What is the life story of Bard of Avon?



Can you imagine what it would be like if the mighty Iron Man starts spewing Shakespeare's sonnets? Or if Hulk and Captain America face each other in a Shakespearean duel with swords? Well, you won't have to wait too long to find out.



The superhero films are all set to be presented in a new avatar with a classical twist. Marvel Studios along with Quirk Books will be releasing The Avengers", "Avengers: Age of Ultron", "Avengers: Infinity War, and "Avengers: Endgame" in the form of Shakespearean plays. Titled "William Shakespeare's Avengers: The Complete Works, the plays will be released on September 28.



Immersing Marvel's favourite team of superheroes into a Shakespearean world isn't as far-fetched as it may sound. In fact, viewers got a taste of it in the very first "Avenger" film in 2012 when Tony Stark aka Iron Man encounters the God of Thunder for the first time. Looking at Thor's medieval clothes, Stark jests about indulging in some Shakespeare in the park. "Doth Mother know you weareath her drapes?" Stark famously asks Thor.



And it was actually this scene that inspired Marvel to come up with the unconventional collaboration. The studio wondered what would have happened if the most epic cinematic franchise of all time had been penned by the greatest playwright of all time?



What's in store



According to the Marvel website, "William Shakespeare's Avengers: The Complete Works" reimagines all four films as plays by the Bard of Avon, complete with authentic metre and verse, stage directions, and entertaining Easter eggs. Fans will also experience their favourite scenes, characters, and lines in a new way, through monologues and dialogue by everyone from Captain America to Groot (Tis !!).



Written by lan Doescher, the author of "William Shakespeare's Star Wars", the book will feature a two column layout and dozens of full-colour illustrations capturing the iconic moments of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.



Who was William Shakespeare?



Born on April 23, 1564 Shakespeare was the son of a glove maker in Stratford upon-Avon. A small-town boy with only secondary school education, he grew up to become the greatest English-language playwright in the world. Love him or hate him, you just cannot ignore Shakespeare. His works have been admired by the world for hundreds of years and are part of the school curriculum.



And even though, the young minds might struggle to comprehend his Victorian English, Shakespeare's stories continue to move us and remain relevant even today.



His life and achievements



Shakespeare had a successful career in London as an actor. writer. He was also part-owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men.



Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories. He devoted the latter half of his career to writing tragedies. Some of his notable works are "Hamlet" "Romeo and Juliet "Othello", "King Lear and "Macbeth". In the last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies.



A man of mystery



For a man who was so prolific with his pen.



Shakespeare did not leave much evidence of his life. No one knows for sure whether Shakespeare is one person or a group of writers using the name collectively. Nobody even knows if that's how Shakespeare spelled his name: the only surviving examples of his handwriting are six signatures spelled in different ways. He is believed to have died at the age of 52 on April 23 1616.



OH REALLY?




  • Shakespeare wrote around 37 plays for the theatre and over 150 poems! But the exact number is unknown.

  • In the latter part of the 16th Century, Shakespeare disappeared from records for a few years! Historians often refer to this part of the writers life as the lost years.

  • Plays in Shakespeare's time were different from the ones we have today. There were no female actors. If the audiences didn't like the performance, they would boo and even throw food at the actors.



 



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What is the life story of Charles Addams?



Who was Charles Addams?



Growing up in the shadow of World War I. Addams found humour in the darkest of places-death. Born in New Jersey on January 7, 1917, his parents encouraged him to channel his creativity into doodles. One of his first jobs involved retouching photos of corpses that appeared in a detective magazine. It helped him come to terms with death and inspired, his macabre cartoons, which were later published in The New Yorker magazine under the pseudonym Chas Addams.



In over a five-decade-long career, Addams contributed over 1,300 cartoons, with at least 80 of them featuring reccurring gothic mysterious and spooky characters, Gomez Morticia, Wednesday, Pugsley, and Fester, who came to be known as "The Addams Family".



Getting started



At the age of 12, Addams faced his first rejection. He was told that he was not talented by a New York Herald newspaper cartoonist. Instead of feeling disappointed, Addams spurred into action and enrolled at a prestigious art school. In just one year, Addams sold his first drawing, a sketch of a window washer, to The New Yorker. It was published on February 6, 1932. Within a few years, he became a regular contributor to the magazine. And from 1938 till his death on September 29, 1988, the magazine published 'The Addams Family" series regularly.



The franchise and adaptations



What began as a humble monochromatic cartoon strip in The New Yorker turned into a giant franchise after the series was adapted for television by producer David Levy. However, Addams kept his distance from "The Addams Family" television series. He only decided on the characters' names and descriptions. The series ran on ABC for two seasons, from 1964 to 1966, and gained global attention.



Intrigued by the popularity of the series, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera introduced an animated version of the Addams Family characters as guests in an episode of the "Scooby Doo" series. The episode titled, "Scooby-Doo Meets the Addams Family", first aired on television on September 23, 1972. The characters were drawn to the exact specifications of the original Addams cartoons. And the fans loved them so much that Hanna-Barbera created their own animated show featuring the beloved characters.



Considering the enduring appeal of the Addams Family, Netflix has announced a live-action TV series adaptation to be based around the character of Wednesday Addams. With the legendary director Tim Burton at its helm, the series will follow Wednesday as she solves mysteries using her psychic ability.



DID YOU KNOW?




  • In 1961, Charles Addams received a Special Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America.

  • Addams loved collecting armour and arms, as well as tinkering with cars.

  • Keeping with his dark sense of humour, Addams married his third and final wife, Marilyn Matthews Miller in a pet cemetery. And their home in Sagaponack, New York was called "The Swamp".



OH REALLY?




  • Addams was friends with author Ray Bradbury. In fact, the duo were planning to collaborate on a project. But Addams died before it could materialize.

  • Filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock too was a friend of Addams, and owned two pieces of original Addams art.

  • The University of Pennsylvania has a Charles Addams Fine Arts Hall on its campus at 36th and Walnut Streets in Philadelphia. There is a small sculpture of the Addams Family in front of the building.



 



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Which is first in the series of fantasy novels by British author C.S. Lewis was published in 1950, and called “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”?



The Chronicles of Narnia, a series of seven children’s books by C.S. Lewis: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950), Prince Caspian (1951), The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952), The Silver Chair (1953), The Horse and His Boy (1954), The Magician’s Nephew (1955), and The Last Battle (1956). The series is considered a classic of fantasy literature and has influenced many other fantasy works.



Lewis dedicated the first book to his goddaughter Lucy Barfield and gave her name to the fictional Lucy Pevensie, who—with her siblings Peter, Susan, and Edmund—figures as a character in the series. Most Lewis scholars agree that it is preferable to read the books in order of publication. They were originally illustrated by Pauline Baynes. Books from the series have also been adapted several times for radio, television, stage, and film productions.



In the United States, the publication rights were first owned by Macmillan Publishers, and later by HarperCollins. The two issued both hardcover and paperback editions of the series during their tenure as publishers, while at the same time Scholastic, Inc. produced paperback versions for sale primarily through direct mail order, book clubs, and book fairs. HarperCollins also published several one-volume collected editions containing the full text of the series. As noted below (see Reading order), the first American publisher, Macmillan, numbered the books in publication sequence, whereas HarperCollins, at the suggestion of Lewis's stepson, opted to use the series' internal chronological order when they won the rights to it in 1994. Scholastic switched the numbering of its paperback editions in 1994 to mirror that of HarperCollins.



 



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Narrating the unusual story of a young girl named Dorothy, which book by L Frank Baum has spawned several films and television series since the book’s launch in 1900?



The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, children’s book written by L. Frank Baum and first published in 1900. A modern fairy tale with a distinctly American setting, a delightfully levelheaded and assertive heroine, and engaging fantasy characters, the story was enormously popular and became a classic of children’s literature. However, by the late 20th century the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz had become more familiar than the book on which it was based.



The story chronicles the adventures of a young farm girl named Dorothy Gale in the magical Land of Oz after she and her pet dog Toto are swept away from their home in Kansas by a cyclone. The book is one of the best-known stories in American literature and has been widely translated. The Library of Congress has declared it "America's greatest and best-loved homegrown fairytale." Its groundbreaking success, and that of the Broadway musical adapted from the novel led Baum to write thirteen additional Oz books that serve as official sequels to the first story.



The book was illustrated by Baum's friend and collaborator W.W. Denslow, who also co-held the copyright. The design was lavish for the time, with illustrations on many pages, backgrounds in different colors, and several color plate illustrations. In September 1900, The Grand Rapids Herald wrote that Denslow's illustrations are "quite as much of the story as in the writing". The editorial opined that had it not been for Denslow's pictures, the readers would be unable to picture precisely the figures of Dorothy, Toto, and the other characters.



 



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“Christopher Robin” is a 2018 American fantasy comedy-drama inspired by which book?



Christopher Robin is a 2018 American fantasy comedy-drama film directed by Marc Forster and written by Alex Ross Perry, Tom McCarthy, and Allison Schroeder, from a story by Greg Brooker and Mark Steven Johnson. The film is inspired by A. A. Milne and E. H. Shepard's Winnie-the-Pooh children's books and is a live-action/CGI follow-up of the Disney franchise of the same name. Plans of a live-action Winnie the Pooh adaptation were announced back in April 2015, and Forster was confirmed as the director in November 2016. McGregor signed on as Christopher Robin in April 2017 and principal photography began in August of that year in the United Kingdom, lasting until November. Christopher Robin premiered in Burbank, California on July 30, 2018. Released in the United States on August 3, 2018, by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, the film grossed over $197 million worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing film in Disney's Winnie the Pooh franchise surpassing The Tigger Movie released in 2000. The film received mostly positive reviews from critics, who praised its performances, musical score, and visual effects. The film received an Academy Award nomination for Best Visual Effects at the 91st Academy Awards.



Christopher Robin -- now a family man living in London -- receives a surprise visit from his old childhood pal, Winnie-the-Pooh. With Christopher's help, Pooh embarks on a journey to find his friends -- Tigger, Eeyore, Owl, Piglet, Rabbit, Kanga and Roo. Once reunited, the lovable bear and the gang travel to the big city to help Christopher rediscover the joy of life.



 



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Who is the author of The Diary of a Young Girl?



The Diary of a Young Girl, also known as The Diary of Anne Frank, journal by Anne Frank, a Jewish teenager who chronicled her family’s two years (1942–44) in hiding during the German occupation of the Netherlands during World War II. The book was first published in 1947—two years after Anne’s death in a concentration camp—and later became a classic of war literature.



The diary is not written in the classic forms of "Dear Diary" or as letters to oneself; Anne calls her diary "Kitty", so almost all of the letters are written to Kitty. Anne used the above-mentioned names for her annex-mates in the first volume, from 25 September 1942 until 13 November 1942, when the first notebook ends. It is believed that these names were taken from characters found in a series of popular Dutch books written by Cissy van Marxveldt.



Anne's already budding literary ambitions were galvanized on 29 March 1944 when she heard a London radio broadcast made by the exiled Dutch Minister for Education, Art, and Science, Gerrit Bolkestein, calling for the preservation of "ordinary documents—a diary, letters ... simple everyday material" to create an archive for posterity as testimony to the suffering of civilians during the Nazi occupation. On 20 May 1944, she notes that she started re-drafting her diary with future readers in mind. She expanded entries and standardized them by addressing all of them to Kitty, clarified situations, prepared a list of pseudonyms, and cut scenes she thought would be of little interest or too intimate for general consumption. By the time she started the second existing volume, she was writing only to Kitty.



 



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What is the life story of Beverly Cleary?



Have you met the residents of the Klickitat Street? Henry Huggins and his neighbours Ellen Tebbits, Otis Spofford, Beatrice "Beezus" Quimby and her younger sister. Ramona made their way into the hearts of children across the world through the writings of the beloved children's author Beverly Cleary. But did you know that there is a real Klickitat Street in Portland, Oregon, in the U.S.? Or that Cleary spent most of her childhood there? Read on to find out...



Who was Beverly Cleary?



Born in 1916 on a farm in Yamhill, Cleary moved to Portland as a child. She lived on the 37th Street, also known as the Klickitat Street. Both the street and the people in her neighbourhood left a strong impression on Cleary's mind. A school assignment in Class VII kindled her love for writing.



Unlike most women then, Cleary was determined to attend college and stand on her feet. She even moved to South California with her aunt and uncle because California's colleges were free to its residents. Cleary earned a degree in English from the prestigious UC Berkeley and librarianship from the University of Washington.



Half a century of children's books



Working as a librarian, Cleary started writing in her 30s. Her first, "Henry Huggins" was published in 1950. Cleary received $500 for the book and there was no looking back after that. In a career spanning over 50 years, Cleary came up with many children's classics including the “The Mouse and the Motorcycle" trilogy, which is centred around rodents and motorbikes. Among the "Henry" titles were "Henry and Ribs," "Henry and the Paper Route" and "Henry and Beezus." Her last book, "Ramona's World", released in 1999.



Beverly and Ramona



Of all her creations, Ramona is perhaps the best-known. Ramona made her debut in "Henry Huggins", but became so popular that she inspired her own spin-offs. In all there were eight Ramona books, including "Beezus and Ramona", "Ramona the Pest and "Ramona and Her Father." In 1981, "Ramona and Her Mother” won the National Book Award.



Twilight years



Although Cleary took a break from writing towards the end of her career, three of her books were re-released on popular demand. And to make them even more special, they contain forewords by three of her famous fans-Judy Blume, Kate DiCamillo and actress Amy Poehler.



Cleary breathed her last on March 25, 2021, at the age of 104.



OH REALLY?




  • The Beverly Cleary Sculpture Garden in her hometown is dedicated to the beloved children's author. Artist Lee Hunt has created sculpted figures of some of Cleary's characters, while quotes from her famous books are engraved on the granite slabs in the garden.

  • Out of all the magical books she wrote, only her "Ralph Mouse" series has been adapted to the silver screen.

  • Cleary has written two memoirs "A Girl From Yamhill" and "My Own Two Feet” in which she discusses her life candidly.



 



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What is the life story of Charlotte Bronte?



A famous poet once told Charlotte Bronte that "literature cannot be the business of a woman's life." But Charlotte proved him wrong by penning "Jane Eyre" and becoming one of the earliest feminist voices in literature. Charlotte's heroine, the feisty and strong-willed governess, was based partly on herself and her sisters, Emily and Anne, and their extraordinary lives. Read on to know more about Charlotte's genius, imagination and literary prowess...



Early life



Born on April 21, 1816, Charlotte was the eldest among the Bronte sisters. Along with their brother Branwell, they lived in Haworth, West Yorkshire in England. At an early age, Charlotte had to grapple with the loss of her mother and two older sisters, who died of tuberculosis.



School too was a nightmare for Charlotte. The Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge had a harsh environment, and Charlotte had several bad experiences there. It served as an inspiration for the dark and cold Lowood Institution in "Jane Eyre".



Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell



Charlotte and her siblings penned several novels and poems using male pen names Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. Currer Bell was Charlotte, Emily was Ellis and Anne was Acton. Charlotte even used this pseudonym while writing her most successful novel "Jane Eyre". She did not want to reveal her identity as she feared that the readers will not take a female author seriously. Even her publishers found out about her true identity later. "Jane Eyre" received rave reviews and readers began to speculate about who Currer Bell was. *Charlotte famously responded to her critics, "To you I am neither Man nor Woman - I come before you as an Author only - the sole ground on which I accept your judgement." (*Source: "Charlotte Bronte: A Fiery Heart by Claire Harman.)



Tiny books



Growing up, Charlotte and her siblings entertained themselves by creating miniature magazines. The magazines included original short stories, essays, poems, and letters written by the siblings as well as fictional advertisements and editorials. The second issue of one such book, called "The Young Men's Magazine", was bought by the Bronte Society for a sum of £600,000 last year. The tiny book has since been put on display at the Parsonage Museum in the Brontes old home in Haworth.



DID YOU KNOW?




  • Charlotte's first novel "The Professor" was rejected nine times before it was finally published posthumously.

  • A famous poet told Charlotte that "literature cannot be the business of a woman's life."

  • Her siblings didn't live long enough to see her succeed. All three of them succumbed to tuberculosis between 1848 and 1849.

  • A golden ring containing a lock of Charlotte's hair was discovered in an attic in north Wales in April, 2019. The authors name has been inscribed on the inside.



 



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What is the life story of William Steig?



One of the highest grossing animated film franchises of all time, the "Shrek" films are popular with one and all. The adventures of the green ogre, Shrek and his faithful companion, Donkey, voiced by comedians Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy, will leave you chuckling with delight.



With the film franchise completing 20 years in April, the first film 'Shrek", which released in 2001, is set to return to the big screen on April 24, 25 and 26. But did you know that the films are based on a children's picture book? William Steig's "Shrek!” released in 1996, is the source material for the films.



Who was William Steig?



Growing up in New York, William Steig was interested in swimming and playing touch football more than books. He didn't complete his college education even though he attended three colleges. He studied at the City College of New York for two years, then the National Academy of Design and spent just five days at the Yale School of Art.



A gifted illustrator, Steig started working with the prestigious magazine The New Yorker in 1930. He produced 117 covers for the magazine. One of his cartoon characters, Poor Pitiful Pearl, inspired a popular line of dolls, starting in 1956.



From Pitiful Pearl to Doctor De Soto



Steig forayed into writing for children at the age of 61. it was his cartoonist friend Robert Kraus who persuaded him to wield the pen. Steig's first children's book was released in 1968. He excelled in writing as well, and his third book, "Sylvester and the Magic Pebble" (1969), won the Caldecott Medal. He went on to pen more than 30 children's books, including the "Doctor De Soto" series, and he continued to write well into his nineties. On the basis of his entire body of work, Steig was selected as the 1982 U.S. candidate for the Hans Christian Andersen Medal for illustration and subsequently in 1988 for writing.



Steig's unique characters



What sets Steig's books apart is that it can appeal to children and adults alike. Moving beyond rainbows and unicorns, his books explore complex topics and give a realistic view of life. They are unafraid of touching upon topics that adults usually hesitate to talk to kids about. In "Brave Irene", a dressmaker falls ill as she completes a gown for a duchess; her daughter, Irene, volunteers to deliver it, but is caught in a snowstorm. A lesson on survival, the story follows Irene's ordeal as she braves the snowstorm. In "Doctor De Soto", a mouse dentist finds ways to outwit a fox in the guise of a patient who wants to eat him.



Beauty of the beast



Steig's picture book “Shrek!” (1990) formed the basis for the DreamWorks Animation's film "Shrek" (2001).



Shrek! is one of the unique characters in children's literature. A monster, Shrek is depicted as not only ugly but also cruel. He's so hideous that people faint at the sight of him. However, Shrek doesn't scare the readers. And, the story doesn't end with Shrek finding his inner beauty, but by accepting himself for who he is. A valuable lesson in today's world!



After the release of "Shrek 2" in 2004, Steig became the first sole creator of an animated movie franchise that went on to generate over $1 billion after only one sequel. The character also received a star at the Hollywood Walk of Fame.



Legacy



Steig passed away in Boston, Massachusetts on October 3, 2003 at the age of 95, but left behind a legacy of thought provoking cartoons that teaches all about life.



OH REALLY?




  • Steig had a gift for puns and sarcasm, which is obvious in his works. "Spinky Sulks" is a hilarious tale of a family whose youngest son holds a grudge for an impressively long time.

  • In 1930, Steig sold his first comic to The New Yorker. It depicted one prison inmate telling a fellow inmate about his incorrigible son. Initially, editor Harold Ross wanted another artist to redraw it, but Steig refused permission. The cartoon went on to become extremely popular.

  • In 1984, Steig's film adaptation of "Doctor De Soto", directed by Michael Sporn, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.

  • For a time, Steig lived at 75 1/2 Bedford Street, which is considered to be one of the narrowest houses in Manhattan.



 



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Which is the Nobel-winning 1957 novel by Boris Pasternak is set during the Russian Revolution?



Doctor Zhivago is a novel by Boris Pasternak, first published in 1957 in Italy. The novel is named after its protagonist, Yuri Zhivago, a physician and poet, and takes place between the Russian Revolution of 1905 and World War II.



The novel was made into a film by David Lean in 1965, and since then has twice been adapted for television, most recently as a miniseries for Russian TV in 2006. The novel Doctor Zhivago has been part of the Russian school curriculum since 2003, where it is read in 11th grade.



Dr. Yury Zhivago, Pasternak’s alter ego, is a poet, philosopher, and physician whose life is disrupted by the war and by his love for Lara, the wife of a revolutionary. His artistic nature makes him vulnerable to the brutality and harshness of the Bolsheviks; wandering throughout Russia, he is unable to take control of his fate, and dies in utter poverty. The poems he leaves behind constitute some of the most beautiful writing in the novel.



 



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In 1952, Ralph Ellison published which novel?



Invisible Man, novel by Ralph Ellison, published in 1952. Invisible Man won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction in 1953. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Invisible Man 19th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Time magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005, calling it "the quintessential American picaresque of the 20th century," rather than a "race novel, or even a bildungsroman." Malcolm Bradbury and Richard Ruland recognize an existential vision with a "Kafka-like absurdity." According to The New York Times, Barack Obama modeled his 1995 memoir Dreams from My Father on Ellison's novel.



Published in 1952, Invisible Man explores the theme of a person's search for their identity and place in society, as seen from the perspective of the first-person narrator, an unnamed African American man, first in the Deep South and then in the New York City of the 1930s. In contrast to his contemporaries such as Richard Wright and James Baldwin, Ellison created characters that are dispassionate, educated, articulate, and self-aware. Through the protagonist, Ellison explores the contrasts between the Northern and Southern varieties of racism and their alienating effect. The narrator is "invisible" in a figurative sense, in that "people refuse to see" him, and also experiences a kind of dissociation. The novel also contains taboo issues such as incest and the controversial subject of communism.



In 1975, Ellison was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and his hometown of Oklahoma City honored him with the dedication of the Ralph Waldo Ellison Library. Continuing to teach, Ellison published mostly essays, and in 1984, he received the New York City College's Langston Hughes Medal. In 1985, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. In 1986, his Going to the Territory was published; this is a collection of seventeen essays that included insight into southern novelist William Faulkner and Ellison's friend Richard Wright, as well as the music of Duke Ellington and the contributions of African Americans to America's national identity.



In 1992, Ellison was awarded a special achievement award from the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards; his artistic achievements included work as a sculptor, musician, photographer, and college professor as well as his writing output. He taught at Bard College, Rutgers University, the University of Chicago, and New York University. Ellison was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers.



 



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What is the only novel published by Playwright Oscar Wilde?



In the final decade of his life, Wilde wrote and published nearly all of his major work. In his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (published in Lippincott’s Magazine, 1890, and in book form, revised and expanded by six chapters, 1891), Wilde combined the supernatural elements of the Gothic novel with the unspeakable sins of French decadent fiction. 



Though the novel is now revered as a great and classic work, at the time critics were outraged by the book's apparent lack of morality. Wilde vehemently defended himself in a preface to the novel, considered one of the great testaments to aestheticism, in which he wrote, "an ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style" and "vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art."



Wilde's first play, Lady Windermere's Fan, opened in February 1892 to widespread popularity and critical acclaim, encouraging Wilde to adopt playwriting as his primary literary form. Over the next few years, Wilde produced several great plays—witty, highly satirical comedies of manners that nevertheless contained dark and serious undertones. His most notable plays were A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), his most famous play.



 



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What is the only novel published by American poet and Sylvia Plath?



The Bell Jar is the only novel written by the American writer and poet Sylvia Plath. Originally published under the pseudonym "Victoria Lucas" in 1963, the novel is semi-autobiographical with the names of places and people changed. The book is often regarded as a roman à clef because the protagonist's descent into mental illness parallels Plath's own experiences with what may have been clinical depression or bipolar II disorder. Plath died by suicide a month after its first United Kingdom publication. The novel was published under Plath's name for the first time in 1967 and was not published in the United States until 1971, in accordance with the wishes of both Plath's husband, Ted Hughes, and her mother. The novel has been translated into nearly a dozen languages.



Plath was born on October 27, 1932, in Boston, Massachusetts. Plath was a gifted and troubled poet, known for the confessional style of her work. Her interest in writing emerged at an early age, and she started out by keeping a journal. After publishing a number of works, Plath won a scholarship to Smith College in 1950.



While she was a student, Plath spent time in New York City during the summer of 1953 working for Mademoiselle magazine as a guest editor. Soon after, Plath tried to kill herself by taking sleeping pills. She eventually recovered, having received treatment during a stay in a mental health facility. Plath returned to Smith and finished her degree in 1955.



After Hughes left her for another woman in 1962, Plath fell into a deep depression. Struggling with her mental illness, she wrote The Bell Jar (1963), her only novel, which was based on her life and deals with one young woman's mental breakdown. Plath published the novel under the pseudonym, Victoria Lucas. She also created the poems that would make up the collection Ariel (1965), which was released after her death. Plath committed suicide on February 11, 1963.



 



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Which India-born writer first work of fiction “God of Small Things” came out in 1997?



Arundhati Roy, full name Suzanna Arundhati Roy, Indian author, actress, and political activist who was best known for the award-winning novel The God of Small Things (1997) and for her involvement in environmental and human rights causes.



In 1997 Roy published her debut novel, The God of Small Things to wide acclaim. The semiautobiographical work departed from the conventional plots and light prose that had been typical among best-sellers. Composed in a lyrical language about South Asian themes and characters in a narrative that wandered through time, Roy’s novel became the biggest-selling book by a nonexpatriate Indian author and won the 1998 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.



Roy’s subsequent literary output largely consisted of politically oriented nonfiction, much of it aimed at addressing the problems faced by her homeland in the age of global capitalism. Among her publications were Power Politics (2001), The Algebra of Infinite Justice (2002), War Talk (2003), Public Power in the Age of Empire (2004), Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers (2009), Broken Republic: Three Essays (2011), and Capitalism: A Ghost Story (2014). In 2017 Roy published The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, her first novel in 20 years. The work blends personal stories with topical issues as it uses a large cast of characters, including a transgender woman and a resistance fighter in Kashmir, to explore contemporary India.



 



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Could name the only published work of Margaret Mitchell?



Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell was an American novelist and journalist. Mitchell wrote only one novel, published during her lifetime, the American Civil War-era novel Gone with the Wind, for which she won the National Book Award for Most Distinguished Novel of 1936.



The same year she was married, Mitchell landed a job with the Atlanta Journal Sunday magazine, where she ended up writing nearly 130 articles. Mitchell would get married a second time during this period, wedding John Robert Marsh in 1925. As seemed to be the case in Mitchell’s life, though, yet another good thing was to come to an end too quickly, as her journalist career ended in 1926 due to complications from a broken ankle.



With her broken ankle keeping Mitchell off her feet, in 1926 she began writing Gone With the Wind. Perched at an old sewing table, and writing the last chapter first and the other chapters randomly, she finished most of the book by 1929. A novel about the Civil War and Reconstruction, Gone With the Wind is told from a Southern point of view, informed by Mitchell’s family and steeped in the history of the South and the tragedy of the war.



In July 1935, New York publisher Macmillan offered her a $500 advance and 10 percent royalty payments. Mitchell set to finalizing the manuscript, changing characters' names (Scarlett was Pansy in earlier drafts), cutting and rearranging chapters and finally naming the book Gone With the Wind, a phrase from “Cynara!, a favorite Ernest Dowson poem. Gone With the Wind was published in 1936 to huge success and took home the 1937 Pulitzer. Mitchell became an overnight celebrity, and the landmark film based on her novel came out just three years later and went on to become a classic, winning eight Oscars and two special Oscars.



 



Picture Credit : Google