The Essence Of The Thing
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The Essence Of The Thing
''The Essence of the Thing'' (1997) is a novel by Australian author Madeleine St John. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 1997. Plot summary The novel begins with the end of a relationship as the novel's protagonist Nicola Gatling, returning from a trip to the shops to get some cigarettes, is told by her lover Jonathan that he wants her to move out of their shared flat. The story follows Nicola's attempts to remake her life over the ensuing several weeks in 1990s London. Awards * 1997 shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize The Booker Prize, formerly known as the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a literary prize awarded each year for the best novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. ... Notes The novel carried the following dedication: "For Judith McCue" Reviews Gardner McFall in ''The New York Times'' in 1999 opined "In this novel, which was a finalist for the 1997 Booker Prize ...
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Madeleine St John
Madeleine St John (12 November 194118 June 2006) was an Australian writer, the first Australian woman to be shortlisted Beresford, Bruce (2009) "In memory of a friendship", ''The Canberra Times'', 28 March 2009, Panorama, p. 9 for the Booker Prize for Fiction (in 1997 for her novel '' The Essence of the Thing''). Biography St John was born in 1941 in Castlecrag, a suburb of Sydney, and schooled at Queenwood School for Girls, Mosman. She was born to Edward St John, a Queen's Counsel, the son of a Church of England clergyman. Her French mother, Sylvette (Cargher), died by suicide when St John was 12. Her maternal grandparents were Romanian Jews."St John, Madeleine (1941–2006)"
obituary by Christopher Potter, ''

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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 ...
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Literary
Literature is any collection of Writing, written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include oral literature, much of which has been transcribed. Literature is a method of recording, preserving, and transmitting knowledge and entertainment, and can also have a social, psychological, spiritual, or political role. Literature, as an art form, can also include works in various non-fiction genres, such as biography, Diary, diaries, memoir, Letter (message), letters, and the essay. Within its broad definition, literature includes non-fictional books, articles or other printed information on a particular subject.''OED'' Etymology, Etymologically, the term derives from Latin language, Latin ''literatura/litteratura'' "learning, a writing, grammar," originally "writing formed with letters," from ''litera/littera'' "letter". In sp ...
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Fourth Estate (imprint)
HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News Corp. The name is a combination of several publishing firm names: Harper & Row, an American publishing company acquired in 1987—whose own name was the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers (founded in 1817) and Row, Peterson & Company—together with Scottish publishing company William Collins, Sons (founded in 1819), acquired in 1989. The worldwide CEO of HarperCollins is Brian Murray. HarperCollins has publishing groups in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, India, and China. The company publishes many different imprints, both former independent publishing houses and new imprints. History Collins Harper Mergers and acquisitions Collins was bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporat ...
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Paperback
A paperback (softcover, softback) book is one with a thick paper or paperboard cover, and often held together with adhesive, glue rather than stitch (textile arts), stitches or Staple (fastener), staples. In contrast, hardcover (hardback) books are bound with cardboard covered with cloth, leather, paper, or plastic. Inexpensive books bound in paper have existed since at least the 19th century in such forms as pamphlets, yellow-backs, yellowbacks, dime novels, and airport novels. Modern paperbacks can be differentiated from one another by size. In the United States, there are "mass-market paperbacks" and larger, more durable "trade paperbacks". In the United Kingdom, there are A-format, B-format, and the largest C-format sizes. Paperback editions of books are issued when a publisher decides to release a book in a low-cost format. Lower-quality paper, glued (rather than stapled or sewn) bindings, and the lack of a hard cover may contribute to the lower cost of paperbacks. Paperb ...
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Novel
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 histori ...
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Australian Literature
Australian literature is the written or literary work produced in the area or by the people of the Commonwealth of Australia and its preceding colonies. During its early Western history, Australia was a collection of British colonies; as such, its recognised literary tradition begins with and is linked to the broader tradition of English literature. However, the narrative art of Australian writers has, since 1788, introduced the character of a new continent into literature—exploring such themes as Aboriginality, ''mateship'', egalitarianism, democracy, national identity, migration, Australia's unique location and geography, the complexities of urban living, and " the beauty and the terror" of life in the Australian bush. Overview Australian writers who have obtained international renown include the Nobel-winning author Patrick White, as well as authors Christina Stead, David Malouf, Peter Carey, Bradley Trevor Greive, Thomas Keneally, Colleen McCullough, Nevil Shute an ...
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List Of Winners And Shortlisted Authors Of The Booker Prize For Fiction
4 The following is a list of winners and shortlisted authors of the Booker Prize for Fiction. The prize has been awarded each year since 1969 to the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations or the Republic of Ireland. In 2014, it was opened for the first time to any work published in the United Kingdom and written in (not translated into) the English language. There have been three special awards celebrating the Booker's history. In 1993, the "Booker of Bookers" prize was awarded to Salman Rushdie for ''Midnight's Children'' (the 1981 winner) as the best novel to win the award in its first 25 years. ''Midnight's Children'' also won a public vote in 2008, on the prize's fortieth anniversary, for " The Best of the Booker". In 2018 a special " Golden Booker" was awarded celebrating 50 years of the award; this was won by Michael Ondaatje for ''The English Patient''. Winners, shortlists and longlists * Awarded in 2010 ...
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Text Publishing
Text Publishing is an independent Australian publisher of fiction and non-fiction, based in Melbourne, Victoria (Australia), Victoria. Company background Text Media was founded in Melbourne in 1990 by Diana Gribble and Eric Beecher, along with designer Chong Weng Ho and others, with a small book publishing division known as Text Publishing. Michael Heyward joined in 1992, and the small publishing house became independent in 1994. When Text Media was taken over by Fairfax Media in 2004, Michael Heyward and his wife Penny Hueston entered into a joint venture with Scottish publisher Canongate. Maureen and Tony Wheeler, founders of Lonely Planet, bought Canongate's share in Text in 2011, making it a wholly Australian-owned company. In 2012, Text launched a series of Australian classics, republishing out of print works that had been, for the most part, lost to literary history. People As of August 2022, Heyward was the publisher. Awards Text awards The Text Prize for Young A ...
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1997 Australian Novels
File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; ''Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of the most observed comets of the 20th century; Golden Bauhinia Square, where sovereignty of Hong Kong is handed over from the United Kingdom to the People's Republic of China; the 1997 Central European flood kills 114 people in the Czech Republic, Poland, and Germany; Korean Air Flight 801 crashes during heavy rain on Guam, killing 229; Mars Pathfinder and Sojourner land on Mars; flowers left outside Kensington Palace following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in a car crash in Paris., 300x300px, thumb rect 0 0 200 200 Titanic (1997 film) rect 200 0 400 200 Harry Potter rect 400 0 600 200 Comet Hale-Bopp rect 0 200 300 400 Death of Diana, Princess of Wales rect 300 200 600 400 Handover of Hong Kong rect 0 400 200 600 Mars Pathfinder re ...
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Novels Set In London
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 historic ...
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