AUSTRALIA AUTHOR · HISTORY · BIOGRAPHY
Lindsay, Jack
John Lindsay , FRSL (20 October 1900 – 8 March 1990) was an Australian-born writer. He was born in Melbourne, but spent his formative years in Brisbane. He was the eldest son of Norman Lindsay and brother of author Philip Lindsay.
I flew back to Troy.
— from Helen of Troy, 1892
Most acclaimed
Helen of Troy
1892
Scottish writer Andrew Lang is best remember for his prolific collections of folk and fairy tales, but he was also an accomplished poet, literary critic, novelist and contributor in the field of anthropology. In Lang's Helen of Troy, a story in rhyme of the fortunes of Helen, the theory that she was an unwilling victim of the Gods has been preferred. Many of the descriptions of manners are versified from the Iliad and the Odyssey. The description of the events after the death of Hector, and the account of the sack of Troy, is chiefly borrowed from Quintus Smyrnaeus. The character and history of Helen of Troy have been conceived of in very different ways by poets and mythologists. In attempting to trace the chief current of ancient traditions about Helen, we cannot really get further back than the Homeric poems, the Iliad and Odyssey. Philological conjecture may assure us that Helen, like most of the characters of old romance, is "merely the Dawn," or Light, or some other bright being carried away by Paris, who represents Night, or Winter, or the Cloud, or some other power of darkness. Without discussing these ideas, it may be said that the Greek poets (at all events before allegorical explanations of mythology came in, about five hundred years before Christ) regarded Helen simply as a woman of wonderful beauty. Homer was not thinking of the Dawn, or the Cloud when he described Helen among the Elders on the Ilian walls, or repeated her lament over the dead body of Hector. The Homeric poems are our oldest literary documents about Helen, but it is probable enough that the poet has modified and purified more ancient traditions which still survive in various fragments of Greek legend. In Homer Helen is always the daughter of Zeus. Isocrates tells us ("Helena," 211 b) that "while many of the demigods were children of Zeus, he thought the paternity of none of his daughters worth claiming, save that of Helen only." In Homer, then, Helen is the daughter of Zeus, but Homer says nothing of the famous legend which makes Zeus assume the form of a swan to woo the mother of Helen. Unhomeric as this myth is, we may regard it as extremely ancient.
Charles Dickens
"With the delectable wit, unforgettable characters, and challenging themes that have won her a Pulitzer Prize and national bestseller status, Jane Smiley naturally finds a kindred spirit in the author of such classics as Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol. Because "his novels shaped his life as much as his life shaped his novels," Smiley's Charles Dickens is at once a sensitive profile of the great master and a fascinating meditation on the writing life.". "Smiley evokes Dickens as he might have seemed to his contemporaries: convivial, astute, boundlessly energetic - and lionized. As she makes clear, Dickens not only led the action-packed life of a prolific writer, editor, and family man, but, balancing the artistic and the commercial in his work, he also consciously sustained his status as one of the first modern "celebrities."". "Charles Dickens offers brilliant interpretations of almost all the major works, an exploration of Dickens's narrative techniques and his innovative voice and themes, and a reflection on how his richly varied lower-class cameos sprang from an experience and passion more personal than his public knew. Jane Smiley's own "demon narrative intelligence" (The Boston Globe) touches, too, on controversial details that include Dickens's obsession with money, his squabbles with publishers, his unhappy marriage, and the rumors of an affair."--BOOK JACKET.
William Blake
William Blake was one of the most significant figures of the Romantic era. An artist and poet of outstanding originality, Blake's work gave powerful expression to his own visionary universe, as well as to those of authors such as Milton and Dante. Imagination was of paramount importance to Blake: he believed art must proceed from inner visions and not from the empirical observation of nature.Sumptuously illustrated, this beautiful volume presents the National Gallery of Victoria's Blake holdings, which include illustrations for Dante's Divine Comedy, Milton's Paradise Lost and The Book of Job, among other works. It celebrates a creative genius who, through his watercolours, prints and illustrated books, created some of the most compelling and original works of his time.