Cimke: 18th century

Jane Austen’s Transatlantic Sister : The Life and Letters of Fanny Palmer Austen

In 1807, genteel, Bermuda-born Fanny Palmer (1789-1814) married Jane Austen’s youngest brother, Captain Charles Austen, and was thrust into a demanding life within the world of the British navy. Experiencing adventure and adversity in wartime conditions both at sea and onshore, the spirited and resilient Fanny travelled between and lived in Bermuda, Halifax, Nova Scotia, and England. After crossing the Atlantic in 1811, she ingeniously made a home for Charles and their daughters aboard a working naval vessel, and developed a supportive friendship with his sister, Jane.

Les loteries royales dans l’Europe des Lumieres

Un « impôt sur les imbéciles », une « friponnerie », un « jeu cruel », un « fléau inventé par le despotisme »… Les hommes des Lumières n’avaient pas de mots assez durs pour dénoncer la loterie royale, une institution que tous les États européens ont mis sur pied au xviiie siècle. Les souverains encourageaient donc la passion du jeu, l’oisiveté, et captaient sans vergogne l’épargne de leurs sujets ? Faire croire que l’on gagne, tandis que l’on perd toujours, n’était-ce pas le propre d’un État corrompu ? Ou bien doit-on plutôt considérer la loterie royale comme un outil d’ingénierie financière, le fruit d’une nouvelle rationalité publique ?

Tagebuch aus dem Siebenjährigen Krieg

In abgewichener Nacht frühe gegen 5 Uhr haben die Franz[osen] von Göttingen Besitz genommen. Es sollen 250 Mann seyn, welche d[en] H[err]n Major van der Märsch, ein feiner Mann, zum commandanten haben. In dem gestrigen Scharmützel ist d[em] H[err]n Maj[or] Friedrichs das Pferd todt geschossen, und er gefangen. Abends gegen 7 Uhr sind die Herren Grafen von Schwerin und v[on] Münch, desg[leichen] verschiedene andere Bursche, unter welchen d[er] H[err] von Biederitz, von dem Jacobithurm durch Franz[osen] herunter geholet, jedoch nach Ankunft des Commandanten auf dem Jacobi-Kirchhofe sogleich wieder loßgelassen worden.

Great Ships on the Great Lakes : A Maritime History

In this highly accessible history of ships and shipping on the Great Lakes, upper elementary readers are taken on a rip-roaring journey through the waterways of the upper Midwest. Great Ships on the Great Lakes explores the history of the region’s rivers, lakes, and inland seas—and the people and ships who navigated them. Read along as the first peoples paddle tributaries in birch bark canoes. Follow as European voyageurs pilot rivers and lakes to get beaver pelts back to the eastern market. Watch as settlers build towns and eventually cities on the shores of the Great Lakes. Listen to the stories of sailors, lighthouse keepers, and shipping agents whose livelihoods depended on the dangerous waters of Lake Michigan, Superior, Huron, Erie, and Ontario. Give an ear to their stories of unexpected tragedy and miraculous rescue, and heed their tales of risk and reward on the low seas.

Mr Charlotte Brontë : The Life of Arthur Bell Nicholls

Alan Adamson’s biography takes recent scholarship into account and adds new material about Nicholl’s family, education, and early life in Ireland to give a more balanced view. The book explores why Brontë, cool and often hostile towards Nicholls in the early days of his curacy at Haworth, came to respect and love him, and how Patrick Brontë, her difficult father, grew to rely on him after her death.

Selected Letters of Charlotte Brontë

These letters give an insight into the life of a writer whose novels continue to be bestsellers. They reveal much about Charlotte Brontë’s personal life, her family relationships, and the society in which she lived. Many of her early letters are written with vigour, vivacity, and an engaging aptitude for self-mockery. In contrast, her letters to her’master’, the Belgian schoolteacher Constantin Heger, reveal her intense, obsessive longing for some response from him. Other letters are deeply moving, when Charlotte endures the agony of her brother’s and sisters’untimely deaths. We learn also of the progress of her writing, including the astonishing success of Jane Eyre, and of her contacts with her publishers, including the young George Smith; and we recognize in her letters the life-experiences which are transmuted into the art of her novels.