Catalog Search Results
281) J.R.R. Tolkien
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Discusses the life and works of J.R.R. Tolkien, whose contribution to literature is the fantasy world of Middle-earth, with its elves, dwarves, and hobbits.
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The seventy essays collected here, written over ten years, cover an astonishing range of subjects--the literature of the recieved masters and of Rushdie's contemporaries; the politics of colonialism and the ironies of culture; film, politicians, the Labour Party, religious fundamenalism in America, racial prejudice; and the preciousness of the imagination and of free expression.
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"How does a story begin? Sometimes it begins with a dream, and a dreamer. Mary is one such dreamer, a little girl who learns to read by tracing the letters on the tombstone of her famous feminist mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, and whose only escape from her strict father and overbearing stepmother is through the stories she reads and imagines. Unhappy at home, she seeks independence, and at the age of sixteen runs away with poet Percy Bysshe Shelley,...
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Agatha Christie becomes involved in solving the murder of a woman bludgeoned on a train; in the winter of 1928, Agatha Christie travels to Iraq, where she falls in love with an attractive archaeologist and has to unravel a series of murders; in the midst of personal turmoil, Agatha Christie decides to kill off her famous character, Hercule Poirot, and sell the manuscript to a wealthy businessman, but the businessman mysteriously dies and the manuscript...
285) Two lives
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Shanti Behari Seth, brought up in India, was sent by his family in the 1930s to Berlin--though he could not speak a word of German--to study medicine and dentistry. Helga Gerda Caro, known to everyone as "Henny" was also born in 1908, in Berlin, to a Jewish family--cultured, patriotic, and intensely German. When the family decided to take Shanti as a lodger, Henny's first reaction was, "Don't take the black man!" But a friendship flowered, and when...
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"In 1773, the Scottish James Boswell persuaded his English friend Samuel Johnson to accompany him on a tour through the Highlands of Scotland. Johnson was well known for his literary works and his dictionary. The two travelers set out from Edinburgh and skirted the eastern and northeastern coasts of Scotland. They proceeded into the Highlands and spent several weeks on various islands in the Hebrides. After a visit to Boswell's Estate at Auchinleck,...
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Humanism, in both its rhetoric and practice, attempted to transform the relationships between men that constituted the fabric of early modern society. So argues Alan Stewart in this ground-breaking investigation into the impact of humanism in sixteenth-century England. Here the author shows that by valorizing textual skills over martial prowess, humanism provided a new means of upward mobility for the lowborn but humanistically trained scholar: he...
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On a train trip from Manchester to London in 1990, a young single mother named Joanne Rowling conceived the idea of a children's book about a boy wizard named Harry Potter. Five years later, that idea became the basis for the most successful book franchise in the history of publishing. Here is the rags-to-riches story of J.K. Rowling, who overcame numerous hardships to rise seemingly overnight from a destitute welfare mother in England to one of the...
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"Ramie Targoff carries us from the sumptuous coronation of Queen Elizabeth in the mid-sixteenth century into the private lives of four women writers working at a time when women were legally the property of men. Some readers may have heard of Mary Sidney, accomplished poet and sister of the famous Sir Philip Sidney, but few will have heard of Aemilia Lanyer, the first woman in the seventeenth century to publish a book of original poetry, which offered...
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Both Tolkien and C.S. Lewis are known around the world as the creators of Middle-earth and Narnia. But few of their readers and fans know about the complex friendship between Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Without the persistent encouragement of his friend, Tolkien would never have completed The Lord of the Rings. This great tale, along with the connected matter of The Silmarillion, would have remained merely a private hobby. Likewise, all of Lewis' fiction,...
292) Agatha Christie
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Explores the life and legacy of English mystery writer, Agatha Christie.
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Agatha Christie becomes involved in solving the murder of a woman bludgeoned on a train; in the winter of 1928, Agatha Christie travels to Iraq, where she falls in love with an attractive archaeologist and has to unravel a series of murders; in the midst of personal turmoil, Agatha Christie decides to kill off her famous character, Hercule Poirot, and sell the manuscript to a wealthy businessman, but the businessman mysteriously dies and the manuscript...
294) J.R.R. Tolkien
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Profiles English writer, poet, and philologist John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, describing the influence the rural English West Midlands where he grew up had on his writing.
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Inside His dark materials contains an exclusive interview with Philip Pullman, as well as interviews with friends, former teachers, and others fascinated by his work. The world of Philip Pullman is constructed around an exclusive interview, scripted by Pullman's friend, Nick Turner, and it documents Pullman's life and works.
296) Swimming pool
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Sarah is a famous British murder mystery author. Tired of London and seeking inspiration for her new novel, she accepts an offer from her publisher to stay at his home in the south of France. Sarah finds that the beautiful country locale and unhurried pace is just the tonic for her - until late one night, when John's sexy and provocative daughter, Julie, unexpectedly arrives. Sarah's English reserve is jarred by Julie's lifestyle. An increasingly...
297) J.K. Rowling
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A short biography of children's author J.K. Rowling written as a comic book.
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