Posts about Literary City Special
The Charles Dickens Museum at No. 48 Doughty Street in Bloomsbury has re-opened its doors after a six-week refurbishment period in time for the bicentenary of the author’s birth in 2012. This seems like a good opportunity to take stock of a national treasure, or rather two: the house and the man.
Dickens lived in Doughty Street for only two years from 1837, but what two years! Recently married to Catherine Hogarth, with their first child just born, he felt confident enough of his future income to move from the rooms he and his small family rented in Furnival’s Inn on High Holborn to what was then a recently built terrace of well-proportioned houses on a street that was gated at each end. Over the next two years Dickens would complete the Pickwick Papers, write Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby, both of which were published in serial format, begin Barnaby Rudge and contribute to the theatrical and journalistic world of early Victorian London. He was still only 27 years old when he left for larger premises in December 1839, but was already a well-established author with a growing family and reputation. Read more »
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December 13th, 2011 under Culture, Literary City Special, London, Museums and Monuments, Special Events.
Docent Fiorella Squillante gives the case for Naples as we continue the search for Context City of Literature 2011. Stay tuned to the blog for details of how to vote for your choice of best city, and the prizes you can win…
“All of these beaches and promontories…islands and peninsulas…only now that all of this is present in my mind, the Odyssey for the first time has become for me a living word< .” This is what Goethe said during his stay in Naples, so we could start with Homer as our narrative of the literary origins of this city and its surroundings, but perhaps it is better to focus on and remember that Virgil—who Dante elects as his master—came to Naples, fell in love with it and stayed. It was here that he went to Siro and Philodemus’ school of philosophy to learn the Epicurean precepts. In the 1700s Epicurean writings came to light in the Villa of the Papyri which had been buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79AD. The villa was named of the Papyri after this discovery. Perhaps this is literature, preserved for centuries under the ashes of Vesuvius. The rediscovered Epicurean fragments from Herculaneum—which are kept in Naples—discuss an intense love, intent on pure sensual pleasure. These pleasures in the Bay of Naples seem to be the same centuries later during the Grand Tour when Goethe wrote: “Naples is a Paradise…and it is a strange experience for me to find myself with people who think of nothing else but enjoying themselves.” Read more »
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November 10th, 2011 under Books & Literature, Literary City Special, Naples.
The search for the Context City of Literature—and our exploration of the connections between literature and travel in general—is just too big to fit into October. So we’ll be continuing with the theme into November. Without further ado, here’s Context’s Sarah Morgan with her arguments for why Rome should take the title of City of Literature 2011…
Rome, more than any other city, has since ancient times been a lure for writers and an inspiration for their work. It would be impossible to list all the writers who were influenced or who lived in Rome. In passing, it is enough to mention that there were great writers in ancient Roman times, the most notable being the poet Virgil. It is Rome that the most famous lyrical poet Francesco Petrarch, chose to be crowned poet laureate (1341) declining the invitations from Paris and Naples as he recognized the importance of the city in restoring the classical tradition of the poet laureate and the its idea of literary immortality. The great epic poet Torquato Tasso died in Rome in 1588 while waiting to be crowned (one can visit his tomb in the S. Onofrio church). Read more »
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November 3rd, 2011 under Books & Literature, Literary City Special, Rome, Uncategorized.
Docent Cedrik Verdure gives his views on why Paris should be named Context City of Literature 2011.
1. Paris is not a literary capital, it is the home of writers. Let me explain. It’s not only because I’ve met Pulitzer prizewinners like Norman Mailer and National Book Award finalists like Alan Ginsberg, or prix de Flore winners like Bruce Benderson. It’s not only because Faulkner went to Paris to meet James Joyce. It’s not because James Joyce came to Paris to write about Dublin. It’s for all of it. Paris is the writer’s home. Read more »
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October 28th, 2011 under Books & Literature, Literary City Special, Paris.
The search for Context’s City of Literature heads back over the Atlantic now, as docent Alex Goldfeld brings us the case for Boston.
The first Bostonians were not concerned as much with literature as with literacy. Massachusetts passed the country’s first laws requiring public education in the 1640s, and three of the schools they established, all over 365 years old, are educating children in the city of Boston today. In neighboring Cambridge, the first printing press in the English colonies was established in 1638, just two years after the creation of what is now the international grande dame of higher education: Harvard University. Ever focused on religion and the expansion and survival of their own way of life, the Puritans did not leave behind a rich body of literature, but rather the standard of an educated citizenry. Read more »
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October 27th, 2011 under Books & Literature, Boston, Literary City Special, Uncategorized.
Docent Francesca Frulla here gives us the arguments for Venice as Context City of Literature 2011…
There are several reasons for choosing Venice as Context’s “city of literature. Of course, many writers, poets and playwrights were born here, and tourists who raise their heads to marvel at the façades of the beautiful buildings scattered throughout every sestiere can spot the numerous marble plaques commemorating excellent Venetians of letters: Marco Polo, Goldoni, Casanova, Gozzi… Read more »
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October 26th, 2011 under Books & Literature, Literary City Special, Venice.
Continuing the search for Context City of Literature 2011, docent Kristin Stasiowski gives the arguments for Florence…
If it is true that you cannot have history until you have writing, than it is true that you cannot speak of writing without speaking of Florence.
In the 13th century, Florence welcomed the birth of her most erudite and inspired son: the poet Dante Alighieri. Written in the Tuscan vernacular, his Divina Commedia not only resurrected interest in great classical authors such as Virgil, it would serve as a model for generations of writers from Boccaccio, whose Decameron became the defining text of the Black Death, to T.S. Eliot, who would later say that: “Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them, there is no third.”
Florence continued to inspire a veritable library of world-class writers including Francesco Petrarca whose Canzoniere, Secretum, and Triumphs earned him the title “Father of Humanism.” Renaissance humanism following Petrarca flourished as other artists, architects and thinkers committed their genius to vellum: Read more »
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October 24th, 2011 under Books & Literature, Florence, Literary City Special.
Based in the UK, but with their books available on both sides of the Atlantic, Bitter Lemon Press specialise in publishing translated crime fiction. I caught up with François von Hurter to find out more about what they do, and get his views on the appeal of the genre.
Could you tell us a little about how Bitter Lemon got started, and how you decided to focus on translated crime fiction?
Three of us founded the imprint which was launched in 2004. Laurence Colchester, my brother and I share a love for books, an upbringing on the Continent, and many decades of living in the Anglophone world. We thought we might be capable of identifying novels from distant places that would appeal to readers in the UK or the US. Between us we read French, German and Italian so this gave us a starting point.
We did some market research by going to see some independent publishers. Everyone told us we must be mad to focus on translation. There’s no doubt that the economic model of doing translated fiction is a risky one, and small-scale publishing in general doesn’t really make sense financially, because you need to be prepared to wait patiently for results in a way that doesn’t apply in any other field. But we wanted to share our love for these books so we went ahead. We had no publishing experience between us so we thought it prudent to learn more about the business by initially concentrating on crime and noir fiction, a genre we admire and one perhaps more ‘commercial’ than others. Read more »
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October 21st, 2011 under Books & Literature, Literary City Special.
The search for Context’s City of Literature 2011 continues with Julian Smith-Newman giving the case in favour of Berlin…
Vladimir Nabokov’s delightful short sketch A Guide to Berlin is by no means a typical traveler’s guide. In the story, a scarred, one-armed narrator sits in a typical Berlin bar and tells his “usual pot companion” about a number of very “important matters” that he has experienced over the course of his wanderings through the city (Nabokov himself lived in Berlin from 1922-1937, writing The Gift here as well as numerous other works of poetry and prose). Read more »
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October 19th, 2011 under Berlin, Books & Literature, Literary City Special, Uncategorized.
Author James Benmore has a story in the current Fiction Desk anthology All These Little Worlds, and has written a novel about the Artful Dodger, coming soon from Quercus. He’s been kind enough to write us this guest post on Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana.
There is a scene in Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene where the main protagonist Jim Wormold, a vacuum cleaner salesman and reluctant spy, finds himself playing a game of draughts with Captain Segura, Havanaʼs very genial but also corrupt Chief of Police. Cigar smoke fills the air and the two men drink daiquiris and laugh about who is and is not torturable in Cuban society.
But this is no ordinary game. The pieces are miniature bottles of Scotch and Bourbon and whenever one player takes a piece they must drink it, immediately putting them at a drunken disadvantage at the very moment that they also take the lead. Wormold is playing to lose. He wants Segura to pass out in a stupor so he can steal his gun and a list of other spies that the Captain has about him, shoot a double-agent dead and replace the gun in its holster before his opponent wakes. So it’s not just the hot Havanan sun that is making our man sweat. Read more »
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October 15th, 2011 under Books & Literature, Literary City Special, Uncategorized.
