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The Sylph
''The Sylph'' is a 1778 novel by Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire. It was her second printed work and was published anonymously under the name 'A Young Lady'. ''The Sylph'' is an epistolary novel. It centres on Julia Grenville, a Welsh beauty and ingenue (with whom there are parallels with Cavendish herself) who leaves her idyllic rustic life to marry a rich member of the aristocracy. Over the course of time she uncovers the fact that her husband is a rake and a libertine, lavishing his wealth on gambling and mistresses. The letters are chiefly written to her sisters and provide narrative detail about Julia's life in London and her disillusionment with the mores of the inhabitants of the city as well as her miscarriage. We also discover that she has a long-term admirer, Henry Woodley, that she has growing affections for another man (the Baron Ton-hausen) and also that she has a mysterious and enigmatic protector and guardian, who is the ' sylph' of the title. The sylph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess Of Devonshire
Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire (née Spencer; ; 7 June 1757 – 30 March 1806), was an English aristocrat, socialite, political organiser, author, and activist. Born into the Spencer family, married into the Cavendish family, she was the first wife of William Cavendish, 5th Duke of Devonshire, and the mother of the 6th Duke of Devonshire. As the Duchess of Devonshire, she garnered much attention and fame in society during her lifetime. With a preeminent position in the peerage of England, the Duchess was famous for her charisma, political influence, beauty, unusual marital arrangement, love affairs, socializing, and notorious for her gambling addiction, leading to an immense debt. She was the great-great-great-great aunt of Diana, Princess of Wales. Their lives, centuries apart, have been compared in tragedy. She was also a great-great-great-aunt of Elizabeth II by marriage through the queen's maternal grandmother. Early life and family The Duchess was born Miss G ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epistolary Novel
An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of letters. The term is often extended to cover novels that intersperse documents of other kinds with the letters, most commonly diary entries and newspaper clippings, and sometimes considered to include novels composed of documents even if they don't include letters at all. More recently, epistolaries may include electronic documents such as recordings and radio, blog posts, and e-mails. The word ''epistolary'' is derived from Latin from the Greek word ἐπιστολή ''epistolē'', meaning a letter (see epistle). In German, this type of novel is known as a Briefroman. The epistolary form can add greater realism to a story, because it mimics the workings of real life. It is thus able to demonstrate differing points of view without recourse to the device of an omniscient narrator. An important strategic device in the epistolary novel for creating the impression of authenticity of the letters is the fictional editor. Early ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Libertine
A libertine is a person devoid of most moral principles, a sense of responsibility, or sexual restraints, which they see as unnecessary or undesirable, and is especially someone who ignores or even spurns accepted morals and forms of behaviour observed by the larger society. Libertinism is described as an extreme form of hedonism. Libertines put value on physical pleasures, meaning those experienced through the senses. As a philosophy, libertinism gained new-found adherents in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, particularly in France and Great Britain. Notable among these were John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, and the Marquis de Sade. History of the term The word ''libertine'' was originally coined by John Calvin to negatively describe opponents of his policies in Geneva, Switzerland. This group, led by Ami Perrin, argued against Calvin's "insistence that church discipline should be enforced uniformly against all members of Genevan society". Perrin and his allies were electe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sylph
A sylph (also called sylphid) is an air spirit stemming from the 16th-century works of Paracelsus, who describes sylphs as (invisible) beings of the air, his elementals of air. A significant number of subsequent literary and occult works have been inspired by Paracelsus's concept: Robert Alfred Vaughan noted that "the wild but poetical fantasies" of Paracelsus had probably exercised a larger influence over his age and the subsequent one than is generally supposed, particularly on the Rosicrucians, but that through the 18th century they had become reduced to "machinery for the playwright" and "opera figurantes with wings of gauze and spangles". Etymology "Sylph" is possibly a blend of from Latin '' sylvestris'' and '' nympha'', ''sylvestris'' being a common synonym for sylph in Paracelsus. Anthon and Trollope note a similar usage in the ''Aeneid'', where ''silvestris'' is taken as an elliptical form of ''nympha silvestris'' ("forest nymph"). Jacob Grimm uses this phrase as a gl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Rape Of The Lock
''The Rape of the Lock'' is a mock-heroic narrative poem written by Alexander Pope. One of the most commonly cited examples of high burlesque, it was first published anonymously in Lintot's ''Miscellaneous Poems and Translations'' (May 1712) in two cantos (334 lines); a revised edition "Written by Mr. Pope" followed in March 1714 as a five-canto version (794 lines) accompanied by six engravings. Pope boasted that this sold more than three thousand copies in its first four days. The final form of the poem appeared in 1717 with the addition of Clarissa's speech on good humour. The poem was much translated and contributed to the growing popularity of mock-heroic in Europe. Description The poem of ''The Rape of the Lock'' satirises a minor incident of life, by comparing it to the epic world of the gods, and is based on an event recounted to Alexander Pope by his friend John Caryll. Arabella Fermor and her suitor, Lord Petre, were each a member of aristocratic recusant Cat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 O.S. – 30 May 1744) was an English poet, translator, and satirist of the Enlightenment era who is considered one of the most prominent English poets of the early 18th century. An exponent of Augustan literature, Pope is best known for his satirical and discursive poetry including '' The Rape of the Lock'', ''The Dunciad'', and ''An Essay on Criticism,'' and for his translation of Homer. After Shakespeare, Pope is the second-most quoted author in ''The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations'', some of his verses having entered common parlance (e.g. "damning with faint praise" or " to err is human; to forgive, divine"). Life Alexander Pope was born in London on 21 May 1688 during the year of the Glorious Revolution. His father (Alexander Pope, 1646–1717) was a successful linen merchant in the Strand, London. His mother, Edith (1643–1733), was the daughter of William Turner, Esquire, of York. Both parents were Catholics. His mother's sister was the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Germain-François Poullain De Saint-Foix
Germain-François Poullain de Saint-Foix (5 February 1698 – 25 August 1776) was an 18th-century French writer and playwright. Life He served with the musketeers until he was 36, distinguishing himself at Guastalla in 1734. He then left the army and purchased a post as "maître des eaux et forêts" in Rennes. He published his first comedy, ''Pandore'', in 1721 and from 1740 devoted himself entirely to writing, setting up in Paris and becoming a fashionable author there. He wrote 20 comedies in all. In 1764 he was made historian of the ordre du Saint-Esprit. The jurist Auguste-Marie Poullain-Duparc was his brother. Works * ''Pandore'' (1721) * ''Lettres d’une Turque à Paris'' (1730), in imitation of the ''Persian Letters'' by Montesquieu - reissued under the titles ''Lettres de Nedim Koggia'' (1732) and ''Lettres turques'' (1760) * ''L’Oracle'' (1740) * ''Deucalion et Pyrrha'' (1741) * ''L’Île sauvage'' (1743) * ''Le Sylphe'' (1743) * ''Les Grâces'' (1744) * '' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sophia Briscoe
Sophia Briscoe ( fl. 1770s) was an English author of two epistolary novels. Little is known of her life. Novels Briscoe was the author of the epistolary novels ''Miss Melmoth; or the New Clarissa'' (1771) and ''The Fine Lady: A Novel'' (sometimes ''The Fine Lady; or a history of Mrs. Montague'', 1772). Briscoe was paid 20 guineas for the copyright of ''The Fine Lady''. A German translation of ''The Fine Lady'' appeared as ''Die Frau nach der Mode'' in Leipzig, dated 1771. ''Miss Melmoth'' was well received in ''The Critical Review''. The ''Monthly Review'' mildly commended it. In the twentieth century, Briscoe came to the attention of new readers: she was listed in Dale Spender's '' Mothers of the Novel: 100 Good Women Writers Before Jane Austen'' (1986) and the treatment of incest in ''Miss Melmoth'' (Caroline Melmoth shies away from marrying Sir John Evelin instinctively, before discovering their relationship) has been discussed along with other aspects by at least one contempo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg (PG) is a Virtual volunteering, volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of books or individual stories in the public domain. All files can be accessed for free under an open format layout, available on almost any computer. , Project Gutenberg had reached 50,000 items in its collection of free eBooks. The releases are available in Text file, plain text as well as other formats, such as HTML, PDF, EPUB, Mobipocket, MOBI, and Plucker wherever possible. Most releases are in the English language, but many non-English works are also available. There are multiple affiliated projects that provide additional content, including region- and language-specific works. Project Gutenberg is closely affiliated with Distributed Proofreaders, an Inte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, movies/videos, moving images, and millions of books. In addition to its archiving function, the Archive is an activist organization, advocating a free and open Internet. , the Internet Archive holds over 35 million books and texts, 8.5 million movies, videos and TV shows, 894 thousand software programs, 14 million audio files, 4.4 million images, 2.4 million TV clips, 241 thousand concerts, and over 734 billion web pages in the Wayback Machine. The Internet Archive allows the public to upload and download digital material to its data cluster, but the bulk of its data is collected automatically by its web crawlers, which work to preserve as much of the public web as possible. Its web archiving, web archive, the Wayback Machine, contains hu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1778 Novels
Events January–March * January 18 – Third voyage of James Cook: Captain James Cook, with ships HMS ''Resolution'' and HMS ''Discovery'', first views Oahu then Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands of the Pacific Ocean, which he names the ''Sandwich Islands''. * February 5 – **South Carolina becomes the first state to ratify the Articles of Confederation. ** **General John Cadwalader shoots and seriously wounds Major General Thomas Conway in a duel after a dispute between the two officers over Conway's continued criticism of General George Washington's leadership of the Continental Army.''Harper's Encyclopaedia of United States History from 458 A. D. to 1909'', ed. by Benson John Lossing and, Woodrow Wilson (Harper & Brothers, 1910) p166 * February 6 – American Revolutionary War – In Paris, the Treaty of Alliance and the Treaty of Amity and Commerce are signed by the United States and France, signaling official French recognition of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
