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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 'Honorary Black Lambs' CategoryHonorary Black LambsMay 1st, 2007 BY BLACK LAMB Again we bring you a couple of short portraits, with recommended bibliographies, of personages soon to take their places in The Ultimate Literary Calendar for 2008: your handy pocket guides to two of literature’s most readable practitioners.
An amateur naturalist and prolific author, this gifted Canadian has delighted readers for more than half a century with memoirs of his childhood and war service and innumerable books about animals and indigenous peoples of the far North. Start with Never Cry Wolf and then make your way in leisurely and enjoyable fashion through his engaging oeuvre. Books People of the Deer, 1952. Lost in the Barrens, 1956. The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be, 1957. Coppermine Journey: An Account of a Great Adventure, 1958. Grey Seas Under: The Perilous Rescue Missions of a North Atlantic Salvage Tug, 1959. Never Cry Wolf, 1963. This Rock Within the Sea: A Heritage Lost, 1968. The Boat Who Wouldn’t Float, 1969. Sibir: My Discovery of Siberia, 1970. A Whale for the Killing, 1972. Virunga: The Passion of Dian Fossey, 1987. Woman in the Mists: The Story of Dian Fossey, 1987.
Posted by: The Editors Honorary Black LambsApril 1st, 2007 BY BLACK LAMB Here, as always in this space, are new entries in what will become, later this year, The Ultimate Literary Calendar. We hope you find the following mini-guides with suggested bibliographies useful introductions to these two important figures from the world of books. John Braine, b. April 13, 1922, d. 1987
Suggested Reading Novels Room at the Top, 1957. The Vodi, 1959. Life at the Top, 1962. The Jealous God, 1964. Waiting for Sheila, 1976. The Two of Us, 1984.
Mortimer is celebrated for his creation of Horace Rumpole, the imperturbable barrister, and his wife Hilda, always referred to as She Who Must Be Obeyed. But he is also the writer of many other novels and plays, many of them superb. Our favorites are the Rapstone Chronicles, a trilogy of novels listed below after Rumpole, the autobiography Clinging to the Wreckage, the remarkable play A Voyage Round My Father, and two enchanting books of interviews with famous people (from Grahame Greene and Georges Simenon to Mick Jagger and Raquel Welch), In Character and Character Parts. Suggested Reading Novels & novellas Charade, 1947. The Rumpole Series (19 books), beginning with Rumpole of the Bailey, 1978, through Rumpole and the Reign of Terror, 2006. Paradise Postponed, 1985. Titmuss Regained, 1990. The Sound of Trumpets, 1998. Plays A Voyage Round My Father, 1971. Edwin and Other Plays, 1984. Non-fiction Clinging to the Wreckage, 1982. The Oxford Book of Villains, 1992. Murderers and Other Friends: Another Part of Life, 1994. The Summer of the Dormouse: A Year of Growing Old. Interviews In Character, 1983. Character Parts, 1986.
Posted by: The Editors Honorary Black LambsMarch 1st, 2007 BY BLACK LAMB As always in this space, we present new entries to the The Ultimate Literary Calendar, which will appear later this year. Here, then, is your handy thumbnail guide, with a selected bibliography, to another preeminent figure of literary history. Ada Louise Huxtable, b. March 14, 1921 The architecture critic of The New York Times for twenty years, Huxtable is a rare, clear voice against the appropriation of the American cityscape by modern schools of architectural practice. Her Pulitzer Prize for “distinguished criticism” was the first such award, and she subsequently enjoyed a MacArthur “genius” grant. She has been simply the best we’ve ever had in her field, and her cautionary books repay careful rereading. Books Will They Ever Finish Bruckner Boulevard? 1970. Kicked a Building Lately? 1976. The Tall Building Artistically Considered: The Search for a Skyscraper Style, 1984. Architecture, Anyone? 1986. Goodbye History, Hello Hamburger, 1986. The Unreal America: Architecture and Illusion, 1997. Frank Lloyd Wright, 2004. Other March Birhdays & Events of Note 1st Polish composer Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849), American novelist William Dean Howells (1837-1920), English biographer Lytton Strachey (1880-1932), American novelist Ralph Ellison (1914-1994), and American poets Robert Lowell (1917-1977) and Howard Nemerov (1920-1991). 2nd Bohemian composer Bedrich Smetana (1824-1884), Yiddish writer Shalom Aleichem (1859-1916), German composer Kurt Weill (1900-1950), brilliant children’s book writer Theodor (Dr. Seuss) Geisl (1904-1991), and American novelist and journalist Tom Wolfe (b. 1931); D.H. Lawrence dies in 1930 at age forty-five of tuberculosis.
Posted by: The Editors Honorary Black LambsMarch 1st, 2006 BY BLACK LAMB As always in this space, we present new entries to the Black Lamb Literary Calendar, which will appear later this year. Here are your handy thumbnail guides, with selected bibliographies, to three preeminent figures of literary history.
Whatever his limitations, Strachey revolutionized the writing of biography in English with his book Eminent Victorians, in which he replaced the standard Victorian two-volume compendium of minuscule facts with shorter accounts. If his portrayals of Cardinal Manning, Dr. Thomas Arnold, Florence Nightingale, and General George Gordon reveal as much about the biographer as about the biographee, this only adds to the fun. Strachey went long steps further in the direction of tabloid journalism (elegant tabloid journalism, though) in his subsequent books; biography was never the same again. Biography Eminent Victorians, 1918. Queen Victoria, 1921. Elizabeth and Essex, 1928. Portraits in Miniature, 1931. Essays & Studies Landmarks in French Literature, 1912. Books and Characters, French and English, 1922. Characters and Commentaries, 1933.
Posted by: The Editors Honorary Black LambsDecember 1st, 2004 BY BLACK LAMB December is a fertile month for artistic birthdays, from which we’ve chosen four Honorary Black Lambs to add to our accumulating Black Lamb Literary Calendar. Here are four short assessments and selected bibliographies, your capsule guides to some of literature’s great figures.
Conrad, born Jozef Teodor Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski in Poland, has often been praised for his mastery of his second language, but in fact he wrote in a strange un-Engish. After a couple of notable books he published his so-called masterpiece, Lord Jim, in 1900, then needed the help of Ford Madox Hueffer (later Ford Madox Ford) on three subsequent novels. We confess to a weakness for The Nigger of the Narcissus, but then we’re soft on sea stories, which is probably why we tolerate Lord Jim so far as we do. Conrad’s is a bizarre and non-influential body of work. Novels The Nigger of the Narcissus, 1897. Lord Jim, 1900. Nostromo, 1904. The Secret Agent, 1907. Short stories & tales Typhoon, 1902. Youth: A Narrative and Two Other Stories, 1902. The Complete Short Stories of Joseph Conrad, 1933.
Posted by: The Editors Honorary Black LambsJune 1st, 2003 BY BLACK LAMB
Another poet, one of a different sort, adorns June, and that’s the late Allen Ginsberg, born on the 3rd in 1926. And a great master came on the scene, in Russia, on the 6th, in 1799, when Aleksandr Pushkin drooled his first. And although he’s better known for his grim novels, Thomas Hardy, born on the 2nd in 1840, was one of the great poets of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Posted by: The Editors
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