This Day In Writing History
On February 1st, 1814, The Corsair, the classic epic poem by the legendary English poet Lord Byron, was published. The poem, a three-canto drama in verse, told the story of pirate Captain Conrad's attempt to rescue the damsel Gulnare from sexual slavery in the harem of the evil Turk, Pacha Sayed.
The noble Conrad is the quintessential Byronic hero. He will not stoop to Sayed's level and murder him, even to save himself. Gulnare is the quintessential Byronic heroine; a passive victim at first, she undergoes a proto-feminist transformation and becomes a vengeful murderess, losing her feminine soul to achieve masculine superiority - which endears her to Conrad, whose masculinity is subverted by Gulnare's transformation.
The shifting masculine and feminine personalities of his hero and heroine no doubt reflected Byron's frustration with and disdain for the narrow minded culture of early 19th century England, which demanded that he control his natural impulses and subscribe to a strictly defined masculine persona. Byron was openly bisexual; though he preferred women, he also had affairs with male paramours.
The Corsair was first published in an initial press run of 10,000 copies. It sold out on the first day. Byron was living at Newstead Abbey, his ancestral home in Nottinghamshire, when his publisher came to deliver the news. Soon, Byron would sell the Abbey and travel throughout Europe, as debt and scandal would drive him out of England.
The unhappily married Byron had engaged in several torrid affairs with married women, including novelist Lady Caroline Lamb. He also supposedly had an affair with his own half-sister, Augusta Leigh, who allegedly became pregnant with his child.
Although Byron's supposed affair with his half-sister is debatable, he did have an affair with Lady Caroline Lamb, who famously described him as "mad, bad and dangerous to know." For Lamb to call Byron mad was ironic, considering that she herself went mad after Byron broke off their affair.
She wouldn't take no for an answer. She sent him a lock of her pubic hair, (in return, he sent her a lock of his new mistress' hair) disguised herself as a page boy to get into his home, and held a public bonfire where she burned Byron's letters along with his effigy while children danced about the flames. To get his attention at a party, she slashed her arms.
Lord Byron died of blood poisoning after falling ill while involved in the Greek rebel army's fight for independence from the Ottoman Empire. He was 36 years old. To this day, he is considered a national hero in Greece, and his classic poem The Corsair remains hugely influential on English poetic voice. You can read the complete text of the poem here.
The Corsair would later be adapted as Il Corsaro, an opera by legendary composer Giuseppe Verdi and as a ballet by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges and Marius Petipa.
Quote Of The Day
"If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad." - Lord Byron
Vanguard Video
Today's video features a clip from Il Corsaro, Verdi's opera adaptation of Lord Byron's classic poem, The Corsair. Enjoy!
This Day In Writing History
On January 31st, 1923, the legendary American writer Norman Mailer was born in New York City. He enrolled at Harvard University in 1939 (at the age of 16) to study aeronautical engineering. During his freshman year, his first short story was published.
After Mailer graduated in 1943, he was drafted into the U.S. Army, where he served as a cook for the 112th Cavalry in the Philippines. Though he wouldn't see much combat during World War 2, his experience in the Army would inspire him to write his classic debut novel.
The Naked and the Dead (1948), set during an Allied invasion of a fictional island in the South Pacific, was a breakthrough novel that painted an incredibly realistic, warts-and-all portrait of American soldiers at war. Not only were the horrors of war graphically depicted, so was the language of the men fighting it.
Mailer's original draft was peppered with numerous uses of the word fuck and its variants. Fearing legal repercussions, his publisher demanded that he censor the manuscript. Rather than cut out the word, Mailer famously substituted the word fug instead. It sounded exactly like the obscenity, though it wasn't an obscene word.
With his fourth novel, An American Dream (1964), Mailer paid tribute to the legendary writers of the past by publishing it first in a serialized format, over an eight month period, in Esquire magazine.
Featuring a poetic narrative rich in metaphor, the novel told the story of Stephen Rojack, a war hero and ex-congressman turned sensationalist talk show host. Estranged from his wife, a society woman, Rojack ends up murdering her in a drunken rage. He makes the crime appear to be a suicide.
From there, Rojack descends into a sleazy, surreal world of jazz clubs and bars, and gets mixed up in mafia intrigue while trying to avoid the suspicion that's closing in on him. He also begins to lose his mind. This nightmare is a metaphor for the so-called American dream.
An American Dream was famously blasted by feminist critic Kate Millett in her famous book Sexual Politics (1970), a groundbreaking study of the treatment of women in literature. Not only did she accuse Norman Mailer of misogyny, she leveled the same charge against Henry Miller and D.H. Lawrence. Millett's book received mixed reviews.
Another of Mailer's memorable novels was The Executioner's Song (1979), a novelization of the true story of Gary Gilmore, the first man executed after a conservative Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.
Gary Gilmore was a career criminal who robbed and murdered two people in two separate incidents on the same night in July of 1976. Convicted of both murders, Gilmore, who was 35 years old, declared to the court that he wanted to be executed rather than spend the rest of his life in prison.
Gilmore was sentenced to death, but the legal process entitled him to appeal the sentence as well as his conviction. When his court-appointed attorneys began working on an appeal, Gilmore fought them for his right to be executed. The attorneys continued to defy their client.
Gilmore would get his wish. Though his attorneys had won three stays of execution for him, their appeals were ultimately denied. Gary Gilmore was executed by firing squad in January of 1977. The Executioner's Song would win Norman Mailer a Pulitzer Prize.
In 1991, after not publishing a novel in seven years, Mailer returned in style with Harlot's Ghost, a whopping 1,300+ page epic. In it, senior CIA agent Harry Hubbard learns that his mentor, agent Hugh Montague, code named Harlot, is dead. He either committed suicide or was assassinated. Hubbard's wife then tells him that she's in love with another man.
Emotionally drained, Hubbard goes to Russia, where he rereads the manuscript of his autobiography, tentatively titled The Game. It's an incredibly detailed account of Hubbard's life in the CIA, beginning at the end of World War 2. The manuscript ends in 1984, with the words "To be continued."
Although Harlot's Ghost received mixed reviews, some of Mailer's famous literary colleagues, including Salman Rushdie, Anthony Burgess, and Christopher Hitchens, declared it to be the best novel he'd written so far. He planned to write a sequel called Harlot's Grave, but other projects got in the way and he never wrote it.
Mailer's last novel, The Castle in the Forest, was published in 2007 - the year he died. It was based on the life of Adolf Hitler. In this novel, Dieter, a demon from Hell, is sent to guide the young Hitler on his path of destruction. Rather than being part Jewish, as historians believed, here Hitler is the product of incest.
In addition to his literary career, Norman Mailer was a political activist. He covered the Democratic and Republican political conventions of 1960, 1964, 1968, 1972, 1992, and 1996. His account of the 1996 Democratic convention was the only one not published.
In 1969, Mailer ran for Mayor of New York City. The legendary columnist Jimmy Breslin was his biggest supporter. He lost the election. Some say it was because his platform included advocating the secession of New York City from New York State. Others believe it was because he advocated the release of Huey Newton, the founder of the Black Panther Party.
In 2003, just before the invasion of Iraq, Mailer spoke at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. He said the following:
Fascism is more of a natural state than democracy. To assume blithely that we can export democracy into any country we choose can serve paradoxically to encourage more fascism at home and abroad. Democracy is a state of grace that is attained only by those countries who have a host of individuals not only ready to enjoy freedom but to undergo the heavy labor of maintaining it.
A vocal advocate for freedom of speech, Mailer was a key witness in the famous 1965 censorship trial of William S. Burroughs' classic novel, Naked Lunch (1959), which had been banned in Boston. The ban would be reversed by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Mailer described Burroughs as “the only American novelist living today who may conceivably be possessed by genius.”
Norman Mailer died of kidney failure in November of 2007. He was 84 years old.
Quote Of The Day
"Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing." - Norman Mailer
Vanguard Video
Today's video features a reading from Norman Mailer's last novel, The Castle in the Forest. Enjoy!
I'm proud to present below our latest batch of Internet Writing Workshop members who found publishing success this past week. Congratulations to all of you!
Every wonder what makes Rick tick? How the book sales are really going? How many decades it took to write his first novel? Check out the interview up on the Indie Writing blog. Working hard to make the Chatham County Best-Sellers list. I mean, really, how many books can be coming out of Chatham County in a year. I have to be in the top 100 by now. Can't I be? Maybe? Confidence ebbs, opossum in yard shakes head in disgust as he eats more of Rick's bird seed in front of Rick.
Got an email in this morning's mail notifying me Deadly Valentine is now available from allromanceebooks.com and it's also up at Amazon. You can see the cover there.
The editor of the River Journal plans to announce my online editions of "Behind These Mountains," vol. 1, 2 & 3. Trish Gannon, the editor wrote, "...Mona I had no idea you had put the books online - what a wonderful resource! I'll have to put something in the River Journal about it. You should also upload your files via Amazon's create space or something like it, so that those who might want a hard copy of the book can buy one. (Like me - I wish I knew who I had loaned my books to, so I could get them back.)
Yes! I replied with a press release, and then sent PR to a few MT newspapers, and to Libby, MT. School Supt. I need to find time to do promotion.
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Elaine Moore
My story, "Oceans Apart," is the featured story today at Daily Love.
~~~
Eric Petersen
My latest book review - a review of the gangster novel Narrows Gate by Jim Fusilli - has been published by the Internet Review of Books.
My short story, "Rites of Passage," is now published in the anthology The Killer App and Other Paranormal Stories (Penguin India). The book is available on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Book depository UK and elsewhere.
My special thanks to Mithran Somasundram and Mira Desai for their valuable feedback.
Prepared by: Charles Hightower Posted on: 29 January 2012
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In 400 words or less, open a scene with a character who receives an alarming message. Something apparently has happened, is happening, or is about to happen. Show what follows when the recipient is unable to quickly clarify the situation or to fully participate in its outcome. Your goal is to produce a character in distress; help us to feel the mounting tension.
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In the past one received a message by letter, telegram, carrier pigeon, or even a note placed in a prominent place. Now we have answering machines and voicemail, e-mail, and text messaging. But all of these are one-way communications. If the initial information is incomplete or confusing, the recipient may not be able to learn more without the sender's cooperation.
How would an individual react to an e-mail message from a family member in the military, on deployment, saying, "Not badly hurt. More later." Or a whispered voicemail saying, "Holdup, Bank of America." Or, in a note left on the kitchen table from wife to husband, "Derek in trouble." Or a text message, "Man following me." Or an answering machine message, "I have your daughter." How would the character behave when attempts to reestablish communications fail?
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In 400 words or less, open a scene with a character who receives an alarming message. Something apparently has happened, is happening, or is about to happen. Show what follows when the recipient is unable to quickly clarify the situation or to fully participate in its outcome. Your goal is to produce a character in distress; help us to feel the mounting tension.
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Critique: Did the opening of the scene capture your attention? Would you read on? If not, why? Were the characters and/or the situation believable? Could you feel the character's emotions?
These exercises were written by IWW members and administrators to provide structured practice opportunities for its members. You are welcome to use them for practice as well. Please mention that you found them at the Internet Writing Workshop.
This Day In Writing History
On January 27th, 1832, the legendary British children's book writer Lewis Carroll was born. He was born Charles Dodgson IV in Daresbury, Cheshire, England. His father was a fiercely conservative clergyman in the Anglican Church. Young Charles, however, did not share his father's conservatism or his extreme devotion to the Anglican Church.
Charles Dodgson received his early education at home. He was a precocious, intellectually gifted child and a voracious reader. He was also sickly. A fever left him deaf in one ear, and he suffered from a stammer, which would result in the extreme shyness that plagued him all his life.
As a teenager, he would contract a severe case of whooping cough that left him with a weak respiratory system. He also suffered from a condition that matched the description of temporal lobe epilepsy.
In 1844, at the age of twelve, Charles Dodgson began his formal schooling at a small private school in Richmond, North Yorkshire. He loved that school, but when he moved on to Rugby School in Rugby, Warwickshire two years later, he came to hate the place.
R.B. Mayor, his mathematics master, recognized Dodgson's genius for arithmetic. Though he disliked Rugby School, he maintained his academic prowess and was an excellent student as always.
Dodgson enrolled in his father's alma mater, Christ Church, Oxford, in January of 1851. He was at university for only two days when he was summoned to return home. His mother had died at the age of 47 from "inflammation of the brain," a common euphemism for conditions such as meningitis and stroke.
He later returned to university, where his talent as a mathematician won him a Mathematical Lectureship at Christ Church, and he would teach there for the next 26 years. Teaching bored him, but the pay was good.
Charles Dodgson had begun writing poetry and short stories as a young boy. He would publish them in Mischmasch, a magazine created by the Dodgson family for their own amusement. Later, between 1854 and 1856, his works would appear in both national magazines and smaller publications in the UK.
Most of these works were humorous and satirical in nature. Too shy to use his own name, Dodgson wrote under his soon-to-be-famous pseudonym, Lewis Carroll, which was a clever play on his own name; Carroll is an Irish surname similar to the Latin word Carolus, from which the name Charles comes.
In 1856, Dodgson published the first work to make him famous, a romantic poem titled Solitude. That same year, a new Dean arrived at Christ Church with his family. His name was Henry Liddell. He and his wife had four children: Harry, Lorina, Edith, and Alice.
Dodgson became a close friend of the Liddell family. He would take the children on rowing trips to Nuneham Courtenay and Godstow. Of the four Liddell children, Dodgson was closest to Alice and would spend a lot of time with her.
On July 4th, 1862, during a rowing trip with Alice, Dodgson told her a story he was thinking about turning into a children's book. It was about a little girl (named after Alice) who falls through a rabbit hole and finds herself in a strange and magical world. Alice loved the story and begged him to write the book. So he did.
A year later, he took his unfinished manuscript for Alice's Adventures Under Ground to a publisher named Macmillan for appraisal. He liked it immediately. In 1864, Dodgson presented Alice Liddell with his completed manuscript.
When the book was being prepared for publication, several other titles were considered, including Alice Among The Fairies and Alice's Golden Hour. The book was published in 1865 as Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, later shortened to Alice In Wonderland.
It was a huge critical and commercial success, beloved by both children and adults. It made the name Lewis Carroll world famous. It also made the author a lot of money, but he still kept the teaching job he disliked.
Dodgson published a sequel, Through The Looking Glass and What Alice Found There in 1871, though the title page erroneously states that the book was published in 1872. Through The Looking Glass was a darker tale than the original, which no doubt reflected (no pun intended) the author's struggle with depression following the death of his father in 1868.
Dodgson would publish several other children's books, including Sylvie And Bruno and The Hunting Of The Snark, a dazzling, epic "nonsense poem." He also wrote over a dozen mathematics textbooks.
When he wasn't writing or teaching, Dodgson explored his interest in photography and became a renowned photographer. Ironically, it was his photography, not his writing, that gained him entrance into high society.
He would photograph many notable people, including legendary poet Alfred Lord Tennyson. When he retired as a photographer in 1880, Dodgson had taken over 3,000 photographs, but less than 1,000 of these images have survived.
In late 1897, Charles Dodgson contracted a bad case of the flu that turned into pneumonia. His weak respiratory system never recovered, and he died at his sister's home on January 14th, 1898 - two weeks before his 66th birthday.
Years later, several different biographers would speculate that Dodgson was a pedophile. He never married, he preferred the company of children to adults - especially little girls - and as a photographer, he had taken many nude photographs of young girls, including Alice Liddell.
A group of scholars, including French academic Hugues Lebailly and biographer Karoline Leach, sought to debunk what they called the "Carroll Myth." Leach wrote a biography called In the Shadow of the Dreamchild, where she explained how the Carroll Myth came to be.
In her book, Leach argues that the myth of Dodgson's pedophilia arose from a misunderstanding of Victorian morality and aesthetics. In Victorian England, images of nude children were not only common but considered artistic representations of beauty and innocence, devoid of eroticism. Child nudes even appeared on Christmas cards.
Leach goes on to say that Dodgson's diaries showed that he was interested in adult women and had relationships with them that were considered scandalous by Victorian standards. Some biographers had claimed that Dodgson's falling out with the Liddell family happened because he wanted to marry the then 11-year-old Alice.
Leach claimed that the falling out happened because Henry Liddell discovered that Dodgson was having an affair with either oldest daughter Lorina or the family's nanny, both of whom were grown women.
Of the 13 diaries that Dodgson kept throughout his life, four are missing. Leach believes that they were destroyed by Dodgson's family to protect his name because they chronicled his sexual relationships with unmarried women - not little girls.
Charles Dodgson's love for children came from the extreme shyness brought on by his speech impediment. He was more comfortable around children because they weren't bothered by the stammer he was so self-conscious of.
Karoline Leach's biography of Dodgson is, like the writer's sexuality, still hotly debated. Some say that In the Shadow of the Dreamchild is a long overdue repudiation of the besmirching of Dodgson's name, while others accuse Leach and the academics who support her of historical revisionism.
Dodgson's classic novel, Alice In Wonderland, still beloved by readers of all ages and popular with literary scholars, has been adapted numerous times for the stage, screen, radio, and television.
The latest feature film adaptation was released in March of 2010. Directed by Tim Burton, the movie featured Mia Wasikowska as Alice, Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen, Anne Hathaway as the White Queen, Stephen Fry as the Cheshire Cat, Alan Rickman as the Caterpillar, and Christopher Lee as the Jabberwock.
Quote Of The Day
"Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle." - Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson)
Vanguard Video
Today's video features the theatrical trailer for the new 2010 feature film adaptation of Lewis Carroll's classic children's novel, Alice In Wonderland. Enjoy!
This Day In Writing History
On January 26th, 1831, the famous American children's book writer Mary Mapes Dodge was born in New York City. As a young girl, Mary was well educated by private tutors, as her father, James Jay Mapes, was an affluent professor.
In 1851, at the age of twenty, Mary wed her boyfriend, a young lawyer named William Dodge. She bore him two sons, James and Harrington. Then, in 1858, facing serious financial trouble, Mary's husband abandoned the family. He was found dead in an apparent drowning a month later.
Left a poor widow at 27, Mary Mapes Dodge went to work to support herself and her children. Working with her father, she wrote for, edited, and published two magazines - The Working Farmer and The United States Journal. A few years later, in 1864, her first book was published.
The Irvington Stories was a collection of children's stories about life in colonial times. The book was so successful that Mary's publisher asked her to write another one.
This time, she wrote a novel set in the Netherlands in the early 19th century. Her colorful portrait of Dutch life, which introduced a famous Dutch folk tale to American children, became an instant bestseller and brought Mary international fame.
Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates (1865) was inspired by historian John L. Motley's multi-volume works The Rise of the Dutch Republic and The History of the United Netherlands, which Mary Mapes Dodge had read and greatly enjoyed.
Hans Brinker is a fifteen-year-old Dutch boy who, along with his younger sister Gretel, hopes to win the big speed skating race on the canal, though all they have are handmade wooden ice skates. The grand prize for winning the race is a new pair of silver skates.
Hans and Gretel's father cannot work because he is ill and suffering from amnesia after falling from a dike. So, Mrs. Brinker and her children must work to support the family. The Brinkers are looked down on in their community because they're poor.
Hans and Gretel learn that a famous surgeon named Dr. Boekman may be able to cure their ailing father. Unfortunately, Dr. Boekman is expensive and has become gruff and hardhearted since he lost his wife and son.
When Dr. Boekman finally agrees to examine Hans Brinker's father, the diagnosis is pressure on the brain, which can be cured with a risky and expensive operation that involves trephining.
To help pay for the operation, Hans offers Dr. Boekman the money he's been saving to buy steel skates for the big race. Touched by this gesture, the doctor agrees to perform the surgery for free.
Able to buy good skates, Hans enters the big race, but then lets a friend (who needs the silver skates more than he does) win instead. Meanwhile, Mr. Brinker's operation is successful, and his health and memory are restored.
The experience changes Dr. Boekman, who loses his gruffness and hardhearted nature. Later, he helps Hans Brinker get into medical school, and Hans becomes a successful doctor.
The novel included the famous Dutch folk tale about the heroic little Dutch boy who stuck his finger in a dike to plug a leak. It was the first book to introduce this Dutch folk tale to American readers. It also introduced Americans to the sport of speed skating.
After the success of Hans Brinker, Mary Mapes Dodge would visit the Netherlands for the first time. She would write more children's books, including novels and children's poetry collections.
She would continue her career as an editor as well. She became an associate editor of Hearth and Home, the literary magazine edited by Harriet Beecher Stowe, the legendary abolitionist and author of the classic novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin.
In 1873, Scribner's asked Mary to become the editor-in-chief of their new children's magazine, St. Nicholas Magazine. Under Mary's direction, it became the most famous and highly regarded children's publication of its time - an innovative and progressive literary and art magazine for children that contained no heavy-handed moralizing.
St. Nicholas Magazine would feature the writings and illustrations of the best contemporary authors and artists. The magazine's first hit was a serialized version of Frances Hodgson Burnett's classic novel, Little Lord Fauntleroy.
Louisa May Alcott's Jo's Boys, Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, and the works of Mark Twain and Robert Louis Stevenson would also be published in serialized form by the magazine, which would remain in publication for almost 70 years.
Mary Mapes Dodge died in 1905 at the age of 74.
Quote Of The Day
"What a dreadful thing it must be to have a dull father." - Mary Mapes Dodge
Vanguard Video
Today's video features a clip from the classic 1969 TV movie adaptation of Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates. Enjoy!
This Day in Writing History
On January 25th, 1759, the legendary Scottish poet and lyricist Robert Burns was born in Alloway, South Ayreshire, Scotland. He was the oldest of seven children. Robbie, as he liked to be called, was born in a house that his father built. His father, William, was a tenant farmer.
When Robbie was seven years old, his father sold his small house (it would later become the Burns Cottage Museum) and moved the family to the 70-acre Mt. Oliphant tenant farm Southeast of Alloway.
As a young tenant farmer, Robbie Burns grew up in an atmosphere of grinding poverty and grueling labor. Young Robbie's labors would leave him with a premature stoop and frail health that would ultimately and tragically cut his life short.
He and his siblings received little formal schooling. They were taught reading, writing, arithmetic, and other subjects by their father, who also wrote a textbook for them called A Manual of Christian Belief.
Robbie Burns and his brother Gilbert attended some local schools, including a new "adventure school" founded by John Murdoch, who taught his students French and Latin in addition to English grammar and other subjects.
For the Burns siblings and other children of tenant farmers, harvest time meant leaving school and returning to full-time farming.
By the age of 15, Robbie Burns practically managed the farm himself. He was assisted by Nellie Kilpatrick, a girl his age with whom he fell in love. She inspired him to write his first poem, O, Once I Lov'd A Bonnie Lass.
Three years later, in 1777, disgusted by the poor working and living conditions at the Mt. Oliphant farm, Burns' father William moved the family to another tenant farm, this one in Lochlea near Tarbolton, where the family would stay until William died in 1784.
Robbie Burns found the conditions at the Lochlea farm better than Mt. Oliphant, though not exactly ideal. Against his father's wishes, he joined a country dancing school. He and his brother Gilbert founded the Tarbolton Bachelor's Club.
In October of 1781, Robbie was initiated into the St. David Tarbolton Masonic Lodge. When this particular lodge became inactive, Burns joined another one. He would remain an active Mason throughout his life, helping to run his Lodge.
He would attain the rank of Depute Master, and in 1787 at the Lodge St. Andrew in Edinburgh, he would be toasted by the Grand Master, Francis Chateris, and named Poet Laureate - a title still honored by the Masons today.
In the summer of 1784, Robbie Burns became acquainted with a group of girls who called themselves The Belles of Mauchline. One member of the group was Jean Armour, the daughter of a fellow Mason. Robbie fell in love with her.
While they were courting, Elizabeth Paton, his mother's servant girl, gave birth to his illegitimate daughter. Within the next couple of years, Jean would become pregnant with Robbie's twin son and daughter. At this time, Robbie was also dating a girl named Mary Campbell.
Robbie wanted to marry Jean Armour, but her furious father forbade her from marrying him and sent her to stay with her uncle. Realizing that he was really in no financial position to marry Jean, Robbie accepted an offer to work in Jamaica as the bookkeeper for a slave plantation.
He loathed slavery, (and later wrote a poem called The Slave's Lament) but he was desperate. Unfortunately, he couldn't afford passage on a ship to Jamaica. So, taking a friend's advice, to earn the money, he decided to publish a collection of his poems.
On April 3rd, 1786, Robert Burns submitted proposals to John Wilson, a printer in Kilmarnock, to publish his collection, Scotch Poems. The volume appeared three months later as Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect.
It was an accurate title, as Burns wrote poetry in a Gaelic dialect, in English, and in a combination of both languages. The book was an overnight sensation, and soon, Burns was famous throughout Scotland.
Robbie earned enough money to pay for his trip to Jamaica, scheduled for September 1st, but he postponed it when he learned that Jean Armour had given birth to his twin children. Two months later, he borrowed a horse and rode to Edinburgh, hoping get his poetry collection published there.
It was accepted by publisher William Creech, who published it in a serialized format sold to subscribers. In Edinburgh, Burns found himself embraced by the city's literati and men of letters, who invited him to their gatherings. He also met the then 16-year-old Sir Walter Scott, who described him this way:
His person was strong and robust; his manners rustic, not clownish, a sort of dignified plainness and simplicity which received part of its effect perhaps from knowledge of his extraordinary talents. His features are presented in Mr Nasmyth's picture but to me it conveys the idea that they are diminished, as if seen in perspective.
I think his countenance was more massive than it looks in any of the portraits ... there was a strong expression of shrewdness in all his lineaments; the eye alone, I think, indicated the poetical character and temperament. It was large, and of a dark cast, and literally glowed when he spoke with feeling or interest. I never saw such another eye in a human head, though I have seen the most distinguished men of my time.
By February of 1788, Robbie Burns, now a famous poet, was finally reunited with Jean Armour and his twin children. Her father relented and allowed them to marry. Robbie leased a farm near Dumfries and gave it a go.
He also worked for the Customs and Excise Department. Two years later, he gave up farming, wrote some of his best poetry, and embarked on a project to collect and preserve Scottish folk songs. He also wrote lyrics for Scottish folk melodies.
Unfortunately, Robert Burns' early life as a tenant farmer and its grueling labors had taken a toll on his health. It is believed that he suffered from a rheumatic heart condition that was aggravated by his drinking and, possibly, by an infected tooth that was extracted several months before his death.
He died in July of 1796 at the age of 37. To this day, Robert Burns remains Scotland's most famous poet, and every New Year's Eve, people around the world sing his classic song, Auld Lang Syne. In 2009, the Royal Mint issued a commemorative two pound coin featuring a quote from the lyrics.
Quote Of The Day
"My way is: I consider the poetic sentiment, correspondent to my idea of the musical expression, then chuse my theme, begin one stanza, when that is composed - which is generally the most difficult part of the business - I walk out, sit down now and then, look out for objects in nature around me that are in unison or harmony with the cogitations of my fancy and workings of my bosom, humming every now and then the air with the verses I have framed. when I feel my Muse beginning to jade, I retire to the solitary fireside of my study, and there commit my effusions to paper, swinging, at intervals, on the hind-legs of my elbow chair, by way of calling forth my own critical strictures, as my pen goes." - Robert Burns
Vanguard Video
Today's video features Scottish singer-songwriter Eddi Reader performing Robert Burns' classic song, My Love Is Like a Red, Red Rose, from her 2003 album, Sings the Songs of Robert Burns. Enjoy!
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