|
Dark Places Of The Heart
''Dark Places of the Heart'' (1966) is a novel by Australian writer Christina Stead. This novel is also known by Stead's preferred title ''Cotter's England''. Story outline Set in post-war northern England the novel follows the fortunes of Nellie Cook, sister Peggy Cotter and brother Tom, and their familial and external relationships. Critical reception Writing in ''The Canberra Times'', Neville Braybrooke notes that the book is a "masterly depiction of working class life, both in the north and south of England, it has a freshness of vision which makes it unique." A reviewer in ''Kirkus Review'' was a little ambivalent about the book: "Like her best novel, it is a hurdy gurdy of domestic crises, strewn with slashing, colorful speech, vigorous rhythms and social detail. Yet it has a strangely melancholic air and an uncertain jumble of incidents, as if the author were never sure either of her descriptive powers or of the intended emotional design." See also * 1966 in literatu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christina Stead
Christina Stead (17 July 190231 March 1983) was an Australian novelist and short-story writer acclaimed for her satirical wit and penetrating psychological characterisations. Christina Stead was a committed Marxist, although she was never a member of the Communist Party. She spent much of her life outside Australia, although she returned before her death. Biography Christina Stead's father was the marine biologist and pioneer conservationist David George Stead. She was born in the Sydney suburb of Rockdale. They lived in Rockdale at Lydham Hall. She later moved with her family to the suburb of Watsons Bay in 1911. She was the only child of her father's first marriage, and had five half-siblings from his second marriage. He also married a third time, to Thistle Yolette Harris, the Australian botanist, educator, author, and conservationist. According to some, this house was a hellhole for her because of her "domineering" father. She then left Australia in 1928, and worked in a Pa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the island of Great Britain. Existing on a dialect continuum with Scots, and then closest related to the Low Saxon and Frisian languages, English is genealogically West Germanic. However, its vocabulary is also distinctively influenced by dialects of France (about 29% of Modern English words) and Latin (also about 29%), plus some grammar and a small amount of core vocabulary influenced by Old Norse (a North Germanic language). Speakers of English are called Anglophones. The earliest forms of English, collectively known as Old English, evolved from a group of West Germanic (Ingvaeonic) dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century and further mutated by Norse-speaking Viking settlers starting in the 8th and 9th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Holt, Rinehart And Winston
Holt McDougal is an American publishing company, a division of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, that specializes in textbooks for use in high schools. The Holt name is derived from that of U.S. publisher Henry Holt (1840–1926), co-founder of the earliest ancestor business, but Holt McDougal is distinct from contemporary Henry Holt and Company, which claims the history from 1866. The companies publish different kinds of books. History Holt, Rinehart and Winston (HRW) was created in March 1960 by the merger of Henry Holt and Company of New York City (established 1866 as Leypoldt and Holt); Rinehart & Company of New York, descendant of Farrar & Rinehart (est. 1929); and the John C. Winston Company of Philadelphia (est. 1884). ''The Wall Street Journal'' reported on March 1, 1960, that Holt stockholders had approved the merger, last of the three approvals. "Henry Holt is the surviving concern, but will be known as Holt, Rinehart, Winston, Inc.""Henry Holt Merger". ''The Wall Stree ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The People With The Dogs
''The People with the Dogs'' (1952) is a novel by Australian writer Christina Stead. Story outline Edward Massine has returned home to New York from the Second World War to a doting family. The last of his line he is in a comfortable position that he finds very difficult to break away from. He waits too long to marry his long-term girlfriend who chooses another, but subsequently meets and marries Lydia, an actress, finally exchanging his suffocating family life for a bright new future. Critical reception A reviewer in ''Kirkus Review'' found good and not-so-good points with the book: "An acrid, often amusing, occasionally tiresome probing of a rather squashy segment of New York City's population and also an examination of the problem of nonconformity in contemporary society - a novel sounding some telling notes which unfortunately evaporate into the thin upper air of attenuated symbolism." In 2011 Edmund White listed the novel as one of his "top 10 New York Books" in ''The G ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Little Hotel
''The Little Hotel'' (1973) is a novel by Australian writer Christina Stead. Story outline In a small European hotel in the late 1940s a bizarre group of characters, who all seem to be on the run from some past financial, personal or political horror, come together. Critical reception In a short survey of books for the 1974 Christmas market, Margaret Sydney noted in ''The Australian Women's Weekly'' that "This novel is one to treasure, because of its humor, its beautiful writing, its understanding of the way in which bothered people tick." Kegan Gardiner has written an extended review essay on the novel and finds: "Despite some gaps in its narrative point of view, ''The Little Hotel'' is a shapely piece of fiction, with coherent parallel plotting, a careful array of interconnected characters, and rich patterns of imagery." And continues "Unusually for Stead, in ''The Little Hotel'' we hear less of her characters’ speeches than we might like. The characters and their pasts ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1966 In Literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1966. Events *February – The Nottingham-based chain of pharmacy stores Boots UK closes the last of its circulating " Booklovers' Library" branches. *February 10 – Author Jacqueline Susann has her first novel, '' Valley of the Dolls'', published. From a friend she obtains a list of the bookstores on whose sales figures ''The New York Times'' relies for its bestseller list. She then uses her own money to buy large quantities of her book at these stores, causing it to head the list. ''Valley of the Dolls'' incidentally comes to rank among the best-selling novels of all time. *February 14 – Dissident writers Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky are sentenced to hard labour for "anti-Soviet activity". *March 9 – J. R. R. Tolkien writes to Roger Verhulst expressing concerns about a proposed book about him by W. H. Auden, saying, "I regard such things as premature impertinences.... I cannot believe that ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Novels By Christina Stead
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially the historica ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
