Classic Literature Library

Bath festivals of music and literature win £50K of sponsorship

2004-10-18T03:05:00.000Z

The organisers of the Bath festivals of music and literature say they have secured £50,000 of sponsorship for next year's events.

The financial backing, from business and arts groups, includes a new three-year, five-figure deal with a local media company.

The literature festival runs from 26 February to 6 March and will take the theme 'Hidden Histories'.

The music programme, from 20 May to 6 June, has the theme 'The Last Word'.

Nobel Prize for Literature

2004-10-09T03:08:00.000Z

Nobel Prize for Literature goes to a controversial Austrian writer.

Nobel literature prize

Vienna's Die Presse says Austria's Elfriede Jelinek is a deserving winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

While Nobel prize winners often tend to be merely "average" because of the compromises involved in the choice, the paper says, Ms Jelinek measures up to the greats in world literature.

But it notes that her critics regard her as "incorrigible" and "obstinate" in ideological terms.

"If your focus is sufficiently narrow," the paper concedes, "it is relatively easy to reproach Elfriede Jelinek over these negative characteristics."

But her mastery of language and of self-irony make it impossible to argue against the award, it concludes.

Also in Vienna, Der Standard questions the idea that Ms Jelinek's award represents a triumph for Austria.

The paper notes that the writer does not wish the award to have any significance for Austria, because of what she described as her "complete distance" from the government.

It points out that for decades the country's economic and political elite have kept their distance from the writer, too.

"So why should a woman whom people would have loved to banish stand up for Austria?" it asks.

The jury gave the award to a woman who does not mince her words, except to spit them out in your face
Tribune de Geneve

The paper describes Elfriede Jelinek as "probably the most difficult writer in the German language world" whose treatment of the situation of women marks her out from other authors.

In Germany, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung calls the award "a big surprise", noting that the writer sees continuing undercurrents of fascism in Austria society.

"It is therefore unsurprising that Elfriede Jelinek's books are highly controversial," the paper observes, "and that, in particular in her own country, the author is less celebrated than insulted."

The paper's says the Nobel committee made "a good choice" because it would have been hard to find a more radical or challenging author.

The French daily Liberation feels that with their choice of Elfriede Jelinek the Nobel jurors "have redressed the balance of an award which is very masculine, surprisingly for a literary circle so careful to be politically correct".

According to the Swiss Tribune De Geneve , the Nobel jury "passed over other more comfortable authors, and gave the award to a woman who does not mince her words, except to spit them out in your face".

Rare Aesop book sells for £16,675

2004-10-07T03:39:00.000Z

A 15th Century copy of fables by Aesop, the mythical pre-Christian story-teller has been sold at auction for £16,675.

The edition of Aesop's Vita et Fabulae - Life-story and fables - was published in Italy in 1497 and is one of only three known to exist.

The estimated sale price was estimated at between £2,000-£3,000, but finally closed at £14,500. A buyer's premium was added to the cost.

The buyer was named as antiquarian book sellers Quaritch.

'Hare and tortoise'

They saw off top American trader David Waxman in what was described as an Aesop-style bidding war in which the roles were reversed.

Auctioneer Chris Albury, from Dominic Winter Book Auctions in Swindon, said: "We had a 'hare and tortoise' bidding situation and, unlike Aesop's famous fable, the hare won.

"The tortoise was an American who was very, very slow all the way through, but the UK bidder came in late and quick and won on the day."

The book has four pages missing from the back owing to a "binder's error", which detracted from its value.

Until recently only two copies of this edition were listed on an official bibliography of 15th Century Literature.

One of those is in Milan, and another in Florence. One of these copies is perfect, while the other has just one page missing.

The third was discovered when Anthony Crane, the Bath-based grandson of Walter Crane, the Victorian illustrator arranged to sell items from his private library.

Conan Doyle Collection Handed to City

2004-08-07T05:13:00.000Z

PORTSMOUTH, England (AP) - One of the world's greatest collections of memorabilia from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was handed over Friday to a library in the port city where this classic author once had a medical practice and wrote the first two Sherlock Holmes adventures.

When he died in March, writer and collector Richard Lancelyn Green, left the 20,000-item collection worth more than $3.6 million to the Porsmouth library service.

The collection includes a full size recreation by Lancelyn Green of the study at 221B Baker Street, Holmes' fictional London address.

It also contains a small medical book by a Doctor Sherlock which is believed to have been the inspiration for the name of Conan Doyle's detective.

And there is a copy of the Beeton's Christmas Annual in which the first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet appeared, as well as first editions of every publication of Conan Doyle's work.

"Richard was the foremost Arthur Conan Doyle scholar and a leading Sherlock Holmes specialist. His collection was acknowledged to be the finest in private hands," said Nicholas Utechin, Lancelyn Green's friend and editor of the "Sherlock Holmes Journal."

"It's wonderful that Portsmouth has agreed to be the custodian of these thousands of volumes and make them publicly available to literary researchers."

Lancelyn Green was a prominent figure in the Sherlock Holmes Society and spent more than 40 years collecting material related to Conan Doyle and Holmes. His will stipulated that the literature collection should be housed together and that he wanted it offered first to Portsmouth's library service.

The classic collection will eventually be housed in the city's Central Library.

Born in Edinburgh, where he studied medicine, Conan Doyle moved later to Portsmouth and then London. While in Portsmouth, he wrote "A Study in Scarlet" (1887) which introduced the super-observant Holmes and his sidekick Dr. Watson.

For further details about the creator of the most famous fictional detective see Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Biography at the Classic Literature Library.

Classic Literature Library

2004-07-22T14:58:00.000Z

Free Classic Literature in the Public Domain including classics such as King James Bible, William Shakespeare, Sherlock Holmes, Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin, Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jules Verne, Bram Stoker, Detective Stories, Fairy Tales, Free Recipes, Business Ebooks, Romance Books.

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