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"A literary rebirth of wonder has produced an outpouring of imaginative books filled with elves, gnomes, dragons, giants, and unicorns. From the movemen'ts dawn-song or prelude in Granny's Wonderful Chair to such contemporary tales as Watership Down, fantasy writers have thrown open 'magic casements' on worlds filled with marvels, fresh insights, and a very special joy. Now Marion Lochhead's charming and enlightening Renaissance of Wonder reveals the nineteenth-century roots and modern flowering of such fantasy and faery literature. Renaissance of Wonder begins with a study of the achievement of George MacDonald, one of the key figures in this movement. Marion Lochhead then traces the development of the genre through the writings of Juliana Ewing, Mrs. Molesworth, Mary de Morgan ('Mrs. Oakchest'), E. Nesbit, Rudyard Kipling, John Masefield, and Walter de la Mare. The book culminates in brilliant studies of the major contributions of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis." --
This book examines the literary construction of personal identity through autobiographical narratives by three significant writers analysed together for the first time: the Scottish Willa Muir (1890-1970), the Canadian Margaret Laurence (1926-1987), and the New Zealander Janet Frame (1924-2004). These apparently dissimilar authors suffered not only geographical, but also political marginality: they were women from the working-class or struggling middle-class, striving to be considered as professional writers, and emerging from countries that might be felt to be under the shadows of economic and political world powers such as England and the United States. During their lifetimes, they exerted...
Using a trajectory of 20th century Anglican approaches to mission in rural Africa, the book tells the story of the development of an educational institution by tracing the faith journey of Eelin Beardall, a woman who dedicated thirty years of her life to the people of Nyamandlovu in Matabeleland region in Zimbabwe. Eelin and her husband Frank played a pioneering role in the development of Nyamandlovu's first secondary school. One of her greatest contributions to humanity was to carry out a vision for education both in the days of guerrilla warfare and in the context of post-independence troubles in rural Matabeleland. Eelin's bravery, resilience and care for African children earned her long-lasting love and respect among educationists and ordinary people alike. Her legacy continues today as an inspiration to those whose lives are dedicated to the service and welfare of others.
Discusses the status of children in society from the mid-Victorian period to the end of the First World War, showing that children were regarded principally as objects to be used and abused rather than people in their own right.
In her examination of neglected diaristic texts, Anne-Marie Millim expands the field of Victorian diary criticism by complicating the conventional notion of diaries as mainly private sources of biographical information. She argues that for Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake, Henry Crabb Robinson, George Eliot, George Gissing, John Ruskin, Edith Simcox and Gerard Manley Hopkins, the exposure or publication of their diaries was a real possibility that they either coveted or feared. Millim locates the diary at the intersection of the public and private spheres to show that well-known writers and public figures of both sexes exploited the diary's self-reflexive, diurnal structure in order to enhance their...
The fairy tale is arguably one of the most important cultural and social influences on children's lives. But until the first publication of Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion, little attention had been paid to the ways in which the writers and collectors of tales used traditional forms and genres in order to shape children's lives – their behavior, values, and relationship to society. As Jack Zipes convincingly shows in this classic work, fairy tales have always been a powerful discourse, capable of being used to shape or destabilize attitudes and behavior within culture. How and why did certain authors try to influence children or social images of children? How were fairy tales shaped by the changes in European society in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? Zipes examines famous writers of fairy tales such as Charles Perrault, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen and L.Frank Baum and considers the extraordinary impact of Walt Disney on the genre as a fairy tale filmmaker.
Over the twentieth century Scots' lives changed infast, dramatic and culturally significant ways. By examining their bodies,homes, working lives, rituals, beliefs and consumption, this volume exposeshow the very substance of everyday life was composed, tracing both theintimate and the mass changes that the people endured. Using novelperspectives and methods, chapters range across the experiences of work, artand death, the way Scots conceived of themselves and their homes, and theway the 'old Scotland' of oppressive community rules broke down frommid-century as the country reinvented its everyday life and culture. Thisvolume brings together leading cultural historians of twentieth-centuryScot...
This book explores the ordinary daily routines, behaviours, experiences and beliefs of the Scottish people during a period of immense political, social and economic change. It underlines the importance of the church in post-Reformation Scottish society, but also highlights aspects of everyday life that remained the same, or similar, notwithstanding the efforts of the kirk, employers and the state to alter behaviours and attitudes.Drawing upon and interrogating a range of primary sources, the authors create a richly coloured, highly-nuanced picture of the lives of ordinary Scots from birth through marriage to death. Analytical in approach, the coverage of topics is wide, ranging from the ways...
Contends that gender politics were influential in the early development of literary criticism and the writings of female critics
This year marks the bicentennial of the English writer, translator, critic and amateur artist Elizabeth Rigby, Lady Eastlake (1809–93). The Letters of Elizabeth Rigby, Lady Eastlake brings together a comprehensive collection of her surviving correspondence and reveals significant new material about this extraordinary Victorian figure. Rigby wrote on a variety of subjects, most notably reviews of works and authors such as Jane Eyre, Vanity Fair, Ruskin, Coleridge, and Madame de Staël, as well as art-related criticism, including one of the earliest critical texts on photography. Her lively correspondence here shows how this well-connected woman played such an important role in the Victorian art world.