title: British literature

text: Romanticism was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century. Various dates are given for the Romantic period in British literature, but here the publishing of "Lyrical Ballads" in 1798 is taken as the beginning, and the crowning of Queen Victoria in 1837 as its end, even though, for example, William Wordsworth lived until 1850 and William Blake published before 1798. The writers of this period, however, "did not think of themselves as 'Romantics'", and the term was first used by critics of the Victorian period.


title: British literature

text: The Romantic period was one of major social change in England, because of the depopulation of the countryside and the rapid development of overcrowded industrial cities, that took place in the period roughly between 1785 and 1830. The movement of so many people in England was the result of two forces: the Agricultural Revolution, that involved the enclosure of the land, drove workers off the land, and the Industrial Revolution which provided them employment, "in the factories and mills, operated by machines driven by steam-power". Indeed, Romanticism may be seen in part as a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, though it was also a revolt against aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment, as well a reaction against the scientific rationalisation of nature. The French Revolution was an especially important influence on the political thinking of many of the Romantic poets.


title: British literature

text: The landscape is often prominent in the poetry of this period, so that the Romantics, especially perhaps Wordsworth, are often described as 'nature poets'. However, the longer Romantic 'nature poems' have a wider concern because they are usually meditations on "an emotional problem or personal crisis".


title: British literature

text: The poet, painter, and printmaker William Blake (1757–1827) was one of the first of the English Romantic poets. Largely disconnected from the major streams of the literature of the time, Blake was generally unrecognised during his lifetime, but is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. Among his most important works are "Songs of Innocence" (1789) and "Songs of Experience" (1794) "and profound and difficult 'prophecies' " such as "Visions of the Daughters of Albion" (1793), "The First Book of Urizen" (1794), and "Jerusalem: the Emanation of the Giant Albion" (1804–?20).


title: British literature

text: After Blake, among the earliest Romantics were the Lake Poets, a small group of friends, including William Wordsworth (1770–1850), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834), Robert Southey (1774–1843) and journalist Thomas De Quincey (1785–1859). However, at the time, Walter Scott (1771–1832) was the most famous poet. Scott achieved immediate success with his long narrative poem "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" in 1805, followed by the full epic poem "Marmion" in 1808. Both were set in the distant Scottish past.


title: British literature

text: The early Romantic Poets brought a new emotionalism and introspection, and their emergence is marked by the first romantic manifesto in English literature, the "Preface" to "Lyrical Ballads" (1798). The poems in "Lyrical Ballads" were mostly by Wordsworth, although Coleridge contributed the long "Rime of the Ancient Mariner". Among Wordsworth's most important poems, are "Michael", "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey", "Resolution and Independence", "" and the long, autobiographical, epic "The Prelude".


title: British literature

text: Robert Southey (1774–1843) was another of the so-called "Lake Poets", and Poet Laureate for 30 years from 1813 to his death in 1843. Although his fame has been long eclipsed by that of his contemporaries and friends William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Thomas De Quincey (1785–1859) was an English essayist, best known for his "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater" (1821), an autobiographical account of his laudanum and its effect on his life.


title: British literature

text: The second generation of Romantic poets includes Lord Byron (1788–1824), Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) and John Keats (1795–1821). Byron, however, was still influenced by 18th-century satirists and was, perhaps, the least "romantic" of the three, preferring "the brilliant wit of Pope to what he called the 'wrong poetical system' of his Romantic contemporaries".


title: British literature

text: Though John Keats shared Byron and Shelley's radical politics, "his best poetry is not political". but is especially noted for its sensuous music and imagery, along with a concern with material beauty and the transience of life. Among his most famous works are: "The Eve of St Agnes", "La Belle Dame sans Merci", "Ode to a Nightingale", "To Autumn".


title: British literature

text: Percy Shelley, known to contemporaries for his radical politics and association with figures such as Byron and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, daughter of radical thinkers William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, was the third major romantic poet of the second generation. Generally regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language, Shelley is perhaps best known for poems such as "Ozymandias", "Ode to the West Wind", "To a Skylark" and "Adonaïs", an elegy written on the death of Keats. Mary Shelley (1797–1851) is remembered as the author of "Frankenstein" (1818), an important Gothic novel, as well as being an early example of science fiction.


title: British literature

text: Although sticking to its forms, Felicia Hemans began a process of undermining the Romantic tradition, a deconstruction that was continued by Letitia Elizabeth Landon, as "an urban poet deeply attentive to themes of decay and decomposition". Landon's novel forms of metrical romance and dramatic monologue were much copied and contributed to her long-lasting influence on Victorian poetry.


title: British literature

text: Another important poet in this period was John Clare (1793–1864). Clare was the son of a farm labourer, who came to be known for his celebratory representations of the English countryside and his lamentation for the changes taking place in rural England.


title: British literature

text: George Crabbe (1754–1832) was an English poet who, during the Romantic period, wrote "closely observed, realistic portraits of rural life [...] in the heroic couplets of the Augustan age". Crabbe's works include "The Village" (1783), "Poems" (1807), "The Borough" (1810).


title: British literature

text: Major novelists in this period were Jane Austen (1775–1817) and the Scotsman Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832), while Gothic fiction of various kinds also flourished. Austen's works satirise the novels of sensibility of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-century realism. Austen's works include "Pride and Prejudice" (1813) "Sense and Sensibility" (1811), "Mansfield Park" (1814), "Emma" (1815)" and Persuasion" (1818).


title: British literature

text: The most important British novelist at the beginning of the early 19th century was Sir Walter Scott, who was not only a highly successful British novelist, but "the greatest single influence on fiction in the 19th century [...] [and] a European figure". Scott's novel writing career was launched in 1814 with "Waverley", often called the first historical novel, and was followed by "Ivanhoe". The Waverley Novels, including "The Antiquary", "Old Mortality", "The Heart of Midlothian", and whose subject is Scottish history, are now generally regarded as Scott's masterpieces.


title: British literature

text: It was in the Victorian era (1837–1900) that the novel became the leading literary genre in English. Women played an important part in this rising popularity both as authors and as readers. Monthly serialising of fiction encouraged this surge in popularity, due to a combination of the rise of literacy, technological advances in printing, and improved economics of distribution. Circulating libraries, that allowed books to be borrowed for an annual subscription, were a further factor in the rising popularity of the novel.


title: British literature

text: Charles Dickens (1812–70) emerged on the literary scene in the late 1830s and soon became probably the most famous novelist in the history of British literature. Dickens fiercely satirised various aspects of society, including the workhouse in "Oliver Twist", the failures of the legal system in "Bleak House". In more recent years Dickens has been most admired for his later novels, such as "Dombey and Son" (1846–48), "Bleak House" (1852–53) and "Little Dorrit" (1855–57), "Great Expectations" (1860–1), and "Our Mutual Friend" (1864–65).


title: British literature

text: An early rival to Dickens was William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–63), who during the Victorian period ranked second only to him, but he is now much less read and is known almost exclusively for "Vanity Fair" (1847).


title: British literature

text: The Brontë sisters, Emily, Charlotte and Anne, were other significant novelists in the 1840s and 1850s. Their novels caused a sensation when they were first published but were subsequently accepted as classics. Charlotte Brontë's (1816–55) work was "Jane Eyre", broke new ground in being written from an intensely first-person female perspective. Emily Brontë's (1818–48) novel was "Wuthering Heights" and, according to Juliet Gardiner, "the vivid sexual passion and power of its language and imagery impressed, bewildered and appalled reviewers". The third Brontë novel of 1847 was Anne Brontë's (1820–49) "Agnes Grey", which deals with the lonely life of a governess.


title: British literature

text: Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–65) was also a successful writer and "North and South" contrasts the lifestyle in the industrial north of England with the wealthier south.


title: British literature

text: Anthony Trollope (1815–82) was one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. Some of his best-loved works are set in the imaginary west country county of Barsetshire, including "The Warden" (1855) and "Barchester Towers" (1857). Trollope's novels portray the lives of the landowning and professional classes of early Victorian England.


title: British literature

text: George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans (1819–80) was a major novelist of the mid-Victorian period. Her works, especially "Middlemarch" 1871–2), are important examples of literary realism, and are admired for their combination of high Victorian literary detail, with an intellectual breadth that removes them from the narrow geographic confines they often depict, that has led to comparisons with Tolstoy.


title: British literature

text: George Meredith (1828–1909) is best remembered for his novels "The Ordeal of Richard Feverel" (1859) and "The Egoist" (1879). "His reputation stood very high well into" the 20th century but then seriously declined.


title: British literature

text: An interest in rural matters and the changing social and economic situation of the countryside is seen in the novels of Thomas Hardy (1840–1928). A Victorian realist, in the tradition of George Eliot, he was also influenced both in his novels and poetry by Romanticism, especially by William Wordsworth. He gained fame as the author of such novels as, "Far from the Madding Crowd" (1874), "The Mayor of Casterbridge" (1886), "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" (1891), and "Jude the Obscure" (1895).


title: British literature

text: Another significant late 19th-century novelist is George Gissing (1857–1903), who published 23 novels between 1880 and 1903. His best-known novel is "New Grub Street" (1891). Also in the late 1890s, the first novel of Polish-born immigrant Joseph Conrad (1857–1924), an important forerunner of modernist literature, was published. Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" was published in 1899.


title: British literature

text: There are early European examples of short stories published separately between 1790 and 1810, but the first true collections of short stories appeared between 1810 and 1830 in several countries around the same period.


title: British literature

text: The first short stories in the United Kingdom were gothic tales like Richard Cumberland's "remarkable narrative" "The Poisoner of Montremos" (1791). Major novelists like Sir Walter Scott and Charles Dickens also wrote some short stories.


title: British literature

text: Adventure novels were popular, including Sir John Barrow's descriptive 1831 account of the Mutiny on the Bounty. The Lost World literary genre was inspired by real stories of archaeological discoveries by imperial adventurers. Sir Henry Rider Haggard wrote one of the earliest examples, "King Solomon's Mines", in 1885. Contemporary European politics and diplomatic manoeuvrings informed Anthony Hope's swashbuckling Ruritanian adventure novels "The Prisoner of Zenda" (1894). Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94) also wrote works in this genre, including "Kidnapped" (1886), an historical novel set in the aftermath of the Jacobite rising of 1745, and "Treasure Island" (1883), the classic pirate adventure.


title: British literature

text: Wilkie Collins' epistolary novel "The Moonstone" (1868) is generally considered the first detective novel in the English language, and soon after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle began his Sherlock Holmes series about a London-based "consulting detective". Doyle wrote four novels and fifty-six short stories featuring Holmes, from 1880 up to 1907, with a final case in 1914.


title: British literature

text: H. G. Wells's (1866–1946) writing career began in the 1890s with science fiction novels like "The War of the Worlds" (1898) which describes an invasion of late Victorian England by Martians, and Wells is, along with Frenchman Jules Verne (1828–1905), as a major figure in the development of the science fiction genre.


title: British literature

text: The history of the modern fantasy genre is generally said to begin with George MacDonald, the influential author of "The Princess and the Goblin" and "Phantastes" (1858). William Morris was a popular English poet who also wrote several fantasy novels during the latter part of the nineteenth century. The vampire genre fiction began with John William Polidori's "The Vampyre" (1819). This short story was inspired by the life of Lord Byron and his poem "The Giaour". Irish writer Bram Stoker was the author of seminal horror work "Dracula" (1897) with the primary antagonist the vampire Count Dracula.


title: British literature

text: Penny dreadful publications were an alternative to mainstream works, and were aimed at working class adolescents, introducing the infamous Sweeney Todd. The premier ghost story writer of the 19th century was the Irish writer Sheridan Le Fanu.


title: British literature

text: Literature for children developed as a separate genre during the Victorian era, and some works became internationally known, such as Lewis Carroll, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" (1865). At the end of nineteenth-century, the author and illustrator Beatrix Potter was known for her children's books, which featured animal characters, including "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" (1902). In the latter years of the 19th century, precursors of the modern picture book were illustrated books of poems and short stories produced by illustrators Randolph Caldecott, Walter Crane, and Kate Greenaway. These had a larger proportion of pictures to words than earlier books, and many of their pictures were in colour. "Vice Versa" (1882) by F. Anstey, sees a father and son exchange bodies — body swaps have been a popular theme in various media since the book was published.


title: British literature

text: The leading poets during the Victorian period were Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892), Robert Browning (1812–89), Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–61), and Matthew Arnold (1822–88). The poetry of this period was heavily influenced by the Romantics, but also went off in its own directions. Particularly notable was the development of the dramatic monologue, a form used by many poets in this period, but perfected by Browning.


title: British literature

text: Tennyson was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom during much of Queen Victoria's reign. He was described by T. S. Eliot, as "the greatest master of metrics as well as melancholia", and as having "the finest ear of any English poet since Milton".


title: British literature

text: While Elizabeth Barrett Browning was the wife of Robert Browning she had established her reputation as a major poet before she met him. Her most famous work is the sequence of 44 sonnets "Sonnets from the Portuguese" published in "Poems" (1850). Matthew Arnold's reputation as a poet has declined in recent years and he is best remembered now for his critical works, like "Culture and Anarchy" (1869), and his 1867 poem "Dover Beach".


title: British literature

text: Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) was a poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement, most notably William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones.


title: British literature

text: While Arthur Clough (1819–61) was a more minor figure of this era, he has been described as "a fine poet whose experiments in extending the range of literary language and subject were ahead of his time".


title: British literature

text: George Meredith (1828–1909) is remembered for his innovative collection of poems "Modern Love" (1862).


title: British literature

text: In the second half of the century, English poets began to take an interest in French Symbolism. Two groups of poets emerged in the 1890s, the "Yellow Book" poets who adhered to the tenets of Aestheticism, including Algernon Charles Swinburne, Oscar Wilde and Arthur Symons and the Rhymers' Club group, that included Ernest Dowson, Lionel Johnson and Irishman William Butler Yeats. Irishman Yeats went on to become an important modernist in the 20th century. Also in the 1890s A. E. Housman (1859–1936) published at his own expense "A Shropshire Lad". The poems' wistful evocation of doomed youth in the English countryside, in spare language and distinctive imagery, appealed strongly to late Victorian and Edwardian taste.


title: British literature

text: The nonsense verse of Edward Lear, along with the novels and poems of Lewis Carroll, is regarded as a precursor of surrealism. In 1846 Lear published "", a volume of limericks that went through three editions and helped popularise the form.


title: British literature

text: Writers of comic verse included the dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911), who is best known for his fourteen comic operas produced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, of which the most famous include "H.M.S. Pinafore", "The Pirates of Penzance" and one of the most frequently performed works in the history of musical theatre, "The Mikado".


title: British literature

text: For much of the first half of the 19th century, drama in London and provincial theatres was restricted by a licensing system to the Patent theatre companies, and all other theatres could perform only musical entertainments (although magistrates had powers to license occasional dramatic performances). The passing of the Theatres Act 1843 removed the monopoly on drama held by the Patent theatres.


title: British literature

text: Irish playwright Dion Boucicault (1820–90) was an extremely popular writer of comedies who achieved success on the London stage with works like "London Assurance", (1841), in the middle of the 19th century. However, drama did not achieve importance as a genre in the 19th century until the end of the century, and then the main figures were also Irish-born. In the last decade of the century major playwrights emerged, including George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), "Arms and the Man" (1894), and Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), "The Importance of Being Earnest" (1895). Both of these Irish writers lived mainly in England and wrote in English, with the exception of some works in French by Wilde.


title: British literature

text: The year 1922 marked a significant change in the relationship between Great Britain and Ireland, with the setting up of the (predominantly Catholic) Irish Free State in most of Ireland, while the predominantly Protestant Northern Ireland remained part of the United Kingdom. This separation also leads to questions as to what extent Irish writing prior to 1922 should be treated as a colonial literature. There are also those who question whether the literature of Northern Ireland is Irish or British. Nationalist movements in Britain, especially in Wales and Scotland, also significantly influenced writers in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.


title: British literature

text: From around 1910 the Modernist movement began to influence British literature. While their Victorian predecessors had usually been happy to cater to mainstream middle-class taste, 20th-century writers often felt alienated from it, so responded by writing more intellectually challenging works or by pushing the boundaries of acceptable content.


title: British literature

text: The short but influential Edwardian era emerged with the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 and continued until the First World War. During this time, the world was introduced to cozy and puckish animal characters of Beatrix Potter along with the eternally youthful antics of Peter Pan (J.M. Barrie). A.A. Milne also began to write during this time, but his beloved Winnie the Pooh would not be published until 1926. Rudyard Kipling's "Just So Stories For Little Children" (1902) was a successful followup to his earlier adventures with Mowgli and The Jungle Book (1894).


title: British literature

text: Other exemplary novels of the time take on an optimistic but critical tone, including E.M. Forster's "A Room With A View" (1908)"." Here, Forster satirizes the classism and xenophobia of Victorian England, using his own travel experiences to question the "ingrained bias[es]" of the previous century. The Women's Suffrage Movement was also gaining momentum during this era and fiction reflected these ideas. More than ever, fictional women were protagonists (not just supporting roles), and they often crossed social and geographical boundaries through marriage or the pursuit of knowledge.


title: British literature

text: Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" (1899) is another (early but important) example of the changing times during King Edward VII's reign. While Conrad's depiction of the local Africans in his novel is often criticized as deeply dehumanizing (for example, Chinua Achebe in ""), others argue that this xenophobic characterization belongs to the fictional narrator (Charles Marlow), and that Conrad himself seeks to blur the lines between societies, demonstrating the ambiguity and darkness inherent in each.


title: British literature

text: The experiences of the First World War were reflected in the work of war poets such as Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brooke, Isaac Rosenberg, Robert Graves, and Siegfried Sassoon. "In Parenthesis", an epic poem by David Jones first published in 1937, is a notable work of the literature of the First World War, that was influenced by Welsh traditions, despite Jones being born in England. In non-fiction prose T. E. Lawrence's (Lawrence of Arabia) autobiographical account in "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" of the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire is important.


title: British literature

text: Two Victorian poets who published little in the 19th century, Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) and Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89), have since come to be regarded as major poets. While Hardy first established his reputation the late 19th century with novels, he also wrote poetry throughout his career. However he did not publish his first collection until 1898, so that he tends to be treated as a 20th-century poet. Gerard Manley Hopkins's "Poems" were posthumously published in 1918 by Robert Bridges.


title: British literature

text: Free verse and other stylistic innovations came to the forefront in this era, with which T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound were especially associated. T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) was born American, migrated to England in 1914, and he was "arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century." He produced some of the best-known poems in the English language, including "The Waste Land" (1922) and "Four Quartets" (1935–1942).


title: British literature

text: The Georgian poets like Rupert Brooke, Walter de la Mare (1873–1956) and John Masefield (1878–1967, Poet Laureate from 1930) maintained a more conservative approach to poetry by combining romanticism, sentimentality and hedonism. Edward Thomas (1878–1917) is sometimes treated as another Georgian poet.


title: British literature

text: In the 1930s the Auden Group, sometimes called simply "the Thirties poets", was an important group of politically left-wing writers, that included W. H. Auden (1907–73) and two Anglo-Irish writers, Cecil Day-Lewis (1904–72) and Louis MacNeice (1907-1963). Auden was a major poet who had a similar influence on subsequent poets as W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot had had on earlier generations.


title: British literature

text: Keith Douglas (1920–1944) was noted for his war poetry during World War II and his wry memoir of the Western Desert Campaign, "Alamein to Zem Zem". He was killed in action during the invasion of Normandy. Alun Lewis (1915–1944), born in South Wales, was one of the best-known English-language poets of the war The Second World War has remained a theme in British literature.


title: British literature

text: While modernism was to become an important literary movement in the early decades of the new century, there were also many fine writers who, like Thomas Hardy, were not modernists. Novelists include: Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936), who was also a successful poet; H. G. Wells (1866–1946); John Galsworthy (1867–1933), (Nobel Prize in Literature, 1932), whose novels include "The Forsyte Saga" (1906–21); Arnold Bennett (1867–1931) author of "The Old Wives' Tale" (1908); G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936); E.M. Forster (1879–1970). The most popular British writer of the early years of the 20th century was arguably Rudyard Kipling, a highly versatile writer of novels, short stories and poems, and to date the youngest ever recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature (1907).


title: British literature

text: H. G. Wells was a highly prolific author who is now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. His most notable science fiction works include "The War of the Worlds", and "The Time Machine", written in the 1890s. Forster's "A Passage to India" 1924, reflected challenges to imperialism, while his earlier works such as "A Room with a View" (1908) and "Howards End" (1910), examined the restrictions and hypocrisy of Edwardian society in England.


title: British literature

text: Writing in the 1920s and 1930s Virginia Woolf was an influential feminist, and a major stylistic innovator associated with the stream-of-consciousness technique. Her novels include "Mrs Dalloway" 1925, and "The Waves" 1931, and "A Room of One's Own" 1929, which contains her famous dictum; "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction". Woolf and E. M. Forster were members of the "Bloomsbury Group", an enormously influential group of associated English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists.


title: British literature

text: Other early modernists were Dorothy Richardson (1873–1957), whose novel "Pointed Roof" (1915), is one of the earliest example of the stream of consciousness technique and D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930), who wrote with understanding about the social life of the lower and middle classes, and the personal life of those who could not adapt to the social norms of his time. "Sons and Lovers" 1913, is widely regarded as his earliest masterpiece. There followed "The Rainbow" 1915, and its sequel "Women in Love" published 1920.


title: British literature

text: An important development, beginning really in the 1930s and 1940s, was a tradition of working class novels that were actually written by writers who had a working-class background.


title: British literature

text: An essayist and novelist, George Orwell's works are considered important social and political commentaries of the 20th century, dealing with issues such as poverty in "The Road to Wigan Pier" (1937) and in the 1940s his satires of totalitarianism included "Animal Farm" (1945). Malcolm Lowry published in the 1930s, but is best known for "Under the Volcano" (1947). Evelyn Waugh satirised the "bright young things" of the 1920s and 1930s, notably in "A Handful of Dust", and "Decline and Fall", while "Brideshead Revisited" 1945, has a theological basis, aiming to examine the effect of divine grace on its main characters. Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) published his famous dystopia "Brave New World" in 1932, the same year as John Cowper Powys's "A Glastonbury Romance". In 1938 Graham Greene's (1904–91) first major novel "Brighton Rock" was published.


title: British literature

text: Though some have seen modernism ending by around 1939, with regard to English literature, "When (if) modernism petered out and postmodernism began has been contested almost as hotly as when the transition from Victorianism to modernism occurred". In fact a number of modernists were still living and publishing in the 1950s and 1960, including T. S. Eliot, Dorothy Richardson and John Cowper Powys. Furthermore, Northumberland poet Basil Bunting, born in 1901, published little until "Briggflatts" in 1965.


title: British literature

text: In 1947 Malcolm Lowry published "Under the Volcano". George Orwell's satire of totalitarianism, "Nineteen Eighty-Four", was published in 1949. An essayist and novelist, Orwell's works are important social and political commentaries of the 20th century. Evelyn Waugh's Second World War trilogy "Sword of Honour" (1952–61) was published in this period.


title: British literature

text: Graham Greene's works span the 1930s to the 1980s. He was a convert to Catholicism and his novels explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world. Other novelists writing in the 1950s and later were: Anthony Powell, "A Dance to the Music of Time"; Nobel Prize laureate Sir William Golding; Anglo-Irish philosopher Dame Iris Murdoch (who was a prolific writer of novels dealing with sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious); and Scottish novelist Dame Muriel Spark, "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" (1961). Anthony Burgess is especially remembered for his dystopian novel "A Clockwork Orange" 1962. Mervyn Peake (1911–1968) published his Gothic fantasy Gormenghast trilogy between 1946 and 1959. Angela Carter (1940–1992) was a novelist and journalist, known for her feminist, magical realism, and picaresque works. Writing from the 1960s until the 1980s.


title: British literature

text: Sir Salman Rushdie is among a number of post Second World War writers from former British colonies who permanently settled in Britain. Rushdie achieved fame with "Midnight's Children" (1981). His most controversial novel "The Satanic Verses" (1989) was inspired in part by the life of Muhammad.


title: British literature

text: Doris Lessing from Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) published her first novel "The Grass is Singing" in 1950, after immigrating to England. She initially wrote about her African experiences. Lessing soon became a dominant presence in the English literary scene, publishing frequently, and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007. Sir V. S. Naipaul (1932–2018) was another immigrant, born in Trinidad, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Also from the West Indies is George Lamming (1927–2022) who wrote "In the Castle of My Skin" (1953), while from Pakistan came Hanif Kureshi (1954–), a playwright, screenwriter, filmmaker, novelist and short story writer. 2017 Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro (1954– ) was born in Japan, but his parents immigrated to Britain when he was six, and he became a British citizen as an adult. Martin Amis (1949) is one of the most prominent British novelists of the end of the 20th, beginning of the 21st century. Pat Barker (1943–) has won many awards for her fiction. English novelist and screenwriter Ian McEwan (1948– ) is a highly regarded writer.


title: British literature

text: An important cultural movement in the British theatre that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s was Kitchen sink realism (or "kitchen sink drama"), art, novels, film, and television plays. The term angry young men was often applied members of this artistic movement. It used a style of social realism which depicts the domestic lives of the working class, to explore social issues and political issues. The drawing room plays of the post war period, typical of dramatists like Sir Terence Rattigan and Sir Noël Coward, were challenged in the 1950s by these Angry Young Men, in plays like John Osborne's "Look Back in Anger" (1956).


title: British literature

text: Again in the 1950s the Theatre of the Absurd profoundly affected British dramatists, especially Irishman Samuel Beckett's play "Waiting for Godot", Among those influenced were Harold Pinter (1930–2008), ("The Birthday Party", 1958), and Tom Stoppard (1937– ) ("Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead",1966).


title: British literature

text: The Theatres Act 1968 abolished the system of censorship of the stage that had existed in Great Britain since 1737. The new freedoms of the London stage were tested by Howard Brenton's "The Romans in Britain", first staged at the National Theatre during 1980, and subsequently the focus of an unsuccessful private prosecution in 1982.


title: British literature

text: Other playwrights whose careers began later in the century are: Sir Alan Ayckbourn ("Absurd Person Singular", 1972), Michael Frayn (1933–) playwright and novelist, David Hare (1947– ), David Edgar (1948– ). Dennis Potter's most distinctive dramatic work was produced for television.


title: British literature

text: During the 1950s and 1960s many major British playwrights either effectively began their careers with the BBC, or had works adapted for radio. Many major British playwrights in fact, either effectively began their careers with the BBC, or had works adapted for radio, including Caryl Churchill and Tom Stoppard whose "first professional production was in the fifteen-minute "Just Before Midnight" programme on BBC Radio, which showcased new dramatists". John Mortimer made his radio debut as a dramatist in 1955, with his adaptation of his own novel "Like Men Betrayed" for the BBC Light Programme. Other notable radio dramatists included Brendan Behan, from Ireland, and novelist Angela Carter.


title: British literature

text: Among the most famous works created for radio, are Dylan Thomas's "Under Milk Wood" (1954), Samuel Beckett's "All That Fall" (1957), Harold Pinter's "A Slight Ache" (1959) and Robert Bolt's "A Man for All Seasons" (1954).


title: British literature

text: While poets T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden and Dylan Thomas were still publishing after 1945, new poets started their careers in the 1950s and 1960s including Philip Larkin (1922–85) ("The Whitsun Weddings",1964) and Ted Hughes (1930–98) ("The Hawk in the Rain", 1957). Northern Ireland has produced a number of significant poets, the most famous being Nobel prize winner Seamus Heaney. However, Heaney regarded himself as Irish and not British. Others poets from Northern Ireland include Derek Mahon, Paul Muldoon, James Fenton, Michael Longley, and Medbh McGuckian.


title: British literature

text: In the 1960s and 1970s Martian poetry aimed to break the grip of 'the familiar', by describing ordinary things in unfamiliar ways, as though, for example, through the eyes of a Martian. Poets most closely associated with it are Craig Raine and Christopher Reid. Martin Amis, an important novelist in the late twentieth and twentieth centuries, carried into fiction this drive to make the familiar strange. Another literary movement in this period was the British Poetry Revival, a wide-reaching collection of groupings and subgroupings that embraces performance, sound and concrete poetry. Leading poets associated with this movement include J. H. Prynne, Eric Mottram, Tom Raworth, Denise Riley and Lee Harwood. It reacted to the more conservative group called "The Movement".


title: British literature

text: The Liverpool poets were Adrian Henri, Brian Patten and Roger McGough. Their work was a self-conscious attempt at creating an English equivalent to the Beats. Tony Harrison (1937 – ), who explores the medium of language and the tension between native dialect (in his case, that of working-class Leeds) and acquired language, and Simon Armitage.


title: British literature

text: Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) has been considered to be among the most distinguished English poets of his generation, Charles Tomlinson (1927–2015) is another important English poet of an older generation, though "since his first publication in 1951, has built a career that has seen more notice in the international scene than in his native England.


title: British literature

text: Scotland has in the late 20th century produced several important novelists, including James Kelman who like Samuel Beckett can create humour out of the most grim situations; A. L. Kennedy whose 2007 novel "Day" was named Book of the Year in the Costa Book Awards.; Alasdair Gray whose "" (1981) is a dystopian fantasy set in his home town Glasgow.


title: British literature

text: Highly anglicised Lowland Scots is often used in contemporary Scottish fiction, for example, the Edinburgh dialect of Lowland Scots used in "Trainspotting" by Irvine Welsh to give a brutal depiction of the lives of working class Edinburgh drug users. In Northern Ireland, James Fenton's poetry is written in contemporary Ulster Scots. The poet Michael Longley (born 1939) has experimented with Ulster Scots for the translation of Classical verse, as in his 1995 collection "The Ghost Orchid".


title: British literature

text: Among significant writers in this genre in the early twentieth-century were Erskine Childers' "The Riddle of the Sands" (1903), who wrote spy novels, Emma Orczy (Baroness Orczy) author of "The Scarlet Pimpernel", an historical romance which recounted the adventures of a member of the English gentry in the French Revolutionary period. The title character established the notion of a "hero with a secret identity" into popular culture. John Buchan wrote adventure novels like "Prester John" (1910). Novels featuring a gentleman adventurer were popular between the wars, exemplified by the series of H. C. McNeile with "Bulldog Drummond" (1920), and Leslie Charteris, whose many books chronicled the adventures of Simon Templar, alias "The Saint".


title: British literature

text: This was called 'the Golden Age of Detective Fiction'. Dame Agatha Christie, a writer of crime novels, short stories and plays, is best remembered for her 80 detective novels and her successful West End theatre plays. Other female writers dubbed "Queens of crime" include Dorothy L. Sayers (gentleman detective, Lord Peter Wimsey), Margery Allingham (Albert Campion – supposedly created as a parody of Sayers' Wimsey) and New Zealander Dame Ngaio Marsh (Roderick Alleyn). Georgette Heyer created the historical romance genre, and also wrote detective fiction.


title: British literature

text: A major work of science fiction, from the early 20th century, is "A Voyage to Arcturus" by Scottish writer David Lindsay, first published in 1920, and was a central influence on C. S. Lewis's "Space Trilogy".


title: British literature

text: From the early 1930s to late 1940s, an informal literary discussion group associated with the English faculty at the University of Oxford were "The Inklings". Its leading members were the major fantasy novelists; J. R. R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Lewis is known for "The Screwtape Letters" (1942), "The Chronicles of Narnia" and "The Space Trilogy", while Tolkien is best known as the author of "The Hobbit" (1937), "The Lord of the Rings", and "The Silmarillion".


title: British literature

text: Among important writers of genre fiction in the second half of the twentieth-century are thriller writer Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond 007. Fleming chronicled Bond's adventures in twelve novels, including "Casino Royale" (1953).


title: British literature

text: In contrast to the larger-than-life spy capers of Bond, John le Carré was an author of spy novels who depicted a shadowy world of espionage and counter-espionage, and his best known novel "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" (1963), is often regarded as one of the greatest in the genre.


title: British literature

text: Frederick Forsyth writes thriller novels and Ken Follett writes spy thrillers as well as historical novels, notably "The Pillars of the Earth" (1989).


title: British literature

text: War novels include Alistair MacLean thriller's "The Guns of Navarone" (1957), "Where Eagles Dare" (1968), and Jack Higgins' "The Eagle Has Landed" (1975). Patrick O'Brian's nautical historical novels feature the "Aubrey–Maturin series" set in the Royal Navy.


title: British literature

text: Ronald Welch's Carnegie Medal winning novel "Knight Crusader" is set in the 12th century and gives a depiction of the Third Crusade, featuring the Christian leader and King of England Richard the Lionheart. Nigel Tranter also wrote historical novels of celebrated Scottish warriors; Robert the Bruce in "The Bruce Trilogy".


title: British literature

text: John Wyndham wrote post-apocalyptic science fiction, his most notable works being "The Day of the Triffids" (1951), and "The Midwich Cuckoos" (1957). Other important writers in this genre are Sir Arthur C. Clarke "", Brian Aldiss, and Michael Moorcock. Moorcock was involved with the 'New Wave' of science fiction writers "part of whose aim was to invest the genre with literary merit" Similarly J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) "became known in the 1960s as the most prominent of the 'New Wave' science fiction writers". A later major figure in science fiction was Iain M. Banks who created a fictional anarchist, socialist, and utopian society the Culture. Nobel prize winner Doris Lessing also published a sequence of five science fiction novels the "Canopus in Argos: Archives" between 1979 and 1983.


title: British literature

text: Sir Terry Pratchett is best known for his "Discworld" series of comic fantasy novels, that begins with "The Colour of Magic" (1983), and includes "Night Watch" (2002). Philip Pullman's is famous for his fantasy trilogy "His Dark Materials", which follows the coming-of-age of two children as they wander through a series of parallel universes against a backdrop of epic events. While Neil Gaiman is a writer of both science fiction, and fantasy including "Stardust" (1998). Douglas Adams is known for his five-volume science fiction comedy series "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".


title: British literature

text: Significant writers of works for children include, Kenneth Grahame, "The Wind in the Willows" (1908), Rev W Awdry, "The Railway Series" (1945-2011, A. A. Milne, "Winnie-the-Pooh" (1926), and P. L. Travers' "Mary Poppins". Prolific children's author Enid Blyton chronicled the adventures of a group of young children and their dog in "The Famous Five". T. H. White wrote the Arthurian fantasy "The Once and Future King", the first part being "The Sword in the Stone" (1938). Mary Norton wrote "The Borrowers", featuring tiny people who borrow from humans. Inspiration for Frances Hodgson Burnett's novel "The Secret Garden" was the Great Maytham Hall Garden in Kent. Hugh Lofting created the character Doctor Dolittle who appears in a series of twelve books, while Dodie Smith's "The Hundred and One Dalmatians" featured the villainous Cruella de Vil.


title: British literature

text: Roald Dahl is a prominent author of children's fantasy novels, like "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" in 1964, which are often inspired from experiences from his childhood, with often unexpected endings, and unsentimental, dark humour. Popular school stories from this period include Ronald Searle's "St Trinian's".


title: British literature

text: J. K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" fantasy series is a sequence of seven novels that chronicle the adventures of the adolescent wizard Harry Potter is the best-selling book series in history. The series has been translated into 67 languages, placing Rowling among the most translated authors in history. Cressida Cowell wrote "How to Train Your Dragon", a series of twelve books set in a fictional Viking world.


title: British literature

text: In the 21st century an outstanding concern with historical fiction has been noted. Dame Hilary Mantel (1952–2022) was a highly successful writer of historical novels winning the Booker Prize twice, for "Wolf Hall" 2009, and "Bring Up the Bodies". One of the more ambitious novelists to emerge in this period is David Mitchell whose far-reaching novel "Cloud Atlas" (2004) spans from the 19th century into the future. Influences from earlier literary styles and techniques in English literature is notable by writers such as Ian McEwan in his 2002 novel "Atonement". Zadie Smith was critically acclaimed for her debut novel "White Teeth" (2000), and for subsequent novels. Julian Barnes (1946– ) is another prominent writer and he won the 2011 Booker Prize for his book "The Sense of an Ending". Kazuo Ishiguro was noted for works such as the dystopian science fiction-novel "Never Let Me Go" (2005) and was subsequently awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature for his novels.


title: British literature

text: The theatrical landscape has been reconfigured, moving from a single national theatre at the end of the twentieth-century to four as a result of the devolution of cultural policy.


title: British literature

text: E. L. James' erotic romance trilogy "Fifty Shades of Grey", "Fifty Shades Darker", and "Fifty Shades Freed", along with the companion novel "", have sold over 100 million copies globally, and set the record in the United Kingdom as the fastest selling paperback of all time. The perceived success and promotion of genre fiction authors from Scotland provoked controversy in 2009 when James Kelman criticised, in a speech at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the attention afforded to "upper middle-class young magicians" and "detective fiction" by the "Anglocentric" Scottish literary establishment.


title: British literature

text: Original literature continues to be promoted by institutions such as the Eisteddfod in Wales and the Welsh Books Council. The Royal Society of Edinburgh includes literature within its sphere of activity. Literature Wales is the Welsh national literature promotion agency and society of writers, which administers the Wales Book of the Year award. The imported eisteddfod tradition in the Channel Islands encouraged recitation and performance, a tradition that continues today.


title: British literature

text: Formed in 1949, the Cheltenham Literature Festival is the longest-running festival of its kind in the world. The Hay Festival in Wales attracts wide interest, and the Edinburgh International Book Festival is the largest festival of its kind in the world.


title: British literature

text: The Poetry Society publishes and promotes poetry, notably through an annual National Poetry Day. World Book Day is observed in Britain and the Crown Dependencies on the first Thursday in March annually.


title: British literature

text: British recipients of the Nobel Prize in Literature include Rudyard Kipling (1907), John Galsworthy (1932), T. S. Eliot (1948), Bertrand Russell (1950), Winston Churchill (1953), William Golding (1983), V. S. Naipaul (2001), Harold Pinter (2005) Doris Lessing (2007), and Kazuo Ishiguro (2017).


title: Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel

text: The Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel (), spelled Hesse-Cassel during its entire existence, was a state in the Holy Roman Empire that was directly subject to the Emperor. The state was created in 1567 when the Landgraviate of Hesse was divided upon the death of Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse. His eldest son William IV inherited the northern half of the Landgraviate and the capital of Kassel. The other sons received the Landgraviate of Hesse-Marburg, the Landgraviate of Hesse-Rheinfels and the Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt.


title: Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel

text: During the Napoleonic reorganisation of the Empire in 1803, the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel was elevated to an Electorate and Landgrave William IX became an Imperial Elector. Many members of the Hesse-Kassel House served in the Danish military gaining high ranks and power in the Oldenburg realm due to the fact that many Landgraves were married to Danish princesses. Members of the family who are known to have served Denmark-Norway include Prince Frederik of Hesse-Kassel, Prince Frederick of Hesse-Kassel, and Prince Charles of Hesse-Kassel. It had two votes to the Reichstag: one for itself and one for Hersfeld Abbey. It was later occupied by French troops and became part of the Kingdom of Westphalia, a French satellite state. The Electorate of Hesse was restored at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, though by that time there was no longer an emperor to elect.


title: Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel

text: The Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel was founded by William IV the Wise, the eldest son of Philip I. On his father's death in 1567, the Landgraviate of Hesse was divided into four parts. William IV received about half of the territory, with Kassel as his capital. Hesse-Kassel expanded in 1604 when Maurice, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel inherited the Landgraviate of Hesse-Marburg from his childless uncle, Louis IV, Landgrave of Hesse-Marburg (1537–1604).


title: Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel

text: In 1605, Maurice became Calvinist and entered the Thirty Years' War on the Protestant side. After being forced to cede some of his territories to Hesse-Darmstadt, Maurice abdicated in 1627 in favour of his son William V. His younger sons received appanages, which created several cadet lines in yet another partition of Hesse. William V allied himself with Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden and then France, losing most of Hesse-Kassel when Imperial troops invaded. He died in exile in 1637, leaving his widow Amalie Elisabeth of Hanau-Münzenberg to act as regent for their eight-year-old son William VI.


title: Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel

text: Amalie Elisabeth vigorously advanced the interests of Hesse-Kassel. After expelling Imperial troops from Hesse-Kassel, she sent troops to take the city of Marburg, which her father-in-law had lost to their Hesse-Darmstadt relatives. At the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, Hesse-Kassel was further rewarded with most of the County of Schaumburg and the newly secularized Hersfeld Abbey. Amalie Elisabeth also introduced the rule of primogeniture to prevent Hesse-Kasse from being divided again in the future. However, her health was ruined by the stresses of the war, and she died in 1651.


title: Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel

text: William VI, who came of age in 1650, was an enlightened patron of learning and the arts. He was succeeded by his son William VII, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, then an infant, who died in 1670. He was succeeded by his brother Charles I. Charles' chief claim to fame is that he hired out his soldiers to foreign powers as auxiliaries, as a means of improving the finances of his principality. William V was succeeded by Landgraves William VI and William VII. Frederick I of Sweden, the next landgrave, became by marriage King of Sweden. Although the Landgraviate was in personal union with Sweden from 1730 to 1751, the King's younger brother, Prince William, ruled in Kassel as regent until he succeeded his brother as William VIII.


title: Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel

text: On Frederick I's death in 1751, he was succeeded by his brother William VIII, who fought as an ally of Kingdom of Great Britain during the Seven Years' War. His successor, Frederick II, converted to Catholicism after a long line of Protestant Landgraviates. When the American Revolutionary War broke out, Frederick II leased Hessian troops to Great Britain for service in America.


title: Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel

text: Following the reorganization of the German states during the German mediatisation of 1803, the Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel was raised to the Electorate of Hesse and Landgrave William IX was elevated to Imperial Elector, taking the title William I, Elector of Hesse. The principality thus became known as "", although still usually referred to as Hesse-Kassel.


title: Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel

text: In 1806, William I was dispossessed by Napoleon Bonaparte for his support of the Kingdom of Prussia. Kassel was designated as the capital of a new Kingdom of Westphalia, where Napoleon appointed his brother Jérôme Bonaparte as king. Following Napoleon's defeat in 1813, the elector was restored. At the Congress of Vienna, a number of Napoleonic electorates were elevated to kingdoms, and William tried to secure recognition as King of the Chatti. However, he was rebuffed by the Great Powers, who listed him as a "Royal Highness" along with the other grand dukes. To secure his pre-eminence over his cousin, the Grand Duke of Hesse in the former Hesse-Darmstadt, William chose to keep his title of Prince-Elector. The rulers of the Electorate of Hesse became the only Prince-Electors in the German Confederation, even though there was no longer a Holy Roman Emperor for them to elect.


title: Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel

text: The Landgraves of Hesse-Kassel were famous for renting out their army to European Great Powers during the 17th and 18th centuries. It was a widespread practice at the time for small countries to rent out troops to larger countries in exchange for subsidies. International jurists drew a distinction between mercenaries and auxiliaries ("Hilfstruppen"). Mercenaries served in foreign armies as individuals, while auxiliaries were sent by their prince to the aid of another prince.


title: Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel

text: Hesse-Kassel took the practice to an extreme, maintaining 5.3% of its population under arms in 1730. This was a higher proportion than even Prussia, a country that was so heavily militarized that it was described as "not a country with an army, but an army with a country". The Hessian army served as a readily available reserve for the Great Powers.


title: Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel

text: During the American War of Independence, 25% of the British army consisted of troops rented from German princes, half of whom came from Hesse-Kassel and nearby Hesse-Hanau. For this reason, Americans refer to all German troops serving with the British army as "Hessians", a form of synecdoche.


title: Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel

text: The village of Hessen Cassel, Indiana, near Fort Wayne, founded by German immigrants, is named for the Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel.


title: The Secret Life of My Secretary

text: The Secret Life of My Secretary () is a 2019 South Korean television series starring Kim Young-kwang, Jin Ki-joo, Kim Jae-kyung and Koo Ja-sung. It aired from May 6 to June 25, 2019.


title: The Secret Life of My Secretary

text: A department manager of a mobile media company getting to know who is his real friends and foe after losing his ability to recognize faces ("face-blindness") due to an attack on him, and teaming up with his secretary to try and solve the mystery while falling in love with her. His face-blindess is essential to the plot.


title: Paola Mori

text: Paola di Gerfalco, Contessa di Gerfalco (18 September 1928 – 12 August 1986), better known by her professional name Paola Mori, was an Italian actress and aristocrat, and the third and last wife of Orson Welles.


title: Paola Mori

text: Paola Mori was born in 1928 to an Italian aristocratic family. During World War II, she spent eights months in a concentration camp. Her father, a colonel in the Italian army under King Victor Emmanuel III, was a member of the anti-Mussolini resistance.


title: Paola Mori

text: By 1953, she had begun carving out a career for herself as a film actress, playing supporting roles in several Italian films.


title: Paola Mori

text: In 1953, Mori met Orson Welles, and he cast her as the female lead of his film "Mr. Arkadin" (1955). Mori's voice was dubbed by Billie Whitelaw to conceal her Italian accent.


title: Paola Mori

text: The couple embarked on a passionate affair, and married at her parents' insistence. The couple's wedding ceremony was held in London on 8 May 1955, and their daughter, Beatrice Welles, was born in New York on 13 November 1955.


title: Paola Mori

text: Mori and Welles were interviewed by journalist Edward R. Murrow for the CBS television program Person to Person, which aired in November 1955.


title: Paola Mori

text: Following her marriage, Mori acted in only a handful of projects, all directed by her husband and then withdrew from acting altogether.


title: Paola Mori

text: She assisted Welles with "The Trial" by picking the musical score and appearing in a bit part. Mori scouted locations for "Chimes at Midnight" and "Don Quixote". She also helped with costume designs for "Chimes at Midnight". The film's co-star, Keith Baxter, discussed Mori's involvement with "Chimes at Midnight" in his 2002 memoir, "My Sentiments Exactly", her sparkling personality and relationship with her husband. He described Mori as the best influence on Welles's life.


title: Paola Mori

text: Much of Welles's 1968 film "The Immortal Story" was shot in the couple's home, located outside of Madrid, Spain.


title: Paola Mori

text: Mori and Welles moved from Europe to Sedona, Arizona, in 1976. They lived there for two years before purchasing a home in Las Vegas. The move to Las Vegas provided easier access to an airport for Welles.


title: Paola Mori

text: Her friend, Las Vegas Sun columnist Muriel Stevens said of Mori: "Paola was a rarity — elegant, dignified, without any pretense or airs. Her life had been privileged and glamorous. but simplicity was her style. She remained unimpressed by her aristocratic background. It was simply what was. She was an accomplished needleworker. Her gifts were always handmade treasures. And when Orson was home, she cooked wonderful foods for him. She scoured the city for delicacies. It pleased her to make him comfortable and happy. I’d never met a celebrity wife like her."


title: Paola Mori

text: Gary Graver, Welles's cameraman for the last fifteen years of his life, wrote in a book co-authored with film historian Andrew J. Rausch that "the couple was estranged from the mid-1960s through [to] Welles's death in 1985." However, his description is at odds with accounts given by Stevens, Beatrice Welles, who says her mother provided a loving, stable home during much of the couple's thirty-year marriage; Welles' close friend, film-maker Juan Cobos; and Baxter, as well as personal correspondence from Mori archived at the Museo Nazionale del Cinema‘s Bibliomediateca in Turin, Italy.


title: Paola Mori

text: Mori was seated next to her husband when he was honored with the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award in February 1975.


title: Paola Mori

text: In the early 1980s, Welles divided his time between his Las Vegas home with Mori and their daughter, and a Los Angeles home he shared with Oja Kodar, a Croatian actress he had begun an on-and off-again relationship with in the 1960s and 1970s. When Mori found out about Kodar in 1984, she threw Welles out of their Nevada house, and neither Mori nor Beatrice Welles saw him for much of the last year of his life, although they still talked regularly on the telephone. Beatrice stated: "They sort of separated toward the end because he had a girlfriend. My mother found out about it, and he denied it. She told him he could come back home as soon as he stopped lying to her. He didn't come home during that last year of his life, but he and my mother talked on the phone every day."


title: Paola Mori

text: In his will, Welles bequeathed the bulk of his estate to Mori, though he left Kodar his Los Angeles home and the rights to many of his unfinished films. His widow questioned several deals signed by Welles in his final weeks that greatly benefited Kodar and had not been reviewed by his lawyer. A year after Welles' death, a settlement was reached. However, Mori died in a car accident before it was signed. Mori's portion of the estate was inherited by Beatrice, who finalized the agreement in December 1986.


title: Paola Mori

text: Mori was in an automobile accident in Las Vegas on August 12, 1986, when a car driven by a family friend pulled into cross traffic and was broadsided. She died from head injuries at Desert Springs Hospital in Las Vegas several hours later at the age of 57. Her ashes were buried in Rome.


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: Mozilla Thunderbird is a free and open-source cross-platform email client, personal information manager, news client, RSS and chat client developed by the Mozilla Foundation and operated by subsidiary MZLA Technologies Corporation. The project strategy was originally modeled after that of Mozilla's Firefox web browser.


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: Thunderbird is an email, newsgroup, news feed, and chat (XMPP/IRC) client with personal information manager (PIM) functionality, inbuilt since version 78.0 and previously available from the Lightning calendar extension. Additional features are available from extensions.


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: Thunderbird manages multiple email, newsgroup, and news feed accounts and supports multiple identities within accounts. Features such as quick search, saved search folders ("virtual folders"), advanced message filtering, message grouping, and tags help manage and find messages. On Linux-based systems, system mail (movemail) accounts were supported until version 91.0. Thunderbird provides basic support for system-specific new email notifications and can be extended with advanced notification support using an add-on.


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: Thunderbird incorporates a Bayesian spam filter, a whitelist based on the included address book, and can also understand classifications by server-based filters such as SpamAssassin.


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: Extensions allow the addition of features through the installation of XPInstall modules (known as "XPI" or "zippy" installation) via the add-ons website that also features an update functionality to update the extensions.


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: Thunderbird supports a variety of themes for changing its overall look and feel. These packages of CSS and image files can be downloaded via the add-ons website at Mozilla Add-ons.


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: Thunderbird provides mailbox format support using plugins, but this feature is not yet enabled due to related work in progress. The mailbox formats supported are:


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: Thunderbird also uses Mork and (since version 3) MozStorage (which is based on SQLite) for its internal database. Mork was due to be replaced with MozStorage in Thunderbird 3.0, but the 8.0 release still uses the Mork file format.


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: Since version 38, Thunderbird has integrated support for automatic linking of large files instead of attaching them directly to the mail message.


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: Thunderbird provides a wysiwyg editor for composing messages formatted with HTML (default). The delivery format auto-detect feature will send unformatted messages as plain text (controlled by a user preference). Certain special formatting like subscript, superscript and strikethrough is available from the Format menu. The Insert > HTML menu provides the ability to edit the HTML source code of the message. There is basic support for HTML template messages, which are stored in a dedicated templates folder for each account.


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: As with any software, there may be limitations to the number and sizes of files and objects represented. For example, POP3 folders are subject to filesystem design limitations, such as maximum file sizes on filesystems that do not have large-file support, as well as possible limitations of long filenames, and other issues.


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: Thunderbird runs on a variety of platforms. Releases available on the primary distribution site support the following operating systems:


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: The source code is freely available and can be compiled to be run on a variety of other architectures and operating systems.


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: In June 2022, the Thunderbird project announced that it would be collaborating with email client K-9 for Android to build a Thunderbird version for Android. To this end, K-9 lead developer Christian Ketterer joined the Thunderbird team in 2022. The plan was to transform K-9 Mail into Thunderbird on Android, including the respective name change and adoption of the Thunderbird branding. As soon as K-9 Mail had been brought into alignment with Thunderbird’s feature set and visual appearance, this changeover would take place, according to Thunderbird's Jason Evangelho.


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: With contributors all over the world, Thunderbird has been translated into more than 65 languages, although email addresses are currently limited to ASCII local parts. Thunderbird does not yet support SMTPUTF8 (RFC 6531) or Email Address Internationalization.


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: Thunderbird provides security features such as TLS/SSL connections to IMAP and SMTP servers. It also offers inbuilt support for secure email with digital signing and message encryption through OpenPGP (using public and private keys) or S/MIME (using certificates). Any of these security features can take advantage of smartcards with the installation of additional extensions.


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: Other security features may be added through extensions. Up to version 68, the Enigmail extension was required for OpenPGP support (now inbuilt).


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: Optional security protections also include disabling loading of remote images within messages, enabling only specific media types (sanitizer), and disabling JavaScript.


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: The French military uses Thunderbird and contributes to its security features, which are claimed to match the requirements for NATO's closed messaging system.


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: Originally launched as "Minotaur" shortly after "Phoenix" (the original name for Mozilla Firefox), the project failed to gain momentum. With the success of Firefox, however, demand increased for a mail client to go with it, and the work on Minotaur was revived under the new name of Thunderbird, and migrated to the new toolkit developed by the Firefox team.


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: On December 7, 2004, version 1.0 was released, and received more than 500,000 downloads in its first three days of release, and 1,000,000 in ten days.


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: Significant work on Thunderbird restarted with the announcement that from version 1.5 onward the main Mozilla suite would be designed around separate applications using this new toolkit. This contrasts with the previous all-in-one approach, allowing users to mix and match the Mozilla applications with alternatives. The original Mozilla Suite continues to be developed as SeaMonkey.


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: On December 23, 2004, Project Lightning was announced which tightly integrated calendar functionality (scheduling, tasks, etc.) into Thunderbird. Lightning supports the full range of calendar mechanisms and protocols supported by the Mozilla Calendar infrastructure, just as with modern (post-0.2) Sunbird.


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: On October 11, 2006, Qualcomm and the Mozilla Foundation announced that "future versions of Eudora will be based upon the same technology platform as the open source Mozilla Thunderbird email program." The project was code-named Penelope.


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: In late 2006, Debian rebranded Thunderbird as Icedove due to trademark and copyright reasons. This was the second product to be rebranded.


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: On July 26, 2007, the Mozilla Foundation announced that Thunderbird would be developed by an independent organization, because the Mozilla Corporation (a subsidiary of the foundation) was focusing on Mozilla Firefox development.


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: On September 17, 2007, the Mozilla Foundation announced the funding of a new internet communications initiative with David Ascher of ActiveState. The purpose of this initiative was "to develop Internet communications software based on the Thunderbird product, code, and brand".


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: On February 19, 2008, Mozilla Messaging started operations as a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation responsible for the development of email and similar communications. Its initial focus was on the then upcoming version of Thunderbird 3. Alpha Preview releases of Thunderbird 3 were codenamed "Shredder". On April 4, 2011, Mozilla Messaging was merged into the Mozilla Labs group of the Mozilla Foundation.


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: On July 6, 2012, a confidential memo from Jb Piacentino, the Thunderbird Managing Director at Mozilla, was leaked and published to TechCrunch. The memo indicated that Mozilla would be moving some of the team off the project and further development of new features would be left up to the community. The memo was slated for release on July 9, 2012. A subsequent article by the Executive Chair of Mozilla, Mitchell Baker, stated Mozilla's decision to make a transition of Thunderbird to a new release and governance model. On July 6, 2012, Mozilla announced the company was dropping the priority of Thunderbird development because the continuous effort to extend Thunderbird's feature set was mostly fruitless. The new development model shifted to Mozilla offering only "Extended Support Releases", which deliver security and maintenance updates, while allowing the community to take over the development of new features.


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: On November 25, 2014, Kent James of the volunteer-led Thunderbird Council announced on the Thunderbird blog that active contributors to Thunderbird gathered at the Mozilla office in Toronto and discussed the future of the application. They decided that more staff were required working full-time on Thunderbird so that the Thunderbird Team could release a stable and reliable product and make progress on features that had been frequently requested by the community.


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: On December 1, 2015, Mozilla Executive Chair Mitchell Baker announced in a company-wide memo that Thunderbird development needed to be uncoupled from Firefox. She referred to Thunderbird developers spending large efforts responding to changes to Mozilla technologies, while Firefox was paying a tax to support Thunderbird development. She also said that she does not believe Thunderbird has the potential for "industry-wide impact" that Firefox does. Mozilla remained interested in having a role in Thunderbird, but sought more assistance to help with development. Therefore, at the same time, it was announced that Mozilla Foundation would provide at least a temporary legal and financial home for the Thunderbird project.


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: On May 9, 2017, Philipp Kewisch announced that the Mozilla Foundation would continue to serve as the legal and fiscal home for the Thunderbird project, but that Thunderbird would migrate off Mozilla Corporation infrastructure, separating the operational aspects of the project. Mozilla brought Thunderbird back in-house in an announcement on May 9, 2017, and continued to support its development. The Thunderbird development team expanded by adding several new members and overhauled security and the user interface.


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: The interim/beta versions Thunderbird 57 and 58, released in late 2017, began to make changes influenced by Firefox Quantum, including a new "Photon" user interface.


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: Despite the removal in Firefox Quantum of support for XUL-based legacy add-ons in favor of WebExtensions, the stable/ESR release of Thunderbird 60 in mid-2018 continued to support them, although most would require updates, and it did not support WebExtensions except for Themes.


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: In 2018, work was underway for planned support in Thunderbird 63 of WebExtensions and to continue to "somewhat" support legacy addons, according to Mozilla.


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: With the release of Thunderbird 68 in August 2019 it now only supports WebExtension addons. Legacy Addons can still be used if a special "legacy mode" is enabled, but even for this, the legacy Addon has to be converted. Alongside the transition, OpenPGP support was integrated directly into Thunderbird as a standard feature, seeking to supplant the Enigmail extension. Mainly for licensing reasons, this is no longer based on GnuPG, but on the RNP library, which has more liberal licensing terms.


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: On January 28, 2020, the Mozilla Foundation announced that the project would henceforth be operating from a new wholly owned subsidiary, MZLA Technologies Corporation, in order to explore offering products and services that were not previously possible and to collect revenue through partnerships and non-charitable donations.


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: As of version 78.7.1, Thunderbird will no longer allow installation of addons that use Legacy WebExtensions. Only MailExtensions are now compatible with Thunderbird. MailExtensions are WebExtensions but with "some added features specific to Thunderbird".


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: Thunderbird 91 features various UI improvements (including a new account setup workflow), Apple silicon support, CardDAV address book support, built-in import and export tools for Thunderbird profiles, the PDF.js PDF viewer, and the ability to encrypt emails to BCC recipients.


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: On June 13, 2022, it was announced that the Mozilla Thunderbird team would take over development of the Android email client app K-9 Mail, with plans for it to eventually become a mobile version of Thunderbird with synchronisation support.


title: Mozilla Thunderbird

text: Thunderbird development releases occur in three stages, called Beta, Earlybird, and Daily, which correspond to Firefox's Beta, Aurora, and Nightly stages. The release dates and Gecko versions are exactly the same as Firefox; for example, Firefox 7 and Thunderbird 7 were both released on September 27, 2011, and were both based on Gecko 7.0.


title: Free Soil Party

text: The Free Soil Party was a short-lived coalition political party in the United States active from 1848 to 1854, when it merged into the Republican Party. The party was largely focused on the single issue of opposing the expansion of slavery into the western territories of the United States.


title: Free Soil Party

text: The Free Soil Party formed during the 1848 presidential election, which took place in the aftermath of the Mexican–American War and debates over the extension of slavery into the Mexican Cession. After the Whig Party and the Democratic Party nominated presidential candidates who were unwilling to rule out the extension of slavery into the Mexican Cession, anti-slavery Democrats and Whigs joined with members of the abolitionist Liberty Party to form the new Free Soil Party. Running as the Free Soil presidential candidate, former President Martin Van Buren won 10.1 percent of the popular vote, the strongest popular vote performance by a third party up to that point in U.S. history.


title: Free Soil Party

text: Though Van Buren and many other Free Soil supporters rejoined the Democrats or the Whigs immediately after the 1848 election, Free Soilers retained a presence in Congress over the next six years. Led by individuals like Salmon P. Chase of Ohio, John P. Hale of New Hampshire, and Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, the Free Soilers strongly opposed the Compromise of 1850, which temporarily settled the issue of slavery in the Mexican Cession. Hale ran as the party's presidential candidate in the 1852 presidential election, taking just under five percent of the vote. The 1854 Kansas–Nebraska Act repealed the long-standing Missouri Compromise and outraged many Northerners, contributing to the collapse of the Whigs and spurring the creation of a new, broad-based anti-slavery party known as the Republican Party. Most Free Soilers joined the Republican Party, which emerged as the dominant political party in the United States in the subsequent Third Party System (1856–1894).


title: Free Soil Party

text: Though William Lloyd Garrison and most other abolitionists of the 1830s had generally shunned the political system, in 1840 a small group of abolitionists founded the Liberty Party, a third party dedicated to the immediate abolition of slavery. The Liberty Party nominated James G. Birney for president and Thomas Earle for vice president in the 1840 presidential election. Months after the 1840 election, the party re-nominated Birney for president, established a national party committee, and began to organize at the state and local level. Support for the party grew in the North, especially among evangelical former Whigs in New England, upstate New York, Michigan, and Ohio's Western Reserve. Other anti-slavery Whigs like John Quincy Adams remained within the Whig Party, but increasingly supported anti-slavery policies like the repeal of the gag rule, which prevented the House of Representatives from considering abolitionist petitions. Meanwhile, long-time abolitionist leaders like Lewis Tappan became increasingly open to working within the political system. In a reflection of the rise of anti-slavery sentiment, several Northern states passed personal liberty laws that forbid state authorities from cooperating in the capture and return of fugitive slaves.


title: Free Soil Party

text: Beginning in May 1843, President John Tyler made the annexation of Texas his key priority. Most leaders of both parties opposed opening the question of annexation in 1843 due to their fear of stoking the debate over slavery; the annexation of Texas was widely viewed as a pro-slavery initiative because it would add another slave state to the union. Nonetheless, in April 1844, Secretary of State John C. Calhoun reached a treaty with Texas providing for the annexation of that country. Henry Clay and Martin Van Buren, the two front-runners for the major party presidential nominations in the 1844 presidential election, both announced their opposition to annexation, and the Senate blocked the treaty. To the surprise of Clay and other Whigs, the 1844 Democratic National Convention rejected Van Buren in favor of James K. Polk, and approved a platform calling for the acquisition of both Texas and Oregon Country. Polk went on to defeat Clay in a close election, taking 49.5 of the popular vote and a majority of the electoral vote. The number of voters casting a ballot for Birney increased tenfold from 6,200 in 1840 (0.3 percent of popular vote) to 62,000 (2.3 percent of the popular vote) in 1844.


title: Free Soil Party

text: Following the annexation of Texas in 1845, President Polk began preparations for a potential war with Mexico, which still regarded Texas as a part of its republic. After a skirmish known as the Thornton Affair broke out on the northern side of the Rio Grande, Polk convinced Congress to declare war against Mexico. Though most Democrats and Whigs initially supported the war, Adams and some other anti-slavery Whigs attacked the war as a "Slave Power" plot designed to expand slavery across North America. Meanwhile, former Democratic Congressman John P. Hale had defied party leaders by denouncing the annexation of Texas, causing him to lose re-election in 1845. Hale joined with anti-slavery Whigs and the Liberty Party to found a new party in New Hampshire, and he won election to the Senate in early 1847. In New York, tensions between the anti-slavery Barnburner and the conservative Hunker factions of the Democratic Party rose, as the Hunkers allied with the Whigs to defeat the re-election campaign of Democratic Governor Silas Wright.


title: Free Soil Party

text: In August 1846, Polk asked Congress to appropriate $2 million in hopes of using that money as a down payment for the purchase of Alta California in a treaty with Mexico. During the debate over the appropriations bill, Democratic Congressman David Wilmot of Pennsylvania offered an amendment known as the Wilmot Proviso, which would ban slavery in any newly-acquired lands. Though broadly supportive of the war, Wilmot and some other anti-slavery Northern Democrats had increasingly come to view Polk as unduly favorable to Southern interests, partly due to Polk's decision to compromise with Britain over the partition of Oregon. Unlike some Northern Whigs, Wilmot and other anti-slavery Democrats were largely unconcerned by the issue of racial equality, and instead opposed the expansion of slavery because they believed the institution was detrimental to the "laboring white man." The Wilmot Proviso passed the House with the support of both Northern Whigs and Northern Democrats, breaking the normal pattern of partisan division in congressional votes, but it was defeated in the Senate, where Southerners controlled a proportionally higher share of seats. Several Northern congressmen subsequently defeated an attempt by President Polk and Senator Lewis Cass to extend the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific.


title: Free Soil Party

text: In February 1848, Mexican and U.S. negotiators reached the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which provided for the cession of Alta California and New Mexico. Though many senators had reservations about the treaty, the Senate approved it in a 38-to-14 vote in February 1848. Senator John M. Clayton's effort to reach a compromise over the status of slavery in the territories was defeated in the House, ensuring that slavery would be an important issue in the 1848 election.


title: Free Soil Party

text: Led by John Van Buren, the Barnburners bolted from the 1848 Democratic National Convention after the party nominated a ticket consisting of Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan and former Congressman William O. Butler of Kentucky; Cass and Butler had both opposed the Wilmot Proviso. Shortly after the Democrats nominated Cass, a group of Whigs made plans for a convention of anti-slavery politicians and activists in case the 1848 Whig National Convention nominated General Zachary Taylor of Louisiana for president. With the strong backing of slave state delegates, Taylor defeated Henry Clay to win the Whig presidential nomination. For vice president, the Whigs nominated Millard Fillmore of New York, a conservative Northerner. The nomination of Taylor, a slaveholder without any history in the Whig Party, spurred anti-slavery Whigs to go through with their convention, which would meet in Buffalo, New York in August. A faction of the Liberty Party led by Salmon P. Chase agreed to attend the convention, though another faction of the party, led by Gerrit Smith, refused to consider merging with another party.


title: Free Soil Party

text: Meanwhile, Barnburners convened in Utica, New York on June 22; they were joined by a smaller number of Whigs and Democrats from outside New York. Though initially reluctant to accept to run for president, former President Van Buren accepted the group's presidential nomination. Van Buren endorsed the position that slavery should be excluded from the territories acquired from Mexico, further declaring his belief that slavery was inconsistent with the "principles of the Revolution". Because Van Buren had favored the gag rule and had generally accommodated pro-slavery leaders during his presidency, many Liberty Party leaders and anti-slavery Whigs were unconvinced as to the sincerity of Van Buren's anti-slavery beliefs. Historian A. James Reichley writes that, while resentment stemming from his defeat at the 1844 Democratic National Convention may have played a role in his candidacy, Van Buren ran on the grounds that "the long-term welfare of [the Democratic Party], and the nation, required that the [Democratic Party] shed its Calhounite influence, even at the cost of losing an election or two."


title: Free Soil Party

text: With mix of Democratic, Whig, and Liberty Party attendees, the National Free Soil Convention convened in Buffalo early August. Anti-slavery leaders made up a majority of the attendees, but the convention also attracted some Democrats and Whigs who were indifferent on the issue of slavery but disliked the nominee of their respective party. Salmon Chase, Preston King, and Benjamin Franklin Butler led the drafting of a platform that not only endorsed the Wilmot Proviso but also called for the abolition of slavery in Washington, D.C. and all U.S. territories. With the backing of most Democratic delegates, about half of the Whig delegates, and a small number of Liberty Party leaders, Van Buren defeated John P. Hale to win the fledgling party's presidential nomination. For vice president, the Free Soil Party nominated Charles Francis Adams Sr., the youngest son of the recently-deceased John Quincy Adams.


title: Free Soil Party

text: Some Free Soil leaders were initially optimistic that Van Buren could carry a handful of Northern states and force a contingent election in the House of Representatives, but Van Buren did not win a single electoral vote. However, the nomination of Van Buren alienated many Whigs; except in northern Ohio, most Whig leaders and newspapers rallied around Taylor's candidacy. Ultimately, Taylor won the election with a majority of the electoral vote and a plurality of the popular vote, improving on Clay's 1844 performance in the South and benefiting from the defection of many Democrats to Van Buren in the North. Van Buren won ten percent of the national popular vote and fifteen percent of the popular vote in the Northern states; he received a popular vote total five times greater than that of Birney's 1844 candidacy. Van Buren was the first third party candidate in U.S. history to win at least ten percent of the national popular vote. In concurrent congressional elections, Salmon Chase won election to the Senate and about a dozen Free Soil candidates won election to the House of Representatives.


title: Free Soil Party

text: The Free Soil Party continued to exist after 1848, fielding candidates for various offices. At the state level, Free Soilers often entered into coalition with either of the major parties to elect anti-slavery officeholders. To sidestep the issue of the Wilmot Proviso, the Taylor administration proposed that the lands of the Mexican Cession be admitted as states without first organizing territorial governments; thus, slavery in the area would be left to the discretion of state governments rather than the federal government. In January 1850, Senator Clay introduced a separate proposal which included the admission of California as a free state, the cession by Texas of some of its northern and western territorial claims in return for debt relief, the establishment of New Mexico and Utah territories, a ban on the importation of slaves into the District of Columbia for sale, and a more stringent fugitive slave law. Free Soilers strongly opposed this proposal, focusing especially on the fugitive slave law.


title: Free Soil Party

text: Taylor died in July 1850 and was succeeded by Vice President Fillmore. Fillmore and Democrat Stephen A. Douglas led the passage of the Compromise of 1850, which was based on Clay's earlier proposal. The Whig Party became badly split between pro-Compromise Whigs like Fillmore and Webster and anti-Compromise Whigs like William Seward, who demanded the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act. The first of several prominent episodes concerning the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law occurred in late 1850, when Boston abolitionists helped Ellen and William Craft, two fugitive slaves, escape to Canada.


title: Free Soil Party

text: Though the fugitive slave act and its enforcement outraged anti-slavery activists, most Northerners viewed it as a necessary trade-off for sectional peace with the South, and there was a backlash in the North against the anti-slavery agitation. The Free Soil Party suffered from this backlash, as well as the desertion of many anti-slavery Democrats (including Van Buren himself), many of whom believed that sectional balance had been restored following Van Buren's candidacy and the Compromise of 1850. Charles Sumner won election to the 32nd Congress, but Free Soilers lost a net of five seats in the 1850 and 1851 House of Representatives elections. As the 1852 presidential election approached, Free Soilers cast about for a candidate. Potential candidates with national stature like Van Buren and Senator Thomas Hart Benton declined to run, while Supreme Court Justice Levi Woodbury, another subject of speculation as a potential Free Soil candidate, died in 1851.


title: Free Soil Party

text: Enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act damaged Fillmore's standing among Northerners and, with the backing of Senator Seward, General Winfield Scott won the presidential nomination at the 1852 Whig National Convention. The Whig national convention also adopted a platform that endorsed the Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Act. Scott and his advisers had initially hoped to avoid openly endorsing the Compromise of 1850 in order to court Free Soil support, but, as a concession to Southern Whigs, Scott agreed to support the Whig platform. The 1852 Democratic National Convention, meanwhile, nominated former New Hampshire senator Franklin Pierce, a Northerner sympathetic to the Southern view on slavery. Free Soil leaders had initially considered supporting Scott, but they organized a national convention after Scott accepted the pro-Compromise Whig platform.


title: Free Soil Party

text: At the August 1852 Free Soil Convention, held in Pittsburgh, the party nominated a ticket consisting of Senator John P. Hale of New Hampshire and former Congressman George Washington Julian of Indiana. The party adopted a platform that called for the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act and described slavery as "a sin against God and a crime against man." Free Soil leaders strongly preferred Scott to Pierce, and Hale focused his campaign on winning over anti-slavery Democratic voters. The elections proved to be disastrous for the Whig Party, as Scott was defeated by a wide margin and the Whigs lost several congressional and state elections. Hale won just under five percent of the vote, performing most strongly in Massachusetts, Vermont, and Wisconsin. Though much of this drop in support was caused by the return of Barnburners to the Democratic Party, many individuals who had voted for Van Buren in 1848 sat out the 1852 election. In the aftermath of the decisive defeat of the Whigs, many Free Soil leaders predicted an impending realignment that would result in the formation of a larger anti-slavery party that would unite Free Soilers, Whigs, and Democrats.


title: Free Soil Party

text: Hoping to spur the creation of a transcontinental railroad, in 1853 Senator Douglas proposed a bill to create an organized territorial government in a portion of the Louisiana Purchase that was north of the 36°30′ parallel, and thus excluded slavery under the terms of the Missouri Compromise. After pro-slavery Southern Senators blocked the passage of the proposal, Douglas and other Democratic leaders agreed to a bill that would repeal the Missouri Compromise and allow the inhabitants of the territories to determine the status of slavery. In response, Free Soilers issued the "Appeal of the Independent Democrats", a manifesto that attacked the bill as the work of the Slave Power. Overcoming the opposition of Free Soilers, Northern Whigs, and many Democrats, the Kansas–Nebraska Act was passed into law in May 1854. The act deeply angered many Northerners, including anti-slavery Democrats and conservative Whigs who were largely apathetic towards slavery but were upset by the repeal of a thirty-year-old compromise. Pierce's forceful response to protests stemming from the capture of escaped slave Anthony Burns further alienated many Northerners.


title: Free Soil Party

text: Throughout 1854, Democrats, Whigs, and Free Soilers held state and local conventions, where they denounced the Kansas–Nebraska Act. Many of the larger conventions agreed to nominate a fusion ticket of candidate opposed to the Kansas–Nebraska Act, and some adopted portions of the Free Soil platform from 1848 and 1852. One of these groups met in Ripon, Wisconsin, and agreed to establish a new party known as the Republican Party if the Kansas–Nebraska Act passed. Though many Democrats and Whigs involved in the anti-Nebraska movement still clung to their partisan affiliation, others began to label themselves as Republicans. Another political coalition appeared in the form of the nativist and anti-Catholic Know Nothing movement, which formed the American Party. While the Republican Party almost exclusively appealed to Northerners, the Know Nothings gathered many adherents in both the North and South; some individuals joined both groups even while they remained part of the Whig Party or the Democratic Party.


title: Free Soil Party

text: Congressional Democrats suffered huge losses in the mid-term elections of 1854, as voters provided support to a wide array of new parties opposed to the Democratic Party. Most victorious congressional candidates who were not affiliated with the Democratic Party had campaigned either independently of the Whig Party or in fusion with another party. "Bleeding Kansas", a struggle between anti-slavery and pro-slavery settlers for control of Kansas Territory, escalated in 1855 and 1856, pushing many moderate Northerners to join the nascent Republican Party. As cooperation between Northern and Southern Whigs appeared to be increasingly impossible, leaders from both sections continued to abandon the party. In September 1855, Seward led his faction of Whigs into the Republican Party, effectively marking the end of the Whig Party as an independent and significant political force. In May 1856, after denouncing the Slave Power in a speech on the Senate floor, Senator Sumner was attacked by Congressman Preston Brooks, outraging Northerners. Meanwhile, the 1856 American National Convention nominated former President Fillmore for president, but many Northerners deserted the American Party after the party platform failed to denounce the Kansas–Nebraska Act.


title: Free Soil Party

text: The 1856 Republican National Convention convened in Philadelphia in June 1856. A committee chaired by David Wilmot produced a platform that denounced slavery, the Kansas–Nebraska Act, and the Pierce administration. Though Chase and Seward were the two most prominent members of the nascent party, the Republicans instead nominated John C. Frémont, the son-in-law of Thomas Hart Benton and a political neophyte. The party campaigned on a new version of an old Free Soil slogan: "Free Speech, Free Press, Free Men, Free Labor, Free Territory, and Frémont". With the collapse of the Whig Party, the 1856 presidential election became a three-sided contest between Democrats, Know Nothings, and Republicans. During his campaign, Fillmore minimized the issue of nativism, instead attempting to use his campaign as a platform for unionism and a revival of the Whig Party. Ultimately, Democrat James Buchanan won the election with a majority of the electoral vote and 45 percent of the popular vote; Frémont won most of the remaining electoral votes and took 33 percent of the popular vote, while Fillmore won 21.6 percent of the popular vote and just eight electoral votes. Frémont carried New England, New York, and parts of the Midwest, but Buchanan nearly swept the South and won several Northern states.


title: Free Soil Party

text: The 1848 Free Soil platform openly denounced the institution of slavery, demanding that the federal government "relieve itself of all responsibility for the existence and continuance of slavery" by abolishing slavery in all federal districts and territories. The platform declared: "[W]e inscribe on our banner, 'Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, and Free Men,' and under it we will fight on, and fight forever, until a triumphant victory shall reward our exertions". Unlike the Liberty Party, the 1848 Free Soil Party platform did not address fugitive slaves or racial discrimination, nor did it call for the abolition of slavery in the states. The party nonetheless earned the support of many former Liberty Party leaders by calling for abolition wherever possible, the chief goal of the Liberty Party. The Free Soil platform also called for lower tariffs, reduced postal rates, and improvements to harbors. The 1852 party platform more overtly denounced slavery, and also called for the diplomatic recognition of Haiti. Many Free Soilers also supported the temperance movement.


title: Free Soil Party

text: During the 1848 election, the Free Soil Party fared best in New York, Vermont, and Massachusetts. Though some anti-slavery Democrats found Cass acceptable or refused to vote for a ticket featuring Charles Francis Adams, about three-fifths of the support for Van Buren's candidacy came from Democrats. About one-fifth of those who voted for Van Buren were former members of the Liberty Party, though a small number of Liberty Party members voted for Gerrit Smith instead. Except in New Hampshire and Ohio, relatively few Whigs voted for Van Buren, as slavery-averse Whigs like Abraham Lincoln, Thaddeus Stevens, and Horace Greeley largely backed Taylor.


title: Free Soil Party

text: In New England, many trade unionists and land reformers supported the Free Soil Party, though others viewed slavery as a secondary issue or were hostile to the anti-slavery movement. Other Free Soil Party supporters were active in the women's rights movement, and a disproportionate number of those who attended the Seneca Falls Convention were associated with party. One leading women's rights activist, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, was the wife of Free Soil leader Henry Brewster Stanton and a cousin of Free Soil Congressman Gerrit Smith.