|
Gay's The Word (bookshop)
Gay's the Word is an independent bookshop in central London, and the oldest LGBT bookshop in the United Kingdom. Inspired by the emergence and growth of lesbian and gay bookstores in the United States, a small group of people from Gay Icebreakers, a gay socialist group, founded the store in 1979. These included Peter Dorey, Ernest Hole and Jonathan Cutbill. Various locations were looked at, including Covent Garden, which was then being regenerated, before they decided to open the store in Marchmont Street in Bloomsbury, an area of the capital with rich academic and literary associations. Initial reluctance from Camden Council to grant a lease was overcome with help from Ken Livingstone, then a local councillor, later Mayor of London. For a period of time, it was the only LGBT bookshop in England. History From the beginning, the bookshop was used as a community and information resource for lesbians and gay men providing information on gay organisations and forthcoming eve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bookshop
Bookselling is the commercial trading of books which is the retail and distribution end of the publishing process. People who engage in bookselling are called booksellers, bookdealers, bookpeople, bookmen, or bookwomen. The founding of libraries in c.300 BC stimulated the energies of the Athenian booksellers. History In Rome, toward the end of the republic, it became the fashion to have a library, and Roman booksellers carried on a flourishing trade. The spread of Christianity naturally created a great demand for copies of the Gospels, other sacred books, and later on for missals and other devotional volumes for both church and private use. The modern system of bookselling dates from soon after the introduction of printing. In the course of the 16th and 17th centuries the Low Countries for a time became the chief centre of the bookselling world. Modern book selling has changed dramatically with the advent of the Internet. Major websites such as Amazon, eBay, and other big bo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gay Men's Press
Gay Men's Press was a publisher of books based in London, United Kingdom. Founded in 1979, the imprint was run until 2000 by its founders, then until 2006 by Millivres Prowler. Overview Launched in 1979 by Aubrey Walter, David Fernbach, and Richard Dipple, GMP, as it became known, was a pioneer publisher for the gay community, releasing at least 300 titles. The book business had been unwelcoming to LGBT writers, publishing only those works of a homosexual nature deemed suitable for mainstream readers. Authors such as David Rees, Tom Wakefield, and Mike Seabrook could now reach an audience with fiction about contemporary gay life. Gay Men's Press also published a range of non-fiction books, including acclaimed titles such as ''Homosexuality in Renaissance England'' by Alan Bray and '' Mother Clap's Molly House'' by Rictor Norton, as well as meeting the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s with a number of self-help books. Its Gay Modern Classics series provided a format for reissuing many ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stella Duffy
Stella Frances Silas Duffy (born 1963) is a London-born writer and theatremaker. Born in London, she spent her childhood in New Zealand before returning to the UK. Early life and education Born in London in 1962 to a New Zealand father and an English mother, Duffy is the youngest in a family of seven children. The family moved to New Zealand when Duffy was five, and Duffy later returned to London. She studied English literature and drama at Victoria University of Wellington. Career Duffy has written several literary novels, as well as crime novels in the ''Saz Martin'' series, published by Serpent's Tail. In 2018 HarperCollins Publishers released ''Money in the Morgue'' by Ngaio Marsh and Stella Duffy. The book was started by Marsh during World War II, but abandoned. Working with just the book's title, first three chapters and some notes—but no idea of the plot or motive of the villain—Duffy completed the novel, which has received widespread praise for its authenticity ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Leavitt
David Leavitt (; born June 23, 1961) is an American novelist, short story writer, and biographer. Biography Leavitt was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Harold and Gloria Leavitt. Harold was a professor who taught at Stanford University and Gloria was a political activist. Leavitt graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in English in 1983. After his first book's success, he spent much of the 1990s living in Italy working and restoring an old house in Semproniano in Tuscany with his partner. He has also taught at Princeton University. While a student at Yale, Leavitt published two stories in The New Yorker, "Territory" and "Out Here", both of which were included in his first collection, ''Family Dancing'' (nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award and finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award). Other published fiction includes the short-story collections ''A Place I've Never Been'', ''Arkansas: Three Novellas'' and ''The Marble Quilt'' and the novels ''The Lost Language ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edmund White
Edmund Valentine White III (born 1940) is an American novelist, memoirist, playwright, biographer and an essayist on literary and social topics. Since 1999 he has been a professor at Princeton University. France made him (and later ) de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1993. White's books include ''The Joy of Gay Sex'', written with Charles Silverstein (1977); his trilogy of semi-autobiographic novels, '' A Boy's Own Story'' (1982), '' The Beautiful Room Is Empty'' (1988) and ''The Farewell Symphony'' (1997); and his biography of Jean Genet. Much of his writing is on the theme of same-sex love. White has also written biographies of three French writers: Jean Genet, Marcel Proust and Arthur Rimbaud. He is the namesake of the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, awarded annually by Publishing Triangle. Early life and education Edmund Valentine White mostly grew up in Chicago, Illinois. He attended Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, as a boy. Afterward, he stud ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
House Of Commons Of The United Kingdom
The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the upper house, the House of Lords, it meets in the Palace of Westminster in London, England. The House of Commons is an elected body consisting of 650 members known as members of Parliament (MPs). MPs are elected to represent constituencies by the first-past-the-post system and hold their seats until Parliament is dissolved. The House of Commons of England started to evolve in the 13th and 14th centuries. In 1707 it became the House of Commons of Great Britain after the political union with Scotland, and from 1800 it also became the House of Commons for Ireland after the political union of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922, the body became the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland after the independence of the Irish Free State. Under the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949, the Lords' power to reject legislation was reduced to a delaying power. The g ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Obscene Publications Act
Since 1857, a series of obscenity laws known as the Obscene Publications Acts have governed what can be published in England and Wales. The classic definition of criminal obscenity is if it "tends to deprave and corrupt," stated in 1868 by Lord Justice Cockburn, in ''Regina v. Hicklin'', now known as the Hicklin test. Timeline of legislation There have been several Acts of Parliament of this name: * Obscene Publications Act 1857 * Obscene Publications Act 1959 * Obscene Publications Act 1964 Of these, only the 1959 and 1964 acts are still in force in England and Wales, as amended by more recent legislation. They define the legal bounds of obscenity in England and Wales, and are used to enforce the removal of obscene material. Irish law diverged from English law in 1929, replacing the OPA 1857 with a new Irish act. Key cases under the Obscene Publications Act Scottish prohibitions on obscene material are to be found in section 51 of the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Consolidation Act
A consolidation bill is a bill introduced into the Parliament of the United Kingdom with the intention of consolidating several Acts of Parliament or Statutory Instruments into a single Act. Such bills simplify the statute book without significantly changing the state of the law, and are subject to an expedited Parliamentary procedure. The parliamentary practice of legislating only for small portions of a subject at a time can create undue complexity in statute law. Acts relating to a particular subject often end up scattered over many years, and through the operation of clauses partially repealing or amending former acts, the specific meaning of the law regarding the subject becomes enveloped in intricate or contradictory expressions. For clarity, the law as expressed across many statutes is sometimes recast in a single statute, called a consolidation bill. By 1911, such bills had been passed dealing with subjects as diverse as customs, stamps and stamp duties, public health, we ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean Genet
Jean Genet (; – ) was a French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. In his early life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but he later became a writer and playwright. His major works include the novels ''The Thief's Journal'' and ''Our Lady of the Flowers'' and the plays ''The Balcony'', ''The Maids'' and ''The Screens''. Biography Early life Genet's mother was a prostitute who raised him for the first seven months of his life before placing him for adoption. Thereafter Genet was raised in the provincial town of Alligny-en-Morvan, in the Nièvre department of central France. His foster family was headed by a carpenter and, according to Edmund White's biography, was loving and attentive. While he received excellent grades in school, his childhood involved a series of attempts at running away and incidents of petty theft. After the death of his foster mother, Genet was placed with an elderly couple but remained with them less than two years. Accord ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christopher Isherwood
Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood (26 August 1904 – 4 January 1986) was an Anglo-American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, autobiographer, and diarist. His best-known works include '' Goodbye to Berlin'' (1939), a semi-autobiographical novel which inspired the musical ''Cabaret''; ''A Single Man'' (1964), adapted as a film by Tom Ford in 2009; and '' Christopher and His Kind'' (1976), a memoir which "carried him into the heart of the Gay Liberation movement". Biography Early life and work Isherwood was born in 1904 on his family's estate in Cheshire near Stockport in the north-west of England. He was the elder son of Francis Edward Bradshaw Isherwood (1869–1915), known as Frank, a professional soldier in the York and Lancaster Regiment, and Kathleen Bradshaw Isherwood, nee Machell Smith (1868–1960), the only daughter of a successful wine merchant. He was the grandson of John Henry Isherwood, squire of Marple Hall and Wyberslegh Hall, Cheshire, and he included ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gore Vidal
Eugene Luther Gore Vidal (; born Eugene Louis Vidal, October 3, 1925 – July 31, 2012) was an American writer and public intellectual known for his epigrammatic wit, erudition, and patrician manner. Vidal was bisexual, and in his novels and essays interrogated the social and cultural sexual norms he perceived as driving American life. Beyond literature, Vidal was heavily involved in politics. He twice sought office—unsuccessfully—as a Democratic Party candidate, first in 1960 to the U.S. House of Representatives (for New York), and later in 1982 to the U.S. Senate (for California). A grandson of a U.S. Senator, Vidal was born into an upper-class political family. As a political commentator and essayist, Vidal's primary focus was the history and society of the United States, especially how a militaristic foreign policy reduced the country to a decadent empire. His political and cultural essays were published in ''The Nation'', the ''New Statesman'', the ''New York Revie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tennessee Williams
Thomas Lanier Williams III (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983), known by his pen name Tennessee Williams, was an American playwright and screenwriter. Along with contemporaries Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller, he is considered among the three foremost playwrights of 20th-century American drama. At age 33, after years of obscurity, Williams suddenly became famous with the success of ''The Glass Menagerie'' (1944) in New York City. He introduced "plastic theatre" in this play and it closely reflected his own unhappy family background. It was the first of a string of successes, including ''A Streetcar Named Desire'' (1947), ''Cat on a Hot Tin Roof'' (1955), ''Sweet Bird of Youth'' (1959), and ''The Night of the Iguana'' (1961). With his later work, Williams attempted a new style that did not appeal as widely to audiences. His drama ''A Streetcar Named Desire'' is often numbered on short lists of the finest American plays of the 20th century alongside Eugene O'Neill's '' Long Day ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
._Tennessee_Williams_age_5.jpg "Click for more on -> Tennessee Williams")