Jane Eyre (by Charlotte Bronte)

Jane Eyre (by Charlotte Bronte) 我国高等院校英语专业开设的课程中，《英美文学史》和《英美文学作品选 读》是两门高年级课程。考虑到师范院校英美文学这门课程不能也无法安排太多 课时，因此学生难免在浩瀚的文学宝库中漫无目的地徜徉，难以寻求落脚点，面 对数以千计的文学作品无从下手。编写这本英国文学作品导读即源于这个初衷。 本材料是根据高等学校英语专业英语教学大纲上所规定的英语专业学生阅读参 考书目编写而成的文学名著导读本，在遴选作品时，我们首先考虑思想内容，同 时也考虑艺术标准和作家在文学史上的地位，因为不可能求大求全，只能选一部 分最重要的作家。希望学生能在了解经典作品的故事梗概的基础上，有选择、有 目的地欣赏文学名著，同时领略经典作品的艺术风采。 编著本材料的作者均为外国语学院英语一系精明能干的青年教师，他们有 李欧，王亮，张琳琳，徐明钰，潘佳宁，徐嗣群，马晓丽，肖凌鹤，门悦，他 们大多数已获硕士学位或正就读硕士学位，本材料由英语二系黄丽娟副教授统一 校正，是他们从教多年的经验和学识结成的硕果。在学院院长范革新教授、张伟 副院长、王艳彪主任的关心、扶植和审阅下得以印刷成册。本材料的体例首先是 作者生平和作品的概括介绍，然后是代表作品的故事梗概，以及相关评价。由于 覆盖面广，历时三个世纪的 流程 快递问题件怎么处理流程河南自建厂房流程下载关于规范招聘需求审批流程制作流程表下载邮件下载流程设计 ，纰漏之处，望可见谅。 1 CONTENTS Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis…………………………………………………………1 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen…………………………………………………..2 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte……………………………………………………….. 2 Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte..............................................................................4 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll…………………………………..6 Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad………………………………………………….7 Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad……………………………………………………………9 Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe…………………………………………………...10 David Copperfield by Charles Dickens………………………………………………11 Adventure of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur C. Doyle………………………………12 Middlemarch by George Eliot…………………………………………………..……13 Howards End by E. M. Forster……………………………………………………….14 A Passage to India by E. M. Forster…………………………………………………15 The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles……………………………………16 The Man of Property by John Galsworthy…………………………………………...17 Lord of the Flies by William Golding………………………………………………..19 The Human Factor by Graham Greene………………………………………………20 Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy…………………………………………21 Jude the obscure by Thomas Hardy…………………………………………………22 Daisy Miller by Henry James………………………………………………………..23 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce…………………………….24 Kim by Rudyard Kipling……………………………………………………………..25 Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence…………………………………………………26 The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing ……………………………………………...27 Nineteen Eighty-four by George Orwell…………………………………………….28 Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott………………………………………………………….31 2 Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson…………………………………….…..33 Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift……………………………………..…………34 Vanity Fair by William M. Thackeray………………………….…………………...35 A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh………………………………………………..36 The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells……………………………………………………37 The Moon and Sixpence by William Somerset Maugham……………………….…..38 Of Human Bondage by William Somerset Maugham…………………………….…39 The Black Prince by Jean Iris Murdoch……………………………………………..39 The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde…………………………………………41 Mrs. Dallloway by Virginia Woolf …………………………………………………42 To the lighthouse by Virginia Woolf …………………………………………………43 My life in China and America by Yung Wing………………………………………..44 The Chinese Painted by Themselves by Tcheng Ki Tong ……………………………44 Peasant Life in China by Fei Hsia Tung …………………………………………….45 My country and my people by Lin Yutang…………………………………………...46 3 Kingsley Amis (1922-1995) • Kingsley Amis is an English writer, born in London, England. His great contribution to literature is Lucky Jim 《幸运的吉姆》. He produced a particularly violent James Bond novel, Colonel Sun, in 1968, under the pseudonym Robert Markham. He graduated from St. John College in Oxford University majoring in British literature with master degree. In 1955, he won Maugham Award.（毛姆奖金）Besides novels, he wrote many poems, plays, short stories and some comments. His works are as follows: Hurry on Down《大学后的漂泊》(1953), which was considered the earliest representative in 1950s, One Fat Englishman《一个英国胖子》(1964), My Enemy’s Enemy《我的敌人的敌人》(1963). His other novels are also very famous like: That Uncertain Feeling 《那种不安的感觉》(1955), Take a Girl like You《爱你这样的姑娘》(1960), Ending Up《死》(1974). He published three volumes of poetry and many science fiction. He inherited the tradition of realism, but wrote with a humorous and ironic tone to express dissatisfaction towards society. Lucky Jim Jim, a luckless lecturer at a provincial British university, tried to make a splash with his pompous boss, Professor Neddy Welch. He is history teacher in a university, but he was still in internship period, and so he had to try his best to please Prof. Welch in order to get the formal qualification of a lecturer. However, in his mind he didn‘t like Welch at all. He pretended to respect Welch and to visit his home as a great honor. Jim is also trying to make it with the woman of his dreams, Christine Callaghan (Daughte of Welch), while simultaneously being pursued by the woman of his nightmares, fellow lecturer Margaret Peel . One (of many) complications is that Christine is the girlfriend of Professor Welch‘s egotistical artist son, Bertrand. Another is that Margaret keeps attempting suicide to get Jim‘s attention. But no matter what he tried, he still couldn‘t get what he wanted. He finally separated with the Welch family. The story came to an end, he had got another job in another university. Although Kingsley Amis‘s acid satire of postwar British academic life has lost some of its bite in the four decades since it was published, it‘s still a rewarding read. And there‘s no denying how big an impact it had on other literary works. Lucky Jim affected people so powerfully that you even remember when you read it, it is like reading Pearl Harbor. This masterpiece vividly shows the social reality and the philosophy of personal relationship through the vivid description about the hero in this novel, Jim. This satiric story leads through scenes of comic catastrophe. 4 Jane Austen (1775–1817) • Jane Austen is an English writer, who first gave the novel its modern character through the treatment of everyday life. Although Austen was widely read in her lifetime, she published her works anonymously. The most urgent preoccupation of her bright, young heroines is courtship and finally marriage. Austen herself never married. Her best-known books include Pride and prejudice 《傲慢与偏见》 (1813) and Emma 《爱玛》(1816). Virginia Woolf called Austen ―the most perfect artist among women.‖ Jane Austen was born in Steventon, Hampshire, where her father, Rev. George Austen, was a rector. Austen‘s heroines are determined to marry wisely and well, but romantic Marianne of Sense and Sensibility《理智与情感》(1811) is a character, who feels intensely about everything and loses her heart to an irresponsible seducer. Her other works are as follows: Mansfield Park《曼斯菲尔德公园》 (1814), Persuasion《觉醒》 (1818), Northanger Abbey《诺桑觉寺》(1818). Pride and Prejudice Pride and Prejudice mainly described the family of Bennet. There are five daughters in this family with no any son. According to law at that time, the legacy of the Bennet should be inherited to a relative of the family, Collins, instead of leaving it to female. Therefore, the whole family was making all efforts to the marriages of the five daughters hoping all of them could find a wealthy family. A bachelor, Bingley, was young, handsome and wealthy. He together with his friend, Darcy who was a little arrogant, moved to the Bennet. Later, Bingley fell in love with the first daughter of the Bennet, Jane. At the same time, Darcy fell in love with the second daughter of the family, Elizabeth. But Elizabeth thgough Darcy was arrogant. She had no good impression on him, and furthermore, she had the kind of bias towards him. Because of many discrepancies and misunderstandings, when Darcy asked for marriage from Elizabeth, she firmly refused him. But through a series of happenings, all the misunderstandings and bias were got rid of. Darcy was not so arrogant as he was in the past. So when he asked for her marriage for the second time, Elizabeth accepted with happiness and pleasure. Pride and Prejudice is a comedy. Austen‘s novels describe a narrow range of society and events: a quiet, prosperous, middle class circle in provincial surroundings 5 which she knew well from her own experience. Her subject matter is also limited, for most of her novels deal with the subject of getting married, which was in fact the central problem for the young leisure-class lady of that age, who had no other choice in her life but to find a good husband. Austen was the first to bring to light what was to be one of the principal themes of the later 19trh-century novel. Austen‘s interest was not in natural scenery, but in human nature; in her description of human nature, instead being fascinated by great waves of elevated emotion, by passion or heroic experience, she focused on the trivial and poetry details of everyday living, which became very interesting g\through her truthful an lively description. Austen is much gifted in character portrayal, especially in drawing young girls whom she understands well. She herself compared her wok to a fine engraving made up on a little piece of ivory only two inches square. The comparison is true. The ivory surface is small enough, but the lady who made the drawings of human life on it was a real artist. Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855) • Charlotte Bronte is an English writer noted for her novel Jane Eyre 《简爱》in 1847, sister of Anne Bronte and Emily Bronte. The three sisters are almost as famous for their short, tragic lives as for their novels. In the past 40 years Charlotte Bronte‘s reputation has risen rapidly, and feminist criticism has done much to show that she was speaking up for oppressed women of every age. Another typical works of Charlotte is Shirley《雪丽》which described the workers‘ movement in 19 century. Charlotte was born in Thornton, Yorkshire, in the north of England, the daughter of an Anglican clergyman who moved with his family to Haworth amid the Yorkshire moors in 1820. After their mother and two eldest children died, Charlotte was left with her sisters Emily and Anne and brother Branwell to the care of their father, and their strict, religious aunt, Elisabeth Branwell. Charlotte attended the Clergy Daughter‘s School at Cowan Bridge in 1824. She returned home next year because of the harsh conditions. In 1831 she went to school at Roe Head, where she later worked as a teacher. However, she fell ill, suffered from melancholia, and gave up this post. Charlotte‘s attempts to earn her living as a governess were hindered by her disabling shyness, her ignorance of normal children, and her yearning to be with her sisters. The collection of poems, Poems By Currer, Ellis And Acton Bell (1846), which Charlotte wrote with her sisters, sold only two copies. By this time she had finished a novel; The Professor《教授》, but it never found a publisher during her lifetime. Undeterred by this rejection, Charlotte began Jane Eyre, which appeared in 1847 and 6 became an immediate success. Jane Eyre The heroine, Jane Eyre, lived together with her aunt after the death of her parents. She was tortured and suffered a lot there, but she was self-independent and rebellious. Later she was send to a boarding school where she received education, while in fact that school was something like a prison especially for keeping orphans. Eight years later, she was employed to St. Field as a governess. Before long, she fell in love with the owner of St. Field, Mr. Rochester. At the moment when they were holing a wedding ceremony in church, truth was told by the brother of Rochester‘s wife, who was mad because of inheritance and was confined to the attic of St. Field. On the other hand, she thought they were coming from rather different family and living background, and they couldn‘t marry. So she went away regardless of Rochester‘s love. She was later saved by St. John, who was a priest and decided to devoted himself to religion. St. John hoped Jane could marry him and went far away together with him to help those who needed help. However, Jane refused since she still couldn‘t forget Rochester. With the love towards Rochester she returned to St. Field finding everything was fired to the ground. Rochester‘s wife set fire to the whole fazenda with herself death in the fire. Rochester not only lost everything in the big fire, but also became blind and lost one arm. While Jane still loved him and finally they got married. Jane Eyre was published in 1847, and this great work brought fame to Charlotte Bronte making her known by the world. Jane Eyre is in the form of a fictional autobiography, with some authentic personal experiences, especially in the earlier chapters. This novel brings up the question of women‘s independence and the equality between men and women through the life experience of the heroine, Jane. The story is told in the first person, and the narrator‘s personality is not just a window through which the events are seen, but it also defines the quality of the events. Emily Bronte (1818-1848) • Emily Bronte is perhaps the greatest writer of the three Bronte sisters - Charlotte, Emily and Anne. Emily Bronte published only one novel, Wuthering Heights 《呼啸山庄》(1847), a story of doomed love and revenge. But that single work places has its place among the masterpieces of English literature. Some of her best lyrics are also rated with the best in English poetry. 7 Emily Bronte was born in Thornton, Yorkshire, on July 30, 1818. Her father was the rector of Haworth from 1820. After their mother died in 1821, the children spent most of their time in reading and composition. Between the years 1824 and 1825 Emily attended the school at Cowan Bridge with Charlotte, and then was largely educated at home. In 1835 Emily attended school at Roe Head, but suffered from homesickness and returned after a few months to the moorland scenery of home. In 1837 she became a governess at Law Hill, near Halifax, where she spent six months. Emily Bronte died of tuberculosis on December 19 1848, having caught cold at her brother Branwell‘s funeral in September. Another important and influential works written by her is Angnes Grey《艾格尼斯•格雷》in 1847. Wuthering Heights The hero of this novel is Heathcliff, who was an orphan brought to Wuthering Heights by the old owner of Wuthering Heights, Earnshaw. He, as a little boy, was discriminatorily treated by Earnshaw‘s son, Hindley and by the servants as well. He suffered not only spiritually but also physically. Since then, Heathcliff decided to retaliate. However, Earnshaw‘s daughter, Catherine felt sorry for Heathcliff because of his biased treatment in Wuthering Heights. They gradually became intimate and loved each other in their minds. But later, Catherine married the young owner, Edgar Linton, from neighbor Thrushcross Grange （画眉山庄）. So Heathcliff went away. Three years later, he came back to retaliate the persons he hated. Therefore, he was in conflict with Edgar Linton. Catherine was seriously ill in bed and when she was giving birth of her baby, she died. But Heathcliff continued to retaliate the members from the two families. Finally, due to the everlasting miss to Catherine he died. Everything was ended and the next generation resumed their relationship and lived in harmony. Wuthering Heights is an extraordinary story of love and revenge. In many respects it is an unconventional work. The two figures are also not conventional people. Catherine is unorthodox according to Victorian standards and Heathcliff represents savage forces that society tried in vain to eliminate. Through Heathcliff and Catherine, Emily Bronte ranges human passions against social conventions with extraordinary violence, while at the same time retaining a cool artistic control. The structure of the novel is also unique: the story is told through independent narrators unidentical with the author, whose personality is therefore completely absent from the book. Like her sister Charlotte, Emily Bronte also brings up the women question, but from another angle. She presents an image of the feminine personality under the social constrictions of eth civilization of the time. 8 Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) ? Lewis Carroll is the pseudonym of English writer and mathematician, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. He was a man of diverse interests - in mathematics, logic, photography, art, theater, religion, medicine, and science. He was happiest in the company of children for whom he created puzzles, clever games, and charming letters. As all Carroll admirers know, his book ―Alice‘s Adventures in Wonderland‖ (1865), became an immediate success and has since been translated into more than eighty languages. The equally popular sequel ―Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There‖, was published in 1872. The ―Alice‖ books are but one example of his wide-ranging authorship. ―The Hunting of the Snark‖, a classic nonsense epic (1876) and ―Euclid and His Modern Rivals‖, a rare example of humorous work concerning mathematics, still entice and intrigue today‘s students. ―Sylvie and Bruno‖, published toward the end of his life contains startling ideas including an 1889 description of weightlessness. The humor, sparkling wit and genius of this Victorian Englishman have lasted for more than a century. His books are among the most quoted works in the English language, and his influence (with that of his illustrator, Sir John Tenniel) can be seen everywhere, from the world of advertising to that of atomic physics. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland爱丽丝漫游奇境记 The novel opens with Alice and her sister sitting on the bank of a river. Feeling absolutely bored since she (Alice) did not have anything to do she decides to take a short walk. Just then she spots a small white rabbit dart across the grass. What amazes her is that the rabbit takes out a small watch from its pocket and exclaims, ―I will be late‖. Alice had never heard a rabbit talk and moreover felt that it was very strange for a rabbit to own a pocket watch. Curiosity takes Alice down the rabbit hole and this leads her into a land where her main pre- occupation seems to be either growing tall or becoming short. Her desire to get through a little door that leads to a beautiful garden takes her on an adventure to the house of a Duchess, a mad tea-party where she meets the Mad Hatter and March Hare. Her encounter with the caterpillar is very helpful because it is through the caterpillar that she manages to know the way in which one could change their height depending on the situation. Her experience in the house of White Rabbit 9 is another interesting episode. On the whole, her adventures prior to entry into the beautiful garden are of a kind that leads her to question herself and the knowledge that she has about herself and of the world. Her entry into the beautiful garden signals the beginning of a turn of events where she is subjected to various questions. It is typical of a situation in which the readers confront the fact that appearances are deceptive. The Queen becomes very symbolic of a character that is a sadist at heart and ironically she is indeed the Queen of Hearts. The game of croquet which represents the cruel rules of the game (land) and the lop-sided legal system (courtroom proceedings) are typical of all that one despises. Alice‘s final realization of reality (that the characters are just a pack of cards) is the realization of the manner in which external features can influence the mind of a human being, especially that of a child. The novel ends on a very typical fairy tale like note. Alice wakes up to realize that she has been dreaming. However the fairy tale end is only for Alice. Her sister is the one who leads her out of the dream to the world of reality. In a waking reality she sees in her mind‘s eye all that Alice had dreamt. In her imagination, time--past, present and future collapse. The past (Alic‘s dream) is re-experienced by Alice‘s sister, who is symbolic of the present. This leads her (Alice‘s sister) to foresee the days when her sister would gather round her a dozen bright and innocent children who would in turn listen with curiosity all about that intriguing land called ―Wonderland‖. Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) ? Joseph Conrad is a Polish-born English novelist and short-story writer, a dreamer, adventurer, and gentleman. In his famous preface to THE NIGGER OF THE ?NARCISSUS‘ (1897) Conrad crystallized his often quoted goal as a writer: ―My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel - it is, above all, to make you see. That - and no more, and it is everything.‖ Among Conrad‘s most popular works are LORD JIM (1900) and HEART OF DARKNESS (1902). Conrad discouraged interpretation of his sea novels through evidence from his life, but several of his novels drew the material, events, and personalities from his own experiences in different parts of the world. While making his first voyages to the West Indies, Conrad met the Corsican Dominic Cervoni, who was later model for his characters filled with a thirst for adventure. 10 Heart of Darkness Heart of Darkness tells the story of Marlow, a sailor, who describes to his shipmates the unusual experience he had traveling upriver in the Congo and the effect it had upon him. Hired by a Continental trading company as a steamboat captain between the outer stations and the interior, Marlow‘s primary mission was to visit and, if necessary, retrieve the mysterious Kurtz, an extraordinarily successful agent who had lost contact and reportedly fallen ill. Marlow tells the men that the entire journey was a sort of dream--lacking any real-world logic, deeply affecting, and difficult to describe in its details. The trip took several months, occurring in stages--a trip along the coast, an overland trek to the Central Station, and finally the riverboat journey to Kurtz‘s outpost. During the entire expedition Marlow was struck by the mistreatment of natives by the Company and its agents, the preponderance of disease, the intimidating presence of the jungle, and the absurdness of the colonial operation carrying on for a relatively small amount of ivory. He began hearing of Kurtz as soon as he arrived, and everything he heard--of Kurtz‘s eloquence, of his high moral principles, of his effectiveness, of his influence in the Company--aroused Marlow‘s interest. The idea of Kurtz began to obsess Marlow. When they arrived at his station, they found he had set himself up as a sort of god to the natives he had once wanted to civilize; he had become more savage than even the natives, taking part in bizarre rites and using violence against the locals to inspire fear and obtain more ivory. Against his wishes, Kurtz was taken back by Marlow and the other whites; his illness overcame him on the return trip, and he died. His last words--‖The horror! The horror!‖--were his realization of the depths to which he had sunk from his noble goals. He entrusted Marlow before his death with his papers, including an article he had written on bringing enlightenment and progress to the natives of the Congo. As evidence of Kurtz‘s decay, however, was the postscript he‘d scribbled at the end of this article: ―Exterminate all the brutes!‖. Marlow was shaken by his encounter with Kurtz, who had, because of his isolation, been exposed to the darkness within himself and had gone mad as a result. When back in Europe, Marlow contacted Kurtz‘s fiancé but could not reveal to her the terrifying last words. Ultimately, Marlow tells the story of how when the thin shell of civilization has fallen away, the corruption and evil within can surface. Seeing the darkness lingering immediately under the surface of a man who thought himself moral forever affected Marlow as a deep nightmare would. As Marlow finishes his story, trailing off as he reaches the lie about Kurtz‘s last words, the sky has grown dark. Heart of Darkness is the finest of all Conrad‘s stories, showing him at the height of his powers as a writer of great vividness, intensity, and sophistication. Set in an atmosphere of mystery and menace, it tells of Marlow‘s journey up the Congo River to meet the remarkable Mr Kurtz. ?An Outpost of Progress‘, ?Karain‘, and ?Youth‘, unavailable in any other edition, echo the theme of the folly of imperial adventure and display Conrad‘s audaciously brilliant insights into human nature and the bases of civilization. 11 Lord Jim The novel opens with a description of Jim, who is an inch or two below six feet and employed as a water-clerk. He is powerfully built and has a deep, loud voice. The son of a clergyman, Jim decides to make a career at sea, passes examinations, and is made an officer of a ship by passing the third test. Soon he is sent on board the Patna as a first mate. The ship has eight hundred pilgrims. Jim is not very friendly with the other officers of the Patna. On a calm night in the Arabian Sea, the Patna collides with a submerged wreck and is badly damaged in its forepeak compartment. Assessing the damage, Jim knows that in no time the water will rush in and the ship will sink. Along with the ship, all the pilgrims will drown. The captain of the ship also senses the danger. At any time the bulkhead of the ship may give way. Jim watches as the crew struggles to lower a boat. He is disgusted, but cannot shout because it will create further panic. Already one of the engineers has died of heart attack. The ship plunges. Jim does not want to desert the pilgrims, but in a moment of indecision and crisis, he jumps into ―an everlasting deep hole.‖ This fills him with guilt and affects him throughout his life. The Patna, however, survives, and the ship, along with the pilgrims, is towed into the Suez by a French warship. The four men who jumped ship are also picked up by Avondale and delivered to an eastern port. The inquiry starts. At the Court of Inquiry, Jim meets Marlow, the narrator of the story. Marlow is attracted to Jim and feels himself responsible for Jim‘s safety. At the inquiry, Jim is found guilty and his certificate is canceled. Marlow decides to rehabilitate Jim. He talks to Stein, a wealthy merchant, and arranges for Jim to go to Patusan. Jim is very happy with the offer and hopes that his past will be buried soon. In Patusan, as adviser and ruler of the Bugis, he wins their trust and soon becomes Tuan Jim. He finds great peace. Marlow visits him in Patusan and finds him very happy there. He is also involved with Jewel, a woman half-native and half-English. However, life does not continue in this manner. The outside world in the form of Brown, a renegade Australian, disrupts Jim‘s idyllic existence. Jim is one of Conrad‘s most complex creations, and Conrad explores, along the vast horizon of this gorgeous novel, the phenomena of shame, guile, retribution_ and redemption. Hoe right it is for our times! Originally published in 1904, Nostromo is considered by many to be Conrad‘s supreme achievement. Set in the imaginary South American republic of Costaguana, the novel reveals the effects of unbridled greed and imperialist interests on many different lives. V.S. Pritchett wrote, ―Nostromo is the most strikingly modern of Conrad‘s novels. It is pervaded by a profound, even morbid sense of insecurity which is the very spirit of our age.‖ 12 Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) ? Daniel Defoe is perhaps best known for his novels, Robinson Crusoe 《鲁滨逊漂流记》and Moll Flanders,《莫尔?弗兰德斯》 but he was also the quintessential ―brilliant scoundrel‖ of the Augustan Age. In rough chronological order, Daniel Defoe was a hosier, soldier, wine merchant, factory owner, bankrupt, spy, pamphleteer, convict, journalist, editor, political flunkey, hack writer and novelist. In 1704, he launched the Review of the Affairs of France and of all Europe, one of the first serious political and economic newspapers in England (it folded in the aftermath of the 1712 Stamp Act). He served as editor on several other newspapers later. As a trader and non-conformist, Defoe‘s produced several political and social commentaries hailing the dawn of the bourgeois-capitalist age. In the service of Robert Harley, a shadowy figure of Queen Anne‘s reign, Defoe‘s produced a detailed three-volume (1724-7) account of the economic, political and social conditions of the cities and country-sides of Great Britain. His talent was dissipated in later years when, as a political journalist, he compromised his independence as a reporter in return for political favors. Robinson Crusoe Robinson Crusoe, born in York, is the third son in his family. His parents wish to make a lawyer out of young Cru soe, but Crusoe has other plans. His one great desire is to become a sailor and go to sea. The first foreshadows what lies ahead for the hero. Although his father refuses to give him permission to go to sea, Crusoe runs away to become a sailor. Although almost all of his initial forays into sea life are disastrous, Crusoe is not deterred. During one of his trips, the Moors capture his ship, and Crusoe is taken as a slave. He finally escapes in a boat with another young man. After some interesting adventures, he is rescued by a Portuguese ship. He next lands in Brazil, where his enterprising ways help him to succeed; he becomes a planter and prospers in a few years time. Still not satisfied with his success, he decides to become a slave trader in order to get cheap labor for his plantation. As he travels by boat to find slaves, a storm hits, and his ship is wrecked. All the sailors are drowned except for Crusoe, who is washed ashore on an uninhabited island. The novel is basically about the life and adventures of Crusoe on the island, where he lives for the next twenty-eight years. Crusoe salvages as much as he can from the ship. He builds a home, strong fortifications, plows the land, cultivates corn and rice, and raises goats. His peaceful existence is interrupted when savages land on the island. 13 Crusoe rescues Friday, one of the savages‘ prisoners, whom he educates and converts to Christianity. When the cannibals visit next, Friday and Crusoe rescue two of their prisoners, a Spaniard and a savage. The savage turns out to be Friday‘s father. An expedition is sent to the mainland in a canoe to bring back sixteen Spaniards who have been marooned there. An English ship visits the coast, and a few of its crew come ashore in a boat. Crusoe realizes that the visitors are mutineers and that the captain and men loyal to him are being held as prisoners. With good planning, Crusoe and Friday subdue the mutineers and rescue the captain and his crew. When the ship sends another boat with men ashore, they are also tricked and captured by Crusoe‘s men. Now, all that stands in the way of Crusoe‘s deliverance is the remaining men on the ship. In a final assault, the ship is captured, and the rebel captain is killed. Soon Crusoe sails from the island in the capture ship and finally reaches England. Back home, Crusoe finds that most of his family members have died. He also learns that his plantation in Brazil has thrived during his absence. As a result, he is enormously wealthy. The older, mature Crusoe is gracious in his new status and generous towards his old friends and the remaining members of his family. There are, however, some more adventures in life for Crusoe and his friends as they travel the land route through Europe to Calais. In the end, Crusoe settles down, gets married, and has three children. Many years later he visits his old island and finds it has been settled. He promises to send the inhabitants more essential things from Brazil. On this note the story ends. Charles Dickens (1812-1870)? Charles Dickens is an English novelist who is generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens‘s works are characterized by attacks on social evils, injustice, and hypocrisy. He had also experienced in his youth oppression, when he was forced to end school in early teens and work in a factory. Dickens‘s good, bad, and comic characters, such as the cruel miser Scrooge, the aspiring novelist David Copperfield, 《大卫?科波菲尔》or the trusting and innocent Mr. Pickwick, have fascinated generations of readers. Dickens is probably the best known and most popular of British 19th century novelists. This is due not only to the quality of his writing in itself but also to the 14 widespread adaptation of his work for the stage and the screen, something already foreshadowed by Dickens‘ own highly successful second career as a public performer in recitals of readings from his own work, an activity that took him all over Britain and North America. David Copperfield• David‘s troubles begin at birth. His father dies six months before he is born. Betsey Trotwood, David‘s eccentric aunt, arrives to help Clara Copperfield deliver her baby, but storms out in a huff when she learns that the baby is a boy, not a girl. Nonetheless, David has a happy early childhood, raised by his loving mother, Clara. David grows up and begins his career as a lawyer. His past returns to haunt him when he falls in love with Dora Spenlow, only to discover that her chaperone is Mr. Murdstone‘s bleak sister, Jane. Forbidden to marry by Dora‘s father, the two lovers exchange letters and confidences. When Dora‘s father dies, he leaves his family penniless. Dora and David are free to marry. Their marriage is strained. Dora is frail and cannot manage the household. Meanwhile, David‘s old friend Mr. Micawber uncovers the sinister blackmail plans of Uriah Heep. Micawber exposes Heep as a liar and a thief, saving Agnes Wickfield (a childhood friend of David‘s) and her father from his clutches. Dora‘s frailty leads to her death. David runs away to Switzerland, where his writing career takes off. When he meets Murdstone at a restaurant, he is finally able to stand up to his stepfather, vowing to write and publish the true tale of Mr. Murdstone‘s wretched behavior. Free at last from his childhood fears, David returns to England and hurries to Agnes. She admits that she has loved David since they first met. The two true lovers are united at last. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) • • Arthur C. Doyle is a British writer, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, who is the best-known detective in literature and the embodiment of sharp reasoning. Doyle himself was not a good example of rational personality: he believed in fairies and was interested in occultism. Sherlock Holmes stories have been translated into more than fifty languages, and made into plays, films, radio and television series, a musical comedy, a ballet, cartoons, comic books, and advertisement. By 1920 Doyle was one of the most highly paid writers in the world. 15 Doyle qualified as doctor in 1885. After graduation Doyle practiced medicine as an eye specialist at Southsea near Porsmouth in Hampshire until 1891 when he became a full time writer. His first story, an illustrated tale of a man and a tiger, Doyle had produced at the age of six. Doyle‘s first novel about Holmes, A STUDY IN SCARLET, was published in 1887 in Beeton‘s Christmas Annual. The story was written in three weeks in 1886. Conan Doyle‘s other publications include plays, verse, memoirs, short stories, and several historical novels and supernatural and speculative fiction. Adventure of Sherlock Holmes In the twelve intriguing stories, Sherlock Homes and his trusty friend Dr. Watson solve crimes amid the sinister and foggy streets of Victorian London. ―The Red-Headed League‖ first appeared in a popular British magazine, the Strand, in August of 1891. It was republished in 1892, along with eleven other Sherlock Holmes stories, in the collection The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes 《 》. Its style and structure make it a nearly perfect example of the modern detective story, first devised by Edgar Allan Poe fifty years previously. Doyle‘s ingenious plots and captivating central characters, Holmes and his sidekick Watson, brought the author literary success in his own time. Further, the Sherlock Holmes stories provided later writers with models for their own work. The existence of today‘s popular detective tales, whether in the form of books, movies, or television shows, are in large part due to Doyle‘s influence. He commented: ―My contention is that Sherlock Holmes is literature on a humble but not ignoble level, whereas the mystery writers most in vogue now are not. The old stories are literature, not because of the conjuring tricks and the puzzles, not because of the lively melodrama, which they have in common with many other detective stories, but the virtue of imagination and style. They are fairy-tales, as Conan Doyle intimated in his preface to his last collection, and they are among the most amusing of fairy-tales and not among the least distinguished.‖ (Edmund Wilson in Classics and Commercials, 1950) George Eliot (1857-1876) • As novelist, translator, essayist, poet and sage, George Eliot [1819-1880] had a powerful influence on nineteenth-century British literature and culture, and remains one of the most influential women writers in English literary 16 history. (Born Mary Anne Evans, Eliot chose her pen-name out of admiration for the French woman writer George Sand. This summary will refer to her throughout by her chosen profession name, George Eliot.) Family and friends thought her an intelligent and introspective child from a very early age, and her education (both at boarding schools and under her own direction) made her remarkably well read in literature and philosophy by her early twenties. She had also mastered Greek, Latin, Italian and German by this time. MiddleMarch Dorothea Brooks, a pious young woman, lives with her younger sister and uncle at Tipton Grange. She thinks she is in love with a deeply intellectual older man, Casaubon. After marrying him, she discovers he is not what she wanted nor is the marriage, but it is what she has. Her husband‘s second cousin, Ladislaw, visits them on their honeymoon trip, innocently prompting jealousy in the older man. Casaubon adds a codicil to his will that requires his young widow to relinquish the substantial money and property he will leave her should she marry Ladislaw at anytime. Often called the greatest nineteenth-century British novelist, George Eliot (the pen name of Mary Ann Evans) created in Middlemarch a vast panorama of life in a provincial Midlands town. At the story‘s center stands the intellectual and idealistic Dorothea Brooke—a character who in many ways resembles Eliot herself. But the very qualities that set Dorothea apart from the materialistic, mean-spirited society around her also lead her into a disastrous marriage with a man she mistakes for her soul mate. In a parallel story, young doctor Tertius Lydgate, who is equally idealistic, falls in love with the pretty but vain and superficial Rosamund Vincy, whom he marries to his ruin. Eliot surrounds her main figures with a gallery of characters drawn from every social class, from laborers and shopkeepers to the rising middle class to members of the wealthy, landed gentry. Together they form an extraordinarily rich and precisely detailed portrait of English provincial life in the 1830s. But Dorothea‘s and Lydgate‘s struggles to retain their moral integrity in the midst of temptation and tragedy remind us that their world is very much like our own. Strikingly modern in its painful ironies and psychological insight, Middlemarch was pivotal in the shaping of twentieth-century literary realism. E. M. Foster (1879-1970) E. M. E. M. Foster is an English author and critic, member of 17 Bloomsbury group and friend of Virginia Woolf. After gaining fame as a novelist, Forster spent his 46 remaining years publishing mainly short stories and non-fiction. Of his five important novels four appeared before World War I. Forster‘s major concern was that individuals should ?connect the prose with the passion‘ within themselves, and that one of the most exacting aspect of the novel is prophecy. Howards End Howards End begins with Helen Schlegel‘s brief affair with Paul Wilcox. In its wake, Helen‘s Aunt Juley travels to Howards End, the Wilcox home, to discuss the relationship with the Wilcoxes, not knowing that it has already ended. The Wilcoxes react with horror to news of the affair, believing, unlike the Schlegels, that Paul must make his fortune before he marries. Helen, her romance with Paul and the rest of the Wilcox family over, returns to the Schlegel house, Wickham Place, and she and her sister Margaret resume their old life together. Howards End depicts the life and manners of the upper middle class that Forster knew from his own life. He portrayed the shortcomings as well as the amenities of society along side the frequent trivialities he saw. He felt that people need not be static even when a society was. A sincere individual could still achieve a morality above what his surroundings might seem to permit. In Howards End, Forster is ―preoccupied with the well-being of an entire society. He not only analyzed the various strata of the British upper class, he also showed that even a sincere individual would encounter great difficulty in acquiring wholeness in the fractured modern age‖. The primary character in Howards End is Margaret Schlegel. She and her sister, Helen, and brother Tibby, represent the middle level of middle class society, independent, but not wealthy. Henry Wilcox, whom Margaret eventually marries, and his family represent the upper level of the middle class. Two other characters of importance are Leonard and Jacky Bast, who live in genteel poverty. A Passage to India《印度之行》 The scene in the novel is an Indian city, Chandrapore and India is under British rule. Aziz, a Muslim Indian doctor issues an impulsive invitation to the British visitors to visit the local Marabar Caves. The climax of the book occurs when this visit takes place. Heat and the caves themselves cause Mrs Moore and Adela to suffer traumatic experiences. Adela has an attack of hysteria that temporarily convinces her that Aziz has attempted to rape her. This proposed rape brings the already strained relations between the British and the Indians to a crisis. Although the crisis is resolved by Adela‘s return to sanity in the witness box the author remains doubt about the possibility of understanding between the peoples of the two countries. The novel is usually regarded as Forster‘s masterpiece. The novel has psychological, political, and religious dimensions and it contrasts European and Asian philosophies of life. 18 John Fowels (1926 – 2005 )• John Fowels was born at Leighton-on-Sea, Essex in 1926, where he lived until the outbreak of the Second World War. He was educated at Bedford School and New College, Oxford, where he read French and German. After graduating he taught English at the University of Poitiers and then at the Anagyriou School at Spetses. He became a full-time writer in 1963. His work has more recently been termed ?historiographic metafiction‘ - with links back to late modernism‘s experimentalism, and associations with magical realism and the ?fabulation‘ of authors such as Pynchon and Rushdie. Fowles‘s novels thus mark an important literary development, although his profile declined in later years and he himself admitted that ―I think I have more or less written myself out.‖ He was also a translator, essayist and poet. The French Lieutenant’s women At the beginning of the novel, Charles Smithson and Ernestina Freeman are engaged to be married. Charles is an upper-class aristocrat and Ernestina is a wealthy heiress. They meet Sarah Woodruff, an unemployed governess and the scarlet woman of Lyme. Charles is struck by this woman who ―had been dumped by her French lover and now wandered the shores in the hope that he would return someday.‖ Sarah is employed as a lady‘s companion by Mrs. Poulteney of Malborough House. Her stay is miserable due to Mrs. Poulteney and the housekeeper, Mrs. Fairley, who keeps spying on Sarah. They attempt to restrict her freedom in the name of making her repent for her sins. Meanwhile, Charles is intrigued by the outcast. His interest in her grows to be an obsession. An amateur paleontologist, he meets her on several occasions at Ware Commons. He wants to help her but his interest is routed in the fact that he finds her singularly different from other Victorian woman. As on outcast, Sarah does not follow societal norms yet she insists on Charles help. Dr. Grogan, Charles friend, sympathizes with her situation but believes that Sarah wants Charles?constant attention. He diagnoses her condition as a mental illness called melancholia and wants to get her institutionalized. Meanwhile, Sarah has come to depend on Charles who is himself going through a change. He is beginning to question his age‘s conventions and questioning himself. He urges Sarah to leave Lyme and go to Exeter where she will have more freedom to live an unconventional life. Sarah takes his advice but Charles cannot forget her. At the same time, he feels guilty for even thinking about her. He does not love Ernestina 19 and is marrying her solely for her wealth. He thinks their relationship is nothing more than a facade. Fowles constantly interrupts the narrative by making authorial comments with a twentieth century perspective. The narrative action digresses back and forth from the Victorian Age to the twentieth century in time. Fowles is writing a novel set in the nineteenth-century romantic literary genre but with a twentieth century perspective. Charles finds the prospect of living a life as a dutiful husband and son-in-law unappealing. His uncle disinherits him, so he has no money and title. He wants to have a more meaningful life, unrestricted by traditions. He makes the ultimate decision of his life by breaking his engagement to Ernestina and follows Sarah to Exeter, where they consummate their relationship. When he returns for her, after informing Ernestina of the break-up, he learns that she has left with no forwarding address. His valet Sam betrays him. In despair, Charles reaches Sarah but to no avail. Ernestina‘s father makes him sign a humiliating statement of guilt for breaking the marriage contract and Charles?friend and solicitor prevails upon him to leave England for some time. Charles travels the world but prefers America, which he finds refreshingly modern compared to England. While touring America, he receives word that Sarah has been found. He hurries back to England and finds Sarah living with the Rossettis. She has changed drastically, and Charles finds this difficult to accept. Fowles gives two endings to the novel. In the conventional ending, Charles meets his baby daughter and Sarah and he reunite. They live happily ever after like any other hero and heroine in a romantic novel. The other ending is unconventional and more realistic, an ending more apt for a twentieth century novel. Charles rejects the new Sarah, yet despite feeling bitter and alienated, he has found a new awareness and strength within himself. Because of his involvement with Sarah, Charles has changed from his old conventional self, rejecting the values that sought to confine him. John Galsworthy (1867 – 1933) • John Galsworthy is a novelist, dramatist and recipient of Nobel Prize for literature in 1932. As a novelist Galsworthy is chiefly known for his roman fleuve, The Forsyte Saga《福尔赛世家》. The first novel of this vast work appeared in 1906. The Man of Property was a harsh criticism of the upper middle classes, Galsworthy‘s own background. Galsworthy did not immediately continue it; 20 fifteen years and with them the First World War intervened until he resumed work on the history of the Forsytes with In Chancery《骑虎》 (1920) and To Let 《出租》(1921). Meanwhile he had written a considerable number of novels, short stories, and plays. The Forsyte Saga was continued by the three volumes of A Modern Comedy,《现代喜 剧》 The White Monkey《白猿》 (1924), The Silver Spoon《银匙》 (1926), Swan Song 《天鹅曲》(1928), and its two interludes A Silent Wooing and Passersby. Galsworthy was a dramatist of considerable technical skill. His plays often took up specific social grievances such as the double standard of justice as applied to the upper and lower classes in The Silver Box 《银匣》(1906) and the confrontation of capital and labour in Strife《争斗》 (1909). Justice 《公平》(1910), his most famous play, led to a prison reform in England. Galsworthy‘s reaction o the First World War found its expression in The Mob (1914), in which the voice of a statesman is drowned in the madness of the war-hungry masses; and in enmity of the two families of The Skin Game (1920). Generally speaking, Galsworthy was a conventional writer, having inherited the traditions of the Victorian novelists of the realism. He focused on plot development and character portrayal. As a playwright, Galsworthy was concerned with moral issues. Conrad described his as a humanitarian moralist, and it is true that he champions the victim of injustice, albeit in a rather cold and aloof judicial manner. The Man of Property The Man of Property was a harsh criticism of the upper middle classes, Galsworthy‘s own background. Galsworthy attacks the Forsytes through the character of Soames Forsyte, a solicitor who considers his wife Irene a mere form of property. Irene finds her husband physically unattractive and falls in love with a young architect who dies. In 1904, he published the novel The Island Pharisees 《》under his own name. That same year, his father passed away and Galsworthy became financially independent. He immediately married Ada Person Cooper, with whom he had lived in secret for nearly 10 years to escape his father‘s disapproval. Her previous, unhappy marriage to Galsworthy‘s cousin, Arthur, formed the basis for The Man of Property (1906), the novel that was to become the first installment of The Forsyte Saga, his epic chronicle of three generations of the British middle-class. The Times Literary Supplement《》 hailed The Man of Property as ―a new type of novel,‖ one unafraid to take satiric swipes at social privilege. 21 William Golding (1911 – 1993) is a novelist. Golding joined the Royal Navy and entered the World War Two and was greatly shocked by the cruelty of the war. Golding had no interest in the realism of daily life, but turned instead to symbolism to express his view of life. His first novel, for example, Lord of the Flies is a symbolical moral fable. Golding‘s first published novel was Lord of the Flies (1954; film 1963 and 1990), the story of a group of schoolboys isolated on a coral island who revert to savagery. Its imaginative and brutal depiction of the rapid and inevitable dissolution of social mores aroused widespread interest. The Inheritors (1955), set in the last days of Neanderthal man, is another story of the essential violence and depravity of human nature. The guilt-filled reflections of a naval officer, his ship torpedoed, who faces an agonizing death are the subject of Pincher Martin (1956). Two other novels, Free Fall (1959) and The Spire (1964), also demonstrate Golding‘s belief that ―man produces evil as a bee produces honey.‖ Darkness Visible (1979) tells the story of a boy horribly burned in the London blitz during World War II. His later works include Rites of Passage (1980), which won the Booker McConnell Prize, and its sequels, Close Quarters (1987) and Fire Down Below (1989). Golding was knighted in 1988. Golding received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1983. Lord of Flies Set during World War II, the story describes the plight of a group of British schoolboys stranded on a Pacific island after their plane was shot down en route to England. Two of the boys, Ralph and Piggy, discover a conch in the lagoon near the beach and use it to call all the other survivors, setting up a mock democratic government with Ralph as leader. Piggy continues to advise and give logic and reason to Ralph‘s rule. A signal fire, kindled with the lens of Piggy‘s glasses, is established on the mountain to call passing ships to their rescue while shelters are constructed. However, the school‘s choir leader, Jack, soon becomes obsessed with hunting the pigs of the island and loses sight of Ralph‘s democratic vision. Further discord results with an increasing fear of a supposed ―beast‖ on the island, stemming particularly from the younger boys dubbed the ―littluns.‖ Jack eventually abandons any thought of being rescued, content instead with hunting and killing pigs with his choir boys turned into hunters. Jack later speaks out of turn during their assembly meetings and eventually leaves the group to start a ―tribe.‖ Other children gradually defect to his side except for Ralph, Piggy, Simon and the twins Samneric (Sam and Eric). One by 22 one these children are eliminated from the opposition. Upon discovering the beast the boys had all feared on the mountain is only the rotting corpse of a pilot whose plane had been shot down near the island, Simon runs down from the mountain to share this happy news. However the boys (including Ralph, Piggy, and Samneric) are all, following Jack‘s example, caught up in a primal ritual celebrating the murder of a pig they have just eaten and Simon runs into the midst of this. Mistaken to be the beast, Simon is killed by the boys‘ spears. Ralph, Piggy, and Samneric remain resistant to joining Jack‘s tribe. They attempt to cling to the democracy they had set up, still using the conch to call an assembly and struggling to keep a signal fire burning on the beach. Then Jack and his hunters attack the four and steal Piggy‘s glasses to kindle the fire he needs for pig-roasting fires. Angry and blinded, Piggy decides to go to the place on the island called Castle Rock where the hunters have set up a base. Reluctantly, Ralph and Samneric agree and upon arriving Roger stops them at the gate. Jack emerges from the forest and begins to fight with Ralph while Piggy stands nearby shrieking in fear, wanting only for his sight be restored by retrieving his glasses. Samneric are seized at Jack‘s command by the hunters and Roger, Jack‘s second-in-command, drops a large boulder on the head of Piggy, killing him and shattering the conch which he holds in his hands. Ralph alone is left to flee, with no friends left to aid him. Samneric have become hunters as well and betray the secret of his hiding place in the forest to Jack. The island is set ablaze and hunters fan out to kill Ralph with their spears, the sole remaining opposition to their tribe, as even now he tries to cling to his old democratic ideas. Running wildly and suddenly becoming savage himself, Ralph stabs with his spear at the hunters pursuing him, chased by all until he at last comes to the beach. The shelters he had built with such labor are in flames and, falling at last upon the sand with the sea before him and nowhere left to run, Ralph looks up to see a naval officer. Rescue comes at last to the boys‘ aid, seeing the smoke from the mighty blaze set by Jack‘s hunters after Ralph‘s signal fire had earlier failed to alert anyone of their presence. When the officer expresses disapproval for the savage state and chaos to which the boys have reverted, Ralph breaks down in tears. Soon, all the hunters begin crying at the sight of grown-ups on the beach. Ralph weeps for ―the end of innocence‖ and ―the darkness of man‘s heart.‖ Lord of the Flies commands a pessimistic outlook that seems to show that man is inherently tied to society, and without it, we would likely return to savagery. Graham Greene(1904-1991) ? Graham Greene is an English novelist, short-story writer, playwright, journalist, book reviewer, film critic, newspaper editor, and world traveler, Henry 23 Graham Greene was one of the most prolific and widely read novelists of his day, with said popularity enduring unabated into the present. Possessed of a keen insight into and a firsthand knowledge of that which would assuredly translate into commercial success, Greene parlayed his own experiences in the British Foreign Office and SIS into a series of espionage and spy novels, (and subsequent films), replete with those attributes demanded by his readers: love and hate; fear, terror, panic, and dread; treachery and betrayal; action, adventure, and suspense; and, of course, exotic locales. His religious sentiments were made manifest in such works as Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory, Heart of the Matter, and The End of the Affair. The Human Factor With six months on The New York Times bestseller list, The Human Factor is considered Greene‘s chef-d‘oeuvre in the genre of modern spy fiction. A story of betrayal, love, and death, The Human Factor endeavors to present, minus the superfluous glamour, glitz, and overt gadgetry of Ian Fleming‘s Agent 007, a pragmatic portrait of Cold War espionage via masterful character development, plausible dialogue, and ingenious plot twists. It is a spy novel about a British double agent who‘s forced to defect to Russia. When a leak in the British Secret Service is discovered in Russia, two agents become the target of the government‘s investigation: Arthur Davis, a high living bachelor who‘s attempts at a secret rendezvous arouse the suspicions of his superiors; and Maurice Castle, who eight years earlier had defied his government by falling in love with an African woman and helping her escape to England to become his wife. One of the men is selling secrets to the communists, but in the course of the investigation, the double agent is eliminated. Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) ? Thomas Hardy is an English poet and novelist, famous for his depictions of the imaginary county ―Wessex‖ . Hardy‘s work reflected his stoical pessimism and sense of tragedy in human life. Unable to find a public for his poetry, Hardy turned to fiction. His first novel, The Poor Man And The Lady, was written in 1867, but the book was rejected by many 24 publishers and he destroyed the manuscript. His first book that gained notice, was Far From The Madding Crowd 《远离尘嚣》(1874). After its success Hardy devoted himself entirely to writing and produced a series of novels, among them The Return Of The Native 《还乡》(1878) and The Mayor Of Casterbridge 《卡斯特桥市长》 (1886). Hardy succeeded on the death of his friend George Meredith to the presidency of the Society of Authors in 1909. King George V conferred on him the Order of Merit and he received in 1912 the gold medal of the Royal Society of Literature. Tess of the d’Urbervilles《德伯家的苔丝》 Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) is generally regarded as Hardy‘s finest novel. A brilliant tale of seduction, love, betrayal, and murder, Tess of the d‘Ubervilles yields to narrative convention by punishing Tess‘s sin, but boldly exposes this standard denouement of unforgiving morality as cruelly unjust. Throughout, Hardy‘s most lyrical and atmospheric language frames his shattering narrative. The novel centers around a young woman who struggles to find her place in society. When it is discovered that the low-class Durbeyfield family is in reality the d‘Urbervilles, the last of a famous bloodline that dates back hundreds of years, the mother sends her eldest daughter, Tess, to beg money from relations with the obvious desire that Tess wed the rich Mr. d‘Urberville. Thus begins a tale of woe in which a wealthy man cruelly mistreats a poor girl. Tess is taken advantage of by Mr. d‘Urberville and leaves his house, returning home to have their child, who subsequently dies. Throughout the rest of this fascinating novel, Tess is tormented by guilt at the thought of her impurity and vows to never marry. She is tested when she meets Angel, the clever son of a priest, and falls in love with him. After days of pleading, Tess gives in to Angel and consents to marry him. Angel deserts Tess when he finds the innocent country girl he fell in love with is not so pure. Jude the Obscure This story focuses on the main character Jude Fawley and his hopes and aspirations to become a scholar. Sadly, due to his social class, he is rejected by the universities and must become a common worker. Jude unwisely marries a rather audacious and shameless woman whom he later splits with. After their separation, Jude moves away and falls in love with his cousin Sue. After Sue learns that Jude is married, she becomes angry and marries a man that she doesn‘t love. Later, Sue realizes that she is unhappy and leaves her husband. Finally, Sue proclaims her love to Jude and they both get divorces from their previous spouses. However, Sue and Jude are too fearful to marry each other and they begin to live together. Soon, Jude‘s ex-wife tells his that he has a son that will be coming to live with him. This proposes a problem with Sue but she overcomes her fears and loves the boy nonetheless. In a few years, Jude and Sue have 2 children of their own. However, society rejects them and the family is forced to move to another town where they will not be well known. No inn will take the family in at the new town. Finally, an inn receives them but only allows Sue and 25 the children to stay. Sue, depressed and lonely, confides in Jude‘s son that she is pregnant. The child is overcome with grief because they are very poor and will become worse off after the new arrival. The next morning Sue leaves to find Jude so they can get a new lodging. When they return, they find the corpses of their children hanging from hooks in the room. Jude‘s child murdered his brother and sister and took his own life, so that his parents wouldn‘t have to be weighted down by them. In the end, Sue and Jude are torn apart by the deaths of their children. You‘ll have to read the rest to find out the end of this terribly picturesque tragedy. Henry James (1843-1916) Henry James is an American-born writer, gifted with talents in literature, psychology, and philosophy. James wrote 20 novels, 112 stories, 12 plays and a number of works of literary criticism. Among James‘ masterpieces are Daisy Miller (1879), where the young and innocent American, Daisy finds her values in conflict with European sophistication Although James is best known for his novels, his essays are now attracting a more general audience. Daisy Miller • At a hotel in the resort town of Vevey, Switzerland, a young American named Winterbourne meets a rich, pretty American girl named Daisy Miller, who is traveling around Europe with her mother and her younger brother, Randolph. Winterbourne, who has lived in Geneva most of his life, is both charmed and mystified by Daisy, who is less proper than the European girls he has encountered. She seems wonderfully spontaneous, if a little crass and ―uncultivated.‖ Despite the fact that Mrs. Costello, his aunt, strongly disapproves of the Millers and flatly refuses to be introduced to Daisy, Winterbourne spends time with Daisy at Vevey and even accompanies her, unchaperoned, to Chillon Castle, a famous local tourist attraction. The following winter, Winterbourne goes to Rome, knowing Daisy will be there, and is distressed to learn from his aunt that she has taken up with a number of well-known fortune hunters and become the talk of the town. She has one suitor in particular, a handsome Italian named Mr. Giovanelli, of uncertain background, whose conduct with Daisy mystifies Winterbourne and scandalizes the American community in Rome. Among those scandalized is Mrs. Walker, who is at the center of Rome‘s fashionable society. Both Mrs. Walker and Winterbourne attempt to warn Daisy about the effect her behavior is having on her reputation, but she refuses to listen. As Daisy spends 26 increasingly more time with Mr. Giovanelli, Winterbourne begins to have doubts about her character and how to interpret her behavior. He also becomes uncertain about the nature of Daisy‘s relationship with Mr. Giovanelli. Sometimes Daisy tells him they are engaged, and other times she tells him they are not. One night, on his way home from a dinner party, Winterbourne passes the Coliseum and decides to look at it by moonlight, braving the bad night air that is known to cause ―Roman fever,‖ which is malaria. He finds Daisy and Mr. Giovanelli there and immediately comes to the conclusion that she is too lacking in self-respect to bother about. Winterbourne is still concerned for Daisy‘s health, however, and he reproaches Giovanelli and urges him to get her safely home. A few days later, Daisy becomes gravely ill, and she dies soon after. Before dying, she gives her mother a message to pass on to Winterbourne that indicates that she cared what he thought about her after all. At the time, he does not understand it, but a year later, still thinking about Daisy, he tells his aunt that he made a great mistake and has lived in Europe too long. Nevertheless, he returns to Geneva and his former life. James Joyce (1882-1941) • James Joyce is an Irish novelist and poet. Educated at a Jesuit boarding school and University College, Dublin, he soon became dissatisfied with the constrictions and what he considered the bigotry of Irish Roman Catholicism and left Ireland in 1904. Thereafter he lived mainly in Trieste, Zurich, and Paris with Nora Barnacle, whom he married in 1931. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man The title of the novel suggests a character study with strong autobiographical elements. The novel can be read as a naturalistic account of the hero‘s bitter experiences and his final artistic and spiritual liberation. The story develops around the life of a middles-class Irish boy, Stephen Dedalus, from his infancy to his departure from Ireland some twenty years later. Published in 1916, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man established its then thirty-two-year-old author, James Joyce, as a leading figure in the international movement known as literary modernism. The title describes the book‘s subject quite accurately. On one level, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man can be read as what the Germans call a Bildungsroman, or coming-of-age novel. Set in Ireland in the late nineteenth century, Portrait is a semi-autobiographical 27 novel about the education of a young Irishman, Stephen Dedalus, whose background has much in common with Joyce‘s. Stephen‘s education includes not only his formal schooling but also his moral, emotional, and intellectual development as he observes and reacts to the world around him. At the center of the story is Stephen‘s rejection of his Roman Catholic upbringing and his growing confidence as a writer. But the book‘s significance does not lie only in its portrayal of a sensitive and complex young man or in its use of autobiographical detail. More than this, Portrait is Joyce‘s deliberate attempt to create a new kind of novel that does not rely on conventional narrative techniques. Rather than telling a story with a coherent plot and a traditional beginning, middle, and end, Joyce presents selected decisive moments in the life of his hero without the kind of transitional material that marked most novels written up to that time. The ―portrait‖ of the title is actually a series of portraits, each showing Stephen at a different stage of development. And, although this story is told in a third-person narrative, it is filtered through Stephen‘s consciousness. Finally, the book can be read as Joyce‘s artistic manifesto and a declaration of independence—independence from what Joyce considered the restrictive social background of Catholic Ireland and from the conventions that had previously governed the novel as a literary genre. More than eighty years after its publication, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man continues to be regarded as a central text of early twentieth century modernism. Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) 罗德亚德•吉卜林 Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay, but educated in England at the United Services College, Westward Ho, Bideford. In 1882 he returned to India, where he worked for Anglo-Indian newspapers. His literary career began with Departmental Ditties (1886), but subsequently he became chiefly known as a writer of short stories. A prolific writer, he achieved fame quickly. Kipling was the poet of the British Empire and its yeoman, the common soldier, whom he glorified in many of his works, in particular Plain Tales from the Hills (1888) and Soldiers Three (1888), collections of short stories with roughly and affectionately drawn soldier portraits. His Barrack Room Ballads (1892) were written for, as much as about, the common soldier. In 1894 appeared his Jungle Book, which became a children‘s classic all over the world. Kim (1901), the story of Kimball O‘Hara and his adventures in the Himalayas, is perhaps his most felicitous work. During the First World War Kipling wrote some propaganda books. His collected poems appeared in 1933. Rudyard Kipling died on January 18, 1936. 28 Kim Kim is Rudyard Kipling‘s most enduringly successful serious novel. It was published in 1901 and is the story of the orphaned son of a soldier in the Irish regiment. His full name is Kimball O‘Hara, but he is known, as the title suggests, as Kim. The novel takes place in India, then a British colony, and Kim spends his childhood as a waif in Lahore where he meets a Tibetan Lama or holy man who is on a quest to find a mystical river. Kim joins him on his journey, but meets his father‘s old regiment. He is adopted by them and is sent to a school although in his holidays he continues with his wandering. Partly as a result of his spirited lifestyle, Kim is selected by Colonel Creighton of the Ethnological Survey who notices his promise as a secret agent for the British. Under the instruction of the Indian, Hurree Babu, he becomes a distinguished member of the secret service, getting hold of the papers of some Russian spies in the Himalayas. The novel is notable for its detailed portrait of Indian life, its religions and some of the humbler aspects of a land with a great population and associated problems. Some of Kipling‘s jingoism does show through in the latter stages of the novel, however, but this does not detract much from what is a highly successful study of life in India and of a boy who combines both Oriental and Irish and therefore East and West in his nature. Kim is a masterly novel from an expert craftsman and presents an enduring and powerful portrait of India under the Raj. D. H. Lawrence(1885-1930) David Herbert Lawrence was one of the most prolific writers of the early twentieth century. Particularly remembered for his ground-breaking psychological novels, he also wrote essays, letter, poems, plays, travel books and short stories. He was born in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, in central England. In 1913 appeared Lawrence‘s novel Sons and Lovers, which was based on his childhood and contains a portrayal of Jessie Chambers, the Miriam in the novel and called ?Muriel‘ in early stories. D.H. Lawrence died in Venice, France on March 2, 1930. 29 Sons and Lovers Sons and Lovers was the first of Lawrence‘s major works, and is still considered to be one of his best. The novel was partly autobiographical and was set in the coalmining village of Bestwood. The parents of the central character, Paul, are Mr and Mrs Morel who are a vigorous and heavy-drinking miner and a well-educated, pretty intellectual respectively. We learn of Paul‘s successful brother and sister, William and Annie, but are soon drawn into Paul‘s world. He is still in his teens but works in a factory producing surgical appliances but becomes sick and spends his time with Miriam Leivers who he falls in love with. Their love is made difficult by Miriam‘s intense and religious nature and the fondness Paul‘s mother has for him that is protective to the point of dependence. As Paul reaches his early twenties he becomes passionate and makes love to Miriam but this ecstasy spells the end for their relationship. The latter stages of the novel concern Paul‘s next passion - Mrs Clara Dawes - and her vengeful husband. In the end, with Mrs Morel‘s slow death, we find that the closest and most meaningful bond is held between mother and son. The novel is notable for being the first English novel to be genuinely working-class in origin and focus. Sons and Lovers moves chronologically from before Paul‘s birth through his life as a young man and ends with his mourning the death of his mother. It has fifteen episodic chapters, divided into Parts One and Part Two. Part One deals with the Morel family home life, emphasizing social and historical influences. The core of Part One is the story of Mr. and Mrs. Morel‘s failed marriage and the promise of son William‘s success in life. Part Two, or the story of Paul‘s life, concentrates more on the conflicting inner feelings of its characters than on the straightforward, action- and detail-oriented realism of Part One. It also focuses on the battle between Miriam and Mrs. Morel for Paul‘s soul. Doris Lessing (1919– ) • Doris Lessing is a British novelist ,widely regarded as one of the major writers of the mid-20th cent, and an influential figure among feminists. She was brought up on a farm in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and in 1949 went to England, where her first novel, The Grass Is Singing (1950), was published. Lessing writes on a wide variety of themes: Rhodesia, women, communism, and animals. Distinguished for its energy and intelligence, her work is principally concerned with 30 the lives of women—their psychology, politics, work, relationship to men and to their children, and their change of vision as they age. In her later books she has mainly focused on efforts by individuals to resist society‘s pressures toward marginalization and acculturation. The Grass is Singing青草高歌》 The Grass is Singing, published in 1950, is Doris L e s s i n g ?s first novel. The story takes place in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), in southern Africa, in the late 1940s. From 1923–1980 Rhodesia was a British colony, with its own white government. The Grass is Singing tells the story of a white woman and her unhappy marriage to Dick, a poor white farmer. The heroine, Mary, falls obsessively in love with her black houseboy. She treats him cruelly, as she treats all black Africans. The story ends with Mary‘s madness and murder. The Grass is Singing is a powerful psychological study of an unhappy woman and her marriage. But at the same time, Lessing draws a picture of Rhodesian society; she shows us how badly many white people treated black people during that period. When The Grass is Singing was first published, it was an immediate success, both in America and in Europe. George Orwell (1903–1950) • George Orwell was the pen name of British author Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903–21 January 1950). Noted as a political and cultural commentator, Orwell is among the most widely admired English-language essayists of the twentieth century, though he is best known for two novels he wrote in the late 1940s, the political allegory Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. The latter described a totalitarian dystopia so vividly that the adjective ?Orwellian‘ is now commonly used to describe totalitarian mechanisms of thought-control. Eric Blair was born in 1903 in Motihari, Bengal, in the then British colony of India, where his father, Richard, worked for the Opium Department of the Civil Service. His mother, Ida, brought him to England at the age of one. He did not see his father again until 1907, when Richard visited England for three months before leaving again until 1912. Eric had an older sister named Marjorie and a younger sister named Avril. With 31 his characteristic humor, he would later describe his family‘s background as ―lower-upper-middle class.‖ At the age of five, Blair was sent to a small Anglican parish school in Henley, which his sister had attended before him. He never wrote of his recollections of it, but he must have impressed the teachers very favorably for two years later he was recommended to the headmaster of one of the most successful preparatory schools in England at the time: St Cyprian‘s School, in Eastbourne, Sussex. Young Eric attended St Cyprian‘s on a scholarship that allowed his parents to pay only half of the usual fees. Many years later, he would recall his time at St Cyprian‘s with biting resentment in the essay ―Such, Such Were the Joys,‖ but he did well enough to earn scholarships to both Wellington and Eton colleges. After a term at Wellington, Eric moved to Eton, where he was a King‘s Scholar from 1917 to 1921. Later in life he wrote that he had been ―relatively happy‖ at Eton, which allowed its students considerable independence, but also that he ceased doing serious work after arriving there. Reports of his academic performance at Eton vary: some claim he was a poor student, others deny this. It is clear that he was disliked by some of his teachers, who resented what they perceived as disrespect for their authority. In any event, during his time at the school Eric made lifetime friendships with a number of future British intellectuals. Nineteen Eighty-Four 1984 Winston Smith is a low-ranking member of the ruling Party in London, in the nation of Oceania. Everywhere Winston goes, even his own home, the Party watches him through telescreens; everywhere he looks he sees the face of the Party‘s seemingly omniscient leader, a figure known only as Big Brother. The Party controls everything in Oceania, even the people‘s history and language. Currently, the Party is forcing the implementation of an invented language called Newspeak, which attempts to prevent political rebellion by eliminating all words related to it. Even thinking rebellious thoughts is illegal. Such thoughtcrime is, in fact, the worst of all crimes. As the novel opens, Winston feels frustrated by the oppression and rigid control of the Party, which prohibits free thought, sex, and any expression of individuality. Winston dislikes the party and has illegally purchased a diary in which to write his criminal thoughts. He has also become fixated on a powerful Party member named O‘Brien, whom Winston believes is a secret member of the Brotherhood—the mysterious, legendary group that works to overthrow the Party. Winston works in the Ministry of Truth, where he alters historical records to fit the needs of the Party. He notices a coworker, a beautiful dark-haired girl, staring at him, and worries that she is an informant who will turn him in for his thoughtcrime. He is troubled by the Party‘s control of history: the Party claims that Oceania has always been allied with Eastasia in a war against Eurasia, but Winston seems to recall a time when this was not true. The Party also claims that Emmanuel Goldstein, the alleged leader of the Brotherhood, is the most dangerous man alive, but this does not seem plausible to Winston. Winston spends his evenings wandering through the poorest 32 neighborhoods in London, where the proletarians, or proles, live squalid lives, relatively free of Party monitoring. One day, Winston receives a note from the dark-haired girl that reads ―I love you.‖ She tells him her name, Julia, and they begin a covert affair, always on the lookout for signs of Party monitoring. Eventually they rent a room above the secondhand store in the prole district where Winston bought the diary. This relationship lasts for some time. Winston is sure that they will be caught and punished sooner or later (the fatalistic Winston knows that he has been doomed since he wrote his first diary entry), while Julia is more pragmatic and optimistic. As Winston‘s affair with Julia progresses, his hatred for the Party grows more and more intense. At last, he receives the message that he has been waiting for: O‘Brien wants to see him. Winston and Julia travel to O‘Brien‘s luxurious apartment. As a member of the powerful Inner Party (Winston belongs to the Outer Party), O‘Brien leads a life of luxury that Winston can only imagine. O‘Brien confirms to Winston and Julia that, like them, he hates the Party, and says that he works against it as a member of the Brotherhood. He indoctrinates Winston and Julia into the Brotherhood, and gives Winston a copy of Emmanuel Goldstein‘s book, the manifesto of the Brotherhood. Winston reads the book—an amalgam of several forms of class-based twentieth-century social theory—to Julia in the room above the store. Suddenly, soldiers barge in and seize them. Mr. Charrington, the proprietor of the store, is revealed as having been a member of the Thought Police all along. Torn away from Julia and taken to a place called the Ministry of Love, Winston finds that O‘Brien, too, is a Party spy who simply pretended to be a member of the Brotherhood in order to trap Winston into committing an open act of rebellion against the Party. O‘Brien spends months torturing and brainwashing Winston, who struggles to resist. At last, O‘Brien sends him to the dreaded Room 101, the final destination for anyone who opposes the Party. Here, O‘Brien tells Winston that he will be forced to confront his worst fear. Throughout the novel, Winston has had recurring nightmares about rats; O‘Brien now straps a cage full of rats onto Winston‘s head and prepares to allow the rats to eat his face. Winston snaps, pleading with O‘Brien to do it to Julia, not to him. Giving up Julia is what O‘Brien wanted from Winston all along. His spirit broken, Winston is released to the outside world. He meets Julia, but no longer feels anything for her. He has accepted the Party entirely and has learned to love Big Brother. 33 Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832) • Walter Scott was born on August 15, 1771 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Scott created and popularized historical novels in a series called the Waverley Novels. In his novels Scott arranged the plots and characters so the reader enters into the lives of both great and ordinary people caught up in violent, dramatic changes in history. Scott‘s work shows the influence of the 18th century enlightenment. He believed every human was basically decent regardless of class, religion, politics, or ancestry. Tolerance is a major theme in his historical works. The Waverley Novels express his belief in the need for social progress that does not reject the traditions of the past. He was the first novelist to portray peasant characters sympathetically and realistically, and was equally just to merchants, soldiers, and even kings. Central themes of many of Scott‘s novels are about conflicts between opposing cultures. Ivanhoe (1819) is about war between Normans and Saxons. The Talisman (1825) is about conflict between Christians and Muslims. His novels about Scottish history deal with clashes between the new English culture and the old Scottish. Scott‘s other great novels include ―Old Mortality‖ (1816), ―The Heart of Midlothian‖ (1819), and ―St Ronan‘s Well‖ (1824). His Waverley series includes ―Rob Roy‖ (1817), ―A Legend of Montrose‖ (1819), and ―Quentin Dunward‖ (1823). Scott‘s amiability, generosity, and modesty made him popular with his contemporaries. He was also famous for entertaining on a grand scale at his Scottish estate, Abbotsford. Ivanhoe It is a dark time for England. Four generations after the Norman conquest of the island, the tensions between Saxons and Normans are at a peak; the two peoples even refuse to speak one another‘s languages. King Richard is in an Austrian prison after having been captured on his way home from the Crusades; his avaricious brother, Prince John, sits on the throne, and under his reign the Norman nobles have begun routinely abusing their power. Saxon lands are capriciously repossessed, and many Saxon landowners are made into serfs. These practices have enraged the Saxon nobility, particularly the fiery Cedric of Rotherwood. Cedric is so loyal to the Saxon cause that he has disinherited his son Ivanhoe for following King Richard to war. 34 Additionally, Ivanhoe fell in love with Cedric‘s high-born ward Rowena, whom Cedric intends to marry to Athelstane, a descendent of a long-dead Saxon king. Cedric hopes that the union will reawaken the Saxon royal line. Unbeknownst to his father, Ivanhoe has recently returned to England disguised as a religious pilgrim. Assuming a new disguise as the Disinherited Knight, he fights in the great tournament at Ashby-de-la-Zouche. Here, with the help of a mysterious Black Knight, he vanquishes his great enemy, the Templar Brian de Bois-Guilbert, and wins the tournament. He names Rowena the Queen of Love and Beauty, and reveals his identity to the crowd. But he is badly wounded and collapses on the field. In the meantime, the wicked Prince John has heard a rumor that Richard is free from his Austrian prison. He and his advisors, Waldemar Fitzurse, Maurice de Bracy, and Reginald Front-de-Boeuf, begin plotting how to stop Richard from returning to power in England. John has a scheme to marry Rowena to de Bracy; unable to wait, de Bracy kidnaps Cedric‘s party on its way home from the tournament, imprisoning the Saxons in Front-de-Boeuf‘s castle of Torquilstone. With the party are Cedric, Rowena, and Athelstane, as well as Isaac and Rebecca, a Jewish father and daughter who have been tending to Ivanhoe after his injury, and Ivanhoe himself. De Bracy attempts to convince Rowena to marry him, while de Bois-Guilbert attempts to seduce Rebecca, who has fallen in love with Ivanhoe. Both men fail, and the castle is attacked by a force led by the Black Knight who helped Ivanhoe at the tournament. Fighting with the Black Knight are the legendary outlaws of the forest, Robin Hood and his merry men. The villains are defeated and the prisoners are freed, but de Bois-Guilbert succeeds in kidnapping Rebecca. As the battle winds down, Ulrica, a Saxon crone, lights the castle on fire, and it burns to the ground, engulfing both Ulrica and Front-de-Boeuf. At Templestowe, the stronghold of the Knights-Templars, de Bois-Guilbert comes under fire from his commanders for bringing a Jew into their sacred fortress. It is speculated among the Templars that perhaps Rebecca is a sorceress who has enchanted de Bois-Guilbert against his will; the Grand Master of the Templars concurs and orders a trial for Rebecca. On the advice of de Bois-Guilbert, who has fallen in love with her, Rebecca demands a trial-by-combat, and can do nothing but await a hero to defend her. To his dismay, de Bois-Guilbert is appointed to fight for the Templars: if he wins, Rebecca will be killed, and if he loses, he himself will die. At the last moment, Ivanhoe appears to defend Rebecca, but he is so exhausted from the journey that de Bois-Guilbert unseats him in the first pass. But Ivanhoe wins a strange victory when de Bois-Guilbert falls dead from his horse, killed by his own conflicting passions. In the meantime, the Black Knight has defeated an ambush carried out by Waldemar Fitzurse and announced himself as King Richard, returned to England at last. When Athelstane steps out of the way, Ivanhoe and Rowena are married; Rebecca visits Rowena one last time to thank her for Ivanhoe‘s role in saving her life. Rebecca and Isaac are sailing for their new home in Granada; Ivanhoe goes on to have a heroic career under King Richard, until the king‘s untimely death puts an end to all his 35 worldly projects. Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 - 1894) •• Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish essayist, poet and author of fiction and travel books, known especially for his novels of adventure, who also contributed several classics to the world of children‘s literature. Stevenson was born in an engineering family and had been well educated. At the age of seventeen he enrolled at Edinburgh University to study engineering, with the aim - his father hoped - of following him in the family firm. However, he abandoned this course of studies and made the compromise of studying law in 1875. Since his unhealthy body condition (suffered from tuberculosis), Stevenson often travelled abroad in search of warmer climates. These experiences provided much material for his later writings. He married an American divorcee in 1880 and collaborated with his stepson in the writing of some novels. Stevenson died of a brain hemorrhage on December 3, 1894, in Vailima, Samoa. Treasure Island: a romantic adventure story I It is another fortuitous turning-point in Stevenson‘s life. The story had occurred when on holiday in Scotland in the summer of 1881. The cold rainy weather forced the family to amuse themselves indoors, and one day Stevenson and his twelve-year-old stepson, Lloyd (Fanny‘s son by her first marriage), drew, coloured and annotated the map of an imaginary ?Treasure Island‘. The map stimulated Stevenson‘s imagination and, ?On a chill September morning, by the cheek of a brisk fire‘ he began to write a story based on it as an entertainment for the rest of the family. Treasure Island (published in book form in 1883) marks the beginning of his popularity and his career as a profitable writer; it was his first volume-length fictional narrative, and the first of his writings ?for children‘ (or rather, the first of writings manipulating the genres associated with children). A versatile writer, Stevenson was capable of skillfully handling a variety of genres. He mastered the difficult forms of essay and criticism in Virginibus Puerisque (1881), Familiar Studies of Men and Books (1882), and Memories and Portraits (1887). Also critically well received were such travel and autobiographical pieces as The Silverado Squatters (1883), which records Stevenson‘s impressions of his stay at a California mining camp; Across the Plains (1892); and In the South Seas (1896). 36 Jonathan Swift (1667 –1745) Jonathan Swift was an Irish author and journalist, dean of St. Patrick‘s Cathedral (Dublin) from 1713, the foremost prose satirist in English language. He was born seven months after his father‘s (a lawyer and an English civil servant) death and received his B.A. degrees in Trinity College, Dublin in 1686 and M.A. degrees in 1692. Among Swift‘s best known works is Gulliver’s Travels (1726), where the stories of Gulliver‘s experiences among dwarfs and giants are best known. Swift gave to these journeys an air of authenticity and realism and many contemporary readers believed them to be true. Swift‘s religious writing is little read today. His most famous works include THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS (1697), exploring the merits of the ancients and the moderns in literature. The author himself pretends to be an objective chronicler of events, but his sympathies are more on the side of the ancients. Jonathan died on 19 October 1745, aged 78. Gulliver’s Travels: a social satire Defoe‘s novel about Robinson Crusoe had appeared in 1719 and in the same vein Swift made Lemuel Gulliver, a surgeon and a sea captain, recount his adventures. It tells of four voyages that Gulliver had taken and demonstrates his idea that human race would destroy itself without divine aid. In part one, Gulliver is wrecked on an island where human beings are six inches tall. The Lilliputians have wars, and conduct clearly laughable with their self-importance and vanities - these human follies only reduced into a miniature scale. Gulliver‘s second voyage takes him to Brobdingnag. He meets giants who are practical but do not understand abstractions. In the third voyage contemporary scientist are held up for ridicule: science is shown to be futile unless it is applicable to human betterment. Gulliver then travels to the flying island of Laputa and the nearby continent and capital of Lagado. There he meets pedants obsessed with their own special field and utterly ignorant of the rest of the life. On the island of Glubbdubdrib Gulliver encounters a community of sorcerers who can summon the spirits of the dead, allowing him to converse with Alexander, Julius Caesar, Aristotle and others. He meets Struldbrughs, who are immortal and, as a result, utterly miserable and become senile in their 80s. In the fourth part Gulliver visits the land of Houyhnhnms, where horses are intelligent but human beings are not. The horses are served with degenerate creatures called Yahoos, demonstrating that human race would destroy itself without divine aid. Swift wrote the book with a serious 37 purpose - ―to mend the world‖. Gulliver’s Travels was published in 1726, Jonathan‘s first big dive into prose. Though it‘s been pretty solidly labeled a children‘s book, it‘s also a great satire of the times that is pretty much beyond most children. It was a work of propaganda, in which Swift wanted to show the consequences of humanity‘s refusal to be reasonable. It is still widely read all over the world - especially the two first books are children‘s favorites - and open to many interpretations. But when Defoe was an optimist, Swift‘s in his bitter pessimism makes Gulliver return home, preferring the company of horses to that of his family. William Makepeace Thackeray (1811 –1863) was an English journalist and novelist, famous for his novel VANITY FAIR (1847-48), a tale of two middle-class London families. He was born in India where his father worked for the East India Company, and sent to school in England, as was the fashion for colonial-born children, in 1817. Thackeray was educated at Charterhouse and at Trinity College, Cambridge, but he abandoned his studies without taking a degree, having lost some of his inheritance of twenty thousand pounds through gambling. After art studies in Paris, Thackeray returned in 1837 to London and started his career as a hard working journalist. He contributed regularly to Fraser’s Magazine, Morning Chronicle, New Monthly Magazine and The Times. His writings attracted first attention in Punch, where he satirized English snobbery. Thackeray was died on Christmas Eve, 1863, shortly after he travelled around visiting old haunts and friends to say goodbye. Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero Thackeray‘s fame as a writer began in the late 1830s with The Yellowplush Papers (1837-8) but it is his first major novel, Vanity Fair, which appeared in monthly parts 1847-8 that he is most associated with now. Named after the fair set up by Beelzebub in Bunyan‘s Pilgrim’s Progress, the novel takes place during the Napoleonic Wars and concerns the lives of two starkly contrasted girls: Becky Sharp, orphaned and poor but ingenious; and Amelia Sedley, sheltered daughter of a rich City merchant. These two meet at Miss Pinkerton‘s Academy for young ladies, the 38 former driven by social ambition and the latter by her delicate heart. Sharp‘s adventures begin with an attempt to marry Jos Sedley, Amelia‘s brother, who is rich but dim. She soon finds her way to the Crawley household as a governess and marries Rawdon, the second son of Sir Pitt Crawley, although the father himself had proposed to her. Rawdon is, typically for the novel, an ignorant and self-indulgent man. However, Becky moves on further to become the mistress of Lord Steyne and finds her place in society almost accidentally in the end. Miss Sedley‘s story is less intriguing, largely due to useless first husband Osborne and moral by uninteresting second love Dobbin. Thackeray‘s portrait of the upper classes in the early nineteenth century is consistently disparaging and negative but is entertaining for its vile characters and hopeless, loveless relationships. Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) • Evelyn Waugh was an English writer, regarded by many as the leading satirical novelist of his day. He was born in London and educated at Lancing School and Hertford College, Oxford. After university he taught for a brief period in private schools and was dismissed from one of them for drunkenness. He worked for the Daily Express, and studied arts and crafts in a desultory way. His first work, privately printed when he was 13, was The World to Come: A Poem in Three Cantos. Among Waugh‘s most popular books is BRIDESHEAD REVISITED (1945), depicting the Oxford world of the late 1920s. It was made into a highly successful television series in 1981, starring Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews. Waugh wrote sixteen novels. He also published travel books and biographies. A Handful of Dust: a satirical novel The novel takes its title from Eliot‘s poem The Waste Land, certain features which reappear in it. Containing many of the qualities typical of Waugh‘s satirical novels, Handful of dust tells the story of Tony Last, proud owner of a Victorian gothic country house, Hetton. Frustrated by his old-fashioned ways, his wife, Lady Brenda, becomes infatuated with a young socialite, John Beaver, and deserts Tony and the family after their son, John Andrew, is killed in a hunting accident. Tony refuses to grant her a divorce, fearing the cost of alimony and the consequent loss of his beloved Hetton. He departs for an extended trip to Brazil and accompanies a casual acquaintance, Dr. Messinger, up the Amazon. They run into trouble; Tony falls ill and 39 Messinger is drowned. At the point of death Tony is rescued by a mad recluse, Mr. Todd, who has lived in the jungle for nearly 60 years. Tony recovers but is forced to become Mr. Todd‘s ?companion‘, spending the rest of his life reading aloud the works of Dickens. In England, he is reported dead and Brenda marries a politician, Jock Grant-Menzies, her relationship with Beaver having faded. Hetton passes into the hands of Tony‘s cousin, Richard Last. This sustained body of literary allusion gives A Handful of Dust greater range of ironic implication than Waugh was ever again to attempt. It is in parts exceptionally funny. It is an excellent and faithful adaptation of Evelyn Waugh‘s novel, featuring fine performances from a notable cast. H.G. Wells (1866-1946) H.G. Wells was an English novelist, journalist, sociologist, and historian, famous for his works of science fiction. Wells‘s best-known books are The Time Machine (1895), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War Of The Worlds (1898). As a novelist Wells made his debut with The Time Machine(1895), a parody of English class division and a satirical warning that human progress is not inevitable. The work was followed by such science-fiction classics as The Island Of Dr. Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897) and The War of the Worlds (1898). The First Men On The Moon (1901) was a prophetic description of the methodology of space flight and The War In The Air (1908) describes a catastrophic aerial war. Love And Mr. Lewisham appeared in 1900, Tono-Bungay and The History Of Mr. Polly in 1909. Wells also published critical pamphlets attacking the Victorian social order, among them Anticipations (1901), Mankind In The Making (1903) and A Modern Utopia (1905). The Invisible Man The story is simple and straightforward. A stranger arrives in a village, where he books a private room in the pub. His behaviour intrigues the locals. He is foul-tempered and rude, and never removes the bandages covering his face. He remains confined to his room, working on mysterious experiments. We gradually 40 discover that he is a scientist who has made himself invisible, and is now desperately trying to regain visibility. He fails, goes on the rampage, and terrorises the surrounding countryside. He kills, and is killed. Wells had created a gripping masterpiece on the destructive effects the invisibility has on the scientist and the insane and murderous chaos left in his malicious wake. William Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965) ?? William Somerset Maugham was an English playwright, novelist and short story writer. Maugham wrote comedies, psychological novels and spy stories (although the latter part of his work is hardly ever seen as belonging to crime fiction proper). Maugham‘s masterpiece is generally agreed to be Of Human Bondage《人生枷锁》, an autobiographical novel which deals with the life of Philip Carey, who, like Maugham, was orphaned and brought up by his pious uncle. Maugham‘s severe stutter has been replaced by Philip‘s clubfoot. Among his short stories, some of the most memorable are those dealing with the lives of western, mostly British, colonists in the Far East. The stories are typically concerned with the emotional toll exacted on the colonists by their isolation. Maugham‘s restrained prose allows him to explore the resulting tensions and passions without descending into melodrama. Somerset Maugham died in Nice, France on December 16, 1965. The Moon and Sixpence It is one of Maugham‘s best-known novels, this fictionalized documentary 41 chronicles the life of Charles Strickland, a London stockbroker who leaves his wife, children, and career to move to Paris and become a painter. The narrator describes how he came to know of Strickland and his family, eventually following the artist first to Paris and then to Tahiti, where the painter lived out the final years of his life among the natives. The Moon and Sixpence is strongly based on the life of painter Paul Gaugain - other than the fact that all names have been changed, the biggest divergence between Gaugain and his fictional counterpart is that Gaugain was a native Frenchman, while Maugham‘s character Charles Strickland is British. It is no doubt an inspiring, thoughtful book, showcasing Maugham‘s eye for detail and considerable talent understanding people‘s character and motivation. Of Human Bondage Philip Carey, the central character of this early 20th century Bildungsroman, is both an orphan and afflicted with a club foot. He is sent at age nine, after the death of his mother, to live with a childless uncle--a deeply religious Vicar--and his submissive aunt. They have no idea how to be parents, so send Philip away to a boys‘ boarding school where the child begins to learn what it means to be less than physically ―perfect.‖ The remainder of Philip‘s development is cast in this light. He roams about looking for himself and his place--to Germany to learn languages, to London to learn a trade, to Paris to study art, and finally, as a last resort, a default decision to follow in the steps of his father the physician. A major part of Philip‘s maturation is based in making decisions about women and about sensual love. The most painful portions of his story are those that evolve around his stumbling and frequently failed attempts to find security in his personal relationships. Dame Jean Iris Murdoch (1919 - 1999) ? was a novelist and philosopher. Born in Dublin and educated at Badminton School and Somerville College, she worked in the Civil Service, before taking up posts at Oxford and London Universities. Her works on philosophy include Sartre, Romantic Rationalist (1953) and The Sovereignty of Good (1970). After publishing her first novel in 1954, she wrote one a year, all concerned 42 with the nature of good and evil. Described as psychological thrillers, they portray 20th century professional and intellectual middle-class life. The Sea, The Sea (1978) won the Booker Prize. She married John Bailey in 1956, and their struggle with her Alzheimer‘s Disease was the subject of books by Bailey, and of the film Iris (2002). The Black Prince The Black Prince tells the story of Bradley Pearson, a fifty-eight year old man who has previously published three books. In order to write a great novel, he quits his lifelong job as a tax inspector, but soon finds himself struck with writer‘s block. He decides to spend the summer in a rented cottage on the coast for inspiration. Before he can leave for the coast, however, a series of events keeps him home. When his detested ex-wife‘s brother, Francis visits him he finds out that his ex wife, Christian, has returned to London. He is called to intervene in a marital dispute between his close friends, Arnold and Rachel Baffin. Arnold is a successful but unartistic writer. During the fight, Rachel Baffin hits her head on the fireplace poker, but is not dead, as Arnold initially fears. After leaving their house, Bradley runs into the Baffins‘ twenty-year-old daughter, Julian, by the subway station. She wants Bradley to teach her how to write. The next morning, Bradley‘s sister, Priscilla, unexpectedly arrives, because she has left her husband. She almost immediately tries to commit suicide with sleeping pills. During the confusion of her suicide attempt, for which all of the Baffins and Francis Marloe are present, Christian, Bradley‘s ex-wife, appears, but is taken away by Arnold before Bradley sees her. After Priscilla gets back from the hospital, Bradley visits Christian in order to tell her to leave him alone. Bradley then goes to Bristol to pick up his sister‘s jewels. He is unable to do so, and finds that Priscilla‘s husband has a younger, pregnant mistress. Priscilla starts staying at Christian‘s house so Francis Marloe, a former doctor, can care for her. While all of this is happening, Arnold Baffin becomes interested in having an affair with Christian and Rachel Baffin becomes interested in sleeping with Bradley. During Rachel and Bradley‘s attempted lovemaking, however, he cannot perform sexually. He and Rachel later determine to become platonic friends. Julian has been pestering Bradley to teach her about Hamlet and arrives one day for a tutorial. During the tutorial, Bradley falls passionately in love with her. He initially tries to keep his love secret. After becoming physically ill while watching Der Rosenkavalier with Julian however, he confesses his emotions. He tells Julian that he is forty-six, instead of fifty-eight. Julian considers the issue of his love thoughtfully. By the next morning, she has determined that she loves him. Julian later confesses her love to her parents. They respond by locking her in her room and yelling at Bradley. Despite Rachel and Arnold‘s anger, Bradley refuses to see that his love is inappropriate. When Julian sneaks away from her parents‘ house, she and Bradley meet and leave for his rented cottage. On their first day away, Julian entertains romantic fantasies about marrying Bradley. Their initial attempts at lovemaking are not successful. The next day, Bradley finds out that Priscilla has killed herself. He keeps the news from Julian to maintain their bliss. When he returns home, he finds Julian dressed up as Hamlet. He drags her to 43 the bed and makes violent love to her in such a rough way that Julian later weeps. Arnold finds them later that night and begs Julian to leave. He tells her of Priscilla‘s death and Bradley‘s true age. Julian seems confused, but refuses go. After her father leaves, she isolates herself in a separate bedroom to think, but is gone by the time Bradley wakes in the morning. Bradley goes back to London for Priscilla‘s funeral. He believes that Arnold stole Julian away in the night. Bradley cannot find her anywhere. Christian wants to start a relationship with Bradley, but he declines. Rachel tells Bradley that Julian left him freely because she learned of Bradley‘s recent sexual encounter with Rachel (Rachel had described the encounter in a letter that Arnold delivered). Bradley is so angry at Rachel‘s interference that he spitefully shows her a letter that Arnold wrote describing Arnold‘s love for Christian. Rachel is furious and vows never to forgive Bradley. A few days later, Bradley receives a letter from Julian. Despite her saying otherwise, he decides that she still loves him and that she is in Venice. He makes plans to go there. Before he can leave, however, Rachel calls and begs for his immediate assistance. After arriving at the Baffins‘ house, Bradley finds Arnold dead, having been hit with the same fire poker that once hit Rachel. When Bradley tries to cover up Rachel‘s crime, he is accused of it himself. He is later convicted because everyone believes that he killed Arnold out of envy. Bradley has written his novel from prison. In the final postscript of the book, the editor, P.Loxias, notes that soon after finishing the book, Bradley Pearson died of a fast growing cancer. Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) • Oscar Wilde was an Irish author famous for his sophisticated and brilliantly witty plays. He studied at Trinity College at Dublin where he was born, and then at Oxford, where he distinguish himself for his scholarship and wit as well as his unusual taste in dress and manners. He wrote many poems, fairy tales and stories, but his creative genius was best displayed through his plays, of which the most famous was The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). His carrer was shattered by two years of imprisonment for homosexual practices (1898-1897). After his release from prison, he moved to Paris and lived there till he died at the age of 46. The Picture of Dorian Gray • 44 The Picture of Dorian Gray is the only novel which Oscar Wilde wrote through his whole rich career of writing plays, poems and essays. It is a book of love, pleasure, and above all else… insanity. The story takes place in London in the 1800‘s. It deals mostly with the upper classes. The main character of the story is Dorian Gray; but naturally, there are other characters involved as well, such as Lord Henry Wotton, Basil Hallward, Han Campbell, Sybil Vane, and her brother, James Vane. The book is actually a modern version of the story of the Greek Narcisus. The book tells about the handsome Dorian Gray who is painted by a talented artist who‘s inspired by him. when the portrait is done, Dorian Gray immediately falls in love with his portrait. It seems so young and innocent and beautiful to him, that he wishes that he would be the one who‘d stay young forever, and the picture would be the one who‘d get old and ugly. Dorian‘s wish unfortunately comes true, and the picture gets old and ugly, horrible and merciless, while Dorian, which committed many crimes, stays young and beautiful, and even when he‘s in his thirties people think that he‘s only about twenty years old or so. The end of course is tragic and very uncompromising. Virginia Woolf (1882 -1941) • Virginia Woolf is one of the founders of the movement known as Modernism, is one of the most important woman writers in English. Her ―stream-of-consciousness‖ essays and novels provide an invaluable insight into both her own life experiences and those of women at the beginning of the twentieth century. Her most famous works include Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), The Waves (1931), and her most recognized work, A Room of One’s Own (1929). Woolf‘s writing thoroughly explores the concepts of time, memory, and consciousness. The plot is generated by the characters‘ inner lives, not by the external world. Mrs. Dalloway Mrs. Dalloway formed a giant web of thoughts of several groups of people during the course of a single day. There is little action, but much movement in time from 45 present to past and back again through the characters memories. The central figure, Clarissa Dalloway, is a wealthy London hostess. She spends her day in London preparing for her evening party. She recalls her life before World War I, berofe her marriage to Richard Dalloway, and her friendship with the unconventional Sally Seton, and her relationship with Peter Walsh. At her party she never meets the shell-shocked veteran Septimus Smith, one of the first Englishmen to enlist in the war. Sally returns as Lady Rossetter, Peter Walsh is still enamored with Mrs. Dalloway, the prime minister arrives, and Smith commits suicide. Mrs. Dalloway is probably the most accessible of Woolf ?s great novels. A day in the life of a London society hostess is used as the structure for her experiments in multiple points of view. The themes she explores are the nature of personal identity, memory and consciousness, the passage of time, and the tensions between the forces of Life and Death. She gives a very lyrical response to the fundamental question, ―what is it like to be alien?‖ The novel also features her rich expression of the ―interior monologue‖ and offers a subtle critique of society recovering in the aftermath of the First World War. Virginia Woolf works with many of the sane themes she later expands upon in Mrs. Dalloway. To Mrs. Dalloway, she added the theme of insanity. As Woolf stated, ―I adumbrate here a study of insanity and suicide; the world seen by the sane and the insane side by side.‖ To the Lighthouse The 1927 publication of Virginia Woolf‘s To the Lighthouse was a landmark for both the author and the development of the novel in England. Usually regarded as her finest achievement, it won her the Prix Femina the following year, and gained her a reputation as one of Britain‘s most important living authors. Not only was it a critical success, it was popular too, selling in large quantities to a readership that encompassed a broad spectrum of social classes. Since Woolf‘s death in 1941, To the Lighthouse has risen in importance as a focus of criticism concerning issues of gender, empire, and class. Along with James Joyce‘s Ulysses, it continues to be heralded as a milestone in literary technique. The complexity of Woolf‘s writing in To the Lighthouse has become almost proverbially intimidating, as suggested famously in the title of Edward Albee‘s 1962 play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Written from multiple perspectives and shifting between times and characters with poetic grace, the novel is not concerned with plot. Instead, it paints a verbal picture of the members of the Ramsay family and their friends. In the first section, the character of Mrs. Ramsay is the lens through which most of the perspectives are focused, and her son‘s desire to go ―to the Lighthouse‖ is the organizing impetus from which the picture takes shape. In the central section, the Lighthouse stands empty as the narrative marks the passage of time and the death of many of the characters. In the third and final section, with Mrs. Ramsay dead, the remaining family and friends finally get to the Lighthouse, and the novel becomes a meditation on love, loss, and creativity. 46 Yung Wing 容闳 was born in Guangdong Province. He was the most famous reformers in China, at the same time he was the earliest graduate from American university. In 1847, he went to America; in 1854, he graduated from University of Yale and went back to China in 1855. After coming back to China, and was appointed as official by Qing Dynasty., he actively proposed the idea that Chinese government should send more youth to America to learn their advanced technology and science. The process is not easy to follow. Finally his plan failed. But his progressive and radical performance deeply influenced the development of China. My life in China and America The first five chapters are about his early education in America, the later study in Massachusetts and in Yale. From chapter six, he makes his efforts describing his hard working on the plan--- to send young Chinese to go to America to learn the developed technology, science and ideas. He utterly showed his will to develop China and make her as powerful as other countries. From this, we could also learn his patriotism. He deeply believed that China‘s development rely on the above mentioned plan, sending young Chinese abroad. This book is an autobiography wherein his personal experiences are written. This great piece introduced the great educational reformer, Yungwing and his advanced ideas which are aiming at developing China. This work makes us fully thleaned what the educational situation was like at the end of the 19 century, and how difficult to conduct reform in such a feudalist country. We come to know the first hand information about the earliest reforms in Qing Dynasty. Tcheng Ki Tong Tcheng Ki Tong was an oversea Chinese students in late Ching Dynasty. Different with others including Yan Fu, Deng Shichang etc, he went to France to study law. After graduation, he worked for Chinese embassies in Germany and France for almost 20 years. During the time he attributed a lot to the cultural exchange and 47 communication between China and western world, helping to correct some foreigners‘ prejudice on China by introducing Chinese traditional culture and literatures in French. Meanwhile, he tried to spread law systems of France and Germany among Chinese people. Throughout his life, Tcheng Ki Tong wrote a lot of works in French on Chinese operas and stories, including The Chinese Painted by Themselves, which made him a most popular Chinese scholar in western world. The Chinese Painted by Themselves A highly useful work, covering the Chinese daily life, religion, philosophy, marriage, divorce, woman, written language and literary class, journalism, public opinion, prehistoric epochs, proverbs, maxims & education. Also ancestor worship, working classes, historical songs, pleasures, European society, classical poetry, East and West, arsenal at Foo-Choo, & other essays on Chinese. Keen observations a by Frenchman. Fei Hsia Tung 费孝通 Fei Hsia Tung is a prominent sociologist, anthropologist and ethnologist in China. He was born in 1910 in Wujiang County, Jiangsu Province. He graduated from Yanjing University in 1933 with a B.A. degree in sociology. In 1935, he earned a M.A. degree in anthropology from Tsinghua University. He gave ―Chinese substance to the modern social sciences and applied them rigorously to the needs of China and its people,‖ according to the board of trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership, which chose Fei to receive the 1994 award. The honour is based in the Philippines. Born into a well-off family, Fei, however, saw with his own eyes the ills of Chinese society in the early 20th century. He started college majoring in medicine but then changed his mind. His book Peasant Life In China (1939) made him famous in the English-speaking world, but he will be remembered in China for his role in advising the economic reformers in the post-Mao era, when the policy of rural industrialization, which he had advocated since the late 1930s, flourished. Peasant Life in China 《内地农村》 48 Peasant Life In China was published, with a preface by Bronislaw Malinowski, with whom Fei had studied for the previous two years at the London School of Economics (LSE). Peasant Life In China (1939) made him famous in the English-speaking world The book was based on a village near his birthplace, where his sister had started a silk-manufacturing cooperative. He had joined her to recuperate from his tiger-trap injury, and spent his time investigating the village‘s economy and social life in order to know what reformers should do to help peasants improve their lives. As Malinowski wrote, in the tragedy that was China and at a time when Europe was in the hands of madmen, fanatics and gangsters, Fei‘s careful analysis of social institutions to help direct change stood on the side of practical sanity against dictated doctrine. Through this book, Fei arguably provided initial knowledge about China for the scholarly world. Gary G Hamilton, a professor with the Sociology Department at the Jackson School of International Studies at University of Washington commented that ―Fei shows how these unique features reflect and are reflected in the moral and ethical characters of people in these societies. This profound, challenging book is both succinct and accessible.‖ Lin Yutang 林语堂 (1895–1976) is a Chinese-American writer, translator, and editor, born in. Lunqi, Fujian, educated in China and at Harvard, Ph.D. Univ. of Leipzig, 1923. Lin spent most of his life in the United States and wrote most of his many works in English. His non-fictional books include My Country and My People (1935); A Leaf in the Storm (1941), about war-torn China; Between Tears and Laughter (1943), and The Pleasures of a Nonconformist (1962). Among his novels are Chinatown Family (1948) and The Flight of the Innocents (1965). He translated and edited The Chinese Theory of Art (1968). My country and my people This book made headlines in America when it came out in the 1930‘s. For perhaps the first time a Chinese wrote a book in English about China and the Chinese, and the 49 sympathetic reaction of many Americans to China‘s plight in the struggle against Japan made this book a bestseller. It sets out in language that is still easy to read the Chinese mind, their history, philosophy, characteristics, etc. A good deal of the descriptions are the author‘s own opinions, inevitably, but it is a testament to the author‘s brilliant mind and perceptive eyes that much of the book is still valid today. Indeed, now that war, revolution, and communism are things of the past, the Chinese are reverting more and more to their old ways, both good and bad, and their old ways are what this book is about. Pearl Buck, the first American woman to win the Nobel Literature Prize, was the one who persuaded Lin to write this book. Her faith in him is fully justified. Few indeed were native sons of China who were immersed in both Chinese and Western cultures. And Lin was one. 50