Snow initiated one of the biggest rows in academia and beyond with his assertion that there were two cultures and F R Leavis's virulent response. I was very young at the time and it wasn't until later that I discovered what all the fuss was about. It still resonates today as this article from the Daily Telegraph clearly indicates.Originally Posted by Seasider
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolog...speration.html
"L'art de la statistique est de tirer des conclusions erronèes a partir de chiffres exacts." Napoléon Bonaparte.
"Je crois que beaucoup de gens sont dans cet état d’esprit: au fond, ils ne sentent pas concernés par l’Histoire. Mais pourtant, de temps à autre, l’Histoire pose sa main sur eux." Michel Houellebecq.
Apologies. Brown was another Scottish author. He wrote "The House With the Green Shutters"
Thank you. I found him on Wikipedia under George Douglas Brown. That article makes no mention of his book being an influence on or plagerized by Cronin, but reading the description of the book I can see a resemblance between the two.
"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its' own reason for existing." ~ Albert Einstein
"Remember, no matter where you go, there you are." Buckaroo Bonzai "Some people say I done alright for a girl." Melanie Safka
Mrs Craik (Dinah Mulock) - Her book "John Halifax, Gentleman" was possibly the most popular book of the Victorian era.
Jane Porter - I think that she only had two books published, but one of them inspired Walter Scott to write historical novels, and the other inspired the social realism of Dickens.
Le Sage - wrote, amongst other things, "Gil Blas", everybody's boyhood favourite before "Treasure Island" (in fact, I think Stevenson states somewhere that Gil Blas was his boyhood favourite.)
On boyhood favourites, two of the most popular authors of the early C20th were A.E. (Sinbad) Dingle and Cutcliffe-Hyne.
Ou sont les neiges d'antan?
Voices mysterious far and near,
Sound of the wind and sound of the sea,
Are calling and whispering in my ear,
Whifflingpin! Why stayest thou here?
Loka... glad you brought up Morris. I have a book of the collected writings of Morris and a couple on his achievements in the visual arts. Like many I came upon him as a result of his efforts in the visual arts... and it should be noted that as an artist he is nearly as undervalued or under-recognized as he is as a writer. Morris not only created wallpaper design:
He was also a painter:
... an architect...
... a master book maker...
...a tapestry and textiles designer...
... a designer of stained glass windows...
... and much more. Morris built upon both the artistic and socio-political ideas of William Blake. Like Blake, Morris was profoundly interested in medieval art along with the artists of the Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, as well as Morris' follower, Edward Burne-Jones. Morris started his own company to market his designs which became the basis of the "Arts and Crafts Movement". Morris rejected the notion of the "hierarchy of art forms" (the concept that painting and sculpture as "pure" non-practical or utilitarian art forms were inherently superior to the so-called "applied arts"... "crafts"... or "decorative art." This idea would fuel the Art Nouveau and Art Deco movements as well as the Modernist Bauhaus School. The appearance of Morris' art and the Medievalist aspects of Burne-Jones and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood also had a profound impact upon later illustration... especially child's book illustrations as well as illustration for sci-fi and fantasy.
Along with William Blake and John Ruskin, William Morris feared the inhuman, massed produced aspects of industrialization and felt that Art had a moral worth... both to the artist/creator and to the people who lived with objects of well-crafted beauty as opposed to purely utilitarian objects that were mass produced without the least concern for aesthetics. Clearly Morris ideas predate many of those espoused by the artists and poets of art pour l'art including Gautier, Oscar Wilde, Walter Pater, and Mallarme.
One could do far worse that to spend one's time exploring the achievements of Morris.
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
There really is a serious argument to be made for William Morris being one of the greatest geniuses our species has produced. He really was an incredibly active polymath, and the contributions he made to the various fields in which he involved himself are substantial. As you say, one could do a lot worse than spend time with Mr Morris.
When I finally have a house of my own, and of course a wage, I fully intend to have a Morris room.
"I should only believe in a God that would know how to dance. And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: he was the spirit of gravity- through him all things fall. Not by wrath, but by laughter, do we slay. Come, let us slay the spirit of gravity!" - Nietzsche
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