Wasim Akram


Wasim Akram (Urdu: وسیم اکرم) (born June 3, 1966 in Lahore, Punjab) is a former Pakistani cricketer. He was a left-arm fast bowler and left-handed batsman, who represented the Pakistani cricket team in Tests and One-Day Internationals. He is widely regarded as one of the finest fast bowlers ever and holds world records for the most wickets taken in both ODIs (502) and List A cricket (881).




Domestic career
Wasim signed for Lancashire in 1988 and went on to become one of their most successful overseas players. From 1988 to 1998, he spearheaded their attack in their NatWest Trophy, Benson & Hedges Cup and Sunday League winning sides. He was a favourite of the local fans who used to sing a song called "Wasim for England" at Lancashire's matches.


International career
Wasim made his Test debut for Pakistani cricket team against New Zealand in early 1985 and in only his second Test he made his presence felt with a ten-wicket haul. Like a few other Pakistani cricketers of his time, he was identified at club level and bypassed first-class domestic competition, entering international cricket directly. A few weeks prior to his selection into the Pakistani team, he was an unknown club cricketer who had failed to even make it to his college team. He was spotted by Javed Miandad, and as a result of his insisting was it that Wasim was given an oppurtunity to play for Pakistan. Later that season he paired with Imran, who became his mentor, at the World Championship of Cricket in Australia.

Wasim's rise in international cricket was rapid during the initial years. When Pakistan toured the West Indies in 1988, he looked to be the quickest bowler between the two sides. However, a serious groin injury impeded his career in the late 1980s. Following two surgeries, he re-emerged in 1990 as a bowler who focused more on swing and control than speed.


One-Day success
Wasim was instrumental in Pakistan's famous World Cup victory in 1992 in Australia. In the final against England his late flurry of an innings, 33 off 19 balls, pushed Pakistan to a respectable 249 for 6. Wasim then took the all-important wicket of Ian Botham early on, and when brought back into the attack later on, with the ball reverse swinging, he produced a devastating spell which led to Allan Lamb and Chris Lewis being clean-bowled in successive deliveries. His excellent performances earned him the Man of the Match award for the final.

He also captained Pakistan with some success. The high points of his captaincy were the 1996-97 victory in the World Series in Australia, two Test match wins in India in 1998-99 and in 1999, when Pakistan reached the World Cup final for the second time. The low point was the 1996 World Cup in Pakistan and India, when he had to pull out of the crucial quarter final match against India. After Pakistan's defeat, there were angry protests outside his homes, and a government inquiry was launched into the failure.

In 1999, he led Pakistan to the brink of victory in the World Cup before they rolled over and gave the final to Australia. This was the start of the match-fixing controversies, as people believed Wasim had set up the match for Australia. He was pardoned by Justice Qayyum.

He was Pakistan's top bowler in the 2003 World Cup taking 19 wickets in 7 matches. However, Pakistan failed to reach the "Super Six" phase of the tournament, and Wasim was one of the eight players to be sacked by the Pakistan Cricket Board as a result.

Wasim was diagnosed with diabetes at the peak of his career, but despite the initial psychological blow, he managed to regain his form and went on to produce fine cricketing displays. Since then he has actively sought to be involved in various awareness-raising campaigns for diabetes.


Playing style
“ Over my 15 or 16 years of playing international cricket in Tests and one-day internationals, Wasim Akram is definitely the most outstanding bowler I've ever faced. ”
— Former West Indies batsman Brian Lara.

An immensely talented player first discovered by Javed Miandad, Wasim played for his college(Govt. Islamia College Civil Lines, Lahore) as an opening bowler and batsman. Early on in his career, he bowled with genuine pace and hostility. Wasim possessed accurate control of line and length and seam position, and could swing the ball both in and out. With a very deceptive ball-concealing action, he could bowl equally well from both sides of the wicket. His mastery of reverse swing with the old ball meant he was at his most dangerous towards the end of an innings, and earned him the nickname Sultan of Swing.

As well as often being able to find the edge of the bat, Wasim would also focus his attack on the stumps and had a particularly lethal yorker. Of his 414 Test wickets, 193 were taken caught, 119 were taken LBW and 102 were bowled.[8][9][10] In partnership with Waqar Younis, he intimidated international batsmen in the 1990s. Together Wasim and Waqar, known as "the two Ws" of the Pakistani team, were one of the most successful bowling partnerships ever.

Wasim was also skilled with the bat and was regarded as a bowling all-rounder. He was especially effective against spinners. However, he liked to slog and was criticised for his lack of big scores and giving away his wicket too cheaply for a player of his talent. He did silence his critics in October 1996 when he scored 257, not out, of the team's total of 553 against Zimbabwe at Sheikhupura. He also made good scores in difficult times for the Pakistan team such as his 123 against Australia and his 45 not-out to take Pakistan to victory in a low-scoring match. Pakistan, needing six runs in two balls two win the Nehru Cup saw Wasim come out to bat. The first ball he faced was hit out of the ground and secured the cup. Ahmed Bilal was his coach who gave him tricks on reverse swing.


Records
In his Test career, Wasim took 414 wickets in 104 matches, a Pakistani record, at an average of 23.62, and scored 2,898 runs, at an average of 22.64.
In One-Day Internationals, Wasim took a world record 502 wickets in 356 appearances, at an average of 23.52, and scored 3,717 runs, at an average of 16.52.
Wasim was the first bowler in international cricket to take more than 400 wickets in both forms of the game, and only Muttiah Muralitharan has since achieved this.
Wasim also held the record for the most wickets in Cricket World Cups — a total of 55 in 38 matches. Australia's Glenn McGrath broke the record during the 2007 World Cup, ending with a final tally of 71 from 39 matches. On passing Wasim's record, McGrath said, "Wasim Akram, to me, is one of the greatest bowlers of all time. Left-armer, swung it both ways with the new ball and he was so dangerous with the old ball. To go past him is something I will always remember. Probably the other side of the coin is that if you play long enough, you're going to break records here and there."

Uniquely, Wasim took four hat-tricks in international cricket, two each in Tests and ODIs. He is one of only three bowlers to have taken two Test hat-tricks (the others being Hugh Trumble and Jimmy Matthews), and also one of only three bowlers to have taken two ODI hat-tricks (the others being fellow Pakistani Saqlain Mushtaq and Chaminda Vaas of Sri Lanka). Wasim's Test hat-tricks are unique, since they were taken in consecutive Test matches in the same series, against Sri Lanka in 1999. Wasim is also one of only two bowlers to have taken both a Test and ODI hat-trick (the other being fellow Pakistani Mohammad Sami).
Playing in a Test against the West Indies at Lahore in 1990-91, he became one of only six players to have taken four wickets in an over during a Test match. In Wasim's case, the feat was not part of a hat-trick, the third ball of the series being a dropped catch, which allowed a single.
Wasim has also achieved the highest score by a number eight batsman in Test cricket — 257 not out from 363 balls against Zimbabwe at Sheikhupura. The innings contained 12 sixes which is also a world record for Test cricket.
He also has the joint-highest number of Man of the Match awards in Test cricket, along with South African Jacques Kallis, with 17.

Controversies
In 1992, after he had been successful against English batsmen, accusations of ball tampering began to appear in the English press, though no video evidence was ever found. Wasim and Waqar had been able to obtain prodigious amounts of movement from old balls. This phenomenon, termed reverse swing was relatively unknown in England at the time.

A far larger controversy was created when he was alleged to be involved in match fixing. An enquiry commission was set up by Pakistan Cricket Board headed by a Pakistan high court judge Malik Mohammed Qayyum. The judge wrote in his report that:

This commission feels that all is not well here and that Wasim Akram is not above board. He has not co-operated with this Commission. It is only by giving Wasim Akram the benefit of the doubt after Ata-ur-Rehman changed his testimony in suspicious circumstances that he has not been found guilty of match-fixing. He cannot be said to be above suspicion.

Retirement
Wasim retired in 2003, after a brief spell with Hampshire in England. Since then, Wasim has taken up commentary and can currently be seen as a sportscaster for the ESPN Star network, and is also running shows on ARY Digital.

He is married to Huma Mufti, daughter of Mr. Humayaun Mufti. Huma and Wasim have two sons from their marriage of thirteen years.

sachin tendulkar biography

Rani mukherjee


Date of Birth
21 March 1978, Bengal, India


Height
5' 3" (1.60 m)


Mini Biography
Mukerji comes from a film-oriented family of Bengali origin. Her father Ram Mukherjee is a retired director and one of the founders of 'Filmalaya Studios'. Her mother Krishna was a playback singer. Her brother Raja Mukherjee is a film producer, now turned director. Her maternal aunt, Debashree Roy, was a Bengali-film actress and her cousin Kajol is a Bollywood actress.

Mukerji is a trained Odissi dancer, and began learning the dance in tenth grade. Mukerji studied at Maneckjee Cooper High School in Juhu, and later enrolled at Mithibai College in Mumbai.

While in school at the age of 14, Mukerji did a cameo role in her father's Bengali film Biyar Phool (1992). In 1994, Salim Akhtar, a family friend, offered her a film called Aa Gale Lag Jaa (1994) but her father was against it as she was too young. Mukerji turned down the offer and Urmila Matondkar was cast instead.

Two years later, Salim Akhtar came up with another offer and insisted on her playing the protagonist of Raja Ki Ayegi Baraat (1997). After a long discussion with her father, she agreed to do the film. When the film was unsuccessful at the box office, Mukerji returned to college to complete her education.

BIOGRAPHY


Trade Mark
Husky voice

Queen of Bollywood



Trivia
Got her first breakthrough with Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998).

Cousin of Kajol, Sharbani Mukherji, Mohnish Bahl and Tanisha. Niece of Joy Mukherjee and Deb Mukherjee.

Indian model.

Daughter of director Ram Mukherjee.

Favorite comic: Archie and Donald Duck

Favorite outfit: Anything comfortable

Favorite hobby: Dancing

Favorite food: Fish made by her mom.

Favorite gift: Diamond ring her dad gave her.

Her favorite film is 'Titanic' along with that her favorite song is 'My Heart Will Go On' from 'Titanic'.

Favorite Perfume: Polo Sport

Won 'Best Actress' for Hum Tum (2004) at the Bollywood Movie Awards, Screen, Cinegoers, Sports World, 1st GIFA, Zee Cine, IIFA and at the 50th Filmfare Awards.

Won accolades in the 'Best Supporting Actress' category for Yuva (2004) at the Bollywood Movie Awards, Screen and at the 50th Filmfare Awards.

Won accolades in the 'Best Supporting Actress' category for Veer-Zaara (2004) at the Sports World, Cinegoers, IIFA and South Africa Awards.

Won Sports World Jodi of the Year with Saif Ali Khan (2004).

Only actress on Filmfare power list (2004).

Won a Filmfare award for best supporting actress for 'Kuch Kuch Hota Hai.' Directors then started taking her seriously, and then she signed up to do 22 films.

She changed the English transliteration of her surname from Mukherjee to Mukerji several years ago. At the time, it was reported that she did this for numerological reasons. Recently, she has claimed that numerology was not a concern; her name had been put down as Mukerji on her passport, and she wished to harmonize her name and her passport.

She is the first actor to ever win both the Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress trophies in a single year (2005) at the Filmfare.

Two movies in which she appeared have been India's entry to the Academy Awards. Paheli (2005) was the official entry for the 2006 Oscars. Hey Ram (2000) was an earlier entry.

Appeared at the Closing Ceremony of the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, as part of a performance showcasing Indian culture, on behalf of the 2010 Commonwealth Games, to be held in New Delhi.

Besides acting in films, she also does many charity appearances for noble causes. Her most noteworthy show was Temptations 2005 where she performed in New Delhi. The event provided the opportunity to raise funds for National Centre For Promotional of Employment for Disabled People (NCPEDP), a leading disabled rights group. Shahrukh Khan and Priyanka Chopra were also amongst the many who contributed to this cause.

In 2005, she worked with the biggest production houses and banners: Black, Bunty aur Babli and The Rising. These three movies were amongst the top ten grosser of the year. Paheli, while only moderately successful, was India's official entry to the 2006 Oscars.

In February 2005, she was the only woman on the listing of "Ten Most Powerful Names of Bollywood". Filmfare Magazine incorporated her into the Power List at # 10. She was ranked at # 8 the following year, a number ahead of Aishwarya Rai. In February 2007, she was placed at #5 on the prestigious Power List, configuring the highest ranking for a woman. Rani has also been ranked # 1 in the Filmfare Top Ten Actresses' Listing for three years in a row (2004-2006).

She has won well over 60 awards to date.

Listed # 1 on Rediff's 'Top Bollywood Female Stars' Rankings for three consecutive years (2004-2006).

Was honored by an audience of 50,000 at the Casablanca Film Festival (2005) in Morocco where her selected four movies were presented to the foreign masses of people.

Her film, Paheli (2005) got the honor to open the ninth Zimbabwe International Film Festival in Harare a year later.

In 2006, the actress bought a new house for herself in Juhu. The interiors were done by Twinkle Khanna and it took an entire year to get ready.

Black (2005), Paheli (2005), and Veer-Zaara (2004) were all part of the final process of nomination selection for the 63rd Annual Golden Globe Awards amongst 60 foreign films in 2006.

Appeared at the Closing Ceremony of the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, as part of a performance showcasing Indian culture, on behalf of the 2010 Commonwealth Games, to be held in Delhi.

Listed # 36 by UK magazine 'Eastern Eye' as one of "Asia's Sexiest Women" (Sept/2006).

Rani Mukerji have been the only member from the film industry to have been invited to the dinner in Honor of President Musharraf.

She was invited to the Toronto International Film Festival to promote her movie Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna. Due to her schedule shooting of Tara Rum Pum in New York City, she opted not to go.

In early 2007, the actress performed an act with Saif Ali Khan in Versailles for Lakshmi Mittal's guests at his daughter's £30 million/$65 million wedding.

Mukerji was offered the lead role in Hollywood film, The Namesake (2006) but owing to clashing dates with Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna (2006), she couldn't commit to Mira Nair's project.

In November 2006, Mukerji was shooting a film in Varanasi when avid fans crowded the set. Security personnel beat the crowd back with sticks. A media storm followed as various groups insisted that Mukerji should have stopped the security guards. The actress later issued an apology.

The actress donated her prize money, her half-share of half-a-million rupees from her 2007 appearance on "Kaun Banega Crorepati?" (2000) with Preity Zinta, to the Holy Family Hospital. She said that this institution looks after children with heart problems which is a major setback in India.

In February 2005, Mukerji performed at the HELP! Telethon Concert to help raise money for the victims of Tsunami in company with other Bollywood stars.

As of 2006, she is a six-time Filmfare Award-winning Indian film actress, the most wins by an actress tying with Nutan Behl.

Besides acting in films, Mukerji has associated herself with several other commercial and non-profit organizations. In March 2004, Mukerji visited the sandy dunes of Rajasthan to boost the morales of the soldiers. It was for a show where entertainers and stars visit Indian troops in far-flung regions to encourage them along with the NDTV team.

She has been featured in the list of Rediff's "Best Dressed Actresses".

Rani Mukerji was listed on the coveted Rediff's 'Bollywood's Most Beautiful Actresses' Listing along with Sonali Bendre and Aishwarya Rai.

For her three minutes dance act at the Closing Ceremony of the 2006 Commonwealth Games, alongside Saif Ali Khan, she was reportedly paid 1.5 million rupees.

She performed in the "Temptations 2004" concert alongside Shahrukh Khan, Saif Ali Khan, Arjun Rampal, Preity Zinta, and Priyanka Chopra in nineteen stage shows across the globe. It was the most successful Bollywood concert in its time and it broke all records.

The actress has been an active stage performer and has participated in numerous world tours. Her first world tour was in the year 1999 with Aamir Khan, Aishwarya Rai, Akshaye Khanna and Twinkle Khanna. It was called the "Magnificent Five". The show was widely watched in every city where it was showcased.

As of 2006, her total box office impact is worth well over Rs. 5 billion.

Her close friends in the industry include Shahrukh Khan, Aamir Khan, Karan Johar, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Aditya Chopra, Abhishek Bachchan, and Twinkle Khanna.



Personal Quotes
"The kiss with Kamal Haasan (in Hey! Ram) was mechanical. He was constantly checking the right angle. Where was the passion?"

"I don't party, I don't get drunk and I don't have affairs. So all my passion goes into my work."

"Kamal Hassan re-invented the actress in me after the 'Hey Ram' experience."

"When Karan wanted my voice to be dubbed for 'Kuch Kuch Hota Hai', I really thought that it was bad and very husky and rough, but slowly I worked to improve my diction, and am now quite comfortable with it."

"You sign two films with a hero and it's said you're having a scene with him. Please, the only scenes I'm into are in front of the camera."

"Why should I try to imitate Kajol? I am not a mimicry artist."

"It's frustrating for the media to see me going about my work like Florence Nightingale - They'd like me to be Rangeeli Rani."

"I'd never trade my dad's house, even for Buckingham Palace. I'm very sentimental about living with my parents."

"I'd rather have a room full of cuddly teddy bears than a diamond necklace in a safe deposit locker."

On her character in The Rising (2005): "See, my role started as a cameo. I was supposed to play the widow Jwala's character - yes, the one Aishwarya Rai was supposed to have done. Now Amisha Patel is doing that. When I read the script, I fell in love with the small role of the prostitute. There were two or three very good scenes. The script underwent a change, and I got more space than before. But it's still a cameo - nothing like what Smita Patil did with Ketan Mehta in Mirch Masala, though I wish had."

I can never be rude to people who want photographs and autographs, but I don't like to be followed and stared at constantly.

My schedule for the day is somewhat fixed. I wake up early; go for my work-out. Play with the baby for a while, get ready and then I am off for my shoots. After work, I come home directly, play with her as long as she is awake. Then I have my dinner and hit the bed. That's it. My life revolves around my shooting schedules and Myeisha's daily routines.

I am here to act, entertain and make good films. I don't want to work hard for a film which does not even get released. I will cooperate with my director and help him make a good film. I get disappointed if my co-actors don't put in as much as I do. Today I am looking for banners and costars who have the same goal as me --- to work towards making a good film with dedication. I have made mistakes in my career, but that is just the learning process.

On Replacing Aishwarya Rai in Chalte Chalte (2003): As a matter of fact, and I have said this before, I was the original choice for this role. Shah Rukh spoke to me about the film during Asoka. I didn't have dates, so Ash replaced me. When she couldn't do the film for whatever reason, Shah Rukh asked me to do it. I love Aamir and Shah Rukh in a different way. When Shah Rukh asks, I can't say no.

I am in the profession of acting and so to suit the character I sometimes have to indulge in kissing and provocative scenes. I have never felt comfortable shooting for kissing sequences. Although, kissing scenes like the ones in Yuva with Abhishek Bachchan and in Hum Tum with Saif were shot in an aesthetic manner. I am still pretty much uncomfortable performing such scenes.

On the State Dinner with President Pervez Musharraf: It was like a dream come true! To just be part of such an event made me feel that I've done something to achieve this. All the biggest dignitaries from both sides of the border were so cultured and down-to-earth. When I was invited, I was disbelieving and overjoyed. I'm really looking forward to going to Pakistan. Let's see where the invitation comes from. Maybe it will come directly from the Begum (President Musharraf's wife). They actually want me and Latabai (Lata Mangeshkar) to come to Pakistan!.

Fifty thousand people on the beach watching 'Chalte Chalte' with me, then asking me questions about the songs and dances, the idiom and language of expression was incredible. I don't think I'll ever forget my experience in Casablanca.

sachin tendulkar biography

George Etherege

Early life
George Etherege was born in Maidenhead, Berkshire, around 1635, to George Etherege and Mary Powney, being the eldest of six children.[1] Rumor has it that he was educated at Cambridge; [2] however, John Dennis assures that to his certain knowledge he understood neither Greek nor Latin, thus rising doubts that he could hardly have been there.[3] He served as apprentice to a lawyer and later studied law at Clement's Inn, London, one of the Inns of Chancery.[2] He probably travelled abroad to France with his father who stayed with the exiled queen Henrietta Maria. It is possible that he witnessed in Paris the performances of some of Molière's earliest comedies; and he is thought, from an allusion in one of his plays, to have been personally acquainted with Roger de Rabutin, Comte de Bussy.


[edit] Success on the stage
Soon after the Restoration in 1660 he composed his comedy of The Comical Revenge or Love in a Tub, which introduced him to Lord Buckhurst, afterwards the earl of Dorset. This was performed at the Duke's theatre in 1664, and a few copies were printed in the same year. It is partly in rhymed heroic verse, like the stilted tragedies of the Howards and Killigrew, but it contains comic scenes that are exceedingly bright and fresh. The sparring between Sir Frederick and the Widow introduced a style of wit hitherto unknown upon the English stage.

The success of this play was very great, but Etherege waited four years before he repeated his experiment. Meanwhile he gained the highest reputation as a poetical beau, and moved in the circle of Sir Charles Sedley, Lord Rochester and the other noble wits of the day. His temperament is best known by the names his contemporaries gave him, of "gentle George" and "easy Etheredge." In 1668 he brought out She would if she could, a comedy full of action, wit and spirit, although by some thought to be frivolous and immoral. But in this play Etherege first shows himself a new power in literature. We move in an airy and fantastic world, where flirtation is the only serious business of life. At this time Etherege was living a life no less frivolous and unprincipled than those of his Courtals and Freemans.


[edit] The Man of Mode

Frontispiece to The Man of Mode (1676).Between 1668 and 1671 Etherege went to Constantinople as secretary of the English ambassador Sir Daniel Harvey. After a silence of eight years, he came forward with one more play, unfortunately his last. The Man of Mode or, Sir Fopling Flutter, indisputably the best comedy of manners written in England before the days of Congreve, was acted and printed in 1676, and enjoyed an unbounded success. Besides the merit of its plot and wit, it had the personal charm of being supposed to satirize, or at least to paint, persons well known in London. Sir Fopling Flutter was a portrait of Beau Hewit, the reigning exquisite of the hour; in Dorimant the poet drew the Earl of Rochester, and in Medley a portrait of himself (or, equally plausible, of his fellow playwright and wit Sir Charles Sedley); while even the drunken shoemaker was a real character, who made his fortune from being thus brought into public notice.

Etherege was a friend of John Wilmot; each had a daughter by the unmarried actress Elizabeth Barry.[4] All three are characters in the 2005 film The Libertine based on a play by Stephen Jeffreys.

After this brilliant success Etheredge retired from literature; his gallantries and his gambling in a few years deprived him of his fortune, and he looked about for a rich match. He was knighted before 1680, and gained the hand and the money of a rich widow. In March 1685 he was appointed resident minister in the imperial German court at Regensburg. After three and a half-year's residence and after the Glorious Revolution, he left for Paris to join James II in exile. His manuscript despatches are preserved in the British Museum, where they were discovered and described by Gosse in 1881; they are available in editions by Sybil Rosenfeld (1928) and Frederic Bracher (1974). He died in Paris, probably in 1691, for Narcissus Luttrell notes in February 1692 that Sir George Etherege, the late King James' ambassador to Vienna, had died recently in Paris.


[edit] Reputation
Etherege holds a distinguished place in English literature as one of the "big five" of Restoration comedy. He inaugurated a period of genuine wit and sprightliness. He invented the comedy of manners, and led the way for the masterpieces of Congreve and Sheridan.

Etherege's portraits of fops and beaux are considered the best of their kind. His wit is sparkling and frivolous, his style picturesque. Etherege is noted for his delicate touches of dress, furniture and scene; he vividly draws the fine airs of London gentlemen and ladies, perhaps better than Congreve; but he has less insight and less energy than Congreve. His biography was first written in detail by Edmund Gosse in Seventeenth Century Studies (1883).

Warren Ellis


Warren Ellis (born February 16, 1968) is a British author of comics, novels, and television, well known for sociocultural commentary, both through his online presence and his writing, which covers extropian and transhumanist themes (most notably nanotechnology, cryonics, uploading, and human enhancement). He is a resident of Southend-on-Sea, England.

Career
Ellis was born in Essex in February 1968, about seventeen months before Neil Armstrong landed on the moon on July 20, 1969; he reports that the televised broadcast of the event is his earliest coherent memory.[1] He was a student at The South East Essex Sixth Form College, commonly known as SEEVIC. He contributed comic work to the college magazine, Spike, along with Richard Easter, who also later followed a career in writing. Prior to his career as a writer he had "done most of the shitty jobs you can imagine; ran a bookstore, ran a pub, worked in bankruptcy, worked in a record shop, lifted compost bags for a living".[2]

Ellis' writing career started in the British independent magazine Deadline with a six page short story in 1990. Other early works include a Judge Dredd short and a Doctor Who one-pager. His first ongoing work, Lazarus Churchyard appeared in Blast!, a short lived British magazine.

By 1994 Ellis began working for Marvel Comics, where he took over the series Hellstorm with #12, which he wrote until its cancellation with #21. He also did some work on the Marvel 2099 imprint, most notably in a storyline where a futuristic Doctor Doom took over the United States. His most notable early Marvel work is a run on Excalibur, a superhero series set in Britain. He also wrote a four-issue arc of Thor called "Worldengine", in which he dramatically revamped both the character and book.

Ellis then started working for DC Comics, Caliber Comics, and Image Comics' Wildstorm studio, where he wrote the Gen¹³ spin-off DV8 and took over Stormwatch, a previously action-oriented team book, which he gave a more idea- and character-driven flavor. He wrote issues #37-50 with artist Tom Raney, and the 11 issues of volume two with artist Bryan Hitch. He and Hitch followed that with the Stormwatch spinoff The Authority, a cinematic super-action series for which Ellis coined the term "widescreen comics."

In 1997 Ellis started Transmetropolitan, a creator-owned series about an acerbic "gonzo" journalist in a dystopian future America, co-created with artist Darick Robertson and published by DC's Helix imprint. When Helix was discontinued the following year, Transmetropolitan was shifted to the Vertigo imprint, and remained one of the most successful non-superhero comics DC was then publishing [3]. Transmetropolitan ran for 60 issues (plus a few specials), ending in 2002. It remains Ellis' largest work to date.

1999 saw the launch of Planetary, another Wildstorm series by Ellis and John Cassaday, and Ellis' short run on the DC/Vertigo series Hellblazer. He left that series when DC announced, following the Columbine High School massacre, that it would not publish "Shoot", a Hellblazer story about school shootings, although the story had been written and illustrated prior to the Columbine massacre.[4] [5] Planetary has been notoriously plagued with delays, but is scheduled to conclude in 2007 with issue #27.

Ellis also returned to Marvel Comics, as part of the company's "Revolution" event, to head the "Counter-X" line of titles. This project was intended to revitalize the X-Men spinoff books Generation X, X-Man, and X-Force, but it was not successful, and Ellis stayed away from mainstream superhero comics for a time.


Transmetropolitan - one of Ellis' best-known seriesIn 2003 Ellis started Global Frequency, a 12-issue limited series for Wildstorm, and continued to produce work for various publishers, including DC, Avatar Comics, AiT/Planet Lar, Cliffhanger and Homage Comics.

In 2004 Ellis came back to mainstream superhero comics. He took over Ultimate Fantastic Four and Iron Man for Marvel under a temporary exclusive work for hire contract.

Toward the end of 2004, Ellis released the "Apparat Singles Group", which he described as "An imaginary line of comics singles. Four imaginary first issues of imaginary series from an imaginary line of comics, even." The Apparat titles were published by Avatar but carried only the Apparat logo on the cover.

In 2006 Ellis worked on Jack Cross (for DC), which was not well received and subsequently cancelled. For Marvel, he worked on Nextwave, which lasted 12 issues. The series was critically acclaimed and only ended because Ellis didn't want to carry on with it after twelve issues. He also worked on the Ultimate Galactus trilogy. Ellis also took over the Thunderbolts monthly title, which deals with the aftermath of the Marvel Civil War crossover.[6]

In honor of the 20th anniversary of Marvel's New Universe in 2006, Ellis and illustrator Salvador Larroca created a new series that re-imagines the New Universe, under the title newuniversal. The first issue was released on December 6, 2006.[7]

Ellis continues to work on several projects for different publishers, including Fell (for Image), Desolation Jones (for DC/Wildstorm), , Blackgas (for Avatar Comics).

Ellis also wrote an episode of Justice League Unlimited entitled "Dark Heart".

Ellis has managed a series of online forums and media to promote his written works and his creative ideals. These forums are sharply moderated by Ellis and his assistants, to suit the particular purpose each one was created for. They include the Warren Ellis Forum, DiePunyHumans.com, the Bad Signal mailing list, WarrenEllis.com, Warren-Ellis.livejournal.com and The-Engine.net. He is popularly known as "Stalin," "The Love Swami," or "Internet Jesus" on these forums.

Ellis' first prose novel, Crooked Little Vein, was published in the summer of 2007 by William Morrow (an imprint of HarperCollins), with a second novel, Listener, to follow. He is also developing a television series for AMC called Dead Channel, for which he will be the sole writer.

It has recently been announced that he is writing an animated direct to DVD feature film, Castlevania: Dracula's Curse, which will be based on the similarly titled video game Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse.[8] [9]

Ellis has described himself as "a notorious pain in the arse for getting involved in book design"[10] According to a comment made in the first issue of Fell, he has more trade paperbacks in print than anyone else in the American comic industry.

Ellis is currently writing a column for the Suicide Girls website that appears every Sunday, entitled "The Sunday Hangover."[11]

Ellis is also writing a Second Life column for Reuters titled Second Life Sketches [12] In Second Life he's known under the name Integral Danton.

On July 29th 2007 Ellis announced two new projects for Avatar press; FreakAngels, a free long-form webcomic illustrated by Paul Duffield, and Ignition City, an ongoing monthly series.[13]


[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Marvel Comics
Hellstorm: Prince of Lies #12-21 (1994). With artists Leonardo Manco (#12-13, 15-16 & 18-21), Peter Gross (#14) & Derek Yaniger (#17). Note: The series was cancelled in issue 21.
Excalibur #83-103 (1994-1996). With several artists, including Casey Jones and Carlos Pacheco.
Ghost Rider Annual (1994)
Ghost Rider #55 (1995)
Starjammers (1995). 4-issue miniseries with artist Carlos Pacheco
Druid (1995). 4-issue miniseries with artist Leonardo Manco.
Ruins (1995). 2-issue prestige miniseries.
Dr. Strange, Sorcerer Supreme #80-82 (1995).
"Metalscream" in 2099 Unlimited #4, 7 (unfinished) (1994, 1995)
"Steel Dawn" in 2099 Unlimited #9 (1995)
Doom 2099 #25-39 (1995-96).
2099 A.D. Apocalypse (Dec 1995)
2099 A.D. Genesis (Jan 1996)
Thor #491-494 (1995-96). 4-issue "World engine" story arc, with artist Mike Deodato Jr.
Carnage: Mindbomb (1996). One-shot with artist Kyle Hotz.
Storm (1996). 4-issue miniseries with artist Terry Dodson.
Pryde and Wisdom (1996). 3-issue miniseries with artist Terry Dodson.
Wolverine #119-122 (1997-1998). 4-issue "Not Dead Yet" story arc, with artist Leinil Francis Yu
Ultimate Fantastic Four #7-18 (2004-05)
Ultimate Nightmare (2004), Ultimate Secret (2005) & Ultimate Extinction (2006). A trilogy of mini-series set in the Ultimate Universe.
Iron Man (volume 4) #1-6 (2005-2006). 6-issue "Extremis" story arc, with artist Adi Granov
Nextwave (2006-2007). With artist Stuart Immonen
newuniversal (2006-present). With artist Salvador Larroca and colorist Jason Keith
Thunderbolts #110- (2007-present). With artist Mike Deodato Jr.
Astonishing X-Men (2008-?). With artist Simone Bianchi [13]
What If (comics) (volume 2) #77 (1995). Wrote dialogue. Plot by Benny R. Powell. With artist Hector Gomez

[edit] Wildstorm

Planetary: All Over the WorldDV8 #1-8
Stormwatch (volume 1) #37-50 (1996-1997) & StormWatch (volume 2) #1-11 (1997-1998)
WildC.A.T.s/Aliens (1998). One-shot with artist Chris Sprouse
The Authority #1-12 (1999-2000). 12-issue run with artist Bryan Hitch
Planetary #1-26 (1999-2006). With artist John Cassaday
Global Frequency (2002). 12-issue maxiseries, with 12 stand-alone stories, each drawn by a different artist
Mek (2002). 3-issue sci-fi miniseries with artist Steve Rolston.
Red (2003). 3-issue action miniseries with artist Cully Hamner
Reload (2003). 3-issue miniseries with artist Paul Gulacy
Tokyo Storm Warning. 3-issue miniseries
Two-Step (2003). 3-issue sci-fi miniseries with artist Amanda Conner
Desolation Jones (2005-). Ongoing series with artists J.H. Williams III on issues #1-6 and Danijel Zezelj since issue #7
Ocean (2004-2005). 6-issue sci-fi miniseries with artist Chris Sprouse

[edit] DC Comics and Vertigo
Transmetropolitan #1-60. Sci-fi series with artist Darick Robertson.
Hellblazer:
Hellblazer: Haunted (collects #134-139)
Hellblazer: Setting Sun (collects #140-143)
Orbiter (2003). Sci-fi graphic novel with artist Colleen Doran about a space shuttle that lands on earth after being missing for years.
Jack Cross (2005-2006). 4-issue series with artist Gary Erskine.
JLA Classified #10-15 with artist Butch Guice (collected in "JLA Classified: New Maps Of Hell" TPB).
Stealth Tribes (with Colleen Doran, graphic novel, forthcoming) [14] [15] [16]

[edit] Image Comics
City of Silence (2000). 3-issue miniseries with artist Gary Erskine.
Ministry of Space (2001-2004). 3-issue miniseries with artist Chris Weston.
Down (Image/Top Cow, 2005-2006). 4-issue miniseries with artists Tony Harris (interiors of #1 and all the four covers) & Cully Hammner (interiors of #2-4).
Fell (2005-). Ongoing series with artist Ben Templesmith (30 Days of Night)

[edit] AiT/Planet Lar
Switchblade Honey (2003). A 72-page sci-fi graphic novel with artist Brandon McKinney.
Come in Alone (non-comics). Collection of the on-line weekly column that Ellis published in 1999-2000 in the website Comic Book Resources.
Available Light (non-comics). Collection of short writings and digital photography by Ellis.

[edit] Avatar Press
Strange Kiss (a series of four 3-issue and two 6-issue miniseries with artist Mike Wolfer, all featuring the same lead character, William Gravel):
Strange Kiss #1-3 (1999)
Stranger Kisses #1-3 (2001)
Strange Killings #1-3 (2002)
Strange Killings: Body Orchard #1-6 (2002-2003)
Strange Killings: Strong Medicine #1-3 (2003)
Strange Killings: Necromancer #1-6 (2004)
Gravel (2008)
Dark Blue (2000). With artist Jacen Burrows. Originally published in 6 chapters in the Threshold anthology, later collected in TPB.
Bad World (2001). 3-issue miniseries with artist Jacen Burrows.
Atmospherics (2002)
Bad Signal: From the Desk of Warren Ellis, a collection of essays from Ellis' mailing list of the same name
Scars (2003). 6-issue miniseries with artist Jacen Burrows.
Wolfskin (2006-). Sword & fantasy mini-series with artist Juan Jose RyP.
Blackgas (2006)
Blackgas 2 (2006-2007)
Black Summer (2007-). Masked hero series (#0 plus 7 issue series) with artist Juan Jose RyP.
Doktor Sleepless (2007–)
FreakAngels (2007, webcomic, forthcoming) [17] [13]

[edit] Apparat
Angel Stomp Future
Frank Ironwine
Quit City
Simon Spector
Crécy

[edit] Others
Lazarus Churchyard (with D'Israeli, later reprinted by Image Comics)
Calibrations, later reprinted as Atmospherics (Caliber Comics)
Sugarvirus
edison hate future (webcomic)
Cold Winter (video game)
Hostile Waters (PC game)
Crooked Little Vein (prose novel)
Listener (prose novel)
Dead Channel (TV series)
At the zoo, short story about transhumanism published in Nature #408, November 16, 2000.
Second Life Sketches, a weekly column about Second Life [18]

[edit] Appearances in others' work
He makes a lengthy cameo appearance in Powers volume 1 issue #7, in which much of his dialogue consists of actual quotations from Ellis' writings.


[edit] Awards
This short section requires expansion.

2007:
Eagle Awards: [19] [20]
Favourite Comics Writer
Favourite New Comicbook (for Nextwave)
Favourite Comics Story published during 2006 (for Nextwave)
Favourite Comics Villain (for Dirk Anger)
Roll of Honour

[edit] References
^ http://www.scifidimensions.com/May03/orbiter.htm Orbiter
^ www.reallyscary.com - 10 Questions w/Warren Ellis
^ Top 300 Comics For September
^ Holmes, Thomas Alan (2005) "Warren Ellis’ 'Shoot' and Media Passivity." International Journal of Comic Art. 7 (2). 370-374
^ "Shoot" online
^ CONFIRMED: ELLIS & DEODATO ON THUNDERBOLTS, Newsarama
^ CCI, DAY 4: ELLIS TALKS "NEWUNIVERSAL"
^ CASTLEVANIA
^ Castlevania: Dracula's Curse production blog
^ Introduction to 'Strange Kiss Cover Notes', Strange Kiss Scriptbook (Avatar Press, May 2000)
^ Warren Ellis To Join Suicide Girls As A Columnist (news article). Suicide Girls. Retrieved on 2007-07-08.
^ SECOND LIFE SKETCHES: ELLIS SECOND LIFE COLUMN FOR REUTERS
^ a b c Warren Ellis Addresses His "Children" at Comic-Con, July 29, 2007
^ The dark star, August 26, 2004, The Guardian
^ Colleen Doran talks Stealth Tribes, July 22, 2005, Newsarama
^ Colleen Doran announcing the arrival of the script, April 2, 2007
^ http://www.freakangels.com/
^ Warren Ellis to write weekly SL column for Reuters, December 22, 2006, Reuters
^ http://www.eagleawards.co.uk/results.asp?year=2006
^ http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=10538

T. S. Eliot

Thomas Stearns Eliot, OM (September 26, 1888 – January 4, 1965), was a poet, dramatist and literary critic. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. He wrote the poems "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", The Waste Land, "The Hollow Men", "Ash Wednesday", and Four Quartets; the plays Murder in the Cathedral and The Cocktail Party; and the essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent". Eliot was born an American, moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 (at the age of 25), and became a British subject in 1927 at the age of 39.

Life

[edit] Early life and education
Eliot was born into the prominent Eliot family of St. Louis, Missouri. His father, Henry Ware Eliot (1843–1919), was a successful businessman, president and treasurer of the Hydraulic-Press Brick Company in St. Louis; his mother, born Charlotte Champe Stearns (1843–1929), wrote poems and was also a social worker. Eliot was the last of six surviving children; his parents were both 44 years old when he was born. His four sisters were between eleven and nineteen years older than him; his brother was eight years older. Known to family and friends as Tom, he was the namesake of his maternal grandfather, Thomas Stearns.

From 1898 to 1905, Eliot was a day student at Smith Academy, a preparatory school for Washington University. At the academy, Eliot studied Latin, Greek, French, and German. Upon graduation, he could have gone to Harvard University, but his parents sent him to Milton Academy (in Milton, Massachusetts, near Boston) for a preparatory year. There he met Scofield Thayer, who would later publish The Waste Land. He studied at Harvard, where he earned a B.A., from 1906 to 1909. The Harvard Advocate published some of his poems, and he became lifelong friends with Conrad Aiken. The next year, he earned a master's degree at Harvard. In the 1910–1911 school year, Eliot lived in Paris, studying at the Sorbonne and touring the continent. Returning to Harvard in 1911 as a doctoral student in philosophy, Eliot studied the writings of F.H. Bradley, Buddhism and Indic philology (learning Sanskrit and Pāli to read some of the religious texts.[4]) He was awarded a scholarship to attend Merton College, Oxford in 1914, and, before settling there, he visited Marburg, Germany, where he planned to take a summer program in philosophy. When the First World War broke out, however, he went to London and then to Oxford. In a letter to Aiken late in December 1914, Eliot, aged 26, wrote "I am very dependent upon women (I mean female society)" and then added a complaint that he was still a virgin.[5] Less than four months later, he was introduced by Thayer, then also at Oxford, to Cambridge governess Vivienne Haigh-Wood (May 28, 1888 – January 22, 1947).[6] Eliot was not happy at Merton and declined a second year there. Instead, on 26 June 1915, he married Vivienne in a register office. After a short visit, alone, to the U. S. to see his family, he returned to London and took a few teaching jobs such as lecturing at Birkbeck College, University of London. He continued to work on his dissertation and, in the spring of 1916, sent it to Harvard, which accepted it. Because he did not appear in person to defend his dissertation, however, he was not awarded his Ph.D. (In 1964, the dissertation was published as Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley.) During Eliot's university career, he studied with George Santayana, Irving Babbitt, Henri Bergson, C. R. Lanman, Josiah Royce, Bertrand Russell, and Harold Joachim.

Bertrand Russell took an interest in Vivien (the spelling she preferred[7]) while the newlyweds stayed in his flat. Some scholars have suggested that Vivien and Russell had an affair (see Carole Seymour-Jones, Painted Shadow), but these allegations have never been confirmed. Eliot, in a private paper, written in his sixties, confessed: "I came to persuade myself that I was in love with Vivienne simply because I wanted to burn my boats and commit myself to staying in England. And she persuaded herself (also under the influence of Pound) that she would save the poet by keeping him in England. To her, the marriage brought no happiness. To me, it brought the state of mind out of which came The Waste Land."[8]


A plaque at SOAS's Faber Building, 24 Russell Square commemorating T S Eliot's years at Faber and Faber.After leaving Merton Eliot worked as a school teacher, most notably at Highgate School where he taught the young John Betjeman, and later at the Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe. To earn extra money, he wrote book reviews and lectured at evening extension courses. In 1917, he took a position at Lloyds Bank in London, where he worked on foreign accounts. In August 1920, Eliot met James Joyce on a trip to Paris, accompanied by Wyndham Lewis. After the meeting, Eliot said he found Joyce arrogant (Joyce doubted Eliot's ability as a poet at the time), but the two soon became friends with Eliot visiting Joyce whenever he was in Paris.[9] In 1925, Eliot left Lloyds to join the publishing firm of Faber and Gwyer (later Faber and Faber), where he remained for the rest of his career, becoming a director of the firm.


[edit] Later life in England
In 1927, Eliot took two important steps in his self-definition. On June 29 he converted to Anglicanism and in November he dropped his American citizenship and became a British subject. In 1928, Eliot summarised his beliefs when he wrote in the preface to his book, For Lancelot Andrewes that "the general point of view [of the book's essays] may be described as classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and anglo-catholic in religion."

By 1932, Eliot had been contemplating a separation from his wife for some time. When Harvard University offered him the Charles Eliot Norton professorship for the 1932-1933 academic year, he accepted, leaving Vivien in England. Upon his return in 1933, Eliot officially separated from Vivien. He avoided all but one meeting with his wife between his leaving for America in 1932 and her death in 1947. (Vivien died at Northumberland House, a mental hospital north of London, where she was committed in 1938, without ever having been visited by Eliot, who was still her husband.[10])

From 1946 to 1957, Eliot shared a flat with his friend, John Davy Hayward, who gathered and archived Eliot's papers and styled himself Keeper of the Eliot Archive.[11] He also collected Eliot's pre-"Prufrock" verse, commercially published after Eliot's death as Poems Written in Early Youth. When Eliot and Hayward separated their household in 1957, Hayward retained his collection of Eliot's papers, which he bequeathed to King's College, Cambridge in 1965.

Eliot's second marriage was happy but short. On January 10, 1957, he married Esmé Valerie Fletcher, to whom he was introduced by Collin Brooks. In sharp contrast to his first marriage, Eliot knew Miss Fletcher well, as she had been his secretary at Faber and Faber since August 1949. Like his marriage to Vivien, the wedding was kept a secret to preserve his privacy. The ceremony was held in a church at 6.15 a.m. with virtually no one other than his wife's parents in attendance. Valerie was 37 years younger than her husband. Since Eliot's death she has dedicated her time to preserving his legacy; she has edited and annotated The Letters of T.S. Eliot and a facsimile of the draft of The Waste Land.

Eliot died of emphysema in London on January 4, 1965. For many years, he had health problems owing to the combination of London air and his heavy smoking, often being laid low with bronchitis or tachycardia. His body was cremated and, according to Eliot's wishes, the ashes taken to St Michael's Church in East Coker, the village from which Eliot's ancestors emigrated to America. There, a simple plaque commemorates him. On the second anniversary of his death, a large stone placed on the floor of Poets' Corner in London's Westminster Abbey was dedicated to Eliot. This commemoration contains his name, an indication that he had received the Order of Merit, dates, and a quotation from Little Gidding: "the communication / Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond / the language of the living."


[edit] Eliot's poetry
For a poet of his stature, Eliot's poetic output was small. Eliot was aware of this early in his career. He wrote to J.H. Woods, one of his former Harvard professors, that "My reputation in London is built upon one small volume of verse, and is kept up by printing two or three more poems in a year. The only thing that matters is that these should be perfect in their kind, so that each should be an event."[12]

Typically, Eliot first published his poems in periodicals or in small books or pamphlets consisting of a single poem (e.g., the Ariel poems) and then adding them to collections. His first collection was Prufrock and Other Observations (1917). In 1920 Eliot published more poems in Ara Vos Prec (London) and Poems: 1920 (New York). These had the same poems (in a different order) except that "Ode" in the British edition was replaced with "Hysteria" in the American edition. In 1925 Eliot collected The Waste Land and the poems in Prufrock and Poems into one volume and added "The Hollow Men" to form Poems: 1909–1925. From then on he updated this work (as Collected Poems). Exceptions are:

Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939) — a collection of light verse.
Poems Written in Early Youth (posthumously published in 1967) — consisting mainly of poems published between 1907 and 1910 in The Harvard Advocate, the student-run literary magazine at Harvard University.[13]
Inventions of the March Hare: Poems 1909–1917 (posthumously published in 1997) — poems, verse and drafts Eliot never intended to be published. Densely annotated by Christopher Ricks.

[edit] The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Main article: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
In 1915, Ezra Pound, overseas editor of Poetry magazine, recommended to Harriet Monroe, the magazine's founder, that she publish "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". Although Prufrock seems to be middle-aged, Eliot wrote most of the poem when he was only 22. Its now-famous opening lines, comparing the evening sky to "a patient etherised upon a table," were considered shocking and offensive, especially at a time when the poetry of the Georgians was hailed for its derivations of the 19th century Romantic Poets. The poem then follows the conscious experience of a man, Prufrock, (relayed in the "stream of consciousness" form indicative of the Modernists) lamenting his physical and intellectual inertia, the lost opportunities in his life and lack of spiritual progress, with the recurrent theme of carnal love unattained. Critical opinion is divided as to whether the narrator even leaves his own residence during the course of the narration. The locations described can be interpreted either as actual physical experiences, mental recollections or even as symbolic images from the sub-conscious mind, as, for example, in the refrain "In the room the women come and go."

Its mainstream reception can be gauged from a review in The Times Literary Supplement on June 21, 1917: "The fact that these things occurred to the mind of Mr Eliot is surely of the very smallest importance to anyone, even to himself. They certainly have no relation to poetry…"[14][15]

The poem's structure was heavily influenced by Eliot's extensive reading of Dante Alighieri (in the Italian). References to Shakespeare's Hamlet and other literary works are present in the poem: this technique of allusion and quotation was developed in Eliot's subsequent poetry.


[edit] The Waste Land
Main article: The Waste Land
In October 1922, Eliot published The Waste Land in The Criterion. Composed during a period of personal difficulty for Eliot — his marriage was failing, and both he and Vivien suffered from disordered nerves —The Waste Land is often read as a representation of the disillusionment of the post-war generation. Even before The Waste Land had been published as a book (December 1922), Eliot distanced himself from the poem's vision of despair: "As for The Waste Land, that is a thing of the past so far as I am concerned and I am now feeling toward a new form and style" he wrote to Richard Aldington on November 15, 1922. Despite the alleged obscurity of the poem — its slippage between satire and prophecy; its abrupt changes of speaker, location, and time; its elegiac but intimidating summoning up of a vast and dissonant range of cultures and literatures--it has become a touchstone of modern literature, a poetic counterpart to a novel published in the same year, James Joyce's Ulysses. Among its famous phrases are "April is the cruellest month"; "I will show you fear in a handful of dust"; and "Shantih shantih shantih," the utterance in Sanskrit which closes the poem.


[edit] Ash Wednesday
Main article: Ash Wednesday (poem)
Ash Wednesday is the first long poem written by Eliot after his 1927 conversion to Anglicanism. Published in 1930, this poem deals with the struggle that ensues when one who has lacked faith in the past strives to move towards God.

Sometimes referred to as Eliot's "conversion poem", Ash Wednesday, with a base of Dante's Purgatorio, is richly but ambiguously allusive and deals with the aspiration to move from spiritual barrenness to hope for human salvation. The style is different from his poetry which predates his conversion. Ash Wednesday and the poems that followed had a more casual, melodic, and contemplative method.

Many critics were "particularly enthusiastic concerning Ash Wednesday",[16] while in other quarters it was not well received.[17] Among many of the more secular literati its groundwork of orthodox Christianity was discomfiting. Edwin Muir maintained that "Ash Wednesday is one of the most moving poems he has written, and perhaps the most perfect."[18]


[edit] Four Quartets
Main article: Four Quartets
Although many critics preferred his earlier work, Eliot and many other critics considered Four Quartets his masterpiece and it is the work which led to his receipt of the Nobel Prize.[19] The Four Quartets draws upon his knowledge of mysticism and philosophy. It consists of four long poems, published separately: Burnt Norton (1936), East Coker (1940), The Dry Salvages (1941) and Little Gidding (1942), each in five sections. Although they resist easy characterisation, each begins with a rumination on the geographical location of its title, and each meditates on the nature of time in some important respect — theological, historical, physical — and its relation to the human condition. Also, each is associated with one of the four classical elements: air, earth, water, and fire. They approach the same ideas in varying but overlapping ways, and are open to a diversity of interpretations.

Burnt Norton asks what it means to consider things that might have been. We see the shell of an abandoned house, and Eliot toys with the idea that all these "merely possible" realities are present together, but invisible to us: All the possible ways people might walk across a courtyard add up to a vast dance we can't see; children who aren't there are hiding in the bushes.

East Coker continues the examination of time and meaning, focusing in a famous passage on the nature of language and poetry. Out of darkness Eliot continues to reassert a solution ("I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope").

The Dry Salvages treats the element of water, via images of river and sea. It again strives to contain opposites ("…the past and future/Are conquered, and reconciled").

"Little Gidding" (the element of fire) is the most anthologized of the Quartets. Eliot's own experiences as an air raid warden in The Blitz power the poem, and he imagines meeting Dante during the German bombing. The beginning of the Quartets ("Houses…/Are removed, destroyed") had become a violent everyday experience; this creates an animation, where for the first time he talks of Love — as the driving force behind all experience. From this background, the Quartets end with an affirmation of Julian of Norwich "all shall be well and/All manner of things shall be well".

The Four Quartets cannot be understood without reference to Christian thought, traditions, and history. Eliot draws upon the theology, art, symbolism and language of such figures as Dante, St. John of the Cross and Julian of Norwich. The "deeper communion" sought in Burnt Norton, the "hints" and whispers of children, the sickness that must grow worse in order to find healing, and the exploration which inevitably leads us home all point to the pilgrim's path along the road of sanctification.


[edit] Eliot's plays
With the exception of the poems of Four Quartets Eliot did not write any major poetry after "Ash Wednesday" (1930). His creative energies were spent in writing plays in verse, mostly comedies or plays with redemptive endings. He was long a critic and fan of Elizabethan and Jacobean verse drama (witness his allusions to Webster, Middleton, Shakespeare and Kyd in The Waste Land.) In a 1933 lecture he said: "Every poet would like, I fancy, to be able to think that he had some direct social utility. ... He would like to be something of a popular entertainer, and be able to think his own thoughts behind a tragic or a comic mask. He would like to convey the pleasures of poetry, not only to a larger audience, but to larger groups of people collectively; and the theatre is the best place in which to do it."[20]

After writing The Waste Land (1922) Eliot wrote that he was "now feeling toward a new form and style." One item he had in mind was writing a play in verse with a jazz tempo with a character that appeared in a number of his poems, Sweeney. This was a failure; Eliot did not finish it. He did publish two pieces of what he had separately. The two, "Fragment of a Prologue (1926) and "Fragment of a Agon (1927) were published together in 1932 as Sweeney Agonistes. Although noted that this was not intended to be a one-act play, it is sometimes performed as a one.[21]

In 1934 a pageant play called The Rock that Eliot authored was performed. This was a benefit for churches in the Diocese of London. Much of the work was a collaborative effort and Eliot only accepted authorship of one scene and the choruses.[22] The pageant would have a sympathetic audience but one largely consisting of the common churchman, a new audience for Eliot who had to modify his style, often called "erudite."

George Bell, the Bishop of Chichester, who was instrumental in getting Eliot to work as writer with producer E. Martin Browne in producing the pageant play The Rock asked Eliot to write another play for the Canterbury Festival in 1935. This play, Murder in the Cathedral, was more under Eliot's control.

Murder in the Cathedral is about the death of Thomas Becket. Eliot admitted being influenced by, among others, the works of 17th century preacher Lancelot Andrewes. Murder in the Cathedral has been a standard choice for Anglican and Roman Catholic curricula for many years.

Following his ecclesiastical plays Eliot worked on commercial plays for more general audiences. These were The Family Reunion (1939), The Cocktail Party (1949), The Confidential Clerk (1953) and The Elder Statesman (1958).

The dramatic works of Eliot are less well known than his poems.


[edit] Eliot as critic
Strongly influencing the New Criticism (as can be seen in essays such as "Tradition and the Individual Talent" and "The Frontiers of Criticism" that take the whole field of criticism, rather than a single work, as their subject), Eliot is considered by some to be one of the great literary critics of the 20th century. The famous critic William Empson once said, "I do not know for certain how much of my own mind [Eliot] invented, let alone how much of it is a reaction against him or indeed a consequence of misreading him. He is a very penetrating influence, perhaps not unlike the east wind."[23] His essays were a major factor in the revival of interest in the metaphysical poets. A preoccupation with Elizabethan and Jacobean verse drama (for instance, John Webster, who is mentioned in his poem "Whispers of Immortality") is also central to his critical writing, and greatly influenced his own forays into drama.

In his critical and theoretical writing, Eliot is known for his formulation of the "objective correlative," (in the essay "Hamlet and His Problems") the notion that art should not be a personal expression, but should work through objective universal symbols. There is fierce critical debate over the pragmatic value of the objective correlative, and Eliot's failure to follow its dicta. It is claimed that there is evidence throughout his work of contrary practice (e.g. part II of The Waste Land in the section beginning "My nerves are bad tonight"); but of course the worth of the idea is by no means negated by alleged lapses in practice, here as elsewhere.


[edit] Other works
In 1939, he published a book of poetry for children, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats — "Old Possum" being a name Pound had bestowed upon him. This first edition had an illustration of the author on the cover. In 1954 the composer Alan Rawsthorne set six of the poems for speaker and orchestra, in a work entitled Practical Cats. After Eliot's death, it became the basis of the West End and Broadway hit musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber, Cats.

In 1958 the Archbishop of Canterbury appointed Eliot to a commission which resulted in "The Revised Psalter" (1963). A harsh critic of Eliot's, C.S. Lewis, was also a member of the commission but their antagonism turned into a friendship.[24]


[edit] Criticism of Eliot
Eliot's poetry was first criticized as not being poetry at all. Another criticism has been of his widespread interweaving of quotations from other authors into his work. "Notes on the Waste Land," which follows after the poem, gives the source of many of these, but not all. This practice has been defended as a necessary salvaging of tradition in an age of fragmentation, and completely integral to the work, as well adding richness through unexpected juxtaposition. It has also been condemned as showing a lack of originality, and for plagiarism. The prominent critic F. W. Bateson once published an essay called 'T. S. Eliot: The Poetry of Pseudo-Learning'. Eliot himself once wrote ("The Sacred Wood"): "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different."

Canadian academic Robert Ian Scott pointed out that the title of The Waste Land and some of the images had previously appeared in the work of a minor Kentucky poet, Madison Cawein (1865–1914). Bevis Hillier compared Cawein's lines "… come and go/Around its ancient portico" with Eliot's "… come and go/talking of Michelangelo". (This line actually appears in Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", and not in The Waste Land.) Cawein's "Waste Land" had appeared in the January 1913 issue of Chicago magazine Poetry (which contained an article by Ezra Pound on London poets). But scholars are continually finding new sources for Eliot's Waste Land, often in odd places.

Many famous fellow writers and critics have paid tribute to Eliot. According to the poet Ted Hughes, "Each year Eliot's presence reasserts itself at a deeper level, to an audience that is surprised to find itself more chastened, more astonished, more humble." Hugh Kenner commented, "He has been the most gifted and influential literary critic in English in the twentieth century."

C. S. Lewis, however, thought his literary criticism "superficial and unscholarly". In a 1935 letter to a mutual friend of theirs, Paul Elmer Moore, Lewis wrote that he considered the work of Eliot to be "a very great evil".[24] Although, in a letter to Eliot written in 1943, Lewis showed an admiration for Eliot along with his antagonism toward his views when he wrote: "I hope the fact that I find myself often contradicting you in print gives no offence; it is a kind of tribute to you — whenever I fall foul of some widespread contemporary view about literature I always seem to find that you have expressed it most clearly. One aims at the officers first in meeting an attack!"[24]


[edit] Charges of anti-Semitism
Eliot has sometimes been charged with anti-Semitism. Biographer Lyndall Gordon has noted that many in Eliot's milieu successfully eschewed such views.[25]


[edit] Public expressions
The poem "Gerontion" contains a negative portrayal of a greedy landlord known as the "Jew [who] squats on the window sill." Another much-quoted example is the poem, "Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar", in which a character in the poem implicitly blames the Jews for the decline of Venice ("The rats are underneath the piles/ The Jew is underneath the lot"). In "A Cooking Egg", Eliot writes, "The red-eyed scavengers are creeping/ From Kentish Town and Golder's Green" (Golders Green was a largely Jewish suburb of London).

In a series of lectures given at the University of Virginia in 1933 and later published under the title "After Strange Gods" (1934), Eliot said, regarding a homogeneity of culture (and implying a traditional Christian community), "What is still more important is unity of religious background, and reasons of race and religion combine to make any large number of free-thinking Jews undesirable."[26] The philosopher George Boas, who had previously been on friendly terms with Eliot, wrote to him that, "I can at least rid you of the company of one." Eliot did not reply. In later years Eliot disavowed the book, and refused to allow any part to be reprinted.

Eliot also wrote a letter to the Daily Mail in January 1932 which congratulated the paper for a series of laudatory articles on the rise of Mussolini. In The Idea of a Christian Society (1939) he says "…totalitarianism can retain the terms 'freedom' and 'democracy' and give them its own meaning: and its right to them is not so easily disproved as minds inflamed by passion suppose." In the same book, written before World War II, he says of J. F. C. Fuller, who worked for the Policy Directorate in the British Union of Fascists:

Fuller… believes that Britain "must swim with the out-flowing tide of this great political change". From my point of view, General Fuller has as good a title to call himself a "believer in democracy" as anyone else. …I do not think I am unfair to [the report that a ban against married women Civil Servants should be removed because it embodied Nazism], in finding the implication that what is Nazi is wrong, and need not be discussed on its own merits.[27]


[edit] Protests against
One of the first and most famous protests against T.S. Eliot on the subject of anti-Semitism came in the form of a poem from the Anglo-Jewish writer and poet Emanuel Litvinoff,[28] at an inaugural poetry reading for the Institute of Contemporary Arts in 1951. Only a few years after the Holocaust, Eliot had republished lines originally written in the 1920s about 'money in furs' and the 'protozoic slime' of Bleistein's 'lustreless, protrusive eye' in his Selected Poems of 1948, angering Litvinoff. When the poet got up to announce the poem, the event’s host, Sir Herbert Read, declared 'Oh Good, Tom's just come in’. Litvinoff proceeded in evoking to the packed but silent room his work, which ended with the lines "Let your words/tread lightly on this earth of Europe/lest my people's bones protest". Many members of the audience were outraged; Litvinoff said "hell broke loose" and that no one supported him. One listener, the poet Stephen Spender, claiming to be as Jewish as Litvinoff, stood and called the poem an undeserved attack on Eliot.[28] However, Eliot was heard to mutter 'It's a good poem, it's a very good poem'.[29]


[edit] Rebuttals
Leonard Woolf, husband of Virginia Woolf, who was himself Jewish and a friend of Eliot's, judged that Eliot was probably "slightly anti-Semitic in the sort of vague way which is not uncommon. He would have denied it quite genuinely."[30] Jewish friends such as Stephen Spender, Isaiah Berlin, Sidney Schiff, and Norbert Weiner claimed that they had no basis on which to believe that Eliot was anti-semitic.

In 2003, Professor Ronald Schuchard of Emory University published details of a previously unknown cache of letters from Eliot to Horace Kallen, which reveal that in the early 1940s Eliot was actively helping Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria to re-settle in Britain and America. In letters written after the war, Eliot also voiced support for modern Israel.[31]


[edit] Recognition
Main article: Cultural depictions of T. S. Eliot

[edit] Formal recognition
Order of Merit (awarded by King George VI (United Kingdom), 1948)
Nobel Prize for Literature "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry" (Stockholm, 1948)
Officier de la Legion d'Honneur (1951)
Hanseatic Goethe Prize (Hamburg, 1955)
Dante Medal (Florence, 1959)
Commandeur de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres, (1960)
Presidential Medal of Freedom (1964)
13 honorary doctorates (including Oxford, Cambridge, the Sorbonne, and Harvard)
Two posthumous Tony Awards (1983) for his poems used in the musical Cats
Eliot College of the University of Kent, England, named after him
Celebrated on commemorative postage stamps
Has a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Poetry
Prufrock and Other Observations (1917)
Preludes (1917)
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Poems (1920)
Gerontion
Sweeney Among the Nightingales
The Waste Land (1922)
The Hollow Men (1925)
Ariel Poems (1927-1954)
The Journey of the Magi (1927)
Ash Wednesday (1930)
Coriolan (1931)
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939)
The Marching Song of the Pollicle Dogs and Billy M'Caw: The Remarkable Parrot (1939) in The Queen's Book of the Red Cross
Four Quartets (1945)

[edit] Plays
Sweeney Agonistes (published in 1926, first performed in 1934)
The Rock (1934)
Murder in the Cathedral (1935)
The Family Reunion (1939)
The Cocktail Party (1949)
The Confidential Clerk (1953)
The Elder Statesman (first performed in 1958, published in 1959)

[edit] Nonfiction
The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism (1920)
The Second-Order Mind (1920)
"Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1920)
Homage to John Dryden (1924)
Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca (1928)
For Lancelot Andrewes (1928)
Dante (1929)
Selected Essays, 1917–1932 (1932)
The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933)
After Strange Gods (1934)
Elizabethan Essays (1934)
Essays Ancient and Modern (1936)
The Idea of a Christian Society (1940)
Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948)
Poetry and Drama (1951)
The Three Voices of Poetry (1954)
"The Frontiers of Criticism" (1956)
On Poetry and Poets (1957)

[edit] Posthumous Publications
The Waste Land: Facsimile Edition (1974)
Inventions of the March Hare: Poems 1909-1917 1996

[edit] Further reading
Ackroyd, Peter. T.S. Eliot: A Life. (1984)
Asher, Kenneth T.S. Eliot and Ideology (1995)
Bush, Ronald. T.S. Eliot: A Study in Character and Style. (1984)
Christensen, Karen. "Dear Mrs. Eliot," The Guardian Review. (29 January 2005).
Crawford, Robert. The Savage and the City in the Work of T.S. Eliot. (1987).
Gardner, Helen. The Composition of Four Quartets. (1978).
---The Art of T.S. Eliot. (1949)
The Letters of T.S. Eliot. Ed. by Valerie Eliot. Vol. I, 1898-1922. San Diego [etc.] 1988.
Gordon, Lyndall. T.S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life. (1998)
Julius, Anthony. T. S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form. Cambridge University Press (1995)
Kelleter, Frank. Die Moderne und der Tod: Edgar Allan Poe – T. S. Eliot – Samuel Beckett. Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang, 1998.
Kenner, Hugh. The Invisible Poet: T. S. Eliot. (1969)
Levy, William Turner and Victor Scherle. Affectionately, T.S. Eliot: The Story of a Friendship: 1947-1965. (1968).
Matthews, T.S. Great Tom: Notes Towards the Definition of T.S. Eliot. (1973)
Miller, James E., Jr. T. S. Eliot. The Making of an American Poet, 1888-1922. The Pennsylvania State University Press. 2005.
North, Michael (ed.) The Waste Land (Norton Critical Editions). New York: W.W. Norton, 2000.
Quillian, William H. Hamlet and the new poetic: James Joyce and T.S. Eliot. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press (1983).
Raine, Craig. T.S. Eliot. Oxford University Press (2006).
Ricks, Christopher.T.S. Eliot and Prejudice. (1988).
Schuchard, Ronald. Eliot's Dark Angel: Intersections of Life and Art. (1999).
Seymour-Jones, Carole. Painted Shadow: A Life of Vivienne Eliot. (2001).
Sencourt, Robert. T.S.Eliot: A Memoir. (1971).
Spender, Stephen. T.S. Eliot. (1975).
Sinha, Arun Kumar and Vikram, Kumar. T. S Eliot: An Intensive Study of Selected Poems, Spectrum Books Pvt. Ltd, New Delhi, (2005).
Tate, Allen - edited by. T. S Eliot: The Man and His Work, First published in 1966 - republished by Penguin 1971.

[edit] Notes
^ http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/bassr/heath/syllabuild/iguide/craneh.html
^ http://bostonreview.net/BR14.5/heaney.html
^ http://www.unc.edu/~hobson/BobDylan.html
^ Perl, Jeffry M. and Andrew P. Tuck "The Hidden Advantage of Tradition: On the Significance of T. S. Eliot's Indic Studies", Philosophy East & West V. 35 No. 2 (April 1985) pp. 116-131. Online at http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-PHIL/ew33375.htm (March 14, 2007)
^ Eliot, T. S. The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1, 1898-192. p. 75
^ Richardson, John, Sacred Monsters, Sacred Masters, Random House, 2001, page 20. ISBN 0-679-42490-3
^ Seymour-Jones, Carole. Painted Shadow: A Life of Vivienne Eliot. Constable (2001). p. 17
^ Eliot, T.S. The Letters of T.S. Eliot, Volume 1, 1898-192, p. xvii, ISBN 0-15-150885-2
^ Ellmann, Richard James Joyce, p.492-495, ISBN 0-19-503381-7
^ Seymour-Jones, Carole. Painted Shadow: A Life of Vivienne Eliot. Constable (2001). p. 561
^ Gordon, Lyndall. T.S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life. Norton. (1998) p. 455
^ Eliot, T.S. "Letter to J.H. Woods, April 21, 1919." The Letters of T.S. Eliot, vol. I. Valerie Eliot, ed. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1988. 285
^ http://www.theworld.com/~raparker/exploring/tseliot/works/poems/eliot-harvard-poems.html T.S. Eliot: The Harvard Advocate Poems, accessed February 5, 2007.
^ Times Literary Supplement 21 June 1917, no. 805, 299 Accessed from www.usask.ca, June 8, 2006. Longer extract and other reviews can be found on this page.
^ Wagner, Erica (2001) "An eruption of fury" Guardian online, September 4, 2001. Accessed June 8, 2006. This omits the word "very" from the quote.
^ Untermeyer, Louis "Modern American Poetry" pp. 395-396 (Hartcourt Brace 1950)
^ http://www.britannica.com/nobel/micro/190_21.html Britannica: Guide to the Nobel Prizes: Eliot, T.S. by Dame Helen Gardner and Allen Tate, accessed November 6, 2006.
^ Untermeyer, Louis "Modern American Poetry" p. 396 (Harcourt Brace 1950)
^ http://www.britannica.com/nobel/micro/190_21.html Britannica: Guide to the Nobel Prizes: Eliot, T.S. by Dame Helen Gardner and Allen Tate, accessed November 6, 2006.
^ Eliot, T.S. The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism Harvard University Press, 1933 (penultimate paragraph)
^ Gallup, Donald. T.S. Eliot: A Bibliography (A Revised and Extended Edition) Harcourt, Brace & World, New York, 1969. Listings A23, C184, C193
^ Gallup, Donald. T.S. Eliot: A Bibliography (A Revised and Extended Edition) Harcourt, Brace & World, New York, 1969. Listings A25
^ quoted in Roger Kimball, "A Craving for Reality," The New Criterion Vol. 18, 1999
^ a b c Spruyt, Bart Jan. One of the enemy: C. S. Lewis on the very great evil of T. S. Eliot's work. Lecture delivered at the conference "Order and Liberty in the American Tradition" for the Intercollegiate Studies Institute held 28 July to 3 August 2004 at Oxford. Online at http://www.burkestichting.nl/nl/stichting/isioxford.html (February 25, 2007)
^ Gordon, Lyndall, "T.S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life", Norton, 1998, pp. 2,104-5
^ Kirk, Russell; "T.S. Eliot on Literary Morals: On T.S. Eliot's After Strange Gods" Touchstone Magazine, volume 10, issue 4, fall 1997, reprinted online http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=10-04-034-f
^ Eliot, T. S., The Idea of a Christian Society, 1939.
^ a b http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/archive/londonsvoices/web/interview.asp?pid=6#i414
^ Dannie Abse, A Poet in the Family, London: Hutchinson, 1974, p. 203
^ Ackroyd, Peter, T.S. Eliot, Abacus, 1985, p. 304
^ Modernism/Modernity January 2003.

George Eliot


Mary Ann (Marian) Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880), better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist. She was one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. Her novels, largely set in provincial England, are well known for their realism and psychological perspicacity.

She used a male pen name, she said, to ensure that her works were taken seriously. Female authors published freely under their own names, but Eliot wanted to ensure that she was not seen as merely a writer of romances. An additional factor may have been a desire to shield her private life from public scrutiny and to prevent scandals attending her relationship with the married George Henry Lewes.

Biography

George Eliot's birthplace at South Farm, ArburyMary Ann Evans was the third child of Robert Evans (1773-1849) and Christiana Evans (née Pearson, the daughter of a local farmer, ?1788-1836). When born, Mary Ann, sometimes shortened to Marian,[1] had two teenage siblings, a half-brother, Robert (1802-1864), and sister, Fanny (1805-1882), from her father's previous marriage to Harriet Poynton (d. 1809). Robert Evans was the manager of the Arbury Hall Estate for the Newdigate family in Warwickshire, and Mary Anne was born on the estate at South Farm, Arbury, near Nuneaton. In early 1820 the family moved to a house named Griff, part way between Nuneaton and Coventry. Her full siblings were Christiana, known as Chrissey (1814–1859), Isaac (1816–1890), and twin brothers who survived a few days in March 1821.

The young Evans was obviously intelligent, and due to her father's important role on the estate, she was allowed access to the library of Arbury Hall, which greatly aided her education and breadth of learning. Her classical education left its mark; Christopher Stray has observed that "George Eliot's novels draw heavily on Greek literature (only one of her books can be printed without the use of a Greek font), and her themes are often influenced by Greek tragedy".[2] Her frequent visits also allowed her to contrast the wealth in which the local landowner lived with the lives of the often much poorer people on the estate, and different lives lived in parallel would reappear in many of her works. The other important early influence in her life was religion. She was brought up within a narrow low church Anglican family, but at that time the Midlands was an area with many religious dissenters, and those beliefs formed part of her education. She boarded at schools in Attleborough, Nuneaton and Coventry. At the second she was taught by the evangelical Maria Lewis—-to whom her earliest surviving letters are addressed—-and at the Coventry school she received instruction from Baptist sisters.

In 1836 her mother died and Evans returned home to act as housekeeper, but she continued her education with a private tutor and advice from Maria Lewis. When she was 21, her brother Isaac married and took over the family home, so Evans and her father moved to Foleshill near Coventry. The closeness to Coventry society brought new influences, most notably those of Charles and Cara Bray. Charles Bray had become rich as a ribbon manufacturer and had used his wealth in building schools and other philanthropic causes. He was a freethinker in religious matters, a progressive in politics, and his home, Rosehill, was a haven for people who held and debated radical views. The people whom the young woman met at the Brays' house included Robert Owen, Herbert Spencer, Harriet Martineau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Through this society, Evans was introduced to more liberal theologies, many of which cast doubt on the supernatural elements of Biblical stories, and she stopped going to church. This caused a rift between herself and her family, with her father threatening to throw her out, although that did not happen. Instead, she respectably attended church and continued to keep house for him until his death in 1857. Her first major literary work was the translation of David Strauss' Life of Jesus (1862), which she completed after it had been begun by another member of the Rosehill circle.

Before her father's death, she travelled to Switzerland with the Brays, and on her return moved to London with the intent of becoming a writer and calling herself Marian Evans. She stayed at the house of John Chapman, the radical publisher whom she had met at Rosehill and who had printed her translation. Chapman had recently bought the campaigning, left-wing journal The Westminster Review, and Evans became its assistant editor in 1858. Although Chapman was the named editor, it was Evans who did much of the work in running the journal for the next three years, contributing many essays and reviews.


Now in this vast ugliness resides a most powerful beauty which, in a very few minutes, steals forth and charms the mind, so that you end, as I ended, in falling in love with her....
— Henry James, in a letter to his fatherWomen writers were not uncommon at the time, but Evans's role at the head of a literary enterprise was. The mere sight of an unmarried young woman mixing with the predominantly male society of London at that time was unusual, even scandalous to some. Although clearly strong-minded, she was frequently sensitive, depressed, and crippled by self-doubt. She was well aware of her ill-favoured appearance,[3] and she formed a number of embarrassing, unreciprocated emotional attachments, including that to her employer, the married Chapman, and Herbert Spencer. However, another highly inappropriate attraction would prove to be much more successful and beneficial for Evans.

The philosopher and critic George Henry Lewes met Evans in 1851, and by 1854 they had decided to live together. Lewes was married to Agnes Jervis, but they had decided to have an open marriage, and in addition to having three children together, Agnes had also had several children with other men. As he was named on the birth certificate as the father of one of these children despite knowing this to be false, and since he was therefore complicit in adultery, he was not able to divorce Agnes. In July 1854 Lewes and Evans travelled to Weimar and Berlin together for the purpose of research. Before going to Germany, Evans continued her interest in theological work with a translation of Ludwig Feuerbach's Essence of Christianity and while abroad she wrote essays and worked on her translation of Baruch Spinoza's Ethics, which she would however never complete.

The trip to Germany also doubled as a honeymoon as they were now effectively married, with Evans calling herself Marian Evans Lewes, and referring to George Lewes as her husband. It was not unusual for men in Victorian society to have mistresses, including both Charles Bray and John Chapman. What was scandalous was the Lewes's open admission of the relationship. On their return to England, they lived apart from the literary society of London, both shunning and being shunned in equal measure. While continuing to contribute pieces to the Westminster Review, Evans had resolved to become a novelist, and she set out a manifesto for herself in one of her last essays for the Review: Silly Novels by Lady Novelists. The essay criticised the trivial and ridiculous plots of contemporary fiction by women. In other essays she praised the realism of novels written in Europe at the time, and subsequently an emphasis placed on realistic story-telling would become clear throughout her subsequent fiction. She also adopted a new nom-de-plume, the one for which she would become best known: George Eliot. This masculine name was chosen partly in order to distance herself from the lady writers of silly novels, but it also quietly hid the tricky subject of her marital status.

In 1864 Amos Barton, the first of the Scenes of Clerical Life, was published in Blackwood's Magazine and, along with the other Scenes, was well received. Her first complete novel, published in 1859, was Adam Bede and was an instant success, but it prompted an intense interest in who this new author might be. Scenes of Clerical Life was widely believed to have been written by a country parson or perhaps the wife of a parson. With the release of the incredibly popular Adam Bede, speculation increased markedly, and there was even a pretender to the authorship, one Joseph Liggins. In the end, the real George Eliot stepped forward: Marian Evans Lewes admitted she was the author. The revelations about Eliot's private life surprised and shocked many of her admiring readers, but this apparently did not affect her popularity as a novelist. Eliot's relationship with Lewes afforded her the encouragement and stability she so badly needed to write fiction, and to ease her self-doubt, but it would be some time before they were accepted into polite society. Acceptance was finally confirmed in 1867, when they were introduced to Princess Louise, the daughter of Queen Victoria, who was an avid reader of George Eliot's novels.

After the popularity of Adam Bede, she continued to write popular novels for the next fifteen years. Within a year of completing Adam Bede, she finished The Mill on the Floss, inscribing the manuscript: "To my beloved husband, George Henry Lewes, I give this MS. of my third book, written in the sixth year of our life together, at Holly Lodge, South Field, Wandsworth, and finished 21st March 1860."

Her last novel was Daniel Deronda, published in 1873, whereafter she and Lewes moved to Witley, Surrey; but by this time Lewes's health was failing and he died two years later on 25 November 1873. Eliot spent the next two years editing Lewes's final work Life and Mind for publication, and she found solace with John Walter Cross, an American banker whose mother had recently passed away.


George Eliot died at 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea.On 16 May 1880 George Eliot courted controversy once more by marrying a man twenty years younger than herself, and again changing her name, this time to Mary Anne Cross. The legal marriage at least pleased her brother Isaac, who sent his congratulations after breaking off relations with his sister when she had begun to live with Lewes. John Cross was a rather unstable character, and apparently jumped or fell from their hotel balcony into the Grand Canal in Venice during their honeymoon. Cross survived and they returned to England. The couple moved to a new house in Chelsea but Eliot fell ill with a throat infection. This, coupled with the kidney disease she had been afflicted with for the past few years, led to her death on the 22 December 1880 at the age of 61.

The possibility of burial in Westminster Abbey being rejected due to her denial of Christian faith and "irregular" though monogamous life with Lewes, she was buried in Highgate Cemetery (East), Highgate, London in the area reserved for religious dissenters, next to George Henry Lewes. In 1980, on the centenary of her death, a memorial stone was established for her in the Poets’ Corner.


[edit] Literary assessment
Eliot's most famous work, Middlemarch, is a turning point in the history of the novel[citation needed]. Making masterful use of a counterpointed plot, Eliot presents the stories of a number of denizens of a small English town on the eve of the Reform Bill of 1832. The main characters, Dorothea Brooke and Tertius Lydgate, long for exceptional lives but are powerfully constrained both by their own unrealistic expectations and by a conservative society. The novel is notable for its deep psychological insight and sophisticated character portraits.

Throughout her career, Eliot wrote with a politically astute pen. From Adam Bede to The Mill on the Floss and the frequently-read Silas Marner, Eliot presented the cases of social outsiders and small-town persecution. No author since Jane Austen had been as socially conscious and as sharp in pointing out the hypocrisy of the country squires. Felix Holt, the Radical and The Legend of Jubal were overtly political novels, and political crisis is at the heart of Middlemarch. Readers in the Victorian era particularly praised her books for their depictions of rural society, for which she drew on her own early experiences, and she shared with Wordsworth the belief that there was much interest and importance in the mundane details of ordinary country lives. Eliot did not, however, confine herself to her bucolic roots. Romola, an historical novel set in late 15th century Florence and touching on the lives of several real persons such as the priest Girolamo Savonarola, displays her wider reading and interests. In The Spanish Gypsy, Eliot made a foray into verse, creating a work whose initial popularity has not endured.

The religious elements in her fiction also owe much to her upbringing, with the experiences of Maggie Tulliver from The Mill on the Floss sharing many similarities with the young Mary Anne Evans' own development. When Silas Marner is persuaded that his alienation from the church means also his alienation from society, the author's life is again mirrored with her refusal to attend church. She was at her most autobiographical in Looking Backwards, part of her final printed work Impressions of Theophrastus Such. By the time of Daniel Deronda, Eliot's sales were falling off, and she faded from public view to some degree. This was not helped by the biography written by her husband after her death, which portrayed a wonderful, almost saintly, woman totally at odds with scandalous life they knew she had led. In the 20th century she was championed by a new breed of critics; most notably by Virginia Woolf, who called Middlemarch "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people". The various film and television adaptations of Eliot's books have re-introduced her to the wider-reading public.

As an author, Eliot was not only very successful in sales, but she was, and remains, one of the most widely praised for her style and clarity of thought. Eliot's sentence structures are clear, patient, and well balanced, and she mixes plain statement and unsettling irony with rare poise. Her commentaries are never without sympathy for the characters, and she never stoops to being arch or flippant with the emotions in her stories. Villains, heroines and bystanders are all presented with awareness and full motivation.


[edit] Works

[edit] Novels
Adam Bede, 1859
The Mill on the Floss, 1860
Silas Marner, 1861
Romola, 1863
Felix Holt, the Radical, 1866
Middlemarch, 1871-72
Daniel Deronda, 1876

[edit] Other works
Translation of "The Life of Jesus Critically Examined" by David Strauss, 1846
Translation of "The Essence of Christianity" by Ludwig Feuerbach, 1854
Scenes of Clerical Life, 1858
Amos Barton
Mr Gilfil's Love Story
Janet's Repentance
The Lifted Veil, 1859
Brother Jacob, 1864
Impressions of Theophrastus Such, 1879

[edit] Poetry
Poems by George Eliot include:

The Spanish Gypsy (a dramatic poem) 1868
Agatha, 1869
Armgart, 1871
Stradivarius, 1873
The Legend of Jubal, 1874
Arion, 1874
A Minor Prophet, 1874
A College Breakfast Party, 1879
The Death of Moses, 1879
From a London Drawing Room,
Count That Day Lost, ?

[edit] Notes
^ http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/collections/projects/eliot/middlemarch/bio.html#mary According to a University of Virginia research forum published here,] her baptismal records record the spelling as Mary Ann, and she uses this spelling in her earliest letters. Around 1857, she began to use Mary Ann. In 1859, she was using Marian, but she reverted to Mary Ann in 1880.
^ Classics Transformed, p. 81
^ She had a low forehead, a dull grey eye, a vast pendulous nose, a huge mouth full of uneven teeth and a chin and jawbone 'qui n'en finissent pas'... Now in this vast ugliness resides a most powerful beauty which, in a very few minutes, steals forth and charms the mind, so that you end, as I ended, in falling in love with her. Yes, behold me in love with this great horse-faced bluestocking.Henry James, in a letter to his father, published in Edel, Leon (ed.) Henry James: Selected Letters (1990)
Christopher Stray, Classics Transformed: Schools, Universities, and Society in England, 1830-1960. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998.


[edit] Bibliography
Haight, Gordon S., George Eliot: A Biography, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1968, ISBN 0-19-811666-7.
Haight, Gordon S., ed., George Eliot: Letters, New Haven, Connecticut, Yale University Press, 1954, ISBN 0-300-01088-5.
Uglow, Jennifer, George Eliot, London, Virago, 1987, ISBN 0-394-75359-3.
Jenkins, Lucien, Collected Poems of George Eliot, London, Skoob Books Publishing, 1989, ISBN 1-871438-35-7

[edit] Context and background
Beer, Gillian, Darwin's Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Fiction, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983, ISBN 0-521-78392-5.
Beer, Gillian, George Eliot, Prentice Hall / Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1986, ISBN 0-7108-0511-X.
Chapman, Raymond, The Sense of the Past in Victorian Literature, London, CroomHelm, 1986, ISBN 0-7099-3441-6.
Cosslett, Tess, The 'Scientific Movement' and Victorian Literature, Brighton, Harvester, 1982, ISBN 0-312-70298-1.
Gilbert, Sandra M., and Gubar, Susan, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, New Haven, Connecticut, Yale University Press, 1979, ISBN 0-300-08458-7.
Hughes, Kathryn, George Eliot: The Last Victorian, New York, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1998, ISBN 0-374-16138-0.
Edel, Leon (ed.) Henry James: Selected Letters, Belknap Press (1990) ISBN 0674387945
Jay, Elisabeth, The Religion of the Heart: Anglican Evangelicalism and the Nineteenth-Century Novel, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1979, ISBN 0-19-812092-3.
Pinney, Thomas, ed., Essays of George Eliot, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963, ISBN 0-231-02619-6.
Shuttleworth, Sally, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Science: The Make-Believe of a Beginning, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984, ISBN 0-521-25786-7.
Uglow, Jenny, George Eliot, London, Virago Press, 1988, ISBN 0 86068 400 8.
Willey, Basil, Nineteenth-Century Studies: Coleridge to Matthew Arnold, London, Chatto & Windus, 1964, ISBN 0-14-021709-6.
Williams, Raymond, The Country and the City, London, Chatto & Windus, 1973, ISBN 0-19-519810-7.

[edit] Critical studies
Alley, Henry, "The Quest for Anonymity: The Novels of George Eliot", University of Delaware Press, 1997.
Ashton, Rosemary, George Eliot, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1983.
Beaty, Jerome, 'Middlemarch'from Notebook to Novel: A Study of George Eliot's Creative Method, Champaign, Illinois, University of Illinois, 1960.
Carroll, David, ed., George Eliot: The Critical Heritage, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971.
Daiches, David, George Eliot: Middlemarch, London, Edward Arnold, 1963.
Dentith, Simon, George Eliot, Brighton, Harvester, 1986.
Garrett, Peter K., The Victorian Multiplot Novel: Studies in Dialogical Form, New Haven, Connecticut, Yale University Press, 1980.
Graver, Suzanne, George Eliot and Community: A Study in Social Theory and Fictional Form, Berkeley, California, University of California Press, 1984.
Harvey, W. J, The Art of George Eliot, London, Chatto & Windus, 1961.
Kettle, Arnold. An Introduction to the English Novel, vol. I, London, Hutchinson, 1951.
Leavis, F RThe Great Tradition, London, Chatto & Windus, 1948.
Neale, Catherine, Middlemarch: Penguin Critical Studies,London, Penguin, 1989
Swinden, Patrick, eel., George Eliot: Middlemarch, London, Macmillan
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