|
1979 In Literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1979. Events *May – The Merchant Ivory Productions film ''The Europeans'' is released. Its screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala draws on the 1878 Henry James novel of the same name. *October 25 – The ''London Review of Books'' is first issued, its founding editors being Karl Miller, Mary-Kay Wilmers and Susannah Clapp. For its first six months it appears as an insert to ''The New York Review of Books''. *November – Dambudzo Marechera's ''The House of Hunger'' wins the Guardian Fiction Prize. *''unknown dates'' **K. W. Jeter's novel ''Morlock Night'' pioneers full-length fiction in the genre he later calls steampunk. **August Wilson's '' Jitney'' is first produced; it becomes the eighth in his "Pittsburgh Cycle". New books Fiction *Douglas Adams – ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' * V. C. Andrews – ''Flowers in the Attic'' *Jeffrey Archer – '' Kane and Abel'' *Barbara Taylor Brad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Merchant Ivory Productions
Merchant Ivory Productions is a film company founded in 1961 by producer Ismail Merchant (1936–2005) and director James Ivory (b. 1928). Merchant and Ivory were life and business partners from 1961 until Merchant's death in 2005. During their time together, they made 44 films. The films were for the most part produced by Merchant and directed by Ivory, and 23 of them were scripted by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (1927–2013) in some capacity. The films were often based upon novels or short stories, particularly the work of Henry James, E. M. Forster, and Jhabvala herself. The initial goal of the company was "to make English-language films in India aimed at the international market". The style of Merchant Ivory films set and photographed in India became iconic. The company also went on to make films in the United Kingdom and America. Some actors and producers associated with Merchant Ivory include Maggie Smith, Leela Naidu, Madhur Jaffrey, Aparna Sen, Shashi Kapoor, Jennifer Kendal, H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Steampunk
Steampunk is a subgenre of science fiction that incorporates retrofuturistic technology and aesthetics inspired by 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery. Steampunk works are often set in an alternative history of the Victorian era or the American "Wild West", where steam power remains in mainstream use, or in a fantasy world that similarly employs steam power. Steampunk most recognizably features anachronistic technologies or retrofuturistic inventions as people in the 19th century might have envisioned them — distinguishing it from Neo-Victorianism — and is likewise rooted in the era's perspective on fashion, culture, architectural style, and art. Such technologies may include fictional machines like those found in the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne. Other examples of steampunk contain alternative-history-style presentations of such technology as steam cannons, lighter-than-air airships, analog computers, or such digital mechanical computers as Charles B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
If On A Winter's Night A Traveler
''If on a winter's night a traveler'' ( it, Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore) is a 1979 novel by the Italian writer Italo Calvino. The postmodernist narrative, in the form of a frame story, is about the reader trying to read a book called ''If on a winter's night a traveler''. Each chapter is divided into two sections. The first section of each chapter is in second person, and describes the process the reader goes through to attempt to read the next chapter of the book he or she is reading. The second half is the first part of a new book that the reader ("you") finds. The second half is always about something different from the previous ones. The book was published in an English translation by William Weaver in 1981. Structure The book begins with a chapter on the art and nature of reading, and is subsequently divided into twenty-two passages. The odd-numbered passages and the final passage are narrated in the second person. That is, they concern events purportedly happ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino (, also , ;. RAI (circa 1970), retrieved 25 October 2012. 15 October 1923 – 19 September 1985) was an Italian writer and journalist. His best known works include the ''Our Ancestors'' trilogy (1952–1959), the '' Cosmicomics'' collection of short stories (1965), and the novels ''Invisible Cities'' (1972) and ''If on a winter's night a traveler'' (1979). Admired in Britain, Australia and the United States, he was the most translated contemporary Italian writer at the time of his death. Italo Calvino is buried in the garden cemetery of Castiglione della Pescaia, in Tuscany. Biography Parents Italo Calvino was born in Santiago de las Vegas, a suburb of Havana, Cuba, in 1923. His father, Mario, was a tropical agronomist and botanist who also taught agriculture and floriculture. Born 47 years earlier in Sanremo, Italy, Mario Calvino had emigrated to Mexico in 1909 where he took up an important position with the Ministry of Agriculture. In an autobiographical ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kindred (novel)
''Kindred ''is a novel by American writer Octavia E. Butler that incorporates time travel and is modeled on slave narratives. First published in 1979, it is still widely popular. It has been frequently chosen as a text for community-wide reading programs and book organizations, as well as being a common choice for high school and college courses. The book is the first-person account of a young African-American writer, Dana, who finds herself being shunted in time between her Los Angeles, California home in 1976 and a pre-Civil War Maryland plantation. There she meets her ancestors: a proud Black freewoman and a white planter who has forced her into slavery and concubinage. As Dana's stays in the past become longer, she becomes intimately entangled with the plantation community. She makes hard choices to survive slavery and to ensure her return to her own time. ''Kindred '' explores the dynamics and dilemmas of antebellum slavery from the sensibility of a late 20th-century Black w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Octavia Butler
Octavia Estelle Butler (June 22, 1947 – February 24, 2006) was an American science fiction author and a multiple recipient of the Hugo and Nebula awards. In 1995, Butler became the first science-fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship.Crossley, Robert. "Critical Essay." In ''Kindred'', by Octavia Butler. Boston: Beacon, 2004. Born in Pasadena, California, Butler was raised by her widowed mother. Extremely shy as a child, Butler found an outlet at the library reading fantasy, and in writing. She began writing science fiction as a teenager. She attended community college during the Black Power movement, and while participating in a local writer's workshop, was encouraged to attend the Clarion Workshop, which focused on science fiction. She soon sold her first stories and by the late 1970s had become sufficiently successful as an author that she was able to pursue writing full-time. Her books and short stories drew the favorable attention of the public and awards s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Woman Of Substance (novel)
''A Woman of Substance'' is a novel by Barbara Taylor Bradford, published in 1979. The novel is the first of a seven-book saga about the fortunes of a retail empire and the machinations of the business elite across three generations. The series, featuring Emma Harte and her family also includes ''Hold The Dream'', ''To Be The Best'', ''Emma's Secret'', ''Unexpected Blessings'', ''Just Rewards'' and ''Breaking the Rules''. ''A Woman of Substance'' was adapted as '' an eponymous television miniseries'' as were the sequels '' Hold the Dream'' and ''To Be the Best''. Plot summary The book starts with an elderly Emma Harte flying to New York with her personal assistant and favourite grandchild, Paula. Emma contemplates the empire she has created. She has trained Paula to be her successor, both as the head of Harte Stores and as representative of her mother, Daisy Amory, at Sitex. On their arrival in New York, Emma's secretary, Gaye, tells her she heard Emma's sons discussing a p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Barbara Taylor Bradford
Barbara Taylor Bradford (born 10 May 1933) is a best-selling British-American novelist. Her debut novel, '' A Woman of Substance'', was published in 1979 and sold over 30 million copies worldwide. She wrote 39 novels, all bestsellers in England and the United States. Writing career In her youth, Barbara read Charles Dickens, the Brontë sisters, Thomas Hardy, and Colette. At age ten she decided to be a writer after sending a story to a magazine. She was paid seven 7 s 6 d for the story, with which she bought handkerchiefs and a green vase for her parents. Barbara left school at 15. She became a reporter for the ''Yorkshire Evening Post'' after working briefly in their typing pool. While a reporter, she worked alongside Keith Waterhouse. She moved to London at the age 20 where she became the fashion editor of ''Woman's Own'' magazine, and later a columnist for the ''London Evening News''. She later wrote an interior decoration column syndicated to 183 newspapers. Her fi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kane And Abel (novel)
''Kane and Abel'' is a 1979 novel by British author Jeffrey Archer. Released in the United Kingdom in 1979 and in the United States in February 1980, the book was an international success, selling over one million copies in its first week. It reached No. 1 on the ''New York Times'' best-seller list. By 2009, it had sold an estimated 34 million copies worldwide. A sequel, ''The Prodigal Daughter'', was released in 1982 and features Abel's daughter Florentyna as the protagonist. In 2003, ''Kane and Abel'' was listed at number 96 on the BBC's survey The Big Read. ''Kane & Abel'' is among the top 100 best-selling books in the world, with a similar number of copies sold as ''To Kill a Mockingbird'' and ''Gone with the Wind''. Plot summary The book tells the stories of two men born worlds apart. They have nothing in common except the same date of birth (18 April 1906) and a zeal to succeed in life. William Lowell Kane is a wealthy and powerful elite class while Abel Rosnovski ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jeffrey Archer
Jeffrey Howard Archer, Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare (born 15 April 1940) is an English novelist, life peer, convicted criminal, and former politician. Before becoming an author, Archer was a Member of Parliament (1969–1974), but did not seek re-election after a financial scandal that left him almost bankrupt. Archer revived his fortunes as a novelist. His 1979 novel ''Kane and Abel'' remains one of the best-selling books in the world, with an estimated 34 million copies sold worldwide. Overall his books have sold more than 320 million copies worldwide. Archer became deputy chairman of the Conservative Party (1985–86), before resigning after a newspaper accused him of paying money to a prostitute. In 1987, he won a court case and was awarded large damages because of this claim. He was made a life peer in 1992 and subsequently became Conservative candidate to be the first elected Mayor of London. He resigned his candidacy in 1999 after it emerged that he had lied in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flowers In The Attic
''Flowers in the Attic'' is a 1979 Gothic novel by V. C. Andrews. It is the first book in the Dollanganger Series, and was followed by '' Petals on the Wind'', '' If There Be Thorns'', '' Seeds of Yesterday'', '' Garden of Shadows'', '' Christopher's Diary: Secrets of Foxworth'', '' Christopher's Diary: Echoes of Dollanganger'' and '' Christopher's Diary: Secret Brother''. The novel is written in the first-person, from the point of view of Cathy Dollanganger. It was twice adapted into films in 1987 and 2014. The book was extremely popular, selling over forty million copies world-wide. Plot In 1957, the Dollanganger family—father Christopher, mother Corinne, 14-year-old Chris, 12-year-old Cathy, and 5-year-old twins Carrie and Cory—live an idyllic life in Gladstone, Pennsylvania, until Christopher Sr. is killed in a car accident, leaving Corinne deep in debt with no means to support her children. On the verge of their home being foreclosed, Corinne reveals to the children tha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy
''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' (sometimes referred to as ''HG2G'', ''HHGTTG'', ''H2G2'', or ''tHGttG'') is a comic science fiction, comedy science fiction franchise created by Douglas Adams. Originally The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (radio series), a 1978 radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio 4, it was later adapted to other formats, including novels, stage shows, comic books, a The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (TV series), 1981 TV series, a The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (video game), 1984 text-based computer game, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (film), 2005 feature film. ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' has become an international multi-media phenomenon; the novels are the most widely distributed, having been translated into more than 30 languages by 2005. The first novel, ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (novel), The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' (1979), has been ranked fourth on the BBC’s The Big Read poll. The sixth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
