Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, and poet. His essays had a strong influence on both sides of the Atlantic toward directing readers and writers to study man's relation to life and social aims. In "Self Reliance" he stresses the importance of sturdy independence in thought and action. "Trust Thyself" he counsels. "Envy is ignorance.....imitation is suicide." Emerson believed in an "Over-Soul" or divine force, that supplies man with revelations of truth and beauty.

The core of Emerson's philosophy was Transcendentalism. His essays are memorable for the many epigrams they contain. Emerson's best poetry is also epigrammatic. His simple, vigorous style inspired other rebels against stale conventions, notably Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. He was a popular lecturer. Though keenly interested in the cause of abolition of slavery and such social experiments as Brook Farm, he was more an observer than an active participant.

Emerson called for an American culture less dependent upon European patterns, and urged upon the scholar these mottoes: "Know Thyself" and "Study Nature." In an address to the senior class of the Harvard Divinity School in 1938 he advised young clergymen to rely more upon intuition than rigid dogma. Some faculty members attacked Emerson as an atheist, and it was 30 years before he was again asked to talk at Harvard.

Though he continued to lecture and write, his creative powers began to fade away after the Civil War. In 1871 friends took Emerson on a trip to California in a private Pullman car. After his return, his mind became increasingly erratic. At Longfellow's funeral in March 1882, he recognized his friend's face but could not recall his name. Emerson died of pneumonia a few weeks later. He was buried in Concord.

In "The Definition of Success", he states the following:

To laugh often and much

to win the respect of intelligent people

and affection of children; to earn the

appreciation of honest critics and

endure the betrayal of false friends;

to appreciate beauty, to find the best

in others; to leave the world a bit

better, whether by a healthy child

a garden patch or redeemed

social condition; to know even

one life has breathed easier because

you have lived. This is to have

succeeded.

Trees - Oil Pastel

 

Oil Pastel - Drawing

Walter Scott

 

Sir Walter Scott, (1771-1832), was a Scottish novelist, poet, historian and critic. He was for many years one of the most widely read authors in Europe and America. His stirring tales of adventure brought to life for millions of readers the history of Scotland and England from the 12th through the 18th century. “The Lady of the Lake” (1810), a story of the Scottish Highlands in the 16th century, was the most popular of Scott’s narrative poems, and has been the most often reprinted. Critics consider “The Heart of Midlothian (1818), a novel set in 18th century Scotland and England, the best of all Scott’s works.

Scott’s popularity rested largely upon his descriptions of scenes and manners unfamiliar to his readers, and upon lively action and romantic episodes. He did not plot carefully, and wrote hastily and without revising. As a result, his novels and narrative poems lack unity and forcefulness. Most of his heroes and heroines are unrealistic, and their speech is stilted and trite. Except for some of the short lyrics incorporated in his narrative poems, his verse is second rate.

Scott’s importance is based on several valuable contributions to literary development. He created the historical novel and gave prestige to the novel in general. Among writers he influenced were Robert Louis Stevenson, Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, Dumas the Elder, Leo Tolstoy, Alexander Pushkin, and James Fenimore Cooper. Scott was the first novelist to present people of the lower classes as real human beings rather than as comic or sentimentally idealized figures. He was also the first novelist to use regional dialects in a serious instead of a mocking manner.

Sea and Beach - Oil Pastel

 

Landscape bathed in Moonlight - Watercolor

 

Oil Pastel

 

Houses by the Canal - Rough drawing with oil pastel

 

"Sunset by the Beira Lake - Sri Lanka" - Watercolour

 

Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) was a Scottish author. He was one of the most versatile of writers. His romantic novels of adventure captured the public fancy as had no British works since Sir Walter Scott’s. Treasure Island (1883), a story of a search for pirate treasure, is the most popular of these romances and one of the best children’s books in English. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), an allegorical novel about man’s dual nature, is a suspenseful horror story that shows psychological insight. A Child’s Garden of Verses (1885) is a classic.

Stevenson proved himself a master of the short story in such tales as the eerie “Marheim” and “Thrawn Janet,” the tragic “The Beach at Falesa,” and the fanciful “The Sire de Maletroit’s Door.” His essays travel books, and letters are polished, witty, informative. Stevenson’s writings brought him great popularity during his lifetime, but after his death, his literary reputation declined for several years and he was thought of only as a competent writer of children’s tales. Toward the middle of the 20th century, however, a new critical evaluation of his work ranked him with the great writers of the 19th century.

Stevenson was born in Edinburgh, the son of a prosperous engineer who wanted him to follow the same profession. Instead, Stevenson studied law at the University of Edinburgh. He passed the bar examinations in 1875 but never practiced law. Since 1873 he had been publishing essays in various periodicals and he now turned all his attention to a literary career. Stevenson had never been robust and he began traveling early in life, partly for health and partly for pleasure. In 1888 he sailed to the islands of the Pacific Ocean, settling finally in the Samoan island of Upolu in 1890. There Stevenson bought a large estate he called “Vailima.” He took an active part in Samoan political affairs and wrote extensively.

Stevenson died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage. He left an unfinished novel, Weir of Hermiston, that was published as a fragment in 1896. This novel, set in 18th century Scotland, contains some of Stevenson’s most powerful and realistic characterizations. Some critics believe it would have been his masterpiece. Samoan friends affectionately called Stevenson Tusitala (teller of tales). They carried his body to the top of Mount Vaea, where it was buried under this epitaph written by himself :

Under a wide and starry sky

Dig a grave and let me lie

Glad did I live and gladly die

And I laid me down with a will

This is the verse you grave for me

Here he lies where he longed to be

Home is the sailor, home from the sea

And the hunter home from the hill

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 writes: Wells’s genius was his ability to create a stream of brand new, wholly original stories out of thin air. Originality was Wells’s 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's earliest specialized 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) sympathizing 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 a 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.