Portal:Books

The Black Hours, MS M.493 (or the Morgan Black Hours) is an illuminated book of hours completed in Bruges between 1460 and 1475. It consists of 121 pages (leaves) with Latin text written in Gothic minuscule script. The words are arranged in rows of fourteen lines and follow the Roman version of the texts. The lettering is inscribed in silver and gold and placed within borders ornamented with flowers, foliage and grotesques, on pages dyed a deep blueish black; hence its designation as a black book of hours. The book contains fourteen full-page miniatures and opens with the months of the liturgical calendar (folios 3 verso – 14 recto), followed by the Hours of the Virgin, and ends with the Office of the Dead (folio 121v).

MS M.493 has been in the collection of the Morgan Library & Museum, New York, since 1912. It is one of seven surviving black books of hours, all originating from Bruges and dated to the mid-to-late 15th century. They are so named for their unusual dark blueish appearance, a colourisation achieved through the expensive process of dyeing the vellum with iron gall ink. This dye is very corrosive and the surviving examples are mostly badly decomposed; MS M.493 is in relatively good condition due to its very thick parchment. (Full article...)

The Halo Graphic Novel is a graphic novel anthology published by Marvel Comics in partnership with Bungie, set in the universe of the science fiction franchise Halo. The Halo Graphic Novel was the series' first entry into the sequential art medium, and features aspects of the Halo universe which until then had not been discussed or seen in any medium.

The majority of the book is divided into four short stories by different writers and artists from the computer game and comic industries. Each story focuses on different aspects of the Halo universe, revealing stories that are tangential to the main plot of the game. Apart from the stories, the book also contains an extensive art gallery compiled of contributions from Bungie, Marvel and independent sources. (Full article...)

Original Stories from Real Life; with Conversations Calculated to Regulate the Affections, and Form the Mind to Truth and Goodness is the only complete work of children's literature by the 18th-century English feminist author Mary Wollstonecraft. Original Stories begins with a frame story that sketches out the education of two young girls by their maternal teacher Mrs. Mason, followed by a series of didactic tales. The book was first published by Joseph Johnson in 1788; a second, illustrated edition, with engravings by William Blake, was released in 1791 and remained in print for around a quarter of a century.

In Original Stories, Wollstonecraft employed the then-burgeoning genre of children's literature to promote the education of women and an emerging middle-class ideology. She argued that women would be able to become rational adults if they were educated properly as children, which was not a widely held belief in the 18th century, and contended that the nascent middle-class ethos was superior to the court culture represented by fairy tales and to the values of chance and luck found in chapbook stories for the poor. Wollstonecraft, in developing her own pedagogy, also responded to the works of the two most important educational theorists of the 18th century: John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. (Full article...)

I Never Liked You is a graphic novel by Canadian cartoonist Chester Brown. The story first ran between 1991 and 1993 under the title Fuck, in issues #26–30 of Brown's comic book Yummy Fur; published in book form by Drawn & Quarterly in 1994. It deals with the teenage Brown's introversion and difficulty talking to others, especially members of the opposite sex—including his mother. The story has minimal dialogue and is sparsely narrated. The artwork is amongst the simplest in Brown's body of work—some pages consist only of a single small panel.

Brown established his reputation in the early alternative comics scene of the 1980s with the surreal, taboo-breaking Ed the Happy Clown. He brought that story to an abrupt end in 1989 when, excited by the autobiographical comics of Joe Matt and Julie Doucet, he turned towards personal stories. The uncomplicated artwork of his friend and fellow Toronto cartoonist Seth inspired him to simplify his own. Brown intended I Never Liked You as part of a longer work with what became his previous book, The Playboy (1992), but found the larger story too complex to handle at once. I Never Liked You was the last work of Brown's early autobiographical period. (Full article...)

The Heart of a Woman (1981) is an autobiography by American writer Maya Angelou. The book is the fourth installment in Angelou's series of seven autobiographies. The Heart of a Woman recounts events in Angelou's life between 1957 and 1962 and follows her travels to California, New York City, Cairo, and Ghana as she raises her teenage son, becomes a published author, becomes active in the civil rights movement, and becomes romantically involved with a South African anti-apartheid fighter. One of the most important themes of The Heart of a Woman is motherhood, as Angelou continues to raise her son. The book ends with her son leaving for college and Angelou looking forward to newfound independence and freedom.

Like Angelou's previous volumes, the book has been described as autobiographical fiction, though most critics, as well as Angelou, have characterized it as autobiography. Although most critics consider Angelou's first autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings more favorably, The Heart of a Woman has received positive reviews. It was chosen as an Oprah's Book Club selection in 1997. (Full article...)

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (also ASC and the Chronicle) is the term used by historians to describe a set of annals in Old English, chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons.

The lost first version of the Chronicle was created in the late ninth century, probably in Wessex, during the reign of King Alfred the Great (r. 871–899). Its content, which incorporated sources now otherwise lost dating from as early as the seventh century, is known as the "Common Stock" of the Chronicle. Multiple copies were made of that one original and then distributed to monasteries across England, where they were updated, partly independently. These manuscripts collectively are known as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Almost all of the material in the Chronicle is in the form of annals, by year. The earliest is dated at 60 BC, the annals' date for Julius Caesar's invasions of Britain. In one case, the Chronicle was still being actively updated in 1154. (Full article...)

The Liber Eliensis is a 12th-century English chronicle and history, written in Latin. Composed in three books, it was written at Ely Abbey on the island of Ely in the fenlands of eastern Cambridgeshire. Ely Abbey became the cathedral of a newly formed bishopric in 1109. Traditionally, the author of the anonymous work has been given as Richard or Thomas, two monks at Ely, one of whom, Richard, has been identified with an official of the monastery, but some historians hold that neither Richard nor Thomas was the author.

The Liber covers the period from the founding of the abbey in 673 until the middle of the 12th century, building on earlier historical works. It incorporates documents and stories of saints' lives. The work typifies a type of local history produced during the latter part of the 12th century. Similar books were written at other English monasteries. The longest of the contemporary local histories, the Liber chronicles the devastation that the Anarchy caused during the reign of King Stephen. It also documents the career of Nigel, the Bishop of Ely from 1133 to 1169, and his disputes with King Stephen. Other themes include the miracles worked by the monastery's patron saint, Æthelthryth, and gifts of land to Ely. (Full article...)

The Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men comprised ten volumes of Dionysius Lardner's 133-volume Cabinet Cyclopaedia (1829–1846). Aimed at the self-educating middle class, this encyclopedia was written during the 19th-century literary revolution in Britain that encouraged more people to read.

The Lives formed part of the Cabinet of Biography in the Cabinet Cyclopaedia. Within the set of ten, the three-volume Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men of Italy, Spain and Portugal (1835–37) and the two-volume Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men of France (1838–39) consist of biographies of important writers and thinkers of the 14th to 18th centuries. Most of them were written by the Romantic writer Mary Shelley. Shelley's biographies reveal her as a professional woman of letters, contracted to produce several volumes of works and paid well to do so. Her extensive knowledge of history and languages, her ability to tell a gripping biographical narrative, and her interest in the burgeoning field of feminist historiography are reflected in these works. (Full article...)

Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796) is a personal travel narrative by the eighteenth-century British feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft. The twenty-five letters cover a wide range of topics, from sociological reflections on Scandinavia and its peoples to philosophical questions regarding identity. Published by Wollstonecraft's career-long publisher, Joseph Johnson, it was the last work issued during her lifetime.

Wollstonecraft undertook her tour of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark in order to retrieve a stolen treasure ship for her lover, Gilbert Imlay. Believing that the journey would restore their strained relationship, she eagerly set off. However, over the course of the three months she spent in Scandinavia, she realized that Imlay had no intention of renewing the relationship. The letters, which constitute the text, drawn from her journal and from missives she sent to Imlay, reflect her anger and melancholy over his repeated betrayals. Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark is therefore both a travel narrative and an autobiographical memoir. (Full article...)

The Bread-Winners: A Social Study is an 1883 novel by John Hay, former secretary to Abraham Lincoln who in 1898 became U.S. Secretary of State. The book takes an anti-organized labor stance, and when published anonymously sold well and provoked considerable public interest in determining who the author was.

The plot of the book revolves around former army captain Arthur Farnham, a wealthy resident of Buffland (an analog of Cleveland). He organizes Civil War veterans to keep the peace when the Bread-winners, a group of lazy and malcontented workers, call a violent general strike. He is sought in marriage by the ambitious Maud Matchin, daughter of a carpenter, but instead weds a woman of his own class. (Full article...)

Southern Cross is the sole wordless novel by Canadian artist Laurence Hyde (1914–1987). Published in 1951, its 118 wood-engraved images narrate the impact of atomic testing on Pacific islanders. Hyde made the book to express his anger at the US military's nuclear tests in the Bikini Atoll.

The wordless novel genre had flourished primarily during the 1920s and 1930s, but by the 1940s even the most prolific practitioners had abandoned it. Hyde was familiar with some such works by Lynd Ward, Otto Nückel, and the form's pioneer Frans Masereel. The high-contrast artwork of Southern Cross features dynamic curving lines uncommon in wood engraving and combines abstract imagery with realistic detail. It has gained appreciation in comics circles as a precursor to the Canadian graphic novel, though it had no direct influence. (Full article...)

The Relapse, or, Virtue in Danger is a Restoration comedy from 1696 written by John Vanbrugh. The play is a sequel to Colley Cibber's Love's Last Shift, or, The Fool in Fashion.

In Cibber's Love's Last Shift, a free-living Restoration rake is brought to repentance and reform by the ruses of his wife, while in The Relapse, the rake succumbs again to temptation and has a new love affair. His virtuous wife is also subjected to a determined seduction attempt, and resists with difficulty. (Full article...)

Fertilisation of Orchids is a book by English naturalist Charles Darwin published on 15 May 1862 under the full explanatory title On the Various Contrivances by Which British and Foreign Orchids Are Fertilised by Insects, and On the Good Effects of Intercrossing. Darwin's previous book, On the Origin of Species, had briefly mentioned evolutionary interactions between insects and the plants they fertilised, and this new idea was explored in detail. Field studies and practical scientific investigations that were initially a recreation for Darwin—a relief from the drudgery of writing—developed into enjoyable and challenging experiments. Aided in his work by his family, friends, and a wide circle of correspondents across Britain and worldwide, Darwin tapped into the contemporary vogue for growing exotic orchids.

The book was his first detailed demonstration of the power of natural selection, and explained how complex ecological relationships resulted in the coevolution of orchids and insects. The view has been expressed that the book led directly or indirectly to all modern work on coevolution and the evolution of extreme specialisation. It influenced botanists, and revived interest in the neglected idea that insects played a part in pollinating flowers. It opened up the new study areas of pollination research and reproductive ecology, directly related to Darwin's ideas on evolution, and supported his view that natural selection led to a variety of forms through the important benefits achieved by cross-fertilisation. Although the general public showed less interest and sales of the book were low, it established Darwin as a leading botanist. Orchids was the first in a series of books on his innovative investigations into plants. (Full article...)

Literary Hall is a mid-19th-century brick library, building and museum located in Romney, a city in the U.S. state of West Virginia. It is located at the intersection of North High Street (West Virginia Route 28) and West Main Street (U.S. Route 50). Literary Hall was constructed between 1869 and 1870 by the Romney Literary Society.

Founded in 1819, the Romney Literary Society was the first literary organization of its kind in the present-day state of West Virginia, and one of the first in the United States. In 1846, the society constructed a building which housed the Romney Classical Institute and its library. The Romney Literary Society and the Romney Classical Institute both flourished and continued to grow in importance and influence until the onset of the American Civil War in 1861. (Full article...)

A Vindication of the Rights of Men, in a Letter to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke; Occasioned by His Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) is a political pamphlet, written by the 18th-century British writer and women's rights advocate Mary Wollstonecraft, which attacks aristocracy and advocates republicanism. Wollstonecraft's was the first response in a pamphlet war sparked by the publication of Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), a defense of constitutional monarchy, aristocracy, and the Church of England.

Wollstonecraft attacked not only hereditary privilege, but also the rhetoric that Burke used to defend it. Most of Burke's detractors deplored what they viewed as his theatrical pity for Marie Antoinette, but Wollstonecraft was unique in her love of Burke's gendered language. By saying the sublime and the beautiful, terms first established by Burke himself in A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1756), she kept his rhetoric as well as his argument. In her first unabashedly feminist critique, which Wollstonecraft scholar Claudia Johnson describes as unsurpassed in its argumentative force, Wollstonecraft indicts Burke's justification of an equal society founded on the passivity of women. (Full article...)

Adaptive Coloration in Animals is a 500-page textbook about camouflage, warning coloration and mimicry by the Cambridge zoologist Hugh Cott, first published during the Second World War in 1940; the book sold widely and made him famous.

The book's general method is to present a wide range of examples from across the animal kingdom of each type of coloration, including marine invertebrates and fishes as well as terrestrial insects, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. The examples are supported by many of Cott's own drawings, diagrams, and photographs. This essentially descriptive natural history treatment is supplemented with accounts of experiments by Cott and others. The book had few precedents, but to some extent follows (and criticises) Abbott Handerson Thayer's 1909 Concealing-Coloration in the Animal Kingdom. (Full article...)

The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories, published in October 2006 by Bloomsbury, is a collection of eight short stories by British writer Susanna Clarke, illustrated by Charles Vess. The stories, which are sophisticated fairy tales, focus on the power of women and are set in the same alternative history as Clarke's debut novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004), in which magic has returned to England. The stories are written in a pastiche of 18th- and 19th-century styles and their tone is macabre as well as satirical. The volume was generally well received, though some critics compared it unfavorably to Jonathan Strange. (Full article...)

Gnomes, originally published in Dutch in 1976 as Leven en werken van de kabouter (lit. 'Life and work of the gnomes'), then released in English in 1977, is a fiction book written by Wil Huygen and illustrated by Rien Poortvliet. The book explains the life and habitat of gnomes in an in-universe fashion, much as a biology book would do, complete with illustrations and textbook notes.

The book was well received by critics. Huygen's writing, which mixed physiology with fiction, and Poortvliet's drawings, which used a natural style and watercolor, were both praised. Gnomes sold almost a million units after its first year of being published in the United States. Its financial success led to the creation of several spin-off books about the same fictional creatures, as well as many other products, such as toys, clothing and games. (Full article...)

The difficulty of translating Beowulf from its compact, metrical, alliterative form in a single surviving but damaged Old English manuscript into any modern language is considerable, matched by the large number of attempts to make the poem approachable, and the scholarly attention given to the problem.

Among the challenges to the translator of Beowulf are whether to attempt a verse or prose rendering; how closely to stick to the original; whether to make the language archaic or to use distinctly modern phraseology; whether to domesticate or foreignize the text; to what extent to imitate the original's laconic style and understatement; and its use of intentionally poetic language to represent the heroic from what was already an ancient time when the poem was composed. (Full article...)

Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street is a non-fiction book chronicling the history of the children's television program Sesame Street. Street Gang is journalist and writer Michael Davis's first book, published by Viking Press in 2008. On bookshelves in time for the show's 40th anniversary in 2009, the book developed out of a TV Guide article Davis wrote to commemorate the show's 35th anniversary in 2004. Davis spent five years researching and writing the book, and conducted hundreds of interviews with the show's creators, cast, and crew.

Street Gang begins with a description of Muppet creator Jim Henson's 1990 funeral, from the perspective of co-creator Joan Ganz Cooney. Its first twelve chapters describe the origin, development, and early years of Sesame Street and the Children's Television Workshop, the organization created to oversee the production of the show and other projects. Davis includes the biographies of many of the key people involved with the creation and production of Sesame Street. Subsequent chapters chronicle the rest of the show's history, up to its 40th anniversary in 2009. (Full article...)

God's Choice: The Total World of a Fundamentalist Christian School is a 1986 book by Alan Peshkin and published by the University of Chicago Press. It is the product of his late 1970s 18-month ethnographic study of a 350-person Christian fundamentalist Baptist school in Illinois. He describes the K–12 day school's function as a total institution that educates about a singular truth (God's will) and subordination before God. The final chapter is a comparative analysis of the school and other schools, institutions, and social movements, wherein Peshkin concludes that the school is divisive in American society for promoting intolerance towards religious plurality. The very condition permits the school's existence.

Reviewers wrote that Peshkin's account was fair and praised his decision to let the participants speak for themselves through quotations. They also noted that the book filled a literary lacuna in scholarly understanding of the rapidly expanding and understudied fundamentalist Christian school. (Full article...)

My Life as a 10-Year-Old Boy is an autobiography written by Nancy Cartwright. First published in September 2000 by Hyperion, it details Cartwright's career, particularly her experiences as the voice of Bart Simpson on The Simpsons and contains insights on the show, diary entries and anecdotes about her encounters with various guest stars.

Critics commented that the book seemed to be aimed at fans of The Simpsons rather than a more general audience. Other criticisms included the simplicity of the writing and a lack of interesting stories. In 2004, Cartwright adapted the book into a one-woman show, which she has performed in the UK and North America, including at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. (Full article...)

Hellenic Nomarchy (Greek: Ελληνική Νομαρχία The Greek rule of law) was a pamphlet written by "an Anonymous Greek" published and printed in Italy in 1806. It advocated the ideals of freedom, social justice and social equality as the main principles of a well-governed society, making it the most important theoretical monument of Greek republicanism. Its author, arguing for both social autonomy and national sovereignty, supported the Greek struggle for national liberation and turned to the moral greatness of ancient Greece in order to stimulate collective pride. Although this work was widely read by Greeks before the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence in 1821, from its first appearance it was received with discomfort by its contemporary audience, and later generated scholarly debates on the identity of its author. (Full article...)

A New System of Domestic Cookery, first published in 1806 by Maria Rundell, was the most popular English cookery book of the first half of the nineteenth century; it is often referred to simply as Mrs Rundell, but its full title is A New System of Domestic Cookery: Formed Upon Principles of Economy; and Adapted to the Use of Private Families.

Mrs Rundell has been called "the original domestic goddess" and her book "a publishing sensation" and "the most famous cookery book of its time". It ran to over 67 editions; the 1865 edition had grown to 644 pages, and earned two thousand guineas. (Full article...)

The BLT Cookbook is a cookbook about the preparation of bacon, lettuce, and tomato (BLT) sandwiches. It was written by Michele Anna Jordan and was published by William Morrow Cookbooks in the United States in June 2003. Jordan is a food writer and has written for The Press Democrat; The BLT Cookbook is her 14th published book. She researched the book for ten years and in the process she taste-tested hundreds of variations on the sandwich, describing it as America's most beloved sandwich. She instructs the reader on how to acquire and prepare the best ingredients for the sandwich. The book includes recipes with varying ingredients, though each recipe includes tomatoes. Many recipes in the book are not sandwiches, and include appetizers, soups, salads, and desserts. Jordan also suggests wines to accompany the sandwich.

The book was positively received, and the National Pork Board highly recommended it. A review in The Detroit News said that the book includes "mouthwatering recipes", and the San Francisco Chronicle called it a "neat little book" on the subject. The food editor for the Daily Herald wrote that the book's recipes "will surely shake up your next toasted meal". The Anchorage Daily News called it the "definitive book" on the BLT sandwich. (Full article...)

Nirmala is a Hindi novel written by Indian writer Munshi Premchand. The melodramatic novel is centered on Nirmala, a young girl who was forced to marry a widower of her father's age. The plot unfolds to reveal her husband's suspicion of a relationship between her and his eldest son, a suspicion that leads to the son's death.

A poignant novel first published between 1925 and 1926, Nirmala's reformist agenda is transparent in its theme which deals with the question of dowry, and consequently mismatched marriages and related issues. The story uses fiction to highlight an era of much needed social reform in 1920s Indian society. Nirmala was serialised in Chand, a women's magazine in which the novel's feminist character was represented. Nirmala is somewhat like Godaan (published in 1936) in that it deals with the exploitation of the village poor, and Nandita (2016) in similarities of being shackled by society's narrow expectations of how a woman should be. Nirmala was translated by multiple scholarly translators. It was first translated in 1988 as The Second Wife by David Rubin, and in 1999 as Nirmala by Alok Rai, Premchand's grandson. (Full article...)

Bare-Faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard is a posthumous biography of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard by British journalist Russell Miller. First published in the United Kingdom on 26 October 1987, the book takes a critical perspective, challenging the Church of Scientology's account of Hubbard's life and work. It quotes extensively from official documents acquired using the Freedom of Information Act and from Hubbard's personal papers, which were obtained via a defector from Scientology. It was also published in Australia, Canada and the United States.

Reviews of the book have been broadly positive — one calling it "the best and most comprehensive biography of L. Ron Hubbard" — and praise the quality and depth of Miller's research. (Full article...)

Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs is an autobiography by American author Elissa Wall detailing her childhood in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) and subsequent later life outside of the church. It was first published by William Morrow and Company in 2008.

Wall was born into a polygamous family in Salt Lake City and grew up attending the FLDS-run Alta Academy. She describes her living situation as tense; familial relations were further complicated when her mother was reassigned to marry another man in Hildale, Utah. FLDS leaders orchestrated a marriage between Wall, then 14, and her 19-year-old cousin, Allen Steed, an arrangement she vehemently opposed. During their four-year marriage, Steed abused her sexually and psychologically, and Wall eventually began an affair with Lamont Barlow, a 25-year-old former member of the FLDS. Barlow later persuaded her to leave the church and to press charges against Steed and Warren Jeffs, the FLDS "prophet" who performed the wedding ceremony. (Full article...)

A History of British Birds is a natural history book by Thomas Bewick, published in two volumes. Volume 1, Land Birds, appeared in 1797. Volume 2, Water Birds, appeared in 1804. A supplement was published in 1821. The text in Land Birds was written by Ralph Beilby, while Bewick took over the text for the second volume. The book is admired mainly for the beauty and clarity of Bewick's wood-engravings, which are widely considered his finest work, and among the finest in that medium.

British Birds has been compared to works of poetry and literature. It plays a recurring role in Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre. William Wordsworth praised Bewick in the first lines of his poem "The Two Thieves": "Oh now that the genius of Bewick were mine, And the skill which he learned on the banks of the Tyne." (Full article...)

Before the Dawn may refer to: (Full article...)