Highgate Literary And Scientific Institution
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Highgate Literary And Scientific Institution
The Highgate Literary and Scientific Institution (HLSI) is an unincorporated society with trustees having charitable status under the Friendly Societies Act. Founded in 1839 in Highgate, north London, with the aim of helping local people to better understand new developments in industry and discoveries in science, it is now one the few surviving membership supported organisations which predate the widespread establishment of public libraries in the United Kingdom. Today its charitable purpose, from its historic building, is to offer opportunities for life-long learning through its courses, library, archives, art gallery, lectures, debates, cultural and social events. Origins The Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries set in train a movement for self-improvement among all classes of society. The spirit of enquiry generated by the new scientific inventions and their development in manufacturing processes led to the formation, originally in the big industrial cities ...
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Friendly Society
A friendly society (sometimes called a benefit society, mutual aid society, benevolent society, fraternal organization or ROSCA) is a mutual association for the purposes of insurance, pensions, savings or cooperative banking. It is a mutual organization or benefit society composed of a body of people who join together for a common financial or social purpose. Before modern insurance and the welfare state, friendly societies provided financial and social services to individuals, often according to their religious, political, or trade affiliations. These societies are still widespread in many parts of the developing world, where they are referred to as ROSCAs (rotating savings and credit associations), ASCAs (accumulating savings and credit associations), burial societies, chit funds, etc. Character Before the development of large-scale government and employer health insurance and other financial services, friendly societies played an important part in many people's lives. Many o ...
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Cottage
A cottage, during Feudalism in England, England's feudal period, was the holding by a cottager (known as a Cotter (farmer), cotter or ''bordar'') of a small house with enough garden to feed a family and in return for the cottage, the cottager had to provide some form of service to the Lord of the manor, manorial lord.Daniel D. McGarry, ''Medieval history and civilization'' (1976) p 242 However, in time cottage just became the general term for a small house. In modern usage, a cottage is usually a modest, often cosy dwelling, typically in a rural or semi-rural location and not necessarily in England. The cottage orné, often quite large and grand residences built by the nobility, dates back to a movement of "rustic" stylised cottages of the late 18th and early 19th century during the Romantic movement. In British English the term now denotes a small dwelling of traditional build, although it can also be applied to modern construction designed to resemble traditional houses ("wi ...
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John Betjeman
Sir John Betjeman (; 28 August 190619 May 1984) was an English poet, writer, and broadcaster. He was Poet Laureate from 1972 until his death. He was a founding member of The Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture, helping to save St Pancras railway station from demolition. He began his career as a journalist and ended it as one of the most popular British Poets Laureate and a much-loved figure on British television. Life Early life and education Betjeman was born John Betjemann. He was the son of a prosperous silverware maker of Dutch descent. His parents, Mabel (''née'' Dawson) and Ernest Betjemann, had a family firm at 34–42 Pentonville Road which manufactured the kind of ornamental household furniture and gadgets distinctive to Victorians. During the First World War the family name was changed to the less German-looking Betjeman. His father's forebears had actually come from the present day Netherlands more than a century earlier, setting ...
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Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He also shared volumes and collaborated with Charles Lamb, Robert Southey, and Charles Lloyd. He wrote the poems ''The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'' and ''Kubla Khan'', as well as the major prose work ''Biographia Literaria''. His critical work, especially on William Shakespeare, was highly influential, and he helped introduce German idealist philosophy to English-speaking cultures. Coleridge coined many familiar words and phrases, including "suspension of disbelief". He had a major influence on Ralph Waldo Emerson and American transcendentalism. Throughout his adult life, Coleridge had crippling bouts of anxiety and depression; it has been speculated that he had bipolar disorder, which had not been defined during his lifetime.Jamis ...
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Mary Kingsley
Mary Henrietta Kingsley (13 October 1862 – 3 June 1900) was an English ethnographer, scientific writer, and explorer whose travels throughout West Africa and resulting work helped shape European perceptions of both African cultures and British colonialism in Africa. Early life Kingsley was born in London on 13 October 1862, the daughter and oldest child of physician, traveller and writer George Kingsley and Mary Bailey. She came from a family of writers, as she was also the niece of novelists Charles Kingsley and Henry Kingsley. The family moved to Highgate less than a year after her birth, the same home where her brother Charles George R. ("Charley") Kingsley was born in 1866, and by 1881 were living in Southwood House, Bexley in Kent. Her father was a physician and worked for George Herbert, 13th Earl of Pembroke, and other aristocrats and was frequently away from home on his excursions. During these voyages he collected information for his studies. Dr. Kingsley a ...
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Imperial Russia
The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the List of Russian monarchs, Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. The rise of the Russian Empire coincided with the decline of neighbouring rival powers: the Swedish Empire, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Qajar Iran, the Ottoman Empire, and Qing dynasty, Qing China. It also held colonies in North America between 1799 and 1867. Covering an area of approximately , it remains the list of largest empires, third-largest empire in history, surpassed only by the British Empire and the Mongol Empire; it ruled over a population of 125.6 million people per the Russian Empire Census, 1897 Russian census, which was the only census carried out during the entire imperial period. Owing to its geographic extent across three continents at its peak, it featured great ethnic, linguistic, re ...
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Bloomsbury Group
The Bloomsbury Group—or Bloomsbury Set—was a group of associated English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists in the first half of the 20th century, including Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster and Lytton Strachey. This loose collective of friends and relatives was closely associated with the University of Cambridge for the men and King's College London for the women, and they lived, worked or studied together near Bloomsbury, London. According to Ian Ousby, "although its members denied being a group in any formal sense, they were united by an abiding belief in the importance of the arts."Ousby, p. 95 Their works and outlook deeply influenced literature, aesthetics, criticism, and economics as well as modern attitudes towards feminism, pacifism, and Human sexuality, sexuality. A well-known quote, attributed to Dorothy Parker, is "they lived in squares, painted in circles and loved in triangles". Origins All male members of the Bloomsbury Gr ...
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Margaret Thomas (painter)
Margaret Thomas (26 September 1916 – 27 March 2016) was a British painter. She is remembered in particular for her still lifes and her flower paintings which received considerable acclaim, and are in numerous UK public collections. Career Thomas was born in London, England on 26 September 1916. When she was 12 years old she was introduced to Ethel Walker, and other women artists, by her governess.  Thomas would later exhibit pieces in the same shows as Walker. In 1934 Thomas began her studies at Sidcup School of Art. She continued, having won a scholarship, at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. For her final year, she studied at the Royal Academy Schools The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its purpo ... under Walter Thomas Monnington, Thomas Monnington and Erne ...
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Baroness Burdett-Coutts
Baron is a rank of nobility or title of honour, often hereditary, in various European countries, either current or historical. The female equivalent is baroness. Typically, the title denotes an aristocrat who ranks higher than a lord or knight, but lower than a viscount or count. Often, barons hold their fief – their lands and income – directly from the monarch. Barons are less often the vassals of other nobles. In many kingdoms, they were entitled to wear a smaller form of a crown called a ''coronet''. The term originates from the Latin term , via Old French. The use of the title ''baron'' came to England via the Norman Conquest of 1066, then the Normans brought the title to Scotland and Italy. It later spread to Scandinavia and Slavic lands. Etymology The word '' baron'' comes from the Old French , from a Late Latin "man; servant, soldier, mercenary" (so used in Salic law; Alemannic law has in the same sense). The scholar Isidore of Seville in the 7th century ...
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Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl Of Shaftesbury
Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury (28 April 1801 – 1 October 1885), styled Lord Ashley from 1811 to 1851, was a British Tory politician, philanthropist, and social reformer. He was the eldest son of The 6th Earl of Shaftesbury and his wife, Lady Anne Spencer, daughter of The 4th Duke of Marlborough, and older brother of Henry Ashley, MP. As a social reformer who was called the "Poor Man's Earl", he campaigned for better working conditions, reform to lunacy laws, education and the limitation of child labour. He was also an early supporter of the Zionist movement and the YMCA and a leading figure in the evangelical movement in the Church of England. Early life Lord Ashley, as he was styled until his father's death in 1851, was educated at Manor House school in Chiswick (1812–1813), Harrow School (1813–1816) and Christ Church, Oxford, where he gained first-class honours in classics in 1822, took his MA in 1832 and was appointed DCL in 1841. Ashley's early f ...
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Dr Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709  – 13 December 1784), often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. The ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' calls him "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history". Born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, he attended Pembroke College, Oxford until lack of funds forced him to leave. After working as a teacher, he moved to London and began writing for ''The Gentleman's Magazine''. Early works include '' Life of Mr Richard Savage'', the poems ''London'' and ''The Vanity of Human Wishes'' and the play ''Irene''. After nine years' effort, Johnson's ''A Dictionary of the English Language'' appeared in 1755, and was acclaimed as "one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship". Later work included essays, an annotated '' The Plays of William Shakespeare'', and the apologue ''The History of Rasse ...
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Survey Of London
The Survey of London is a research project to produce a comprehensive architectural survey of central London and its suburbs, or the area formerly administered by the London County Council. It was founded in 1894 by Charles Robert Ashbee, an Arts-and-Crafts designer, architect and social reformer and was motivated by a desire to record and preserve London's ancient monuments. The first volume was published in 1900, but the completion of the series remains far in the future. The London Survey Committee was initially a volunteer effort, but from 1910 published the surveys jointly with the London County Council (later the Greater London Council, GLC). From 1952, the voluntary committee was disbanded, and all survey work was wholly council-run. Following the abolition of the GLC in 1986, responsibility for the survey was taken over by the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England (RCHME). Since 2013, it has been administered by The Bartlett School of Architecture, Uni ...
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