Encyclopedia of Literature: Lights of Bohemia to Love in Livery

Literature Reference: American Literature, English Literature, Classics & Modern Fiction

Shirley Geok-lin Lim Biography - (1944– ), Crossing the Peninsula, No Man's Grove, Modern Secrets: New and Selected Poems

Malaysian poet, born and raised in Malacca, Malaya, educated at the University of Malaya, and Brandeis University in the USA. She has continued to live in America, with frequent sojourns in Asia, but her work in all genres reflects her fascination with her heritage as a Chinese woman in Malaysia and a permanent foreigner in the country of her adoption. The choice of English as her language of expr…

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Jack Lindsay Biography - (1900–90), Fauns and Ladies, Vision, The London Aphrodite, Fanfrolico and After, William Blake, Mulk Raj Anand

Australian writer, born in Melbourne, educated at Brisbane University. His early work includes a volume of poetry, Fauns and Ladies (1923), with illustrations by his father, Norman Lindsay. His energy was the driving force behind the creation of the periodical Vision (1923?4). He left for London in 1926 where he edited several journals, including The London Aphrodite, and had considerable success …

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Norman Lindsay Biography - (1879–1969), A Curate in Bohemia, Bulletin, Vision, Creative Effort, Madam Life's Lovers, Redheap

Australian artist and writer, born in Victoria. He left home at the age of 16, and subsequently led a bohemian life in Melbourne where he established his reputation as an artist and illustrator. This period is reflected in his first novel, A Curate in Bohemia (1913). In 1901 he began his long association with the Sydney-based Bulletin as artist, reviewer, and contributor of essays and fiction. His…

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Vachel Lindsay (Nicholas Vachel Lindsay) Biography - (1879–1931), (Nicholas Vachel Lindsay), Adventures while Preaching the Gospel of Beauty, A Handy Guide for Beggars

American poet, born in Springfield, Illinois. After studying art in New York he began the years of vagrancy described in the prose of Adventures while Preaching the Gospel of Beauty (1914) and A Handy Guide for Beggars (1916); The Tree of Laughing Bells (1905) and Rhymes To Be Traded for Bread (1912) were among the pamphlets of verse he bartered for food and shelter. His characteristic combination…

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Walter Lippmann Biography - (1889–1974), New Republic, A Preface to Politics, Vanity Fair, World, Herald Tribune, Washington Post, Newsweek

American essayist, journalist, and social commentator, born in New York City, educated at Harvard. Lippmann's career as an analyst and critic of American social and political affairs began at the end of the First World War and ended with the traumas of the Vietnam War and Watergate. In 1913 he joined the New Republic at the invitation of Herbert Croly. His first book, A Preface to Politics (1913),…

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Literary Review, The - Quarto

a periodical founded in Edinburgh in 1979 by Anne Smith, who remained editor until 1981, when she sold it to the publisher Naim Attallah. Under Smith's editorship the magazine published reviews, articles, short stories, poetry, and interviews; Anthony Burgess, Doris Lessing, Angus Wilson, William Trevor, Geoffrey Grigson, and David Lodge were among the contributors. In 1982 it absorbed Quarto and …

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little magazines - The Germ, The Savoy, The Dome, Blast, The Dial, The Egoist, Horizon, The Little Review

a term denoting periodicals whose specialized concern with aspects of literature or art generally places them beyond the ambit of commercial publishing. Numerous examples existed in the nineteenth century or earlier, notably The Germ, the organ of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood founded in 1850, The Savoy, and The Dome, both associated with the coteries of the 1890s; principally because of their ma…

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Little Review, The - Little Review, Ulysses

a periodical founded by Margaret Anderson (1893?1973) in Chicago in 1914 and based in New York from 1917 to 1922. The magazine quickly achieved notoriety for promoting Nietzschean philosophy and anarchist political opinions. By 1916, when Jane Heap joined Anderson as assistant editor, the Little Review had begun supporting Imagism; Ezra Pound, European editor from 1917 to 1919, exercised a large m…

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Adam Lively Biography - (1961– ), Blue, The Burnt House, The Snail, I Sing The Body Electric

British novelist, born in Swansea, educated at Cambridge University. His works display a preoccupation with history and philosophy as well as music, politics, and the genesis of creativity. His first brief novel, Blue (1988), is the story of an eighteenth-century musician and scientist who is projected into the New Orleans of the future, where he discovers the rhythms of black music. The Burnt Hou…

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Penelope Lively Biography - (1933– ), Oleander, Jacaranda, Astercote, The Road to Lichfield, Treasures of Time, Judgement Day

British novelist and children's writer, born in Cairo, educated at St Anne's College, Oxford. Her childhood in Egypt is vividly evoked in Oleander, Jacaranda (1994), an autobiography of her early years. Beginning with Astercote (1970), Lively has written over twenty well-received books for children. Her first novel for adults, The Road to Lichfield (1977), and her subsequent novels are rewarding f…

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Liverpool Poets - The Liverpool Scene, The Mersey Sound, The Incredible New Liverpool Scene, New Volume

the name given to a group of three poets, Adrian Henri, Roger McGough, and Brian Patten, who came together in the early 1960s in the euphoria generated in part by the success of the Beatles. The Liverpool Scene (1967) gave the term currency; achieving unusually high sales for a poetry anthology, it was eclipsed by the astonishing success of the 1967 Penguin anthology The Mersey Sound and of collec…

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Dorothy Livesay Biography - (1909– ), Green Pitcher, Signpost, Selected Poems, The Colour of God's Face

Canadian poet, born in Winnipeg, educated at the University of Toronto and at the Sorbonne, Paris. She subsequently worked in France, the USA, and Zambia, before holding various posts at Canadian universities from 1966. From early and predominantly lyrical collections such as Green Pitcher (1928) and Signpost (1932) her work increasingly reflects social and political issues. Selected Poems (1956) …

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Henry Livings Biography - (1929– ), Stop It Whoever You Are, Big Soft Nellie, Nil Carborundum, Eh?, Kelly's Eye

British dramatist, born in Prestwich, Lancashire, educated at Liverpool University. He worked in the theatre as an actor before writing several comedies whose anti-heroic heroes are usually the resilient, if slightly gormless, members of an oppressed Northern working class. These plays are often, though not invariably, written in a quirky, somewhat surreal style that itself reflects their author's…

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Living Theatre - Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights, Sweeney Agonistes, Ubu the King, Faustina, Orpheus, Many Loves, The Connection

American theatre company. Founded in New York City in 1947 by Judith Malina and her husband Julian Beck, it was originally committed to poetic drama and modernist plays that had little chance of commercial success, such as Gertrude Stein's Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights, T. S. Eliot's Sweeney Agonistes, Alfred Jarry's Ubu the King, Paul Goodman's Faustina, Jean Cocteau's Orpheus, and William Car…

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Taban Lo Liyong Biography - (1939– ), Eating Chiefs: Lwo Culture from Lolwe to Malkal, Popular Culture of East Africa

East African essayist, poet, and short-story writer, born in Northern Uganda, educated at the National Teachers' College, Kampala, and in the USA at Howard University, Knoxville College, and the University of Iowa. His great interest and research studies in oral literature have resulted in Eating Chiefs: Lwo Culture from Lolwe to Malkal (1960) and, as editor, Popular Culture of East Africa (1972).…

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Liz Lochhead Biography - (1947– ), Memo for Spring, The Grimm Sisters, Dreaming Frankenstein, and Collected Poems

Scottish poet and dramatist, born in Motherwell, Lanarkshire, educated at Glasgow School of Art. Her first two collections of verse, Memo for Spring (1972) and The Grimm Sisters (1981), established her as a poet whose refreshing humour and directness were combined with a shrewdly understated technical accomplishment. Her subsequent volumes, in which an increasingly feminist perspective is evident,…

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Gerald Locklin (Gerald Ivan Locklin) Biography - (1941– ), (Gerald Ivan Locklin), The Toad Poems, Poop and Other Poems, The Criminal Mentality

American poet, short-story and novella writer, born in Rochester, New York, educated at the University of Arizona. In 1965 he took up an academic post at California State University, Long Beach, where he became a Professor of English. Among the best-known of his early works are The Toad Poems (1970), Poop and Other Poems (1972), and The Criminal Mentality (1976); with a characteristic anecdotal ea…

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David Lodge Biography - (1935– ), Changing Places, Small World, Nice Work, The Picturegoers, Ginger, You're Barmy

British novelist and critic, born in London, educated at University College, London, and the University of Birmingham where, from 1976 to 1987, he was Professor of Modern English Literature. He is best known for his alert and funny campus novels, Changing Places (1975), Small World (1984), and Nice Work (1989), in which English and American academics encounter the well-observed follies of each oth…

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Christopher Logue Biography - (1926– ), Wand and Quartet, The Lily White Boys, Trials by Logue, Songs, New Numbers, Abecedary

British poet and playwright, born in Portsmouth, educated at Portsmouth Grammar School. His early collections of poetry include Wand and Quartet (1953), which indicates the accomplishment in traditional lyric forms underlying less orthodox subsequent work. During the later 1950s, he was among the leading performers of poetry to jazz accompaniments (see Jazz Poetry) and was closely involved with th…

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Lolita - Lolita, The Annotated Lolita

a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, published in 1955. Fear of the possibility of prosecution for obscenity made both American and British publishers unwilling to accept the novel and it was first published in Paris by the Olympia Press; American publication followed in 1958 and British in 1959. The subject of the novel is the passion of the narrator, Humbert Humbert, for a 12-year-old girl, Lolita, the …

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Jack London (Jack John Griffith London) Biography - (1876–1916), (Jack John Griffith London), The Son of the Wolf, The Call of the Wild

American novelist, essayist, and social activist; he was born in San Francisco and led an irregular childhood living on the waterfront. After leaving school at 14, he continued this way of life and eventually sailed for Japan and the Arctic aboard a sealer, before returning to America where he also travelled extensively. In 1894 he joined Kelly's Industrial Army, which was to join forces with Coxe…

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London Mercury, The - belles-lettres, Georgian Poetry, Mercury, Bookman, Life and Letters

a monthly publication begun in 1919 by J. C. Squire, whose policy of presenting accessible belles-lettres in an attractively produced magazine made it remarkably popular throughout much of the 1920s. Poetry, essays, and fiction were supplied Robert Frost, Thomas Hardy, W. B. Yeats, Edmund Gosse, G. K. Chesterton, Virginia Woolf, and Katherine Mansfield. Squire's editorial stance was characterized …

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London Review of Books, The - New York Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, LRB

a fortnightly literary periodical which began appearing as part of the New York Review of Books in October 1979, when the Times Literary Supplement had temporarily ceased publication. In May 1980 it became an independent publication. Karl Miller was founding editor and continued to edit the journal until 1992. The editorial advisory board includes Ian Hamilton, Frank Kermode, and V. S. Pritchett, …

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Long Day's Journey into Night

a play by Eugene O'Neill, produced and published posthumously in 1956, but written in 1940?1. The play takes place in the New England household of a retired actor, James Tyrone. His attractive wife, Mary, has recently been released from a home to cure her drug addiction. The day seems to begin cheerfully enough, with Tyrone and Mary teasing one another and their sons Jamie, aged 35, and Edmund, ag…

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Longest Journey, The - Epipsychidion, Maurice

a novel by E. M. Forster, published in 1907. Its central character, Rickie Elliot, is a young man handicapped in his dealings with others as much by his sensitivity and intelligence as by the fact that he is lame; he is first seen at Cambridge, where his circle of friends include the philosopher, Ansell. He is befriended by Herbert and Agnes Pembroke, a brother and sister: Herbert runs a school; A…

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Michael Longley Biography - (1939– ), Ten Poems, No Continuing City, An Exploded View, Man Lying on a Wall

Northern Irish poet, born in Belfast, educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He became Director for Literature and the Traditional Arts with the Arts Council of Northern Ireland in 1970. His first publication of note was Ten Poems (1965), which appeared during the Belfast Festival of 1965 with pamphlets by Seamus Heaney and Derek Mahon, marking the emergence of Ulster poetry. His collections of vers…

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Look Back in Anger

a play by John Osborne, produced in 1956, published in 1957. The plot concerns Jimmy and Alison Porter, he of working-class origins, she from an upper-middle-class background, who share a room as uncomfortable as their marriage is turbulent. The arrival of Alison's old friend Helena enrages Jimmy and, after he has left to attend the deathbed of the mother of one of his own friends, she allows her …

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Look Homeward, Angel

a novel by Thomas Wolfe, published in 1929. Subtitled ?A Story of the Buried Life?, it is the first of a series of novels about the Gant family. In this youthful semi-autobiographical work Wolfe appears as Eugene Gant, an artist growing up in Altamont, a small Southern town in the state of Old Catawba. He is caught in the cross-currents of his parents' stormy relationship, between his mother's pra…

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Look, Stranger! - Look, Stranger!, On This Island

a collection of verse by W. H. Auden, published in 1936. It contains a number of his best-known poems, including those later given the titles ?On This Island?, ?Our Hunting Fathers?, and ?A Bride in the 30's?. His social and political preoccupations of the earlier 1930s remain apparent, most obviously in ?Brothers, who when the sirens roar ??; the references to communism which were contained in ea…

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Loot

a play by Joe Orton, first performed in 1965. It takes what its author called ?a farcical view of things normally treated as tragic?, prime among them death and bereavement. Mrs McLeavy's coffin is used by her son Hal and his lover Dennis to hide the money they have stolen from the local bank. The body itself is planted upside down in a cupboard, then taken out, stripped, and disguised as a sewing…

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Audre Lorde Biography - (1934–92), The First Cities, Cables to Rage, From a Land where Other People Live

African-American feminist poet and essayist, born in Harlem of West Indian parentage, educated at Hunter College, Columbia University School of Library Science, and the University of Mexico. The First Cities (1968) was her first volume of poetry; other volumes include Cables to Rage (1970), From a Land where Other People Live (1973), New York Head Shop and Museum (1975), Between Ourselves (1976), …

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Lord Jim - Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Patna

a novel by Joseph Conrad, published in 1900, serialized in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine (1898?1900). Probably Conrad's most popular and accessible work, the novel concerns a young Englishman who decides on a career at sea ?after a course of light holiday literature?. However, the sea does not live up to his romantic expectations. The crisis comes when the Patna, with its 800 passengers, collides…

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Lord of the Files - deus ex machina, Lord of the Flies, The Coral Island

a novel by W. Golding, published in 1954. A party of schoolboys are the only survivors of an aeroplane crash during a nuclear war. Stranded on a desert island, they attempt to recreate the structures of democracy from which they came, but by the end of the book have descended to savagery. By the time Golding introduces his deus ex machina, two of the boys have been killed. Golding makes the island…

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Lost Generation, The - The Sun also Rises, A Moveable Feast, Being Geniuses Together, Exile's Return

the term for the American and British writers who chose to live in Europe, chiefly in Paris, during the 1920s. The designation was supplied by Gertrude Stein; her remark that ?You are all a lost generation? was used by Ernest Hemingway, a leading member of the group, to preface The Sun also Rises (1926), which forms a vivid fictionalized account of the milieu and attitudes of the literary expatria…

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Lost Lady, A

a novel by Willa Cather, published in 1923. The first of her highly wrought symbolic novels, which are nevertheless rooted in closely observed life, it tells the story of beautiful Marion Forrester from the point of view of the gentle Niel Herbert, whose adoration of her makes it hard for him to accept the truth, which is that she leads a double life. This refined beauty, who illuminates the house…

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