Sylvia Townsend Warner (6 December 1893– 1 May 1978) was an English novelist and poet. She also made a contribution to musicology as a young woman. Life Sylvia Nora Townsend Warner was born at Harrow on the Hill, Middlesex, the only child of George Townsend Warner and his wife Eleanor “Nora” Mary (née Hudleston). Her father was a house-master at Harrow School and was, for many years, associated with the prestigious Harrow History Prize which was renamed the Townsend Warner History Prize in his honour, after his death in 1916. As a child, Townsend Warner was home-schooled by her father. She enjoyed a seemingly idyllic childhood in rural Devonshire, but was strongly affected by her father’s death. She moved to London and worked in a munitions factory at the outbreak of World War I. Warner was friendly with a number of the “Bright young things” of the 1920s. Her first major success was the novel Lolly Willowes. In 1923, she met T. F. Powys, whose writing influenced her own and whose work she in turn encouraged. It was at Powys’ home that Warner, in 1930, first met Valentine Ackland, a young poet; the two women fell in love and settled at Frome Vauchurch, Dorset. Alarmed by the growing threat of fascism, they were active in the Communist Party, and in 1937 visited Valencia and Benicàssim, in Spain, on behalf of the Red Cross during the Civil War. They lived together from 1930 until Ackland’s death in 1969. Ackland and Warner are buried together at St Nicholas, Chaldon Herring, Dorset. Warner’s political engagement continued for the rest of her life, even after she became disillusioned with communism. Work Early in her career Warner researched 15th and 16th century music. From 1917 she was in regular employment as one of the editors of Tudor Church Music, ten volumes published by Oxford University Press in the 1920s with the support of the Carnegie UK Trust. She obtained the work through the influence of her lover and music teacher Sir Percy Buck, who was on the editorial committee. The lead editor was initially Sir Richard Terry, who as the Master of Music at Westminster Cathedral, had been a pioneer in the revival of Tudor vocal repertoire. Warner was involved in travelling to study source material and in transcribing the music into modern musical notation. Warner also published on the subject of musical notation including a contribution to the Oxford History of Music (in the introductory volume of 1929). In 1934 she published a joint collection of poems with Ackland, Whether a Dove or a Seagull. She was encouraged to write fiction by David Garnett. Warner’s novels included Lolly Willowes (1926), Mr Fortune’s Maggot (1927), Summer Will Show (1936), and The Corner That Held Them (1948). Recurring themes are evident in a number of her works. These include a rejection of Christianity (in Mr Fortune’s Maggot, and in Lolly Willowes, where the protagonist becomes a witch); the position of women in patriarchal societies (Lolly Willowes, Summer Will Show, The Corner that Held Them); ambiguous sexuality, or bisexuality (Lolly Willowes, Mr Fortune’s Maggot, Summer Will Show); and lyrical descriptions of landscape. Mr Fortune’s Maggot, about a missionary in the Pacific Islands, has been described as a “satirical, anti-imperialist novel”. In Summer Will Show, the heroine, Sophia Willoughby, travels to Paris during the 1848 Revolution and falls in love with a woman. Warner’s short stories include the collections A Moral Ending and Other Stories, The Salutation, More Joy in Heaven, The Cat’s Cradle Book, A Garland of Straw, The Museum of Cheats. Winter in the Air, A Spirit Rises, A Stranger with a Bag, The Innocent and the Guilty, and One Thing Leading to Another. Her final work was a series of linked short stories set in the supernatural Kingdoms of Elfin. Many of these stories were published in The New Yorker. In addition to fiction, Warner wrote anti-fascist articles for such leftist publications as Time and Tide and Left Review. After the death of the novelist T. H. White, Warner was given access to his papers. She published a biography which The New York Times declared “a small masterpiece which may well be read long after the writings of its subject have been forgotten.” White’s long-time friend and literary agent, David Higham, however, questioned Warner’s work, suggesting a bias in her approach due to her own homosexuality: he gave Warner the address of one of White’s lovers “so that she could get in touch with someone so important in Tim’s story. But she never, the girl told me, took that step. So she was able to present Tim in such a light that a reviewer could call him a raging homosexual. Perhaps a heterosexual affair would have made her blush.” Warner produced several books of poetry, including Opus 7, a book-length pastoral poem about an elderly female flower-seller. Although Warner never wrote an autobiography, Scenes of Childhood was compiled after her death on 1 May 1978 at age 84, based on short reminiscences published over the years in the New Yorker. She also translated Contre Saint-Beuve by Marcel Proust from the original French into English. In the 1970s, she became known as a significant writer of feminist or lesbian sentiment, and her novels were among the earlier ones to be revived by Virago Press. Selected letters of Warner and Valentine Ackland have been published twice: Wendy Mulford edited a collection titled This Narrow Place in 1988, and ten years later Susanna Pinney published another selection, Jealousy in Connecticut.

Sir William Empson (27 September 1906– 15 April 1984) was an English literary critic and poet, widely influential for his practice of closely reading literary works, a practice fundamental to New Criticism. His best-known work is his first, Seven Types of Ambiguity, published in 1930. Jonathan Bate has written that the three greatest English literary critics of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries are Johnson, Hazlitt and Empson, “not least because they are the funniest”. Education Empson was the son of Arthur Reginald Empson of Yokefleet Hall, Yorkshire. His mother was Laura, daughter of Richard Mickelthwait, JP, of Ardsley House, Yorkshire. He was a first cousin of the twins David and Richard Atcherley. Empson first discovered his great skill and interest in mathematics at his preparatory school. He won an entrance scholarship to Winchester College, where he excelled as a student and received what he later described as “a ripping education” in spite of the rather rough and abusive milieu of the school: a longstanding tradition of physical force, especially among the students, figured prominently in life at such schools. In 1925 Empson won a scholarship to Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he read Mathematics, gaining a first for his Part I but a disappointing upper-second for his Part II. He then went on to pursue a second degree in English, and at the end of the first year he was offered a Bye Fellowship. His supervisor in Mathematics, the father of the mathematician and philosopher Frank P. Ramsey, expressed regret at Empson’s decision to pursue English rather than Mathematics, since it was a discipline for which Empson showed great talent. I. A. Richards, the director of studies in English, recalled the genesis of Empson’s first major work, Seven Types of Ambiguity, composed when Empson was not yet 22 and published when he was 24: At about his third visit he brought up the games of interpretation which Laura Riding and Robert Graves had been playing [in A Survey of Modernist Poetry, 1927] with the unpunctuated form of ‘The expense of spirit in a waste of shame.’ Taking the sonnet as a conjuror takes his hat, he produced an endless swarm of lively rabbits from it and ended by 'You could do that with any poetry, couldn’t you?' This was a Godsend to a Director of Studies, so I said, 'You’d better go off and do it, hadn’t you?’ But disaster struck when a servant found condoms among Empson’s possessions and claimed to have caught him in flagrante delicto with a woman. As a result, not only did he have his scholarship revoked, but his name was struck from the college records, he lost his prospects of a fellowship and he was banished from the city. Career After his banishment from Cambridge Empson supported himself for a brief period as a freelance critic and journalist, living in Bloomsbury until 1930, when he signed a three-year contract to teach in Japan after his tutor Richards had failed to find him a post teaching in China. He returned to England in the mid-1930s only to depart again after receiving a three-year contract to teach at Peking University. Upon his arrival he discovered that, because of the Japanese invasion of China, he no longer had a post. He joined the exodus of the university’s staff, with little more than a typewriter and a suitcase, and ended up in Kunming, with Lianda (Southwest Associated University), the school created there by students and professors who were refugees from the war in the North. He arrived back in England in January 1939. He worked for a year on the daily Digest of foreign broadcasts and in 1941 met George Orwell, at that time the Indian Editor of the BBC Eastern Service, on a six-week course at what was called the Liars’ School of the BBC. They remained friends, but Empson recalled one clash: “At that time the Government had put into action a scheme for keeping up the birth-rate during the war by making it in various ways convenient to have babies, for mothers going out to work; government nurseries were available after the first month, I think, and there were extra eggs and other goodies on the rations. My wife and I took advantage of this plan to have two children. I was saying to George one evening after dinner what a pleasure it was to cooperate with so enlightened a plan when, to my horror, I saw the familiar look of settled loathing come over his face. Rich swine boasting over our privileges, that was what we had become ...”. Just after the war Empson returned to China. He taught at Peking University, befriending a young David Hawkes, who later became a noted sinologist and chair of Chinese at Oxford University. Then, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, he taught a summer course for the intensive study of literature at the Kenyon School of English at Kenyon College in Ohio. According to Newsweek, “The roster of instructors was enough to pop the eyes of any major in English.” In addition to Empson the faculty included Robert Penn Warren, John Crowe Ransom, Robert Lowell, Delmore Schwartz, Jacques Barzun, Eric Bentley, Cleanth Brooks, Alfred Kazin, Arthur Mizener, Allen Tate and Yvor Winters. In 1953 Empson was Professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College, London, for a year. He then became head of the English Department at the University of Sheffield until his retirement in 1972. He was knighted in 1979, the same year his old college, Magdalene, awarded him an honorary fellowship some 50 years after his expulsion. Professor Sir William Empson died in 1984. Critical focus Empson’s critical work is largely concerned with early and pre-modern works in the English literary canon. He was a significant scholar of Milton (see below), Shakespeare (Essays on Shakespeare) and Elizabethan drama (Essays on Renaissance Literature, Volume 2: The Drama). He published a monograph, Faustus and the Censor, on the subject of censorship and the authoritative version of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. He was also an important scholar of the metaphysical poets John Donne (Essays on Renaissance Literature, Volume 1: Donne and the New Philosophy) and Andrew Marvell. Occasionally Empson brought his critical genius to bear on modern writers; Using Biography, for instance, contains papers on Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones as well as the poems of W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot, and Joyce’s Ulysses. Literary criticism Empson was styled a “critic of genius” by Frank Kermode, who qualified his praise by identifying willfully perverse readings of certain authors. Harold Bloom has stated that Empson is among a handful of critics who matter most to him because of their force and eccentricity. Empson’s bluntness led to controversy both during his life and after his death, and a reputation in part also as a “licensed buffoon” (Empson’s own phrase). Style, method and influence Empson is today best known for his literary criticism, and in particular his analysis of the use of language in poetical works: his own poems are arguably undervalued, although they were admired by and influenced English poets in the 1950s. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was an acquaintance at Cambridge, but Empson consistently denied any previous or direct influence on his work. Empson’s best-known work is the book Seven Types of Ambiguity, which, together with Some Versions of Pastoral and The Structure of Complex Words, mines the astonishing riches of linguistic ambiguity in English poetic literature. Empson’s studies unearth layer upon layer of irony, suggestion and argumentation in various literary works, applying a technique of textual criticism so influential that often Empson’s contributions to certain domains of literary scholarship remain significant, though they may no longer be recognized as his. The universal recognition of the difficulty and complexity (indeed, ambiguity) of Shakespeare’s "Sonnet 94" ("They that have power ..."), for instance, is traceable to Empson’s analysis in Some Versions of Pastoral. Empson’s study of "Sonnet 94" goes some way towards explaining the high esteem in which the sonnet is now held (often being reckoned as among the finest sonnets), as well as the technique of criticism and interpretation that has thus reckoned it. Empson’s technique of teasing a rich variety of interpretations from poetic literature does not, however, exhaustively characterize his critical practice. He was also very interested in the human or experiential reality to be discovered in great works of literature, as is manifest, for instance, in his discussion of the fortunes of the notion of proletarian literature in Some Versions of Pastoral. His commitment to unravelling or articulating the experiential truth or reality in literature permitted him unusual avenues to explore sociopolitical ideas in literature in a vein very different from contemporary Marxist critics or scholars of New Historicism. Thus, for instance, Empson remarks in the first few pages of Some Versions of Pastoral that: Gray’s Elegy is an odd case of poetry with latent political ideas: Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear; Full many a flower is born to blush unseen And waste its sweetness on the desert air. What this means, as the context makes clear, is that eighteenth century England had no scholarship system or carrière ouverte aux talents. This is stated as pathetic, but the reader is put into a mood in which one would not try to alter it.... By comparing the social arrangement to Nature he makes it seem inevitable, which it was not, and gives it a dignity which was undeserved.... The tone of melancholy claims that the poet understands the considerations opposed to aristocracy, though he judges against them; the truism of the reflections in the churchyard, the universality and impersonality this gives to the style, claim as if by comparison that we ought to accept the injustice of society as we do the inevitability of death. Empson goes on to deliver his political verdict with a psychological suggestion: Many people, without being communists, have been irritated by the complacence in the massive calm of the poem, and this seems partly because they feel there is a cheat in the implied politics; the “bourgeois” themselves do not like literature to have too much “bourgeois ideology”. Empson also made remarks reminiscent of Dr Samuel Johnson in their pained insistence: And yet what is said is one of the permanent truths; it is only in degree that any improvement of society could prevent wastage of human powers; the waste even in a fortunate life, the isolation even of a life rich in intimacy, cannot but be felt deeply, and is the central feeling of tragedy. And anything of value must accept this because it must not prostitute itself; its strength is to be prepared to waste itself, if it does not get its opportunity. A statement of this is certainly non-political because it is true in any society, and yet nearly all the great poetic statements of it are in a way “bourgeois”, like this one; they suggest to readers, though they do not say, that for the poor man things cannot be improved even in degree. Despite the complexity of Empson’s critical methods and attitude, his work, in particular Seven Types of Ambiguity, had a significant impact on the New Criticism, a school of criticism that directed particular attention to close reading of texts, among whose adherents may be numbered F. R. Leavis (whose critical approach was, however, already well developed before Empson appeared on the scene - he had been teaching at Cambridge since 1925), although Empson could scarcely be described as an adherent or exponent of such a school or, indeed, of any critical school at all. Indeed, Empson consistently ridiculed, both outrightly in words and implicitly in practice, the doctrine of the intentional fallacy formulated by William K. Wimsatt, an influential New Critic. Indeed, Empson’s distaste for New Criticism could manifest itself in a distinctively dismissive and brusque wit, as when he described New Criticism (which he ironically labelled “the new rigour”) as a “campaign to make poetry as dull as possible” (Essays on Renaissance Literature, Volume 1: Donne and the New Philosophy, p. 122). Similarly, both the title and the content of one of Empson’s volumes of critical papers, Using Biography, show a patent and polemical disregard for the teachings of New Critics as much as for those of Roland Barthes and postmodern literary theories predicated upon, if not merely influenced by, the notion of the Death of the Author, despite the fact that some scholars regard Empson as a progenitor of certain of these currents of criticism, which vexed Empson. As Frank Kermode stated: Now and again somebody like Christopher Norris may, in a pious moment, attempt to “recuperate” a particularly brilliant old-style reputation by claiming its owner as a New New Critic avant la lettre - Empson in this case, now to be thought of as having, in his “great theoretical summa,” The Structure of Complex Words, anticipated deconstruction. The grumpy old man repudiated this notion with his habitual scorn, calling the work of Derrida (or, as he preferred to call him, “Nerrida”) “very disgusting”(Kermode, Pleasure, Change, and the Canon) Milton’s God Empson’s Milton’s God is often described as a sustained attack on Christianity and a defence of Milton’s attempt to “justify the ways of God to man” in Paradise Lost. Empson argues that precisely the inconsistencies and complexities adduced by critics as evidence of the poem’s badness in fact function in quite the opposite manner. What the poem brings out is the difficulty faced by anyone in encountering and submitting to the will of God and, indeed, the great clash between the authority of such a deity and the determinate desires and needs of human beings: the poem is not good in spite of but especially because of its moral confusions, which ought to be clear in your mind when you are feeling its power. I think it horrible and wonderful; I regard it as like Aztec or Benin sculpture, or to come nearer home the novels of Kafka, and am rather suspicious of any critic who claims not to feel anything so obvious. (Milton’s God (1965), p. 13) Empson writes that it is precisely Milton’s great sensitivity and faithfulness to the Scriptures, in spite of their apparent madness, that generates such a controversial picture of God. Empson reckons that it requires a mind of astonishing integrity to, in the words of Blake, be of the Devil’s party without knowing it: [Milton] is struggling to make his God appear less wicked, as he tells us he will at the start (l. 25), and does succeed in making him noticeably less wicked than the traditional Christian one; though, after all, owing to his loyalty to the sacred text and the penetration with which he make its story real to us, his modern critics still feel, in a puzzled way, that there is something badly wrong about it all. That this searching goes on in Paradise Lost, I submit, is the chief source of its fascination and poignancy... (Milton’s God (1965), p. 11) Empson portrays Paradise Lost as the product of a poet of astonishingly powerful and imaginative sensibilities and great intellect who had invested much of himself in the poem. Despite its lack of influence, certain critics view Milton’s God as by far the best sustained work of criticism on the poem by a 20th-century critic. Harold Bloom includes it as one of the few critical works worthy of canonical status in his The Western Canon (where it is also the only critical work concerned solely with a single piece of literature). Verse Empson’s poems are clever, learned, dry, aethereal and technically virtuosic, not wholly dissimilar to his critical work. His high regard for the metaphysical poet John Donne is to be seen in many places within his work, tempered with his appreciation of Buddhist thinking, an occasional tendency to satire and a larger awareness of intellectual trends. He wrote very few poems and stopped publishing poems almost entirely after 1940. His Complete Poems [edited by John Haffenden, his biographer] is 512 pages long, with over 300 pages of notes. In reviewing this work Frank Kermode commended Empson as a “most noteworthy poet” and chose it as International Book of the Year for The Times Literary Supplement. Quotations From “Proletarian Literature” in Some Versions of Pastoral: As for propaganda, some very good work has been that; most authors want their point of view to be convincing. Pope said that even the Aeneid was a “political puff”; its dreamy, impersonal, universal melancholy was a calculated support for Augustus. Of course to decide on an author’s purpose, conscious or unconscious, is very difficult. Good writing is not done unless there are serious forces at work; and it is not permanent unless it works for readers with opinions different from the author’s. On the other hand, the reason an English audience can enjoy Russian propagandist films is that the propaganda is too remote to be annoying; a Tory audience subjected to Tory propaganda of the same intensity would be extremely bored. From “They That Have Power” in Some Versions of Pastoral: (regarding Sonnet 94): If this was Shakespeare’s only surviving work, it would still be clear, supposing one knew about the other Elizabethans, that it involves somehow their feelings about the Machiavellian, the wicked plotter who is exciting and civilized and somehow right about life; which seems an important though rather secret element in the romance that Shakespeare extracted from his patron. ...poets, who tend to make in their lives a situation they have already written about. ...that curious trick of pastoral which for extreme courtly flattery - perhaps to give self-respect to both poet and patron, to show that the poet is not ignorantly easy to impress, nor the patron to flatter - writes about the poorest people; and those jazz songs which give an intense effect of luxury and silk underwear by pretending to be about slaves naked in the fields. The business of interpretation is obviously very complicated. Literary uses of the problem of free-will and necessity, for example, may be noticed to give curiously bad arguments and I should think get their strength from keeping you in doubt between the two methods. Thus Hardy is fond of showing us an unusually stupid person subjected to very unusually bad luck, and then a moral is drawn, not merely by inference but by solemn assertion, that we are all in the same boat as this person whose story is striking precisely because it is unusual. The effect may be very grand, but to make an otherwise logical reader accept the process must depend on giving him obscure reasons for wishing it so. It is clear at any rate that this grand notion of the inadequacy of life, so various in its means of expression, so reliable a bass note in the arts, needs to be counted as a possible territory of the pastoral. From “Milton and Bentley” in Some Versions of Pastoral: Surely Bentley was right to be surprised at finding Faunus haunting the bower [Paradise Lost ll. 705 - 707], a ghost crying in the cold of Paradise, and the lusts of Pan sacred even in comparison to Eden. There is a Vergilian quality in the lines, haunting indeed, a pathos not mentioned because it is the whole of the story. I suppose that in Satan determining to destroy the innocent happiness of Eden, for the highest political motives, without hatred, not without tears, we may find some echo of the Elizabethan fulness of life that Milton as a poet abandoned, and as a Puritan helped to destroy. On Celine’s Journey to the End of the Night from Some Versions of Pastoral: Voyage au Bout de la Nuit... is not to be placed quickly either as pastoral or proletarian; it is partly the 'underdog’ theme and partly social criticism. The two main characters have no voice or trust in their society and no sympathy with those who have; it is this, not cowardice or poverty or low class, which the war drives home to them, and from then on they have a straightforward inferiority complex; the theme becomes their struggle with it as private individuals.... Life may be black and mad in the second half but Bardamu is not, and he gets to the real end of the night as critic and spectator. This change is masked by unity of style and by a humility which will not allow that one can claim to be sane while living as part of such a world, but it is in the second half that we get Bardamu speaking as Celine in criticism of it. What is attacked may perhaps be summed up as the death-wishes generated by the herds of a machine society, and he is not speaking as 'spokesman of the proletariat’ or with any sympathy for a communist one. ...before claiming the book as proletarian literature you have to separate off the author (in the phrase that Radek used) as a man ripe for fascism. From “The Variants for the Byzantium Poems” in Using Biography: ...she appears to end her penultimate chapter ‘Was Yeats a Christian?’ with the sentiment that he must have been pretty Christian if he could stay friends with Ezra Pound. From “Ulysses: Joyce’s Intentions” in Using Biography: When I was young, literary critics often rejoiced that the hypocrisy of the Victorians had been discredited, or expressed confidence that the operation would soon be complete. So far from that, it has returned in a peculiarly stifling form to take possession of critics of Eng. Lit.; Mr Pecksniff has become the patron saint of many of my colleagues. As so often, the deformity is the result of severe pressure between forces in themselves good. The study of English authors of the past is now centred in the universities, and yet there must be no censorship - no work of admitted literary merit may be hidden from the learners. Somehow we must save poor Teacher’s face, and protect him from the indignant or jeering students, local authorities or parents. It thus came to be tacitly agreed that a dead author usually hated what he described, hated it as much as we do, even, and wanted his book to shame everybody out of being so nasty ever again. This is often called fearless or unflinching criticism, and one of its ill effects is to make the young people regard all literature as a terrific nag or scold. Independently of this, a strong drive has been going on to recover the children for orthodox or traditional religious beliefs;... and when you understand all that, you may just be able to understand how they manage to present James Joyce as a man devoted to the God who was satisfied by the crucifixion. The concordat was reached over his dead body. Bibliography * Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930) * Some Versions of Pastoral (1935) * The Structure of Complex Words (1951) * Milton’s God (1961) * Using Biography (1985) * Essays on Shakespeare (1986) * Faustus and the Censor (1987) * Essays on Renaissance Literature: Volume 1, Donne and the New Philosophy (1993) * Essays on Renaissance Literature: Volume 2, The Drama (1994) * Argufying: Essays on Literature and Culture (1987) * The Strengths of Shakespeare’s Shrew: Essays, Memoirs and Interviews (1996). * The Complete Poems of William Empson - ed. Haffenden * The Royal Beasts and Other Works - London: Chatto & Windus, 1986. Selected books about Empson * Frank Day, Sir William Empson: An Annotated Bibliography, London: Garland, 1984. ISBN 0-8240-9207-4 * Philip and Averil Gardner, The God Approached: A Commentary on the Poems of William Empson, London: Chatto & Windus, 1978. ISBN 0-7011-2213-7 * John Haffenden, William Empson, Vol. 1: Among the Mandarins, Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-19-927659-5 * John Haffenden, William Empson, Vol. 2: Against the Christians, Oxford University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-19-953992-8 * Christopher Norris and Nigel Mapp, ed., William Empson: The Critical Achievement, Cambridge University Press, 1993. ISBN 0-521-35386-6 Notes and references External links * “William Empson’s Fixated Faith”: an article in The Times Literary Supplement by Eric Griffiths, 24 October 2007 * “The Savage Life”: Sir Frank Kermode reviews vol. 1 of John Haffenden’s biography of William Empson from London Review of Books * “Pleasure, Change, and the Canon”: Sir Frank Kermode’s Tanner Lectures on Human Values at The University of Utah References Wikipedia—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Empson

Kathleen Jessie Raine CBE (14 June 1908– 6 July 2003) was a British poet, critic and scholar, writing in particular on William Blake, W. B. Yeats and Thomas Taylor. Known for her interest in various forms of spirituality, most prominently Platonism and Neoplatonism, she was a founder member of the Temenos Academy. Life Kathleen Raine was born in Ilford, Essex (now part of London). Her mother was from Scotland and her father was born in Wingate, County Durham. The couple had met as students at Armstrong College in Newcastle upon Tyne. Raine spent part of World War I, 'a few short years’, with her Aunty Peggy Black at the Manse in Great Bavington Northumberland. She commented, “I loved everything about it.” For her it was an idyllic world and is the declared foundation of all her poetry. Raine always remembered Northumberland as Eden: “In Northumberland I knew myself in my own place; and I never 'adjusted’ myself to any other or forgot what I had so briefly but clearly seen and understood and experienced.” This period is described in the first book of her autobiography, Farewell Happy Fields (1973). Raine noted that poetry was deeply ingrained in the daily lives of her maternal ancestors: "On my mother’s side I inherited Scotland’s songs and ballads…sung or recited by my mother, aunts and grandmothers, who had learnt it from their mothers and grandmothers… Poetry was the very essence of life." Raine heard and read the Bible daily at home and at school, coming to know much of it by heart. Her father was an English master at County High School in Ilford. He had studied the poetry of Wordsworth for his M.Litt thesis and had a passion for Shakespeare and Raine saw many Shakespearean plays as a child. From her father she gained a love of etymology and the literary aspect of poetry, the counterpart to her immersion in the poetic oral traditions. She wrote that for her poetry was "not something invented but given…Brought up as I was in a household where poets were so regarded it naturally became my ambition to be a poet". She confided her ambition to her father who was sceptical of the plan. “To my father” she wrote “poets belonged to a higher world, to another plane; to say one wished to become a poet was to him something like saying one wished to write the fifth gospel”. Her mother encouraged Raine’s poetry from babyhood. Raine was educated at County High School, Ilford, and then read natural sciences, including botany and zoology, on an Exhibition at Girton College, Cambridge, receiving her master’s degree in 1929. While in Cambridge she met Jacob Bronowski, William Empson, Humphrey Jennings and Malcolm Lowry. In later life she was a friend and colleague of the kabbalist author and teacher, Z’ev ben Shimon Halevi. Raine married Hugh Sykes Davies in 1930. She left Davies for Charles Madge and they had two children together, but their marriage also broke up. She also held an unrequited passion for Gavin Maxwell. The title of Maxwell’s most famous book Ring of Bright Water, subsequently made into a film of the same name starring Virginia McKenna, was taken from a line in Raine’s poem “The Marriage of Psyche”. The relationship with Maxwell ended in 1956 when Raine lost his pet otter, Mijbil, indirectly causing the animal’s death. Raine held herself responsible, not only for losing Mijbil but for a curse she had uttered shortly beforehand, frustrated by Maxwell’s homosexuality: “Let Gavin suffer in this place as I am suffering now.” Raine blamed herself thereafter for all Maxwell’s misfortunes, beginning with Mijbil’s death and ending with the cancer from which he died in 1969. From 1939 to 1941, Raine and her children shared a house at 49a Wordsworth Street in Penrith with Janet Adam Smith and Michael Roberts and later lived in Martindale. She was a friend of Winifred Nicholson. Raine’s two children were Anna Hopwell Madge (born 1934) and James Wolf Madge (1936–2006). In 1959, James married Jennifer Alliston, the daughter of Raine’s friend, architect and town planner Jane Drew with architect James Alliston. Drew was a direct descendant of the neoplatonist Thomas Taylor whom Raine studied and wrote about. Thus a link was made between Raine and Taylor by the two children of her son’s marriage. At the time of her death, following an accident, Raine resided in London.

Laurence Edward Alan "Laurie" Lee, MBE (26 June 1914 – 13 May 1997) was an English poet, novelist, and screenwriter, raised in the village of Slad, and went to Marling School, Gloucestershire. His most famous work was an autobiographical trilogy which consisted of Cider with Rosie (1959), As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969) and A Moment of War (1991). The first volume recounts his childhood in the Slad Valley. The second deals with his leaving home for London and his first visit to Spain in 1935, and the third with his return to Spain in December 1937 to join the Republican International Brigades.

Thomas Chatterton (20 November 1752– 24 August 1770) was an English poet and forger of pseudo-medieval verse. Although fatherless and raised in poverty, he was an exceptionally studious child, publishing mature work by the age of eleven. He was able to pass-off as an imaginary 15th-century poet called Thomas Rowley, chiefly because few people at the time were familiar with medieval poetry, though he was denounced by Horace Walpole. At seventeen, he sought outlets for his political writings in London, having impressed the Lord Mayor, William Beckford, and the radical leader John Wilkes, but his earnings were not enough to keep him, and he poisoned himself in despair. His unusual life and death attracted much interest among the romantic poets, and Alfred de Vigny wrote a play about him that is still performed today. The oil-painting The Death of Chatterton by Pre-Raphaelite artist Henry Wallis has enjoyed lasting fame. Childhood Chatterton was born in Bristol where the office of sexton of St Mary Redcliffe had long been held by the Chatterton family. The poet’s father, also named Thomas Chatterton, was a musician, a poet, a numismatist, and a dabbler in the occult. He had been a sub-chanter at Bristol Cathedral and master of the Pyle Street free school, near Redcliffe church. After Chatterton’s birth (15 weeks after his father’s death on 7 August 1752), his mother established a girls’ school and took in sewing and ornamental needlework. Chatterton was admitted to Edward Colston’s Charity, a Bristol charity school, in which the curriculum was limited to reading, writing, arithmetic and the catechism. Chatterton, however, was always fascinated with his uncle the sexton and the church of St Mary Redcliffe. The knights, ecclesiastics and civic dignitaries on its altar tombs became familiar to him. Then he found a fresh interest in oaken chests in the muniment room over the porch on the north side of the nave, where parchment deeds, old as the Wars of the Roses, lay forgotten. Chatterton learned his first letters from the illuminated capitals of an old musical folio, and he learned to read out of a black-letter Bible. He did not like, his sister said, reading out of small books. Wayward from his earliest years, and uninterested in the games of other children, he was thought to be educationally backward. His sister related that on being asked what device he would like painted on a bowl that was to be his, he replied, “Paint me an angel, with wings, and a trumpet, to trumpet my name over the world.” From his earliest years he was liable to fits of abstraction, sitting for hours in what seemed like a trance, or crying for no reason. His lonely circumstances helped foster his natural reserve, and to create the love of mystery which exercised such an influence on the development of his poetry. When Chatterton was six, his mother began to recognise his capacity; at eight he was so eager for books that he would read and write all day long if undisturbed; by the age of eleven, he had become a contributor to Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal. His confirmation inspired him to write some religious poems published in that paper. In 1763 a cross which had adorned the churchyard of St Mary Redcliffe for upwards of three centuries was destroyed by a churchwarden. The spirit of veneration was strong in Chatterton, and he sent to the local journal on 7 January 1764 a satire on the parish vandal. He also liked to lock himself in a little attic which he had appropriated as his study; and there, with books, cherished parchments, loot purloined from the muniment room of St Mary Redcliffe, and drawing materials, the child lived in thought with his 15th century heroes and heroines. First “medieval” works The first of his literary mysteries, the dialogue of “Elinoure and Juga,” was written before he was 12, and he showed it to Thomas Phillips, the usher at the boarding school Colston’s Hospital where he was a pupil, pretending it was the work of a 15th-century poet. Chatterton remained a boarder at Colston’s Hospital for more than six years, and it was only his uncle who encouraged the pupils to write. Three of Chatterton’s companions are named as youths whom Phillips’s taste for poetry stimulated to rivalry; but Chatterton told no one about his own more daring literary adventures. His little pocket-money was spent on borrowing books from a circulating library; and he ingratiated himself with book collectors, in order to obtain access to John Weever, William Dugdale and Arthur Collins, as well as to Thomas Speght’s edition of Chaucer, Spenser and other books. At some point he came across Elizabeth Cooper’s anthology of verse, which is said to have been a major source for his inventions. Chatterton’s “Rowleian” jargon appears to have been chiefly the result of the study of John Kersey’s Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum, and it seems his knowledge even of Chaucer was very slight. His holidays were mostly spent at his mother’s house, and much of them in the favourite retreat of his attic study there. He lived for the most part in an ideal world of his own, in the reign of Edward IV, during the mid-15th century, when the great Bristol merchant William II Canynges (d.1474), five times mayor of Bristol, patron and rebuilder of St Mary Redcliffe “still ruled in Bristol’s civic chair.” Canynges was familiar to him from his recumbent effigy in Redcliffe church, and is represented by Chatterton as an enlightened patron of art and literature. Adopts persona of Thomas Rowley Chatterton soon conceived the romance of Thomas Rowley, an imaginary monk of the 15th century, and adopted for himself the pseudonym Thomas Rowley for poetry and history. According to psychoanalyst Louise J. Kaplan, his being fatherless played a great role in his imposturous creation of Rowley. The development of his masculine identity was held back by the fact that he was raised by two women: his mother Sarah and his sister Mary. Therefore, “to reconstitute the lost father in fantasy,” he unconsciously created "two interweaving family romances [fantasies], each with its own scenario." The first of these was the romance of Rowley for whom he created a fatherlike, wealthy patron, William Canynge, while the second was as Kaplan named it his romance of “Jack and the Beanstalk.” He imagined he would become a famous poet who by his talents would be able to rescue his mother from poverty. Chatterton’s search for a patron To bring his hopes to life, Chatterton started to look for a patron. At first, he was trying to do so in Bristol where he became acquainted with William Barrett, George Catcott and Henry Burgum. He assisted them by providing Rowley transcripts for their work. The antiquary William Barrett relied exclusively on these fake transcripts when writing his History and Antiquities of Bristol (1789) which became an enormous failure. But since his Bristol patrons were not willing to pay him enough, he turned to the wealthier Horace Walpole. In 1769 Chatterton sent specimens of Rowley’s poetry and “The Ryse of Peyncteynge yn Englade” to Walpole who offered to print them “if they have never been printed.” Later, however, finding that Chatterton was only sixteen and that the alleged Rowley pieces might have been forgeries, he scornfully sent him away. Political writings Badly hurt by Walpole’s snub, Chatterton wrote very little for a summer. Then, after the end of the summer, he turned his attention to periodical literature and politics, and exchanged Farley’s Bristol Journal for the Town and Country Magazine and other London periodicals. Assuming the vein of the pseudonymous letter writer Junius—then in the full blaze of his triumph—he turned his pen against the Duke of Grafton, the Earl of Bute and Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, the Princess of Wales. Determines on leaving Bristol He had just dispatched one of his political diatribes to the Middlesex Journal, when he sat down on Easter Eve, 17 April 1770, and penned his “Last Will and Testament,” a satirical compound of jest and earnest, in which he intimated his intention of ending his life the following evening. Among his satirical bequests, such as his “humility” to the Rev. Mr Camplin, his “religion” to Dean Barton, and his “modesty” along with his “prosody and grammar” to Mr Burgum, he leaves “to Bristol all his spirit and disinterestedness, parcels of goods unknown on its quay since the days of Canynge and Rowley.” In more genuine earnestness he recalls the name of Michael Clayfield, a friend to whom he owed intelligent sympathy. The will was possibly prepared in order to frighten his master into letting him go. If so, it had the desired effect. John Lambert, the attorney to whom he was apprenticed, cancelled his indentures; his friends and acquaintances having donated money, Chatterton went to London. London Chatterton was already known to the readers of the Middlesex Journal as a rival of Junius, under the nom de plume of Decimus. He had also been a contributor to Hamilton’s Town and Country Magazine, and speedily found access to the Freeholder’s Magazine, another political miscellany supportive of John Wilkes and liberty. His contributions were accepted, but the editors paid little or nothing for them. He wrote hopefully to his mother and sister, and spent his first earnings in buying gifts for them. Wilkes himself had noted his trenchant style “and expressed a desire to know the author”; and Lord Mayor William Beckford graciously acknowledged a political address of his, and greeted him “as politely as a citizen could.” He was abstemious and extraordinarily diligent. He could assume the style of Junius or Tobias Smollett, reproduce the satiric bitterness of Charles Churchill, parody James Macpherson’s Ossian, or write in the manner of Alexander Pope or with the polished grace of Thomas Gray and William Collins. He wrote political letters, eclogues, lyrics, operas and satires, both in prose and verse. In June 1770—after nine weeks in London—he moved from Shoreditch, where he had lodged with a relative, to an attic in Brook Street, Holborn (now beneath Alfred Waterhouse’s Holborn Bars building). He was still short of money; and now state prosecutions of the press rendered letters in the Junius vein no longer admissible, and threw him back on the lighter resources of his pen. In Shoreditch, he had shared a room; but now, for the first time, he enjoyed uninterrupted solitude. His bed-fellow at Mr Walmsley’s, Shoreditch, noted that much of the night was spent by him in writing; and now he could write all night. The romance of his earlier years revived, and he transcribed from an imaginary parchment of the old priest Rowley his “Excelente Balade of Charitie.” This poem, disguised in archaic language, he sent to the editor of the Town and Country Magazine, where it was rejected. Mr Cross, a neighbouring apothecary, repeatedly invited him to join him at dinner or supper; but he refused. His landlady also, suspecting his necessity, pressed him to share her dinner, but in vain. “She knew,” as she afterwards said, “that he had not eaten anything for two or three days.” But he assured her that he was not hungry. The note of his actual receipts, found in his pocket-book after his death, shows that Hamilton, Fell and other editors who had been so liberal in flattery, had paid him at the rate of a shilling for an article, and less than eightpence each for his songs; much which had been accepted was held in reserve and still unpaid for. According to his foster-mother, he had wished to study medicine with Barrett, and in his desperation he wrote to Barrett for a letter to help him to an opening as a surgeon’s assistant on board an African trader. Death While walking along St Pancras Churchyard, Chatterton much absorbed in thought, took no notice of an open grave, newly dug in his path, and subsequently tumbled into it. His walking companion upon observing this event, helped Chatterton out and told him in a jocular manner, that he was happy in assisting at the resurrection of genius. Chatterton replied, “My dear friend, I have been at war with the grave for some time now.” Chatterton would commit suicide three days later. On 24 August 1770, he retired for the last time to his attic in Brook Street, carrying with him the arsenic which he drank, after tearing into fragments whatever literary remains were at hand. He was only 17 years and nine months old. A few days later one Dr Thomas Fry came to London with the intention of giving financial support to the young boy “whether discoverer or author merely.” A fragment, probably one of the last pieces written by the impostor-poet was put together by Dr Fry from the shreds of paper that covered the floor of Thomas Chatterton’s Brook Street attic on the morning of 25 August 1770. The would-have-been patron of the poet had an eye for literary forgeries, and purchased the scraps which the poet’s landlady, Mrs Angel swept into a box, cherishing the hope of discovering a suicide note among the pieces. This fragment, possibly one of the remnants of Chatterton’s very last literary efforts, was identified by Dr Fry to be a modified ending of the poet’s tragical interlude Aella. The fragment is now in the possession of Bristol Public Library and Art Gallery. The final Alexandrine is completely missing, together with Chatterton’s notes. However, according to Dr Fry, the character who utters the final lines must have been Birtha, whose last word might have been something like “kisste.” Posthumous recognition The death of Chatterton attracted little notice at the time; for the few who then entertained any appreciative estimate of the Rowley poems regarded him as their mere transcriber. He was interred in a burying-ground attached to the Shoe Lane Workhouse, in the parish of St Andrew, Holborn, later the site of Farringdon Market. There is a discredited story that the body of the poet was recovered, and secretly buried by his uncle, Richard Phillips, in Redcliffe Churchyard. There a monument has since been erected to his memory, with the appropriate inscription, borrowed from his “Will,” and so supplied by the poet’s own pen. “To the memory of Thomas Chatterton. Reader! judge not. If thou art a Christian, believe that he shall be judged by a Superior Power. To that Power only is he now answerable.” It was after Chatterton’s death that the controversy over his work began. Poems supposed to have been written at Bristol by Thomas Rowley and others, in the Fifteenth Century (1777) was edited by Thomas Tyrwhitt, a Chaucerian scholar who believed them genuine medieval works. However, the appendix to the following year’s edition recognises that they were probably Chatterton’s own work. Thomas Warton, in his History of English Poetry (1778) included Rowley among 15th-century poets, but apparently did not believe in the antiquity of the poems. In 1782 a new edition of Rowley’s poems appeared, with a “Commentary, in which the antiquity of them is considered and defended,” by Jeremiah Milles, Dean of Exeter. The controversy which raged round the Rowley poems is discussed in Andrew Kippis, Biographia Britannica (vol. iv., 1789), where there is a detailed account by G Gregory of Chatterton’s life (pp. 573–619). This was reprinted in the edition (1803) of Chatterton’s Works by Robert Southey and Joseph Cottle, published for the benefit of the poet’s sister. The neglected condition of the study of earlier English in the 18th century alone accounts for the temporary success of Chatterton’s mystification. It has long been agreed that Chatterton was solely responsible for the Rowley poems; the language and style were analysed in confirmation of this view by W. W. Skeat in an introductory essay prefaced to vol. ii. of The Poetical Works of Thomas Chatterton (1871) in the “Aldine Edition of the British Poets.” The Chatterton manuscripts originally in the possession of William Barrett of Bristol were left by his heir to the British Museum in 1800. Others are preserved in the Bristol library. Legacy Chatterton’s genius and his death are commemorated by Percy Bysshe Shelley in Adonais (though its main emphasis is the commemoration of Keats), by William Wordsworth in “Resolution and Independence,” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in “Monody on the Death of Chatterton,” by Dante Gabriel Rossetti in “Five English Poets,” and in John Keats’ sonnet “To Chatterton.” Keats also inscribed Endymion “to the memory of Thomas Chatterton.” Two of Alfred de Vigny’s works, Stello and the drama Chatterton, give fictionalized accounts of the poet; in the former, there is a scene in which William Beckford’s harsh criticism of Chatterton’s work drives the poet to suicide. The three-act play “Chatterton” was first performed at the Théâtre-Français, Paris on February 12, 1835. Herbert Croft, in his Love and Madness, interpolated a long and valuable account of Chatterton, giving many of the poet’s letters, and much information obtained from his family and friends (pp. 125–244, letter li.). The most famous image of Chatterton in the 19th century was The Death of Chatterton (1856) by Henry Wallis, now in Tate Britain, London. Two smaller versions, sketches or replicas, are held by the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and the Yale Center for British Art. The figure of the poet was modelled by the young George Meredith. Two of Chatterton’s poems were set to music as glees by the English composer John Wall Callcott. These include separate settings of distinct verses within the Song to Aelle. His best known poem, O synge untoe mie roundelaie was set to a five-part madrigal by Samuel Wesley. Chatterton has attracted operatic treatment a number of times throughout history, notably Ruggiero Leoncavallo’s largely unsuccessful two-act Chatterton; the German composer Matthias Pintscher’s modernistic Thomas Chatterton; and Australian composer Matthew Dewey’s lyrical yet dramatically intricate one-man mythography entitled “The Death of Thomas Chatterton.” There is a collection of “Chattertoniana” in the British Museum, consisting of works by Chatterton, newspaper cuttings, articles dealing with the Rowley controversy and other subjects, with manuscript notes by Joseph Haslewood, and several autograph letters. E. H. W. Meyerstein, who worked for many years in the manuscript room of the British Museum wrote a definitive work—"A Life of Thomas Chatterton"—in 1930. Peter Ackroyd’s 1987 novel Chatterton was a literary re-telling of the poet’s story, giving emphasis to the philosophical and spiritual implications of forgery. In 1886, architect Herbert Horne and Oscar Wilde unsuccessfully attempted to have a plaque erected at Colston’s School, Bristol. Wilde, who lectured on Chatterton at this time, suggested the inscription: “To The Memory of Thomas Chatterton, One of England’s Greatest Poets, and Sometime pupil at this school.” In 1928 a plaque in memory of Chatterton was mounted on 39, Brooke Street, Holborn, bearing the inscription below. The plaque has subsequently been transferred to a modern office building on the same site. Within Bromley Common, there is a road called Chatterton Road; this is the main thoroughfare in Chatterton Village, based around the public house, The Chatterton Arms. Both road and pub are named after the poet. French singer Serge Gainsbourg entitled one of his songs “Chatterton,” stating: Chatterton suicidé Hannibal suicidé [...] Quant à moi Ça ne va plus très bien. The song was covered (in Portuguese) by Seu Jorge live and recorded in the album Ana & Jorge: Ao Vivo. Works * ‘An Elegy on the much lamented Death of William Beckford, Esq.,’ 4to, pp. 14, 1770. * 'The Execution of Sir Charles Bawdwin’ (edited by Thomas Eagles, F.S.A.), 4to, pp. 26, 1772. * 'Poems supposed to have been written at Bristol, by Thomas Rowley and others, in the Fifteenth Century’ (edited by Thomas Tyrwhitt), 8vo, pp. 307, 1777. * 'Appendix’ (to the 3rd edition of the poems, edited by the same), 8vo, pp. 309–333, 1778. * 'Miscellanies in Prose and Verse, by Thomas Chatterton, the supposed author of the Poems published under the names of Rowley, Canning, &c.' (edited by John Broughton), 8vo, pp. 245, 1778. * 'Poems supposed to have been written at Bristol in the Fifteenth Century by Thomas Rowley, Priest, &c., [edited] by Jeremiah Milles, D.D., Dean of Exeter,' 4to, pp. 545, 1782. * ‘A Supplement to the Miscellanies of Thomas Chatterton,’ 8vo, pp. 88, 1784. * 'Poems supposed to have been written at Bristol by Thomas Rowley and others in the Fifteenth Century’ (edited by Lancelot Sharpe), 8vo, pp. xxix, 329, 1794. * ‘The Poetical Works of Thomas Chatterton,’ Anderson s ‘British Poets,’ xi. 297-322, 1795. * ‘The Revenge: a Burletta ; with additional Songs, by Thomas Chatterton,’ 8vo, pp. 47, 1795. * 'The Works of Thomas Chatterton’ (edited by Robert Southey and Joseph Cottle), 3 vols. 8yo, 1803. * 'The Poetical Works of Thomas Chatterton’ (edited by Charles B. Willcox), 2 vols. 12mo, 1842. * 'The Poetical Works of Thomas Chatterton’ (edited by the Rev Walter Skeat, M.A.), Aldine edition, 2 vols. 8vo, 1875. References Wikipedia—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Chatterton

Elizabeth Jennings CBE (18 July 1926– 26 October 2001) was an English poet. Life and career Jennings was born in Boston, Lincolnshire. When she was six, her family moved to Oxford, where she remained for the rest of her life. There she later attended St Anne’s College. After graduation, she became a writer. Jennings’ early poetry was published in journals such as Oxford Poetry, New English Weekly, The Spectator, Outposts and Poetry Review, but her first book was not published until she was 27. The lyrical poets she cited as having influenced her were Hopkins, Auden, Graves and Muir. Her second book, A Way of Looking, won the Somerset Maugham award and marked a turning point, as the prize money allowed her to spend nearly three months in Rome, which was a revelation. It brought a new dimension to her religious belief and inspired her imagination. Regarded as traditionalist rather than an innovator, Jennings is known for her lyric poetry and mastery of form. Her work displays a simplicity of metre and rhyme shared with Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis and Thom Gunn, all members of the group of English poets known as The Movement. She always made it clear that, whilst her life, which included a spell of severe mental illness, contributed to the themes contained within her work, she did not write explicitly autobiographical poetry. Her deeply held Roman Catholicism coloured much of her work. She died in a care home in Bampton, Oxfordshire and is buried in Wolvercote Cemetery, Oxford. Selected honours and awards 1953: Arts Council of Great Britain Prize for the best first book of poems for Poems 1955: Somerset Maugham Prize for A Way of Looking. 1987: W.H. Smith Literary Award for Collected Poems 1953–1985 1992: Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) 2001: Honorary Doctorate of Divinity from Durham University

Amelia Opie, née Alderson (12 November 1769– 2 December 1853), was an English author who published numerous novels in the Romantic Period of the early 19th century, through 1828. Opie was also a leading abolitionist in Norwich, England. Life and work Amelia Alderson was the daughter of James Alderson, a physician, and Amelia Briggs of Norwich, England. She was a cousin of notable judge Edward Hall Alderson, with whom she corresponded throughout her life, and also a cousin of notable artist Henry Perronet Briggs. Miss Alderson had inherited radical principles and was an ardent admirer of John Horne Tooke. She was close to activists John Philip Kemble, Sarah Siddons, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. Marriage and family In 1798 Alderson married John Opie, the painter. The nine years of her married life before her husband’s death were happy, although her husband did not share her love of society. With his encouragement, in 1801 she completed a novel entitled Father and Daughter, which showed genuine fancy and pathos. Writing career Amelia Opie published regularly after that. Her volume of Poems, published in 1802 went through six editions, and was followed by The Warrior’s Return and other poems in 1808. More novels followed: Adeline Mowbray (1804), Simple Tales (1806), Temper (1812), Tales of Real Life (1813), Valentine’s Eve (1816), Tales of the Heart (1818), and Madeline (1822). Opie wrote The dangers of Coquetry at age 18. Her novel Father and Daughter (1801) is about misled virtue and family reconciliation. Encouraged by her husband to continue writing, she published Adeline Mowbray (1804), an exploration of women’s education, marriage, and abolition of slavery. The novel is noted in particular for engaging the history of Opie’s former friend Mary Wollstonecraft, whose relationship with the American Gilbert Imlay outside marriage, and later marriage to the philosopher William Godwin caused some scandal. Godwin had previously argued against marriage as an institution by which women were owned as property, but when Wollstonecraft became pregnant, they married despite his prior principles. In the novel, Adeline early on becomes involved with a philosopher who takes a principled stand against marriage, only to be convinced to marry a West Indian Landowner against her better judgment. The novel also engages abolitionist sentiment, in the story of a mixed-race woman and her family whom Adeline saves from poverty at some expense to herself. Amelia Opie divided her time between London and Norwich. She was a friend of writers Sir Walter Scott, Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Madame de Stael. In 1825, following the death of her father who objected, she joined the Society of Friends through the influence of Joseph John Gurney and his sisters who were longtime friends and neighbors in Norwich. The rest of her life was spent mostly in travelling and working at charity, though she published an anti-slavery poem, The Black Man’s Lament in 1826 and a volume of devotional poems, Lays for the Dead in 1834. Opie worked with Anna Gurney to create a Ladies Anti-Slavery Society in Norwich. Opie went to World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840 where she one of the few women who was included in the commemorative painting. Even late in life, Opie maintained connections with writers, for instance receiving George Borrow as a guest. After a visit to Cromer, a seaside resort on the North Norfolk coast, she caught a chill and retired to her bedroom. A year later on 2 December 1853, she died at Norwich and was said to retain her vivacity to the last. She was buried at the Gildencroft Quaker Cemetery, Norwich. An somewhat sanitized biography of her, A Life, by Miss C.L. Brightwell, was published in 1854.

James Kenneth Stephen (25 February 1859– 3 February 1892) was an English poet, and tutor to Prince Albert Victor, eldest son of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales. Early life Stephen was the second son of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, barrister-at-law, and his wife Mary Richenda Cunningham. James Kenneth Stephen was known as 'Jem’ among his family and close friends; he was first cousin to Virginia Woolf (née Stephen). He was a King’s Scholar at Eton, where he proved to be a highly competent player of the Eton Wall Game; and then went up to King’s College, Cambridge, again as a King’s Scholar. In the Michaelmas term of 1880, he was President of the Cambridge Union Society. In 1883 he became tutor to Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, and was made a Fellow of King’s College in 1885. He was a renowned intellectual; and it was said that he spoke in a pedantic, but highly articulate and entertaining manner. Poetry Stephen became a published poet, his work being identified by the initials J. K. S. His collections of poems Lapsus Calami and Quo Musa Tendis were both published in 1891. Rudyard Kipling called him “that genius” and told how he “dealt with Haggard and me in some stanzas which I would have given much to have written myself”. Those stanzas, in which Stephen deplores the state of contemporary writing, appear in his poem ‘To R. K.’: Will there never come a season Which shall rid us from the curse Of a prose which knows no reason And an unmelodious verse: When the world shall cease to wonder At the genius of an Ass, And a boy's eccentric blunder Shall not bring success to pass: When mankind shall be delivered From the clash of magazines, And the inkstand shall be shivered Into countless smithereens: When there stands a muzzled stripling, Mute, beside a muzzled bore: When the Rudyards cease from Kipling And the Haggards Ride no more. “The Last Ride Together (From Her Point of View)” parodies Robert Browning’s “Last Ride Together”; Lord Byron is parodied in “A Grievance”; and William Wordsworth in “A Sonnet”: Two voices are there: one is of the deep; It learns the storm-cloud's thunderous melody, Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea, Now bird-like pipes, now closes soft in sleep: And one is of an old half-witted sheep Which bleats articulate monotony, And indicates that two and one are three, That grass is green, lakes damp, and mountains steep: And, Wordsworth, both are thine J. K Stephen was at Cambridge at the same time as the distinguished antiquarian and writer of ghost-stories, Montague R. James, and mentions him at the end of a curious Latin celebration of then-current worthies of 'Coll. Regale’ (King’s College): Vivat J.K. Stephanus, Humilis poeta! Vivat Monty Jamesius, Vivant A, B, C, D, E Et totus Alphabeta! Stephen wrote a satirical pastiche of Thomas Gray’s “Ode to the Distant Prospect of Eton College” pillorying Eton for being Tory. A poem which gave him a reputation as a misogynist is “Men and Women,” where he describes two people, a man and a woman, whom he does not know but to whom he takes a violent dislike. The first part, subtitled “In the Backs” (The Backs is a riverside area of Cambridge), concludes ...I do not want to see that girl again: I did not like her: and I should not mind If she were done away with, killed, or ploughed. She did not seem to serve a useful end: And certainly she was not beautiful. (Plough is slang for failing an exam.) However many of his other poems show that this “misogyny” Is more accurately described as only one facet of a sardonic nature. Stephen was a member of the Cambridge “Apostles”. Death Stephen suffered a serious head injury in an accident in the winter of 1886/1887 which may have exacerbated the bi-polar disorder from which he suffered. His cousin Virginia Woolf suffered from the same disorder throughout her adult life. Stephen was eventually committed to St Andrew’s Hospital, a mental asylum in Northampton. In January 1892 the former Royal tutor heard that his erstwhile pupil, the 28-year-old Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence had died of pneumonia at Sandringham, after contracting influenza. On hearing the news, Stephen refused to eat, and died twenty days later, aged 32. His cause of death, according to the death certificate, was mania. Eton legacies Stephen was noted for his prodigious size and physical strength. At Eton, he was an outstanding player of the Wall Game. He played for College on St Andrew’s Day four times: in 1874, 1875, 1876 and 1877. In the last two years he was Keeper (or captain) of the College Wall. College beat the Oppidans by 4 shies to nil in his first year as Keeper, and by 10 shies to nil the next year. Ever after, the King’s Scholars have honoured J K Stephen’s memory with a toast at the Christmas Sock Supper or other festive occasions - in piam memoriam, J. K. S. (In pious memory of J. K. S.). Stephen was recalled in less pious memory in a play by former Eton housemaster and Old Etonian, Angus Graham-Campbell; entitled Sympathy for the Devil, it premiered at the Eton Drama festival in 1993. This was based on the notion that Stephen could have been one of the Jack the Ripper suspects; this theory has been dismissed, because he would have been unable to return to Cambridge in time for lectures the following morning. Stephen’s poem The Old School List from Quo Musa Tendis is included in the front pages of H. E. C. Stapleton’s Eton School Lists 1853-1892, and the author refers to him in the preface as 'an Etonian of great promise, who died only too early for his numerous friends’. During his time at Eton, Stephen was a friend of Harry Goodhart (1858–1895), who became an England international footballer and later a Professor at the University of Edinburgh. Goodhart is referred to as “one of them’s wed” in the last verse of The Old School List: There were two good fellows I used to know. —How distant it all appears! We played together in football weather, And messed together for years: Now one of them's wed, and the other's dead So long that he's hardly missed Save by us, who messed with him years ago: But we're all in the old School List. Collections Select Poems 1926 Augustan Books of Modern Poetry Lapsus Calami JKS Cambridge 1891 Quo Musa Tendis Cambridge 1891 Lapsus Calami and other verses 1896 References Wikipedia—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Kenneth_Stephen

Francis Quarles (8 May 1592– 8 September 1644) was an English poet most famous for his Emblem book aptly entitled Emblems. Career Francis was born in Romford, Essex (now London Borough of Havering), and baptised there on 8 May 1592. He traced his ancestry to a family settled in England before the Norman Conquest with a long history in royal service. His great-grandfather, George Quarles, was Auditor to Henry VIII, and his father, James Quarles, held several places under Elizabeth I and James I, for which he was rewarded with an estate called Stewards in Romford. His mother, Joan Dalton, was the daughter and heiress of Eldred Dalton of Mores Place, Hadham. There were eight children in the family; the eldest, Sir Robert Quarles, was knighted by James I in 1608, and another, John Quarles, also became a poet. Francis was entered at Christ’s College, Cambridge, in 1608, and subsequently at Lincoln’s Inn. He was made cupbearer to the Princess Elizabeth, in 1613, remaining abroad for some years; and before 1629 he was appointed secretary to Ussher, the primate of Ireland. About 1633 he returned to England, and spent the next two years in the preparation of his Emblems. In 1639 he was made city chronologer, a post in which Ben Jonson and Thomas Middleton had preceded him. At the outbreak of the Civil War he took the Royalist side, drawing up three pamphlets in 1644 in support of the king’s cause. It is said that his house was searched and his papers destroyed by the Parliamentarians in consequence of these publications. Quarles married Ursula Woodgate in 1618, by whom he had eighteen children. His son, John Quarles (1624–1665), was exiled to Flanders for his Royalist sympathies and was the author of Fons Lachrymarum (1648) and other poems. Quarles descendants, Charles Henry Langston and John Mercer Langston were American abolitionists who pressed for greater freedom and suffrages among the African Americans in the 19th century. Charles Henry Langston’s grandson (and Quarles’ descendant), Langston Hughes, was a celebrated author and poet during the Harlem Renaissance. The work by which Quarles is best known, the Emblems, was originally published in 1634, with grotesque illustrations engraved by William Marshall and others. The forty-five prints in the last three books are borrowed from the designs by Boetius à Bolswert for the Pia Desideria (Antwerp, 1624) of Herman Hugo. Each “emblem” consists of a paraphrase from a passage of Scripture, expressed in ornate and metaphorical language, followed by passages from the Christian Fathers, and concluding with an epigram of four lines. The Emblems was immensely popular with the common people, but the critics of the 17th and 18th centuries had no mercy on Quarles. Sir John Suckling in his Sessions of the Poets disrespectfully alluded to him as he “that makes God speak so big in’s poetry.” Pope in the Dunciad spoke of the Emblems, “Where the pictures for the page atone And Quarles is saved by beauties not his own.” Works * The works of Quarles include: * A Feast for Wormes. Set forth in a Poeme of the History of Jonah (1620), which contains other scriptural paraphrases, besides the one that furnishes the title; Hadassa; or the History of Queene Ester (1621) * Job Militant, with Meditations Divine and Moral (1624) * Sions Elegies, wept by Jeremie the Prophet (1624) * Sions Sonets sung by Solomon the King (1624), a paraphrase of the Canticles * The Historic of Samson (1631) * Alphabet of Elegies upon... Dr Aylmer (1625) * Argalus and Parthenia (1629), the subject of which is borrowed from Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia * four books of Divine Fancies digested into Epigrams, Meditations and Observations (1632) * a reissue of his scriptural paraphrases and the Alphabet of Elegies as Divine Poems (1633) * Hieroglyphikes of the Life of Man (1638) * Memorials Upon the Death of Sir Robert Quarles, Knight (1639), in honor of his brother * Enchyridion, containing Institutions Divine and Moral (1640–41), a collection of four “centuries” of miscellaneous aphorisms * Observations concerning Princes and States upon Peace and Warre (1642) * Boanerges and Barnabas—Wine and Oyle for... afflicted Soules (1644–46), collection of miscellaneous reflections * three violent Royalist tracts (1644), The Loyal Convert, The Whipper Whipt, and The New Distemper, reissued in one volume in 1645 with the title of The Profest Royalist * his quarrel with the Times, and some elegies * Solomon’s Recantation... (1645), which contains a memoir by his widow * The Shepheards’ Oracles (1646) * a second part of Boanerges and Barnabas (1646) * a broadside entitled A Direfull Anathema against Peace-haters (1647) * an interlude, The Virgin Widow (1649). * An edition of the Emblems (Edinburgh, 1857) was embellished with new illustrations by CH Bennett and WA Rogers These are reproduced in the complete edition (1874) of Quarles included in the “Chertsey Worthies Library” by Dr AB Grosart, who provides an introductory memoir and an appreciation of Quarles’s value as a poet. References Wikipedia—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Quarles

Mary Elizabeth Coleridge (23 September 1861– 25 August 1907) was a British novelist and poet who also wrote essays and reviews. She taught at the London Working Women’s College for twelve years from 1895 to 1907. She wrote poetry under the pseudonym Anodos, taken from George MacDonald; other influences on her were Richard Watson Dixon and Christina Rossetti. Robert Bridges, the Poet Laureate, described her poems as ‘wonderously beautiful… but mystical rather and enigmatic’. She published five novels, the best known of those being The King with Two Faces.

Muriel Stuart (1885, Norbury, South London– 18 December 1967), born Muriel Stuart Irwin, was a poet, the daughter of a Scottish barrister. She was particularly concerned with the topic of sexual politics, though she first wrote poems about World War I. She later gave up poetry writing; her later publications are on gardening. She was hailed by Hugh MacDiarmid as the best woman poet of the Scottish Renaissance although she was Scottish only by family origin and lived all her life in England. Despite this, his comment led to her inclusion in many Scottish anthologies. Thomas Hardy described her poetry as “superlatively good”. Like other female poets of her era, she reflects the weight of social expectations on women and the experience of post-war spinsterhood. Her most famous poem, “In the Orchard”, is entirely dialogues and in no kind of verse form, which makes it innovative for its time. She does use rhyme: a mixture of half-rhyme and rhyming couplets (a, b, a, b form). Other famous poems of hers are “The Seed Shop”, “The Fools” and “Man and his Makers”. She married twice, the second time to the publisher Alfred William Board. Later in life she stopped publishing poetry and wrote books on gardening: Fool’s Garden (1936) was a best-seller and Gardener’s Nightcap has been reprinted by Persephone Books.

John Wesley (/ˈwɛsli, ˈwɛzli/; 28 June [O.S. 17 June] 1703– 2 March 1791) was an Anglican minister and theologian who, with his brother Charles and fellow cleric George Whitefield, is credited with the foundation of the evangelical movement known as Methodism. His work and writings also played a leading role in the development of the Holiness movement and Pentecostalism. Educated at Charterhouse School and Oxford University, Wesley was elected a fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford in 1726 and ordained a priest two years later. Returning to Oxford in 1729 after serving as curate at his father’s parish, he led the Holy Club, a society formed for the purpose of study and the pursuit of a devout Christian life; it had been founded by his brother Charles, and counted George Whitefield among its members. After an unsuccessful ministry of two years at Savannah in the Georgia Colony, Wesley returned to London and joined a religious society led by Moravian Christians. On 24 May 1738 he experienced what has come to be called his evangelical conversion, when he felt his “heart strangely warmed”. He subsequently departed from the Moravians, beginning his own ministry. A key step in the development of Wesley’s ministry was, like Whitefield, to travel and preach outdoors. In contrast to Whitefield’s Calvinism, Wesley embraced the Arminian doctrines that dominated the Church of England at the time. Moving across Great Britain and Ireland, he helped form and organise small Christian groups that developed intensive and personal accountability, discipleship and religious instruction. Most importantly, he appointed itinerant, unordained evangelists to travel and preach as he did and to care for these groups of people. Under Wesley’s direction, Methodists became leaders in many social issues of the day, including prison reform and the abolition of slavery. Although he was not a systematic theologian, Wesley argued for the notion of Christian perfection and against Calvinism– and, in particular, against its doctrine of predestination. He held that, in this life, Christians could achieve a state where the love of God “reigned supreme in their hearts”, giving them outward holiness. His evangelicalism, firmly grounded in sacramental theology, maintained that means of grace were the manner by which God sanctifies and transforms the believer, encouraging people to experience Jesus Christ personally. Throughout his life, Wesley remained within the established Anglican church, insisting that the Methodist movement lay well within its tradition. Although sometimes maverick in his interpretation and use of church policy, he became widely respected and, by the end of his life, had been described as “the best loved man in England”. Early life John Wesley was born in 1703 in Epworth, 23 miles (37 km) north-west of Lincoln, as the fifteenth child of Samuel Wesley and his wife Susanna Wesley (née Annesley). Samuel Wesley was a graduate of the University of Oxford and a poet who, from 1696, was rector of Epworth. He married Susanna, the twenty-fifth child of Samuel Annesley, a dissenting minister, in 1689. Ultimately, she bore him nineteen children, of which nine lived beyond infancy. She and Samuel Wesley had become members of the Church of England as young adults. As in many families at the time, Wesley’s parents gave their children their early education. Each child, including the girls, was taught to read as soon as they could walk and talk. They were expected to become proficient in Latin and Greek and to have learned major portions of the New Testament by heart. Susanna Wesley examined each child before the midday meal and before evening prayers. Children were not allowed to eat between meals and were interviewed singularly by their mother one evening each week for the purpose of intensive spiritual instruction. In 1714, at age 11, Wesley was sent to the Charterhouse School in London (under the mastership of John King from 1715), where he lived the studious, methodical and, for a while, religious life in which he had been trained at home. Apart from his disciplined upbringing, a rectory fire which occurred on 9 February 1709, when Wesley was five years old, left an indelible impression. Some time after 11:00 p.m., the rectory roof caught on fire. Sparks falling on the children’s beds and cries of “fire” from the street roused the Wesleys who managed to shepherd all their children out of the house except for John who was left stranded on the second floor. With stairs aflame and the roof about to collapse, Wesley was lifted out of the second floor window by a parishioner standing on another man’s shoulders. Wesley later utilised the phrase, “a brand plucked out of the fire”, quoting Zechariah 3:2, to describe the incident. This childhood deliverance subsequently became part of the Wesley legend, attesting to his special destiny and extraordinary work. Education In June 1720, Wesley entered Christ Church, Oxford. In 1724, Wesley graduated as a Bachelor of Arts and decided to pursue a Master of Arts degree. He was ordained a deacon on 25 September 1725, holy orders being a necessary step toward becoming a fellow and tutor at the university. In the year of his ordination he read Thomas à Kempis and Jeremy Taylor, and began to seek the religious truths which underlay the great revival of the 18th century. The reading of Law’s Christian Perfection and A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life gave him, he said, a sublimer view of the law of God; and he resolved to keep it, inwardly and outwardly, as sacredly as possible, believing that in obedience he would find salvation. He pursued a rigidly methodical and abstemious life, studied the Scriptures, and performed his religious duties diligently, depriving himself so that he would have alms to give. He began to seek after holiness of heart and life. In March 1726, Wesley was unanimously elected a fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford. This carried with it the right to a room at the college and regular salary. While continuing his studies, Wesley taught Greek, lectured on the New Testament and moderated daily disputations at the university. However, a call to ministry intruded upon his academic career. In August 1727, after taking his master’s degree, Wesley returned to Epworth. His father had requested his assistance in serving the neighbouring cure of Wroote. Ordained a priest on 22 September 1728, Wesley served as a parish curate for two years. He returned to Oxford in November 1729 at the request of the Rector of Lincoln College and to maintain his status as junior Fellow. Holy Club During Wesley’s absence, his younger brother Charles (1707–88) matriculated at Christ Church. Along with two fellow students, he formed a small club for the purpose of study and the pursuit of a devout Christian life. On Wesley’s return, he became the leader of the group which increased somewhat in number and greatly in commitment. The group met daily from six until nine for prayer, psalms, and reading of the Greek New Testament. They prayed every waking hour for several minutes and each day for a special virtue. While the church’s prescribed attendance was only three times a year, they took communion every Sunday. They fasted on Wednesdays and Fridays until three o’clock as was commonly observed in the ancient church. In 1730, the group began the practice of visiting prisoners in jail. They preached, educated, and relieved jailed debtors whenever possible, and cared for the sick. Given the low ebb of spirituality in Oxford at that time, it was not surprising that Wesley’s group provoked a negative reaction. They were considered to be religious “enthusiasts” which in the context of the time meant religious fanatics. University wits styled them the “Holy Club,” a title of derision. Currents of opposition became a furor following the mental breakdown and death of a group member, William Morgan. In response to the charge that “rigorous fasting” had hastened his death, Wesley noted that Morgan had left off fasting a year and a half since. In the same letter, which was widely circulated, Wesley referred to the name “Methodist” which “some of our neighbors are pleased to compliment us.” That name was used by an anonymous author in a published pamphlet (1733) describing Wesley and his group, “The Oxford Methodists”. For all of his outward piety, Wesley sought to cultivate his inner holiness or at least his sincerity as evidence of being a true Christian. A list of “General Questions” which he developed in 1730 evolved into an elaborate grid by 1734 in which he recorded his daily activities hour-by-hour, resolutions he had broken or kept, and ranked his hourly “temper of devotion” on a scale of 1 to 9. Wesley also regarded the contempt with which he and his group were held to be a mark of a true Christian. As he put it in a letter to his father, “Till he be thus contemned, no man is in a state of salvation.” Journey to Savannah, Georgia On 14 October 1735, Wesley and his brother Charles sailed on The Simmonds from Gravesend in Kent for Savannah in the Province of Georgia in the American colonies at the request of James Oglethorpe, who had founded the colony in 1733 on behalf of the Trustees for the Establishment of the Colony of Georgia in America. Oglethorpe wanted Wesley to be the minister of the newly formed Savannah parish, a new town laid out in accordance with the famous Oglethorpe Plan. It was on the voyage to the colonies that the Wesleys first came into contact with Moravian settlers. Wesley was influenced by their deep faith and spirituality rooted in pietism. At one point in the voyage a storm came up and broke the mast off the ship. While the English panicked, the Moravians calmly sang hymns and prayed. This experience led Wesley to believe that the Moravians possessed an inner strength which he lacked. The deeply personal religion that the Moravian pietists practised heavily influenced Wesley’s theology of Methodism. Wesley arrived in the colony in February 1736. He approached the Georgia mission as a High Churchman, seeing it as an opportunity to revive “primitive Christianity” in a primitive environment. Although his primary goal was to evangelise the Native Americans, a shortage of clergy in the colony largely limited his ministry to European settlers in Savannah. While his ministry has often been judged to have been a failure in comparison to his later success as a leader in the Evangelical Revival, Wesley gathered around him a group of devoted Christians who met in a number of small group religious societies. At the same time, attendance at church services and communion increased over the course of nearly two years in which he served as Savannah’s parish priest. Nonetheless, Wesley’s High Church ministry was controversial amongst the colonists and it ended in disappointment after Wesley fell in love with a young woman named Sophia Hopkey. Following her marriage to William Williamson, Wesley believed Sophia’s former zeal for practising the Christian faith declined. In strictly applying the rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer, Wesley denied her communion after she failed to signify to him in advance her intention of taking it. As a result, legal proceedings against him ensued in which a clear resolution seemed unlikely. In December 1737, Wesley fled the colony and returned to England. It has been widely recognised that one of the most significant accomplishments of Wesley’s Georgia mission was his publication of a Collection of Psalms and Hymns. The Collection was the first Anglican hymnal published in America, and the first of many hymn-books Wesley published. It included five hymns he translated from German. Wesley’s “Aldersgate experience” Wesley returned to England depressed and beaten. It was at this point that he turned to the Moravians. Both he and Charles received counsel from the young Moravian missionary Peter Boehler, who was temporarily in England awaiting permission to depart for Georgia himself. Wesley’s noted “Aldersgate experience” of 24 May 1738, at a Moravian meeting in Aldersgate Street, London, in which he heard a reading of Martin Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans, revolutionised the character and method of his ministry. The previous week he had been highly impressed by the sermon of John Heylyn, whom he was assisting in the service at St Mary-le-Strand. Earlier that day, he had heard the choir at St. Paul’s Cathedral singing Psalm 130, where the Psalmist calls to God “Out of the depths.” But it was still a depressed Wesley who attended a service on the evening of 24 May. Wesley recounted his Aldersgate experience in his journal: “In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s Preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation, and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.” A few weeks later, Wesley preached a sermon on the doctrine of personal salvation by faith, which was followed by another, on God’s grace “free in all, and free for all.” Daniel L. Burnett writes: “The significance of Wesley’s Aldersgate Experience is monumental. It is the pivotal point in his life and the Methodist movement. Without it the names of Wesley and Methodism would likely be nothing more than obscure footnotes in the pages of church history.” Daniel L. Burnett calls this event Wesley’s “Evangelical Conversion”. It is commemorated in Methodist churches as Aldersgate Day. After Aldersgate: Working with the Moravians Wesley allied himself with the Moravian society in Fetter Lane. In 1738 he went to Herrnhut, the Moravian headquarters in Germany, to study. On his return to England, Wesley drew up rules for the “bands” into which the Fetter Lane Society was divided and published a collection of hymns for them. He met frequently with this and other religious societies in London but did not preach often in 1738, because most of the parish churches were closed to him. Wesley’s Oxford friend, the evangelist George Whitefield, was also excluded from the churches of Bristol upon his return from America. Going to the neighbouring village of Kingswood, in February 1739, Whitefield preached in the open air to a company of miners. Later he preached in Whitefield’s Tabernacle. Wesley hesitated to accept Whitefield’s call to copy this bold step. Overcoming his scruples, he preached the first time at Whitefield’s invitation sermon in the open air, near Bristol, in April 1739. Wesley wrote, I could scarce reconcile myself to this strange way of preaching in the fields, of which he [Whitefield] set me an example on Sunday; having been all my life till very lately so tenacious of every point relating to decency and order, that I should have thought the saving of souls almost a sin if it had not been done in a church. Wesley was unhappy about the idea of field preaching as he believed Anglican liturgy had much to offer in its practice. Earlier in his life he would have thought that such a method of saving souls was “almost a sin.” He recognised the open-air services were successful in reaching men and women who would not enter most churches. From then on he took the opportunities to preach wherever an assembly could be brought together, more than once using his father’s tombstone at Epworth as a pulpit. Wesley continued for fifty years– entering churches when he was invited, and taking his stand in the fields, in halls, cottages, and chapels, when the churches would not receive him. Late in 1739 Wesley broke with the Moravians in London. Wesley had helped them organise the Fetter Lane Society, and those converted by his preaching and that of his brother and Whitefield had become members of their bands. But he believed they fell into heresy by supporting quietism, so he decided to form his own followers into a separate society. “Thus,” he wrote, “without any previous plan, began the Methodist Society in England.” He soon formed similar societies in Bristol and Kingswood, and wherever Wesley and his friends made converts. Persecutions and lay preaching From 1739 onward, Wesley and the Methodists were persecuted by clergy and magistrates for various reasons. Though Wesley had been ordained an Anglican priest, many other Methodist leaders had not received ordination. And for his own part, Wesley flouted many regulations of the Church of England concerning parish boundaries and who had authority to preach. This was seen as a social threat that disregarded institutions. Clergy attacked them in sermons and in print, and at times mobs attacked them. Wesley and his followers continued to work among the neglected and needy. They were denounced as promulgators of strange doctrines, fomenters of religious disturbances; as blind fanatics, leading people astray, claiming miraculous gifts, attacking the clergy of the Church of England, and trying to re-establish Catholicism. Wesley felt that the church failed to call sinners to repentance, that many of the clergy were corrupt, and that people were perishing in their sins. He believed he was commissioned by God to bring about revival in the church, and no opposition, persecution, or obstacles could prevail against the divine urgency and authority of this commission. The prejudices of his high-church training, his strict notions of the methods and proprieties of public worship, his views of the apostolic succession and the prerogatives of the priest, even his most cherished convictions, were not allowed to stand in the way. Unwilling that people should perish in their sins and unable to reach them from church pulpits, following the example set by George Whitefield, Wesley began field preaching. Seeing that he and the few clergy co-operating with him could not do the work that needed to be done, he was led, as early as 1739, to approve local preachers. He evaluated and approved men who were not ordained by the Anglican Church to preach and do pastoral work. This expansion of lay preachers was one of the keys of the growth of Methodism. Chapels and organisations As his societies needed houses to worship in, Wesley began to provide chapels, first in Bristol at the New Room, then in London (first The Foundery and then Wesley’s Chapel) and elsewhere. The Foundery was an early chapel utilised by Wesley. The location of the Foundery shown on an 18th-century map, where it rests between Tabernacle Street and Worship Street in the Moorfields area of London. When the Wesleys spotted the building atop Windmill Hill, north of Finsbury Fields, the structure which previously cast brass guns and mortars for the Royal Ordnance had been sitting vacant for 23 years; it has been abandoned because of an explosion on 10 May 1716. The Bristol chapel (built in 1739) was at first in the hands of trustees. A large debt was contracted, and Wesley’s friends urged him to keep it under his own control, so the deed was cancelled and he became sole trustee. Following this precedent, all Methodist chapels were committed in trust to him until by a “deed of declaration”, all his interests in them were transferred to a body of preachers called the “Legal Hundred”. When disorder arose among some members of the societies, Wesley adopted giving tickets to members, with their names written by his own hand. These were renewed every three months. Those deemed unworthy did not receive new tickets and dropped out of the society without disturbance. The tickets were regarded as commendatory letters. When the debt on a chapel became a burden, it was proposed that one in 12 members should collect offerings regularly from the 11 allotted to him. Out of this grew the Methodist class-meeting system in 1742. In order to keep the disorderly out of the societies, Wesley established a probationary system. He undertook to visit each society regularly in what became the quarterly visitation, or conference. As the number of societies increased, Wesley could not keep personal contact, so in 1743 he drew up a set of “General Rules” for the “United Societies”. These were the nucleus of the Methodist Discipline, still the basis. Over time, a shifting pattern of societies, circuits, quarterly meetings, annual Conferences, classes, bands, and select societies took shape. At the local level, there were numerous societies of different sizes which were grouped into circuits to which traveling preachers were appointed for two-year periods. Circuit officials met quarterly under a senior traveling preacher or “assistant.” Conferences with Wesley, traveling preachers and others were convened annually for the purpose of coordinating doctrine and discipline for the entire connection. Classes of a dozen or so society members under a leader met weekly for spiritual fellowship and guidance. In early years, there were “bands” of the spiritually gifted who consciously pursued perfection. Those who were regarded to have achieved it were grouped in select societies or bands. In 1744, there were 77 such members. There also was a category of penitents which consisted of backsliders. As the number of preachers and preaching-places increased, doctrinal and administrative matters needed to be discussed; so John and Charles Wesley, along with four other clergy and four lay preachers, met for consultation in London in 1744. This was the first Methodist conference; subsequently, the conference (with Wesley as its president) became the ruling body of the Methodist movement. Two years later, to help preachers work more systematically and societies receive services more regularly, Wesley appointed “helpers” to definitive circuits. Each circuit included at least 30 appointments a month. Believing that the preacher’s efficiency was promoted by his being changed from one circuit to another every year or two, Wesley established the “itinerancy” and insisted that his preachers submit to its rules. Ordination of ministers As the societies multiplied, they adopted the elements of an ecclesiastical system. The divide between Wesley and the Church of England widened. The question of division from the Church of England was urged by some of his preachers and societies, but most strenuously opposed by his brother Charles. Wesley refused to leave the Church of England, believing that Anglicanism was "with all her blemishes, [...] nearer the Scriptural plans than any other in Europe". In 1745 Wesley wrote that he would make any concession which his conscience permitted, in order to live in peace with the clergy. He could not give up the doctrine of an inward and present salvation by faith itself. He would not stop preaching, nor dissolve the societies, nor end preaching by lay members. As a cleric of the established church he had no plans to go further. When, in 1746, Wesley read Lord King on the primitive church, he became convinced that the concept of apostolic succession in Anglicanism was a “fable”. He wrote that he was “a scriptural episkopos as much as many men in England.” Many years later, Edward Stillingfleet’s Irenicon led him to decide that ordination could be valid when performed by a presbyter rather than a bishop. Nevertheless, many believe that Wesley was consecrated a bishop in 1763 by Erasmus of Arcadia, and that Wesley could not openly announce his episcopal consecration without incurring the penalty of the Præmunire Act. In 1784, he believed he could not longer wait for the Bishop of London to ordain someone for the American Methodists, who were without the sacraments after the American War of Independence. The Church of England had been disestablished in the United States, where it had been the state church in most of the southern colonies. The Church of England had not yet appointed a United States bishop to what would become the Protestant Episcopal Church in America. Wesley ordained Thomas Coke by the laying on of hands although Coke was already a priest in the Church of England. Wesley appointed him to be superintendent of Methodists in the United States. He also ordained Richard Whatcoat and Thomas Vasey as presbyters. Whatcoat and Vasey sailed to America with Coke. Wesley intended that Coke and Asbury (whom Coke ordained) should ordain others in the newly founded Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States. His brother Charles grew alarmed and begged Wesley to stop before he had “quite broken down the bridge” and not embitter his [Charles’] last moments on earth, nor “leave an indelible blot on our memory.” Wesley replied that he had not separated from the church, nor did he intend to, but he must and would save as many souls as he could while alive, “without being careful about what may possibly be when I die.” Although Wesley rejoiced that the Methodists in America were free, he advised his English followers to remain in the established church and he himself died within it. Doctrines, theology and advocacy The 20th-century Wesley scholar Albert Outler argued in his introduction to the 1964 collection John Wesley that Wesley developed his theology by using a method that Outler termed the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. In this method, Wesley believed that the living core of the Christian faith was revealed in Scripture; and the Bible was the sole foundational source of theological or doctrinal development. The centrality of Scripture was so important for Wesley that he called himself “a man of one book”– meaning the Bible– although he was well-read for his day. However, he believed that doctrine had to be in keeping with Christian orthodox tradition. So, tradition was considered the second aspect of the Quadrilateral. Wesley contended that a part of the theological method would involve experiential faith. In other words, truth would be vivified in personal experience of Christians (overall, not individually), if it were really truth. And every doctrine must be able to be defended rationally. He did not divorce faith from reason. Tradition, experience and reason, however, were subject always to Scripture, Wesley argued, because only there is the Word of God revealed “so far as it is necessary for our salvation.” The doctrines which Wesley emphasised in his sermons and writings are prevenient grace, present personal salvation by faith, the witness of the Spirit, and sanctification. Prevenient grace was the theological underpinning of his belief that all persons were capable of being saved by faith in Christ. Unlike the Calvinists of his day, Wesley did not believe in predestination, that is, that some persons had been elected by God for salvation and others for damnation. He understood that Christian orthodoxy insisted that salvation was only possible by the sovereign grace of God. He expressed his understanding of humanity’s relationship to God as utter dependence upon God’s grace. God was at work to enable all people to be capable of coming to faith by empowering humans to have actual existential freedom of response to God. Wesley defined the witness of the Spirit as: “an inward impression on the soul of believers, whereby the Spirit of God directly testifies to their spirit that they are the children of God.” He based this doctrine upon certain Biblical passages (see Romans 8:15–16 as an example). This doctrine was closely related to his belief that salvation had to be “personal.” In his view, a person must ultimately believe the Good News for himself or herself; no one could be in relation to God for another. Sanctification he described in 1790 as the "grand depositum which God has lodged with the people called `Methodists’." Wesley taught that sanctification was obtainable after justification by faith, between justification and death. He did not contend for “sinless perfection”; rather, he contended that a Christian could be made “perfect in love”. (Wesley studied Eastern Orthodoxy and particularly the doctrine of Theosis). This love would mean, first of all, that a believer’s motives, rather than being self-centred, would be guided by the deep desire to please God. One would be able to keep from committing what Wesley called, “sin rightly so-called.” By this he meant a conscious or intentional breach of God’s will or laws. A person could still be able to sin, but intentional or wilful sin could be avoided. Secondly, to be made perfect in love meant, for Wesley, that a Christian could live with a primary guiding regard for others and their welfare. He based this on Christ’s quote that the second great command is “to love your neighbour as you love yourself.” In his view, this orientation would cause a person to avoid any number of sins against his neighbour. This love, plus the love for God that could be the central focus of a person’s faith, would be what Wesley referred to as “a fulfilment of the law of Christ.” Advocacy of Arminianism Wesley entered controversies as he tried to enlarge church practice. The most notable of his controversies was that on Calvinism. His father was of the Arminian school in the church. Wesley came to his own conclusions while in college and expressed himself strongly against the doctrines of Calvinistic election and reprobation. His system of thought has become known as Wesleyan Arminianism, the foundations of which were laid by Wesley and Fletcher. Whitefield inclined to Calvinism. In his first tour in America, he embraced the views of the New England School of Calvinism. When in 1739 Wesley preached a sermon on Freedom of Grace, attacking the Calvinistic understanding of predestination as blasphemous, as it represented “God as worse than the devil,” Whitefield asked him not to repeat or publish the discourse, as he did not want a dispute. Wesley published his sermon anyway. Whitefield was one of many who responded. The two men separated their practice in 1741. Wesley wrote that those who held to unlimited atonement did not desire separation, but “those who held 'particular redemption’ would not hear of any accommodation.” Whitefield, Harris, Cennick, and others, became the founders of Calvinistic Methodism. Whitefield and Wesley, however, were soon back on friendly terms, and their friendship remained unbroken although they travelled different paths. When someone asked Whitefield if he thought he would see Wesley in heaven, Whitefield replied, “I fear not, for he will be so near the eternal throne and we at such a distance, we shall hardly get sight of him.” In 1770, the controversy broke out anew with violence and bitterness, as people’s view of God related to their views of men and their possibilities. Augustus Montague Toplady, Rowland, Richard Hill and others were engaged on one side, while Wesley and Fletcher stood on the other. Toplady was editor of The Gospel Magazine, which had articles covering the controversy. In 1778, Wesley began the publication of The Arminian Magazine, not, he said, to convince Calvinists, but to preserve Methodists. He wanted to teach the truth that “God willeth all men to be saved.” A “lasting peace” could be secured in no other way. Support for abolitionism Later in his ministry, Wesley was a keen abolitionist, speaking out and writing against the slave trade. He published a pamphlet on slavery, titled Thoughts Upon Slavery, in 1774. To quote from one of his tracts against the slave trade: “Liberty is the right of every human creature, as soon as he breathes the vital air; and no human law can deprive him of that right which he derives from the law of nature”. Wesley was a friend of John Newton and William Wilberforce who were also influential in the abolition of slavery in Britain. Personality and activities John Wesley travelled generally on horseback, preaching two or three times each day. Stephen Tomkins writes that he "rode 250,000 miles, gave away 30,000 pounds,... and preached more than 40,000 sermons... ” He formed societies, opened chapels, examined and commissioned preachers, administered aid charities, prescribed for the sick, helped to pioneer the use of electric shock for the treatment of illness, superintended schools and orphanages, and received at least £20,000 for his publications but used little of it for himself. Wesley practiced a vegetarian diet and abstained from wine. Wesley warned against the dangers of alcohol abuse in his famous sermon, “The Use of Money,” and in his letter to an alcoholic. Following his lead, Methodist churches became pioneers in the Temperance movement of the 19th and 20th centuries. After attending a performance in Bristol Cathedral in 1758, Wesley said: “I went to the cathedral to hear Mr. Handel’s Messiah. I doubt if that congregation was ever so serious at a sermon as they were during this performance. In many places, especially several of the choruses, it exceeded my expectation.” He is described as below medium height, well proportioned, strong, with a bright eye, a clear complexion, and a saintly, intellectual face. Wesley married very unhappily at the age of 48 to a widow, Mary Vazeille, described as “a well-to-do widow and mother of four children.” The couple had no children. Vazeille left him 15 years later. John Singleton writes: "By 1758 she had left him– unable to cope, it is said, with the competition for his time and devotion presented by the ever-burgeoning Methodist movement. Molly, as she was known, was to return and leave him again on several occasions before their final separation." Wesley wryly reported in his journal, “I did not forsake her, I did not dismiss her, I will not recall her.” In 1770, at the death of George Whitefield, Wesley wrote a memorial sermon which praised Whitefield’s admirable qualities and acknowledged the two men’s differences: “There are many doctrines of a less essential nature... In these we may think and let think; we may ‘agree to disagree.’ But, meantime, let us hold fast the essentials...” Wesley was the first to put the phrase “agree to disagree” in print. Death Wesley died on 2 March 1791, in his 87th year. As he lay dying, his friends gathered around him, Wesley grasped their hands and said repeatedly, “Farewell, farewell.” At the end, he said, “The best of all is, God is with us”, lifted his arms and raised his feeble voice again, repeating the words, “The best of all is, God is with us.” He was entombed at Wesley’s Chapel, which he built in City Road, London, in England. The site also is now both a place of worship and a visitor attraction, incorporating the Museum of Methodism and John Wesley’s House. Because of his charitable nature he died poor, leaving as the result of his life’s work 135,000 members and 541 itinerant preachers under the name “Methodist”. It has been said that “when John Wesley was carried to his grave, he left behind him a good library of books, a well-worn clergyman’s gown” and the Methodist Church. Literary work Wesley was a logical thinker and expressed himself clearly, concisely and forcefully in writing. His written sermons are characterised by spiritual earnestness and simplicity. They are doctrinal but not dogmatic. His Notes on the New Testament (1755) are enlightening. Both the Sermons (about 140) and the Notes are doctrinal standards. Wesley was a fluent, powerful and effective preacher. He usually preached spontaneously and briefly, though occasionally at great length. As an organiser, a religious leader and a statesman, he was eminent. He knew how to lead and control men to achieve his purposes. He used his power, not to provoke rebellion, but to inspire love. His mission was to spread “Scriptural holiness”; his means and plans were such as Providence indicated. The course thus mapped out for him he pursued with a determination from which nothing could distract him. Wesley’s prose Works were first collected by himself (32 vols., Bristol, 1771–74, frequently reprinted in editions varying greatly in the number of volumes). His chief prose works are a standard publication in seven octavo volumes of the Methodist Book Concern, New York. The Poetical Works of John and Charles, ed. G. Osborn, appeared in 13 vols., London, 1868–72. In addition to his Sermons and Notes are his Journals (originally published in 20 parts, London, 1740–89; new ed. by N. Curnock containing notes from unpublished diaries, 6 vols., vols. i.-ii., London and New York, 1909–11); The Doctrine of Original Sin (Bristol, 1757; in reply to Dr. John Taylor of Norwich); "An Earnest Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion (originally published in three parts; 2d ed., Bristol, 1743), an elaborate defence of Methodism, describing the evils of the times in society and the church; a Plain Account of Christian Perfection (1766). Wesley adapted the Book of Common Prayer for use by American Methodists. In his Watch Night service, he made use of a pietist prayer now generally known as the Wesley Covenant Prayer, perhaps his most famous contribution to Christian liturgy. He also was a noted hymn-writer, translator and compiler of a hymnal. Wesley also wrote on divine physics, such as in Desideratum, subtitled Electricity made Plain and Useful by a Lover of Mankind and of Common Sense (1759). In spite of the proliferation of his literary output, Wesley was challenged for plagiarism for borrowing heavily from an essay by Samuel Johnson, publishing in March 1775. Initially denying the charge, Wesley later recanted and apologised officially. Legacy Wesley continues to be the primary theological influence on Methodists and Methodist-heritage groups the world over; the largest bodies being the United Methodist Church, the Methodist Church of Great Britain and the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Wesleyan teachings also serve as a basis for the holiness movement, which includes denominations like the Wesleyan Church, the Free Methodist Church, the Church of the Nazarene, the Christian and Missionary Alliance, the Church of God (Anderson, IN), and several smaller groups, and from which Pentecostalism and parts of the Charismatic Movement are offshoots. Wesley’s call to personal and social holiness continues to challenge Christians who attempt to discern what it means to participate in the Kingdom of God. In addition, he refined Arminianism with a strong evangelical emphasis on the Reformed doctrine of justification by faith. He is commemorated in the Calendar of Saints of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America on 2 March with his brother Charles. The Wesley brothers are also commemorated on 3 March in the Calendar of Saints of the Episcopal Church and on 24 May in the Anglican calendar. Wesley’s legacy is preserved in Kingswood School, which he founded in 1748 in order to educate the children of the growing number of Methodist preachers. Also, one of the four form houses at the St Marylebone Church of England School, London, is named after John Wesley. In 2002, Wesley was listed at number 50 on the BBC’s list of the 100 Greatest Britons. In 1831, Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, was the first institution of higher education in the United States to be named after Wesley. The now secular institution was founded as an all-male Methodist college. About 20 unrelated colleges and universities in the US were subsequently named after him. In film In 1954, the Radio and Film Commission of the Methodist Church in cooperation with J. Arthur Rank produced the film John Wesley. The film was a live-action re-telling of the story of the life of John Wesley, with Leonard Sachs as Wesley. In 2009, a more ambitious feature film, Wesley, was released by Foundery Pictures, starring Burgess Jenkins as John Wesley, with June Lockhart as Susanna Wesley, R. Keith Harris as Charles Wesley, and the Golden Globe winner Kevin McCarthy as Bishop Ryder. The film was directed by the award-winning film-maker John Jackman. Works * A Collection of Different Forms of Prayer for Every Day in the Week (1733) * A Treatise on Christian Prudence Extracted from Mr. Norris (1734) * An Earnest Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion (originally published in three parts; 2d ed., Bristol, 1743) * Primitive Physic, Or, An Easy and Natural Method of Curing Most Diseases, London: 1744 * Notes on the New Testament 1755 * The Doctrine of Original Sin (Bristol, 1757; in reply to Dr. John Taylor of Norwich) * The Desideratum; or, Electricity Made Plain and Useful (1759) London: Bailliere, Tindall, and Cox. Published 1871. (digital copy) * A Plain Account of Christian Perfection (1766) * Works (32 vols., Bristol, 1771–74. Printed by William Pine. This edition has many errors.) * Works (17 Vols., 1809-1813, Edited by Joseph Benson. This is better than the preceding, but is still very erroneus.) * Works (14 Vols., 1827, edited by Thomas Jackson. At present, the standard edition.) * Works (7 Vols., 1831, an American Edition edited by John Emory, combining two volumes of the Jackson Edition into one. Containing two extra letters and more footnotes.) * Works (15 Vols., the Jackson Edition with an additional volume containing his Notes to the New Testament) * The Poetical Works of John and Charles, ed. G. Osborn, 13 vols., London, 1868–72 * Journals (originally published in 20 parts, London, 1740–89; new ed. by N. Curnock containing notes from unpublished diaries, 6 vols., vols. i.-ii., London and New York, 1909–11) References Wikipedia—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wesley

Arthur Hugh Clough (1 January 1819 – 13 November 1861) was an English poet, an educationalist, and the devoted assistant to ground-breaking nurse Florence Nightingale. He was the brother of suffragist Anne Clough, who became principal of Newnham College, Cambridge. He was born in Liverpool to James Butler Clough, a cotton merchant of Welsh descent, and Anne Perfect, from Pontefract in Yorkshire. In 1822 the family moved to the United States, and Clough’s early childhood was spent mainly in Charleston, South Carolina. In 1828 Clough and his older brother Charles returned to England to attend school in Chester.

George Gascoigne (c. 1535– 7 October 1577) was an English poet, soldier and unsuccessful courtier. He is considered the most important poet of the early Elizabethan era, following Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey and leading to the emergence of Philip Sidney. He was the first poet to deify Queen Elizabeth I, in effect establishing her cult as a virgin goddess married to her kingdom and subjects. His most noted works include A Discourse of the Adventures of Master FJ (1573), an account of courtly sexual intrigue and one of the earliest English prose fictions; The Supposes, (performed in 1566, printed in 1573), an early translation of Ariosto and the first comedy written in English prose, which was used by Shakespeare as a source for The Taming of the Shrew; the frequently anthologised short poem “Gascoignes wodmanship” (1573); and “Certayne Notes of Instruction concerning the making of verse or ryme in English” (1575), the first essay on English versification. Early life The eldest son of Sir John Gascoigne of Cardington, Bedfordshire, Gascoigne was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and on leaving the university is supposed to have joined the Middle Temple. He became a member of Gray’s Inn in 1555. He has been identified without much show of evidence with a lawyer named Gastone who was in prison in 1548 under very discreditable circumstances. There is no doubt that his escapades were notorious, and that he was imprisoned for debt. George Whetstone says that Sir John Gascoigne disinherited his son on account of his follies, but by his own account he was obliged to sell his patrimony to pay the debts contracted at court. He was M.P. for Bedford in 1557–1558 and 1558–1559, but when he presented himself in 1572 for election at Midhurst he was refused on the charges of being “a defamed person and noted for manslaughter”, “a common Rymer and a deviser of slaunderous Pasquelles”, “a notorious rufilanne”, and a constantly indebted atheist. His poems, with the exception of some commendatory verses, were not published before 1572, but they may have circulated in manuscript before that date. He tells us that his friends at Gray’s Inn importuned him to write on Latin themes set by them, and that two of his plays were acted there. He repaired his fortunes by marrying the wealthy widow of William Breton, thus becoming stepfather to the poet, Nicholas Breton. In 1568 an inquiry into the disposition of William Breton’s property with a view to the protection of the children’s rights was instituted before the Lord Mayor, but the matter was probably settled in a friendly manner, for Gascoigne continued to hold the Breton Walthamstow estate, which he had from his wife, until his death. Plays at Grays Inn Gascoigne translated two plays performed in 1566 at Grays Inn, the most aristocratic of the Renaissance London Inns of Court: the prose comedy Supposes based on Ariosto’s Suppositi, and Jocasta, a tragedy in blank verse which is said to have derived from Euripides’s Phoenissae, but appears more directly as a translation from the Italian of Lodovico Dolce’s Giocasta. Hundredth Sundry Flowres (1573) and Posies of Gascoigne (1575) Gascoigne’s best known and controversial work was originally published in 1573 under the title A Hundredth Sundry Flowres bound up in one small Posie. Gathered partly (by translation) in the fyne outlandish Gardens of Euripides, Ovid, Petrarch, Ariosto and others; and partly by Invention out of our owne fruitfull Orchardes in Englande, Yelding Sundrie Savours of tragical, comical and moral discourse, bothe pleasaunt and profitable, to the well-smelling noses of learned readers, by London printer Richarde Smith. The book purports to be an anthology of courtly poets, gathered and edited by Gascoigne and two other editors known only by the initials “H.W.” and “G.T.” The book’s content is throughout suggestive of courtly scandal, and the aura of scandal is skillfully elaborated through the effective use of initials and posies—Latin or English tags supposed to denote particular authors—in place of the real names of actual or alleged authors. For reasons that are still unclear, the book was republished, with certain additions and deletions, two years later under the alternative title, The Posies of George Gascoigne, Esquire. The new edition contains three new dedicatory epistles, signed by Gascoigne, which apologize for some offense that the original edition had caused and effect to transfer sole responsibility for the book’s content to Gascoigne himself. At war in the Netherlands When Gascoigne sailed as a soldier of fortune to the Low Countries in 1572, his ship was driven by stress of weather to Brielle, which luckily for him had just fallen into the hands of the Dutch. He obtained a captain’s commission, and took an active part in the campaigns of the next two years including the Middelburg siege, during which he acquired a profound dislike of the Dutch, and a great admiration for William of Orange, who had personally intervened on his behalf in a quarrel with his colonel, and secured him against the suspicion caused by his clandestine visits to a lady at the Hague. Taken prisoner after the evacuation of Valkenburg by English troops during the Siege of Leiden, he was sent to England in the autumn of 1574. He dedicated to Lord Grey de Wilton the story of his adventures, The Fruites of Warres (printed in the edition of 1575) and Gascoigne’s Voyage into Hollande. In 1575 he had a share in devising the masques, published in the next year as The Princely Pleasures at the Courte at Kenelworth, which celebrated the queen’s visit to the Earl of Leicester. At Woodstock in 1575 he delivered a prose speech before Elizabeth, and was present at a reading of the Pleasant Tale of Hemetes the Hermit, a brief romance, probably written by the queen’s host, Sir Henry Lee. At the queen’s annual gift exchange with members of her court the following New Year’s, Gascoigne gave her a manuscript of Hemetes which he had translated into Latin, Italian, and French. Its frontispiece shows the Queen rewarding the kneeling poet with an accolade and a purse; its motto, “Tam Marti, quam Mercurio,” indicates that he will serve her as a soldier, as a scholar-poet, or as both. He also drew three emblems, with accompanying text in the three other languages. He also translated Jacques du Fouilloux’s La Venerie (1561) into English as The Noble Arte of Venerie or Hunting (1575) which was printed together with George Turberville’s The Book of Falconrie or Hawking and is thus sometimes misattributed to Turberville though in fact it was a work by Gascoigne. Later writings and influences Most of his works were published during the last years of his life after his return from the wars. He died 7 October 1577 at Walcot Hall, Barnack, near Stamford, where he was the guest of George Whetstone and was buried in the Whetstone family vault at St John the Baptist’s Church, Barnack. Gascoigne’s theory of metrical composition is explained in a short critical treatise, “Certayne Notes of Instruction concerning the making of verse or ryme in English, written at the request of Master Edouardo Donati,” prefixed to his Posies (1575). He acknowledged Chaucer as his master, and differed from the earlier poets of the school of Surrey and Wyatt chiefly in the greater smoothness and sweetness of his verse. Ancestry References Wikipedia—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gascoigne

Gerald Massey (29 May 1828 – 29 October 1907) was an English poet and writer on Spiritualism and Ancient Egypt. Early life Massey was born near Tring, Hertfordshire in England to poor parents. When little more than a child, he was made to work hard in a silk factory, which he afterward deserted for the equally laborious occupation of straw plaiting. These early years were rendered gloomy by much distress and deprivation, against which the young man strove with increasing spirit and virility, educating himself in his spare time, and gradually cultivating his innate taste for literary work. He was attracted by the movement known as Christian Socialism, into which he threw himself with whole-hearted vigour, and so became associated with Frederick Denison Maurice and Charles Kingsley. Later life From about 1870 onwards, Massey became increasingly interested in Egyptology and the similarities that exist between ancient Egyptian mythology and the Gospel stories. He studied the extensive Egyptian records housed in the Assyrian and Egyptology section of the British Museum in London where he worked closely with the curator, Dr. Samuel Birch, and other leading Egyptologists of his day, even learning hieroglyphics at the time the Temple of Horus at Edfu was first being excavated. Writing career Massey's first public appearance as a writer was in connection with a journal called the Spirit of Freedom, of which he became editor, and he was only twenty-two when he published his first volume of poems, Voices of Freedom and Lyrics of Love (1850). These he followed in rapid succession with The Ballad of Babe Christabel (1854), War Waits (1855), Havelock's March (1860), and A Tale of Eternity (1869). In 1889, Massey published a two-volume collection of his poems called My Lyrical Life. He also published works dealing with Spiritualism, the study of Shakespeare's sonnets (1872 and 1890), and theological speculation. It is generally understood that he was the original of George Eliot's Felix Holt.[1] Massey's poetry has a certain rough and vigorous element of sincerity and strength which easily accounts for its popularity at the time of its production. He treated the theme of Sir Richard Grenville before Tennyson thought of using it, with much force and vitality. Indeed, Tennyson's own praise of Massey's work is still its best eulogy, for the Laureate found in him a poet of fine lyrical impulse, and of a rich half-Oriental imagination. The inspiration of his poetry is a combination of his vast knowledge based on travels, research and experiences; he was a patriotic humanist to the core. His poem "The Merry, Merry May" was set to music in 1894 by the composer Cyril Rootham and then in a popular song by composer Christabel Baxendale. In regard to Ancient Egypt, Massey first published The Book of the Beginnings, followed by The Natural Genesis. His most prolific work is Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World, published shortly before his death. Massey was a believer in spiritual evolution; he opined that Darwin's theory of evolution was incomplete without spiritualism: The theory contains only one half the explanation of man's origins and needs spiritualism to carry it through and complete it. For while this ascent on the physical side has been progressing through myriads of ages, the Divine descent has also been going on – man being spiritually an incarnation from the Divine as well as a human development from the animal creation. The cause of the development is spiritual. Mr. Darwin's theory does not in the least militate against ours – we think it necessitates it; he simply does not deal with our side of the subject. He can not go lower than the dust of the earth for the matter of life; and for us, the main interest of our origin must lie in the spiritual domain. Assertions about Jesus and Horus One of the more important aspects of Massey's writings were his assertions that there were parallels between Jesus and the Egyptian god Horus, primarily contained in book The Natural Genesis first published in 1883. Massey, for example, argued in the book his belief that: both Horus and Jesus were born of virgins on 25 December, raised men from the dead (Massey speculates that the biblical Lazarus, raised from the dead by Jesus, has a parallel in El-Asar-Us, a title of Osiris), died by crucifixion and were resurrected three days later.[5] These assertions have influenced various later writers such as Alvin Boyd Kuhn, Tom Harpur, Yosef Ben-Jochannan, and Dorothy M. Murdock.[6][7][unreliable source?] Like Godfrey Higgins a half-century earlier, Massey believed that Western religions had mythical roots. The human mind has long suffered an eclipse and been darkened and dwarfed in the shadow of ideas the real meaning of which has been lost to moderns. Myths and allegories whose significance was once unfolded in the Mysteries have been adopted in ignorance and reissued as real truths directly and divinely vouchsafed to humanity for the first and only time! The early religions had their myths interpreted. We have ours misinterpreted. And a great deal of what has been imposed on us as God’s own true and sole revelation to us is a mass of inverted myths. Christian ignorance notwithstanding, the Gnostic Jesus is the Egyptian Horus who was continued by the various sects of gnostics under both the names of Horus and of Jesus. In the gnostic iconography of the Roman Catacombs child-Horus reappears as the mummy-babe who wears the solar disc. The royal Horus is represented in the cloak of royalty, and the phallic emblem found there witnesses to Jesus being Horus of the resurrection. Criticism Christian theologian W. Ward Gasque, a Ph.D. from Harvard and Manchester University, sent emails to twenty Egyptologists that he considered leaders of the field – including Kenneth Kitchen of the University of Liverpool and Ron Leprohan of the University of Toronto – in Canada, the United States, Britain, Australia, Germany and Austria to verify academic support for some of these assertions. His primary targets were Tom Harpur, Alvin Boyd Kuhn and the Christ myth theory, and only indirectly Massey. Ten out of twenty responded, but most were not named. According to Gasque, Massey's work, which draws comparisons between the Judeo-Christian religion and the Egyptian religion, is not considered significant in the field of modern Egyptology and is not mentioned in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt or similar reference works of modern Egyptology. Gasque reports that those who responded were unanimous in dismissing the proposed etymologies for Jesus and Christ, and one unspecified Egyptologist referred to Alvin Boyd Kuhn's comparison as "fringe nonsense."[11][unreliable source?] However, Harpur's response to Gasque quotes leading contemporary Egyptologist Erik Hornung that there are parallels between Christianity and ancient Egypt, as do the writings of biblical expert Thomas L. Thompson. Theologian Stanley E. Porter has pointed out that Massey's analogies include a number of errors, for example Massey stated that 25 December as the date of birth of Jesus was selected based on the birth of Horus, but the New Testament does not include any reference to the date or season of the birth of Jesus. The earliest known source recognizing 25 December as the date of birth of Jesus is by Hippolytus of Rome, written around the beginning of the 3rd century, based on the assumption that the conception of Jesus took place at the Spring equinox. Hippolytus placed the equinox on 25 March and then added 9 months to get 25 December, thus establishing the date for festivals. The Roman Chronography of 354 then included an early reference to the celebration of a Nativity feast in December, as of the fourth century. Porter states that Massey's serious historical errors often render his works nonsensical, for example Massey states that the biblical references to Herod the Great were based on the myth of "Herrut" the evil hydra serpent, while the existence of Herod the Great can be well established without reliance on Christian sources. References Wikipedia—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Massey

William Cosmo Monkhouse (18 March 1840– 20 July 1901) was an English poet and critic. He was born in London. His father, Cyril John Monkhouse, was a solicitor; his mother’s maiden name was Delafosse. He was educated at St Paul’s School, quitting it at seventeen to enter the board of trade as a junior supplementary clerk, from which grade he rose eventually to be the assistant-secretary to the finance department of the office. In 1870–71 he visited South America in connection with the hospital accommodation for seamen at Valparaíso, Chile, and other ports; and he served on different departmental committees, notably that of 1894–96 on the Mercantile Marine Fund. He was twice married: first, to Laura, daughter of James Keymer of Dartford; and, secondly, to Leonora Eliza, daughter of Commander Blount, R.N.

John Henry Newman Cong. Orat. (21 February 1801– 11 August 1890), also referred to as Cardinal Newman, John Henry Cardinal Newman, and Blessed John Henry Newman, was an important figure in the religious history of England in the 19th century. He was known nationally by the mid-1830s. Originally an evangelical Oxford University academic and priest in the Church of England, Newman then became drawn to the high-church tradition of Anglicanism. He became known as a leader of, and an able polemicist for, the Oxford Movement, an influential and controversial grouping of Anglicans who wished to return to the Church of England many Catholic beliefs and liturgical rituals from before the English Reformation. In this the movement had some success. However, in 1845 Newman, joined by some but not all of his followers, left the Church of England and his teaching post at Oxford University and was received into the Catholic Church. He was quickly ordained as a priest and continued as an influential religious leader, based in Birmingham. In 1879, he was created a cardinal by Pope Leo XIII in recognition of his services to the cause of the Catholic Church in England. He was instrumental in the founding of the Catholic University of Ireland, which evolved into University College Dublin, today the largest university in Ireland. Newman’s beatification was officially proclaimed by Pope Benedict XVI on 19 September 2010 during his visit to the United Kingdom. His canonisation is dependent on the documentation of additional miracles attributed to his intercession. Newman was also a literary figure of note: his major writings including the Tracts for the Times (1833–1841), his autobiography Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1865–66), the Grammar of Assent (1870), and the poem The Dream of Gerontius (1865), which was set to music in 1900 by Edward Elgar. He wrote the popular hymns “Lead, Kindly Light” and “Praise to the Holiest in the Height” (taken from Gerontius). Early life and education Newman was born in the City of London, the eldest of a family of three sons and three daughters. His father, John Newman, was a banker with Ramsbottom, Newman and Company in Lombard Street. His mother, Jemima (née Fourdrinier), was descended from a notable family of Huguenot refugees in England, founded by the engraver, printer and stationer, Paul Fourdrinier. Francis William Newman was a younger brother. His eldest sister, Harriet Elizabeth, married Thomas Mozley, also prominent in the Oxford Movement. The family lived in Southampton Street (now Southampton Place) in Bloomsbury and bought a country retreat in Ham, near Richmond, in the early 1800s. At school in Ealing At the age of seven Newman was sent to Great Ealing School conducted by George Nicholas. There George Huxley, father of Thomas Henry Huxley, taught mathematics, and the classics teacher was Walter Mayers. Newman took no part in the casual school games. He was a great reader of the novels of Walter Scott, then in course of publication, and of Robert Southey. Aged 14, he read sceptical works by Thomas Paine, David Hume and perhaps Voltaire. Evangelical At the age of 15, during his last year at school, Newman was converted, an incident of which he wrote in his Apologia that it was “more certain than that I have hands or feet”. Almost at the same time (March 1816) the bank Ramsbottom, Newman and Co. crashed, though it paid its creditors and his father left to manage a brewery. Mayers, who had himself undergone a conversion in 1814, lent Newman books from the English Calvinist tradition. It was in the autumn of 1816 that Newman “fell under the influence of a definite creed”, and received into his intellect “impressions of dogma, which, through God’s mercy, have never been effaced or obscured”. He became an evangelical Calvinist and held the typical belief that the Pope was the antichrist under the influence of the writings of Thomas Newton, as well as his reading of Joseph Milner’s History of the Church of Christ. Mayers is described as a moderate, Clapham Sect Calvinist, and Newman read William Law as well as William Beveridge in devotional literature. He also read The Force of Truth by Thomas Scott. Although to the end of his life Newman looked back on his conversion to evangelical Christianity in 1816 as the saving of his soul, he gradually shifted away from his early Calvinism. As Eamon Duffy puts it, “He came to see Evangelicalism, with its emphasis on religious feeling and on the Reformation doctrine of justification by faith alone, as a Trojan horse for an undogmatic religious individualism that ignored the Church’s role in the transmission of revealed truth, and that must lead inexorably to subjectivism and skepticism.” At university Newman’s name was entered at Lincoln’s Inn. He was, however, sent shortly to Trinity College, Oxford, where he studied widely. Anxiety to do well in the final schools produced the opposite result; he broke down in the examination, under Thomas Vowler Short, and so graduated as a BA with third-class honours in 1821. Desiring to remain in Oxford, Newman then took private pupils and read for a fellowship at Oriel, then “the acknowledged centre of Oxford intellectualism.” He was elected at Oriel on 12 April 1822. Edward Bouverie Pusey was elected a fellow of the same college in 1823. Anglican priest On 13 June 1824, Newman was made an Anglican deacon in Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford. Ten days later he preached his first sermon in Holy Trinity at Over Worton, near Banbury, Oxfordshire when on a visit to his former teacher, the Reverend Walter Mayers, who had been curate there since 1823. On Trinity Sunday, 29 May 1825, he was ordained a priest in Christ Church Cathedral by the Bishop of Oxford, Edward Legge. He became, at Pusey’s suggestion, curate of St Clement’s Church, Oxford. Here, for two years, he was engaged in parochial work, and wrote articles on Apollonius of Tyana, Cicero and Miracles for the Encyclopædia Metropolitana. Richard Whately and Edward Copleston, Provost of Oriel, were leaders in the group of Oriel Noetics, a group of independently thinking dons with a strong belief in free debate. In 1825, at Whately’s request, Newman became vice-principal of St Alban Hall, but he only held this post for one year. He attributed much of his “mental improvement” and partial conquest of his shyness at this time to Whately. In 1826 Newman returned as tutor of Oriel, and the same year Richard Hurrell Froude, described by Newman as “one of the acutest, cleverest and deepest men” he ever met, was elected fellow there. The two formed a high ideal of the tutorial office as clerical and pastoral rather than secular, which led to tensions in the college. Newman assisted Whately in his popular work Elements of Logic (1826, initially for the Encyclopædia Metropolitana), and from him gained a definite idea of the Christian Church as institution: “... a Divine appointment, and as a substantive body, independent of the State, and endowed with rights, prerogatives and powers of its own”. Newman broke with Whately in 1827 on the occasion of the re-election of Robert Peel as Member of Parliament for the university: Newman opposed Peel on personal grounds. In 1827 Newman was a preacher at Whitehall. Oxford Movement In 1828 Newman supported and secured the election of Edward Hawkins as Provost of Oriel over John Keble. This choice, he later commented, produced the Oxford Movement with all its consequences. In the same year Newman was appointed vicar of St Mary’s University Church, to which the benefice of Littlemore (to the south of the city of Oxford) was attached, and Pusey was made Regius Professor of Hebrew. At this date, though Newman was still nominally associated with the Evangelicals, his views were gradually assuming a higher ecclesiastical tone. George Herring considers that the death of his sister Mary in January had a major impact on Newman. In the middle part of the year he worked to read the Church Fathers thoroughly. While local secretary of the Church Missionary Society, Newman circulated an anonymous letter suggesting a method by which Anglican clergy might practically oust Nonconformists from all control of the society. This resulted in his being dismissed from the post on 8 March 1830; and three months later Newman withdrew from the Bible Society, completing his move away from the Low Church group. In 1831–1832 Newman became the “Select Preacher” before the University. In 1832 his difference with Hawkins as to the “substantially religious nature” of a college tutorship became acute and prompted his resignation. Mediterranean travels In December 1832, Newman went with Hurrell Froude, on account of the latter’s health, for a tour in Southern Europe. On board the mail steamship Hermes they visited Gibraltar, Malta, the Ionian Islands and, subsequently, Sicily, Naples and Rome, where Newman made the acquaintance of Nicholas Wiseman. In a letter home he described Rome as “the most wonderful place on Earth”, but the Roman Catholic Church as “polytheistic, degrading and idolatrous”. During the course of this tour, Newman wrote most of the short poems which a year later were printed in the Lyra Apostolica. From Rome, instead of accompanying the Froudes home in April, Newman returned to Sicily alone. He fell dangerously ill with gastric or typhoid fever at Leonforte, but recovered, with the conviction that God still had work for him to do in England. Newman saw this as his third providential illness. In June 1833 he left Palermo for Marseille in an orange boat, which was becalmed in the Strait of Bonifacio. Here, Newman wrote the verses “Lead, Kindly Light” which later became popular as a hymn. Tracts for the Times Newman was at home again in Oxford on 9 July 1833 and, on 14 July, Keble preached at St Mary’s an assize sermon on “National Apostasy”, which Newman afterwards regarded as the inauguration of the Oxford Movement. In the words of Richard William Church, it was “Keble who inspired, Froude who gave the impetus and Newman who took up the work”; but the first organisation of it was due to Hugh James Rose, editor of the British Magazine, who has been styled “the Cambridge originator of the Oxford Movement”. Rose met Oxford Movement figures on a visit to Oxford looking for magazine contributors, and it was in his rectory house at Hadleigh, Suffolk, that a meeting of High Church clergy was held over 25–26 July (Newman was not present, but Hurrell Froude, Arthur Philip Perceval and William Palmer had gone to visit Rose), at which it was resolved to fight for “the apostolical succession and the integrity of the Prayer Book.” A few weeks later Newman started, apparently on his own initiative, the Tracts for the Times, from which the movement was subsequently named “Tractarian”. Its aim was to secure for the Church of England a definite basis of doctrine and discipline. At the time the state’s financial stance towards the Church of Ireland had raised the spectres of disestablishment, or an exit of High Churchmen. The teaching of the tracts was supplemented by Newman’s Sunday afternoon sermons at St Mary’s, the influence of which, especially over the junior members of the university, was increasingly marked during a period of eight years. In 1835 Pusey joined the movement, which, so far as concerned ritual observances, was later called “Puseyite”. In 1836 the Tractarians appeared as an activist group, in united opposition to the appointment of Renn Dickson Hampden as Regius Professor of Divinity. Hampden’s 1832 Bampton Lectures, in the preparation of which Joseph Blanco White had assisted him, were suspected of heresy; and this suspicion was accentuated by a pamphlet put forth by Newman, Elucidations of Dr Hampden’s Theological Statements. At this date Newman became editor of the British Critic. He also gave courses of lectures in a side chapel of St Mary’s in defence of the via media ("middle way") of Anglicanism between Roman Catholicism and popular Protestantism. Doubts and opposition Newman’s influence in Oxford was supreme about the year 1839. Just then, however, his study of monophysitism caused him to doubt whether Anglican theology was consistent with the principles of ecclesiastical authority which he had come to accept. He read Nicholas Wiseman’s article in the Dublin Review on “The Anglican Claim”, which quoted Augustine of Hippo against the Donatists, “securus judicat orbis terrarum” ("the verdict of the world is conclusive"). Newman later wrote of his reaction: For a mere sentence, the words of St Augustine, struck me with a power which I never had felt from any words before... they were like the ‘Tolle, lege,—Tolle, lege,’ of the child, which converted St Augustine himself. ‘Securus judicat orbis terrarum!’ By those great words of the ancient Father, interpreting and summing up the long and varied course of ecclesiastical history, the theology of the Via Media was absolutely pulverised. (Apologia, part 5) After a furore in which the eccentric John Brande Morris preached for him in St Mary’s in September 1839, Newman began to think of moving away from Oxford. One plan that surfaced was to set up a religious community in Littlemore, outside the city of Oxford. Since accepting his post at St. Mary’s, Newman had a chapel (dedicated to Sts. Nicholas and Mary) and school built in the parish’s neglected area. Newman’s mother had laid the foundation stone in 1835, based on a half-acre plot and £100 given by Oriel College. Newman planned to appoint Charles Pourtales Golightly, an Oriel man, as curate at Littlemore in 1836. However, Golightly had taken offence at one of Newman’s sermons, and joined a group of aggressive anti-Catholics. Thus, Isaac Williams became Littlemore’s curate instead, succeeded by John Rouse Bloxam from 1837 to 1840, during which the school opened. William John Copeland acted as curate from 1840. Newman continued as a High Anglican controversialist until 1841, when he published Tract 90, which proved the last of the series. This detailed examination of the Thirty-Nine Articles suggested that their framers directed their negations not against Catholicism’s authorised creed, but only against popular errors and exaggerations. Though this was not altogether new, Archibald Campbell Tait, with three other senior tutors, denounced it as “suggesting and opening a way by which men might violate their solemn engagements to the university.” Other heads of houses and others in authority joined in the alarm. At the request of Richard Bagot, the Bishop of Oxford, the publication of the Tracts came to an end. Retreat to Littlemore Newman also resigned the editorship of the British Critic and was thenceforth, as he later described it, “on his deathbed as regards membership with the Anglican Church”. He now considered the position of Anglicans to be similar to that of the semi-Arians in the Arian controversy. The joint Anglican-Lutheran bishopric set up in Jerusalem was to him further evidence that the Church of England was not apostolic. In 1842 Newman withdrew to Littlemore with a small band of followers, and lived in semi-monastic conditions. The first to join him there was John Dobree Dalgairns. Others were William Lockhart on the advice of Henry Manning, Ambrose St John in 1843, Frederick Oakeley and Albany James Christie in 1845. The group adapted buildings in what is now College Lane, Littlemore, opposite the inn, including stables and a granary for stage coaches. Newman called it “the house of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Littlemore” (now Newman College). This “Anglican monastery” attracted publicity, and much curiosity in Oxford, which Newman tried to downplay, but some nicknamed it Newmanooth (from Maynooth College). Some Newman disciples wrote about English saints, while Newman himself worked to complete an Essay on the development of doctrine. In February 1843, Newman published, as an advertisement in the Oxford Conservative Journal, an anonymous but otherwise formal retractation of all the hard things he had said against Roman Catholicism. Lockhart became the first in the group to convert formally to Catholicism. Newman preached his last Anglican sermon at Littlemore, the valedictory “The parting of friends” on 25 September, and resigned the living of St Mary’s, although he did not leave Littlemore for two more years, until his own formal reception into the Catholic Church. Conversion to Roman Catholicism An interval of two years then elapsed before Newman was received into the Roman Catholic Church on 9 October 1845 by Dominic Barberi, an Italian Passionist, at the college in Littlemore. The personal consequences for Newman of his conversion were great: he suffered broken relationships with family and friends, attitudes to him within his Oxford circle becoming polarised. The effect on the wider Tractarian movement is still debated, since Newman’s leading role is regarded by some scholars as overstated, as is Oxford’s domination of the movement as a whole. Tractarian writings had a wide and continuing circulation after 1845, well beyond the range of personal contacts with the main Oxford figures, and Tractarian clergy continued to be recruited into the Church of England in numbers. Oratorian In February 1846, Newman left Oxford for Oscott, where Bishop Wiseman, then vicar-apostolic of the Midland district, resided; and in October he went to Rome, where he was ordained priest by Cardinal Giacomo Filippo Fransoni and awarded the degree of DD by Pope Pius IX. At the close of 1847, Newman returned to England as an Oratorian and resided first at Maryvale (near Old Oscott); then at St Wilfrid’s College, Cheadle; and then at St Anne’s, Alcester Street, Birmingham. Finally he settled at Edgbaston, where spacious premises were built for the community, and where (except for four years in Ireland) he lived a secluded life for nearly forty years. Before the house at Edgbaston was occupied, Newman established the London Oratory, with Father Frederick William Faber as its superior. Lectures on the position of Catholics in England Anti-Catholicism had been central to British culture since the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation. According to D.G. Paz, anti-Catholicism was “an integral part of what it meant to be a Victorian”. Popular Protestant feeling ran high at this time, partly in consequence of the Papal Bull Universalis Ecclesiae which re-established the Catholic diocesan hierarchy in England by Pope Pius IX on 29 September 1850. New Episcopal sees were created and Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman was to be the first Archbishop of Westminster. On 7 October, Wiseman announced the Pope’s restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in England in a pastoral letter From out of the Flaminian Gate: “Catholic England has been restored to its orbit in the ecclesiastical firmament, from which its light had long vanished, and begins anew its course of regularly adjusted action round the centre of unity, the source of jurisdiction, of light and vigour.” Led by The Times and Punch, the British press saw this as being an attempt by the Papacy to claim jurisdiction over England. This was dubbed the “Papal Aggression”. The Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, wrote a public letter to the Bishop of Durham and denounced this “attempt to impose a foreign yoke upon our minds and consciences”. Russell’s stirring up of anti-Catholicism led to a national outcry. This “No Popery” uproar led to violence with Catholic priests being pelted in the streets and Catholic churches being attacked. Newman was keen for lay people to be at the forefront of any public apologetics: “[Catholics should] make the excuse of this persecution for getting up a great organization, going round the towns giving lectures, or making speeches.” He supported John Capes in the committee he was organising for public lectures in February 1851. Due to ill-health, Capes had to stop them half way through. Newman took the initiative and booked the Birmingham Corn Exchange for a series of public lectures. He decided to make their tone popular and provide cheap off-prints to those who attended. These lectures were his Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England and they were delivered weekly, beginning on 30 June and finishing on 1 September 1851. In total there were nine lectures: Protestant view of the Catholic Church Tradition the sustaining power of the Protestant view Fable the basis of the Protestant view True testimony insufficient for the Protestant view Logical inconsistency of the Protestant view Prejudice the life of the Protestant view Assumed principles of the intellectual ground of the Protestant view Ignorance concerning Catholics the protection of the Protestant view Duties of Catholics towards the Protestant view which form the nine chapters of the published book. Following the first edition, a number of paragraphs were removed following the Achilli trial as "they were decided by a jury to constitute a libel, June 24, 1852.” Andrew Nash describes the Lectures as: "an analysis of this [anti-Catholic] ideology, satirising it, demonstrating the false traditions on which it was based and advising Catholics how they should respond to it. They were the first of their kind in English literature.” John Wolffe assesses the Lectures as: “an interesting treatment of the problem of anti-Catholicism from an observer whose partisan commitment did not cause him to slide into mere polemic and who had the advantage of viewing the religious battlefield from both sides of the tortured no man’s land of Littlemore.” The response to the Lectures was split between Catholics and Protestants. Catholics greeted them with enthusiasm. A review in The Rambler, a Catholic periodical, saw them as “furnishing a key to the whole mystery of anti-Catholic hostility and as shewing the special point of attack upon which our controversial energies should be concentrated.” The Protestant response was, predictably, less positive. Archdeacon Julius Hare said that Newman “is determined to say whatever he chooses, in despite of facts and reason”. Wilfred Ward, Newman’s first biographer, describes the Lectures as follows: “We have the very curious spectacle of a grave religious apologist giving rein for the first time at the age of fifty to a sense of rollicking fun and gifts of humorous writing, which if expended on other subjects would naturally have adorned the pages of Thackeray’s Punch.” Ian Ker has raised the profile of Newman’s satire. Ker notes that Newman’s imagery has a “savage, Swiftian flavour” and can be “grotesque in the Dickens manner”. Newman himself described the lectures as his “best written book.” Achilli trial One of the features of English anti-Catholicism was the holding of public meetings at which ex-Catholics, including priests, denounced their former beliefs and gave detailed accounts of the horrors of Catholic life. Giacinto Achilli (1803–1860), an ex-Dominican friar, was one such speaker. In 1833 Achilli, author of Dealings with the inquisition: or, Papal Rome, her priests, and her Jesuits... (1851), had been made Master of Sacred Theology at the College of St. Thomas, the future Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum. Nash describes Achilli’s journey to England thus: [Achilli] had been imprisoned (in a monastery) by the Inquisition for heresy, he claimed, but actually for a series of sexual offences against under-age young women. He had been “rescued” from the Inquisition by a group of English ultra-Protestants as a hero six months before the Papal Aggression crisis broke. He was received by the Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston, greeted a public meeting at Exeter Hall with a specially written hymn, “Hail Roman prisoner, Hail” and given a chapel in London. His Dealings with the Inquisition was a best seller. In his public lectures, sponsored by the Evangelical Alliance, he professed to the errors of Catholicism and to be a sincere Protestant, and his exciting account of the cruelties of the Inquisition made him a credible and popular anti-Catholic speaker. In July 1850, Cardinal Wiseman wrote a detailed exposé of him in The Dublin Review which listed all of his offences. Newman therefore assumed, after seeking legal advice, that he would be able to repeat the facts in his fifth lecture in his Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England. In these lectures, Newman denounced various anti-Catholic utterances. These included those of the Maria Monk, the allegation of cells under his own Oratory on Hagley Road, Birmingham and those of Giacinto Achilli. Newman emphasises the importance of responding to Achilli: For how, Brothers of the Oratory, can we possibly believe a man like this [Achilli], in what he says about persons and facts, and conversations, and events, when he is of the stamp of Maria Monk, of Jeffreys, and of Teodore, and of others who have had their hour, and then been dropped by the indignation or the shame of mankind. The section of the lecture that was decided by jury to constitute a libel was: “I have been a Catholic and an infidel; I have been a Roman priest and a hypocrite; I have been a profligate under a cowl. I am that Father Achilli, who as early as 1826, was deprived of my faculty to lecture, for an offence which my superiors did their best to conceal; and who in 1827 had already earned the reputation of a scandalous friar. I am that Achilli, who in the diocese of Viterbo in February, 1831, robbed of her honour a young women of eighteen; who in September 1833, was found guilty of a second such crime, in the case of a person of twenty-eight; and who perpetrated a third in July, 1834, in the case of another aged twenty-four. I am he, who afterwards was found guilty of sins, similar or worse, in other towns of the neighbourhood. I am that son of St. Dominic who is known to have repeated the offence at Capua, in 1834 or 1835; and at Naples again, in 1840, in the case of a child of fi[f]teen. I am he who chose the sacristy of the church for one of these crimes, and Good Friday for another. Look on me, ye mothers of England, a confessor against Popery, for ye 'ne’er may look upon my like again.' I am that veritable priest, who, after all this, began to speak against, not only the Catholic faith, but the moral law, and perverted others by my teaching. I am the Cavaliere Achilli, who then went to Corfu, made the wife of a tailor faithless to her husband, and lived publicly and travelled about with the wife of a chorus-singer. I am that Professor of the Protestant College at Malta, who with two others was dismissed from my post for offences which the authorities cannot get themselves to describe. And now attend to me, such as I am, and you shall see what you shall see about the barbarity and profligacy of the Inquisitors of Rome.” You speak truly, O Achilli, and we cannot answer you a word. You are a Priest; you have been a Friar; you are, it is undeniable, the scandal of Catholicism, and the palmary argument of Protestants, by your extraordinary depravity. You have been, it is true, a profligate, an unbeliever, and a hypocrite. Not many years passed of your conventional life, and you were never in the choir, always in private houses, so that the laity observed you. You were deprived of your professorship, we own it; you were prohibited from preaching and hearing confessions; you were obliged to give hush-money to the father of one of your victims, as we learned from an official document of the Neapolitan Police to be ‘known for habitual incontinency;’ your name came before the civil tribunal at Corfu for your crime of adultery. You have put the crown on your offences, by as long as you could, denying them all; you have professed to seek after truth, when you were ravening after sin.” The libel charge was officially laid against Newman in November. Under English law, Newman needed to prove every single charge he had made against Achilli. Newman requested the documents that Wiseman had used for his article in the Dublin Review but he had mislaid them. He eventually found them but it was too late to prevent the trial. Newman and his defence committee needed to locate the victims and return them to England. A number of the victims were found and Maria Giberne, a friend of Newman, went to Italy to return with them to England. Achilli, on hearing that witnesses were being brought, arranged for the trial to be delayed. This put Newman under great strain as he had been invited to be the founding Rector of the proposed Catholic University in Dublin and was composing and delivering the lectures that would become The Idea of a University. On 21 June 1852, the libel trial started and lasted three days. Despite the evidence of the victims and witnesses, Achilli denied that any of it had happened; the jury believed him and found Newman guilty of libel. The injustice of the verdict was widely recognised: a great blow has been given to the administration of justice in this country, and Roman Catholics will have henceforth only too good reason for asserting that there is no justice for them in matters tending to rouse the Protestant feelings of judges and juries. A second trial was not granted and sentencing was postponed. When sentencing occurred, Newman did not get the prison sentence expected but got a fine of £100 and a long lecture from Judge Coleridge about his moral deterioration since he had become a Catholic. Coleridge later wrote to Keble: It is a very painful matter for us who must hail this libel as false, believing it is in great part true– or at least that it may be. The fine was paid on the spot and while his expenses as defendant amounted to about £14,000, they were paid out a fund organised by this defence committee to which Catholics at home and abroad had contributed; there was £2,000 left over which was spent on the purchase of a small property in Rednal, on the Lickey Hills, with a chapel and cemetery, where Newman was eventually buried. Achilli, despite his victory, was discredited. Newman removed the libellous section of the fifth lecture and replaced them by the inscription: De illis quae sequebantur / posterorum judicium sit– About those things which had followed / let posterity be the judge. Educator In 1854, at the request of the Irish Catholic bishops, Newman went to Dublin as rector of the newly established Catholic University of Ireland, now University College, Dublin. It was during this time that he founded the Literary and Historical Society. After four years, he retired. He published a volume of lectures entitled The Idea of a University, which explained his philosophy of education. Newman believed in a middle way between free thinking and moral authority– one that would respect the rights of knowledge as well as the rights of revelation. His purpose was to build a Catholic university, in a world where the major Catholic universities on the European continent had recently been secularised, and most universities in the English-speaking world were Protestant. For a university to claim legitimacy in the larger world, it would have to support research and publication free from church censorship; however, for a university to be a safe place for the education of Catholic youth, it would have to be a place in which the teachings of the Catholic church were respected and promoted. The University [...] has this object and this mission; it contemplates neither moral impression nor mechanical production; it professes to exercise the mind neither in art nor in duty; its function is intellectual culture; here it may leave its scholars, and it has done its work when it has done as much as this. It educates the intellect to reason well in all matters, to reach out towards truth, and to grasp it. This philosophy encountered opposition within the Catholic church, at least in Ireland, as evidenced by the opinion of bishop Paul Cullen. In 1854 Cullen wrote a letter to the Vatican’s office Propaganda fide (now called the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples), criticising Newman’s liberal exercise of authority within the new university: The discipline introduced is unsuitable, certainly to this country. The young men are allowed to go out at all hours, to smoke, etc., and there has not been any fixed time for study. All this makes it clear that Father Newman does not give enough attention to details. The University as envisaged by Newman encountered too much opposition to prosper. However, his book did have a wide influence. In 1858, Newman projected a branch house of the Oratory at Oxford; but this project was opposed by Father (later Cardinal) Henry Edward Manning, another influential convert from Anglicanism, and others. It was thought that the creation of a Catholic body within the heart of Oxford was likely to induce Catholics to send their sons to that university, rather than to newly formed Catholic universities. The scheme was abandoned. When Catholics did begin to attend Oxford from the 1860s onwards, a Catholic club was formed and, in 1888, it was renamed the Oxford University Newman Society in recognition of Newman’s efforts on behalf of Catholicism in that university city. The Oxford Oratory was eventually founded over 100 years later in 1993. In 1859, Newman established, in connection with the Birmingham Oratory, a school for the education of the sons of gentlemen along lines similar to those of English public schools. The Oratory School flourished as a boy’s boarding school, dubbed 'The Catholic Eton’. Relationships with other converts Newman had a special concern in the publisher Burns & Oates; the owner, James Burns, had published some of the Tractarians, and Burns had himself converted to Roman Catholicism in 1847. Newman published several books with the company, effectively saving it. There is even a story that Newman’s novel Loss and Gain was written specifically to assist Burns. In 1863, in a response to Thomas William Allies, while agreeing that slavery was bad, Newman would not publicly condemn it as “intrinsically evil” on the grounds that it had been tolerated by St Paul– thus asserting that slavery is “a condition of life ordained by God in the same sense that other conditions of life are”. Newman and Henry Edward Manning both became significant figures in the late 19th-century Roman Catholic Church in England: both were Anglican converts and both were elevated to the dignity of cardinal. In spite of these similarities, in fact there was a lack of sympathy between the two men, who were different in character and experience, and they clashed on a number of issues, in particular the foundation of an Oratory in Oxford. On theological issues, Newman is seen as the more liberal because of his reservations about the declaration of papal infallibility (Manning favoured the formal declaration of the doctrine). George W. E. Russell recorded that: When Newman died there appeared in a monthly magazine a series of very unflattering sketches by one who had lived under his roof. I ventured to ask Cardinal Manning if he had seen these sketches. He replied that he had and thought them very shocking; the writer must have a very unenviable mind, &c., and then, having thus sacrificed to propriety, after a moment’s pause he added: “But if you ask me if they are like poor Newman, I am bound to say– a photograph.” Apologia In 1862 Newman began to prepare autobiographical and other memoranda to vindicate his career. The occasion came when, in January 1864, Charles Kingsley, reviewing James Anthony Froude’s History of England in Macmillan’s Magazine, incidentally asserted that “Father Newman informs us that truth for its own sake need not be, and on the whole ought not to be, a virtue of the Roman clergy.” Edward Lowth Badeley, who had been a close legal adviser to Newman since the Achilli trial, encouraged him to make a robust rebuttal. After some preliminary sparring between the two, in which Kingsley refused to admit any fault, Newman published a pamphlet, Mr Kingsley and Dr Newman: a Correspondence on the Question whether Dr Newman teaches that Truth is no Virtue, (published in 1864 and not reprinted until 1913). The pamphlet has been described as “unsurpassed in the English language for the vigour of its satire”. However, the anger displayed was later, in a letter to Sir William Cope, admitted to have been largely feigned. After the debate went public, Kingsley attempted to defend his assertion in a lengthy pamphlet entitled “What then does Dr Newman mean?”, described by a historian as “one of the most momentous rhetorical and polemical failures of the Victorian age”. In answer to Kingsley, again encouraged by Badeley, Newman published in bi-monthly parts his Apologia Pro Vita Sua, a religious autobiography of abiding interest. Its tone changed the popular estimate of its author, by explaining the convictions which had led him into the Catholic Church. Kingsley’s general accusation against the Catholic clergy is dealt with later in the work; his specific accusations are addressed in an appendix. Newman maintains that English Catholic priests are at least as truthful as English Catholic laymen. Newman published a revision of the series of pamphlets in book form in 1865; in 1913 a combined critical edition, edited by Wilfrid Ward, was published. Later years In 1870, Newman published his Grammar of Assent, a closely reasoned work in which the case for religious belief is maintained by arguments somewhat different from those commonly used by Roman Catholic theologians of the time. In 1877, in the republication of his Anglican works, he added to the two volumes containing his defence of the via media, a long preface in which he criticised and replied to anti-Catholic arguments of his own which were contained in the original works. At the time of the First Vatican Council (1869–1870), Newman was uneasy about the formal definition of the doctrine of papal infallibility, believing that the time was 'inopportune’. In a private letter to his bishop (William Bernard Ullathorne), surreptitiously published, he denounced the “insolent and aggressive faction” that had pushed the matter forward. Newman gave no sign of disapproval when the doctrine was finally defined, but was an advocate of the “principle of minimising”, that included very few papal declarations within the scope of infallibility. Subsequently, in a letter nominally addressed to the Duke of Norfolk when Gladstone accused the Roman Church of having “equally repudiated modern thought and ancient history”, Newman affirmed that he had always believed in the doctrine, and had only feared the deterrent effect of its definition on conversions on account of acknowledged historical difficulties. In this letter, and especially in the postscript to the second edition, Newman answered the charge that he was not at ease within the Catholic Church. Cardinalate In 1878, Newman’s old college elected him an honorary fellow, and he revisited Oxford, after an interval of thirty-two years, on the same day Pope Pius IX died. Pius had mistrusted Newman, but his successor, Pope Leo XIII, was encouraged by the Duke of Norfolk and other English Catholic laymen to make Newman a cardinal, despite the fact that he was neither a bishop nor resident in Rome. Cardinal Manning seems not to have been interested in having Newman become a cardinal, and remained silent when the Pope asked him about it; Bishop Ullathorne, as Newman’s immediate superior, sent word to Pope Leo that he would welcome the honour. The offer was made by Rome in February 1879. Newman accepted the gesture as a vindication of his work, but made two requests: that he not be consecrated a bishop on receiving the cardinalate, as was usual at that time; and that he might remain in Birmingham. Father John Henry Newman was elevated to the rank of cardinal in the Consistory of 12 May 1879 by Pope Leo XIII, who assigned him the Deaconry of San Giorgio al Velabro. Newman while in Rome insisted on the lifelong consistency of his opposition to “liberalism in religion.” Death After an illness, Newman returned to England and lived at the Oratory until his death, making occasional visits to London and chiefly to his old friend, R. W. Church, now Dean of St Paul’s. As a cardinal, Newman published nothing beyond a preface to a work by Arthur Wollaston Hutton on the Anglican ministry (1879) and an article “On the Inspiration of Scripture” in The Nineteenth Century (February 1884). From the latter half of 1886, Newman’s health began to fail, and he celebrated Mass for the last time on Christmas Day in 1889. On 11 August 1890 he died of pneumonia at the Birmingham Oratory. Eight days later his body was buried in the cemetery at Rednal Hill, Birmingham, at the country house of the Oratory. At the time of his death he had been Protodeacon of the Holy Roman Church. In accordance with his express wishes, Newman was buried in the grave of his lifelong friend Ambrose St. John. The pall over the coffin bore the motto that Newman adopted for use as a cardinal, Cor ad cor loquitur ("Heart speaks to heart"), which William Barry, writing in the Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), traces to Francis de Sales and sees as revealing the secret of Newman’s “eloquence, unaffected, graceful, tender, and penetrating”. Ambrose St. John had become a Roman Catholic at around the same time as Newman, and the two men have a joint memorial stone inscribed with the motto Newman had chosen, Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem ("Out of shadows and phantasms into the truth"), which Barry traces to Plato’s allegory of the cave. On 27 February 1891, Newman’s estate was probated at £4,206. Remains Newman’s grave was opened on 2 October 2008, with the intention of moving any remains to a tomb inside Birmingham Oratory for their more convenient veneration as relics during Newman’s consideration for sainthood; however, his wooden coffin was found to have disintegrated and no bones were found. A representative of Fathers of the Birmingham Oratory alleged that this was because the coffin was wooden and the burial took place at a damp site. Contemporary sources show that the coffin was covered with a softer type of soil than the clay marl of the grave site. Forensic expert John Hunter, from the University of Birmingham, tested soil samples from near the grave and said that total disappearance of a body was unlikely over that timescale. He said that extreme conditions which could remove bone would also have removed the coffin handles, which were extant. Writer Some of Newman’s short and earlier poems are described by R. H. Hutton as “unequalled for grandeur of outline, purity of taste and radiance of total effect”; while his latest and longest, The Dream of Gerontius, attempts to represent the unseen world along the same lines as Dante. His prose style, especially in his Catholic days, is fresh and vigorous, and is attractive to many who do not sympathise with his conclusions, from the apparent candour with which difficulties are admitted and grappled; while in his private correspondence there is charm. James Joyce had a lifelong admiration for Newman’s writing style, and in a letter to his patron Harriet Shaw Weaver humorously remarked about Newman that “nobody has ever written English prose that can be compared with that of a tiresome footling little Anglican parson who afterwards became a prince of the only true church”. Theologian Around 1830, Newman developed a distinction between natural religion and revealed religion. Revealed religion is the Judeo-Christian revelation which finds its fulfilment in Jesus Christ. Natural religion refers to the knowledge of God and divine things that has been acquired outside the Judeo-Christian revelation. For Newman, this knowledge of God is not the result of unaided reason but of reason aided by grace, and so he speaks of natural religion as containing a revelation, even though it is an incomplete revelation. Newman’s view of natural religion gives rise to passages in his writings in which he appears to sympathise with a broader theology. Both as an Anglican and as a Catholic, he put forward the notion of a universal revelation. As an Anglican, Newman subscribed to this notion in various works, among them the 1830 University Sermon entitled “The Influence of Natural and Revealed Religion Respectively”, the 1833 poem “Heathenism”, and the book The Arians of the Fourth Century, also 1833, where he admits that there was “something true and divinely revealed in every religion”. As a Catholic, he included the idea in A Grammar of Assent: “As far as we know, there never was a time when... revelation was not a revelation continuous and systematic, with distinct representatives and an orderly succession.” Newman held that “freedom from symbols and articles is abstractedly the highest state of Christian communion”, but was “the peculiar privilege of the primitive Church.” In 1877 he allowed that “in a religion that embraces large and separate classes of adherents there always is of necessity to a certain extent an exoteric and an esoteric doctrine.” Character and relationships A recent biography of Newman notes that since his death in 1890 he has suffered almost as much misrepresentation as he did during his lifetime. In the Apologia he had exorcised the phantom which, as he said, “gibbers instead of me”– the phantom of the secret Romanist, corrupting the youth of Oxford, devious and dissimulating. But he raised another phantom– that of the oversensitive, self-absorbed recluse who never did anything but think and write. Unwary readers took the Apologia as autobiography, but it is strictly what Newman called its first parts—"A History of My Religious Opinions". In Newman’s letters and memoranda and those of his friends, a more outgoing and humorous character is revealed. Newman lived in the world of his time, travelling by train as soon as engines were built and rail lines laid, and writing amusing letters about his adventures on railways and ships or during his travels in Scotland and Ireland. He was an indefatigable walker, and as a young don at Oriel he often went out riding with Hurrell Froude and other friends. At Oxford he had an active pastoral life, as an Anglican priest, though nothing of it appears in the Apologia. Later he was active as a Catholic priest. His parishioners at the Oratory, apart from a few professional men and their families, were mainly factory workers, Irish immigrants, and tradespeople. He was a caring pastor, and their recorded reminiscences show that they held him in affection. Newman, who was only a few years younger than Keats and Shelley, was born into the Romantic generation, when Englishmen still wept in moments of emotion. But he lived on into the age of the stiff upper lip, with the result that later generations, hearing of his tears on a visit to his mother’s grave or at the funerals of old friends such as Henry Wilberforce, thought him not only sensitive but melancholy. The “sensitive recluse of legend” had a wide currency, appearing, for instance, in Lytton Strachey’s description, in his famously debunking set of portraits Eminent Victorians, as Newman’s “soft, spectacled, Oxford manner, with its half-effeminate diffidence”. Geoffrey Faber, whose own account of Newman in Oxford Apostles was far from hagiographic, found Strachey’s portrait a distasteful caricature, bearing scant likeness to the Newman of history and designed solely “to tickle the self-conceit of a cynical and beliefless generation”. However, in Strachey’s account the true villain is Cardinal Manning, who is accused of secretly briefing the Press the false story that Newman would turn down the Cardinalate, and who privately said of his late “friend”: “Poor Newman! He was a great hater!”. Strachey was only ten when Newman died and never met him. In contrast to Strachey’s account, James Anthony Froude, Hurrell Froude’s brother, who knew Newman at Oxford, saw him as a Carlylean hero. Compared with Newman, Froude wrote, Keble, Pusey and the other Tractarians “were all but as ciphers, and he the indicating number”. Newman’s face was “remarkably like that of Julius Caesar.... I have often thought of the resemblance, and believed that it extended to the temperament. In both there was an original force of character which refused to be moulded by circumstances, which was to make its own way, and become a power in the world; a clearness of intellectual perception, a disdain for conventionalities, a temper imperious and wilful, but along with it a most attaching gentleness, sweetness, singleness of heart and purpose. Both were formed by nature to command others, both had the faculty of attracting to themselves the passionate devotion of their friends and followers.... For hundreds of young men Credo in Newmannum was the veritable symbol of faith.” Celibacy Newman’s celibacy, which he embraced at the age of 15, also contributed to negative representations of his character, laying him open to what he called “slurs”. To exponents of Muscular Christianity such as Charles Kingsley, celibacy was synonymous with unmanliness. Kingsley, who interpreted the Biblical story of Adam and Eve as expressing a “binary law of man’s being; the want of a complementum, a 'help meet’, without whom it is not good for him to be”, feared and hated vowed sexual abstinence, considering it, in Laura Fasick’s words, “a distinct and separate perversion”. The charge of effeminacy was aimed not just at Newman but at Tractarians and Roman Catholics in general. “In all that school”, wrote Kingsley in 1851, “there is an element of foppery—even in dress and manner; a fastidious, maundering, die-away effeminacy, which is mistaken for purity and refinement.” John Cornwell comments that "the notion of Newman’s effeminacy tells us more about the reaction of others to him at the time than [about] any tendency in his own nature.” To many members of the Oxford Movement, Newman included, it was Kingsley’s ideal of domesticity that seemed unmanly. As R. W. Church put it, "To shrink from [celibacy] was a mark of want of strength or intelligence, of an unmanly preference for English home life, of insensibility to the generous devotion and purity of the saints." Defending his decision to remain single, Charles Reding, the hero of Newman’s novel Loss and Gain, argues that “surely the idea of an Apostle, unmarried, pure, in fast and nakedness, and at length a martyr, is a higher idea than that of one of the old Israelites sitting under his vine and fig-tree, full of temporal goods, and surrounded by sons and grandsons?” James Eli Adams remarks that if manliness is equated with physical and psychological toughness, then perhaps “manhood cannot be sustained within domesticity, since the ideal is incompatible with ease.” A “common antagonism to domesticity” links “Tractarian discipline to Carlylean heroism”. Friendships Although Newman’s deepest relationships were with men, he had many affectionate friendships with women. One of the most important was with Maria Giberne, who knew him in his youth and followed him into the Catholic Church. She was a noted beauty, who even at fifty was described by one admirer as “the handsomest woman I ever saw in my life”. A gifted amateur artist, she painted many portraits of Newman at various periods, as well as several of the pictures hanging in the Birmingham Oratory. Newman had a photographic portrait of her in his room and was still corresponding with her into their eighties. Emily Bowles, who first met Newman at Littlemore, was the recipient of some of his most outspoken letters on what he felt to be the mistaken course of the extreme infallibilists and his reasons for not “speaking out” as many begged him to do. When she visited Newman at the Birmingham Oratory in 1861, she was welcomed by him “as only he can welcome”; she would never forget “the brightness that lit up his worn face as he received me at the door, carrying in several packages himself”. Newman also experienced intense male friendships, the first with Richard Hurrell Froude (1803–1836), the longest with Ambrose St John (1815–1875), who shared communitarian life with Newman for 32 years starting in 1843 (when St John was 28). Newman wrote after St John’s death: “I have ever thought no bereavement was equal to that of a husband’s or a wife’s, but I feel it difficult to believe that any can be greater, or any one’s sorrow greater, than mine.” He directed that he be buried in the same grave as St. John: “I wish, with all my heart, to be buried in Fr Ambrose St John’s grave—and I give this as my last, my imperative will.” Newman spelt out his theology of friendship in a sermon he preached on the Feast of St John the Evangelist, traditionally thought to be the same person as the disciple John, “whom Jesus loved”. In the sermon, Newman said: “There have been men before now, who have supposed Christian love was so diffuse as not to admit of concentration upon individuals; so that we ought to love all men equally.... Now I shall maintain here, in opposition to such notions of Christian love, and with our Saviour’s pattern before me, that the best preparation for loving the world at large, and loving it duly and wisely, is to cultivate our intimate friendship and affection towards those who are immediately about us.” For Newman, friendship is an intimation of a greater love, a foretaste of heaven. In friendship, two intimate friends gain a glimpse of the life that awaits them in God. Juan R. Vélez writes that someday Newman “may well earn a new title, that of Doctor amicitiae: Doctor of the Church on Friendship. His biography is a treatise on the human and supernatural virtues that make up friendship.” Issues of sexual identity David Hilliard characterises Geoffrey Faber’s description of Newman, in his 1933 book Oxford Apostles, as a “portrait of Newman as a sublimated homosexual (though the word itself was not used)”. On Newman’s relations with Hurrell Froude, Faber wrote: “Of all his friends Froude filled the deepest place in his heart, and I’m not the first to point out that his occasional notions of marrying definitely ceased with the beginning of his real intimacy with Froude.” However, while Faber’s theory has had considerable popular influence, scholars of the Oxford Movement tend either to dismiss it entirely or to view it with great scepticism, with even scholars specifically concerned with same-sex desire hesitating to endorse it. Ellis Hanson, for instance, writes that Newman and Froude clearly “presented a challenge to Victorian gender norms”, but “Faber’s reading of Newman’s sexlessness and Hurrell Froude’s guilt as evidence of homosexuality” seems “strained”. When John Campbell Shairp combines masculine and feminine imagery in his highly poetic description of Newman’s preaching style at Oxford in the early 1840s, Frederick S. Roden is put in mind of “the late Victorian definition of a male invert, the homosexual: his (Newman’s) homiletics suggest a woman’s soul in a man’s body.” Roden, however, does not argue that Newman was homosexual, seeing him rather– particularly in his professed celibacy– as a “cultural dissident” or “queer”. Roden uses the term “queer” in a very general sense “to include any dissonant behaviours, discourses or claimed identities” in relation to Victorian norms. In this sense, “Victorian Roman and Anglo-Catholicism were culturally queer”. In Newman’s case, Roden writes, “homoaffectivity” (found in heterosexuals and homosexuals alike) “is contained in friendships, in relationships that are not overtly sexual”. In a September 2010 television documentary, “The Trouble with the Pope”, Peter Tatchell discussed Newman’s underlying sexuality, citing his close friendship with Ambrose St John and entries in Newman’s diaries describing their intense love for each other. Alan Bray, however, in his 2003 book The Friend, saw the bond between the two men as “entirely spiritual”, noting that Newman, when speaking of St John, echoes the language of John’s gospel. Shortly after St John’s death, Bray adds, Newman recorded “a conversation between them before St John lost his speech in those final days. He expressed his hope, Newman wrote, that during his whole priestly life he had not committed one mortal sin. For men of their time and culture that statement is definitive.... Newman’s burial with Ambrose St John cannot be detached from his understanding of the place of friendship in Christian belief or its long history.” Bray cites numerous examples of friends being buried together. Newman’s burial with St John was not unusual at the time and did not draw contemporary comment. David Hilliard writes that relationships such as Newman’s with Froude and St John “were not regarded by contemporaries as unnatural.... Nor is it possible, on the basis of passionate words uttered by mid-Victorians, to make a clear distinction between male affection and homosexual feeling. Theirs was a generation prepared to accept romantic friendships between men simply as friendships without sexual significance. Only with the emergence in the late nineteenth century of the doctrine of the stiff upper lip and the concept of homosexuality as an identifiable condition, did open expressions of love between men become suspect and regarded in a new light as morally undesirable.” Men born in the first decades of the nineteenth century had a capacity, that did not survive into later generations, for intense male friendships. The friendship of Alfred Tennyson and Arthur Hallam, immortalised in In Memoriam A.H.H., is a famous example. Less well-known is that of Charles Kingsley and his closest friend at Cambridge, Charles Mansfield. When Ian Ker reissued his biography of Newman in 2009, he added an afterword in which he put forward evidence that Newman was a heterosexual. He cited diary entries from December 1816 in which the 15-year-old Newman wrote about the temptations awaiting him when he returned home from boarding school and met girls at Christmas parties. As an adult, Newman wrote about the deep pain of the “sacrifice” of the life of celibacy. Ker comments: “The only 'sacrifice’ that he could possibly be referring to was that of marriage. And he readily acknowledges that from time to time he continued to feel the natural attraction for marriage that any heterosexual man would.” In 1833, Newman wrote that, despite having “willingly” accepted the call to celibacy, he felt “not the less... the need” of "the sort of interest [sympathy] which a wife takes and none but she– it is a woman’s interest". Influence and legacy Within both the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches, Newman’s influence was great in dogma. For the Roman Catholic Church in Britain, Newman’s conversion secured prestige. On Catholics, his influence was mainly in the direction of a broader spirit and of a recognition of the part played by development, in doctrine and in church government. If his teaching on the Church was less widely followed, it was because of doubts as to the thoroughness of his knowledge of history and as to his freedom from bias as a critic. Some hundreds of clergymen influenced by the Oxford Movement, made submission to the Holy See; but a larger number, who also came under its influence, did not accept that belief in the Church necessitated acceptance of the Pope. Tertiary education Newman founded the independent school for boys Catholic University School, Dublin and the Catholic University of Ireland which evolved into University College, Dublin, a college of Ireland’s largest university, the National University of Ireland, which has contributed significantly both intellectually and socially to Ireland. A number of Newman Societies (or Newman Centers in the United States) in Newman’s honour have been established throughout the world, in the mould of the Oxford University Newman Society. They provide pastoral services and ministries to Catholics at non-Catholic universities; at various times this type of “campus ministry” (the distinction and definition being flexible) has been known to Catholics as the Newman Apostolate or “Newman movement”. Additionally, colleges have been named for him in Birmingham, England, Melbourne, Australia, Thodupuzha, India, and Wichita, United States. Newman’s Dublin lecture series The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated is thought to have become “the basis of a characteristic British belief that education should aim at producing generalists rather than narrow specialists, and that non-vocational subjects– in arts or pure science– could train the mind in ways applicable to a wide range of jobs.” Cause for his canonisation In 1991, Newman was proclaimed venerable by Pope John Paul II, after a thorough examination of his life and work by the Sacred Congregation for the Causes of Saints. One miracle was investigated and confirmed by the Vatican, so he was beatified on 19 September 2010 by Pope Benedict XVI. A second miracle is necessary for his canonisation. Works * Anglican period * The Arians of the Fourth Century (1833) * Tracts for the Times (1833–1841) * British Critic (1836–1842) * On the Prophetical Office of the Church (1837) * Lectures on Justification (1838) * Parochial and Plain Sermons (1834–1843) * Select Treatises of St. Athanasius (1842, 1844) * Lives of the English Saints (1843–44) * Essays on Miracles (1826, 1843) * Oxford University Sermons (1843) * Sermons on Subjects of the Day (1843) * Catholic period * Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845) * Retractation of Anti-Catholic Statements (1845) * Loss and Gain (novel– 1848) * Faith and Prejudice and Other Unpublished Sermons (1848–1873; collected 1956) * Discourses to Mixed Congregations (1849) * Difficulties of Anglicans (1850) * The Present Position of Catholics in England (1851) * The Idea of a University (1852 and 1858) * Cathedra Sempiterna (1852) * Callista (novel– 1855) * The Rambler (editor) (1859–1860) * Apologia Pro Vita Sua (religious autobiography– 1864; revised edition, 1865) * Letter to Dr. Pusey (1865) * The Dream of Gerontius (1865) * An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (1870) * Sermons Preached on Various Occasions (various/1874) * Letter to the Duke of Norfolk (1875) * Five Letters (1875) * Sermon Notes (1849–1878) * Select Treatises of St. Athanasius (1881) * On the Inspiration of Scripture (1884) * Development of Religious Error (1885) * Other miscellaneous works * Historical Tracts of St. Athanasius (1843) * Essays Critical and Historical (various/1871) * Tracts Theological and Ecclesiastical (various/1871) * Discussions and Arguments (various/1872) * Historical Sketches (various/1872) * Addresses to Cardinal Newman and His Replies, with Biglietto Speech (1879) * Selections * Realizations: Newman’s Own Selection of His Sermons (edited by Vincent Ferrer Blehl, S.J., 1964). Liturgical Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-8146-3290-1 * Mary the Second Eve (compiled by Sister Eileen Breen, F.M.A., 1969). TAN Books, 2009. ISBN 978-0-89555-181-8 References Wikipedia—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_Newman

Charles Stuart Calverley (/ˈkɑːvərlɪ/; 22 December 1831– 17 February 1884) was an English poet and wit. He was the literary father of what has been called “the university school of humour”. Early life He was born at Martley, Worcestershire, and given the name Charles Stuart Blayds. In 1852, his father, the Rev. Henry Blayds, resumed the old family name of Calverley, which his grandfather had exchanged for Blayds in 1807. Charles went up to Balliol College, Oxford from Harrow School in 1850, and was soon known in Oxford as the most daring and high-spirited undergraduate of his time. He was a universal favourite, a delightful companion, a brilliant scholar and the playful enemy of all “dons.” In 1851 he won the Chancellor’s prize for Latin verse, but it is said that the entire exercise was written in an afternoon, when his friends had locked him into his rooms, refusing to let him out until he had finished what they were confident would prove the prize poem. A year later, to avoid the consequences of a college escapade (he had been expelled from Oxford), he too changed his name to Calverley and moved to Christ’s College, Cambridge. Here he was again successful in Latin verse, the only undergraduate to have won the Chancellor’s prize at both universities. In 1856 he took second place in the first class in the Classical Tripos. Later life He was elected fellow of Christ’s (1858), published Verses and Translations in 1862, and was called to the bar in 1865. Injuries sustained in a skating accident prevented him from following a professional career, and during the last years of his life he was an invalid. He died of Bright’s disease. Works * Nowadays he is best-known (at least in Cambridge, his adoptive home) as the author of the Ode to Tobacco which is to be found on a bronze plaque in Rose crescent, on the wall of what used to be Bacon’s the tobacconist. * His Translations into English and Latin appeared in 1866; his Theocritus translated into English Verse in 1869; Fly Leaves in 1872; and Literary Remains in 1885. * His Complete Works, with a biographical notice by Walter Joseph Sendall, a contemporary at Christ’s and his brother-in-law, appeared in 1901. * George W. E. Russell said of him: * He was a true poet; he was one of the most graceful scholars that Cambridge ever produced; and all his exuberant fun was based on a broad and strong foundation of Greek, Latin, and English literature. References Wikipedia—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Stuart_Calverley

John Skelton, also known as John Shelton (c. 1463– 21 June 1529), possibly born in Diss, Norfolk, was an English poet. He had been a tutor to King Henry VIII of England and died at Westminster. Education Skelton is said to have been educated at Oxford. He certainly studied at Cambridge, and he is probably the “one Scheklton” mentioned by William Cole as taking his M.A. degree in 1484. In 1490, William Caxton in the preface to The Boke of Eneydos compyled by Vyrgyle refers to him in terms which prove that Skelton had already won a reputation as a scholar. “But I pray mayster John Skelton,” he says, “late created poete laureate in the unyversite of Oxenforde, to oversee and correct this sayd booke... for him I know for suffycyent to expowne and englysshe every dyffyculte that is therin. For he hath late translated the epystlys of Tulle, and the boke of dyodorus siculus, and diverse other works... in polysshed and ornate termes craftely... suppose he hath drunken of Elycons well.” The laureateship referred to was a degree in rhetoric. In 1493 Skelton received the same honour at Cambridge, and also, it is said, at Leuven. He found a patron in the pious and learned Countess of Richmond, Henry VII’s mother, for whom he wrote Of Mannes Lyfe the Peregrynacioun, a translation, now lost, of Guillaume de Diguileville’s Pèlerinage de la vie humaine. An elegy “Of the death of the noble prince Kynge Edwarde the forth,” included in some of the editions of the Mirror for Magistrates, and another (1489) on the death of Henry Percy, fourth earl of Northumberland, are among his earliest poems. Poet laureate In the last decade of the century he was appointed tutor to Prince Henry (afterwards King Henry VIII). He wrote for his pupil a lost Speculum principis, and Erasmus, in dedicating an ode to the prince in 1500, speaks of Skelton as “unum Britannicarum literarum lumen ac decus.” In 1498 he was successively ordained sub-deacon, deacon and priest. He seems to have been imprisoned in 1502, but no reason is known for his disgrace. (It has been said that he offended Wolsey but this would be impossible if the date is correct, given Wolsey was not yet an influential figure at court - Wolsey’s rise began in 1508). Two years later he retired from regular attendance at court to become rector of Diss, a benefice which he retained nominally until his death. Skelton frequently signed himself “regius orator” and poet-laureate, but there is no record of any emoluments paid in connection with these dignities, although the Abbé du Resnel, author of Recherches sur les poètes couronnez, asserts that he had seen a patent (1513–1514) in which Skelton was appointed poet-laureate to Henry VIII. As rector of Diss he caused great scandal among his parishioners, who thought him, says Anthony Wood, more fit for the stage than for the pew or the pulpit. He was secretly married to a woman who lived in his house, and he had earned the hatred of the Dominican monks by his fierce satire. Consequently, he came under the formal censure of Richard Nix, the bishop of the diocese, and appears to have been temporarily suspended. After his death a collection of farcical tales, no doubt chiefly, if not entirely, apocryphal, gathered round his name—The Merie Tales of Skelton. During the rest of the century he figured in the popular imagination as an incorrigible practical joker. His sarcastic wit made him some enemies, among them Sir Christopher Garnesche or Garneys, Alexander Barclay, William Lilly and the French scholar, Robert Gaguin (c. 1425-1502). With Garneys he engaged in a regular “flyting,” undertaken, he says, at the king’s command, but Skelton’s four poems read as if the abuse in them were dictated by genuine anger. Earlier in his career he had found a friend and patron in Cardinal Wolsey, and the dedication to the cardinal of his Replycacion is couched in the most flattering terms. But in 1522, when Wolsey in his capacity of legate dissolved convocation at St Paul’s, Skelton put in circulation the couplet: Gentle Paul, laie doune thy sweard For Peter of Westminster hath shaven thy beard. In Colyn Cloute he incidentally attacked Wolsey in a general satire on the clergy, “Speke, Parrot” and “Why come ye nat to Courte?” are direct and fierce invectives against the cardinal who is said to have more than once imprisoned the author. To avoid another arrest Skelton took sanctuary in Westminster Abbey. He was kindly received by the abbot, John Islip, who continued to protect him until his death. The inscription on his tomb in the neighbouring church of St Margaret’s described him as vales pierius. It is thought that Skelton wrote “Why come ye nat to Courte?” having been inspired by Sir Thomas Spring, a merchant in Suffolk who had fallen out with Wolsey over tax. His works In his Garlande of Laurell Skelton gives a long list of his works, only a few of which are extant. The garland in question was worked for him in silks, gold and pearls by the ladies of the Countess of Surrey at Sheriff Hutton Castle, where he was the guest of the duke of Norfolk. The composition includes complimentary verses to the various ladies concerned, and a good deal of information about himself. But it is as a satirist that Skelton merits attention. The Bowge of Court is directed against the vices and dangers of court life. He had already in his Boke of the Thre Foles drawn on Alexander Barclay’s version of the Narrenschijf of Sebastian Brant, and this more elaborate and imaginative poem belongs to the same class. Skelton, falling into a dream at Harwich, sees a stately ship in the harbour called the Bowge of Court, the owner of which is the “Dame Saunce Pere”. Her merchandise is Favour; the helmsman Fortune; and the poet, who figures as Drede (modesty), finds on board F’avell (the flatterer), Suspect, Harvy Hafter (the clever thief), Dysdayne, Ryotte, Dyssymuler and Subtylte, who all explain themselves in turn, until at last Drede, who finds they are secretly his enemies, is about to save his life by jumping overboard, when he wakes with a start. Both of these poems are written in the seven-lined Rhyme Royal, a Continental verse-form first used in English by Chaucer, but it is in an irregular metre of his own—known as “Skeltonics”—that his most characteristic work was accomplished. The Boke of Phyllyp Sparowe, the lament of Jane Scroop, a schoolgirl in the Benedictine convent of Carrow near Norwich, for her dead bird, was no doubt inspired by Catullus. It is a poem of some 1,400 lines and takes many liberties with the formularies of the church. The digressions are considerable. We learn what a wide reading Jane had in the romances of Charlemagne, of the Round Table, The Four Sons of Aymon and the Trojan cycle. Skelton finds space to give an opinion of Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower and John Lydgate. Whether we can equate this opinion, voiced by the character of Jane, with Skelton’s own is contentious. It would appear that he seems fully to have realised Chaucer’s value as a master of the English language. Gower’s matter was, Jane tells us, “worth gold,” but his English she regards as antiquated. The verse in which the poem is written, called from its inventor “Skeltonical,” is here turned entirely to whimsical use. The lines are usually six-syllabled, but vary in length, and rhyme in groups of two, three, four and even more. It is not far removed from the old alliterative English verse, and well fitted to be chanted by the minstrels who had sung the old ballads. For its comic admixture of Latin Skelton had abundant example in French and Low Latin macaronic verse. He makes frequent use of Latin and French words to carry out his exacting system of frequently recurring rhymes. This breathless, voluble measure was in Skelton’s energetic hands an admirable vehicle for invective, but it easily degenerated into doggerel. By the end of the 16th century he was a “rude rayling rimer” (Puttenham, Arte of English Poesie), and at the hands of Pope and Warton he fared even worse. His own criticism is a just one: For though my ryme be ragged, Tattered and jagged, Rudely rayne beaten, Rusty and moughte eaten, It hath in it some pyth. Colyn Cloute represents the average country man who gives his opinions on the state of the church. There is no more scathing indictment of the sins of the clergy before the Reformation. He exposes their greed, their ignorance, the ostentation of the bishops and the common practice of simony, but takes care to explain that his accusations do not include all and that he writes in defence of, not against, the church. He repeatedly hits at Wolsey even in this general satire, but not directly. Speke, Parrot has only been preserved in a fragmentary form, and is exceedingly obscure. It was apparently composed at different times, but in the latter part of the composition he openly attacks Wolsey. In Why come ye not to Courte? there is no attempt at disguise. The wonder is not that the author had to seek sanctuary, but that he had any opportunity of doing so. He rails at Wolsey’s ostentation, at his almost royal authority, his overbearing manner to suitors high and low, and taunts him with his mean extraction. This scathing invective was not allowed to be printed in the cardinal’s lifetime, but it was no doubt widely circulated in manuscript and by repetition. The charge of coarseness regularly brought against Skelton is based chiefly on The Tunnynge of Elynoare Rummynge, a realistic description in the same metre of the drunken women who gathered at a well-known ale-house kept by Elynour Rummynge at Leatherhead, not far from the royal palace of Nonsuch. “Skelton Laureate against the Scottes” is a fierce song of triumph celebrating the victory of Flodden. “Jemmy is ded And closed in led, That was theyr owne Kynge,” says the poem; but there was an earlier version written before the news of James IV’s death had reached London. This, which is the earliest singly printed ballad in the language, was entitled A Ballade of the Scottysshe Kynge, and was rescued in 1878 from the wooden covers of a copy of Huon de Bordeaux. “Howe the douty Duke of Albany, lyke a cowarde knight” deals with the campaign of 1523, and contains a panegyric of Henry VIII. To this is attached an envoi to Wolsey, but it must surely have been misplaced, for both the satires on the cardinal are of earlier date. Skelton also wrote three plays, only one of which survives. Magnificence is one of the best examples of the morality play. It deals with the same topic as his satires, the evils of ambition; the play’s moral, namely “how suddenly worldly wealth doth decay” was a favourite one with him. Thomas Warton in his History of English Poetry described another piece titled Nigramansir, printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1504. It deals with simony and the love of money in the church; but no copy is known to exist, and some suspicion has been cast on Warton’s statement. Illustration of the hold Skelton had on the public imagination is supplied from the stage. A play (1600) called Scogan and Shelton, by Richard Hathwaye and William Rankins, is mentioned by Henslowe. In Anthony Munday’s Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon, Skelton acts the part of Friar Tuck, and Ben Jonson in his masque, The Fortunate Isles, introduced Skogan and Skelton in like habits as they lived. Very few of Skelton’s productions are dated, and their titles are here necessarily abbreviated. De Worde printed the Bowge of Court twice. Divers Batettys and dyties salacious devysed by Master Shelton Laureat, and Shelton Laureate agaynste a comely Coystroune have no date or printer’s name, but are evidently from the press of Richard Pynson, who also printed Replycacion against certain yang scalers, dedicated to Wolsey. The Garlande or Chapelet of Laurell was printed by Richard Faukes (1523); Magnificence, A goodly interlude, probably by John Rastell about 1533, reprinted (1821) for the Roxburghe Club. Hereafter foloweth the Boke of Phyllyp Sparowe was printed by Richard Kele (1550?), Robert Toy, Antony Kitson (1560?), Abraham Veale (1570?), John Walley, John Wyght (1560?). Hereafter foloweth certaine bokes compyled by mayster Shelton... including “Speke, Parrot,” “Ware the Hawke,” “Elynoure Rumpiynge” and others, was printed by Richard Lant (1550?), John King and Thomas March (1565?), by John Day (1560). Hereafter foloweth a title boke called Colyn Cloute and Hereafter... why come ye nat to Courte? were printed by Richard Kele (1550?) and in numerous subsequent editions. Pithy, plesaunt and profitable workes of maister Shelton, Poete Laureate. Nowe collected and newly published was printed in 1568, and reprinted in 1736. A scarce reprint of Filnour Rummin by Samuel Rand appeared in 1624. Five of Skelton’s 'Tudor Portraits’, including 'The Tunnying of Elynour Rummyng’ were set to music by Ralph Vaughan Williams in or around 1935. Although he changed the text here and there to suit his music, the sentiments are well expressed. The other four poems are 'My pretty Bess’,'Epitaph of John Jayberd of Diss’, 'Jane Scroop (her lament for Philip Sparrow)', and 'Jolly Rutterkin’. The music is rarely performed, although it is immensely funny, and captures the coarseness of Skelton in an inspired way. See The Poetical Works of John Shelton; with Notes and some account of the author and his writings, by the Rev. Alexander Dyce (2 vols., 1843). A selection of his works was edited by WH Williams (London, 1902). See also Zur Charakteristik John Skeltons by Dr Arthur Koelbing (Stuttgart, 1904); F Brie, “Skelton Studien” in Englische Studien, vol. 38 (Heilbronn, 1877, etc.); A Rey, Skelton’s Satirical Poems... (Berne, 1899); A Thummel, Studien über John Skelton (Leipzig-Reudnitz, 1905); G Saintsbury, Hist. of Eng. Prosody (vol. i, 1906); and A Kolbing in the Cambridge History of English Literature (vol. iii, 1909). Family John Skelton’s lineage is difficult to prove. He was probably related to Sir John Shelton and his children, who also came from Norfolk. Sir John’s daughter, Mary Shelton, was a mistress of Henry VIII’s during the reign of her cousin, Anne Boleyn. Mary Shelton was the main editor and contributor to the Devonshire MS, a collection of poems written by various members of the court. Interestingly, it is said that several of Skelton’s works were inspired by women who were to become mothers to two of Henry VIII’s six wives. Elizabeth Boleyn, Countess of Wiltshire and Ormonde, was said to be so beautiful that Skelton compared her to Cressida and a popular but unverifiable legend also suggests that several poems were inspired by Margery Wentworth. Elizabeth was the mother of Anne Boleyn, Henry’s second wife; Margery was the mother of his third, Jane Seymour. References Wikipedia—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Skelton

John Fletcher (1579–1625) was a Jacobean playwright. Following William Shakespeare as house playwright for the King’s Men, he was among the most prolific and influential dramatists of his day; both during his lifetime and in the early Restoration, his fame rivaled Shakespeare’s. Though his reputation has been far eclipsed since, Fletcher remains an important transitional figure between the Elizabethan popular tradition and the popular drama of the Restoration. Biography Early life Fletcher was born in December 1579 (baptised 20 December) in Rye, Sussex, and died of the plague in August 1625 (buried 29 August in St. Saviour’s, Southwark). His father Richard Fletcher was an ambitious and successful cleric who was in turn Dean of Peterborough, Bishop of Bristol, Bishop of Worcester, and Bishop of London (shortly before his death) as well as chaplain to Queen Elizabeth. As dean of Peterborough, Richard Fletcher, at the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, at Fotheringay “knelt down on the scaffold steps and started to pray out loud and at length, in a prolonged and rhetorical style as though determined to force his way into the pages of history”. He cried out at her death, “So perish all the Queen’s enemies!” Richard Fletcher died shortly after falling out of favour with the queen, over a marriage the queen had advised against. He appears to have been partly rehabilitated before his death in 1596; however, he died substantially in debt. The upbringing of John Fletcher and his seven siblings was entrusted to his paternal uncle Giles Fletcher, a poet and minor official. His uncle’s connections ceased to be a benefit, and may even have become a liability, after the rebellion of the Earl of Essex, who had been his patron. Fletcher appears to have entered Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University in 1591, at the age of eleven. It is not certain that he took a degree, but evidence suggests that he was preparing for a career in the church. Little is known about his time at college, but he evidently followed the same path previously trodden by the University wits before him, from Cambridge to the burgeoning commercial theatre of London. Collaborations with Beaumont In 1606, he began to appear as a playwright for the Children of the Queen’s Revels, then performing at the Blackfriars Theatre. Commendatory verses by Richard Brome in the Beaumont and Fletcher 1647 folio place Fletcher in the company of Ben Jonson; a comment of Jonson’s to Drummond corroborates this claim, although it is not known when this friendship began. At the beginning of his career, his most important association was with Francis Beaumont. The two wrote together for close to a decade, first for the children and then for the King’s Men. According to an anecdote transmitted or invented by John Aubrey, they also lived together (in Bankside), sharing clothes and having “one wench in the house between them.” This domestic arrangement, if it existed, was ended by Beaumont’s marriage in 1613, and their dramatic partnership ended after Beaumont fell ill, probably of a stroke, the same year. Successor to Shakespeare By this time, Fletcher had moved into a closer association with the King’s Men. He collaborated with Shakespeare on Henry VIII, The Two Noble Kinsmen, and the lost Cardenio, which is probably (according to some modern scholars) the basis for Lewis Theobald’s play Double Falsehood. A play he wrote singly around this time, The Woman’s Prize or the Tamer Tamed, is a sequel to The Taming of the Shrew. In 1616, after Shakespeare’s death, Fletcher appears to have entered into an exclusive arrangement with the King’s Men similar to Shakespeare’s. Fletcher wrote only for that company between the death of Shakespeare and his own death nine years later. He never lost his habit of collaboration, working with Nathan Field and later with Philip Massinger, who succeeded him as house playwright for the King’s Men. His popularity continued unabated throughout his life; during the winter of 1621, three of his plays were performed at court. He died in 1625, apparently of the plague. He seems to have been buried in what is now Southwark Cathedral, although the precise location is not known; there is a reference by Aston Cockayne to a single grave for Fletcher and Massinger (also buried in Southwark). What is more certain is that two simple adjacent stones in the floor of The Choir of Southwark Cathedral, one marked 'Edmond Shakespeare 1607' the other 'John Fletcher 1625' refer to Shakespeare’s younger brother and the playwright. His mastery is most notable in two dramatic types, tragicomedy and comedy of manners. Stage history Fletcher’s early career was marked by one significant failure, of The Faithful Shepherdess, his adaptation of Giovanni Battista Guarini’s Il Pastor Fido, which was performed by the Blackfriars Children in 1608. In the preface to the printed edition of his play, Fletcher explained the failure as due to his audience’s faulty expectations. They expected a pastoral tragicomedy to feature dances, comedy, and murder, with the shepherds presented in conventional stereotypes– as Fletcher put it, wearing “gray cloaks, with curtailed dogs in strings.” Fletcher’s preface in defence of his play is best known for its pithy definition of tragicomedy: "A tragicomedy is not so called in respect of mirth and killing, but in respect it wants [i.e., lacks] deaths, which is enough to make it no tragedy; yet brings some near it, which is enough to make it no comedy." A comedy, he went on to say, must be “a representation of familiar people,” and the preface is critical of drama that features characters whose action violates nature. In that case, Fletcher appears to have been developing a new style faster than audiences could comprehend. By 1609, however, he had found his stride. With Beaumont, he wrote Philaster, which became a hit for the King’s Men and began a profitable connection between Fletcher and that company. Philaster appears also to have initiated a vogue for tragicomedy; Fletcher’s influence has been credited with inspiring some features of Shakespeare’s late romances (Kirsch, 288-90), and his influence on the tragicomic work of other playwrights is even more marked. By the middle of the 1610s, Fletcher’s plays had achieved a popularity that rivalled Shakespeare’s and cemented the preeminence of the King’s Men in Jacobean London. After Beaumont’s retirement and early death in 1616, Fletcher continued working, both singly and in collaboration, until his death in 1625. By that time, he had produced, or had been credited with, close to fifty plays. This body of work remained a major part of the King’s Men’s repertory until the closing of the theatres in 1642. During the Commonwealth, many of the playwright’s best-known scenes were kept alive as drolls, the brief performances devised to satisfy the taste for plays while the theatres were suppressed. At the re-opening of the theatres in 1660, the plays in the Fletcher canon, in original form or revised, were by far the most common fare on the English stage. The most frequently revived plays suggest the developing taste for comedies of manners. Among the tragedies, The Maid’s Tragedy and, especially, Rollo Duke of Normandy held the stage. Four tragicomedies (A King and No King, The Humorous Lieutenant, Philaster, and The Island Princess) were popular, perhaps in part for their similarity to and foreshadowing of heroic drama. Four comedies (Rule a Wife And Have a Wife, The Chances, Beggars’ Bush, and especially The Scornful Lady) were also popular. Yet the popularity of these plays relative to those of Shakespeare and to new productions steadily eroded. By around 1710, Shakespeare’s plays were more frequently performed, and the rest of the century saw a steady erosion in performance of Fletcher’s plays. By 1784, Thomas Davies asserted that only Rule a Wife and The Chances were still current on stage. A generation later, Alexander Dyce mentioned only The Chances. Since then Fletcher has increasingly become a subject only for occasional revivals and for specialists. Fletcher and his collaborators have been the subject of important bibliographic and critical studies, but the plays have been revived only infrequently. Plays Because Fletcher collaborated regularly and widely, attempts to separate out Fletcher’s work from this collaborative fabric of plays have experienced difficulties in attribution. Fletcher collaborated most often with Beaumont and Massinger but also with Nathan Field, Shakespeare and others. Some of his early collaborations with Beaumont were later revised by Massinger, adding another layer of complexity to the collaborative texture of the plays. According to scholars such as Hoy, Fletcher used distinctive mannerisms that Hoy argued identify his presence. According to Hoy’s figures, he frequently uses ye instead of you, at rates sometimes approaching 50%. He employs 'em for them, along with a set of other preferences in contractions. He adds a sixth stressed syllable to a standard pentameter verse line—most often sir but also too or still or next. Various other specific habits and preferences may reveal his hand. The detection of this pattern, this personal Fletcherian textual profile, has persuaded some researchers that they have penetrated the Fletcher canon with what they consider success—and has in turn encouraged the use of similar techniques more broadly in the study of literature. [See: stylometry.] Some scholars, such as Jeffrey Masten and Gordon McMullan, have pointed out limitations of logic and method in Hoy’s and others’ attempts to distinguish playwrights on the basis of style and linguistic preferences. Bibliography has attempted to establish the writers of each play. Attempts to determine the exact “shares” of each writer (for instance by Cyrus Hoy) in particular plays is ongoing, based on patterns of textual and linguistic preferences, stylistic grounds, and idiosyncrasies of spelling. The list that follows gives a tentative verdict on the writing of the plays in Fletcher’s canon, with likeliest composition dates, dates of first publication, and dates of licensing by the Master of the Revels, where available. Solo plays The Faithful Shepherdess, pastoral (written 1608–9; printed 1609?) Valentinian, tragedy (1610–14; 1647) Monsieur Thomas, comedy (c. 1610–16; 1639) The Woman’s Prize, or The Tamer Tamed, comedy (c. 1611?; 1647) Bonduca, tragedy (1611–14; 1647) The Chances, comedy (c. 1613–25; 1647) Wit Without Money, comedy (c. 1614; 1639) The Mad Lover, tragicomedy (acted 5 January 1617; 1647) The Loyal Subject, tragicomedy (licensed 16 November 1618; revised 1633?; 1647) The Humorous Lieutenant, tragicomedy (c. 1619; 1647) Women Pleased, tragicomedy (c. 1619–23; 1647) The Island Princess, tragicomedy (c. 1620; 1647) The Wild Goose Chase, comedy (c. 1621; 1652) The Pilgrim, comedy (c. 1621; 1647) A Wife for a Month, tragicomedy (licensed 27 May 1624; 1647) Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, comedy (licensed 19 October 1624; 1640) Collaborations With Francis Beaumont: The Woman Hater, comedy (1606; 1607) Cupid’s Revenge, tragedy (c. 1607–12; 1615) Philaster, or Love Lies a-Bleeding, tragicomedy (c. 1609; 1620) The Maid’s Tragedy, Tragedy (c. 1609; 1619) A King and No King, tragicomedy (1611; 1619) The Captain, comedy (c. 1609–12; 1647) The Scornful Lady, comedy (c. 1613; 1616) Love’s Pilgrimage, tragicomedy (c. 1615–16; 1647) The Noble Gentleman, comedy (c. 1613?; licensed 3 February 1626; 1647) With Beaumont and Massinger: Thierry and Theodoret, tragedy (c. 1607?; 1621) The Coxcomb, comedy (c. 1608–10; 1647) Beggars’ Bush, comedy (c. 1612–13? revised 1622?; 1647) Love’s Cure, comedy (c. 1612–13?; revised 1625?; 1647) With Massinger: Sir John van Olden Barnavelt, tragedy (August 1619; MS) The Little French Lawyer, comedy (c. 1619–23; 1647) A Very Woman, tragicomedy (c. 1619–22; licensed 6 June 1634; 1655) The Custom of the Country, comedy (c. 1619–23; 1647) The Double Marriage, tragedy (c. 1619–23; 1647) The False One, history (c. 1619–23; 1647) The Prophetess, tragicomedy (licensed 14 May 1622; 1647) The Sea Voyage, comedy (licensed 22 June 1622; 1647) The Spanish Curate, comedy (licensed 24 October 1622; 1647) The Lovers’ Progress or The Wandering Lovers, tragicomedy (licensed 6 December 1623; revised 1634; 1647) The Elder Brother, comedy (c. 1625; 1637) With Massinger and Field: The Honest Man’s Fortune, tragicomedy (1613; 1647) The Queen of Corinth, tragicomedy (c. 1616–18; 1647) The Knight of Malta, tragicomedy (c. 1619; 1647) With Shakespeare: Henry VIII, history (c. 1613; 1623) The Two Noble Kinsmen, tragicomedy (c. 1613; 1634) Cardenio, tragicomedy? (c. 1613) With Middleton and Rowley: Wit at Several Weapons, comedy (c. 1610–20; 1647) With Rowley: The Maid in the Mill (licensed 29 August 1623; 1647). With Field: Four Plays, or Moral Representations, in One, morality (c. 1608–13; 1647) With Massinger, Jonson, and Chapman: Rollo Duke of Normandy, or The Bloody Brother, tragedy (c. 1617; revised 1627–30?; 1639) With Shirley: The Night Walker, or The Little Thief, comedy (c. 1611; 1640) Uncertain: The Nice Valour, or The Passionate Madman, comedy (c. 1615–25; 1647) The Laws of Candy, tragicomedy (c. 1619–23; 1647) The Fair Maid of the Inn, comedy (licensed 22 January 1626; 1647) The Faithful Friends, tragicomedy (registered 29 June 1660; MS.) The Nice Valour may be a play by Fletcher revised by Thomas Middleton; The Fair Maid of the Inn is perhaps a play by Massinger, John Ford, and John Webster, either with or without Fletcher’s involvement. The Laws of Candy has been variously attributed to Fletcher and to John Ford. The Night-Walker was a Fletcher original, with additions by Shirley for a 1639 production. And some of the attributions given above are disputed by some scholars, as noted in connection with Four Plays in One. Rollo Duke of Normandy, an especially difficult case and a focus of much disagreement among scholars, may have been written around 1617, and later revised by Massinger. The first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647 collected 35 plays, most not published previously. The second folio of 1679 added 18 more, for a total of 53. The first folio included The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inn (1613), and the second The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1607), widely considered Beaumont’s solo works, although the latter was in early editions attributed to both writers. One play in the canon, Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt, existed in manuscript and was not published till 1883. In 1640 James Shirley’s The Coronation was misattributed to Fletcher upon its initial publication, and was included in the second Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1679. References Wikipedia—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Fletcher_(playwright)

Jean Ingelow (17 March 1820– 20 July 1897), was an English poet and novelist. She also wrote several stories for children. Early life Born at Boston, Lincolnshire, she was the daughter of William Ingelow, a banker. As a girl she contributed verses and tales to magazines under the pseudonym of Orris, but her first (anonymous) volume, A Rhyming Chronicle of Incidents and Feelings, which came from an established London publisher, did not appear until her thirtieth year. This was called charming by Tennyson, who declared he should like to know the author; they later became friends. Professional life Jean Ingelow followed this book of verse in 1851 with a story, Allerton and Dreux, but it was the publication of her Poems in 1863 which suddenly made her a popular writer. This ran rapidly through numerous editions and was set to music, proving very popular for English domestic entertainment. Her work often focused on religious introspection. In the United States, her poems obtained great public acclaim, and the collection was said to have sold 200,000 copies. In 1867 she edited, with Dora Greenwell, The Story of Doom and other Poems, a collection of poetry for children At that point Ingelow gave up verse for a while and became industrious as a novelist. Off the Skelligs appeared in 1872, Fated to be Free in 1873, Sarah de Berenger in 1880, and John Jerome in 1886. She also wrote Studies for Stories (1864), Stories told to a Child (1865), Mopsa the Fairy (1869), and other stories for children. Ingelow’s children’s stories were influenced by Lewis Carroll and George MacDonald. Mopsa the Fairy, about a boy who discovers a nest of fairies and discovers a fairyland while riding on the back of an albatross) was one of her most popular works (it was reprinted in 1927 with illustrations by Dorothy P. Lathrop). Anne Thaxter Eaton, writing in A Critical History of Children’s Literature, calls the book “a well-constructed tale”, with “charm and a kind of logical make-believe.” Her third series of Poems was published in 1885. Jean Ingelow’s last years were spent in Kensington, by which time she had outlived her popularity as a poet. She died in 1897 and was buried in Brompton Cemetery, London. Criticism Ingelow’s poems, collected in one volume in 1898, were frequently popular successes. “Sailing beyond Seas” and “When Sparrows build in Supper at the Mill” were among the most popular songs of the day. Her best-known poems include “The High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire” and “Divided”. Many, particularly her contemporaries, have defended her work. Gerald Massey described The High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire as “a poem full of power and tenderness” and Susan Coolidge remarked in a preface to an anthology of Ingelow’s poems, "She stood amid the morning dew/ And sang her earliest measure sweet/ Sang as the lark sings, speeding fair/ to touch and taste the purer air". “Sailing beyond Seas” (or “The Dove on the Mast”) was a favourite poem of Agatha Christie, who quotes it in two of her novels, The Moving Finger and Ordeal by Innocence. Still, the larger literary world largely dismissed her work. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, for example, wrote: "If we had nothing of Jean Ingelow’s but the most remarkable poem entitled Divided, it would be permissible to suppose the loss [of her], in fact or in might-have-been, of a poetess of almost the highest rank.... Jean Ingelow wrote some other good things, but nothing at all equalling this; while she also wrote too much and too long." Some of this criticism has overtones of dismissiveness of her as a female writer: “ Unless a man is an extraordinary coxcomb, a person of private means, or both, he seldom has the time and opportunity of committing, or the wish to commit, bad or indifferent verse for a long series of years; but it is otherwise with woman.” There have many parodies of her poetry, particularly of her archaisms, flowery language and perceived sentimentality. These include “Lovers, and a Reflexion” by Charles Stuart Calverley and “Supper at the Kind Brown Mill”, a parody of her “Supper at the Mill”, which appears in Gilbert Sorrentino’s satirical novel Blue Pastoral (1983). It is no longer fashionable to criticise poetry for the use of dialect.

John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester (1 April 1647– 26 July 1680), was an English poet and courtier of King Charles II’s Restoration court. The Restoration reacted against the “spiritual authoritarianism” of the Puritan era. Rochester was the embodiment of the new era, and he is as well known for his rakish lifestyle as his poetry, although the two were often interlinked. He died at the age of 33 from venereal disease. Rochester’s contemporary Andrew Marvell described him as “the best English satirist,” and he is generally considered to be the most considerable poet and the most learned among the Restoration wits. His poetry, despite being widely censored during the Victorian era, enjoyed a revival from the 1920s onwards, with notable champions including Graham Greene and Ezra Pound. The critic Vivian de Sola Pinto linked Rochester’s libertinism to Hobbesian materialism. During his lifetime, he was best known for A Satyr Against Reason and Mankind, and it remains among his best known works today. Life Upbringing and teens John Wilmot was born at Ditchley House in Oxfordshire on 1 April 1647. His father, Henry, Viscount Wilmot would be created Earl of Rochester in 1652 for his military service to Charles II during the King’s exile under the Commonwealth. Paul Davis describes Henry as "a Cavalier legend, a dashing bon viveur and war-hero who single-handedly engineered the future Charles II’s escape to the Continent (including the famous concealment in an oak tree) after the disastrous battle of Worcester in 1651". His mother, Anne St. John, was a strong-willed Puritan from a noble Wiltshire family. From the age of seven, Rochester was privately tutored, two years later attending the grammar school in nearby Burford. His father died in 1658, and John Wilmot inherited the title of the Earl of Rochester in April of that year. In January 1660, Rochester was admitted as a Fellow commoner to Wadham College, Oxford, a new and comparatively poor college. Whilst there, it is said, the 13-year-old “grew debauched”. In September 1661 he was awarded an honorary M.A. by the newly elected Chancellor of the university, Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, a family friend. As an act of gratitude towards the son of Henry Wilmot, Charles II conferred on Rochester an annual pension of £500. In November 1661 Charles sent Rochester on a three year Grand Tour of France and Italy, and appointed the physician Andrew Balfour as his governor. This exposed him to an unusual degree to European (especially French) writing and thought. In 1664 Rochester returned to London, and made his formal début at the Restoration court on Christmas Day. It has been suggested by a number of scholars that the King took a paternal role in Rochester’s life. Charles II suggested a marriage between Rochester and the wealthy heiress Elizabeth Malet. Her wealth-hungry relatives opposed marriage to the impoverished Rochester, who conspired with his mother to abduct the young Countess. Samuel Pepys described the attempted abduction in his diary on 28 May 1665: Thence to my Lady Sandwich’s, where, to my shame, I had not been a great while before. Here, upon my telling her a story of my Lord Rochester’s running away on Friday night last with Mrs. Mallett, the great beauty and fortune of the North, who had supped at White Hall with Mrs. Stewart, and was going home to her lodgings with her grandfather, my Lord Haly, by coach; and was at Charing Cross seized on by both horse and foot men, and forcibly taken from him, and put into a coach with six horses, and two women provided to receive her, and carried away. Upon immediate pursuit, my Lord of Rochester (for whom the King had spoke to the lady often, but with no successe [sic]) was taken at Uxbridge; but the lady is not yet heard of, and the King mighty angry, and the Lord sent to the Tower. 18-year-old Rochester spent three weeks in the Tower, and was only released after he wrote a penitent apology to the King. Rochester attempted to redeem himself by volunteering for the navy in the Second Dutch War in the winter of 1665, serving under the Earl of Sandwich. His courage at the Battle of Vågen, serving onboard the ship of Thomas Teddeman, made him a war hero. Pleased with his conduct, Charles appointed Rochester a Gentleman of the Bedchamber in March 1666, which granted him prime lodgings in Whitehall and a pension of £1,000 a year. The role encompassed, one week in every four, Rochester helping the King to dress and undress, serve his meals when dining in private, and sleeping at the foot of the King’s bed. In the summer of 1666, Rochester returned to sea, serving under Edward Spragge. He again showed extraordinary courage in battle. Upon returning from sea, Rochester resumed his courtship of Elizabeth Malet. Defying her family’s wishes, Malet eloped with Rochester again in January 1667, and they were married at the Knightsbridge chapel. In October 1667, the monarch granted Rochester special licence to enter the House of Lords early, despite being seven months underage. The act was an attempt by the King to bolster his number of supporters among the Lords. Teenage actress Nell Gwyn “almost certainly” took him as her lover; she was later to become the mistress of Charles II. Gwyn remained a lifelong friend and political associate, and her relationship with the King gave Rochester influence and status within the Court. 20s and last years Rochester’s life was divided between domesticity in the country and a riotous existence at court, where he was renowned for drunkenness, vivacious conversation, and “extravagant frolics” as part of the Merry Gang (as Andrew Marvell described them). The Merry Gang flourished for about 15 years after 1665 and included Henry Jermyn; Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset; John Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave; Henry Killigrew; Sir Charles Sedley; the playwrights William Wycherley and George Etherege; and George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham. Gilbert Burnet wrote of him that, "For five years together he was continually Drunk... [and] not... perfectly Master of himself... [which] led him to... do many wild and unaccountable things." In 1669 he committed treason by boxing the ears of Thomas Killigrew in sight of the monarch and was banned from the court, although the King soon called for his return. In 1673, Rochester began to train Elizabeth Barry as an actress. She went on to become the most famous actress of her age. He took her as his mistress in 1675. The relationship lasted for around five years, and produced a daughter, before descending into acrimony after Rochester began to resent her success. Rochester wrote afterwards, "With what face can I incline/To damn you to be only mine?... Live up to thy might mind/And be the mistress of mankind". When the King’s advisor and friend of Rochester, George Villiers lost power in 1673, Rochester’s standing fell as well. At the Christmas festivities at Whitehall of that year, Rochester delivered a satire to Charles II, “In the Isle of Britain”– which criticized the King for being obsessed with sex at the expense of his kingdom. Charles’ reaction to this satirical portrayal resulted in Rochester’s exile from the court until February. During this time Rochester dwelt at his estate in Adderbury. Despite this, in February 1674, after much petitioning by Rochester, the King appointed him Ranger of Woodstock Park. In June 1675 “Lord Rochester in a frolick after a rant did... beat downe the dyill (i.e. sundial) which stood in the middle of the Privie Garding, which was esteemed the rarest in Europ”. John Aubrey learned what Rochester said on this occasion when he came in from his “revells” with Charles Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, and Fleetwood Sheppard to see the object: “'What... doest thou stand here to fuck time?' Dash they fell to worke”. It has been speculated that the comment refers not to the dial itself, which was not phallic in appearance, but a painting of the King next to the dial that featured his phallic sceptre. Rochester fled the court again. Rochester fell into disfavour again in 1676. During a late-night scuffle with the night watch, one of Rochester’s companions was killed by a pike-thrust. Rochester was reported to have fled the scene of the incident, and his standing with the monarch reached an all time low. Following this incident, Rochester briefly fled to Tower Hill, where he impersonated a mountebank “Doctor Bendo”. Under this persona, he claimed skill in treating “barrenness” (infertility), and other gynecological disorders. Gilbert Burnet wryly noted that Rochester’s practice was “not without success”, implying his intercession of himself as surreptitious sperm donor. On occasion, Rochester also assumed the role of the grave and matronly Mrs. Bendo, presumably so that he could inspect young women privately without arousing their husbands’ suspicions. Death By the age of 33, Rochester was dying, from what is usually described as the effects of syphilis, gonorrhea, or other venereal diseases, combined with the effects of alcoholism. Carol Richards has disputed this, arguing that it is more likely that he died of renal failure due to chronic nephritis as a result of suffering from Bright’s disease. His mother had him attended in his final weeks by her religious associates, particularly Gilbert Burnet, later Bishop of Salisbury. After hearing of Burnet’s departure from his side, Rochester muttered his last words; “Has my friend left me? then I shall die shortly”. In the early morning of 26 July 1680, Rochester died “without a shudder or a sound”. He was buried at Spelsbury Church in Oxfordshire. A deathbed renunciation of libertinism was published and promulgated as the conversion of a prodigal son. Because the first published account of this story appears in Burnet’s own writings, its accuracy has been disputed by some scholars, who accuse Burnet with having shaped the account of Rochester’s denunciation of libertinism to enhance his own reputation. Works * Three major critical editions of Rochester in the twentieth century have taken very different approaches to authenticating and organizing his canon. David Vieth’s 1968 edition adopts a heavily biographical organization, modernizing spellings and heading the sections of his book “Prentice Work”, “Early Maturity”, “Tragic Maturity”, and “Disillusionment and Death”. Keith Walker’s 1984 edition takes a genre-based approach, returning to the older spellings and accidentals in an effort to present documents closer to those a seventeenth century audience would have received. Harold Love’s Oxford University Press edition of 1999, now the scholarly standard, notes the variorum history conscientiously, but arranges works in genre sections ordered from the private to the public. Scholarship has identified approximately 75 authentic Rochester poems. * Rochester’s poetic work varies widely in form, genre, and content. He was part of a “mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease”, who continued to produce their poetry in manuscripts, rather than in publication. As a consequence, some of Rochester’s work deals with topical concerns, such as satires of courtly affairs in libels, to parodies of the styles of his contemporaries, such as Sir Carr Scroope. He is also notable for his impromptus, one of which is a teasing epitaph of King Charles II: * We have a pretty witty king, * And whose word no man relies on, * He never said a foolish thing, * And never did a wise one” * to which Charles supposedly said “that’s true, for my words are my own, but my actions are those of my ministers”. * Rochester’s poetry displays a range of learning and influences. These included imitations of Malherbe, Ronsard, and Boileau. He also translated or adapted from classical authors such as Petronius, Lucretius, Ovid, Anacreon, Horace, and Seneca. * Rochester’s writings were at once admired and infamous. A Satyr Against Mankind (1675), one of the few poems he published (in a broadside in 1679) is a scathing denunciation of rationalism and optimism that contrasts human perfidy with animal wisdom. * The majority of his poetry was not published under his name until after his death. Because most of his poems circulated only in manuscript form during his lifetime, it is likely that much of his writing does not survive. Burnet claimed that Rochester’s conversion experience led him to ask that “all his profane and lewd writings” be burned; it is unclear how much, if any, of Rochester’s writing was destroyed. * Rochester was also interested in the theatre. In addition to an interest in actresses, he wrote an adaptation of Fletcher’s Valentinian (1685), a scene for Sir Robert Howard’s The Conquest of China, a prologue to Elkanah Settle’s The Empress of Morocco (1673), and epilogues to Sir Francis Fane’s Love in the Dark (1675), Charles Davenant’s Circe, a Tragedy (1677). The best-known dramatic work attributed to Rochester, Sodom, or the Quintessence of Debauchery, has never been successfully proven to be written by him. Posthumous printings of Sodom, however, gave rise to prosecutions for obscenity, and were destroyed. On 16 December 2004 one of the few surviving copies of Sodom was sold by Sotheby’s for £45,600. * Rochester’s letters to his wife and to his friend Henry Savile show an admirable mastery of easy, colloquial prose. Reception and influence * Rochester was the model for a number of rake heroes in plays of the period, such as Don John in Thomas Shadwell’s The Libertine (1675) and Dorimant in George Etherege’s The Man of Mode (1676). Meanwhile he was eulogised by his contemporaries such as Aphra Behn and Andrew Marvell, who described him as “the only man in England that had the true vein of satire”. Daniel Defoe quoted him in Moll Flanders, and discussed him in other works. Voltaire, who spoke of Rochester as “the man of genius, the great poet”, admired his satire for its “energy and fire” and translated some lines into French to “display the shining imagination his lordship only could boast”. * By the 1750s, Rochester’s reputation suffered as the liberality of the Restoration era subsided; Samuel Johnson characterised him as a worthless and dissolute rake. Horace Walpole described him as “a man whom the muses were fond to inspire but ashamed to avow”. Despite this general disdain for Rochester, William Hazlitt commented that his “verses cut and sparkle like diamonds” while his “epigrams were the bitterest, the least laboured, and the truest, that ever were written”. Referring to Rochester’s perspective, Hazlitt wrote that “his contempt for everything that others respect almost amounts to sublimity”. Meanwhile, Goethe quoted A Satyr against Reason and Mankind in English in his Autobiography. Despite this, Rochester’s work was largely ignored throughout the Victorian era. * Rochester’s reputation would not begin to revive until the 1920s. Ezra Pound, in his ABC of Reading, compared Rochester’s poetry favourably to better known figures such as Alexander Pope and John Milton. Graham Greene characterised Rochester as a “spoiled Puritan”. Although F. R. Leavis argued that “Rochester is not a great poet of any kind”, William Empson admired him. More recently, Germaine Greer has questioned the validity of the appraisal of Rochester as a drunken rake, and hailed the sensitivity of some of his lyrics. * Rochester was listed #6 in Time Out’s "Top 30 chart of London’s most erotic writers". Tom Morris, the associate director, of the National Theatre said ‘Rochester reminds me of an unhinged poacher, moving noiselessly through the night and shooting every convention that moves. Bishop Burnett, who coached him to an implausible death-bed repentance, said that he was unable to express any feeling without oaths and obscenities. He seemed like a punk in a frock coat. But once the straw dolls have been slain, Rochester celebrates in a sexual landscape all of his own.’ In popular culture * A play, The Libertine (1994), was written by Stephen Jeffreys, and staged by the Royal Court Theatre. The 2004 film The Libertine, based on Jeffreys’ play, starred Johnny Depp as Rochester, Samantha Morton as Elizabeth Barry, John Malkovich as King Charles II and Rosamund Pike as Elizabeth Malet. Michael Nyman set to music an excerpt of Rochester’s poem, “Signor Dildo” for the film. * Rochester is the central character in Anna Lieff Saxby’s 1996 erotic novella 'No Paradise But Pleasure’ References Wikipedia—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wilmot,_2nd_Earl_of_Rochester

Francis Beaumont (1584– 6 March 1616) was a dramatist in the English Renaissance theatre, most famous for his collaborations with John Fletcher. Beaumont was the son of Sir Francis Beaumont of Grace Dieu, near Thringstone in Leicestershire, a justice of the common pleas. His mother was Anne, the daughter of Sir George Pierrepont (d. 1564), of Holme Pierrepont, and his wife Winnifred Twaits. Beaumont was born at the family seat and was educated at Broadgates Hall (now Pembroke College, Oxford) at age thirteen. Following the death of his father in 1598, he left university without a degree and followed in his father’s footsteps by entering the Inner Temple in London in 1600. Accounts suggest that Beaumont did not work long as a lawyer. He became a student of poet and playwright Ben Jonson; he was also acquainted with Michael Drayton and other poets and dramatists, and decided that was where his passion lay. His first work, Salmacis and Hermaphroditus, appeared in 1602. The 1911 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica describes the work as “not on the whole discreditable to a lad of eighteen, fresh from the popular love-poems of Marlowe and Shakespeare, which it naturally exceeds in long-winded and fantastic diffusion of episodes and conceits.” In 1605, Beaumont wrote commendatory verses to Jonson’s Volpone. Beaumont’s collaboration with Fletcher may have begun as early as 1605. They had both hit an obstacle early in their dramatic careers with notable failures; Beaumont’s The Knight of the Burning Pestle, first performed by the Children of the Blackfriars in 1607, was rejected by an audience who, the publisher’s epistle to the 1613 quarto claims, failed to note “the privie mark of irony about it;” that is, they took Beaumont’s satire of old-fashioned drama as an old-fashioned drama. The play received a lukewarm reception. The following year, Fletcher’s Faithful Shepherdess failed on the same stage. In 1609, however, the two collaborated on Philaster, which was performed by the King’s Men at the Globe Theatre and at Blackfriars. The play was a popular success, not only launching the careers of the two playwrights but also sparking a new taste for tragicomedy. According to a mid-century anecdote related by John Aubrey, they lived in the same house on the Bankside in Southwark, “sharing everything in the closest intimacy.” About 1613 Beaumont married Ursula Isley, daughter and co-heiress of Henry Isley of Sundridge in Kent, by whom he had two daughters, one posthumous. He had a stroke between February and October 1613, after which he wrote no more plays, but was able to write an elegy for Lady Penelope Clifton, who died 26 October 1613. Beaumont died in 1616 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Although today Beaumont is remembered as a dramatist, during his lifetime he was also celebrated as a poet. Beaumont’s plays It was once written of Beaumont and Fletcher that “in their joint plays their talents are so... completely merged into one, that the hand of Beaumont cannot clearly be distinguished from that of Fletcher.” Yet this romantic notion did not stand up to critical examination. In the seventeenth century, Sir Aston Cockayne, a friend of Fletcher’s, specified that there were many plays in the 1647 Beaumont and Fletcher folio that contained nothing of Beaumont’s work, but rather featured the writing of Philip Massinger. Nineteenth– and twentieth-century critics like E. H. C. Oliphant subjected the plays to a self-consciously literary, and often subjective and impressionistic, reading—but nonetheless began to differentiate the hands of the collaborators. This study was carried much farther, and onto a more objective footing, by twentieth-century scholars, especially Cyrus Hoy. Short of absolute certainty, a critical consensus has evolved on many plays in the canon of Fletcher and his collaborators; in regard to Beaumont, the schema below is among the least controversial that has been drawn. By Beaumont alone: The Knight of the Burning Pestle, comedy (performed 1607; printed 1613) The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inn, masque (performed 20 February 1613; printed 1613?) With Fletcher: The Woman Hater, comedy (1606; 1607) Cupid’s Revenge, tragedy (c. 1607–12; 1615) Philaster, or Love Lies a-Bleeding, tragicomedy (c. 1609; 1620) The Maid’s Tragedy, tragedy (c. 1609; 1619) A King and No King, tragicomedy (1611; 1619) The Captain, comedy (c. 1609–12; 1647) The Scornful Lady, comedy (ca. 1613; 1616) Love’s Pilgrimage, tragicomedy (c. 1615–16; 1647) The Noble Gentleman, comedy (licensed 3 February 1626; 1647) Beaumont/Fletcher plays, later revised by Massinger: Thierry and Theodoret, tragedy (c. 1607?; 1621) The Coxcomb, comedy (c. 1608–10; 1647) Beggars’ Bush, comedy (c. 1612–13?; revised 1622?; 1647) Love’s Cure, comedy (c. 1612–13?; revised 1625?; 1647) Because of Fletcher’s highly distinctive and personal pattern of linguistic preferences and contractional forms (ye for you, 'em for them, etc.), his hand can be distinguished fairly easily from Beaumont’s in their collaborations. In A King and No King, for example, Beaumont wrote all of Acts I, II, and III, plus scenes IV.iv and V.ii and iv; Fletcher wrote only the first three scenes in Act IV (IV, i-iii) and the first and third scenes in Act V (V, i and iii)—so that the play is more Beaumont’s than Fletcher’s. The same is true of The Woman Hater, The Maid’s Tragedy, The Noble Gentleman, and Philaster. On the other hand, Cupid’s Revenge, The Coxcomb, The Scornful Lady, Beggar’s Bush, and The Captain are more Fletcher’s than Beaumont’s. In Love’s Cure and Thierry and Theodoret, the influence of Massinger’s revision complicates matters; but in those plays too, Fletcher appears to be the majority contributor, Beaumont the minority. References Wikipedia—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Beaumont

Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell DBE (7 September 1887– 9 December 1964) was a British poet and critic and the eldest of the three literary Sitwells. Like her brothers Osbert and Sacheverell, Edith reacted badly to her eccentric, unloving parents, and lived for much of her life with her governess. She never married, but became passionately attached to the gay Russian painter Pavel Tchelitchew, and her home was always open to London’s poetic circle, to whom she was unfailingly generous and helpful. Sitwell published poetry continuously from 1913, some of it abstract and set to music. With her dramatic style and exotic costumes, she was sometimes labelled a poseur, but her work was praised for its solid technique and painstaking craftsmanship. Background Edith Louisa Sitwell was born in Scarborough, North Riding of Yorkshire, the oldest child and only daughter of Sir George Sitwell, 4th Baronet, of Renishaw Hall; he was an expert on genealogy and landscaping. Her mother was Lady Ida Emily Augusta (née Denison), a daughter of the Earl of Londesborough and a granddaughter of Henry Somerset, 7th Duke of Beaufort. She claimed a descent through female lines from the Plantagenets. Sitwell had two younger brothers, Osbert (1892–1969) and Sacheverell Sitwell (1897–1988) both distinguished authors, well-known literary figures in their own right, and long-term collaborators. Her relationship with her parents was stormy at best, not least because her father made her undertake a “cure” for her supposed spinal deformation, involving locking her into an iron frame. She wrote in her autobiography that her parents had always been strangers to her. In 1914, 26-year-old Sitwell moved to a small, shabby flat in Pembridge Mansions, Bayswater, which she shared with Helen Rootham (1875–1938), her governess since 1903. Sitwell never married, but in 1927 she allegedly fell in love with the homosexual Russian painter Pavel Tchelitchew. The relationship lasted until 1928, the same year that Rootham underwent operations for cancer (eventually becoming an invalid). In 1932, Helen Rootham and Sitwell moved to Paris, where they lived with Rootham’s younger sister, Evelyn Wiel. Sitwell’s mother died in 1937. Sitwell did not attend the funeral because of her displeasure with her parents during her childhood. Helen Rootham died of spinal cancer in 1938. During the Second World War Sitwell returned from France and retired to Renishaw with her brother Osbert and his lover, David Horner. She wrote under the light of oil lamps as the house had no electricity. She knitted clothes for their friends who served in the army. One of the beneficiaries was Alec Guinness, who received a pair of seaboot stockings. The poems she wrote during the war brought her back before the public. They include Street Songs (1942), The Song of the Cold (1945), and The Shadow of Cain (1947), all of which were much praised. “Still Falls the Rain” about the London Blitz, remains perhaps her best-known poem; it was set to music by Benjamin Britten as Canticle III: Still Falls the Rain. Her poem The Bee-Keeper was set to music by Priaulx Rainier, as The Bee Oracles (1970), a setting for tenor, flute, oboe, violin, cello, and harpsichord. It was premiered by Peter Pears in 1970. In 1943, her father died in Switzerland, his wealth depleted. In 1948, a reunion with Tchelitchew, whom she had not seen since before the war, went badly. In 1948 Sitwell toured the United States with her brothers, reciting her poetry and, notoriously, giving a reading of Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking scene. Her poetry recitals always were occasions; she made recordings of her poems, including two recordings of Façade, the first with Constant Lambert as co-narrator, and the second with Peter Pears. Tchelitchew died in July 1957. Her brother Osbert died in 1969, of Parkinson’s disease, diagnosed in 1950. Sitwell became a Dame Commander (DBE) in 1954. In August 1955 she converted to Roman Catholicism and asked author Evelyn Waugh to serve as her godfather. Sitwell wrote two books about Queen Elizabeth I of England: Fanfare for Elizabeth (1946) and The Queens and the Hive (1962). She always claimed that she wrote prose simply for money and both these books were extremely successful, as were her English Eccentrics (1933) and Victoria of England (1936). Sitwell was the subject of This Is Your Life in November 1962 when she was surprised by Eamonn Andrews on the stage of the BBC Television Theatre in London. Sitwell lived from 1961 until her death in a flat in Hampstead in London, which is now marked with an English Heritage blue plaque. Last years and death About 1957 she began using a wheelchair, after battling with Marfan syndrome throughout her life. Her last poetry reading was in 1962. She died of cerebral haemorrhage at St Thomas’ Hospital on 9 December 1964 at the age of 77. She is buried in the churchyard of Weedon Lois in Northamptonshire. Sitwell’s papers are held at the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin. Poetry Sitwell published her first poem The Drowned Suns in the Daily Mirror in 1913 and between 1916 and 1921 she edited Wheels, an annual poetic anthology compiled with her brothers—a literary collaboration generally called “the Sitwells”. In 1929 she published Gold Coast Customs, a poem about the artificiality of human behaviour and the barbarism that lies beneath the surface. The poem was written in the rhythms of the tom-tom and of jazz, and shows considerable technical skill. Her early work reflects the strong influence of the French symbolists. She became a proponent and supporter of innovative trends in English poetry and opposed what she considered the conventionality of many contemporary backward-looking poets. Her flat became a meeting place for young writers whom she wished to befriend and help: these later included Dylan Thomas and Denton Welch. She also helped to publish the poetry of Wilfred Owen after his death. Her only novel, I Live Under a Black Sun, based on the life of Jonathan Swift, was published in 1937. Publicity and controversy Sitwell had angular features resembling Queen Elizabeth I (they also had the same birthday) and stood six feet (183 cm) tall, but often dressed in an unusual manner with gowns of brocade or velvet, with gold turbans, and a plethora of rings– her jewellery may be seen in the jewellery galleries of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Her unusual appearance provoked critics almost as much as her verse, and throughout her life she was the subject of more or less virulent personal attacks from Geoffrey Grigson, F. R. Leavis, and others, which she returned with vigour. Her 'enemies’ were treated with scorn; after Noël Coward wrote a skit on Sitwell and her two brothers as “The Swiss Family Whittlebot” for his 1923 revue London Calling!, she refused to speak to him until they were reconciled after her triumphant 70th birthday party at London’s Royal Festival Hall. To her friends she showed great sweetness and invariable kindness. Sitwell participated in the ongoing UGH.... correspondence featured in the Times Literary Supplement in 1963, an ongoing debate on the value of the work of William S. Burroughs and the nature of literary criticism, initiated by critic John Willard. Sitwell stated she was delighted by Willard’s wholly negative review of Burroughs’ work, despite claiming to not know who Burroughs was. In the same letter she described Lady Chatterley’s Lover as an “insignificant, dirty little book”, and rounded out her letter with the statement that she preferred Chanel Number 5 to having her nose “nailed to other people’s lavatories”. Sitwell was most interested by the distinction between poetry and music, a matter explored in Façade (1922), a series of abstract poems the rhythms of which counterparted those of music, and which was set to music by William Walton. Façade was performed behind a curtain with a hole in the mouth of a painted face (the painting was by John Piper) and the words were recited through the hole with the aid of a Sengerphone. The public received the first performance with bemusement, but there were many positive reactions. As she lay dying, the critic Julian Symons published the last of these attacks in The London Magazine of November 1964, accusing her of “wearing other people’s bleeding hearts on her own safe sleeve.”

Anne Killigrew (1660–1685) was an English poet. Born in London, Killigrew is perhaps best known as the subject of a famous elegy by the poet John Dryden entitled To The Pious Memory of the Accomplish’d Young Lady Mrs. Anne Killigrew (1686). She was however a skilful poet in her own right, and her Poems were published posthumously in 1686. Dryden compared her poetic abilities to the famous Greek poet of antiquity, Sappho. Killigrew died of smallpox aged 25. Early life and inspiration Anne Killigrew was born in early 1660, before the Restoration, at St. Martin’s Lane in London. Not much is known about her mother Judith Killigrew, but her father Dr. Henry Killigrew published several sermons and poems as well as a play called The Conspiracy. Her two paternal uncles were also published playwrights. Sir William Killigrew (1606–1695) published two collections of plays and Thomas Killigrew (1612–1683) not only wrote plays but built the theatre now known as Drury Lane. Her father and her uncles had close connections with the Stuart Court, serving Charles I, Charles II, and his Queen, Catherine of Braganza. Anne was made a personal attendant, before her death, to Mary of Modena, Duchess of York. Little is recorded about Anne’s education, but it is known that she kept up with her social class, and she received instruction in both poetry and painting in which she excelled. Her theatrical background added to her use of shifting voices in her poetry. In John Dryden’s Ode to Anne he points out that “Art she had none, yet wanted none. For Nature did that want supply” (Stanza V). Killigrew most likely got her education through studying the Bible, Greek mythology, and philosophy. Mythology was often expressed throughout her paintings and poetry. Inspiration for Killigrew’s poetry came from her knowledge of Greek myths and Biblical proverbs as well as from some very influential female poets who lived during the Restoration period: Katherine Philips and Anne Finch (also a maid to Mary of Modena at the same time as Killigrew). Mary of Modena encouraged the French tradition of precieuses (patrician women intellectuals) which pressed women’s participation in theatre, literature, and music. In effect, Killigrew was surrounded with a poetic feminist inspiration on a daily basis in Court: she was encompassed by strong intelligent women who encouraged her writing career as much as their own. With this motivation came a short book of only thirty-three poems published soon after her death by her father. It was not abnormal for poets, especially for women, never to see their work published in their lifetime. Since Killigrew died at the young age of 25 she was only able to produce a small collection of poetry. In fact, the last three poems were only found among her papers and it is still being debated about whether or not they were actually written by her. Inside the book is also a self painted portrait of Anne and the Ode by family friend and poet John Dryden. The Poet and the Painter Anne Killigrew excelled in multiple media, which was noted by contemporary poet, mentor, and family friend, John Dryden in his dedicatory ode to Killigrew. He addresses her as "the Accomplisht Young LADY Mrs Anne Killigrew, Excellent in the two Sister-Arts of Poësie, and Painting." Scholars believe that Kelligrew painted a total of 15 paintings; however, only four are known to exist today. Many of her paintings display biblical and mythological imagery. Yet, Killigrew was also skilled at portraits, and her works include a self-portrait and a portrait of James, Duke of York. Some of her poetry references her own paintings, such as her poem “On a Picture Painted by her self, representing two Nimphs of DIANA’s, one in a posture to Hunt, the other Batheing.” Both her poems and her paintings place emphasis on women and nature, suggesting female rebellion in a male-dominated society. Contemporary critics noted her exceptional skill in both mediums, with John Dryden addressing his dedicatory John Dryden and critical reception Killigrew is best known for being the subject of John Dryden’s famous, extolling ode, which praises Killigrew for her beauty, virtue, and literary talent. However, Dryden was one of several contemporary admirers of Killigrew, and the posthumous collection of her work published in 1686 included several additional poems commending her literary merit, irreproachable piety, and personal charm. Nonetheless, critics often disagree about the nature of Dryden’s ode: some believe his praise to be too excessive, and even ironic. These individuals condemn Killigrew for using well worn and conventional topics, such as death, love, and the human condition, in her poetry and pastoral dialogues. In fact, Alexander Pope, a prominent critic, as well as the leading poet of the time, labelled her work “crude” and “unsophisticated.” As a young poet who had only distributed her work via manuscript prior to her death, it is possible that Killigrew was not ready to see her work published so soon. Some say Dryden defended all poets because he believed them to be teachers of moral truths; thus, he felt Killigrew, as an inexperienced yet dedicated poet, deserved his praise. However, Anthony Wood in his 1721 essay defends Dryden’s praise, confirming that Killigrew “was equal to, if not superior” to any of the compliments lavished upon her. Furthermore, Wood asserts that Killigrew must have been well received in her time, otherwise “her Father would never have suffered them to pass the Press” after her death. Authorship controversy Then, there is the question of the last three poems that were found among her papers. They seem to be in her handwriting, which is why Killigrew’s father added them to her book. The poems are about the despair the author has for another woman, and could possibly be autobiographical if they are in fact by Killigrew. Some of her other poems are about failed friendships, possibly with Anne Finch, so this assumption may have some validity. An early death Killigrew died of smallpox on 16 June 1685, when she was only 25 years old. She is buried in the Chancel of the Savoy Chapel (dedicated to St John the Baptist) where a monument was built in her honour, but has since been destroyed by a fire.

Christopher Marlowe, also known as Kit Marlowe (baptised 26 February 1564– 30 May 1593), was an English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe was the foremost Elizabethan tragedian of his day. He greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who was born in the same year as Marlowe and who rose to become the pre-eminent Elizabethan playwright after Marlowe’s mysterious early death. Marlowe’s plays are known for the use of blank verse and their overreaching protagonists. A warrant was issued for Marlowe’s arrest on 18 May 1593. No reason was given for it, though it was thought to be connected to allegations of blasphemy—a manuscript believed to have been written by Marlowe was said to contain “vile heretical conceipts”. On 20 May, he was brought to the court to attend upon the Privy Council for questioning. There is no record of their having met that day, however, and he was commanded to attend upon them each day thereafter until “licensed to the contrary”. Ten days later, he was stabbed to death by Ingram Frizer. Whether the stabbing was connected to his arrest has never been resolved. Early life Marlowe was born in Canterbury to shoemaker John Marlowe and his wife Catherine. His date of birth is not known, but he was baptised on 26 February 1564, and is likely to have been born a few days before. Thus, he was just two months older than his contemporary William Shakespeare, who was baptised on 26 April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon. Marlowe attended The King’s School in Canterbury (where a house is now named after him) and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he studied on a scholarship and received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1584. In 1587, the university hesitated to award him his Master of Arts degree because of a rumour that he intended to go to the English college at Rheims, presumably to prepare for ordination as a Roman Catholic priest. However, his degree was awarded on schedule when the Privy Council intervened on his behalf, commending him for his “faithful dealing” and “good service” to the Queen. The nature of Marlowe’s service was not specified by the Council, but its letter to the Cambridge authorities has provoked much speculation, notably the theory that Marlowe was operating as a secret agent working for Sir Francis Walsingham’s intelligence service. No direct evidence supports this theory, although the Council’s letter is evidence that Marlowe had served the government in some secret capacity. Literary career Of the dramas attributed to Marlowe, Dido, Queen of Carthage is believed to have been his first. It was performed by the Children of the Chapel, a company of boy actors, between 1587 and 1593. The play was first published in 1594; the title page attributes the play to Marlowe and Thomas Nashe. Marlowe’s first play performed on the regular stage in London, in 1587, was Tamburlaine the Great, about the conqueror Timur (Tamerlane), who rises from shepherd to warlord. It is among the first English plays in blank verse, and, with Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, generally is considered the beginning of the mature phase of the Elizabethan theatre. Tamburlaine was a success, and was followed with Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. The two parts of Tamburlaine were published in 1590; all Marlowe’s other works were published posthumously. The sequence of the writing of his other four plays is unknown; all deal with controversial themes. * The Jew of Malta (first published as The Famous Tragedy of the Rich Jew of Malta), about a Maltese Jew’s barbarous revenge against the city authorities, has a prologue delivered by a character representing Machiavelli. It was probably written in 1589 or 1590, and was first performed in 1592. It was a success, and remained popular for the next fifty years. The play was entered in the Stationers’ Register on 17 May 1594, but the earliest surviving printed edition is from 1633. * Edward the Second is an English history play about the deposition of King Edward II by his barons and the Queen, who resent the undue influence the king’s favourites have in court and state affairs. The play was entered into the Stationers’ Register on 6 July 1593, five weeks after Marlowe’s death. The full title of the earliest extant edition, of 1594, is The troublesome reigne and lamentable death of Edward the second, King of England, with the tragicall fall of proud Mortimer. * The Massacre at Paris is a short and luridly written work, the only surviving text of which was probably a reconstruction from memory of the original performance text, portraying the events of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572, which English Protestants invoked as the blackest example of Catholic treachery. It features the silent “English Agent”, whom subsequent tradition has identified with Marlowe himself and his connections to the secret service. The Massacre at Paris is considered his most dangerous play, as agitators in London seized on its theme to advocate the murders of refugees from the low countries and, indeed, it warns Elizabeth I of this possibility in its last scene. Its full title was The Massacre at Paris: With the Death of the Duke of Guise. * Doctor Faustus (or The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus), based on the German Faustbuch, was the first dramatised version of the Faust legend of a scholar’s dealing with the devil. While versions of “The Devil’s Pact” can be traced back to the 4th century, Marlowe deviates significantly by having his hero unable to “burn his books” or repent to a merciful God in order to have his contract annulled at the end of the play. Marlowe’s protagonist is instead carried off by demons, and in the 1616 quarto his mangled corpse is found by several scholars. Doctor Faustus is a textual problem for scholars as two versions of the play exist: the 1604 quarto, also known as the A text, and the 1616 quarto or B text. Both were published after Marlowe’s death. Scholars have disagreed which text is more representative of Marlowe’s original, and some editions are based on a combination of the two. The latest scholarly consensus (as of the late 20th century) holds the A text is more representative because it contains irregular character names and idiosyncratic spelling, which are believed to reflect a text based on the author’s handwritten manuscript, or “foul papers.” The B text, in comparison, was highly edited, censored because of shifting theater laws regarding religious words onstage, and contains several additional scenes which scholars believe to be the additions of other playwrights, particularly Samuel Rowley and William Bird (alias Borne). Marlowe’s plays were enormously successful, thanks in part, no doubt, to the imposing stage presence of Edward Alleyn. Alleyn was unusually tall for the time, and the haughty roles of Tamburlaine, Faustus, and Barabas were probably written especially for him. Marlowe’s plays were the foundation of the repertoire of Alleyn’s company, the Admiral’s Men, throughout the 1590s. Marlowe also wrote the poem Hero and Leander (published in 1598, and with a continuation by George Chapman the same year), the popular lyric “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”, and translations of Ovid’s Amores and the first book of Lucan’s Pharsalia. In 1599, his translation of Ovid was banned and copies publicly burned as part of Archbishop Whitgift’s crackdown on offensive material. Marlowe has been credited in the New Oxford Shakespeare series as co-author of the three Henry VI plays. Legend As with other writers of the period, little is known about Marlowe. What evidence there is can be found in legal records and other official documents. This has not stopped writers of both fiction and non-fiction from speculating about his activities and character. Marlowe has often been described as a spy, a brawler, and a heretic, as well as a “magician”, “duellist”, “tobacco-user”, “counterfeiter”, and “rakehell”. J. A. Downie and Constance Kuriyama have argued against the more lurid speculation, but J. B. Steane remarked, “it seems absurd to dismiss all of these Elizabethan rumours and accusations as 'the Marlowe myth’”. Spying Marlowe is alleged to have been a government spy (Park Honan’s 2005 biography even had “Spy” in its title). The author Charles Nicholl speculates this was the case and suggests that Marlowe’s recruitment took place when he was at Cambridge. As noted above, in 1587 the Privy Council ordered the University of Cambridge to award Marlowe his degree of Master of Arts, denying rumours that he intended to go to the English Catholic college in Rheims, saying instead that he had been engaged in unspecified “affaires” on “matters touching the benefit of his country”. Surviving college records from the period also indicate that Marlowe had had a series of unusually lengthy absences from the university– much longer than permitted by university regulations– that began in the academic year 1584–1585. Surviving college buttery (provisions store) accounts indicate he began spending lavishly on food and drink during the periods he was in attendance– more than he could have afforded on his known scholarship income. It has sometimes been theorised that Marlowe was the “Morley” who was tutor to Arbella Stuart in 1589. This possibility was first raised in a TLS letter by E. St John Brooks in 1937; in a letter to Notes and Queries, John Baker has added that only Marlowe could be Arbella’s tutor due to the absence of any other known “Morley” from the period with an MA and not otherwise occupied. If Marlowe was Arbella’s tutor (and some biographers think that the “Morley” in question may have been a brother of the musician Thomas Morley), it might indicate that he was there as a spy, since Arbella, niece of Mary, Queen of Scots, and cousin of James VI of Scotland, later James I of England, was at the time a strong candidate for the succession to Elizabeth’s throne. Frederick S. Boas dismisses the possibility of this identification, based on surviving legal records which document his "residence in London between September and December 1589". Marlowe had been party to a fatal quarrel involving his neighbours and the poet Thomas Watson in Norton Folgate, and was held in Newgate Prison for a fortnight. In fact the quarrel and his arrest was on 18 September, he was released on bail on 1 October, and he had to attend court– where he was cleared of any wrongdoing– on 3 December, but there is no record of where he was for the intervening two months. In 1592 Marlowe was arrested in the town of Flushing (Vlissingen) (then an English garrison town) in the Netherlands for his alleged involvement in the counterfeiting of coins, presumably related to the activities of seditious Catholics. He was sent to be dealt with by the Lord Treasurer (Burghley) but no charge or imprisonment resulted. This arrest may have disrupted another of Marlowe’s spying missions, perhaps by giving the resulting coinage to the Catholic cause. He was to infiltrate the followers of the active Catholic plotter William Stanley and report back to Burghley. Arrest and death In early May 1593 several bills were posted about London threatening Protestant refugees from France and the Netherlands who had settled in the city. One of these, the “Dutch church libel”, written in rhymed iambic pentameter, contained allusions to several of Marlowe’s plays and was signed, “Tamburlaine”. On 11 May the Privy Council ordered the arrest of those responsible for the libels. The next day, Marlowe’s colleague Thomas Kyd was arrested. Kyd’s lodgings were searched and a 3-page fragment of a heretical tract was found. In a letter to Sir John Puckering, Kyd asserted that it had belonged to Marlowe, with whom he had been writing “in one chamber” some two years earlier. In a second letter, Kyd described Marlowe as blasphemous, disorderly, holding treasonous opinions, being an irreligious reprobate, and ‘intemperate & of a cruel hart’. At that time they had both been working for an aristocratic patron, probably Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange. A warrant for Marlowe’s arrest was issued on 18 May, when the Privy Council apparently knew that he might be found staying with Thomas Walsingham, whose father was a first cousin of the late Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth’s principal secretary in the 1580s and a man more deeply involved in state espionage than any other member of the Privy Council. Marlowe duly presented himself on 20 May but, there apparently being no Privy Council meeting on that day, was instructed to “give his daily attendance on their Lordships, until he shall be licensed to the contrary”. On Wednesday, 30 May, Marlowe was killed. Various accounts of Marlowe’s death were current over the next few years. In his Palladis Tamia, published in 1598, Francis Meres says Marlowe was “stabbed to death by a bawdy serving-man, a rival of his in his lewd love” as punishment for his “epicurism and atheism.” In 1917, in the Dictionary of National Biography, Sir Sidney Lee wrote that Marlowe was killed in a drunken fight, and this is still often stated as fact today. The official account came to light only in 1925 when the scholar Leslie Hotson discovered the coroner’s report of the inquest on Marlowe’s death, held two days later on Friday 1 June 1593, by the Coroner of the Queen’s Household, William Danby. Marlowe had spent all day in a house in Deptford, owned by the widow Eleanor Bull, and together with three men: Ingram Frizer, Nicholas Skeres and Robert Poley. All three had been employed by one or other of the Walsinghams. Skeres and Poley had helped snare the conspirators in the Babington plot and Frizer would later describe Thomas Walsingham as his “master” at that time although his role was probably more that of a financial or business agent as he was for Walsingham’s wife Audrey a few years later. These witnesses testified that Frizer and Marlowe had argued over payment of the bill (now famously known as the 'Reckoning’) exchanging “divers malicious words” while Frizer was sitting at a table between the other two and Marlowe was lying behind him on a couch. Marlowe snatched Frizer’s dagger and wounded him on the head. In the ensuing struggle, according to the coroner’s report, Marlowe was stabbed above the right eye, killing him instantly. The jury concluded that Frizer acted in self-defence, and within a month he was pardoned. Marlowe was buried in an unmarked grave in the churchyard of St. Nicholas, Deptford immediately after the inquest, on 1 June 1593. The complete text of the inquest report was published by Leslie Hotson in his book, The Death of Christopher Marlowe, in the introduction to which Prof. G. L. Kittredge said “The mystery of Marlowe’s death, heretofore involved in a cloud of contradictory gossip and irresponsible guess-work, is now cleared up for good and all on the authority of public records of complete authenticity and gratifying fullness”, but this confidence proved fairly short-lived. Hotson himself had considered the possibility that the witnesses had “concocted a lying account of Marlowe’s behaviour, to which they swore at the inquest, and with which they deceived the jury” but came down against that scenario. Others, however, began to suspect that this was indeed the case. Writing to the Times Literary Supplement shortly after the book’s publication, Eugénie de Kalb disputed that the struggle and outcome as described were even possible, and Samuel A. Tannenbaum (a graduate of the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons) insisted the following year that such a wound could not have possibly resulted in instant death, as had been claimed. Even Marlowe’s biographer John Bakeless acknowledged that “some scholars have been inclined to question the truthfulness of the coroner’s report. There is something queer about the whole episode” and said that Hotson’s discovery “raises almost as many questions as it answers.” It has also been discovered more recently that the apparent absence of a local county coroner to accompany the Coroner of the Queen’s Household would, if noticed, have made the inquest null and void. One of the main reasons for doubting the truth of the inquest concerns the reliability of Marlowe’s companions as witnesses. As an agent provocateur for the late Sir Francis Walsingham, Robert Poley was a consummate liar, the “very genius of the Elizabethan underworld”, and is even on record as saying “I will swear and forswear myself, rather than I will accuse myself to do me any harm.” The other witness, Nicholas Skeres, had for many years acted as a confidence trickster, drawing young men into the clutches of people in the money-lending racket, including Marlowe’s apparent killer, Ingram Frizer, with whom he was currently engaged in just such a swindle. In other words, despite their being referred to as “generosi” (gentlemen) in the inquest report, they were all professional liars. Some biographers, such as Kuriyama and Downie, nevertheless take the inquest to be a true account of what occurred, but in trying to explain what really happened if the account was not true, others have come up with a variety of murder theories. Jealous of her husband Thomas’s relationship with Marlowe, Audrey Walsingham arranged for the playwright to be murdered. Sir Walter Raleigh arranged the murder, fearing that under torture Marlowe might incriminate him. With Skeres the main player, the murder resulted from attempts by the Earl of Essex to use Marlowe to incriminate Sir Walter Raleigh. He was killed on the orders of father and son Lord Burghley and Sir Robert Cecil, who thought that his plays contained Catholic propaganda. He was accidentally killed while Frizer and Skeres were pressuring him to pay back money he owed them. Marlowe was murdered at the behest of several members of the Privy Council who feared that he might reveal them to be atheists. The Queen herself ordered his assassination because of his subversively atheistic behaviour. Frizer murdered him because he envied Marlowe’s close relationship with his master Thomas Walsingham and feared the effect that Marlowe’s behaviour might have on Walsingham’s reputation. There is even a theory that Marlowe’s death was faked to save him from trial and execution for subversive atheism. However, since there are only written documents on which to base any conclusions, and since it is probable that the most crucial information about his death was never committed to writing at all, it is unlikely that the full circumstances of Marlowe’s death will ever be known. Philosophy During his lifetime, Marlowe was reputed to be an atheist which, at that time, held the dangerous implication of being an enemy of God and, by association, the state. With the rise of public fears concerning The School of Night, or “School of Atheism” in the late 16th century, accusations of atheism were closely associated with disloyalty to the Protestant monarchy of England. Some modern historians consider that Marlowe’s professed atheism, as with his supposed Catholicism, may have been no more than an elaborate and sustained pretense adopted to further his work as a government spy. Contemporary evidence comes from Marlowe’s accuser in Flushing, an informer called Richard Baines. The governor of Flushing had reported that each of the men had “of malice” accused the other of instigating the counterfeiting, and of intending to go over to the Catholic “enemy”; such an action was considered atheistic by the Church of England. Following Marlowe’s arrest in 1593, Baines submitted to the authorities a “note containing the opinion of one Christopher Marly concerning his damnable judgment of religion, and scorn of God’s word.” Baines attributes to Marlowe a total of eighteen items which “scoff at the pretensions of the Old and New Testament” such as, "Christ was a bastard and his mother dishonest [unchaste]", “the woman of Samaria and her sister were whores and that Christ knew them dishonestly”, and, “St John the Evangelist was bedfellow to Christ and leaned always in his bosom” (cf. John 13:23–25), and, “that he used him as the sinners of Sodom”. He also implies that Marlowe had Catholic sympathies. Other passages are merely skeptical in tone: “he persuades men to atheism, willing them not to be afraid of bugbears and hobgoblins”. The final paragraph of Baines’s document reads: These thinges, with many other shall by good & honest witnes be aproved to be his opinions and Comon Speeches, and that this Marlowe doth not only hould them himself, but almost into every Company he Cometh he persuades men to Atheism willing them not to be afeard of bugbeares and hobgoblins, and vtterly scorning both god and his ministers as I Richard Baines will Justify & approue both by mine oth and the testimony of many honest men, and almost al men with whome he hath Conversed any time will testify the same, and as I think all men in Cristianity ought to indevor that the mouth of so dangerous a member may be stopped, he saith likewise that he hath quoted a number of Contrarieties oute of the Scripture which he hath giuen to some great men who in Convenient time shalbe named. When these thinges shalbe Called in question the witnes shalbe produced. Similar examples of Marlowe’s statements were given by Thomas Kyd after his imprisonment and possible torture (see above); both Kyd and Baines connect Marlowe with the mathematician Thomas Harriot and Sir Walter Raleigh’s circle. Another document claimed at around the same time that “one Marlowe is able to show more sound reasons for Atheism than any divine in England is able to give to prove divinity, and that... he hath read the Atheist lecture to Sir Walter Raleigh and others.” Some critics believe that Marlowe sought to disseminate these views in his work and that he identified with his rebellious and iconoclastic protagonists. However, plays had to be approved by the Master of the Revels before they could be performed, and the censorship of publications was under the control of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Presumably these authorities did not consider any of Marlowe’s works to be unacceptable other than the Amores. Sexuality Like William Shakespeare, Marlowe is frequently claimed to have been homosexual. Others argue that the question of whether an Elizabethan was gay or homosexual in a modern sense is anachronistic. For the Elizabethans, what is often today termed homosexual or bisexual was more likely to be recognised as a sexual act, rather than an exclusive sexual orientation and identity. Some scholars argue that the evidence is inconclusive and that the reports of Marlowe’s homosexuality may simply be exaggerated rumours produced after his death. Richard Baines reported Marlowe as saying: “All they that love not Tobacco and Boys are fools”. David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen describe Baines’s evidence as “unreliable testimony” and make the comment: “These and other testimonials need to be discounted for their exaggeration and for their having been produced under legal circumstances we would regard as a witch-hunt”. One critic, J.B. Steane, remarked that he considers there to be “no evidence for Marlowe’s homosexuality at all.” Other scholars, however, point to homosexual themes in Marlowe’s writing: in Hero and Leander, Marlowe writes of the male youth Leander, “in his looks were all that men desire” and that when the youth swims to visit Hero at Sestos, the sea god Neptune becomes sexually excited, "[i]magining that Ganymede, displeas’d, [h]ad left the Heavens... [t]he lusty god embrac’d him, call’d him love... He watched his arms and, as they opened wide [a]t every stroke, betwixt them would he slide [a]nd steal a kiss,... And dive into the water, and there pry [u]pon his breast, his thighs, and every limb,... [a]nd talk of love", while the boy, naive and unaware of Greek love practices, protests, “'You are deceiv’d, I am no woman, I.' Thereat smil’d Neptune.” Edward the Second contains the following passage supporting homosexual relationships: Marlowe wrote the only play about the life of Edward II up to his time, taking the humanist literary discussion of male sexuality much further than his contemporaries. The play was extremely bold, dealing with a star-crossed love story between Edward II and Piers Gaveston. Though it was common practice at the time to reveal characters as gay to give audiences reason to suspect them as culprits of a given crime, Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II is portrayed as a sympathetic character. Reputation among contemporary writers Whatever the particular focus of modern critics, biographers and novelists, for his contemporaries in the literary world, Marlowe was above all an admired and influential artist. Within weeks of his death, George Peele remembered him as “Marley, the Muses’ darling”; Michael Drayton noted that he "Had in him those brave translunary things / That the first poets had", and Ben Jonson wrote of “Marlowe’s mighty line”. Thomas Nashe wrote warmly of his friend, “poor deceased Kit Marlowe”. So too did the publisher Edward Blount, in the dedication of Hero and Leander to Sir Thomas Walsingham. Among the few contemporary dramatists to say anything negative about Marlowe was the anonymous author of the Cambridge University play The Return From Parnassus (1598) who wrote, "Pity it is that wit so ill should dwell, / Wit lent from heaven, but vices sent from hell.” The most famous tribute to Marlowe was paid by Shakespeare in As You Like It, where he not only quotes a line from Hero and Leander ("Dead Shepherd, now I find thy saw of might, ‘Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?’") but also gives to the clown Touchstone the words “When a man’s verses cannot be understood, nor a man’s good wit seconded with the forward child, understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room.” This appears to be a reference to Marlowe’s murder which involved a fight over the “reckoning”, the bill, as well as to a line in Marlowe’s Jew of Malta– “Infinite riches in a little room”. Shakespeare was heavily influenced by Marlowe in his work, as can be seen in the re-using of Marlovian themes in Antony and Cleopatra, The Merchant of Venice, Richard II, and Macbeth (Dido, Jew of Malta, Edward II and Doctor Faustus, respectively). In Hamlet, after meeting with the travelling actors, Hamlet requests the Player perform a speech about the Trojan War, which at 2.2.429–32 has an echo of Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage. In Love’s Labour’s Lost Shakespeare brings on a character “Marcade” (three syllables) in conscious acknowledgement of Marlowe’s character “Mercury”, also attending the King of Navarre, in Massacre at Paris. The significance, to those of Shakespeare’s audience who had read Hero and Leander, was Marlowe’s identification of himself with the god Mercury. As Shakespeare A theory has arisen centered on the notion that Marlowe may have faked his death and then continued to write under the assumed name of William Shakespeare. However, orthodox academic consensus rejects alternative candidates for authorship, including Marlowe. Memorials A Marlowe Memorial in the form of a bronze sculpture of The Muse of Poetry by Edward Onslow Ford was erected by subscription in Buttermarket, Canterbury in 1891. In July 2002, a memorial window to Marlowe– a gift of the Marlowe Society– was unveiled in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey. Controversially, a question mark was added to the generally accepted date of death. On 25 October 2011 a letter from Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells was published by The Times newspaper, in which they called on the Dean and Chapter to remove the question mark on the grounds that it “flew in the face of a mass of unimpugnable evidence”. In 2012, they renewed this call in their e-book Shakespeare Bites Back, adding that it “denies history”, and again the following year in their book Shakespeare Beyond Doubt. Fictional works about Marlowe Wilbur G. Zeigler’s novel It was Marlowe (1895) was the first book to argue that Marlowe’s death was faked—apparently in support of Zeigler’s claim that Marlowe was the actual author of Hamlet, which was written after Marlowe’s recorded death. Herbert Lom’s Enter a Spy: The Double Life of Christopher Marlowe (1978), a historical novel. Philip Lindsay’s One Dagger For Two (1932), novel which claims that Marlowe was stabbed in a dispute over a woman. Leo Rost’s Marlowe (1981), was an American rock musical staged on Broadway. Peter Whelan’s play The School of Night (1992), about Marlowe’s links to the freethinking “school of night” and the young Shakespeare, was performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon. Anthony Burgess’s A Dead Man in Deptford (1993), an imaginative treatment of Marlowe’s death, was the last of Burgess’s novels to be published in his lifetime. Marlowe appears in Harry Turtledove’s Ruled Britannia (2002), an alternate history depicting an England where the Spanish Armada was successful in 1588 and imposed the rule of King Philip II of Spain. In this depiction, Marlowe is still alive in 1598 and is active among conspirators seeking to overthrow Spanish rule and restore the imprisoned Queen Elizabeth. This involvement leads to Marlowe being killed, five years later than in actual history, and he does not live to see the success of the rebellion he helped foment. Louise Welsh’s 2004 novel Tamburlaine Must Die about Marlowe’s last days was chosen as a BBC Radio 4 “Book at Bedtime” in April 2006. The 2010 Dr Who audio play Point of Entry starring Colin Baker has Marlowe haunted by a demon seeking an Aztec dagger. Marlowe plays a major role in Elizabeth Bear’s Promethean Age Series (2006-2013), which combines elements of secret history and fantasy. Among other things, in this account Marlowe and Shakespeare had a secret, deeply emotional homosexual love affair and many of Shakespeare’s Sonnets were written to express his love for Marlowe. Also, as depicted in the Promethean Age series, Christopher Marlowe was not assassinated in 1593 as history records but was taken into Faerie where he became the lover of the witch Morgan le Fay. The Christopher Marlowe Mysteries was a 4-episode BBC Radio 4 series, first broadcast in 2007. Michael Butt’s radio play, The Killing, was performed as “Afternoon Drama” on BBC Radio 4 in August 2010. D. Lawrence-Young’s novel Marlowe: “Soul’d to the Devil” (2010) is close to a biography of Marlowe’s life. Ros Barber’s verse novel The Marlowe Papers (2012), in which Marlowe looks back on his past and faked death, was winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize and joint winner of the Authors’ Club First Novel Award for 2013. M. J. Trow’s The Kit Marlowe Series (2011 - ), in which Marlowe is depicted as a detective and spy for Sir Francis Walsingham Ellen Wilson’s novel, In the Shadow of Shakespeare (2013), mixing historical fiction, romance, and science fiction, the heroine, Alice, travels back in time and meets Christopher Marlowe. Marlowe is a character in the 2015 film Bill. Marlowe (played by Jamie Campbell-Bower) is a main character in the 2017 TNT series Will. Michelle Butler Hallett’s This Marlowe (2016) explores the relationship between Kyd and Marlowe, and gives an account of Kyd’s interrogation and the murder of Marlowe. Works (The dates of composition are approximate.) Plays * Dido, Queen of Carthage (c. 1586) (possibly co-written with Thomas Nashe) * Tamburlaine the Great, part 1 (c. 1587), part 2 (c. 1587–1588) * The Jew of Malta (c. 1589) * The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (c. 1589, or, c. 1593) * Edward II (c. 1592) * The Massacre at Paris (c. 1593) * The play Lust’s Dominion was attributed to Marlowe upon its initial publication in 1657, though scholars and critics have almost unanimously rejected the attribution. Poetry * Translation of Book One of Lucan’s Pharsalia (date unknown) * Translation of Ovid’s Amores (c. 1580s?) * “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” (pre-1593) * Hero and Leander (c. 1593, unfinished; completed by George Chapman, 1598) References Wikipedia—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Marlowe

George Canning, FRS, (11 April 1770– 8 August 1827) was a British statesman and Tory politician who served in various senior cabinet positions under numerous Prime Ministers, before himself serving as Prime Minister for the final four months of his life. The son of an actress and a failed businessman and lawyer, Canning was supported financially by his uncle Stratford, allowing him to attend Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford. Canning entered politics in 1793 and rose rapidly. He was Paymaster of the Forces (1800–01) and Treasurer of the Navy (1804–06) under William Pitt the Younger and Foreign Secretary (1807–09) under the Duke of Portland. In 1809, he was wounded in a duel with his foe Lord Castlereagh and was shortly thereafter passed over as a potential prime ministerial successor to the Duke of Portland in favour of Spencer Perceval. He rejected overtures to serve as Foreign Secretary again, owing to Castlereagh’s presence in Perceval’s Cabinet, and he remained out of high office until after Perceval was assassinated in 1812. Canning subsequently served under new Prime Minister the Earl of Liverpool as British Ambassador to Portugal (1814–16), President of the Board of Control (1816–21), and Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House of Commons (1822–27). When Lord Liverpool resigned in ailing health in April 1827, Canning was chosen to succeed him as Prime Minister ahead of the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel. They both declined to serve under Canning and the Tories split between Peel and Wellington’s Ultra-Tories and the Canningites. Canning thus invited several Whigs to join his cabinet. However, his administration did not last long. His health declined and he died in office in August 1827, after just 119 days in office, the shortest tenure of any British Prime Minister. Early life Canning was born into an Anglo-Irish family at his parents’ home in Queen Anne Street, Marylebone, London. Canning described himself as “an Irishman born in London”. His father, George Canning, Sr., of Garvagh, County Londonderry, Ireland, was a gentleman of limited means, a failed wine merchant and lawyer, who renounced his right to inherit the family estate in exchange for payment of his substantial debts. George Sr. eventually abandoned the family and died in poverty on 11 April 1771, his son’s first birthday, in London. Canning’s mother, Mary Anne Costello, took work as a stage actress, a profession not considered respectable at the time. Indeed, when in 1827 it looked as if Canning would become Prime Minister, Lord Grey remarked that “the son of an actress is, ipso facto, disqualified from becoming Prime Minister”. Because Canning showed unusual intelligence and promise at an early age, family friends persuaded his uncle, London merchant Stratford Canning (father to the diplomat Stratford Canning), to become his nephew’s guardian. George Canning grew up with his cousins at the home of his uncle, who provided him with an income and an education. Stratford Canning’s financial support allowed the young Canning to study at Hyde Abbey School, Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford. Canning came out top of the school at Eton and left at the age of seventeen. His time at Eton has been described as “a triumph almost without parallel. He proved a brilliant classicist, came top of the school, and excelled at public orations”. Canning struck up friendships with the future Lord Liverpool as well as with Granville Leveson-Gower and John Hookham Frere. In 1789 he won a prize for his Latin poem The Pilgrimage to Mecca which he recited in Oxford Theatre. Canning began practising law after receiving his BA from Oxford in the summer of 1791, but he wished to enter politics. Entry into politics Stratford Canning was a Whig and would introduce his nephew in the 1780s to prominent Whigs such as Charles James Fox, Edmund Burke, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan. George Canning’s friendship with Sheridan would last for the remainder of Sheridan’s life. George Canning’s impoverished background and limited financial resources, however, made unlikely a bright political future in a Whig party whose political ranks were led mostly by members of the wealthy landed aristocracy in league with the newly rich industrialist classes. Regardless, along with Whigs such as Burke, Canning himself would become considerably more conservative in the early 1790s after witnessing the excessive radicalism of the French Revolution. “The political reaction which then followed swept the young man to the opposite extreme; and his vehemence for monarchy and the Tories gave point to a Whig sarcasm,—that men had often turned their coats, but this was the first time a boy had turned his jacket.” So when Canning decided to enter politics he sought and received the patronage of the leader of the “Tory” group, William Pitt the Younger. In 1793, thanks to the help of Pitt, Canning became a member of parliament for Newtown on the Isle of Wight, a rotten borough. In 1796, he changed seats to a different rotten borough, Wendover in Buckinghamshire. He was elected to represent several constituencies during his parliamentary career. Canning rose quickly in British politics as an effective orator and writer. His speeches in Parliament as well as his essays gave the followers of Pitt a rhetorical power they had previously lacked. Canning’s skills saw him gain leverage within the Pittite faction that allowed him influence over its policies along with repeated promotions in the Cabinet. Over time, Canning became a prominent public speaker as well, and was one of the first politicians to campaign heavily in the country. As a result of his charisma and promise, Canning early on drew to himself a circle of supporters who would become known as the Canningites. Conversely though, Canning had a reputation as a divisive man who alienated many. He was a dominant personality and often risked losing political allies for personal reasons. He once reduced Lord Liverpool to tears with a long satirical poem mocking Liverpool’s attachment to his time as a colonel in the militia. He then forced Liverpool to apologise for being upset. Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs On 2 November 1795, Canning received his first ministerial post: Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. In this post he proved a strong supporter of Pitt, often taking his side in disputes with the Foreign Secretary, Lord Grenville. At the end of 1798 Canning responded to a resolution by George Tierney MP for peace negotiations with France: I for my part still conceive it to be the paramount duty of a British member of parliament to consider what is good for Great Britain... I do not envy that man’s feelings, who can behold the sufferings of Switzerland, and who derives from that sight no idea of what is meant by the deliverance of Europe. I do not envy the feelings of that man, who can look without emotion at Italy– plundered, insulted, trampled upon, exhausted, covered with ridicule, and horror, and devastation– who can look at all this, and be at a loss to guess what is meant by the deliverance of Europe? As little do I envy the feelings of that man, who can view the peoples of the Netherlands driven into insurrection, and struggling for their freedom against the heavy hand of a merciless tyranny, without entertaining any suspicion of what may be the sense of the word deliverance. Does such a man contemplate Holland groaning under arbitrary oppressions and exactions? Does he turn his eyes to Spain trembling at the nod of a foreign master? And does the word deliverance still sound unintelligibly in his ear? Has he heard of the rescue and salvation of Naples, by the appearance and the triumphs of the British fleet? Does he know that the monarchy of Naples maintains its existence at the sword’s point? And is his understanding, and his heart, still impenetrable to the sense and meaning of the deliverance of Europe? Pitt called this speech “one of the best ever heard on any occasion”. He resigned his position at the Foreign Office on 1 April 1799. The Anti-Jacobin Canning was involved in the founding of the Anti-Jacobin, a newspaper which was published on every Monday from 20 November 1797 to 9 July 1798. Its purpose was to support the government and condemn revolutionary doctrines through news and poetry, much of it written by Canning. Canning’s poetry satirised and ridiculed Jacobin poetry. Before the appearance of the Anti-Jacobin all the eloquence (except for Burke’s) and all the wit and ridicule had been on the side of Fox and Sheridan. Canning and his friends changed this. A young Whig, William Lamb (the future Lord Melbourne, Prime Minister) wrote an 'Epistle to the Editors of the Anti-Jacobin’, which attacked Canning: Who e’er ye are, all hail!– whether the skill Of youthful CANNING guides the ranc’rous quill; With powers mechanic far above his age, Adapts the paragraph and fills the page; Measures the column, mends what e’er’s amiss, Rejects THAT letter, and accepts of THIS; Subsequent offices In 1799 Canning became a Commissioner of the Board of Control for India. Canning wrote on 16 April: “Here I am immersed in papers, of which I do not yet comprehend three words in succession; but I shall get at their meaning by degrees and at my leisure. No such hard work here as at my former office. No attendance but when I like it, when there are interesting letters received from India (as is now the case) or to be sent out there”. Canning was appointed Paymaster of the Forces (and therefore to the Privy Council as well) in 1800. In February 1801 Pitt resigned as Prime Minister due to the King’s opposition to Catholic Emancipation. Canning, despite Pitt’s advice to stay in office, loyally followed him into opposition. The day after Canning wrote Lady Malmesbury: “I resign because Pitt resigns. And that is all”. Backbenches Canning disliked being out of office, and wrote on to John Hookham Frere in summer 1801: “But the thought will obtrude itself now and then that I am not where I should be– non-hoc pollicitus.” He also claimed that Pitt had done “scrupulously and magnanimously right by everyone but me”. At the end of September 1801 Canning wrote to Frere, saying of Pitt: “I do love him, and reverence him as I should a Father– but a Father should not sacrifice me, with my good will. Most heartily I forgive him, But he has to answer to himself, and to the country for much mischief that he has done and much that is still to do.” Pitt wished for Canning to enter Henry Addington’s government, a move which Canning looked on as a horrible dilemma but in the end he turned the offer down. Canning opposed the preliminaries of the Peace of Amiens signed on 1 October. He did not vote against it due to his personal devotion to Pitt. He wrote on 22 November: “I would risk my life to be assured of being able to act always with P in a manner satisfactory to my own feelings and sense of what is right, rather than have to seek that object in separation from him.” On 27 May 1802 in the Commons Canning requested that all grants of land in Trinidad (captured by Britain from Spain) should be rejected until Parliament had decided what to do with the island. The threat that it could be populated by slaves like other West Indian islands was real. Canning instead wanted it to have a military post and that it should be settled with ex-soldiers, free blacks and creoles, with the Native American population protected and helped. He also asserted that the island should be used to test the theory that better methods of cultivation in land would lessen the need for slaves. Addington acceded to Canning’s demands and the Reverend William Leigh believed Canning had saved 750,000 lives. At a dinner to celebrate Pitt’s birthday in 1802, Canning wrote the song ‘The Pilot that Weathered the Storm’, performed by a tenor from Drury Lane, Charles Dignum: And oh! if again the rude whirlwind should rise, The dawnings of peace should fresh darkness deform, The regrets of the good and the fears of the wise Shall turn to the Pilot that weathered the Storm. In November Canning spoke out openly in support of Pitt in the Commons. One observer thought that Canning made incomparably the best speech and that his defence of Pitt’s administration “one of the best things, either argumentatively as to matter, or critically and to manner and style” that he could ever remember. On 8 December Sheridan spoke out in defence of Addington and denied that Pitt was the only man who could save the country. Canning replied by criticising the Addington government’s foreign policy and claimed that the House should recognise the greatness of the country and Pitt, who ought to be its leader. He argued against those, such as William Wilberforce, who held that Britain could safely maintain a policy of isolation: “Let us consider the state of the world as it is, not as we fancy it ought to be. Let us not seek to hide from our own eyes... the real, imminent and awful danger which threatens us.” Also, he objected to the notion that Britain could choose between greatness and happiness: “The choice is not in our power. We have... no refuge in littleness. We must maintain ourselves what we are, or cease to have a political existence worth preserving.” Furthermore, he openly declared for Pitt and said: "Away with the cant of “measures, not men”, the idle supposition that it is the harness and not the horses that draw the chariot along." Kingdoms rise and fall due to what degree they are upheld “not by well-meaning endeavours... but by commanding, over-awing talents... retreat and withdraw as much as he will, he must not hope to efface the memory of his past services from the gratitude of his country; he cannot withdraw himself from the following of a nation; he must endure the attachment of a people whom he has saved.” In private Canning was fearful that if Pitt did not return to power, Fox would: “Sooner or later he must act or the country is gone.” Canning approved of the declaration of war against France on 18 May 1803. Canning was angered by Pitt’s desire not to proactively work to turn out the ministry but support the ministry when it adopted sound policies. However, in 1804, to Canning’s delight, Pitt began to work against the Addington government. After Pitt delivered a stinging attack on the government’s defence measures on 25 April, Canning launched his own attack on Addington, which made Addington furious. On 30 April Lord Eldon, the Lord Chancellor, asked Pitt to submit a new administration to the King. Treasurer of the Navy Canning returned to office in 1804 with Pitt, becoming Treasurer of the Navy. In 1805 he offered Pitt his resignation after Addington was given a seat in the Cabinet. He wrote to Lady Hester to say he felt humiliated that Addington was a minister “and I am– nothing. I cannot help it, I cannot face the House of Commons or walk the streets in this state of things, as I am”. After reading this letter Pitt summoned Canning to London for a meeting, where he told him that if he resigned it would open a permanent breach between the two of them as it would cast a slur on his conduct. He offered Canning the office of Chief Secretary for Ireland but he refused on the grounds that this would look like he was being got out of the way. Canning eventually decided not to resign and wrote that “I am resolved to ”sink or swim" with Pitt, though he has tied himself to such sinking company. God forgive him". Canning left office with the death of Pitt; he was not offered a place in Lord Grenville’s administration. Foreign Secretary Canning was appointed Foreign Secretary in the new government of the Duke of Portland in 1807. Given key responsibilities for the country’s diplomacy in the Napoleonic Wars, he was responsible for planning the attack on Copenhagen in September 1807, much of which he undertook at his country estate, South Hill Park at Easthampstead in Berkshire. After the defeat of Prussia by the French, the neutrality of Denmark looked increasingly fragile. Canning was worried that Denmark might, under French pressure, become hostile to Britain. On the night of 21/22 July 1807 Canning received intelligence directly from Tilsit (where Napoleon and Tsar Alexander I of Russia were negotiating a treaty) which appeared “to rest on good authority” that Napoleon had proposed to the Tsar a great naval combination against Britain, of which Denmark and Portugal would be members. On 30 July a military force 25,000 strong set sail for Denmark, with Francis Jackson travelling the day after. Canning instructed Jackson that his over-riding aim was to secure the possession of the Danish navy by offering the Danes a treaty of alliance and mutual defence and whereby they would be given back their fleet at the end of the war. On 31 July Canning wrote to his wife: "The anxious interval between this day and the hearing the result of his [Jackson’s] expedition will be long and painful indeed. Long, I mean, in feeling. In fact it will be about a fortnight or three weeks... I think we have made success almost certain. But the measure is a bold one and if it fails– why we must be impeached I suppose– and dearest dear will have a box at the trial". The day after he wrote that he had received a letter the previous night which provided an “account of the French being actually about to do that act of hostility, the possibility of which formed the groundwork of my Baltic plan. My fear was that the French might not be the aggressors– and then ours would have appeared a strong measure, fully justifiable I think and absolutely necessary, but without apparent necessity or justification. Now the aggression will justify us fully... I am therefore quite easy as to the morality and political wisdom of our plan”. Napoleon had on 31 July instructed his Foreign Minister, Talleyrand, to inform the Danes that if they did not wish for Holstein to be invaded and occupied by Jean Bernadotte they must prepare for war against Britain. Canning wrote to his wife on 1 August: "Now for the execution and I confess to my own love, I wake an hour or two earlier than I ought to, thinking of this execution. I could not sleep after asses’ milk today, thought I was not in bed till 1/2 p.2". On 25 August he wrote to Granville Leveson-Gower: “The suspense is, as you may well imagine, agitating and painful in the extreme; but I have an undiminished confidence as to the result, either by force or by treaty. The latter however is so infinitely preferable to the former that the doubt whether it has been successful is of itself almost as anxious as if the whole depended on it alone”. On 2 September, after Jackson’s negotiations proved unsuccessful, the British fleet began bombarding Copenhagen until when on 7pm 5 September the Danes requested a truce. On 7 September the Danes agreed to hand over their navy (18 ships of the line, 15 frigates and 31 smaller ships) and naval stores and the British agreed to evacuate Zealand within six weeks. On 16 September Canning received the news with relief and excitement: “Did I not tell you we would save Plumstead from bombardment?” he wrote to Revered William Leigh. On 24 September he wrote to George Rose: "Nothing was ever more brilliant, more salutary or more effectual than the success [at Copenhagen]". On 30 September he wrote Lord Boringdon that he hoped Copenhagen would “stun Russia into her sense again”. Canning wrote to Gower on 2 October 1807: “We are hated throughout Europe and that hate must be cured by fear”. After the news of Russia’s declaration of war against Britain reached London on 2 December, Canning wrote to Lord Boringdon two days later: “The Peace of Tilsit you see is come out. We did not want any more case for Copenhagen; but if we had, this gives it us”. On 3 February 1808 the opposition leader George Ponsonby requested the publication of all information on the strength and battle-worthiness of the Danish fleet sent by the British envoy at Copenhagen. Canning replied with a speech nearly three hours long, described by Lord Palmerston as “so powerful that it gave a decisive turn to the debate”. Lord Grey said his speech was “eloquent and powerful” but that he had never heard such “audacious misrepresentation” and “positive falsehood”. On 2 March the opposition moved a vote of censure over Copenhagen, defeated by 224 votes to 64 after Canning gave a speech, in the words of Lord Glenbervie, so “very witty, very eloquent and very able”. In November 1807, Canning oversaw the Portuguese royal family’s flight from Portugal to Brazil. Duel with Castlereagh In 1809 Canning entered into a series of disputes within the government that were to become famous. He argued with the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, Lord Castlereagh, over the deployment of troops that Canning had promised would be sent to Portugal but which Castlereagh sent to the Netherlands. The government became increasingly paralysed in disputes between the two men. Portland was in deteriorating health and gave no lead, until Canning threatened resignation unless Castlereagh were removed and replaced by Lord Wellesley. Portland secretly agreed to make this change when it would be possible. Castlereagh discovered the deal in September 1809 and challenged Canning to a duel. Canning accepted the challenge and it was fought on 21 September 1809 on Putney Heath. Canning, who had never before fired a pistol, widely missed his mark. Castlereagh, who was regarded as one of the best shots of his day, wounded his opponent in the thigh. There was much outrage that two cabinet ministers had resorted to such a method. Shortly afterwards the ailing Portland resigned as Prime Minister, and Canning offered himself to George III as a potential successor. However, the King appointed Spencer Perceval instead, and Canning left office once more. He did take consolation, though, in the fact that Castlereagh also stood down. Upon Perceval’s assassination in 1812, the new Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool, offered Canning the position of Foreign Secretary once more. Canning refused, as he also wished to be Leader of the House of Commons and was reluctant to serve in any government with Castlereagh. Ambassador to Lisbon In 1814 he became the British Ambassador to Portugal, returning the following year. He received several further offers of office from Liverpool. President of the Board of Control In 1816 he became President of the Board of Control. Canning resigned from office once more in 1820, in opposition to the treatment of Queen Caroline, estranged wife of the new King George IV. Canning and Caroline were close friends and may have had a brief sexual affair. This would have been regarded as unacceptable. On 16 March 1821 Canning spoke in favour of William Plunket’s Catholic Emancipation Bill. Liverpool wished to have Canning back in the Cabinet but the King was strongly hostile to him due to his actions over the Caroline affair. The King would only allow Canning back into the Cabinet if he did not have to deal personally with him. This required the office of Governor-General of India. After deliberating on whether to accept, Canning initially declined the offer but then accepted it. On 25 April he spoke in the Commons against Lord John Russell’s motion for parliamentary reform and a few days later Canning moved for leave to introduce a measure of Catholic Emancipation (for lifting the exclusion of Catholics from the House of Lords). This passed the Commons but was rejected by the Lords. Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House In August 1822, Castlereagh, now Marquess of Londonderry, committed suicide. Instead of going to India, Canning succeeded him as both Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House of Commons. In his second term of office he sought to prevent South America from coming into the French sphere of influence, and in this he was successful. He also gave support to the growing campaign for the abolition of slavery. Despite personal issues with Castlereagh, he continued many of his foreign policies, such as the view that the powers of Europe (Russia, France, etc.) should not be allowed to meddle in the affairs of other states. This policy enhanced public opinion of Canning as a liberal. He also prevented the United States from opening trade with the West Indies. During his early period in the Foreign Office (1807–09) Canning became deeply involved in the affairs of Spain, Portugal and Latin America. He was responsible for a number of decisions that greatly affected the future course of Latin American history. Great Britain had a strong interest in ensuring the demise of Spanish colonialism, and to open the newly independent Latin American colonies to British trade. The Latin Americans received a certain amount of unofficial aid– arms and volunteers– from outside, but no outside official help at any stage from Britain or any other power. Britain also refused to aid Spain and opposed any outside intervention on behalf of Spain by other powers. Britain, and especially British sea power, was a decisive factor in the struggle for independence of certain Latin American countries. In 1825 Mexico, Argentina and Colombia were recognised by means of the ratification of commercial treaties with Britain. In November 1825 the first minister from a Latin American state, Colombia, was officially received in London. “Spanish America is free,” Canning declared, “and if we do not mismanage our affairs she is English... the New World established and if we do not throw it away, ours.” Also in 1825, Portugal recognised Brazil (thanks to Canning’s efforts, and in return for a preferential commercial treaty), less than three years after Brazil’s declaration of independence. On 12 December 1826, in the House of Commons, Canning was given an opportunity to defend the policies he had adopted towards France, Spain and Spanish America, and declared: “I resolved that if France had Spain it should not be Spain with the Indies. I called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old.” Canning pushed through, against great opposition, British recognition of Argentina, Colombia, Mexico and Brazil. In a sense, therefore, he brought part of the New World into political existence. The United States had recognised these states earlier, but recognition by the leading world power was to be decisive. Recognition by Britain was greeted with enthusiasm throughout Latin America. Canning, who was more concerned with Britain’s political and economic interests in Latin America than with Latin American independence, did a great deal to enhance Britain’s prestige throughout Latin America. He was esteemed as a great liberal statesman who understood and sympathised with the cause of Latin American independence and who did more than any other foreign statesman to make it a reality. George Canning deserves credit as the first British Foreign Secretary to devote a large proportion of his time and energies to the affairs of Latin America (as well as to those of Spain and Portugal) and to foresee the important political and economic role the Latin American states would one day play in the world. In 1826 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. Prime Minister In 1827 Liverpool was forced to stand down as Prime Minister after suffering a severe stroke (and was to die the following year). Canning, as Liverpool’s right-hand man, was then chosen by George IV to succeed him, in preference to both the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel. Neither man agreed to serve under Canning, and they were followed by five other members of Liverpool’s Cabinet as well as 40 junior members of the government. The Tory party was now heavily split between the “High Tories” (or “Ultras”, nicknamed after the contemporary party in France) and the moderates supporting Canning, often called “Canningites”. As a result, Canning found it difficult to form a government and chose to invite a number of Whigs to join his Cabinet, including Lord Lansdowne. The government agreed not to discuss the difficult question of parliamentary reform, which Canning opposed but the Whigs supported. However, Canning’s health by this time was in steep decline: at the funeral of Frederick, Duke of York, which was held at night in an unheated chapel in January, he became so ill that it was thought he might not recover. He died on 8 August 1827, in the very same room where Charles James Fox met his own end, 21 years earlier. To this day Canning’s total period in office remains the shortest of any Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, a mere 119 days. He is buried in Westminster Abbey. Legacy Canning has come to be regarded as a “lost leader”, with much speculation about what his legacy could have been had he lived. His government of Tories and Whigs continued for a few months under Lord Goderich but fell apart in early 1828. It was succeeded by a government under the Duke of Wellington, which initially included some Canningites but soon became mostly “High Tory” when many of the Canningites drifted over to the Whigs. Wellington’s administration would soon go down in defeat as well. Some historians have seen the revival of the Tories from the 1830s onwards, in the form of the Conservative Party, as the overcoming of the divisions of 1827. What would have been the course of events had Canning lived is highly speculative. Rory Muir has described Canning as “the most brilliant and colourful minister, and certainly the greatest orator in the government at a time when oratory was still politically important. He was a man of biting wit and invective, with immense confidence in his own ability, who often inspired either great friendship or deep dislike and distrust... he was a passionate, active, committed man who poured his energy into whatever he undertook. This was his strength and also his weakness... the government’s ablest minister”. Greville recorded of Canning on the day after his death: “He wrote very fast, but not fast enough for his mind, composing much quicker than he could commit his ideas to paper. He could not bear to dictate, because nobody could write fast enough for him; but on one occasion, when he had the gout in his hand and could not write, he stood by the fire and dictated at the same time a despatch on Greek affairs to George Bentinck and one on South American politics to Howard de Walden, each writing as fast as he could, while he turned from one to the other without hesitation or embarrassment.” Places named after Canning The Canning River in Western Australia is named after George Canning. It flows into the Swan River south of Perth and has a number of districts named similarly (after the river, rather than Canning himself) on its banks, for example Cannington and Canning Vale. Elsewhere in Australia, there is a street in Melbourne, Australia named after him. The village of Canning in the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia is named after Canning. Cannington, Ontario, is a small village in Brock Township. A square in downtown Athens, Greece, is named after Canning (Πλατεία Κάνιγγος, Plateía Kánningos, Canning Square), in appreciation of his supportive stance toward the Greek War of Independence (1821–1830). In South America, a street in the city of Buenos Aires has been on-and-off named after Canning since 1893, changing away from the name in 1985. There is also a street in the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo named Jorge Canning, which is coincidentally the location of the British Residence. There is also a street named after him in the district of Ipanema, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In Santiago, Chile there two streets called Jorge (Spanish for George) Canning, one in the commune of San Joaquin and other, smaller, in the commune of Ñuñoa. One Street in Liverpool is named after George Canning; the surrounding Canning neighbourhood, also known as the “Georgian Quarter,” derives its name from the street. Canning Circus is an area at the top of Zion Hill in Nottingham. In his memory. Canning Terrace was erected as almshouses and a gatehouse to the adjacent cemetery. Canning Town in London is often thought of as being named after George Canning, but was in fact named after his son Charles Canning, 1st Earl Canning, Governor-General of India during the Indian Mutiny. Elsewhere in London, a Brixton public house on the corner of Effra Road and Brixton Water Lane was called the George Canning (it was renamed the Hobgoblin in the late 1990s and the Hootenanny in 2008). A Camberwell public house on Grove Lane near Denmark Hill station is called the George Canning. The seat of the Hispanic and Luso Brazilian Council in the Belgravia neighbourhood of London is named Canning House. It houses a research library and is used for a range of cultural and educational events. Fort Canning, a hill in Singapore, is actually named after Canning’s son Viscount Charles Canning although many mistakenly believe that it was named after George Canning himself. The hill was previously known simply as Government Hill and earlier as Bukit Larangan (Malay for Forbidden Hill) as it was once the seat for Malay royalty. Having served as an administrative centre for the British colonial administration in Singapore, it was then converted into a fort during World War I but wasn’t used till second world war. It is currently one of Singapore’s oldest urban parks. Canning is a district of Liverpool and Canning Place was the site of the famous Liverpool Sailors’ Home. The Canning Club, a gentlemen’s club in central London. Founded in 1911 as the Argentine Club for expatriate businessmen, it was renamed in 1948 as the club extended its remit to the rest of Latin America, in honour of Canning’s strong ties to the region. The club currently shares the premises of the Naval and Military Club in St. James’s Square. Family Canning married Joan Scott (later 1st Viscountess Canning) (1776–1837) on 8 July 1800, with John Hookham Frere and William Pitt the Younger as witnesses. George and Joan Canning had four children: George Charles Canning (1801–1820), died from consumption William Pitt Canning (1802–1828), died from drowning in Madeira, Portugal Harriet Canning (1804–1876), married the 1st Marquess of Clanricarde Charles John Canning (later 2nd Viscount Canning and 1st Earl Canning) (1812–1862) Canning’s Government, April– August 1827 George Canning– First Lord of the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons Lord Lyndhurst– Lord Chancellor Lord Harrowby– Lord President of the Council The Duke of Portland– Lord Privy Seal William Sturges Bourne– Secretary of State for the Home Department Lord Dudley– Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Lord Goderich– Secretary of State for War and the Colonies and Leader of the House of Lords William Huskisson– President of the Board of Trade and Treasurer of the Navy Charles Williams-Wynn– President of the Board of Control Lord Bexley– Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Lord Palmerston– Secretary at War Lord Lansdowne– Minister without Portfolio Changes May 1827– Lord Carlisle, the First Commissioner of Woods and Forests, enters the Cabinet July 1827– The Duke of Portland becomes a minister without portfolio. Lord Carlisle succeeds him as Lord Privy Seal. W. S. Bourne succeeds Carlisle as First Commissioner of Woods and Forests. Lord Lansdowne succeeds Bourne as Home Secretary. George Tierney, the Master of the Mint, enters the cabinet References Wikipedia—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Canning

Christopher Smart (11 April 1722– 21 May 1771), also known as “Kit Smart”, “Kitty Smart”, and “Jack Smart”, was an English poet. He was a major contributor to two popular magazines and a friend to influential cultural icons like Samuel Johnson and Henry Fielding. Smart, a high church Anglican, was widely known throughout London.

Jane Austen (/ˈdʒeɪn ˈɒstɪn/; 16 December 1775– 18 July 1817) was an English novelist known primarily for her six major novels, which interpret, critique and comment upon the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. Austen’s plots often explore the dependence of women on marriage in the pursuit of favourable social standing and economic security. Her works critique the novels of sensibility of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-century literary realism. With the publications of Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1815), she achieved success as a published writer. She wrote two additional novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, both published posthumously in 1818, and began a third, eventually titled Sanditon, but died before its completion. Her novels have rarely been out of print, although they were published anonymously and brought her little fame during her lifetime. A significant transition in her posthumous reputation occurred in 1869, fifty-two years after her death, when her nephew’s publication of A Memoir of Jane Austen introduced her to a wider audience. Austen has inspired a large number of critical essays and literary anthologies. Her novels have inspired many films, from 1940's Pride and Prejudice to more recent productions: Sense and Sensibility (1995) and Love & Friendship (2016). Biographical material Very little biographical detail of Austen’s life survives. Of the approximately 3,000 letters Jane wrote in her lifetime only about 160 survive. Her sister Cassandra (to whom most of the letters were addressed) burned “the greater part” of those she kept and censored those she did not destroy, ostensibly to prevent their falling into the hands of relatives and ensuring that “younger nieces did not read any of Jane Austen’s sometimes acid or forthright comments on neighbors or family members”. Other letters were destroyed by the heirs of Admiral Francis Austen, Jane’s brother. Most of the early biographical material about Austen was written by her relatives and reflects the family’s biases in favour of “good quiet Aunt Jane”, that her domestic situation was happy and that her family was the mainstay of her life. With little evidence other than the small amount of biographical materials her brother and nephew produced, which served to set a family legend according to Deirdre Le Faye. Early life Steventon Austen was born at Steventon on 16 December 1775. Her parents, George Austen (1731–1805), and his wife Cassandra (1739–1827), were members of the gentry. George was born into woollen manufacturers. Cassandra was a member of the prominent Leigh family, and daughter to the Master of Balliol, “short, fragile, pretty, and disinclined to marry”. They married on 26 April 1764 at Walcot Church in Bath. For much of Jane’s life, George Austen served as the rector of the Anglican parishes at Steventon, Hampshire, and a nearby village. From 1773 until 1796, he supplemented this income by farming and by teaching three or four boys at a time, who boarded at his home. After a few months at home, her mother placed her with Elizabeth Littlewood who nursed and raised her until she was weaned. She came from a family of six brothers and one sister. Her sister was Austen’s closest friend and confidante throughout her life. The eldest, James, was ten years older; George, a year younger, was born deaf and mute and raised in the village by a local family. During her childhood Jane taught herself enough sign language to communicate with George, suggesting he visited the family home regularly. Charles and Frank served in the navy, both rising to the rank of admiral. Edward was sold to be adopted, to his fourth cousin, Thomas Knight, whose name he took and estate he inherited in 1812. Of her brothers, Austen felt closest to Henry, a banker and, after his bank failed, an Anglican clergyman. Henry acted as his sister’s literary agent, whose large circle of friends and acquaintances in London included bankers, merchants, publishers, painters and actors. He exposed her to a social world not normally visible from a small parish in rural Hampshire. Private theatricals were an essential part of Austen’s education. From her early childhood, the family and friends staged a series of plays in the rectory barn, including Richard Sheridan’s The Rivals (1775) and David Garrick’s Bon Ton. Jane’s eldest brother James wrote the prologues and epilogues and Jane probably joined in these activities, first as a spectator and later as a participant. Most of the plays were comedies, which suggests how Austen’s satirical gifts were cultivated. At age 12, Jane tried her own hand at dramatic writing; she wrote three short plays during her teenage years. In 1783 Jane and Cassandra were sent to Oxford to be educated by Mrs. Ann Cawley, and they moved with her to Southampton later in the year. Both girls caught typhus and Jane nearly died. Austen was from then home educated, until she attended boarding school with her sister from early in 1785. The school curriculum probably included some French, spelling, needlework, dancing and music and, perhaps, drama. The sisters returned home before December 1786; the Austens could not afford to send both the daughters to school. After 1786, Austen “never again lived anywhere beyond the bounds of her immediate family environment”. The remainder of her education came from reading, guided by her father and brothers James and Henry. Austen apparently had unfettered access both to her father’s library and that of a family friend, Warren Hastings. Together these collections amounted to a large and varied library. Her father was also tolerant of Austen’s sometimes risqué experiments in writing, and provided both sisters with expensive paper and other materials for their writing and drawing. According to Park Honan, life in the Austen home was lived in “an open, amused, easy intellectual atmosphere” where the ideas of those with whom the Austens might disagree politically or socially were considered and discussed. Juvenilia (1787–1793) For her own and family’s amusement Austen wrote poems and stories. She later compiled “fair copies” of 29 of these early works into three bound notebooks, now referred to as the Juvenilia, containing work written between 1787 and 1793. There is manuscript evidence that Austen continued to work on these pieces as late as the period 1809–1811, and that her niece and nephew, Anna and James Edward Austen, made further additions as late as 1814. Among these works are a satirical novel in letters titled Love and Freindship [sic], where she mocked popular novels of sensibility, and The History of England, a manuscript of 34 pages accompanied by 13 watercolour miniatures by her sister, Cassandra. Austen’s History parodied popular historical writing, particularly Oliver Goldsmith’s History of England (1764). Austen’s Juvenilia are often, according to scholar Richard Jenkyns, “boisterous” and “anarchic”; he compares them to the work of 18th-century novelist Laurence Sterne and the 20th-century comedy group Monty Python. She sent short pieces of writing to her newborn nieces Fanny Catherine and Jane Anna Elizabeth. Austen was particularly proud of her accomplishments as a seamstress. She also attended church regularly, socialized frequently with friends and neighbours, and read novels—often of her own composition—aloud with her family in the evenings. Socializing with the neighbours often meant dancing, either impromptu in someone’s home after supper or at the balls held regularly at the assembly rooms in the town hall. Her brother Henry later said that “Jane was fond of dancing, and excelled in it”. In 1793 Austen began but abandoned a short play, later titled Sir Charles Grandison or the happy Man, a comedy in 6 acts, which she returned to and completed around 1800. This was a short parody of various school textbook abridgments of Austen’s favourite contemporary novel, The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753), by Samuel Richardson. Honan speculates that not long after writing Love and Freindship [sic] in 1789, Austen decided to “write for profit, to make stories her central effort”, that is, to become a professional writer. Whenever she made that decision, beginning in about 1793, Austen began to write longer, more sophisticated works. Between 1793 and 1795 Austen wrote Lady Susan, a short epistolary novel, usually described as her most ambitious and sophisticated early work. It is unlike any of Austen’s other works. Austen biographer Claire Tomalin describes the novella’s heroine as a sexual predator who uses her intelligence and charm to manipulate, betray and abuse her lovers, friends and family. Tomalin writes: “Told in letters, it is as neatly plotted as a play, and as cynical in tone as any of the most outrageous of the Restoration dramatists who may have provided some of her inspiration... It stands alone in Austen’s work as a study of an adult woman whose intelligence and force of character are greater than those of anyone she encounters.” Early manuscripts (1796–1798) When Austen was twenty, Tom Lefroy, a neighbour, visited Steventon from December 1795 to January 1796. He had just finished a university degree and was moving to London for training as a barrister. Lefroy and Austen would have been introduced at a ball or other neighbourhood social gathering, and it is clear from Austen’s letters to Cassandra that they spent considerable time together: “I am almost afraid to tell you how my Irish friend and I behaved. Imagine to yourself everything most profligate and shocking in the way of dancing and sitting down together.” The English scholar John Halperin wrote that Austen almost certainly died a virgin, and though she had several chances to marry, all ended in disappointment. Austen wrote in her first surviving letter to her sister Cassandra that Lefroy was “very gentlemanlike, good-looking, pleasant young man”. Austen called him her “friend” and explained that on this account Cassandra must anxious to know more about him. Five days later in another letter, Austen wrote she expected an “offer” from her “friend” and that “I shall refuse him, however, unless he promises to give away his white coat”, going on to write “I will confide myself in the future to Mr. Tom Lefroy, for whom I don’t give a sixpence” and refuse all others. The next day, Austen wrote: “The day will come on which I flirt my last with Tom Lefroy and when you receive this it will be all over. My tears flow as I write at this melancholy idea”. Halperin cautioned that Austen often liked to satirize the sentimental romantic literature that was popular at the time in her letters, and some of the statements about Lefroy may have been ironic. However, it is clear that Austen was genuinely attracted to Lefroy and subsequently none of her other suitors ever quite measured up to him. The Lefroy family intervened and sent him away at the end of January. Marriage was impractical, as both Lefroy and Austen must have known. Neither had any money, and he was dependent on a great-uncle in Ireland to finance his education and establish his legal career. If Tom Lefroy later visited Hampshire, he was carefully kept away from the Austens, and Jane Austen never saw him again. In November 1798, Lefroy was still on Austen’s mind as she wrote to her sister she had tea with one of his relatives, wanted desperately to ask about him, but could not bring herself to raise the subject. After finishing Lady Susan, Austen began her first full-length novel Elinor and Marianne. Her sister remembered that it was read to the family "before 1796" and was told through a series of letters. Without surviving original manuscripts, there is no way to know how much of the original draft survived in the novel published anonymously in 1811 as Sense and Sensibility. Austen began a second novel, First Impressions, in 1796. She completed the initial draft in August 1797, aged 21, (later published as Pride and Prejudice); as with all of her novels, Austen read the work aloud to her family as she was working on it and it became an “established favourite”. At this time, her father made the first attempt to publish one of her novels. In November 1797, George Austen wrote to Thomas Cadell, an established publisher in London, to ask if he would consider publishing First Impressions. Cadell returned Mr. Austen’s letter, marking it “Declined by Return of Post”. Austen may not have known of her father’s efforts. Following the completion of First Impressions, Austen returned to Elinor and Marianne and from November 1797 until mid-1798, revised it heavily; she eliminated the epistolary format in favour of third-person narration and produced something close to Sense and Sensibility. In 1797, Austen met her sister-in-law, Eliza de Feullide, a French aristocrat whose first husband the Comte de Feullide had been guillotined, causing her to flee to Britain, where she married Henry Austen. The description of the execution of the Comte de Feullide related by his widow left Austen with an intense horror of the French Revolution that lasted for the rest of her life. During the middle of 1798, after finishing revisions of Elinor and Marianne, Austen began writing a third novel with the working title Susan—later Northanger Abbey—a satire on the popular Gothic novel. Austen completed her work about a year later. In early 1803, Henry Austen offered Susan to Benjamin Crosby, a London publisher, who paid £10 for the copyright. Crosby promised early publication and went so far as to advertise the book publicly as being “in the press”, but did nothing more. The manuscript remained in Crosby’s hands, unpublished, until Austen repurchased the copyright from him in 1816. Bath and Southampton In December 1800 George Austen unexpectedly announced his decision to retire from the ministry, leave Steventon, and move the family to Bath. While retirement and travel were good for the elder Austens, Jane Austen was shocked to be told she was moving from the only home she had ever known. An indication of her state of mind is her lack of productivity as a writer during the time she lived at Bath. She was able to make some revisions to Susan, and she began and then abandoned a new novel, The Watsons, but there was nothing like the productivity of the years 1795–1799. Tomalin suggests this reflects a deep depression disabling her as a writer, but Honan disagrees, arguing Austen wrote or revised her manuscripts throughout her creative life, except for a few months after her father died. The years from 1801 to 1804 are something of a blank space for Austen scholars as Cassandra destroyed all of her letters from her sister in this period for unknown reasons. In December 1802 Austen received her only known proposal of marriage. She and her sister visited Alethea and Catherine Bigg, old friends who lived near Basingstoke. Their younger brother, Harris Bigg-Wither, had recently finished his education at Oxford and was also at home. Bigg-Wither proposed and Austen accepted. As described by Caroline Austen, Jane’s niece, and Reginald Bigg-Wither, a descendant, Harris was not attractive—he was a large, plain-looking man who spoke little, stuttered when he did speak, was aggressive in conversation, and almost completely tactless. However, Austen had known him since both were young and the marriage offered many practical advantages to Austen and her family. He was the heir to extensive family estates located in the area where the sisters had grown up. With these resources, Austen could provide her parents a comfortable old age, give Cassandra a permanent home and, perhaps, assist her brothers in their careers. By the next morning, Austen realised she had made a mistake and withdrew her acceptance. No contemporary letters or diaries describe how Austen felt about this proposal. In 1814, Austen wrote a letter to her niece, Fanny Knight, who had asked for advice about a serious relationship, telling her that "having written so much on one side of the question, I shall now turn around & entreat you not to commit yourself farther, & not to think of accepting him unless you really do like him. Anything is to be preferred or endured rather than marrying without Affection". The English scholar Douglas Bush wrote that Austen had “had a very high ideal of the love that should unite a husband and wife... All of her heroines... know in proportion to their maturity, the meaning of ardent love”. A possible autobiographical element in Sense and Sensibility occurs when Elinor Dashwood contemplates that “the worse and most irremediable of all evils, a connection for life” with an unsuitable man. In 1804, while living in Bath, Austen started but did not complete her novel, The Watsons. The story centres on an invalid and improvised clergyman and four unmarried daughters. Sutherland describes the novel as “a study in the harsh economic realities of dependent women’s lives”. Honan suggests, and Tomalin agrees, that Austen chose to stop work on the novel after her father died on 21 January 1805 and her personal circumstances resembled those of her characters too closely for her comfort. Her father’s relatively sudden death left Jane, Cassandra, and their mother in a precarious financial situation. Edward, James, Henry, and Francis Austen pledged to make annual contributions to support their mother and sisters. For the next four years, the family’s living arrangements reflected their financial insecurity. They spent part of the time in rented quarters in Bath before leaving the city in June 1805 for a family visit to Steventon & Godmersham. They moved for the autumn months to the newly fashionable seaside resort of Worthing, on the Sussex coast, where they resided at Stanford Cottage. It was here that Austen is thought to have written her fair copy of Lady Susan and added its “Conclusion”. In 1806 the family moved to Southampton, where they shared a house with Frank Austen and his new wife. A large part of this time they spent visiting various branches of the family. On 5 April 1809, about three months before the family’s move to Chawton, Austen wrote an angry letter to Richard Crosby, offering him a new manuscript of Susan if needed to secure the immediate publication of the novel, and requesting the return of the original so she could find another publisher. Crosby replied that he had not agreed to publish the book by any particular time, or at all, and that Austen could repurchase the manuscript for the £10 he had paid her and find another publisher. She did not have the resources to buy the copyright back at that time, but was able to purchase it in 1816. Chawton Around early 1809 Austen’s brother Edward offered his mother and sisters a more settled life—the use of a large cottage in Chawton village that was part of Edward’s nearby estate, Chawton House. Jane, Cassandra and their mother moved into Chawton cottage on 7 July 1809. Life was quieter in Chawton than it had been since the family’s move to Bath in 1800. The Austens did not socialise with gentry and entertained only when family visited. Her niece Anna described the family’s life in Chawton: “It was a very quiet life, according to our ideas, but they were great readers, and besides the housekeeping our aunts occupied themselves in working with the poor and in teaching some girl or boy to read or write.” Published author During her time at Chawton, Jane Austen published four generally well received novels. Through her brother Henry, the publisher Thomas Egerton agreed to publish Sense and Sensibility, which appeared in October 1811. Reviews were favourable and the novel became fashionable among young aristocratic opinion-makers; the edition sold out by mid-1813. Austen’s earnings from Sense and Sensibility provided her with some financial and psychological independence. Egerton then published Pride and Prejudice, a revision of First Impressions, in January 1813. He advertised the book widely and it was an immediate success, garnering three favourable reviews and selling well. By October 1813 Egerton was able to begin selling a second edition. Mansfield Park was published by Egerton in May 1814. While Mansfield Park was ignored by reviewers, it was very popular with readers. All copies were sold within six months, and Austen’s earnings on this novel were larger than for any of her other novels. Austen learned that the Prince Regent admired her novels and kept a set at each of his residences. In November 1815, the Prince Regent’s librarian James Stanier Clarke invited Austen to visit the Prince’s London residence and hinted Austen should dedicate the forthcoming Emma to the Prince. Though Austen disliked the Prince Regent, she could scarcely refuse the request. Austen disapproved of the Prince Regent on the account of his womanizing, gambling, drinking, spendthrift ways and generally disreputable behaviour. She later wrote Plan of a Novel, according to hints from various quarters, a satiric outline of the “perfect novel” based on the librarian’s many suggestions for a future Austen novel. Austen was greatly annoyed by Clarke’s often pompous literacy advice, and the Plan of A Novel parodying Clarke was intended as her revenge for all of the unwanted letters she had received from the royal librarian. In mid-1815 Austen moved her work from Egerton to John Murray, a better known London publisher, who published Emma in December 1815 and a second edition of Mansfield Park in February 1816. Emma sold well but the new edition of Mansfield Park did poorly, and this failure offset most of the income from Emma. These were the last of Austen’s novels to be published during her lifetime. While Murray prepared Emma for publication, Austen began The Elliots, later published as Persuasion. She completed her first draft in July 1816. In addition, shortly after the publication of Emma, Henry Austen repurchased the copyright for Susan from Crosby. Austen was forced to postpone publishing either of these completed novels by family financial troubles. Henry Austen’s bank failed in March 1816, depriving him of all of his assets, leaving him deeply in debt and losing Edward, James, and Frank Austen large sums. Henry and Frank could no longer afford the contributions they had made to support their mother and sisters. Illness and death Austen was feeling unwell by early 1816, but ignored the warning signs. By the middle of that year, her decline was unmistakable, and she began a slow, irregular, deterioration. The majority of biographers rely on Dr. Vincent Cope’s 1964 retrospective diagnosis and list her cause of death as Addison’s disease, although her final illness has also been described as resulting from Hodgkin’s lymphoma. She continued to work in spite of her illness. Dissatisfied with the ending of The Elliots, she rewrote the final two chapters, finished on 6 August 1816. In January 1817 she began The Brothers (titled Sanditon when published in 1925), and completed twelve chapters before stopping work in mid-March 1817, probably due to illness. Austen made light of her condition, describing it as “bile” and rheumatism. As her illness progressed she experienced difficulty walking and lacked energy; by mid-April she was confined to bed. In May Cassandra and Henry brought her to Winchester for treatment. Austen died in Winchester on 18 July 1817, at the age of 41. Henry, through his clerical connections, arranged for his sister to be buried in the north aisle of the nave of Winchester Cathedral. The epitaph composed by her brother James praises Austen’s personal qualities, expresses hope for her salvation, mentions the “extraordinary endowments of her mind”, but does not explicitly mention her achievements as a writer. Posthumous publication After Austen’s death, Cassandra, Henry Austen, and Murray arranged for the publication of Persuasion and Northanger Abbey as a set. Henry Austen contributed a Biographical Note which for the first time identified his sister as the author of the novels. Tomalin describes it as “a loving and polished eulogy”. Sales were good for a year—only 321 copies remained unsold at the end of 1818. In 1832 Richard Bentley purchased the remaining copyrights to all of her novels, and over the following winter published five illustrated volumes as part of his Standard Novels series. In October 1833, Bentley released the first collected edition of her works. Since then, Austen’s novels have been continuously in print. Genre and style Austen’s works critique the sentimental novels of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-century literary realism. The earliest English novelists, Richardson, Henry Fielding and Tobias Smollett, were followed by the school of sentimentalists and romantics such as Walter Scott, Horace Walpole, Clara Reeve, Ann Radcliffe, Laurence Sterne, and Oliver Goldsmith, whose style and genre Austen rejected, returning the novel on a “slender thread” to the tradition of Richardson and Fielding for a “realistic study of manners”. Walter Scott noted Austen’s “resistance to the trashy sensationalism of much of modern fiction—'the ephemeral productions which supply the regular demand of watering places and circulating libraries’”. Yet her rejection of these genres is complex, as evidenced by Northanger Abbey and Emma. Similar to William Wordsworth, who excoriated the modern frantic novel in the “Preface” to his Lyrical Ballads (1800), Austen distances herself from escapist novels; the discipline and innovation she demonstrates is similar to his, and she shows “that rhetorically less is artistically more.” She eschewed popular Gothic fiction, stories of terror in which a heroine typically was stranded in a remote location, a castle or abbey (32 novels between 1784 and 1818 contain the word “abbey” in their title). Yet in Northanger Abbey she alludes to the trope, with the heroine, Catherine, anticipating a move to a remote locale. Rather than full-scale rejection or parody, Austen transforms the genre, juxtaposing reality, with descriptions of elegant rooms and modern comforts, against the heroine’s “novel-fueled” desires. Nor does she completely denigrate Gothic fiction: instead she transforms settings and situations, such that the heroine is still imprisoned, yet her imprisonment is mundane and real—regulated manners and the strict rules of the ballroom. In Sense and Sensibility Austen presents characters who are more complex than in staple sentimental fiction, according to critic Keymer, who notes that although it is a parody of popular sentimental fiction, “Marianne in her sentimental histrionics responds to the calculating world... with a quite justifiable scream of female distress.” Richardson’s Pamela, the prototype for the sentimental novel, is a didactic love story with a happy ending, written at a time women were beginning to have the right to choose husbands and yet were restricted by social conventions. Austen attempted Richardson’s epistolary style, but found the flexibility of narrative more conducive to her realism, a realism in which each conversation and gesture carries a weight of significance. The narrative style utilises free indirect speech—she was the first English novelist to do so extensively—through which she had the ability to present a character’s thoughts directly to the reader and yet still retain narrative control. The style allows an author to vary discourse between the narrator’s voice and values and those of the characters. Austen had a natural ear for speech and dialogue, according to scholar Mary Lascelles “Few novelists can be more scrupulous than Jane Austen as to the phrasing and thoughts of their characters.” Techniques such as fragmentary speech suggest a character’s traits and their tone; “syntax and phrasing rather than vocabulary” is utilised to indicate social variants. Dialogue reveals a character’s mood—frustration, anger, happiness—each treated differently and often through varying patterns of sentence structures. For example, when Elizabeth Bennett rejects Darcy, her stilted speech and the convoluted sentence structure reveals that he has wounded her: From the very beginning, from the first moment I may almost say, of my acquaintance with you, your manners impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form that the groundwork of disapprobation, on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike. And I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry. Austen’s plots highlight women’s traditional dependence on marriage to secure social standing and economic security. As an art form, the 18th-century novel lacked the seriousness of its equivalents from the 19th century, when novels were treated as “the natural vehicle for discussion and ventilation of what mattered in life”. Rather than delving too deeply into the psyche of her characters, Austen enjoys them and imbues them with humour, according to critic John Bayley. He believes that the well-spring of her wit and irony is her own attitude that comedy “is the saving grace of life”. Part of Austen’s fame rests on the historical and literary significance that she was the first woman to write great comic novels. Samuel Johnson’s influence is evident, in that she follows his advice to write “a representation of life as may excite mirth”. Her humour comes from her modesty and lack of superiority, allowing her most successful characters, such as Elizabeth Bennet, to transcend the trivialities of life, which the more foolish characters are overly absorbed in. Austen used comedy to explore the individualism of women’s lives and gender relations, and she appears to have used it to find the goodness in life, often fusing it with “ethical sensibility”, creating artistic tension. Critic Robert Polhemus writes, “To appreciate the drama and achievement of Austen, we need to realize how deep was her passion for both reverence and ridicule... and her comic imagination reveals both the harmonies and the telling contradictions of her mind and vision as she tries to reconcile her satirical bias with her sense of the good.” Reception Contemporaneous responses As Austen’s works were published anonymously, they brought her little personal renown. They were fashionable among opinion-makers, but were rarely reviewed. Most of the reviews were short and on balance favourable, although superficial and cautious. They most often focused on the moral lessons of the novels. Sir Walter Scott, a leading novelist of the day, contributed one anonymously. Using the review as a platform to defend the then-disreputable genre of the novel, he praised Austen’s realism. The other important early review was attributed to Richard Whately in 1821. However, Whately denied having authored the review, which drew favourable comparisons between Austen and such acknowledged greats as Homer and Shakespeare, and praised the dramatic qualities of her narrative. Scott and Whately set the tone for almost all subsequent 19th-century Austen criticism. 19th century Because Austen’s novels did not to conform to Romantic and Victorian expectations that "powerful emotion [be] authenticated by an egregious display of sound and colour in the writing", 19th-century critics and audiences preferred the works of Charles Dickens and George Eliot. In a rare sympathetic review, in this case of Emma in 1815, Sir Walter Scott wrote that book displayed “the art of copying from nature as she really exists in the common walks of life, and presenting to the reader, instead of the splendid scenes from an imaginary world, a correct and and striking representation of that which is daily taking place around him”. Through Scott was positive, Austen’s work did not match the prevailing aesthetic values of the Romantic zeitgeist. Though Austen’s novels were republished in Britain from the 1830s and sold at a steady rate, they were not bestsellers. Austen had many admiring readers in the 19th century who considered themselves part of a literary elite. Philosopher and literary critic George Henry Lewes expressed this viewpoint in a series of enthusiastic articles published in the 1840s and 1850s. This theme continued later in the century with novelist Henry James, who referred to Austen several times with approval and on one occasion ranked her with Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Henry Fielding as among “the fine painters of life”. The publication of James Edward Austen-Leigh’s A Memoir of Jane Austen in 1869 introduced Austen to a wider public as “dear aunt Jane”, the respectable maiden aunt. Publication of the Memoir spurred the reissue of Austen’s novels—the first popular editions were released in 1883 and fancy illustrated editions and collectors’ sets quickly followed. Author and critic Leslie Stephen described the popular mania that started to develop for Austen in the 1880s as “Austenolatry”. Around the start of the 20th century, members of the literary elite reacted against the popularization of Austen. They referred to themselves as Janeites in order to distinguish themselves from the masses who did not properly understand her works. For example, Henry James responded negatively to what he described as “a beguiled infatuation” with Austen, a rising tide of public interest that exceeded Austen’s “intrinsic merit and interest”. The American literacy critic A. Walton Litz noted that the “anti-Janites” in the 19th and 20th centuries comprise a formidable literacy squad of Mark Twain, Henry James, Charlotte Bronte, D.H. Lawrence and Kingsley Amis, but in “every case the adverse judgement merely reveals the special limitations or eccentricities of the critic, leaving Jane Austen relativity untouched”. Modern Several of Austen’s works have been subject to academic study. The first examination came from a 1911 essay by Oxford Shakespearean scholar A. C. Bradley. In his essay, Bradley groups of Austen’s novels into “early” and “late” works, a distinction still used by scholars today. The second was R. W. Chapman’s 1923 edition of Austen’s collected works. Not only was it the first scholarly edition of Austen’s works, it was also the first scholarly edition of any English novelist. The Chapman text has remained the basis for all subsequent published editions of Austen’s works. With the publication in 1939 of Mary Lascelles’s Jane Austen and Her Art, the academic study of Austen took hold. Lascelles’s innovative work included an analysis of the books Austen read and the effect of her reading on her work, an extended analysis of Austen’s style, and her “narrative art”. Concern arose that academics were taking over Austen criticism and that it was becoming increasingly esoteric, a debate that has continued since. A more revisionist approach in the 1940s, together with F. R. Leavis’s and Ian Watt’s pronouncement that Austen was one of the great writers of English fiction, did much to cement Austen’s reputation amongst academics. They agreed that she "combined [Henry Fielding’s and Samuel Richardson’s] qualities of interiority and irony, realism and satire to form an author superior to both". The period since World War II has seen more scholarship on Austen using a diversity of critical approaches, including feminist theory, and perhaps most controversially, postcolonial theory. The continuing disconnection between the popular appreciation of Austen, particularly by modern Janeites, and the academic appreciation of Austen has widened considerably. A sign of the way that Austen can still spark debate can be seen when the American English professor Gene Koppel mentioned in a lecture that Austen and her family were “Tories of the deepest dye” [the Tories were the conservative party while the Whigs were the liberal party], a statement which greatly upset many of Koppel’s liberal students, who much to his amusement, complained to him how was it possible that Austen was a conservative?. The conservative Koppel noted several feminist authors such as Claudia Johnson and Mollie Sandock were claiming Austen for their own cause. Citing the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Koppel argued that different people can and do react to the same work of literature in different ways as art is always a subjective discipline as various people have their standards for evaluating literature.?. A such, Koppel argued that competing interpretations of Austen’s work, provided that they are grounded in readings of her work are all equally valid, and so it equally possible to see Austen as a feminist critiquing Regency society and as a conservative upholding the values of Regency society. Adaptations Austen’s novels have resulted in sequels, prequels and adaptations of almost every type, from soft-core pornography to fantasy. From the 19th century, her family members published conclusions to her incomplete novels, and by 2000 there were over 100 printed adaptations. The first film adaptation was the 1940 MGM production of Pride and Prejudice starring Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson. BBC television dramatisations since the 1970s have attempted to adhere meticulously to Austen’s plots, characterisations and settings. From 1995 a large number of Austen adaptations began to appear, with Ang Lee’s film of Sense and Sensibility, for which screenwriter and star Emma Thompson won an Academy Award, and the BBC’s immensely popular TV mini-series Pride and Prejudice, starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth. A 2005 British production of Pride and Prejudice, directed by Joe Wright and starring Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen, was followed in 2007 by ITV’s Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, and in 2016 by Love & Friendship, a film version of Lady Susan that borrowed the title of Austen’s Love and Freindship [sic].

Nicholas Breton (also Britton or Brittaine) (1545–1626), English poet and novelist, belonged to an old family settled at Layer Breton, Essex. Life His father, William Breton, a London merchant who had made a considerable fortune, died in 1559, and the widow (née Elizabeth Bacon) married the poet George Gascoigne before her sons had attained their majority. Nicholas Breton was probably born at the “capitall mansion house” in Red Cross Street, in the parish of St Giles without Cripplegate, mentioned in his father’s will. There is no official record of his residence at the university, but the diary of the Rev. Richard Madox tells us that he was at Antwerp in 1583 and was “once of Oriel College.” He married Ann Sutton in 1593, and had a family. He is supposed to have died shortly after the publication of his last work, Fantastickes (1626). Breton found a patron in Mary, countess of Pembroke, and wrote much in her honour until 1601, when she seems to have withdrawn her favour. It is probably safe to supplement the meagre record of his life by accepting as autobiographical some of the letters signed N.B. in A Poste with a Packet of Mad Letters (1603, enlarged 1637); the 19th letter of the second part contains a general complaint of many griefs, and proceeds as follows: “Hath another been wounded in the warres, fared hard, lain in a cold bed many a bitter storme, and beene at many a hard banquet? all these have I; another imprisoned? so have I; another long been sicke? so have I; another plagued with an unquiet life? so have I; another indebted to his hearts griefe, and fame would pay and cannot? so am I.” Works * Breton was a prolific author of considerable versatility and gift, popular with his contemporaries, and forgotten by the next generation. His work consists of religious and pastoral poems, satires, and a number of miscellaneous prose tracts. His religious poems are sometimes wearisome by their excess of fluency and sweetness, but they are evidently the expression of a devout and earnest mind. His lyrics are pure and fresh, and his romances, though full of conceits, are pleasant reading, remarkably free from grossness. His praise of the Virgin and his references to Mary Magdalene have suggested that he was a Roman Catholic, but his prose writings abundantly prove that he was an ardent Anglican. * Breton had little gift for satire, and his best work is to be found in his pastoral poetry. His Passionate Shepheard (1604) is full of sunshine and fresh air, and of unaffected gaiety. The third pastoral in this book—"Who can live in heart so glad As the merrie country lad"—is well known; with some other of Breton’s daintiest poems, among them the lullaby, “Come little babe, come silly soule,” (This poem, however, comes from The Arbor of Amorous Devises, which is only in part Breton’s work.)—it is incorporated in A. H. Bullen’s Lyrics from Elizabethan Romances (1890). His keen observation of country life appears also in his prose idyll, Wits Trenckrnour, “a conference betwixt a scholler and an angler,” and in his Fantastickes, a series of short prose pictures of the months, the Christian festivals and the hours, which throw much light on the customs of the times. Most of Breton’s books are very rare and have great bibliographical value. His works, with the exception of some belonging to private owners, were collected by Dr AB Grosart in the Chertsey Worthies Library in 1879, with an elaborate introduction quoting the documents for the poet’s history. * Breton’s poetical works, the titles of which are here somewhat abbreviated, include: * The Workes of a Young Wit (1577) * A Floorish upon Fancie (1577) * The Pilgrimage to Paradise (1592), with a prefatory letter by John Case * The Countess of Penbrook’s Passion (manuscript), first printed by JO Halliwell-Phillipps in 1853 [1] * Pasquil’s Fooles cappe (entered at Stationers’ Hall in 1600) * Pasquil’s Mistresse (1600) * Pasquil’s Passe and Passeth Not (1600) * Melancholike Humours (1600) - reprinted by Scholartis Press London. 1929. * Marie Magdalen’s Love: a Solemne Passion of the Soules Love (1595), the first part of which, a prose treatise, is probably by another hand; the second part, a poem in six-lined stanza, is certainly by Breton * A Divine Poem, including “The Ravisht Soul” and “The Blessed Weeper” (1601) * An Excellent Poem, upon the Longing of a Blessed heart (1601) * The Soules Heavenly Exercise (1601) * The Soules Harmony (1602) * Olde Madcappe newe Gaily mawfrey (1602) * The Mother’s Blessing (1602) * A True Description of Unthankfulnesse (1602) * The Passionate Shepheard (1604) * The Souies Immortail Crowne (1605) * The Honour of Valour (1605) * An Invective against Treason; I would and I would not (1614) * Bryton’s Bowre of Delights (1591), edited by Dr Grosart in 1893, an unauthorized publication which contained some poems disclaimed by Breton * The Arbor of Amorous Devises (entered at Stationers’ Hall, 1594), only in part Breton’s * contributions to England’s Helicon and other miscellanies of verse. * Of his twenty-two prose tracts may be mentioned Wit’s Trenchmour (1597), The Wil of Wit (1599), A Poste with a Packet of Mad Letters (1602-6). Sir Philip Sidney’s Ourania by N. B. (1606), A Mad World, my Masters, Adventures of Two Excellent Princes, Grimello’s Fortunes (1603), Strange News out of Divers Countries (1622), etc.; Mary Magdalen’s Lamentations (1604), and The Passion of a Discontented Mind (1601), are sometimes, but erroneously, ascribed to Breton. Footnotes References Wikipedia—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Breton