I often wonder what Shakespeare would think of his legacy. It would be difficult to imagine what ambitions he had when he began his writing career. Eternal fame, legendary status was, perhaps, not on his bucket list. To say Shakespeare has become immortal through his sonnets and plays would be […]
Hild Nicola Griffith Farrar, Straus and Giroux First Edition: November 12, 2013 ISBN 978-0-374-28087-1 Seventh century Britain: a time when men’s ambitions were larger than their means, when life was simple and hard and brutal. There was beauty, too, but it rarely lasted. Illiterate kings warred, scheming religions undermined each […]
The Wild Princess Mary Hart Perry William Morrow Paperbacks Original Edition (July 24, 2012) ISBN 978-0-06-212346-6 — ♦ — Princess Louise Caroline Alberta, Marchioness of Lorne and Duchess of Argyll, was the 6th child born to Britain’s Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, in 1848. She was a real, honest-to-goodness person, and under […]
On this day, December 3, in 1857, Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Imperial Russia (modern
Ukraine, then a part of Poland). While he settled in England and wrote in English, he always considered himself a Pole. Heart of Darkness, one of the most famous of his 20 novels (which explores colonialism and the attitudes regarding what constitutes a barbarian versus civilized society) is considered one of the best English novels of the 20th century, as is his novel Lord Jim, which chronicles a crew’s abandonment of its disabled ship. Conrad died in England in 1924 at age 66.