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Jamie O'Neill
Jamie O'Neill (born 1 January 1962) is an Irish author. His critically acclaimed novel, ''At Swim, Two Boys'' (2001), earned him the highest advance ever paid for an Irish novel and frequent praise as the natural successor to James Joyce, Flann O'Brien and Samuel Beckett. He is currently living in Gortachalla in County Galway, having previously lived and worked in England for two decades. O'Neill's work follows the imaginative route in Irish literature, unlike his realist contemporaries such as Colm Tóibín or John McGahern. Terry Pender commented on ''At Swim, Two Boys'': "With only this work O'Neill can take his rightful place among the great Irish writers beginning with Joyce and ending with Roddy Doyle". Background and education O'Neill was born in Dún Laoghaire in 1962 the youngest of four children and was educated at Presentation College, Glasthule, County Dublin, run by the Presentation Brothers, and (in his words) "the city streets of London, the beaches of Greece." H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dún Laoghaire
Dún Laoghaire ( , ) is a suburban coastal town in Dublin in Ireland. It is the administrative centre of Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown. The town was built following the 1816 legislation that allowed the building of a major port to serve Dublin. It was known as Dunleary until it was renamed Kingstown in honour of King George IV's 1821 visit, and in 1920 was given its present name, the original Irish form of Dunleary. Over time, the town became a residential location, a seaside resort and the terminus of Ireland's first railway. Toponymy The town's name means "fort of Laoghaire". This refers to Lóegaire mac Néill (modern spelling: Laoghaire Mac Néill), a 5th century High King of Ireland, who chose the site as a sea base from which to carry out raids on Britain and Gaul. Traces of fortifications from that time have been found on the coast, and some of the stone is kept in the Maritime Museum. The name is officially spelt Dún Laoghaire in modern Irish orthography; sometime ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sir Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet (15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832), was a Scottish novelist, poet, playwright and historian. Many of his works remain classics of European and Scottish literature, notably the novels '' Ivanhoe'', '' Rob Roy'', ''Waverley'', ''Old Mortality'', '' The Heart of Mid-Lothian'' and ''The Bride of Lammermoor'', and the narrative poems '' The Lady of the Lake'' and '' Marmion''. He had a major impact on European and American literature. As an advocate, judge and legal administrator by profession, he combined writing and editing with daily work as Clerk of Session and Sheriff-Depute of Selkirkshire. He was prominent in Edinburgh's Tory establishment, active in the Highland Society, long a president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1820–1832), and a vice president of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (1827–1829). His knowledge of history and literary facility equipped him to establish the historical novel genre as an exemplar of Europ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez (; 6 March 1927 – 17 April 2014) was a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter, and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo () or Gabito () throughout Latin America. Considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century, particularly in the Hispanic literature, Spanish language, he was awarded the 1972 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature. He pursued a self-directed education that resulted in leaving law school for a career in journalism. From early on he showed no inhibitions in his criticism of Colombian and foreign politics. In 1958, he married Mercedes Barcha Pardo; they had two sons, Rodrigo García (director), Rodrigo and Gonzalo. García Márquez started as a journalist and wrote many acclaimed non-fiction works and short stories, but is best known for his novels, such as ''One Hundred Years of Solitude'' (1967), ''Chronicle of a Death Foretold'' (198 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Siege Of Krishnapur
''The Siege of Krishnapur'' is a novel by J. G. Farrell, first published in 1973. Inspired by events such as the sieges of Cawnapore (Kanpur) and Lucknow, the book details the siege of a fictional Indian town, Krishnapur, during the Indian Rebellion of 1857 from the perspective of the British residents. The main characters find themselves subject to the increasing strictures and deprivation of the siege, which reverses the "normal" structure of life where Europeans govern Asian subjects. The book portrays an India under the control of the East India Company, as was the case in 1857. The absurdity of the class system in a town no one can leave becomes a source of comic invention, though the text is serious in intent and tone. The novel gained positive reviews from a variety of sources, and won the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1973. Farrell used his acceptance speech to attack the sponsors for their business activities. In 2008 the book was shortlisted along with five other former ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, 11th Prince of Lampedusa, 12th Duke of Palma, GE (; 23 December 1896 – 23 July 1957) was an Italian writer and the last Prince of Lampedusa. He is most famous for his only novel, ''Il Gattopardo'' (first published posthumously in 1958), which is set in his native Sicily during the ''Risorgimento''. A taciturn and solitary man, he spent a great deal of his time reading and meditating, and used to say of himself "I was a boy who liked solitude, who preferred the company of things to that of people." Biography Tomasi was born in Palermo to Giulio Maria Tomasi, Prince of Lampedusa, Duke of Palma di Montechiaro, Baron of Torretta, and Grandee of Spain (1868–1934), and Beatrice Mastrogiovanni Tasca Filangieri di Cutò (1870–1946). He became an only child after the death (from diphtheria) in 1897 of his sister Stefania. He was very close to his mother, a strong personality who influenced him a great deal, especially because his father was rather ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Leopard
''The Leopard'' ( it, Il Gattopardo ) is a novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa that chronicles the changes in Sicilian life and society during the ''Risorgimento''. Published posthumously in 1958 by Feltrinelli, after two rejections by the leading Italian publishing houses Mondadori and Einaudi, it became the top-selling novel in Italian history and is considered one of the most important novels in modern Italian literature. In 1959, it won Italy's highest award for fiction, the Strega Prize. In 2012, ''The Observer'' named it as one of "the 10 best historical novels". The novel was also made into an award-winning 1963 film of the same name, directed by Luchino Visconti and starring Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale and Alain Delon. Tomasi was the last in a line of minor princes in Sicily. He had long contemplated writing a historical novel based on his great-grandfather, Don Giulio Fabrizio Tomasi, another Prince of Lampedusa. But after the Lampedusa palace near Palermo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edward Gibbon
Edward Gibbon (; 8 May 173716 January 1794) was an English historian, writer, and member of parliament. His most important work, ''The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'', published in six volumes between 1776 and 1788, is known for the quality and irony of its prose, its use of primary sources, and its polemical criticism of organised religion. Early life: 1737–1752 Edward Gibbon was born in 1737, the son of Edward and Judith Gibbon at Lime Grove, in the town of Putney, Surrey. He had six siblings, five brothers and one sister, all of whom died in infancy. His grandfather, also named Edward, had lost his assets as a result of the South Sea bubble stock-market collapse in 1720 but eventually regained much of his wealth. Gibbon's father was thus able to inherit a substantial estate. One of his grandmothers, Catherine Acton, descended from Sir Walter Acton, 2nd Baronet. As a youth, Gibbon's health was under constant threat. He described himself as "a puny ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire
''The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'' is a six-volume work by the English historian Edward Gibbon. It traces Western civilization (as well as the Islamic and Mongolian conquests) from the height of the Roman Empire to the fall of Byzantium in the fifteenth century. Volume I was published in 1776 and went through six printings. Volumes II and III were published in 1781; volumes IV, V, and VI in 1788–1789.The original volumes were published in quarto sections, a common publishing practice of the time. The six volumes cover the history, from 98 to 1590, of the Roman Empire, the history of early Christianity and then of the Roman State Church, and the history of Europe, and discusses the decline of the Roman Empire among other things. Thesis Gibbon offers an explanation for the fall of the Roman Empire, a task made difficult by a lack of comprehensive written sources, though he was not the only historian to attempt it. According to Gib ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frederick Rolfe
Frederick William Rolfe (surname pronounced ), better known as Baron Corvo (Italian for "Crow"), and also calling himself Frederick William Serafino Austin Lewis Mary Rolfe (22 July 1860 – 25 October 1913), was an English writer, artist, photographer and eccentric. Life Rolfe was born in Cheapside, London, the son of piano maker and tuner James Rolfe (c. 1827-1902) and Ellen Elizabeth, née Pilcher. He left school at the age of fourteen and became a teacher. He taught briefly at The King's School, Grantham, where the then headmaster, Ernest Hardy, later principal of Jesus College, Oxford, became a lifelong friend. He converted to Roman Catholicism in 1886 and was confirmed by Henry Edward Manning, Cardinal Manning. With his conversion came a strongly-felt vocation to the Holy orders, priesthood, which persisted throughout his life despite being constantly frustrated and never realised. In 1887 he was sponsored to train at St Mary's College, Oscott, near Birmingham and in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hadrian The Seventh
''Hadrian the Seventh: A Romance'' (sometimes called ''Hadrian VII'') is a 1904 novel by the English novelist Frederick Rolfe, who wrote under the pseudonym "Baron Corvo". Rolfe's best-known work, this novel of extreme wish-fulfilment developed out of an article he wrote on the Papal Conclave to elect the successor to Pope Leo XIII. Plot The prologue introduces us to George Arthur Rose (a transparent double for Rolfe himself): a failed candidate for the priesthood denied his vocation by the machinations and bungling of the Roman Catholic ecclesiastical machinery, and now living alone with his yellow cat. Rose is visited by two prominent churchmen, one a Cardinal Archbishop. The two propose to right the wrongs done to him, ordain him a priest, and take him to Rome where the Conclave to elect the new Pope has reached deadlock. When he arrives in Rome he finds that the Cardinals have been inspired, divinely or otherwise, to offer him the Papacy. He accepts, and since the only prev ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mary Renault
Eileen Mary Challans (4 September 1905 – 13 December 1983), known by her pen name Mary Renault ("She always pronounced it 'Ren-olt', though almost everyone would come to speak of her as if she were a French car." ), was an English writer best known for her historical novels set in ancient Greece. Born in Forest Gate in 1905, she attended St Hugh's College, Oxford, from 1924 until 1928. After graduating from St Hugh's with a Third Class in English, she worked as a nurse and began writing her first novels, which were contemporary romances. In 1948, she moved to South Africa with her partner Julie Mullard, where she spent the rest of her life. Living in South Africa allowed her to write about openly gay characters without fearing the censorship and homophobia of England. She devoted herself to writing historical fiction in the 1950s, which were also her most successful books. She is best known for her historical fiction today. Renault's works are often rooted in themes related t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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