Inside The Whale
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Inside The Whale
"Inside the Whale" is an essay in three parts written by George Orwell in 1940. It is primarily a review of ''Tropic of Cancer'' by Henry Miller with Orwell discursing more widely over English literature in the 1920s and 1930s. The biblical story of Jonah and the whale is used as a metaphor for accepting experience without seeking to change it, Jonah inside the whale being comfortably protected from the problems of the outside world. It was published, alongside two other pieces by Orwell, 11 March 1940 by Gollancz in Orwell's first collection of essays, ''Inside the Whale and Other Essays''. Background Henry Miller's ''Tropic of Cancer'' was published in 1934 by Obelisk Press in Paris. Set in France (primarily Paris) during the 1930s, Miller tells of his life as a struggling writer. There are many passages explicitly describing the narrator's sexual encounters, but the book does not solely focus on this subject. Orwell had also lived in Paris for 18 months in 1928 to 1929 and us ...
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George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalitarianism, and support of democratic socialism. Orwell produced literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. He is known for the allegorical novella ''Animal Farm'' (1945) and the dystopian novel ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (1949). His non-fiction works, including ''The Road to Wigan Pier'' (1937), documenting his experience of working-class life in the industrial north of England, and ''Homage to Catalonia'' (1938), an account of his experiences soldiering for the Republican faction of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), are as critically respected as his essays on politics, literature, language and culture. Blair was born in India, and raised and educated in England. After school he became an Imperial policeman in Burma, ...
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Lytton Strachey
Giles Lytton Strachey (; 1 March 1880 – 21 January 1932) was an English writer and critic. A founding member of the Bloomsbury Group and author of ''Eminent Victorians'', he established a new form of biography in which psychological insight and sympathy are combined with irreverence and wit. His biography ''Queen Victoria'' (1921) was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Early life and education Youth Strachey was born on 1 March 1880 at Stowey House, Clapham Common, London, the fifth son and eleventh child of Lieutenant General Sir Richard Strachey, an officer in the British colonial armed forces, and his second wife, the former Jane Grant, who became a leading supporter of the women's suffrage movement. He was named "Giles Lytton" after an early sixteenth-century Gyles Strachey and the first Earl of Lytton, who had been a friend of Richard Strachey's when he was Viceroy of India in the late 1870s. The Earl of Lytton was also Lytton Strachey's godfather.Charles ...
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Rebecca West
Dame Cicily Isabel Fairfield (21 December 1892 – 15 March 1983), known as Rebecca West, or Dame Rebecca West, was a British author, journalist, literary critic and travel writer. An author who wrote in many genres, West reviewed books for ''The Times'', the '' New York Herald Tribune'', ''The Sunday Telegraph'' and ''The New Republic'', and she was a correspondent for '' The Bookman''. Her major works include '' Black Lamb and Grey Falcon'' (1941), on the history and culture of Yugoslavia; ''A Train of Powder'' (1955), her coverage of the Nuremberg trials, published originally in ''The New Yorker''; ''The Meaning of Treason'' (first published as a magazine article in 1945 and then expanded to the book in 1947), later ''The New Meaning of Treason'' (1964), a study of the trial of the British fascist William Joyce and others; ''The Return of the Soldier'' (1918), a modernist World War I novel; and the "Aubrey trilogy" of autobiographical novels, ''The Fountain Overflows' ...
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Andy Croft
Andy Croft (born 1956) is an English writer, editor, and poet based in North East England."About the Contributors", in Edward J. Carvalho (ed.), ''Acknowledged Legislator: Critical Essays on the Poetry of Martín Espada''. Rowman & Littlefield, 2014, (pp. 333–4). His books include ''Red Letter Days'', a history of British political fiction of the 1930s. Other books by Croft include ''Out of the Old Earth'', ''A Weapon in the Struggle'', ''Selected Poems of Randall Swingler'', ''Comrade Heart'', ''After the Party'', ''A Creative Approach to Teaching Rhythm and Rhyme'' and ''Forty-six Quid and a Bag of Dirty Washing''. He has written seven novels and 42 books for teenagers, mostly about football. Writing residencies include the Hartlepool Headland, the Great North Run, the Southwell Poetry Festival, the Combe Down Stone Mines Project, HMP Holme House and HMP South Yorkshire. He has given many poetry readings, including readings in Paris, Moscow, Potsdam, Sofia, Novosibirsk, ...
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Bedaux System
The efficiency movement was a major movement in the United States, Britain and other industrial nations in the early 20th century that sought to identify and eliminate waste in all areas of the economy and society, and to develop and implement best practices. The concept covered mechanical, economic, social, and personal improvement. The quest for efficiency promised effective, dynamic management rewarded by growth. As a result of the influence of an early proponent, it is more often known as Taylorism. United States The efficiency movement played a central role in the Progressive Era in the United States, where it flourished 1890–1932. Adherents argued that all aspects of the economy, society and government were riddled with waste and inefficiency. Everything would be better if experts identified the problems and fixed them. The result was strong support for building research universities and schools of business and engineering, municipal research agencies, as well as reform of ...
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Prufrock
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", commonly known as "Prufrock", is the first professionally published poem by American-born British poet T. S. Eliot (1888–1965). Eliot began writing "Prufrock" in February 1910, and it was first published in the June 1915 issue of '' Poetry: A Magazine of Verse'' at the instigation of Ezra Pound (1885–1972). It was later printed as part of a twelve-poem pamphlet (or chapbook) titled ''Prufrock and Other Observations'' in 1917. At the time of its publication, Prufrock was considered outlandish, (citing an unsigned review in ''Literary Review''. 5 July 1917, vol. lxxxiii, 107.) but is now seen as heralding a paradigmatic cultural shift from late 19th-century Romantic verse and Georgian lyrics to Modernism. The poem's structure was heavily influenced by Eliot's extensive reading of Dante Alighieri and makes several references to the Bible and other literary works—including William Shakespeare's plays '' Henry IV Part II'', ''Twelfth Ni ...
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Anaïs Nin
Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell (February 11, 1903 – January 14, 1977; , ) was a French-born American diarist, essayist, novelist, and writer of short stories and erotica. Born to Cuban parents in France, Nin was the daughter of the composer Joaquín Nin and the classically trained singer Rosa Culmell. Nin spent her early years in Spain and Cuba, about sixteen years in Paris (1924–1940), and the remaining half of her life in the United States, where she became an established author. Nin wrote journals prolifically from age eleven until her death. Her journals, many of which were published during her lifetime, detail her private thoughts and personal relationships. Her journals also describe her marriages to Hugh Parker Guiler and Rupert Pole, in addition to her numerous affairs, including those with psychoanalyst Otto Rank and writer Henry Miller, both of whom profoundly influenced Nin and her writing. In addition to her journals, Nin wrote several ...
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Enemies Of Promise
''Enemies of Promise'' is a critical and autobiographical work written by Cyril Connolly first published in 1938. It comprises three parts, the first dedicated to Connolly's observations about English literature and the English literary world of his time, the second a list of adverse elements that affect the ability to be a good writer and the last an account of Connolly's early life. The overarching theme of the book is the search for understanding why Connolly, though he was widely recognised as a leading man of letters and a highly distinguished critic, failed to produce a major work of literature. Part 1 "Predicament" This part consists of an erudite discussion of literary styles, with Connolly posing the question of what the following ten years would bring in the world of literature and what sort of writing would last. He summarises the two main styles as follows: :"We have seen that there are two styles which it is convenient to describe as the realist, or vernacular, the ...
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Cyril Connolly
Cyril Vernon Connolly CBE (10 September 1903 – 26 November 1974) was an English literary critic and writer. He was the editor of the influential literary magazine ''Horizon'' (1940–49) and wrote '' Enemies of Promise'' (1938), which combined literary criticism with an autobiographical exploration of why he failed to become the successful author of fiction that he had aspired to be in his youth. Early life Cyril Connolly was born in Coventry, Warwickshire, the only child of Major Matthew William Kemble Connolly (1872–1947), an officer in the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, by his Anglo-Irish wife, Muriel Maud Vernon, daughter of Colonel Edward Vernon (1838–1913) J.P., D.L., of Clontarf Castle, Co. Dublin. His parents had met while his father was serving in Ireland, and his father's next posting was to South Africa.Jeremy Lewis, ''Cyril Connolly: A Life'', Jonathan Cape, 1997. Connolly's father was also a malacologist (the scientific study of the Mollusca, i.e. sna ...
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Summary Execution
A summary execution is an execution in which a person is accused of a crime and immediately killed without the benefit of a full and fair trial. Executions as the result of summary justice (such as a drumhead court-martial) are sometimes included, but the term generally refers to capture, accusation, and execution all conducted within a very short period of time, and without any trial. Under international law, refusal to accept lawful surrender in combat and instead killing the person surrendering is also categorized as a summary execution (as well as murder). Summary executions have been practiced by police, military, and paramilitary organizations and are frequently associated with guerrilla warfare, counter-insurgency, terrorism, and any other situation which involves a breakdown of the normal procedures for handling accused prisoners, civilian or military. Civilian jurisdiction In nearly all civilian jurisdictions, summary execution is illegal, as it violates the right of ...
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Bloomsbury
Bloomsbury is a district in the West End of London. It is considered a fashionable residential area, and is the location of numerous cultural, intellectual, and educational institutions. Bloomsbury is home of the British Museum, the largest museum in the United Kingdom, and several educational institutions, including University College London and a number of other colleges and institutes of the University of London as well as its central headquarters, the New College of the Humanities, the University of Law, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, the British Medical Association and many others. Bloomsbury is an intellectual and literary hub for London, as home of world-known Bloomsbury Publishing, publishers of the ''Harry Potter'' series, and namesake of the Bloomsbury Set, a group of British intellectuals which included author Virginia Woolf, biographer Lytton Strachey, and economist John Maynard Keynes. Bloomsbury began to be developed in the 17th century under the Earls of Sout ...
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Public School (UK)
In England and Wales (but not Scotland), a public school is a fee-charging endowed school originally for older boys. They are "public" in the sense of being open to pupils irrespective of locality, denomination or paternal trade or profession. In Scotland, a public school is synonymous with a state school in England and Wales, and fee-charging schools are referred to as private schools. Although the term "public school" has been in use since at least the 18th century, its usage was formalised by the Public Schools Act 1868, which put into law most recommendations of the 1864 Clarendon Report. Nine prestigious schools were investigated by Clarendon (including Merchant Taylors' School and St Paul's School, London) and seven subsequently reformed by the Act: Eton, Shrewsbury, Harrow, Winchester, Rugby, Westminster, and Charterhouse. Public schools are associated with the ruling class. Historically, public schools provided many of the military officers and administrators ...
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