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The Letters Of J. R. R. Tolkien
''The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien'' is a selection of J. R. R. Tolkien's letters published in 1981, edited by Tolkien's biographer Humphrey Carpenter assisted by Christopher Tolkien. The selection from a large mass of materials contains 354 letters, dating between October 1914, when Tolkien was an undergraduate at Oxford, and 29 August 1973, four days before his death. The letters are of interest both for what they show of Tolkien's life and for his interpretations of his Middle-earth writings. Contents The book has a 3-page introduction by its editor, Humphrey Carpenter. It notes that an "enormous quantity of material adto be omitted, and that only passages of particular interest could be included." The omissions include "the very large body of letters" written between 1913 and 1918 to Edith Bratt, the woman who became his wife. Carpenter notes that few letters from the period between 1918 and 1937 survive, and those "unfortunately" say nothing about the writing of '' Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Humphrey Carpenter
Humphrey William Bouverie Carpenter (29 April 1946 – 4 January 2005) was an English biographer, writer, and radio broadcaster. He is known especially for his biographies of J. R. R. Tolkien and other members of the literary society the Inklings. Biography Carpenter was born, lived almost all of his life, and died in the city of Oxford. His father was Harry Carpenter, Bishop of Oxford. His mother was Urith Monica Trevelyan, who had training in the Fröbel teaching method. As a child, he lived in the Warden's Lodgings at Keble College, Oxford, where his father served as warden until his appointment as Bishop of Oxford. He was educated at the Dragon School Oxford, and Marlborough College and then read English at Keble. His biographies included '' J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography'' (1977; also editing of ''The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien''), ''The Inklings: CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien, Charles Williams and their Friends'' (1978; winner of the 1978 Somerset Maugham Award), W. H. Auden (1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Translation
Translation is the communication of the Meaning (linguistic), meaning of a #Source and target languages, source-language text by means of an Dynamic and formal equivalence, equivalent #Source and target languages, target-language text. The English language draws a terminology, terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''translating'' (a written text) and ''Language interpretation, interpreting'' (oral or Sign language, signed communication between users of different languages); under this distinction, translation can begin only after the appearance of writing within a language community. A translator always risks inadvertently introducing source-language words, grammar, or syntax into the target-language rendering. On the other hand, such "spill-overs" have sometimes imported useful source-language calques and loanwords that have enriched target languages. Translators, including early translators of sacred texts, have helped shape the very l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Colin Duriez
Colin Duriez (born 19 July 1947) is a writer on fantasy, especially that of J. R. R. Tolkien. Life and works Duriez was born in Derbyshire and spent his early life in Long Eaton, Derbyshire, in a couple of new council estates near Portsmouth and six years in a mining village in South Wales, before moving to the West Midlands. After school he studied for two years at the University of Istanbul, Turkey, before completing his studies at the University of Ulster in Coleraine, Northern Ireland where he read English and philosophy. After a career in editing and journalism in London, interspersed with some teaching, he migrated to Leicester Leicester ( ) is a city status in the United Kingdom, city, Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority and the county town of Leicestershire in the East Midlands of England. It is the largest settlement in the East Midlands. The city l ... in 1983 to work with a small publisher, IVP, as a commissioning editor. In 2002 he star ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Reader's Companion
A, or a, is the first letter and the first vowel of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''a'' (pronounced ), plural ''aes''. It is similar in shape to the Ancient Greek letter alpha, from which it derives. The uppercase version consists of the two slanting sides of a triangle, crossed in the middle by a horizontal bar. The lowercase version can be written in two forms: the double-storey a and single-storey ɑ. The latter is commonly used in handwriting and fonts based on it, especially fonts intended to be read by children, and is also found in italic type. In English grammar, " a", and its variant " an", are indefinite articles. History The earliest certain ancestor of "A" is aleph (also written 'aleph), the first letter of the Phoenician alphabet, which consisted entirely of consonants (for that reason, it is also called an abjad to distinguish ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
HarperCollins
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 Corpora ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Collins, Sons
William Collins, Sons (often referred to as Collins) was a Scottish printing and publishing company founded by a Presbyterian schoolmaster, William Collins, in Glasgow in 1819, in partnership with Charles Chalmers, the younger brother of Thomas Chalmers, minister of Tron Church, Glasgow. Collins merged with Harper & Row in 1990, forming a new publisher named HarperCollins. History The company had to overcome many early obstacles, and Charles Chalmers left the business in 1825. The company eventually found success in 1841 as a printer of Bibles, and, in 1848, Collins's son Sir William Collins developed the firm as a publishing venture, specialising in religious and educational books. The company was renamed William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd. in 1868. (The Library of Congress reports W. Collins & Co., or William Collins & Company, Collins & Co., etc., before "sometime in the 1860s", then "William Collins Sons and Co.") Although the early emphasis of the company had been on relig ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Faramir
Faramir is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's ''The Lord of the Rings''. He is introduced as the younger brother of Boromir of the Fellowship of the Ring (characters), Fellowship of the Ring and second son of Denethor, the Stewards of Gondor, Steward of Gondor. Faramir enters the narrative in ''The Two Towers'', where, upon meeting Frodo Baggins, he is presented with a temptation to take possession of the One Ring. In ''The Return of the King'', he leads the forces of Gondor in the War of the Ring, coming near to death, succeeds his father as Steward, and wins the love of Éowyn, lady of the royal house of Rohan (Middle-earth), Rohan. Tolkien wrote that of all his characters, Faramir was the most like him: Tolkien had fought in the First World War and had similarly had a vision of darkness. Scholars have likened Faramir's courage to that in the Old English poem ''The Battle of Maldon'', and his hunting green-clad in Ithilien England in Middle-earth, to the English fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tower Of Babel
The Tower of Babel ( he, , ''Mīgdal Bāḇel'') narrative in Genesis 11:1–9 is an origin myth meant to explain why the world's peoples speak different languages. According to the story, a united human race speaking a single language and migrating eastward, comes to the land of Shinar (). There they agree to build a city and a tower with its top in the sky. Yahweh, observing their city and tower, confounds their speech so that they can no longer understand each other, and scatters them around the world. Some modern scholars have associated the Tower of Babel with known structures, notably the Etemenanki, a ziggurat dedicated to the Mesopotamian god Marduk in Babylon. A Sumerian story with some similar elements is told in ''Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta''. Narrative Etymology The phrase "Tower of Babel" does not appear in the Bible; it is always "the city and the tower" () or just "the city" (). The original derivation of the name Babel (also the Hebrew name for B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lunatic
Lunatic is an antiquated term referring to a person who is seen as mentally ill, dangerous, foolish, or crazy—conditions once attributed to "lunacy". The word derives from ''lunaticus'' meaning "of the moon" or "moonstruck". History The term "lunatic" derives from the Latin word ''lunaticus'', which originally referred mainly to epilepsy and madness, as diseases thought to be caused by the moon. The King James Version of the Bible records "lunatick" in the Gospel of Matthew, which has been interpreted as a reference to epilepsy. By the fourth and fifth centuries, astrologers were commonly using the term to refer to neurological and psychiatric diseases. Pliny the Elder argued that the full moon induced individuals to lunacy and epilepsy by effects on the brain analogous to the nocturnal dew. Until at least 1700, it was also a common belief that the moon influenced fevers, rheumatism, episodes of epilepsy and other diseases. Use of the term "lunatic" in legislation In the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the United States Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Nuclear physicist Robert Oppenheimer was the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory that designed the actual bombs. The Army component of the project was designated the Manhattan District as its first headquarters were in Manhattan; the placename gradually superseded the official codename, Development of Substitute Materials, for the entire project. Along the way, the project absorbed its earlier British counterpart, Tube Alloys. The Manhattan Project began modestly in 1939, but grew to employ more than 130,000 people and cost nearly US$2 billion (equivalent to about $ billion in ). Over 90 percent of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atomic Bombings Of Hiroshima And Nagasaki
The United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, respectively. The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the only use of nuclear weapons in armed conflict so far. In the final year of World War II, the Allies prepared for a costly invasion of the Japanese mainland. This undertaking was preceded by a conventional and firebombing campaign that devastated 64 Japanese cities. The war in the European theatre concluded when Germany surrendered on 8 May 1945, and the Allies turned their full attention to the Pacific War. By July 1945, the Allies' Manhattan Project had produced two types of atomic bombs: "Fat Man", a plutonium implosion-type nuclear weapon; and "Little Boy", an enriched uranium gun-type fission weapon. The 509th Composite Group of the United States Army Air Forces was trained and equipped with the specialized Silverplate version of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. World War II was a total war that directly involved more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries. The major participants in the war threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and deploying the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in human history; it resulted in 70 to 85 million fatalities, mostly among civilians. Tens of millions died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
