My Life as an Author


Book Description




The History of "Punch"


Book Description




Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama


Book Description

Reproduction of the original: Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama by E. Cobham Brewer







The Natural Genesis (Two Volumes in One)


Book Description

Egyptologist Gerald Massey challenged readers in A Book of the Beginnings to consider the argument that Egypt was the birthplace of civilization and that the widespread monotheistic vision of man and the metaphysical was, in fact, based on ancient Egyptian mythos. In The Natural Genesis, presented here in an omnibus edition, Massey delivers a sequel, delving deeper into his compelling polemic. In Volume I, he offers a more intellectual, fine-tuned analysis of the development of society out of Egypt. From the simplest signs (numbers, the cross) to the grandest archetypes (darkness, the mother figure), Massey carefully and confidently lays the cultural and psychosocial bricks of evolutionism. Volume II provides detailed discourse on the Egyptian origin of the delicate components of the monotheistic creed. With his agile prose, Massey leads an adventurous examination of the epistemology of astronomy, time, and Christology-and what it all means for human culture. British author GERALD MASSEY (1828-1907) published works of poetry, spiritualism, Shakespearean criticism, and theology, but his best known works are in the realm of Egyptology, including The Book of the Beginnings, The Natural Genesis, and Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World.




Dickens and Popular Entertainment


Book Description

Dickens and Popular Entertainment is the first extended study of this vital aspect of Dicken's life and work. Ranging widely through showmen's memoirs, playbills, advertisements, journals, drawings and imaginative literature, Paul Schlicke explores the ways in which Dickens channelled his love of entertainment into incomparable artistry. Circus, fair, theatre and street performances provided the novelist with subject matter and with the sources of imaginative stimulus essential to his art. Splendidly illustrated with nineteenth-century engravings, many reprinted here for the first time, this study offers a challenging reassessment of Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop and Hard Times. It shows the important place entertainment held in Dicken's journalism and presents an illuminating perspective on the public readings which dominated the last twelve years of his life.




Thomas Hamblin and the Bowery Theatre


Book Description

This book recounts the personal and professional life of Thomas Souness Hamblin (1800-1853), Shakespearean actor and Bowery Theatre manager. Primarily responsible for the popularity of “blood and thunder” melodramas with working class audiences in New York City, Hamblin discovered, trained and promoted many young actors and, especially, actresses who later became famous in their own right. He also epitomized the “sporting man” of mid-nineteenth century life, conducting a scandalous series of affairs and visits to Manhattan brothels, which cost him his marriage to Elizabeth Blanchard Hamblin (1799-1849) and made him the brunt of moralist, religious and journalistic crusades, notably that of James Gordon Bennett’s New York Herald. His machinations and perseverance through trying challenges, including several destructions of the Bowery Theatre by fire, extensive financial and legal complications, and the untimely deaths of several young protégées, earned him equal measures of admiration and opprobrium.




Travels in London


Book Description




A Book of the Beginnings


Book Description