Risultati letto da "Ghizela Rowe" in Tutte le categorie

Throughout the long centuries of human history is the want, and the need, to share information, to exchange ideas and for that knowledge and experience, for curiosity and learning, to be the basis of a civil society. In literature the ambition is much narrower. In order to be known, to be popular, you had to be published. And for that people had to know you existed and your ideas worth reading. Obviously for most of humanity's time people couldn't read and texts couldn't be published in any great number.

All too often the talents of women have been scorned, mocked and laughed at. In reality that was more usually by those whose own talents were hardly fit to even grace their shadows. But society in general still connived and set women to one side in almost everything that men considered their rightful territory. And literature was one such territory. Remarkably resilient as well as talented these women strove to be published, to show themselves as equals. The results more often than not proved that they were.

Do you believe in ghosts? If you do you probably treat any rendezvous with them with more than a fair share of caution. If you don’t then you’re probably keen to disprove their existence and find a rational explanation for whatever is going on and immediately make plans to enter the haunted house. In this volume our authors are very keen to show why the latter is not the wisest of moves.

To be a woman is to be half the world’s population but, in many countries, unfortunately still now and for most of history, women were decidedly second class, normally no more than chattels and the bearers and nurturers of children. As society involved into a complex and overlapping system where education and equality begin to seek space things began to change. In this volume our authors describe and reveal how life actually felt for almost all women before the recent past.

For centuries England has always had a leading and admired reputation for its poets and poetry. In this volume we explore those born in the West Midlands who created such revered, enduring and respected verse.

For centuries England has always had a leading and admired reputation for its poets and poetry. In this volume we explore those born in the East Midlands who created such revered, enduring and respected verse.

Katherine O'Flaherty was born on the 8th February 1850 in St Louis, Missouri to parents of French and Irish descent. Kate married Oscar Chopin in 1870 and the couple moved to New Orleans, and later to the rural setting of Cloutierville, Louisiana to raise their 6 children. By the early 1890’s her short stories were published nationally. Despite the criticism, which unnerved her, she continued to write though in the main her works, around 100 short stories and two novels, were not attributed with any literary worth.

In this collection of short stories some of our most popular and well-known authors are grouped together with an unfortunate tag: dead at 46. These authors are not run-of-the-mill or ten a penny; many are literary leviathans who left enduring works of literature and sadly may have left us many more had they lived. We will never know.

Our quoted authority is not the people in white coats but those with a quill, a heart and a soul that can take these feelings of love and loss and with the ink of words put to verse feelings and emotions that can be re-lived and shared by all. As they venture through depression, war, slavery to heartache and the loss of loved ones our eyes may mist and tears gently fall at what collectively we have done, have experienced, have witnessed and lost.

With the talents on display the most difficult task is choosing only ten. Their virtuosity, their craft and ambition scare belie the difficulties that society places upon most women. Their words cannot be denied, their literary heritage is safe forever.

The Irish Short Story tradition is packed with literary leviathans who take the raw ingredients of the land, it’s people and their own talents to create quite dazzling narratives in these perfectly pitched short stories. Genius has many names.

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author? Ambrose Bierce is an author whose words take us one way and then send us another. These miniature masterpieces all have a central truth and plausibility that seems to vanish in an ending that can be anything from wry, to shocking to hallucinatory.

Once more the year begins. The first month of the Gregorian calendar. Cold winds howl, the landscape shivers, frost, snow, ice are the many blankets for the land. Daylight is thin; it arrives late and leaves early, ceding the hours to shadow and the ink of night. From the pens of our remarkable poets, including Shelley, Dickenson, Shakespeare, Whitman, Gilbran and a wealth of others, come sumptuous verse that describe our moods, feelings, travels and desires of the dawning year.

Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu was born on August 28th, 1814, at 45 Lower Dominick Street, Dublin, into a literary family with Huguenot, Irish and English roots. Between 1838 and 1840 Le Fanu had written and published twelve stories which purported to be the literary remains of an 18th-century Catholic priest called Father Purcell. Set mostly in Ireland they include classic stories of gothic horror, with grim, shadowed castles, as well as supernatural visitations from beyond the grave, together with madness and suicide.

Edgar Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on 19th January 1809. Poe is also one of a number of authors credited with inventing the detective genre with his Parisian sleuth C. Auguste Dupin. He's featured in three stories, including the legendary ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue’, and by sheer deduction, logic and a touch of Gallic arrogance revealed what was hidden to the rest of us.

Angels are undeniably associated with religion and more usually Christianity, Islam and Judaism. Often they are seen as supernatural beings, benevolent celestial intermediaries interposed between God, Heaven and humanity. Obviously there are complications, a fact that our classic poets through the centuries, including Alexander Pope, Edmund Spenser, Radclyffe Hall and Hafiz, use as they write verse to explain, to reveal and to help us understand exactly why Angels are so prevalent amongst our thoughts.

Mary Diana Dods was born at some point in 1790. Much of the details of her life are unknown. Accounts propose that she was one of the illegitimate daughters of George Douglas, the sixteenth Earl of Morton, and that she and her older sister were raised in both Scotland and London. As a writer she seems only to have published under the pseudonym of David Lyndsay. Her works appeared in periodicals such as Blackwood's Magazine and in 1822 she was asked by its founder to provide it with ‘Dramas of the Ancient World’.

Alice Ruth Moore was born on 19th July 1875 in New Orleans where she was part of the multi-racial Creole community. She was the first generation seemingly born free after the Civil War and unusually for the times, obtained a university education which led to her becoming a teacher at a public school in New Orleans. Alice Dunbar Nelson was a natural and gifted writer across many genres, from novels, essays, plays to diaries, criticism, poetry and of course short stories, of which ‘The Stones in the Village’ is a fine example.

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on 24th September 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota into an upper-middle class family. His classic "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" carefully pulls apart the relationship between two cousins one hot summer. Something has to give and with Fitzgerald its an absolute certainty that the brittle lives of young women finally snap in unique ways.

Elizabeth Stevenson was born in Chelsea in London on 29th September 1810. Both parents embedded their strong Unitarian beliefs into Elizabeth who rebelliously was often reluctant to display these religious convictions. The early death of Elizabeth’s mother saw her sent away to be brought up by her maternal aunt in Knutsford, Cheshire. Her father remarried but Elizabeth spent most of her childhood in Cheshire away from her father and his new family. Elizabeth’s aunt encouraged her education and particularly to read and express herself through writing.