Thomas More- Sir Thomas More , known by Catholics as Saint Thomas More since 1935, was an English lawyer, social philosopher, author, statesman, and noted Renaissance humanist. He was an important councillor to Henry VIII of England and was Lord Chancellor from October 1529 to 16 May 1532. He is commemorated by the Church of England as a “Reformation martyr”. More coined the word “utopia” – a name he gave to the ideal and imaginary island nation, the political system of which he described in Utopia published

Jonathan Swift was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political, poet and cleric who became Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin. He is remembered for works such as Gulliver’s Travels, A Modest Proposal, A Journal to Stella, Drapier’s Letters, The Battle of the Books, An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity, and A Tale of a Tub. Swift is probably the foremost prose satirist in the English language, and is less well known for his poetry.

Daniel Defoe born Daniel Foe, was an English trader, writer, journalist, and pamphleteer, who gained fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest proponents of the novel, as he helped to popularize the form in Britain and along with others such as Richardson, is among the founders of the English novel. A prolific and versatile writer, he wrote more than 500 books, pamphlets and journals on various topics.

Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature. Her realism and biting social commentary has gained her historical importance among scholars and critics.

Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English writer and social critic who is generally regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian period and the creator of some of the world’s most memorable fictional characters. During his lifetime Dickens’ works enjoyed unprecedented popularity and fame. Now his novels and short stories are popular too.

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems “The Hunting of the Snark” and “Jabberwocky”, all examples of the genre of literary nonsense. He is noted for his facility at word play, logic, and fantasy.enson

Robert Louis Stevenson – Scottish essayist, poet, and author of fiction and travel books, known especially for his novels of adventure. Stevenson’s characters often prefer unknown hazards to everyday life of the Victorian society. His most famous examinations of the split personality are THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE. and TREASURE ISLAND .Many of Stevenson’s stories are set in colorful locations, they have also horror and supernatural elements.

Charlotte Brontë was an English 19th century writer whose novel Jane Eyre is considered a classic of Western literature. Born on April 21, 1816, in Thornton, Yorkshire, England, Charlotte Brontë worked as a teacher and governess before collaborating on a book of poetry with her two sisters, Emily and Anne, who were writers as well. In 1847, Brontë published the semi-autobiographical novel Jane Eyre, which was a hit and would become a literary classic. Her other novels included Shirley andVillette. She died on March 31, 1855, in Haworth, Yorkshire, England.

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered a milestone in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger. He was a prolific writer whose other works include science fiction stories, plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction and historical novels.

Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist .Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature. Kipling is best known for his works of fiction, including The Jungle Book (a collection of stories which includes “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi”), Just So Stories , Kim , many short stories, including “The Man Who Would Be King” ; and his poems, his children’s books are enduring classics of children’s literature.

Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and more than 15 short story collections (especially those featuring Hercule Poirot or Miss Jane Marple), and her successful West End plays.
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Christie is the best-selling novelist of all time. Her novels have sold roughly four billion copies.

Joanne “Jo” Rowling, better known as J. K. Rowling, is a British novelist, best known as the author of the Harry Potter fantasy series. The Potter books have gained worldwide attention, won multiple awards, sold more than 400 million copies to become the best-selling book series in history and been the basis for a popular series of films.

Henry Graham Greene was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world. Greene was notable for his ability to combine serious literary acclaim with widespread popularity : Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory, The Heart of the Matter and The End of the Affair, The Confidential Agent, The Third Man, The Quiet American, Our Man in Havana and The Human Factor.

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Here are  some interesting highlights of Austen’s life, career, and literary impact.

1. Although she never married,Jane Austendid become engaged — for one night. She received and accepted a proposal of marriage on December 2, 1802, two weeks before her 27 birthday. Jane Austen changed her mind overnight, however, and refused the proposal the next morning. And, perhaps she changed her mind because she believed – as she later wrote to a niece considering a marriage of convenience – that “nothing can be compared to the misery of being bound without Love.” Fortunately for her readers, she chose to remain single and was able to focus on writing rather than running a household and raising children.
2. Jane Austen continued to imagine how the lives of her characters evolved long after she finished a novel.InA Memoir of Jane Austen, her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh wrote, “She would, if asked, tell us many little particulars about the subsequent career of some of her people.” For example, Anne Steele, Lucy’s silly and vulgar sister in Sense and Sensibility, did not catch Dr. Davies after all. And, after the close of Pride and Prejudice, Kitty Bennet eventually married a clergyman near Pemberley, while Mary ended up with a clerk who worked for her Uncle Philips. Some of the most interesting revelations, however, related to Emma. Mr. Woodhouse not only survived Emma’s marriage to Mr. Knightly, but also kept his daughter and son-in-law living at Hartfield for two years. Deirdre Le Faye has also noted in Jane Austen: A Family Record that “According to a less well-known tradition, the delicate Jane Fairfax lived only another nine or ten years after her marriage to Frank Churchill.”
3. The surnames of a number of Austen’s characters can be found within the prominent and wealthy Wentworth family of Yorkshire — which also happens to intersect with Jane Austen’s own family tree.
4. Jane Austen took her writing very seriously. She began writing stories, plays and poetry when she was 12 years old. Most of her “Juvenilia,” as the material she wrote in her youth is called, was in the comic vein. She wrote a parody of textbook histories,The History of England… by a partial, prejudiced and ignorant historian, when she was 16 years old. She also wrote parodies of the romantic novels of “sensibility” that were popular in her day. Austen’s family members read aloud and performed plays for each other, and she learned about writing from these activities and the comments her family made about her own efforts. By the age of 23, Austen had written first drafts of the novels that later became Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey.     From the letters she wrote to her sister, Cassandra, and other family members, one can see that Jane Austen was proud of her writing. She enjoyed discussing her latest work, sharing news about a novel’s progress at the printer, and offering advice on the craft of writing to other aspiring authors in the family. She also carefully tracked comments made by family members and friends about Mansfield Park and Emma and referred to Pride and Prejudice as her “own darling child.” Jane Austen continued writing throughout her adult life until just before she died in July of 1817.
5. Jane Austen’s life was not limited to a sheltered country existence. On the surface, her life seems to have been quiet and secluded; she was born in a small country village and lived there for 25 years. Her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh publishedA Memoir of Jane Austen in 1869, which reinforced the image that she was a demure, quiet maiden aunt in the best Victorian tradition. However, she led a very active life with travel and social contacts of many types. Through her family and friends she learned a great deal about the world around her.
6. Men read Jane Austen, too.Jane Austen’s novels are sometimes viewed as “chick-lit” romances, leading some men to think they wouldn’t enjoy reading them. But, Jane Austen has always had male admirers. Her books are not just about romance; they have a serious instructional purpose clothed in novel form. British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan admitted to reading Austen’s novels, andWinston Churchill credited her with helping him win World War II .Rudyard Kipling read Jane Austen aloud to his wife and daughter each evening in an effort to raise their spirits after his son, fighting in WWI, was reported missing and believed dead. And one of her male contemporaries, Sir Walter Scott, praised her writing in his journal: “Also read again, and for the third time at least, Miss Austen’s very finely written novel of Pride and Prejudice. That young lady had a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life, which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with.”

Row 1: (L-R) Eleanor H. Porter, Jane Austen, Philip K. Dick Row 2: (L-R) Joseph Conrad, Rudyard Kipling

Joseph Conrad

(December 3, 1857 – August 3, 1924)

Józef Teodor Konrad, known as his pen name Joseph Conrad, was a Polish author who wrote in English after settling in England. He is regarded as one of the greatest novelists in English. The Secret Agent (1907) was made into a film in 1996.

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Jane Austen

(December 16, 1775 – July 18, 1817)

Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature.  She achieved success as a published writer with the release of Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), Northanger Abbey and Persuasion (1818).

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Philip K. Dick     

(December 16, 1928 – March 2, 1982)

Dick was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist and philosopher whose published work is almost entirely accepted as being in the science fiction genre. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) was made into the very popular 1982 film, Blade Runner.

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Eleanor H. Porter            

(December 19, 1868 – May 21, 1920)

Porter was an American novelist who mainly wrote children’s literature, adventure stories and romance fiction. Her most famous novel is Pollyanna (1913). It was made into a film in 1960.

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Rudyard Kipling     

(December 30, 1865 – January 18, 1936)

Kipling was an English short-story writer, poet, and novelist. In 1907, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first English-language writer to receive the prize, and its youngest recipient to date. Kipling’s works of fiction include The Jungle Book (1894), The Second Jungle Book (1895), Stalky & Co. (1899), Kim (1901), Just So Stories (1902), Puck of Pook’s Hill (1906) and Rewards and Fairies (1910).

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Through the stories of her spirited heroines and their circles, their interactions and rituals, their movements from ballrooms to drawing rooms, from London and Bath to parklands and gardens, she recreates the life of the English gentry that she observed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Each of her novels is a love story and a story about marriage; marriage for love, for financial security, for social status. But they are not romances; ironic, comic, wise and penetrating , they are brilliant portrayals of the society Jane Austen knew.

Includes seven stories: Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, and Lady Susan.

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Sense and Sensibility

Author: Jane Austen

ISBN: 9780230037526

Jane Austen’s first published novel, Sense and Sensibility is a wonderfully entertaining tale of flirtation and folly that revolves around two starkly different sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood. While Elinor is thoughtful, considerate, and calm, her younger sister is emotional and wildly romantic. Both are looking for a husband, but neither Elinor’s reason nor Marianne’s passion can lead them to perfect happiness—as Marianne falls for an unscrupulous rascal and Elinor becomes attached to a man who’s already engaged.

Startling secrets, unexpected twists, and heartless betrayals interrupt the marriage games that follow. Filled with satiric wit and subtle characterizations, Sense and Sensibility teaches that true love requires a balance of reason and emotion.

Price: 6,5 GEL

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Pride and Prejudice

Author: Jane Austen

ISBN: 9780141199078

‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.’ Thus memorably begins Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, one of the world’s most popular novels. Pride and Prejudice—Austen’s own ‘darling child’—tells the story of fiercely independent Elizabeth Bennet, one of five sisters who must marry rich, as she confounds the arrogant, wealthy Mr. Darcy. What ensues is one of the most delightful and engrossingly readable courtships known to literature, written by a precocious Austen when she was just twenty-one years old.

Humorous and profound, and filled with highly entertaining dialogue, this witty comedy of manners dips and turns through drawing-rooms and plots to reach an immensely satisfying finale. In the words of Eudora Welty, Pride and Prejudice is as ‘irresistible and as nearly flawless as any fiction could be.’

Price: 14,9 GEL

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Northanger Abbey

Author: Jane Austen

ISBN: 9780141389424

A wonderfully entertaining coming-of-age story, Northanger Abbey is often referred to as Jane Austen’s “Gothic parody.” Decrepit castles, locked rooms, mysterious chests, cryptic notes, and tyrannical fathers give the story an uncanny air, but one with a decidedly satirical twist.

The story’s unlikely heroine is Catherine Morland, a remarkably innocent seventeen-year-old woman from a country parsonage. While spending a few weeks in Bath with a family friend, Catherine meets and falls in love with Henry Tilney, who invites her to visit his family estate, Northanger Abbey. Once there, Catherine, a great reader of Gothic thrillers, lets the shadowy atmosphere of the old mansion fill her mind with terrible suspicions. What is the mystery surrounding the death of Henry’s mother? Is the family concealing a terrible secret within the elegant rooms of the Abbey? Can she trust Henry, or is he part of an evil conspiracy? Catherine finds dreadful portents in the most prosaic events, until Henry persuades her to see the peril in confusing life with art.

Executed with high-spirited gusto, Northanger Abbey is the most lighthearted of Jane Austen’s novels, yet at its core this delightful novel is a serious, unsentimental commentary on love and marriage.

Price: 14,9 GEL

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Persuasion

Author: Jane Austen

ISBN: 9780230735125

In her final novel, as in her earlier ones, Jane Austen uses a love story to explore and gently satirize social pretensions and emotional confusion. Persuasion follows the romance of Anne Elliot and naval officer Frederick Wentworth. They were happily engaged until Anne’s friend, Lady Russell, persuaded her that Frederick was “unworthy.” Now, eight years later, Frederick returns, a wealthy captain in the navy, while Anne’s family teeters on the edge of bankruptcy. They still love each other, but their past mistakes threaten to keep them apart.

Austen may seem to paint on a small canvas, but her characters contain the full range of human passion and moral complexity, and the author’s generous spirit renders them all with understanding, compassion, and humor.

Price: 6,5 GEL

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The theme for this week is about Jane Austen, an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the privileged British social class who lived entirely off rental income (landed gentry), earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature. Her realism, biting irony and social commentary as well as her acclaimed plots have gained her historical importance among scholars and critics.

Austen lived her entire life as part of a close-knit family located on the lower fringes of the English landed gentry. She was educated primarily by her father and older brothers as well as through her own reading. The steadfast support of her family was critical to her development as a professional writer.

Enjoy two film trailers adapted from Austen’s most popular novels, Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice.

Sense and Sensibility:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns17RQr1yK8

Pride and Prejudice:

Since its publication in 1813, Pride and Prejudice’s blend of humor, romance, and social satire have delighted readers of all ages. In telling the story of Mr. and Mrs. Bennett and their five daughters, Jane Austen creates a miniature of her world, where social grace and the nuances of behavior predominate in the making of a great love story.

At the turn of eighteenth-century England, spirited Elizabeth Bennet copes with the suit of the snobbish Mr. Darcy while trying to sort out the romantic entanglements of two of her sisters, sweet and beautiful Jane and scatterbrained Lydia.

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