48 Pieces marble magnetic bookmarks magnetic page markers page clips bookmarks for students teachers school home office supplies, 2.13 x 1.34 inch, 8 styles
The magnetic bookmark measures approx. 11 x 3.5 cm/ 4.26 x 1.34 inches when unfold, the folded size is approx. 5.5 x 3.5 cm/ 2.13 x 1.34 inches, lightweight and proper size to use, convenient to carry and store.
The magnetic page markers are suitable for home, office, school, library and other situations, can be applied for refrigerator, books, computer and so on, can also serve for bookmarks, children rewards, birthday gift, classroom incentives and more, good for encouraging children to learn and read.
Size: as pictures shown
Material: paper, magnet
Color: as pictures shown
Style: marble grain
Quantity: 48 pieces
48 x Bookmarks
Manual measurement, please allow slight errors on size.
The colors may exist slight difference due to different screens.


THE TEMPEST IN GLASS—an adventurous mystery-thriller with a spiritual edge—is the debut novel of writer-director Dirk Eichhorst. The book was printed in a Limited First Edition in February 2022, available exclusively from this website, received positive reviews, and is currently sold out. A second edition is in the works.
From The Back Cover
Ever since intelligence officer Marvin Fischer’s plea to spare his wife’s life was ignored by God, he fills the void with luxury living and no longer believes in the power of prayer. But when single-mother Rubi Valdez insists he pray for her safety, Marvin complies, resulting in a shocking accident. Haunted by guilt, Marvin is determined to understand why his prayers are met with disaster, and desperately seeks a way to reunite Rubi with her young son, Antonio.
World-renowned medium Amina Karimova senses perilous turbulence on the other side, and fears the spiritual world is caught in an unprecedented assault by some unknown power.
Led to Amina through a mysterious message, Marvin and Antonio embark with her on a dangerous quest through ancient ruins and mystical realms, where legendary spirits reveal unspeakable secrets altering the course of eternity. Tasked with the mission to reset the constancy of the spiritual realm, Marvin must let go of logic to revive his faith, or Rubi Valdez and millions like her will be lost forever.
“The Tempest In Glass” is the debut novel of writer-director Dirk Eichhorst. The book is still in its early launch phase. According to readers and reviewers, “The Tempest In Glass” is one of the best new fiction books of 2022, a spiritual adventure book with elements of mystery-thriller and speculative fiction. It may also be considered new Christian fiction with a sharp edge.


Cobb Robin Snipe
A history of the Cobb family usually fills a large chapter in many of the decoy books. For the most insightful and detailed history of the Cobb family, Cobb Island and the famous Cobb decoys, check out my old friend Henry Fleckenstein’s informative book SOUTHERN DECOYS OF VIRGINIA AND THE CAROLINAS. This book is a must-have in any decoy library.
Cobb decoys are among the most sought-after and coveted decoys ever made. While there are lots of mysteries and questions about the Cobb decoys, there is no question that most of the really great decoys were made by Nathan Cobb, Jr. sometime between 1870 and 1890. Most of these are hollow, with inletted heads in various positions to give the rig a realistic look. A few decoys were also made during this time by Elkanah, Nathan’s son, and Arthur, his nephew. Most of the better Cobb decoys have an “N” with serifs (Triangular embellishments on the ends of the “N”) carved into the bottom. One of the Cobb mysteries is that many great Cobb decoys have a backward “N,” (also with serifs) carved into the bottom. Many Cobb decoys also have “A” or “E” initials carved into the bottoms (sometimes these have serifs attached to the letters as well), for Elkanah and Arthur. Occasionally a Cobb decoy is found with “A.H. Cobb” branded in the bottom. And some of the very best Cobb decoys, both ducks and shorebirds, have no initials on them at all. Many collectors speculate that a lot of “Cobb” decoys were made by guides whom the Cobbs employed during the hunting seasons, and these guides simply adapted and copied the basic Cobb style, which for the most part were solid-bodied, rugged and serviceable decoys. These are usually identified as “Cobb Island” decoys, and the actual maker’s name is open to speculation.
Cobb decoys will commonly fetch $100,000 or more at auctions, and not only decoy collectors, but astute collectors of great folk art are competing to own some of these birds. While I do like the Cobb ducks and geese, the shorebirds are my favorites. Many are found with almost no paint left and dozens of shot holes attesting to their hard usage. Even without paint, these birds have marvelous personalities and most of them were made by artists whom, I am sure, never thought of themselves in that light. To see and handle a really great Cobb shorebird is a joy for a decoy collector. I have made quite a few Cobb style decoys, including “Knots,” (or Robin Snipe), Black-Breasted Plover and some really large Curlew, which have inletted and splined hardwood bills. Some will have paint similar to those decoys found in original paint but most will have little or no paint, lots of shot holes, and the proper look of 140 year old shorebird decoys.
The little Robin Snipe shown here has “original” paint in the Cobb style. He has a hardwood bill, typical carved eyes and wings, is just slightly aged and has my initials carved under the tail. He comes with a wood stand. Call me if you want to order one with less paint and more “seniority.”


Utilize este identificador para referenciar este registo:
|Título:||Thermochemical and Theoretical Studies of 2-Hydroxyquinoxaline, 2,3-Dihydroxyquinoxaline, and 2-Hydroxy-3-methylquinoxaline|
|Autor:||Ribeiro da Silva, M. A. V.|
Matos, M. A. R.
Miranda, M. S.
Morais, V. M. F.
|Palavras-chave:||Enthalpies of formation|
|Resumo:||The standard (p° = 0.1 MPa) molar enthalpies of formation for crystalline 2-hydroxyquinoxaline, 2,3-dihydroxyquinoxaline, and 2-hydroxy-3-methylquinoxaline were derived from the standard molar enthalpies of combustion, in oxygen, at T = 298.15 K, measured by static bomb combustion calorimetry. The standard molar enthalpies of sublimation, at T = 298.15 K, of the three compounds were measured by Calvet microcalorimetry. The derived standard molar enthalpies of formation in the gaseous phase are 45.9 ± 4.3 kJ·mol-1 for 2-hydroxyquinoxaline, −(179.2 ± 5.3) kJ·mol-1 for 2,3-dihydroxyquinoxaline, and −(8.8 ± 4.9) kJ·mol-1 for 2-hydroxy-3-methylquinoxaline. In addition, theoretical calculations using the density functional theory and the B3LYP/6-311G** hybrid exchange-correlation energy functional were performed for these molecules in order to obtain the most stable geometries and to access their relative stability. The theoretical results are in general good agreement with experimental findings.|
|Aparece nas colecções:||FCT2-Artigos (em revistas ou actas indexadas)|
Todos os registos no repositório estão protegidos por leis de copyright, com todos os direitos reservados.


Unreserved - RBA's latest release of digitised archival records
The Reserve Bank has been releasing a large volume of digitised archival records to the public through our digital archive (called Unreserved). These records span nearly 200 years of Australia’s economic, financial and social history. The latest release includes records about the work and influence of Dr HC Coombs along with additional records from the Bank’s Research Department, with much of the new information covering the period from the Bank’s ‘separation’ from the original Commonwealth Bank in 1960 through to the early 1970s. The published series are:
Records and collection items relating to Dr HC Coombs, Governor of the Commonwealth and Reserve Bank from 1949 to 1968, which include:
- Articles, speeches and lectures given by Dr Coombs to various organisations and institutions.
- Correspondence with Prime Ministers, Treasurers, Treasury, prominent economists and other central bank governors.
- Minutes of various committees including the Financial & Economic Committee, the Economic Advisory Committee and the Atomic Energy Committee.
- Photographs of Dr Coombs.
- A Research Guide on Dr Coombs which provides details on his life and achievements as well as links to the records and photographs that relate to him.
The early economic analysis conducted by the central bank over the period from 1918 to 1973. The latest materials released include:
- General Economic Conditions: Additional papers and documents prepared by economists, both internal and external to the Bank, discussing current economic conditions, the economic outlook and policies.
- Prices & Statistics: Correspondence, papers, tables and graphs on the development and reporting of statistics on a range of economic variables but particularly prices.
- Planning & Economic Development: Reports, correspondence and memoranda on topics including the Colombo Plan, the Depression, and the Second World War and recovery.
- Miscellaneous Correspondence: The monthly review of happenings and developments from the London Office from 1954 to 1973 and Thomas Balogh’s letters, London Reviews and special articles for the Bank.
Accompanying these economic records are additional items from the Bank’s photographic collection, primarily scenes of Bank life in the 1960s.


Thursday, October 13, 2005
"field of daisies 2" by Cathy Sigmon
Primarily a self-taught artist, Cathy works from her studio in Faith, North Carolina in colored pencil, watercolor and acrylics. She has won numerous awards in local and regional exhibitions and conducts workshops for regional art guilds.
A Signature member of the Colored Pencil Society of America, Cathy has participated in CPSA international exhibitions in San Diego, Detroit and Houston. Her work is included in "The Best of Colored Pecncil 4", published by Rockport Publishers and distributed in the U.S. and abroad by North Light Books.


Having spent years training at the gyms throughout Thailand, I figured some of you guys (and girls) could benefit from some of the knowledge I’ve accumulated during my time here.
For that reason, I’ve put together a mini-guidebook called “10 Tips for Training in Thailand”. The book is completely free and I’m hoping you’ll find it useful.
The manual covers topics such as the common scams to avoid, what to pack, tips on where to say and how to save money.
There are also sections in the book discussing basic Thai culture, tips on getting around the country and of course, I’ve included a section on relationships with locals and how not to get played.
Perhaps the most useful section is the information on obtaining the right Thai visa depending on how long you’re planning on staying.
At 10 pages, the book is an easy, clutter-free read that gets right to the point.
If you’d like a copy of it, simply input your name and email into the form below and click “Send It To Me Now!”.


Wisconsin Library Lending Out iPads
The iPad is more and more becoming part of people’s daily life. While many libraries lend out e-books for those that already have a tablet or e-reader, Eau Claire Wisconsin library is beginning to lend out iPads.
The library got a grant from the Presto Foundation to help pay for the tablets and said it chose the iPad from among the digital options because of its versatility in providing more access to library-related content than an e-reader-only device.
The library has 44 iPads that were purchased with a grant. 32 of those iPads can be lent out to the library’s users for up to seven days while six other iPads will stay in the library building but can be used by patrons for up to four hours at a time. The remaining six iPads are to be lent out to patrons who are at home for medical reasons.
Each of the iPads will have 1,000 eBooks available to read, loaded by the library’s staff, along with 10 audiobooks and a number of free iPad apps. Users will be able to download content and apps for the iPad on their own during the seven day lending period but when the iPad is returned to the library its staff will restore the tablet to its original state, wiping out anything that the user might have downloaded.
The goal of the iPad lending program is to provide library customers with opportunities to gain familiarity and comfort with new technology that allows them to make use of alternative methods of enjoying the written and spoken word and to more fully explore the Internet and its vast resources.
The library is offering tablets with four-hour loan periods in the library and has other iPads that are being offered on a 7-day take home loan. To borrow the iPad, the user needs a valid library card and must be at least 18. An overdue iPad will cost the user $10 per day and there is no grace period. There is also another $25 fine if the iPad is returned by any other method than directly to the library staff. If the iPad is lent out and then broken or damaged by the user, the borrower will be liable for as much as $1,020 to replace the iPad and accessories.
Thanks to a $50,000 grant from the Presto Foundation, library users will be able to stay up-to-date on the latest technology without paying hundreds of dollars.


Samuel Johnson, 'Dr Johnson'
St Paul's Cathedral - Virtual Tour
© 2007 Armchair Travel Co. Ltd. - This page may be used for non-commercial purposes ONLY!
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The statue of Dr Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) which stands at the entrance of the North Quire Aisle was placed there in 1796.
It was paid for by a subscription started by the Literary Club, of which he had been a founder member, and which included a glittering array of writers, artists, and actors of the later 18th century.
The statue is by John Bacon, and shows a very idealised Johnson leaning on a column, dressed in antique drapes, and contemplating a scroll.
The face is furrowed with thought, and, though not handsome, it has been given a kind of dignity of feature which in reality the Doctor probably lacked. He was a prodigious figure, admired, feared and sometimes mocked (but never to his face).
He was born in the city of Lichfield, to a provincial bookseller, and became first a schoolmaster and then a journalist and writer in London, living a precarious life for many years.
His fortunes were changed by the English Dictionary which he began in 1747.
He was immensely sociable, and we know many of the extraordinary things which he uttered spontaneously in company because James Boswell, his friend and admirer took care to write them down over many years.
His circle included Mrs Thrale (with whom he was later to quarrel when she became, as a widow, Mrs Piozzi). His letters to her, published after his death, are prized among his many works.
Johnson's career was the literary success story of a sickly boy from the Midlands who by talent, tenacity, and intelligence became the foremost literary figure and the most formidable conversationalist of his time.
"The freedom with which Dr Johnson condemns whatever he disapproves is astonishing."


NY Times Custom Birthday Book
Featured at UncommonGoods
Commemorate a newsworthy birthday with a collection of the New York Times front pages from each year since your birth, personalized with your name and birth date, and preserved in a handsome library binding. For a 30th, 40th, or 50th birthday, the collection forms a fascinating snapshot of history seen through the lens of your special day. Made in Williston, Vermont.
- Washington Post and LA Times Custom Birthday Books also available


Join us for an evening of reading and learning. Wear your cozy PJs, bring a stuffed animal, and come cuddle up with some good books.
The evening will include:
- An information session for parents on the importance of asking questions while reading, and an introduction to different types of comprehension questions.
- Children will make "Comprehension Kits" and learn how to use the kit at home when reading with their family
We will also be collecting gently used books to donate to students in Baltimore City schools.
Tuesday, February 26, 2019 - 5:45pm to 7:30pm


Hispanic heritage month also provides an opportunity for dialogue and reflection about the issues that specifically impact Hispanic people.
Hispanic Heritage Month is celebrated from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15. This month is celebrated nationwide through festivals, art shows, conferences, community gatherings, and much more. Check out some San Francisco community-focused events at the San Francisco Public Library .
In celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, the Department of Human Resources has created the below virtual backgrounds for all employee use. Some of these backgrounds include papel picado, a Mexican folk art involving cutting elaborate designs into tissue paper, often used as a decoration for celebrating holidays, events, and other special occasions. Also included is the Latin American Youth Center mural drawn by Latino artist Marela Zacarías, located in Washington DC, this mural reflects political, representational, and intersectional aspects of Latino culture and experience.
Click the images below to download.


We have assembled this list of links to support the education of our patients on healthy topics and additional resources that may be available to them. Please note that online research can be beneficial to help you understand more about your health, however it should be used in conjunction with the diagnosis and treatment information provided by your medical practitioner.
Student Health and Wellness Center Resources
Tips for dealing with the rare but disturbing violence on America's campuses
Violence and sexual assault
General Health Resources
Mental Health Resources
Eating Disorder Resources


Flash Ostial Balloon in Right Internal Mammary Artery Percutaneous Coronary Intervention: A Novel Approach
Desai R, Kumar G (August 02, 2017) Cureus 9(8): e1537 doi: 10 7759/cureus 1537
Left Internal Mammary Artery Dissection: Use Of Dual Balloon Angioplasty In Treatment Of Ostial Dissection Involving Subclavian Artery.
Zaher Fanari, MD; Jhapat Thapa, MBBS; Subba R. Vanga, MBBS, MS; Wasif Qureshi, MD. Delaware Medical Journal June 2015 Vol. 87 No. 6
High Incidence of Inaccurate Stent Placement in the Treatment of Coronary Aorto-Ostial Disease
Dwight A. Dishmon, MD, Adam Elhaddi, MD et al.
The Flash saves the day: A device for Ostial lesions:
Richard R. Heuser, MD, and Khalid Naqi, MD
The Flash to the Rescue
Richard R. Heuser, MD.
Treatment of Ostial Renal Artery Stenosis with Stenting Followed by Flared Ostial Balloon
Harit Desai, DO and Jon C. George, MD From the Deborah Heart and Lung Center, Browns Mills, New Jersey
For more information, articles or prints please contact Ostial Corp.


As a new platform for cross-domain intelligent combat, the ground–air cooperative unmanned system provides an important direction for competition in military technology among the world’s powers. First, this paper summarizes the concept, function, and goals of development of the ground–air cooperative unmanned system, and analyzes plans for the development of such systems around the world. The significance of the ground-air cooperative unmanned system is systematically summarized from three perspectives: forming an intelligent combat system, changing the attack-defense balance on the battlefield, and improving combat effectiveness. Second, in view of the constraints imposed by complex environments, resources, and the heterogeneity of platforms, such key technologies as distributed situational awareness, adaptive intelligent navigation, and cooperative control of heterogeneous systems are addressed. Finally, to deal with the challenge of intelligent warfare, suggestions for development are proposed from the perspectives of technological bottlenecks, platform construction, and policy support. This study provides a reference for the development and application of ground–air cooperative unmanned systems in the context of national defense science and technology.
付梦印,杨 毅,岳裕丰,屈 艺.【专题】地空协同无人系统综述[J].国防科技,2021,42(3):1-8；FU Mengyin, YANG Yi, YUE Yufeng, QU Yi. A review of ground-air cooperative unmanned system[J]. National Defense Technology,2021,42(3):1-8复制


De man die de woestijn tegenhield
Een prachtige documentaire over hoe Yacouba Sawadogo de woestijn tegenhoudt en de Sahel woestijn weer vruchtbaar weet te maken.
In Burkina Faso, the rapid desertification of the once fertile plains of the Sahel caused droughts and ruined harvests, sparking a mass exodus of village inhabitants and famines that decimated populations. Yet remarkably, one illiterate peasant farmer and his ingenious farming methods have proved the key to achieving what experts have failed to do: stop the desert. This inspiring documentary tells the unique story of Yacouba Sawadogo, whose years of toil have transformed the lives of thousands.


The Milestone book features a collection of work from 2019 onwards and documents the movements of an artist travelling up and down the east coast of Australia making large scale outdoor artwork and collecting notes from friends.
This book was constructed by the artist without a computer using a collaging technique and consists of photographs and self help quotes compiled and designed to give the reader a true insight into the reality taking place as the work is created.
48 Pages | Full colour printed | Perfect bound | Printed on 100% recycled - 120GSM paper | 148mm x 210mm (A5) | Limited run | Printed in Australia
Published by. @exhalebookclub & @backyourself100


Mark Twain – American author and humorist ( 1835 – 1910 )
Những Nội Dung Chính Bài Viết
- Mark Twain – American author and humorist ( 1835 – 1910 )
- Pen names
- Legacy and depictions
- See also
- Further reading
Mark Twain, whose real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was indeed a renowned American author and humorist. He lived from 1835 to 1910 and made significant contributions to American literature. Here are some key highlights of Mark Twain’s life and career:
- Early Life: Mark Twain was born on November 30, 1835, in Florida, Missouri, USA. He grew up in the town of Hannibal, Missouri, which later served as the inspiration for the fictional town of St. Petersburg in many of his works.
- Career as a Writer: Twain began his writing career as a journalist and worked for several newspapers. His humorous and satirical writing style quickly gained popularity. He adopted the pen name “Mark Twain” while working as a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River, where “mark twain” was a river term indicating a safe depth for navigation.
- Famous Works: Mark Twain is best known for his classic novels, including “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” (1876) and “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” (1884). These novels are often considered masterpieces of American literature and offer insights into the social and cultural landscape of the American South during the 19th century.
- Social Critic: Through his writing, Twain often addressed societal issues such as slavery, racism, and class distinctions. “Huckleberry Finn,” in particular, is known for its powerful critique of racism and the institution of slavery.
- Humor and Satire: Twain’s humor and wit made him a beloved figure in American literature. He had a knack for using humor to highlight the absurdities of human behavior and society.
- Lecturer and Traveler: Later in his life, Twain embarked on lecture tours around the world, sharing his experiences and observations. He wrote about his travels in works like “The Innocents Abroad” (1869).
- Legacy: Mark Twain’s works continue to be widely read and studied in literature courses. His influence on American literature and humor is immeasurable. His quotes and sayings, such as “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated” and “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect,” are still widely quoted today.
- Personal Life: Twain had a complex personal life, marked by financial ups and downs. He also experienced personal tragedies, including the loss of family members. Despite these challenges, his literary contributions endure.
Mark Twain passed away on April 21, 1910, in Redding, Connecticut, leaving behind a rich literary legacy that continues to entertain and provoke thought to this day.
American author and humorist ( 1835 – 1910 )
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), best known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the “greatest humorist the United States has produced”, and William Faulkner called him “the father of American literature”. His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), the latter of which has often been called the “Great American Novel”. Twain also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889) and Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894), and co-wrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner.
Twain was raised in Hannibal, Missouri, which later provided the setting for Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. He served an apprenticeship with a printer and then worked as a typesetter, contributing articles to the newspaper of his older brother Orion Clemens. He later became a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River before heading west to join Orion in Nevada. He referred humorously to his lack of success at mining, turning to journalism for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. His humorous story “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” was published in 1865, based on a story that he heard at Angels Hotel in Angels Camp, California, where he had spent some time as a miner. The short story brought international attention and was even translated into French. His wit and satire, in prose and in speech, earned praise from critics and peers, and he was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty. Although initially an ardent American imperialist who spoke out strongly in favor of American interests in the Hawaiian Islands, he later became vice president of the American Anti-Imperialist League from 1901 until his death in 1910, coming out strongly against the Philippine-American War.
Bạn đang đọc: Mark Twain – Wikipedia
Twain earned a great giảm giá of money from his writing and lectures, but invested in ventures that lost most of it, such as the Paige Compositor, a mechanical typesetter that failed because of its complexity and imprecision. He filed for bankruptcy in the wake of these financial setbacks, but in time overcame his financial troubles with the help of Standard Oil executive Henry Huttleston Rogers. He eventually paid all his creditors in full, even though his declaration of bankruptcy meant he was not required to do so .Twain was born shortly after an appearance of Halley’s Comet, and he predicted that he would ” go out with it ” as well, dying a day after the comet was at its closest to Earth. [ 9 ]
Early lifeSamuel Clemens, age 15 holding metal type in a composing stick that spells out his first name. He understood that the photographic printing process reversed the contents of an image in the same way backwards moveable type was reversed in printing to give clear copy.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born on November 30, 1835, in Florida, Missouri. He was the sixth of seven children of Jane (née Lampton; 1803–1890), a native of Kentucky, and John Marshall Clemens (1798–1847), a native of Virginia. His parents met when his father moved to Missouri. They were married in 1823. Twain was of Cornish, English, and Scots-Irish descent. Only three of his siblings survived childhood: Orion (1825–1897), Pamela (1827–1904), and Henry (1838–1858). His brother Pleasant Hannibal (1828) died at three weeks of age, his sister Margaret (1830–1839) when Twain was three, and his brother Benjamin (1832–1842) three years later.
When he was four, Twain’s family moved to Hannibal, Missouri, a port town on the Mississippi River that inspired the fictional town of St. Petersburg in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Slavery was legal in Missouri at the time, and it became a theme in these writings. His father was an attorney and judge who died of pneumonia in 1847, when Twain was 11. The following year, Twain left school after the fifth grade to become a printer’s apprentice. In 1851, he began working as a typesetter, contributing articles and humorous sketches to the Hannibal Journal, a newspaper that Orion owned. When he was 18, he left Hannibal and worked as a printer in New York City, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Cincinnati, joining the newly formed International Typographical Union, the printers trade union. He educated himself in public libraries in the evenings, finding wider information than at a conventional school.
Twain describes his boyhood in Life on the Mississippi, stating that “there was but one permanent ambition” among his comrades: to be a steamboatman. “Pilot was the grandest position of all. The pilot, even in those days of trivial wages, had a princely salary – from a hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty dollars a month, and no board to pay.” As Twain described it, the pilot’s prestige exceeded that of the captain. The pilot had to “get up a warm personal acquaintanceship with every old snag and one-limbed cottonwood and every obscure wood pile that ornaments the banks of this river for twelve hundred miles; and more than that, must… actually know where these things are in the dark”. Steamboat pilot Horace E. Bixby took Twain on as a cub pilot to teach him the river between New Orleans and St. Louis for $500 (equivalent to $17,000 in 2022), payable out of Twain’s first wages after graduating. Twain studied the Mississippi, learning its landmarks, how to navigate its currents effectively, and how to read the river and its constantly shifting channels, reefs, submerged snags, and rocks that would “tear the life out of the strongest vessel that ever floated”. It was more than two years before he received his pilot’s license. Piloting also gave him his pen name from “mark twain”, the leadsman’s cry for a measured river depth of two fathoms (12 feet), which was safe water for a steamboat.
As a young pilot, Clemens served on the steamer A. B. Chambers with Grant Marsh, who became famous for his exploits as a steamboat captain on the Missouri River. The two liked and admired each other, and maintained a correspondence for many years after Clemens left the river.
While training, Samuel convinced his younger brother Henry to work with him, and even arranged a post of mud clerk for him on the steamboat Pennsylvania. On June 13, 1858, the steamboat’s boiler exploded; Henry succumbed to his wounds on June 21. Twain claimed to have foreseen this death in a dream a month earlier,: 275 which inspired his interest in parapsychology; he was an early member of the Society for Psychical Research. Twain was guilt-stricken and held himself responsible for the rest of his life. He continued to work on the river and was a river pilot until the Civil War broke out in 1861, when traffic was curtailed along the Mississippi River. At the start of hostilities, he enlisted briefly in a local Confederate unit. He later wrote the sketch “The Private History of a Campaign That Failed”, describing how he and his friends had been Confederate volunteers for two weeks before their unit disbanded.
He then left for Nevada to work for his brother Orion, who was Secretary of the Nevada Territory. Twain describes the episode in his book Roughing It.: 147
In the American West
Twain, age 31
Orion became secretary to Nevada Territory governor James W. Nye in 1861, and Twain joined him when he moved west. The brothers traveled more than two weeks on a stagecoach across the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains, visiting the Mormon community in Salt Lake City. [ 31 ]
Twain’s journey ended in the silver-mining town of Virginia City, Nevada, where he became a miner on the Comstock Lode. He failed as a miner and went to work at the Virginia City newspaper Territorial Enterprise, working under a friend, the writer Dan DeQuille. He first used his pen name here on February 3, 1863, when he wrote a humorous travel account titled “Letter From Carson – re: Joe Goodman; party at Gov. Johnson’s; music” and signed it “Mark Twain”.
His experiences in the American West inspired Roughing It, written during 1870–71 and published in 1872. His experiences in Angels Camp (in Calaveras County, California) provided material for “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” (1865).
Twain moved to San Francisco in 1864, still as a journalist, and met writers such as Bret Harte and Artemus Ward. He may have been romantically involved with the poet Ina Coolbrith. [ 35 ]
His first success as a writer came when his humorous tall tale “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” was published on November 18, 1865, in the New York weekly The Saturday Press, bringing him national attention. A year later, he traveled to the Sandwich Islands (present-day Hawaii) as a reporter for the Sacramento Union. His letters to the Union were popular and became the basis for his first lectures.
In 1867, a local newspapers
The Alta California and New-York Tribune funded his trip to the Mediterranean aboard the Quaker City, including a tour of Europe and the Middle East. He wrote a collection of travel letters which were later compiled as The Innocents Abroad (1869). It was on this trip that he met fellow passenger Charles Langdon, who showed him a picture of his sister Olivia. Twain later claimed to have fallen in love at first sight.
Upon returning to the United States, Twain was offered honorary membership in Yale University ‘ s secret society Scroll and Key in 1868. [ 38 ]
Marriage and children
Twain with American Civil War correspondent and author George Alfred Townsend, and David Gray, editor of the rival Buffalo Courier
Twain and Olivia Langdon corresponded throughout 1868. She rejected his first marriage proposal, but he continued to court her and managed to overcome her father’s initial reluctance. They were married in Elmira, New York in February 1870. She came from a “wealthy but liberal family”; through her, he met abolitionists, “socialists, principled atheists and activists for women’s rights and social equality”, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, and utopian socialist writer William Dean Howells, who became a long-time friend. The Clemenses lived in Buffalo, New York, from 1869 to 1871. He owned a stake in the Buffalo Express newspaper and worked as an editor and writer. While they were living in Buffalo, their son Langdon died of diphtheria at the age of 19 months. They had three daughters: Susy (1872–1896), Clara (1874–1962), and Jean (1880–1909). The Clemenses formed a friendship with David Gray, who worked as an editor of the rival Buffalo Courier, and his wife Martha. Twain later wrote that the Grays were “‘all the solace’ he and Livy had during their ‘sorrowful and pathetic brief sojourn in Buffalo'”, and that Gray’s “delicate gift for poetry” was wasted working for a newspaper.
In November 1872, Twain was a passenger on the Cunard Line steamship Batavia which rescued the nine surviving crew of the British barque Charles Ward. Twain witnessed the rescue, and wrote to the Royal Humane Society recommending them to honour Batavia‘s captain and the lifeboat’s crew. Starting in 1873, Twain moved his family to Hartford, Connecticut, where he arranged the building of a home next door to Stowe. In the 1870s and 1880s, the family summered at Quarry Farm in Elmira, the home of Olivia’s sister, Susan Crane. In 1874, Susan had a study built apart from the main house so that Twain would have a quiet place in which to write. Also, he smoked cigars constantly, and Susan did not want him to do so in her house.
Twain wrote many of his classic novels during his 17 years in Hartford (1874–1891) and over 20 summers at Quarry Farm. They include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), The Prince and the Pauper (1881), Life on the Mississippi (1883), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889).
The couple’s marriage lasted 34 years until Olivia’s death in 1904. All of the Clemens family are buried in Elmira’s Woodlawn Cemetery.
Love of science and technology
Twain in the laboratory of Nikola Tesla, early 1894
Twain was fascinated with science and scientific inquiry. He developed a close and lasting friendship with Nikola Tesla, and the two spent much time together in Tesla’s laboratory. [ 47 ]Twain patented three inventions, including an ” Improvement in Adjustable and Detachable Straps for Garments ” ( to replace suspenders ) and a history trivia game. [ 48 ] [ 49 ] Most commercially successful was a self-pasting scrapbook ; a dried adhesive on the pages needed only to be moistened before use. [ 48 ] Over 25,000 were sold. [ 48 ]
Twain was an early proponent of fingerprinting as a forensic technique, featuring it in a tall tale in Life on the Mississippi (1883) and as a central plot element in the novel Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894).
Twain’s novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889) features a time traveler from the contemporary U.S., using his knowledge of science to introduce modern technology to Arthurian England. This type of historical manipulation became a trope of speculative fiction as alternate histories.
In 1909, Thomas Edison visited Twain at Stormfield, his home in Redding, Connecticut and filmed him. Part of the footage was used in The Prince and the Pauper (1909), a two-reel short film. It is the only known existing film footage of Twain.
Twain was a serious skeptic when it came to phrenology. He had two such examinations – one where he kept his identity secret and another where it was known. They had different results. In his autobiography, he explained that the phrenologist found a cavity where a bump should have been. And then he explained that this represented a total absence of having a sense of humor. [ 51 ]
Twain made a substantial amount of money through his writing, but he lost a great khuyến mãi through investments. He invested mostly in new inventions and technology, particularly the Paige typesetting machine. It was considered a mechanical marvel that amazed viewers when it worked, but it was prone to breakdowns. Twain spent $ 300,000 ( equivalent to $ 9,097,241 in 2022 ) on it between 1880 and 1894, [ 52 ] but before it could be perfected it was rendered obsolete by the Linotype. He lost the bulk of his book profits, as well as a substantial portion of his wife’s inheritance. [ 53 ]Twain also lost money through his publishing house, Charles L. Webster and Company, which enjoyed initial success selling the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant but failed soon afterward, losing money on a biography of Pope Leo XIII. Fewer than 200 copies were sold. [ 53 ]
Twain and his family closed down their expensive Hartford home in response to the dwindling income and moved to Europe in June 1891. William M. Laffan of The New York Sun and the McClure Newspaper Syndicate offered him the publication of a series of six European letters. Twain, Olivia, and their daughter Susy were all faced with health problems, and they believed that it would be of benefit to visit European baths.: 175 The family stayed mainly in France, Germany, and Italy until May 1895, with longer spells at Berlin (winter 1891–92), Florence (fall and winter 1892–93), and Paris (winters and springs 1893–94 and 1894–95). During that period, Twain returned four times to New York due to his enduring business troubles. He rented “a cheap room” in September 1893 at $1.50 per day (equivalent to $49 in 2022) at The Players Club, which he had to keep until March 1894; meanwhile, he became “the Belle of New York,” in the words of biographer Albert Bigelow Paine.: 176–190
Twain’s writings and lectures enabled him to recover financially, combined with the help of his friend, Henry Huttleston Rogers. [ 55 ] In 1893, he began a friendship with the financier, a principal of Standard Oil, that lasted the remainder of his life. Rogers first made him file for bankruptcy in April 1894, then had him transfer the copyrights on his written works to his wife to prevent creditors from gaining possession of them. Finally, Rogers took absolute charge of Twain’s money until all his creditors were paid. [ 54 ] : 188
Twain accepted an offer from Robert Sparrow Smythe and embarked on a year-long around-the-world lecture tour in July 1895 to pay off his creditors in full, although he was no longer under any legal obligation to do so. It was a long, arduous journey, and he was sick much of the time, mostly from a cold and a carbuncle. The first part of the itinerary took him across northern America to British Columbia, Canada, until the second half of August. For the second part, he sailed across the Pacific Ocean. His scheduled lecture in Honolulu, Hawaii, had to be canceled due to a cholera epidemic.: 188  Twain went on to Fiji, Australia, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, India, Mauritius, and South Africa. His three months in India became the centerpiece of his 712-page book Following the Equator. In the second half of July 1896, he sailed back to England, completing his circumnavigation of the world begun 14 months before.: 188
Twain and his family spent four more years in Europe, mainly in England and Austria ( October 1897 to May 1899 ), with longer spells in London and Vienna. Clara had wished to study the piano under Theodor Leschetizky in Vienna. [ 54 ] : 192 – 211 However, Jean’s health did not benefit from consulting with specialists in Vienna, the ” City of Doctors “. [ 60 ] The family moved to London in spring 1899, following a lead by Poultney Bigelow, who had a good experience being treated by Dr. Jonas Henrik Kellgren, a Swedish osteopathic practitioner in Belgravia. They were persuaded to spend the summer at Kellgren’s sanatorium by the lake in the Swedish village of Sanna. Coming back in fall, they continued the treatment in London, until Twain was convinced by lengthy inquiries in America that similar osteopathic expertise was available there. [ 61 ]In mid-1900, he was the guest of newspaper proprietor Hugh Gilzean-Reid at Dollis Hill House, located on the north side of London. Twain wrote that he had ” never seen any place that was so satisfactorily situated, with its noble trees and stretch of country, and everything that went to make life delightful, and all within a biscuit’s throw of the metropolis of the world. ” [ 62 ] He then returned to America in October 1900, having earned enough to pay off his debts. In winter 1900 / 01, he became his country’s most prominent opponent of imperialism, raising the issue in his speeches, interviews, and writings. In January 1901, he began serving as vice-president of the Anti-Imperialist League of Thành Phố New York. [ 63 ]
Plaque on Sydney Writers Walk commemorating the visit of Twain in 1895
Twain was in great demand as a featured speaker, performing solo humorous talks similar to modern stand-up comedy. He gave paid talks to many men’s clubs, including the Authors’ Club, Beefsteak Club, Vagabonds, White Friars, and Monday Evening Club of Hartford.
In the late 1890s, he spoke to the Savage Club in London and was elected an honorary member. He was told that only three men had been so honored, including the Prince of Wales, and he replied: “Well, it must make the Prince feel mighty fine.”: 197 He visited Melbourne and Sydney in 1895 as part of a world lecture tour. In 1897, he spoke to the Concordia Press Club in Vienna as a special guest, following the diplomat Charlemagne Tower, Jr. He delivered the speech “Die Schrecken der Deutschen Sprache” (“The Horrors of the German Language”)—in German—to the great amusement of the audience.: 50 In 1901, he was invited to speak at Princeton University’s Cliosophic Literary Society, where he was made an honorary member.
In 1881, Twain was honored at a banquet in Montreal, Canada where he made reference to securing a copyright. [ 66 ] In 1883, he paid a brief visit to Ottawa, [ 67 ] and he visited Toronto twice in 1884 and 1885 on a reading tour with George Washington Cable, known as the ” Twins of Genius ” tour. [ 67 ] [ 68 ] [ 69 ]
The reason for the Toronto visits was to secure Canadian and British copyrights for his upcoming book Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, to which he had alluded in his Montreal visit. The reason for the Ottawa visit had been to secure Canadian and British copyrights for Life on the Mississippi. Publishers in Toronto had printed unauthorized editions of his books at the time, before an international copyright agreement was established in 1891. These were sold in the United States as well as in Canada, depriving him of royalties. He estimated that Belford Brothers’ edition of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer alone had cost him ten thousand dollars (equivalent to $330,000 in 2022). He had unsuccessfully attempted to secure the rights for The Prince and the Pauper in 1881, in conjunction with his Montreal trip. Eventually, he received legal advice to register a copyright in Canada (for both Canada and Britain) prior to publishing in the United States, which would restrain the Canadian publishers from printing a version when the American edition was published. There was a requirement that a copyright be registered to a Canadian resident; he addressed this by his short visits to the country.
Later life and death
— TwainThe report of my death was an exaggeration .
Twain lived in his later years at 14 West 10 th Street in Manhattan. [ 72 ] He passed through a period of deep depression which began in 1896 when his daughter Susy died of meningitis. Olivia’s death in 1904 and Jean’s on December 24, 1909, deepened his gloom. [ 1 ] On May 20, 1909, his close friend Henry Rogers died suddenly. [ 73 ]
In April 1906, he heard that his friend Ina Coolbrith had lost nearly all that she owned in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and he volunteered a few autographed portrait photographs to be sold for her benefit. To further aid Coolbrith, George Wharton James visited Twain in New York and arranged for a new portrait session. He was resistant initially, but he eventually admitted that four of the resulting images were the finest ones ever taken of him. In September, Twain started publishing chapters from his autobiography in the North American Review. The same year, Charlotte Teller, a writer living with her grandmother at 3 Fifth Avenue, began an acquaintanceship with him which “lasted several years and may have included romantic intentions” on his part.
Twain photographed in 1908 via the Autochrome Lumiere process
In 1906, Twain formed the Angel Fish and Aquarium Club, for girls whom he viewed as surrogate granddaughters. Its dozen or so members ranged in age from 10 to 16. He exchanged letters with his ” Angel Fish ” girls and invited them to concerts and the theatre and to play games. Twain wrote in 1908 that the club was his ” life’s chief delight “. [ 30 ] : 28 In 1907, he met Dorothy Quick ( aged 11 ) on a transatlantic crossing, beginning ” a friendship that was to last until the very day of his death “. [ 77 ]
Twain in academic regalia for acceptance of the D.Litt. degree awarded him by Oxford University in 1907
Twain was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters ( D.Litt. ) by Yale University in 1901. Then in 1902, the Doctor of Law by the University of Missouri, Oxford University would also award him the Doctorate of Law in 1907. [ 78 ] : 52 : 58Twain was born two weeks after Halley’s Comet ‘ s closest approach in 1835 ; he said in 1909 : [ 54 ]
I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt : ” Now here are these two unaccountable freaks ; they came in together, they must go out together ” .
Twain’s prediction was eerily accurate ; he died of a heart attack on April 21, 1910, in Stormfield, one month before the comet passed Earth that year. [ 79 ]
Twain and his wife are buried side by side in Elmira’s Woodlawn Cemetery
Upon hearing of Twain’s death, President William Howard Taft said : [ 80 ] [ 81 ]
Mark Twain gave pleasure – real intellectual enjoyment – to millions, and his works will continue to give such pleasure to millions yet to come … His humor was American, but he was nearly as much appreciated by Englishmen and people of other countries as by his own countrymen. He has made an enduring part of American literature .
Twain’s funeral was at the Brick Presbyterian Church on Fifth Avenue, New York. He is buried in his wife’s family plot at Woodlawn Cemetery in Elmira, New York. The Langdon family plot is marked by a 12-foot monument (two fathoms, or “mark twain”) placed there by his surviving daughter Clara. There is also a smaller headstone. He expressed a preference for cremation (for example, in Life on the Mississippi), but he acknowledged that his surviving family would have the last word.
Officials in Connecticut and Thành Phố New York estimated the value of Twain’s estate at $ 471,000 ( USD 10,000,000 in 2021 ). [ 84 ]
Twain began his career writing light, humorous verse, but he became a chronicler of the vanities, hypocrisies, and murderous acts of mankind. At mid-career, he combined rich humor, sturdy narrative, and social criticism in Huckleberry Finn. He was a master of rendering colloquial speech and helped to create and popularize a distinctive American literature built on American themes and language.
Many of his works have been suppressed at times for various reasons. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been repeatedly restricted in American high schools, not least for its frequent use of the word “nigger”, a slur commonly used for Black people in the nineteenth century.
A complete bibliography of Twain’s works is nearly impossible to compile because of the vast number of pieces he wrote ( often in obscure newspapers ) and his use of several different pen names. Additionally, a large portion of his speeches and lectures have been lost or were not recorded ; thus, the compilation of Twain’s works is an ongoing process. Researchers rediscovered published material as recently as 1995 and năm ngoái. [ 53 ] [ 86 ]
Early journalism and travelogues
Twain was writing for the Virginia City newspaper the Territorial Enterprise in 1863 when he met lawyer Tom Fitch, editor of the competing newspaper Virginia Daily Union and known as the “silver-tongued orator of the Pacific”.: 51 He credited Fitch with giving him his “first really profitable lesson” in writing. “When I first began to lecture, and in my earlier writings,” Twain later commented, “my sole idea was to make comic capital out of everything I saw and heard.” In 1866, he presented his lecture on the Sandwich Islands to a crowd in Washoe City, Nevada. Afterwards, Fitch told him:
Clemens, your lecture was magnificent. It was eloquent, moving, sincere. Never in my entire life have I listened to such a magnificent piece of descriptive narration. But you committed one unpardonable sin – the unpardonable sin. It is a sin you must never commit again. You closed a most eloquent description, by which you had keyed your audience up to a pitch of the intensest interest, with a piece of atrocious anti-climax which nullified all the really fine effect you had produced. [ 90 ]
Cabin where Twain wrote “Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”, Jackass Hill, Tuolumne County. Click on historical marker and interior view.
It was in these days that Twain became a writer of the Sagebrush School; he was known later as its most famous member. His first important work was “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” published in the New York Saturday Press on November 18, 1865. After a burst of popularity, the Sacramento Union commissioned him to write letters about his travel experiences. The first journey that he took for this job was to ride the steamer Ajax on its maiden voyage to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii). All the while, he was writing letters to the newspaper that were meant for publishing, chronicling his experiences with humor. These letters proved to be the genesis to his work with the San Francisco Alta California newspaper, which designated him a traveling correspondent for a trip from San Francisco to New York City via the Panama isthmus.
On June 8, 1867, he set sail on the pleasure cruiser Quaker City for five months, and this trip resulted in The Innocents Abroad or The New Pilgrims’ Progress. In 1872, he published his second piece of travel literature, Roughing It, as an account of his journey from Missouri to Nevada, his subsequent life in the American West, and his visit to Hawaii. The book lampoons American and Western society in the same way that Innocents critiqued the various countries of Europe and the Middle East. His next work was The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, his first attempt at writing a novel. The book, written with his neighbor Charles Dudley Warner, is also his only collaboration.
Twain’s next work drew on his experiences on the Mississippi River. Old Times on the Mississippi was a series of sketches published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1875 featuring his disillusionment with Romanticism. Old Times eventually became the starting point for Life on the Mississippi.
Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn
Twain’s next major publication was The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which draws on his youth in Hannibal. Tom Sawyer was modeled on Twain as a child, with traces of schoolmates John Briggs and Will Bowen. The book also introduces Huckleberry Finn in a supporting role, based on Twain’s boyhood friend Tom Blankenship.
The Prince and the Pauper was not as well received, despite a storyline that is common in film and literature today. The book tells the story of two boys born on the same day who are physically identical, acting as a social commentary as the prince and pauper switch places. Twain had started Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (which he consistently had problems completing) and had completed his travel book A Tramp Abroad, which describes his travels through central and southern Europe.
Twain’s next major published work was the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which confirmed him as a noteworthy American writer. Some have called it the first Great American Novel, and the book has become required reading in many schools throughout the United States. Huckleberry Finn was an offshoot from Tom Sawyer and had a more serious tone than its predecessor. Four hundred manuscript pages were written in mid-1876, right after the publication of Tom Sawyer. The last fifth of Huckleberry Finn is subject to much controversy. Some say that Twain experienced a “failure of nerve,” as critic Leo Marx puts it. Ernest Hemingway once said of Huckleberry Finn:
If you read it, you must stop where the Nigger Jim is stolen from the boys. That is the real end. The rest is just cheating .
Hemingway also wrote in the same essay :
All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.
Near the completion of Huckleberry Finn, Twain wrote Life on the Mississippi, which is said to have heavily influenced the novel. The travel work recounts Twain’s memories and new experiences after a 22-year absence from the Mississippi River. In it, he also explains that “Mark Twain” was the call made when the boat was in safe water, indicating a depth of two (or twain) fathoms (12 feet or 3.7 metres).
McDowell’s cave—now known as Mark Twain Cave in Hannibal, Missouri, and frequently mentioned in Twain’s book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer—has “Sam Clemens”, Twain’s real name, engraved on the wall by Twain himself.
Twain produced President Ulysses S. Grant’s Memoirs through his fledgling publishing house, Charles L. Webster and Company, which he co-owned with Charles L. Webster, his nephew by marriage.
At this time he also wrote “The Private History of a Campaign That Failed” for The Century Magazine. This piece detailed his two-week stint in a Confederate militia during the Civil War. He next focused on A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, written with the same historical fiction style as The Prince and the Pauper. A Connecticut Yankee showed the absurdities of political and social norms by setting them in the court of King Arthur. The book was started in December 1885, then shelved a few months later until the summer of 1887, and eventually finished in the spring of 1889.
His next large-scale work was Pudd’nhead Wilson, which he wrote rapidly, as he was desperately trying to stave off bankruptcy. From November 12 to December 14, 1893, Twain wrote 60,000 words for the novel. Critics[who?] have pointed to this rushed completion as the cause of the novel’s rough organization and constant disruption of the plot. This novel also contains the tale of two boys born on the same day who switch positions in life, like The Prince and the Pauper. It was first published serially in Century Magazine and, when it was finally published in book form, Pudd’nhead Wilson appeared as the main title; however, the “subtitles” make the entire title read: The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson and the Comedy of The Extraordinary Twins.
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Twain’s next venture was a work of straight fiction that he called Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc and dedicated to his wife. He had long said[where?] that this was the work that he was most proud of, despite the criticism that he received for it. The book had been a dream of his since childhood, and he claimed that he had found a manuscript detailing the life of Joan of Arc when he was an adolescent. This was another piece that he was convinced would save his publishing company. His financial adviser Henry Huttleston Rogers quashed that idea and got Twain out of that business altogether, but the book was published nonetheless.
To pay the bills and keep his business projects afloat, Twain had begun to write articles and commentary furiously, with diminishing returns, but it was not enough. He filed for bankruptcy in 1894. During this time of dire financial straits, he published several literary ra mắt in newspapers to help make ends meet. He famously derided James Fenimore Cooper in his article detailing Cooper’s ” Literary Offenses “. He became an extremely outspoken critic of other authors and other critics ; he suggested that, before praising Cooper’s work, Thomas Lounsbury, Brander Matthews, and Wilkie Collins ” ought to have read some of it “. [ 98 ]
George Eliot, Jane Austen, and Robert Louis Stevenson also fell under Twain’s attack during this time period, beginning around 1890 and continuing until his death. He outlines what he considers to be “quality writing” in several letters and essays, in addition to providing a source for the “tooth and claw” style of literary criticism. He places emphasis on concision, utility of word choice, and realism; he complains, for example, that Cooper’s Deerslayer purports to be realistic but has several shortcomings. Ironically, several of his own works were later criticized for lack of continuity (Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) and organization (Pudd’nhead Wilson).
Twain’s wife died in 1904 while the couple were staying at the Villa di Quarto in Florence. After some time had passed, he published some works that his wife, his de facto editor and censor throughout her married life, had looked down upon. The Mysterious Stranger is perhaps the best known, depicting various visits of Satan to earth. This particular work was not published in Twain’s lifetime. His manuscripts included three versions, written between 1897 and 1905: the so-called Hannibal, Eseldorf, and Print Shop versions. The resulting confusion led to extensive publication of a jumbled version, and only recently have the original versions become available as Twain wrote them.
Twain’s last work was his autobiography, which he dictated and thought would be most entertaining if he went off on whims and tangents in non-chronological order. Some archivists and compilers have rearranged the biography into a more conventional form, thereby eliminating some of Twain’s humor and the flow of the book. The first volume of the autobiography, over 736 pages, was published by the University of California in November 2010, 100 years after his death, as Twain wished. [ 100 ] [ 101 ] It soon became an unexpected best-seller, [ 102 ] making Twain one of a very few authors publishing new best-selling volumes in the 19 th, 20 th, and 21 st centuries .
Twain’s works have been subjected to censorship efforts. According to Stuart (2013), “Leading these banning campaigns, generally, were religious organizations or individuals in positions of influence – not so much working librarians, who had been instilled with that American “library spirit” which honored intellectual freedom (within bounds of course)”. In 1905, the Brooklyn Public Library banned both The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer from the children’s department because of their language.
Mark Twain lived for two decades in a house in Hartford, Connecticut ( 1871 – 1891 ), and the American Publishing Company in that city published the first edition of several of his books. [ 104 ] The same can be said about a number of Thành Phố New York – based companies, such as Harper và Brothers and his nephew’s Charles L. Webster and Company. [ 104 ] Other memorable editions were created by The Ash Ranch Press of San Diego and Barry Moser ‘ s Pennyroyal Press. [ 104 ]
Twain’s views became more radical as he grew older. In a letter to friend and fellow writer William Dean Howells in 1887, he acknowledged that his views had changed and developed over his lifetime, referring to one of his favorite works :
When I finished Carlyle’s French Revolution in 1871, I was a Girondin; every time I have read it since, I have read it differently – being influenced and changed, little by little, by life and environment … and now I lay the book down once more, and recognize that I am a Sansculotte! And not a pale, characterless Sansculotte, but a Marat.
Twain was a staunch supporter of technological progress and commerce. He was against welfare measures, because he believed that society in the ” business age ” is governed by ” exact and constant ” laws that should not be ” interfered with for the accommodation of any individual or political or religious faction “. [ 107 ] He opined that ” there is no good government at all và none possible “. [ 107 ] In the opinion of Washington University professor Guy A. Cardwell :
By present standards Mark Twain was more conservative than liberal. He believed strongly in laissez faire, thought personal political rights secondary to property rights, admired self-made plutocrats, and advocated a leadership to be composed of men of wealth and brains. Among his attitudes now more readily recognized as liberal were a faith in progress through technology and a hostility towards monarchy, inherited aristocracy, the Roman Catholic church, and, in his later years, imperialism. [ 108 ]
Twain wrote glowingly about unions in the river boating industry in Life on the Mississippi, which was read in union halls decades later. He supported the labor movement, especially one of the most important unions, the Knights of Labor. In a speech to them, he said:
Who are the oppressors ? The few : the King, the capitalist, and a handful of other overseers and superintendents. Who are the oppressed ? The many : the nations of the earth ; the valuable personages ; the workers ; they that make the bread that the soft-handed and idle eat. [ 110 ]
He further wrote ” Why is it right that there is not a fairer division of the spoil all around ? Because laws and constitutions have ordered otherwise. Then it follows that laws and constitutions should change around and say there shall be a more nearly equal division. ” [ 111 ]
Before 1899, Twain was an ardent imperialist. In the late 1860s and early 1870s, he spoke out strongly in favor of American interests in the Hawaiian Islands. He said the war with Spain in 1898 was “the worthiest” war ever fought. In 1899, however, he reversed course. In the New York Herald, October 16, 1900, Twain describes his transformation and political awakening, in the context of the Philippine–American War, to anti-imperialism:
I wanted the American eagle to go screaming into the Pacific … Why not spread its wings over the Philippines, I asked myself ? … I said to myself, Here are a people who have suffered for three centuries. We can make them as không lấy phí as ourselves, give them a government and country of their own, put a miniature of the American Constitution afloat in the Pacific, start a brand new republic to take its place among the không lấy phí nations of the world. It seemed to me a great task to which we had addressed ourselves .But I have thought some more, since then, and I have read carefully the treaty of Paris ( which ended the Spanish – American War ), and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem .It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people không lấy phí, and let them khuyến mãi with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land. [ 114 ] [ 115 ]
During the Boxer Rebellion, Twain said that ” the Boxer is a patriot. He loves his country better than he does the countries of other people. I wish him success. ” [ 116 ]
From 1901, soon after his return from Europe, until his death in 1910, Twain was vice-president of the American Anti-Imperialist League, which opposed the annexation of the Philippines by the United States and had “tens of thousands of members”. He wrote many political pamphlets for the organization. The Incident in the Philippines, posthumously published in 1924, was in response to the Moro Crater Massacre, in which six hundred Moros were killed. He wrote “In what way was it a battle? It has no resemblance to a battle…We cleaned up our four days’ work and made it complete by butchering these helpless people.” Many of his neglected and previously uncollected writings on anti-imperialism appeared for the first time in book form in 1992.
Twain was critical of imperialism in other countries as well. In Following the Equator, Twain expresses “hatred and condemnation of imperialism of all stripes”. He was highly critical of European imperialists such as Cecil Rhodes and King Leopold II of Belgium, both of whom attempted to establish colonies on the African continent during the Scramble for Africa. King Leopold’s Soliloquy is a political satire about his private colony, the Congo Free State. Reports of outrageous exploitation and grotesque abuses led to widespread international outcry in the early 1900s, arguably the first large-scale human rights movement. In the soliloquy, the King argues that bringing Christianity to the colony outweighs “a little starvation”. The abuses against Congolese forced laborers continued until the movement forced the Belgian government to take direct control of the colony.
During the Philippine–American War, Twain wrote a short pacifist story titled The War Prayer, which makes the point that humanism and Christianity’s preaching of love are incompatible with the conduct of war. It was submitted to Harper’s Bazaar for publication, but on March 22, 1905, the magazine rejected the story as “not quite suited to a woman’s magazine”. Eight days later, Twain wrote to his friend Daniel Carter Beard, to whom he had read the story, “I don’t think the prayer will be published in my time. None but the dead are permitted to tell the truth.” Because he had an exclusive contract with Harper & Brothers, Twain could not publish The War Prayer elsewhere; it remained unpublished until 1916. It was republished in the 1960s as campaigning material by anti-war activists.
Twain acknowledged that he had originally sympathized with the more moderate Girondins of the French Revolution and then shifted his sympathies to the more radical Sansculottes, indeed identifying himself as ” a Marat ” and writing that the Reign of Terror paled in comparison to the older terrors that preceded it. [ 123 ] Twain supported the revolutionaries in Russia against the reformists, arguing that the Tsar must be got rid of by violent means, because peaceful ones would not work. [ 124 ] He summed up his views of revolutions in the following statement :
I am said to be a revolutionist in my sympathies, by birth, by breeding and by principle. I am always on the side of the revolutionists, because there never was a revolution unless there were some oppressive and intolerable conditions against which to revolute. [ 125 ]
Twain was an adamant supporter of the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of slaves, even going so far as to say, ” Lincoln ‘ s Proclamation … not only set the black slaves không lấy phí, but set the white man không lấy phí also “. [ 126 ] He argued that non-whites did not receive justice in the United States, once saying, ” I have seen Chinamen abused and maltreated in all the mean, cowardly ways possible to the invention of a degraded nature … but I never saw a Chinaman righted in a court of justice for wrongs thus done to him “. [ 127 ] He paid for at least one black person to attend Yale Law School and for another black person to attend a southern university to become a minister. [ 128 ]Twain’s forward-thinking views on race were not reflected in his early writings on American Indians. Of them, Twain wrote in 1870 :
His heart is a cesspool of falsehood, of treachery, and of low and devilish instincts. With him, gratitude is an unknown emotion ; and when one does him a kindness, it is safest to keep the face toward him, lest the reward be an arrow in the back. To accept of a favor from him is to assume a debt which you can never repay to his satisfaction, though you bankrupt yourself trying. The scum of the earth ! [ 129 ]
As counterpoint, Twain’s essay on “The Literary Offenses of Fenimore Cooper” offers a much kinder view of Indians. “No, other Indians would have noticed these things, but Cooper’s Indians never notice anything. Cooper thinks they are marvelous creatures for noticing, but he was almost always in error about his Indians. There was seldom a sane one among them.” In his later travelogue Following the Equator (1897), Twain observes that in colonized lands all over the world, “savages” have always been wronged by “whites” in the most merciless ways, such as “robbery, humiliation, and slow, slow murder, through poverty and the white man’s whiskey”; his conclusion is that “there are many humorous things in this world; among them the white man’s notion that he is less savage than the other savages”. In an expression that captures his East Indian experiences, he wrote, “So far as I am able to judge nothing has been left undone, either by man or Nature, to make India the most extraordinary country that the sun visits on his rounds. Where every prospect pleases, and only man is vile.”
Twain was also a supporter of women’s suffrage, as evidenced by his ” Votes for Women ” speech, given in 1901. [ 133 ]Helen Keller benefited from Twain’s tư vấn as she pursued her college education and publishing despite her disabilities and financial limitations. The two were friends for roughly 16 years. [ 134 ]Through Twain’s efforts, the Connecticut legislature voted a pension for Prudence Crandall, since 1995 Connecticut’s official heroine, for her efforts towards the education of young African-American women in Connecticut. Twain also offered to purchase for her use her former house in Canterbury, home of the Canterbury Female Boarding School, but she declined. [ 135 ] : 528
Twain was a Republican for most of his life. However, in 1884 he publicly broke with his party and joined the Mugwumps to support the Democratic nominee, Grover Cleveland, over the Republican nominee, James G. Blaine, whom he considered a corrupt politician. Twain spoke at rallies in favor of Cleveland. In the early 20th century, he began decrying both Democrats and Republicans as “insane” and proposed, in his 1907 book Christian Science, that while each party recognized the other’s insanity, only the Mugwumps (that is, those who eschewed party loyalties in favor of voting for “the best man”) could perceive the overall madness linking the two.
Twain was a Presbyterian. [ 137 ] He was critical of organized religion and certain elements of Christianity through his later life. He wrote, for example, ” Faith is believing what you know ain’t so “, and ” If Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be – a Christian “. [ 138 ] With anti-Catholic sentiment rampant in 19 th century America, Twain noted he was ” educated to enmity toward everything that is Catholic “. [ 139 ] As an adult, he engaged in religious discussions and attended services, his theology developing as he wrestled with the deaths of loved ones and with his own mortality. [ 140 ]
Twain generally avoided publishing his most controversial opinions on religion in his lifetime, and they are known from essays and stories that were published later. In the essay Three Statements of the Eighties in the 1880s, Twain stated that he believed in an almighty God, but not in any messages, revelations, holy scriptures such as the Bible, Providence, or retribution in the afterlife. He did state that “the goodness, the justice, and the mercy of God are manifested in His works”, but also that “the universe is governed by strict and immutable laws”, which determine “small matters”, such as who dies in a pestilence. At other times, he plainly professed a belief in Providence. In some later writings in the 1890s, he was less optimistic about the goodness of God, observing that “if our Maker is all-powerful for good or evil, He is not in His right mind”. At other times, he conjectured sardonically that perhaps God had created the world with all its tortures for some purpose of His own, but was otherwise indifferent to humanity, which was too petty and insignificant to deserve His attention anyway.
In 1901, Twain criticized the actions of the missionary Dr. William Scott Ament (1851–1909) because Ament and other missionaries had collected indemnities from Chinese subjects in the aftermath of the Boxer Uprising of 1900. Twain’s response to hearing of Ament’s methods was published in the North American Review in February 1901: To the Person Sitting in Darkness, and deals with examples of imperialism in China, South Africa, and with the U.S. occupation of the Philippines. A subsequent article, “To My Missionary Critics” published in The North American Review in April 1901, unapologetically continues his attack, but with the focus shifted from Ament to his missionary superiors, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.
After his death, Twain’s family suppressed some of his work that was especially irreverent toward conventional religion, including Letters from the Earth, which was not published until his daughter Clara reversed her position in 1962 in response to Soviet propaganda about the withholding. The anti-religious The Mysterious Stranger was published in 1916. Little Bessie, a story ridiculing Christianity, was first published in the 1972 collection Mark Twain’s Fables of Man.
He raised money to build a Presbyterian Church in Nevada in 1864. [ 149 ]
Twain created a reverent portrayal of Joan of Arc, a subject over which he had obsessed for forty years, studied for a dozen years and spent two years writing about. In 1900 and again in 1908 he stated, “I like Joan of Arc best of all my books, it is the best”.
Thos e who knew Twain well late in life recount that he dwelt on the subject of the afterlife, his daughter Clara saying : ” Sometimes he believed death ended everything, but most of the time he felt sure of a life beyond. ” [ 152 ]
Twain’s frankest views on religion appeared in his final work Autobiography of Mark Twain, the publication of which started in November 2010, 100 years after his death. In it, he said:
There is one notable thing about our Christianity : bad, bloody, merciless, money-grabbing, and predatory as it is – in our country particularly and in all other Christian countries in a somewhat modified degree – it is still a hundred times better than the Christianity of the Bible, with its prodigious crime – the invention of Hell. Measured by our Christianity of to-day, bad as it is, hypocritical as it is, empty and hollow as it is, neither the Deity nor his Son is a Christian, nor qualified for that moderately high place. Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilled .
Twain was a Freemason. [ 154 ] [ 155 ] He belonged to Polar Star Lodge No. 79 A.F. và A.M., based in St. Louis. He was initiated an Entered Apprentice on May 22, 1861, passed to the degree of Fellow Craft on June 12, and raised to the degree of Master Mason on July 10 .
Twain visited Salt Lake City for two days and met there members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They also gave him a Book of Mormon. He later wrote in Roughing It about that book:
The book seems to be merely a prosy detail of imaginary history, with the Old Testament for a model ; followed by a tedious plagiarism of the New Testament .
Twain was opposed to the vivisection practices of his day. His objection was not on a scientific basis but rather an ethical one. He specifically cited the pain caused to the animal as his basis of his opposition : [ 159 ] [ 160 ]
I am not interested to know whether Vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn’t. … The pains which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity towards it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further .
Twain used different pen names before deciding on ” Mark Twain “. He signed humorous and imaginative sketches as ” Josh ” until 1863. Additionally, he used the pen name ” Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass ” for a series of humorous letters. [ 161 ]He maintained that his primary pen name came from his years working on Mississippi riverboats, where two fathoms, a depth indicating water safe for the passage of boat, was a measure on the sounding line. Twain is an archaic term for ” two “, as in ” The veil of the temple was rent in twain. ” [ 162 ] The riverboatman’s cry was ” mark twain ” or, more fully, ” by the mark twain “, meaning ” according to the mark [ on the line ], [ the depth is ] two [ fathoms ] ” ; that is, ” The water is 12 feet ( 3.7 m ) deep and it is safe to pass. ”
Twain said that his famous pen name was not entirely his invention. In Life on the Mississippi, he wrote:
Captain Isaiah Sellers was not of literary turn or capacity, but he used to jot down brief paragraphs of plain practical information about the river, and sign them “MARK TWAIN”, and give them to the New Orleans Picayune. They related to the stage and condition of the river, and were accurate and valuable; … At the time that the telegraph brought the news of his death, I was on the Pacific coast. I was a fresh new journalist, and needed a nom de guerre; so I confiscated the ancient mariner’s discarded one, and have done my best to make it remain what it was in his hands – a sign and symbol and warrant that whatever is found in its company may be gambled on as being the petrified truth; how I have succeeded, it would not be modest in me to say.
Twain’s story about his pen name has been questioned by some, with the suggestion that “mark twain” refers to a running bar tab that Twain would regularly incur while drinking at John Piper’s saloon in Virginia City, Nevada. Samuel Clemens himself responded to this suggestion by saying, “Mark Twain was the nom de plume of one Captain Isaiah Sellers, who used to write river news over it for the New Orleans Picayune. He died in 1863 and as he could no longer need that signature, I laid violent hands upon it without asking permission of the proprietor’s remains. That is the history of the nom de plume I bear.”
In his autobiography, Twain writes further of Captain Sellers ‘ use of ” Mark Twain ” :
I was a cub pilot on the Mississippi River then, and one day I wrote a rude and crude satire which was leveled at Captain Isaiah Sellers, the oldest steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River, and the most respected, esteemed, and revered. For many years he had occasionally written brief paragraphs concerning the river and the changes which it had undergone under his observation during fifty years, and had signed these paragraphs ” Mark Twain ” and published them in the St. Louis and New Orleans journals. In my satire I made rude game of his reminiscences. It was a shabby poor performance, but I didn’t know it, and the pilots didn’t know it. The pilots thought it was brilliant. They were jealous of Sellers, because when the gray-heads among them pleased their vanity by detailing in the hearing of the younger craftsmen marvels which they had seen in the long ago on the river, Sellers was always likely to step in at the psychological moment and snuff them out with wonders of his own which made their small marvels look pale and sick. However, I have told all about this in ” Old Times on the Mississippi. ” The pilots handed my extravagant satire to a river reporter, and it was published in the New Orleans True Delta. That poor old Captain Sellers was deeply wounded. He had never been held up to ridicule before ; he was sensitive, and he never got over the hurt which I had wantonly and stupidly inflicted upon his dignity. I was proud of my performance for a while, and considered it quite wonderful, but I have changed my opinion of it long ago. Sellers never published another paragraph nor ever used his nom de guerre again. [ 166 ]
Legacy and depictions
Caricature of Twain by Spy in the London magazine Vanity Fair, May 1908
While Twain is often depicted wearing a white suit, modern representations suggesting that he wore them throughout his life are unfounded. Evidence suggests that Twain began wearing white suits on the lecture circuit, after the death of his wife in 1904. However, there is also evidence showing him wearing a white suit before 1904. In 1882, he sent a photograph of himself in a white suit to 18-year-old Edward W. Bok, later publisher of the Ladies Home Journal, with a handwritten dated note. The white suit did eventually become his trademark, as illustrated in anecdotes about this eccentricity (such as the time he wore a white summer suit to a Congressional hearing during the winter). McMasters’ The Mark Twain Encyclopedia states that Twain did not wear a white suit in his last three years, except at one banquet speech.
In his autobiography, Twain writes of his early experiments with wearing white out-of-season : [ 168 ]
Next after fine colors, I like plain white. One of my sorrows, when the summer ends, is that I must put off my cheery and comfortable white clothes and enter for the winter into the depressing captivity of the shapeless and degrading black ones. It is mid-October now, and the weather is growing cold up here in the New Hampshire hills, but it will not succeed in freezing me out of these white garments, for here the neighbors are few, and it is only of crowds that I am afraid. [ 168 ]


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In this lively & provocative multi-media presentation, Jennifer K. Stuller, pop culture historian, geek feminist, and co-founder of Seattle’s GeekGirlCon, shares how geek culture is being hacked, modded, & maniped by activists - and how you can too!Project Website
Even if Jennifer K. Stuller’s given name wasn’t an homage to Vanessa Redgrave’s Guenevere in 1967’s Camelot, she nevertheless would have been forged from the pop culture of the late twentieth century. Superhero television of the 1970s taught her compassion is the ultimate superpower. Adventure films in the 1980s demonstrated that possibility is the eternal fuel of human spirit. Gen X staples of the 1990s teenager kept her, to quote an icon, “strange and unusual.” When, in 1989, her father (who affectionately called her “Grasshopper”) gifted his first-born a copy of Ms. Magazine, it was Jennifer’s Excalibur. Pop culture and politics would be forever entwined in her quests. Today, Jennifer is a respected and sought-after feminist pop culture historian and media critic. As a professional writer she has contributed to web and print based publications including the BBC, Bitch Media, and Geek Monthly. As a public speaker, Jennifer brings her illuminating, insightful, and often playful voice to audiences in the United States and internationally. From coffee houses to Comic-Cons, libraries and classrooms to Town Halls, museums, and even the United Nations, she is a featured speaker, panel organizer and contributor, conversation moderator, and interviewer. In her book Ink-Stained Amazons and Cinematic Warriors: Superwomen in Modern Mythology, Jennifer presents an exploration of the journey of the female hero in comics, film, and television, as well as a call to action for creating stories with complex women at their center. As the editor of Fan Phenomena and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Jennifer embraces two of her passions: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the creative endeavors of fan communities. Jennifer is co-founder of GeekGirlCon—an organization that celebrates and honors the legacy of women and girls in the fields of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math), comics, science-fiction, arts, and literature, game play and game design. Founded in 2010, GeekGirlCon has connected thousands of women and allies in geek culture in friendship, unapologetic nerdiness, and career and mentoring opportunities. Jennifer has been interviewed by numerous publications about geek culture and women in media including The Seattle Times, Seattle Weekly, The Mary Sue, Legion of Leia, and Bitch Media. Her expert opinion and interviews extend across radio, documentaries, podcasts, and news media including the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio National Breakfast show; KUOW’s The Conversation and The Record; and WNYC’s The Takeaway. She was a featured talking head in the 2012 documentary, Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines. She can be seen in the forthcoming AMC documentary series Robert Kirkman’s Heroes and Villains of Comic Books. Jennifer’s passion for popular culture, geek culture, and feminist politics have led to collaborations with the Museum of Pop Culture, the Seattle International Film Festival, the Comics Arts Conference, Whedon Studies Association, Humanities Washington, and more. She is currently working on a book exploring the evolution of geek culture and how geeks are hacking popular culture for social change. Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Jennifer moved to Seattle in 1997. She is married to Ryan Wilkerson, Vice President, Experience Design at HBO Seattle. They live with their two Maltese, Giles and Wesley. Jennifer is a rebellion built on hope, and has vowed to use her powers only for good.


This is an old revision of the document!
pyHIDS is a little HIDS (with e-mail alerts) written in Python for my personal needs. Tested with Python 3.1 and Python 3.2.
- Getting pyHIDS:
- Ohloh page of pyHIDS;
- freecode page of pyHIDS.
projects/pyhids.1361056464.txt.gz · Last modified: 2013/02/17 00:14 by cedric


Hi everyone! ♥
I'm going away from February 24 to March 5. I'll still be around on social media but I won't be blogging during these days. I'll be back on March 6th.
See you all then!
Experience the world’s most enchanting and timeless love story—retold with a dark and realistic twist.
A BEAST LIVING IN THE SHADOW OF HIS PAST
Reclusive and severely scarred Prince Adam Delacroix has remained hidden inside a secluded, decrepit castle ever since he witnessed his family’s brutal massacre. Cloaked in shadow, with only the lamentations of past ghosts for company, he has abandoned all hope, allowing the world to believe he died on that tragic eve twenty-five years ago.
A BEAUTY IN PURSUIT OF A BETTER FUTURE
Caught in a fierce snowstorm, beautiful and strong-willed Isabelle Rose seeks shelter at a castle—unaware that its beastly and disfigured master is much more than he appears to be. When he imprisons her gravely ill and blind father, she bravely offers herself in his place.
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
Stripped of his emotional defenses, Adam’s humanity reawakens as he encounters a kindred soul in Isabelle. Together they will wade through darkness and discover beauty and passion in the most unlikely of places. But when a monster from Isabelle’s former life threatens their new love, Demrov’s forgotten prince must emerge from his shadows and face the world once more…
Perfect for fans of Beauty and the Beast and The Phantom of the Opera, Beauty of the Beast brings a familiar and well-loved fairy tale to life with a rich setting in the kingdom of Demrov and a captivating, Gothic voice.
Disclaimer: This is an edgy retelling of the classic fairy tale. Due to strong sexual content, profanity, and dark subject matter, including an instance of sexual assault committed by the villain, Beauty of the Beast is not intended for readers under the age of 18.
A darkly irresistible new fantasy set in the infamous Gomorrah Festival, a traveling carnival of debauchery that caters to the strangest of dreams and desires.
Sixteen-year-old Sorina has spent most of her life within the smoldering borders of the Gomorrah Festival. Yet even among the many unusual members of the traveling circus-city, Sorina stands apart as the only illusion-worker born in hundreds of years. This rare talent allows her to create illusions that others can see, feel and touch, with personalities all their own. Her creations are her family, and together they make up the cast of the Festival’s Freak Show.
But no matter how lifelike they may seem, her illusions are still just that—illusions, and not truly real. Or so she always believed…until one of them is murdered.
Desperate to protect her family, Sorina must track down the culprit and determine how they killed a person who doesn’t actually exist. Her search for answers leads her to the self-proclaimed gossip-worker Luca, and their investigation sends them through a haze of political turmoil and forbidden romance, and into the most sinister corners of the Festival. But as the killer continues murdering Sorina’s illusions one by one, she must unravel the horrifying truth before all of her loved ones disappear.
A thrilling debut novel, a literary historical thriller based on the devastating witch hunts in 1640s England conducted by “Witchfinder General” Matthew Hopkins—for readers of Sarah Waters and Katherine Howe.
Before Salem, there was Manningtree. . . .
“This summer, my brother Matthew set himself to killing women, but without ever once breaking the law.”
Essex, England, 1645. With a heavy heart, Alice Hopkins returns to the small town she grew up in. Widowed, with child, and without prospects, she is forced to find refuge at the house of her younger brother, Matthew. In the five years she has been gone, the boy she knew has become a man of influence and wealth—but more has changed than merely his fortunes. Alice fears that even as the cruel burns of a childhood accident still mark his face, something terrible has scarred Matthew’s soul.
There is a new darkness in the town, too—frightened whispers are stirring in the streets, and Alice’s blood runs cold with dread when she discovers that Matthew is a ruthless hunter of suspected witches. Torn between devotion to her brother and horror at what he’s become, Alice is desperate to intervene—and deathly afraid of the consequences. But as Matthew’s reign of terror spreads, Alice must choose between her safety and her soul.
Alone and surrounded by suspicious eyes, Alice seeks out the fuel firing her brother’s brutal mission—and is drawn into the Hopkins family’s past. There she finds secrets nested within secrets: and at their heart, the poisonous truth. Only by putting her own life and liberty in peril can she defeat this darkest of evils—before more innocent women are forced to the gallows.
Inspired by the real-life story of notorious “Witchfinder General” Matthew Hopkins, Beth Underdown’s thrilling debut novel blends spellbinding history with harrowing storytelling for a truly haunting reading experience.
Beth Underdown was born in Rochdale in 1987. She studied at the University of York and then the University of Manchester, where she is now a Lecturer in Creative Writing.
The Witchfinder’s Sister is her first novel, and is out with Viking in the UK and Ballantine in the US in Spring 2017. The book is based on the life of the 1640s witch finder Matthew Hopkins, whom she first came across while reading a book about seventeenth-century midwifery. As you do.


"Barrett Leddy's voices are terrific!"
Katherine Paterson, author of Bridge to Terabithia
"A terrific narration. So grateful to Barrett for bringing his extraordinary talents to this effort."
Joby Warrick, Pulitzer Prize-winning author
"Barrett Leddy plays Rumpelstiltskin with a zany, villainous voice that still manages to make him appear sympathetic."
School Library Journal
"Barrett Leddy narrates and he does a wonderful job...excellent timing and a very upbeat tone."


This is the documentation website for Baseball Sharp, an unofficial .NET wrapper library for the public facing (but undocumented) MLB Stats API. Currently in an early alpha status, Baseball Sharp is in active development and is built on .NET 5.0.
Quick Start Notes:
Check out the getting started guide or dive into the API Documentation.
This package and its author are not affiliated with MLB or any MLB team. This API wrapper interfaces with MLB's Stats API. Use of MLB data is subject to the notice posted at http://gdx.mlb.com/components/copyright.txt.


John Wyndham is one of my favourite writers (his Chrysalids is definitely one of my favourite books) so I fancied re-reading this book when I saw it in the library.
It’s odd how you remember one story and on re-reading a book you find something completely different. I originally remembered the book touching on its end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it scenario and then focussing for most of the book on how the main character works to rebuild his life. This time round then I was surprised to find that much more of the book deals with the actual end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it bit than the rebuilding bit.
Bill is a biologist in 1950’s London, blinded by the sting of a poisonous plant called a Triffid and recuperating in hospital. He is frustrated that the whole world seems to be enjoying a mysterious display of green lights which have lit up the whole world’s skies and caused great excitement and which he cannot see. On the day his bandages are due to come off, he wakes to find London in chaos with everyone appearing to be blind apart from the few people who, like him, missed seeing the green lights.
In a very short period of time the city turns to savagery, with scores of people committing suicide and the rest grabbing and hoarding what they can and trying to hold sighted people prisoner to use as guides. The scene created is one of utter despair as people veer between despair and brutality as they face slow starvation and disease. At the same time, the Triffids, strange plants genetically modified by scientists to provide cheap fuel, turn on the blind population with a vengeance, with their poisoned sting and habit of absorbing dead bodies.
Bill’s natural inclination towards gentlemanliness is challenged as he realises he cannot help everyone and that most people are likely to die regardless of what he does. We then follow him on his journey as he attempts to track down other survivors and make a new life for himself.
Although the book was written in 1951, it does not feel particularly dated. The scenario created is mostly well-imagined and Windham takes the time to explore what the protagonists is going through and what is happening around him. That said, the only thing that does date the book slightly is the language some of the characters use. Every now and again, the characters fall into 1940’s black-and-white movie language:
“It’s silly, but I shall cry when we do go. I shall cry buckets. You mustn’t mind” p.261
This book, and especially its main character, reminded me very much of books like War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells; a very civilised old chap as the hero, a very neat suburban London where all hell is about to be let loose and lots of stereotypes – working class people who speak like Dick Van Dyke does in Mary Poppins and naive posh sorts who are good at getting themselves killed.
Nevertheless an enjoyable and absorbing enough read.