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"
The Open Boat" is a
short story by American author
Stephen Crane (1871–1900). First published in 1897, it was based on Crane's experience of surviving a shipwreck off the coast of
Florida earlier that year while traveling to
Cuba to work as a newspaper correspondent. Crane was stranded at sea for thirty hours when his ship, the
SS Commodore, sank after hitting a sandbar. He and three other men were forced to navigate their way to shore in a small boat; one of the men, an
oiler named Billie Higgins, drowned after the boat overturned. Crane's personal account of the shipwreck and the men's survival, titled "Stephen Crane's Own Story", was first published a few days after his rescue.
Crane subsequently adapted his report into narrative form, and the resulting short story "The Open Boat" was published in Scribner's Magazine. The story is told from the point of view of an anonymous correspondent, with Crane as the implied author, the action closely resembles the author's experiences after the shipwreck. Praised for its innovation by contemporary critics, the story is considered an exemplary work of literary Naturalism, and is one of the most frequently discussed works in Crane's canon.
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Image 1Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an
American poet and critic, a major figure in the early
modernist poetry movement, and a
collaborator in
Fascist Italy and the
Salò Republic during
World War II. His works include
Ripostes (1912),
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920), and
The Cantos (
c. 1915–1962).
Pound's contribution to poetry began in the early 20th century with his role in developing
Imagism, a movement stressing precision and economy of language. Working in London as foreign editor of several American literary magazines, he helped to discover and shape the work of contemporaries such as
H.D.,
Robert Frost,
T. S. Eliot,
Ernest Hemingway, and
James Joyce. He was responsible for the 1914 serialization of Joyce's
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the 1915 publication of Eliot's "
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", and the serialization from 1918 of Joyce's
Ulysses. Hemingway wrote in 1932 that, for poets born in the late 19th or early 20th century, not to be influenced by Pound would be "like passing through a great blizzard and not feeling its cold". (
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Image 2Edgar Allan Poe (
né Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American
writer,
poet,
editor, and
literary critic who is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales involving mystery and the
macabre. He is widely regarded as one of the central figures of
Romanticism and
Gothic fiction in the United States and of early
American literature. Poe was one of the country's first successful practitioners of the
short story, and is generally considered to be one of the pioneers of the
detective fiction genre. In addition, he is credited with contributing significantly to the emergence of
science fiction. He is the first well-known American writer to earn a living exclusively through writing, which resulted in a financially difficult life and career.
Poe was born in
Boston. He was the second child of actors
David and
Elizabeth "Eliza" Poe. His father abandoned the family in 1810, and when Eliza died the following year, Poe was taken in by John and Frances Allan of
Richmond, Virginia. They never formally
adopted him, but he lived with them well into young adulthood. Poe attended the
University of Virginia but left after only a year due to a lack of money. He frequently quarreled with John Allan over the funds needed to continue his education as well as his
gambling debts. In 1827, having enlisted in the
United States Army under the assumed name of Edgar A. Perry, he published his first collection,
Tamerlane and Other Poems, which was credited only to "a Bostonian". Poe and Allan reached a temporary rapprochement after the death of Allan's wife, Frances, in 1829. However, Poe later failed as an officer cadet at
West Point, declared his intention to become a writer, primarily of poems, and parted ways with Allan. (
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Image 3Ann Weldy (born September 15, 1932), better known by her pen name
Ann Bannon, is an American author who, from 1957 to 1962, wrote five
lesbian pulp fiction novels known as
The Beebo Brinker Chronicles. The books' enduring popularity and impact on lesbian identity has earned her the title "Queen of Lesbian Pulp Fiction". Bannon was a young housewife trying to address her own issues of sexuality when she was inspired to write her first novel. Her subsequent books featured four characters who reappeared throughout the series, including her eponymous heroine, Beebo Brinker, who came to embody the
archetype of a
butch lesbian. The majority of her characters mirrored people she knew, but their stories reflected a life she did not feel she was able to live. Despite her traditional upbringing and role in married life, her novels defied conventions for romance stories and depictions of lesbians by addressing complex homosexual relationships.
Her books shaped lesbian identity for lesbians and heterosexuals alike, but Bannon was mostly unaware of their impact. She stopped writing in 1962. Later, she earned a doctorate in
linguistics and became an academic. She endured a difficult marriage for 27 years and, as she separated from her husband in the 1980s, her books were republished; she was stunned to learn of their influence on society. They were released again between 2001 and 2003 and were adapted as an award-winning
Off-Broadway production. They are taught in
women's and
LGBT studies courses, and Bannon has received numerous awards for pioneering lesbian and
gay literature. She has been described as "the premier fictional representation of US lesbian life in the fifties and sixties", and it has been said that her books "rest on the bookshelf of nearly every even faintly literate Lesbian". (
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Image 4Ezra Morgan Meeker (December 29, 1830 – December 3, 1928) was an
American pioneer who traveled the
Oregon Trail by ox-drawn wagon as a young man, migrating from Iowa to the
Pacific Coast. Later in life he worked to memorialize the Trail, repeatedly retracing the trip of his youth. Once known as the "
Hop King of the World", he was the first mayor of
Puyallup, Washington.
Meeker was born in
Butler County, Ohio, to Jacob and Phoebe Meeker. His family relocated to Indiana when he was a boy. He married Eliza Jane Sumner in 1851; the following year the couple, with their newborn son and Ezra's brother, set out for the
Oregon Territory, where land could be claimed and settled on. Although they endured hardships on the Trail in the journey of nearly six months, the entire party survived the trek. Meeker and his family briefly stayed near
Portland, then journeyed north to live in the
Puget Sound region. They settled at what is now Puyallup in 1862, where Meeker grew hops for use in brewing beer. By 1887, his business had made him wealthy, and his wife built a large mansion for the family. In 1891, an infestation of
hop aphids destroyed his crops and took much of his fortune. He later tried his hand at a number of ventures, and made four largely unsuccessful trips to the
Klondike, taking groceries and hoping to profit from the gold rush. (
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Image 5Joanne Rowling (
ROH-ling; born 31 July 1965), better known by her
pen name J. K. Rowling, is a British author, philanthropist, producer, and screenwriter. She is best known for writing
Harry Potter, a seven-volume series about a young wizard. Published from 1997 to 2007, the fantasy novels are the
best-selling book series in history, with over 600 million copies sold. They have been
translated into 84 languages and have spawned a
global media franchise including
films and
video games. She writes
Cormoran Strike, an ongoing
crime fiction series, under the alias
Robert Galbraith.
Born in
Yate, Gloucestershire, Rowling was working as a researcher and bilingual secretary for
Amnesty International in 1990 when she conceived the idea for the
Harry Potter series. The seven-year period that followed saw the death of her mother, the birth of her first child, divorce from her first husband, and relative poverty until the first novel in the series,
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, was published in 1997. Six sequels followed, concluding with
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007). By 2008,
Forbes had named her the world's highest-paid author. (
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Image 6Maya Angelou (
AN-jə-loh; born
Marguerite Annie Johnson; April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014) was an American
memoirist,
essayist,
poet, and
civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees. Angelou's series of seven autobiographies focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first,
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up to the age of 17 and brought her international recognition and acclaim.
She became a poet and writer after a string of odd jobs during her young adulthood. In 1982, Angelou was named the first Reynolds Professor of American Studies at
Wake Forest University in
Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Angelou was active in the
Civil Rights Movement and worked with
Martin Luther King Jr. and
Malcolm X. Beginning in the 1990s, she made approximately 80 appearances a year on the
lecture circuit, something she continued into her eighties. In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "
On the Pulse of Morning" (1993) at the
first inauguration of Bill Clinton, making her the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since
Robert Frost at the
inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961. (
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Image 7Ion Heliade Rădulescu or
Ion Heliade (also known as
Eliade or
Eliade Rădulescu;
Romanian pronunciation: [ˈi.on (h)eliˈade rəduˈlesku]; 6 January 1802 – 27 April 1872) was a
Wallachian, later
Romanian academic,
Romantic and
Classicist poet, essayist, memoirist, short story writer, newspaper editor and politician. A prolific translator of foreign literature into
Romanian, he was also the author of books on
linguistics and history. For much of his life, Heliade Rădulescu was a teacher at
Saint Sava College in
Bucharest, which he helped reopen. He was a founding member and first president of the
Romanian Academy.
Heliade Rădulescu is considered one of the foremost champions of
Romanian culture from the first half of the 19th century, having first risen to prominence through his association with
Gheorghe Lazăr and his support of Lazăr's drive for discontinuing education in
Greek. Over the following decades, he had a major role in shaping the modern Romanian language, but caused controversy when he advocated the massive introduction of
Italian neologisms into the
Romanian lexis. A
Romantic nationalist landowner siding with moderate
liberals, Heliade was among the leaders of the
1848 Wallachian revolution, after which he was forced to spend several years in exile. Adopting an original form of conservatism, which emphasized the role of the aristocratic
boyars in
Romanian history, he was rewarded for supporting the
Ottoman Empire and clashed with the
radical wing of the 1848 revolutionaries. (
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Image 8Mário Raul de Morais Andrade (
Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈmaɾiu ʁaˈu dʒi moˈɾajs ɐ̃ˈdɾadʒi]; October 9, 1893 – February 25, 1945) was a Brazilian poet, novelist,
musicologist,
art historian and
critic, and
photographer. He wrote one of the first and most influential collections of modern Brazilian poetry,
Paulicéia Desvairada (
Hallucinated City), published in 1922. He has had considerable influence on modern
Brazilian literature, and as a scholar and essayist—he was a pioneer of the field of
ethnomusicology—his influence has reached far beyond Brazil.
Andrade was a central figure in the
avant-garde movement of
São Paulo for twenty years. Trained as a musician and best known as a poet and novelist, Andrade was personally involved in virtually every discipline that was connected with São Paulo modernism. His photography and essays on a wide variety of subjects, from history to literature and music, were widely published. He was the driving force behind the
Modern Art Week, the 1922 event that reshaped both literature and the
visual arts in Brazil, and a member of the avant-garde "Group of Five". The ideas behind the Week were further explored in the preface to his poetry collection
Pauliceia Desvairada, and in the poems themselves. (
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Image 10Du Fu (
Chinese:
杜甫;
pinyin:
Dù Fǔ;
Wade–Giles:
Tu Fu; 712–770) was a Chinese poet and politician during the
Tang dynasty. Together with his elder contemporary and friend
Li Bai, Du is often considered one of the greatest
Chinese poets of his time. His greatest ambition was to serve his country as a successful
civil servant, but Du proved unable to make the necessary accommodations. His life, like all of China, was devastated by the
An Lushan rebellion of 755, and his last 15 years were a time of almost constant unrest.
Although initially he was little-known to other writers, his works came to be hugely influential in both
Chinese and
Japanese literary culture. Of his poetic writing, nearly fifteen hundred poems have been preserved over the ages. He has been called the "Poet-Historian" and the "Poet-Sage" by Chinese critics, while the range of his work has allowed him to be introduced to Western readers as "the Chinese
Virgil,
Horace,
Ovid,
Shakespeare,
Milton,
Burns,
Wordsworth,
Béranger,
Hugo or
Baudelaire". (
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