Industrial Revolution

Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling

Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells Edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling Tor Books First Edition: 3/19/13 ISBN 978-0-7653-3227-1 Take 19 established and talented writers. Give them the chance to craft stories full of fantasy, magic, gaslight, alternate history and/or visceral horror. Mix in a Victorian-era mindset and a nod […]

Featured Author Review: Without a Summer by Mary Robinette Kowal

Without A Summer Mary Robinette Kowal Tor Books 1st Edition: April 2, 2013 ISBN 978-0-7653-3415-2 —♦— Let me say this: I utterly enjoyed Mary Robinette Kowal’s second novel in her Glamourist Histories series, Glamour in Glass, with its early 1800s historical intrigue and cultural exploratives, but after the initial Shades […]

Birthdays

On this day, June 11, in 1572, Ben Jonson was born in Westminster, London, England. A towering figure in English (and therefore Western) literature, especially during the Renaissance and Restoration, he is considered second only to William Shakespeare (whom he knew) in his importance to British drama. Indeed, known for his intellect and cultured satire found in both his plays and his poetry, he was more widely known and better received than Shakespeare, and enjoyed the patronage of King James VI and I. The man who has been called the first poet laureate continued to write up until his death in 1637; he was 65.

Birthdays

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.