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Amaryllis Night And Day
''Amaryllis Night and Day'' is a 2001 novel by Russell Hoban, incorporating elements of magic realism and romance. Plot introduction Peter Diggs has a vivid dream in which he meets a woman called Amaryllis. When he later encounters the same woman in real life, he discovers that the two of them have the ability to enter each other's dreams. A cautious relationship is begun, half in the real world and half in dreams, in which both parties struggle to overcome the emotional effects of previous failed romances. Characters *Peter Diggs, the narrator of the novel, an artist in his early thirties *Amaryllis, who has the power to ‘tune in’ to people's dreams *Lenore, Peter's former girlfriend, an artist with emotional problems *Ron Hastings, a student of Peter's who appears in his dreams and who may also know Amaryllis Major themes The novel is by turns romantic, philosophical, funny, sexy, and frightening, as the characters explore the different possibilities offered by their uni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Russell Hoban
Russell Conwell Hoban (February 4, 1925 – December 13, 2011) was an American expatriate writer. His works span many genres, including fantasy, science fiction, mainstream fiction, magical realism, poetry, and children's books. He lived in London from 1969 until his death. Biography Hoban was born in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, just outside Philadelphia, to Jewish immigrants from Ostrog (now in Ukraine). His father, Abram T. Hoban, was the advertising manager of the Yiddish-language ''Jewish Daily Forward'' and the director of The Drama Guild of the Labor Institute of the Workmen's Circle of Philadelphia. His father died when Russell was 11, and Russell was thereafter raised by his mother, Jeanette Dimmerman. He was named for Russell Conwell. After briefly attending Temple University, he enlisted in the Army at age 18 and served in the Philippines and Italy as a radio operator during World War II, earning a bronze star. During his military service he married Lillian Abe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Negro Spiritual
Spirituals (also known as Negro spirituals, African American spirituals, Black spirituals, or spiritual music) is a genre of Christian music that is associated with Black Americans, which merged sub-Saharan African cultural heritage with the experiences of being held in bondage in slavery, at first during the transatlantic slave trade and for centuries afterwards, through the domestic slave trade. Spirituals encompass the "sing songs," work songs, and plantation songs that evolved into the blues and gospel songs in church. In the nineteenth century, the word "spirituals" referred to all these subcategories of folk songs. While they were often rooted in biblical stories, they also described the extreme hardships endured by African Americans who were enslaved from the 17th century until the 1860s, the emancipation altering mainly the nature (but not continuation) of slavery for many. Many new derivative music genres emerged from the spirituals songcraft. Prior to the end of the U ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Herman Melville
Herman Melville (born Melvill; August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are ''Moby-Dick'' (1851); '' Typee'' (1846), a romanticized account of his experiences in Polynesia; and ''Billy Budd, Sailor'', a posthumously published novella. Although his reputation was not high at the time of his death, the 1919 centennial of his birth was the starting point of a Melville revival, and ''Moby-Dick'' grew to be considered one of the great American novels. Melville was born in New York City, the third child of a prosperous merchant whose death in 1832 left the family in dire financial straits. He took to sea in 1839 as a common sailor on a merchant ship and then on the whaler ''Acushnet'', but he jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands. ''Typee'', his first book, and its sequel, ''Omoo'' (1847), were travel-adventures based on his encounters with the peoples of the i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Walter De La Mare
Walter John de la Mare (; 25 April 1873 – 22 June 1956) was an English poet, short story writer, and novelist. He is probably best remembered for his works for children, for his poem "The Listeners", and for a highly acclaimed selection of subtle psychological horror stories, amongst them "Seaton's Aunt" and "All Hallows". In 1921, his novel '' Memoirs of a Midget'' won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction, and his post-war '' Collected Stories for Children'' won the 1947 Carnegie Medal for British children's books. Life De la Mare was born in Kent at 83, Maryon Road, Charlton (now part of the Royal Borough of Greenwich), partly descended from a family of French Huguenot silk merchants, and was educated at St Paul's Cathedral School. He was born to James Edward de la Mare (1811–1877), a principal at the Bank of England, and James's second wife Lucy Sophia (1838–1920), daughter of Scottish naval surgeon and author Dr Colin Arrott Browning.Theresa Whistl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oliver Onions
George Oliver Onions (13 November 1873 – 9 April 1961), who published under the name Oliver Onions, was an English writer of short stories and novels. He wrote in various genres, but is perhaps best remembered for his ghost stories, notably the collection ''Widdershins'' and the widely anthologized novella "The Beckoning Fair One". He was married to the novelist Berta Ruck. Personal life George Oliver Onions was born on 13 November 1873 in Bradford, Yorkshire, England, to George Frederick Onions, a bank cashier (born 1847, London, England) and Emily Alice Fearnley (born 1850, Scholes, Yorkshire, England). He studied art for three years in London at the National Arts Training Schools (now the Royal College of Art). In the book ''Twentieth Century Authors'', Onions described his interests as motoring and science; he was also an amateur boxer as a young man. In 1909, Onions married the writer Berta Ruck (1878–1978) and they had two sons: Arthur (born 1912) and Wil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Life Is Just A Bowl Of Cherries
"Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries" is a popular song with music by Ray Henderson and lyrics by Lew Brown, published in 1931. Ethel Merman introduced this song in George White's ''Scandals of 1931''. A Rudy Vallée version, recorded in 1931, spent five weeks in the top-10 pop music charts. The song was revived in 1953 by singer Jaye P. Morgan. The song title gave rise to the revue of composer Ray Henderson's music called ''It's the Cherries'', which launched the American Composer Series in 2000. Notable recordings * Rudy Vallée & His Connecticut Yankees – 1931 single peaked at #3 on 9/19/1931 * Jack Hylton - 1931 * Leslie "Hutch" Hutchinson - 1931 * Layton & Johnstone - 1931 * Jaye P. Morgan – 1953 single debuted 12/19/1953 and peaked at #26 on pop charts in 1954. *Doris Day – '' The Love Album'' (1967) and '' My Heart'' (2011) * Judy Garland – '' Judy'' (1956) *Johnny Mathis featuring Forever Plaid – ''Mathis on Broadway'' (2000) * Lisa Loeb recorded the song as t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Barbara Strozzi
Barbara Strozzi (also called Barbara Valle; baptised 6 August 1619 – 11 November 1677) was an Italian composer and singer of the Baroque Period. During her lifetime, Strozzi published eight volumes of her own music, and had more secular music in print than any other composer of the era. This was achieved without any support from the Church and with no consistent patronage from the nobility. Personal life Early life and childhood Barbara Strozzi (at birth, Barbara Valle) was born in Venice in 1619 to a woman known as "La Greghetta" (in other sources she is also referred to as Isabella Griega or Isabella Garzoni). She was baptized in the church of Santa Sofia in the Cannaregio district of Venice. Although Barbara's birth certificate does not provide information on her father's identity, it is assumed that her biological father may have been Giulio Strozzi, a poet and librettist, a very influential figure in seventeenth-century Venice. Giulio Strozzi was a member of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anthony Robbins
Anthony Jay Robbins (né Mahavoric, born February 29, 1960) is an American author, coach, speaker, and philanthropist. He is known for his infomercials, seminars, and self-help books including the books ''Unlimited Power'' and ''Awaken the Giant Within''. Early life Robbins was born Anthony J. Mahavoric in North Hollywood, California, on February 29, 1960. Robbins is the eldest of three children, and his parents divorced when he was seven. He is of Croatian heritage from both sides of his family. His mother then remarried several times, including a marriage with Jim Robbins, a former semi-professional baseball player who legally adopted Anthony when he was 12. Robbins attended Glendora High School. During high school, Robbins grew ten inches in a year, a growth spurt later attributed to a pituitary tumor. He has said his home life was "chaotic" and "abusive". When he was 17 years old, he left home and never returned. Robbins later worked as a janitor, and did not attend coll ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1 July 1742 – 24 February 1799) was a German physicist, satirist, and Anglophile. As a scientist, he was the first to hold a professorship explicitly dedicated to experimental physics in Germany. He is remembered for his posthumously published notebooks, which he himself called '' sudelbücher'', a description modelled on the English bookkeeping term " waste books" or "scrapbooks", and for his discovery of tree-like electrical discharge patterns now called Lichtenberg figures. Life Georg Christoph Lichtenberg was born in Ober-Ramstadt near Darmstadt, Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt, the youngest of 17 children. His father, Johann Conrad Lichtenberg, was a pastor ascending through the ranks of the church hierarchy, who eventually became superintendent for Darmstadt. Unusually for a clergyman in those times, he seems to have possessed a fair amount of scientific knowledge. Lichtenberg was educated at his parents' house until 10 years old, when he j ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Bridge Of San Luis Rey
''The Bridge of San Luis Rey'' is American author Thornton Wilder's second novel. It was first published in 1927 to worldwide acclaim. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1928, and was the best-selling work of fiction that year. Premise ''The Bridge of San Luis Rey'' tells the story of several interrelated people who die in the collapse of an Inca rope bridge in Peru, and the events that lead up to their being on the bridge. A friar who witnesses the accident then goes about inquiring into the lives of the victims, seeking some sort of cosmic answer to the question of why each had to die. Plot Part One: Perhaps an Accident The first few pages of the first chapter explain the book's basic premise: the story centers on a fictional event that happened in Peru on the road between Lima and Cuzco, at noon on Friday, July 20, 1714. A rope bridge woven by the Inca a century earlier collapsed at that particular moment, while five people were crossing it, sending them falling from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thornton Wilder
Thornton Niven Wilder (April 17, 1897 – December 7, 1975) was an American playwright and novelist. He won three Pulitzer Prizes — for the novel ''The Bridge of San Luis Rey'' and for the plays '' Our Town'' and '' The Skin of Our Teeth'' — and a U.S. National Book Award for the novel '' The Eighth Day''. Early years and family Wilder was born in Madison, Wisconsin, the son of Amos Parker Wilder, a newspaper editor and later a U.S. diplomat, and Isabella Thornton Niven. Wilder had four siblings as well as a twin who was stillborn. All of the surviving Wilder children spent part of their childhood in China when their father was stationed in Hong Kong and Shanghai as U.S. Consul General. Thornton's older brother, Amos Niven Wilder, became Hollis Professor of Divinity at the Harvard Divinity School. He was a noted poet and was instrumental in developing the field of theopoetics. Their sister Isabel Wilder was an accomplished writer. They had two more sisters, Charlotte Wil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Giovanni Battista Piranesi
Giovanni Battista (or Giambattista) Piranesi (; also known as simply Piranesi; 4 October 1720 – 9 November 1778) was an Italian Classical archaeologist, architect, and artist, famous for his etchings of Rome and of fictitious and atmospheric "prisons" ('' Carceri d'invenzione''). He was the father of Francesco Piranesi, Laura Piranesi and . Biography Piranesi was born in Venice, in the parish of S. Moisè where he was baptised. His father was a stonemason. His brother Andrea introduced him to Latin literature and ancient Greco-Roman civilization, and later he was apprenticed under his uncle, Matteo Lucchesi, who was a leading architect in ''Magistrato delle Acque'', the state organization responsible for engineering and restoring historical buildings. From 1740, he had an opportunity to work in Rome as a draughtsman for Marco Foscarini, the Venetian ambassador of the new Pope Benedict XIV. He resided in the Palazzo Venezia and studied under Giuseppe Vasi, who introduced h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
