Download or read book The Ambitions of Jane Franklin written by Alison Alexander and published by Allen & Unwin. This book was released on 2013-03-25 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A genius at publicity before the term existed, Jane Franklin was a celebrity in the mid-19th century. This is her remarkable life, including her extensive travels, her years in Tasmania as the governor's wife, and her very public battle to save her husband, the Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin, from accusations of cannibalism. Winner of the 2014 National Biography Award In a period when most ladies sat at home with their embroidery, Jane Franklin achieved fame throughout the western world, and was probably the best travelled woman of her day. Alison Alexander traces the life of this inimitable woman, from her birth in late eighteenth-century London, her marriage at the ripe age of 36 years to Sir John Franklin, to her many trips to far-flung locations, including Russia, the Holy Land, northern Africa, America and Australia. Once Jane Franklin married, her original ambition - to live life to the full - was joined by an equally ardent desire to make her kind and mild husband a success. Arriving in Tasmania in 1837 when Sir John became governor, she swept like a whirlwind through the colony: attempting to rid the island of snakes; establishing a scientific society and the Hobart regatta; adopting an Aboriginal girl, and sending a kangaroo to Queen Victoria. She continued her intrepid travels, becoming the first white woman to travel overland from Melbourne to Sydney. When her husband disappeared in the Arctic on an expedition to discover the Northwest Passage, she badgered the Admiralty, the public and even the President of the United States to fund trips to locate him, and then defended his reputation when remains of the expedition were located and there were claims of cannibalism. Single-handedly, she turned him from a failure into one of England's noblest heroes. She continued travelling well into her 70s and died at age 84, refusing to take her medicine to the last.
Download or read book The Ambitions of Jane Franklin written by Alison Alexander and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Readhowyouwant 16 point large print. In a period when most ladies sat at home with their embroidery, Jane Franklin achieved fame throughout the western world, and was probably the best travelled woman of her day. Alison Alexander traces the life of this inimitable woman, from her birth in late 18th century London, her marriage at the ripe age of 36 years to Sir John Franklin, to her many trips to far-flung locations, including Russia, the Holy Land, northern Africa, America and Australia. Once Jane Franklin married, her original ambition - to live life to the full - was joined by an equally ardent desire to make her kind and mild husband a success. Arriving in Tasmania in 1837 when Sir John became governor, she swept like a whirlwind through the colony: attempting to rid the island of snakes; establishing a scientific society and the Hobart regatta; adopting an Aboriginal girl, and sending a kangaroo to Queen Victoria.
Download or read book Book of Ages written by Jill Lepore and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2014-07-01 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR NPR • Time Magazine • The Washington Post • Entertainment Weekly • The Boston Globe A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK From one of our most accomplished and widely admired historians—a revelatory portrait of Benjamin Franklin's youngest sister, Jane, whose obscurity and poverty were matched only by her brother’s fame and wealth but who, like him, was a passionate reader, a gifted writer, and an astonishingly shrewd political commentator. Making use of an astonishing cache of little-studied material, including documents, objects, and portraits only just discovered, Jill Lepore brings Jane Franklin to life in a way that illuminates not only this one extraordinary woman but an entire world.
Download or read book A Useful Woman written by Gioia Diliberto and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1999-07-07 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first biography in twenty-six years of Jane Addams -- founder of the Hull-House settlement and winner of the 1931 Nobel Peace Prize -- written with access to hundreds of new family documents. "Today, Jane Addams is widely recognized as an extraordinary figure in our nation's history, one of a roster of great Americans -- Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. among them -- who made lasting contributions to social justice. But as with the lives of many iconographic figures, the legend often obscures the real story." Frequently recognized as one of the most influential women of the century -- and considered a heroine by nurses and social workers around the globe -- Jane Addams had to struggle long and hard to earn her place in history. Born in 1860 on the eve of the Civil War, she lived during pivotal times when women were only beginning to create new roles for themselves (ironically building on the Victorian ideal of women as ministering angels). Focusing on her metamorphosis from a frail, small-town girl into a woman who inspired hundreds of others to join her movement to serve the poor, A Useful Woman delves into the mysterious ailments and other troubles young Jane faced. Examining for the first time Jane's physical and mental health and the effect of her father's remarriage after her mother's death, biographer Gioia Diliberto directly links Addams's proneness to depression to her inability to conform to the mores of her time. Also, for the first time, she examines in detail Addams's two marriage-like relationships with women. With hundreds of previously unavailable documents at her disposal, Diliberto has written a fascinating study of one of the most intriguing and important women in history, concentrating on her difficult formative years with compelling -- and groundbreaking -- results.
Download or read book My Brilliant Career written by Miles Franklin and published by Allen & Unwin. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'This is not a romance - I have too often faced the music of life to the tune of hardship to waste time in snivelling and gushing over fancies and dreams; neither is it a novel, but simply a yarn - a real yarn. Oh!' First published in 1901, this Australian classic is the candid tale of the aspirations and frustrations of sixteen-year-old Sybylla Melvin, a headstrong country girl constrained by middle-class social arrangements, especially the pressure to marry. Trapped on her parents' outback farm, Sybylla simultaneously loves bush life and hates the physical burdens it imposes. She longs for a more refined lifestyle - to read, to think, to sing - but most of all to do great things. Suddenly her life is transformed when she is whisked away to live on her grandmother's gracious property. There Sybylla falls under the eye of the rich and handsome Harry Beecham. Soon she finds herself choosing between everything a conventional life offers and her own plans for a 'brilliant career'.
Download or read book Tasmania s Convicts written by Alison Alexander and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010-10 with total page 582 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To the convicts arriving in Van Diemen's Land' it must have felt as though they'd been sent to the very ends of the earth. In Tasmania's Convicts Alison Alexander tells the history of the men and women transported to what became one of Britain's most notorious convict colonies. Following the lives of dozens of convicts and their families' she uncovers stories of success' failure' and everything in between. While some suffered harsh conditions' most served their time and were freed' becoming ordinary and peaceful citizens. Yet over the decades' a terrible stigma became associated with the convicts' and they and the whole colony went to extraordinary lengths to hide it. The majority of Tasmanians today have convict ancestry' whether they know it or not. While the public stigma of its convict past has given way to a contemporary fascination with colonial history' Alison Alexander debates whether the convict past lingers deep in the psyche of white Tasmania.
Download or read book On the Proper Use of Stars written by Dominique Fortier and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 2010-09-07 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sparkling, inventive debut novel inspired by Sir John Franklin's grand — but ultimately failed — quest to discover the Northwest Passage and by his extraordinary wife, Lady Jane. Originally published in Quebec as Du bon usage des etoiles, Dominique Fortier's debut On the Proper Use of Stars is as fresh and imaginative as anything published in recent years. It weaves together the voices of Francis Crozier, Sir John Franklin's second in command, who turns a sceptical eye on the grandiose ambitions and hubris of his leader, and of Lady Jane Franklin and her niece Sophia, both driven to uncommon actions by love and by frustration as months then years pass with no word from the expedition. Fortier skilfully accents the main narratives with overheard conversations and snippets from letters and documents that bring two entirely different worlds — the frozen Arctic and busy Victorian London — alive.
Download or read book Sir John Franklin s Erebus and Terror Expedition written by Gillian Hutchinson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-07-13 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1845, British explorer Sir John Franklin set out on a voyage to find the North-West Passage – the sea route linking the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. The expedition was expected to complete its mission within three years and return home in triumph but the two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, and the 129 men aboard them disappeared in the Arctic. The last Europeans to see them alive were the crews of two whaling ships in Baffin Bay in July 1845, just before they entered the labyrinth of the Arctic Archipelago. The loss of this British hero and his crew, and the many rescue expeditions and searches that followed, captured the public imagination, but the mystery surrounding the expedition's fate only deepened as more clues were found. How did Franklin's final expedition end in tragedy? What happened to the crew? The thrilling discoveries in the Arctic of the wrecks of Erebus in 2014 and Terror in 2016 have brought the events of 170 years ago into sharp focus and excited new interest in the Franklin expedition. This richly illustrated book is an essential guide to this story of heroism, endurance, tragedy and dark desperation.
Download or read book The Exiles written by Christina Baker Kline and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-08-25 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER OPTIONED FOR TELEVISION BY BRUNA PAPANDREA, THE PRODUCER OF HBO'S BIG LITTLE LIES “A tour de force of original thought, imagination and promise … Kline takes full advantage of fiction — its freedom to create compelling characters who fully illuminate monumental events to make history accessible and forever etched in our minds." — Houston Chronicle The author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Orphan Train returns with an ambitious, emotionally resonant novel about three women whose lives are bound together in nineteenth-century Australia and the hardships they weather together as they fight for redemption and freedom in a new society. Seduced by her employer’s son, Evangeline, a naïve young governess in early nineteenth-century London, is discharged when her pregnancy is discovered and sent to the notorious Newgate Prison. After months in the fetid, overcrowded jail, she learns she is sentenced to “the land beyond the seas,” Van Diemen’s Land, a penal colony in Australia. Though uncertain of what awaits, Evangeline knows one thing: the child she carries will be born on the months-long voyage to this distant land. During the journey on a repurposed slave ship, the Medea, Evangeline strikes up a friendship with Hazel, a girl little older than her former pupils who was sentenced to seven years transport for stealing a silver spoon. Canny where Evangeline is guileless, Hazel—a skilled midwife and herbalist—is soon offering home remedies to both prisoners and sailors in return for a variety of favors. Though Australia has been home to Aboriginal people for more than 50,000 years, the British government in the 1840s considers its fledgling colony uninhabited and unsettled, and views the natives as an unpleasant nuisance. By the time the Medea arrives, many of them have been forcibly relocated, their land seized by white colonists. One of these relocated people is Mathinna, the orphaned daughter of the Chief of the Lowreenne tribe, who has been adopted by the new governor of Van Diemen’s Land. In this gorgeous novel, Christina Baker Kline brilliantly recreates the beginnings of a new society in a beautiful and challenging land, telling the story of Australia from a fresh perspective, through the experiences of Evangeline, Hazel, and Mathinna. While life in Australia is punishing and often brutally unfair, it is also, for some, an opportunity: for redemption, for a new way of life, for unimagined freedom. Told in exquisite detail and incisive prose, The Exiles is a story of grace born from hardship, the unbreakable bonds of female friendships, and the unfettering of legacy.
Download or read book A Great and Rising Nation written by Michael A. Verney and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2022-07-27 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Great and Rising Nation illuminates the unexplored early decades of the United States’ imperialist naval aspirations. Conventional wisdom holds that, until the Spanish-American War of 1898, the United States was a feeble player on the world stage, with an international presence rooted in commerce rather than military might. Michael A. Verney’s A Great and Rising Nation flips this notion on its head, arguing that early US naval expeditions, often characterized as merely scientific, were in fact deeply imperialist. Circling the globe from the Mediterranean to South America and the Arctic, these voyages reflected the diverse imperial aspirations of the new republic, including commercial dominance in the Pacific World, religious empire in the Holy Land, proslavery expansion in South America, and diplomatic prestige in Europe. As Verney makes clear, the United States had global imperial aspirations far earlier than is commonly thought.
Download or read book Valiant Ambition written by Nathaniel Philbrick and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-06-28 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Bestseller Winner of the George Washington Prize A surprising account of the middle years of the American Revolution and the tragic relationship between George Washington and Benedict Arnold, from the New York Times bestselling author of In The Heart of the Sea, Mayflower, and In the Hurricane's Eye. "May be one of the greatest what-if books of the age—a volume that turns one of America’s best-known narratives on its head.”—Boston Globe "Clear and insightful, [Valiant Ambition] consolidates Philbrick's reputation as one of America's foremost practitioners of narrative nonfiction."—Wall Street Journal In the second book of his acclaimed American Revolution series, Nathaniel Philbrick turns to the tragic relationship between George Washington and Benedict Arnold. In September 1776, the vulnerable Continental army under an unsure George Washington evacuated New York after a devastating defeat by the British army. Three weeks later, one of his favorite generals, Benedict Arnold, miraculously succeeded in postponing the British naval advance down Lake Champlain that might have lost the war. As this book ends, four years later Washington has vanquished his demons, and Arnold has fled to the enemy. America was forced at last to realize that the real threat to its liberties might not come from without but from withinComplex, controversial, and dramatic, Valiant Ambition is a portrait of a people in crisis and the war that gave birth to a nation.
Download or read book Shirley Jackson A Rather Haunted Life written by Ruth Franklin and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2016-09-27 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner • National Book Critics Circle Award (Biography) Winner • Edgar Award (Critical/Biographical) Winner • Bram Stoker Award (Nonfiction) A New York Times Notable Book A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Pick of the Year Named one of the Best Books of the Year by Entertainment Weekly, NPR, TIME, Boston Globe, NYLON, San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle Times, Kirkus Reviews, and Booklist In this “thoughtful and persuasive” biography, award-winning biographer Ruth Franklin establishes Shirley Jackson as a “serious and accomplished literary artist” (Charles McGrath, New York Times Book Review). Instantly heralded for its “masterful” and “thrilling” portrayal (Boston Globe), Shirley Jackson reveals the tumultuous life and inner darkness of the literary genius behind such classics as “The Lottery” and The Haunting of Hill House. In this “remarkable act of reclamation” (Neil Gaiman), Ruth Franklin envisions Jackson as “belonging to the great tradition of Hawthorne, Poe and James” (New York Times Book Review) and demonstrates how her unique contribution to the canon “so uncannily channeled women’s nightmares and contradictions that it is ‘nothing less than the secret history of American women of her era’ ” (Washington Post). Franklin investigates the “interplay between the life, the work, and the times with real skill and insight, making this fine book a real contribution not only to biography, but to mid-20th-century women’s history” (Chicago Tribune). “Wisely rescu[ing] Shirley Jackson from any semblance of obscurity” (Lena Dunham), Franklin’s invigorating portrait stands as the definitive biography of a generational avatar and an American literary genius.
Download or read book The Antipodean Laboratory written by Anna Johnston and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-09-30 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Johnston shows how colonial knowledge from Australia influenced global thinking about religion, science, and society. Using a rich variety of sources including botanical illustrations, Victorian literature and convict memoirs, this multi-disciplinary study charts how new ways of identifying ideas were forged and circulated between colonies.
Download or read book World Without Mind written by Franklin Foer and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-09-12 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2017 • One of the best books of the year by The New York Times, LA Times, and NPR Franklin Foer reveals the existential threat posed by big tech, and in his brilliant polemic gives us the toolkit to fight their pervasive influence. Over the past few decades there has been a revolution in terms of who controls knowledge and information. This rapid change has imperiled the way we think. Without pausing to consider the cost, the world has rushed to embrace the products and services of four titanic corporations. We shop with Amazon; socialize on Facebook; turn to Apple for entertainment; and rely on Google for information. These firms sell their efficiency and purport to make the world a better place, but what they have done instead is to enable an intoxicating level of daily convenience. As these companies have expanded, marketing themselves as champions of individuality and pluralism, their algorithms have pressed us into conformity and laid waste to privacy. They have produced an unstable and narrow culture of misinformation, and put us on a path to a world without private contemplation, autonomous thought, or solitary introspection—a world without mind. In order to restore our inner lives, we must avoid being coopted by these gigantic companies, and understand the ideas that underpin their success. Elegantly tracing the intellectual history of computer science—from Descartes and the enlightenment to Alan Turing to Stewart Brand and the hippie origins of today's Silicon Valley—Foer exposes the dark underpinnings of our most idealistic dreams for technology. The corporate ambitions of Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon, he argues, are trampling longstanding liberal values, especially intellectual property and privacy. This is a nascent stage in the total automation and homogenization of social, political, and intellectual life. By reclaiming our private authority over how we intellectually engage with the world, we have the power to stem the tide. At stake is nothing less than who we are, and what we will become. There have been monopolists in the past but today's corporate giants have far more nefarious aims. They’re monopolists who want access to every facet of our identities and influence over every corner of our decision-making. Until now few have grasped the sheer scale of the threat. Foer explains not just the looming existential crisis but the imperative of resistance.
Download or read book New Perspectives on the History of Gender and Empire written by Ulrike Lindner and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-08-09 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New Perspectives on the History of Gender and Empire, an open access book, extends our understanding of the gendered workings of empires, colonialism and imperialism, taking up recent impulses from gender history, new imperial history and global history. The authors apply new theoretical and methodological approaches to historical case studies around the globe in order to redefine the complex relationship between gender and empire. The chapters deal not only with 'typical' colonial empires like the British Empire, but also with those less well-studied, such as the German, Russian, Italian and U.S. empires. They focus on various imperial formations, from colonies in Africa or Asia to settler colonial settings like Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, to imperial peripheries like the Dodecanese or the Black Sea Steppe. The book deals with key themes such as intimacy, sexuality and female education, as well as exploring new aspects like the complex marriage regimes some empires developed or the so-called 'servant debates'. It also presents several ways in which imperial formations were structured by gender and other categories like race, class, caste, sexuality, religion, and citizenship. Offering new reflections on the intimate and personal aspects of gender in imperial activities and relationships, this is an important volume for students and scholars of gender studies and imperial and colonial history. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollection.com. Open access was funded by Knowledge Unlatched.
Download or read book Just Enough written by Laura Nash and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2010-12-28 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Just Enough, top Harvard professors offer a revealing, research-based look at the true nature of professional success, helping people everywhere live more rewarding and satisfying lives. True professional and personal satisfaction seems more elusive every day, despite a proliferation of gurus and special methods that promise to make it easy. They conclude that many of the problems of success today can be traced back to unrealistic expectations and misconceptions about what success is and what constitutes it. The authors show where the happiest and most well-balanced among us are focusing their energy, and why, to help readers find more balance and satisfaction in their lives.
Download or read book Richard Flanagan written by Robert Dixon and published by Sydney University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-12 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Flanagan: Critical Essays is the first book to be published about the life and work of this major world author. Written by twelve leading critics from Australia, Europe and North America, these richly varied essays offer new ways of understanding Flanagan’s contribution to Tasmanian, Australian and world literature. Flanagan’s fictional worlds offer empathetic, often poignant, renderings of those whose voices have been lost beneath official accounts of history, stories from a small region that have made their mark on a global scale. Considering his seven novels as well as his non-fiction, journalism and correspondence, this collection examines the historical and geographical factors that have shaped Flanagan’s representation of Tasmanian identity. This collection offers new insights into a determinedly regional writer, and the impact he has had on a local, national and global scale.
