|
The Middle Ground
''The Middle Ground'' is a 1980 novel by British novelist Margaret Drabble. It is her ninth published novel. The novel explores the "crisis of British urban life" through the eyes of a middle aged journalist, Kate Armstrong. Several critics compare the narrative to Virginia Woolf's '' Mrs Dalloway,'' with critic Roberta Rubenstein calling the novel "essentially plotless" instead exploring human relationships in a particular time and space. Intertextuality The novel contains long reflections on Kate's past; several critics describe these reflections as similar to ''Mrs. Dalloway''. ''Kirkus Review''s describes the same stylistic features, writing that the novel is "Told almost completely in a series of ruminations (Kate's and her friends'), the book has a vulnerable, occasionally fey, but almost consistently charming lurch to it." The novel also has episodes that give homage to Proust. Critic Roberta Rubenstien suggest that the title of the novel likely refers to Henry James's ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Margaret Drabble
Dame Margaret Drabble, Lady Holroyd, (born 5 June 1939) is an English biographer, novelist and short story writer. Drabble's books include '' The Millstone'' (1965), which won the following year's John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize, and ''Jerusalem the Golden'', which won the 1967 James Tait Black Memorial Prize. She was honoured by the University of Cambridge in 2006, having earlier received awards from numerous redbrick (e.g. Sheffield, Hull, Manchester,) and plateglass universities (such as Bradford, Keele, East Anglia and York). She received the American Academy of Arts and Letters E. M. Forster Award in 1973. Drabble also wrote biographies of Arnold Bennett and Angus Wilson and edited two editions of ''The Oxford Companion to English Literature'' and a book on Thomas Hardy. Early life Drabble was born in Sheffield, the second daughter of the advocate and novelist John F. Drabble and the teacher Kathleen Marie (née Bloor). Her elder sister is the novelist and critic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mrs Dalloway
''Mrs. Dalloway'' is a novel by Virginia Woolf, published on 14 May 1925, that details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a fictional upper-class woman in post-First World War England. It is one of Woolf's best-known novels. The working title of ''Mrs. Dalloway'' was ''The Hours''. The novel began as two short stories, "Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street" and the unfinished "The Prime Minister". The book describes Clarissa's preparations for a party she will host in the evening, and the ensuing party. With an interior perspective, the story travels forwards and backwards in time, to construct an image of Clarissa's life and of the inter-war social structure. The novel addresses the nature of time in personal experience through multiple interwoven stories. In October 2005, ''Mrs. Dalloway'' was included on ''TIME Magazine''s list of the 100 best English-language novels written since its first issue in 1923. Plot Summary Clarissa Dalloway goes around London in the morning, ge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel '' In Search of Lost Time'' (''À la recherche du temps perdu''; with the previous English title translation of ''Remembrance of Things Past''), originally published in French in seven volumes between 1913 and 1927. He is considered by critics and writers to be one of the most influential authors of the 20th century. Background Proust was born on 10 July 1871 at the home of his great-uncle in the Paris Borough of Auteuil (the south-western sector of the then-rustic 16th arrondissement), two months after the Treaty of Frankfurt formally ended the Franco-Prussian War. His birth took place at the very beginning of the Third Republic, during the violence that surrounded the suppression of the Paris Commune, and his childhood corresponded with the consolidation of the Republic. Much of '' In Search of Lost Time'' concerns t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry James
Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the son of Henry James Sr. and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James. He is best known for his novels dealing with the social and marital interplay between ''émigré ''Americans, English people, and continental Europeans. Examples of such novels include '' The Portrait of a Lady'', '' The Ambassadors'', and '' The Wings of the Dove''. His later works were increasingly experimental. In describing the internal states of mind and social dynamics of his characters, James often wrote in a style in which ambiguous or contradictory motives and impressions were overlaid or juxtaposed in the discussion of a character's psyche. For their unique ambiguity, as well as for other aspects of their composition, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Middle Years (autobiography)
''The Middle Years'' is an incomplete book of autobiography by Henry James, posthumously published in 1917. The book covers the early years of James' residence in Europe and his meetings with writers such as George Eliot, Alfred Tennyson, and James Russell Lowell. Summary and themes The seven chapters of this fragment show promise as a record of James' young manhood in Europe. He met many of the leading writers of the day, though his opinions of them were not always flattering. Tennyson he found rather dull and commonplace, not at all the fine mind he expected. The poetry, poet's reading of ''Locksley Hall'' left James unimpressed. George Eliot appealed much more to James with her interesting conversation and alert consideration of ideas. James tells a story of how he helped summon a doctor when George Eliot's injured stepson required urgent medical aid. He compliments the novelist on how carefully she attended to the young man. James also has much to say about the London of his f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Margaret Forster
Margaret Forster (25 May 1938 – 8 February 2016) was an English novelist, biographer, memoirist, historian and critic, best known for the 1965 novel ''Georgy Girl'', made into a successful film of the same name, which inspired a hit song by The Seekers. Other successes were a 2003 novel, '' Diary of an Ordinary Woman'', biographies of Daphne du Maurier and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and her memoirs ''Hidden Lives'' and ''Precious Lives''. Early life and education Forster was born in the Raffles council estate in Carlisle, England. Her father, Arthur Forster, was a mechanic or factory fitter, her mother, Lilian (née Hind), a housewife who had worked as a clerk or secretary before her marriage. Forster attended Carlisle and County High School for Girls (1949–1956), a grammar school. She went on to win an open scholarship to read history at Somerville College, Oxford, graduating in 1960. Her first job was two years (1961–1963) of teaching English at Barnsbury Girls' School ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1980 British Novels
__NOTOC__ Year 198 (CXCVIII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Sergius and Gallus (or, less frequently, year 951 ''Ab urbe condita''). The denomination 198 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years. Events By place Roman Empire *January 28 **Publius Septimius Geta, son of Septimius Severus, receives the title of Caesar. **Caracalla, son of Septimius Severus, is given the title of Augustus. China *Winter – Battle of Xiapi: The allied armies led by Cao Cao and Liu Bei defeat Lü Bu; afterward Cao Cao has him executed. By topic Religion * Marcus I succeeds Olympianus as Patriarch of Constantinople (until 211). Births * Lu Kai (or Jingfeng), Chinese official and general (d. 269) * Quan Cong, Chinese general and advisor (d. 2 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Novels By Margaret Drabble
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
