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The novel The Egoist, written immediately after the essay on comedy, is the
most successful example of his comic method and remains his most critically
praised novel. In this comedy of manners, Meredith attacked a widely embraced
element in the thought of John Stuart Mill, who held that individuals could think
and do as they wished provided that they did no harm to others. With The
Egoist, Meredith finally achieved popular success and his popularity grew with
subsequent novels.
The most popular and artistically successful of Meredith’s later works was
Diana of the Crossways, a novel inspired by a scandal involving an adulterous
woman accused of selling a state secret.
Meredith was honoured from many quarters: he succeeded Lord Tennyson
as president of the Society of Authors; in 1905 he was appointed to the Order of
Merit by King Edward VII.
In 1909 he died at his home in Box Hill, Surrey. He is buried in the cemetery at Dorking, Surrey, England.
Famous quotations by Meredith:
A witty woman is a treasure; a witty beauty is a power.
I expect that Woman will be the last thing civilized by Man.
Kissing don’t last: cookery do.
We never know what’s in us till we stand by ourselves.
Don’t just count your years, make your years count.
Always imitate the behavior of the winners when you lose.
Caricature is rough truth.
Speech is the small change of silence.
Popular works by Meredith:
Essay on Comedy (1877)
The Shaving of Shagpat (1856)
Farina (1857)
The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859)
Evan Harrington (1861)
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Emilia in England (1864)
The Adventures of Harry Richmond (1871)
The House on the Beach (1877)
The Case of General Ople and Lady Camper (1877)
The Tale of Chloe (1879)
The Egoist (1879)
Diana of the Crossways (1885)
The Amazing Marriage (1895)
Celt and Saxon (1910)
Poetry:
Poems (1851)
Modern Love (1862)
Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth (1883)
The Woods of Westermain (1883)
A Faith on Trial (1885)
A Reading of Earth (1888)
The Empty Purse (1892)
A Reading of Life (1901)
Useful recources about Meredith:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/george-meredith
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/meredith/biograph.html
http://global.britannica.com/biography/George-Meredith
Comprehension assignments:
1. Give the brief summary of Meredith’s life.
2. Highlight the literary styles of the author.
3. Meredith’s most memorable works.
4. Write the brief summary of one of Meredith’s works.
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William Morris
(Уильям Моррис)
William Morris was an English textile designer, artist, writer and socialist.
William Morris was born in Walthamstow, Essex, England, in a wealthy
middle-class family, he was named after his father, a financier who worked as a
partner of bill brokers in the City of London. Aged 6, Morris moved with his
family to the Georgian Italianate mansion at Woodford Hall, Woodford, Essex,
which was surrounded by 50 acres of land adjacent to Epping Forest. He was
interested in fishing and he took rides through the Essex countryside on his pony
and together with his father visited the various churches and cathedrals
throughout the country, marveling at their architecture. Aged 9, he was then sent
to Misses Arundale’s Academy for Young Gentlemen, a nearby preparatory
school.
In 1847 Morris’s father died unexpectedly and the family had to move
into the smaller Water House. In February 1848 Morris began his studies at
Marlborough College in Marlborough, Wiltshire, where he gained a reputation
as an eccentric nicknamed ‟Crab”. He despised his time there, being bullied,
bored, and homesick. At Christmas 1851 Morris was removed from the school
and returned to Water House, where he was privately tutored.
In June 1852 Morris entered Oxford University’s Exeter College. He
disliked the college and was bored by the manner in which they taught him
Classics. Instead he developed a keen interest in Medieval history and Medieval
architecture, inspired by the many Medieval buildings in Oxford. At Oxford he
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met the artist Edward Burne Jones, and through this friendship he came into
contact with the Pre-Raphaelite painters, such as Rossetti, and others in their circle.
In 1859 Morris married Jane Burden, an unconventional beauty and a
favourite model for the Pre-Raphaelites. He immediately commissioned his
friend, the architect Philip Webb, to build them a new home on land he had
bought in Bexleyheath, Kent. Now a suburb of London, Bexleyheath was then a
rural area. Morris wanted a modern home and Webb designed it for him. Morris
and his wife moved into Red House in 1860 and spent the next two years
furnishing and decorating the interior. Morris did much of the work himself,
with the help from his artist friends. In January 1861 Morris and Janey’s first
daughter was born: named Jane Alice Morris, she was commonly known as
‟Jenny”. Jenny was followed in March 1862 by the birth of their second
daughter, Mary ‟May” Morris. Morris was a caring father to his daughters, and
years later they both recounted having idyllic childhoods.
Prompted by the success of their efforts, they decided to start their own
company. In April 1861 Morris and his friends established a company, which
produced a range of original domestic furnishings including embroidery,
tableware and furniture, stained glass and tiles. Wallpapers were soon added to the
list because Morris was unable to find any he liked well enough to use in his own
home. The company also influenced the decoration of churches and houses into the
early 20th century. Morris was also a major contributor to reviving traditional
textile arts and methods of production, and one of the founders of the SPAB, now a
statutory element in the preservation of historic buildings in the UK.
Morris wrote and published poetry, fiction, and translations of ancient and
medieval texts throughout his life. His best-known works include The Defence
of Guenevere and Other Poems (1858), The Earthly Paradise (1868–1870),
A Dream of John Ball (1888) and the utopian News from Nowhere (1890).
Morris was an important figure in the emergence of socialism in Britain,
founding the Socialist League in 1884, but breaking with that organization over
goals and methods by the end of the decade. He devoted much of the rest of his
life to the Kelmscott Press, which he founded in 1891. The 1896 Kelmscott
edition of the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer is considered a masterpiece of book
design.
In July 1896 he went on a cruise to Norway with construction engineer
John Carruthers. Returning to Kelmscott House, he became a complete invalid,
being visited by friends and family, before dying of tuberculosis on the morning
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of 4 October 1896. The national press reflected at that time considered and
recognised Morris primarily as a poet. His funeral was held on 6 October, during
which his corpse was transported to Oxford, and from there to Kelmscott, where
it was buried in the churchyard of St. George’s Church.
Famous quotations by Morris:
The past is not dead, it is living in us, and will be alive in the future
which we are now helping to make.
History has remembered the kings and warriors, because they
destroyed; art has remembered the people, because they created.
The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the
details of daily life.
It took me years to understand that words are often as important as
experience, because words make experience last.
If you cannot learn to love real art, at least learn to hate sham art and
reject it.
Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or
believe to be beautiful.
Love makes clear the eyes that else would never see: ‟Love makes
blind the eyes to all but me and thee”.
Let some word reach my ears and touch my heart.
Popular works by Morris:
The Hollow Land (1856)
The Defence of Guenevere, and other Poems (1858)
The Life and Death of Jason (1867)
The Earthly Paradise (1868–1870)
Love is Enough, or The Freeing of Pharamond: A Morality (1872)
The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs (1877)
Hopes and Fears for Art (1882)
The Pilgrims of Hope (1885)
A Dream of John Ball (1888)
Signs of Change (1888)
A Tale of the House of the Wolfings, and All the Kindreds of the Mark
Written in Prose and in Verse (1889)
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The Roots of the Mountains (1890)
The Story of the Glittering Plain (1891)
The Wood Beyond the World (1894)
Child Christopher and Goldilind the Fair (1895)
The Well at the World’s End (1896)
The Water of the Wondrous Isles (1897)
Useful recources about Morris:
http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/b/biography-of-william-morris/
https://www.william-morris.co.uk/a-full-history/
http://www.morrissociety.org/
Comprehension assignments:
1. Give the brief summary of Morris’s life.
2. Highlight the literary styles of the author.
3. Morris’s most memorable works.
4. Write the brief summary of one of Morris’s works.
Robert Louis Stevenson
(Роберт Льюис Стивенсон)
Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, andtravel
writer. Stevensonis among the 26 most translated authors in the world.
Stevenson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on 13 November 1850.
His father Thomas Stevenson (1818–1887) was a leading lighthouse engineer.
Lighthouse design was the family profession. He was christened Robert Lewis
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Balfour Stevenson. At about age 18, Stevenson was to change the spelling of
Lewis to Louis, and in 1873 he dropped Balfour.
Stevenson spent the greater part of his boyhood holidays in his maternal
grandfather’s house. Stevenson inherited a tendency to coughs and fevers.
An only child, strange-looking and eccentric, Stevenson found it hard to fit in
when he was sent to a nearby school at age six, a problem with the health
repeated at age eleven when he went on to the Edinburgh Academy, but he
mixed well in lively games with his cousins in summer holidays. In any case, his
frequent illnesses often kept him away from his first school, so he was taught for
long time by private tutors. He was a late reader, first learning at age seven or
eight, but even before this he dictated stories to his mother and nurse. He
compulsively wrote stories throughout his childhood. His father was proud of
this interest; he had also written stories in his spare time until his own father
found them and told him to give up such nonsense and mind your business. He
paid for the printing of Robert’s first publication at sixteen, The Pentland
Rising: A Page of History, 1666 (1866).
In October 1861 he went to Edinburgh Academy, an independent school
for boys, and stayed there for about fifteen months. In the autumn of 1863 he
spent one term at an English boarding school at Spring Grove. In October 1864,
following an improvement to his health, he was sent to Robert Thomson’s
private school in Frederick Street, Edinburgh, where he remained until he went
to university. In November 1867 Stevenson entered the University of Edinburgh
to study engineering, with the goal of following his father in the family business.
He showed from the start no enthusiasm for his studies and devoted much
energy to avoiding lectures. Lighthouse design never appealed to Stevenson,
though, and he began studying law instead. His spirit of adventure truly began to
appear at this stage, and during his summer vacations he traveled to France to be
around young artists, both writers and painters. He emerged from law school in
1875, but did not practice, as, by this point, he felt that his calling was to be a
writer.
In 1873 on a visit to a cousin in England, Stevenson met two people who
were to be of great importance to him, Sidney Colvin and Fanny (Frances Jane)
Sitwell. Sitwell was a 34-year-old woman with two children, separated from her
husband. Stevenson fell in love with her, and over several years they kept up a
heated correspondence in which Stevenson wavered between the role of a suitor
and a son (he addressed her as ‟Madonna”). In 1878 she divorced her husband,
and Stevenson set out to meet her in California (the account of his voyage would
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later be captured in The Amateur Emigrant). They married in 1880 and remained
together until Stevenson’s death in 1894. As for Colvin he became Stevenson’s
literary adviser and after his death was the first editor of Stevenson’s letters.
Soon after their first meeting, he had placed Stevenson’s first paid contribution,
an essay entitled Roads, in The Portfolio. Stevenson was soon active in London
literary life, becoming acquainted with many of the writers of the time. Visiting
Edinburgh in 1875, he took Stevenson with him to visit a patient at the Edinburgh Infirmary, William Ernest Henley. Henley, an energetic and talkative man
with a wooden leg, became a close friend and occasional literary collaborator,
until a quarrel broke up the friendship in 1888. Henley is often seen as the model
for Long John Silver in Treasure Island. The idea for Treasure Island was ignited by a map that Stevenson had drawn for his 12-year-old stepson;
Stevenson had conjured a pirate adventure story to accompany the drawing, and
it was serialized in the boys’ magazine Young Folks from October 1881 to
January 1882. When Treasure Island was published in book form in 1883,
Stevenson got his first real taste of widespread popularity, and his career as a
profitable writer had finally begun. Besides playing the piano and flageolet,
Stevenson wrote over 123 original musical compositions or arrangements,
including solos, duets, trios and quartets for various combinations of flageolet,
flute, clarinet, violin, guitar, mandolin and piano. His works include ten songs
written to his own poetry and with original or arranged melodies.
In June 1888 Stevenson and his family sailed from San Francisco,
California, to travel the islands of the Pacific Ocean, stopping for stays at the
Hawaiian Islands, where he became good friends with King Kalākaua. In 1889
they arrived in the Samoan islands, where they decided to build a house and
settle. The island setting stimulated Stevenson’s imagination and subsequently,
influenced his writing during this time: Several of his later works are about the
Pacific isles, including The Wrecker (1892), Island Nights’ Entertainments
(1893), The Ebb-Tide (1894) and In the South Seas (1896).
Toward the end of his life, Stevenson’s writing included nonfiction and
fiction and they became more powerful than his earlier works. These mature
works not only brought Stevenson lasting fame, they helped to enhance his
status with the literary establishment when his work was re-evaluated in the late
20th century, and his abilities were embraced by critics as much as his storytelling
had always been by readers.
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Robert Louis Stevenson, aged forty-four, died of a stroke on December 3,
1894, at his home in Vailima, Samoa. He was buried at the top of Mount Vaea,
on a spot overlooking the sea.
Famous quotations by Stevenson:
Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand
well.
I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.
I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The
great affair is to move.
Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.
A friend is a gift you give yourself.
You can give without loving, but you can never love without giving.
Wine is bottled poetry.
Popular works by Stevenson:
Novels:
The Hair Trunk or The Ideal Commonwealth (1877) Unfinished and
unpublished.
Treasure Island (1883)
Prince Otto (1885)
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)
Kidnapped (1886)
The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses (1888)
The Master of Ballantrae (1889)
The Wrong Box (1889)
The Wrecker (1892)
The Ebb-Tide (1894)
Weir of Hermiston (1896)
St Ives: Being the Adventures of a French Prisoner in England (1897)
Short stories collections:
New Arabian Nights (1882)
More New Arabian Nights: The Dynamiter (1885)
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The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables (1887); contains 6 stories.
Island Nights’ Entertainments (also known as South Sea Tales) (1893)
contains three longer stories
Fables (1896)
Useful recources about Stevenson:
http://robert-louis-stevenson.org/biographies/
http://www.biography.com/people/robert-louis-stevenson-9494571#finalyears
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/robert-louis-stevenson
Comprehension assignments:
1. Give the brief summary of Stevenson’s life.
2. Highlight the literary styles of the author.
3. Stevenson’s most memorable works.
4. Write the brief summary of one of Stevenson’s works.
Jane Austen
(Джейн Остин)
Jane Austen was the most widely read novelist of romantic fiction in
English literature.
Jane Austen was born on December 16th, 1775 in Steventon, Hampshire,
England to Rev. George Austen and his wife Cassandra, nee Leigh. She was to
be their seventh child and the second daughter. Austen’s family was large, six
brothers and one sister, Cassandra who was Austen’s closest and confidante
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