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.pdfthe darkest and bitterest in his life. Collin at length consented to consider him educated, and Andersen came to Copenhagen.
Life as an author
In 1829, Andersen had considerable success with a fantastic volume entitled A
Journey on Foot from Holmen’s Canal to the East Point of Amager, and he published in the same season a farce and a book of poems. Thus, he suddenly came into request at the moment when his friends had decided that no good thing would ever come out of his early eccentricity and vivacity.
He made little further progress, however, until 1833, when he received a small traveling stipend from the king, and made the first of his long European journeys. At Le Locle, in the Jura, he wrote Agnete and the Merman; and in October 1834 he arrived in Rome.
Early in 1835, Andersen’s first novel, The Improvisatore, appeared, and achieved real success. The poet’s troubles were at an end at last. In the same year,
Andersen published the earliest installment of his immortal Fairy Tales (Danish: Eventyr). Other parts, completing the first volume, appeared in 1836 and 1837. The value of these stories was not at first perceived, and they sold slowly. Andersen was more successful for the time being with a novel, O.T. (1836), and a volume of sketches, In Sweden. In 1837, he produced the best of his novels, Only a Fiddler.
Andersen now turned his attention, with but ephemeral success, to the theatre, but was recalled to his true genius in the charming miscellany of 1840, the PictureBook without Pictures the fame of his Fairy Tales had been steadily rising; a second series began in 1838; a third in 1845.
Andersen was now celebrated throughout Europe, although in Denmark itself there was still some resistance to his pretensions. In June 1847, he paid his first visit to England and enjoyed a triumphal social success. When he left, Charles Dickens saw him off from Ramsgate pier (Shortly thereafter Dickens published David Copperfield, in which the character Uriah Heep is said to have been modeled on Andersen—a left-handed compliment, to say the least).
After this, Andersen continued to publish much as he still desired to excel as a novelist and a dramatist, which he could not do. He disdained the enchanting Fairy Tales, in the composition of which his unique genius lay. Nevertheless, he continued to write them, and in 1847 and 1848 two fresh volumes appeared. After a long silence, Andersen published another novel in 1857, To be or not to be. In 1863, after a very interesting journey, he issued another of his travel-books, In Spain.
His Fairy Tales continued to appear, in installments, until 1872, when, at Christmas, the last stories were published. In the spring of that year, Andersen fell out of bed and severely hurt himself. He was never again quite well, but he lived until the 4th of August 1875, when he died very peacefully in the house called Rolighed, near Copenhagen. He is interred in the Assistens Cemetery, in Copenhagen, Denmark.
In the English-speaking world, the stories of The Ugly Duckling, The Emperor’s New Clothes, and The Princess and the Pea, are cultural universals;
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everyone knows them, though few could tell you their author. They have become part of the common heritage, and, like the tales of Charles Perrault, are not distinguished from actual folk-tales such as those of the Brothers Grimm.
Emile Zola
Emile Zola (April 2, 1840 – September 29, 1902) was an influential French novelist, the most important example of the literary school of naturalism, and a major figure in the political liberalization of France.
Born in Paris, France, the son of an Italian engineer, Emile Zola spent his childhood in Aix-en-Provence and was educated at the College Bourbon. At age 18 he returned to Paris where he studied at the LycEe Saint-Louis. After working at several low-level clerical jobs, he began to write a literary column for a newspaper. Controversial from the beginning, he did not hide his disdain for Napoleon III, who used the Second Republic as a vehicle to become Emperor.
More than half of Zola’s novels were part of a set of 20 collectively known as Les Rougon-Macquart. Set in France’s Second Empire, it traces the hereditary influence of violence, alcoholism, and prostitution in two branches of a family, the respectable Rougons and the disreputable Macquarts, for five generations.
As he described his plans for the series, “I want to portray, at the outset of a century of liberty and truth, a family that cannot restrain itself in its rush to possess all the good things that progress is making available and is derailed by its own momentum, the fatal convulsions that accompany the birth of a new world.”
Zola and the painter Paul Cezanne were friends from childhood and in youth, but broke in later life over Zola’s fictionalized depiction of Cezanne and the bohemian life of painters in the his novel L’Oeuvre (The Masterpiece, 1886).
He risked his career and even his life on January 13, 1898, when his
“J’accuse” was published on the front page of the Paris daily, L’Aurore . The paper was run by Ernest Vaughan and Georges Clemenceau, who decided that the controversial story would be in the form of an open letter to the President, FElix
Faure. J’accuse accused the French government of anti-Semitism and of wrongfully placing Alfred Dreyfus in jail. Zola was brought to trial for libel for publishing J’Accuse on February 7, 1898 and was convicted on February 23. Zola declared that the conviction and transportation to Devil’s Island of the Jewish army captain Alfred Dreyfus came after a false accusation of espionage and was a miscarriage of justice. The case, known as the Dreyfus affair, had divided France deeply between the reactionary army and church and the more liberal commercial society. The ramifications continued for years, so much so that on the 100th anniversary of Emile Zola’s article, France’s Roman Catholic daily paper, “La Croix”, apologized for its anti-Semitic editorials during the Dreyfus affair.
Zola was a leading light of France and his letter formed a major turning-point in the Dreyfus affair, causing the captain’s case to be reopened, whereupon he was acquitted. In the course of events, Zola was convicted of libel, sentenced, and
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removed from the Legion of Honor. Rather than go to jail, he fled to England. Soon he was allowed to return in time to see the government fall. Dreyfus was convicted again, but was ultimately freed, in large part due to the moral force of
Zola’s arguments. Zola said “The truth is on the march, and nothing shall stop it.”
In 1906, Dreyfus was completely exonerated by the Supreme Court.
Zola died in Paris on September 29, 1902 of carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a stopped chimney. His enemies were blamed, but nothing was proved. He was initially buried in the Cimetiere de Montmartre in Paris, but on June 4, 1908, almost six years after his death, his remains were moved to the PanthEon.
Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
Bankim Chandra Chatterjee was born on 27 June 1838 was a Bengali poet, novelist, essayist and journalist, most famous as the author of Vande Mataram or Bande Mataram, that inspired the freedom fighters of India, and was later declared the National Song of IndiaChattopadhyay was born in the village Kanthalpara in Naihati, the youngest of three brothers, to Yadav (or Jadab) Chandra Chattopadhyaya and Durgadebi. His family was orthodox, and his father, a government official who went on to become the Deputy Collector of Midnapur. One of his brothers, Sanjeeb Chandra Chatterjee, was also a novelist and his known for his famous book “Palamau”.He was educated at the Mohsin College in
Hooghly and later at the Presidency College, graduating with a degree in Arts in 1857. He was one of the first two graduates of the University of Calcutta .He later obtained a degree in Law as well, in 1869.He was appointed as Deputy Collector, just like his father, of Jessore, Chatterjee went on to become a Deputy Magistrate, retiring from government service in 1891. His years at work were peppered with incidents that brought him into conflict with the ruling British of the time. However, he was made a Companion, Order of the Indian Empire in 1894.
He was married at a very young of age of eleven, his first wife died in 1859. He later married Rajalakshmi Devi. They had three daughters.
The only novel of Chatterjee’s that can truly be considered historical fiction is Rajsimha (1881, rewritten and enlarged 1893). Anandamath (The mission house of Felicity, 1882) is a political novel which depicts a Sannyasi (Brahmin ascetic) army fighting Indian Muslims who are in the employ of the East India Company. The book calls for the rise of Brahmin/Hindu nationalism but, ironically, concludes with a character accepting British Empire as a necessity. The novel was also the source of the song Vande Mataram (I worship the Mother) which, set to music by Rabindranath Tagore, was taken up by many secular nationalists. The novel is loosely based on the time of the Sannyasi Rebellion, however in the actual rebellion, Hindus sannyasis and Muslim fakirs both rebelled against the British East India Company. The novel first appeared in serial form in Bangadarshan.
Chatterjee’s next novel, Devi Chaudhurani, was published in 1884. His final novel, Sitaram (1886), tells the story of a Hindu chief rebelling against Muslim rule.
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Chatterjee’s humorous sketches are his best known works other than his novels. Kamalakanter Daptar (From the Desk of Kamalakanta, 1875; enlarged as Kamalakanta, 1885) contains half humorous and half serious sketches, somewhat on the model of De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.
He was died on 8 April 1894.
6. Libraries
Famous Libraries in History
The Great Library of Alexandria was one of the most famous libraries in history, but it was by no means the only one. History is full of great libraries.
The first concerted effort to build a library is thought to have been that of King Ashurbanipal of Assyria.
An ancient library of sorts can be found at the remains of the Villa of the Payri, a private house in Herculaneum, one of the Roman cities engulfed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79.
The owner of the villa was Lucius Calpurnius Piso, the father-in-law of Julius Caesar. Piso was quite a collector. His villa had more than 80 sculptures, some quite large. The grounds were extensive, containing a large swimming bath and a large area of both covered and uncovered gardens. The furnishings in the villa were lavish. But the villa is most famous for its library, the contents of which give the villa its name.
Piso was a collector of writings as well. Archaeologists digging in the 1750s found a collection of nearly 1,800 papyrus scrolls. The scrolls were sealed in portable cases and were discovered in tunnels underneath the villa, leading archaeologists to surmise that the owner had attempted to spirit the scrolls away while the volcano was raging.
Like an amazing amount of other people, animals, and things in both Pompeii and Herculaneum, the scrolls were largely preserved by being overrun with volcanic ash. As a result, historians have been able to read what is written on some of the scrolls. The main writings so far discovered are by Philodemus of Gadara, a student of Epicureanism, one of antiquity's dueling philosophical traditions. Among Epicureanism's main tenets was the importance of living a happy and pleasurable life.
The main excavations at the Villa of the Papyri took place between 1750 and 1765, under the direction of Swiss engineer and archaeologist Karl Web. Not all of the land in or under the villa has been excavated.
Another famous ancient library was in Pergamum, in what is now Bergama, Turkey. The Library of Pergamum was established during the rule of King Eumenes II, during the 2nd Century B.C. At its largest, the Pergamum library is thought to have more than 200,000 scrolls.
The library was a quite large building, with a large reading room filled with benches and a great number of shelves. Works stored in the library were written on parchment and stored, rolled up, on shelves. Space was left between the shelves
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and the outer walls to accommodate air circulation, in an early attempt at preservation (given the humid climate of the area). The library was part of a temple complex dedicated to the goddess Athena, and a large statue of her was in the reading room. Also onsite were study facilities, and this attracted some of the great minds of the time, including several scientists from the famed Great Library of Alexandria.
The Roman Empire assumed control of the Library of Pergamum in 133 B.C. Although the library continued as a source of information and study, its best years proved to be behind it as the centuries passed. The Ottoman Empire took over the library after the fall of Constantinople, in 1453.
Constantinople itself had a great library as well, begun during the 4th Century A.D. by the Eastern Roman Emperor Constantius II, who made room for a Scriptorium to store copies of Greek literature that would otherwise have been lost. (In fact, most of the Greek works that we think of as classics today were preserved in the Imperial Library of Constantinople.) Constantius' other great contribution was the continuation of preservation work started by his predecessor, Constantine himself, to transfer the texts from papyrus to the more durable parchment.
At its height, the Constantinople library was thought to have contained 100,000 volumes of text. The library continued to grow and preserve for the next 10 centuries, despite great damage from a fire in 473 and from rampaging knights during the Fourth Crusade, in 1204. This library met the opposite fate of the Library of Pergamum after the Ottoman takeover of Constantinople: It was destroyed.
Perhaps the most famous library during the Dark Ages was the House of Wisdom, an English translation of Bayt al-Hikmah, a library established in Baghdad, in what is now Iraq but was then part of what was known as the Muslim Empire. In Western lands after the fall of the Roman Empire, people turned away from the scientific focus of ancient Greece. This was not the case in the House of Wisdom, where Muslim scientists and scholars gathered to study and progress the world's learning.
Beginning with copies of worlds stores in the libraries of Constantinople (still Byzantine at this time), the librarians at the House of Wisdom created a library of international renown, translating works by Euclid, Archimedes, Pythagoras, Hippocrates, and other famous Greeks into Arabic. Indian and Persian texts served as inspiration as well. Special areas of focus at the House of Wisdom included astronomy, cartography, chemistry, geography, mathematics, medicine, and zoology.
One scholar, Hunayn bin Ishaq (known in the West as Joanitius) translated into Arabic the entire body of Greek medical works, including the Hippocratic Oath. He then expanded on the Greeks' knowledge. In fact, one of his books on ophthalmology was the first to include anatomical drawings and was so influential that it was translated into Latin and served as the definitive Western text on the subject for a great many years.
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Out of this focus on mathematics and the sciences came the popularization of what we now call Arabic numerals. Originating in India, these numerals simplified counting and made possible the development of algebra. Indeed, algebra is a version of Kitab al-Jabr, a book written by the famed mathematician AlKhawarizmi.
Of necessity, in lands sometimes bereft of the necessary supply of food, water, wood, or precious metals, Muslim scientists devised inventions in agriculture, construction, and metalworking that were advanced beyond Western knowledge.
Scholars eventually focused on Greek literature and philosophy as well, translating works of Plato and Aristotle into Arabic. With this expansion came a method of cataloging the contents of the library, a good part of which was printed on paper.
Officially, the House of Wisdom opened in 1004. However, the collecting and translating had been happening for awhile before then. The physical collection of works and study lasted until 1258, when the Mongols sacked Baghdad. The learning and writing that took place in the House of Wisdom, however, continued in the traditions of both East and West.
One large library begun in the Middle Ages that survives to this day is the Vatican Library. Although Catholic Church leaders had maintained manuscript and book collections for many years, it was the 15th Century that saw the establishment of the Vatican Library, by Pope Nicholas V. The formal establishment came in 1475. The first librarian, Platina, began in 1481 with a catalog containing about 3,500 listings. About a century later, in 1587, a new building was built to house the growing collection. That building is still in use today.
The Vatican Library contains not only religious works but also law texts and and history texts, science works, and classics from Greece and Rome. The librarians at the Vatican became known throughout the subsequent centuries as eminent scholars, especially during the Renaissance. People came to the Vatican from all over the world to study the texts housed within the Library. To discourage theft, Vatican librarians took up the habit of chaining some books to the benches on which they were displayed.
In all, the holdings at the Vatican Library number in the millions. The Secret Archives, separated from the main library in the 1600s, contain another 150,000 items.
Another of the oldest surviving libraries in Europe is the Bodleian Library, in Oxford, in what is now the United Kingdom. This library, named for noted collector Thomas Bodley, was officially established in 1602 and comprises five buildings, with the Tower of the Five Orders forming the main entrance. The library, which was started with Bodley's extensive collection, has grown in the centuries since, and now functions mainly as a reference library. (In other words, no books leave the premises.) It is the second-largest library in the U.K., behind the British Library.
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The Bodlien Library is also one of six legal deposit libraries for books published in the U.K., meaning that the Bodley can request a copy of any book the country publishes. This extends also to books published in Ireland.
One great European library that moved around a fair bit is the National Library of France. Now located on its own grounds in Paris, it began its life in the 14th Century as a royal collection in an adjunct to the Louvre and then bounced around to various locations before being taken over entirely by the population at large during the French Revolution, during which time it had more than 300,000 volumes. Napoleon encouraged additions to the Bibliotheque Nationale, as it was now called, and the size of the collection doubled in his lifetime. For many years, the Bibliotheque Nationale was the largest library in the world. Although it has now lost that title, the library now boasts more than 4 million volumes and 11,000 manuscripts.
The oldest American library began in 1638, with the bequeathing of a few hundred books by Massachusetts minister John Harvard, after whom the country's first university is named. Nearly a century later, Benjamin Franklin and others started the Library Company of Philadelphia, the nation's first subscription library, in 1731.
The Library of Congress opened in 1800, when the nation's capital moved from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C. The library grew sporadically during the next 14 years but was nearly destroyed during the War of 1812, when British soldiers set fire to the Capitol Building. Thomas Jefferson offered his personal library, 50 years of book-collecting, to make up what was lost. The Library of Congress began again, infused by Jefferson's nearly 6,500 books and grew steadily along with the country.
Librarian of Congress Ainsworth Spofford was responsible for a large amount of the Library's growth, including the 1870 copyright law that mandated two copies of all books from authors seeking copyright permission. The collection grew and grew and soon outgrew its housing. Congress gave permission and funds for a new building, and the current Library of Congress opened to the public on November 1, 1897. It is now the largest library in the world, housing more than 144 million materials in the areas of print, film, and sound recordings.
Libraries
The Word library comes from the Latin word ‘liber’, meaning ‘book’. This is a place where information in print (book, manuscripts, periodicals and musical scores) and in other forms is collected. Libraries can be found in many places. There are libraries in small towns and large cities and there are libraries at schools, universities, colleges. People go to the library to read, look, listen, search, inquire, relax, discuss, learn and think.
The largest and the best known libraries in the world are: the British National library in London, the Library of Congress in Washington and The Russian State Library. The British Library is the largest state library in Britain and is one of the finest libraries in the world. It is a rapidly growing modern research library with all
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its current publications. People who want to read for higher degrees and who are engaged in research in their spare time visit this library. Other library which is known throughout the world is the Library of Congress. It was established as a reference library in 1600 and gradually would come a world famous institution that now occupies three huge buildings.
A great number of items in collections of books, newspapers, periodicals, manuscripts, films, maps and works of drama, music, art and important and exciting documents from American history are kept in library’s archives. There are materials on practically every subject to which members of Congress can refer. And now I would tell you about Lenin State Library. The Lenin Library is the central library and is one of the world’s largest. The old library building was built in 1786 on a hill opposite the Kremlin by Vasily Bashenov and was a typical example of a Moscow town residence of that time. Its new buildings were built in 1940. When the library was founded in 1961, it contained over 1000.000 volumes, and was then located in the old Pashkov part of the complex. In 1915 its one reading room had a sitting capacity of only 170. Now it has 23 reading rooms of 2500 seating capacities and a book fund of 27 millions. There a wide choice of books: fiction, non-fiction, serious books, detective stories, science fiction, biographic, history and encyclopedias which are extremely useful in work, because it gives information about every branch of knowledge. Of cource there is a catalogue of books.
The titles and authors of all the books in the library can be found in a card catalogue or a computer listing. Each card in catalogue gives very helpful information about the book; the title send the author, the time and place of publication and the even something about it contents. The library is used daily by around 10000 people. Most librarians have a professionally staff whose first duty is to help you.
Librarians also select books and other materials, organize materials so that you can easily use them, answer questions about facts, people, events, or advise you how to find the information you need. The library today is a centre for all kinds of communications: printed, pictured, recorded and even electronically stored.
Russian State Library
The Russian State Library is the national library of Russia, located in Moscow. It is the largest in the country and the fourth largest in the world for its collection of books (17.5 million).[2] It was named the V. I. Lenin State Library of the USSR from 1925 until it was renamed in 1992 as the Russian State Library.
The library has over 275 km of shelves with more than 43 million items, including over 17 million books and serial volumes, 13 million journals, 350 thousand music scores and sound records, 150,000 maps and others. There are items in 247 languages of the world, the foreign part representing about 29 percent of the entire collection.
Between 1922 and 1991 at least one copy of every book published in the USSR was deposited with the library, a practice which continues in a similar
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method today, with the library designated by law as a place to hold a "mandatory" copy of every publication issued in Russia.
History
The library was founded on July 1, 1862, as Moscow's first free public library named The Library of the Moscow Public Museum and Rumiantsev Museum, or The Rumiantsev Library. The Rumyantsev Museum part of the complex was Moscow's first public museum, and housed the Art collection of count Nikolai Petrovich Rumyantsev, which had been given to the Russian people and transferred from St. Petersburg to Moscow. Its donation covered above all books and manuscripts as well as an extensive numismatic and an ethnographic collection. These, as well as approximately 200 paintings and more than 20,000 prints, which had been selected from the collection of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, could be seen in the so-called Pashkov House (a palace, established between 1784 and 1787, in the proximity of the Kremlin). Tsar Alexander II of Russia donated the painting The Appearance of Christ before the People by Alexander Andreyevich Ivanov for the opening of the museum.
19th century postcard of Pashkov House, old building of the Russian State Library, overlooking the Kremlin
New building of the library, view of the front entrance in 2007 (in front is the monument to Dostoevsky)
The citizens of Moscow, deeply impressed by the count's altruistic donation, named the new museum after its founder and had the inscription "from count Rumyantsev for the good Enlightenment" carved above its entrance. In the subsequent years, the collection of the museum grew by numerous further donations of objects and money, so that the museum soon housed a yet more important collection of Western European paintings, an extensive antique collection and a large collection of icons. Indeed, the collection grew so much that soon the premises of the Pashkov House became insufficient, and a second building was built beside the museum shortly after the turn of the 20th century to house the paintings in particular. After the October Revolution the contents again grew enormously, and again lack of space became an urgent problem. Acute financial problems also arose, for most of the money to finance the Museum flowed into the Pushkin Museum, which had only been finished a few years before and was assuming the Rumyantsev Museum's role. Therefore it was decided in 1925 to dissolve the Rumyantsev Museum and to spread its collections over other museums and institutions in the country. Part of the collections, in particular the Western European art and antiques, were thus transferred to the Pushkin Museum. Pashkov House (at 3 Mokhovaya Street) was renamed the Old Building of the Russian State Library. The old state archive building on the corner of Mokhovaya and Vozdvizhenka Streets was razed and replaced by the new buildings.
Construction of the first stage, designed by Vladimir Shchuko and Vladimir Gelfreikh in 1927-1929, was authorized in 1929 and commenced in 1930. The first stage was largely complete in 1941. In the process, the building acquired the modernized neoclassicism exterior features of the Palace of Soviets (co-designed by Shchuko and Gelfreikh), departing from the stern modernism of the 1927 drafts.
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The last component of Shchuko's plan, a 250-seat reading hall, was opened in 1945; further additions continued until 1960. In 1968 the building reached its capacity, and the library launched construction of a new depository in Khimki, earmarked for storing newspapers, scientific works and low-demand books from the main storage areas. The first stage of Khimki library was complete in 1975.
In 1925 the complex was renamed the V. I. Lenin State Library of the USSR, and remained so until 1992 when it was given its present name.
National Library of Russia
The National Library of Russia in St Petersburg (known as the Imperial Public Library from 1795 to 1917; Russian Public Library from 1917 to 1925; State Public Library from 1925 to 1992 (since 1932 named after M.SaltykovShchedrin); NLR), is not only the oldest public library in the nation, but also the first national library in the country. The NLR is currently ranked among the world’s major libraries. It has the second richest library collection in the Russian Federation, a treasury of national heritage, and is the All-Russian Information, Research and Cultural Center. Over the course of its history, the Library has aimed for comprehensive acquisition of the national printed output and has provided free access to its collections. It should not be confused with the Russian State Library, located in Moscow.
History.
The Imperial Public Library was established in 1795 by Catherine the Great, whose private collections included the domestic libraries of Voltaire and Diderot, which she had purchased from their heirs. Voltaire's personal library is still one of the highlights of the collection.
The idea of a public library in Russia emerged in the early 18th century but did not take shape until the arrival of the Russian Enlightenment. The plan of a Russian public library was submitted to Catherine in 1766 but the Empress did not approve the project for the imperial library until 27 May [O.S. 16 May] 1795, eighteen months before her death. A site for the building was found at the corner of Nevsky Avenue and Sadovaya Street, right in the center of the Russian Imperial capital. The construction work began immediately and lasted for almost fifteen years. The building was designed in a Neoclassical style by architect Yegor Sokolov (built between 1796–1801).
The cornerstone of the foreign-language department came from the Polish-
Lithuanian Commonwealth in the form of Załuski's Library (420,000 volumes), nationalized by the Russian government at the time of the partitions The Polishlanguage books from the library (numbering some 55,000 titles) were returned to Poland by the Russian SFSR in 1921.
For five years after its foundation, the library was run by Comte Marie- Gabriel-Florent-Auguste de Choiseul-Gouffier. The stocks were arranged according to a specially compiled manual of library classification. In 1810,
Emperor Alexander I approved Russia’s first library law stipulating, among other
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