Cultural Links - Literature
Brian Jacques
the author of the internationally best
selling Redwall novels, was born
in
With the publication of his first
children's book in 1987, the award-winning Redwall, Mr Jacques' fresh talent has received exceptional praise
from reviewers in the
Herman Melville Author
of Moby Dick, Billy Budd and many other tales of lifeat sea in the 19th
century.
Herman Melville was born on August 1, 1819, in New York City; his
father was a prosperous importer,
Herman's roving disposition, and a desire to support himself independently of
family assistance, soon led him to ship as cabin boy in a New York vessel bound
for Liverpool. 'Redburn: His First Voyage,' published in 1849, is partly
founded on the experiences of this trip. Drawn from Melville’s own adolescent
experience aboard a merchant ship,
Redburn charts the coming-of-age of
Wellingborough Redburn, a young innocent who embarks on a crossing to
Washington Irving
(1783-1859),
American writer, the first American author to achieve international renown, who
created the fictional characters Rip Van Winkle and Ichabod Crane. The critical
acceptance and enduring popularity of
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Born:
4 July 1804 Birthplace: Salem, Massachusetts
Died: 19 May 1864 Best
Known As: The author of The
Scarlet Letter One of the great American authors of the 19th century,
Nathaniel Hawthorne grew up in New England and published his first novel, Fanshawe,
in 1828. Though he went on to help lay the foundations of the American short
story,
‘Happiness
is as a butterfly which when pursued is always beyond our grasp, but which if
you will sit down quietly may alight upon you’
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
The noted American author visited Liverpool on a number of occasions He wrote the well known books - Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. During a visit to Liverpool in 1873, as part of a European lecture tour, the noted American author Mark Twain stayed at the Washington Hotel in Lime Street and was later entertained at a special Lord Mayors banquet at the Town hall.
He wrote in a letter home “We arrived in Liverpool an hour ago very tired, and have halted at this hotel ( The Washington in Lime Street - by the advice of misguided friends)--and if my instinct and experience are worth anything, it is the very worst hotel on earth, without any exception.
We shall move to another hotel ( He moved further down Lime Street to the Adelphi Hotel) early in the morning to spend to-morrow. Then we sail from Liverpool for America the next day in the "Gallic."
Mark Twain later wrote a poem about old age in which he made reference to Liverpool.
Mark Twain later wrote a poem about old age in which he made
reference to Liverpool.
' Whether one hides in some secluded Nook--Whether at Liverpool or Sandy Hook--
Some for the Honours of Old Age, and some Long for its Respite from the Hum
And Clash of sordid Strife - O Fools, The Past should teach them what's to Come'
Later in an article describing the silver mining boom of the 1890s in Nevada he mentioned Liverpool again in the following extract
Roughing It
- by Mark TwainThey transported the ore concentrated to Europe. The conveyance from Star City (its locality) to Virginia City will cost 70 dollars per ton; from Virginia to San Francisco, 40 dollars per ton; from thence to Liverpool, its destination, ten dollars per ton.
Their idea is that its conglomerate metals will reimburse them their cost of original extraction, the price of transportation, and the
expense of reduction, and that then a ton of the raw ore will net them 12 hundred dollars’
Felicia Hemans (1793
- 1835), Born in 118
Felicia was
the most widely read female poet of the English-speaking world throughout the
nineteenth century, and into the early twentieth. During her lifetime, she
published twenty volumes of poetry and placed nearly 400 poems in magazines and
annuals.
She was reviewed favourably in her lifetime by the major
periodicals and was spoken of in the same breath as Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley
and Keats. After her death in 1835, scores of selected and collected editions
appeared until the rise of modernism.
‘The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers in
The breaking waves dash'd high
On a stern and rock-bound coast,
And the woods against a stormy sky
Their giant branches toss'd;
And
the heavy night hung dark,
The hills and waters o'er,
When a band of exiles moor'd their bark
On the wild New-England shore.