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Watch And Ward Society
The New England Watch and Ward Society (founded as the New England Society for the Suppression of Vice) was a Boston, Massachusetts, organization involved in the censorship of books and the performing arts from the late 19th century to the middle of the 20th century. After the 1920s, its emphasis changed to combating the spread of gambling. In 1957 the organization's name was changed to the New England Citizens Crime Commission, and in 1967 it became the Massachusetts Council on Crime and Correction. In 1975 it was merged with another organization to form Community Resources for Justice, a group that promotes prison reform and rights for formerly incarcerated persons. At the height of the society's power in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Boston Public Library kept books that had been deemed objectionable in a locked room, publishers and booksellers held back publications for fear of the organization's influence with prosecutors and judges, and plays were performed ...
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Leaves Of Grass
''Leaves of Grass'' is a poetry collection by American poet Walt Whitman. Though it was first published in 1855, Whitman spent most of his professional life writing and rewriting ''Leaves of Grass'', revising it multiple times until his death. There have been held to be either six or nine individual editions of ''Leaves of Grass'', the count varying depending on how they are distinguished. This resulted in vastly different editions over four decades—the first edition being a small book of twelve poems, and the last, a compilation of over 400. The collection of loosely connected poems represents the celebration of his philosophy of life and humanity and praises nature and the individual human's role in it. Rather than focusing on religious or spiritual matters, ''Leaves of Grass'' focuses primarily on the body and the material world. With one exception, its poems do not rhyme or follow standard rules for meter and line length. ''Leaves of Grass'' is regarded by many scholars ...
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Point Counter Point
''Point Counter Point'' is a novel by Aldous Huxley, first published in 1928. It is Huxley's longest novel, and was notably more complex and serious than his earlier fiction. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked ''Point Counter Point'' 44th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Title and construction The novel's title is a reference to the flow of arguments in a debate, and a series of these exchanges tell the story. Instead of a single central plot, there are a number of interlinked story lines and recurring themes (as in musical "counterpoint"). As a roman à clef, many of the characters are based on real people, most of whom Huxley knew personally, such as D. H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, Sir Oswald Mosley, Nancy Cunard, and John Middleton Murry, and Huxley is depicted as the novel's novelist, Philip Quarles. Huxley described the structure of Point Counter Point within the novel itself, in a stream of consciousness musing of Quarles: ...
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Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and philosopher. He wrote nearly 50 books, both novels and non-fiction works, as well as wide-ranging essays, narratives, and poems. Born into the prominent Huxley family, he graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, with an undergraduate degree in English literature. Early in his career, he published short stories and poetry and edited the literary magazine ''Oxford Poetry'', before going on to publish travel writing, satire, and screenplays. He spent the latter part of his life in the United States, living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death. By the end of his life, Huxley was widely acknowledged as one of the foremost intellectuals of his time. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine times, and was elected Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature in 1962. Huxley was a pacifist. He grew interested in philosophical mysticism, as well as universalism, addre ...
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American Mercury
''The American Mercury'' was an American magazine published from 1924Staff (Dec. 31, 1923)"Bichloride of Mercury."''Time''. to 1981. It was founded as the brainchild of H. L. Mencken and drama critic George Jean Nathan. The magazine featured writing by some of the most important writers in the United States through the 1920s and 1930s. After a change in ownership in the 1940s, the magazine attracted conservative writers, including William F. Buckley. A second change in ownership in the 1950s turned the magazine into a far-right and virulently anti-Semitic publication. It was published monthly in New York City. The magazine went out of business in 1981, having spent the last 25 years of its existence in decline and controversy. History H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan had previously edited ''The Smart Set'' literary magazine, when not producing their own books and, in Mencken's case, regular journalism for ''The Baltimore Sun''. With their mutual book publisher Alfred A. ...
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Herbert Asbury
Herbert Asbury (September 1, 1891 – February 24, 1963) was an American journalist and writer best known for his books detailing crime during the 19th and early-20th centuries, such as ''Gem of the Prairie: An Informal History of the Chicago Underworld'', ''The Barbary Coast: An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld'', ''Sucker's Progress: An Informal History of Gambling in America'' and ''The Gangs of New York''. ''The Gangs of New York'' was later adapted for film as Martin Scorsese's ''Gangs of New York'' (2002). However, the film adaptation of ''Gangs of New York'' was so loose that ''Gangs'' was nominated for "Best Original Screenplay" rather than as a screenplay adapted from another work. Early life Born in Farmington, Missouri, he was raised in a highly religious family which included several generations of devout Methodist preachers. His great-great uncle was Francis Asbury, the first bishop of the Methodist Church to be ordained in the United States. When ...
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Floyd Dell
Floyd James Dell (June 28, 1887 – July 23, 1969) was an American newspaper and magazine editor, literary critic, novelist, playwright, and poet. Dell has been called "one of the most flamboyant, versatile and influential American Men of Letters of the first third of the 20th Century." In Chicago, he was editor of the nationally syndicated ''Friday Literary Review''. As editor and critic, Dell's influence is seen in the work of many major American writers from the first half of the 20th century. A lifelong poet, he was also a best-selling author, as well as a playwright whose hit Broadway comedy, ''Little Accident'' (1928), was made into a Hollywood movie. Dell wrote extensively on controversial social issues of the early 20th century, and played a major part in the political and social movements originating in New York City's Greenwich Village during the 1910s & 1920s. As editor of left-wing magazine ''The Masses'', Dell was twice put on trial for publishing subversive literatur ...
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Simon Called Peter
''Simon Called Peter'' is a novel by Robert Keable (1887–1927) which was a best-seller in 1921. The title is a reference to Simon Peter the apostle and first Pope of the Catholic Church. In 1921 it was met with astonishing success, and its runaway popularity won Keable a level of celebrity. The book reportedly sold over 600,000 copies during the 1920s, reaching a 66th edition by 1922. A largely autobiographical work, Simon Called Peter is the tale of a priest, Peter Graham, who has an affair in wartime France with a nurse named Julie. The title character almost abandons his faith for love, but experiences a direct revelation of Christ while watching a Catholic mass and is given up by his lover, who sees his sincerity. The book was controversial at its introduction due to its sexual and religious content. It was made into a play in 1924 by Jules Eckert Goodman and Edward Knoblock; which had a short run on Broadway. This book is referred to in ''The Great Gatsby ''The Great G ...
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Robert Keable
Robert Keable (6 March 1887 – 22 December 1927) was a British novelist, formerly a missionary and priest in the Church of England. He resigned his ministry following his experiences in the First World War and caused a scandal with his 1921 novel '' Simon Called Peter,'' the tale of a priest's wartime affair with a young nurse. The book sold 600,000 copies in the 1920s alone, was referenced in ''The Great Gatsby'', and was cited in a double murder investigation. Fêted in the United States, but critically less than well-received, Keable moved to Tahiti where he continued to write, producing both novels and theological works, until his death at age 40 of kidney disease. Keable was raised in Bedfordshire and educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge. He entered a theological college after graduation and was ordained a priest in 1911. He spent the next several years as a missionary in Africa, stationed on Zanzibar and in Basutoland, before returning to Europe as an army chaplain du ...
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Three Weeks (book)
''Three Weeks'' is a 1907 erotic romance novel by Elinor Glyn. Plot Paul Verdayne, wealthy English nobleman in his early twenties, is caught embracing the parson's daughter. His parents decide to send him away to France and then Switzerland. In Switzerland, he sees a woman referred to only as "the Lady". The Lady is older, in her thirties. After several days of exchanging lustful glances, they actually meet. She invites him to her apartment, where they share a sexual relationship for three weeks. Eventually, Paul learns the Lady is actually the queen of a Russian dependency and her husband, the king, is abusive towards her. She disappears after the titular three weeks; Paul is upset and returns to England. Paul later discovers that the Lady has given birth to their son. With his father's assistance, he finds out the Lady's identity; however, before they can meet again, she is murdered by her husband. Paul is upset and spends the next five years wandering around from country to coun ...
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Elinor Glyn
Elinor Glyn ( Sutherland; 17 October 1864 – 23 September 1943) was a British novelist and scriptwriter who specialised in romantic fiction, which was considered scandalous for its time, although her works are relatively tame by modern standards. She popularized the concept of the ''it-girl'', and had tremendous influence on early 20th-century popular culture and, possibly, on the careers of notable Hollywood stars such as Rudolph Valentino, Gloria Swanson and, especially, Clara Bow. Early life and family background Elinor Sutherland was born on 17 October 1864 in Saint Helier, Jersey, in the Channel Islands. She was the younger daughter of Douglas Sutherland (1838–1865), a civil engineer of Scottish descent, and his wife Elinor Saunders (1841–1937), of an Anglo-French family that had settled in Canada. Her father was said to be related to the Lords Duffus. Anthony Glyn was her grandson. Her father died when she was two months old; her mother returned to the parental ho ...
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Gargantua And Pantagruel
''The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel'' (french: La vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel) is a pentalogy of novels written in the 16th century by François Rabelais, telling the adventures of two giants, Gargantua ( , ) and his son Pantagruel ( , ). The work is written in an amusing, extravagant, and satirical vein, features much erudition, vulgarity, and wordplay, and is regularly compared with the works of William Shakespeare and James Joyce. Rabelais was a polyglot, and the work introduced "a great number of new and difficult words ..into the French language". The work was stigmatised as obscene by the censors of the Collège de la Sorbonne, and, within a social climate of increasing religious oppression in a lead up to the French Wars of Religion, it was treated with suspicion, and contemporaries avoided mentioning it.Le Cadet, Nicolas (2009) Marcel De Grève, La réception de Rabelais en Europe du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle', Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes ...
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