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ABOUTBlack Lamb was created to offer the discerning reader a stimulating selection of excellent original writing. Published monthly. (more) FREE SAMPLE COPYClick here to receive a free sample issue via U.S. mail. There is absolutely no obligation. SUBSCRIBESupport this independently published journal of fine essays. Annual subscriptions are $15 in the USA, $25 in Canada, $30 in the UK, or $35 elsewhere (all prices in US $). Click here to subscribe online via paypal or send a check to Black Lamb, 1759 View Drive, San Leandro CA 94577. QUESTIONSIf you have questions or comments regarding Black Lamb, please email us. |
Archive for the 'A Week in Literary History' CategoryA Week in Literary HistoryNovember 13th, 2002 Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson (The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 1886) is born in Edinburgh in 1850.
Stevenson led an adventurous life and managed to work most of his major adventures and concerns into his fiction. For a while after his death, he was relegated to the minor ranks, but his reputation has steadily revived, and his popularity has never waned. He is a fluent, lively, and ambitious writer, and his works have been translated far more widely than his contemporaries Poe, Dickens, and Wilde. Suggested Reading Novels & Novellas Treasure Island, 1883. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, 1886. Kidnapped, 1886. The Master of Ballantrae, 1889. Short stories New Arabian Nights, 1877. Island Nights' Entertainments, 1893. Poetry A Child's Garden of Verses, 1885. Ballads, 1891. Songs of Travel and Other Verses, 1896. Other Virginibus Puerisque, and Other Papers, 1881. Familiar Studies of Men and Books, 1882. Memories and Portraits, 1887.
Posted by: The Editors A Week in Literary HistoryNovember 11th, 2002 In 1922, American novelist Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse Five, or The Children’s Brigade, 1969) is born in Indianapolis, Ind.
Vonnegut became a voice, perhaps the voice, of the generation after his in the Sixties with his openly political and satirical novels. In his book on the Allied bombing of Dresden in World War II, he emerged as a humanist and an advocate for peace in a very confused period. His humor and compassion should make his books last well beyond their topical contexts. Suggested Reading Novels The Sirens of Titan, 1959. Mother Night, 1961. Cat’s Cradle, 1963. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, 1965. Slaughterhouse-Five, 1969. Jailbird, 1979. Short stories Welcome to the Monkey House, 1968. Palm Sunday, 1981.
Posted by: The Editors A Week in Literary HistoryNovember 11th, 2002 Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment, 1886) is born in Moscow in 1821.
Dostoevsky has his detractors, most notably Vladimir Nabokov, who had no taste for his countryman’s religious enthusiasms and thought his novels sentimental. But Dostoevsky wrote on a huge scale; his excesses are part of the deal and his preoccupation with psychology is unparalleled. His characters — quarreling, agonizing, rushing about, philosophizing, and always talking talking talking — are fascinating. Their craziness — even their author’s — is the stuff of humanity, presented by a giant of literature. Suggested Reading Novels Notes from the House of the Dead, 1861-62. Notes from Underground, 1864. The Gambler, 1866. Crime and Punishment, 1866. The Idiot, 1868. The Possessed, 1871-72. The Brothers Karamazov, 1879-80.
Posted by: The Editors A Week in Literary HistoryNovember 9th, 2002 Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev (Fathers and Sons, 1862) is born in Orel in 1818.
Turgenev was the first of the great Russian novelists to be widely read in Europe. In Fathers and Sons he introduced the vexing question of nihilism, borrowed from the West, into the Russian consciousness. His elegant style became a model not so much for other Russian writers but for generations of foreigners. By the end of his life, he had become a famous figure in his homeland: his funeral was attended by delegations from 180 organizations and was an occasion of national mourning. Suggested Reading Novels Fathers and Sons, 1862. Smoke, 1867. Spring Torrents, 1871. Virgin Soil, 1877. Stories A Sportsman’s Sketches, 1852.
Posted by: The Editors A Week in Literary HistoryNovember 6th, 2002 American editor (The New Yorker) Harold Ross is born in 1892 in Aspen, Colo.
Ross sprang out of a journeyman’s career as a journalist for no fewer than a dozen different newspapers to create America’s most distinctive magazine, The New Yorker, which published its first issue in 1925 and continues to be a model of good writing. Ross had an instinct for locating good writers and proved to be a brilliant, if exasperating, editor; the entire roster of significant American mid-century writers has been nourished by Ross’s remarkable creation. James Thurber’s memoir of the New Yorker heyday paints an unforgettable portrait of a remarkable man, who was called, among other things, “an illiterate clown,” “a dishonest Abe Lincoln,” and “a genius.” Suggested Reading Biography by James Thurber, The Years with Ross, 1957.
Posted by: The Editors A Week in Literary HistoryNovember 5th, 2002 English art critic and Booker Prize winning novelist John Berger (Pig Earth, 1979) is born in Stoke Newington, London, in 1926. John Berger, b. November 5, 1926
Suggested Reading Novels A Painter of Our Time, 1958. The Foot of Clive, 1962. G., 1972. The Into Their Labours trilogy: Pig Earth, 1979; Once in Europa, 1987; Lilac and Flag, 1990. To the Wedding, 1995. From A to X, 2008. Non-fiction The Success and Failure of Picasso, 1965. Ways of Seeing, 1972. About Looking, 1980. The Sense of Sight: Writings, 1985. Selected Essays, 2001. Hold Everything Dear, 2007.
Posted by: The Editors A Week in Literary HistoryNovember 1st, 2002 American author Stephen Crane (The Red Badge of Courage, 1895) is born in 1871 in Newark, N.J. Stephen Crane, b. November 1, 1871 d. 1900
Suggested Reading Novels and novellas Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, 1893. The Red Badge of Courage: An Episode of the American Civil War, 1895. The Monster, 1898. Short stories The Little Regiment and Other Episodes of the American Civil War, 1896. The Open Boat and Other Tales of Adventure, 1898. Whilomville Stories, 1900. Wounds in the Rain: War Stories, 1900. Poetry The Black Riders, 1895. War Is Kind, 1899.
Posted by: The Editors A Week in Literary HistoryOctober 29th, 2002 English novelist Henry Green (Loving, 1945) is born Henry Vincent Yorke near Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire. Henry Green, b. October 29, 1905, d. 1973
Suggested Reading Novels Blindness, 1926. Living, 1929. Party Going, 1939. Caught, 1943. Loving, 1945. Back, 1946. Concluding, 1948. Nothing, 1950. Doting, 1952. Memoir Pack My Bag, 1940.
Posted by: The Editors A Week in Literary HistoryOctober 28th, 2002 In 1903, English novelist Evelyn Waugh (A Handful of Dust, 1934) is born in Hampstead. Arthur St. John (Evelyn) Waugh, b. October 28, 1903, d. 1966 Suggested Reading Novels Decline and Fall, 1928. Vile Bodies, 1930. Black Mischief, 1932. A Handful of Dust, 1934. Scoop, 1938. Put Out More Flags, 1952. The Sword of Honour World War II trilogy: Men at Arms, 1952, Officers and Gentlemen, 1955, and Unconditional Surrender, 1961. Brideshead Revisited, 1945. The Loved One, 1948. The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold, 1957. Stories Mr. Loveday’s Outing and Other Sad Stories, 1936. Love Among the Ruins, 1953. Tactical Exercise, 1954. Travel Labels, A Mediterranean Journal, 1930. Remote People, 1932. Ninety-Two Days, The Account of a Tropical Journey Through British Guiana and Part of Brazil, 1934. Waugh in Abyssinia, 1936. Robbery Under Law: The Mexican Object-Lesson, 1939. The Holy Places, 1953. A Tourist in Africa, 1960. Biography Rossetti: His Life and Works, 1928. Edmund Campion, 1935. The Life of the Right Reverend Ronald Knox, 1959. Autobiography and Other A Little Learning, 1964. The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh, 1976. A Little Order, 1977. The Letters of Evelyn Waugh, 1980. The Essays, Articles and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh, 1980.
Posted by: The Editors A Week in Literary HistoryOctober 27th, 2002 American poet Sylvia Plath (Ariel, 1965) is born in Boston in 1932.
We’ll never know what Sylvia Plath might have accomplished had she been able to put aside her demons. She was writing the best poetry of her life just before she died, and her novel The Bell Jar is a small classic. Suggested Reading Poetry The Colossus and Other Poems, 1960. Ariel, 1965. Plath:Poems, 1998. Prose The Bell Jar, 1963. The Journals of Sylvia Plath, 1982.
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