Robert William Chambers (May 26, 1865 - December 16, 1933) was an American artist and fiction writer, best known for his book of short stories titled The King in Yellow, published in 1895. Chambers was first educated at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, and then entered the Art Students' League at around the age of twenty, where the artist Charles Dana Gibson was a fellow student. Chambers studied in Paris at the École des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Julian from 1886 to 1893, and his work was displayed at the Salon as early as 1889. On his return to New York, he succeeded in selling his illustrations to Life, Truth, and Vogue magazines. His most famous, and perhaps most meritorious, effort is The King in Yellow, a collection of Art Nouveau short stories published in 1895.
For decades, Robert H. Waugh has been a scintillating critic of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. A leading analyst of H. P. Lovecraft, Waugh now brings his critical talents to the assessment of an array of fantasy and science fiction writers, past and present. In a trilogy of essays, Waugh studies David Lindsay's pioneering novel A Voyage to Arcturus (1920), probing its relations to the work of Goethe and its distinctive vocabulary. Two essays discuss the largely ignored work of Olaf Stapledon, while another pair of essays examine key novels by Arthur C. Clarke. Subsequent pieces reveal Waugh's acumen in analyzing the work of William Gibson (Neuromancer), the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories and other works by Fritz Leiber, and parallels between Leiber's work and that of James Tiptree, Jr. The book concludes with a rumination on Lovecraft's collaborative science fiction story "In the Walls of Eryx." Waugh illuminates the complexities of all these authors' works with effortless elegance and panache. Robert H. Waugh is a former professor of English at the State University of New York at New Paltz. He is the author of the essay collections The Monster in the Mirror: Looking for H. P. Lovecraft (2006) and A Monster of Voices: Speaking for H. P. Lovecraft (2011) as well as the short story collection The Bloody Tugboat and Other Witcheries (2015). He has also published several volumes of poetry.
To the literary, literal, and scientific mind purposeless fiction is abhorrent. Fortunately we all are literally and scientifically inclined; the doom of purposeless fiction is sounded; and it is a great comfort to believe that, in the near future, only literary and scientific works suitable for man, woman, child, and suffragette, are to adorn the lingerie-laden counters in our great department shops. It is, then, with animation and confidence that the author politely offers to a regenerated nation this modern, moral, literary, and highly scientific work, thinly but ineffectually disguised as fiction, in deference to the prejudices of a few old-fashioned story-readers who still survive among us. -- R.W.C.
Unlike any other fashion designer at work today, Paul Smith has managed to combine a flair for eccentric, subversive detail, a dedication to the highest standards of craftmanship, and a business and marketing sense that has made him simply the most successful designer in British history. But this publication is not a fashion monograph; it is not a catalogue of suits. Rather, imagine Paul Smith's brain on a page: cleverly original and often humorous thoughts and ideas, perfectly executed, not just on the back of a man or a woman, but in shop windows, in advertising campaigns, in toys, photographs, and souvenirs brought back from travels throughout the world that became the inspiration for the look of a season. Words and images crash together in striking contrast to reveal the passions and amusements of a designer committed to both modesty in his pursuits and stunning innovation. Designed by Alan Aboud, Art Director for Paul Smith for more than a decade, and with a slipcase designed by Jonathan Ive (famed designer of the iMac), this publication will bring together observations, images, and, in its own unique design and production, all of the extraordinary qualities possessed by Paul Smith himself.
Through a series of studies focusing on individuals, this volume highlights the continued importance of religion and religious identity on British life throughout the long eighteenth century. From the Puritan divine and scholar Roger Morrice, active at the beginning of the period, to Dean Shipley who died in the reign of George IV, the individuals chosen chart a shifting world of enlightenment and revolution whilst simultaneously reaffirming the tremendous influence that religion continued to bring to bear. For, whilst religion has long enjoyed a central role in the study of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century British history, scholars of religion in the eighteenth century have often felt compelled to prove their subject's worth. Sitting uneasily at the juncture between the early modern and modern worlds, the eighteenth century has perhaps provided historians with an all-too-convenient peg on which to hang the origins of a secular society, in which religion takes a back-seat to politics, science and economics. Yet, as this study makes clear, in spite of the undoubted innovations and developments of this period, religion continued to be a prime factor in shaping society and culture. By exploring important connections between religion, politics and identity, and asking broad questions about the character of religion in Britain, the contributions put into context many of the big issues of the day. From the beliefs of the Jacobite rebels, to the notions of liberty and toleration, to the attitudes to the French Wars, the book makes an unambiguous and forceful statement about the centrality of religion to any proper understanding of British public life between the Restoration and the Reform Bill.
What was it you were saying about selfishness? she asked. Oh, I remember. It was nonsense. Certainly. She laughed, adding: Selfishness is so simply defined you know. Is it? How. A refusal to renounce. That covers everything, she concluded. Sometimes renunciation is weakness -- isn't it? he suggested. In what case for example? Well, suppose we take love. Very well, you may take it if you like it. Suppose you loved a man he insisted. Let him beware What then? -- And, suppose it would distress your family if you married him? I'd give him up. If you loved him? Love? That is the poorest excuse for selfishness, Mr. Siward. So you would ruin your happiness and his -- A girl ought to find more happiness in renouncing a selfish love than in love itself, announced Miss Landis with that serious conviction characteristic of her years. Of course, assented Siward with a touch of malice, if you really do find more happiness in renouncing love than in love itself, it would be foolish not to do it -- Mr. Siward You are derisive. Besides, you are not acute. A woman is always an opportunist. When the event takes place I shall know what to do.
From chapter III "Imprudence": The breeze-blown conversation became fragmentary, veering as capriciously as the purple wind-flaws that spread across the shoals. But always to her question or comment she found in his response the charm of freshness, of quick intelligence, or of a humorous and idle perversity which stimulates without demanding.
For six decades, writer and editor Robert A. Parker has followed up each book he reads, mainly novels, with an evaluation of that book. His comments are informed by an independent critical view that balances a moral and literary sensibility. In this second of six volumes, the authors covered range from Henri Daniel-Rops to Jose Maria Gironalla. They include Don DeLillo, Peter Dexter, E. L. Doctorow, Umberto Eco, Shusaku Endo, Louise Erdrich, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Fowles, E. M. Forster, Carlos Fuentes, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, as well as a few mystery authors and historians. The commentaries are listed alphabetically by author, and the books by the date of publication for each author. The writers here represent a broad range of writing styles, cultural influences, and moral philosophies. And all are rated on their literary achievement, the effectiveness of plot, character, and setting, plus their recognition of the moral, ethical, and spiritual values of mankind.
This book examines the transformation of the figure of the stranger in the literature of the modern age in terms of liminality. As a ‘spectral monster’ that has a paradoxical and liminal relationship to both the sacred and the secular, the figure of the modern stranger has played a role in both adapting and shaping a culturally determined understanding of the self and the other. With the advent of modernity, the stranger, the monster, and the spectre became interconnected. Haunting the edges of reason while also being absorbed into ‘normal’ society, all three, together with the cyborg, manifest the vulnerability of an age that is fearful of the return of the repressed. Yet these figures can also become re-appropriated as positive symbols, able to navigate between the dangerous and chaotic elements that threaten society while serving as precarious and ironic symbols of hope or sustainability. The book shows the explanatory potential of focusing on the resacralizing – in a paradoxical and liminal manner – of traditionally sacred concepts such as ‘messianic’ time and the ‘utopian,’ and the conflicts that emerged as a result of secularized modernity’s denial of its own hybridization. This approach to modern literature shows how the modern stranger, a figure that is both paradoxically immersed and removed from society, deals with the dangers of failing to be re-assimilated into mainstream society and is caught in a fixed or permanent state of liminality, a state that can ultimately lead to boredom, alienation, nihilism, and failure. These ‘monstrous’ aspects of liminality can also be rewarding in that traversing difficult and paradoxical avenues they confront both traditional and contemporary viewpoints, enabling new and fresh perspectives suspended between imagination and reality, past and future, nature and artificial. In many ways, the modern stranger as a figure of literature and the cultural imagination has become more complicated and challenging in the (post)modern contemporary age, both clashing with and encompassing people who go beyond simply the psychological or even spiritual inability to blend in and out of society. However, while the stranger may be altering once again the defining or essentializing the figure could result in the creation of other sets of binaries, and thereby dissolve the purpose and productiveness of both strangeness and liminality. The intention of “Monstrous Liminality” is to trace the liminal sphere located between the secular and sacred that has characterized modernity itself. This space has consequently altered the makeup of the stranger from something external, into a figure far more liminal, which is forced to traverse this uncanny space in an attempt to find new meanings for an age that is struggling to maintain any.
A new interpretation of English history and religion in the eighteenth century. The eighteenth century has long divided critical opinion. Some contend that it witnessed the birth of the modern world, while others counter that England remained an ancien regime confessional state. This book takes issue with both positions, arguing that the former overstate the newness of the age and largely misdiagnose the causes of change, while the latter rightly point to the persistence of more traditional modes of thought and behaviour, but downplay the era's fundamental uncertainty and misplace the reasons for and the timeline of its passage. The overwhelming catalyst for change is here seen to be war, rather than long-term social and economic changes. Archbishop Thomas Secker [1693-1768], the Cranmer or Laud of his age, and the hitherto neglected church reforms he spearheaded, form the particular focus of the book; this is the first full archivally-based study of a crucial but frequently ignored figure. ROBERT G. INGRAM is Assistant Professor at the Department of History, Ohio University.
A powerful confluence of youthful energies and entrenched codes of honor enlivens Robert F. Pace's look at the world of male student college life in the antebellum South. Through extensive research into records, letters, and diaries of students and faculty from more than twenty institutions, Pace creates a vivid portrait of adolescent rebelliousness struggling with the ethic to cultivate a public face of industry, respect, and honesty. These future leaders confronted authority figures, made friends, studied, courted, frolicked, drank, gambled, cheated, and dueled -- all within the established traditions of their southern culture. For the sons of southern gentry, college life presented a variety of challenges, including engaging with northern professors and adjusting to living away from home and family. The young men extended the usual view of higher education as a bridge between childhood and adulthood, innovatively creating their own world of honor that prepared them for living in the larger southern society. Failure to obtain a good education was a grievous breach of honor for them, and Pace skillfully weaves together stories of student antics, trials, and triumphs within the broader male ethos of the Old South. When the Civil War erupted, many students left campus to become soldiers, defend their families, and preserve a way of life. By war's end, the code of honor had waned, changing the culture of southern colleges and universities forever. Halls of Honor represents a significant update of E. Merton Coulter's 1928 classic work, College Life in the Old South, which focused on the University of Georgia. Pace's lively study will widen the discussion of antebellum southern college life for decades to come.
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