Oscar's Books

A fresh and delightful examination of the character of Oscar Wilde by looking at him through the prism of the books he read. In an entirely new kind of biography, Oscar’s Books explores the personality of Oscar Wilde through his reading. For Wilde, as for many people, reading could be as powerful and transformative an experience as falling in love. He referred to the volumes that radically altered his vision of the world as his “golden books.” He gave books as gifts, often as part of his seduction campaigns of young men, and sometimes he literally ate books, tearing off corners of paper and chewing them as he read. Wilde’s beloved book collection was sold at the time of his trials to pay creditors and legal costs. Thomas Wright, in the course of his intensive research, has hunted down many of the missing volumes, which contain revealing markings and personal annotations never previously examined. From the Hardcover edition.

Biographies & Memoirs

WRIGHT, THOMAS

Arts & Literature

Vintage Books

Arguably the greatest Englishman in the history of science after Isaac Newton, a vivid and visceral biography of William Harvey, who discovered the circulation of the blood, and brilliant portrait of seventeenth-century thought and imagination. Diminutive, brilliant and choleric, William Harvey had a huge impact on anatomy and modern biology. Arguably the greatest Englishman in the history of science after Newton and Darwin, Harvey's obsessive quest to understand the movement of the blood overturned beliefs held by anatomists and physicians since Roman times. His circulation theory was as controversial in its day as Copernicus' idea that the earth revolved around the sun. Set in the beating heart of late Renaissance London, Thomas Wright's vivid and visceral biography shows how Harvey drew inspiration not only from his dissections and vivisections, but also from the world around him: from England's bustling trade networks to technological developments of the time. It features a dramatic cast of historical characters, including Francis Bacon, England's Lord Chancellor and a recalcitrant patient of Harvey's; John Donne, a poet and preacher fascinated with anatomy and the human heart; and King Charles I, Harvey's beloved patron and witness to many of his experiments. Harvey's circulation theory, in turn, permeated and altered the culture and language of its time, influencing poets and economists. To the dismay of the arch-Royalist Harvey, it also encouraged radical political ideas -- and just as cherished anatomical orthodoxies could be toppled, so was the King during the Civil War. In more ways than one, Harvey's idea was truly revolutionary, yet astonishingly, it gained currency in his lifetime. Circulation charts the remarkable rise of a yeoman's son to the position of King's physician, offers a fresh interpretation of his ideas, and above all, celebrates a brilliant mind that epitomized a rich moment in England's intellectual history.

Circulation: William Harvey's Revolutionary Idea

In 1628, the English physician William Harvey published his revolutionary theory of blood circulation. Offering a radical conception of the workings of the human body and the function of the heart, Harvey's theory overthrew centuries of anatomical and physiological orthodoxy and had profound consequences for the history of science. It also had an enormous impact on culture more generally, influencing economists, poets and political thinkers, for whom the theory triumphed not as empirical fact but as a remarkable philosophical idea. In the first major biographical study of Harvey in 50 years, Thomas Wright charts the meteoric rise of a yeoman's son to the elevated position of King Charles I's physician, taking the reader from farmlands of Kent to England's royal palaces, and paints a vivid portrait of an extraordinary mind formed at a fertile time in England's intellectual history. Set in late Renaissance London, the book features an illustrious cast of historical characters, from Francis Bacon and John Donne to Robert Fludd, whose corroboration of Harvey's ideas helped launch his circulation theory. After he published his discoveries, Harvey became famous throughout Europe, where he demonstrated his theory through public vivisections. Although his ideas met with vociferous opposition, they eventually triumphed and Harvey became renowned as the only man in the history of natural philosophy to live to see a revolutionary theory gain wide currency. But just as intellectual ideas could be toppled, so too could kings. When Charles I was overthrown during the Civil War of the 1640s, his loyal court physician fell also, and Harvey, an unrepentant Royalist, was banished from London under the English Republic. He died in the late 1650s, a gout-ridden, melancholy man, uncertain of his achievement. A victim of the political turmoil of the times, William Harvey was nevertheless the mainspring of vast historical changes in anatomy and physiology. Wright's biography skillfully repositions Harvey as a man who embodied the intellectual and cultural spirit of his age, and launched a revolution that would continue to run its course long after his death.

William Harvey: A Life in Circulation

Oxford University Press

Excerpt from Reading Poems: An Introduction to Critical StudyThe editors have made no effort to provide a critical text of thepoems, but have proceeded upon the principle of making them as 'available' as possible for the ordinary reader. For this reason Spelling has been modernized and Americanized except in a few cases where old Spelling or dialect forms are required for the full experience of the poem. Thus Milton, Spenser, Drayton, Burns, and the old ballads are based upon standard critical editions.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Reading Poems: An Introduction to Critical Study (Classic Reprint)

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

Forgotten Books

Facsimiles of an early publication of "Passions of the Minde in Generall".

Passions of the Minde in Generall: A Reprint Based on the 1604 Ediition

University of Illinois Press

Thomas C. Wright describes and explains the extraordinary impact that the Cuban Revolution had on Latin America and on U.S.-Latin American relations during the past three decades. Wright integrates diverse and complex political events into a comprehensive and comprehensible whole--providing a broad perspective on this critical period in Latin American history.
Wright does not use a country-by-country approach, but rather a unique synthesis of broadly defined trends and phases that affected significant numbers of Latin American countries and people. Among the currents examined are the destabilizing influence of fidelismo, the rise of rural and urban guerrilla warfare, the Alliance for Progress, the growth of U.S. military involvement in Latin America, and the rise of terrorist military regimes. Three country-specific topics--the military revolution in Peru, the Allende government in Chile, and the Sandinista struggle in Nicaragua--are examined separately due to their universal interest and their importance to the whole of Latin America. Successfully linking the most important Latin American political developments of three decades to the pervasive influence of Fidel Castro and his revolution, Wright presents 1990 as the final year in this coherent, discrete era that most Latin American historians agree began in 1959. This text will interest university and college classes on Latin American history, Latin American politics, and revolution and reform courses, as well as professional Latin Americanists in many specializations.

Latin America in the Era of the Cuban Revolution

History

Americas

Praeger Publishers

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

The Travels of Marco Polo, the Venetian: The Translation of Marsden Revised, With a Selection of His Notes

Polo, Marco

Marsden, William

Franklin Classics

The Chester Plays: A Collection of Mysteries Founded Upon Scriptural Subjects, and Formerly Represented by the Trades of Chester at Whitsuntide; Volume 1

Dramas & Plays

A History of Caricature and Grotesque in Literature and Art

Fairholt, Frederick William

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