FICTION · GENERAL
Elizabeth Gill
Elizabeth Gill was born Elizabeth Joyce Copping in 1901, into a family including journalists, novelists and illustrators. She married for the first time, at the age of 19, to archaeologist Kenneth Codrington. Her second marriage, to artist Colin Gill, lasted until her death, at the age of only 32, in 1934, following complications from surgery. She is the author of three golden age mystery novels, The Crime Coast (a.k.a. Strange Holiday) (1931), What Dread Hand? (1932), and Crime de Luxe (1933), all featuring eccentric but perceptive artist-detective Benvenuto Brown. >*From Dean Street Press
My name is Cassie.
— from The secret, 2001
Most acclaimed
Nobody's child
1996
'Kath walked for so long that she wanted to lie down in the snow and sleep but she thought of her sister and knew she must go on. Soon the snow was so deep that she couldn't move. She could feel her shoes disintegrating and her feet were numb. The sky cleared and a great big moon came out and there were so many stars. She remembered what her mother had said before she died, that each star was one of her people. She musn't give up now ... ' When their mother dies and their father, in his grief, burns down their wagon and runs away, Kath and Ella - gypsy sisters - suddenly become orphans. With no one to turn to for help, they face hardship and hunger at every turn. Will their special sisters' bond be strong enough to see them to safety?
The secret
2001
Secretum (De secreto conflictu curarum mearum, translated as The Secret or My Secret Book) is a trilogy of dialogues in Latin written by Petrarch sometime from 1347 to 1353, in which he examines his faith with the help of Saint Augustine, and "in the presence of The Lady Truth". Secretum was not circulated until some time after Petrarch's death, and was probably meant to be a means of self-examination more than a work to be published and read by others. The dialogue opens with Augustine chastising Petrarch for ignoring his own mortality and his fate in the afterlife by not devoting himself fully to God. Petrarch concedes that this lack of piety is the source of his unhappiness, but he insists that he cannot overcome it. The dialogue then turns to the question of Petrarch's seeming lack of free will, and Augustine explains that it is his love for temporal things (specifically Laura), and his pursuit of fame through poetry that "bind his will in adamantine chains". Petrarch's turn towards religion in his later life was inspired in part by Augustine's Confessions, and Petrarch imitates Augustine's style of self-examination and harsh self-criticism in Secretum. The ideas expressed in the dialogues are taken mostly from Augustine, particularly the importance of free will in achieving faith. Other notable influences include Cicero and other Pre-Christian thinkers. Secretum can be seen as an attempt by Petrarch to reconcile his Renaissance humanism and admiration of the classical world with his Christian faith. Especially important are his rejection of love for temporal things not because it is a sin, but because it prevents him from knowing the eternal, a position that resembles classical philosophy far more than the contemporary Christian theology. Classical writers are also regarded as sources of authority supporting Christianity, and Secretum quotes them more frequently than scripture."--Wikped, July 2014.