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Файл:Английский язык. Литературное наследие Великобритании XIX в.. Практикум для бакалавров укрупненных групп направлений подготовки «Науки об обществе», «
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The Haunted and the Haunters or The House and the Brain (novelette,
1859)
What Will He Do With It? (1858)
A Strange Story (1862)
The Parisiens (1873 unfinished)
Useful resources for reading about Bulwer-Lytton:
http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/
http://global.britannica.com/biography/Edward-George-Earle-Bulwer-Lytt
on-1st-Baron-Lytton
http://www.poemhunter.com/edward-george-bulwer-lytton/biography/
Comprehension assignments:
1. Give the brief summary of Bulwer-Lytton’s life.
2. Highlight the literary styles of the author.
3. Bulwer-Lytton’s most memorable works.
4. Write the brief summary of one of Bulwer-Lytton’s works.
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson
(Альфред Теннисон)
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, was an English poet often
regarded as the chief representative of the Victorian age in poetry. Tennyson
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succeeded Wordsworth as Poet Laureate of Great Britain in 1850. He had a
reputation no other poet writing in English has ever had.
Tennyson was born in Somersby, Lincolnshire, England, the fourth son of
the twelve. He was born into a middle-class line of Tennysons, but also had a
noble and royal ancestry. His father, George Clayton Tennyson, was rector of
Somersby, also rector of Benniworth and Bag Enderby, and vicar of Grimsby.
George Clayton Tennyson raised a large family. He was comfortably well off
for a country clergyman and his shrewd money management enabled the family
to spend summers on the eastern coast of England. Alfred Tennyson’s mother,
Elizabeth Fytche was the daughter of the vicar of St. James Church, Louthand
rector of Withcall, a small village. Tennyson’s father cared a lot about the
education of his children. Alfred began to write poetry at an early age in the
style of Lord Byron. Tennyson’s two of his elder brothers were writing poetry in
their teens, and a collection of poems by all of them was published locally when
Alfred was only 17. One peculiar aspect of his method of composition was set
while he was still a boy: he would make up phrases or discrete lines as he
walked, and store them in his memory until he had an opportunity to write them
down.
Tennyson was a student of Louth Grammar School for four years
(1816–1820) and then attended Scaitcliffe School, Englefield Green and King
Edward VI Grammar School, Louth. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge,
in 1827, where he joined a secret society called the Cambridge Apostles.
In 1829 Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor’s Gold Medal at
Cambridge for one of his first pieces, ‟Timbuktu”. He published his first solo
collection of poems, Poems Chiefly Lyrical in 1830. Claribel and Mariana,
which later took their place among Tennyson’s most celebrated poems, were
included in this volume. His verses soon proved popularity and brought
Tennyson to the attention of well-known writers of the day, including Samuel
Taylor Coleridge.
Tennyson excelled at penning short lyrics, such as Break, Break, Break,
The Charge of the Light Brigade, Tears, Idle Tears and Crossing the Bar. Much
of his verse was based on classical mythological themes. During his career,
Tennyson attempted drama, but his plays were of little success. A number of
phrases from Tennyson’s work have become common places of the English
language. Tennyson is the ninth most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford
Dictionary of Quotations.
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Tennyson had to leave Cambridge because of the death of his father.
Dr. Tennyson left little but debts to his family, although he had enjoyed a good
income and a large allowance from his father. This began a very bitter period of
Tennyson’s life. An annual gift from an aunt allowed him to live in a modest
manner, but he refused his grandfather’s offer to help him find a place in the
church if he would be ordained. Tennyson said that poetry was his career and he
had some prospects for his earning for a living from poetry. His third volume of
poetry was published at the end of 1832.
Tennyson wrote a dozen or so poems to Rosa Baring, the pretty young
daughter of a great banking family her. Certainly, he seems not to have been
crushed when she married another man. In 1836, however, at the age of
twenty-seven, Tennyson became seriously involved with Emily Sellwood, who
was four years younger than he. By the following year they considered
themselves engaged. Emily had been a friend of Tennyson’s sisters. Most of the
correspondence between Tennyson and Emily has been destroyed, but from
what remains it is clear that she was very much in love with him.
After marrying Emily Sellwood, the couple settled in a house in
Freshwater on the Isle of Wright in 1853. From there the family moved in 1869
to Aldworth, Surrey. Tennyson’s life was then uneventful. In London he was a
regular guest of the literary and artistic salon of Mrs. Prinsep at Little Holland
House. In this House he produced some of his best poems.
In the 1870s Tennyson wrote several plays, among them poetic dramas
Queen Mary (1875) and Harold (1876). In 1884 he was created a baron.
Tennyson continued writing into his eighties. Tennyson died at Aldwort on
October 6, 1892 aged 83 and was buried in the Poets’ Corner in Westminster
Abbey. His last words were: ‟Oh that press will have me now!”
Famous quotations by Tennyson:
Nature, red in tooth and claw.
It is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.
Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die.
My strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure.
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.
The old order changeth, yielding place to new.
Love is the only gold.
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Who is wise in love, love most, say least.
Words, like nature, half reveal and half conceal the soul within.
By blood a king, in heart a clown.
So many worlds, so much to do, so little done, such things to be.
Popular works by Tennyson:
From Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (1830):
Nothing Will Die
All Things Will Die
The Dying Swan
The Kraken
Mariana
Lady Clara Vere de Vere (1832)
From Poems (1833):
The Lotos-Eaters
The Lady of Shalott (1832, 1842) – three versions painted by J. W. Water-
house (1888, 1894, and 1916). Also put to music by Loreena McKennitt on her
album The Visit (1991).
St. Simeon Stylites (1833)
From Poems (1842):
Locksley Hall
Tithonus
Vision of Sin
The Two Voices (1834)
Ulysses (1833)
From The Princess; A Medley (1847)
The Princess
Godiva
Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal
Ring Out, Wild Bells (1850)
The Eagle (1851)
The Sister’s Shame
The Charge of the Light Brigade (1854)
Flower in the crannied wall (1869)
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The Window (1871)
Harold (1876)
Crossing the Bar (1889)
The Foresters (1891)
Kapiolani (published after his death)
Useful resources for reading about Tennyson:
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/lord-alfred-tennyson
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/alfred-tennyson
http://www.online-literature.com/tennyson/
Comprehension assignments:
1. Give the brief summary of Tennyson’s life.
2. Highlight the literary styles of the author.
3. Tennyson’s most memorable works.
4. Write the brief summary of one of Tennyson’s works.
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (Stevenson)
(Элизабет Гаскелл)
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, often referred as Mrs. Gaskell, was an
English novelist and short story writer during the Victorian era. Her novels
describes the lives of the different stages of the society (the poor, the rich). Her
novels are of great interest for social historians and for lovers of literature.
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Elizabeth Stevenson was born in London on 29 September 1810, the
daughter of a Unitarian minister. She was the youngest of eight children; only
she and her brother John survived infancy. After her mother’s early death, her
father saw no alternative for Elizabeth but to be sent to live with her mother’s
sister, Hannah Lumb, and so she was raised by an aunt who lived in Knutsford
in Cheshire. While she was growing up Elizabeth’s future was uncertain, as she
had no personal wealth and no firm home, though she was a permanent guest at
her aunt and grandparents’ house. Her father married Catherine Thomson in
1814 and they had a son, William (born 1815), and a daughter, Catherine (born
1816). Her stepmother’s brother William John Thomson became the miniature
artist, and painted a portrait of Elizabeth Gaskell in Manchester in 1832.
Although Elizabeth spent several years without seeing her father and his new
family, her older brother John often visited her in Knutsford. He sent her
modern books, and descriptions of his life at sea and his experiences abroad.
John was destined for the Royal Navy from an early age. John went missing in
1827 during an expedition to India. From 1821 to 1826 she attended a school
run at Barford House, and after that she received the traditional education in
arts, the classics, decorum and propriety given to young ladies at the time. Her
aunts gave her the classics to read, and she was encouraged by her father in her
studies and writing.
In 1832 she married William Gaskell, also a Unitarian minister, and they
settled in the industrial city of Manchester. Their first child, a daughter,
was stillborn in 1833. A son, William (1844–1845), died in infancy. Their other
children were Marianne (1834), Margaret Emily, known as Meta (1837), Florence
Elizabeth (1842) and Julia Bradford (1846). Motherhood and the obligations of a
minister’s wife kept her busy. However, the death of her only son inspired her to
write her first novel, Mary Barton, which was published anonymously in 1848.
It was an immediate success, winning the praise of Charles Dickens and Thomas
Carlyle. Dickens invited her to contribute to his magazine, Household Words,
where her next major work, Cranford, appeared in 1853. North and South was
published the following year. Mrs. Gaskell’s writing style is notable for putting
local dialect words into the mouths of middle-class characters and the narrator.
Gaskell’s work brought her many friends, including the novelist Charlotte Brontë.
When Charlotte died in 1855, her father, Patrick Brontë, asked Gaskell to write
her biography. The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857) was written with admiration
and covered a huge quantity of firsthand material with great narrative skill.
In 1859 Mrs. Gaskell travelled to Whitby to gather material for Sylvia’s
Lovers, which was published in 1863. Her novella Cousin Phyllis was serialised
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in The Cornhill Magazine from November 1863 to February 1864. The
serialisation of her last novel, Wives and Daughters, began in August 1864 in
The Cornhill. She died of a heart attack in 1865, while visiting a house she had
purchased in Holybourne, Hampshire. She left her longest work, Wives
and Daughters incomplete. Wives and Daughters was published in book form in
early 1866, first in the United States and then, ten days later, in Britain. Gaskell
died on 12 November 1865.
On 25 September 2010 a memorial to Elizabeth Gaskell was dedicated in
Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey.
Famous quotations by Gaskell:
Sometimes one likes foolish people for their folly, better than wise
people for their wisdom.
How easy it is to judge rightly after one sees what evil comes from
judging wrongly.
I wish I could tell you how lonely I am. How cold and harsh it is here.
Everywhere there is conflict and unkindness. I think God has forsaken this
place. I believe I have seen hell and it’s white, it’s snow-white.
I know you despise me; allow me to say, it is because you don’t un-
derstand me.
Margaret was not a ready lover, but where she loved she loved passio-
nately, and with no small degree of jealousy.
But the future must be met, however stern and iron it be.
But the cloud never comes in that quarter of the horizon
from which we watch for it.
I won’t say she was silly, but I think one of us was silly, and it wasn’t
me!
Those who are happy and successful themselves are too apt to make
light of the misfortunes of others.
Popular works by Gaskell:
Novels:
Mary Barton (1848)
Ruth (1853)
North and South (1854–55)
Sylvia’s Lovers (1863)
Wives and Daughters: An Everyday Story (1865)
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Novellas and collections:
The Moorland Cottage (1850)
Mr. Harrison’s Confessions (1851)
Cranford (1851–53)
The Old Nurse’s Story (1852)
Lizzie Leigh (1855)
My Lady Ludlow (1859)
Round the Sofa (1859)
Lois the Witch (1861)
A Dark Night’s Work (1863)
Cousin Phillis (1864)
Short stories
Libbie Marsh’s Three Eras (1847)
The Sexton’s Hero (1847)
Christmas Storms and Sunshine (1848)
Hand and Heart (1849)
The Well of Pen-Morfa (1850)
The Heart of John Middleton (1850)
Disappearances (1851)
Bessy’s Troubles at Home (1852)
The Old Nurse’s Story (1852)
Cumberland Sheep-Shearers (1853)
Morton Hall (1853)
Traits and Stories of the Huguenots (1853)
My French Master (1853)
The Squire’s Story (1853)
Half a Life-time Ago (1855)
Company Manners (1854)
The Poor Clare (1856)
The Doom of the Griffiths (1858)
Right at Last (1858)
Useful resources for reading about Gaskell:
http://gaskellsociety.co.uk/
http://www.online-literature.com/elizabeth_gaskell/
http://www.victorianweb.org/victorian/authors/gaskell/index.html
88
Comprehension assignments:
1. Give the brief summary of Gaskell’s life.
2. Highlight the literary styles of the author.
3. Gaskell’s most memorable works.
4. Write the brief summary of one of Gaskell’s works.
Charlotte Brontë
(Шарлотта Бронте)
Charlotte Brontë was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three
Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels have become
classics of English literature.
Charlotte was born in Thornton, West Riding of Yorkshire, in 1816, the
third of the six children of Maria and Patrick Brontë, an Irish Anglican
clergyman. In 1820 her family moved a few miles to the village of Haworth,
where her father had been appointed perpetual curate of St. Michael and All
Angels Church. Maria died of cancer on 15 September 1821, leaving five
daughters, Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte, Emily and Anne, and a son, Branwell, to
be taken care of by her sister, Elizabeth Branwell.
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In August 1824 Patrick sent Charlotte, Emily, Maria and Elizabeth to the
Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire. Charlotte maintained
that the school’s poor conditions permanently affected her health and physical
development, and hastened the deaths of Maria (born 1814) and Elizabeth (born
1815), who both died of tuberculosis in June 1825. After the deaths of her older
sisters her father removed Charlotte and Emily from the school. Charlotte used
the school as the basis for Lowood School in Jane Eyre.
At home in Haworth Parsonage Charlotte should care about her younger
sisters. She and her surviving siblings Branwell, Emily and Anne created their
own fictional worlds, and began chronicling the lives and struggles of the
inhabitants of their imaginary kingdoms. Charlotte and Branwell wrote Byronic
stories about their jointly imagined country, Angria, and Emily and Anne wrote
articles and poems about Gondal. The sagas they created were episodic and
elaborate, and they exist in incomplete manuscripts, some of which have been
published as juvenilia. They provided them with an obsessive interest during
childhood and early adolescence, which prepared them for literary vocations in
adulthood.
Between 1831 and 1832 Charlotte continued her education at Roe Head in
Mirfield, where she met her lifelong friends and correspondents Ellen Nussey
and Mary Taylor. In 1833 she wrote a novella, The Green Dwarf, using the
name Wellesley. She returned to Roe Head as a teacher from 1835 to 1838.
In 1839 she worked as a governess in families in Yorkshire. One of them
was Sidgwick family, where one of her charges was an unruly child who on one
occasion threw a Bible at Charlotte, an incident that may have been the
inspiration for a part of the opening chapter of Jane Eyre in which John Reed
throws a book at the young Jane. Soon she disliked her job and she and her
sisters Emily and Anne travelled to Brussels, Belgium to study at the Pensionnat
Heger under the instruction of Constantin Heger. They learned French and
German and studied literature with the aim to start their own school someday.
Charlotte returned home to Haworth and unsuccessfully tried to start her own
school, around the same time that Arthur Bell Nicholls was appointed curate of
Haworth.
1848 was a sad year for the Brontes: Charlotte’s brother Branwell, who
was an alcoholic died in September and her sister Emily died in December.
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