Virginia woolf

Virginia Woolf (Jan. 25, 1882, London — March 28, 1941, near Rodmell, Sussex) was the daughter of a Victorian critic, philosopher, biographer, and scholar Leslie Stephen. She was brought up in a large family where she could read in her father's impressive library, and get in touch with many well-known Victorians. In 1904, when her father died, she moved to Bloomsbury, the district in London which became the centre of the whole literary school: Lytton Strachey, a biographer; J. M. Keynes, an economist; Roger Fry, an art critic; and the novelist E. M. Forster.

In 1912, she married the journalist and essayist Leonard Woolf, supportive emotionally and intellectually in all her creative and personal troubles. Together they established the Hogarth Press in 1917 that published, among others, Eliot's Poems (1919) and Homage to John Dryden (1924), the English translations of Freud, and Woolf's own writings. After her novels The Voyage Out (1915) and Night and Day (1919), she started experimenting to emphasize the wholeness of experience, the complexity of one's character and external world, and their influence on the soul.

The fear of Word War II and the fear of losing her mind and remaining an invalid pressed heavily on her, and finally she committed suicide. Few friends suspected that under her liveliness and wit lay a grave nervous depression and psychological anxiety.

As a writer, she developed naturally in her rich cultural world, which surrounded her from childhood. In her best novels, like Jacob's Room (1922), Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), The Waves (1931) and Between the Acts (1941), Woolf inventively combined the stream of consciousness technique, lyric imagery and her highly poetic language in her concern about personal identity and the role of time and memory in our lives.

Woolf was also preoccupied with the social status of women, especially of women writers in the man-dominated world, writing several essay collections, such as A Room of One's Own (1929) and Three Guineas (1938). She also produced innumerable reviews and critical essays, published under the title The Common Reader (1925) and The Second Common Reader (1932). Her criticism is subtle and spontaneous, informal and personal, evocative rather than commanding.

JAMES JOYCE

James Joyce (Feb. 2, 1882, Dublin, Ireland — Jan. 13, 1941, Zurich, Switzerland) was raised in a Catholic atmosphere; he attended Clongowes Wood College, then Belvedere College, Dublin. He was well on the way to becoming a priest, since both were Jesuit institutions, as well as University College, Dublin, where he studied modern languages.

He was much fond of Henrik Ibsen, and learned Norwegian to read his plays in the original and wrote an article, Ibsen's New Drama, published in the London Fortnightly Review in 1900 at the age of just 18. It was very successful and Joyce firmly decided to become a writer. In 1901, he published an essay, The Day of the Rabblement, attacking the Irish Literary Theatre for its catering to popular taste. Refused publication, the essay was printed privately, thus angering the university authorities. By his graduation in 1902, he knew he would have to leave Ireland. Meanwhile, he decided to become a doctor, but, after attending a few lectures in Dublin he gave it up, borrowed some money and went to Paris. He wrote some book reviews and studied in the Sainte-Genevieve Library.

Shortly afterwards, he was called back home since his mother was seriously ill. He tried various occupations, briefly worked as a schoolteacher, and began writing a long naturalistic novel, Stephen Hero, when in 1904, he was invited to submit some short stories with an Irish background to a farmers' magazine, The Irish Homestead. On June 16, 1904, he met an uneducated peasant girl Nora Barnacle and fell in love with her. They moved to the Continent to teach English first at Trieste, where their two children were born, and then from 1915 at Zurich.

Joyce suffered from poor eyesight and from 1917 until 1930 endured a series of 25 operations, sometimes unable to see at all. Notwithstanding the problems, he continued working. Moreover, some of his funniest passages were written when his health was in decline. From 1920 to 1940, Joyce lived in Paris, until forced to flee to Switzerland when the War started.

Personally, Joyce was a difficult man to get along with. Nevertheless, for 36 years on the Continent he was the centre of a literary circle. His friends helped him, both spiritually and financially, among them the New York lawyer and art patron John Quinn, the English feminist and editor Harriet Shaw Weaver.

Although abroad, Joyce always wrote about Dublin alone, so that it became his little universe of all human history. In fact, he launched his literary career from realistic stories about various sides of Dublin life, collected in the 1914 edition as Dubliners. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), having many autobiographical elements, tells of the interconnections between the artist and society in the modern world.

With his life and career, Joyce exemplifies the inevitable estrangement of the artist from society in 20^th century Western civilization. These themes are raised in his masterpieces Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939), unique novels in organization and style. Ulysses is built similar to Homer's Odyssey. The novel covers one day in the lives of Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom and his wife Molly Bloom, parallel to Telemachus, Ulysses and Penelope, as well as the central events of the journey home. For the depth of its portrayal and humour the novel stands out in all the literary output of the 20^th century. It is also a pioneering work in the use of interior monologue, known as the stream of consciousness.

James Joyce is famous for his experimental use of language, for the exploration in new literary techniques. His subtle depiction of human nature made him one of the most influential novelists of 20^th century Modernism.

Araby

Araby is one of the fifteen short stories of Joyce's collection, Dubliners, which together trace the development of a child into an adult. The point of view in every third story changes from a young boy's to that of a teenager's. Araby is the last story of the first group and borrows its title from a festival in Dublin. The boy, who narrates the story, lives with his aunt and uncle, and remains unnamed.

DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE

Lawrence acquired his reputation partly for being of working-class origin. In his novels he described the reality of English provincial family life and introduced elements of psychoanalysis in his novels. He is also regarded as a pioneer of sexual liberation in literature. From the very beginning he attracted readers with a sensitive brightness and his inclination to describe subjective emotional states. His best novels remain difficult chiefly because he was trying to express in words what was usually subconscious and thus wordless and open to the darker gods of nature, feeling, and instinct.

David Herbert Lawrence (Sept. 11, 1885, Eastwood, Nottinghamshire — March 2, 1930, Vence, France) was born into a mining family. His educated mother struggled all her married life to raise her children out of the working class. This social inequality between his parents made him side with his mother's gracefulness. He readily responded to her affection, and, especially after the death of an elder brother, he was the centre of her emotions.

Thanks to his mother, Lawrence went to Nottingham High School on a scholarship, worked as a clerk and elementary school teacher, and studied at Nottingham University College. In 1908, Lawrence started teaching in a London suburb, and some of his poems were sent by his early love Jessie to the influential English Review. His native Eastwood setting, the dissimilarity between mining town and countryside, the work and leisure of the miners, conflicts between his parents, his tormented relationship with his early love Jessie, all turned into themes of Lawrence's early short stories and novels, such as The White Peacock (1910). His next novel, The Trespasser (1912), interested the influential editor Edward Garnet, who later published Sons and Lovers (1913).

In 1911, Lawrence suffered a violent attack of pneumonia and decided to resign teaching and keep on writing. At that time he fell in love with Frieda von Richthofen, the German wife of a professor at Nottingham. They went to Germany together and married in 1914, after Frieda got a divorce. The war forced them back to England, and his outspoken protest against the war and Frieda's German origins got them into trouble with the authorities. More often, especially after the ban on his next novel, The Rainbow (1915), Lawrence felt the forces of modern civilization stood in the way against him.

Lawrence's poetry, at first unsure and conventional, underwent an amazing development and advanced to a highly spontaneous free verse, full of observation and symbolism. His most original poetic contribution is his collection Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923), excellent nature poetry, based on his stays in the Mediterranean and in America. His Last Poems (1932) are highly contemplative. Lawrence's letters, rich in tone, vivacity and splendour, disclose his restless nature and wandering life.

After the First World War, Lawrence and his wife went to Italy, never to come to England again. He soon began a series of novels consisting of The Lost Girl (1920), Aaron's Rod (1922), and the unfinished Mr. Noon (1984). In 1921, the Lawrences decided to go to the United States, via Sri Lanka and Australia. Since 1917 Lawrence had been working on Studies in Classic American Literature (1923), nourished by his sense that the American West was a yet unspoilt natural environment.

While in Australia in 1922, Lawrence wrote the novel Kangaroo, a summary of his lifetime. After six weeks the Lawrences left for America. They visited Mexico in 1923, and Lawrence started the ambitious novel The Plumed Serpent (1926), where he envisioned the reconstruction of European post-war society from a religious perspective.

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The Lawrences went back to Italy in 1925, and next year he set out on the first drafts of Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928). However, Lawrence, diagnosed with tuberculosis, was gradually dying, and they decided to move to the south of France, where in 1929 he wrote Apocalypse (1931), a commentary on the biblical Book of Revelation, which is his final religious statement. Shortly before his death he had written: Already the dark and endless ocean of the end is washing in through the breaches of our wounds, already the flood is upon us.

In this symbolic evocation to the biblical past Lawrence stands next to Blake, in that they both created their unique worlds always at odds with the mechanical and artificial. His best writing displays his exploration into the realm of man's individuality, often in association with others.

The Horse Dealer's Daughter

Lawrence's short story The Horse Dealer's Daughter is, in a way, a research into a troubled mind resulting from unfulfilled desires.

This story traces the decline of a family from masters to servants. Although tragedy has been avoided, the story does not end affirmatively. It might be a love story, but totally deprived of all romantic expectations. The author examines the psychological workings of the central characters, Mabel Pervin and Jack Fergusson, and their strangely born love. Their thoughts and feelings are closely knit into their environment.