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Sumner, New Zealand

Sumner is a coastal seaside suburb of Christchurch, New Zealand and was surveyed and named in 1849 in honour of John Bird Sumner, the then newly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury and president of the Canterbury Association. Originally a separate borough, it was amalgamated with the city of Christchurch as communications improved and the economies of scale made small town boroughs uneconomic to operate.

Toponymy
Captain Thomas named the settlement for Bishop John Bird Sumner, one of the leading members of the Canterbury Association.

The Ngāi Tahu name for the beach between Cave Rock (Tuawera) and Scarborough is Matuku Tako Tako. This name has been used by both the state primary school and the city libraries.

A. W. Reed gives the Māori name for is Ohikaparuparu ("o" means place of; "hika" means rubbing, kindling, or planting; "paruparu" means dirt, deeply laden, or a preparation of fermented cockles). However, J. F Menzies indicates this name is associated with a settlement on the shores of the estuary between Redcliffs and Mt Pleasant and prefers an alternative translation of "The place where sticks were rubbed together to make a fire with which to cook cockles in preparation for a journey". Andersen places this name on the beach at the mouth of the estuary, near Shag Rock (Rapanui). James Cowan, retelling Sir Maui Pomare, indicates this name applies to the estuary shallows and means "fall in the mud".

History
Sumner was surveyed in 1849 by Edward Jollie for Captain Joseph Thomas, the advanced agent of the Canterbury Association. Jollie's November 1849 map showed 527 sections and numerous reserved and provisions for churches, schools, cemeteries, town hall, emigration barracks and other town amenities. However, his plans were abandoned through lack of funds and a new survey on which Sumner is based was carried out in 1860.

The first European to carry out work in Sumner is believed to be Charles Crawford, a whaleboat owner, who transported materials from Port Cooper, now Lyttelton, under contract to build the headquarters and storeroom for Captain Thomas. Sumner was settled in late 1849 or early 1850 by work crews building the road to Lyttelton, Sumner is thus one of the oldest European settlements in the Christchurch area. The Day family was the first to settle permanently in Sumner followed by Edward Dobson and his family.

Sumner had its first shop early in 1870, and its proprietor, S.E. Horneman, was postmaster from 1873 until 1876.

In 1872, it came under the control of the Heathcote Road District. When provincial councils were disestablished in 1876 and replaced with counties, Sumner had a second parent body, the Selwyn County added to the continuing road board. In 1883, Sumner was constituted as a town district and was run by a board of five elected commissioners. The board elected its own chairmen, and the two people who filled that role were C. L. Wiggins (March 1883 – September 1884) and J. M. Wheeler (September 1884 – June 1891). On 1 June 1891, Sumner was proclaimed a borough. Mayoral elections were held on 27 June, and the last chairman was elected the first Mayor of Sumner.

In 1885 the Harbour Board granted the concession to build a bath at the East end of Sumner beach. S.L. Bell enclosed some of the sea, built dressing sheds and a tea shop. The bathing pool was a great attraction but every year terrific storms would batter the bath and gradually dump fine sand. Eventually a flood filled the bath with clay and silt from the hills causing its closure.

In 1912 Sumner established its own gasworks and electricity was connected in 1918. The Anglican evangelical leader William Orange was vicar of Sumner from 1930–1945.

On 22 February 2011, Sumner was hit by the Christchurch earthquake, which destroyed or made uninhabitable a large number of the local houses and commercial buildings. On 13 June the same year, Sumner was hit by another earthquake of almost the same magnitude as the February event. These two earthquakes caused many of Sumner's iconic cliffs to collapse, and many areas to be cordoned off with both traditional fences and shipping containers.

Geography
Sumner is nestled in a coastal valley separated from the adjacent city suburbs by rugged volcanic hill ridges that end in cliffs that descend to the sea shore in places. Sumner Bay is the first bay on the northern side of Banks Peninsula and faces Pegasus Bay and the Pacific Ocean.

Because of its ocean exposure, a high surf can form in some swell conditions. The beach is gently sloping, with fine grey sand. It is a popular surf beach for these reasons.

Sand dunes have filled the river valley behind the beach. This has made housing construction relatively easy, although flooding at the head of the valley has been a problem in the past due to the reverse slope caused by the sand dunes filling the front of the valley. This has been addressed by a flood drain.

A sea wall and wide esplanade have been built along the length of the beach to prevent coastal erosion.

The rocky volcanic outcrop of Cave Rock, or Tuawera dominates the beach. Until the mid-1860s, this feature was known by Europeans as Cass Rock, after the surveyor Thomas Cass. There are other rocky outcrops in the area and the volcanic nature of the geology is readily apparent from several of the exposed cliffs around the valley.

Shag Rock, or Rapanui, is another large volcanic outcrop at the western end of the beach and sits at the mouth of the Estuary formed by the Avon and Heathcote rivers. This landmark was shattered by the Christchurch earthquakes in 2011, which reduced the iconic rock to a pile of boulders.

Sumner bar
The Sumner Bar is a sand bar where the estuary meets the sea and is notoriously dangerous to cross. The outlet of the Avon Heathcote Estuary, at the western end of the beach, forms the Sumner bar off shore of Cave Rock. The Sumner bar presents a major hazard to shipping, while the fast currents, strong rips and undertows in the area can be a danger to swimmers.

In December 1854, Commander Byron Drury, in HMS Pandora, surveyed the Sumner Bay, including the bar and mouth of the Avon-Heathcote Estuary for the Canterbury Provincial Council. Drury wrote a report and produced a detailed chart of the area, with soundings. Commander Drury's 1854 chart locates several buildings on shore, including a store at the foot of the hill in Clifton Bay, Day's house, which is set well back from the foreshore on a bend in the road, as it turns away from the foot of Clifton hill, and Dobson's house, which is shown at end of the spur at the foot of Richmond Hill. Compared to a modern-day map, the Day's house would have been near the corner at the top end of Nayland Street while Dobson's house would be near the intersection of Nayland Street and Wakefield Avenue.

The earliest recorded accident crossing the Sumner Bar occurred in May 1845 when a whaleboat capsized, without loss of life. The earliest recorded loss of life was in 1851 when a dinghy capsizes and two men aboard drowned. The cutter Hawk broke up crossing the Sumner Bar in rough weather at the end of June 1851 and wrecked on the beach, though the crew survived, the cargo was plundered. Fifteen more vessels were recorded as stranding on the bar between 1851 and 1867, with 7 being total losses.

One regular vessel crossing the bar in the early days was the Mullogh, New Zealand's first iron hulled steamer. On 25 August 1865 the Mullogh ran onto Cave Rock, Sumner, in violent surf. Her cargo of liquor created keen interest on the beach. George Holmes of Pigeon Bay, the contractor for the Lyttelton Rail Tunnel, then bought the ship, refitted and used her until 1869.

The NZ Trawler Muriel was stranded on Sumner Beach in 1937 and was a total loss and had to be dismantled where she lay.

Community
Sumner is a focal point for the adjacent suburbs of Clifton, Richmond Hill and Scarborough. In earlier times, residents of those suburbs would often have been considered to be living in Sumner, because these suburbs have road access via Sumner or depend on services available in Sumner. Before 1945, Sumner was a separate borough from Christchurch City. Also, before seven-digit landline telephone numbering was implemented in Christchurch (late 1980s or early 1990s), telephone subscribers in these suburbs would have had a four-digit Sumner telephone exchange number.

Demographics
The statistical area of Sumner, which includes Scarborough and Te Onepoto / Taylors Mistake, covers 2.64 km2. It had an estimated population of as of  with a population density of  people per km2.

Sumner had a population of 3,519 at the 2018 New Zealand census, an increase of 36 people (1.0%) since the 2013 census, and a decrease of 249 people (−6.6%) since the 2006 census. There were 1,338 households, comprising 1,752 males and 1,764 females, giving a sex ratio of 0.99 males per female. The median age was 42.6 years (compared with 37.4 years nationally), with 714 people (20.3%) aged under 15 years, 483 (13.7%) aged 15 to 29, 1,806 (51.3%) aged 30 to 64, and 516 (14.7%) aged 65 or older.

Ethnicities were 95.6% European/Pākehā, 4.9% Māori, 0.6% Pasifika, 2.1% Asian, and 2.5% other ethnicities. People may identify with more than one ethnicity.

The percentage of people born overseas was 29.5, compared with 27.1% nationally.

Although some people chose not to answer the census's question about religious affiliation, 57.6% had no religion, 33.5% were Christian, 0.1% had Māori religious beliefs, 0.2% were Hindu, 0.5% were Buddhist and 1.8% had other religions.

Of those at least 15 years old, 1,113 (39.7%) people had a bachelor's or higher degree, and 216 (7.7%) people had no formal qualifications. The median income was $43,600, compared with $31,800 nationally. 879 people (31.3%) earned over $70,000 compared to 17.2% nationally. The employment status of those at least 15 was that 1,419 (50.6%) people were employed full-time, 501 (17.9%) were part-time, and 66 (2.4%) were unemployed.

Government
Sumner is administered by the Christchurch City Council.

The Canterbury Association initially administered Sumner, with the valley being surveyed by Edward Jollie in 1849 and he drew up a street plan in November of that year. However, the planned settlement was rejected by Godley and the land was not subdivided. When the first allocation of rural sections was made public in February 1851, rural section No.2 was allocated to Felix Wakefield. This section was bounded in the North by a road along the coast, in the West by the road between Christchurch and Lyttelton, by an accommodation road against the hillside in the East and another accommodation road across the valley in the South. The street names on the 1850 settlement plan were not used and Wakefield subdivided and leased or sold off parts of this rural section in smaller lots to create a settlement he called Wakefield Township.

After the Canterbury Association was disestablished, Sumner came under the control of the Canterbury Provincial Council. This lasted until the provinces were disestablished in 1876 and county councils were established instead. Sumner came under the jurisdiction of the Selwyn County Council initially.

A Town Board was established during the 1870s.

By the end of the 1880s Sumner had become a borough and administered the still mostly rural suburbs east of Ferrymead, including Mount Pleasant, Redcliffs, Moncks Bay, Clifton and Richmond Hill as well as the mostly undeveloped land between Scarborough and Godley Head, including Taylors Mistake.

By the 1940s, small town boroughs were becoming uneconomic and Sumner was merged with Christchurch city.

Architecture
The Pascoe House in Colenso Street is a category II historic place and an early example of a two story private dwelling in the Post War Modern Domestic style of the 1940–1960. It was designed by architect Paul Pascoe and constructed in 1948 as his own private home.

Transport
The need for a convenient route between the Port at Lyttelton and the plains settlement of Christchurch was quickly recognised by Captain Thomas, Chief Surveyor for the Canterbury Association. Settlement of flat land at Sumner was also planned at an early stage.

By sea
The Sumner Bar is a notable navigation hazard, though it can be crossed safely in the right wind, tide and sea conditions. However, with an exposed coast and no safe anchorage immediately off-shore, good seamanship is also required.

There is a small boat harbour, protected by a substantial breakwater, at the south-eastern end of Sumner Bay, below Scarborough. There is a slipway for launching small boats from a trailer, as well as the lifeboat station. However, the area has a tendency to silt up, as it is still exposed to wind and sea.

In 1849, this area was known as Sumner Nook and was the only comparatively safe place in the bay for landing from a boat, because of a lagoon formed by a small stream running into the sea in this area. But, with Sumner Bay open to the Pacific Ocean, there was no nearby safe anchorage for larger ships, short of Lyttelton Harbour, about 8 nautical miles away by sea. An early proposal, by Captain Thomas, was to builds a jetty here to unload ships and transport the cargo by tramway to the estuary beyond Shag Rock, to avoid ships having to cross the Sumner Bar, but a land option was chosen instead.

By land
A convenient land route between Lyttelton to Christchurch has been a requirement from the beginning of Canterbury settlement. While rail and road tunnels between Lyttelton to Christchurch have been constructed, there remains the need to transport goods that are too dangerous or too large to travel through one of the tunnel. The route via Sumner remains a necessary transport alternative.

Construction of a road from Lyttelton to Christchurch via Evans Pass and Sumner began in 1849. However, progress was slow due to steep hillsides and hard volcanic rock being encountered. In 1850, a Bridle Path was cut directly over the saddle between Lyttelton and the Heathcote Valley so that the early settlers could travel to Ferrymead by foot and pack horse, while their heavy goods still needed to be transported across the Sumner Bar by boat. Road construction on the western side of the Sumner valley ceased in 1851 when construction encountered steep volcanic bluffs and funds ran out. The original road line, now known as Captain Thomas' Track, was abandoned and a new way down the eastern side of the valley between Evans Pass and Sumner was subsequently found and constructed. In 1952, the suburb was linked by several bus routes to its neighbouring suburbs and the central city.

Today, Southshore's public transportation is served by the frequent Airport (or Sheffield Crescent)—Sumner (route 3) bus service operated under the Metro brand. It serves the suburb to its neighbouring suburbs and the final destination of the route being Christchurch International Airport.

Public transport
A tramway opened to Sumner on 1 November 1888.

Sumner School
Sumner School was founded in 1876 and is these days a full primary school, teaching children from years 1 to 8. The school has a roll of students as of

Our Lady Star of the Sea School
Our Lady Star of the Sea Catholic School is a full primary school, teaching children from years 1 to 8. The school has a roll of students. It opened in 1928.

Ko Taku Reo
The former van Asch College, which took hearing-impaired children from all over the South Island and the southern North Island, is now a residential campus for Ko Taku Reo. It opened in 1880 as Sumner School for the Deaf.

Sumner College
Variously known as "Sumner College", "Beach Glen Boarding School" or "Chelford", existed in Sumner between about 1877 and 1895. Schoolmaster C. L. Wiggins, as he was almost invariably known, appears to have moved his boarding school for young gentlemen to Sumner in August 1877, according to newspaper advertisements of the time. Wiggins has previously operated his boarding school at Akaroa and Fernside, before moving to Sumner. The school taught "the usual branches of a sound English education, together with Latin and French" and provided recreations including sea bathing, cricket, and "pedestrian excursions". Wiggins expanded his school at Sumner and built the dormitories and school rooms that were later leased and then sold to the Government School for the Deaf in the mid 1880s. From 1896, Wiggans was the Assistant Master in the Lower School of Christ's College. He subsequently founded a preparatory school in Durham Street, where he taught until he was 80 years old.

Clement Lester Wiggins was born in England in 1843, and educated at various schools before arriving in Lyttelton in 1861, aged 18. By 1870, he had become headmaster of the Akaroa public school, and served there for three years, before founding a private boarding school. He was also a church organist, Sunday school teacher, a founding member of the Sumner Lawn Tennis Club, and involved in local body politics. He died on 18 August 1927, aged 84.

Sumner Life Boat Institution
Because of the hazard posed by the Sumner Bar, Sumner has had a lifeboat of some kind almost since its settlement. There is no record of a formal or even informal lifeboat being available prior to the appointment of a pilot in September 1864. However, it is likely that small open rowing boats were available in the bay from the early 1850s.

The Sumner Life Boat Institution has operated a formal life boat or similar rescue craft in the bay since 1898. The traditional name of Rescue has been applied to three of the life boats.

Notable people

 * Rita Angus (1908–1970), painter
 * Edward Dobson (1816/17? – 1908), early landowner and resident
 * Ruth France (1913–1968), librarian, poet and novelist
 * Denis Glover (1912–1980), poet and publisher
 * William M. Hodgkins (1833–1898), painter
 * William Orange (1889–1966), Anglican clergyman
 * Samuel Hurst Seager (1855–1933), draftsman and architect who had a subdivision of eight houses built on Clifton Spur
 * Petrus Van der Velden (1837–1913), Dutch-born painter and lithographer
 * Felix Wakefield (1807–1875), first landowner

title: Sumner, New Zealand


text:
Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle

Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle (11 February 1657 – 9 January 1757), also called Bernard Le Bouyer de Fontenelle, was a French author and an influential member of three of the academies of the Institut de France, noted especially for his accessible treatment of scientific topics during the unfolding of the Age of Enlightenment.

Biography
Fontenelle was born in Rouen, France (then the capital of Normandy) and died in Paris at age 99. His mother was the sister of great French dramatists Pierre and Thomas Corneille. His father, François le Bovier de Fontenelle, was a lawyer who worked in the provincial court of Rouen and came from a family of lawyers from Alençon.

He trained in the law but gave up after one case, devoting his life to writing about philosophers and scientists, especially defending the Cartesian tradition. In spite of the undoubted merit and value of his writings, both to the laity and the scientific community, there is no question of his being a primary contributor to the field. He was a commentator and explicator and occasionally a passionate, though generally good-humoured, controversialist.

He was educated at the college of the Jesuits, the Lycée Pierre Corneille (although it did not adopt the name of his uncle (Pierre Corneille) until 1873, about 200 years later). At the Lycée he showed a preference for literature and distinguished himself.

According to Bernard de Fontenelle, Blondel was a disciple of Father Marin Mersenne at the Academia Parisiensis in the French capital, until 1649. There he met "Messieurs Gassendi, Descartes, Hobbes, Roberval, and the two Pascals, father and son".

Early work
He began as a poet, writing a poem in Latin at the age of 13 and more than once competed for prizes of the Académie française, but he never won anything. He visited Paris from time to time and became friendly with the abbé de Saint-Pierre, the abbé Vertot and the mathematician Pierre Varignon. He witnessed, in 1680, the total failure of his tragedy Aspar. Fontenelle afterwards acknowledged the public verdict by burning his unfortunate drama. His libretto for Pascal Collasse's Thétis et Pélée ("Thetis and Peleus"), which premiered at the Opéra de Paris in January, 1689, was received with great acclaim.

His Lettres galantes du chevalier d'Her ..., published anonymously in 1685, was a collection of letters portraying worldly society of the time. It immediately made its mark. In 1686 his famous allegory of Rome and Geneva, slightly disguised as the rival princesses Mreo and Eenegu, in the Relation de l'île de Bornéo, gave proof of his daring in religious matters. But it was by his Nouveaux Dialogues des morts (1683) that Fontenelle established a genuine claim to high literary rank.

That claim was enhanced three years later by what has been summarised as the most influential work on the plurality of worlds in the period, Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes (1686). He wrote extensively on the nature of the universe: ''Behold a universe so immense that I am lost in it. I no longer know where I am. I am just nothing at all. Our world is terrifying in its insignificance.''

Later work

Fontenelle had made his home in Rouen. In 1687 he moved to Paris. In 1687 he published his Histoire des oracles, a book which made a considerable stir in theological and philosophical circles. It consisted of two essays, the first of which was designed to prove that oracles were not given by the supernatural agency of demons, and the second that they did not cease with the birth of Jesus.

It excited the suspicion of the Church, and a Jesuit, by name Jean-François Baltus, published a ponderous refutation of it; but the peace-loving disposition of its author impelled him to leave his opponent unanswered. To the following year (1688) belongs his Digression sur les anciens et les modernes, in which he took the modern side in the controversy then raging; his Doutes sur le système physique des causes occasionnelles (against Nicolas Malebranche) appeared shortly afterwards.

He remained influential in his older years and when a then unknown Jean-Jacques Rousseau met him in 1742, when Fontenelle was 85, he passed on the advice he gave all young writers that came to him: "You must courageously offer your brow to laurel wreaths and your nose to blows."

A noted gourmand, he attributed his longevity to eating strawberries. At ninety-two, one observer wrote that he was as lively as a man of twenty-two. When, in his late nineties, he met the then-beautiful Madame Helvétius, he reportedly told her, "Ah Madame, if only I were eighty again!"

Member of the French Academy
In 1691 he was received into the French Academy in spite of the determined efforts of the partisans of the "ancients", especially Racine and Boileau, who on four previous occasions had ensured his rejection. He was thus a member both of the Academy of Inscriptions and of the Academy of Sciences. In 1697 he became perpetual secretary to the Academy of Sciences, an office he held for forty-two years. It was in this official capacity that he wrote the Histoire du renouvellement de l'Académie des Sciences (Paris, 3 vols., 1708, 1717, 1722) containing extracts and analyses of the proceedings, and also the éloges of the members, written with great simplicity and delicacy.

Perhaps the best known of his éloges, of which there are sixty-nine in all, is that of his uncle Pierre Corneille. This was first printed in the Nouvelles de la republique des lettres (January 1685) and, as Vie de Corneille, was included in all the editions of Fontenelle's Œuvres. The other important works of Fontenelle are his Éléments de la géometrie de l'infini (1727) and his Théorie des tourbillons (1752). In the latter he supported the views of René Descartes concerning gravitation, material that by that time had effectively been superseded by the work of Isaac Newton.

He is noted for the accessibility of his work – particularly its novelistic style. This allowed non-scientists to appreciate scientific development in a time where this was unusual, and scientists to benefit from the thoughts of the greater society. If his writing is often seen as trying to popularize the astronomical theories of Descartes, whose greatest exponent he is sometimes considered, it also appealed to the literate society of the day to become more involved in "natural philosophy," thus enriching the work of early-Enlightenment scientists. In spite of the inarguable value and quality of his writings, he had no serious pretensions to original scientific or mathematical work, but did not let that stop him from outspoken support for Descartes' proposed conceptions of the roles of vortices in physics.

Legacy
Fontenelle was a popular figure in the educated French society of his period, byholding a position of esteem comparable only to that of Voltaire. Unlike Voltaire, however, Fontenelle avoided making important enemies. He balanced his penchant for universal critical thought with liberal doses of flattery and praise to the appropriate individuals in aristocratic society.

Fontenelle forms a link between two very widely different periods of French literature, that of Corneille, Racine and Boileau on the one hand, and that of Voltaire, D'Alembert and Diderot on the other. It is not in virtue of his great age alone that this can be said of him; he actually had much in common with the beaux esprits of the 17th century, as well as with the philosophes of the 18th. But it is to the latter rather than to the former period that he properly belongs.

According to Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, he deserves a place dans la classe des esprits infiniment distinguésbut is distinguished by being ought to be added by intelligence rather than by intellect and less by the power of saying much than by the power of saying a little well. There have been several collected editions of Fontenelle's works, the first being printed in 3 vols. at the Hague in 1728–1729. The best is that of Paris, in 8 vols., 1790. Some of his separate works have been frequently reprinted and also translated.

The Pluralité des mondes was translated into modern Greek in 1794. Sainte-Beuve has an interesting essay on Fontenelle, with several useful references, in the Causeries du lundi, vol. iii. See also Villemain, Tableau de la littérature française au XVIIIe siècle; the abbé Trublet, Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de la vie et des ouvrages de M. de Fontenelle (1759); A Laborde-Milaà, Fontenelle (1905), in the "Grands écrivains français" series; and L. Maigron, Fontenelle, l'homme, l'œuvre, l'influence (Paris, 1906).

His Dialogues of the dead show both his erudition and wit by presenting invented but plausible dialogues between dead ancients, dead moderns and a whole book devoted to dialogues between an ancient and a modern. To Montaigne asking him if some centuries had more wise men than other, Socrates answers sadly, "The general order of natures seems very constant". In one of the books Roxelane and Anne Boleyn discuss about politics and the way for a woman to decide a man to marry her. The dialogue between Montezuma and Cortez allows the former to dismiss some myths about the wisdom in ancient Greece by quoting some counter-examples.

In 1935, the lunar crater Fontenelle was named after him.

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title: Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle


text:
Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1 November 1636 – 13 March 1711), often known simply as Boileau, was a French poet and critic. He did much to reform the prevailing form of French poetry, in the same way that Blaise Pascal did to reform the prose. He was greatly influenced by Horace.

Family and education
Boileau was the fifteenth child of Gilles Boileau, a clerk in the Parlement of Paris. Two of his brothers attained some distinction: Gilles Boileau, the author of a translation of Epictetus; and Jacques Boileau, who became a canon of the Sainte-Chapelle, and made valuable contributions to church history. The surname "Despréaux" was derived from a small property at Crosne near Villeneuve-Saint-Georges. His mother died when he was two years old; and Nicolas Boileau, who had a delicate constitution, seems to have suffered something from want of care.

Sainte-Beuve puts down his somewhat hard and unsympathetic outlook quite as much to the uninspiring circumstances of these days as to the general character of his time. He cannot be said to have been early disenchanted, for he never seems to have had any illusions; he grew up with a single passion, "the hatred of stupid books." He was educated at the Collège de Beauvais, and was then sent to study theology at the Sorbonne. He exchanged theology for law, however, and was called to the bar on December 4, 1656. From the profession of law, after a short trial, he recoiled in disgust, complaining bitterly of the amount of chicanery which passed under the name of law and justice. His father died in 1657, leaving him a small fortune, and thenceforward he devoted himself to letters.

1660s

Much of Boileau's early poems as have been preserved hardly contain the promise of what he ultimately became. The first piece in which his peculiar powers were displayed was the first satire (1660), in imitation of the third satire of Juvenal; it embodied the farewell of a poet to the city of Paris. This was quickly followed by eight others, and the number was at a later period increased to twelve. A twofold interest attaches to the satires. In the first place the author skilfully parodies and attacks writers who at the time were placed in the very first rank, such as Jean Chapelain, the abbé Charles Cotin, Philippe Quinault and Georges de Scudéry; he openly raised the standard of revolt against the older poets. But in the second place he showed both by precept and practice what were the poetical capabilities of the French language. Prose in the hands of such writers as René Descartes and Blaise Pascal had proved itself a flexible and powerful instrument of expression, with a distinct mechanism and form. But except with Francois de Malherbe, there had been no attempt to fashion French versification according to rule or method. In Boileau for the first time appeared terseness and vigour of expression, with perfect regularity of verse structure.

His admiration for Molière found expression in the stanzas addressed to him (1663) and in the second satire (1664). In 1664 or 1665, he composed his prose Dialogue sur les héros de roman, a satire on the elaborate romances of the time, which may be said to have once for all abolished the lucubrations of La Calprenède, Mlle de Scudéry and their fellows. Though fairly widely read in manuscript and also released in an unauthorized edition in 1668, the book was not published till 1713, out of regard, it is said, for Mlle de Scudéry. To these early days belong the reunions at the Mouton Blanc and the Pomme du Pin, where Boileau, Molière, Jean Racine, Jean de La Chapelle and Antoine Furetière met to discuss literary questions. To Molière and Racine he proved a constant friend, and supported their interests on many occasions.

In 1666, prompted by the publication of two unauthorized editions, he published Satires du Sieur D...., containing seven satires and the Discours au roi. From 1669 onwards appeared his epistles, graver in tone than the satires, maturer in thought, more exquisite and polished in style. The Épîtres gained for him the favour of Louis XIV, who desired his presence at court. The king asked him which he thought his best verses. Whereupon Boileau diplomatically selected as his "least bad" some still unprinted lines in honour of the grand monarch and proceeded to recite them. He received forthwith a pension of 2000 livres.

1670s
In 1674 Boileau's L'Art poétique (in imitation of the Ars Poetica of Horace) and Le Lutrin were published with some earlier works as the L'Œuvres diverses du sieur D.... Boileau rules on the language of poetry, and analyses various kinds of verse composition. He influenced English literature through the translation of L'Art poétique by Sir William Soame and John Dryden, and their imitation in Alexander Pope's Essay on Criticism.

Of the four books of L'Art poétique, the first and last consist of general precepts, inculcating mainly the great rule of bon sens; the second treats of the pastoral, the elegy, the ode, the epigram and satire; and the third of tragic and epic poetry. Though the rules laid down are of value, their tendency is rather to hamper and render too mechanical the efforts of poetry. Boileau himself, a great, though, by no means infallible critic in verse, cannot be considered a great poet. He rendered the utmost service in destroying the exaggerated reputations of the mediocrities of his time, but his judgment was sometimes at fault. The Lutrin, a mock heroic poem, of which four cantos appeared in 1674, is sometimes said to have furnished Alexander Pope with a model for the Rape of the Lock, but the English poem is superior in richness of imagination and subtlety of invention. The fifth and sixth cantos, afterwards added by Boileau, rather detract from the beauty of the poem; the last canto in particular is quite unworthy of his genius.

In 1674 Boileau published his translation of Longinus' On the Sublime, making Longinus' ideas available to a wider audience, and influencing Edmund Burke's work on the same subject. In 1693 he added some critical reflections to the translation, chiefly directed against the theory of the superiority of the moderns over the ancients as advanced by Charles Perrault.

Boileau was made historiographer to the king in 1677. From this time the amount of his production diminished. To this period of his life belong the satire, Sur les femmes, the ode, Sur la prise de Namur, the epistles, A mes vers and Sur l'amour de Dieu, and the satire Sur l'homme. The satires had raised up a crowd of enemies against Boileau. The 10th satire, on women, provoked an Apologie des femmes from Charles Perrault. Antoine Arnauld in the year of his death wrote a letter in defence of Boileau, but when at the desire of his friends he submitted his reply to Bossuet, the bishop pronounced all satire to be incompatible with the spirit of Christianity, and the 10th satire to be subversive of morality. The friends of Antoine Arnauld had declared that it was inconsistent with the dignity of a churchman to write on any subject so trivial as poetry. The epistle, Sur l'amour de Dieu, was a triumphant vindication on the part of Boileau of the dignity of his art. It was not until April 15, 1684, that he was admitted to the Académie française, and then only by the king's wish. In 1687 he retired to a country-house he had bought at Auteuil, which Jean Racine, because of the numerous guests, calls his hôtellerie d'Auteuil.

1700–1711
In 1705 Boileau sold his house and returned to Paris, where he lived with his confessor in the cloisters of Notre Dame. In the 12th satire, Sur l'équivoque, he attacked the Jesuits in verses which Sainte-Beuve called a recapitulation of the Lettres provinciales of Pascal. This was written about 1705. He then gave his attention to the arrangement of a complete and definitive edition of his works. But the Jesuit fathers obtained from Louis XIV the withdrawal of the privilege already granted for the publication, and demanded the suppression of the 12th satire. These annoyances are said to have hastened his death, which took place on 13 March 1711.

He was a man of warm and kindly feelings, honest, outspoken and benevolent. Many anecdotes are told of his frankness of speech at court, and of his generous actions. He holds a well-defined place in French literature, as the first who reduced its versification to rule, and taught the value of workmanship for its own sake. His influence on English literature, through Pope and his contemporaries, was not less strong, though less durable. After much undue depreciation, Boileau's critical work has been rehabilitated by recent writers, perhaps to the extent of some exaggeration in the other direction. It has been shown that in spite of undue harshness in individual cases most of his criticisms have been substantially adopted by his successors.

Numerous editions of Boileau's works were published during his lifetime. The last of these, l'Œuvres diverses (1701), known as the "favourite" edition of the poet, was reprinted with variants and notes by Alphonse Pauly (2 vols., 1894). The critical text of his works was established by Berriat Saint-Prix, Œuvres de Boileau (4 vols., 1830–1837), who made use of some 350 editions. This text, edited with notes by Paul Chéron, with the Boloeana of 1740, and an essay by Sainte-Beuve, was reprinted by Garnier frères (1860).

title: Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux


text:
François de Malherbe

François de Malherbe (, 1555 – 16 October 1628) was a French poet, critic, and translator.

Life
He was born in Le Locheur (near Caen, Normandie), to a family of standing, although the family's pedigree did not satisfy the heralds in terms of its claims to nobility pre-16th century. Francois the poet was the eldest son of another François de Malherbe, conseiller du roi in the magistracy of Caen. He himself was elaborately educated at Caen, at Paris, at Heidelberg and at Basel. At the age of twenty-one, preferring arms to the gown, he entered the household of Henri d'Angoulême, the illegitimate son of Henry II, governor of Provence. He served this prince as secretary in Provence, and married there in 1581. It seems that he wrote verses at this period, but, to judge from a quotation of Tallemant des Réaux, they must have been very bad ones. His patron died when Malherbe was on a visit in his native province, and for a time he had no particular employment, though by some servile verses he obtained a considerable gift of money from Henry III, whom he afterwards libelled. He lived partly in Provence and partly in Normandy for many years after this event; but very little is known of his life during this period. His Larmes de Saint Pierre, imitated from Luigi Tansillo, appeared in 1587. It was in 1600 that he presented to Maria de' Medici an ode of welcome, the first of his remarkable poems. But four or five years more passed before his fortune, which had hitherto been indifferent, turned. He was presented by his countryman, the Cardinal Du Perron, to Henry IV; and, though that economical prince did not at first show any great eagerness to entertain the poet, he was at last summoned to court and endowed after one fashion or another. It is said that the pension promised him was not paid till the next reign. His father died in 1606, and he came into his inheritance.

From this time forward he lived at court, corresponding affectionately with his wife, but seeing her only twice in some twenty years. His old age was saddened by a great misfortune. His son, Marc Antoine, a young man of promise, died in a duel against Paul de Fortia de Piles. Malherbe suspected foul play and used his utmost influence to have the de Fortia and Jean Baptiste de Covet (de Fortia's second in the duel) brought to justice. Malherbe died before the suit was decided; it is said in consequence of disease caught at the siege of La Rochelle, where he had gone to petition the king. Malherbe died in Paris, on October 16, 1628, at the age of seventy-three, only 15 months after his son.

The football team from Caen, France, Stade Malherbe de Caen, is named after him.

Works
Malherbe exercised, or at least indicated the exercise of, a great and enduring effect upon French literature, though not exactly a wholly beneficial one. From the time of Malherbe dates the gradual development of the poetic rules of "Classicism" that would dominate for nearly two centuries until the Romantics. The critical and restraining tendency of Malherbe who preached greater technical perfection, and especially greater simplicity and purity in vocabulary and versification, was a sober correction to the luxuriant importation and innovation of Pierre de Ronsard and La Pléiade, but the lines of praise by Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux beginning Enfin Malherbe vint ("Finally Malherbe arrived") are rendered only partially applicable by Boileau's ignorance of older French poetry.

The personal character of Malherbe, whose writings demonstrate a bludgeon-like wit, was far from amiable; the good as well as bad side of Malherbe's theory and practice is excellently described by his contemporary and rival Mathurin Régnier, who was animated against Malherbe, not merely by reason of his own devotion to Ronsard but because of Malherbe's discourtesy towards Régnier's uncle Philippe Desportes, whom the Norman poet had at first distinctly plagiarized.

Malherbe's reforms helped to elaborate the kind of verse necessary for the classical tragedy, but his own poetical work is scanty in amount, and for the most part frigid and lacking inspiration. The beautiful Consolation a Duperier, in which occurs the famous line - Et, rose, elle a vécu ce que vivent les roses - the odes to Marie de' Medici and to Louis XIII, are the best-remembered of his works.

His prose work is much more abundant, not less remarkable for care as to style and expression, and of greater positive value. It consists of some translations of Livy and Seneca, and of a very large number of interesting and admirably written letters, many of which are addressed to Peiresc, the man of science of whom Gassendi has left a delightful Latin life. It also contains a most curious commentary on Desportes, in which Malherbe's minute and carping style of verbal criticism is displayed on the great scale.

Malherbe's two most important disciples were François Maynard and Racan; Claude Favre de Vaugelas is credited with having purified French diction at about the same time.

In popular culture
The Caen-based association football club Stade Malherbe Caen, founded in 1913, takes its name from the poet.

title: François de Malherbe


text:
My Left Foot (book)

My Left Foot is the 1954 autobiography of Christy Brown, who was born with cerebral palsy on 5 June 1932 in Dublin, Ireland. As one of 13 surviving children, Brown went on to be an author, painter and poet.

Plot
Brown begins his book by telling the reader about his early childhood. When he was four months old, Brown's mother was the first to notice that there was something wrong with his health. He could not hold his head upright or control his body movements. After seeking medical advice, the family's worst fears were confirmed: Christy was physically disabled and had an incurable disability called cerebral palsy. His family, besides his mother, thought he was an idiot. They told his mother to give up.

Although the doctors did not believe in Brown's mental intelligence, his mother did not lose faith in her son and supported him as a full member of the family.

A transforming moment occurs in the young boy's life that proves him to be intelligent. He discovers that he can control his left foot and toes. At the age of five, he snatches a piece of yellow chalk from his sister with his left foot. He marks the letter "A" on the floor with his foot and the help of his mother. He had wanted to make what he described as, "a wild sort of scribble with it on the slate". It is from this incident that the book received its title. In this moment, Brown had found a way to express himself since he could not speak like a healthy child.

Throughout his childhood, Brown played with local children and with his siblings, assisted by a small cart that he called "Henry". As time went on, he became more introverted, as he began to realize that his handicap made him different from his family and friends and impeded his enjoyment of life. Through this struggle, he discovered his creative and artistic talents, becoming devoted to literature, writing and painting. He used his left foot to carry out these tasks.

At the age of 18, Brown went to Lourdes in France. Here, he met individuals whose handicaps were even worse than his. For the first time in his life, he began to experience energy and hope. He also began to accept himself as the person he was, and do the best with what he had. He started a new treatment for cerebral palsy, which led to the improvement of his speech and physical condition.

In his teenage years, he met the Irish doctor Robert Collis. Collis had established a clinic for cerebral palsy patients and Brown was his first patient at this clinic. Collis was also a noted author, and guided Brown on how to write. This too involved a kind of therapy of intensive practice and exercises. Collis was involved in the two first drafts of this book and its final version.

The autobiography makes reference to its own creation. The final pages tell of Collis reading the first chapter of the book to the audience at a fundraising event. The chapter was warmly received by those in attendance.

Adaptations
My Left Foot, the Academy Award-winning Daniel Day-Lewis starred as Christy while Brenda Fricker played Brown's mother.

title: My Left Foot (book)


text:
Talk:Maude Flanders

Grandma said, "Once you have a lion by the tail you should offer him some pie."

 * o...k.... On with this wikipedia business. Re:Jumping the Shark. According to a pole on http://jumptheshark.com Maudes death is in the top three of when the program jumped with 138 votes. But, the option Never Jumped is scoring 1,592 votes. http://www.jumptheshark.com/s/simpsons.htm Quite a minority me thinks. KevinCarmody 02:45, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

I added a thing about Homer's statements about Maude, I think it was a running gag that Homer coveted his neighbors wife. pkomma 23:14, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Euology
moved it to "death" section

title: Talk:Maude Flanders


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Philippe Quinault

Philippe Quinault (3 June 1635 – 26 November 1688), French dramatist and librettist, was born in Paris.

Biography
Quinault was educated by the liberality of François Tristan l'Hermite, the author of Marianne. Quinault's first play was produced at the Hôtel de Bourgogne in 1653, when he was only eighteen. The piece succeeded, and Quinault followed it up, but he also read for the bar; and in 1660, when he married a widow with money, he bought himself a place in the Cour des Comptes. Then he tried tragedies (Agrippa, etc.) with more success.

He received one of the literary pensions then recently established, and was elected to the Académie française in 1670. Up to this time he had written some sixteen or seventeen comedies, tragedies, and tragi-comedies, which began at the Hôtel de Bourgogne in 1653, and of which the tragedies were mostly of very small value and the tragi-comedies of little more. But his comedies—especially his first piece Les Rivales (1653), L'Amant indiscret (1654), which has some likeness to Molière's Étourdi, Le Fantôme amoureux (1659), and La Mère coquette (1665), perhaps the best—are much better. In assessing Quinault's comedy work, Patricia Howard noted the influence of Préciosité, especially in the female roles: "For if in French theatre in the second half of the century, women's roles are preeminent, it was the précieux movement which made them so." In 1671 he contributed to the singular miscellany of Psyché, in which Pierre Corneille and Molière also had a hand, and which was set to the music of Jean-Baptiste Lully.

Here he showed a remarkable faculty for lyrical drama, and from this time until just before his death he confined himself to composing libretti for Lully's work. This was not only very profitable (for he is said to have received four thousand livres for each, which was much more than was usually paid even for tragedy), but it established Quinault's reputation as the master of a new style—so that even Boileau, who had previously satirized his dramatic work, praised, not the opera, which he did not like, but Quinault's remarkably ingenious and artist-like work in it.

His libretti are among the very few which are readable without the music, and which are yet carefully adapted to it. The very artificiality of the French lyric of the later 17th century, and its resemblance to alexandrines cut into lengths, were aids to Quinault in arranging lyrical dialogue. They certainly do not contain very exalted poetry or very perfect drama. But they are quite free from the ludicrous doggerel which has made the name libretto a byword, and they have quite enough dramatic merit to carry the reader, much more the spectator, along with them. It is not an exaggeration to say that Quinault, coming at the exact time when opera became fashionable out of Italy, had very much to do with establishing it as a permanent European genre. His first piece after Psyché (1671) was a kind of classical masque, Les Fêtes de l'Amour et de Bacchus (1672). Then came Cadmus et Hermione (1674), Alceste ou le Triomphe d'Alcide (1674), Thesée (1675), Atys (1676), one of his best pieces, and Isis (1677). Alceste was received very negatively by some critics, and this inspired a debate of published opinions by the writers Jean Racine and Charles Perrault which constitutes one of the first exchanges in what would later become known as the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns.

All these were classical in subject, and so was Proserpine (1680), which was superior to any of them. The Triumph of Love (1681) is a mere ballet, but in Persée (1682) and Phaëton (1683) Quinault returned to the classical opera. Then he finally deserted it for romantic subjects, in which he was even more successful. Amadis de Gaule (1684) and Roland (1685) are arguably his masterpieces, although Armide (1686) is probably the best known opera. Lully died in 1687, and Quinault, his occupation gone, became devout, and began a poem called the "Destruction of Heresy". He died on 26 November 1688, in Paris. Among his less known works is the lyrical, theatrical drama "Bellerephon", in 2 parts: (one probably first published on 1671 and one probably first published on 1679   ), based on the famous, ancient Greek myth:

title: Philippe Quinault


text:
Earthsea

The Earthsea Cycle, also known as Earthsea, is a series of high fantasy books written by the American author Ursula K. Le Guin. Beginning with A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), The Tombs of Atuan, (1970) and The Farthest Shore (1972), the series was continued in Tehanu (1990), and Tales from Earthsea and The Other Wind (both 2001). In 2018, all the novels and short stories were published in a single volume, The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition, with artwork by Charles Vess.

Setting
The world of Earthsea is one of sea and islands: a vast archipelago of hundreds of islands surrounded by mostly uncharted ocean. Earthsea contains no large continents. The largest island, Havnor, at approximately 380 mi across, is about the size of Great Britain. The cultures of Earthsea are literate non-industrial civilizations and not direct analogues of the real world. The overall climate of Earthsea is temperate, comparable to the mid-latitudes (over a distance of about 1800 mi) of the northern hemisphere of the Earth. There is a yearly transition from warm summers to cold and snowy winters, especially on northern islands like Gont and Osskil. In the southern regions of Earthsea, it can be much warmer.

Most of the people of Earthsea are described as having brown skin. In the Archipelago, "red-brown" skin is typical; however, the people of the East Reach have darker "black-brown" complexions. The people of Osskil in the north are described as having lighter, sallow complexions, while the Kargs of the Kargad Lands are "white-skinned" and often "yellow-haired". Le Guin has criticized what she described as the general assumption in fantasy that characters should be white and the society should resemble the Middle Ages.

Magic is a central part of life in most of Earthsea; the exception being the Kargish lands, where it is banned. There are weather workers on ships, fixers who repair boats and buildings, entertainers, and court sorcerers. Magic is an inborn talent which can be developed with training. The most gifted are sent to the school on Roke, where, if their skill and their discipline prove sufficient, they can become staff-carrying wizards.

The Dry Land is where most people go after they die, with the exception of the Kargs. It is a realm of shadow and dust, of eternal night where the stars are fixed in the sky, and nothing changes. The souls who reside there have an empty, dreary existence, and even "lovers pass each other in silence". Le Guin has stated that the idea of the Dry Land came from the "Greco-Roman idea of Hades' realm, from certain images in Dante Alighieri's work, and from one of Rainer Maria Rilke's Elegies". In the fifth and last novel of the series, The Other Wind, it is revealed that the Dry Land is a part of the dragons' domain that was stolen from them by the earliest mages in an attempt gone awry to obtain immortality. The Dry Land is restored to the dragons at the end of The Other Wind.

Books
Le Guin originally intended for A Wizard of Earthsea to be a standalone novel, but she wrote The Tombs of Atuan as a sequel after considering the loose ends in the first book; The Farthest Shore followed after further consideration. These three books were written in quick succession, from 1968 to 1972, and are sometimes seen as the "original trilogy". Nearly twenty years later, Le Guin wrote a fourth book, Tehanu (1990), and followed it with Tales from Earthsea and The Other Wind in 2001. The latter three books are sometimes referred to as the "second trilogy". The series as a whole is known as the Earthsea Cycle, and was published in a single volume in 2018 as The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition, with art by Charles Vess.

Short stories
Le Guin published nine short stories of Earthsea. Seven appear in two collections of her work (and some have been reissued elsewhere). Two early stories were originally published in 1964, and were collected in The Wind's Twelve Quarters (Harper & Row, 1975). These helped to define the setting of Earthsea. Five much later stories were collected in Tales from Earthsea (Harcourt, 2001), where three were original. In October 2014, a new novella set in Earthsea was published as a stand-alone, "The Daughter of Odren". A final 12-page short story, "Firelight", was published in June 2018, covering the last days of Ged.

Tales from Earthsea also includes about 30 pages of fictional reference material titled "A Description of Earthsea" (2001).

 * "The Word of Unbinding", Fantastic Stories of Imagination, January 1964 +Q
 * "The Rule of Names", Fantastic Stories of Imagination, April 1964+Q
 * "Dragonfly", Legends: Short Novels by the Masters of Modern Fantasy, Tor Books, 1998 +T
 * "Darkrose and Diamond", The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Oct-Nov 1999 +T
 * "The Bones of the Earth" (2001) T
 * "The Finder" (2001) T
 * "On The High Marsh" (2001) T
 * "The Daughter of Odren" (2014) EB
 * "Firelight", Paris Review, Summer 2018, issue 225
 * Notes:
 * +Q Collected in The Wind's Twelve Quarters
 * +T Collected in Tales from Earthsea
 * T  Original to Tales from Earthsea
 * EB  Originally released as a stand-alone eBook
 * All of the stories are included in The Books of Earthsea.

Unsubmitted story
After "The Rule of Names" and before "A Wizard of Earthsea", Le Guin wrote a long story about a prince in search of the Ultimate. He travels south-west from Havnor through the archipelago into the open sea. There he finds a raft-colony and sea-people, whom he joins in the sea. The prince wears out, sinks and finds the Ultimate. This story was never submitted for publication because "it never worked out itself well". However, the theme of a raft-colony and sea-people was later taken up as an important ingredient in the plot of The Farthest Shore.

Awards
Each book in the series has received a literary award:

On November 5, 2019, the BBC News listed The Earthsea Trilogy on its list of the 100 most influential novels.

Audiobooks
There have been a number of audiobook readings by different narrators and publishers. In the early 1990s, Robert Inglis narrated the first three books of the series for Recorded Books.

Radio
A BBC-produced two-hour radio dramatization of A Wizard of Earthsea was originally broadcast on Radio 4 on December 26, 1996. This adaptation was narrated by Dame Judi Dench, with Michael Maloney as Ged, and used a wide range of actors with different regional and social accents to emphasize the origins of the Earthsea characters (for instance, Estarriol and others from the East Reach were played by actors with Southern Welsh accents). The adaptation was subsequently released on audio cassette.

In April and May 2015, BBC Radio 4 aired a new, six-part dramatization of the Earthsea works, encompassing the storylines and motifs of the novels A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan and The Farthest Shore. The first of the six 30 minute-long episodes premiered on April 27 and the last on May 5. The characters of Ged and Tenar were portrayed by three actors at different stages in their lives (Kasper Hilton-Hille, James McArdle and Shaun Dooley as Ged; Nishi Malde, Aysha Kala and Vineeta Rishi as Tenar). The radio drama was adapted by Judith Adams, directed by Sasha Yevtushenko and featured original music composed by Jon Nicholls. Following the premiere radio broadcast, each of the episodes were made available for online streaming on BBC Radio 4 Extra for a month, via the BBC iPlayer service. The adaptation was created and aired as part of a thematic month centered on the life and works of Ursula Le Guin, in commemoration of her then-recent 85th birthday. In addition to the Earthsea radio drama, the thematic month included the airing of a two-part radio adaptation of The Left Hand of Darkness earlier in April, as well as exclusive interviews with Le Guin and some of the writers she inspired.

Miniseries, 2004
In December 2004, the U.S.-based Sci Fi Channel broadcast a three-hour loose adaptation of A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan for television, entitled Legend of Earthsea (later, simply Earthsea). It was broadcast in two parts on Channel 4 in the UK at Easter 2005. Sci Fi Channel had angered Le Guin and fans of the Earthsea novels with its announcement that Ged and the vast majority of the other characters would be played by Caucasians and with the dramatis personæ posted on an official website. The latter revealed several original characters – such as "The Archmagus" and "King Tygath", "Diana", "Penelope", and "Marion" – and it referred to "Kargide" characters rather than Kargad, Karg, or Kargish. The religious practices of Atuan were portrayed differently in the adaptation, and the celibacy of Earthsea wizards overlooked as Ged and Tenar become sexually involved.

One month before the U.S. broadcast, Le Guin posted on her website "A Reply to Some Statements Made by the Film-Makers" published in the December 2004 issue of Sci Fi Magazine. She opened with the observation, "I've tried very hard to keep from saying anything at all about this production, being well aware that movies must differ in many ways from the books they're based on, and feeling that I really had no business talking about it, since I was not included in planning it and was given no part in discussions or decisions." (Director Robert Lieberman, too, had stated that she was not involved.)

"That makes it particularly galling of the director to put words in my mouth." Le Guin disavowed some specific interpretations both by Lieberman and by executive director Robert Halmi Sr., and concluded (quoting Lieberman): "I wonder if the people who made the film of The Lord of the Rings had ended it with Frodo putting on the Ring and ruling happily ever after, and then claimed that that was what Tolkien 'intended...'[,] would people think they'd been 'very, very honest to the books'?"

Planned TV series
In May 2018, it was announced that the series had been opted for a film adaptation by producer Jennifer Fox. In 2019, it was decided to produce a TV series instead.

Nothing has been heard of this proposed series since.

Animated film, 2006
Studio Ghibli's 2006 film Tales from Earthsea is loosely based in the Earthsea mythology. It was directed by Gorō Miyazaki, the son of Hayao Miyazaki. Le Guin granted Studio Ghibli the rights due to her love of Hayao Miyazaki's films. Le Guin called the adaptation "disappointing" and "entirely different" from her creation.

title: Earthsea


text:
Talk:Earthsea

Etymology of Éa
I have a problem with this line: (The name Éa is coincidentally similar to J. R. R. Tolkien's "Eä".) It's not coincidental; they are both derived from the indo-european root word Ea, meaning Dawn. However, I'm not sure how to fix this without unnecessary explanation. The name Éa derives from the same root as J. R. R. Tolkien's "Eä", an Indo-European root word for dawn
 * I've replaced the sentence with "The name Éa derives from the same root as J. R. R. Tolkien's "Eä", an Indo-European root word for dawn". It's nearly double the length but it doesn't seem excessive to me. 60.225.160.189 03:51, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
 * This is, without reservation, completely false on both accounts. RandomCritic 14:39, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

The deity Ea pre-dates Tolkien's work by a long stretch. Ea was a water god in Babylonian mythology, and also considered a father-figure god, much as Zeus was "father" to the other Greek gods, even when he wasn't literally their father. Just to note, the Babylonians were not Indo-Europeans. KateH 15:41, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Earthsea rules
earthsea rulesVera Cruz

Putting an accent on Ea
How do I put an Accent on Ea? -- Daran
 * You mean like Éa --Astrokey 44 14:30, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Miniseries
The SciFi Channel (I assume US but I'm not sure) are apparently making a TV version: where should this go? --Phil | Talk 16:24, Sep 1, 2004 (UTC)

 * I just took a stab at it here, under the heading "other media". The Skiffy Channel's adaptation is apparently to be called "Earthsea" tout court, so perhaps it's best here (with a link or at least a nod from A Wizard of Earthsea?) I hope I wasn't too disparaging in what I wrote, but the quick look I just gave the official site depressed me immensely. –Hajor 17:44, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Back in July someone added an entry to the Wikipedia about the miniseries. I found that entry today along with a request for it to be cleaned up, which I have now done. To avoid being biased I updated the information present in that entry to also detail that Le Guin was not involved in the production of the greatly altered Earthsea stories in any way. -- Kenguest 01:31, August 11, 2005 (UTC)

The race issue
This will probably make everyone hate me, but... I have never seen the skin colours in Earthsea as reflecting the racial issues in the real world. I've always felt that having the majority, including the main protagonist and hero, black-skinned is just a fresh new twist. Just because most of the people in the Western world are white-skinned doesn't mean most of the people in fantasy worlds have to be. They can be any colour the author likes. But I have never seen this as a statement against oppression in real life. Sure, I understand why UKL is angry at the folks who made the Sci-Fi channel TV movie. I'd be pissed as hell too if they changed a black character into a white one. I'd also be pissed if they changed a white character into a black one. But this is purely because I think the author has the right to define his/her character, not because I think blacks are any better or worse than whites. — J I P | Talk 15:36, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * While your opinion is your own, I'm afraid Le Guin herself disagrees with you. A Frankenstein's Earthsea notes that she started with the premise of having the protagonists brown and the minority characters white specifically because it is rarely this way in most other novels - think about it, when's the last time you read a novel that didn't have a white protagonist?  And by casting the way they did ("colorblind", which often means having a white protagonist with non-white support, because of systemic unequal opportunities in Hollywood itself) they essentially destroyed her premise.  Also note that race isn't the only thing she complains about - she complains about the watering down of much of messages in the novel, thereby turning it into a generic fantasy.  --ColourBurst 05:42, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, I never said there could not be any race issue behind the setting of the books. It's just that I never saw one there. J I P  | Talk 17:22, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
 * JIP, I agree with you, I also never saw this race message Le Guin was trying to communicate. I suppose this is only because I have just recently read these books and i am 22 so have been used to anti-racism for most of my memory. We all have to remember when Le Guin actually wrote this series, things were very different back then and those memories and values may still stand with her today. As to what ColourBurst is saying, its just as Le Guin has said many times over, as an Author one has very little control over what is done to their work. Unfortunate really but true.

 * I also have another point to make which reflects on a lot of people's ignorance (mine included) "God created man in his own image". Most of us do exactly that. If I'm white living in a white dominant society, my imaginery characters will quite likely be white, like me. It's unresearched to say that novels with a non-white protagonist rarely exist, this statement is only true in a white society. I think i can assure everyone that in a non-white dominant country, say, India, they have novels with non-white protagonists aplenty! After all, Jesus is full blooded African in Africa. And Jesus could not possibley have been Caucasian because he was Israeli, the Romans remade him in their own image.

 * So just to conclude my rant, in a fictional piece of work having a non-white dominant world nowadays is probably quite unremarkable seeing as whites are still a smaller population ratio in the world. But for back when the novel was written, Le Guin was pretty damned brave and this also reflects on a how non-judgemental she is! She's quite something!

 * PS, I have read a couple of the books in Tad Williams' Otherland series. The main character is Irene, an African woman. Supporting character is a native African Bushman. Quite a good read if a little difficult to digest! TheTragicUglyDuckling 21:09, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

 * If you don't understand why the race issue is important in Earthsea, read the following: Ursula's links to articles on Earthsea and race -- Pay particular attention to "The Shame of Earthsea" by Pam Noles.

 * This is not about a "race message" as such, other than that LeGuin puts non-white races in her books partly to remind readers that just as in real life, they shouldn't expect everyone to be white. By casting white actors as non-white characters, the filmmakers completely screw that up. It is also a matter of identification. Children should be able to see and read about heroes who look like them. --Bluejay Young 16:09, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Dragon Tongue
The article says that dragons can tell lies in the Dragon Tongue, while humans can't. I think what the books actually say (in A Wizard of Earthsea when Ged first confronts the dragon out in the Western Reaches) is that dragons can't neccessarily lie in the Dragon Tongue, but since it's their native language they have such a good grasp of it that they can say tricky things which aren't lies but which can mislead a less fluent listener. In a similar vein to how, in the stories about genies granting wishes, the genie has to grant the exact wish of the person with the lamp, but can take advantage of looseness in their language to make the wish be not exactly what it knows they really intended.

However, it's been two years since I read A Wizard of Earthsea and I don't have a copy of the book anymore so I can't check to make sure whether this is right or not. --4.246.0.68 17:07, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

This is correct. Dragons cannot lie, but can deceive. Clarityfiend 09:51, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

 * So regarding the statement in the article "One vital aspect of magic is that it is impossible to lie in the old language" should be change, correct? Though the book did say it was Old Speeck. Which I assume is Old Language. The exact quote from the book would be "Although the use of the Old Speech binds a man to truth, this is not so with dragons. Blindwaves 14:08, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

 * "Although the use of the Old Speech binds a man to truth, this is not so with dragons. It is their own language, and they can lie in it, twisting the true words to false ends, catching the unwary hearer in a maze of mirrorwords each of which reflects the truth and none of which leads anywhere." It is said specifically that dragons can lie, so I think that it should be changed. Requiem mn 12:35, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * UKL in Tales from Earthsea, an anthology of her stories, clarifies that the dragons themselved have said they can lie in the Language of Making, so either this is true, or the dragons are lying - proving it true. Dragons can lie in the True Speech. 72.49.43.222 (talk) 03:49, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

 * It appears dragons cannot tell direct untruths, but can take the assumptions and implied meanings inherent in human speech and make seemingly contradictory statements. This would appear to mean that any dragon lie is calculated and deliberately constructed. Mdw0 (talk) 22:28, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Chatter About Tolkein
I'd like to see it kept to a minimum. Even if we believed, for example, that LeGuin was paying tribute to Tolkein with bits of the Language of the Making as discussed, which the author of the section in this article expressly doubts, it doesn't really enhance an understanding of LeGuin's work, which doesn't resemble Tolkein's opus nearly so much as people are fond of saying. The section on the meaning of Tolkein in the old speech should go.

Miniseries
I've removed Category:Television Miniseries from this page as the article is about the location and literary works, and because Legend of Earthsea already belongs to the miniseries category, thus making a miniseries category here redundant. Ergative rlt 20:11, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Plagiarism
I removed the section that alleged "plagiarism" of Earthsea by several authors. Plagiarism is a serious charge that requires greater foundation that a few shared concepts (which, in this case, far predate either work). As far as I could see, what was written in the section could not be easily expanded into a legitimate section. A full section on influence Earthsea had, if better sourced than this, would be welcome, however. PotatoKnight 01:59, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I wish you had removed the section, or at least changed it to read "Influence on other Authors". It's still there when I read the page. I tried to edit it it and the link would not work. Plagiarism is more than simply being influenced by someones work or having similar ideas. For example, Terry Pratchett alludes to Earthsea in his wonderful Discworld series when the character Granny Weatherwax talks about the dangers of borrowing (which is like shape-shifting) and the importance of staying in balance. Terry Pratchett is a wonderful author who was just giving a nod towards the great authors and ideas that influenced him. If someone wants to add a section of works that were influenced by Ursula Le Guin that would be fine.

General comments
I've thought about this for a long time, and I'm thinking more and more that with Earthsea, Ursula Le Guin has managed to write the perfect fantasy book series. I've read The Hobbit, and part of the Lord of the Rings, by Tolkien, and over 40 Dragonlance books. Still, having read every Earthsea book by Le Guin (not having seen the TV series, though), I can say that Earthsea tops them both.

I understand Le Guin is purposely promoting both gender and race issues. But I never cared about them when I read Earthsea. In fact, I never even noticed them. What I find novel and refreshing, however, is that the world in Earthsea is almost all sea, with all land consisting of islands, no continents, and that there's no special named "evil" - the only evil comes from humans themselves. No other fantasy series has ever managed that, especially the latter one.

I was also impressed by Le Guin's idea of the "true speech" and how saying things in it caused them to be true, by definition. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense.

In short, Earthsea remains my favourite fantasy series ever, over both LOTR and Dragonlance. I only wish Le Guin would continue her work.

(In contrast, I tried reading some of Le Guin's other work - a compilation of her sci-fi stories. That turned out so boring I was simply flipping the pages without paying attention to the text. How is it possible that one series of her work is so much better than anything else?) J I P  | Talk 19:52, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

 * Go back and read Left Hand of Darkness, Lathe of Heaven, Always Coming Home, and The Dispossessed in a few years. You might also look for a copy of Language of the Night, which is her essays about fantasy writing. The second edition is heavily annotated to bring it up-to-date in terms of insights she's had, particularly on gender. If you're interested in the idea of the true speech, you might want to read True Names by Vernor Vinge, on line here... this book was the prototype for Neal Stephenson's work. --Bluejay Young 16:20, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Movie
The movie isn't mentioned in the article anywhere! -- Sy / (talk) 01:02, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

 * This is the television miniseries, which is discussed here >. Shot info 08:04, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

A new novel for anime?
According to Ms. Masako Shimizu, Le Guin is working on a new novel. But Le Guin does not want to talk about it before its release, as you can read here. The novel might have something to with the offer Le Guin made to Mr. Miyazaki: to write the (untold) story of Ged, in the years between The Tombs of Atuan and The Farthest Shore. The inbetween years.

Is this history of Earthsea accurate?
Having just read "The Isolate Tower" an Earthsea Compendium created by Ursual Le Guin, which you can find on >http//www.tavia.co.uk/earthsea/, I am concerned that the history of Earthsea listed in this entry is not accurate. Specifically, that only one year passes between Ged defeating the shadow spirit in A Wizard of Earthsea (1032) and his visiting the Tombs of Atuan in 1033. I feel that the timeline listed on the site I have mentioned should replace the one which is currently in this entry. How does one go about doing that? --Aylessa1 15:38, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Edit away...make the changes you want and if they are inaccurate, I'm sure other editors will alter :-) Shot info 22:11, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Earthseadvd.jpg
Image:Earthseadvd.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in Wikipedia articles constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

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Fair use rationale for Image:Wizardearthsea.jpg
Image:Wizardearthsea.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

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If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. BetacommandBot 12:00, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Gedo6sn.jpg
Image:Gedo6sn.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. BetacommandBot (talk) 21:15, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Re: Deletion of Karg/Inca reference
I just deleted the following passage under the Ethnic Groups section in the Earthsea article: "In other respects the Kargs seem to resemble the Incas." This sentence had appeared after a racial description of the Kargs. The section is entitled "Ethnic Groups", and ethnicity may encompass culture, but in this section, only race is discussed. Since Le Guin describes Kargs as being similar in appearance to northern Europeans, only in some other way could they be considered to resemble Incas. The notation "citation needed" had been placed after the Inca statement. I would venture to guess that the person who originally wrote that sentence was not using any statement made by Le Guin, but rather something they came up with on their own. (This may also be true for the Viking statement also.) S. Neuman (talk) 20:40, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

 * Should perhaps then we rename the section 'Racial Groups' rather than ethnic?Ged UK (talk) 20:42, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

 * Technically they are the same "race" (human) but different ethnic groups. I personally would prefer that "Ethnic Groups" is used - as well as the removal of the editorialising.  Shot info (talk) 00:29, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Possible Improvements?
I'd like to see Earthsea get good enough to be an A article like Middle-earth. Some improvements I would like to see to this article include sources for the direct color comparisons with real world ethnic groups in People and Cultures. In fact, more sources in general would be great. I suggest that the list of dates in the History of Earthsea is too long and unnecessary, and should probably be relegated to an external link. I'd like to see perhaps a gender section in Magic; in fact, I think it should be divided into several subsections (of which Roke could be one), like the influence of geography, and perhaps the relationship of magic and religion. I think the "examples of magic" is silly and should be removed.

Other suggestions? Comments? Mistsrider (talk) 12:43, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

 * I agree that the history section is faaaar too long and totally disrupts the flow. If we really think we ought to keep it in some form, then I would suggest a separate article.I also agree that the examples of magic are unnecessary, but we do need to keep in the central concept of naming, because that is critical to the concept. Again, I agree with the gender and magic idea, because of the male-centricness of magic in the Isles during most of the series, but considering that Le Guin had women using high magic in the earlier tales. Ged UK (talk) 09:46, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

OK, i've done some of these today. Not had time to redo the magic section, and i'd really need to re-read some of the books before I'd feel comfortable with it. Maybe over the weekend Ged UK (talk) 20:00, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

 * I think the quality of this article should be rated at "C" - probably at the last time it was rated, there were only Start and B classes, with no distinction in between. The article has a lot of information, but with only 5 in-line citations and one reference, I think it falls short of B class.Npd2983 (talk) 01:25, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Audio?
New section for musicians who have written songs about Earthsea or been inspired by the books. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ade mc (talk • contribs) 07:13, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

 * If it's properly sourced with interviews or the like where they say that this is the case, i don't see why not. Not a whole load of links to songs though, that would be spamming i think. --Ged UK (talk) 09:07, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Archmage second to the king
We cannot say that Archmages were loyal to the kings, because when kings ruled Archipelago there was no Archmage and vice wersa. 62.93.36.156 (talk) 13:54, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

gates of horn and ivory
I would like to make mention of and wikify the dragon tooth/ivory doorway and the horn door that Ged passes through on his way into the magical school at Roke. Would that be appropriate on this page or on the Wizard of Earthsea page? I am thinking here because (pure speculation) I suspect the gate and door are a permanent part of the school, not unique to Ged's journey in WoE. I think it is relevant because it draws on a notable trope of Greek mythology.Npd2983 (talk) 15:47, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
 * If you can find a reliable source that agrees with you, then fine, otherwise it's speculation, and shouldn't be in any article. I really, really can't see the point of wikilinking 'the dragon tooth/ivory doorway and the horn door' because that's never going to be notable enough to have it's own article. Ged  UK  16:06, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I would wikilink to the article Gates of horn and ivory, not create a new one. The novel describes Ged passing through a doorway of ivory with a door of horn.  I would think the novel's narrative itself would stand on its own, but I'll search for a reference nevertheless.
 * Ah, sorry, I didn't realise that article already exists; seems reasonable to me, and that other article does list other occurances in English literature. Ged  UK  09:09, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Main image for article
I am thinking about removing the book scan of A Wizard of Earthsea and replacing it with a map of Earthsea. A similar approach is used on the page middle-earth. I think this would be appropriate for this article since the article is about the entire realm as opposed to the one novel. Npd2983 (talk) 06:03, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Aaaah, my eyes! How long has that purple monstrosity been there? Take it away, take it away! Clarityfiend (talk) 06:40, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I put the map on the Islands of Earthsea page. Unfortunately it is very small to comply with non-free fair use.  It would probably look comically small on this page.  That being said, the size of the purple book is a bit big, also the book itself is not significant.  If the image were replaced with the cover image of a compilation of Earthsea novels, a first-edition paperback or an Easton Press edition, that would be preferable. Npd2983 (talk) 15:49, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I have decided that the cover of the '80s trilogy box set would be visually pleasing and appropriate for this page - will upload it in the next couple of weeks.Npd2983 (talk) 16:12, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Dragonlords Discontinuity
Under the "Dragons/Dragonlords" section, the article states that the only two living dragonlords are Ged and Tenar. However, several times in The Farthest Shore the dragons Kalessin and Orm Embar speak with Lebannen/Arren. Doesn't this make him a dragonlord too? Anyone opposed to changing the article to reflect this?

Diyforlife (talk) 21:44, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

 * I don't recall him ever being explicitly called a dragonlord, so unless you can find it, that would be WP:OR. Clarityfiend (talk) 22:32, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

 * Now that I think of it, I'm not sure Tenar qualifies either. Clarityfiend (talk) 22:40, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Kalessin redirect?
Kalessin redirects here, but is never mentioned in the article. For someone who (like me) is trying to figure out what Kalessin is, this is pretty frustrating. 213.64.153.102 (talk) 15:46, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Kalessin is the oldest dragon, so old nobody knows whether it is male or female. It/she/he plays a role in The Farthest Shore and makes a brief appearance at the end of Tehanu. I'm not sure how (or whether) to shoehorn this into this article. I'll think about it. In the meantime, I'm going to redirect it to Characters in Earthsea. Clarityfiend (talk) 23:06, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Havnor Area
380 miles is about 600 klometers. A circle with a diameter of 300 kilometers would have an area of about 280 000 km2. As Havnor is roundish in shape albeit has a large bay in the middle I believe that 'about the size of Great Britain' (cca 230 000 km2) is a correct estimate. The areas given previously here and in currently Islands of Earthsea article (which put Havnor as 'about the size of Sicilly') are obviously wrong, consistently about ten times too small. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.24.147.14 (talk) 12:11, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Origin at Parnassus Press

 * posted also at Talk:A Wizard of Earthsea --P64

"March 16", Anita Silvey's Children's Book-a-Day Almanac. 2011-03. quote
 * "March has been set aside to recognize the contribution of small presses to our literary heritage. ...
 * "Le Guin was best known, probably as she still is today, as a writer of adult science fiction and fantasy novels like The Left Hand of Darkness. In 1967 the publisher of the small California publishing house Parnassus Press, Herbert Schein, wrote to Le Guin, asking her to consider writing a book for children/young adults. Schein had published Ishi: Last of Her Tribe by anthropologist Theodora Kroeber, Le Guin’s mother. Although Le Guin had not considered writing for this audience, she crafted a coming-of-age story, A Wizard of Earthsea, set in a fantasy world.

unquote --P64 (talk) 15:42, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Adaptations
See above: ; ; ; ;

There are now three subsections of section : Radio, Television, and Anime. Occasionaly there has been subsection Movie. Confusion is predictable. Many other kinds of adaptation are supposedly "named" in other articles (not necessarily as section headings): Audiotape, Film, Screen, Stage, Play, Drama, Graphic (novel), Miniseries, and probably others. Some are identified by media, others are not. What happens if the "anime" is broad- or narrowcast to television screens? or a made-for-TV movie is shown in a theatre? --P64 (talk) 17:10, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

ISBN
For A Wizard of Earthsea 1st ed., our citation cite book includes this comment : Please check ISBN|reason=Check digit (5) does not correspond to calculated figure.

ISFDB does not give any ISBN for that edition, or any Parnassus edition. I have checked the

For The Tombs of Atuan 1st ed., ISFDB gives (ISBN-10: 1-874703-23-X; ISBN-13: 978-1-874703-23-5) which does not match our nominally 1st ed. data.

For the last three novels and Tales from Earthsea, ISFDB confirms our IBSN-13 data. --P64 (talk) 19:12, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

 * I have edited ISBN-13 for A Wizard so that it is a valid number. I doubt that it designates the first edition as we say, because internet search for that ISBN-13 we give for The Tombs (1971) hits a record of the 1976 edition. (Internet search is perilous, at least for a while now, because so many sites reflect English wikipedia --among other reasons to doubt internet search.)
 * "Ursula K. Le Guin" at Books by ISBN does give for the first editions of Wizard and Tombs the ISBN-13 that we now list here. Is that site reliable? --P64 (talk) 00:54, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

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Lead paragraph and novels -v- books for listing section
Hello. I'm not a "Wikipedia regular" but I have edited a few items before. I'm also a librarian, and I've been lending Earthsea books for decades, so I do know something of the topic.

Yesterday and today I made simple edits to do two things:
 * make clear that the five Earthsea novels form a single story arc (spread across much of Ged's lifetime), and reach a firm conclusion; it is not that there is a "trilogy" and "other stuff" - the author herself referred to The Earthsea Quartet after Tehanu came out, and while I never heard her speak of a "Quintet", The Other Wind was in turn in direct continuity from Wind...
 * while clarifying that "Tales of Earthsea" is a collection of short-form writing, spread over a much wider in-world timespan - there are stories and essays, designed to give more depth to the world (in addition to two stories in another Le Guin collection, and others); it's a good book but in no way part of the main story flow, rather it enriches the world, and, Le Guin was quite clear, "reinterprets" or "better explains" matters concerning women and others.

Today I also made a correction to clarify that if the first three books are YA, the later two are definitely not so defined or limited.

In addition, there was a logic error in the structure of the listing section - if one section references short works, the other should reference novels. Having short fiction and "books" - mixing up novels 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and the collection - makes no sense, and I fixed this. In fact the form of publication is not important, so Tales of Earthsea should probably simply be discussed in the Short Works sub-section.

My careful edits today were reversed without explanation by a fairly new editor, but I don't think this requires personal debate, rather I propose to raise a discussion here, and if there are no (reasoned) objections, restore those edits later this week. I'm on vacation, so my access is intermittent, but I have time.

I actually came to this article because I was getting more and more queries looking for the "6th book of the Earthsea saga / cycle / etc" - young and not-so-young readers who were afraid they'd missed a bit, or thought there was something "after The Other Wind" and were puzzled because that book firmly wrapped-up the story, and it turned out that this article was one source of this wrong impression, because it was presented as if the main storyline indeed had six books. No one lists collections as part of sequential book series order lists, unless every short story in a collection falls firmly between two books of the main series.

As a close, out of courtesy to those of us in the great mass who occasionally try to help your wonderful resource with a little editing, could you consider making it mandatory that reversals of edits are properly explained, or better still, debated before reversal? Just having someone wipe out careful work without explanation is both impolite and discouraging. Thanks.

2A00:1370:8117:40AC:8565:D390:3D80:E4EA (talk) 08:24, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

 * You have got a point on the YA thing, this is improper labelling, and would have annoyed the author, from what I've read. On the books, it's more complex. I agree that it is important to be clear about the order of the novels, ans they do carry the main storyline (which sometimes jumps in decades) BUT Tales of Earthsea contained, among all the other stuff, one critical story, which actually does form a bridge from Novel #4 to Novel #5. I think it was called Dragonfly. Let me have a go at wording which reflects this. 194.186.53.164 (talk) 12:55, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

 * The problem with these edits is that the article was correct in its original form. Earthsea is a six-book series, as determined by its author and its publisher.  Any change to the article which tries to obscure this is wrong.  I've reverted most of 194.186.53.164's edit.
 * FWIW, back in 2018 I added the line, "Unusually for a series, Tales from Earthsea is a short story collection; the rest are novels," but that was later removed. Obviously, I think it would be fine to add it back. Dan Bloch (talk) 16:21, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
 * FYI, the inside flap of The Books of Earthsea refers to "all 6 Earthsea novels". In the introduction to the book, Le Guin explicitly calls Tales from Earthsea the fifth book and The Other Wind the sixth novel. She even says "this fifth book has been treated as marginal, but it's integral". Olivaw-Daneel (talk) 22:23, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Iron Age setting?
The setting is not "early Iron Age" at all. Technologically, the world is at least a thousand years more advanced than the end of real world's protohistory. There's castles and a long history of writing and recording history, for example. 158.181.79.135 (talk) 06:38, 11 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Iron Age refers to human history, not Earthsea's. Any resemblance to our Iron Age is purely conjecture, so I've taken that out. Clarityfiend (talk) 13:08, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Earthsea


text:
Knowledge Web

Knowledge Web is the name of four different projects:
 * The Knowledge Web Project supervised by James Burke
 * A project under the European Sixth Framework Program
 * An example of a knowledge web software platform is the Jumper 2.0 open source project
 * The Knowledge Web created by AFAC (Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council previously Australasian Fire Authorities Council) for collaboration on Fire and Emergency Services for Australasia

title: Knowledge Web


text:
My Left Foot (disambiguation)

My Left Foot is a 1989 drama film about Irish writer Christy Brown.

My Left Foot may also refer to:

 * My Left Foot (book), an autobiography by Christy Brown

title: My Left Foot (disambiguation)