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19C Literature

cultural history, critical studies, and background study notes

cultural history, critical studies, and background study notes

Flatland

November 30, 2015 by Roy Johnson

a fantasy romance and mathematical novella

Flatland (1884) is something of a literary curiosity – a Victorian work of science fiction. Its author Edwin Abbott was rather similar to Lewis Carroll – a Cambridge scholar and a clergyman who wrote on language, grammar, and problems of philosophy and mathematics. It’s a difficult work to categorise because it is nearer to a scientific essay than a work of fiction, and yet it does describe a particular world (containing only two dimensions) and it gives an account of the people who live there.

Like Lewis Carroll’s Alice books, Flatland is largely a work of amusing fantasy which pokes fun at some of the conventions of Victorian society at the same time as raising genuinely puzzling issues of geometry and mathematics.

Flatland

The nearest equivalent in English literature might be Jonathan Swift’s satirical fantasy Gulliver’s Travels (1726) in which a character journeys to strange worlds with different size-related issues and philosophic concepts to his own. Abbott gave his work a sub-title of ‘A Romance in Several Dimensions’. The key term here is ‘Romance’, which as a literary genre is a work featuring a series of happenings which take place outside the natural world.


Flatland – critical commentary

The text purports to be a work written by an inhabitant of Flatland (he is named A Square) in the form of a report of his experiences which have led him to pose some fundamental questions about the nature of reality. The Square has been living in a world of two dimensions, but has visited Lineland (a world of one dimension) and Spaceland – a realm which includes a third dimension and solid objects.

The inhabitants of these separate worlds cannot understand any world that includes a dimension greater in number than that of their own, and even the representative of Spaceland (a Sphere) will not accept the logical outcome of the Square’s experience which is that there might be a fourth dimension.

The Square argues using mathematical logic and Euclidian geometry. The world of Lineland is one-dimensional, and can therefore only generate lines, which have two points or ends. His own world of Flatland has two dimensions, and this generates plane figures – such as triangles and in his own case, a square, which has four points or corners. When he visits Spaceland he is introduced to the concept of a cube, which has eight corners. His argument is Two – Four – Eight – why not Sixteen next? (He actually uses a different sequence).

His fundamental question – and a puzzle which has still not been solved – is that if we live in a world of three dimensions, why cannot we imagine a fourth? It is one of the book’s many ironies that the Square is castigated for even asking such questions – and is eventually imprisoned for raising them. He has written Flatland during seven year’s incarceration – rather like Machiavelli’s Il Principe.

Much of the humour in the book lies in his description of everyday life in Flatland. Social stratification exists to an almost ridiculous degree – with triangles at the bottom of society (tradesmen and soldiers) squares as the middle or professional class next, polygons as the upper class, and finally circles as a ‘priesthood’. So – social status rises as the number of ‘sides’ a person possesses.

Women are straight lines – and have so little status that they are obliged to emit warning sounds so that people do not bump into them and become hurt by their pointed ends. The women do not baulk at the social injustice of their position, because they are ‘devoid of brain-power and have no memory’.

Quite obviously the book is a satire of class divisions in Victorian society, a poking fun at social snobbery, an interesting view on the status of women, and the fear of uprisings amongst lower orders. This is a period after all which was preceded by the Communist Manifesto of 1848, Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859, and the Paris Commune of 1881. But it also raises thought-provoking issues about the mathematics of space.


Flatland – plot summary

As its name suggests, Flatland is a world that is completely flat, and its social orders are ranked according to the number of lines of which each person is composed. Workmen and lower orders are triangles with a very narrow base; professionals and gentlemen are squares; and the nobility are polygons. As the number of sides increase, the status increases, with the highest order a priesthood of circles. Women are single straight lines, and the average height of an inhabitant is eleven inches.

However, women are not without a certain amount of power, because being one-dimensional, they can easily hide themselves, and being shaped like needles, they have sharp ends. They must enter houses only through the woman’s door (always on the East side) and a strict social code requires them to announce their presence at all times – because of their dangerous sharp ends. They are protected from any potential sense of exasperation at this injustice by the fact that they are wholly devoid of brain-power and memory.

In a world of such restricted geometry, how do people tell each other apart? After all, one equilateral triangle is very much like another. The answer is primarily through touching and feeling – though care has to be taken with the ‘brainless vertex of an acute angled Isosceles’.

But recognition by feeling is the practice of only the lower orders. Amongst the upper class of Polygons, recognition by sight is made possible by advanced educational methods (at the University of Wentbridge for instance). This allows members of such classes to recognise each other and makes them suitable for occupying positions of authority in Flatland society.

The watchword of this world is Regularity, and any deviation from it is regarded as an inescapable sign of moral depravity. If the sides of someone’s Square are not equal, he is in danger of being a Rhombus. All such instances are noted at birth and humanely destroyed.

Understandably, life amongst a society of two-dimensional triangles, squares, and circles is remarkably dull. But an Irregular once came up with the idea of making distinctions by using colour. People were painted red at the top and green at the bottom. Unfortunately, this led to a decline in sight recognition, a falling away in class distinctions, and a demand for more power amongst the lower orders of Tradesmen and Soldiers. This led to the passing of the Universal Colour Bill, a politically contentious move that resulted in a conflict which left the Circles triumphant because the Triangles fought amongst themselves. The net result was that the use of colour was banned forever.

In the second part of the book, having outlined the principles of Flatland, the Square has a dream in which he visits Lineland. In this world all the men are short lines and the women are points. They can only ever move along a single line, and no individual Linelander can ever pass another on this line. Marriage and reproduction are arranged by the sound of voices, which makes any form of touching unnecessary: indeed it is forbidden.

The Square tries to convince the King of Lineland that his world and perspectives are strictly limited, but the King cannot conceive of space or anything other than a single straight line.

The Square is then visited by a Sphere who arrives from Spaceland to explain the existence of a third dimension. He tries proving it mathematically and by analogy, but the Square cannot understand and resorts to physical attacks on the Sphere.

The Sphere then takes the Square into Spaceland where he is able to see his entire world of Flatland laid out before him like a map. The Sphere then re-enters the Flatland parliament to pronounce the existence of a third dimension. This is denied, and all those who overheard this heresy are either imprisoned or ‘despatched’.

Back in Spaceland the Sphere explains the nature of a cube to the Square. He is excited by this new knowledge, but then suggests that by analogy of lines, planes, and solids, that there must therefore be a fourth dimension which would make such a world superior to the first three. The Sphere rejects this idea and banishes the Square back to Flatland.

The Square then has a dream in which he is taken by the Sphere into Pointland. This is occupied by single speck who can only ever be conscious of himself, and knows of no existence outside his own. The Sphere encourages the Square’s vision by showing him the generation of geometric solids.

The Square decides to evangelize about the third dimension, starting with his grandson, a Hexagon. But the boy respects thee legal prohibition of such ideas and the experiment is not successful.

The Square tries writing a book about the third dimension, but he is unable to produce any illustrations to demonstrate his beliefs. In frustration he makes a speech at a local Speculative Society meeting relating his experiences. For this he is arrested and sentenced to permanent imprisonment. Seven years later he has written the work called Flatland but regrets that he still hasn’t made a single convert.

Flatland Buy the book at Amazon UK
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© Roy Johnson 2015


Edwin A. Abbott, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp.124, ISBN: 019953750X


Filed Under: 19C Literature, The Novella Tagged With: Edwin Abbott, English literature, Literary studies, The Novella

Guide to Literary Britain and Ireland

June 26, 2009 by Roy Johnson

illustrated encyclopedia of writers and places

Writers in Britain (no less than those in any other part of the world) have often been influenced by the localities in which the have been born and grown up. There are whole mythologies built around the Brontes and Yorkshire, Thomas Hardy and the West Country, Charles Dickens and London. But the influence actually goes further back than that. For instance in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, people from all over Europe flocked to Scotland, inspired by the writing of Walter Scott.

Guide to Literary Britain and Ireland Wordsworth and his friends almost single-handedly created a passion for the English Lake District which continues to this day. People queue up to peep into Dove Cottage, then go back home to houses ten times the size. Jane Austen has her own museum in Bath, because she captured the city so well in her work, even though she only spent a brief period of her short life there. But these are the well known examples. Less well known but just as interesting socially and geographically are the names listed in this encyclopedia of literature and place which explains connections between writers and locations from the smallest villages via towns and cities, to palaces and country seats which are like separate worlds of their own.

The other interesting factor here is that entries take a historical view of places – so that the record stretches well back beyond the recent past. And it also includes writers who were well known in their own day, even though they might not be now.

So, whilst you get pages of information about Shakespeare and Stratford on Avon (for obvious reasons) the entry on my own home city of Manchester includes Elizabeth Gaskell and Anthony Burgess (both fairly well known) but also the less well known Thomas de Quincy, Harrison Ainsworth, Howard Spring, George Gissing, and even Nobel Prize winner Elias Canetti, who lived here for a while.

I was even more interested to read the details of an entry concerning Christopher Isherwood and his connections with the now defunct Marple Hall in Cheshire. His much neglected – and in my opinion his best – novel The Memorial (1932) is set there. He inherited the hall, but gave it away to his brother.

There are all sorts of unexpected informational gems – such as the fact that Nathaniel Hawthorne lived in Southport; Henry James wrote The Spoils of Poynton in Torquay; and Vladimir Nabokov lived in Trinity College, Cambridge. Entries range from Adelstrop and Abingdon to Wormwood Scrubs and Zennor – famous for having expelled D.H.Lawrence during the First World War on suspicion that he was a German spy.

It’s packed with little gems like that, and the nice thing is that although the big names are not neglected, the smaller, the second.rate, and the also-rans are listed too – and this makes it a work of fairly serious reference rather than just a coffee-table guide. And with two indexes, you can look up either authors or places you might plan to visit. It’s the sort of book that reinforces the idea that people from all over the world probably regard Britain as a nation of writers and poets.

© Roy Johnson 2008

Guide to Literary Britain and Ireland   Buy the book at Amazon UK

Guide to Literary Britain and Ireland   Buy the book at Amazon US


Daniel Hahn and Nicholas Robins, The Oxford Guide to Literary Britain and Ireland, Oxford: Oxford University Press, third revised edition 2008, pp.370, ISBN: 0198614608


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Filed Under: 19C Literature, 20C Literature, Literary Studies Tagged With: Biography, Guide to Literary Britain & Ireland, Literary guide, Literary studies, Reference

How to buy books for a penny

February 8, 2013 by Roy Johnson

conrad_nostromo_2find bargains at online bookshops

I’ve bought several books for a penny each in the last couple of weeks at Amazon. Yes – that’s one penny. And they were not tatty old paperbacks, but hardback reference works of 400 pages plus, in tip top condition, plus a couple of classic novels.

There are several factors that create this state of affairs:

  • new books drive down the value of old books
  • book sales are dropping in global terms
  • more people are buying eBooks
  • eCommerce is changing business practices

What type of books for a penny?

There are lots of junk books for a penny available – as you would expect. But there are just as many that have real intrinsic value in the hands of the right person:

  • dictionaries
  • reference books
  • classic novels
  • out of date text books
  • software and IT manuals

A copy of the classic reference book Whitaker’s Almanack for instance contains lots of valuable information, even if it’s a few years out of date.

You can bet that the capital city, the geography, and the principal imports and exports of Tasmania have not changed much in the last two or three years.

Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice hasn’t changed at all since it was first published nearly two hundred years ago. So you can safely buy a copy that happens to be fifty years old – especially if it’s a nice hardback edition, printed on good paper.

Say you were a student of mathematics. A textbook explaining algebra, geometry, or calculus can’t really be ‘out of date’ – because the rules and equations in maths are fixed as part of their very nature.

In the world of computer technology, developments are so rapid that both software and hardware are updated every few weeks. A guidance manual to a digital camera, an operating system, or a laptop computer has almost zero value after about twelve months. But it might be useful to you if it matches the age of your equipment.


Why do books for a penny exist?

Theese bargain books are available for two good reasons:

Reason one
The bookseller wants to get rid of books that aren’t selling and are taking up valuable storage space.

This makes room for books that are more popular and will make more money in terms of sales.

Reason two

The bookseller is getting valuable information in return for the sale – your name, postal address, email address, and your reading preferences.

The bookseller can make use of this information in any future marketing campaigns.


Hardback Vs paperback

Check the book descriptions carefully. You might find a hardback edition available for the same price as a paperback. Old paperbacks tend to disintegrate, and a hardback edition will be more durable, even if it is much older

A hardback might also have additional features – such as illustrations, photographs, and maps.


How to interpret descriptions

Here is a typical description from a bookseller’s advert – and on some sites you might get a photograph of the book as well.

Ex-Library Book. Has usual library markings and stamps inside. Has been read but remains in clean condition. All pages are intact and the cover is intact. The spine may show signs of wear. All orders are dispatched within 1 working day from our UK warehouse. Established in 2004, we are dedicated to recycling unwanted books on behalf of a number of UK charities who benefit from added revenue through the sale of their books plus huge savings in waste disposal. No quibble refund if not completely satisfied.

  • Ex-Library book – That’s OK: libraries often laminate their books, to make them more durable. The book might have tickets and coloured stamp markings inside.
  • Pages and cover inteact – Good. That means it’s in reasonable external condition.
  • Spine wear – That is perfectly normal on an old book.
  • Despatched within one day – Good! Order it in the morning: you might receive it next day.
  • Charity donation – You are helping a charity, and saving a book which would otherwise be pulped.
  • Money-back guarrantee – You can trust them to honour their promise – for reasons discussed below.

If you want to go into further detail, have a look at our guidance notes on bookseller jargon.


Can you trust the seller?

Almost all bookseller want to gain reputations for good service and prompt delivery. Amazon and AbeBooks have ratings systems in place. Customers can award good (or bad) marks to the online bookseller.

Believe me – these booksellers are very, very keen to keep their ratings as high as possible. They know that if they send you shoddy goods that are badly wrapped, they will lose credibility,


Postage

Of course, you’ve got to pay the postage for these books to be delivered to your front door. But with an average charge of £2.50 (or $4.00 – €3.00) ask yourself if it would cost you that much to travel to your nearest big bookshop.

You might have to wait two or three days (in the UK) for the book to arrive – but in some cases if you order early in the morning, it’s possible that the book could arrive next day.

However, some online booksellers have free delivery options.


Examples of books for a penny

I ran a test and came up with the following examples. All were available for one penny.

These are the original book reviews on this site. Click through to Amazon, When you get there, be prepared to do a bit of clicking around.

books for a penny Roget’s Thesaurus [Reference – hardback]

books for a penny Portrait of a Marriage [Biography – hardback]

books for a penny Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable [Reference – hardback]

books for a penny iPhone UK The Missing Manual [Guidance manual – paperback]

books for a penny Style: ten lessons in clarity and grace [Style guide – paperback]

© Roy Johnson 2013


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Filed Under: 19C Literature, 20C Literature, How-to guides, Literary studies Tagged With: Dictionaries, e-Commerce, Reference

How to create a bibliography

November 16, 2009 by Roy Johnson

the basic conventions for academic writing

1. bibliographyAt the end of any scholarly writing (an essay, report, or dissertation) you should offer a list of any works you have consulted or from which you have quoted. This list is called a bibliography – literally, a list of books or sources.

2. The traditional way of showing this information is to use the following sequence:

Author – Title – Publisher – Date

Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory, Oxford: Blackwell, 1983.

3. In some cases, you might be expected to present this information with the author’s surname listed first – as follows:

Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory, Oxford: Blackwell, 1983.

4. If you are using the Harvard system of notation, the date follows the author’s name – thus:

Eagleton, T. (1983), Literary Theory, Oxford: Blackwell

5. Notice that book titles are shown in italics.

6. If you are using a ‘standard’ text, give the editor’s name first, as in the following examples:

Mark Amory (ed), The Letters of Evelyn Waugh, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980.

Frank Kermode (ed), The Tempest, Methuen, 1954.

7. List the items of a bibliography in alphabetical order according to author’s or the editor’s surname.

8. Don’t list works you have not consulted or from which you have not quoted. Doing this creates the impression that you are trying to claim credit for work you have not actually done.

9. You might find that your bibliography repeats much of the information given in your endnotes or footnotes. Don’t worry about this: these two separate lists have different functions. In addition, your bibliography may contain works from which you have not directly quoted.

10. Here’s an extract from the bibliography of a second year undergraduate essay on the sociology of domestic labour:

Bibliography

Beeton, I., Beeton’s Book of Household Management, Chancellor Press, 1991.

Best, G., Mid-Victorian Britain 1851-75, Fontana, 1979.

Branca, P., Silent Sisterhood, Croom Helm, 1975.

Burman, S. (ed), Fit Work for Women, Croom Helm, 1979.

Burnett, J., Useful Toil, Allen Lane, 1974.

Darwin, E., ‘Domestic Service’, The Nineteenth Century, Vol.28, August 1890.

Davidoff, L., The Best Circles, Croom Helm, 1973.

Davidoff, L., ‘Mastered for Life: Servant and Wife in Victorian and Edwardian England’, Journal of Economic and Social History, Vol.7, 1974.

The Harvard System

11. Some subjects adopt the Author-Date method of referencing – which is also known as the Harvard System. Full details of the texts you have quoted are placed in the bibliography in the following order:

Author – Date – Title – Place – Publisher

Smith, John. (1988) The Weavers’ Revolt, Chicago, Blackbarrow Press.

12. The list of texts which appears at the end of your essay should be arranged in alphabetical order of the author’s surname. The list differs from a traditional bibliography in that the date of publication follows the author’s name.

So – the same bibliography shown above would appear as follows in Harvard style:

Bibliography

Beeton, I. 1991 Beeton’s Book of Household Management, Chancellor Press.

Best, G. 1979 Mid-Victorian Britain 1851-75, Fontana.

Burman, S. 1979 (ed), Fit Work for Women, Croom Helm.

Darwin, E. 1890 ‘Domestic Service’, The Nineteenth Century, Vol.28, August.

Davidoff, L. 1973 The Best Circles, Croom Helm.

Davidoff, L. 1974 ‘Mastered for Life: Servant and Wife in Victorian and Edwardian England’, Journal of Social History, Vol.7.

Davidoff, L. 1987 and Hall, C., Family Fortunes, Hutchinson.

[…and so on]

bibliography Full details of Harvard style referencing.

© Roy Johnson 2009


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Filed Under: 19C Literature, 20C Literature, How-to guides, Literary studies, Study Skills Tagged With: Academic writing, Bibliography, Harvard style referencing, Referencing, Study skills, Writing skills

How to read a novel

June 21, 2011 by Roy Johnson

reading skills for appreciating fiction

Studying FictionIf you love reading novels you’ll know that they can offer an entire world in which to get imaginatively lost. People read Wuthering Heights and actually cry when the heroine Cathy dies half way through the story. They read The Wind in the Willows and are utterly charmed by the antics of characters pottering about on a river – all of whom are little animals. Or they read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and are terrified by the story of a scientist who manufactures life and finds the thing he creates going out of control. The important question is how to read a novel in order to get the most out of it?

It’s true that some people read novels ‘just for the story’, or ‘to see what happens next’. Once they have finished reading, they retain only a vague notion of what the novel was about, and they pass the book on to the local charity shop. But to understand novels at a deeper level and to get more from them, all you need to do is keep a few issues in mind whilst you’re reading. It’s not difficult – and with practice, it becomes easier, then second nature.

What you will be doing is keeping one part of your attention focussed on the events of the story, but other parts on how the story is being told, features of the characters, and the finer points of language in the text. You will become an intellectual multi-tasker.

These guidance notes will give you some idea of things to look for, and activities you might not have thought of before. This approach will help you find greater depths and meanings in the world of fiction. It will also help you to understand how skilled authors put a story together, and how their works are full of subtle and complex effects which make their fictional worlds believable to us.


1. The author

Make a note of the author’s name – and try to find out something of the background or biography. If the author is well known, simply type <Author Name Biography> into Google, and you will get the life story plus links to further reading at Wikipedia.

What are the author’s dates? The answer to this question gives you a historical context into which the book and its author can be placed. More on this later.

There is no guaranteed one-to-one connection between authors’ lives and the stories that they write, but most novelists write about issues that interest them or have touched their imagination in some way.

Has the author written any other books of the same kind? Where does the one you are reading appear in the list? Does it fit into a particular genre – which means the type of story. Is it a romance, thriller, or detective story? Each of these genres has its own ‘rules’.

For instance best-selling Agatha Christie specialised in detective stories. We admire the way her sleuths Hercule Poirot and Miss Marples solve crimes from shrewdly observed details. But we wouldn’t expect them to behave in the same way as secret agent James bond in Ian Flemming’s spy thrillers.


How to read a novel


2. The book

Pick up the book you’re going to read. What do you know about it already? There’s a lot of information about it that’s part of the book itself. The back cover might give you a taster of the plot or details of the author.

When was the book first published? Turn inside to the title, then look on the next page, which usually gives details of its publication. Has it been reprinted a number of times? That’s usually a sign of its popularity.

First published 1988

Reprinted 1990, 1992, 1994

Second edition 1996

New introduction (c) Simon Blackstaff 2005

This tells us that the book was successful on first publication, that a new edition was created after less than ten years, and that after seventeen it has been dignified with an introduction.

Have a look at the opening of the novel. Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities begins

It was the best of times: it was the worst of times.

You just know that this is going to be a novel of tension and conflict from the very opening sentence.


3. The introduction

The book might have an introduction – often written by someone other than the author (as in the example above). This will usually give you information about the characters and themes of the novel – which could be helpful in telling you what to look out for.

It should not give away crucial details of the plot. But no matter how carefully written, it’s bound to influence the way you read the novel. You have two choices. You can read it either before or after you read the novel.

As you develop more experience and confidence, you’ll probably choose to read the introduction after reading the novel. This will enable you to form your own opinions of the book, without being influenced from the outset.


4. The story

In a novel, the story is basically a sequence of what happens in the book. It is a narrative of events arranged in some time sequence. As a reader, you are being invited to follow this sequence until you reach the end of the novel and have the complete picture in your mind.

Most people have no trouble in understanding a simple series of events – even if they contain flashbacks or a jumbled time-sequence. That’s because almost everybody has followed stories in books, newspapers, and on television. Problems only arise when the novel is long, complex, and contains lots of characters.

When that’s the case, you will need to become a more active reader. This means making a brief note of what happens in each chapter – plus creating a list of characters.

These notes and lists will help you in two ways. You will have a record of names and events to which you can refer. But more importantly, the very act of writing them down will help you to remember them.


5. The characters

Authors can choose any number of ways to make their characters realistic, memorable, or convincing. They might give them a striking physical appearance, make them act in a vivid manner, or have them speak in a way that stands out.

Miss Havisham, the embittered old woman in Great Expectations, was jilted at the altar, and has been wearing her wedding dress ever since. The detective Sherlock Holmes plays the violin (and takes opium!) whilst he is solving crimes. Humbert Humbert in Lolita makes literary jokes whilst he is murdering his rival, Clare Quilty. Heathcliffe in Wuthering Heights jumps into the grave of his true love Catherine Earnshawe, wishing to embrace her as if she was alive. You will not forget these characters after reading about them.

At the opening of Pride and Prejudice it might not be easy to distinguish between Mr Bingley and Mr Darcy when they set the hearts of the Bennet girls fluttering. But if you make brief notes on what you know about them (age, home, appearance) it will help you to understand their roles in the story.


Studying FictionStudying Fiction is an introduction to the basic concepts and technical terms you need when making a study of stories and novels. It shows you how to understand literary analysis by explaining its elements one at a time, then showing them at work in short stories which are reproduced as part of the book. Topics covered include – setting, characters, story, point of view, symbolism, narrators, theme, construction, metaphors, irony, prose style, tone, close reading, and interpretation. The book also contains self-assessment exercises, so you can check your understanding of each topic.

Studying Fiction Buy the book at Amazon UK
Studying Fiction Buy the book at Amazon US


5. The plot

In a novel, the story is basically the sequence of what happens. It’s not the same thing as the plot. E.M.Forster explained the difference as follows:

“The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot.

The key difference here is that element of causality. There is some significant reason connecting events in the story. In a murder story the detective eventually finds hidden connections between clues to solve a crime. In Pride and Prejudice the heroine Elizabeth Bennett overcomes her prejudice and realises that the hero Mr Darcy is in love with her after all. In Great Expectations the hero Pip eventually realises that his true benefactor is not a rich woman but a convict he helped to escape as a child.

Some novels have plots that are quite difficult to unravel, but good authors normally give readers enough evidence to be able to work out what is going on. Hidden solutions and surprise endings produced like rabbits out of a hat leave readers feeling cheated.


6. The theme

The theme in a novel is not the same thing as the story or plot. It’s something larger and more general – like a single concept, or the moral of the story. For instance Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park explores the theme of education. It’s a story of a young girl who goes to live with rich relatives and eventually marries their youngest son. But almost every character in the novel learns a lesson from mistakes or errors of judgement they make.

So – the story is a version of the Cinderella tale – the poor young girl who eventually gets her prince. But the theme of the novel is a more subtle issue, running through the lives of other characters as well.


7. The style

The style in which a novel is written will reveal one very important factor – the author’s attitude to the content of the story. This will give you some idea of how to ‘read’ the novel: that is, how to understand and appreciate it.

Here’s the opening of Raymond Chandler’s 1939 hard-boiled detective novel The Big Sleep.

It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.

The main hallway of the Sternwood place was two stories high. Over the entrance doors, which would have let in a troop of Indian elephants, there was a broad stained-glass panel showing a knight in dark armor rescuing a lady who was tied to a tree and didn’t have any clothes on but some very long and convenient hair. The knight had pushed the vizor of his helmet back to be sociable, and he was fiddling with the knots on the ropes that tied the lady to the tree and not getting anywhere. I stood there and thought that if I lived in the house, I would sooner or later have to climb up there and help him. He didn’t seem to be really trying.

This is a first-person narrative. The fictional detective Marlowe is relating the story – so his manner of expression tells us a lot about him. It also tells us how the author Raymond Chandler is inviting us to view the story.

The literary style provides us with lots of conventional details – his suit, shirt, and shoes – but then he reveals that he is ‘sober’. This not only tells us that he normally drinks a lot, but his comment ‘I didn’t care who knew it’ is the sort of amusing and ironic inversion that helps to create his witty yet tough-guy persona.

‘I was calling on four million dollars’ In a factual sense he is visiting someone rich: but the expression does a lot more. This is a compressed figure of speech (metonymy) which also characterises the crime novel. It’s like a cartoon, with everything summed up in a single vivid image.

How to read a novelMarlowe’s description of the stained glass window reinforces his characterisation. He describes the figures in a naive manner, as if he had never seen such an emblematic composition before. The lady ‘didn’t have any clothes on’ and the knight has pushed his visor back ‘to be sociable’ but he was ‘not getting anywhere’. Raymond Chandler is simultaneously creating his main character – who is tough, but a little naive – and is giving us clues about how we should view the novel. It’s not to be taken entirely seriously. In fact describing European art from a naive American perspective is a device he has taken from Mark Twain. There is lots of serious crime ahead in the rest of the novel, but he is creating a witty and ironic point of view which we are invited to share.


8. The setting

It is possible to have novels with no setting. The events might take place in a character’s mind – as in Dostoyevski’s Notes from Underground for instance, or Samuel Beckett’s The Unnamable. But most novelists will try to convince readers to take their stories seriously by giving them a credible setting. Charles Dickens’s Bleak House is set in a London whose streets we can still walk down; and the events of Tom Woolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities can be traced on a street map of New York – as we once did when I was teaching that novel.

Some novelists are able to evoke the spirit of a place so vividly that literary tourists are attracted from all over the world to visit the locations. Bath is full of Jane Austen fans, re-tracing the steps of characters from Nothanger Abbey, and large parts of south-west England (Dorset, Wiltshire, and Somerset) attract visitors to Thomas Hardy’s fictional region of Wessex. He might have changed the name of the hills above Dorchester to Egdon Heath, but his passionate description of the countryside is so vivid and powerful that readers will travel half way round the world to see the original.


9. Historical context

This term means ‘social conditions at the time the novel was written’. In other words, the sort of things that were happening, how people behaved, and what they believed in the period the novel was written. Your awareness of these matters will depend upon the depth of your historical knowledge, and it is something which you will develop, the more your read.

Why is it important? Here’s an example – from Jane Austen again. Any number of her young female characters have their eye fixed upon marriage, but they have to be very careful about choosing the right man. All sorts of moral problems arise in her novels about making the right decision. If something goes wrong and the engagement goes on too long or is broken off, it will be regarded as disastrous.

You might think – what’s the problem? She can simply choose somebody else.

But in polite society during the early nineteenth century, women were not free to act as they wished, and certainly not free to choose a husband. A broken engagement would cast a dark shadow over a young woman’s reputation. It would be thought that if her fiance broke off the engagement, there must be something wrong with her.

The same suspicion would even fall on an engagement that was protracted. If the man had made his choice (it was the man who proposed) then his failure to follow through would immediately arouse suspicion – on the woman.

The stories and plots of any number of novels rest on social conditions quite unlike our own, and in fact at a more advanced level of reading the content of novels is one of the richest sources of social history we may have about a period.


10. Reading and taking notes

Novels will yield up more of their riches if you are prepared to do a little work whilst reading them. This means making notes as you go along. You can make a note of anything that strikes you as interesting, but here are some suggestions:

  • the appearance of characters
  • recurring themes or motifs
  • features of the author’s style
  • plot twists or crucial scenes
  • important details of the story

It’s certainly a good idea to summarize the events of each separate chapter. This will help you keep the events of the story in your mind.

Some do’s and don’ts

If something strikes you as important or interesting, underline the text – but also put a word or two in the margin that gives it a title. In other words, give a name to what you think is important.

Don’t underline whole paragraphs: that creates an ugly page, and it’s a waste of time. Instead, write a note in the top or bottom margin, saying what you think is important. Or put a circle round a name or a special couple of words.


Teaching the Novel and Reading for Pleasure



Salman Rushdie

© Roy Johnson 2011


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Literary Criticism – a new history

September 7, 2010 by Roy Johnson

aesthetic theory from the classical period to the present

Gary Day’s main argument in his impressive study Literary Criticism – a new history is that literary criticism is like a pendulum that swings backwards and forwards in different historical epochs. At one moment it emphasizes the text, and at the next its effect upon the reader. He traces all the main schools of literary criticism, starting with classical Greek and Roman writing on aesthetics, and he shows that many of the notions people imagine to be new have actually been around for two thousand years or more. This makes his book a good antidote to the mistaken idea that literary criticism began in the 1970s with the discovery of French structuralism.

Literary CriticismHe takes the history of both literature and literary criticism through the distinct phases of its historical development, starting with the classics, then looking successively at Medieval, Renaissance, Enlightenment, Romantic, and Modern phases. His emphasis on the whole is on English criticism, though it does not preclude an occasional consideration of other cultures.

His examination of criticism relating to the earlier periods has the instructive effect of condensing their ideas and ‘theory’ into digestible chunks. He points out that in the medieval period for instance there was no concept of either literature or criticism as we know them – only ‘commentary’ on sacred texts. The Greco-Roman classics for instance were interpreted as guides to (Christian) moral behaviour. The medieval period also gave rise to the concept of the auctor (author). It also saw, towards its end, the rise of the written vernacular. Latin was the language of learning, but as trade between nations increased there was more reason than ever for people to use and learn each other’s native language.

In the Renaissance period Day argues that a crucial issue was the Protestant-inspired translation of the Bible into English. This gave the common man both access to divine scripture and the right to its interpretation – previously only in the remit of the church itself. The introduction of printing and the establishment of a vernacular English that pushed out Latin and French as the lingua francas of official discourse led to the publication of books for readers’ pleasure. This in turn gave rise to a literature of the popular marketplace and a need to make distinctions between such products and a canon of revered classics. It is easy to see the point that Gary Day makes several times throughout this study – that many of the critical issues debated with such recent ferocity were evident in literary history centuries ago.

His chapter on the English Enlightenment draws interesting parallels between criticism and finance. If the intrinsic value of a paper five pound note was certainly not five pounds, because there was not a one-to-one correspondence between signifier and signified, so the value of a work of literature could not be determined by the accuracy of its correspondence with some value in the real world.

There is a strong period of Neoclassicism in the eighteenth century that Day attributes to a desire for order, proportion, and rule-based authority after the uncertainties created by the Civil War. However, he argues that it failed to take permanent root and only sprang back into life now and again during politically reactionary phases.

In his chapter on the Romantic period he argues that the cult of individualism, ‘sensibility’, and nature was a reaction to the industrial revolution which reduced man to a mere part in the economy of mass production. Thus the literary criticism that emerged emphasized the possibilities of individual response to and interpretation of a text. This tendency reached its apogee in the art for art’s sake movement at the end of the nineteenth century when all connections between art and moral improvement were finally denied completely.

When it comes to the twentieth century he understandably sees Freud, Max Plank and Picasso as exemplars of revolutionary thinking, though the literary critics he first considers are the very unfashionable Walter Orage and G.K. Chesterton. But in fact the main focus of interest in his final chapter is the establishment of English Studies in the UK university system – a surprising phenomenon both in its recency and the controversy that surrounded it.

Fortunately, he does finish by looking at three major figures critics who were influential from the mid-century onwards – I.A.Richards, William Empson, and F.R.Leavis. He explains their critical methods and their significance, and finally lets himself off the leash to take a few well-aimed swipes at Catherine Belsey, who is obviously his bete noir.

This is not simply gratuitous rival-bashing however, for one of Day’s habits that I found quite entertaining was his demonstrating links between debates held centuries ago with those of the last two or three decades – to show that there is very little that is totally new under the sun. And he is also much given to taking pot shots at the current academic culture of ‘skills’ and ‘performance indicators’ that have come to replace a serious interest in the subject of literature and literary criticism.

He has very little to say about contemporary forms of literary criticism which range from feminism, postcolonialism, post-Modernism, and queer theory – except to conclude somewhat radically that

the sheer variety should not distract us from one fundamental truth: that the demands of bodies like the Quality Assurance Agency are making the study of literature ever more prescriptive for students while the Research Assessment Exercise has distorted it for academics. Criticism is better off outside the academy.

This sort of writing could signal the beginnings of a long overdue and very welcome change in the practice of academic literary criticism.

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© Roy Johnson 2010


Gary Day, Literary Criticism: a new history, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010, pp.344, ISBN: 0748641424


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Literary Theory: a short introduction

August 4, 2009 by Roy Johnson

brief guide to critical approaches to literary studies

This introductory guide to literary theory comes from a new series by Oxford University Press. They are written by specialists, aimed at the common reader, and offer an introduction to the main cultural and philosophical ideas which have shaped the western world. Jonathan Culler avoids the common approach of explaining the various schools of literary criticism by choosing instead a set of topics and showing what various literary theories have to say about them.

Literary Theory: a short introduction There’s a certain amount of sleight of hand. In explaining ‘theory’ in its modern sense he doesn’t acknowledge the profound difference between this loose use of the term and a scientific theory, which can be proven or disproven. Nor does he acknowledge the sort of special pleading and self justification which is passed off as ‘philosophy’ in the work of someone such as Michel Foucault. But he does have a persuasive way of explaining some of these difficult ideas in terms which the common reader can understand.

The topics he chooses turn out to be very fundamental questions such as ‘What is literature?’ – that is, are there any essential differences between a literary and a non-literary text. These are questions to which common sense supplies rapid answers, but when Theory is applied, unforeseen complexities arise.

In fact when he looks more closely at the nature, purpose, and the conventions of literature, he claims that one of the purposes of Theory is to expose the shortcomings of common sense.

There’s an interesting chapter on language and linguistic approaches to literary theory where he discusses Saussure and Chomsky, the differences between poetics and hermeneutics, and reader-response criticism. Any one of these approaches is now the basis for a whole school of literary theory.

When he gets to genre criticism there’s a useful explanation of lyric, epic, and drama – though it’s not quite clear why he separates narrative (stories and novels) into a chapter of its own.

However, when it does come, his explanation of narrative theory is excellent. His account of plot, point of view, focalisation, and narrative reliability will help anyone who wants to get to grips with the analysis of fiction.

He ends with brief notes explaining the various school of literary theory which have emerged in the recent past – from New Criticism, through Structuralism, Marxism, and Deconstruction, to the latest fashions of Post-Colonialism and Queer Theory.

In one sense the book’s title is slightly misleading. It should be Modern Literary Theory. But this is a very interesting and attractive format – a small, pocket-sized book, stylishly designed, with illustrations, endnotes, suggestions for further reading, and an index.

© Roy Johnson 2005

Literary Theory   Buy the book at Amazon UK

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Jonathan Culler, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, pp.149, ISBN: 019285383X


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Literary Theory: the basics

May 24, 2009 by Roy Johnson

schools of literary criticism 1900-2000 explained

Despite its title, this is a survey of modern literary criticism. Hans Bertens starts from a critique of Matthew Arnold’s liberal humanist and essentially romantic appeal that literature exists on a higher spiritual plane that we are invited to visit. He then goes on to show the links with T.S.Eliot, Ivor Richards, F.R.Leavis, and the New Criticism of the United States in the early decades of the last century. Then its on to the Russian formalists and Prague structuralism – Shklovsky, Propp, and Jakobson .

Literary Theory: the basicsThese progress by a slightly dog-legged chronology to the French structuralists of the 1960s and 1970s. Roland Barthes picks up Saussure and runs with the ball of structuralism. Genette develops the same lines in his theories of narratology. When it came to Marxism I had a minor quibble with his account of ideology and I think he lets Georgy Lukacs off rather lightly – but on the whole it’s an even-handed treatment.

I enjoyed his explanations of feminism, race, and gender theory, and I couldn’t help feeling that his own interests were transmitted more infectiously as his story approached the present. What a rich choice of approaches any young student of literature has today.

When he arrives at the ‘poststructuralist revolution’ you have to be prepared for an excursion into the realms of philosophy. Literature seems a long way off, but you’ll get an account of Derrida which makes him seem almost accessible. The same is true of his chapter on Lacan

We know now that the deconstructionists took literary theory to a point where it appeared that nothing certain could be said about a text. So what happened afterwards? Well – it’s interesting that the fashions in literary theory which followed tend to focus upon on a single topic – race, class, sexuality, colonialism, or gender, and erect a series of abstact generalisations upon it.

Bertens gives very generous considerations to these late twentieth-century developments. The strength of this approach is that the theories are explained very well. The weakness is that we don’t get to see them applied. Literary texts themselves seem a long way off, and only get the occasional mention. It’s really difficult to see what ‘queer theory’ can tell us about Bleak House or The Odyssey. Go on – prove me wrong.

Nevertheless, I think this is a book worth recommending to people embarking on literary studies at undergraduate level, if for no other reason than it gives a reasonable account of what these theories claim without shirking from their weaknesses. And as he points out, although the latest of them tend to claim the intellectual high ground, their predecessors are still in general circulation.

Each separate chapter is followed by an annotated bibliography of further reading. I mention the annotation because this makes it far more useful to the reader than the long bare listings you usually find in books of this kind.

© Roy Johnson 2007

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Hans Bertens, Literary Theory: The Basics, Abingdon: Routledge, 2nd edition 2007, pp.264, ISBN: 0415396719


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Literature and the Internet

November 1, 2009 by Roy Johnson

resources, techniques, and issues for literary studies

In the field of literary studies, people have been creating digitized texts and making concordances for quite some time now. But until the advent of the Web it was difficult to get an overview of criticism and scholarship which was easily available. In fact it’s still not easy. As the authors of this excellent guide Literature and the Internet point out, it remains common for the latest work to be made available only in the form of conventionally printed books and the dinosaur publishing methods of scholarly journals.

Literature and the Internet But at last the Internet is now making ever more material easily available to us, and it is the purpose of this guide to advise students, teachers, and scholars how to make the most of the opportunity to retrieve it. They start with a general survey of the pros and cons of the Internet for literary studies, quite rightly pointing out that despite all its obvious advantages, there are still many shortcomings:

It has large and obvious gaps, it cannot cover the literary ground as even a moderately well-stocked library can, and it cannot equal the contemporary appeal of a good bookstore.

In fact the differences between books in libraries and texts on the Net are intelligently explored, before we get down to some practical advice on usability. This centres logically enough on using search engines, and they offer an explanation of the different techniques which can be deployed, as well as alerting users to the differences in kind amongst the sources which might be located.

The centre of the book is an extensive list of resources. These are arranged as web site address – in categories ranging from libraries, journals, literary periods, literary criticism, discussion groups and email distribution lists, to individual authors – from Achebe to Zola – and their home pages.

Mercifully, these lists are annotated with useful evaluative comments, making clear distinctions between sites which are commercial, fan pages, and the results of scholarly research. It’s interesting to note how many of the award-winning sites are the work of dedicated individuals (such as Jack Lynch at Pennsylvania and Mitsuharu Matsuoka in Japan) and departments in little-known colleges in the back of nowhere. Major institutions are noticeably thin on the ground.

I felt reassured that the authors had done their homework, had visited the sites they discuss – and were not frightened of levelling criticism at some quite well known names in the literary establishment. They point out the need for more qualitative evaluation of online resources and web site reviews.

This is followed by advice on the evaluation of sites, including a series of basic questions we can ask on arrival. Is the information accurate? Is it complete? And is there any acknowledgement of the sources being used?

There is also a section for teachers, discussing how computers and the Internet can be used in literary studies, with suggestions (for instance) for hypertext assignments and web essays – though I hope their term Webliographies doesn’t catch on.

They consider the nature of electronic texts – from plain ASCII, through the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) and HyperText Markup Language (HTML), and even as far as the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) and Extensible Markup Language (XML).

These are only touched on lightly, with their differences briefly explained, but this is a valuable topic to raise in the consciousness of students and teachers, especially in the light of controversies surrounding the form in which commercial electronic books are being issued.

The guide ends with considerations of the theoretical and political connections between literary studies in an era of digitized text – exploring some of the notions raised in recent years by Jay Bolter, George Landow, and J. Hillis Miller.

They even have some interesting comments to make on the likely impact of Information Technology on academic careers – including the vexed issue of academic publishing, which must surely be due for major convulsions in the next few years.

Many people have argued that it’s now rather pointless issuing printed resource guides which will be quickly outdated. But there is a reason for such publications. The fact is that it’s often quicker to locate information in a book, rather than searching through files or favourites using a browser.

Certainly, I’m very pleased that this book is on my desk, and I look forward to exploring its suggestions and passing on any gems to my own students – who are currently learning how to write, link, zip, and upload their first web essays.

Literature and the Internet   Buy the book at Amazon UK

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© Roy Johnson 2000


Stephanie Browner, Stephen Pulsford, and Richard Sears, Literature and the Internet: A Guide for Students, Teachers, and Scholars, London/New York: Garland, 2000, pp.191, ISBN: 0815334532


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Nineteenth Century – literary timeline – part 1

September 29, 2009 by Roy Johnson

a chronicle of events, literature, and politics

1789. French Revolution

1790. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France

1791. Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man

1792. Denmark is first country to abolish slavery. September
massacres in France; royal family imprisoned. Coal gas used for lighting. Mary Wollstencraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

1793. Louis XVI beheaded. France becomes a republic and the National
Anthem La Marseillaise is composed. The Napoleonic Wars begin. Godwin, Political Justice.

1794. First slave revolution led by Toussaint L’Ouverture in Haiti. Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho; William Godwin, Caleb Williams; Robert Burns writes Auld Lang Syne; Blake, Songs of Experience.

1795. First horse-drawn railroad appeared in England. Revolt in Ireland.

1796. British doctor Edmund Jenner performs the first vaccination against smallpox. Fanny Burney, Camilla, Mathew Lewis, The Monk.

1798. Wordsworth and Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads. First draft of Northanger Abbey written. T.R. Malthus, Essay on Population

1800. Parliamentary union of Great Britain and Ireland.

1801. Walter Scott, Ballads.

1802. Formation of the Society for the Suppression of Vice in response to concern over obscene literature and pictures – it conducts several prosecutions under the Obscene Libel Law. Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads.

1803. Insurrection in Ireland. Britain at war with France. General Enclosures Act permits enclosure of common land. Thomas Chatterton, Works (posthumous).

1804. Napoleon declares himself Emperor. Spain declares war against Great Britain. Blake, Milton and Jerusalem.

1805. Battle of Trafalgar – Nelson’s victory and death. Walter Scott, Lay of the Last Minstrel.

1807. Slave trade abolished in British Empire. Occupation of Portugal by the French.

1808. Occupation of Spain by the French. Goethe, Faust – Part I.

1809. London exhibition of paintings by William Blake.

1810. Scott, The Lady of the Lake.

1811. George III is declared insane and The Prince of Wales becomes regent. ‘Luddite’ disturbances in Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire. Jane Austen publishes first novel, Sense and Sensibility.

1812. Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow.

1813. Austen, Pride and Prejudice. Shelly, Queen Mab.

1814. Stephenson’s steam locomotive. Copyright Act extended the period of copyright to 28 years from date of first publication or the length of the author’s life. Scott’s Waverley begins his career as Europe’s most celebrated novelist [largely unread today]. Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

1815. Battle of Waterloo. Napoleon is defeated. Corn Law passed setting price of corn at 80s per quarter.

1816. Jane Austen, Emma; Coleridge, Kubla Khan; Scott, The Antiquary.

1817. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine founded; Coleridge, Biographia Literaria. Keats, Poems.

1818. Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey; Persuasion (published posthumously); Mary Shelly, Frankenstein; Scott, Rob Roy. Keats, Endymion.

1819. Peterloo massacre. Seditious Publications Act (copy tax on periodicals containing news). Savannah is the first steamship to cross the Atlantic. Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe; Byron, Don Juan.

1820. George IV becomes king. Shelley, Prometheus Unbound.

1821. Mechanics Institutes formed in Glasgow and London. Death of John Keats. Shelley, Defence of Poetry, Thomas DeQuincey, Confessions of an Opium Eater.

1822. Famine in Ireland. Shelly drowns in Italy. Charles Lamb, Essays of Elia.

1823. Charles Macintosh develops a new fabric for making raincoats. William Webb Ellis, a boy at Rugby school, unwittingly starts the development of the game that was to become known as ‘rugby’.

1824. The National Gallery is opened; G. Combe, Elements of Frenology. Death of Byron.

1825. Stockton-Darlington railway opened; Trade Unions are legalized.

1827. University College London founded. Constable paints The Cornfield.

1828. The Duke of Wellington becomes Prime Minister.

1829. The Governesses’ Mutual Society is founded in response to public concern over the situation of unemployed governesses. Catholic Emancipation Bill sponsored by Sir Robert Peel is passed – Roman Catholics in the UK are relieved of the oppressive regulations, some of which had been in force since the time of Henry VIII. Catholics now able to sit as Members of Parliament. Invention of the first steam locomotive. Founding of the Metropolitan Police Force. Thomas Carlyle, Signs of the Times.

next

© Roy Johnson 2009


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