- Featured Authors: William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, Virginia Woolf, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, J.R.R. Tolkien, and J.K. Rowling.
- Rare Items: Original handwritten letters, personal drafts, and life portraits on loan from the National Portrait Gallery in London.
- Location: China Eastern Airlines Exhibition Gallery 2 (2F), Shanghai Museum East (1952 Century Avenue, Pudong New Area
ALEXANDER POPE
Alexander Pope was a master of the heroic couplet and the pre-eminent English poet of the 18th-century Enlightenment. He is best known for his biting literary satires like The Dunciad, the mock-epic The Rape of the Lock, and his widely quoted philosophical and critical essays.
- The Rape of the Lock: His most famous mock-heroic poem, which satirizes high-society feuds by blowing a petty quarrel (the snipping of a lock of a lady's hair) out of proportion.
- An Essay on Criticism: A didactic poem establishing the rules for reading and judging poetry, famous for oft-used phrases like "To err is human, to forgive, divine."
- Translations of Homer: His financially successful translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey allowed him to become one of the first English writers to make a living entirely from his pen.
- An Essay on Man: A philosophical poem exploring the relationship between humans and the universe, famously asserting that "Whatever is, is right."
- The Dunciad: A vicious, hilarious satire targeting the "dunce" writers and publishers of London's "Grub Street https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/alexander-pope
- Explicit Sexual Content:
The "Nausicaa" episode shocked censors by featuring a scene of the
protagonist, Leopold Bloom, masturbating. Other passages contained
descriptions of brothel scenes and internal monologues from female
characters reflecting frankly on their physical desires.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/william-shakespeare
English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" or simply "the Bard". His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems amongst others.
- Don Juan: Often considered his masterpiece, this satirical epic subverts the traditional legend by making the title character a naive young man easily seduced by women, rather than an aggressive seducer.
- Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: A massive four-part narrative poem that catapulted him to overnight fame. It follows a disillusioned young man traveling through Europe, heavily mirroring Byron's own real-life continental wanderings.
- "She Walks in Beauty": An iconic romantic lyric celebrating inner and outer grace, inspired by the sight of his cousin by marriage dressed in a black mourning gown with spangles.
- "When We Two Parted": A poignant, mournful poem about a secret, painful breakup that reads like a genuine expression of heartbreak.
- "So We'll Go No More a Roving": A melancholic yet tender reflection on aging, exhaustion, and the fading of youthful passions after a long night of partying in Venice.
- Manfred: A deeply philosophical, Gothic dramatic poem featuring a haunted, solitary anti-hero living in the Alps who summons spirits to escape his agonizing guilt
LOVE SCANDALS OF BYRON
https://wordsworth.org.uk/blog/2016/09/08/byron-and-his-women-mad-bad-and-very-dangerous-to-know/
LORD BYRON & MARY SHELLEY
https://ksh.roma.it/romanticism/1816
BEATRIX POTTER AND PETER RABBIT
Peter Rabbit is a fictional animal character in various children's stories by English author Beatrix Potter. A mischievous, adventurous young anthropomorphic rabbit who wears a blue jacket, he first appeared in The Tale of Peter Rabbit in 1902, and subsequently in five more books between 1904 and 1912.
GEORGE ELLIOT
Mary Ann Evans, known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wrote seven novels: Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Romola, Felix Holt, the Radical, Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda
WHY A MALE PEN NAME?
In a letter to her publisher William Blackwood, Evans suggested that the name George Eliot should be assigned to her work in place of her own. The male name was created partly to conceal the gender of the author, and partly to disguise her irregular social position, living as an unmarried woman with a married man
