Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) was an American Poet. At the time of his death Longfellow was regarded both at home and abroad as the greatest American poet. His reputation in England rivaled that of Tennyson. His translations from German, Italian and Scandinavian had much the directness and sincerity of his own verse, and attracted many American readers.

When critical taste turned toward a sterner brand of realism, Longfellow’s faults were noticed more than his very solid virtues. He has been called “The poet of the Commonplace,” but he had the gift of illuminating the ordinary and surrounding it with music. The simplicity that endears him to children and many adults often is interpreted as triteness or mediocrity. Nevertheless, Longfellow has earned a permanent place as a skilled lyricist of pure, sweet and gentle tone. Longfellow’s mastery of the ballad form and his proficiency with the sonnet are generally acknowledged.

A tragedy occurred in 1861 that shadowed the remaining years of his life. While his wife was melting sealing wax, a match set fire to her dress and she was burned to death in spite of Longfellow’s efforts to save her. He was seriously burned. Though the poet’s fame continued to grow, the peak of Longfellow’s creative life had passed. His translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy (1867), to which he turned for solace after his wife’s death, was competent but too literal to possess the musical quality Longfellow ordinarily summoned.

At the 50th anniversary of the graduation of his class at Bowdoin, Longfellow read a poem “Morituri Salutamus” (“We Who Are About to Die Salute Thee). After being stricken with dizziness in 1881, he died from an attack of peritonitis on March 24 of the following year. He was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery.

A poem he wrote was "The Secret of the Sea" and in it the following verses appear.

Ah! what pleasant visions haunt me

As I gaze upon the sea!

All the old romantic legends,

All my dreams, come back to me.

Sails of silk and ropes of sandal,

Such as gleam in ancient lore;

And the singing of the sailors,

And the answer from the shore!

Most of all, the Spanish ballad

Haunts me oft, and tarries long,

Of the noble Count Arnaldos

And the sailor's mystic song.

Like the long waves on a sea-beach,

Where the sand as silver shines,

With a soft, monotonous cadence,

Flow its unrhymed lyric lines;--

Telling how the Count Arnaldos,

With his hawk upon his hand,

Saw a fair and stately galley,

Steering onward to the land;--

How he heard the ancient helmsman

Chant a song so wild and clear,

That the sailing sea-bird slowly

Poised upon the mast to hear,

Till his soul was full of longing,

And he cried, with impulse strong,--

'Helmsman! for the love of heaven,

Teach me, too, that wondrous song!'

'Wouldst thou,'--so the helmsman answered,

'Learn the secret of the sea?

Only those who brave its dangers

Comprehend its mystery!'

In each sail that skims the horizon,

In each landward-blowing breeze,

I behold that stately galley,

Hear those mournful melodies;

Till my soul is full of longing

For the secret of the sea,

And the heart of the great ocean

Sends a thrilling pulse through me.

Oil pastel on paper

 

Factories at Sunset - Oil pastel on paper

 

The Jungle Path - Oil Pastel on paper

 

The Sea at Night - Abstract

 

The Tree - Oil Pastel on paper

 

Pen Drawing

 

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Cartoon

 

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Drawing 2

 

Pen Drawing

 

Edgar Allan Poe

 

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), was a United States short-story writer, poet, critic and editor. There has always been disagreement as to the quality of his work, and some of the events of his life. However, even those critics who do not consider him a great writer acknowledge his importance in the development of modern literature. Poe's most popular stories are those of horror, such as "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Black Cat, "and of detection , such as "The Gold Bug" and "The Murders in Rue Morgue." Among his well-known lyrical poems are the haunting "Ulalume," "The Raven," and "Annabel Lee," and the classically restrained "To Helen."

Poe was one of the most brilliant and independent 19th-century literary critics. His emphasis on artistic rather than morel values in literature greatly influenced modern literary theory and practice. His stressing of poetry's musical elements, and his use of evocative and symbolic language and imagery, contributed to the rise of the French Symbolist movement in poetry and, through it, to various 20th century trends in poetry.

Poe was the first to formulate rules for the short story, and the principles of brevity and unity that he advocated have influenced short-story writing on the present time. He is credited with inventing the modern detective story, and bringing the Gothic horror tale to a high level of development. He enriched both types of stories with psychological insight. Poe's preoccupation with madness, death and the supernatural, and his denial of the importance of morel values in literature, were bitterly criticized during his lifetime and for some years afterward. More valid from a literary standpoint was the objection - still made by many critics - that some of his works are too contrived.

Edgar Poe was born in Boston, second of the three children of Davis and Elizabeth Poe, travelling actors. When Edgar was two years old his mother died in Richmond, Virginia; their father had previously deserted the family. Egar was taken into the home of John Allan, a merchant, from whom the boy took his middle name. The Allan's lived in England from 1815 to 1820, where Edgar attended private schools. He later attended a Richmond academy.

Poe entered the University of Virginia in1826, but at the end of the year Allan withdrew him because Poe had run up large gambling debts. After a quarrel with his foster father Poe went to Bostan in 1827. There he published anonymously his first volume of poetry, Tamerlane and Other Poems. He enlisted in the army and served two years. In 1829 he published his second book of poems. The same year his foster mother died and Poe became briefly reconciled with his foster father, who got him an appointment tothe U.S. Military Academy in 1830. Poe cut classes and drills and was expelled from the Academy early in 1831. His break with Allan was final.

In 1831 Poe lived in New York City for a short while and published Poems. It contained many of his best poems, including "To Helen," "The City and the Sea," and "Israfel." Poe then went to live with his aunt Mrs. Maria Clemm in Baltimore. He turned to the writing of fiction and did not publish another book of poetry for 14 years. In 1833 he won a prize for the story "Manuscript Found in a Bottle."

Poe went back to Richmond in 1835 and joined the staff of the Sothern Literary Messenger, soon becoming its editor. Poe won wide attention for his critical reviews of the Messenger. In 1837 Poe moved to New York, but unable to find work there, moved again to Philadelphia, where he became editor of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine (1839-40). Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque was published in 1840 and favorably reviewed. Poe was literary editor of Graham's Magazine for a few months in 1841 and in it began to publish detective stories.

Poe won another prize with "The Gold Bug" (1843), which became his most popular story during his lifetime. He returned to New York and became assistant editor of the Mirror. Publication of The Raven and Other Poems in 1845 brought him increased fame. For a few months he was the owner of the Broadway Journal, but the periodical failed. Poe's wife died of tuberculosis in 1847, and he became depressed and ill. He became emotionally involved with two women and attempted suicide. During his last years, however, he wrote some of his best poems and critical essays. He also published Eureka (1848), a philosophical work.

Poe became engaged to a childhood sweet-heart in Richmond in 1849. He then went to Baltimore to bring his aunt back for the wedding. A few day later he was found fatally ill in a tavern in Baltimore. The legend that Poe was an opium addict and wastrel is contradicted by the facts of his predominantly quiet and hard-working life. He was an alcoholic, but his claim that he drank to alleviate periods of intense depression was partly upheld by physicians who examined him and said he had a brain lesion. In 1910 Poe was elected to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans

James Cook

 

Captain James Cook (1728-1779), was an English navigator. Captain Cook accurately charted vast regions of the south pacific; provided a basis for England's claim to Australia and New Zealand; and developed a diet that prevented scurvy among seamen. Born of farming parents in Yorkshire, Cook went to sea as a boy and joined the Royal Navy in1755. His seamanship and deligence soon gained recognition, and four years later he was made a master of a naval sloop. From 1763 to 1767 he explored the St. Lawrence River and the shores of Labrador and Newfoundland.

In 1768, with a group of scientists, Cook set out on his first expedition, sailing around Cape Horn. The immediate purpose was to observe the transit of the planet Venus from the vantage point of Tahiti. On his voyage, which continued till 1771, the party went on to explore the coast of New Zealand and to chart the eastern coast of Australia. As a result of this expedition, Cook was promoted to commander in the navy and was sent with two ships to determine whether there was a continent at the south extremity of the earth. Although they did not sight Antarctica, the explorers were the first to cross the Antarctic Circle. During this expedition of 1772-75, Cook sailed around the world far to the south, mapping the South Pacific and other southern latitudes much as they are known today. By providing the crews with sufficient vegetables, Cook proved that scurvy, a desease caused by lack of vitamin C, need no longer plague men on long voyages.

Cook was promoted as captain and on his third voyage of discovery, 1776-78, undertook a search for the Northwest Passage - a linking of the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans by way of Arctic regions. He approached from the Pacific side and discovered the Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands. Although he found no passage through the ice, Cook explored the northwest coast upto Bering Strait. After his return to Hawaii, he was killed by a native because of a misunderstanding over a missing boat. The journals of Cook and his associates are among the most entertaining accounts of discovery and scientific investigation.

The Jungle Path

 

Oil pastel

 

Drawing using the Paint Application (Windows)

 

Experimental drawing in notebook

 

Experimental drawing on a notebook

 

Drawing in the notebook

 

Drawing by me - mixed media - Acrylic on canvas + Oil pastel

 

Oil Pastel Drawing

 

Charles Schwab

 

Charles Schwab (1862-1939) was an American industrialist. Under his leadership, Bethlehem Steel became the second largest steel maker in the United States, and one of the most important heavy manufacturers in the world. Schwab, who received only a modest education, worked briefly as a grocery clerk before he took a job as a laborer in Andrew Carnegie's steelworks. He soon became the manager of the Thomson works.

In 1892 Andrew Carnegie appointed Schwab to heal the wounds between labor and management and get the Homestead plant back into production after the bloody strike there. So greatly did Schwab improve labour and community relations at Homestead while simultaneously increasing production efficiency through technological advances that in 1897—at the age of 35—Charles M. Schwab became president of the Carnegie Steel Company at an annual compensation in excess of $1,000,000.

In his bestselling book "How to Win Friends and Influence People," Dale Carnegie writes as follows: "One of the first people in American business to be paid a salary of over a million dollars a year was Charles Schwab. He had been picked by Andrew Carnegie to become the first president of the newly formed United States Steel Company in 1921, when Schwab was only thirty-eight years old. Why did Andrew Carnegie pay a million dollars a year to Charles Schwab? Why? Because Schwab was a genius? No. Because he knew more about the manufacture of steel than other people? Nonsense. Charles Schwab told me himself that he had many men working for him who knew more about the manufacture of steel than he did."

"Schwab says that he was paid this salary largely because of his ability to deal with people. I asked him how he did it. Here is his secret set down in his own words - words that children ought to memorize instead of wasting their time memorizing the conjugation of Latin verbs or the amount of the annual rainfall in Brazil - words that will all but transform your life and mine if we will only live them:

"I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people," said Schwab, "the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement. There is nothing else that so kills the ambitions of a person as criticism from superiors. I never criticize anyone. I believe in giving a person incentive to work. So I am anxious to praise but loath to find fault. If I like anything, I am hearty in my approbation and lavish in my praise."

Schwab eventually became very rich, but sadly for a human relations genius, he fell into bad days in the last decade of his life. Schwab became notorious for his "fast lane" lifestyle, which included opulent parties and high-stakes gambling. He built "Riverside", the most ambitious private house ever built in New York. Schwab also owned a 44-room summer estate on 1,000 acres in Loretto, Pennsylvania, called "Immergrün". Such unwise investments, and a lifestyle too lavish even for his enormous fortune, finally took their toll. The stock market crash of 1929 finished off what years of wanton spending had started. He could no longer afford the taxes on "Riverside," and it was seized by creditors. He had offered to sell the mansion at a huge loss but there were no buyers. At his death ten years later, Schwab's holdings in Bethlehem Steel were virtually worthless, and he was over US$300,000 in debt. He spent his last years in a small apartment.

Andrew Carnegie

 

Andrew Carnegie (1837-1919), was a United States industrialist and philanthropist who was the world's richest man during his time. After making a great fortune in the iron and steel industry, he distributed most of it in gifts and endowments for the good of mankind. Carnegie gave about $350,000,000 to build libraries, advance education and science, promote world peace, and to support other cultural and welfare work. He once said "no man can become rich without himself enriching others."

Andrew Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland. After his father, a weaver, lost his job, the family migrated in 1848 to Allegheny, Pennsylvania (now part of Pittsburgh). Young Carnegie, then a boy of 11, worked first in a cotton mill at $1.20 a week. When he was 14 he became a telegraph messenger boy. Two years later having taught himself to send and receive messages, he was made a telegraph operator at $4.00 a week. In 1853 Carnegie became a telegraph operator and secretary to Thomas A. Scott, superintendent of the Pittsburgh division of the Pennsylvania Railroad. During the next 12 years Carnegie advanced steadily until he succeeded Scott as superintendent of the Pittsburgh division. When Scott was named the assistant secretary of war, at the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, he took Carnegie to Washington with him to help direct military railways and telegraphs for the Union.

Carnegie returned to Pittsburgh and the Pennsylvania Railroad before the end of the war. Already he had begun the investments that were to be the basis of his immense fortune. In the 1850's he had bought stock in the first company to make sleeping cars. Before the Civil War was over, Carnegie was reaping dividends from an oil land investment in Pennsylvania. Realizing that iron and steel would play an ever greater part in the American economy, Carnegie resigned from the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1865 to give all his energy to this new industry. He had already helped to found the Keystone Bridge Company, and had organized the Superior Rail Mill and Blast Furnaces (1863-64) . Now he established the Union Iron Mills.

On a visit to Great Britain Carnegie noticed that the British were using steel rather than iron for rails. He introduced the Bessemer process into his mills in 1868, and was thus able to compete with British steel manufactures- then the worlds leaders. In 1873 he established the J. Edgar Thomson Steel Mills, and within 16 years United States production overtook the British output. In 1899 he merged all his holdings into one organization, the Carnegie Steel Company. By 1900 it was producing a fourth of the country's steel.

Wishing to retire, Carnegie in 1901 sold his company to the newly formed United States Steel Corporation, headed by J. Pierpont Morgan and Elbert Henry Gary. For his share Carnegie received $250,000,000 in 5 per cent 50-year gold bonds. Now Carnegie could give more time to his major interests - reading, writing, friends, travel, and spending his money for public purposes. In 1889 he had written in an essay, "The Gospel of Wealth," that a rich man was merely a "trustee" of his fortune - that it was his duty to distribute it for "for the improvement of mankind."

The rest of his life Carnegie spent in putting his conviction into practice. His first act, in 1901, was to give the employees of the Carnegie Company $5,000,000 in the form of a pension and benefit fund. He gave a library to his native town, Dumfermline. He followed this by giving a public library and hall to Allegheny City, his first home in the United States. Later he gave many millions of dollars for libraries. He built Peace Palace at The Hague in the Netherlands, the Pan-American Union building in Washington, D. C., and Carnegie Hall in New York. He contributed to Scottish universities and set up a trust for the town of Dunfermline. (Carnegie and his wife spent many summers at "Skibo Castle" on their estate in Scotland.) His largest gifts were to the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Carnegie's writings include Triumphant Democracy (1886), in which he urged Great Britain to become a republic; The Empire of Business (1902); and Problems of Today (1909). He also wrote a number of travel books and many magazine articles. His autobiography was published in 1920.

H.G. Wells

Herbert George Wells (1866-1946), was an English writer. He was prolific in many genres, but is best known now for his early science fiction novels including The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), The War of the Worlds (1898), The War in the Air (1907) among many others and also his comic novels. Wells was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times. His science fiction novels revealed him as a writer of marked originality and an immense fecundity of ideas. He also wrote many short stories. During his own lifetime, however, he was most prominent as a forward-looking, even prophetic social critic who devoted his literary talents to the development of a progressive vision on a global scale. A futurist, he wrote a number of utopian works and foresaw the advent of aircraft, tanks, space travel, nuclear weapons, satellite television and something resembling the World Wide Web.

John Higgs states: Wells' genius was his ability to create a stream of brand new, wholly original stories out of thin air. Originality was Wells' calling card. In a six-year stretch from 1895 to 1901, he produced a stream of what he called “scientific romance” novels, This was a dazzling display of new thought, endlessly copied since. A book like The War of the Worlds inspired every one of the thousands of alien invasion stories that followed. It burned its way into the psyche of mankind and changed us all forever .

Wells' earliest specialised training was in biology, and his thinking on ethical matters took place in a specifically and fundamentally Darwinian context. He was also from an early date an outspoken socialist, often (but not always, as at the beginning of the First World War) sympathising with pacifist views. His later works became increasingly political and didactic, and he wrote little science fiction, while he sometimes indicated on official documents that his profession was that of journalist. Novels such as Kipps and The History of Mr. Polly, which describe lower-middle-class life, led to the suggestion that he was a worthy successor to Charles Dickens but Wells described a range of social strata and even attempted, in tono-Bungay (1909), a diagnosis of English Society as a whole.

Oil pastel

 

Landscape

 

Oil Pastel

 

Sea Oil Pastel

 

Oil Pastel

 

Oil Pastel

Herman Melville

Herman Melville (1819-1891), was an American novelist. “Moby Dick” (1851), his masterpiece, uses Captain Ahab’s relentless and fanatical pursuit of a great white whale to symbolize the conflict between man and fate, good and evil. Melville’s books were popular only briefly during his lifetime and were almost completely neglected for about three-quarters of a century. When rediscovered in the 1920’s, he was recognized as a major American author.

Melville was born in New York City. His merchant father died bankrupt when Herman was 12. He attended Albany Academy until he was 15, and then worked as a bank clerk, farmer, and teacher. At 17 he shipped as a cabin boy to Liverpool, probably to get away from his tyrannical mother. Melville describes this voyage, which gave him a love for the sea, in “Redburn” (1849). Returning in 1837, he taught school until 1840. Then he joined the crew of the whaler “Acushnet”. Harsh treatment caused him to jump ship at the Marquesas Islands, where he was held in friendly captivity for several weeks by Typee cannibals. His adventures are set down in Typee (1846) and Mardi (1849). Melville escaped on an Australian whaler, but left it at Tahiti. His stay there is reflected in Omoo (1847). After clerking in Hawaii, he served a year in the U.S. Navy. This gave him material for “White-Jacket” (1850), and for his last completed work, “Billy Budd”. (Though written before Melville’s death, “Billy Budd” remained unpublished until 1924.)

“Typee” made Melville famous, and he soon became prominent in New York literary circles. In 1847, he was married to Elizabeth Shaw, daughter of the chief justice of Massachusetts. After a visit to Paris and London, he lived 13 years at “Arrowhead”, a farm near Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Hawthorne was his neighbour, and “Pierre” (1852), a psychological study of guilt, suggests his influence on Melville. In 1853 a fire at his publisher’s destroyed the plates of Melville’s books and most of the unsold copies in stock. Melville’s popularity had already waned. His writing became tinged with pessimism, melancholy, and mysticism. After “Piazza Tales” (1856), short stories, he wrote verse. “Clarel” (1876), a long religious poem, was inspired by a pilgrimage to Palestine in 1856. In 1863 he moved to New York City, where he was a customs inspector, (1866-85).

Joseph Mallord William Turner

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) was an English painter and graphic artist. He is known especially for his luminous, imaginative landscapes and seascapes. A prolific artist, Turner did thousands of sketches, engravings, water colors, and oils. His interest in the effect of light and color upon form foreshadowed the work of the impressionist.

Turner's works are usually divided into three styles. In his early period he painted landscapes and historical pictures in quiet tones of green, blue, and brown, using the brighter colors very sparingly. About 1819, after a trip to Italy, a change came over his work. He began to use brighter, purer colors, without dark shadows. During his middle period his works, such as The Fighting Temperaire, became more impressionistic.

Turner became more absorbed in color and light, and the works of his last period grew more abstract. In Burning of the Houses of Parliament and Rain, Steam and Speed light, color and atmosphere dominate; form and subject are barely suggested. Steamer in a Snowstorm shows his use of swirling masses of color to express emotion. These later works were ridiculed by his contemporaries, but they have much in common with 20th-century abstract painting and are now widely admired.

Turner was born in London, the son of a barber. He had very little schooling but early showed a talent for drawing. He entered the Royal Academy school at 14 and first exhibited there at 15. When 24, Turner was elected associate of the Royal Academy. He became a full time member in 1802 and was appointed professor of perspective in 1807. In his will, Turner left most of his works to the British People. About 300 oil paintings and sketches and about 19,000 drawings and water colors are exhibited in the National Gallery, the Tate Gallery, and the British Museum.

He lived in London all his life, retaining his Cockney accent and assiduously avoiding the trappings of success and fame. Intensely private, eccentric and reclusive, Turner was a controversial figure throughout his career. He became more pessimistic and morose as he got older, especially after the death of his father, after which his outlook deteriorated, his gallery fell into disrepair and neglect, and his art intensified. In 1841 Turner rowed a boat into the Thames so he could not be counted as present at any property. He lived in squalor and poor health from 1845. Turner left a small fortune which he hoped would be used to support what he called "decayed artists". 

Drawing by me

 

Oil Pastel drawing by me

 

The Sea at Night - Abstract digital drawing

Oil Pastel on Paper

 

Oil Pastel on Paper

 

James Fenimore Cooper

 

James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851), was a United States author. He is Chiefly remembered for his Leatherstocking series of novels about Indians and frontiersmen, but he also wrote tales of the sea and other books. Cooper was the first American author to win wide popularity in Europe. He did more than any other writer to create the theme of the crafty but noble Redskin pitted against the equally resourceful woodsman.

Mark Twain and others ridiculed Cooper for his impossibly wooden heroines, his unreal dialogue and plots involving miraculous escapes from dangerous situations. Much of the criticism is justified, but Coopers skill in weaving an exciting tale and picturing a romantic woodland background has helped his books remain popular.

Cooper was born in Burlington, New Jersey, the second youngest in a Quaker family of 12. When he was one year old, the family moved to the shore of the Otsego Lake in western New York. There his father founded the village of Cooperstown. Young Cooper soon became acquainted with the Indians and the forests of the region. He entered Yale College at 13, but was dismissed in his third year for playing a prank. He went to sea as a common sailor in 1806, and in 1808 he received a commission as midshipman in the navy.

His dissatisfaction with an English novel provoked him to say he could write a better one. Precaution (1820), an imitative society novel, was the result of his wife’s demand for proof. It was unsuccessful. In 1821 Cooper published The Spy at his own expense. This romance of the American Revolution made him famous on both sides of the Atlantic and caused him to be called the equal of Sir Walter Scott as a historical novelist.

'Harbor' - Oil Pastel on Paper

 

'Factories' - Oil Pastel on Paper

 

P.G. Wodehouse

The feather-brained Bertie Wooster and his sagacious valet Jeeves were the creations of the infinitely well-meaning and later on much-misunderstood humorist named P.G. Wodehouse. Wodehouse’s life at this time was not going well when he joined the London branch of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank. He was unsuited for it and found the work baffling and difficult, but he would come every day eager to write for magazines. But between 1908 and 1915, he created unforgettable characters that made him famous. Psmith was a strikingly original character based on hotelier and impresario Rupert D’Oyly Carte, whose monocle, studied suavity and stateliness of speech Wodehouse cleverly adopted for his character. “Something New” became his first farcical novel and also best-seller and although some of his later stories were gentler and lightly sentimental, it was as a farceur that he became known. Later in the same year, "Extricating Young Gussie” about Bertie and Jeeves was published. He wrote about them for the rest of his life.

His unwise broadcasts from German radio to the US, during the Second World War caused great controversy even though they were comic and apolitical. A front-page article in The Daily Mirror stated that Wodehouse "lived luxuriously because Britain laughed with him, but when the laughter was out of his country's heart, ... [he] was not ready to share her suffering. He hadn't the guts ... even to stick it out in the internment camp." Several libraries removed Wodehouse novels from their shelves. Wodehouse never returned to England.

Wodehouse received great praise from many of his contemporaries, including Max Beerbohm, Rudyard Kipling, A. E. Housman and Evelyn Waugh—the last of whom opines, "One has to regard a man as a Master who can produce on average three uniquely brilliant and entirely original similes on each page. However not everyone agreed. The writer Alan Bennet thinks that "inspired though his language is, I can never take more than ten pages of the novels at a time, their relentless flippancy wearing and tedious”. Another literary critic Q.D. Leavis writes that Wodehouse had a "stereotyped humour ... of ingenious variations on a laugh in one place". Sean O’Casey, a successful playwright of the 1920’s called Wodehouse “English literature’s performing flea”. Another critic wrote “It is now abundantly clear that Wodehouse is one of the funniest and most productive men who ever wrote in English. He is far from being a mere jokesmith: he is an authentic craftsman, a wit and humorist of the first water, the inventor of a prose style which is a kind of comic poetry."