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Ten "Late" Bloomers
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Bach
Dickinson
Kafka
1. JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH Johann Sebastian Bach was better known as a virtuoso organist than as a composer in his day. His sacred music, organ and choral works, and other instrumental music had an enthusiasm and seeming freedom that concealed immense rigor. Bach's use of counterpoint was brilliant and innovative, and the immense complexities of his compositional style -- which often included religious and numerological symbols that seem to fit perfectly together in a profound puzzle of special codes -- still amaze musicians today. Many consider him the greatest composer of all time. Bach was born in Eisenach in 1685. He was taught to play the violin and harpsichord by his father, Johann Ambrosius, a court trumpeter in the service of the Duke of Eisenach. Young Johann was not yet ten when his father died, leaving him orphaned. He was taken in by his recently married oldest brother, Johann Christoph, who lived in Ohrdruf. Because of his excellent singing voice, Bach attained a position at the Michaelis monastery at Lüneberg in 1700. His voice changed a short while later, but he stayed on as an instrumentalist. After taking a short-lived post in Weimar in 1703 as a violinist, Bach became organist at the Neue Kirche in Arnstadt (1703-1707). His relationship with the church council was tenuous as the young musician often shirked his responsibilities, preferring to practice the organ. One account describes a four-month leave granted Bach, to travel to Lubeck where he would familiarize himself with the music of Dietrich Buxtehude. He returned to Arnstadt long after he was expected and much to the dismay of the council. He then briefly served at St. Blasius in Mühlhausen as organist, beginning in June 1707, and married his cousin, Maria Barbara Bach, that fall. Bach composed his famous Toccata and Fugue in D minor (BWV 565) and his first cantatas while in Mühlhausen, but quickly outgrew the musical resources of the town. He next took a post for the Duke of Sachsen-Weimar in 1708, serving as court organist and playing in the orchestra, eventually becoming its leader in 1714. He wrote many organ compositions during this period, including his Orgel-Büchlein. Owing to politics between the Duke and his officials, Bach left Weimar and secured a post in December 1717 as Kapellmeister at Cöthen. In 1720, Bach's wife suddenly died, leaving him with four children (three others had died in infancy). A short while later, he met his second wife, soprano Anna Magdalena Wilcke, whom he married in December 1721. She would bear 13 children, though only five would survive childhood. The six Brandenburg Concertos (BWV 1046-51), among many other secular works, date from his Cöthen years. Bach became Kantor of the Thomas School in Leipzig in May 1723 and held the post until his death. It was in Leipzig that he composed the bulk of his religious and secular cantatas. Bach eventually became dissatisfied with this post, not only because of its meager financial rewards, but also because of onerous duties and inadequate facilities. Thus, he took on other projects, chief among which was the directorship of the city's Collegium Musicum, an ensemble of professional and amateur musicians who gave weekly concerts, in 1729. He also became music director at the Dresden Court in 1736, in the service of Frederick Augustus II; though his duties were vague and apparently few, they allowed him freedom to compose what he wanted. Bach began making trips to Berlin in the 1740s, not least because his son Carl Philipp Emanuel served as a court musician there. In May 1747, the composer was warmly received by King Frederick II of Prussia, for whom he wrote the gloriously abstruse Musical Offering (BWV 1079). Among Bach's last works was his 1749 Mass in B minor. Besieged by diabetes and diminishing eyesight, he died on July 28, 1750 a few months after an ill-fated eye operation that left him blind. © https://www.allmusic.com/artist/johann-sebastian-bach-mn0000075140/biography
• BIOGRAPHY: https://www.biography.com/musician/johann-sebastian-bach• BIOGRAPHY and BIOGROUND: https://www.classicfm.com/composers/bach/guides/bach-facts/• VIDEO BIOGRAPHY (10 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id4g7EKf4Vk• VIDEO BIOGRAPHY (3 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvyLebqTtW4• VIDEO BRANDENBURG CONCERTO NO. 5 (20 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_V7oujd9djk• RE-DISCOVERING BACH: https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200156436/
2. EMILY DICKINSON Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts. She attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley, but only for one year. Throughout her life, she seldom left her home and visitors were few. The people with whom she did come in contact, however, had an enormous impact on her poetry. She was particularly stirred by the Reverend Charles Wadsworth, whom she first met on a trip to Philadelphia. He left for the West Coast shortly after a visit to her home in 1860, and some critics believe his departure gave rise to the heartsick flow of verse from Dickinson in the years that followed. While it is certain that he was an important figure in her life, it is not clear that their relationship was romantic—she called him "my closest earthly friend." Other possibilities for the unrequited love that was the subject of many of Dickinson’s poems include Otis P. Lord, a Massachusetts Supreme Court judge, and Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield Republican. By the 1860s, Dickinson lived in almost complete isolation from the outside world, but actively maintained many correspondences and read widely. She spent a great deal of this time with her family. Her father, Edward Dickinson, was actively involved in state and national politics, serving in Congress for one term. Her brother, Austin, who attended law school and became an attorney, lived next door with his wife, Susan Gilbert. Dickinson’s younger sister, Lavinia, also lived at home for her entire life in similar isolation. Lavinia and Austin were not only family, but intellectual companions for Dickinson during her lifetime. Dickinson's poetry was heavily influenced by the Metaphysical poets of seventeenth-century England, as well as her reading of the Book of Revelation and her upbringing in a Puritan New England town, which encouraged a Calvinist, orthodox, and conservative approach to Christianity. She admired the poetry of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, as well as John Keats. Though she was dissuaded from reading the verse of her contemporary Walt Whitman by rumors of its disgracefulness, the two poets are now connected by the distinguished place they hold as the founders of a uniquely American poetic voice. While Dickinson was extremely prolific as a poet and regularly enclosed poems in letters to friends, she was not publicly recognized during her lifetime. The first volume of her work was published posthumously in 1890 and the last in 1955. She died in Amherst in 1886. Upon her death, Dickinson's family discovered forty handbound volumes of nearly 1,800 poems, or "fascicles" as they are sometimes called. Dickinson assembled these booklets by folding and sewing five or six sheets of stationery paper and copying what seem to be final versions of poems. The handwritten poems show a variety of dash-like marks of various sizes and directions (some are even vertical). The poems were initially unbound and published according to the aesthetics of her many early editors, who removed her unusual and varied dashes, replacing them with traditional punctuation. The current standard version of her poems replaces her dashes with an en-dash, which is a closer typographical approximation to her intention. The original order of the poems was not restored until 1981, when Ralph W. Franklin used the physical evidence of the paper itself to restore her intended order, relying on smudge marks, needle punctures, and other clues to reassemble the packets. Since then, many critics have argued that there is a thematic unity in these small collections, rather than their order being simply chronological or convenient. The Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson (Belknap Press, 1981) is the only volume that keeps the order intact. © https://poets.org/poet/emily-dickinson
• BIOGRAPHY: https://www.biography.com/writer/emily-dickinson• BIOGRAPHY: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Emily-Dickinson• BACKGROUND (Poetry Foundation): https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/70260/emily-dickinson-101• BACKGROUND (Smithsonian): https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/emily-dickinson-fiercer-than-think-180962479/• VIDEO OVERVIEW (2 ½ minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oyZYIO48u4• VIDEO: How Dickinson writes a poem (7 ½ minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55kqNg88JqI
3. FRANZ KAFKA Franz Kafka was born into a middle-class, German-speaking Jewish family on July 3, 1883 in Prague, Bohemia, now the Czech Republic. Franz was the eldest of six children. He had two younger brothers who died in infancy and three younger sisters (Gabriele (1889–1941), Valerie (1890–1942), Ottilie (1892–1943), all of whom perished in concentration camps. His father, Hermann Kafka (1852–1931), was described as a huge ill-tempered domestic tyrant, who on many occasions directed his anger towards his son and was disrespectful towards his escape into literature. Kafka's father was a businessman who established himself as an independent retailer of men's and women's fancy goods and accessories, employing up to 15 people. All his life Kafka struggled to come to terms with his domineering father. Kafka's mother, Julie (1856—1934), was the daughter of a prosperous brewer and was better educated than her husband. She helped to manage her husband's business and worked in it as much as 12 hours a day. The children were largely raised by a series of governesses and servants. From 1889 to 1893, Franz attended the Deutsche Knabenschule, the boys elementary school in Prague. He was sent to German schools, not Czech, which demonstrates his father's desire for social advancement. His Jewish upbringing was limited mostly to his bar mitzvah and going to the synagogue four times a year with his father, which didn't give him much to go on. In 1901 he graduated from the Altstädter Gymnasium, the rigorous classics-oriented secondary school with eight grade levels. He did well in school, taking classes like Latin, Greek and history. After secondary school he went on to Charles Ferdinand University, where at first he decided to study chemistry, but switched after two weeks to law. In the end of his first year, he met another student a year younger than he was, Max Brod, who would become a close friend of his throughout his life, together with the journalist Felix Weltsch, who also studied law. Kafka obtained the degree of Doctor of Law on June 18, 1906 and performed an obligatory year of unpaid service as law clerk for the civil and criminal courts. At the end of 1907 Kafka started working in a huge Italian insurance company, where he stayed for nearly a year. His correspondence during that period witnesses that he was unhappy with his working time schedule - from 8 p.m (20:00) until 6 a.m (06:00) - as it made it extremely difficult for him to concentrate on his writing. On July 15, 1908, he resigned, and few weeks later found more suitable employment with the Worker's Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia. He worked there until July 1922 when he retired for reasons of ill health. He often referred to his job as insurance officer as a "bread job", a job done only to pay the bills. However, he did not show any signs of indifference towards his job, as the several promotions that he received during his career prove that he was a hardworking employee. In parallel, Kafka was also committed to his literary work. In 1912, at the home of his lifelong friend Max Brod, Kafka met Felice Bauer, who lived in Berlin. Over the next five years they corresponded a great deal, met occasionally, and twice were engaged to be married. Their relationship finally ended in 1917. In 1917, Kafka began to suffer from tuberculosis, which would require frequent convalescence during which he was supported by his family, most notably his sister Ottla. In the early 1920s he developed an intense relationship with Czech journalist and writer Milena Jesenská. In 1923, he briefly moved to Berlin in the hope of distancing himself from his family's influence to concentrate on his writing. In Berlin, he lived with Dora Diamant, a 25-year-old kindergarten teacher from an orthodox Jewish family, who was independent enough to have escaped her past in the ghetto. Dora became his lover and influenced Kafka's interest in the Talmud - a book of Jewish law. It is generally agreed that Kafka suffered from clinical depression and social anxiety throughout his entire life. He also suffered from migraines, insomnia, constipation, boils, and other ailments, all usually brought on by excessive stresses and strains. He attempted to counteract all of this by a regimen of naturopathic treatments, such as a vegetarian diet and the consumption of large quantities of unpasteurized milk. Despite all that, his tuberculosis worsened; he returned to Prague, then went to Dr. Hoffmann sanatorium for treatment, where he died on June 3, 1924. His remains are buried alongside his parents under a two-meter obelisk in Prague's New Jewish Cemetery in Olsanske. ©
BIOGRAPHY: https://www.biography.com/writer/franz-kafkaBIOGRAPHY: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Franz-KafkaBIOGRAPHY: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_KafkaBACKGROUND ANALYSIS: https://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-why-kafka-matters-20130623-story.htmlKAFKA’S LEGACY: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/07/books/kafka-archive-jerusalem-israel.html?THE METAMORPHOSES: http://mentalfloss.com/article/65675/12-unsettling-facts-about-metamorphosisVIDEO OVERVIEW (10 ½ minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4LyzhkDNBM
• BIOGRAPHY: https://www.biography.com/musician/johann-sebastian-bach• BIOGRAPHY and BIOGROUND: https://www.classicfm.com/composers/bach/guides/bach-facts/• VIDEO BIOGRAPHY (10 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id4g7EKf4Vk• VIDEO BIOGRAPHY (3 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvyLebqTtW4• VIDEO BRANDENBURG CONCERTO NO. 5 (20 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_V7oujd9djk• RE-DISCOVERING BACH: https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200156436/
2. EMILY DICKINSON Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts. She attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley, but only for one year. Throughout her life, she seldom left her home and visitors were few. The people with whom she did come in contact, however, had an enormous impact on her poetry. She was particularly stirred by the Reverend Charles Wadsworth, whom she first met on a trip to Philadelphia. He left for the West Coast shortly after a visit to her home in 1860, and some critics believe his departure gave rise to the heartsick flow of verse from Dickinson in the years that followed. While it is certain that he was an important figure in her life, it is not clear that their relationship was romantic—she called him "my closest earthly friend." Other possibilities for the unrequited love that was the subject of many of Dickinson’s poems include Otis P. Lord, a Massachusetts Supreme Court judge, and Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield Republican. By the 1860s, Dickinson lived in almost complete isolation from the outside world, but actively maintained many correspondences and read widely. She spent a great deal of this time with her family. Her father, Edward Dickinson, was actively involved in state and national politics, serving in Congress for one term. Her brother, Austin, who attended law school and became an attorney, lived next door with his wife, Susan Gilbert. Dickinson’s younger sister, Lavinia, also lived at home for her entire life in similar isolation. Lavinia and Austin were not only family, but intellectual companions for Dickinson during her lifetime. Dickinson's poetry was heavily influenced by the Metaphysical poets of seventeenth-century England, as well as her reading of the Book of Revelation and her upbringing in a Puritan New England town, which encouraged a Calvinist, orthodox, and conservative approach to Christianity. She admired the poetry of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, as well as John Keats. Though she was dissuaded from reading the verse of her contemporary Walt Whitman by rumors of its disgracefulness, the two poets are now connected by the distinguished place they hold as the founders of a uniquely American poetic voice. While Dickinson was extremely prolific as a poet and regularly enclosed poems in letters to friends, she was not publicly recognized during her lifetime. The first volume of her work was published posthumously in 1890 and the last in 1955. She died in Amherst in 1886. Upon her death, Dickinson's family discovered forty handbound volumes of nearly 1,800 poems, or "fascicles" as they are sometimes called. Dickinson assembled these booklets by folding and sewing five or six sheets of stationery paper and copying what seem to be final versions of poems. The handwritten poems show a variety of dash-like marks of various sizes and directions (some are even vertical). The poems were initially unbound and published according to the aesthetics of her many early editors, who removed her unusual and varied dashes, replacing them with traditional punctuation. The current standard version of her poems replaces her dashes with an en-dash, which is a closer typographical approximation to her intention. The original order of the poems was not restored until 1981, when Ralph W. Franklin used the physical evidence of the paper itself to restore her intended order, relying on smudge marks, needle punctures, and other clues to reassemble the packets. Since then, many critics have argued that there is a thematic unity in these small collections, rather than their order being simply chronological or convenient. The Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson (Belknap Press, 1981) is the only volume that keeps the order intact. © https://poets.org/poet/emily-dickinson
• BIOGRAPHY: https://www.biography.com/writer/emily-dickinson• BIOGRAPHY: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Emily-Dickinson• BACKGROUND (Poetry Foundation): https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/70260/emily-dickinson-101• BACKGROUND (Smithsonian): https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/emily-dickinson-fiercer-than-think-180962479/• VIDEO OVERVIEW (2 ½ minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oyZYIO48u4• VIDEO: How Dickinson writes a poem (7 ½ minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55kqNg88JqI
3. FRANZ KAFKA Franz Kafka was born into a middle-class, German-speaking Jewish family on July 3, 1883 in Prague, Bohemia, now the Czech Republic. Franz was the eldest of six children. He had two younger brothers who died in infancy and three younger sisters (Gabriele (1889–1941), Valerie (1890–1942), Ottilie (1892–1943), all of whom perished in concentration camps. His father, Hermann Kafka (1852–1931), was described as a huge ill-tempered domestic tyrant, who on many occasions directed his anger towards his son and was disrespectful towards his escape into literature. Kafka's father was a businessman who established himself as an independent retailer of men's and women's fancy goods and accessories, employing up to 15 people. All his life Kafka struggled to come to terms with his domineering father. Kafka's mother, Julie (1856—1934), was the daughter of a prosperous brewer and was better educated than her husband. She helped to manage her husband's business and worked in it as much as 12 hours a day. The children were largely raised by a series of governesses and servants. From 1889 to 1893, Franz attended the Deutsche Knabenschule, the boys elementary school in Prague. He was sent to German schools, not Czech, which demonstrates his father's desire for social advancement. His Jewish upbringing was limited mostly to his bar mitzvah and going to the synagogue four times a year with his father, which didn't give him much to go on. In 1901 he graduated from the Altstädter Gymnasium, the rigorous classics-oriented secondary school with eight grade levels. He did well in school, taking classes like Latin, Greek and history. After secondary school he went on to Charles Ferdinand University, where at first he decided to study chemistry, but switched after two weeks to law. In the end of his first year, he met another student a year younger than he was, Max Brod, who would become a close friend of his throughout his life, together with the journalist Felix Weltsch, who also studied law. Kafka obtained the degree of Doctor of Law on June 18, 1906 and performed an obligatory year of unpaid service as law clerk for the civil and criminal courts. At the end of 1907 Kafka started working in a huge Italian insurance company, where he stayed for nearly a year. His correspondence during that period witnesses that he was unhappy with his working time schedule - from 8 p.m (20:00) until 6 a.m (06:00) - as it made it extremely difficult for him to concentrate on his writing. On July 15, 1908, he resigned, and few weeks later found more suitable employment with the Worker's Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia. He worked there until July 1922 when he retired for reasons of ill health. He often referred to his job as insurance officer as a "bread job", a job done only to pay the bills. However, he did not show any signs of indifference towards his job, as the several promotions that he received during his career prove that he was a hardworking employee. In parallel, Kafka was also committed to his literary work. In 1912, at the home of his lifelong friend Max Brod, Kafka met Felice Bauer, who lived in Berlin. Over the next five years they corresponded a great deal, met occasionally, and twice were engaged to be married. Their relationship finally ended in 1917. In 1917, Kafka began to suffer from tuberculosis, which would require frequent convalescence during which he was supported by his family, most notably his sister Ottla. In the early 1920s he developed an intense relationship with Czech journalist and writer Milena Jesenská. In 1923, he briefly moved to Berlin in the hope of distancing himself from his family's influence to concentrate on his writing. In Berlin, he lived with Dora Diamant, a 25-year-old kindergarten teacher from an orthodox Jewish family, who was independent enough to have escaped her past in the ghetto. Dora became his lover and influenced Kafka's interest in the Talmud - a book of Jewish law. It is generally agreed that Kafka suffered from clinical depression and social anxiety throughout his entire life. He also suffered from migraines, insomnia, constipation, boils, and other ailments, all usually brought on by excessive stresses and strains. He attempted to counteract all of this by a regimen of naturopathic treatments, such as a vegetarian diet and the consumption of large quantities of unpasteurized milk. Despite all that, his tuberculosis worsened; he returned to Prague, then went to Dr. Hoffmann sanatorium for treatment, where he died on June 3, 1924. His remains are buried alongside his parents under a two-meter obelisk in Prague's New Jewish Cemetery in Olsanske. ©
BIOGRAPHY: https://www.biography.com/writer/franz-kafkaBIOGRAPHY: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Franz-KafkaBIOGRAPHY: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_KafkaBACKGROUND ANALYSIS: https://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-why-kafka-matters-20130623-story.htmlKAFKA’S LEGACY: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/07/books/kafka-archive-jerusalem-israel.html?THE METAMORPHOSES: http://mentalfloss.com/article/65675/12-unsettling-facts-about-metamorphosisVIDEO OVERVIEW (10 ½ minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4LyzhkDNBM
Larsson
Maier
Melville
4. STIEG LARSSON Stieg Larsson, whose original name was Karl Stig-Erland Larsson, (born August 15, 1954, in Skelleftehamn, Sweden—died November 9, 2004, Stockholm), was a Swedish writer and activist whose posthumously published Millennium series of crime novels brought him international acclaim. Larsson grew up with his maternal grandparents in northern Sweden until age nine when he rejoined his parents in Stockholm. As a teenager he wrote obsessively and, inspired by his grandfather’s ardent antifascist beliefs, developed an interest in radical leftist politics. Following a mandatory 14-month stint in the Swedish army, Larsson participated in rallies against the Vietnam War and became involved in a revolutionary communist group, through which he briefly edited a Trotskyist journal. In 1977, after traveling to Ethiopia to train Eritrean dissidents, he landed a job as a graphic designer for the Swedish news agency Tidningarnas Telegrambyrå (TT), where he later worked as a journalist as well and would remain for 22 years. He soon began to also pen articles for Searchlight, a British magazine that investigated and exposed fascism. By the 1990s Larsson had become a respected muckraker and an expert on the activities of those involved in extreme right-wing movements in Sweden. In 1991 he cowrote (with Anna-Lena Lodenius) a book on the subject, Extremhögern (“The Extreme Right”). Four years later, in response to the rising tide of neo-Nazism in Sweden, he helped establish the Expo Foundation—an organization dedicated to studying racist and antidemocratic tendencies in society to counteract them—and he served as editor in chief of its Expo magazine. As one of his country’s most vocal opponents of hate groups, he became a frequent target of death threats. Larsson started to write fiction in 2001 as a means of generating additional income. Influenced by the detective novels of English-language writers such as Elizabeth George and Sara Paretsky, he conceived a 10-volume series of thrillers in which a disgraced journalist (and seeming alter ego), Mikael Blomkvist, pairs with a young tech-savvy misfit, Lisbeth Salander, to uncover a host of crimes and conspiracies. When he contacted a publisher in 2003, he had already written two novels, and he later completed a third; the following year, however, he suffered a fatal heart attack. Though Larsson had lived with Eva Gabrielsson for three decades before his death, he had never married or written a valid will, and so the rights to and control over his estate passed to his father and brother in what became, as his fame grew, a highly publicized and contentious affair. The first book in the series, Män som hatar kvinnor (2005; “Men Who Hate Women”; Eng. trans. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), which tracked the mismatched protagonists’ investigation into a decades-old disappearance, was swiftly met with praise in Sweden—in particular for Larsson’s indelible characterization of Salander as a surly pixie with a troubled past. Its two sequels—Flickan som lekte med elden (2006; The Girl Who Played with Fire), which delved into the seedy world of sex trafficking, and Luftslottet som sprängdes (2007; “The Air Castle That Blew Up”; Eng. trans. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest), an adrenaline-fueled exploration of institutional corruption—earned similar acclaim. Though some critics charged that the novels’ determined focus on systematic violence against women was complicated by overly graphic depictions of such violence, the trilogy became wildly popular both within and outside Sweden. Together, Larsson’s novels were translated into more than 30 languages and sold tens of millions of copies worldwide. A Swedish film adaptation of the series was produced in 2009, and an English-language film of the first novel emerged two years later. Another entry in the Millennium series was penned by Swedish author David Lagercrantz, who had been selected by Larsson’s father and brother. Gabrielsson publicly objected, claiming that Larsson would not have wanted another writer to continue the series. Det som inte dödar oss (2015; “What Doesn’t Kill You”; Eng. trans. The Girl in the Spider’s Web) was based in part on outlined scenarios left by Larsson, who had mapped out some 10 volumes of the series. The novel sets Salander and Blomkvist against an array of adversaries, from malevolent hackers to the U.S. National Security Agency to Salander’s own twin. Lagercrantz continued the series with Mannen som sökte sin skugga (2017; “The Man Who Hunted His Shadow”; Eng. trans. The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye). ©https://www.britannica.com/biography/Stieg-Larsson
• BIOGRAPHY: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stieg_Larsson• BIOGRAPHY: https://www.famousauthors.org/stieg-larsson• OVERVIEW OF NOVELS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_(novel_series)• OVERVIEW OF NOVELS: http://www.howtoread.me/millennium-books-in-order/• NY TIMES MAGAZINE OVERVIEW/BACKGROUND: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/magazine/23Larsson-t.html• CBS NEWS 2010 OVERVIEW (10 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-WJ6BlLw2s
5. VIVIAN MAIER Maier (1926--2009) was an American street photographer. Maier worked for about forty years as a nanny, mostly in Chicago's North Shore, pursuing photography during her spare time. She took more than 150,000 photographs during her lifetime, primarily of the people and architecture of Chicago, New York City, and Los Angeles, although she also traveled and photographed worldwide. During her lifetime, Maier's photographs were unknown and unpublished; many of her negatives were never printed. A Chicago collector, John Maloof, acquired some of Maier's photos in 2007, while two other Chicago-based collectors, Ron Slattery and Randy Prow, also found some of Maier's prints and negatives in her boxes and suitcases around the same time. Maier's photographs were first published on the Internet in July 2008, by Slattery, but the work received little response. In October 2009, Maloof linked his blog to a selection of Maier's photographs on the image-sharing website Flickr, and the results went viral, with thousands of people expressing interest. Maier's work subsequently attracted critical acclaim, and since then, Maier's photographs have been exhibited around the world. Her life and work have been the subject of books and documentary films, including the film Finding Vivian Maier (2013), which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 87th Academy Awards. © https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivian_Maier
Vivian Maier (1926 – 2009) was an American street photographer whose massive, unseen body of work came to light when it was purchased from an auction in Chicago in 2007. Born in New York City, Maier spent some of her youth in France and then worked in Chicago as a nanny and caregiver for most of her life. In her leisure, however, Maier ventured into the art of photography. Consistently taking photographs over the course of five decades, she would ultimately leave behind over 100,000 negatives. While her photographs have compelled viewers around the world since being brought to the public eye there is much that remains unknown about the enigmatic woman behind the lens. Sometime in 1949, while still in France, Maier began making her first photographs with a modest Kodak Brownie– an amateur camera with only one shutter speed, no focus control, and no aperture dial. In 1951, she returned from France alone and purchased a Rolleiflex camera the following year. In 1956, she moved to the North Shore suburbs of Chicago, where a family employed her as a nanny for their three boys. She enjoyed the luxury of a darkroom as well as a private bathroom, enabling her to process prints and develop her own rolls of black and white film. As the children entered adulthood, Maier had to seek other employment, forcing her to abandon developing her own film. Moving from family to family thereafter, her rolls of undeveloped, unprinted work began to collect. It was around this time that Maier decided to switch to color photography. Her subject matter shifted away from people to found objects, newspapers, and graffiti. In the 1980s, financial stress and lack of stability once again put Maier’s processing on hold, and the undeveloped color rolls began to accumulate. Sometime between the late 1990s and the first years of the new millennium, Maier put down her camera and stored her belongings while she tried to stay afloat. She bounced from homelessness to a small studio apartment, which a family she used to work for helped pay the rent. With meager means, the photographs in storage became lost memories until 2007, when they were sold off due to non-payment of rent. In 2008, Maier’s health began to deteriorate after she fell on a patch of ice, forcing her into a nursing home. She never made a full recovery, leaving behind an immense archive of work when she died in 2009. In 2007, the contents of Maier’s storage space were purchased by several buyers at auction, including John Maloof, who has since dedicated himself to establishing her legacy. While he was unable to connect with Maier in her lifetime, Maloof shared a selection of Maier’s photographs online in 2009 and was met with “viral” interest. Compelled to learn more about the woman behind the lens, Maloof began to investigate the life and work of Maier, culminating in the Oscar-nominated documentary Finding Vivian Maier (2014). Since the discovery of her work, Maier’s photographs have the subject of several publications and have been exhibited at major institutions throughout the world. © http://www.howardgreenberg.com/artists/vivian-maier
• OVERVIEW (Official Website managed by Maier Estate): http://www.vivianmaier.com/• BIOGRAPHY: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivian_Maier• BIOGRAPHY: http://www.vivianmaier.com/about-vivian-maier/• MAIER’S COLOR PHOTOGRAPHY: https://news.artnet.com/exhibitions/1406443-1406443• VIDEO (23-minute Overview): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66oDaqgdTyI• VIDEO (40-minute interview with co-director of documentary FINDING VIVIAN MAIER): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Si6UGJnY9ME
6. HERMAN MELVILLE In addition to writing many sea novels, Herman Melville is best known as the author of the highly acclaimed American novel, Moby Dick (1851). It is quite unfortunate how the masterpiece was given due recognition 30 years after the death of its author. However, during his lifetime, Herman Melville became popular for writing a fictional travel narrative, Type (1846). Herman Melville was born in New York on August 1, 1819 to a rich mercantile family which declined due to great losses in business. Herman was the third child of his parents who had 8. His father, Allan Melville was an importer of French dry goods who died after going bankrupt when Melville was 12 years old. Herman’s mother Maria Gansevoort Melville then raised her children with a little occasional help from some rich relatives. A short episode of scarlet fever affected Melville’s eyesight permanently in 1826. In 1835 he went to school at Albany Classical School (NY). After leaving school at the age of 12, Herman worked at several jobs as a clerk, teacher and farmhand. He also studied Shakespeare and other technical, historical and anthropological works despite his bad eyesight. Melville was thirsty for adventure and in 1839 he set out to sea. In 1841, Herman sailed on a whaler bound. His adventures continued and in 1842 he was on a ship in the Marquesas Islands. His Polynesian adventures produced his early successful novels, Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847). However, his upcoming novel, Mardi (1849) did not do well. In the same year he wrote Redburn (1849) followed by White-Jacket (1850), a book depicting the tough life of sailors, in the next year. Shortly after White-Jacket, came Moby Dick (1851), his distinguished contribution to American literature. Moby Dick, a whaling fictional narrative symbolically touched the tribulations of American democracy. Sadly, Moby Dick did not prove to be rewarding for Melville at the time of its publication and instead put him in despair at not receiving any acclamation. He wrote Pierre in 1852 hoping to advance his career and earn better but the Gothic romantic fiction brought him nothing except disaster both financially and critically. During the next few years Melville wrote Israel Potter (1855) and The Confidence-Man (1857). Melville also wrote magazine stories in Putnam’s Monthly Magazine which revolved around the hypocritical and materialistic nature of man. Some of these stories include Bartleby, the Scrivener (1853), The Encantadas (1854), and Benito Cereno (1855). By 1857, Melville had turned his attention towards writing poetry. Since his writing was not supporting him much financially, Herman took a job as a customs inspector in 1866. He spent the last days of his literary career writing prose and his last work Billy Budd, Foretopman was not published until after his death. Some other last works of Melville include Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1856), John Marr and other Sailors (1888) and Timoleon (1891). Elisabeth Shaw, daughter of the chief justice of Massachusetts married Melville in 1847 and they had four children. Herman Melville died in New York on September 28, 1891. Considered an ordinary writer during his lifetime, Herman Melville’s name now enjoys a place of paramount importance in American literature. ©https://www.famousauthors.org/herman-melville
• BIOGRAPHY: https://www.biography.com/writer/herman-melville• BIOGRAPHY: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Herman-Melville• BIOGRAPHY: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Melville• MELVILLE AS MYSTERIOUS (BISEXUAL?) ICON: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jan/30/herman-melville-mark-twain-parini• VIDEO OVERVIEW (33 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-itqLKTITk
• BIOGRAPHY: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stieg_Larsson• BIOGRAPHY: https://www.famousauthors.org/stieg-larsson• OVERVIEW OF NOVELS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_(novel_series)• OVERVIEW OF NOVELS: http://www.howtoread.me/millennium-books-in-order/• NY TIMES MAGAZINE OVERVIEW/BACKGROUND: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/magazine/23Larsson-t.html• CBS NEWS 2010 OVERVIEW (10 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-WJ6BlLw2s
5. VIVIAN MAIER Maier (1926--2009) was an American street photographer. Maier worked for about forty years as a nanny, mostly in Chicago's North Shore, pursuing photography during her spare time. She took more than 150,000 photographs during her lifetime, primarily of the people and architecture of Chicago, New York City, and Los Angeles, although she also traveled and photographed worldwide. During her lifetime, Maier's photographs were unknown and unpublished; many of her negatives were never printed. A Chicago collector, John Maloof, acquired some of Maier's photos in 2007, while two other Chicago-based collectors, Ron Slattery and Randy Prow, also found some of Maier's prints and negatives in her boxes and suitcases around the same time. Maier's photographs were first published on the Internet in July 2008, by Slattery, but the work received little response. In October 2009, Maloof linked his blog to a selection of Maier's photographs on the image-sharing website Flickr, and the results went viral, with thousands of people expressing interest. Maier's work subsequently attracted critical acclaim, and since then, Maier's photographs have been exhibited around the world. Her life and work have been the subject of books and documentary films, including the film Finding Vivian Maier (2013), which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 87th Academy Awards. © https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivian_Maier
Vivian Maier (1926 – 2009) was an American street photographer whose massive, unseen body of work came to light when it was purchased from an auction in Chicago in 2007. Born in New York City, Maier spent some of her youth in France and then worked in Chicago as a nanny and caregiver for most of her life. In her leisure, however, Maier ventured into the art of photography. Consistently taking photographs over the course of five decades, she would ultimately leave behind over 100,000 negatives. While her photographs have compelled viewers around the world since being brought to the public eye there is much that remains unknown about the enigmatic woman behind the lens. Sometime in 1949, while still in France, Maier began making her first photographs with a modest Kodak Brownie– an amateur camera with only one shutter speed, no focus control, and no aperture dial. In 1951, she returned from France alone and purchased a Rolleiflex camera the following year. In 1956, she moved to the North Shore suburbs of Chicago, where a family employed her as a nanny for their three boys. She enjoyed the luxury of a darkroom as well as a private bathroom, enabling her to process prints and develop her own rolls of black and white film. As the children entered adulthood, Maier had to seek other employment, forcing her to abandon developing her own film. Moving from family to family thereafter, her rolls of undeveloped, unprinted work began to collect. It was around this time that Maier decided to switch to color photography. Her subject matter shifted away from people to found objects, newspapers, and graffiti. In the 1980s, financial stress and lack of stability once again put Maier’s processing on hold, and the undeveloped color rolls began to accumulate. Sometime between the late 1990s and the first years of the new millennium, Maier put down her camera and stored her belongings while she tried to stay afloat. She bounced from homelessness to a small studio apartment, which a family she used to work for helped pay the rent. With meager means, the photographs in storage became lost memories until 2007, when they were sold off due to non-payment of rent. In 2008, Maier’s health began to deteriorate after she fell on a patch of ice, forcing her into a nursing home. She never made a full recovery, leaving behind an immense archive of work when she died in 2009. In 2007, the contents of Maier’s storage space were purchased by several buyers at auction, including John Maloof, who has since dedicated himself to establishing her legacy. While he was unable to connect with Maier in her lifetime, Maloof shared a selection of Maier’s photographs online in 2009 and was met with “viral” interest. Compelled to learn more about the woman behind the lens, Maloof began to investigate the life and work of Maier, culminating in the Oscar-nominated documentary Finding Vivian Maier (2014). Since the discovery of her work, Maier’s photographs have the subject of several publications and have been exhibited at major institutions throughout the world. © http://www.howardgreenberg.com/artists/vivian-maier
• OVERVIEW (Official Website managed by Maier Estate): http://www.vivianmaier.com/• BIOGRAPHY: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivian_Maier• BIOGRAPHY: http://www.vivianmaier.com/about-vivian-maier/• MAIER’S COLOR PHOTOGRAPHY: https://news.artnet.com/exhibitions/1406443-1406443• VIDEO (23-minute Overview): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66oDaqgdTyI• VIDEO (40-minute interview with co-director of documentary FINDING VIVIAN MAIER): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Si6UGJnY9ME
6. HERMAN MELVILLE In addition to writing many sea novels, Herman Melville is best known as the author of the highly acclaimed American novel, Moby Dick (1851). It is quite unfortunate how the masterpiece was given due recognition 30 years after the death of its author. However, during his lifetime, Herman Melville became popular for writing a fictional travel narrative, Type (1846). Herman Melville was born in New York on August 1, 1819 to a rich mercantile family which declined due to great losses in business. Herman was the third child of his parents who had 8. His father, Allan Melville was an importer of French dry goods who died after going bankrupt when Melville was 12 years old. Herman’s mother Maria Gansevoort Melville then raised her children with a little occasional help from some rich relatives. A short episode of scarlet fever affected Melville’s eyesight permanently in 1826. In 1835 he went to school at Albany Classical School (NY). After leaving school at the age of 12, Herman worked at several jobs as a clerk, teacher and farmhand. He also studied Shakespeare and other technical, historical and anthropological works despite his bad eyesight. Melville was thirsty for adventure and in 1839 he set out to sea. In 1841, Herman sailed on a whaler bound. His adventures continued and in 1842 he was on a ship in the Marquesas Islands. His Polynesian adventures produced his early successful novels, Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847). However, his upcoming novel, Mardi (1849) did not do well. In the same year he wrote Redburn (1849) followed by White-Jacket (1850), a book depicting the tough life of sailors, in the next year. Shortly after White-Jacket, came Moby Dick (1851), his distinguished contribution to American literature. Moby Dick, a whaling fictional narrative symbolically touched the tribulations of American democracy. Sadly, Moby Dick did not prove to be rewarding for Melville at the time of its publication and instead put him in despair at not receiving any acclamation. He wrote Pierre in 1852 hoping to advance his career and earn better but the Gothic romantic fiction brought him nothing except disaster both financially and critically. During the next few years Melville wrote Israel Potter (1855) and The Confidence-Man (1857). Melville also wrote magazine stories in Putnam’s Monthly Magazine which revolved around the hypocritical and materialistic nature of man. Some of these stories include Bartleby, the Scrivener (1853), The Encantadas (1854), and Benito Cereno (1855). By 1857, Melville had turned his attention towards writing poetry. Since his writing was not supporting him much financially, Herman took a job as a customs inspector in 1866. He spent the last days of his literary career writing prose and his last work Billy Budd, Foretopman was not published until after his death. Some other last works of Melville include Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1856), John Marr and other Sailors (1888) and Timoleon (1891). Elisabeth Shaw, daughter of the chief justice of Massachusetts married Melville in 1847 and they had four children. Herman Melville died in New York on September 28, 1891. Considered an ordinary writer during his lifetime, Herman Melville’s name now enjoys a place of paramount importance in American literature. ©https://www.famousauthors.org/herman-melville
• BIOGRAPHY: https://www.biography.com/writer/herman-melville• BIOGRAPHY: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Herman-Melville• BIOGRAPHY: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Melville• MELVILLE AS MYSTERIOUS (BISEXUAL?) ICON: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jan/30/herman-melville-mark-twain-parini• VIDEO OVERVIEW (33 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-itqLKTITk