My Blog

Category: Author

  • John Lyly and His Famous Works

    John Lyly and His Famous Works

    John Lyly was born in 1554. He was the grandson of William Lily. He was probably educated at the King’s School, Canterbury, then at Magdalen College, Oxford. He served as secretary to Edward de Vere, the earl of Oxford, was MP successively for Hindon, Aylesbury, and Appleby (1589- 1601), and supported the cause of the bishops in the Martin Marprelate controversy in a satirical pamphlet, Pap with an Hatchet (1589).

    John Lyly, who had sprung at a bound into fame by the publication of his prose romance Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit, had a successful dramatic career, too. An Oxford scholar and highly cultivated gentleman, Lyly was the author of several popular comedies as

    • A moste Excellent Comedie of Alexander, Campaspe and Diogenes (1584),
    • Sapho and Phao (1584),
    • Gallathea (1588)
    •  Endymion, the Man in the Moone (1588),
    • Midas (1589-90),
    • Mother Bombie (1590),
    • Loves Metamorphosis (1590) and
    • The Woman in the Moone (1594).

    Lyly’s subjects are mostly drawn from mythologies and legends, both foreign and native, such as Sir Thomas North’s The Diall of Princes (1551) and George Pettie’s The Petite Pallace of Pettie his Pleasure (1576). His plays, however, reveal his interest, skill, and originality in tackling traditional themes. Of course, these plays reveal nothing of his remarkably structural command over plot or dramatic probe in the representation of characters. His plays are found to have reposed mainly on the lively invention of situations, the flight of fancy, and the dazzle of dramatic dialogue.

    Lyly’s importance in the sphere of the comic drama also lies in his innovation of love as the thematic material for his plays. His comedies are pivoted by love in which romantic men and women participate, and here Lyly appears to be a potent influence on Shakespeare’s romantic comedies. The romantic comedy is believed to have originated with him in the Elizabethan era.

    Yet, Lyly’s significance is not ignorable, and his contribution to English drama is an admitted fact. He is given the position of an innovator in the dramatic history of England for three specific reasons. As one of the early comic authors, Lyly is an innovator, and his contribution to the development of the English drama, particularly the English comedy, is surely immense.

    First, he is found to have introduced prose into the original comedy. Except for the play The Woman in the Moone, his other plays are all written in prose. Of course, Gascoigne’s Supposes, a prose play, was written before. But this is actually an adaptation from a Latin play. The establishment of prose as the right medium of dialogue for comedy is definitely an act of literary originality for the theatre of the age, depending solely on the blank verse. To pass from the doggerel of the early popular comedies to the polished conversation in prose is to enter a new world of expression.

    Lyly’s next contribution is the establishment of the high comedy as a form of drama, highly appealing to the people of breeding and culture. The previous farcical comedies, produced by physical sensationalism, are found replaced by the intellectual comic sense, so wonderfully exhibited in Lyly’s plays, designated as high comedies. The true comic spirit depends not on the forced laughter provoked by farcical situations and characters but on the intellectual understanding of the contradiction of life and the creation of pleasurable sensation out of this. Lyly’s plays bear this out effectively.

    In the third place, Lyly, as the first master of a grand prose style, is found to have enriched the English play with his Euphuistic style, which was somewhat novel for the then-dramatic world. His nice sense of dramatic dialogue and the application of words, sophisticated and artificial no doubt, is found to have added delicacy, grace, charm, and subtlety to the dramatic expression, so sorely missing in the roughly masculine tone of the previous plays.

    The pastoral comedy was found to be a popular form with the Elizabethan dramatists. The origin of this pastoral comedy may also be traced in Lyly’s comedies, which are found to have a pastoral background with meadows, woodlands, shepherds, and
    shepherdesses. Shakespeare’s pastoral comedies owe to him here.

    John Lyly, George Peele, and Robert Greene, along with Marlowe, Thomas Nashe, and Thomas Lodge, formed the famous University Wits in the literary circle of the Elizabethan age. All of them had a University education and classical scholarship. There was a singular resemblance in their lives and careers. They were all of good birth and social position. They were university scholars, members of learned societies, well-cultivated by foreign travels. They had adequate training to give an enduring force to the English drama that was then struggling hard for its very survival and finding its range of expansion.

    Also read: Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) and his famous works

  • Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) and his famous works

    Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) and his famous works

    Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) was an English author and physician. He was born in the parish of St Michael, Cheapside, in London. He was sent to school at Winchester College. He graduated from Oxford in January 1627. Then, he studied medicine at the universities of Padua and Montpellier. Browne completed his studies at Leiden, where he received a medical degree in 1633. Browne was knighted in September 1671, when King Charles II, accompanied by the Royal Court, visited Norwich. He was a great scholar and studied science and natural phenomena with great care and diligence. Although he was well-versed in science and had a specific aptitude for the natural sciences, he never set aside the popular matters of interest of his age. He had a taste for miracles and a bright sense of humour.

    He is noted particularly for his two great works, Religio Medici and Urn Burial. Religio Medici, meaning the religion of a physician, is a highly original work. It treats religious faith, without any religious bias, and remains singular in its queer mixture of religious devotion and scientific scepticism. Browne’s other work, Hydriotaphia, Urne-Buriall, or A Discourse of the Sepulchral Urns lately found in Norfolk, is commonly considered his masterpiece and contains his reflections on human vanity and mortality. The entire conception of the work, suggested by the discovery of certain Roman burial urns at Walsingham, is quite novel. Browne’s other works include The Garden Cyrus, a quite enjoyable treatise on the quincunx, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or, Enquiries into Very many received Tenets, and commonly presumed truths (1646), often known as Browne’s Vulgar Errors, an intellectual probe into popular superstition, and Christian Morals, a didactic work on Christian morality. A more minor work of incredible beauty and subtlety, entitled A Letter to a Friend, Upon occasion of the Death of his Intimate Friend, was published posthumously in 1690.
    –
    Browne’s subjects are pretty serious – philosophical as well as theological – but his treatment never appears dry or colourless. The artist in him is found superior to the thinker in him. The writer in him possesses an admirable prose style, which is, no doubt, ornate but has the cadence of poetry in it. In the making of a felicitous style in English prose, his role is, indeed, immensely significant.

  • John Heywood (c.1497- c.1580); biography and famous works

    John Heywood (c.1497- c.1580); biography and famous works

    John Heywood (c.1497- c.1580) was an English author and playwright. He was probably born in London. He married Elizabeth Rastell, niece of Sir Thomas More. From 1519 under Henry VIII, he was a singer and player on the virginals. Later he became the master of an acting group of boy singers. He received periodic grants that indicate that he was in favor of the court under Henry’s successors, Edward VI and Mary. He was much favored by Queen Mary, and on her death escaped persecution for his Catholic faith by withdrawing to Malines, and afterward to Antwerp and Louvain.

    Heywood’s works for the stage were interludes—entertainments popular in 15th- and 16th-century England, consisting of dialogues on a set subject. They were performed separately, preceding or following a play, or between the acts. The four interludes to which Heywood’s name is attached are witty, satirical debates in verse, ending on a didactic note like others of their genre and reflecting some influence of French farce and of English poet Geoffrey Chaucer.

    He published interludes- entertainments popular in 15th- and 16th-century England, consisting of dialogues on a set subject, substituting the human comedy of contemporary types for the instructive allegory of morality; but he used narrative and debate rather than plot and action. They were performed separately, preceding or following a play, or between the acts. The four interludes to which Heywood’s name is attached are witty, satirical debates in verse, ending on a didactic note like others of their genre and reflecting some influence of French farce and of English poet Geoffrey Chaucer.

    His principal works were The Playe Called the Foure P.P.…A Palmer. A Pardoner. A Potycary. A Pedler , written about 1530, The Play of the Wether, a new and mery interlude of all maner of Wethers (1533), in which Jupiter listens to conflicting opinions as to the kind of weather to be supplied, and A Play of Love (1534). Although entirely faithful to his Church, Heywood did not hesitate to criticize its weaknesses. In his plays, he broke away from the conventional tone and allegorical manner of morality and treated his themes in an ironical, good-humored style. He may also have been the author of The Pardoner and the Friar and Johan Johan the Husband, Tyb his Wife and Sir John the Priest. Heywood wrote a dialogue called Witty and Witless, collections of proverbs and epigrams, and a long satirical poem, The Spider and the Fly (1556). Though Heywood had performed for Elizabeth’s court, he was forced to flee England for Brabant because of the Act of Uniformity against Catholics in 1564. He died in Belgium.

    Also read; King James IV of Scotland (1473- 1513): Biography and Influences

  • Upamanyu Chatterjee: Biography and famous books

    Upamanyu Chatterjee: Biography and famous books

    Upamanyu Chatterjee is one of the new lights of Indian Engish literature. He was born in 1959 in Patna, Bihar. Upamanyu is a prominent writer and IAS as well. He studied English literature at Delhi University and then in 1983 he joined the Indian Administrative Service. His novels are characterized by humour which goes beyond the comic sense, sometimes it is against the traditional life, sometimes it is the minute description of the middle-class life of Indian society.

    WORKS:

    English, August: An Indian Story, published in 1988, deals with the life and self-discovery of a newly appointed trainee civil servant, Agastya Sen, in a rural place. It is an entertaining novel, basically for those who want to discover modern India. Agastya Sen is amazed to see rural India. He never imagined the life of these places. The experience, which he gathers from the place, helps him to realize himself, to discover himself. In 1994, the novel was adapted into a film by the same name.

    The Last Burden, published in 1994, deals with the life of an Indian middle-class family. He portrays the need, desire, emotions and sacrifices of the middle-class family in India. Here he differentiates the nuclear family and atomic family. The story revolves around Jamun, a workless young man, Shamanand, the father and Urmila, the dying mother.

    The Mammaries of the Welfare State was published in 2000. It is the sequel of Chatterjee’s debut novel English, August : An Indian story. Here in this novel, the author describes eight years of Agastya Sen’s life. Chatterjee has frequently used black humour in this novel. In 2004, Chatterjee won the Sahitya Akademi Award for this novel.

    SELECTED WORKS

    • English, August: An Indian Story (1998)
    • The Last Burden (1994)
    • The Mammaries of the Welare State (2000)
    • Weight Loss (2006)Way to Go (2010)
    Awards

    2004 Sahitya Akademi Award for The Mammaries of the Welfare State.
    2009 Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for “extremely contribution to the contemporary literature”

  • William Archer (1856–1924) drama critic, and translator

    William Archer (1856–1924) drama critic, and translator

    William Archer (1856–1924) was a Scottish writer, drama critic, and translator. He was born in Perth, Scotland, and educated at Edinburgh University. He spent periods of his boyhood with his grandparents in Norway, where he learned the language; when he later became an influential drama critic in London, he did much to popularize Henrik Ibsen in England. His translation of Ibsen’s Pillars of Society became in 1880 the first Ibsen play to be produced in London, although it attracted little notice. In 1889, the production of his translation of A Doll’s House caused moral controversy, which increased with the production of Ghosts and Hedda Gabler in 1891, with Elizabeth Robins (1862–1952) in the role of Hedda.

    He also translated, alone or in collaboration, other productions of the Scandinavian stage: Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (1889), The Master Builder (1893, with Edmund Gosse); Edvard Brandes’s A Visit (1892); and in 1892 he and his brother produced a translation of Peer Gynt. The collected works of Ibsen appeared in 1907. Archer campaigned extensively throughout his career to reform and modernize the English theatre. His books included: English Dramatists of Today (1882), Henry Irving, a study (1883) About the Theatre (1886), Masks and Faces? A Study in the Psychology of Acting (1888) (1888), W. C. Macready, a biography (1890), America To-day, Observations and Reflections (1900). His annual volumes of collected theatre criticism, The Theatrical World, appeared between 1894 and 1898. In 1907, with Harley Granville-Barker, he issued detailed proposals for a National Theatre, and in 1919 he assisted with the establishment of the New Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon. He wrote an essay titled The Great Analysis: A Plea for a Rational World-Order in 1912. In The Drama Old and New (1923), he promoted the work of George Bernard Shaw, whose career as a playwright he helped launch, and John Galsworthy among others; in the same year his own play, The Green Goddess, was produced with great success in London after a successful run two years earlier in America.

    Also read: Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849) Anglo-Irish writer and novelist

  • Anna Brownell Jameson (1794–1860) and her famous works

    Anna Brownell Jameson (1794–1860) and her famous works

    Anna Brownell Jameson (1794–1860) was an Anglo-Irish historian, writer, feminist, and traveller. She was born in Dublin. She began her adult life as a governess. Her friendship with the Fanny Kemble, and a long visit to Germany, brought her into contact with literary society, and she became a close friend of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning, Mary Russell Mitford,  Harriet Martineau, Ottilie von Goethe, Lady Byron, Charles, and Elizabeth Eastlake, and eventually of the Carlyles. She produced many highly respected works of art history and criticism, biography, theology, history, travel, social comment, and general essays, some of which exhibited a strong interest in the position and education of women. Her Winter Studies and Summer Rambles (1838), an account of her visit to Canada, is an important work in early Canadian literature.

    The work for which she is now mainly remembered is Characteristics of Women (1832, later known as Shakespeare’s Heroines), dedicated to Fanny Kemble, and illustrated with her etchings. Shakespeare she saw as ‘the Poet of Womankind, whose heroines display all the aspects and complexities of womanhood. She divides the 25 heroines of her book into four groups: the characters of intellect, such as Portia; those of passion and imagination, such as Viola; those of the affections, such as Desdemona; and those from histories, such as Cleopatra and Lady Macbeth. For this book, Anna Jameson read Samuel Johnson, William Hazlitt, S. T. Coleridge, Charles Lamb, and other major critics, as well as relevant European and Greek drama, and thoroughly investigated the sources of the histories. Although she makes little attempt to relate the character to context, her interpretations, many of which are very detailed, were considered illuminating, and the work was received with considerable respect. Gerard Manley Hopkins placed her among the most eminent of Shakespeare’s critics. A volume of essays published in 1846 contains one of Jameson’s best pieces of work, The House of Titian.

    Her other important works include Social Life in Germany (1840); Companion to the Public Picture Galleries of London (1842); Memoirs of Early Italian Painters (1845); Memoirs and Essays on Art, Literature and Morals (1846); (edited) Sacred and Legendary Art (4 vols., 1848–60); Sisters of Charity (1855); The Communion of Labor (1856).

    Also read: Discuss the term différance by Jacques Derrida and its meaning

  • Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849) Anglo-Irish writer and novelist

    Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849) Anglo-Irish writer and novelist

    Early Life and Education

    Maria Edgeworth was an Anglo-Irish writer and novelist. Born on January 1, 1768, she was the eldest daughter of Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1744–1817), a wealthy Irish landlord known for his radical and inventive nature. He was deeply interested in science, education, and social reform, associating with prominent figures like Erasmus Darwin, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, and Thomas Day. Her father’s influence on Maria was immense—he not only managed her literary career but also heavily edited and contributed to her works. Their collaboration led to the publication of Practical Education (1798), a treatise grounded in the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, though it was more practical and less theoretical in tone.

    Edgeworth’s early years were spent in Ireland before she received some schooling in England. At 15, she returned to Ireland to live with her family. It was during this time that she developed her passion for writing. Maria’s first significant publication, Letters to Literary Ladies (1795), called for better education for women. This began a prolific writing career that spanned over four decades.

    Maria Edgeworth maintained essential connections with other prominent literary figures throughout her life. In 1803, she visited London and was warmly received by the literary world, meeting notable figures like Lord Byron, Sydney Smith, Joanna Baillie, and Henry Crabb Robinson. She later visited Walter Scott in 1823, who greatly admired her work. In his preface to the Waverley edition of 1829, Scott described her as “the great Maria” and acknowledged her influence on his work. Other admirers included Jane Austen, who sent her a copy of Emma, and later intellectuals such as Thomas Macaulay, W. M. Thackeray, John Ruskin, and the Russian author Turgenev.

    Contribution to Literature: The Regional and Historical Novel

    One of Edgeworth’s most important contributions to English literature was her pioneering work in the genre of the regional and historical novel. Her novel Castle Rackrent (1800) is considered the first fully developed regional novel in English and one of the first historical novels. It also satirised Anglo-Irish landlords in the pre-1782 period, critiquing the landowning class’s need for better management of Irish estates. This novel would influence the works of Sir Walter Scott, who acknowledged her contribution in his own historical novels.

    Edgeworth’s other notable Irish novels include The Absentee (1812) and Ormond (1817), which focus on the lives of the Anglo-Irish class and Irish society, and are regarded as her finest works. She detailed Irish life, offering readers a window into the complexities of Anglo-Irish relations.

    Maria Edgeworth’s writing also touched on English society. Her novel Belinda (1801–2) became particularly famous for its controversial portrayal of interracial marriage between a Black servant and an English farm girl. This depiction sparked debates on race and marriage in the early 19th century, with later editions of the novel removing the sections that discussed these themes. Other works that explore contemporary English society include Leonora (1806), Patronage (1814), and Helen (1834).

    In addition to her novels, Edgeworth wrote numerous stories aimed at children, often designed to impart moral lessons. These works include The Parent’s Assistant (1796–1800), Moral Tales (1801), Popular Tales (1804), and Harry and Lucy Concluded (1825). Her works for children were widely popular and have remained an important part of her legacy.

    Legacy and Recognition
    Maria Edgeworth’s impact on English literature is still felt today. Her works contributed significantly to the regional and historical novel genres and offered a nuanced portrayal of Irish life and Anglo-Irish relations. She was a strong advocate for women’s education and was a pioneering figure in the early 19th-century literary scene. Marilyn Butler’s 1972 biography, Maria Edgeworth, further solidified her legacy, which remains the standard account of her life and work. Edgeworth passed away in 1849, leaving a literary legacy that continues to be studied and admired.

    Also read: An Impression about Maud Gonne in the poem “No Second Troy” by W.B.Yeats

  • Sarah Fielding (1710-1768); Biography and famous works

    Sarah Fielding (1710-1768); Biography and famous works

    Sarah Fielding (8 November 1710 – 9 April 1768) was an English novelist and sister of the famous novelist Henry Fielding. She was born in Dorset and educated in Salisbury. For much of her life, she lived quietly in and around London, where she became part of Samuel Richardson’s circle, and later near Bath.

    She contributed small items to Henry’s work before publishing her own works. In 1742, Henry Fielding published Joseph Andrews, and Sarah Fielding is often credited with having written the letter from Leonora to Horatio (two of the characters in the book). In 1743, Henry Fielding published his Miscellanies (containing his life of Jonathan Wild), and his sister may have written its narrative of the life of Anne Boleyn.

    In 1744, she published anonymously her own best-known novel, The Adventures of David Simple, a psychologically focused ‘Moral Romance’, with (in its second edition) a preface by her brother. Familiar Letters between the Principal Characters in David Simple followed in 1747, and in 1753 the somber Volume the Last. Her The Governess or The Little Female Academy (1749) was the first English school story written for children. She was almost certainly the author of Remarks on Clarissa (1749).

    With Jane Collier, she published The Cry (1754), an unusual dialogue between Portia (the Solo) representing integrity, and an audience (the Chorus) representing ignorant malice. The parallel of author against critic is implied throughout. The heavily researched The Lives of Cleopatra and Octavia (1757) presents a series of dramatic monologues in which the subtle self-seeking of Cleopatra is contrasted with the honesty of Octavia. The History of the Countess of Dellwyn (1759) traces the disastrous relationship of an old husband and a young wife, and includes some thoughts on literary mimesis. The light-hearted epistolary novel History of Ophelia (1760) relates the adventures of an ingenuous young woman constantly astonished by the unquestioned conventions of society. A successful translation of Xenophon’s Memoirs of Socrates, with the Defence of Socrates before his Judges appeared in 1762.

    Also read: William Sydney Graham (1918-1986) Scottish poet and his poetry collections

  • William Sydney Graham (1918-1986) Scottish poet and his poetry collections

    William Sydney Graham (1918-1986) Scottish poet and his poetry collections

    William Sydney Graham (1918-1986) was a neo-romantic Scottish poet. He was born and brought up in Greenock. He studied structural engineering at Stow College, Glasgow, before winning a bursary to pursue a literature course at Newbattle Abbey, then a newly founded college for adult education, in 1938. After a long nomadic period in Ireland, and Scotland, in 1948 Graham moved to London where he adopted a Bohemian lifestyle. His friends included the playwright Harold Pinter and poets Dylan Thomas, George Barker, and T.S. Eliot. The affinities between these three poets derive from a common interest in poets like Gerard Manley Hopkins, Arthur Rimbaud, and Hart Crane,

    The poems in Cage without Grievance (1942), Seven Journeys (1944), and 2ND Poems (1945-the title is a punning dedication to his wife Nessie Dunsmuir) are often said to resemble those of Dylan Thomas, though they lack the acoustic force and syntactical discipline of the Welsh poet’s work. The White Threshold (1949), a breakthrough volume, makes use of marine images drawn from Graham’s youth on the Clyde estuary and includes the serene, verbally playful meditation ‘Listen. Put on Morning. The long title poem of The Night-Fishing (1955) resourcefully deploys the metaphor of a herring fishing expedition to explore the poet’s struggle with language and vocation. Malcolm Mooney’s Land (1970) and Implements in their Places (1977) bring a new lucidity and inventiveness to Graham’s characteristic preoccupation with solipsism, community, and communication. Perhaps because of this alleviation of his financial circumstances, Graham began to publish with more frequency, with Implements in their Places (1977), Collected Poems 1942–1977 (1979), and an American-published Selected Poems (1980). Several collections of his work were published after his death, including ‘New Collected Poems’ (2004).

  • Erving Goffman (1922- 1982): Biography, Famous Books and Influences

    Erving Goffman (1922- 1982): Biography, Famous Books and Influences

    Erving Goffman was a prominent sociologist and writer known for his pioneering work in the field of symbolic interactionism. He was born on June 11, 1922, in Mannville, Alberta, Canada. He grew up in a Jewish family in Canada. His parents, Max and Anne Goffman, were Ukrainian immigrants. He attended the University of Manitoba, where he initially pursued an undergraduate degree in chemistry before switching to sociology. After completing his bachelor’s degree, Goffman pursued graduate studies at the University of Chicago, a renowned hub for sociological research. There, he was exposed to the ideas of prominent sociologists such as Herbert Blumer and Everett Hughes, who heavily influenced his approach to studying social interactions.

    Goffman’s career was marked by groundbreaking research that transformed the way scholars and researchers viewed human behavior within social contexts. He is mainly known for his concept of “dramaturgy,” which likens social interactions to a theatrical performance, wherein individuals engage in impression management to present themselves in a favorable light. In his doctoral dissertation, which later became his first major book, “The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life” (1959), Goffman introduced his dramaturgical perspective. He argued that individuals adopt various roles and masks to navigate the complexities of social situations. This concept, along with his exploration of “front stage” and “backstage” behaviors, has become foundational in the study of sociology and communication.

    Throughout his career, Goffman wrote many influential books, including “Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates” (1961), where he examined the effects of institutionalization on individuals, then in Interaction Rituals (1967), he discussed the importance of “interaction rituals” in maintaining social order and cohesion. He explored the patterns and micro-level dynamics of face-to-face interactions that contribute to the shared meanings and norms in society and in “Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience” (1974), Goffman explored the idea of “frames,” which are cognitive structures that people use to interpret and make sense of social situations. He discussed how frames influence our perception of events, interactions, and the world around us.

    Goffman’s ideas extended to the study of stigma, face-to-face interactions, and the micro-level dynamics of social encounters. His insights challenged traditional sociological paradigms and emphasized the significance of the individual’s role in shaping social reality. His contributions have had a lasting impact on various academic disciplines, ranging from sociology and psychology to communication studies and anthropology. His innovative concepts and keen observations of human behavior continue to shape scholars’ understanding of social interactions and the construction of identities.

    Tragically, Goffman’s life was cut short by cancer, and he passed away on November 19, 1982, at the age of 60. Despite his relatively short life, his ideas remain integral to the study of society and continue to inspire generations of researchers, students, and thinkers who seek to explore the complexities of human interaction.