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A Dance To The Music Of Time
''A Dance to the Music of Time'' is a 12-volume ''Book series#History, roman-fleuve'' by English writer Anthony Powell, published between 1951 and 1975 to critical acclaim. The story is an often comic examination of movements and manners, power and passivity in English political, cultural and military life in the mid-20th century. The books were inspired by the A Dance to the Music of Time (painting), painting of the same name by French artist Nicolas Poussin. The sequence is narrated by Nicholas Jenkins. At the beginning of the first volume, Jenkins falls into a reverie while watching snow descending on a coal brazier. This reminds him of "the ancient world—legionaries ... mountain altars ... centaurs ..." These classical projections introduce the account of his schooldays, which opens ''A Question of Upbringing''. Over the course of the following volumes, he recalls the people he met over the previous half a century and the events, often small, that reveal the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Book Series
A book series is a sequence of books having certain characteristics in common that are formally identified together as a group. Book series can be organized in different ways, such as written by the same author, or marketed as a group by their publisher. Publishers' reprint series Reprint series of public domain fiction (and sometimes nonfiction) books appeared as early as the 18th century, with the series ''The Poets of Great Britain Complete from Chaucer to Churchill'' (founded by British publisher John Bell (publisher), John Bell in 1777). In 1841 the German Tauchnitz publishers, Tauchnitz publishing firm launched the ''Collection of British and American Authors'', a reprint series of inexpensive paperbound editions of both public domain and copyrighted fiction and nonfiction works. This book series was unique for paying living authors of the works published even though copyright protection did not exist between nations in the 19th century. Later British reprint series were to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Perry Anderson
Francis Rory Peregrine "Perry" Anderson (born 11 September 1938) is a British intellectual, political philosopher, historian and essayist. His work ranges across historical sociology, intellectual history, and cultural analysis. What unites Anderson's work is a preoccupation with Western Marxism. Anderson is perhaps best known as the moving force behind the ''New Left Review''. He is Professor of History and Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Anderson has written many books, most recently ''Different Speeds, Same Furies: Powell, Proust and other Literary Forms'' and ''Disputing Disaster: A Sextet on the Great War''. He is the brother of political scientist Benedict Anderson (1936–2015). Background and early life Anderson was born in London on 11 September 1938. His father, James Carew O'Gorman Anderson (1893–1946), known as Séamas, an official with the Chinese Maritime Customs, was born into an Anglo-Irish family, the younger son of Brigadi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hearing Secret Harmonies
''Hearing Secret Harmonies'' is the final novel in Anthony Powell's twelve-volume series, ''A Dance to the Music of Time''. It was published in 1975, twenty-four years after the first book, ''A Question of Upbringing'', appeared in 1951. No other novel series is based on the formal pictorial principles as ''A Dance to the Music of Time''. The book ends with a torrential passage from ''The Anatomy of Melancholy'' by Robert Burton. Plot summary The book opens in the late 1960s. Nick and Isobel Jenkins let a caravan of four hippies from the Harmony cult, followers of the occult and spiritualism, stay on their land: their niece, Fiona Cutts, daughter of Roddy Cutts; Scorpio Murtlock, an intense young man, also described as "creepy"; Barnabas Henderson; and Rusty. Jenkins muses on Ariosto's Orlando Furioso--specifically the section when Orlando's comrade-in-arms Astolpho travels to the Moon, to the Valley of Lost Things, to recover his friend's lost wits. Kenneth Widmerpool has ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Temporary Kings
''Temporary Kings'' is a novel by Anthony Powell, the penultimate in his twelve-volume novel, ''A Dance to the Music of Time''. It was published in 1973 by Heinemann and remains in print as does the rest of the sequence. It takes place at a fictional 1958 symposium in Venice. ''Temporary Kings'' has been characterized as a novel in the post-war consensus of literary compromise. It also demonstrates Powell's evocation of art at all levels, most notably an (imaginary) Venetian ceiling painting by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo ''Temporary Kings'' received the W. H. Smith Prize in 1974. It is dedicated to Roland Gant, Powell's editor, who Powell called "one in a million." Critical reception In its review of ''Temporary Kings'' in 1973, ''The Times ''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Books Do Furnish A Room (novel)
''Books Do Furnish a Room'' is a novel by Anthony Powell, the tenth in the twelve-novel sequence ''A Dance to the Music of Time''. It was first published in 1971 and, like the other volumes, remains in print. Synopsis The book conveys the atmosphere of post-war austerity as the characters that have survived attempt to resume their former life after the interruption of the conflict. Nicholas Birns has observed, “the novel’s title connotes a provisional postwar recovery.” It deals in particular with the chaotic career of X. Trapnel as a writer and the brief life of the new magazine ''Fission''. This is sponsored by Rosie Manasch and published by the left-wing firm of Quiggin and Craggs (the latter now knighted and married to Gipsy Jones). Also working for the firm is Ada Leintwardine, who Nick Jenkins first meets while she is acting as temporary secretary to Sillery, and to whom Quiggin proposes marriage after the firm is taken over at the end of the novel. Associated w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Kindly Ones (Powell Novel)
''The Kindly Ones'' (published in 1962) is a novel by Anthony Powell that forms the sixth in his twelve-volume sequence, A Dance to the Music of Time. The book's title relates to the placatory name given to the Furies of Greek mythology and chiefly addresses the period just before and after Britain enters World War II. The book is dedicated "For R.W.K.C.", the biographer and historian R. W. Ketton-Cremer.Jay, Mike. (2013) "Who Were the Dedicatees of Powell’s Works?" ''The Anthony Powell Society Newsletter.''50 (spring): 9-10. Plot The novel is divided into four episodes, of which the first takes place at Stonehurst during the boyhood of Nick Jenkins on the eve of World War I. This introduces some of the figures encountered in earlier instalments of the sequence. They include the retired General Conyers, who tactfully handles the nude appearance among them of a parlour maid unhinged by jealousy at the news that the family servant Albert is going to get married. As the General ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Casanova's Chinese Restaurant
''Casanova's Chinese Restaurant'' is a novel by Anthony Powell (). It forms the fifth volume of the twelve-volume sequence ''A Dance to the Music of Time'', and was originally published in 1960 Many of the events of the novel were included in the television adaptation broadcast on the United Kingdom's Channel 4 in 1997, comprising part of the second of four episodes. There was also an earlier, more comprehensive, BBC Radio adaptation. As with several of the earlier volumes, there is a time-overlap with previous books, the first part returning to the period before the death of Mr. Deacon. The ruined door of a fictional Soho pub, the Mortimer, provides the narrative frame of the volume. However, ''Casanova's Chinese Restaurant'' concentrates on a new set of characters, principally the composer Hugh Moreland, (based on Powell's close friend Constant Lambert), his fiancée Matilda, and the critic Maclintick and his wife, Audrey, whose unhappy marriage forms a key part of the narrati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
At Lady Molly's
''At Lady Molly's'' is the fourth volume in Anthony Powell's twelve-novel sequence, ''A Dance to the Music of Time''. Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize 1957, ''At Lady Molly's'' is set in England of the mid-1930s and is essentially a comedy of manners, but in the background, the rise of Hitler and of worldwide Fascism are not ignored. The driving theme of ''At Lady Molly's'' is married life; marriages – as practised or mooted – among the narrator's (Nick Jenkins) acquaintances in bohemian society and the landed classes are pondered. Meanwhile, the career moves of various characters are advanced, checked or put on hold. The portrait of the aristocratic Tolland family is sourced in part from Powell's own in-laws, the Pakenhams. Plot summary It is 1934 and Nick is working, without great success, as a script writer at a film company. He gets invited by a colleague, Chips Lovell, to a party at the home of Lady Molly Jeavons. There he learns that Widmerpool is to m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Acceptance World
''The Acceptance World'' is the third book of Anthony Powell's twelve novel sequence, ''A Dance to the Music of Time''. Nick Jenkins continues the narration of his life and encounters with friends and acquaintances in London between 1931 and 1933. The novel's dedication "To Adrian" refers to British portrait and landscape painter Adrian Daintrey, on whom the character Barnby is based in the novel, and reinforces the wide range of artistic references found in this particular work. Reviews of the novel were generally favourable and it was made a Book Society Alternative Fiction Choice. Synopsis "Nick" Jenkins, working for a publisher and author of a novel, has now reached his late twenties. He also functions as the contact with his Uncle Giles, a former army man living on family money. Nick has been summoned to meet this uncle at the Ufford, an obscure Bayswater hotel, to "talk over business". Before that can happen, they are interrupted by Mrs Myra Erdleigh, a clairvoyant who is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Buyer's Market
''A Buyer's Market'' is the second novel in Anthony Powell's twelve-novel series ''A Dance to the Music of Time''. Published in 1952, it continues the story of narrator Nick Jenkins with his introduction into society after boarding school and university. The book presents new characters, notably the painter Mr. Deacon, female acquaintance Gypsy Jones and artist Ralph Barnby, as well as reappearances by Jenkins' school friends Peter Templer, Charles Stringham and Kenneth Widmerpool. The action takes place in London high society in the late 1920s. At a dinner party there is discussion of the Earl Haig statue. After the dinner party Jenkins and Widmerpool meet Mr. Deacon and Gypsy Jones and Charles Stringham at a coffee stall on the street. The group then goes together to a party at the home of Milly Andriadis. At the party Nick meets his former professor, Sillery, and observes industrialist Magnus Donners. Prince Theodoric, Baby Wentworth and Bijou Ardglass are also at the pa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Broom-Lynne
James William Broom-Lynne (31 October 1916 – 1 December 1995) was an English artist-designer, novelist (sometimes under the pseudonym of James Quartermain) and playwright who was notable for his illustrations for book jackets. Life Islington-born Broom-Lynne was the son of James William Broom, a master bookbinder and Esther ''(née'' Slaughter). As a child he attended Eden Grove and St. Aloysius schools, later going on to Saint Martin's Schools of Art. In 1948 he married Catherine Joan Redmore with whom he had two daughters (Victoria and Kate) and one son (Luke). He also had one previous daughter, Gale (b.1940) with Joan Mary Murray (later the mother of novelist Lisa St Aubin de Terán). Upon his death in 1995 he was cremated and his ashes laid to rest in the graveyard of the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, in the village of East Bergholt, Suffolk, UK, where he and his wife Catherine had lived for over 40 years. Surname and pseudonym It not known why or when James Broom ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Military Philosophers
''The Military Philosophers'' is the ninth of Anthony Powell's twelve-novel sequence '' A Dance to the Music of Time''. First published in 1968, it covers the latter part of Nicholas Jenkins' service in World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo .... It is the last in Powell's war trilogy, and Jenkins is assigned to a War Office Section with the Allies of World War II. Jenkins has a desk job in Whitehall in acting as a liaison officer first with the Poles and later with the Belgians and Czechs. In the background of the narrative he is reading ''Athenae Oxonienses'' by Anthony Wood, ''Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs: from September 1678 to April 1714'' by Narcissus Luttrell and Marcel Proust. The novel begins with a teletype message that small detach ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
