Through The Year With Shakespeare

Maguire, Nancy Klein Klein: AN INFINITY OF LITTLE HOURS, New York PublicAffairs 2006
ISBN: 1-58648-327-7 New Condition

From the Publisher "This is the story of the five-year journey taken by five young men inside the largest center of the most rigorous and ascetic monastic order in the Western world: the Carthusians. When the five young men arrive at the imposing gates of Parkminster in 1960, they enter a world virtually unchanged since its founding in the eleventh century." "As well as being a uniquely intimate portrait of the customs and practices of a monastic order almost entirely unknown until now, An Infinity of Little Hours is a drama of the struggle faced by the young men. After five years, each faces a choice: if he stays to make "solemn profession," he will never leave. But if he leaves he must turn his back on a journey to find God - his life's ambition. Like a team of mountaineers, each searching for a spiritual summit, the novice monks' lives are followed as they climb out of their own age and into a spiritual world of their own making." An investigative work, the book combines unique source material - including personal interviews with the monks themselves, and their handwritten notes, journals, and other correspondence - to describe first-hand the Carthusian life. In the final chapter, describing a reunion forty years later, Nancy Klein Maguire reveals which of the five made it to the top of the mountain, and how the others incorporated their monastic experiences as they rejoined the world outside. San Diego Union-Tribune "Nancy Klein Maguire immerses us into the mysterious world of this ascetic order with admirable detail and clarity." Seattle Times "Maguire's years' of labor bore fine fruit." American Scholar "[An] outstanding work of cultural anthropology and oral history... it probes, it teaches, it unsettles, it amazes." "The level of detail is astonishing... Reading "An Infinity of Little Hours" is almost like praying." Publishers Weekly Carthusians are contemplative monastics who live in community but spend most of their days alone in their private dwellings. With a lifestyle similar to that of their 11th-century French founder, they wear hair shirts, practice self-flagellation and eat just one meal a day from mid-September to Easter (though some monasteries reluctantly have begun allowing such luxuries as electricity, hot water and flush toilets). Maguire, a Renaissance scholar married to an ex-Carthusian, examines this living museum of a bygone age by following the lives of five young men who entered St. Hugh's Charterhouse in England between July 1960 and March 1961. As they work, pray and live in solitude, they discover not only God but also themselves. They do not, however, learn much about the rapid changes taking place beyond their walls, and the men who leave the monastery in 1965 find themselves in a strange new world. Through painstaking research including countless phone conversations, 5,000 pages of e-mails and a reunion of the five men in France, Maguire creates a personal, sympathetic and amazingly detailed description of an ancient order and its contemporary adherents, traveling "toward inner space within the confines of their solitary cells." <P> Gripping tale of five young men who entered Catholicism's most rigorous contemplative monastic order. Founded in 1084, the Carthusian order remained virtually unchanged through the Second Vatican Council in the mid-1960s, declares Maguire, scholar-in-residence at the Folger Shakespeare Library. (It is now slightly more democratic, though post-Vatican II members do not generally consider the changes substantial.) Emphasizing prayer, members of the order led very individual lives, speaking rarely, living austerely and having virtually no contact with the world outside the monastery's walls. Drawing upon copious letters, e-mails, conversations with former and current members of the order and several nearly unprecedented visits to the English Carthusian monastery of Parkminster, Maguire recreates the personal stories of five men who entered Parkminster in 1960 and 1961. Her goal is "to New Book Jacket Hardcover 6- x 9"

[SW: St, Carthusians -- England -- West Sussex, Catholicism, Monastery,]

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Kaplan, Robert D. The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero, Oxford Oxford University Press 1999
ISBN: 0195128427 Fine Kaplan, Ellen

xii, 225 pp., illus., index; 21 cm. AS NEW. Dust jacket protected in a mylar book cover. "A symbol for what is not there, an emptiness that increases any number it's added to, an inexhaustible and indispensable paradox. As we enter the year 2000, zero is once again making its presence felt. Nothing itself, it makes possible a myriad of calculations. Indeed, without zero mathematics as we know it would not exist. And without mathematics our understanding of the universe would be vastly impoverished. But where did this nothing, this hollow circle, come from? Who created it? And what, exactly, does it mean? Robert Kaplan's The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero begins as a mystery story, taking us back to Sumerian times, and then to Greece and India, piecing together the way the idea of a symbol for nothing evolved. Kaplan shows us just how handicapped our ancestors were in trying to figure large sums without the aid of the zero. (Try multiplying CLXIV by XXIV). Remarkably, even the Greeks, mathematically brilliant as they were, didn't have a zero--or did they? We follow the trail to the East where, a millennium or two ago, Indian mathematicians took another crucial step. By treating zero for the first time like any other number, instead of a unique symbol, they allowed huge new leaps forward in computation, and also in our understanding of how mathematics itself works. In the Middle Ages, this mathematical knowledge swept across western Europe via Arab traders. At first it was called 'dangerous Saracen magic' and considered the Devil's work, but it wasn't long before merchants and bankers saw how handy this magic was, and used it to develop tools like double-entry bookkeeping. Zero quickly became an essential part of increasingly sophisticated equations, and with the invention of calculus, one could say it was a linchpin of the scientific revolution. And now even deeper layers of this thing that is nothing are coming to light: our computers speak only in zeros and ones, and modern mathematics shows that zero alone can be made to generate everything. Robert Kaplan serves up all this history with immense zest and humor; his writing is full of anecdotes and asides, and quotations from Shakespeare to Wallace Stevens extend the book's context far beyond the scope of scientific specialists. For Kaplan, the history of zero is a lens for looking not only into the evolution of mathematics but into very nature of human thought. He points out how the history of mathematics is a process of recursive abstraction: how once a symbol is created to represent an idea, that symbol itself gives rise to new operations that in turn lead to new ideas. The beauty of mathematics is that even though we invent it, we seem to be discovering something that already exists. The joy of that discovery shines from Kaplan's pages, as he ranges from Archimedes to Einstein, making fascinating connections between mathematical insights from every age and culture. A tour de force of science history, The Nothing That Is takes us through the hollow circle that leads to infinity." - Publisher. Fine Hard Cover 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall

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Anonymous: "Romeo and Juliet" (Touring Company Production of the Classic at The Opera House, Manchester) - Theatre Programme, Manchester The Opera House 1935
Very Good

Unpaginated but 12pp inc photos of John Gielgud as Romeo, Edith Evans as the Nurse and Peggy Ashcroft as Juliet - Souvenir program for Manchester's Opera House's 1935 (probably, based on the cast being almost identical to that at London's New Theatre that same year) touring company production of "Romeo and Juliet", starring John Gielgud as Romeo and directing, <P> Like Gielgud's "Hamlet" the previous year, this "Romeo and Juliet" won almost universal praise of the highest order. Michael Mullin has commented in his 1995 book "DESIGN BY MOTLEY", "The 1935 production... at the New Theatre came to stand as the benchmark production of the play. Theatre critics would refer to it for decades to come. On his second three-year contract with Bronson Albery at the New Theatre, Gielgud had, in effect, formed a "company" of actors with himself at the head and Motley as the company designers.... The production ... enjoyed an unusually long run for a Shakespeare play and then transferred to the provinces...." <P> Starring Gielgud as Romeo, the production also featured Alec Guinness as Samson and the Apothecary, Leon Quartermaine as Mercutio, Kenneth Grinling as Gregory, Andrew Churchman as Abraham, Michael Brennan as Balthasar, Geoffrey Toone as Tybalt, Glen Byam-Shaw as Benvolio, Hubert Harben as Capulet, Marjorie Fielding as Lady Capulet Cecil Winter as Montague, Barbara Dillon as Lady Montague, E. R. Hignett as Prince of Verona, Sam Beazley as Paris, Peter Murray Hill as Peter, Edith Evans as Juliet's Nurse, Peggy Ashcroft as Juliet, Godfrey Bond as a cousin to Capulet, George Howe as Friar Lawrence and Friar John, Colin Eaton as Paris' Page, Ian Aylmer as Captain of the Watch, and Peter du Calion as Mercutio's Page. <P> Alec Guinness was only 21 when he played in this production, and went on to eventually win both Oscars and Tonys as one of the most versatile performers of his generation. He first worked writing copy for advertising before making his West End debut at the Albery Theatre in 1936, still playing the role of Osric in Gielgud's wildly successful production of "Hamlet". During this period he formed the personal and working friendships that lasted his lifetime, with such luminaries as Gielgud, Peggy Ashcroft, Quayle, and Jack Hawkins. <P> He continued working in Shakespeare throughout his career. By 1938 he was starring in the title role of "Hamlet" to universal acclaim. In 1939, he adapted Dickens' novel "Great Expectations" for the stage, playing the part of Herbert Pocket. The play was a success; one of its viewers was a young British film editor named David Lean, who had Guinness reprise his role in the former's 1946 film adaptation of the play. Guinness served in the Royal Navy throughout World War II, first as a seaman in 1941 and then commissioned the following year. He returned to the Old Vic in 1946 and stayed through 1948, playing a variety of major roles. <P>Arguably his most memorable film roles were in "The Ladykillers" and, of course his playing eight different characters in "Kind Hearts and Coronets". For his performance in "Bridge on the River Kwai", as Colonel Nicholson, the unyielding British POW leader, Guinness won a Best Actor Oscar. His Tony came for his Broadway triumph as Dylan Thomas in "Dylan". <P> Ashcroft was an Academy Award-winning actress who in 1937 appeared in a 30-minute excerpt of "Twelfth Night" on the BBC Television Service, appearing alongside Greer Garson, iin the first known instance of a Shakespeare play to be performed on television. <P> Evans, the Academy Award nominated and Golden Globe award-winning actress, was apprenticed at the age of 15 in 1903 as a milliner. Her first stage appearance was with Miss Massey's Streatham Shakespeare Players in the role of Viola in Twelfth Night in October 1910. Two years later Producer, William Poel discovered her and she made her first professional appearance playing the role of Gautami in an obscure sixth-century Hindu classic, "Sakuntala". Her first real critical success was as Cressida in "Troilus and Cressida" in London and subsequently at Stratford upon Avon. She went on to play 150 different roles, and to play in numerous works by Shakespeare, Congreve, Ibsen, Wycherley, Wilde, and contemporary playwrights including Shaw, Enid Bagnold, Christopher Fry and Coward). <P> <B>PROVENANCE:</B> this item comes from the collection of H. W. Roxburgh of Liverpool, in whose extensive collection of theatrical ephemera this item was contained. It was purchased at Fellows and Sons Auction, Birmingham (UK) in Aug, 2007. <P>The cover and textblock are clean and bright. First Edition No Jacket Pamphlet 5.5 x 9"

[SW: John Gielgud, Alec Guinness, Leon Quartermaine, Kenneth Grinling, Andrew Churchman, Michael Brennan, Geoffrey Toone, Glen Byam-Shaw, Hubert Harben, Marjorie Fielding Cecil Winter, Barbara Dillon, E. R. Hignett, Sam Beazley, Peter Murray Hill, Edith Evans, Peggy Ashcroft, Godfrey Bond, George Howe, Colin Eaton, Ian Aylmer, Peter du Calion, Opera House, Manchester, "Romeo and Juliet", Theater, Theatre, Theatre Programme, Theater Program, Souvenir Program, Souvenir Programme, Ephemera Entertainment Theatre Souvenir Program Souvenir Programme Theatre Programme Theater Program Playbill]

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(KEMBLE, Fanny). A Year of Consolation. By Mrs. Butler. (pseud) Edward Moxon 1847

Two volumes (as issued) First edition. 8vo., orig. cloth, 136, 171pp. 1/2 calf. Lacking one backstrip, library cancels, boards loose. * This work describes Kemble's tour through France to Rome and her residence in Rome with her sister. A contemporary reviewer stated "we know no other tourist who has so lovingly and picturesquely done justice to the natural beauty round about Rome...the great merit of the work consists in these admirable descriptions of scenery..." Robinson p.240, David & Joyce 2592. . An abolitionist, an independent mind, and a great interpreter of Shakespeare. The title refers to a year spent in Italy with her (also notable) sister, apart from Pierce Butler her recently unfaithful and slavery-supporting husband. "The first truly great actress to appear in the United States [1832] .the thirteen-year-old Walt Whitman made repeated pilgrimages to the theater" [where she was playing in The Hunchback] --Notable American Women

[SW: women american stage acting biography actresses plays theater]

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