text:
Talk:James Marsters

Header
Hi, is there a rule calling "speculation" anything that's not already happened in a fiction series even though it's 100% sure (like the fact that James Marsters will be a regular member of the cast of Angel next year)?

It's a real question, I'm not being polemical, I just wonder, since I've tried to find such rule in the FAQ's but I haven't succeded. If there is no such rule, I think that we can add the information, it's on the WB site, and both Joss Whedon and James Marsters have talked about it in interviews several times. Laz 21:25 18 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * Well, getting no answer I guess I'll revert to my previous entry... feel free to delete it again if there is something wrong with it! (Well, this sentence was kind of useless, of course :-) )Lazarus Long 09:56 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

In an article of Dreamwatch magazine (issue 137 february 2006)the former "Buffy" producers and creator Joss Whedon indicates a plan for a series of (made-for-DVD) movie-length productions. Although nothing have been finalised Whedon confirms that plans are developing for a new Buffy spin-off project featuring James Marsters' vampire Spike. I, for one, hopes that this project will be completed and I'll promise to be first in line to buy the DVDs that continues telling the fascinating stories from Joss Whedons alternative universe. carime borjestedt 22:02 12 Jan 2006 (CET)

Is the name written correctly?
I Thought it's spelled Masters without the firs r.

Its : James....M A R S T E R S!!!...

I'm a noob but can somebody sort this...
The piccolo link goes to the instrument, rather than the character... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.36.210.84 (talk) 20:58, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Near-flawless English accent?
"Marsters' accent as the character was near-flawless; even some English people thought he was English."

Speaking as someone who is English I wouldn't say Marsters accent in BTVS/Angel was "near flawless". Whilst his accent was nowhere near as ridiculous as Molly's, it was still pretty contrived. Alexis Denisof (Wesley) on the other hand managed to pull off a pretty much faultless English accent, and it wasn't until recently that I discovered to my surprise he wasn't actually British, yet his article makes no mention of his accent at all. Just wondering basically whether it's valid in this article? --Durzel 09:28, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

James Marsters accent was outstanding. I never knew he was American until I watched an interview. And boy, was I surprised! I'd have to say that his accent was completely flawless, and to be honest, I don't care much for Wesley. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.17.51.198 (talk) 03:32, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Another actual English person stopping by to agree Alexis nailed the English accent far better and more consistently than JM did. I have to say that whether you like a character or not is completely irrelevant to the voice skills of the actor playing him. Uncritical adulation does JM no favours. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.169.222.121 (talk) 00:20, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

 * As another Brit, I'd like to say I consider James Marster's accent flawless. I certainly never knew he was American until hearing the actor speak out of character. It definitely never sounded contrived to me. 80.195.252.5 (talk) 02:42, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Notability
Seems to me like this article needs a notability check. I don't know that what amount to set lists from gigs featuring songs that have never been released are notable enough to be listed here... Anyone? -Porlob 19:00, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Marital Status
Anyone know? 204.112.159.180 01:03, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Divorced, unmarried, one kid, but there's not enough on the net about it. *shrugs*

Northern Exposure
He was in two episodes of Northern Exposure, earlier on as a very small speaking part as a hotel bellboy and then afterwards as the minister. I'm fairly sure he is credited for both on IMDB. 203.206.102.171 15:46, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Dad?
It says here that Marsters has a son, born in 1996, with his ex-wife Liane Davidson. Just wondering if this is true, since the site appears to be edited by anyone, and contains no sources. Paul730 06:19, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

copyright?
i dont know the full wiki rules but most of the stuff in this page is a complete copy and paste from james marsters official website and sounds overly fangurly. Postmoderner 22:37, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Acting Roles
I was looking for a list of roles James Masters has been in and was surprised not to find one as almost every other actors page that i have seen has one apart from Stub pages or pages where the actor has only had one or two roles but given the amount of things he has been in and the amount that has been written about him i was hoping there would be one. I would do one my self but i don't know what hes been in --58.169.217.143 (talk) 11:02, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi. I made a couple minor changes to the para. about Torchwood. (changed "starred" to "guest starred" and made it generally sound better.) Feel free to revert if not acceptable. Also the sentence "He has also stated that he will return for the third series."... this seems to me something that should be cited. Is it? Hstrypcfr (talk) 23:41, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

James will NOT be reprising his role as Captain John Hart in series 3 of Torchwood... is confirmed, (See the "Children of Earth" wikipedia page), although he is interested in playing Hart again in future episodes, so i have editied that sentence out, i hope that is ok. Also just to note i have changed "and the bisexual time traveller Captain John Hart" to "and the omnisexual time traveller Captain John Hart"...i know in the "other work" section it is stated as "omnisexual" but i'm a bit pedantic, sorry. --CharlotteMarshall (talk) 09:37, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

HE ISN'T CAPTAIN JACK IN TORCHWOOD @ ALL!!!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.102.255.182 (talk) 20:27, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

No one said he was. John Hart is similar but diffrent to Jack Harkness 182.239.133.247 (talk) 12:18, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Date Order
Under Filmography for Television, everything is listed in order by date. I'm curious if the way it's set up is correct, though. Wouldn't something that was from 2005-2008 come before something that occurred only in 2008 rather than after? Or is there an ordering rule here that I wasn't previously aware of.

(This question is more out of curiousity rather than a desire to change to order on the page; I just figured it couldn't hurt to ask here.) Sleepsong (talk) 05:50, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

 * I'm not aware of a rule, but it does make it look better so I've changed it. Thanks for the input! IndulgentReader (talk) 23:29, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Open Directory Project Links
The DMOZ search template, and by implication all DMOZ search links, is being considered for deletion because it violates WP:ELNO #9. Anyone interested in discussing the fate of Open Directory Project (DMOZ) search links is invited to join the discussion at Templates for deletion. Qazin (talk) 05:50, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Place of Birth
The article show James Marsters' place of birth as Sydney, Australia, yet the reference cited shows this as Greenville, CA. Sprout59 (talk) 20:45, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Infobox Photo Discussion
Which photo should used in the Infobox? The Left One or the Right One? Nightscream (talk) 23:38, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

I like that it has his name behind it. Jhenderson 7 7 7  00:38, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Ugh! Yeah, but he looks awful in that pic! I took that with the dinky little Casio camera I used to use before acquiring the professional DSLR camera with which I took the left one above. The lighting in the earlier one is harsh, his expression isn't very warm, and his pose looks like little more than a mug shot. That's why I didn't replace it after I took that one. Oh well. To each his own. Nightscream (talk) 17:44, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

 * That's ok...I am preferring a lot of the choices after this one anyways. Jhenderson  7 7 7  18:29, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

 * Slight preference for Right: Strong preference for cropped "right" version, now E (below). Better photo w/ low clutter, no flash, no glare. Note: we've done this enough times, now, folks - lettered candidates make for e-z expansion & voting. --Lexein (talk) 00:45, 27 December 2013 (UTC) Followup - still prefer this for the infobox, because it's more recent (2010) and doesn't awkwardly catch the subject mid-word. See my cropped version E below. --Lexein (talk) 20:20, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
 * You talkin' to me? I don't see who else you would be talking to so you must be talking to me. This is only if somebody votes for the two images though I would think. ;)  Jhenderson  7 7 7  00:53, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree with Anna, neither of those two are terrible, and acceptable if nothing else, but there appear to be many better options.-- S Philbrick (Talk)  02:22, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Third image is my first preference, left image is my second preference. BOZ (talk) 06:33, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The new fourth image seems better to me than the rest. BOZ (talk) 23:01, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Please note that while I am not familiar with the MOS regarding the primary photograph for a biographical article (or any article, for that matter ^_^;), IMHO that photograph should be both representative of the person (as, for instance, Rachael Leigh Cook's is not, since AFAICT she is rarely blonde—not to start another argument ^_^) and make identifying that person easy. While I think that the second image is the most interesting, I feel that image #3 is better for those purposes, followed by image #2, as they both show all of Mr. Marsters' face.—DocWatson42 (talk) 07:42, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Looking at everything at Commons, I think this one would be the best. It shows his face, there is no clutter with logos in the background or water bottles in the foreground, it is of high quality, plus I personally hate the photographers who 1) add there name to the file name, and 2) place undue restrictions on the use of the work (ones that I think could get them deleted from Commons). This one also looks good at 175px which is around what an infobox photo should be at. Of those above, the top left one, but cropped, would be the best one. Aboutmovies (talk) 08:31, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
 * A good shot, but 6 years old. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 09:08, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
 * True, but it doesn't matter much. We need something representative, and in a sense timeless. We don't want to be coming back every five years to update the photo. Just pick out your random really famous person and check out the headshots we use in the infobox. Bill Clinton's is from 1993; Sean Connery's is from 2008. Some other famous people's are more recent, but I don't think age is that important. If there was one of the same quality as this one and more recent, sure, then go with the more recent one. But I'll take a good quality photo from 10 years ago over one taken from 100 feet away using a cell phone from last week. Aboutmovies (talk) 22:38, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

 * None proposed thus far. Each of the four images has problems (respectively: uncroppable product brand name and bad background, looks like promotional head shot, overexposed areas from flash and strangely unflattering, angle too crooked for infobox) that aren't easily solvable through simple editing. If I had to pick one of the four, I'd pick the one proposed by Jhenderson777. Maybe someone with a deft touch could fix the flash problem in Photoshop, idk. Rivertorch (talk) 09:26, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The one currently used in the photobox on the article, i.e. the one on the right. It's the cleanest of the four, to me. Pejorative.majeure (talk) 10:57, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
 * File:James Marsters DragonCon 2007-1.jpg is the cleanest and the sharpest and is look has changed significantly since 2007.--TriiipleThreat (talk) 14:15, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The left one. It is friendlier and seems more natural. David A (talk) 14:20, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I think the right one is slightly better, but I'm not impressed by any of the four suggested so far. Argento Surfer (talk) 14:46, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Of the original two, the left. The third posted by Jhenderson is even better. And the fourth posted by aboutmovies is the best so far. --luckymustard (talk) 17:42, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Certainly neither of the original two. I don't prefer the third. The fourth image provided by Aboutmovies is the most suitable, in my opinion. Many of the images on Flickr or in commons could be incorporated into the article, but I didn't see many that were suitable for an infobox image. Cheers, AstroCog (talk) 19:42, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Fourth is the best. -- King of ♥   ♦   ♣  ♠ 20:27, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment.I like the fourth one too. Remember I said most of the commons one is better and I used one example. Jhenderson  7 7 7  23:59, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

 * Although if age is a problem with some I might still prefer the Big Apple Convention linked....but aboutmovies does make a good point on age doesn't really matter all the time. Jhenderson  7 7 7  00:13, 28 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Of these, File:James Marsters DragonCon 2007-1.jpg looks best to me, but I'm sure more appropriate portraits are available. —PC-XT+ 18:02, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Fifth option, cropped version of "right": Actor James Marsters at Phoenix Comic Con, 28 May 2010 crop.jpg . (My !vote is above) --Lexein (talk) 20:20, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
 * File:James Marsters DragonCon 2007-1.jpg seems best (by far).  Mlpearc  ( open channel ) 20:26, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
 * File:James Marsters DragonCon 2007-1.jpg is my preference from this selection, but I would encourage someone more familiar with the subject to look around at Flickr for an even better alternative if there is one available. Perhaps something like this? Tyrol5   [Talk]  16:45, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

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Other Work, Dresden Files
I have made futile attempts to update and correct the Dresden Files section. The ENTIRE section needs to be rewritten, it has clearly had sentences added to the point that it is nonsense. Can anyone assist o this? I have made several attempts but hitting a wall even on the smallest of corrections. Lorethiel (talk) 19:36, 26 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Impartially written and properly sourced additions are always welcome. -- ‖ Ebyabe talk - Repel All Boarders  ‖ 05:32, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

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license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Talk:James Marsters


text:
Cataclysm

Cataclysm is derived from the Greek katá, 'down, against', and klyzō , 'wash over, surge'. It may refer to:

Common meanings

 * Generally, any large-scale disaster
 * Deluge (mythology)
 * Doomsday event, see hypothetical risks to civilization, humans, and planet Earth
 * A catastrophic natural event:
 * List of geological phenomena
 * earthquake, the result of a sudden release of energy in the Earth's crust that creates seismic waves
 * volcanic eruption

Video games

 * World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, an expansion pack of Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft
 * Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, an open-source cross-platform roguelike video game
 * Homeworld: Cataclysm, a stand-alone expansion, of the Homeworld space-based RTS franchise

Books and comics

 * Cataclysm (Dragonlance), a fictional event in the Dragonlance novels
 * Batman: Cataclysm, a DC Comics crossover story arc featuring Batman
 * Cataclysm: The Ultimates' Last Stand, a 2013–2014 crossover storyline appearing in the Ultimate Marvel line of books
 * Godzilla: Cataclysm, a miniseries from the Godzilla comics by IDW Publishing, see Godzilla (comics)

Other uses

 * A special ability used by Cat Noir, a character in Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir
 * "Cataclysmic", a song by Joe Satriani from the 2015 album Shockwave Supernova

title: Cataclysm


text:
George Meredith

George Meredith (12 February 1828 – 18 May 1909) was an English novelist and poet of the Victorian era. At first, his focus was poetry, influenced by John Keats among others, but Meredith gradually established a reputation as a novelist. The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859) briefly scandalised Victorian literary circles. Of his later novels, the most enduring is The Egoist (1879), though in his lifetime his greatest success was Diana of the Crossways (1885). His novels were innovative in their attention to characters' psychology, and also portrayed social change. His style, in both poetry and prose, was noted for its syntactic complexity; Oscar Wilde likened it to "chaos illumined by brilliant flashes of lightning". Meredith was an encourager of other novelists, as well as an influence on them; among those to benefit were Robert Louis Stevenson and George Gissing. Meredith was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature seven times.

Early years, education and first marriage
Meredith was born at 73 High Street, Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, the only child of Augustus Urmston Meredith and his wife Jane Eliza (née Macnamara). The name Meredith is Welsh, and he would describe himself as "half Irish and half Welsh" (on his mother's and father's sides, respectively). He was proud of his Welsh origins, and such pride is evident in his novels. His biographer Lionel Stevenson explains that Meredith's paternal grandfather, Melchizedek, would sometimes "boast eloquently of his princely forebears", but "between his immediate forebears and the legendary Welsh princes of seven centuries before, the history of the family remains obscure."

Augustus Meredith was, as Melchizedek Meredith had been before him, a naval outfitter, and among his employees was James Watson Gieve. Jane died when her son was five, and the outfitting business failed, with Augustus declared bankrupt in November 1838. He moved to London and in July 1839 remarried – his second wife being the family's former housekeeper, Matilda Buckett.

George Meredith was educated in Southsea until 1840, when a legacy from his mother's sister, Anna, made it possible for him to attend a boarding school in Lowestoft, Suffolk. In August 1842 he was sent to the Moravian School in Neuwied, near Coblenz, where he remained until the spring of 1844; Lionel Stevenson argues that the experience instilled his "impatience towards sham and servility, contempt for conceit, admiration for courage, and devotion to candid and rational forthrightness".

By 1845 it was planned that he would be articled to a solicitor, Richard Charnock of Paternoster Row, and he was duly articled in February 1846, shortly before his eighteenth birthday. But he abandoned the legal profession for journalism and poetry, taking lodgings in Pimlico.

Drawn to literary circles, Meredith collaborated with Edward Gryffydh Peacock, son of Thomas Love Peacock, in publishing a privately circulated literary magazine, the Monthly Observer. One of the contributors was Edward Peacock's sister Mary Ellen Nicolls. Described by the artist William Holman Hunt as "a dashing type of horsewoman who attracted much notice", Mary was the widow of a naval officer, Lieutenant Edward Nicolls, who in 1844 had drowned while attempting to rescue a man under his command.

In August 1849 Meredith married Mary, at St George's, Hanover Square. At the time of the marriage, Meredith was 21 years old; she was 28 and had a five-year-old daughter by Lieutenant Nicolls (born after his death). Augustus Meredith was not present at the wedding, having emigrated to South Africa in April of that year.

First books
Meredith collected his early writings, first published in periodicals, in an 1851 volume, Poems. Dedicated to his father-in-law Thomas Love Peacock, "with the profound admiration and affectionate respect of his son-in-law", it attracted the interest of Tennyson, who wrote Meredith an admiring letter, expressing the desire to meet, though their first encounter was awkward and left Meredith convinced of the elder poet's "conceit". A review by William Michael Rossetti likened Meredith to "a kind of limited Keats", "a seeing or sensuous poet" possessing "warmth of emotion".

The Merediths' circumstances were precarious, and Mary had more than one miscarriage before in 1853 giving birth to a son, Arthur Gryffydh. At the time the couple were living with her father in Lower Halliford (today part of Shepperton). Following the birth, Peacock rented a house for them, across the village green from his home.

Fatherhood heightened Meredith's belief that he must press ahead with his writing career, resulting in what would eventually be his first substantial work of prose fiction, The Shaving of Shagpat. An allegorical Arabian fantasy, it was written in imitation of "the style and manner of the Oriental story-tellers", but sprang "from no Eastern source". The book attracted little notice when published, in 1856, though it was praised by George Eliot for its "poetical genius". The following year he published Farina, subtitled "A Legend of Cologne", a work in the comic-grotesque vein that was described by The Athenaeum's critic as "a full-blooded specimen of the nonsense of Genius" and a "lively, audacious piece of extravaganza". George Eliot, in The Westminster Review, called it "an original and an entertaining book", but it inevitably suffered from her reviewing it alongside Madame Bovary and Barchester Towers.

End of first marriage
The Death of Chatterton, a notable painting by the English Pre-Raphaelite painter Henry Wallis (1830–1916), for which Meredith served as the model, was exhibited in 1856. Mary and Wallis grew close and became lovers. In 1857, she fell pregnant to him and in April 1858 gave birth to a son, Harold, who was later known as Felix Wallis. The relationship with Wallis however did not last; having spent some of 1858 with him in Capri, she returned to England with Harold, and from then on moved frequently. She died three years later, of kidney failure, a few months after moving to Grotto Cottage, Oatlands Park, Weybridge. Meredith was by this time living in Chelsea, where he kept rooms in Hobury Street and often had Arthur in his care. He did not attend Mary's funeral; neither did Henry Wallis or her father.

Meredith's first major novel, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, emerged from his experience of the collapse of his marriage and shocked many readers with its sexual frankness. The collection of sonnets entitled Modern Love (1862) also traces the decline of a marriage and has been described by Dorothy Mermin as "a curiosity of Victorian literature" and "a point of intersection between Victorian poetry and the Victorian novel"; "in a very real sense novelistic", it is notable for its "psychological realism" and "extreme subjectivity".

In 1861 he published Evan Harrington, a novel which deals with class, manners and mimicry. It upset his father, living at the time in Cape Town, who complained: "I am pained beyond expression, as I consider it aimed at myself." The novel, according to the critic Richard Cronin, "recklessly betrays family confidences" and constituted a "treacherous burlesque of his own family's history, but also ... [a] love letter to his family".

Second marriage
In 1863, Meredith met Marie Vulliamy, a young woman of Anglo-French stock whose father, Justin, was the successful, recently retired proprietor of a wool business in Normandy. Attraction was immediate, and by 1864 Meredith was writing to his friend Frederick Maxse that "She has done me the honour to love me for some time". But from Mr Vulliamy's perspective, the 36-year-old Meredith, a widower with an 11-year-old son, was not the ideal suitor for his 24-year-old daughter, and Meredith had to provide character references, among whom were Edward Peacock, Sir Alexander Duff-Gordon and John Chapman.

Mr Vulliamy was especially keen to understand the details of Meredith's previous marriage, to establish both his character and standing. In the end, his investigations "revealed nothing really discreditable, and though the financial outlook was not bright, it was not, with the £200 per annum that he would settle upon Marie, altogether dark. And outweighing all objections was the simple fact that his daughter was in love with Meredith. The only possible answer was yes, and he gave it." The couple duly married in September 1864 and settled in Surrey, first in Norbiton and then, at the end of 1867, at Flint Cottage near Box Hill.

Development of literary career
Meredith continued to write poetry, often inspired by nature, but his most notable publications following his second marriage were novels. Emilia in England (1864) was a comedy at the expense of English social climbers. Rhoda Fleming (1865), which bore a resemblance to George Eliot's novels, portrayed a country girl seduced by a callous gentleman. Vittoria (1867) was a sequel of sorts to Emilia in England, though not comic. None of these met with success, but he gained more recognition with The Adventures of Harry Richmond (1871) and the politically charged Beauchamp's Career (1876). Three novellas followed: The House on the Beach (1877), The Case of General Ople and Lady Camper (also 1877), and The Tale of Chloe (1879).

He also attempted to complete a play, entitled The Sentimentalists, which he had begun in 1862. He would never finish it, but after his death J. M. Barrie chose to weave together the various drafts to create a one-act comedy. This was performed alongside two short pieces of Barrie's during a season of work at the Duke of York's Theatre in 1910 – a project driven by Harley Granville-Barker.

Meredith's keen understanding of comedy was articulated in his Essay on Comedy (1877). Originally delivered as a lecture at the London Institution, it remains a reference work in the history of comic theory, having influenced analysts of comedy such as Joseph Wood Krutch. The essay was in effect preparation for The Egoist, published in 1879, which applies some of his theories, in particular his idea of comedy as "the ultimate civiliser". He followed it with The Tragic Comedians (1880), which was written quickly and without great conviction.

Popular success did not come easily to Meredith. The Egoist was a turning point inasmuch it brought him widespread critical recognition. One of several of his works which highlight the subjugation of women during the Victorian period, it was considered by W. E. Henley, who reviewed it in at least four publications and possibly as many as seven, to make him "a companion for Balzac and Richardson, an intimate for Fielding and Cervantes". The critic for the New Quarterly Magazine commented, "We pay Mr Meredith a high compliment when we say he enables the reader to understand what is meant by Comedy, in the best and fullest sense of the word."

His most commercially rewarding novel was Diana of the Crossways, published in 1885, which attracted notice because of its relationship to real-life events involving Caroline Norton and Lord Melbourne. Margaret Harris explains that "like many of Meredith's novels, Diana contains commentary on the aims and techniques of fiction, made particularly potent by Diana's being herself a novelist dedicated to 'reading the inner as well as exhibiting the outer'". George Gissing wrote to his brother, "By hook or crook, get hold of Diana of the Crossways. The book is right glorious. Shakespeare in modern English", and William Cosmo Monkhouse wrote in the Saturday Review that "amongst all his intellectual and literary feats, Mr Meredith has, perhaps, never accomplished one more striking". Diana was his first book to make an impression in America.

Influence in literary circles
Meredith supplemented his often uncertain writer's income with a job as a publisher's reader. His advice to Chapman & Hall made him influential in the world of letters, and he was capable of reading as many as ten manuscripts a week, though his judgement was not always reliable; Ellen Wood's novel East Lynne was rejected by Chapman & Hall on his say-so yet went on, when published by Richard Bentley, to be a bestseller.

His friends in the literary world included, at different times, William and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Cotter Morison, Leslie Stephen, Robert Louis Stevenson, George Gissing and J. M. Barrie.

Gissing wrote in a letter to his brother Algernon that Meredith's novels were "of the superlatively tough species". His contemporary Sir Arthur Conan Doyle paid tribute to him in the short story "The Boscombe Valley Mystery", in which Sherlock Holmes says to Dr. Watson, during the discussion of the case, "And now let us talk about George Meredith, if you please, and we shall leave all minor matters until to-morrow." Oscar Wilde in "The Art of Novel-Writing" reflected, "Ah, Meredith! Who can define him? ... As a writer he has mastered everything, except language ... Too strange to be popular, too individual to have imitators, ... [he] stands absolutely alone." In 1868 Meredith was introduced to Thomas Hardy by Frederic Chapman of Chapman & Hall. Hardy had submitted his first novel, The Poor Man and the Lady. Meredith advised Hardy not to publish his book as it would be attacked by reviewers and destroy his hopes of becoming a novelist. Meredith felt the book was too bitter a satire on the rich, and counselled Hardy to put it aside and write another "with a purely artistic purpose" and more of a plot. Meredith spoke from experience; his own first big novel, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, was judged so shocking that Mudie's circulating library had cancelled an order of 300 copies. Hardy continued in his attempts to publish the novel, without success, though he clearly took Meredith's advice seriously.

His books were translated into Japanese and influenced author Natsume Sōseki.

Politics
Meredith's politics were those of a Radical Liberal, and he was friends with other Radicals such as Frederick Maxse, whom he met around 1860, and John Morley, whom he first encountered in print, as the Literary Gazette's enraptured reviewer of Evan Harrington. Another politically active friend was W. T. Stead, who replaced Morley as editor of The Pall Mall Gazette and was renowned for his campaigning journalism, in particular a crusade against child prostitution. Stead shared with Meredith an aversion to war, a loathing of the "foul fury of Jingoism" and "jingo-Imperialism" periodically evident in the British press, a hostility to the Russophobia then prevalent in Britain, and an appetite for greater democracy.

Later life
Beginning in the 1880s, Meredith's interest in writing poetry intensified again, and he was of the opinion that his poems would prove more durable than his prose. In 1883 he published Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth, which contained substantial new pieces such as "Melampus", "The Day of the Daughter of Hades", "Earth and Man" and "The Woods of Westermain", along with pieces that had previously appeared in periodicals, including "The Lark Ascending" and an expanded version of his earlier "Love in the Valley". Admirers of the volumes included Alice Meynell, W. P. Ker and Mark Pattison. Ballads and Poems of Tragic Life (1887) brought together many of his previously uncollected poems. Its poor reception, especially by W. E. Henley, cemented Meredith's belief that there was a critical conspiracy against him.

Nine of his novels were republished in 1885–6, priced at six shillings each, which made them accessible to a wider audience, and from 1889 they appeared in an edition priced 3s. 6d.. Meredith was moved to joke to James Payn, editor of the Cornhill Magazine, that his "submerged head [was] strangely appearing above the waters in England".

He continued to publish new novels, including One of our Conquerors (1891), an experimental portrait of a troubled marriage, and Lord Ormont and his Aminta (1894), which depicts a woman breaking free from a humiliating marriage and re-establishing her self-worth through a new relationship. The latter contains a sketch of a school that resembles the one he attended in Neuwied. The Amazing Marriage (1895), melodramatic yet closely concerned with modern questions of psychology and gender, was the last of his novels to be published in his lifetime; Celt and Saxon, an unfinished early work which took a keen interest in the relationship between race and ideology, appeared posthumously in 1910.

Marie died of throat cancer in 1885, lauded by Meredith as "the most unpretending, brave and steadfast friend ever given for a mate". In later life he was troubled by ailments which restricted his mobility. Explanations for this have included locomotor ataxia and osteoarthritis.

Before his death, Meredith was honoured from many quarters: in 1892 he succeeded Tennyson as president of the Society of Authors; that year there was an honorary doctorate from the University of St Andrews; and at a dinner in his honour in 1895 Thomas Hardy and George Gissing paid tribute to his achievements and his influence on them. Max Beerbohm's caricature for Vanity Fair, published in 1896 and captioned "Our First Novelist", was an indication of Meredith's standing at that time; Beerbohm thought him, Shakespeare apart, the greatest English literary figure.

In 1905 he was appointed to the Order of Merit, which had recently been established by King Edward VII. He was invested with the Order at Flint Cottage in December of that year, at a small ceremony performed by the King's representative, Sir Arthur Ellis.

In 1909, he died at home in Box Hill. His ashes were buried alongside Marie's in the cemetery at Dorking, Surrey.

In 1912 Constable & Co. published Letters of George Meredith in 2 volumes.

Family

 * Augustus Meredith died in 1876, aged 79, and his second wife Matilda in 1885, aged 67. Both were buried in Southsea, having returned to England from South Africa around 1863. In Augustus's final years, George visited him from time to time, though only out of a sense of duty.
 * By his two wives, George Meredith had three children, outliving both wives and one child.
 * His relationship with Arthur, his son by Mary, was at first affectionate, and they made a memorable trip to the Alps and Venice in 1861. In 1862, Arthur was enrolled at Norwich School, which was run by a friend of Meredith's, Augustus Jessopp. Arthur would later be sent to school in Switzerland, before continuing his studies in Stuttgart. For most of Arthur's adult life, father and son were estranged. Arthur found work in a linseed warehouse in France, but health problems curtailed this, and he spent several years on Lake Garda, producing a little journalism and attempting to write a book. His health collapsed in 1886, and he relocated to Australia. He died of tuberculosis, not long after returning from Australia, in September 1890.
 * With his second wife, Marie, he had two children. Their son, William Maxse (1865–1937), would edit Meredith's letters and achieve note in the world of publishing. Their daughter, Marie Eveleen (1871–1933), known as Mariette, married Henry Parkman Sturgis, an American-born banker and politician 24 years her senior, who by his first wife Mary (d. 1886) had six children.
 * His stepdaughter Edith Nicolls, later Clarke, for more than 40 years ran The National Training School Of Cookery. A pioneer of what came to be known as "domestic science", she published several cookbooks and received the MBE. She died in 1926.
 * The first biography of Meredith was published in 1920 by Stewart Marsh Ellis, his second cousin.

Literary style
Meredith's style has attracted a great deal of comment, both favourable and disapproving.

Early on, critics noted his indebtedness to two writers in particular: Thomas Carlyle and Robert Browning. Stevenson notes that the triad "soon became a critical cliché." Some critics felt that he was more influenced by the former than the latter, including George Pierce Baker, who asked: "May not Mr. Meredith be called the Carlyle of fiction?"

His novels, far from being action-packed, are instead driven by what he called "action of the mind", and the large amounts of dialogue have led to their being dismissed as "talky". Critic Neil Roberts describes "the often irritating but profoundly original world of Meredith's novelistic art", noting that these are two sides of "the sense of the new" in his work and that this is "still felt by readers encountering Meredith today". Roberts argues that Meredith's use of dialogue and multiple voices make him "a Bakhtinian novelist par excellence".

His prose, aphoristic and allusive, has often been seen as a barrier to comprehension, with some critics arguing that the style, rather than being a means to an end, serves as an end in itself. Oscar Wilde's description of "chaos illumined by brilliant flashes of lightning" has been echoed by many others. A recurring objection is the mental effort required to decipher his meaning. "Readers," writes Vanessa L. Ryan, "complained that Meredith made too constant an appeal to thoughtfulness ... [and] charged his writing with too many ideas and mental abstractions."

However, admirers since George Eliot have applauded the poetic qualities of Meredith's prose. For Max Beerbohm, he "packs tight all his pages with wit, philosophy, poetry, and psychological analysis". Yet even an enthusiast as fervent as Beerbohm can concede that "His obscurity, like that of Carlyle and Browning, is due less to extreme subtlety than to the plethoric abundance of his ideas".

In a thesis published in Meredith's lifetime, Leah Durand Jones commented that his style is "generally conceded to be more subtle and abstruse, more complex and intricate than that of any other modern writer": he "usually avoids the conventional", achieves "independence of thought and expression" through the "brilliancy of his epigrams", finds "analogies in the most unexpected places", and possesses a "power of compression" which can disconcert readers, not least through a "constant omission of pronouns, relatives, or even nouns and verbs" that demands "swiftness of comprehension". More recently, Matthew Sussman argues that Meredith's style exemplifies the virtue of "fervidness," which synthesizes two opposing impulses in the author's mind: "the first, identified with metaphor and epigram, gravitates toward the philosophical intensity of poetic condensation, while the second, identified with plotting and syntax, seeks the imaginative freedom of discursive prose."

As a poet, Meredith has drawn both praise and criticism for his innovation in metrical and stanzaic forms, along with his unorthodox syntax and metaphors. But his poetry is more varied than many assessments recognise; noting the tendency to overlook the pessimistic poetry Meredith produced after Modern Love and until the 1880s, Arthur L. Simpson explains that "The contrast between the derivative Romanticism of the early poems and the evolutionary naturalism of those published after 1880 is striking", and notes, of Meredith's work in the 1860s and 1870s, that "The tensions and polarities of the poems of this period bear comparison to those in the poetry of the early Tennyson, of Arnold, and of the Hopkins of the terrible sonnets."

Novels
• The Shaving of Shagpat (1856)

• Farina (1857)

• The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859)

• Evan Harrington (1861)

• Emilia in England (1864), republished as Sandra Belloni in 1887

• Rhoda Fleming (1865)

• Vittoria (1867)

• The Adventures of Harry Richmond (1871)

• Beauchamp's Career (1875)

• The House on the Beach (1877)

• The Case of General Ople and Lady Camper (1877)

• The Tale of Chloe (1879)

• The Egoist (1879)

• The Tragic Comedians (1880)

• Diana of the Crossways (1885)

• One of our Conquerors (1891)

• Lord Ormont and his Aminta (1894)

• The Amazing Marriage (1895)

• Celt and Saxon (1910)

Poetry
• Poems (1851)

• Modern Love (1862)

• The Lark Ascending (1881), (which inspired Vaughan Williams' instrumental work of that title).

• Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth (1883)

• The Woods of Westermain (1883)

• A Faith on Trial (1885)

• Ballads and Poems of Tragic Life (1887)

• A Reading of Earth (1888)

• The Empty Purse (1892)

• Odes in Contribution to the Song of French History (1898)

• A Reading of Life (1901)

• Selected Poems of George Meredith (1903, author's supervision)

• Last Poems (1909)

• Lucifer in Starlight

• Dirge in woods

Essays

 * Essay on Comedy (1877)

title: George Meredith


text:
Gaston Julia

Gaston Maurice Julia (3 February 1893 – 19 March 1978) was a French mathematician who devised the formula for the Julia set. His works were popularized by Benoit Mandelbrot; the Julia and Mandelbrot fractals are closely related. He founded, independently with Pierre Fatou, the modern theory of holomorphic dynamics.

Military service
Julia was born in the Algerian town of Sidi Bel Abbes, at the time governed by the French. During his youth, he had an interest in mathematics and music. His studies were interrupted at the age of 21, when France became involved in World War I and Julia was conscripted to serve with the army. During an attack he suffered a severe injury, losing his nose. His many operations to remedy the situation were all unsuccessful, and for the rest of his life he resigned himself to wearing a leather strap around the area where his nose had been.

Career in mathematics
Julia gained attention for his mathematical work at the age of 25, in 1918, when his 199-page Mémoire sur l'itération des fonctions rationnelles ("Memoir on the Iteration of Rational Functions") was featured in the Journal de Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées. This article gained immense popularity among mathematicians and earned him the Grand Prix des Sciences Mathématiques of the French Academy of Sciences in 1918. But after this brief moment of fame, his works were mostly forgotten until Benoit Mandelbrot mentioned them in his works on fractals in the French book Les Objets Fractals: Forme, Hasard et Dimension, later translated in 1977 as Fractals: Form, Chance and Dimension.

On 19 March 1978, Julia died in Paris at the age of 85.

Julia was also father to Marc Julia, the French organic chemist who invented the Julia olefination.

World War Two and collaboration
Julia collaborated with Nazi Germany during the occupation of France; recruiting French mathematicians to collaborate with the Zentralblatt für Mathematik. He was suspended for a few weeks after the liberation of France, but according to Michèle Audin: "This was followed by no sanction, as the epuration committee was (unanimously...) too impressed by his status of 'gueule cassée' to do anything. Then he resumed his normal activities, professor at the Sorbonne and l'Ecole Polytechnique, was president of the Académie des Sciences in 1950, etc."

Books

 * Oeuvres, 6 vols., Paris, Gauthier-Villars 1968-1970 (eds. Jacques Dixmier, Michel Hervé, with foreword by Julia)
 * Leçons sur les Fonctions Uniformes à Point Singulier Essentiel Isolé, Gauthier-Villars 1924 (rédigées par P. Flamant)
 * Eléments de géométrie infinitésimale, Gauthier-Villars 1927
 * Cours de Cinématique, Gauthier-Villars 1928, 2nd edition 1936
 * Exercices d'Analyse, 4 vols., Gauthier-Villars, 1928–1938, 2nd edition 1944, 1950
 * Principes Géométriques d'Analyse, 2 vols., Gauthier-Villars, 1930, 1932
 * Essai sur le Développement de la Théorie des Fonctions de Variables Complexes, Gauthier-Villars 1933
 * Introduction Mathématique aux Theories Quantiques, 2 vols., Gauthier-Villars 1936, 1938, 2nd edition 1949, 1955
 * Eléments d'algèbre, Gauthier-Villars 1959
 * Cours de Géométrie, Gauthier-Villars 1941
 * Cours de géométrie infinitésimale, Gauthier-Villars, 2nd edition 1953
 * Exercices de géométrie, 2 vols., Gauthier-Villars 1944, 1952
 * Leçons sur la représentation conforme des aires simplement connexes, Gauthier-Villars 1931, 2nd edition 1950
 * Leçons sur la représentation conforme des aires multiplement connexes, Gauthier-Villars 1934
 * Traité de Théorie de Fonctions, Gauthier-Villars 1953
 * Leçons sur les fonctions monogènes uniformes d'une variable complexe, Gauthier-Villars 1917
 * Étude sur les formes binaires non quadratiques à indéterminées réelles ou complexes, ou à indéterminées conjuguées, Gauthier-Villars 1917

title: Gaston Julia


text:
Andy Gibb

Andrew Roy Gibb (5 March 1958 – 10 March 1988) was an English-Australian singer and songwriter. He was the younger brother of Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb, musicians who had formed the Bee Gees during the mid-1960s. Gibb came to prominence in the late 1970s through the early 1980s with eight singles reaching the Top 20 of the US Hot 100, three of which went to number one: "I Just Want to Be Your Everything" (1977), "(Love Is) Thicker Than Water" (1977), and "Shadow Dancing" (1978). In the early 1980s, he co-hosted the American music television series Solid Gold. He also performed in a production of The Pirates of Penzance and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Gibb would later struggle with drug addiction and depression. He died on 10 March 1988, five days after his 30th birthday.

1958–1975: Early life and first recordings
Andrew Roy Gibb was born on 5 March 1958 at Stretford Memorial Hospital in Stretford, Lancashire. He was the youngest of five children born to Barbara and Hugh Gibb. His mother was of Irish and English descent, and his father was of Scottish and English descent. He had four siblings: his sister, Lesley Evans; and three brothers—Barry and fraternal twins Robin and Maurice.

At the age of six months, Andy Gibb emigrated with his family to Queensland, Australia, settling on Cribb Island just north of Brisbane. After moving several times between Brisbane and Sydney, Andy returned to the United Kingdom in January 1967 as his three older brothers began to gain international fame as the Bee Gees.

In his childhood, his mother, Barbara, described Andy as "A little devil, a little monster. I'd send him off to school, but he'd sneak off to the stable and sleep with his two horses all day. He'd wander back home around lunchtime smelling of horse manure, yet he'd swear he had been at school. Oh, he was a little monkey!"

Producer and film director Tom Kennedy described Andy's personality in his childhood: Andy was always around—he was this cheeky little lad, Hugh and Barbara doted on him, so he would have a limo to go around London with his pals and twenty quid to go to the cinema. It was unheard of in those days! But he was just a cheeky little lad with a heart of gold. He used to try to get me to buy him beer when he was underage—he would only have been about 11 or 12. He quit school at the age of 13, and with an acoustic guitar given to him by his older brother Barry, he began playing at tourist clubs around Ibiza, Spain (when his parents moved there), and later on the Isle of Man, his brothers' birthplace, where his parents were living at the time.

In June 1974, Gibb formed his first group, Melody Fayre (named after a Bee Gees song), which included Isle of Man musicians John Alderson on guitar, Stan Hughes on bass, and John Stringer on drums. The group was managed by Andy's mother, Barbara, and had regular bookings on the small island's hotel circuit. Gibb's first recording, in August 1973, was a Maurice Gibb composition, "My Father Was a Rebel", which Maurice also produced and played on. It was not released. Another track on the session performed by him was "Windows of My World," co-written by him and Maurice.

At the urging of his brother Barry, Gibb returned to Australia in 1974. Barry believed that, because Australia had been a good training ground for the Bee Gees, it would also help his youngest brother. Lesley Gibb had remained in Australia, where she raised a family with her husband. Both Alderson and Stringer followed Andy to Australia with the hope of forming a band there. With Col Joye producing, Andy, Alderson, and Stringer recorded a number of Andy's compositions. The first song was a demo called "To a Girl" (with his brother Maurice playing organ), which he later performed on his television debut in Australia on The Ernie Sigley Show. Sigley later informed the audience that it was from Gibb's forthcoming album, but it was never released. In November of the same year, he recorded six demos—again produced by Joye—including "Words and Music", "Westfield Mansions", and "Flowing Rivers" (which was later released). What may have detracted from the "training ground" aspect of Australia for Andy compared with his brothers was that Andy was relatively comfortable financially, mainly because of his brothers' support and their largesse; hence, the group's sporadic work rate. Andy would disappear for periods of time, leaving Alderson and Stringer out of work with no income. Despondent, Alderson and Stringer returned to the UK.

Gibb later joined the band Zenta, consisting of Gibb on vocals, Rick Alford on guitar, Paddy Lelliot on bass, Glen Greenhalgh on vocals, and Trevor Norton on drums. Zenta supported international artists Sweet and the Bay City Rollers on the Sydney leg of their Australian tours. "Can't Stop Dancing" (which was a Ray Stevens song and was later a US hit for duo Captain and Tennille in May 1977) was mooted for release, but didn't happen, although Gibb did perform it on television at least once on the revitalised Bandstand show hosted by Daryl Somers. Zenta would appear later as a backing band for Gibb, but did not participate on Gibb's recording sessions around 1975, which featured Australian jazz fusion group Crossfire.

"Words and Music" was released on the ATA label, only in Australia and New Zealand, owned by Joye. It was his first single, the song, backed by another Andy Gibb composition "Westfield Mansions". The single would eventually reach the Top Twenty on the Sydney music charts in 1976; the ballad was one of his well-known hits.

1976–1980: International success
Andy at that time lived in Seven Hills, an outer Sydney suburb where he married his girlfriend Kim Reeder at the Wayside Chapel on July 11, 1976. "Kim breeds Staffordshire bull terriers and my sister does too", he once said. "We met at a dog show when my sister Lesley introduced us".

In 1977 they moved to West Hollywood. Reeder recalled, "He became ensconced in the drug scene. Cocaine became his first love. He became depressed and paranoid." After they split up, Reeder moved back to Australia, where she gave birth to their daughter, Peta, on 25 January 1978, and they divorced later that year.

Robert Stigwood, who at the time was the Bee Gees' manager, signed Andy to his label, RSO Records in early 1976, after he heard some of Andy's demo tapes. Andy soon moved to Miami Beach, Florida, to begin working on songs with his brother Barry and co-producers Albhy Galuten and Karl Richardson. In late 1976 in Miami, Andy, with older brother Barry producing and recording in the famed Criteria Studios, set about making his first album Flowing Rivers. Eagles guitarist Joe Walsh played on two songs on the album. The first release from the album, and Gibb's first single released outside Australia, was "I Just Want to Be Your Everything" which was written by Barry, who also provided backup vocals. It reached number one in the United States and Australia and was the most played record of the year. In Britain it was a lesser hit, just scraping into the Top 30. Eight of the ten tracks on the album were Andy Gibb compositions, mostly songs written during his time in Australia. These included a re-recording of his previous single, "Words and Music". In September 1977 Flowing Rivers, with another number one single "(Love Is) Thicker Than Water" (also co-written by Gibb and his brother Barry) to support it, quickly became a million-selling album. That single broke in early 1978 during the time that the Bee Gees' contributions to the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack were dominating the world charts. In the United States it replaced "Stayin' Alive" at the top of the Hot 100 on the day before Andy's 20th birthday, only to be surpassed by "Night Fever" at number one there two weeks later.

Andy then began work with the Gibb-Galuten-Richardson production team on his second album, Shadow Dancing, which was released in April 1978 and was his highest-charting album in America and Canada. The title track, written by all four Gibb brothers, was released as a single in the United States in April 1978. In mid-June it began a seven-week run at number one, achieving platinum status and the honour of being Billboard 's number one song of 1978. In the United States, Gibb became the first male solo artist to have three consecutive number one singles on the Billboard Hot 100, with all of the weeks at the top of the chart happening in less than year, from 30 July 1977 through 29 July 1978. Two further Top Ten singles, "An Everlasting Love" (which reached number 5) and "(Our Love) Don't Throw It All Away" (which reached number 9), were released from the album, which became another million seller.

In 1979, Gibb performed along with the Bee Gees, ABBA and Olivia Newton-John (duet with "Rest Your Love on Me") at the Music for UNICEF Concert at the United Nations General Assembly, which was broadcast worldwide. He returned to the studio to begin recording sessions for his final full studio album After Dark. In March 1980, the last of Gibb's Top Ten singles charted just ahead of the album's release. "Desire" was recorded for the Bee Gees' 1979 album Spirits Having Flown and featured their original track, complete with Andy's original "guest vocal" track. A second single, "I Can't Help It", a duet with family friend and fellow British and Australian expat Olivia Newton-John, reached the top 20.

Later in the year, Andy Gibb's Greatest Hits was released as a finale to his contract with RSO Records, with two new songs: "Time Is Time" (number 15 in January 1981) and "Me (Without You)" (Gibb's last top-40 chart entry) shipped as singles, before RSO founder Robert Stigwood let him go due to his cocaine addiction and behavioural problems. "After Dark" and "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow" were non-single songs added to the album, the latter of which was a duet with P. P. Arnold, who had previously worked with Barry Gibb, including singing uncredited backups on "Bury Me Down by the River" from Cucumber Castle.

Around the same time, Gibb was invited to sing the first verse on Queen's "Play the Game", and lead singer Freddie Mercury apparently was amazed with Gibb's abilities. According to some sources, the tape was found in 1990 in a search of Queen archives for bonus tracks for a CD but was not used. Since it has not been heard by any Queen collectors, its existence is somewhat doubtful, although record producer Mack has also confirmed that the version does exist.

1981–1986: Decline and live performances
While taping The John Davidson Show in January 1981, Gibb met actress Victoria Principal. During their high-profile relationship, Gibb began working on several projects outside the recording studio. He co-hosted the television music show Solid Gold from 1981 to 1982 with Marilyn McCoo. He also performed in Gilbert & Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance in Los Angeles and Andrew Lloyd Webber's Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat on Broadway. Gibb was ultimately fired from both Joseph and Solid Gold because of absenteeism caused by cocaine binges. Said Zev Buffman, a Broadway producer and financier for Joseph, "When Andy was at the theater, he was a joy. But he wasn't there enough", adding that of the five people to play Joseph up to that point, Gibb was the best actor. He also said after Gibb's death, "We'd lose him over long weekends. He'd come back on Tuesday, and he'd look beat. He was like a little puppy—so ashamed when he did something wrong. He was all heart, but he didn't have enough muscle to carry through." An unnamed co-star in Joseph was quoted as saying, "I hear he spent most of his time in his hotel room in front of the TV. I guess he was frightened and insecure. That's what happens when you're the baby brother of the Bee Gees." Commenting after Gibb's death, Solid Gold producer Brad Lachman stated, "...[Andy] was a very charming, vulnerable and charismatic performer. He clearly meant well. He wasn't being difficult. He was going through problems he couldn't deal with. He wanted everyone to love him. He had so much going for him, and he just couldn't believe it."

In August 1981, Gibb and Principal released a duet of the Everly Brothers' "All I Have to Do Is Dream". He reportedly heard her singing in the shower and convinced her to go into the studio with him. This would be Gibb's last official single, and his last US chart entry, peaking at number 51.

Principal recalled after that, "Well, it became very apparent to me that his behavior was becoming erratic and that he was very, very thin. And Andy was a very kind person and a very gentle person, and some of his behavior seemed the antithesis of who I knew him to be. And over a period of ... deduction, I finally realized that it had to be drugs".

Their romance ended shortly thereafter when she gave him an ultimatum to choose between her or drugs. After this, Gibb began dating actress Kari Michaelsen of the NBC television sitcom Gimme a Break!; Gibb met Michaelsen when he had guest starred on the series for one episode.

In 1984 and 1985, Gibb did finish two successful contracts at the Riviera hotel in Las Vegas.

His family convinced him to seek treatment for his drug addiction, which included a stay at the Betty Ford Center in 1985. It was during this time that Gibb began touring small venues with a stage show featuring his hits as well as covers. He also appeared in guest-starring roles on television sitcom Punky Brewster and Gimme a Break! Following an extensive tour of East Asia, he regularly performed shows in Las Vegas and Lake Tahoe. In 1984, he was the headline performer at the Viña del Mar Festival in Chile, performing two nights in a row. He also held a two-week engagement at San Francisco's historic Fairmont Hotel in March 1986.

1987–1988: Attempted comeback and final days
In the spring of 1987, Gibb went through another drug rehabilitation program and thought he had finally beaten his habits.

Gibb now aimed to get a recording contract for release of a new album in 1988. He returned to the studio in June 1987 recording four songs; one of them, "Man on Fire", was released posthumously in 1991 on a Polydor Records anthology. Another track, "Arrow Through the Heart", was the final song Andy would ever record and was featured on an episode of VH1's series, Behind the Music, and released on the Bee Gees' Mythology 4-disc box set in November 2010. The songs are co-written by Gibb with his brothers Barry and Maurice. Their demo recordings with engineer Scott Glasel were heard by Clive Banks from the UK branch of Island Records. Gibb never formally signed a contract but the record label planned to release a single in Europe that spring, followed by another single that summer with the album to follow.

In early March 1988, Barry arranged for Island in England to sign Andy, but when he arrived in England in January 1988, he panicked. Andy missed meetings with the record company and blamed himself for his trouble writing songs. The deal was never signed.

Death
By late January to early February in 1988, Gibb had seemingly beaten his drug addiction, regained his health, and was ready to begin recording a new album; however, he still suffered depression over his breakup with Victoria Principal. According to Robin Gibb, his brother "just went downhill so fast... he was in a terrible state of depression". During this period, Gibb slipped back into alcoholic habits, and was receiving phone calls from brothers Maurice and Barry (one call Barry would regret making), with last-ditch efforts to get Andy to stop. On 5 March 1988, Gibb celebrated his 30th birthday in London while working on the new album. Two days later, he entered John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford complaining of chest pains.

At around 8:30 am on 10 March 1988, Gibb's doctor informed him more tests were needed to determine the cause of his chest pains. Shortly afterward, Gibb slumped into unconsciousness and died as a result of myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle most likely caused by a virus. Years of cocaine use also weakened his heart. This diagnosis was supported by William Shell, a cardiologist who previously treated Gibb.

Upon the announcement of Gibb's death, his ex-wife, Kim Reeder, was not surprised. "I always knew that one day I'd get a call with news like this. It was only a matter of time." Gibb's family said the cause of death was not an overdose, as some media reports suggested, but natural causes after years of substance abuse.

Gibb's body was flown to the United States, where he was interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles. The headstone reads "Andy Gibb / March 5, 1958 – March 10, 1988 / An Everlasting Love", after one of his hit singles.

Legacy
The Andy Gibb Memorial Foundation contributes to charities that Gibb supported, such as the American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society, and the Diabetes Research Institute.

The song "Wish You Were Here", which was a track on the Bee Gees 1989 album One, was dedicated by his brothers to Andy.

Awards and nominations
Gibb was nominated for two Grammy Awards at the 20th Annual Grammy Awards. He was also nominated for two American Music Awards.

Grammy Awards

 * 1978
 * Andy Gibb
 * Best New Artist
 * Nominated
 * 1978
 * "I Just Want to Be Your Everything"
 * Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male
 * Nominated
 * Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male
 * Nominated

American Music Awards

 * 1978
 * "I Just Want To Be Your Everything"
 * Favorite Pop/Rock Song
 * Nominated
 * 1979
 * Andy Gibb
 * Favorite Pop/Rock Male Artist
 * Nominated
 * Favorite Pop/Rock Male Artist
 * Nominated

title: Andy Gibb


text:
Little Wonder Records

Little Wonder Records was a United States budget record label from 1914 through 1923. The label was known for producing one-sided records with abbreviated versions of songs at a very low price.

History
Little Wonders were manufactured by the Columbia Phonograph Company, and were distributed exclusively by music publisher Henry Waterson (the business partner of Irving Berlin) in their early years (1914–1916) – an arrangement that has only recently been discovered as the original contract stipulated that both parties were to keep this relationship a secret. Artists are generally uncredited on Little Wonder labels, which simply give recordings general attributions such as "band", "tenor", "quartette", or "accordion solo".

Little Wonders were lateral-cut single sided $5 1/2$ inch gramophone records. The records contained only about $1 1/2$ to 2 minutes of music. The small size of the discs (together with the cherubic face on later versions of the label) has led some record collectors to incorrectly assume that Little Wonders were made as children's records; they were actually made for the general audience looking for low-priced recordings.

The records retailed for ten cents each, some of the lowest priced recordings available at the time. This price point revolutionized popular recorded music, significantly expanding the market. The audio fidelity is average to slightly above average for the time, with rather narrow grooves (best played with a smaller stylus than contemporary discs). An estimated forty million of these records were sold, principally through the sheet music counters of many five and ten cent store chains of the time and through Sears Roebuck catalogs, rather than in record stores.

All known Little Wonders were made by artists who also recorded for Columbia. One account says that recording artists would visit the Little Wonder recording studio on one floor of the Woolworth Building before or after making records at the Columbia studio on a higher floor of the same building. There has been some speculation that the masters for Little Wonders were actually warm-up balance checks recorded as tests at the beginning of Columbia recording sessions; if such tests happened to record a usable performance, they would be leased to Little Wonder. However, court papers from an early lawsuit between Waterson and Victor Emerson indicate that performers were paid separately and specifically to record for Little Wonder records.

Little Wonder #1 was "Ben Bolt", sung by Henry Burr, who would make more recordings for the label than any other artist. The vaudevillian Sam Ash made the most recordings as a solo artist, beginning with Little Wonder #98, a version of "Chinatown, My Chinatown". Al Jolson recorded a version of "Back to the Carolina You Love" (1914) on the label; Jolson was a Columbia artist, but this was his only Little Wonder recording. Other noted artists of the day whose performances were released (uncredited) on Little Wonder include Gene Greene, Wilbur Sweatman, Billy Murray, Vernon Dalhart, Frank Crumit, the Louisiana Five and the California Ramblers.

Beginning in 1916 Columbia took full control of Little Wonder, and in 1917 it began issuing small illustrated children's books called "Bubble Books", and were also best sellers. Much later Columbia also issued various promotional discs in the same "small disc" numerical series, but these should not be confused with the Little Wonder label.

Little Wonder #339, "The Camp Meeting Jubilee" by a male vocal "quartette", issued in 1916, contains the lyrics "We've been rockin' an' rolling in your arms / Rockin' and rolling in your arms / In the arms of Moses." This is believed to be one of the earliest uses in an audio recording of the phrase "rock ... and roll", albeit in the context of a religious spiritual.

title: Little Wonder Records


text:
Tom Hood

Thomas Hood (19 January 1835 – 20 November 1874) was an English humorist, playwright and author. He was the son of the poet and author Thomas Hood. Pen and Pencil Pictures (1857) was the first of his illustrated books. His most successful novel was Captain Master's Children (1865).

Biography
Hood was born at Lake House, Leytonstone, England, the son of the poet Thomas Hood and his wife Jane (née Reynolds) (1791–1846). His older sister was the children's writer, Frances Freeling Broderip. After attending University College School and Louth Grammar School, he entered Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1853. There he studied for the Church and passed all the examinations for the degree of BA, but did not graduate.

At Oxford, he wrote his Farewell to the Swallows (1853) and Pen and Pencil Pictures (1854). He began to write for the Liskeard Gazette in 1856, and edited that paper in 1858 and 1859. In 1861 he wrote Quips and Cranks, and Daughters of King Daher, and other Poems. The next year, he published Loves of Tom Tucker and Little Bo-Peep, a Rhyming Rigmarole, followed in 1864 by Vere Vereker's Vengeance, a Sensation, and in 1865 by Jingles and Jokes for the Little Folks. His novels included A Disputed Inheritance (1863), A Golden Heart (1867), The Lost Link (1868), Captain Masters's Children (1865), and Love and Valour (1872). In 1866 he translated Ernest L'Épine's La Légende de Croquemitaine.

He also wrote two books on English verse composition, several children's books (in conjunction with his sister, Frances Freeling Broderip), and a body of magazine and journal articles. Hood drew with considerable facility, and illustrated several of his father's comic verses, some of which were collected in his father's book, Precocious Piggy.

Meanwhile, in 1860, the younger Hood obtained a position in the War Office, which he served for five years. In 1865 he left the War Office when selected as editor of Fun Magazine, a Victorian weekly magazine which became very popular under his direction. In 1867, he first issued Tom Hood's Comic Annual, not to be confused with the similarly-named Comic Annual that had been published in 1830 through 1842 by his father, the senior Thomas Hood (who, by then, had already died).

In private life, Hood's geniality and sincere friendliness secured him the affection and esteem of a wide circle of acquaintance. Some of these friends became contributors to his publications. For example, he befriended the dramatist W. S. Gilbert and the American journalist Ambrose Bierce, both frequent contributors to Fun. Hood wrote the burlesque, Robinson Crusoe; or, The Injun Bride and the Injured Wife (1867), together with Gilbert, H. J. Byron, H. S. Leigh and Arthur Sketchley. Hood's Fun gang also included playwright Thomas W. Robertson, among others.

Hood's first wife, Susan, (on occasion called "Mrs Tom"), died in 1873, at the age of only thirty-seven. He married Justine Rudolphine Charotton (b. 1844/5) on 15 August 1874, only a few months before his own death.

Hood died suddenly in his cottage at Peckham Rye, Surrey on 20 November 1874 and was buried in Nunhead cemetery.

Controversy over Alice in Wonderland
In 1887 the literary critic Edward Salmon suggested that Lewis Carroll had plagiarised Hood's From Nowhere to the North Pole (1875) when writing Alice:

"Between Tom Hood and Mr. Lewis Carroll—to call Mr. D. C. Lutwidge by his famous nom de plume—there is more than a suspicion of resemblance in some particulars. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland narrowly escapes challenging a comparison with From Nowhere to the North Pole. The idea of both is so similar that Mr. Carroll can hardly have been surprised if some people have believed he was inspired by Hood."

Carroll replied a month later, in a terse letter to editor of The Nineteenth Century:

"SIR, I find it stated, in an article on 'Literature for the Little Ones,' in your October number, that my little book, 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland,' first published in 1865, was probably suggested by the late Mr. T. Hood's 'From Nowhere to the North Pole,' first published in 1864. May I mention, first, that I have never read Mr. Hood's book; secondly, that I composed mine in the summer of 1862, and wrote it out, in the form lately published in facsimile, during 1863? Thus it will be seen that neither book could have been suggested by the other.

As it is, in my view, and no doubt in that of many others of your readers, an act of dishonesty to imitate another man's book without due acknowledgment, I trust to your sense of justice to allow this reply to the charge brought against me in the above-named article to appear in your forthcoming number."

In 1889 Carroll even inserted an announcement in the back of The Nursery "Alice", correcting his previous explanation and further denying Tom Hood's influence:

"In October 1887, the writer of an article on "Literature for the Little Ones": in The Nineteenth Century, stated that, in 1864 "TOM HOOD was delighting the world with such works as From Nowhere to the North Pole. Between TOM HOOD and Mr. LEWIS CARROLL there is more than a suspicion of resemblance in some particulars. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland narrowly escapes challenging a comparison with From Nowhere to the North Pole. The idea of both is so similar that Mr. Carroll can hardly have been surprised if some people have believed he was inspired by HOOD." The date 1864 is a mistake. From Nowhere to the North Pole was first published in 1874."

Legacy and honours

 * British dramatist Thomas W. Robertson dedicated his play Society (1864) to Hood — "To my dear friend Tom Hood this play is dedicated."
 * His sister, Frances Freeling Broderip, wrote a memoir of him that was published with an 1877 edition of his poems.
 * Ambrose Bierce's short story "The Damned Thing" was inspired by an alleged encounter with Tom Hood's spirit.
 * In 1925, Tom Hood School in Leytonstone was renamed after Hood.

title: Tom Hood


text:
Inns of Court

The Inns of Court in London are the professional associations for barristers in England and Wales. There are four Inns of Court: Gray's Inn, Lincoln's Inn, Inner Temple and Middle Temple.

All barristers must belong to one of them. They have supervisory and disciplinary functions over their members. The Inns also provide libraries, dining facilities and professional accommodation. Each also has a church or chapel attached to it and is a self-contained precinct where barristers traditionally train and practise. However, growth in the legal profession, together with a desire to practise from more modern accommodations and buildings with lower rents, caused many barristers' chambers to move outside the precincts of the Inns of Court in the late 20th century.

History
During the 12th and early 13th centuries, law was taught in the City of London, primarily by the clergy. But a papal bull in 1218 prohibited the clergy from practising in the secular courts (where the English common law system operated, as opposed to the Roman civil law functioning in the Church's ecclesiastical courts). As a result, law began to be practised and taught by laymen instead of by clerics. To protect their schools from competition, first Henry II ((r. 1154 – 1189)) and later Henry III ((r. 1216 – 1272)) issued proclamations prohibiting the teaching of the civil law within the City of London. The common-law lawyers worked in guilds of law, modelled on trade guilds, which in time became the Inns of Court.

In the earliest centuries of their existence, beginning with the 14th century, the Inns were any of a sizeable number of buildings or precincts where lawyers traditionally lodged, trained and carried on their profession. Over the centuries, the four Inns of Court became where barristers were trained, while the more numerous Inns of Chancery – which were initially affiliated to the Inns of Court – became associated with the training of solicitors in the Elizabethan era.

The four Inns of Court are:
 * The Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn
 * The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple
 * The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple
 * The Honourable Society of Gray's Inn

Lawyers have lived and worked in the Temple since 1320. In 1337 the premises were divided into the Inner Temple, where the lawyers resided, and Middle Temple, which was also occupied by lawyers by 1346. Lincoln's Inn, the largest, is able to trace its official records to 1422. The records of Gray's Inn begin in 1569, but teaching is thought to have begun there in the late-fourteenth century. In 1620 a meeting of senior judges decided that all four Inns would be equal in order of precedence.

In the 16th century and earlier, students or apprentices learned their craft primarily by attending court sessions and by sharing both accommodation and education during the legal terms. Prior to the outbreak of the English Civil War in 1642, this training lasted at least seven years; subsequently, the Inns focused their residency requirements on dining together in the company of experienced barristers, to enable learning through contact and networking with experts. In the mid-18th century the common law was first recognised as a subject for study in the universities, and by 1872 bar examinations became compulsory for entry into the profession of law.

Importance in English Renaissance theatre
The Inns played an important role in the history of the English Renaissance theatre. Notable literary figures and playwrights who resided in the Inns of Court included John Donne (1572-1631), Francis Beaumont (1584-1616), John Marston (1576-1634), Thomas Lodge (c. 1558-1625), Thomas Campion (1567-1620), Abraham Fraunce (c. 1559-c.  1593), Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), Sir Thomas More (1478-1535), Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626), and George Gascoigne (c. 1535-1577). Plays written and performed in the Inns of Court include Gorboduc, Gismund of Salerne (1561), and The Misfortunes of Arthur (1588). An example of a famous masque put on by the Inns was James Shirley’s The Triumph of Peace (1634). Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors (c. 1594) and Twelfth Night (c. 1602) were also performed at the Inns, although written for commercial theatre.

Military tradition
Since at least 1584, members of the Inns of Court have rallied to the defence of the realm during times of crisis. That tradition continues to the present, in that 10 Stone Buildings in Lincoln's Inn has been the permanent home of the Inns of Court & City Yeomanry since the building was freed up by the abolition of the Clerks of Chancery in 1842.

Membership and governance
Each of the four Inns of Court has three ordinary grades of membership: students, barristers, and masters of the bench or "benchers". The benchers constitute the governing body for each Inn and appoint new members from among existing barrister members. As a rule, any barrister member of the inn is eligible for appointment. In practice, appointments are made of senior members of the Bar, usually KCs, or High Court judges or those who carry out work on behalf of the Inn, be it on committees or through the training of students and other junior members.

The senior bencher of each Inn is the Treasurer, a position which is held for one year only. Each Inn usually also has at least one royal bencher. They may also appoint honorary benchers, from academics, the world of politics and overseas judiciary.

The Inns of Court no longer provide all the education and training needed by prospective barristers, who must pass the Bar Professional Training Course, but do provide supplementary education during the 'Bar School' year, pupillage and the early years of practice. All prospective Bar School students must be a member of one of the four Inns, and must attend ten (formerly twelve) 'qualifying sessions' before being eligible to qualify as a barrister. Qualifying sessions traditionally comprise formal dinners followed by law-related talks, but increasingly the inns offer training weekends that may count for several sessions' worth of attendance. The Inns still retain the sole right to call qualified students to the bar, which is associated with a graduation ceremony ('Call Day').

Prospective students may choose which Inn to apply to for membership, but can only apply to one Inn for scholarships. It makes no long-term difference which Inn a barrister joins; an applicant might, for example, choose a particular inn because he or she knows someone already a member, or it has a student association at their university.

The inns' disciplinary functions are carried out by a joint Council of the Inns of Court, which administers the disciplinary tribunals. Barristers are prosecuted by the Bar Standards Board.

Location and layout
The four inns are located near one another in central London, near the western boundary of the City of London. Nearby are the Royal Courts of Justice, which were moved for convenience from Westminster Hall to the legal quarter of London in 1882.

Middle Temple and Inner Temple are liberties of the City of London, which means they are within the historic boundaries of the City but are not subject to its jurisdiction. They operate as their own local authorities. These two Inns neighbour each other and occupy the core of the Temple area. The closest Tube station is Temple.

Gray's Inn and Lincoln's Inn are in the London Borough of Camden (formerly in the Borough of Holborn) near the boundary with the City of London. They do not have the status of a local authority. The nearest Tube station is Chancery Lane.

Each Inn is a substantial complex with a great hall, chapel, libraries, sets of chambers for many hundreds of barristers, and gardens, and covers several acres. The layout is similar to that of an Oxbridge college. The chambers were originally used as residences as well as business premises by many of the barristers, but today they serve as offices with only a small number of apartments.

Serjeants' Inn
Another important inn, Serjeants' Inn, was dissolved in 1877 and its assets were, controversially, distributed amongst the existing members. The membership of the Inn had consisted of a small class of senior barristers called serjeants-at-law, who were selected from the members of the other four inns and had exclusive rights of audience in certain Courts. Their pre-eminence was affected by the new rank of King's Counsel, which was granted to barristers who were not serjeants. The serjeant's privileges were withdrawn by the government in the 19th century, no more serjeants were appointed, and they eventually died out. The area now known as Serjeants' Inn, one of two sites formerly occupied by the Serjeants (the other being in Chancery Lane), was purchased by the Inner Temple in 2002.

It was formerly the custom for senior judges to join Serjeants' Inn, thereby leaving the Inn in which they had practised as barristers. This meant that the Masters of the Bench of the four barristers' Inns of Court were mostly themselves barristers. Since there is now no Serjeants' Inn, judges remain in the Inns which they joined as students and belonged to as barristers. This has had the effect of making the majority of the Masters of the Bench senior judges, either because they become benchers when appointed as judges, or because they become judges after being appointed as benchers.

Inns of Chancery
There were also several Inns of Chancery. These are not Inns of Court but are associated to them: Clement's Inn, Clifford's Inn and Lyon's Inn (attached to the Inner Temple); Strand Inn and New Inn (attached to the Middle Temple); Furnival's Inn and Thavie's Inn (attached to Lincoln's Inn); and Staple Inn and Barnard's Inn (attached to Gray's Inn).

Irish Inns of Court
There is also an Inn of Court of Northern Ireland. In the Republic of Ireland, there is only one Inn of Court, the Honorable Society of King's Inns.

American Inns of Court
From the late 1970s, U.S. Chief Justice Warren Burger led a movement to create Inns of Court in the United States, loosely modelled after the traditional English Inns. In 1985, he and others established the American Inns of Court Foundation to promote and formally charter local Inns of Court across the United States. Each local Inn is devoted to promoting professionalism, civility, ethics, and legal skills amongst the American bench and bar, in a collegial setting, through continuing education and mentoring. At present, each major American city has more than one Inn of Court; for example, one Inn may be affiliated with a local law school, and another may be associated with a specific field of legal practice. American Inns of Court do not possess any real property. They are groups of judges, practising attorneys, law professors and students who meet regularly (usually monthly) to discuss and debate issues relating to legal ethics and professionalism. American Inn of Court meetings typically consist of a shared meal and a programme presented by one of the Inn's pupillage teams.

The U.S. does not require attorneys to be members of an Inn of Court, and many of the equivalent functions are performed by state bar associations. Some states require attorneys to belong to the official bar association, e.g., the State Bar of Michigan, while other states, such as Illinois, do not make membership of an official bar association a compulsory condition of licensure. Neither voluntary professional associations (including the American Inns of Court) nor mandatory bar associations typically have any role in training or licensing of law students that would be comparable to that function of the four English Inns of Court in selection and training of new barristers.

While the American Inns of Court share a collegial relationship with the English Inns, there is no formal or legal relationship. A Declaration of Friendship was signed by the English and American Inns of Court, establishing visitation procedures under which American Inn members can acquire a letter of introduction that will officially introduce them to the Inns in England and Ireland, with reciprocal procedures available for English and Irish barristers. An annual six-week exchange program, known as the Pegasus Scholarships, was created to provide for young English barristers to travel to the United States, and young American Inn of Court members to travel to London, to learn about the legal system of the other jurisdiction.

title: Inns of Court


text:
Thomas Hood

Thomas Hood (23 May 1799 – 3 May 1845) was an English poet, author and humorist, best known for poems such as "The Bridge of Sighs" and "The Song of the Shirt". Hood wrote regularly for The London Magazine, Athenaeum, and Punch. He later published a magazine largely consisting of his own works. Hood, never robust, had lapsed into invalidism by the age of 41 and died at the age of 45. William Michael Rossetti in 1903 called him "the finest English poet" between the generations of Shelley and Tennyson. Hood was the father of the playwright and humorist Tom Hood (1835–1874) and the children's writer Frances Freeling Broderip (1830–1878).

Early life
Thomas Hood was born to Thomas Hood and Elizabeth Sands in Poultry (Cheapside), London, above his father's bookshop. His father's family had been Scottish farmers from the village of Errol near Dundee. The elder Hood was a partner in the business of Vernor, Hood and Sharp, a member of the Associated Booksellers. Hood's son, Tom Hood, claimed that his grandfather had been the first to open up the book trade with America and had had great success with new editions of old books.

"Next to being a citizen of the world," writes Thomas Hood in his Literary Reminiscences, "it must be the best thing to be born a citizen of the world's greatest city." On the death of her husband in 1811, Hood's mother moved to Islington, where he had a schoolmaster who in appreciating his talents, "made him feel it impossible not to take an interest in learning while he seemed so interested in teaching." Under the care of this "decayed dominie", he earned a few guineas – his first literary fee – by revising for the press a new edition of the 1788 novel Paul and Virginia.

Hood left his private schoolmaster at 14 years of age and was admitted soon after into the counting house of a friend of his family, where he "turned his stool into a Pegasus on three legs, every foot, of course, being a dactyl or a spondee." However, the uncongenial profession affected his health, which was never strong, and he began to study engraving. The exact nature and course of his study is unclear: various sources tell different stories. Reid emphasizes his work under his maternal uncle Robert Sands, but no deeds of apprenticeship exist and his letters show he studied with a Mr Harris. Hood's daughter in her Memorials mentions her father's association with the Le Keux brothers, who were successful engravers in the City.

The labour of engraving was no better for his health than the counting house had been, and Hood was sent to his father's relations at Dundee, Scotland. There he stayed in the house of his maternal aunt, Jean Keay, for some months. Then on falling out with her, he moved on to the boarding house of one of her friends, Mrs Butterworth, where he lived for the rest of his time in Scotland. In Dundee, Hood made a number of close friends with whom he continued to correspond for many years. He led a healthy outdoor life, but also became a wide and indiscriminate reader. At the same time he began seriously to write poetry and he appeared in print for the first time, with a letter to the editor of the Dundee Advertiser.

Literary society
Before long Hood was contributing humorous and poetical pieces to provincial newspapers and magazines. As a proof of his literary vocation, he would write out his poems in printed characters, believing that this process best enabled him to understand his own peculiarities and faults, and probably unaware that Samuel Taylor Coleridge had recommended some such method of criticism when he said he thought, "Print settles it." On his return to London in 1818 he applied himself to engraving, which enabled him later to illustrate his various humours and fancies.

In 1821, John Scott, editor of The London Magazine, was killed in a duel, and the periodical passed into the hands of some friends of Hood, who proposed to make him sub-editor. This post at once introduced him to the literary society of the time. He gradually developed his powers by becoming an associate of John Hamilton Reynolds, Charles Lamb, Henry Cary, Thomas de Quincey, Allan Cunningham, Bryan Procter, Serjeant Talfourd, Hartley Coleridge, the peasant-poet John Clare, and other contributors.

Family life
Hood married Jane Reynolds (1791–1846). on 5 May 1824. They settled at 2 Robert Street, Adelphi, London. Their first child died at birth, but a daughter, Frances Freeling Broderip (1830–1878), was born soon after they moved to Winchmore Hill, and after they had then moved in 1832 to Lake House, Wanstead, a son, Tom Hood (1835–1874), was also born. Both children took up in Hood's profession: Frances became a children's writer and Tom a humorist and playwright, and they later collaborated in collecting and publishing their father's work. Although constantly worried about money and health, the Hoods were a devoted, affectionate family, as Memorials of Thomas Hood (1860), based on his letters and compiled by his children, testifies.

Odes and Addresses – Hood's first volume – was written in conjunction with his brother-in-law John Hamilton Reynolds, a friend of John Keats. Coleridge wrote to Lamb averring that the book must be the latter's work. Keats wrote two poems for Jane Reynolds: "O Sorrow!" (October 1817) and "On a Leander Gem which Miss Reynolds, my Kind Friend, Gave Me" (c. March 1817). Also from this period are The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies (1827) and a dramatic romance, Lamia, published later. The Plea was a book of serious verse, but Hood was known as a humorist and the book was ignored almost entirely.

Hood was fond of practical jokes, which he was said to have enjoyed inflicting on members of his family. In the Memorials there is a story of Hood instructing his wife Jane to purchase some fish for the evening meal from a woman who regularly came to the door selling her husband's catch. But he warns her to watch for plaice that "has any appearance of red or orange spots, as they are a sure sign of an advanced stage of decomposition." Mrs Hood refused to purchase the fish-seller's plaice, exclaiming, "My good woman... I could not think of buying any plaice with those very unpleasant red spots!" The fish-seller was amazed at such ignorance of what plaice look like.

The series of the Comic Annual, dating from 1830, was a type of publication popular at the time, which Hood undertook and continued almost unassisted for several years. He would cover all the leading events of the day in caricature, without personal malice, and with an undercurrent of sympathy. Readers were also treated to an incessant use of puns, of which Hood had written in his own vindication, "However critics may take offence,/A double meaning has double sense", but as he gained experience as a writer, his diction became simpler.

Later writings

In another annual called the Gem appeared the verse story of Eugene Aram. Hood started a magazine in his own name, mainly sustained by his own activity. He did the work from a sick-bed from which he never rose, and there also composed well-known poems such as "The Song of the Shirt", which appeared anonymously in the Christmas number of Punch, 1843 and was immediately reprinted in The Times and other newspapers across Europe. It was dramatised by Mark Lemon as The Sempstress, printed on broadsheets and cotton handkerchiefs, and was highly praised by many of the literary establishment, including Charles Dickens. Likewise "The Bridge of Sighs" and "The Song of the Labourer", which were also translated into German by Ferdinand Freiligrath. These are plain, solemn pictures of the conditions of life, which appeared shortly before Hood's death in May 1845.

Hood was associated with the Athenaeum, started in 1828 by James Silk Buckingham, and was a regular contributor to it for the rest of his life. Prolonged illness brought straitened circumstances. Applications were made by a number of Hood's friends to the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, to grant Hood a civil list pension, with which the state rewarded literary men. Peel was known to be an admirer of Hood's work and in the last few months of Hood's life he gave Jane Hood the sum of £100 without her husband's knowledge, to alleviate the family's debts. The pension that Peel's government bestowed on Hood was continued to his wife and family after his death. Jane Hood, who also suffered from poor health, had put tremendous energy into tending her husband in his last year and died only 18 months later. The pension then ceased, but Peel's successor Lord John Russell made arrangements for a £50 pension for the maintenance of Hood's two children, Frances and Tom. Nine years later, a monument raised by public subscription in Kensal Green Cemetery was unveiled by Richard Monckton Milnes. The monument was originally surmounted by a bronze bust of Hood by the sculptor Matthew Noble and had circular inset bronze roundels on either side, but all have been stolen.

Thackeray, a friend of Hood's, gave this assessment of him: "Oh sad, marvellous picture of courage, of honesty, of patient endurance, of duty struggling against pain!... Here is one at least without guile, without pretension, without scheming, of a pure life, to his family and little modest circle of friends tenderly devoted."

The house where Hood died, No. 28 Finchley Road, St John's Wood, now has a blue plaque.

Examples of his works
Hood wrote humorously on many contemporary issues. One of the main ones was grave robbing and selling of corpses to anatomists (see West Port murders). On this serious and perhaps cruel issue, he wrote wryly,

November in London is usually cool and overcast, and in Hood's day subject to frequent smog. In 1844, he wrote the poem, "No!":

An example of Hood's reflective and sentimental verse is the famous "I Remember, I Remember", given in full below:

Hood's best known work in his lifetime was "The Song of the Shirt", a verse lament for a London seamstress compelled to sell shirts she had made, the proceeds of which lawfully belonged to her employer, in order to feed her malnourished and ailing child. Hood's poem appeared in one of the first editions of Punch in 1843 and quickly became a public sensation, being turned into a popular song and inspiring social activists in defence of countless industrious labouring women living in abject poverty. An excerpt:

Modern references

 * Metro-Land – John Betjeman (1973)
 * So Much Blood – Simon Brett (1976)
 * "Opus 4" – The Art of Noise (album: In Visible Silence, 1986) - uses as lyrics extracts from 'No!'
 * The Piano – Jane Campion (1993)
 * Cod – Mark Kurlansky (1997)

Works by Thomas Hood
The list of Hood's separately published works is as follows:
 * Odes and Addresses to Great People (1825)
 * Whims and Oddities (two series, 1826 and 1827)
 * The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies, hero and Leander, Lycus the Centaur and other Poems (1827), his only collection of serious verse
 * The Epping Hunt illustrated by George Cruikshank (1829)
 * The Dream of Eugene Aram, the Murderer (1831)
 * Tylney Hall, a novel (3 vols., 1834)
 * The Comic Annual (1830–1842)
 * Hood's Own, or, Laughter from Year to Year (1838, second series, 1861)
 * Up the Rhine (1840)
 * Hood's Magazine and Comic Miscellany (1844–1848)
 * National Tales (2 vols., 1837), a collection of short novelettes, including "The Three Jewels" and The Widow of Galicia.
 * Whimsicalities (1844), with illustrations from John Leech's designs
 * Many contributions to contemporary periodicals.

title: Thomas Hood