Writers through the centuries - 19th Century authors part 2

episode 10

"Tact, if it be genuine, never sleeps."

Charlotte Bronte

"She burned too bright for this world."

Emily Bronte

"What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love."

Fyodor Dostoevsky

"There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it."

Gustave Flaubert

"Never trust people who promise to make you rich in a day."

Carlo Collodi

"Aures habent et non-audient - They have ears but hear not."

Jules Verne

"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself."

Leo Tolstoy

It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.

Leo Tolstoy

"Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle."

Lewis Carroll

Charlotte Bronte (1816-1870)

The eldest of the three famous authors Bronte sisters, Charlotte was born in 1816, Thornton, England. In the family, she was the thirds of the six children.

They were devastated by a family tragedy early on, as, in 1821, her mother died, leaving all the children to be taken care of by their aunt, Elizabeth Branwell. They were soon after sent at the Clergy daughter school at Cowan Bridge. The school's status might have provoked the decline in the health of Charlotte’s sisters (Maria and Elizabeth) died in 1825, aged around ten years, of tuberculosis.

Charlotte used this school's personal experience in depicting the school in her novel, “Jane Eyre”.

Charlotte’s talent for the literary arts was observed since childhood when she started to write poetry since she was aged just 13. While she continued her education at the Roe Head school in Mirfield, she wrote her first novella: “The Green Dwarf”, in 1833.

Between 1835 and 1838, she became from a pupil at Roe Head school, a teacher that did not bring her that much fulfilment, managing to keep her dislike of this stage in her life into her poetry. In 1838 she changed this role to a governess to different noble families in Yorkshire, where she stayed till 1841. This experience was mirrored in some events of her novel: “Jane Eyre”.

From 1842 Charlotte went alongside her sister, Emily, to Brussels, where they enrolled at the school governed by the teacher Constantin Heger and his wife Claire Heger, where the two sisters taught there: English, while her sister taught music. Soon after, they returned to England because their aunt passed away, and Charlotte returned to Brussels on her own in 1843 but left once more in 1844.

Again, her experience here was used in one of her books: “The professor”, which Professor Constantin Heger inspired.

In 1846 the three sisters: Charlotte, Emily and Anne, had used their finances to realize their dream, publish a joint collection of poems under pen-names.

Charlotte’s first manuscript, “The Professor”, did not manage to convince a publisher. The second manuscript: “Jane Eyre”, had more appealing to the publishers: “Smith, Elder & Co.” In 1847 it was published. The book style was a new technique, combining some of the more consecrated genres, a perfect literary mix between romanticism, naturalism and gothic elements.

The book reached an immediate success, which also initiated a quest to find out the real author behind the pen name of Currer Bell. This was doubled by the novel's publication: “Wuthering Heights”, where the author was named: Ellis Bell.

After the success of “Jane Eyre,” Charlotte began working on her second book: “Shirley”, but soo after the Bronte family would go to a sequence of family tragedies: Emily became seriously ill and died at the end of 1848. Next year, in May, Anne Bronte also died of tuberculosis.

Charlotte poured all of her upset in her novel: “Shirley” and enhanced the book's central theme: the woman role in society. And the book was published in October 1849.

Eventually, her true identity, as the author of the two successful novels, became known. She started to enter into the writer social circles and participate in the London cultural elite meetings.

Her last novel, published during her lifetime, “Villette”, in 1853, had some similar techniques she used in her first novel (“Jane Eyre”) using the narrator's first-person depiction.

The year of 1854 brought some news in her personal life, and after the writer, Arthur Bell Nicholls, proposed to her and the time took its tool so that her father accept his former curate as a son in law, they got married in the summer of 1854.

Charlotte Bronte became pregnant very soon after the marriage, but her health went downhill soon after, and in March 1855, she died, still carrying her unborn child.

Two years after her death, the first novel she attempted to publish: “The Professor”, was published in 1857.

Her books and that of her sisters are studied today in schools as an example of extraordinary literary works and are seen today as classics. The Bronte sisters started to increase the long-overdue importance that women should have in academic and be seen that women should have more rights, more important role in art and society.

Emily Bronte (1818-1848)

The second exceptional author of the Romantic era in literature, Emily Bronte, was born in 1818 in Thornton, a short distance from Bradford. Emily was more aged than just the third of the three Bronte sisters, Anne, also a writer.

The sisters lost their mother to cancer in 1821. Emily went in 1824 to study at Clergy Daughters’ school among her older sisters. She was soon returned home in 1825 after a typhoid epidemic wave struck the school. The surviving sisters and their brother, Branwell, were home-schooled after that, where they enjoyed reading from the authors to which lines they would soon enforce, as the famous exceptional writers of literature. Books from Walter Scott, poetry from Percy Shelley soon turned the sisters' spare time into a desire for development, education and enhanced their literary skills.

The sisters used their imagination to create fictional worlds, triggered by receiving a box filled with toy soldiers. All sisters contributed to the creational of an entirely fictitious world, which they called: “Angria”. Around 1831, when she was 13, Emily and Anne began to let their imagination run wild on another fictional world, they called: “Gondal.”

Four years later, Emily started to attend Roe Head girls’ school but soon returned home after she missed her home too much.

In 1838 she became a law school teacher, but she returned once more home the following year, where she got more involved in the domestic works.

In 1842 she went along with her older sister, Charlotte, to attend Constantin Heger's academy in Brussels. Emily taught music, having excellent skills in piano.

Emily started to re-organise, polish and re-write her poems in some notebooks discovered in 1845 by her sister, Charlotte. Enraged by the invasion of her privacy, Emily declined Charlotte’s idea to publish the lyrics. Still, her heart was melted on her little sister, Anne, persuasion, showing her poems as justification for them to get published. They did see the printing press in 1846 under pen-names: Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell.

"Wuthering Heights" was published in 1847 in England under their pen name: Ellis and Acton Bell.

In December 1848, aged 30, she died suddenly, just a couple of months from her brothers funeral, in September 1848.

"Wuthering Heights" has so many literary talent lessons, of the plot, and style to teach to their readers, or just a fabulous read for anyone in love with the written word.

Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881)

Dostoevsky was born in Russian nobility, Moscow’s November of 1821. His family could trace its tree back to the 14th century as one of the aids of Moscow's first Grand prince. Near his recent ancestors, it was a long line of Orthodox priests and merchants well educated. His father, Mykail (Michael), studied Medical and surgical skills at the Academy in Moscow, working as a medical doctor during the war of 1812.

He became a senior medical doctor in 1818, marrying Fyodor’s mother, Maria, which might have inspired Mykail to have more of a philanthropic side that made him take a physical position at the poor hospital in 1820.

His father positions continued ascension, which allowed the family to purchase a summer residence, shy of 100 miles outside Moscow, at Darovoye.

With a well financial situation that could have shielded him from the worlds roughness, the parents empathic character and sensitivity to all society layers, the young Fyodor still got to see the other side of society, playing on the hospital's grounds for the poor.

He had to undergo an increased cultural childhood, reading vast amounts of fairy tales, heroic sagas, legends or literature, mainly read to him by his nanny Alena Frolovna. His nanny might have been the first person to introduce the future writer to his predecessors, like Walter Scott, Miguel de Cervantes or Homer books.

Doubled by his parents' attention for their child education, teaching him the Bible, introducing Fyodor to poetry from Alexander Pushkin, or the gothic fiction of Ann Radcliffe.

The young Dostoyevsky memorised most encounters of his childhood which he would write in his future novels. An example in this sense is the constant theme found in: “Crime and Punishment” or “The Brothers Karamazov”, the desire of an adult man for a younger girl, that might have been triggered by an experience when his father had to attend to a nine-year-old girl raped by a drunk adult male.

Although inside a noble family, his father wealth could not compare to that of others. During his study years, Fyodor felt misplaced among other academic peers from wealthier families, which would inspire his later novel: “The Adolescent.”

Aged fifteen, he witnessed his mother’s death of tuberculosis while stationed in St.Petersburg to attend the Military engineering institute, which he profoundly disliked.

In 1839 his father died, and the first signs of epilepsy made themselves shown. After graduating from the Military Institute, he went to his brother in Reval, where his constant interest in culture was established by his frequent attendances at (now considered classical) music concerts, operas or ballets. But this exposes Dostoyevsky to the vice of gambling by his friends.

Dostoyevsky started his literary career as a translator. His first job was to translate Honore de Balzac – “Eugenie Grandet” into the Russian language. Ten years after it was published in France, the book was available for Russian readers in 1843.

He was followed by his first novel completion in 1845, “Poor Folk” / “Poor People”. His roommate took the book to the poet Nikolay Nekrasov who took it to an influential literary critic, Belinsky, which described Dostoyevsky’s work as the first “social novel”. At the beginning of 1846, the book was published in the St Petersburg collection almanach, and it did not take long to become a success.

His friendship with Belinsky allowed for a second novel: “The Double”, to be published in the journal: “Notes of the Fatherland”, but the two clashed on their religious beliefs. While Dostoyevsky was a devout Christian, Belinsky had a more socialist, philosophical-atheistic view of things.

Between 1846 and 1848, he had more frequent seizures, but he continued to publish short stories in: “Annals of the Fatherland” magazine, but these stories were not received well. In a more profound financial distress, he joined a small socialist community that helped him maintain afloat. And when this group dissolved, he joined a similar socialist group, called Petrashevsky Circle, founded by Mikhail Petrashevsky.

The group was reported to the internal affairs ministry, who started to investigate this group's topic of discussion. Fearing the recent European revolutions of 1848, Tsar Nicholas I did not want to allow things to take a turn for the worse or have another Decembrist revolution like in 1825. The groups' socialist views could have implicated a turn of the countries politics towards future communist perspectives. As such, under several months of trial, even though the Tsar was involved, the group was condemned to death by firing squad. Split into three groups, Dostoevsky was planned to be in the second group, but just before the execution could be carried out, a letter directly from the Tsar commuted the sentence. This experience would be presented in his future novel: “The Idiot”.

Dostoyevsky served exile years at Omsk, Siberia, for four years, where he was very kind and consoled the other prisoners he encountered. There he was considered one of the more dangerous instigators, and as such, he had his hands and feet in chains for most of his stay there, where his epilepsy episodes occurred more frequently. His main consolation was reading the Bible. Sent to the prison infirmary, he used to use his time there to read Charles Dickens novels. His experience there was depicted in: “The house of the Dead.”

After his release, he met his future wife, Maria Isaeva, in Semipalatinsk, which he married in 1857. The marriage of the two was unhappy, and because of his health, Dostoevsky was permitted to return to St. Petersburg.

In 1862 he travelled to Western Europe. Visting Berlin, Dresden, Paris and London. In England, he met Herzen, the Russian father of socialism. From there, he went to Switzerland and a journey through the cities of Livorno and Florence. All of these trips were written down in: “Winter Notes on Summer Impressions.” Next year he returned to Paris, where in October 1863, he met Polina Suslova. But while in Baden-Baden, he lost all his money gambling. While in 1864, both his brother, Mikhail and his wife Maria died.

In the literary career, Dostoevsky published in 1866 two parts: “Crime and Punishment” in the “The Russian Messenger”, which was read passionately. Because of this segment, it attracted several readers to the periodical magazine.

Starting to feel the writing career burden, he hired a twenty-year-old girl as his secretary and stenographer, Anna Snitkina. With her assistance, he fulfilled his story: “The Gambler” in less than a month. In 1867 Dostoevsky married Anna in Saint Petersburg.

Although starting to gain from his books, it wasn’t enough to cover his debts. Still, the couple took a honeymoon in Germany, visiting Dresden, Karlsruhe and Baden-Baden, where he lost a substantial amount of money to gambling once more.

He started to work on: “The Idiot” in 1867. In less than a month, he wrote the first 100 pages, which appeared in January of next year in “The Russian Messenger.”

The couple travelled to Geneva, where Anna gave birth to their first child, Sofya, in March 1868, but the baby girl died just three months later. They continued their move through Milan and Florence, reaching Dresden, where in February 1869, the couple had their second daughter, Lyubov.

Influenced by the fact the socialist groups were killing members from their ranks, he began writing: “Demons” in 1870, and in July of next year, they returned to Russia. The same month their son, Fyodor, was born, but the family was in severe financial debts.

In 1873 “Demons” was published by the family publishing company, which was located in their apartment, and the business managed to sell around 3,000 copies. They wanted to start their periodical, but lacking the money to do it, he agreed to publish some of his work in “The Citizen” for 3,000 rubles a year. Only to leave this job after just one year.

His health started to decline. In August 1875, his second son, Alexey, was born in Staraya Russa. In Autumn, the family returned to Saint Petersburg, where till the end of the year, Dostoevsky finished the work on: “The Adolescent.” Next year he continued to work on the family periodical: “Diary”, and the books started to have an increase in sale, the author beginning to receive more and more letters from readers, fans.

In 1876 even Tsar Alexander II ordered Fyodor to visit his palace, present his “Diary” to him, and educate his sons: Sergey and Paul, which only increased Dostoevsky’s popularity. After 1877 he became an honorary member of The Russian Academy of Sciences. In 1879 he was elected to the committee of the Paris “Association Litteraire et Artistique Internationale” institution that included authors like Victor Hugo, Ralph Emerson or Leo Tolstoy.

His health continued to deteriorate even more, and in February 1881, Dostoevsky passed away, with an attendance that was in the numbers of tens of thousands. While some describe 50,000, others 100,000, it is clear that Dostoevsky’s literary genius was appreciated, and his books are still read to this day with a passion not just in Russia but in the whole of Europe.

Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)

Gustave Flaubert, one of the most prominent representative author of the realist movement, was born in Rouen, son of a senior surgeon of the hospital in Rouen, Achille-Cleophas Flaubert.

For his education, he went to Lycee Pierre-Corneille, where he finished his primary studies in 1840, after which he went to Paris to study law. Staying there, he acquainted Victor Hugo and went on a journey in Corsica and Pyrenees. After an epileptic episode, he abandoned law studies and left Paris in 1846 to occasionally visit it, remaining for the rest of his life, near Rouen, in Croisset.

Flaubert enjoyed more the smaller cities, as he described himself as a romantic.

In 1842, he finished his first novella: “November”.

Between 1846 and 1854, he had a relationship with Louise Colet, the poet, with whom he corresponded, and the letters survived till this day, but to whom he never married.

He went on some visits to Greece and Egypt between 1849-1850. In his visits, he had encounters with his friends: Emile Zola and Victor Hugo. In 1850, he started to work on “Madame Bovary” upon his return from Egypt.

The novel: “Madame Bovary” was published in 1856 in the “Revue de Paris”, a magazine started by Louis0Desire Veron, head of the Paris Opera, a literary magazine published continuously from 1829 till 1970.

The last complete novel of Flaubert, “Sentimental Education” (“L’Education sentimentale”), was published in 1869 with inspiration from personal life, from his youth.

After 1870 the times became more difficult for Flaubert. The region of Rouen and his house were occupied by the Prussian armies during the War of 1870, followed by his mother's death in 1872 that also brought distress to his financial situation.

In 1874 the book: “The temptation of Saint Anthony” was published. A novel that was disregarded as too fantastic to be read.

Due to his venereal diseases, he had a health decline probably caught during his frequent brothel houses visits.

Gustave Flaubert writer career influenced Guy de Maupassant, his protégé, another extraordinary writer of this century. His literary reached as far as the German states, affecting Franz Kafka positively.

Carlo Collodi (1826-1890)

Born Lorenzini, known under his pen surname as Collodi (from the town name Collodi where his mother was born) in Florence of November 1826, from a modest family. His father a cook, and his mother, a dressmaker, worked for marchese Ginori Lisci.

He was the eldest child in a family of eleven, out of which seven died in infancy.

He studied school in Collodi, after which he went to the theological seminary, with the marchese's financial assistance. Still, he soon changed it for the “College of the Scolopi Fathers” in Florence.

In 1844 he got a job at “Libreria Piatti”, a bookstore” where he worked alongside Giuseppe Aiazzi, a manuscript specialist.

Between 1848 and 1860, he was directly involved in the Italian wars of Independence as a volunteer within the Tuscan army. He transformed his experience as a soldier in establishing a satire newspaper, entitled: “Il Lampion,” in 1853, but the Grand Duke of Tuscany soon censored it. This did not stop Collodi, that published another newspaper called: “Lo Scaramuccia (The controversy)”.

In 1860 he published a more well-known work: “Il signor Alberi ha ragione!” (“Mr Alberi is right!”).

After which, he became more involved in the political newspaper and received a job at the Censorship Commission for the Theatre.

But after several years in this literary pursues, he turned towards translations from French children literature into Italian. Especially the works of 17th-century French author Charles Perrault, which he completed (to translate) in 1875.

This works probably instigated his inner desire to write his own children literature, starting the work on “Storia di un burattino” (“Story of a Marionette”) in 1880, also called “Le avventure di Pinocchio”.

In October 1890, Collodi died suddenly in Florence, aged just 63. Currently, there is even a park for his more famous work: "Park of Pinocchio".

Jules Verne (1828-1905)

He was born on a small island in the city of Nantes in February 1828. He spent the first years of his life in the house of his grandmother. His father was an attorney, while his mother had some financial means by being a descendant of a shipowner line.

In 1834 he was sent to a boarding school in Nantes to study under the careful eye of Madame Sambin that invoked the novel Robinson Crusoe very often.

Two years later, he studied in a Catholic school, Ecole Saint-Stanislas, where his higher intellect soon got revealed. Geography, Greek and Latin were easily put on his belt. In 1842 Jules Verne went to study at Petit Seminaire de Saint-Donatien, still a religious school, where he even worked on his unfinished teen novel: “Un pretre en 1839” (“A priest in 1839”). Between 1844 and 1846, he attended Lycee Royal in Nantes, where he graduated with a grade of: “Good enough”.

Jules Verne started to discover his inner literary self, while his father hoped that he would be more interested in the families law practice. Reason for which Verne was sent to Paris in 1847 to study law school. But between the first and second year of law school, he encountered Rose Herminie Grossetiere, with whom he fell in love rapidly, dedicating some poems to her. The girls' friend despised the idea that their daughter would marry a young student with an unpredictable future. Her family got involved in Rose's life and married her to Armand de la Haye, a wealthy landowner, in 1848.

This life experience would transpire into multiple works, where several characters would be married without love or express desire.

When he returned to Paris, the city was in turmoil, when the country was taken over by Napoleon III and the second republic's start. He started to use his family relationships to start participating in high society literary salons, and he discovered and got influenced by Victor Hugo’s exceptional talent presented in his works.

In 1849 he met Alexandre Dumas and became close friends with Dumas’s son.

While Pierre-Michel-Francois Chevalier was looking in 1851 for a person to write articles in his magazine: “Musee des Familles” articles of geography, science and history got to realize he was looking for an erudite person like Jules Verne, that presented him with an article which was immediately published. In 1851 a short-story: “A voyage in a Balloon”, got published. His father pressed him to abandon this and return to a law career because his literary venture was not filled with financial gain.

While writing stories for Chevalier, the idea to create a new literary style kept forming with him, a unique fiction style that would combine natural science, geographical and technical with fictitious characters or fictitious plot. The project was encouraged by Dumas’s family.

While attending a different wedding, Jules Verne got acquainted with Honorine Anne Morel, a young 26-year-old widow with two children, which he married in 1857. He started his job on the Paris Bourse, but he kept his literary pursuit, waking up every morning early to have time to write.

Another event would come to influence him tremendously, a no-fee trip from Bordeaux through Liverpool to Scotland. The journey from 1858 was followed by another in 1861, to Stockholm and a few cities in Norway. His son, Michel, was born in 1861.

Through a mutual friend, he met Pierre-Jules Hetzel and submitted a novel called: “Voyage en Ballon.” This publisher already represented Honore de Balzac, Victor Hugo, but he was looking for someone who could educate the younger generation in science and literature. The manuscript came to meet precisely this demand, and the manuscript, now titled: “Five weeks in a balloon.” Verne signed a contract for a constant submission of three volumes of text, each year for which he demanded a steady salary.

Through the “Magasin d’Education et de Recreation” (“Magazine of Education and Recreation”) “The adventures of Captain Hatteras” was published in 1864-1865 through the magazine and next year as a book. The new literary style included: geographical, physics and astronomy knowledge in between fiction.

“Journey to the centre of the Earth” (1864), “From the Earth to the moon” (1865) increased Jules Verne fame, income but mainly his new style to the reading public.

In 1869 in a debate over: “Twenty thousand leagues under the seas” became to drift the initial friendship relation between Hetzel and Jules Verne over the plot debate, but it was clear the new style: science fiction came to emerge in fiction literature.

In 1866 Jules Verne was returning home, and his twenty-six-year-old nephew, by the name of Gaston, shot him twice. One of the bullets hit his leg, which left him with a limp, while his attacker would be admitted to a mental asylum.

In 1870 he got the highest French order of merit. Jules Verne received the “Legion d’honneur” grade of Chevalier. In 1892 to be promoted to the level of Officier.

He was elected town councillor of Amiens in 1888, office in which he stayed for fifteen years.

In March 1905, he died at his home in Amiens, while his son Michel Verne oversaw the rest of the works' publication.

Jules Verne among H.G. Wells is regarded as the founder of the science fiction style.

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)

In what it is now, the Tolstoy museum, the house at Yasnaya Polyana, at a distance less than 10 miles from the city of Tula, Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was born in September 1828. T5

Member of a family belonging to the Russian nobility, tracing its routes to the 14th century, the family ancestor moved during Vasily II of Moscow reign (1425-1462) from Chernihiv to Moscow. During the 17th century, the Tolstoy family's documents reveal that Peter the Great (1682-1725) granted to Pyotr Tolstoy the title of count.

Leo Tolstoy was the second to last child of Count Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy, a former soldier during the war and French invasion of 1812. His mother, Mariya, died when Leo was just two, followed by his father's death in 1837.

He started his studies in law, at Kazan University, in 1844. His teacher unfairly saw him as a person not capable or with insufficient desire to learn, which made him leave his studies in mid-years and return to Yasnaya Polyana. At the same time, he repeatedly took travels to Moscow.

His writing passion started early on, with his first novel: “Childhood”, describing his youth years, published in 1852. Followed by “Boyhood” published in 1854 and “Youth” in 1857.

Moving from his creative side, he also joined the army and served as an artillery officer in the Crimean war (1853-1856) and was promoted to the level of lieutenant due to his bravery. The war events would be fictionized in the novel published in 1863: “The Cossacks”.

The events witnessed in the war doubled by some European journeys in 1857 and 1860 have established his views for non-violence and spirituality. During his European travel, the trip to Paris in 1857 took him to witness an appalling experience, a public execution. It would be a similar experience that marked his contemporary writer Dostoevsky, fragments of which can be found in this author's (Dostoevsky's) book “The Idiot”.

On the positive side, the travel to Europe during 1860-1861 is where he met with Victor Hugo and reading “Les Miserables” greatly influenced him on his future novels. This France excursion also left a print on the title of one of the centuries defining book: “War and peace”, a title taken from the publication: “La Guerre et la Paix”, a story written by the French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.

Tolstoy became more convinced that the only way society can progress is through education. The printing press product, literature is the best way to benefit the masses of population. Through this view, he founded thirteen schools for the children of Russia’s poor peasants, just freed by the new laws of 1861.

In 1860 due to the death of his brother Nikolay, he persuaded his desire to get married. In September 1862, he married Sophia Behrs, an eighteen years old beauty, the daughter of a court physician. The couple had thirteen children, out of which five died during infancy. His descendants have left Russia after the Bolshevik's came into power. They now are spread across: UK, France, Sweden, Germany or the U.S. The last surviving grandchild died in 2007, but the great-grandchildren still hold occasional meetings of the whole family, mainly at Yasnaya Polyana, after the fall of communism.

The marriage was a happy one, and Sophia acted as his secretary, editor doing the hand-writing of his manuscripts, and managed the family's finances.

The writers well-known and loved stories are published in 1869: “War and peace”, and in 1877: “Anna Karenina.”

“War and Peace” is a titanic book of literary excellence, describing 580 characters. With two of the main characters: Pierre Bezukhov (mainly), and Prince Andrei Bolkonsky traits were mirrored from the author himself.

Both of these books were written in the realist literary school.

Tolstoy was often studied, greatly because of his literary genius, but also because of his personal beliefs. He was one of the most devout Christians, writing in 1884: “What I Believe”. A book in which he publicly stated his deep Christian beliefs, his devotion to Jesus Christ and the favourite Bible reading: “Sermon on the Mount” that increased his kindness, his humble and modest approach in most aspects of his life.

This was followed by “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” in 1866, “The kingdom of God is within you”, published in 1894 and “Resurrection” published in 1899.

Tolstoy inspired so many authors from his own country, like Dostoyevsky (the sentiment of appreciation was mutual between the two giants of literature), but even beyond the Russian borders. Gustave Flaubert, astonished by the marvel that is: “War and peace”, said: “What an artist and what a psychologist!”

The British writer Virginia Wolf had some of the highest regards for Tolstoy as she titled him: “The greatest of all novelists”, while James Joyce, mesmerized by the talent of his writings, exclaimed: “Tolstoy is never dull. He is never stupid, never tired, never pedantic and never theatrical!”

In November 1910, the world lost Leo Tolstoy. He died of pneumonia at Astapovo. So many people wanted to participate at the funeral that the police had to try to limit the attendance. Movies continue to this day to depict his notable works. One of the most fantastic movie depiction is of “War & Peace”, a BBC excellent tv mini-series produced in 2016: imdb link.

Trailer: movie trailer

Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson is better known under the pen-name of Lewis Carroll. On 27 January 1832 in Daresbury, England, Charles Dodgson, a former student at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford, had his first son, the third child, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.

His first years were filled with home education, to which Lewis responded with much interest. At the age of seven, he was reading the complex and essential Christian lecture: “The Pilgrim’s Progress”. His hight intellect did not go unnoticed, and his family sent him to study at a prestigious Grammar School in Richmond.

He excelled in mathematics, and as such, in 1850, he enrolled at Christ Church University, Oxford. But soon after he registered for his university studies, his mother died of a neurological problem at only 47 years of age.

But regardless of his family tragedy, he obtained a Mathematics first-class honour in Mathematics in 1854. A Christ Church Mathematical Lectureship followed in 1855.

After 1850’s he started to join more frequent the pre-Raphaelite social circle. This group of intellectuals from various art types: poets, art critics, writers and painters. In this group, formed as a brotherhood, the members could discuss art and principles of thought.

Between 1854 and 1856, his literary work began to appear in magazines as: “The Comic Times”, “Oxford Critic”, or “The Train.” In the last, his pen-name first appeared, as Lewis Carroll publishing a poem in this publication.

It was in the year 1856 when a family that would influence him significantly moved to Christ Church. Dean Henry Liddell moved here with his family. Lewis soon befriended both Dean Liddell and his wife Lorina and the three girls of the family: Alice, Lorina and Edith. From 1856 Lewis also became a gentleman-photographer, and in 1858 he even took a photograph of Alice Liddell.

It does still constitute the topic of debate. Still, Lewis Carroll is firmly and widely believed that he based his: “Alice in Wonderland” on little Alice Liddell. The same Alice for which he seems to have composed a few: acrostic poems (the type of poetry where each first letter of every line will write a name or a new message on its own).

He took the Liddell sisters on boat rowing trips, where it seems the idea for his novel came about, on one journey on the 4th of July 1862. He was demanded a story by Alice Liddell, and she seemed to have enjoyed it that much that she asked him to write it down. In November 1864, the first draft of this manuscript, titled: “Alice’s Adventures Under Ground”, was presented.

Macmillan publisher enjoyed the story as soon as they’ve seen it, and in 1865 “Alice’s adventures in Wonderland” was published. The book brought fame very more quickly to his name. Such essential characters as even Queen Victoria demanded Lewis Carroll to dedicate his next book to her.

In 1871, “Through the looking-glass” was published, the sequel to the much appreciated first adventures of Alice.

Lewis was also an inventor of various small devices and games, one of which was an initial version of something very similar to today’s Scrabble.

He died of pneumonia in January 1898 in Surrey county.

Nihil sine Deo