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1969 In Literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1969. Events *February 8 – After 147 years, the last issue of ''The Saturday Evening Post'' in its original form appears in the United States. *March 23 – German-born writer Assia Wevill, a mistress of the English poet Ted Hughes and ex-wife of the Canadian poet David Wevill, gasses herself and their daughter at her London home. *April 22 – The first Booker Prize, Booker-McConnell Prize for fiction is awarded to P. H. Newby for ''Something to Answer For''. *August – "Penelope Ashe", purported author of a bestselling novel, ''Naked Came the Stranger'', is revealed as a group of ''Newsday'' journalists. *''unknown date'' – ''The Times Literary Supplement'' begins using the abbreviation "TLS" on its title page. New books Fiction *Eva Alexanderson – ''Kontradans'' (Counter-dance) * Eric Ambler – ''The Intercom Conspiracy'' *Jorge Amado – ''Tenda dos Milagres (novel), Tenda dos Milagres'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kingsley Amis
Sir Kingsley William Amis (16 April 1922 – 22 October 1995) was an English novelist, poet, critic and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, short stories, radio and television scripts, and works of social criticism, social and literary criticism. He is best known for satirical comedies such as ''Lucky Jim'' (1954), ''One Fat Englishman'' (1963), ''Ending Up'' (1974), ''Jake's Thing'' (1978) and ''The Old Devils'' (1986). His biographer Zachary Leader called Amis "the finest English comic novelist of the second half of the twentieth century." In 2008, ''The Times'' ranked him ninth on a list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. He was the father of the novelist Martin Amis. Life and career Kingsley Amis was born on 16 April 1922 in Clapham, south London, the only child of William Robert Amis (1889–1963), a clerk—"quite an important one, fluent in Spanish and responsible for exporting mustard to South America"—for the mustard man ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christianna Brand
Mary Christianna Lewis (née Milne; 17 December 1907 – 11 March 1988), known professionally as Christianna Brand, was a British crime writer and children's literature, children's author born in British Malaya (now Malaysia). Biography Brand was born Mary Christianna Milne in British Malaya, Malaya but spent most of her childhood in England and India. She had a number of different occupations, including model, dancer, shop assistant, and governess. Brand also wrote under the pseudonyms Mary Ann Ashe, Annabel Jones, Mary Brand, Mary Roland, and China Thompson. Christianna Brand served as chair of the Crime Writers' Association from 1972 to 1973. She married Roland Lewis. Her first novel, ''Death in High Heels (novel), Death in High Heels'', was written while Brand was working as a salesgirl, the idea stemming from her fantasies about doing away with an annoying co-worker. In 1941 in literature, 1941, one of her best-loved characters, Inspector Cockrill of the Kent Coun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Hired Man
''The Hired Man'' is a novel by Melvyn Bragg, first published in 1969 by Secker and Warburg. It is the first part of Bragg's Cumbrian Trilogy. The story is set predominantly in the rural area around Thurston (Bragg's name for Wigton, his home town), from the 1890s to the 1920s, and follows the life of John Tallentire, a farm labourer and coal miner. John is the father of Joseph Tallentire, the central character of Bragg's '' A Place in England'', whose son, Douglas Tallentire, is the central character of '' Kingdom Come''. Musical adaptation In 1984 ''The Hired Man'' was turned into an award-winning musical with Bragg collaborating with Howard Goodall. The musical has been refined over time, including a new song, "Day Follows Day", which was introduced for the 2003 revival at the Salisbury Playhouse. It features characters John and Emily Tallentire, and two periods in their lives. The first opens with a Hiring Fair, where John is employed by Pennington, a local farmer. E ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Melvyn Bragg
Melvyn Bragg, Baron Bragg (born 6 October 1939) is an English broadcaster, author and parliamentarian. He is the editor and presenter of ''The South Bank Show'' (1978–2010, 2012–2023), and the presenter of the BBC Radio 4 documentary series ''In Our Time (radio series), In Our Time''. Earlier in his career, Bragg worked for the BBC in various roles including presenter, a connection that resumed in 1988 when he began to host ''Start the Week'' on BBC Radio 4. After his ennoblement in 1998, he switched to presenting the new ''In Our Time'', an academic discussion radio programme, which has run to more than one thousand broadcast editions and is also a podcast. He served as Chancellor (education), Chancellor of the University of Leeds from 1999 until 2017. Early life Bragg was born on 6 October 1939 in Carlisle and was raised in Wigton, Cumberland, the son of Stanley Bragg, a stock keeper turned publican, and Mary Ethel (née Park), who worked alongside her husband in the pub. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
I Sing The Body Electric (Bradbury)
''I Sing the Body Electric!'' is a 1969 collection of short stories by Ray Bradbury. The book takes its name from an included short story of the same title, which in turn took the title from a poem by Walt Whitman published in his collection ''Leaves of Grass''. Contents The collection includes these stories: ; "The Kilimanjaro Device" ''(originally titled "The Kilimanjaro Machine", first appeared in ''Life Magazine'', January 1965)'': After a long drive, a man arrives in Idaho and begins to ask questions about a local who has died. In a bar, he finally finds someone who was familiar with the person he is looking for. Though the latter is never referred to by name, it becomes clear that he is none other than Ernest Hemingway. When asked why he's looking for him, the traveler reveals that his truck has the ability to travel in time. He goes further to explain that there are right graves and wrong graves; that people do not always die at the right time, and this local man is o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ray Bradbury
Ray Douglas Bradbury ( ; August 22, 1920June 5, 2012) was an American author and screenwriter. One of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers, he worked in a variety of genres, including fantasy, science fiction, Horror fiction, horror, mystery fiction, mystery, and Literary fiction, realistic fiction. Bradbury is best known for his novel ''Fahrenheit 451'' (1953) and his short-story collections ''The Martian Chronicles'' (1950), ''The Illustrated Man'' (1951), and ''The October Country'' (1955). Other notable works include the coming of age novel ''Dandelion Wine'' (1957), the dark fantasy ''Something Wicked This Way Comes (novel), Something Wicked This Way Comes'' (1962) and the fictionalized memoir ''Green Shadows, White Whale'' (1992). He also wrote and consulted on screenplays and television scripts, including ''Moby Dick (1956 film), Moby Dick'' and ''It Came from Outer Space''. Many of his works were adapted into television and film productions as well as comic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Les Chemins De Katmandou
''Les Chemins de Katmandou'' ("the roads to Kathmandu") is a 1969 novel by the French writer René Barjavel. It tells the story of a man who joins a group of hippies who live and travel in Nepal, where they take drugs and practice free love in the belief that it will free them from materialism, only to meet disappointment. Adaptation The novel was written in tandem with a 1969 film of the same name (in English, '' The Pleasure Pit''), directed by André Cayatte and starring Renaud Verley and Jane Birkin Jane Mallory Birkin ( ; 14 December 1946 – 16 July 2023) was a British and French actress, singer, and designer. She had a prolific career as an actress, mostly in French cinema. A native of London, Birkin began her career as an actress, .... The film had 1,635,664 admissions in French cinemas. References 1969 French novels French novels adapted into films French-language novels Hippie movement Literature related to the sexual revolution Novels about drugs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
René Barjavel
René Barjavel (24 January 1911 – 24 November 1985) was a French author, journalist and critic who may have been the first to think of the grandfather paradox in time travel. He was born in Nyons, a town in the Drôme department in southeastern France. He is best known as a science fiction author, whose work often involved the fall of civilisation due to technocratic hubris and the madness of war, but who also favoured themes emphasising the durability of love. René Barjavel wrote several novels with these themes, such as '' Ravage'' (translated as ''Ashes, ashes''), ''Le Grand Secret'', '' La Nuit des temps'' (translated as ''The Ice People''), and '' Une rose au paradis''. His writing is poetic, dreamy and sometimes philosophical. Some of his works have their roots in an empirical and poetic questioning of the existence of God (notably ''La Faim du tigre''). He was also interested in the environmental heritage which we leave to future generations. Whilst his works are ra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Edible Woman
''The Edible Woman'' is the first published novel by Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, published in 1969. It is the story of a young woman, Marian, whose sane, structured, consumer-oriented world starts to slip out of focus. Following her engagement, Marian feels her body and her self are becoming separated. Marian begins endowing food with human qualities that cause her to identify with it, and finds herself unable to eat, repelled by metaphorical cannibalism. In a foreword written in 1979 for the Virago edition of the novel, Atwood described it as a protofeminist rather than feminist work. Atwood explores gender stereotypes through characters who strictly adhere to them (such as Peter or Lucy) and those who defy their constraints (such as Ainsley or Duncan). The narrative point of view shifts from first to third person, accentuating Marian's slow detachment from reality. At the conclusion, first person narration returns, consistent with the character's willingness to take contr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Margaret Atwood
Margaret Eleanor Atwood (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian novelist, poet, literary critic, and an inventor. Since 1961, she has published 18 books of poetry, 18 novels, 11 books of nonfiction, nine collections of short fiction, eight children's books, two graphic novels, and a number of small press editions of both poetry and fiction. Her best-known work is the 1985 dystopian novel ''The Handmaid's Tale.'' Atwood has won numerous awards and honors for her writing, including two Booker Prizes, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Governor General's Award, the Franz Kafka Prize, Princess of Asturias Awards, and the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, National Book Critics and PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Awards. A number of her works have been adapted for film and television. Atwood's works encompass a variety of themes including gender and identity, religion and myth, the power of language, climate change, and "power politics". Many of her poems are inspired by myth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Penelope Ashe
''Naked Came the Stranger'' is a 1969 novel written as a literary hoax poking fun at the American literary culture of its time. Though credited to "Penelope Ashe", it was in fact written by a group of twenty-four journalists led by ''Newsday'' columnist Mike McGrady. McGrady's intention was to write a book that was both deliberately terrible and contained a lot of descriptions of sex, to illustrate the point that popular American literary culture had become mindlessly vulgar. The book fulfilled the authors' expectations and became a bestseller in 1969; they revealed the hoax later that year, further spurring the book's popularity. Hoax Mike McGrady was convinced that popular American literary culture had become so base—with the best-seller lists dominated by the likes of Harold Robbins and Jacqueline Susann—that any book could succeed if enough sex was thrown in. To test his theory, in 1966 McGrady recruited a team of ''Newsday'' colleagues (according to Andreas Schroder ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
