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Gimbling in the Wabe – Second Chances, Redux

Published on : 26 September, 201425 September, 2014 Published by : Sharon Browning

This week, I was planning to write on the unhappy phenomenon of banned books. However, every time I sat down to do this my thoughts went back to a year ago, when the attempt to ban a book I thought was wonderful played across the headlines of my own local […]

On this day, September 29, in 1547, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (universally known simply as “Cervantes”) was born in Alcalá de Henares, Spain. He wrote a number of plays, poems and novels, but it is his master work, The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha – better known simply as Don Quixote – for which he has achieved immortality. Unable to support himself through his writing, at various times in his life he joined the army (where he was captured by corsairs, and spent five years in slavery before being ransomed), was a purchasing agent, an accountant and a tax collector. He died at age 68 of diabetes and liver disease.

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.

Gimbling in the Wabe – Second Chances, Redux

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