1837 (in three volumes)

Media type Print (Serial, Hardcover and Paperback) ISBN 91-1-937201-9

OCLC Number 185812519

Preceded by

Followed by

He was an English writer, generally considered to be the greatest novelist of the Victorian period and responsible for some of English literature's most iconic novels and characters.[1] During his lifetime Dickens' works enjoyed unprecedented popularity and fame, and they remain popular today. Dickens's work has been highly praised by writers such as Leo Tolstoy, George Orwell, and G. K. Chesterton for its realism, comedy, prose style, unique characterisations, and social criticism, though others, such as Henry James and Virginia Woolf, have criticised it as melodramatic, sentimental, and implausible.

Summary

Oliver Twist, also known as The Parish Boy's Progress, is the second novel by English author Charles Dickens, published by Richard Bentleyin 1838. The story is about an orphan Oliver Twist, who endures a miserable existence in a workhouse and then is placed with an undertaker. He escapes and travels to where he meets the Artful Dodger, leader of a gang of juvenile pickpockets. Oliver is led to the lair of their elderly criminal trainer Fagin, naively unaware of their unlawful activities. Nancy, who is a whore and works for Fagin, helps Oliver to escape from Fagin and his gang. Then after the murder of Nancy, Billsikes accidentely dies and Fagin is imprisoned. So at the end he is save by Mr. Brownlow from the mysterious man Monk and Fagin and his gang.

Critical Analysis

Oliver Twist is notable for Dickens' unromantic portrayal of criminals and their sordid lives. The book exposed the cruel treatment of many a waif-child in London, which increased international concern in what is sometimes known as "The Great London Waif Crisis": the large number of orphans in London in the Dickens era. The book's subtitle, The Parish Boy's Progress, alludes to Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress and also to a pair of popular 18th-century caricature series by William Hogarth, "A Rake's Progress" and "A Harlot's Progress".[2]

An early example of the social novel, the book calls the public's attention to various contemporary evils, including the Poor Law, child labour and the recruitment of children as criminals. Dickens mocks the hypocrisies of his time by surrounding the novel's serious themes with sarcasm and dark humour. The novel may have been inspired by the story of Robert Blincoe, an orphan whose account of hardships as a child labourer in a cotton mill was widely read in the 1830s. It is likely that Dickens's own early youth as a child labourer contributed to the story's development.

Oliver Twist has been the subject of numerous film and television adaptations, and is the basis for a highly successful musical play, and the multiple Academy Award winning 1968 motion picture made from it.

Oliver Twist- The Protagonist Oliver Twist

First Oliver Twist appearance

Created by Charles Dickens

Portrayed by Jackie Coogan (1922)

John Howard Davies (1948)

Mark Lester (1968)

Joey Lawrence (voice, 1988)

Jon Lee (1994)

Tom Fletcher (1994)

Joshua Close (2003)

Justin Pereira (2003-2004)

Barney Clark (2005)

Joseph McManners (2005)

William Miller (2007)

Harry Stott

Gwion Jones

Laurence Jeffcoate (2009)

Noah McCullough (2010))

Dan Stock (2011)

Information

Species Human

Gender Male

Family Non

Relatives Agnes Fleming (mother, deceased)

Edwin Leeford (father, deceased)

Rose Maylie (aunt)

Captain Fleming (grandfather, deceased) Harry Maylie (uncle; Rose's husband)

Edward "Monks" Leeford (half-brother, deceased)

Miss Leeford (aunt)

Mrs Leeford (step-mother, deceased)

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

Oliver Twist ·Bill Sikes ·Fagin ·Mr. Brownlow Characters ·Nancy ·Rose Maylie ·Monks ·The Artful Dodger ·Charley Bates

Oliver Twist (1909) ·Oliver Twist (1922) ·Oliver Twist (1933) ·Oliver Twist (1948) ·Oliver! ·Oliver Film adaptations & Company · Oliver Twist (1997) ·Twist ·Boy called Twist · Oliver Twist (2005)

Oliver Twist (1982 TV film) ·Oliver Twist (1985 TV miniseries) ·Oliver Twist (1999 TV Television adaptations miniseries) ·Oliver Twist (2007 TV miniseries) ·Saban's Adventures of Oliver Twist

Other adaptations Oliver! ·Fagin the Jew

"As Long as He Needs Me" · "Consider Yourself" · "Food, Glorious Food" · "I'd Do Songs Anything" · "Oliver!" · "Oom-Pah-Pah" · "Where Is Love?" · "You've Got to Pick a Pocket or Two"

See also I'd Do Anything

Works by Charles Dickens

 The Pickwick Papers (1836–1837)  Oliver Twist (1837–1839)  Nicholas Nickleby (1838–1839)  (1840–1841)  (1840–1841)  (1843–1844)

Novels  (1846–1848)  David Copperfield (1849–1850)  Bleak House (1852–1853)  Hard Times (1854)  (1855–1857)  A Tale of Two Cities (1859)  Great Expectations (1860–1861)  (1864–1865)  The Mystery of Edwin Drood (unfinished) (1870)

(1843)  (1844) Christmas books  The Cricket on the Hearth (1845)  (1846)  The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain (1848)

 Sunday Under Three Heads (1836)  The Lamplighter (1838)  A Child's Dream of a Star (1850)  Captain Murderer  (1853)

Short stories  The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices (1857) (with )  Hunted Down (1859)  The Signal-Man (1866)  George Silverman's Explanation (1868)  Holiday Romance (1868)

 A Christmas Tree (1850)  What Christmas is, as We Grow Older (1851)  The Poor Relation's Story (1852)  The Child's Story (1852)  The Schoolboy's Story (1853) Christmas  Nobody's Story (1853) short stories  Going into Society (1858)  Somebody's Luggage (1862)  Mrs Lirriper's Lodgings (1863)  Mrs Lirriper's Legacy (1864)  Doctor Marigold's Prescriptions (1865)

(1837–1839)  The Mudfog Papers (1837–1838) Short story  Master Humphrey's Clock (1840–1841) collections  Boots at the Holly-tree Inn: And Other Stories (1858)  Reprinted Pieces (1861)

(1842)  (1846) Non-fiction  (1846, published in 1934)  A Child's History of England (1851–1853)  The Uncommercial Traveller (1860–1869)

 The Village Coquettes (play, 1836)  The Fine Old English Gentleman (poetry, 1841) Poetry & plays  (play, 1866) (with Wilkie Collins)  : A Drama: In Five Acts (play, 1867) (with Wilkie Collins)

 The Examiner (1808–1886)  Monthly Magazine (1833–1835)  Morning Chronicle (1834–1836)  Evening Chronicle (1835)  Bentley's Miscellany (1836–1838) Journalism  Master Humphrey's Clock (1840–1841)  The Pic-Nic Papers (1841)  Daily News (1846)  (1850–1859)  (1858–1870)

Household Words

The Seven Poor Travellers (1854) (with Wilkie Collins, Adelaide Proctor, George Sala and Eliza Linton)

The Holly-tree Inn (1855) (with Wilkie Collins, William Howitt, Harriet Parr, and Adelaide Procter)

The Wreck of the Golden Mary (1856) (with Wilkie Collins, Adelaide Proctor, Harriet Parr, Percy Fitzgerald and Rev. James White)

The Perils of Certain English Prisoners (1857) (with Wilkie Collins)

A House to Let (1858) (with Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell and Adelaide Procter)

Collaborations All the Year Round

The Haunted House (1859) (with Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell, Adelaide Procter, George Sala, and Hesba Stretton)

A Message from the Sea (1860) (with Wilkie Collins, Robert Buchanan, Charles Allston Collins, Amelia Edwards, and Harriet Parr)

Tom Tiddler's Ground (1861) (with Wilkie Collins, John Harwood, Charles Allston Collins, and Amelia Edwards)

The Trial for Murder (1865) (with Charles Allston Collins)

Mugby Junction (1866) (with Andrew Halliday, Charles Allston Collins, Hesba Stretton and Amelia Edwards)

No Thoroughfare (1867) (with Wilkie Collins)

 A Visit to Newgate (1836)  Epitaph of Charles Irving Thornton (1842) Articles & essays  In Memoriam W. M. Thackeray (1850)  A Coal Miner's Evidence (1850)  Frauds on the Fairies (1853)  The Lost Arctic Voyagers (1854)

Emma -

A watercolour and pencil sketch of Austen, believed to have been

drawn from life by her sister Cassandra (c. 1810)[A]

Born 16 December 1775

Steventon Rectory, Hampshire

Died 18 July 1817 (aged 41)

Winchester, Hampshire

Resting place Winchester Cathedral, Hampshire

Period 1787 to 1809-1811

Genres Romance

Author(s) Jane Austen

Country United Kingdom

Language English

Genre(s) Novel

Publisher John Murray

Publication date December 1815; title page says 1816 Media type Print

Preceded by Mansfield Park

Followed by Northanger Abbey

Emma, by Jane Austen, is a novel about the perils of misconstrued romance. The novel was first published in December 1815. As in her other novels, Austen explores the concerns and difficulties of genteel women living in Georgian-Regency England; she also creates a lively comedy of manners among her characters.

Before she began the novel, Austen wrote, "I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like."[1] In the very first sentence she introduces the title character as "Emma Woodh`ouse, handsome, clever, and rich." Emma, however, is also rather spoiled; she greatly overestimates her own matchmaking abilities; and she is blind to the dangers of meddling in other people's lives and is often mistaken about the meanings of others' actions.

Summary

Emma Woodhouse, twenty-year-old lives in the Highbury.she thinks tobe naturally gifted in conjuring love matches. After her beloved governess, Miss Taylor, leaves Hartfield to become Mrs. Weston, finds herself in need of a friend. The answer is Harriet Smith, a girl of questionable origins whom Emma decides to improve. First she convinces Harriet torefuse a marriage proposal from Mr. Martin, a farmer. ImaginingHarriet to be too respectable and genteel for such a man, Emma chooses for her Mr. Elton, the town preacher. Mr. Knightley, an old family friend, dislikes Emma's matchmaking and worries she will harm Harriet. Emma convinces herself that Harriet and Mr. Elton are lovers, and is very surprised when Mr. Elton reveals that heloves her, not Harriet. Emma, offended at the idea, refuses him. Now having lost her both Mr. Martin and Mr. Elton, Emma determines to stop matchmaking. Then the son of Mr. Weston, Frank Churchill, arrives in town. The Westons secretly hope he and Emma will become attached. Emma is at first attracted to the handsome young man, but she loses interest after his first visit. The Eltons return to town, and Emma and Harriet must suffer under the vain and self-important Mrs. Elton. Mrs. Weston thinks Mr. Knightley and Jane Fairfax like each other, even though he denies the charge. Miss Fairfax is to be a governess, and her new friend Mrs. Elton diligently looks for a job for the unwilling girl. When Frank Churchill returns Emma imagines that Harriet would be a much better match for the young man, and she hopes this new entry will distract her friend from the newly married Mr. Elton. But at the ball at Crown Inn, Emma dances with Mr. Churchill, and Harriet finds herself alone for two of the dances. Mr. Knightley, who dances with her, saves her from Mr. Elton's refusals. The next day it is Frank Churchill who comes to Harriet's aid, saving her from a band of gypsies. Several days later Harriet seems determined to be over Mr. Elton, and she burns her few remembrances of him. Mr. Knightley suspects that Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax are secretly attached. The young man had some town gossip which only the Bates' (including Jane) knew, and during a puzzle game he drops some more clues. This makes Mr. Knightley dislike the young man even more, and fears Mr. Churchill is leading Emma on. The group spends a pleasant day at Mr. Knightley's home, the only uneasiness caused by Miss Fairfax's leaving early, then by Mr. Churchill's ill temper. The next day the group takes a day trip to Box Hill. It is a tense day, only increasing when Mr. Churchill behaves oddly, and Emma insults . Mr. Knightley reprimands her for this behavior, and she feels terrible. Emma visits the Bates the next day and makes amends. Mr. Knightley leaves unexpectedly for London. While he is gone, Mrs. Weston reveals to Emma that Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax had been secretly attached and are now engaged! Emma reassures them that she does not love Frank Churchill, but she fears for Harriet. She is sure Harriet cares for Mr. Churchill, her encouragement helped her friend to feel so. But Harriet is not distressed by the news. She does not love Mr. Churchill, she is in love with Mr. Knightley! Hearing this makes Emma realize that sheloves Mr. Knightley too! Uncertain what to do, Emma sends Harriet away, to give herself time to think. During her absence, Mr. Knightley returns from London, fearing how Emma will handle the news of Frank Churchill's engagement. Finding her undisturbed and not in love, Mr. Knightley tells Emma he loves her, and she returns his love. They learn that Frank Churchill kept the engagement secret because his aunt would disapprove. He and Jane had a fight after the party at Mr. Knightley's, and Miss Fairfax broke the engagement and took a governess job. Lucky for Mr. Churchill, his aunt died and his uncle proved more easygoing, and he was able to put things right with Miss Fairfax and ask to marry her properly. Emma's only worries now are her father and Harriet Smith, and these worries are short-lived. Harriet met Mr. Martin in London, and he proposed to her and she accepted. As for Mr. Woodhouse, Mr. Knightley agrees to move to Hartfield, but that is not enough for Mr. Woodhouse. He finally agrees when a poultry robber is loose in the neighborhood, and the presence of Mr. Knightley is suggested to ease his fears. In September Harriet and Mr. Martin marry, in October Emma and Mr. Knightley, and in November Mr. Churchill and Miss Fairfax. Principle Character- Emma Woodhouse, the protagonist of the story, is a beautiful, high-spirited, intelligent, and 'slightly' spoiled young woman of the age of twenty. Her mother died when she was very young, and she has been mistress of the house ever since, certainly since her older sister got married. Although intelligent, she lacks the necessary discipline to practice or study anything in depth. She is portrayed as very compassionate to the poor, but at the same time has a strong sense of class. Her affection for and patience towards her hypochondriac father are also noteworthy. While she is in many ways mature for her age, Emma makes some serious mistakes, mainly due to her conviction that she is always right and her lack of real world experience. Although she has vowed she will never ever marry, she delights in making matches for others. She seems unable to fall in love, until jealousy makes her realise that she has loved Mr. Knightley all along.

Emma, or the banality of the real world

Populated by small "minute detail" (to borrow the term from Sir ), very realistic but anodyne, the novel disoriented a number of Jane Austen's contemporaries by its immersion in the daily life of a small town, and with the corresponding absence of spectacle. We see, for example, Emma accompanying Harriet to Mr. Ford's boutique and, while her friend gets on with her shopping, she posts herself at the door to observe the spectacle of the street:

[...] the butcher with his tray, a tidy old woman travelling homewards from shop with her full basket, two curs quarrelling over a dirty bone, and a string of dawdling children round the baker's little bow-window eyeing the gingerbread [...].[3]

We find the centre of Highbury life in Mr. Ford's boutique. It's there, for example, that Harriet Smith meets her admirer, Robert Martin (volume II, chapter III). Also, convinced of the importance of the place, Frank Churchill declares: that I may prove myself to belong to the place, to be a true citizen of Highbury, I must buy something at Ford's[4] (volume II, chapter VI). FILM ADAPTATION

Film adaptions:

o 1995: , a loose American modern adaptation of the novel, set in Beverly Hills and starring Alicia Silverstone as Cher Horowitz (Emma). o 1996: Emma, an American comedy starring Gwyneth Paltrow as Emma.

2010: Aisha, an Indian modern adaptation of the novel, starring Sonam Kapoor as Aisha (Emma). Jane Austen’s Work  Sense and Sensibility (1811)  Pride and Prejudice (1813)  Mansfield Park (1814) Major  Emma (1815)  Northanger Abbey (1817)  Persuasion (1817)

 Lady Susan  Sanditon (unfinished) Minor  The Watsons (unfinished)

Juvenilia  Love and Freindship

 The Beautifull Cassandra  The History of England

 Elinor Dashwood  Edward Ferrars  Marianne Dashwood  John Willoughby  Elizabeth Bennet  Fitzwilliam Darcy  Jane Bennet  Lydia Bennet  Charles Bingley  Fanny Price  Edmund Bertram Characters  Mary Crawford  Henry Crawford  Tom Bertram  Maria Bertram  Emma Woodhouse  George Knightley  Anne Elliot  Captain Frederick Wentworth  Catherine Morland  Henry Tilney ()  Don Juan is a satiric poem by , based on the legend of Don Juan, which Byron reverses, portraying Juan not as a womanizer but as someone easily seduced by women. It is a variation on the epic form. Byron himself called it an "Epic Satire" (Don Juan, c. xiv, st. 99). Modern critics generally consider it Byron's masterpiece, with a total of over sixteen thousand individual lines of verse. Byron completed 16 cantos, leaving an unfinished 17th canto before his death in 1824. Byron claimed he had no ideas in his mind as to what would happen in subsequent cantos as he wrote his work.  When the first two cantos were published anonymously in 1819, the poem was criticized for its 'immoral content', though it was also immensely popular.  Byron was a rapid as well as a voluminous writer. Nevertheless, the composition of his great poem, Don Juan, was coextensive with a major part of his poetical life. He began the first canto of Don Juan in the autumn of 1818, and he was still at work on a seventeenth canto in the spring of 1823.  Many of Byron's remarks and reflections on the motive behind his poem are humorous paradoxes, provoked by advice and opposition. For instance, writing to , he says, "I have finished the first canto ... of a poem in the style and manner of , encouraged by the good success of the same. It is ... meant to be a little quietly facetious upon everything. But I doubt whether it is not—at least as far as it has gone—too free for these very modest days."  Conversely, it has been argued that Byron did not "whistle" Don Juan "for want of thought" – but instead he had found a thing to say, and he meant to make the world listen. He had read, albeit with angry disapproval, Coleridge's Critique on (Charles Maturin's) Bertram, where Coleridge describes the legendary Don Juan as a figure not unlike Childe Harold, or for that matter, Byron himself: "Rank, fortune, wit, talent, acquired knowledge, and liberal accomplishments, with beauty of person, vigorous health...all these advantages, elevated by the habits and sympathies of noble birth and natural character, are...combined in Don Juan, so as to give him the means of carrying into all its practical consequences the doctrine of a godless nature... Obedience to nature is the only virtue." Again "It is not the wickedness of Don Juan...which constitutes the character an abstraction, ...but the rapid succession of the correspondent acts and incidents, his intellectual superiority, and the splendid accumulation of his gifts and desirable qualities as coexistent with entire wickedness in one and the same person."

 The views of the literary critics: Sir Walter Scott maintained that its creator "has embraced every topic of human life, and sounded every string of the divine harp, from its slightest to its most powerful and heart-astounding tones." Goethe described Don Juan as "a work of boundless genius." , on the receipt of Cantos III, IV, V, bore testimony to his "wonder and delight:" "This poem carries with it at once the stamp of originality and defiance of imitation. Nothing has ever been written like it in English, nor, if I may venture to prophesy, will there be, unless carrying upon it the mark of a secondary and borrowed light.... You are building up a drama," he adds, "such as England has not yet seen, and the task is sufficiently noble and worthy of you."  Structure: The poem is in eight line iambic pentameter with the rhyme scheme ab ab ab cc - often the last rhyming couplet is used for a humor comic line or humorous bathos. There are mostly 10 syllables per line, aside from the rhyming couplet that closes each stanza, these are composed in mostly iambic hexameter, with 12 syllables per line. The rhyme scheme of each stanza is known as ottava rima. In Italian, because of the common rhymed endings, the effect of ottava rima is often highly comedic or highly tragic. Because of its few rhymed endings, the effect of ottava rima in English is often comic, and Byron chose it for this reason .  (1807)  English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809)  (1813)  (1813)  (1814)  Lara, A Tale (1814)

Longer poetry  (1815)  The Siege of Corinth (1816)  (1816)  (1816)  (1816)  Prometheus (1816)  (1816)  The Lament of Tasso (1817)  Beppo (1818)  Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1818)  Don Juan (1819–1824; incomplete upon Byron's death in 1824)  (1819)  (1819)  (1821)  The Age of Bronze (1823)  The Island (1823)

(1817)  Marino Faliero (1820)  (1821)  (1821)

Plays  (1821)  Heaven and Earth (1821)  Werner (1822)  The Deformed Transformed (1822)

 "The First Kiss of Love" (1806)  "Thoughts Suggested by a College Examination (1806)  "To a Beautiful Quaker" (1807)  "The Cornelian" (1807)  "Lines Addressed to a Young Lady" (1807)  "Lachin y Garr" (1807)  "Epitaph to a Dog" (1808)  "Maid of Athens, ere we part" (1810)

Shorter poetry  "" (1814)  "My Soul is Dark" (1815)  "The Destruction of Sennacherib" (1815)  "Fare Thee Well" (1816)  "When We Two Parted" (1817)  "Love's Last Adieu"  "So, we'll go no more a roving" (1830)

(1819)

Prose

ANIMAL FARM : GEORGE ORWELL

Author(s) George Orwell

Original title Animal Farm: A Fairy Story

Country United Kingdom

Language English

Genre(s) Classics, satire, educational animation

Publisher Secker and Warburg (London)

Publication date 17 August 1945

 Animal Farm is an allegorical novella by George Orwell published in England on 17 August 1945. According to Orwell, the book reflects events leading up to and during the Stalin era before World War II. Orwell, a democratic socialist,[1] was a critic of Joseph Stalin and hostile to Moscow-directed Stalinism, especially after his experiences with the NKVD, and what he saw of the results of the influence of Communist policy ("ceaseless arrests, censored newspapers, prowling hordes of armed police" – "Communism is now a counter-revolutionary force"),[2] during the Spanish Civil War. In a letter to Yvonne Davet, Orwell described Animal Farm as his novel "contre Stalin".[3]  The original title was Animal Farm: A Fairy Story, but the subtitle was dropped by the US publishers for its 1946 publication and subsequently all but one of the translations during Orwell's lifetime omitted the addition. Other variations in the title include: A Satire and A Contemporary Satire.[3] Orwell suggested for the French translation the title Union des républiques socialistes animales, recalling the French name of the Soviet Union, Union des républiques socialistes soviétiques, and which abbreviates URSA, which is the Latin for "bear", a symbol of Russia.[3]  Time magazine chose the book as one of the 100 best English-language novels (1923 to 2005);[4] it also places at number 31 on the Modern Library List of Best 20th- Century Novels. It won a Retrospective Hugo Award in 1996 and is also included in the Great Books of the Western World.  The novel addresses not only the corruption of the revolution by its leaders but also how wickedness, indifference, ignorance, greed and myopia corrupt the revolution. While this novel portrays corrupt leadership as the flaw in revolution (and not the act of revolution itself), it also shows how potential ignorance and indifference to problems within a revolution could allow horrors to happen if a smooth transition to a people's government is not achieved.  Adaptations:

Animal Farm has been adapted to film twice. The 1954 Animal Farm film was an animated feature and the 1999 Animal Farm film was a TV live action version, both differ from the novel. In the 1954 sanitized version, Napoleon is overthrown in a second revolution. The 1999 film shows Napoleon's regime collapsing in on itself, as happened in the Soviet Union, appropriating the new political reality to the story.  ABOUT THE WRITER: Eric Arthur Blair was born in 25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950 in Motihari, Bengal, in the then British colony of India, where his father, Richard, worked for the Opium Department of the Civil Service. His mother, Ida, brought him to England at the age of one. At the age of five, Blair was sent to a small Anglican parish school in Henley. Young Eric attended St Cyprian's School, in Eastbourne, Sussex. Eric moved to Eton, where he was a King's Scholar from 1917 to 1921.

 WORKS: Homage to Catalonia (describing his experiences during the Spanish Civil War), Down and Out in Paris and London (describing a period of poverty in these cities), and The Road to Wigan Pier (which described the living conditions of poor miners in northern England). Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty-Four. According to Newsweek, Orwell "was the finest journalist of his day and the foremost architect of the English essay since Hazlitt."  Summary : It begins with the meeting of all the animals in the farm, led by Old Major. Old Major shares his dream of freedom with the animal. He dies after some days. Now Snowball and Napoleon lead the farm. They revolt against Mr. Jones and win the farm. Now slowly power-hungry Napoleon takes the control of the farm and throws Snowball out of the farm. Napoleon turns the farm into a dictatorial state. Just like Stalin, he cruelly rules over the farm and kills all who come in his way. At the end of the novel we see that the pigs led by Napoleon in the meeting with the humans (Pilkington), look just the same as the humans. The pigs have transformed themselves by imitating the humans, into humans. No one can tell the difference between the pigs and the humans at the end of the novel.

THE WASTE LAND [A] is a 434-line[B] modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922. It has been called "one of the most important poems of the 20th century."[1] Despite the poem's obscurity[2]—its shifts between satire and prophecy, its abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location and time, its elegiac but intimidating summoning up of a vast and dissonant range of cultures and literatures—the poem has become a familiar touchstone of modern literature.[3] Among its famous phrases are "April is the cruellest month" (its first line); "I will show you fear in a handful of dust"; and (its last line) the mantra in the Sanskrit language "Shantih shantih shantih." In a letter to New York lawyer and patron of modernism John Quinn dated 9 May 1921, Eliot wrote that he had "a long poem in mind and partly on paper which I am wishful to finish." THE TITLE: The poem's title is often mistakenly given as "Waste Land" (as used by Weston) or "Wasteland", omitting the definite article. However, in a letter to , Eliot politely insisted that the title begin with "The".

The five parts of The Waste Land are titled:

1. The Burial of the Dead 2. A Game of Chess 3. The Fire Sermon 4. Death by Water 5. What the Thunder Said

 The Waste Land is a dramatic monologue. "The Waste Land" is not a single monologue like "Prufrock." Instead, it is made up of a wide variety of voices.  The style of the poem overall is marked by the hundreds of allusions and quotations from other texts (classic and obscure; "high-brow" and "low-brow") that Eliot peppered throughout the poem. In addition to the many "high-brow" references and/or quotes from poets like Baudelaire, Shakespeare, Ovid, and Homer,  "The Waste Land" is notable for its seemingly disjointed structure, indicative of the Modernist style of James Joyce's Ulysses  He also includes phrases from multiple foreign languages (Latin, Greek, Italian, German, French and Sanskrit).

 The Waste Land  Early poems   Ariel Poems  The

 Old Possum's Book of Practical  "Bustopher Jones"  "Gus: The Theatre Cat"  "Growltiger's Last Stand" Later poems 

Plays  The Rock   The Confidential Clerk 

 Selected Essays, 1917-1932  "" Prose  "Tradition and the Individual Talent"   "The Frontiers of Criticism"

The Homecoming : HAROLD PINTER THE AUTHOR : HAROLD PINTER BIRTH : 10TH OCT. 1930, Hackney, East London, England. DEATH : 24th Dec. 2008 (aged 78) London, England. OCCUPATION : Playwright, Screen Writer, Actor, Theatre Director, Poet. NATIONALITY : British. NOTABLE AWARDS : “ Companion of Honour “ (2002), “ Noble Prize In Literature” (2005) “Legion D’honneur” (2007) “David Cohen Prize” (1995) “Lawrence Olivier Award” (1996)

SPOUSE : Vivian Merchant (1956-1980), Antonia Frazer (1980-2008)

CHILDREN : One son with Merchant, Six stepsons with Frazer.

Written by Harold Pinter

Teddy Lenny Ruth Characters Sam Joey Max

Date premiered June 3, 1965

Place premiered Aldwych Theatre, London

Original language English Subject Family

Genre Drama

Summer. An old house in North Setting London.

 Characters:

The characters who appear onstage are as follows:

 Max, 70 - The patriarch of the family.  Lenny, early 30s - Max's son.  Sam, 63 - Max's brother.  Joey, middle 20s - Max's son.  Teddy, middle 30s - Max's son.  Ruth, early 30s - Teddy's wife.

 SUMMARY:

After having lived in the United States for several years, Teddy brings his wife, Ruth, home for the first time to meet his working-class family in North London, where he grew up and which she finds more familiar than their arid academic life in America.

Much sexual tension occurs as Ruth teases Teddy's brothers and father and the men taunt one another in an Oedipal game of one-upmanship, resulting in Ruth's staying behind with Teddy's relatives as "one of the family" and Teddy returning home to America and their three sons without her.

THE VIEWS OF THE CRITICS :

 According to many critics, it exposes issues of sex and violence in a highly realistic yet aesthetically stylized manner.  Brantley and other contemporary critics now often regard as "perfection" the two-act plot structure of The Homecoming. But, in the 1960s, the play's earliest critics complained that it (like Pinter's other plays) was "plotless", as well as "meaningless" and "emotionless" (lacking character motivation), finding the play "puzzling" and not "understanding" that it might have a multiplicity of potential "meanings".  Lahr considers The Homecoming to be the last and best play of Pinter's fecund early period (1957–65). It is a culmination of the poetic ambiguities, the minimalism, and the linguistic tropes of his earlier major plays: "The Birthday Party" (1958), whose first production lasted only a week in London, though the play was seen by eleven million people when it was broadcast on TV in 1960, and "The Caretaker" (1960), an immediate international hit. "The Homecoming" is both a family romance and a turf war. ("Demolition Man")  The novel ironically raises basic philosophical questions about the nature of so-called "family values" and the "meaning" of "love".  Pinter's close friend and former schoolteacher, Joseph Brearley, was visiting Pinter after he had written the play. ―I gave him the play to read,‖ Pinter recalled. ―I waited in another room. About two hours later, I heard the front door slam. I thought, Well, here we are. He doesn‘t like it. About an hour later, the doorbell rang. I answered it. He said, ‗I had to get some air.‘ He said, ‗It is your best.‘ ‖

AWARDS :

Productions of the play have won major theater awards. For example, the 1967 New York production received four Tony Awards: the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play (Paul Rogers), the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play (Ian Holm), the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play (Peter Hall), and the Tony Award for Best Play.

Heart of Darkness :JOSEPH CONRAD

THE AUTHOR : JOSEPH CONRAD

Name : Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzaeniouski.

Birth : 3rd Dec. 1857, Russian Empire.

Death : 3rd Aug. 1924 (aged 66), Bishopsbourne, England.

Occupation : Novelist (Language-English)

Genre : Psychological Realism, Modernism.

Author(s) Joseph Conrad

Country United Kingdom

Language English

Genre(s) Frame story, Novella Publisher Blackwood's Magazine

Publication date 1899

 Heart of Darkness is a novella written by Joseph Conrad. Before its 1903 publication, it appeared as a three-part series (1899) in Blackwood's Magazine. It was classified by the Modern Library website editors as one of the "100 best novels" [1] and part of the Western canon.  The story centres on Charles Marlow, who narrates most of the book. He is an Englishman who takes a foreign assignment from a Belgian trading company as a river-boat captain in Africa.  Heart of Darkness exposes the dark side of European colonization while exploring the three levels of darkness that the protagonist, Marlow, encounters: the darkness of the Congo wilderness, the darkness of the Europeans' cruel treatment of the African natives, and the unfathomable darkness within every human being for committing heinous acts of evil.  Although Conrad does not give the name of the river, at the time of writing the Congo Free State, the location of the large and important Congo River, was a private colony of Belgium's King Leopold II. In the story, Marlow is employed to transport ivory downriver. However, his more pressing assignment is to return Kurtz, another ivory trader, to civilization, in a cover-up. Kurtz has a reputation throughout the region.  This symbolic story is a story within a story or frame narrative. It follows Marlow as he recounts his Congolese adventure to a group of men aboard a ship anchored in the Thames Estuary from dusk through to late night. The passage of time and the darkening sky during Marlow's narrative parallels the atmosphere of the events he narrates.  T. S. Eliot's use of a quotation from The Heart of Darkness—"Mistah Kurtz, he dead"—as an epigraph to the original manuscript of his poem The Hollow Men contrasted its dark horror with the presumed "light of civilization," and suggested the ambiguity of both the dark motives of civilization and the freedom of barbarism, as well as the "spiritual darkness" of several characters in Heart of Darkness.

Background :

Eight and a half years before writing the book, Conrad had gone to serve as the captain of a Congo steamer. On arriving in the Congo, he found his steamer damaged and under repair. He became sick and returned to Europe before serving as captain. Some of Conrad's experiences in the Congo and the story's historic background, including possible models for Kurtz, are recounted in Adam Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost.

 Almayer's Folly  An Outcast of the Islands Novels and  The Nigger of the 'Narcissus'

novellas  Heart of Darkness  The End of the Tether  Lord Jim  The Inheritors  Typhoon  Romance  Nostromo  The Secret Agent  Under Western Eyes  Freya of the Seven Isles  Chance  Victory  The Shadow Line  The Arrow of Gold  The Rescue  The Nature of a Crime  The Rover  Suspense

 "An Outpost of Progress"  "The Lagoon"

Short stories  "Youth"  "Amy Foster"  "The Secret Sharer"

 A Personal Record Other works  Last Essays

THE HAWK IN THE RAIN : TED HUGHES

NAME : Ted Hughes.

BIRTH : 17th Aug. 1930, Mytholmroyed, Yorkshire, England.

DEATH : 28th Oct. 1998, (aged 68), London, England.

OCCUPATION : Poet, Playwright, Writer,

NATIONALITY : English.

SPOUSE : Sylvia Plath (1956-1963), Carol Orcard (1970-1998).

CHILDREN : Frieda Hughes, Nicholas Hughes, Alexandra Wevill.

ABOUT THE HAWK IN THE RAIN

AUTHOR: TED HUGHES

GENRE:POEM

YEAR OF PUBLICATION: 1957

 Ted Hughes was greatly influenced by William Shakespeare, William Blake, Wilfred Owen, Sylvia Plath, W. B. Yeats, S.T. Coleridge, T. S. Eliot and Emily Dickenson.  He became the British Poet Laureate in 1984. His last poetic work was in 1998, the ―Birthday Letters‖. In 2008 The Times they ranked Ted Hughes on their list of ―The 50 Greatest British Writer Since 1945‖.

Summary :

The speaker in the poem says that he is walking laboriously on the ground because there is deep mud through which he has to drag himself when it is raining heavily. While he is going through a real ordeal in thus dragging himself through the mud in the heavy rain, a hawk, perched at a height, looks downwards calmy and without showing any sign of discomfort. The hawk sits ―effortlessly‖ at high point, maintaining his equilibrium. The hawk‘s wings seem to hold all Creation without having to exert themselves in the least. The hawk sits steadily without being in the least shaken by the strong and cold wind which strikes against the body of the speakerin the poem, hitting every organ of his body. Indeed, the speaker in the poem feels that the rain is cutting through his head and reaching his very bones, while the hawk sits determinedly, thus displaying unshakable will-power. The speaker feels that he would be swallowed by the mud on the earth. He is acutely conscious of the violence of Nature at this time, while the hawk sits still and at ease. But then it occurs to the speaker that a furious storm, would be forced downwards and flung down to the earth, to be killed instantaneously. Then the hawk‘s blood would mingle with the mud on the ground.

THE COMMENTS BY THE CRITICS :

 According to one of the critics, Hughes believes that the strength of animals lies instinct and precise function. Hughes said :‖ Animals are not violent, they are so much more adapted to their environment.‖  The theme of this poem is the contrast between the steadiness, the stability, and the strength of a hawk (perched on some cliff or crag or rock or tree) and the unsteadiness and the sense of danger of a human being when it is raining heavily and when a strong, cold wind is also blowing.  The poem contains graphic imagery  The pictures in this poem have been presented to our minds by means of striking words put together in original combinations.

Ted Hughes Award

In 2009 the Ted Hughes Award for new work in poetry was established with the permission of Carol Hughes. The Poetry Society notes "the award is named in honour of Ted Hughes, Poet Laureate, and one of the greatest twentieth century poets for both children and adults‖. Members of the Poetry Society and Poetry Book Society recommend a living UK poet who has completed the newest and most innovative work that year, "highlighting outstanding contributions made by poets to our cultural life." The £5,000 prize funded from the annual honorarium that Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy receives as Laureate from The Queen.

Alice Oswald was the inaugural winner in 2010 for her collection Weeds and Wildflowers (etchings by Jessica Greenman). In 2011 judges Gillian Clarke, Stephen Raw and Jeanette Winterson awarded the award to Kaite O‘Reilly for her site specific retelling of Aeschylus‘ play, The Persians (first produced in 472 BCE). Three other poets were short-listed. Christopher Reid worked with director Niall MacCormick to adapt his narrative poem The Song of Lunch into a 50-minute BBC2 film. David Swann's The Privilege of Rain (published by Waterloo Press, with wood-cuts by Clare Dunne), is a collection complied following a year as Writer in Residence at HMP Nottingham (prison). Katharine Towers' The Floating Man is a debut collection published by Picador