title: Hair removal

text: It was not until the late 19th century that women in Europe and America started to make hair removal a component of their personal care regime. According to Professor Rebecca Herzig, the modern-day notion of body hair being unwomanly can be traced back to Charles Darwin's book first published in 1871 "The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex". Darwin's theory of natural selection associated body hair with "primitive ancestry and an atavistic return to earlier less developed forms", writes Herzig, a professor of gender and sexuality studies at Bates College in Maine. Darwin also suggests having less body hair was an indication of being more evolved and sexually attractive. As Darwin's ideas polarized, other 19th century medical and scientific experts started to link hairiness to "sexual inversion, disease pathology, lunacy, and criminal violence". Those connotations were mostly applied to women's and not men's body hair.


title: Hair removal

text: By the early 20th century, the upper- and middle-class white America increasingly saw smooth skin as a marker of femininity, and female body hair as repulsive, with hair removal giving "a way to separate oneself from cruder people, lower class and immigrant".


title: Hair removal

text: Harper's Bazaar, in 1915, was the first women's fashion magazine to run a campaign devoted to the removal of underarm hair as "a necessity". Shortly after, Gillette launched the first safety razor marketed specifically for women—the "Milady Décolleté Gillette", one that solves "..an embarrassing personal problem" and to keep the underarm "..white and smooth".


title: Hair removal

text: Body hair characteristics such as thickness and length vary across human populations, some people have less pronounced body hair and others more conspicuous body hair characteristics.


title: Hair removal

text: Each culture of human society developed social norms relating to the presence or absence of body hair, which has changed from one time to another. Different standards of human physical appearance and physical attractiveness can apply to females and males. People whose hair falls outside a culture's aesthetic body image standards may experience real or perceived social acceptance problems, psychological distress and social pressure. For example, for women in several societies, exposure in public of body hair other than head hair, eyelashes and eyebrows is generally considered to be unaesthetic, unattractive and embarrassing.


title: Hair removal

text: With the increased popularity in many countries of women wearing fashion clothing, sportswear and swimsuits during the 20th century and the consequential exposure of parts of the body on which hair is commonly found, there has emerged a popularization for women to remove visible body hair and hirsutism, such as on legs, underarms and elsewhere. In most of the Western world, for example, the vast majority of women regularly shave their legs and armpits, while roughly half also shave hair that may become exposed around their bikini pelvic area (often termed the "bikini line").


title: Hair removal

text: In Western and Asian cultures, in contrast to most Middle Eastern cultures, a majority of men are accustomed to shaving their facial hair, so only a minority of men reveal a beard, even though fast-growing facial hair must be shaved daily to achieve a clean-shaven or beardless appearance. Some men shave because they cannot genetically grow a "full" beard (generally defined as an even density from cheeks to neck), their beard color is genetically different from their scalp hair color, or because their facial hair grows in many directions, making a groomed or contoured appearance difficult to achieve. Some men shave because their beard growth is very excessive, unpleasant, or coarse, causing skin irritation. Some men grow a beard or moustache from time to time to change their appearance or visual style.


title: Hair removal

text: Some men tonsure or head shave, either as a religious practice, a fashion statement, or because they find a shaved head preferable to the appearance of male pattern baldness, or in order to attain enhanced cooling of the skull – particularly for people suffering from hyperhidrosis. A much smaller number of Western women also shave their heads, often as a fashion or political statement.


title: Hair removal

text: Some women also shave their heads for cultural or social reasons. In India, tradition required widows in some sections of the society to shave their heads as part of being ostracized (see ). The outlawed custom is still infrequently encountered mostly in rural areas. The society at large and the government are working to end the practice of ostracizing widows. In addition, it continues to be common practice for men to shave their heads prior to embarking on a pilgrimage.


title: Hair removal

text: Women with unibrows is considered a sign of beauty and attractive in Oman and for both genders in Tajikistan, often emphasized with kohl. In Middle Eastern societies, regular trimming or removal of female and male underarm hair and pubic hair has been considered proper personal hygiene, necessitated by local customs, for many centuries. Young girls and unmarried women, however, are expected to retain their body hair until shortly before marriage, when the whole body is depilated from neck down.


title: Hair removal

text: In China, body hair has long been regarded normal, and even today women are confronted with far less social pressure to remove body hair. The same exists for other countries in Asia. Whilst hair removal has become routine for many of the continent's younger women, trimming or removing pubic hair, for instance, is not as common or popular as in the Western world, where both women and men may trim or remove all their pubic hair for aesthetic or sexual reasons. This custom can be motivated by reasons of potentially increased personal cleanliness or hygiene, heightened sensitivity during sexual activity, or the desire to take on a more exposed appearance or visual appeal, or to boost self-esteem when affected by excessive hair. In Korea, for example, pubic hair has long been considered a sign of fertility and sexual health, and it has been reported in the mid-2010s that some Korean women were undergoing pubic hair transplants, to add extra hair, especially when affected by the condition of pubic atrichosis (or hypotrichosis), which is thought to affect a small percentage of Korean women.


title: Hair removal

text: Moreover, unwanted or excessive hair is often removed in preparatory situations by both sexes, in order to avoid any perceived social stigma or prejudice. For example, unwanted or excessive hair may be removed in preparation for an intimate encounter, or before visiting a public beach or swimming pool.


title: Hair removal

text: Though traditionally in Western culture women remove body hair and men do not, some women choose not to remove hair from their bodies, either as a non-necessity or as an act of rejection against what they regard a social stigma, while some men remove or trim their body hair, a practice that is referred to in modern society as being a part of "manscaping" (a portmanteau expression for male-specific grooming).


title: Hair removal

text: The term "glabrousness" also has been applied to human fashions, wherein some participate in culturally motivated hair removal by depilation (surface removal by shaving, dissolving), or epilation (removal of the entire hair, such as waxing or plucking).


title: Hair removal

text: Although the appearance of secondary hair on parts of the human body commonly occurs during puberty, and therefore, is often seen as a symbol of adulthood, removal of this and other hair may become fashionable in some cultures and subcultures. In many modern Western cultures, men are encouraged to shave their beards, and women are encouraged to remove hair growth in various areas. Commonly depilated areas for women are the underarms, legs, and pubic hair. Some individuals depilate the forearms. In recent years, bodily depilation in men has increased in popularity among some subcultures of Western males.


title: Hair removal

text: For men, the practice of depilating the pubic area is commonly referred to as manscaping, even though technically this term is applicable to hair removal all over the body. Many men will try this at some point in their lives, especially for aesthetic reasons. Most men will use a razor to shave this area, however, as best practice, it is recommended to use a body trimmer to shorten the length of the hair before shaving it off completely.


title: Hair removal

text: In ancient Egypt, depilation was commonly practiced, with pumice and razors used to shave. In both Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, the removal of body and pubic hair may have been practiced among both men and women. It is represented in some artistic depictions of male and female nudity, examples of which may be seen in red figure pottery and sculptures like the Kouros of Ancient Greece in which both men and women were depicted without body or pubic hair. Emperor Augustus was said, by Suetonius, to have applied "hot nutshells" on his legs as a form of depilation.


title: Hair removal

text: The majority of Muslims believe that adult removal of pubic and axillary hair, as a hygienic measure, is religiously beneficial.


title: Hair removal

text: Baptized Sikhs are specifically instructed to have unshorn Kesh (the hair on their head and beards for men) this is a major tenet of the Sikh faith ("see Kesh").


title: Hair removal

text: In the clothes free movement, the term "smoothie" refers to an individual who has removed their body hair. In the past, such practices were frowned upon and in some cases, members of clothes-free clubs were forbidden to remove their pubic hair: violators could face exclusion from the club. Enthusiasts grouped together and formed societies of their own that catered to that fashion and the fashion became more popular, with smoothies becoming a major percentage at some nudist venues. The first Smoothie club (TSC) was founded by a British couple in 1991. A Dutch branch was founded in 1993 in order to give the idea of a hairless body greater publicity in the Netherlands. Being a Smoothie is described by its supporters as exceptionally comfortable and liberating. The Smoothy-Club is also a branch of the World of the Nudest Nudist (WNN) and organizes nudist ship cruises and nudist events every month. Every year in spring the club organizes the international "Smoothy days".


title: Hair removal

text: Head-shaving (tonsure) is a part of some Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, Jain and Hindu traditions. Buddhist and Christian monks generally undergo some form of head-shaving or tonsure during their induction into monastic life.


title: Hair removal

text: Within the Amish society, tradition ordains men to stop shaving a part of their facial hair upon marriage and grow a Shenandoah style beard which serves the significance of wearing a wedding ring, moustaches are rejected as they are regarded as martial (traditionally associated with the military).


title: Hair removal

text: In Judaism (see Shaving in Judaism), there is no obligation for women to remove body hair or facial hair, unless they wish to do so. However, in preparation for a woman's immersion in a ritual bath after concluding her days of purification (following her menstrual cycle), the custom of Jewish women is to shave off their pubic hair. During a mourning ritual, Jewish men are restricted in the Torah and Halakha to using scissors and prohibited from using a razor blade to shave their beards or sideburns, and, by custom, neither men nor women may cut or shave their hair during the "shiva" period.


title: Hair removal

text: The Baháʼí Faith recommends against complete and long-term head-shaving outside of medical purposes. It is not currently practiced as a law, contingent upon a future decision by the Universal House of Justice, its highest governing body. Sikhs take an even stronger stance, opposing all forms of hair removal. One of the "Five Ks" of Sikhism is Kesh, meaning "hair". To Sikhs, the maintenance and management of long hair is a manifestation of one's piety.


title: Hair removal

text: Under Muslim law (Sharia), it is recommended to keep the beard. A Muslim may trim or cut hair on the head. In the 9th century, the use of chemical depilatories for women was introduced by Ziryab in Al-Andalus.


title: Hair removal

text: Ancient Egyptian priests also shaved or depilated all over daily, so as to present a "pure" body before the images of the gods.


title: Hair removal

text: The body hair of surgical patients is often removed beforehand on skin surrounding surgical sites. Shaving was the primary form of hair removal until reports in 1983 showed that it may lead to increased risk of infection. Clippers are now the recommended pre-surgical hair removal method. A 2021 systematic review brought together evidence on different techniques for hair removal before surgery. This involved 25 studies with a total of 8919 participants. Using a razor probably increases the chance of developing a surgical site infection compared to using clippers or hair removal cream or not removing hair before surgery. Removing hair on the day of surgery rather than the day before may also slightly reduce the number of infections.


title: Hair removal

text: The shaving of hair has sometimes been used in attempts to eradicate lice or to minimize body odor due to accumulation of odor-causing micro-organisms in hair. In extreme situations, people may need to remove all body hair to prevent or combat infestation by lice, fleas and other parasites. Such a practice was used, for example, in Ancient Egypt.


title: Hair removal

text: It has been suggested that an increasing percentage of humans removing their pubic hair has led to reduced crab louse populations in some parts of the world.


title: Hair removal

text: A buzz cut or completely shaven haircut is common in military organizations where, among other reasons, it is considered to promote uniformity and neatness. Most militaries have occupational safety and health policies that govern the hair length and hairstyles permitted; in the field and living in close-quarter environments where bathing and sanitation can be difficult, soldiers can be susceptible to parasite infestation such as head lice, that are more easily propagated with long and unkept hair. It also requires less maintenance in the field and in adverse weather it dries more quickly. Short hair is also less likely to cause severe burns from flash flame exposure (as a result of flash fires from explosions) which can easily set hair alight. Short hair can also minimize interference with safety equipment and fittings attached to the head, such as combat helmets and NBC suits. Militaries may also require men to maintain clean-shaven faces as facial hair can prevent an air-tight seal between the face and military gas masks or other respiratory equipment, such as a pilot's oxygen mask, or full-face diving mask. The process of testing whether a mask is an adequately good fit to a person's face is known as a "respirator fit test".


title: Hair removal

text: In many militaries, head-shaving (known as the induction cut) is mandatory for men when beginning their recruit training. However, even after the initial recruitment phase, when head-shaving is no longer required, many soldiers maintain a completely or partially shaven hairstyle (such as a "high and tight", "flattop" or "buzz cut") for personal convenience or neatness. Head-shaving is not required and is often not permitted for women in military service, although they must have their hair cut or tied to regulation length. For example, the shortest hair a female soldier can have in the U.S. Army is 1/4 inch from the scalp.


title: Hair removal

text: It is a common practice for professional footballers (soccer players) and road cyclists to remove leg hair for a number of reasons. In the case of a crash or tackle, the absence of the leg hair means the injuries (usually road rash or scarring) can be cleaned up more efficiently, and treatment is not impeded. Professional cyclists, as well as professional footballers, also receive regular leg massages, and the absence of hair reduces the friction and increases their comfort and effectiveness. Football players are also required to wear shin guards, and in case of a skin rash the affected area can be treated more efficiently.


title: Hair removal

text: It is also common for competitive swimmers to shave the hair off their legs, arms, and torsos (and even their whole bodies from the neckline down), to reduce drag and provide a heightened "feel" for the water by removing the exterior layer of skin along with the body hair.


title: Hair removal

text: In some situations people's hair is shaved as a punishment or a form of humiliation. After World War II, head-shaving was a common punishment in France, the Netherlands, and Norway for women who had collaborated with the Nazis during the occupation, and, in particular, for women who had sexual relations with an occupying soldier.


title: Hair removal

text: In the United States, during the Vietnam War, conservative students would sometimes attack student radicals or "hippies" by shaving beards or cutting long hair. One notorious incident occurred at Stanford University, when unruly fraternity members grabbed "Resistance" founder (and student-body president) David Harris, cut off his long hair, and shaved his beard.


title: Hair removal

text: During European witch-hunts of the Medieval and Early Modern periods, alleged witches were stripped naked and their entire body shaved to discover the so-called witches' marks. The discovery of witches' marks was then used as evidence in trials.


title: Hair removal

text: Many products in the market have proven fraudulent. Many other products exaggerate the results or ease of use.


title: Hair removal

text: "Depilation", or temporary removal of hair to the level of the skin, lasts several hours to several days and can be achieved by


title: Hair removal

text: "Epilation", or removal of the entire hair from the root, lasts several days to several weeks and may be achieved by


title: Hair removal

text: Electrology has been practiced in the United States since 1875. It is approved by the FDA. This technique permanently destroys germ cells responsible for hair growth by way of insertion of a fine probe into the hair follicle and the application of a current adjusted to each hair type and treatment area. Electrology is the only permanent hair removal method recognized by the FDA.


title: Hair removal

text: A 2006 review article in the journal "Lasers in Medical Science" compared intense pulsed light (IPL) and both alexandrite and diode lasers. The review found no statistical difference in effectiveness, but a higher incidence of side effects with diode laser-based treatment. Hair reduction after 6 months was reported as 68.75% for alexandrite lasers, 71.71% for diode lasers, and 66.96% for IPL. Side effects were reported as 9.5% for alexandrite lasers, 28.9% for diode lasers, and 15.3% for IPL. All side effects were found to be temporary and even pigmentation changes returned to normal within 6 months.


title: Hair removal

text: A 2006 meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials found that alexandrite and dioded lasers caused 50% hair reduction for up to 6 months, while there was no evidence of hair reduction from intense pulsed light, neodymium-YAG or ruby lasers.


title: Hair removal

text: Many methods have been proposed or sold over the years without published clinical proof they can work as claimed.


title: Hair removal

text: Hair removal can cause some issues: skin inflammation, minor burns, lesions, scarring, ingrown hairs, bumps, and infected hair follicles.


title: Hair removal

text: Some removal methods are not permanent, can cause medical problems and permanent damage, or have very high costs. Some of these methods are still in the testing phase and have not been clinically proven.


title: Hair removal

text: One issue that can be considered an advantage or a disadvantage depending upon an individual's viewpoint, is that removing hair has the effect of removing information about the individual's hair growth patterns due to genetic predisposition, illness, androgen levels (such as from pubertal hormonal imbalances or drug side effects), and/or gender status.


title: Hair removal

text: In the hair follicle, stem cells reside in a discrete microenvironment called the bulge, located at the base of the part of the follicle that is established during morphogenesis but does not degenerate during the hair cycle. The bulge contains multipotent stem cells that can be recruited during wound healing to help the repair of the epidermis.


title: Hacienda

text: An hacienda ( or ; or ) is an estate (or "finca"), similar to a Roman "latifundium", in Spain and the former Spanish Empire. With origins in Andalusia, "haciendas" were variously plantations (perhaps including animals or orchards), mines or factories, with many "haciendas" combining these activities. The word is derived from Spanish "hacer" (to make, from Latin "facere") and "haciendo" (making), referring to productive business enterprises.


title: Hacienda

text: The term "hacienda" is imprecise, but usually refers to landed estates of significant size, while smaller holdings were termed "estancias" or "ranchos". All colonial "haciendas" were owned almost exclusively by Spaniards and criollos, or rarely by mestizo individuals. In Mexico, as of 1910, there were 8,245 haciendas in the country. In Argentina, the term "estancia" is used for large estates that in Mexico would be termed "haciendas". In recent decades, the term has been used in the United States for an architectural style associated with the traditional estate manor houses.


title: Hacienda

text: The "hacienda" system of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico, New Granada, and Peru was an economic system of large land holdings. A similar system existed on a smaller scale in Puerto Rico and other territories. In Puerto Rico, "haciendas" were larger than "estancias"; ordinarily grew sugar cane, coffee, or cotton; and exported their crops abroad.


title: Hacienda

text: "Haciendas" originated during the "Reconquista" of Andalusia in Spain. The sudden acquisition of conquered land allowed kings to grant extensive holdings to nobles, mercenaries, and religious military orders to reward their military service. Andalusian "haciendas" produced wine, grain, oils, and livestock, and were more purely agricultural than what was to follow in Spanish America.


title: Hacienda

text: During the Spanish colonization of the Americas, the "hacienda" model was exported to the New World, continuing the pattern of the "Reconquista". As the Spanish established cities in conquered territories, the crown distributed smaller plots of land nearby, while in farther areas the conquistadores were allotted large land grants which became haciendas and estancias. Haciendas were developed as profit-making enterprises linked to regional or international markets. Estates were integrated into a market-based economy aimed at the Hispanic sector and cultivated crops such as sugar, wheat, fruits and vegetables and produced animal products such as meat, wool, leather, and tallow.


title: Hacienda

text: The system in Mexico is considered to have started when the Spanish crown granted to Hernán Cortés the title of Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca in 1529, including the entire present state of Morelos, as well as vast encomienda labor grants. Although haciendas originated in grants to the elite, many ordinary Spaniards could also petition for land grants from the crown. New haciendas were formed in many places in the 17th and 18th centuries as most local economies moved from mining toward agriculture and husbandry.


title: Hacienda

text: Distribution of land happened in parallel to the distribution of indigenous people who entered servitude under the encomienda system. Although the hacienda was not directly linked to the encomienda, many Spanish holders of encomiendas lucratively combined the two by acquiring land or developing enterprises to employ that forced labor. As the crown moved to eliminate encomienda labor, Spaniards consolidated private landholdings and recruited labor on a permanent or casual basis. Eventually, the hacienda became secure private property, which survived the colonial period and into the 20th century.


title: Hacienda

text: In Spanish America, the owner of an hacienda was called the "hacendado" or "patrón". Most owners of large and profitable haciendas preferred to live in Spanish cities, often near the hacienda, but in Mexico, the richest owners lived in Mexico City, visiting their haciendas at intervals. Onsite management of the rural estates was by a paid administrator or manager, which was similar to the arrangement with the encomienda. Administrators were often hired for a fixed term of employment, receiving a salary and at times some share of the profits of the estate. Some administrators also acquired landholdings themselves in the area of the estate they were managing.


title: Hacienda

text: The work force on haciendas varied, depending on the type of hacienda and where it was located. In central Mexico near indigenous communities and growing crops to supply urban markets, there was often a small, permanent workforce resident on the hacienda. Labor could be recruited from nearby indigenous communities on an as-needed basis, such as planting and harvest time. The permanent and temporary hacienda employees worked land that belonged to the "patrón" and under the supervision of local labor bosses. In some places small scale cultivators or "campesinos" worked small holdings belonging to the hacendado, and owed a portion of their crops to him.


title: Hacienda

text: Stock raising was central to ranching haciendas, the largest of which were in areas without dense indigenous populations, such as northern Mexico, but as indigenous populations declined in central areas, more land became available for grazing. Livestock were animals originally imported from Spain, including cattle, horses, sheep, and goats were part of the Columbian Exchange and produced significant ecological changes. Sheep in particular had a devastating impact on the environment due to overgrazing. Mounted ranch hands variously called "vaqueros" and "gauchos" (in the Southern Cone), among other terms worked for pastoral haciendas.


title: Hacienda

text: Where the hacienda included working mines, as in Mexico, the "patrón" might gain immense wealth. The unusually large and profitable Jesuit "hacienda" Santa Lucía, near Mexico City, established in 1576 and lasting to the expulsion in 1767, has been reconstructed by Herman Konrad from archival sources. This reconstruction has revealed the nature and operation of the hacienda system in Mexico, its labor force, its systems of land tenure and its relationship to larger Hispanic society in Mexico.


title: Hacienda

text: The Catholic Church and orders, especially the Jesuits, acquired vast "hacienda" holdings or preferentially loaned money to the hacendados. As the hacienda owners' mortgage holders, the Church's interests were connected with the landholding class. In the history of Mexico and other Latin American countries, the masses developed some hostility to the church; at times of gaining independence or during certain political movements, the people confiscated the church haciendas or restricted them.


title: Hacienda

text: Haciendas in the Caribbean were developed primarily as sugar plantations, dependent on the labor of African slaves imported to the region, were staffed by slaves brought from Africa. In Puerto Rico, this system ended with the abolition of slavery on 22 March 1873.


title: Hacienda

text: In South America, the "hacienda" remained after the collapse of the colonial system in the early 19th century when nations gained independence. In some places, such as Dominican Republic, with independence came efforts to break up the large plantation holdings into a myriad of small subsistence farmers' holdings, an agrarian revolution.


title: Hacienda

text: In Bolivia, haciendas were prevalent until the 1952 Revolution of Víctor Paz Estenssoro. He established an extensive program of land distribution as part of the Agrarian Reform. Likewise, Peru had haciendas until the Agrarian Reform (1969) of Juan Velasco Alvarado, who expropriated the land from the hacendados and redistributed it to the peasants.


title: Hacienda

text: The first haciendas of Chile formed during the Spanish conquest in the 16th century. The Destruction of the Seven Cities following the battle of Curalaba (1598) meant for the Spanish the loss of both the main gold districts and the largest sources of indigenous labour. After those dramatic years the colony of Chile became concentrated in Central Chile which became increasingly populated, explored and economically exploited. Much land in Central Chile was cleared with fire during this period. On the contrary open fields in southern Chile were overgrown as indigenous populations declined due to diseases introduced by the Spanish and intermittent warfare. The loss of the cities meant Spanish settlements in Chile became increasingly rural with the hacienda gaining importance in economic and social matters. As Chilean mining activity declined in the 17th century more haciendas were formed as the economy moved away from mining and into agriculture and husbandry.


title: Hacienda

text: Beginning in the late 17th century Chilean haciendas begun to export wheat to Peru. While the immediate cause of this was Peru being struck by both an earthquake and a stem rust epidemic, Chilean soil and climatic conditions were better for cereal production than those of Peru and Chilean wheat was cheaper and of better quality than Peruvian wheat. Initially Chilean haciendas could not meet the wheat demand due to a labour shortage, so had to incorporate temporary workers in addition to the permanent staff. Another response by the latifundia to labour shortages was to act as merchants, buying wheat produced by independent farmers or from farmers that hired land. In the period 1700 to 1850, this second option was overall more lucrative. It was primarily the haciendas of Central Chile, La Serena and Concepción that came to be involved in cereal export to Peru.


title: Hacienda

text: In the 19th and early 20th century haciendas were the main prey for Chilean banditry. 20th century Chilean haciendas stand out for the poor conditions of workers and being a backward part of the economy. The hacienda and inquilinaje institutions that characterized large parts of Chilean agriculture were eliminated by the Chilean land reform (1962–1973).


title: Hacienda

text: Haciendas in Puerto Rico developed during the time of Spanish colonization. An example of these was the 1833 Hacienda Buena Vista, which dealt primarily with the cultivation, packaging, and exportation of coffee. Today, Hacienda Buena Vista, which is listed in the United States National Register of Historic Places, is operated as a museum, Museo Hacienda Buena Vista.


title: Hacienda

text: The 1861 Hacienda Mercedita was a sugar plantation that once produced, packaged and sold sugar in the "Snow White" brand name. In the late 19th century, Mercedita became the site of production of Don Q rum. Its profitable rum business is today called Destilería Serrallés. The last of such haciendas decayed considerably starting in the 1950s, with the industrialization of Puerto Rico via "Operation Bootstrap". At the turn of the 20th century, most coffee haciendas had disappeared.


title: Hacienda

text: The sugar-based haciendas changed into "centrales azucarelas." Yet by the 1990s, and despite significant government fiscal support, the last 13 Puerto Rican "centrales azucares" were forced to shut down. This marked the end of haciendas operating in Puerto Rico. In 2000, the last two sugar mills closed, after having operated for nearly 100 years.


title: Hacienda

text: An ""estancia"" was a similar type of food farm. An "estancia" differed from an hacienda in terms of crop types handled, target market, machinery used, and size. An estancia, during Spanish colonial times in Puerto Rico (1508 - 1898), was a plot of land used for cultivating ""frutos menores"" (minor crops). That is, the crops in such "estancia" farms were produced in relatively small quantities and thus were meant, not for wholesale or exporting, but for sale and consumption locally, where produced and its adjacent towns. Haciendas, unlike estancias, were equipped with industrial machinery used for processing its crops into derivatives such as juices, marmalades, flours, etc., for wholesale and exporting. Some ""frutos menores"" grown in estancias were rice, corn, beans, batatas, ñames, yautías, and pumpkins; among fruits were plantains, bananas, oranges, avocados, and grapefruits. Most haciendas in Puerto Rico produced sugar, coffee, and tobacco, which were the crops for exporting. Some estancias were larger than some haciendas, but generally this was the exception and not the norm.


title: Hacienda

text: In the present era, the ' is the government department in Spain that deals with finance and taxation, as in Mexico ', and which is equivalent to the Department of the Treasury in the United States or HM Treasury in the United Kingdom.


title: Patrício Pitbull

text: Patrício Freire (born July 7, 1987, in Natal, Brazil), known professionally by his ring name Patrício Pitbull, is a Brazilian mixed martial artist currently competing in Bellator MMA where he is the current three-time Bellator Featherweight Champion and former Bellator Lightweight Champion. He is the younger brother of lightweight fighter Patricky Pitbull. He is the second-ever simultaneous two-weight champion in Bellator MMA history. As of April 19, 2022, he is No. 1 in the Bellator men's pound-for-pound rankings.


title: Patrício Pitbull

text: He is currently ranked as the No. 4 featherweight in the world by Fight Matrix, having been ranked as high as No. 3 in October 2020. Combat Press ranks him as the No. 5 featherweight, No. 5 lightweight and No. 9 pound-for-pound fighter in the world. Sherdog ranks him as the No. 6 lightweight and No. 7 featherweight fighter in the world. He is also ranked as the No. 1 featherweight fighter outside of the UFC by Ranking MMA.


title: Patrício Pitbull

text: Freire was born and grew up in the outskirts of Natal, Brazil. Freire began training Brazilian jiu-jitsu at the age of ten to help fend off the stigma of his size. As a teenager, he trained at the famed Chute Boxe academy alongside notable MMA stars such as Wanderlei Silva and Mauricio Rua.


title: Patrício Pitbull

text: Freire made his professional MMA debut in March 2004 at the age of 16. For the first five and a half years of his career, he competed in his native Brazil and amassed an undefeated record of 12–0 with all but two wins coming by way of stoppage.


title: Patrício Pitbull

text: Prior to signing with Bellator, Freire was ranked as one of the top prospects outside of the North American fight scene.


title: Patrício Pitbull

text: After stringing together an impressive undefeated record on the local Brazilian circuit, he was initially tabbed to make his American debut against Will Romero at Bellator 14 on April 15, 2010, in the Bellator Featherweight Tournament.


title: Patrício Pitbull

text: . However, the bout was postponed to take place a week later at Bellator 15 on April 22, 2010. He won the quarterfinal bout via first-round submission.


title: Patrício Pitbull

text: At Bellator 18 on May 13, 2010, he won his semifinal bout against fellow Brazilian and former EliteXC Featherweight Champion, Wilson Reis via unanimous decision.


title: Patrício Pitbull

text: Freire faced Joe Warren on June 24, 2010, at Bellator 23 in the Tournament Final. Despite nearly finishing the fight in the waning moments of the first round, Freire lost the fight by split decision.


title: Patrício Pitbull

text: In Bellator Season Four, Freire earned back-to-back third-round KOs against Georgi Karakhanyan and Wilson Reis (a rematch of their bout the previous year) to advance to the finals of the Featherweight Tournament. Freire met Daniel Mason-Straus in the Bellator Season Four Featherweight Tournament Final at Bellator 45. He won the fight via unanimous decision and earned a title shot rematch against Joe Warren.


title: Patrício Pitbull

text: The title shot was scheduled to take place at Bellator 47 on July 23, 2011, but a broken hand suffered in training had halted Freire's rematch with Joe Warren for the Bellator Featherweight Championship.


title: Patrício Pitbull

text: After a near year and a half lay-off, Freire returned to action at Bellator 85 on January 17, 2013, to face Pat Curran who had defeated Joe Warren to win the Bellator Featherweight Championship at Bellator 60. After a back and forth fight, Freire ended up losing a very close split decision.


title: Patrício Pitbull

text: Freire was set to face Rob Emerson at Bellator 97 on July 31, 2013, but Emerson was forced out of the bout due to injury and was replaced by Jared Downing. Freire won via KO at fifty-four seconds into the second round.


title: Patrício Pitbull

text: Freire faced former UFC featherweight contender Diego Nunes at on September 13, 2013, in the Quarterfinals of Bellator's Season Nine Featherweight Tournament. He won the fight via knockout in the first round.


title: Patrício Pitbull

text: Freire faced Fabricio Guerreiro in the semifinals at on October 11, 2013, and won via unanimous decision.


title: Patrício Pitbull

text: Freire faced Justin Wilcox in the tournament final at Bellator 108 November 15, 2013. He won the fight via TKO in the first round.


title: Patrício Pitbull

text: After being skipped over for his title shot, Freire was expected to finally challenge for the Bellator Featherweight World Championship in the long-awaited rematch with Pat Curran on June 6, 2014, at Bellator 121. However, on May 21, it was announced that Curran had pulled out of the bout due to a calf injury. The rematch eventually took place at Bellator 123 on September 5, 2014. Freire defeated Curran by unanimous decision to become the new Bellator Featherweight Champion.


title: Patrício Pitbull

text: Freire made his first title defense at Bellator 132 on January 16, 2015 against Daniel Mason-Straus in a rematch of their bout in May 2011, which saw Freire walk away with a decision victory. Freire won the back-and-forth fight in the fourth round via a rear-naked choke submission.


title: Patrício Pitbull

text: Freire was expected to defend his featherweight title against former WSOF Featherweight Champion Georgi Karakhanyan in a rematch at Bellator 138 on June 19, 2015. However, after a torn ACL suffered by Karakhanyan, Freire will instead face winner Daniel Weichel at the event. Despite being knocked down in the last seconds of the first round, Freire rallied to knock out Weichel with a perfect counter left hook early in the second round.


title: Patrício Pitbull

text: Freire had a third fight with Straus on November 6, 2015, at Bellator 145. He lost the fight via unanimous decision, dropping the Bellator Featherweight Championship after two successful defenses.


title: Patrício Pitbull

text: After his brother's knockout loss to Michael Chandler, Freire moved up to the lightweight division to earn a title shot in order to face Chandler. He faced Benson Henderson in the main event at Bellator 160 on August 26, 2016. The bout ended in anticlimactic fashion as Freire stopped himself early in round two to declare he had sustained a leg injury. As a result, Henderson was awarded a TKO victory due to injury. It was revealed post-fight that Freire had broken his shin in the first round after Henderson checked a low kick with his knee.


title: Patrício Pitbull

text: Freire faced Daniel Straus in a fourth fight for the Bellator featherweight championship at Bellator 178 on April 21, 2017. After a back and forth first round, Freire won the bout via guillotine choke early in the second round to become the two-time Bellator Featherweight World Champion. Freire was later fined $2,500 for jumping onto the cage, following his submission victory.


title: Patrício Pitbull

text: Freire was scheduled to make his first title defense against Daniel Weichel, in a rematch, at Bellator 188 on November 16, 2017. Freire pulled out of the fight, however, due to multiple injuries. He expressed interest in a rematch with Weichel in early 2018.


title: Patrício Pitbull

text: For his first title defense of his second reign, Freire faced Daniel Weichel at Bellator 203 on July 14, 2018. He won the fight by split decision.


title: Patrício Pitbull

text: In his second title defense, Freire faced Emmanuel Sanchez at Bellator 209 on November 15, 2018. He won the fight by unanimous decision.


title: Patrício Pitbull

text: On February 20, 2019, Bellator announced that Freire had signed a multi-year, multi-fight contract extension with the organization. In the first fight of his new deal, Freire faced Michael Chandler for the Bellator Lightweight World Championship at Bellator 221 on May 11, 2019. He won the fight via TKO in the first round to become the second Bellator fighter after Ryan Bader to hold two titles at the same time.


title: Patrício Pitbull

text: As a first-round bout of the Bellator Featherweight World Grand Prix tournament, Freire defended his Featherweight Championship against Juan Archuleta at Bellator 228 on September 28, 2019. He won the fight by unanimous decision.


title: Patrício Pitbull

text: In the quarterfinals, Freire was expected to defend his Featherweight Championship against Pedro Carvalho at Bellator 241 on March 13, 2020. However, the whole event was eventually cancelled due to the prevailing COVID-19 pandemic. The bout was rebooked and took place at Bellator 252 on November 12. Freire won the fight via knockout in the first round.


title: Patrício Pitbull

text: In the semifinals, Freire defended his title against Emmanuel Sanchez at Bellator 255 on April 2. This was a rematch of their November 2018 bout which saw Freire win by unanimous decision. After dropping Sanchez with a flurry of punches, Freire won the bout after choking Sanchez unconscious via guillotine choke.


title: Patrício Pitbull

text: In the final, Freire attempted to defended his title at Bellator 263 on July 31, 2021, against undefeated A. J. McKee for the Grand Prix Title and $1 million prize. Freire was knocked down early in the fight, and lost via guillotine choke submission in round one.


title: Patrício Pitbull

text: On October 6, 2021, Freire announced that he vacated the Bellator Lightweight championship, not wanting to get in the way of his brother Patricky's title aspirations.


title: Patrício Pitbull

text: In the first bout after losing the Featherweight title and vacating the Lightweight one, Freire rematched A. J. McKee for the Bellator Featherweight Championship on April 15, 2022, at Bellator 277. He won the bout and the title via unanimous decision.


title: Patrício Pitbull

text: Freire defended his title against Ádám Borics on October 1, 2022 at Bellator 286. He won the bout in convincing fashion via unanimous decision.


title: Patrício Pitbull

text: Freire is next expected to face reigning Rizin FF Featherweight Champion Kleber Koike Erbst in a non-title bout at Bellator MMA vs. Rizin on December 31, 2022.


title: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

text: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a collection of annals in Old English, chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The original manuscript of the "Chronicle" was created late in the 9th century, probably in Wessex, during the reign of Alfred the Great (r. 871–899). Multiple copies were made of that one original and then distributed to monasteries across England, where they were independently updated. In one case, the "Chronicle" was still being actively updated in 1154.


title: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

text: Nine manuscripts survive in whole or in part, though not all are of equal historical value and none of them is the original version. The oldest seems to have been started towards the end of Alfred's reign, while the most recent was written at Peterborough Abbey after a fire at that monastery in 1116. Almost all of the material in the "Chronicle" is in the form of annals, by year; the earliest are dated at 60 BC (the annals' date for Caesar's invasions of Britain), and historical material follows up to the year in which the chronicle was written, at which point contemporary records begin. These manuscripts collectively are known as the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle".


title: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

text: The "Chronicle" is biased in places. There are occasions when comparison with other medieval sources makes it clear that the scribes who wrote it omitted events or told one-sided versions of stories. There are also places where the different versions contradict each other. Taken as a whole, however, the "Chronicle" is the single most important historical source for the period in England between the departure of the Romans and the decades following the Norman conquest. Much of the information given in the "Chronicle" is not recorded elsewhere. In addition, the manuscripts are important sources for the history of the English language; in particular, the later Peterborough text is one of the earliest examples of Middle English in existence.


title: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

text: Seven of the nine surviving manuscripts and fragments reside in the British Library. The other two are in the Bodleian Library at Oxford and the Parker Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.


title: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

text: All of the surviving manuscripts are copies, so it is not known for certain where or when the first version of the "Chronicle" was composed. It is generally agreed that the original version – sometimes known as the "Early English Annals" – was written in the late 9th century by a scribe in Wessex. Frank Stenton argued from internal evidence that it was first compiled for a secular, but not royal, patron; and that "its origin is in one of the south-western shires...at some point not far from the boundary between Somerset and Dorset". After the original "Chronicle" was compiled, copies were made and distributed to various monasteries. Additional copies were made, for further distribution or to replace lost manuscripts, and some copies were updated independently of each other. Some of these later copies are those that have survived.


title: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

text: The earliest extant manuscript, the "Parker Chronicle", was written by a single scribe up to the year 891. The scribe wrote the year number, DCCCXCII, in the margin of the next line; subsequent material was written by other scribes. This appears to place the composition of the chronicle at no later than 892; further evidence is provided by Bishop Asser's use of a version of the "Chronicle" in his work "Life of King Alfred", known to have been composed in 893. It is known that the Winchester manuscript is at least two removes from the original "Chronicle"; as a result, there is no proof that the "Chronicle" was compiled at Winchester. It is also difficult to fix the date of composition, but it is generally thought that the chronicles were composed during the reign of Alfred the Great (871–99), as Alfred deliberately tried to revive learning and culture during his reign, and encouraged the use of English as a written language. The "Chronicle", as well as the distribution of copies to other centres of learning, may be a consequence of the changes Alfred introduced.


title: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

text: Of the nine surviving manuscripts, seven are written entirely in Old English (also known as Anglo-Saxon). One, known as the "Bilingual Canterbury Epitome", is in Old English with a translation of each annal into Latin. Another, the "Peterborough Chronicle", is in Old English except for the last entry, which is in early Middle English. The oldest (Corp. Chris. MS 173) is known as the "Winchester Chronicle" or the "Parker Chronicle" (after Matthew Parker, an Archbishop of Canterbury, who once owned it), and is written in Old English until 1070, then Latin to 1075. Six of the manuscripts were printed in an 1861 edition for the Rolls Series by Benjamin Thorpe with the text laid out in columns labelled A to F. He also included the few readable remnants of a burned seventh manuscript, which he referred to as [G], partially destroyed in a fire at Ashburnham House in 1731. Following this convention, the two additional manuscripts are often called [H] and [I].


title: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

text: The surviving manuscripts are listed below; though manuscript G was burned in a fire in 1731, and only a few leaves remain.


title: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

text: The manuscripts are all thought to derive from a common original, but the connections between the texts are more complex than simple inheritance via copying. The diagram at right gives an overview of the relationships between the manuscripts. The following is a summary of the relationships that are known.


title: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

text: All the manuscripts described above share a chronological error between the years 756 and 845, but it is apparent that the composer of the "Annals of St Neots" was using a copy that did not have this error and which must have preceded them. Æthelweard's copy did have the chronological error but it had not lost a whole sentence from annal 885; all the surviving manuscripts have lost this sentence. Hence the error and the missing sentence must have been introduced in separate copying steps, implying that none of the surviving manuscripts are closer than two removes from the original version.


title: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

text: [A]: The "Winchester" (or "Parker") "Chronicle" is the oldest manuscript of the "Chronicle" that survives. It was begun at Old Minster, Winchester, towards the end of Alfred's reign. The manuscript begins with a genealogy of Alfred, and the first chronicle entry is for the year 60 BC. The section containing the "Chronicle" takes up folios 1–32. Unlike the other manuscripts, [A] is of early enough composition to show entries dating back to the late 9th century in the hands of different scribes as the entries were made. The first scribe's hand is dateable to the late 9th or very early 10th century; his entries cease in late 891, and the following entries were made at intervals throughout the 10th century by several scribes. The eighth scribe wrote the annals for the years 925–955, and was clearly at Winchester when he wrote them since he adds some material related to events there; he also uses "ceaster", or "city", to mean Winchester. The manuscript becomes independent of the other recensions after the entry for 975. The book, which also had a copy of the Laws of Alfred and Ine bound in after the entry for 924, was transferred to Canterbury some time in the early 11th century, as evidenced by a list of books that Archbishop Parker gave to Corpus Christi. While at Canterbury, some interpolations were made; this required some erasures in the manuscript. The additional entries appear to have been taken from a version of the manuscript from which [E] descends. The last entry in the vernacular is for 1070. After this comes the Latin "Acta Lanfranci", which covers church events from 1070 to 1093. This is followed by a list of popes and the Archbishops of Canterbury to whom they sent the pallium. The manuscript was acquired by Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury (1559–1575) and is the collection of the Parker Library, Corpus Christi College.


title: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

text: [B] The "Abingdon Chronicle I" was written by a single scribe in the second half of the 10th century. The "Chronicle" takes up folios 1–34. It begins with an entry for 60 BC and ends with the entry for 977. A manuscript that is now separate (British Library MS. Cotton Tiberius Aiii, f. 178) was originally the introduction to this chronicle; it contains a genealogy, as does [A], but extends it to the late 10th century. [B] was at Abingdon in the mid-11th century, because it was used in the composition of [C]. Shortly after this it went to Canterbury, where interpolations and corrections were made. As with [A], it ends with a list of popes and the archbishops of Canterbury to whom they sent the pallium.


title: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

text: [C] includes additional material from local annals at Abingdon, where it was composed. The section containing the "Chronicle" (folios 115–64) is preceded by King Alfred's Old English translation of Orosius's world history, followed by a menologium and some gnomic verses of the laws of the natural world and of humanity. Then follows a copy of the chronicle, beginning with 60 BC; the first scribe copied up to the entry for 490, and a second scribe took over up to the entry for 1048. [B] and [C] are identical between 491 and 652, but differences thereafter make it clear that the second scribe was also using another copy of the "Chronicle". This scribe also inserted, after the annal for 915, the "Mercian Register", which covers the years 902–924, and which focuses on Æthelflæd. The manuscript continues to 1066 and stops in the middle of the description of the Battle of Stamford Bridge. In the 12th century a few lines were added to complete the account.


title: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

text: [D] The "Worcester Chronicle" appears to have been written in the middle of the 11th century. After 1033 it includes some records from Worcester, so it is generally thought to have been composed there. Five different scribes can be identified for the entries up to 1054, after which it appears to have been worked on at intervals. The text includes material from Bede's "Ecclesiastical History" and from a set of 8th-century Northumbrian annals. It is thought that some of the entries may have been composed by Archbishop Wulfstan. [D] contains more information than other manuscripts on northern and Scottish affairs, and it has been speculated that it was a copy intended for the Anglicised Scottish court. From 972 to 1016, the sees of York and Worcester were both held by the same person—Oswald from 972, Ealdwulf from 992, and Wulfstan from 1003, and this may explain why a northern recension was to be found at Worcester. By the 16th century, parts of the manuscript were lost; eighteen pages were inserted containing substitute entries from other sources, including [A], [B], [C] and [E]. These pages were written by John Joscelyn, who was secretary to Matthew Parker.


title: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

text: [E] The "Peterborough Chronicle": In 1116, a fire at the monastery at Peterborough destroyed most of the buildings. The copy of the "Chronicle" kept there may have been lost at that time or later, but in either case shortly thereafter a fresh copy was made, apparently copied from a Kentish version—most likely to have been from Canterbury. The manuscript was written at one time and by a single scribe, down to the annal for 1121. The scribe added material relating to Peterborough Abbey which is not in other versions. The Canterbury original which he copied was similar, but not identical, to [D]: the Mercian Register does not appear, and a poem about the Battle of Brunanburh in 937, which appears in most of the other surviving copies of the "Chronicle", is not recorded. The same scribe then continued the annals through to 1131; these entries were made at intervals, and thus are presumably contemporary records. Finally, a second scribe, in 1154, wrote an account of the years 1132–1154, though his dating is known to be unreliable. This last entry is in Middle English, rather than Old English. [E] was once owned by William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury 1633–1645, so is also known as the "Laud Chronicle". The manuscript contains occasional glosses in Latin, and is referred to (as "the Saxon storye of Peterborowe church") in an antiquarian book from 1566. According to Joscelyn, Nowell had a transcript of the manuscript. Previous owners include William Camden and William L'Isle; the latter probably passed the manuscript on to Laud.


title: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

text: [F] The "Canterbury Bilingual Epitome": In about 1100, a copy of the "Chronicle" was written at Christ Church, Canterbury, probably by one of the scribes who made notes in [A]. This version is written in both Old English and Latin; each entry in Old English was followed by the Latin version. The version the scribe copied (on folios 30–70) is similar to the version used by the scribe in Peterborough who wrote [E], though it seems to have been abridged. It includes the same introductory material as [D] and, along with [E], is one of the two chronicles that does not include the "Battle of Brunanburh" poem. The manuscript has many annotations and interlineations, some made by the original scribe and some by later scribes, including Robert Talbot.


title: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

text: [A]/[G] Copy of the "Winchester Chronicle": [A] was copied from [A] at Winchester in the eleventh century and follows a 10th-century copy of an Old English translation of Bede's "Ecclesiastical History". The last annal copied was 1001, so the copy was made no earlier than that; an episcopal list appended to [A] suggests that the copy was made by 1013. This manuscript was almost completely destroyed in the 1731 fire at Ashburnham House, where the Cotton Library was housed. Of the original 34 leaves, seven remain, ff. 39–47 in the manuscript. However, a transcript had been made by Laurence Nowell, a 16th-century antiquary, which was used by Abraham Wheelocke in an edition of the "Chronicle" printed in 1643. Because of this, it is also sometimes known as [W], after Wheelocke. Nowell's transcript copied the genealogical introduction detached from [B] (the page now British Library MS. Cotton Tiberius Aiii, f. 178), rather than that originally part of this document. The original [A] introduction would later be removed prior to the fire and survives as British Library Add MS 34652, f. 2. The appellations [A], [A] and [G] derive from Plummer, Smith and Thorpe, respectively.


title: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

text: The "Cottonian Fragment" [H] consists of a single leaf, containing annals for 1113 and 1114. In the entry for 1113 it includes the phrase "he came to Winchester"; hence it is thought likely that the manuscript was written at Winchester. There is not enough of this manuscript for reliable relationships to other manuscripts to be established. Ker notes that the entries may have been written contemporarily.


title: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

text: [I] "Easter Table Chronicle": A list of "Chronicle" entries accompanies a table of years, found on folios 133–37 in a badly burned manuscript containing miscellaneous notes on charms, the calculation of dates for church services, and annals pertaining to Christ Church, Canterbury. Most of the "Chronicle"'s entries pertain to Christ Church, Canterbury. Until 1109 (the death of Anselm of Canterbury) they are in English; all but one of the following entries are in Latin. Part of [I] was written by a scribe soon after 1073, in the same hand and ink as the rest of the Caligula MS. After 1085, the annals are in various contemporary hands. The original annalist's entry for the Norman conquest is limited to "Her forðferde eadward kyng"; a later hand added the coming of William the Conqueror, "7 her com willelm." At one point this manuscript was at St Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury.


title: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

text: Two manuscripts are recorded in an old catalogue of the library of Durham; they are described as "cronica duo Anglica". In addition, Parker included a manuscript called "Hist. Angliae Saxonica" in his gifts but the manuscript that included this, now Cambridge University Library MS. Hh.1.10, has lost 52 of its leaves, including all of this copy of the chronicle.


title: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

text: The "Chronicle" incorporates material from multiple sources. The entry for 755, describing how Cynewulf took the kingship of Wessex from Sigebehrt, is far longer than the surrounding entries, and includes direct speech quotations from the participants in those events. It seems likely that this was taken by the scribe from existing saga material. Early entries, up to the year 110, probably came from one of the small encyclopedic volumes of world history in circulation at the time the "Chronicle" was first written. The chronological summary to Bede's "Ecclesiastical History" was used as a source. The "Chronicle" gives dates and genealogies for Northumbrian and Mercian kings, and provides a list of Wessex bishops; these are likely to have had separate sources. The entry for 661 records a battle fought by Cenwalh that is said to have been fought "at Easter"; this precision implies a contemporary record, which survived and was re-used by the "Chronicle" scribe.


title: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

text: Contemporary annals began to be kept in Wessex during the 7th century. The material compiled in Alfred's reign included annals relating to Kentish, South Saxon, Mercian and, particularly, West Saxon history, but, with the exception of the Cynewulf entry, does not gather momentum until it comes to the Nordic invasions of the late 8th century onwards. The "Chronicle" grew out of the tradition of the Easter Tables, drawn up to help the clergy determine the dates of feasts in future years: a page consisted of a sequence of horizontal lines followed by astronomical data, with a space for short notes of events to distinguish one year from another. As the "Chronicle" developed, it lost its list-like appearance, and such notes took up more space, becoming more like historical records. Many later entries, especially those written by contemporaries, contained a great deal of historical narrative under the year headings.


title: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

text: As with any historical source, the "Chronicle" has to be treated with some caution. For example, between 514 and 544 the "Chronicle" makes reference to Wihtgar, who is supposedly buried on the Isle of Wight at "Wihtgar's stronghold" (which is "Wihtgaræsbyrg" in the original) and purportedly gave his name to the island. However, the name of the "Isle of Wight" derives from the Latin "Vectis", not from Wihtgar. The actual name of the fortress was probably "Wihtwarabyrg", "the stronghold of the inhabitants of Wight", and either the chronicler or an earlier source misinterpreted this as referring to Wihtgar.


title: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

text: The dating of the events recorded also requires care. In addition to dates that are simply inaccurate, scribes occasionally made mistakes that caused further errors. For example, in the [D] manuscript, the scribe omits the year 1044 from the list on the left hand side. The annals copied down are therefore incorrect from 1045 to 1052, which has two entries. A more difficult problem is the question of the date at which a new year began, since the modern custom of starting the year on 1 January was not universal at that time. The entry for 1091 in [E] begins at Christmas and continues throughout the year; it is clear that this entry follows the old custom of starting the year at Christmas. Some other entries appear to begin the year on 25 March, such as the year 1044 in the [C] manuscript, which ends with Edward the Confessor's marriage on 23 January, while the entry for 22 April is recorded under 1045. There are also years which appear to start in September.


title: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

text: The manuscripts were produced in different places, and each manuscript reflects the biases of its scribes. It has been argued that the "Chronicle" should be regarded as propaganda, produced by Alfred's court and written with the intent of glorifying Alfred and creating loyalty. This is not universally accepted, but the origins of the manuscripts clearly colour both the description of interactions between Wessex and other kingdoms, and the descriptions of the Vikings' depredations. An example can be seen in the entry for 829, which describes Egbert's invasion of Northumbria. According to the "Chronicle", after Egbert conquered Mercia and Essex, he became a "bretwalda", implying overlordship of all of England. Then when he marched into Northumbria, the Northumbrians offered him "submission and peace". The Northumbrian chronicles incorporated into Roger of Wendover's 13th-century history give a different picture: "When Egbert had obtained all the southern kingdoms, he led a large army into Northumbria, and laid waste that province with severe pillaging, and made King Eanred pay tribute."


title: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

text: Occasionally the scribes' biases can be seen by comparing different versions of the manuscript they created. For example, Ælfgar, earl of East Anglia, and son of Leofric, the earl of Mercia, was exiled briefly in 1055. The [C], [D] and [E] manuscripts say the following:


title: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

text: Another example that mentions Ælfgar shows a different kind of unreliability in the "Chronicle": that of omission. Ælfgar was Earl of Mercia by 1058, and in that year was exiled again. This time only [D] has anything to say: "Here Earl Ælfgar was expelled, but he soon came back again, with violence, through the help of Gruffydd. And here came a raiding ship-army from Norway; it is tedious to tell how it all happened." In this case other sources exist to clarify the picture: a major Norwegian attempt was made on England, but [E] says nothing at all, and [D] scarcely mentions it. It has sometimes been argued that when the "Chronicle" is silent, other sources that report major events must be mistaken, but this example demonstrates that the "Chronicle" does omit important events.


title: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

text: The three main Anglo-Norman historians, John of Worcester, William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon, each had a copy of the "Chronicle", which they adapted for their own purposes. Symeon of Durham also had a copy of the "Chronicle". Some later medieval historians also used the "Chronicle", and others took their material from those who had used it, and so the "Chronicle" became "central to the mainstream of English historical tradition".


title: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

text: Henry of Huntingdon used a copy of the "Chronicle" that was very similar to [E]. There is no evidence in his work of any of the entries in [E] after 1121, so although his manuscript may actually have been [E], it may also have been a copy—either one taken of [E] prior to the entries he makes no use of, or a manuscript from which [E] was copied, with the copying taking place prior to the date of the last annal he uses. Henry also made use of the [C] manuscript.


title: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

text: The Waverley Annals made use of a manuscript that was similar to [E], though it appears that it did not contain the entries focused on Peterborough. The manuscript of the chronicle translated by Geoffrey Gaimar cannot be identified accurately, though according to historian Dorothy Whitelock it was "a rather better text than 'E' or 'F'". Gaimar implies that there was a copy at Winchester in his day (the middle of the 12th century); Whitelock suggests that there is evidence that a manuscript that has not survived to the present day was at Winchester in the mid-tenth century. If it survived to Gaimar's time that would explain why [A] was not kept up to date, and why [A] could be given to the monastery at Canterbury.


title: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

text: John of Worcester's "Chronicon ex chronicis" appears to have had a manuscript that was either [A] or similar to it; he makes use of annals that do not appear in other versions, such as entries concerning Edward the Elder's campaigns and information about Winchester towards the end of the chronicle. His account is often similar to that of [D], though there is less attention paid to Margaret of Scotland, an identifying characteristic of [D]. He had the Mercian register, which appears only in [C] and [D]; and he includes material from annals 979–982 which only appears in [C]. It is possible he had a manuscript that was an ancestor of [D]. He also had sources which have not been identified, and some of his statements have no earlier surviving source.


title: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

text: A manuscript similar to [E] was available to William of Malmesbury, though it is unlikely to have been [E] as that manuscript is known to have still been in Peterborough after the time William was working, and he does not make use of any of the entries in [E] that are specifically related to Peterborough. It is likely he had either the original from which [E] was copied, or a copy of that original. He mentions that the chronicles do not give any information on the murder of Alfred Aetheling, but since this is covered in both [C] and [D] it is apparent he had no access to those manuscripts. On occasion he appears to show some knowledge of [D], but it is possible that his information was taken from John of Worcester's account. He also omits any reference to a battle fought by Cenwealh in 652; this battle is mentioned in [A], [B] and [C], but not in [E]. He does mention a battle fought by Cenwealh at Wirtgernesburg, which is not in any of the extant manuscripts, so it is possible he had a copy now lost.


title: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

text: The "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" is the most important source for the history of England in Anglo-Saxon times. Without the "Chronicle" and Bede's "Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum" (the "Ecclesiastical History of the English People"), it would be impossible to write the history of the English from the Romans to the Norman conquest; Nicholas Howe called them "the two great Anglo-Saxon works of history". It is clear that records and annals of some kind began to be kept in England at the time of the earliest spread of Christianity, but no such records survive in their original form. Instead they were incorporated in later works, and it is thought likely that the "Chronicle" contains many of these. The history it tells is not only that witnessed by its compilers, but also that recorded by earlier annalists, whose work is in many cases preserved nowhere else.


title: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

text: Its importance is not limited to the historical information it provides, however. It is just as important a source for the early development of English. The "Peterborough Chronicle" changes from the standard Old English literary language to early Middle English after 1131, providing some of the earliest Middle English text known. Howe notes, in "Rome: Capitol of Anglo-Saxon England", that many of the entries indicate that Rome was considered a spiritual home for the Anglo-Saxons, Rome and Roman history being of paramount importance in many of the entries; he cites the one for AD 1, for instance, which lists the reign of Octavian Augustus before it mentions the birth of Christ.


title: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

text: An important early printed edition of the "Chronicle" appeared in 1692, by Edmund Gibson, an English jurist and divine who later (1716) became Bishop of Lincoln. Titled "Chronicon Saxonicum", it printed the Old English text in parallel columns with Gibson's own Latin version and became the standard edition until the 19th century. Gibson used three manuscripts of which the chief was the "Peterborough Chronicle". It was superseded in 1861 by Benjamin Thorpe's Rolls Series edition, which printed six versions in columns, labelled A to F, thus giving the manuscripts the letters which are now used to refer to them.


title: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

text: John Earle wrote "Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel" (1865). Charles Plummer edited this book, producing a "Revised Text" with notes, appendices, and glossary in two volumes in 1892 and 1899. This edition of the A and E texts, with material from other versions, was widely used; it was reprinted in 1952.


title: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

text: A facsimile edition of [A], "The Parker Chronicle and Laws", appeared in 1941 from the Oxford University Press, edited by Robin Flower and Hugh Smith. The [C] manuscript had been edited by H. A. Rositzke as "The C-Text of the Old English Chronicles", in "Beiträge zur Englischen Philologie", XXXIV, Bochum-Langendreer, 1940. A scholarly edition of the [D] manuscript is in "An Anglo-Saxon Chronicle from British Museum Cotton MS., Tiberius B. iv", edited by E. Classen and F. E. Harmer, Manchester, 1926. Rositzke also published a translation of the [E] text in "The Peterborough Chronicle" (New York, 1951). The [F] text was printed in F. P. Magoun, Jr., "Annales Domitiani Latini: an Edition" in "Mediaeval Studies of the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies", IX, 1947, pp. 235–295. The first edition of [G] was Abraham Whelock's 1644 "Venerabilis Bedae Historia Ecclesiastica", printed in Cambridge; there is also an edition by Angelica Lutz, "Die Version G der angelsächsischen Chronik: Rekonstruktion und Edition" (Munich, 1981).


title: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

text: Beginning in the 1980s, a set of scholarly editions of the text in Old English have been printed under the series title "The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition". They are published by D. S. Brewer under the general editorship of David Dumville and Simon Keynes. As of 2021, the volumes published are:


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: Louis Ferdinand Auguste Destouches (27 May 1894 – 1 July 1961), better known by the pen name Louis-Ferdinand Céline ( , ) was a French novelist, polemicist and physician. His first novel "Journey to the End of the Night" (1932) won the "Prix Renaudot" but divided critics due to the author's pessimistic depiction of the human condition and his writing style based on working class speech. In subsequent novels such as "Death on the Installment Plan" (1936), "Guignol's Band" (1944) and "Castle to Castle" (1957) Céline further developed an innovative and distinctive literary style. Maurice Nadeau wrote: "What Joyce did for the English language…what the surrealists attempted to do for the French language, Céline achieved effortlessly and on a vast scale."


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: From 1937 Céline wrote a series of antisemitic polemical works in which he advocated a military alliance with Nazi Germany. He continued to publicly espouse antisemitic views during the German occupation of France, and after the Allied landing in Normandy in 1944 he fled to Germany and then Denmark where he lived in exile. He was convicted of collaboration by a French court in 1951, but was pardoned by a military tribunal soon after. He returned to France where he resumed his careers as a doctor and author. Céline is widely considered to be one of the greatest French novelists of the twentieth century, but remains a controversial figure in France due to his antisemitism and activities during the Second World War.


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: The only child of Fernand Destouches and Marguerite-Louise-Céline Guilloux, he was born Louis Ferdinand Auguste Destouches in 1894 at Courbevoie, just outside Paris in the Seine "département" (now Hauts-de-Seine). The family came originally from Normandy on his father's side and Brittany on his mother's side. His father was a middle manager in an insurance company and his mother owned a boutique where she sold antique lace. In 1905, he was awarded his "Certificat d'études", after which he worked as an apprentice and messenger boy in various trades.


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: Between 1908 and 1910, his parents sent him to Germany and England for a year in each country in order to acquire foreign languages for future employment. From the time he left school until the age of eighteen Céline worked in various jobs, leaving or losing them after only short periods of time. He often found himself working for jewellers, first, at eleven, as an errand boy, and later as a salesperson for a local goldsmith. Although he was no longer being formally educated, he bought schoolbooks with the money he earned, and studied by himself. It was around this time that Céline started to want to become a doctor.


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: In 1912, Céline volunteered for the French army (in what he described as an act of rebellion against his parents) and began a three-year enlistment in the 12th Cuirassier Regiment stationed in Rambouillet. At first he was unhappy with military life, and considered deserting. However, he adapted, and eventually attained the rank of Sergeant. The beginning of the First World War brought action to Céline's unit. On 25 October 1914, he volunteered to deliver a message, when others were reluctant to do so because of heavy German fire. Near Ypres, during his attempt to deliver the message, he was wounded in his right arm. (Although he was not wounded in the head, as he later claimed, he did suffer severe headaches and tinnitus for the rest of his life.) For his bravery, he was awarded the "médaille militaire" in November, and appeared one year later in the weekly "l'Illustré National" (November 1915). He later wrote that his war time experience left him with "a profound disgust for all that is bellicose."


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: In March 1915, he was sent to London to work in the French passport office. He spent his nights visiting music halls and the haunts of the London underworld, and claimed to have met Mata Hari. He later drew on his experiences in the city for his novel "Guignol's Band" (1944). In September, he was declared unfit for military duty and was discharged from the army. Before returning to France, he married Suzanne Nebout, a French dancer, but the marriage wasn't registered with the French Consulate and they soon separated.


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: In 1916, Céline went to French-administered Cameroon as an employee of the Forestry Company of Sangha-Oubangui. He worked as an overseer on a plantation and a trading post, and ran a pharmacy for the local inhabitants, procuring essential medical supplies from his parents in France. He left Africa in April 1917 due to ill health. His experiences in Africa left him with a distaste for colonialism and an increasing passion for medicine as a vocation.


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: In March 1918, Céline was employed by the Rockefeller Foundation as part of a team travelling around Brittany delivering information sessions on tuberculosis and hygiene. He met Dr Athanase Follet of the Medical Faculty of the University of Rennes, and soon became close to Follet's daughter Édith. Dr Follet encouraged him to pursue medicine and Céline studied for his baccalaureate part-time, passing his examinations in July 1919. He married Édith in August.


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: Céline enrolled in the Medical Faculty at Rennes in April 1920 and in June Édith gave birth to a daughter, Collette Destouches. In 1923 he transferred to the University of Paris and in May 1924 defended his dissertation "The Life and Work of Philippe-Ignace Semmelweis" "(1818–1865)", which has been called, "a Célinian novel in miniature".


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: In June 1924 Céline joined the Health Department of the League of Nations in Geneva, leaving his wife and daughter in Rennes. His duties involved extensive travel in Europe and to Africa, Canada, the United States and Cuba. He drew on his time with the League for his play "L'Église (The Church", written in 1927, but first published in 1933).


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: Édith divorced him in June 1926 and a few months later he met Elizabeth Craig, an American dancer studying in Geneva. They were to remain together for the six years in which he established himself as a major author. He later wrote: "I wouldn't have amounted to anything without her."


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: He left the League of Nations in late 1927 and set up a medical practice in the working-class Paris suburb of Clichy. The practice wasn't profitable and he supplemented his income working for the nearby public clinic and a pharmaceutical company. In 1929 he gave up his private practice and moved to Montmartre with Elizabeth. However, he continued to practice at the public clinic in Clichy and as well as other clinics and pharmaceutical companies. In his spare time he worked on his first novel, "Voyage au bout de la nuit" ("Journey to the End of the Night"), which was dedicated to Elizabeth, completing it in late 1931.


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: "Voyage au bout de la nuit" was published in October 1932 to widespread critical attention. Although Destouches sought anonymity under the pen-name Céline, his identity was soon revealed by the press. The novel attracted admirers and detractors across the political spectrum, with some praising its anarchist, anticolonialist and antimilitarist themes while one critic condemned it as "the cynical, jeering confessions of a man without courage or nobility." A critic for "Les Nouvelles littéraires" praised the author's use of spoken, colloquial French as an "extraordinary language, the height of the natural and the artificial" while the critic for "Le" "Populaire de Paris" condemned it as mere vulgarity and obscenity. The novel was the favourite for the "Prix Goncourt" of 1932. When the prize was awarded to Mazeline's "Les Loups", the resulting scandal increased publicity for Céline's novel which sold 50,000 copies in the following two months.


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: Despite the success of "Voyage", Céline saw his vocation as medicine and continued his work at the Clichy clinic and private pharmaceutical laboratories. He also began working on a novel about his childhood and youth which was to become "Mort à Credit" (1936) (tr "Death on the Installment Plan"). In June 1933 Elizabeth Craig returned permanently to America. Céline visited her in Los Angeles the following year but failed to persuade her to return.


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: Céline initially refused to take a public stance on the rise of Nazism and the increasing extreme-right political agitation in France, explaining to a friend in 1933: "I am and have always been an anarchist, I have never voted…I will never vote for anything or anybody…I don't believe in men….The Nazis loathe me as much as the socialists and the commies too." Nevertheless, in 1935, British critic William Empson had written that Céline appeared to be "a man ripe for fascism".


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: "Mort à credit" was published in May 1936, with numerous blank spaces where passages had been removed by the publisher for fear of prosecution for obscenity. The critical response was sharply divided, with the majority of reviewers criticising it for gutter language, pessimism and contempt for humanity. The novel sold 35,000 copies up to late 1938.


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: In August Céline visited Leningrad for a month and on his return quickly wrote, and had published, an essay, "Mea Culpa", in which he denounced communism and the Soviet Union.


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: In December the following year "Bagatelles pour un massacre" ("Trifles for a Massacre") was published, a book-length racist and antisemitic polemic in which Céline advocated a military alliance with Hitler's Germany in order to save France from war and Jewish hegemony. The book won qualified support from some sections of the French far Right and sold 75,000 copies up to the end of the war. Céline followed "Bagatelles" with "Ecole des cadavres" ("School for Corpses") (November 1938) in which he developed the themes of antisemitism and a Franco-German alliance.


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: Céline was now living with Lucette Almansor, a French dancer whom he had met in 1935. They were to marry in 1943 and remain together until Céline's death. On the publication of "Bagatelles", Céline quit his jobs at the Clichy clinic and the pharmaceutical laboratory and devoted himself to his writing.


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: At the outbreak of war in September 1939, the draft board declared Céline 70 per cent disabled and unfit for military service. Céline gained employment as a ship's doctor on a troop transport and in January 1940 the ship accidentally rammed a British torpedo boat killing twenty British crew. In February he found a position as a doctor in a public clinic in Sartrouville, north-west of Paris. On the evacuation of Paris in June, Céline and Lucette commandeered an ambulance and evacuated an elderly woman and two new-born infants to La Rochelle. "I did the retreat myself, like many another, I chased the French army all the way from Bezons to La Rochelle, but I could never catch up."


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: Returning to Paris, Céline was appointed head doctor of the Bezons public clinic and accredited physician to the département of Seine-et-Oise. He moved back to Montmartre and in February 1941 published a third polemical book "Les beaux draps" (A Fine Mess) in which he denounced Jews, Freemasons, the Catholic Church, the educational system and the French army. The book was later banned by the Vichy government for defaming the French military.


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: In October 1942, Céline's antisemitic books "Bagatelles pour une massacre" and "L'école des cadavres" were republished in new editions, only months after the round-up of French Jews at the "Vélodrome d'Hiver". Céline devoted most of his time during the occupation years to his medical work and writing a new novel "Guignol's Band", a hallucinatory reworking of his experiences in London during World War I. The novel was published in March 1944 to poor sales.


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: The French were expecting an Allied landing at any time and Céline was receiving anonymous death threats almost daily. Although he had not officially joined any collaborationist organisations, he had frequently allowed himself to be quoted in the collaborationist press expressing antisemitic views. The BBC had also named him as a collaborationist writer.


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: When the Allies landed in France in June 1944, Céline and Lucette fled to Germany, eventually staying in Sigmaringen where the Germans had created an enclave accommodating the Vichy government in exile and collaborationist militia. Using his connections with the German occupying forces, in particular with SS officer who was often his guest in the apartment on Rue Girardon, Céline obtained visas for German-occupied Denmark where he arrived in late March 1945. These events formed the basis for his post-war trilogy of novels "D'un chateau l'autre (1957, tr Castle to Castle)", "Nord" (1960, tr "North") and "Rigodon" (1969, tr "Rigadoon").


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: In November 1945 the new French government applied for Céline's extradition for collaboration, and the following month he was arrested and imprisoned at Vestre Prison by the Danish authorities pending the outcome of the application. He was released from prison in June 1947 on the condition that he would not leave Denmark. Céline's books had been withdrawn from sale in France, and he was living off a hoard of gold coins which he had hidden in Denmark before the war. In 1948 he moved to a farmhouse on the coast of the Great Belt owned by his Danish lawyer where he worked on the novels which were to become "Féerie pour une autre fois" (1952, tr "Fable for Another Time") and "Normance" (1954).


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: The French authorities tried Céline "in absentia" for activities harmful to the national defence. He was found guilty in February 1951 and sentenced to one year's jail, a fine of 50,000 francs and confiscation of half his property. In April a French military tribunal granted him an amnesty based on his status as a disabled war veteran. In July he returned to France.


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: Back in France, Céline signed a contract with the publisher Gallimard to republish all his novels. Céline and Lucette bought a villa in Meudon, on the southwestern outskirts of Paris, where Céline was to live for the remainder of his life. He registered as a doctor in 1953 and set up a practice in his Meudon home, while Lucette established a dance school on the top floor.


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: Céline's first post-war novels "Féerie pour une autre fois" and "Normance" received little critical attention and sold poorly. However, his 1957 novel "D'un château l'autre," a chronicle of his time in Sigmaringen, attracted considerable media and critical interest and revived the controversy over his wartime activities. The novel was a modest commercial success, selling close to 30,000 copies in its first year. A sequel "Nord" was published in 1960 to generally favourable reviews. Céline completed a second draft of his final novel "Rigodon" on 30 June 1961. He died at home of a ruptured aneurysm the following day.


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: Céline's first two novels contained no overt antisemitism. However, his polemical books "Bagatelles pour un massacre" (Trifles for a Massacre) (1937) and "L'École des cadavres" (The School of Corpses) (1938) are characterised by antisemitism, and also Céline's attachment to many of the same ideas that French fascists had been propagating since 1924. While Céline's antisemitism was generally welcomed by the French far Right, some, such as Brasillach, were concerned that its crudity might be counterproductive. Nevertheless, biographer Frédéric Vitoux concludes that: "through the ferocity of his voice and the respect in which it was held, Céline had made himself the most popular and most resounding spokesman of pre-war antisemitism."


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: Céline's public antisemitism continued after the defeat of France in June 1940. In 1941 he published "Les beaux draps" (A Fine Mess) in which he lamented that: "France is Jewish and Masonic, once and for all." He also contributed over thirty letters, interviews and responses to questionnaires to the collaborationist press, including many antisemitic statements. The German novelist Ernst Jünger claims that Céline told him in 1941 that he was stupefied that the Germans did not exterminate the French Jews. Some Nazis thought Céline's antisemitic pronouncements were so extreme as to be counter-productive. Bernhard Payr (), the German superintendent of propaganda in France, considered that Céline "started from correct racial notions" but his "savage, filthy slang" and "brutal obscenities" spoiled his "good intentions" with "hysterical wailing".


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: Céline's attitude towards fascism was ambiguous. In 1937 and 1938 he advocated a Franco-German military alliance to save France from war and Jewish hegemony. However, Vitoux argues that Céline's main motive was a desire for peace at any cost, rather than enthusiasm for Hitler. Following the election victory of the French Popular Front in May 1936, Céline saw the socialist leader Léon Blum and the communists led by Maurice Thorez as greater threats to France than Hitler: "…I'd prefer a dozen Hitlers to one all-powerful Blum."


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: While Céline claimed he was not a fascist and never joined any fascist organisation, in December 1941 he publicly supported the formation of a single party to unite the French far right. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, he expressed his support for Jacques Doriot's Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism (LVF). However, according to Merlin Thomas, Céline didn't "subscribe to any recognisable fascist ideology other than the attack on Jewry."


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: Following the war Céline was found guilty of activities potentially harmful to national defence, due to his membership of the collaborationist Cercle Européen (which Céline denied) and his letters to collaborationist journals. According to Vitoux: "Céline became a member of no committee and no administration (…). He never provided any assistance, either by report, advice, or information, to the German ambassador, let alone the "Gestapo" or the Central Jewish Office." Nevertheless: "Céline's writings had permanently marked French ideology, furthered and supported its antisemitism and consequently its complacency toward the Germans. That cannot be denied."


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: Céline's novels reflect a pessimistic view of the human condition in which human suffering is inevitable, death is final, and hopes for human progress and happiness are illusory. He depicts a world where there is no moral order and where the rich and powerful will always oppress the poor and weak. According to Céline's biographer Patrick McCarthy, Célinian man suffers from an original sin of malicious hatred, but there is no God to redeem him. "The characteristic trait of Célinian hatred is that it is gratuitous: one does not dislike because the object of dislike has harmed one; one hates because one has to."


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: Literary critic Merlin Thomas notes that the experience of war marked Céline for life and it is a theme in all his novels except "Death on the Installment Plan". In "Journey to the End of the Night", Céline presents the horror and stupidity of war as an implacable force which "turns the ordinary individual into an animal intent only on survival". McCarthy contends that for Céline war is "the most striking manifestation of the evil present in the human condition."


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: The individual's struggle for survival in a hostile world is a recurring theme in Céline's novels. Although Célinian man can't escape his fate, according to McCarthy: "he has some control over his death. He need not be arbitrarily slaughtered in battle and he need not blind himself with "divertissements". He can choose to face death, a more painful but more dignified process."


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: Merlin Thomas points out that the Célinian anti-hero also typically chooses defiance. "If you are weak, then you will derive strength from stripping those you fear of all the prestige they pretend to possess (…) [T]he attitude of defiance just outlined is an element of hope and personal salvation."


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: Thomas notes that the Célinian narrator finds some consolation in beauty and creativity. The narrator is "always touched by human physical beauty, by the contemplation of a splendidly formed human body which moves with grace." For Céline ballet and the ballerina are exemplars of artistic and human beauty. McCarthy points out that Céline habitually depicts the movement of people and objects as a dance and attempts to capture the rhythms of dance and music in language. "Yet the dance is always the "danse macabre" and things disintegrate because death strikes them."


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: Céline was critical of the French "academic" literary style which privileged elegance, clarity and exactitude. He advocated a new style aimed at directly conveying emotional intensity:"It seemed to me that there were two ways of telling stories. The classic, normal, academic way which consists of creeping along from one incident to the next...the way cars go along in the street...and then, the other way, which means descending into the intimacy of things, into the fibre, the nerves, the feelings of things, the flesh, and going straight on to the end, to its end, in intimacy, in maintained poetic tension, in inner life, like the "métro" through an inner city, straight to the end...[.]" Céline was a major innovator in French literary language. In his first two novels", Journey to the End of the Night" and "Death on the Installment Plan", Céline shocked many critics by his use of a unique language based on the spoken French of the working class, medical and nautical jargon, neologisms, obscenities, and the specialised slang of soldiers, sailors and the criminal underworld. He also developed an idiosyncratic system of punctuation based on extensive use of ellipses and exclamation marks. Thomas sees Céline's three dots as: "almost comparable to the pointing of a psalm: they divide the text into rhythmical rather than syntactical units, permit extreme variations of pace and make possible to a great extent the hallucinatory lyricism of his style."


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: Céline called his increasingly rhythmic, syncopated writing style his "little music." McCarthy writes that in "Fables for Another Time": "Celine's fury drives him beyond prose and into a new tongue – part poetry and part music – to express what he has to say." Céline's style evolved to reflect the themes of his novels. According to McCarthy, in Céline's final war trilogy, "Castle to Castle", "North" and "Rigadoon": "all worlds disappear into an eternal nothingness (…) the trilogy is written in short, bare phrases: language dissolves as reality does."


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: Céline is widely considered to be one of the major French novelists of the twentieth century. According to George Steiner: "[T]wo bodies of work lead into the idiom and sensibility of twentieth-century narrative: that of Céline and that of Proust."


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: Although many writers have admired and have been influenced by Céline's fiction, McCarthy argues that he holds a unique place in modern writing due to his pessimistic vision of the human condition and idiosyncratic writing style. Writers of the absurd, such as Sartre and Camus, were influenced by Céline, but didn't share his extreme pessimism or politics. Alain Robbe-Grillet cites Céline as a major influence on the "nouveau-roman" and Günter Grass also shows a debt to Céline's writing style. Patrick Modiano admires Céline as a stylist, and produced a parody of his style in his debut novel "La place de l'étoile." McCarthy and O'Connell include Henry Miller, William S. Burroughs, Kurt Vonnegut and others as American writers influenced by Céline.


title: Louis-Ferdinand Céline

text: Céline remains a controversial figure in France. In 2011, the fiftieth anniversary of Céline's death, the writer had initially appeared on an official list of 500 people and events associated with French culture which were to be celebrated nationally that year. Following protests, Frédéric Mitterrand, then French Minister of Culture and Communication, announced that Céline would be removed from the list because of his antisemitic writings.