Overview.

Spain controlled the entire island of Hispaniola from the 1490s until the 17th century, when French pirates began establishing bases on the western side of the island. The official name was "La Española", meaning "The Spanish (Island)". It was also called "Santo Domingo", after Saint Dominic.  The western part of Hispaniola was neglected by the Spanish authorities, and French buccaneers began to settle first on the Tortuga Island, then on the northwest of the island. Spain later ceded the entire western coast of the island to France, retaining the rest of the island, including the "Guava Valley", today known as the "Central Plateau".  The French called their portion of Hispaniola "Saint-Domingue", the French equivalent of "Santo Domingo". The Spanish colony on Hispaniola remained separate, and eventually became the Dominican Republic, the capital of which is still named Santo Domingo.

Establishment.

When Christopher Columbus took possession of the island in 1492, he named it "Insula Hispana", meaning "the Spanish island" in Latin As Spain conquered new regions on the mainland of the Americas (Spanish Main), its interest in Hispaniola waned, and the colony's population grew slowly. By the early 17th century, the island and its smaller neighbors, notably Tortuga, became regular stopping points for Caribbean pirates. In 1606, the king of Spain ordered all inhabitants of Hispaniola to move close to Santo Domingo, to avoid interaction with pirates. Rather than secure the island, however, this resulted in French, English and Dutch pirates establishing bases on the now-abandoned north and west coasts of the island.  French buccaneers established a settlement on the island of Tortuga in 1625 before going to Grande Terre (mainland). At first they survived by pirating ships, eating wild cattle and hogs, and selling hides to traders of all nations. Although the Spanish destroyed the buccaneers' settlements several times, on each occasion they returned due to an abundance of natural resources: hardwood trees, wild hogs and cattle, and fresh water. The settlement on Tortuga was officially established in 1659 under the commission of King Louis XIV.  In 1665, French colonization of the islands Hispaniola and Tortuga entailed slavery-based plantation agricultural activity such as growing coffee and cattle farming. It was officially recognized by King Louis XIV. Spain tacitly recognized the French presence in the western third of the island in the 1697 Treaty of Ryswick; the Spanish deliberately omitted direct reference to the island from the treaty, but they were never able to reclaim this territory from the French.  The economy of Saint-Domingue became focused on slave-based agricultural plantations. Saint-Domingue's Black population quickly increased. They followed the example of neighboring Caribbean colonies in coercive treatment of the enslaved population. More cattle and slave agricultural holdings, coffee plantations and spice plantations were implemented, as well as fishing, cultivation of cocoa, coconuts, and snuff. Saint-Domingue quickly came to overshadow the previous colony in both wealth and population. Nicknamed the "Pearl of the Antilles," Saint-Domingue became the richest and most prosperous French colony in the West Indies, cementing its status as an important port in the Americas for goods and products flowing to and from France and Europe. Thus, the income and the taxes from slave-based sugar production became a major source of the French budget.  Among the first buccaneers was Bertrand D'Ogeron, who played a big part in the settlement of Saint-Domingue. He encouraged the planting of tobacco, which turned a population of buccaneers and freebooters, who had not acquiesced to royal authority until 1660, into a sedentary population. D'Orgeron also attracted many colonists from Martinique and Guadeloupe, including Jean Roy, Jean Hebert and his family, and Guillaume Barre and his family, who were driven out by the land pressure which was generated by the extension of the sugar plantations in those colonies. But in 1670, shortly after Cap-Français (later "Cap-Haïtien") had been established, the crisis of tobacco intervened and a great number of places were abandoned. The rows of freebooting grew bigger; plundering raids, like those of Vera Cruz in 1683 or of Campêche in 1686, became increasingly numerous, and Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Marquis de Seignelay, elder son of Jean Baptist Colbert and at the time Minister of the Navy, brought back some order by taking a great number of measures, including the creation of plantations of indigo and of cane sugar. The first sugar windmill was built in 1685.  On 22 July 1795, Spain ceded to France the remaining Spanish part of the island of Hispaniola, Santo Domingo (now the Dominican Republic), in the second Treaty of Basel, ending the War of the Pyrenees. The people of the eastern part of Saint-Domingue (French Santo Domingo) were opposed to the arrangements and hostile toward the French. The islanders revolted against their new masters and a state of anarchy ensued, leading to more French troops being brought in.  An early death among Europeans was very common due to diseases and conflicts; the French soldiers that Napoleon sent in 1802 to quell the revolt in Saint-Domingue were attacked by yellow fever during the Haitian Revolution, and more than half of the French army died of disease.

Profitable colony.

Prior to the Seven Years' War (1756–1763), the economy of Saint-Domingue gradually expanded, with sugar and, later, coffee becoming important export crops. After the war, which disrupted maritime commerce, the colony underwent rapid expansion. In 1767, it exported 72 million pounds of raw sugar and 51 million pounds of refined sugar, one million pounds of indigo, and two million pounds of cotton. Saint-Domingue became known as the "Pearl of the Antilles" — one of the richest colonies in the world in the 18th-century French empire. It was the greatest jewel in imperial France's mercantile crown. By the 1780s, Saint-Domingue produced about 40 percent of all the sugar and 60 percent of all the coffee consumed in Europe. This single colony, roughly the size of Hawaii or Belgium, produced more sugar and coffee than all of the British West Indies colonies combined, generating enormous revenue for the French government and enhancing its power.  The labor for these plantations was provided by an estimated 790,000 African slaves, accounting in 1783–1791 for a third of the entire Atlantic slave trade. Between 1764 and 1771, the average annual importation of slaves varied between 10,000 and 15,000; by 1786 it was about 28,000, and from 1787 onward, the colony received more than 40,000 slaves a year. However, the inability to maintain slave numbers without constant resupply from Africa meant the slave population in 1789 totalled to 500,000, ruled over by a white population that numbered only 32,000. At all times, a majority of slaves in the colony were African-born, as the brutal conditions of slavery and tropical diseases such as yellow fever prevented the population from experiencing growth through natural increase. African culture thus remained strong among slaves to the end of French rule. The folk religion of Vodou commingled Catholic liturgy and ritual with the beliefs and practices of the Vodun religion of Guinea, Congo and Dahomey. Slave traders scoured the Atlantic coast of Africa, and the slaves who arrived came from hundreds of different tribes, their languages often mutually incomprehensible.  To regularize slavery, in 1685 Louis XIV had enacted the "code noir", which accorded certain human rights to slaves and responsibilities to the master, who was obliged to feed, clothe and provide for the general well-being of his slaves. The "code noir" sanctioned corporal punishment but had provisions intended to regulate the administration of punishments. In any event, such protections were often ignored by white colonists. A passage from Henri Christophe's personal secretary, who lived more than half his life as a slave, describes the punishments the slaves of Saint-Domingue received for disobedience by the French colonists:  Thousands of slaves found freedom by fleeing into the mountains, forming communities of maroons and raiding isolated plantations. The most famous was Mackandal, a one-armed slave, originally from the Guinea region of Africa, who escaped in 1751. A Vodou Houngan (priest), he united many of the different maroon bands. For the next six years, he staged successful raids while evading capture by the French. He and his followers reputedly killed more than 6,000 people. He preached a radical vision of destroying white colonization in Saint-Domingue. In 1758, after a failed plot to poison the drinking water of the planters, he was captured and burned alive at the public square in Cap-Français.  Until the mid-18th century, there were efforts made by the French Crown to found a stable French-European population in the colony, a difficult task because there were few European women there. From the 17th century to the mid-18th century, the Crown attempted to remedy this by sending women from France to Saint-Domingue and Martinique to marry the settlers. However, these women where rumoured to be former prostitutes from La Salpêtrière and the settlers complained about the system in 1713, stating that the women sent were not suitable, a complaint that was repeated in 1743. The system was consequently abandoned, and with it the plans for colonisation. In the later half of the 18th century, it was common and accepted that a Frenchman during his stay of a few years would enjoy the sexual services of a black local, and would live with her.  Saint-Domingue had the largest and wealthiest free population of color in the Caribbean; they were known as the "gens de couleur". The royal census of 1789 counted roughly 25,000 such persons. While many free population of color were former slaves, most members of this class were mulattoes, of mixed French/European and African ancestry. Typically, they were the descendants of the enslaved women and French colonists. As in New Orleans, a system of "plaçage" developed, in which white men had a kind of common-law marriage with slave or free mistresses, and provided for them with a dowry, sometimes freedom, and often education or apprenticeships for their mixed-race children. Some such descendants of planters inherited considerable property. As their numbers grew, they were made subject to discriminatory colonial legislation. Statutes forbade "gens de couleur" from taking up certain professions, marrying whites, wearing European clothing, carrying swords or firearms in public, or attending social functions where whites were present.  The regulations did not restrict their purchase of land, and many accumulated substantial holdings and became slaveowners. By 1789, they owned one-third of the plantation property and one-quarter of the slaves of Saint-Domingue. Central to the rise of the "gens de couleur" planter class was the growing importance of coffee, which thrived on the marginal hillside plots to which they were often relegated. The largest concentration of "gens de couleur" was in the southern peninsula. This was the last region of the colony to be settled, owing to its distance from Atlantic shipping lanes and its formidable terrain, with the highest mountain range in the Caribbean. In the parish of Jérémie, the free population of color formed the majority of the population. Many lived in Port-au-Prince as well, which became an economic center in the South of the island.

End of colonial rule.

In 1758 white homeowners on Hispaniola began to restrict rights and create laws to exclude mulattoes and Blacks, establishing a rigid class system. There were ten Black people for every white one. In France, the majority of the Estates General, an advisory body to the King, constituted itself as the National Assembly, made radical changes in French laws, and on 26 August 1789, published the Declaration of the Rights of Man, declaring all men free and equal. The French Revolution shaped the course of the conflict in Saint-Domingue and was at first widely welcomed on the island. At first, wealthy whites saw it as an opportunity to gain independence from France. The elite planters intended to take control of the island and create trade regulations to further their own wealth and power. Between 1791 and 1804, the leaders François Dominique Toussaint-Louverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines led the revolution against the slave system established on the island; slavery in Saint-Domingue, along with other Caribbean colonies from the French colonial empire, was the third largest source of income to France. They were inspired by the "houngans", sorcerers or priests of Haitian Vodou, Dutty Boukman and François Mackandal.  Léger-Félicité Sonthonax from September 1792 to 1795 was the "de facto" ruler of Saint-Domingue. He was a French Girondist and abolitionist during the French Revolution who controlled 7,000 French troops in Saint-Domingue during part of the Haitian Revolution. His official title was Civil Commissioner. Within a year of his appointment, his powers were considerably expanded by the Committee of Public Safety. Sonthonax believed that Saint-Domingue's whites, most of whom were of Spanish descent, were royalist or separatist conservatives attached to independence or Spain as a way to preserve the slave plantations. He attacked the military power of the white settlers, and by doing so, he alienated the colonists from the French government. Many "gens de couleur", mixed-race residents of the colony, asserted that they could form the military backbone of Saint-Domingue if they were given rights, but Sonthonax rejected this view as outdated in the wake of the August 1791 slave uprising. He believed that Saint-Domingue would need ex-slave soldiers among the ranks of the colonial army if it was to survive. Although he did not originally intend to free the enslaved, by October 1793 he ended slavery in order to maintain his own power.  In 1799, the Black military leader Toussaint L'Ouverture brought under French rule a law which abolished slavery and embarked on a program of modernization. He had become master of the whole island.  In November 1799, during the continuing war in Saint-Domingue, Napoleon Bonaparte gained power in France. He passed a new constitution declaring that the colonies would be subject to special laws. Although the colonies suspected this meant the re-introduction of slavery, Napoleon began by confirming Toussaint's position and promising to maintain the abolition. He forbade Toussaint to control the formerly Spanish settlement on the east side of Hispaniola, as that would have given the leader a more powerful defensive position. In January 1801, Toussaint and Hyacinthe Moïse invaded the Spanish settlements, taking possession from the Governor, Don Garcia, with few difficulties.  Toussaint promulgated the Constitution of 1801 on 7 July, officially establishing his authority as governor general "for life" over the entire island of Hispaniola and confirming most of his existing policies. Article 3 of the constitution states: "There cannot exist slaves [in Saint-Domingue], servitude is therein forever abolished. All men are born, live and die free and French."  During this time, Bonaparte met with refugee planters; they urged the restoration of slavery in Saint-Domingue, saying it was integral to the colony's profits. He sent an expedition of more than 20,000 men to Saint-Domingue in 1802 to restore French authority.  The French Civil Code of Napoleon affirmed the political and legal equality of all adult men; it established a merit-based society in which individuals advanced in education and employment because of talent rather than birth or social standing. The Civil Code confirmed many of the moderate revolutionary policies of the National Assembly but retracted measures passed by the more radical Convention. The situation of the enslaved and people of mixed race was not improved.  The Haitian Revolution culminated in the elimination of slavery in Saint-Domingue and the founding of the Haitian republic in the whole of Hispaniola. France was weakened by a British naval blockade, and by the unwillingness of Napoleon to send massive reinforcements. Having sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States in April 1803, Napoleon began to lose interest in his failing ventures in the Western Hemisphere.  A minority of state officials and civil servants were exempt from manual labor, including some freed colored Haitians. Many slaves had to work hard to survive, and they became increasingly motivated by their hunger. Consisting mostly of slaves, the population was uneducated and largely unskilled. They had lived under authoritarian control as rural laborers. White residents felt the sting most sharply. While Toussaint, a former privileged slave of a tolerant white master, had felt a certain magnanimity toward whites, Dessalines, a former field slave, despised them. A firm hand was used in resistance to slavery.  Napoleon's troops, under the command of his brother-in-law, General Charles Emmanuel Leclerc, planned to seize control of the island by diplomatic means. They proclaimed peaceful intentions, and kept secret his orders to deport all Black officers. Meanwhile, Toussaint was preparing for defense and insuring discipline. This may have contributed to a rebellion against forced labor led by his nephew and top general, Moïse, in October 1801. It was violently repressed, with the result that when the French ships arrived, not all of Saint-Domingue was automatically on Toussaint's side.  For a few months, the island was quiet under Napoleonic rule. But when it became apparent that the French intended to re-establish slavery, because they had done so on Guadeloupe, Dessalines and Pétion switched sides again, in October 1802, and fought against the French.  In late January 1802, while Leclerc sought permission to land at Cap-Français and Christophe held him off, the Vicomte de Rochambeau suddenly attacked Fort-Liberté, effectively quashing the diplomatic option. In November Leclerc died of yellow fever, like much of his army.  His successor, the Vicomte de Rochambeau, fought a brutal campaign. His atrocities helped rally many former French loyalists to the rebel cause. Like other Black slaves captured by the French army, Mackandal was burned alive at the stake. The people of Saint-Domingue, mostly Black, were hostile toward abuse by the French. The slave population had severe food shortages and brutal forced rural labor. The islanders revolted against their new masters and a state of anarchy ensued, bringing more French troops. The people began a series of attacks on the owners of sugar and coffee plantations. French soldiers from Napoleon were sent in 1802 to quell the revolt in Saint-Domingue. They suffered from seasonal epidemics of Yellow fever and more than half of the French army died of disease. The British naval blockade to France persisted.  Dessalines led the rebellion until its completion, when the French forces were finally defeated in 1803. Whites were slaughtered and massacred wholesale under the rule of Dessalines. The brutality toward whites shocked foreign governments.  The last battle of the Haitian Revolution, the Battle of Vertières, occurred on 18 November 1803, near Cap-Haïtien. When the French withdrew, they had only 7,000 troops left to ship to France.  Haiti did not try to support or aid other slave rebellions because they feared that the great powers would take renewed action against them, as happened a few years later with Spain. After the defeat of the French army, wealthy white owners saw the opportunity to preserve their political power and plantations. They attacked the town halls that had representatives of the defeated French authority. Elite planters took control of the former Spanish side of the island, asking Spain for a Spanish government and protection by the Spanish army. Later these planters created trade regulations that would further preserve their own wealth and power.  In the 19th and early 20th centuries, American and British authors often referred to Saint-Domingue period as "Santo Domingo" or "San Domingo." This led to confusion with the earlier Spanish colony, and later the contemporary Spanish colony established at Santo Domingo during the colonial period; in particular, in political debates on slavery previous to the American Civil War, "San Domingo" was used to express fears of Southern whites of a slave rebellion breaking out in their own region. Today, the former Spanish possession contemporary with the early period of the French colony corresponds mostly with the Dominican Republic, whose capital is Santo Domingo. The name of Saint-Domingue was changed to Hayti (Haïti) when Jean-Jacques Dessalines declared the independence of all Hispaniola from the French in 1804. Like the name "Haiti" itself, "Saint-Domingue" may refer to all of Hispaniola, or the western part in the French colonial period, while the Spanish version "Hispaniola" or "Santo Domingo" is often used to refer to the Spanish colonial period or the Dominican nation.

Saint-Domingue () was a French colony on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola from 1659 to 1804, in what is now Haiti.

Saint-Domingue je pojmenování pro bývalou francouzskou kolonii v Karibiku, na ostrově Hispaniola a přilehlých menších ostrovech (zejména Tortuga) od 17. století do počátku 19. století. Nástupnickým státem po Saint-Domingue je dnešní Haiti.


World Group II.

The World Group II was the second highest level of Fed Cup competition in 2013. Winners advanced to the World Group Play-offs, and the losers played in the World Group II Play-offs.  Date: 9–10 February

World Group Play-offs.

The four losing teams in the World Group first round ties, and four winners of the World Group II ties entered the draw for the World Group Play-offs. Four seeded teams, based on the latest Fed Cup ranking, were drawn against four unseeded teams.  Date: 20–21 April

World Group II Play-offs.

The four losing teams from World Group II played off against qualifiers from Zonal Group I. Two teams qualified from Europe/Africa Zone, one team from the Asia/Oceania Zone, and one team from the Americas Zone.  Date: 20–21 April

Americas Zone.

Group I.

Venue: Country Club de Ejecutivos, Medellín, Colombia (outdoor clay)  Dates: 6–9 February

Group II.

Venue: Maya Country Club, Santa Tecla, El Salvador  Dates: 17–20 July

Asia/Oceania Zone.

Group I.

Venue: National Tennis Centre, Astana, Kazakhstan (indoor hard)  Dates: 6–9 February

Group II.

Venue: National Tennis Centre, Astana, Kazakhstan (indoor hard)  Dates: 4–9 February

Europe/Africa Zone.

Group I.

Venue: Municipal Tennis Club, Eilat, Israel (outdoor hard)  Dates: 6–10 February

Group II.

Venue: Bellevue Club, Ulcinj, Montenegro (outdoor clay)  Dates: 17–20 April

Group III.

Venue: Terraten Club, Chișinău, Moldova (outdoor clay)  Dates: 8–11 May

Rankings.

The rankings were measured after the three points during the year that play took place, and were collated by combining points earned from the previous four years.

The 2013 Fed Cup (also known as the 2013 Fed Cup by BNP Paribas for sponsorship purposes) was the 51st edition of the most important tournament between national teams in women's tennis.

Fed Cup 2013, oficiálně se jménem sponzora Fed Cup by BNP Paribas 2013, byl 51. ročník ženské tenisové týmové soutěže ve Fed Cupu, největší kolektivní soutěže v ženském sportu. Los se uskutečnil 6. června 2012 ve francouzské metropoli Paříži. Obhájkyněmi titulu z posledních dvou let 2011 a 2012 byly hráčky České republiky, které v předešlém finále hraném 3. a 4. listopadu 2012 v pražské O areně zdolaly Srbsko 3:1 na zápasy.


Early life.

Frank Raymond Leavis was born in Cambridge in 1895 to Harry Leavis (1862–1921) and Kate Sarah Moore (1874–1929). His father was a cultured man who ran a shop in Cambridge that sold pianos and other musical instruments, and his son was to retain a respect for him throughout his life. Leavis was educated at a fee-paying independent school (in English terms a minor public school), The Perse School, whose headmaster was Dr W. H. D. Rouse. Rouse was a classicist and known for his "direct method", a practice which required teachers to carry on classroom conversations with their pupils in Latin and classical Greek. Though he had some fluency in foreign languages, Leavis felt that his native language was the only one on which he was able to speak with authority. His extensive reading in the classical languages is not therefore strongly evident in his work.  Leavis had won a scholarship from the Perse School to Emmanuel College, Cambridge to study history. Britain declared war on Germany soon after he matriculated, when he was 19. Leavis left Cambridge after his first year as an undergraduate and joined the Friends' Ambulance Unit (FAU) at York in 1915. After the introduction of conscription in 1916, when his brother Ralph also joined the FAU, he benefited from the blanket recognition of the members of the Friends' Ambulance Unit as conscientious objectors. Leavis is quoted as saying: "But after the Bloody Somme there could be no question for anyone who knew what modern war was like of joining the army."  He worked in France behind the Western Front, carrying a copy of Milton's poems with him. His wartime experiences had a lasting effect on him, making him prone to insomnia. He maintained that exposure to poison gas retained in the clothes of soldiers who had been gassed damaged his physical health, particularly his digestion.  Leavis was slow to recover from the war, and he was later to refer to it as "the great hiatus". He said: "The war, to put it egotistically, was bad luck for us."  On his return from the war in 1919, Leavis changed his field of study to English and became a pupil in the newly founded English School at Cambridge. Despite graduating with first-class honours, Leavis was not seen as a strong candidate for a research fellowship and instead embarked on a PhD, then an unusual career move for an aspiring academic. In 1924, Leavis presented a thesis on "The Relationship of Journalism to Literature", which "studied the rise and earlier development of the press in England". This work contributed to his lifelong concern with the way in which the ethos of a periodical can both reflect and mould the cultural aspirations of a wider public. In 1927, Leavis was appointed as a probationary lecturer for the university, and, when his first substantial publications began to appear a few years later, their style was much influenced by the demands of teaching.

Later life and career.

In 1929 Leavis married one of his students, Queenie Roth, and this union resulted in a collaboration that yielded many critical works. 1932 was an "annus mirabilis" for them, when Leavis published "New Bearings in English Poetry", his wife published "Fiction and the Reading Public", and the quarterly periodical "Scrutiny" was founded. A small publishing house, The Minority Press, was founded by Gordon Fraser, another of Leavis's students, in 1930, and served for several years as an additional outlet for the work of Leavis and some of his students. In 1931 Leavis was appointed director of studies in English at Downing College where he was to teach for the next 30 years. He soon founded "Scrutiny", the critical quarterly that he edited until 1953, using it as a vehicle for the new Cambridge criticism, upholding rigorous intellectual standards and attacking the dilettante elitism he believed to characterise the Bloomsbury Group. "Scrutiny" provided a forum for (on occasion) identifying important contemporary work and (more commonly) reviewing the traditional canon by serious criteria. This criticism was informed by a teacher's concern to present the essential to students, taking into consideration time constraints and a limited range of experience.  "New Bearings in English Poetry" was the first major volume of criticism Leavis was to publish, and it provides insight into his own critical positions. He has been frequently (but often erroneously) associated with the American school of New Critics, a group which advocated close reading and detailed textual analysis of poetry over, or even instead of, an interest in the mind and personality of the poet, sources, the history of ideas and political and social implications. Although there are undoubtedly similarities between Leavis's approach to criticism and that of the New Critics (most particularly in that both take the work of art itself as the primary focus of critical discussion), Leavis is ultimately distinguishable from them, since he never adopted (and was explicitly hostile to) a theory of the poem as a self-contained and self-sufficient aesthetic and formal artefact, isolated from the society, culture and tradition from which it emerged. "New Bearings", devoted principally to Gerard Manley Hopkins, William Butler Yeats, T. S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound, was an attempt to identify the essential new achievements in modern poetry. It also discussed at length and praised the work of Ronald Bottrall, whose importance was not to be confirmed by readers and critics.  In 1933 Leavis published "For Continuity", which was a selection of "Scrutiny" essays. This publication, along with "Culture and the Environment" (a joint effort with Denys Thompson), stressed the importance of an informed and discriminating, highly trained intellectual elite whose existence within university English departments would help preserve the cultural continuity of English life and literature. In "Education and the University" (1943), Leavis argued that "there is a prior cultural achievement of language; language is not a detachable instrument of thought and communication. It is the historical embodiment of its community's assumptions and aspirations at levels which are so subliminal much of the time that language is their only index".  Leavis is sometimes seen as having contributed to the mythos of Merrie England with his notion of the "organic community", by which he seems to have meant a community with a deeply rooted and locally self-sufficient culture that he claimed to have existed in the villages of 17th and 18th century England and which was destroyed by the machine and mass culture introduced by the industrial revolution. Historians of the era have suggested that the idea was based on a misreading of history and that such communities had never existed. No historians of Early Modern Britain have supported the notion of the organic community.  In 1948, Leavis focused his attention on fiction and made his general statement about the English novel in "The Great Tradition", where he traced this claimed tradition through Jane Austen, George Eliot, Henry James, and Joseph Conrad. Contentiously, Leavis, and his followers, excluded major authors such as Charles Dickens, Laurence Sterne and Thomas Hardy from his canon, characterising Dickens as a "mere entertainer", but eventually, following the revaluation of Dickens by Edmund Wilson and George Orwell, Leavis changed his position, publishing "Dickens the Novelist" in 1970. The Leavisites' downgrading of Hardy may have damaged Leavis's own authority.  In 1950, in the introduction to "Mill on Bentham and Coleridge", a publication he edited, Leavis set out the historical importance of utilitarian thought. Leavis found Bentham to epitomize the scientific drift of culture and social thinking, which was in his view the enemy of the holistic, humane understanding he championed.  "The Common Pursuit", another collection of his essays from "Scrutiny", was published in 1952. Outside his work on English poetry and the novel, this is Leavis's best-known and most influential work. A decade later Leavis was to earn much notoriety when he delivered his Richmond lecture, "Two Cultures? The Significance of C. P. Snow" at Downing College. Leavis vigorously attacked Snow's suggestion, from a 1959 lecture and book by C. P. Snow (see "The Two Cultures"), that practitioners of the scientific and humanistic disciplines should have some significant understanding of each other, and that a lack of knowledge of 20th century physics was comparable to an ignorance of Shakespeare. Leavis's "ad hominem" attacks on Snow's intelligence and abilities were widely decried in the British press by public figures such as Lord Boothby and Lionel Trilling.  Leavis introduced the idea of the "third realm" as a name for the method of existence of literature; works which are not private like a dream or public in the sense of something that can be tripped over, but exist in human minds as a work of collaborative re-constitution. The notion of the "third realm" has not received much attention subsequently.  In 1964 he resigned his fellowship at Downing; however, he took up visiting professorships at the University of Bristol, the University of Wales and the University of York. His final volumes of criticism were "Nor Shall My Sword" (1972), "The Living Principle" (1975) and "Thought, Words and Creativity" (1976). These later works are notable for their more discursive treatment of the issues he had debated with René Wellek in the 1930s.  Leavis died in 1978, at the age of 82, having been made a Companion of Honour in the previous New Year Honours. His wife, Queenie D. Leavis, died in 1981. He features as a main character, played by Ian Holm, in the 1991 BBC TV feature, "The Last Romantics". The story focuses on his relationship with his mentor, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch and the students. More recently, in a revival of interest in his work, he has been the subject of a series of conferences at the University of York and at Downing College, Cambridge.

Character and reputation.

As Leavis continued his career he became increasingly dogmatic, belligerent and paranoid, and Martin Seymour-Smith found him (and his disciples) to be "fanatic and rancid in manner". Leavis's conduct led to a breach with T. S. Eliot, who wrote  Leavis's uncompromising zeal in promoting his views of literature drew mockery from quarters of the literary world involved in imaginative writing. In a letter that Edith Sitwell wrote to Pamela Hansford Johnson in 1959 she described Leavis as "a tiresome, whining, pettyfogging little pipsqueak". Leavis (as "Simon Lacerous") and Scrutiny (as "Thumbscrew") were satirized by Frederick Crews in the chapter "Another Book to Cross off your List" of his lampoon of literary criticism theory "The Pooh Perplex A Student Casebook". In her novel "Possession", A. S. Byatt (who was herself taught by Leavis) wrote of one of her characters (Blackadder) "Leavis did to Blackadder what he did to serious students: he showed him the terrible, the magnificent importance and urgency of English literature and simultaneously deprived him of any confidence in his own capacity to contribute to or change it." Tom Sharpe, in his novel The Great Pursuit, depicts a ludicrous series of events ending in the hero teaching Leavisite criticism as a religion in the American Bible Belt. In the mock epic heroic poem by Clive James, "Peregrine Pykke", the eponymous hero studies literature under the prophet "F R Looseleaf" at Downing College, Cambridge.  In his autobiography "The Fry Chronicles", Stephen Fry described Leavis as a "sanctimonious prick of only parochial significance" and said that Leavis had an "intense suspicious propensity to explode in wrath and anathematize anyone who dared disagree with him". Fry notes:  The literary critic John Gross accuses Leavis of "narrowness, spitefulness, dogmatism", "distortion, omission and strident overstatement" and says that "the overall effect of his teaching has plainly been calculated...to produce many of the characteristics of a religious or ideological sect."

Criticism.

Leavis's proponents claimed that he introduced a "seriousness" into English studies, and some English and American university departments were shaped much by Leavis's example and ideas. Leavis appeared to possess a clear idea of literary criticism and he was well known for his decisive and often provocative, and idiosyncratic, judgements. Leavis insisted that valuation was the principal concern of criticism, and that it must ensure that English literature should be a living reality operating as an informing spirit in society, and that criticism should involve the shaping of contemporary sensibility.  Leavis's criticism is difficult to directly classify, but it can be grouped into four chronological stages. The first is that of his early publications and essays including "New Bearings in English Poetry" (1932) and "Revaluation" (1936). Here he was concerned primarily with re-examining poetry from the 17th to 20th centuries, and this was accomplished under the strong influence of T. S. Eliot. Also during this early period Leavis sketched out his views about university education.  He then turned his attention to fiction and the novel, producing "The Great Tradition" (1948) and "D. H. Lawrence, Novelist" (1955). Following this period Leavis pursued an increasingly complex treatment of literary, educational and social issues. Though the hub of his work remained literature, his perspective for commentary was noticeably broadening, and this was most visible in "Nor Shall my Sword" (1972).  Two of his last publications embodied the critical sentiments of his final years; "The Living Principle: 'English' as a Discipline of Thought" (1975), and "Thought, Words and Creativity: Art and Thought in Lawrence" (1976). Although these later works have been sometimes called "philosophy", it has been argued that there is no abstract or theoretical context to justify such a description. In discussing the nature of language and value, Leavis implicitly treats the sceptical questioning that philosophical reflection starts from as an irrelevance from his standpoint as a literary critic - a position set out in his famous early exchange with René Wellek (reprinted in 'The Common Pursuit').

On poetry.

Leavis is often viewed as having been a better critic of poetry than of the novel. In "New Bearings in English Poetry" Leavis attacked the Victorian poetical ideal, suggesting that 19th century poetry sought the consciously "poetical" and showed a separation of thought and feeling and a divorce from the real world. The influence of T. S. Eliot is easily identifiable in his criticism of Victorian poetry, and Leavis acknowledged this, saying in "The Common Pursuit" that, "It was Mr. Eliot who made us fully conscious of the weakness of that tradition". In his later publication "Revaluation", the dependence on Eliot was still very much present, but Leavis demonstrated an individual critical sense operating in such a way as to place him among the distinguished modern critics.  The early reception of T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound's poetry, and also the reading of Hopkins, were considerably enhanced by Leavis's proclamation of their greatness. His criticism of Milton, on the other hand, had no great impact on Milton's popular esteem. Many of his finest analyses of poems were reprinted in the late work, "The Living Principle".

On the novel.

As a critic of the novel, Leavis's main tenet stated that great novelists show an intense moral interest in life, and that this moral interest determines the nature of their form in fiction. Authors within this "tradition" were all characterised by a serious or responsible attitude to the moral complexity of life and included Jane Austen, George Eliot, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, and D. H. Lawrence, but excluded Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens. In "The Great Tradition" Leavis attempted to set out his conception of the proper relation between form/composition and moral interest/art and life. This proved to be a contentious issue in the critical world, as Leavis refused to separate art from life, or the aesthetic or formal from the moral. He insisted that the great novelist's preoccupation with form was a matter of responsibility towards a rich moral interest, and that works of art with a limited formal concern would always be of lesser quality.

On the BBC.

Leavis was one of the earliest detractors of the BBC. He accused the corporation's coverage of English literature of lacking impartiality, and of vulgarising the literary taste of British society. In 1931, Leavis took issue with a BBC series of book discussions presented by Harold Nicolson, claiming that Nicolson's programmes lacked the "sensitiveness of intelligence" which Leavis believed good literary criticism required. Throughout his career, Leavis constantly took issue with the BBC's motives and actions, even once jokingly referring to his "anti-BBC complex".

Frank Raymond "F. R." Leavis (14 July 1895 – 14 April 1978) was a British literary critic of the early-to-mid-twentieth century. He taught for much of his career at Downing College, Cambridge, and later at the University of York.

Frank Raymond Leavis (14. července 1895 – 14. dubna 1978) byl britský literární kritik a teoretik. Zpočátku se věnoval zejména analýzám poezie ("New Bearings in English Poetry", "Revaluation"), jeho velkým tématem byli Thomas Stearns Eliot, William Butler Yeats či Ezra Pound, Leavis velmi přispěl k jejich reputaci. Velmi chválil rovněž dílo Ronalda Bottralla, které však u ostatních kritiků ani čtenářů ohlasu nedošlo. Zavrhl básnické dílo Johna Miltona, jeho vliv v anglické kultuře tím však nesnížil. Posléze se obrátil k próze (zejm. v díle "The Great Tradition"), ocenil Jane Austenovou, George Eliota, Henry Jamese, Josepha Conrada a Davida Herberta Lawrence. Negativně hodnotil naopak beletrii Charlese Dickense, Laurence Sternea a Thomase Hardyho (u Dickense však svůj názor korigoval speciální studií "Dickens the Novelist" z roku 1970). Jeho poslední díla mají již více filozofický nádech (např. "Scrutiny: The Common Pursuit", "The Living Principle: ‘English’ as a Discipline of Thought"). Jeho vliv na zejména anglosaské myšlení o literatuře byl mimořádný, hlásila se k němu celá generace kulturních a literárních teoretiků, jimž se říkalo leavisisté.


Sims University life.

Sims University is a sub-neighborhood probably based on New England Campuses that functions similarly to the vacation worlds in "". Its mascot is a llama. In order to attend university, a Sim must be a young adult, adult or elder. When a non-player mascot is near the Sims' lots, they can take an aptitude test. The results will depend on their skills, traits, work experience and school grades. The results also show the total aptitude score, along with the sub-scores for the majors and cerid award. The amount of financial assistance (scholarship) provided to the Sim is also determined by the test. Teen can also take the aptitude test, to see what skills they need to work on but they can not go to University before they grow up to be a young adult.  Enrolling in college can be done on phone, computer, or going to the public school and enrolling there. The player can select the Sim's major, out of either Business, Communications, Fine Arts, Physical Education, Science and Medicine, or Technology, as well as the number of credits they wish to study for, and whether they want to study for one or two terms. Taking more credits will allow a Sim to obtain their degree faster, but they will have more of their time taken up by studying.  To receive a degree, a Sim must obtain 48 credits for it, and pass their final exams. Having a degree will allow a Sim to start at a higher level in careers relevant to the degree, and they will also be paid more. These benefits will increase the higher the Sim's grade.  "University Life" also introduces social groups: Jocks, Nerds and Rebels. The player can join these social groups, and move up in their rankings by befriending members of the group and/or doing activities and interactions related to the group. As they progress through the ranks they can unlock new interactions and objects, and later pick an additional trait. A Sim who reaches rank 10 with a group will be given a job offer in a special career unique to that group.

Development.

It was first leaked on the Russian version of Origin, but later taken down. It was then hinted in a teaser in a Maxis live broadcast, and the Spanish version of the logo was displayed at an EA game launch event that showcased new releases including "The Sims 3: 70s, 80s & 90s Stuff". Nine screenshots were leaked on the EA-owned website Digital River, but fansites were asked to remove them, though they still exist in posts on "The Sims 3" official community forums. On December 29, 2012, "The Sims 3: University Life" was rated T for Teen by the ESRB, confirming that it was official, and had completed development. The game was officially announced on January 8, 2013. The expansion pack was released in North America on March 5, 2013 and Europe on March 8, 2013 with the North American release date coinciding with "SimCity".

The Sims 3: University Life is the ninth expansion pack for "The Sims 3". It is not to be confused with "The Sims 2"s "University Life Collection", which was released in 2009 and featured "", as well as two stuff packs ("IKEA Home Stuff" and "Teen Style Stuff").

The Sims 3: Studentský život () je devátý datadisk do simulátoru The Sims 3. Vydání bylo v Severní Americe 5. března, v Evropě poté 7. března 2013.


Early life.

Cain was born into an Irish Catholic family in Annapolis, Maryland. The son of an educator and a failed opera singer, he inherited a love of music from his mother, but his hopes of a career as a singer were thwarted when she told him that his voice was not good enough. The family moved to Chestertown, Maryland, in 1903. In 1910, Cain graduated from Washington College, where his father, James W. Cain, served as president. By 1914, Cain had decided to become a writer. He began working as a journalist for the "Baltimore American" and then the "Baltimore Sun".  Cain was drafted into the United States Army and spent the final year of World War I in France writing for an army magazine.

Career.

Upon returning to the United States, Cain continued working as a journalist, writing editorials for the "New York World" and a play, a short story, and satirical pieces for "American Mercury". He briefly served as the managing editor of "The New Yorker" and later worked mainly on screenplays and novels.  His first novel, "The Postman Always Rings Twice", was published in 1934. Two years later "Double Indemnity" was serialized in "Liberty" magazine.  Cain made use of his love of music, particularly the opera, in at least three of his novels: "Serenade", about an American opera singer who loses his voice and, after spending part of his life south of the border, re-enters the United States illegally with a Mexican prostitute; "Mildred Pierce", in which, as part of the subplot, the surviving daughter of a successful businesswoman trains as an opera singer; and "Career in C Major", a short semi-comic novel about the unhappy husband of an aspiring opera singer, who unexpectedly discovers that he has a better voice than she does. In his novel "The Moth", music is important in the life of the main character. Cain's fourth wife, Florence Macbeth, was a retired opera singer.  Cain spent many years in Hollywood working on screenplays, but his name appears as a screenwriter in the credits of only two films: "Stand Up and Fight" (1939) and "Gypsy Wildcat" (1944), for which he is one of three credited screenwriters. For "Algiers" (1938) Cain received a credit for "additional dialogue", and he had story credits for other films.

American Authors' Authority.

In 1946, Cain wrote four articles for "Screen Writer" magazine in which he proposed the creation of an "American Authors' Authority" to hold writers' copyrights and represent writers in contract negotiations and court disputes. This idea was dubbed the "Cain plan" in the media. The plan was denounced as communist by some writers, who formed the American Writers Association to oppose it. James T. Farrell was the foremost of these opponents. The "Saturday Review" printed a debate between Cain and Farrell in November 1946. Farrell argued that the commercial Hollywood writers would control the market and keep out independents. "This idea is stamped in the crude conceptions of the artist which Mr. Cain holds, the notion that the artist is a kind of idiot who thinks that he is a God, but who has only the defects and none of the virtues of a God.” In his reply, Cain argued that his opponents understood the issue incorrectly as freedom versus control. It is fear of reprisals from publishers, Cain said, that is the real cause of opposition from well-to-do writers.  Although Cain worked vigorously to promote the Authority, it did not gain widespread support, and the plan was abandoned.

Personal life.

Cain was married to Mary Clough in 1919. That marriage ended in divorce, and he soon married Elina Sjösted Tyszecka. Cain never had any children of his own, but he was close to Elina's two children from a previous marriage. In 1944, Cain married the film actress Aileen Pringle, but the marriage was a tempestuous union and dissolved in a bitter divorce two years later. His fourth marriage, to Florence Macbeth, lasted until her death in 1966.  Cain continued writing up to his death, at the age of 85. He published many novels from the late 1940s onward, but none achieved the financial and popular success of his earlier books.

Bibliography.

Novels and novellas.

The Postman Always Rings Twice was published as an Armed Services Edition during WWII, as was Three of a Kind. (The Armed Services Edition of Three of a Kind was published under the title Double Indemnity.)

Films.

The following films were adapted from Cain's novels, screenplays and stories.

References.

Notes  Bibliography

James Mallahan Cain (July 1, 1892 – October 27, 1977) was an American author and journalist. Cain vehemently opposed labeling, but he is usually associated with the hardboiled school of American crime fiction and is seen as one of the creators of the "roman noir". Several of his crime novels inspired successful movies.

Ignacio „Nacho“ Monreal Eraso (* 26. února 1986, Pamplona) je španělský fotbalista, který hraje od roku 2019 za španělský klub Real Sociedad. Nastupoval rovněž za španělskou reprezentaci.


Club career.

Osasuna.

A product of CA Osasuna's youth ranks, Monreal was born in Pamplona, and made his official debut for his hometown club in an away game against Valencia CF on 22 October 2006, in a 0–1 La Liga loss. He finished his first season with ten league appearances, adding two in the campaign's UEFA Champions League; after the Navarrese's relegation to the UEFA Cup, he appeared in four matches as the team reached the last four, being eliminated by fellow league side Sevilla FC.  Monreal became first-choice in 2007–08, retaining that status in the subsequent seasons, with another youth product, César Azpilicueta, being the undisputed starter in the other defensive wing.

Málaga.

On 10 June 2011, Monreal signed a five-year contract with Málaga CF on a €6 million transfer fee. In his first season he initially battled for first-choice status with Eliseu, but ended up only missing seven games as the club finished fourth and qualified for the Champions League for the first time.  Monreal scored his only goal for the Andalusians on 27 January 2013, in a 3–2 away win against RCD Mallorca.

Arsenal.

On 31 January 2013, Monreal joined English side Arsenal on a long-term contract. He was given the number 17 shirt. The fee was undisclosed, but was believed by "Sky Sports" to be around £8.5 million. He made his Premier League debut against Stoke City two days later in a 1–0 home win.  On 23 February 2013, Monreal provided the assist for fellow countryman Santi Cazorla to score the winner in a 2–1 victory over Aston Villa. He scored his first goal for the Gunners on 16 March, opening the scoring in a 2–0 win at Swansea City.  Monreal returned from injury on 21 August 2013 to feature in Arsenal's 3–0 win at Fenerbahçe SK in the Champions League group stage play-off, playing the last three minutes in the place of Theo Walcott. On 26 September, he scored the deciding penalty in a shootout against West Bromwich Albion to send his team into the fourth round of the League Cup.  Upon the arrival of Alexis Sánchez in the 2014 off-season, Monreal took the vacant number 18 previously worn by Sébastien Squillaci. On 23 August, he assisted Olivier Giroud's late equalizer in a 2–2 draw against Everton. Additionally, an injury crisis in the squad saw him being deployed in an unfamiliar central defender role in a string of games, after Laurent Koscielny was put out of action due to an Achilles tendon injury.  On 9 March 2015, Monreal scored the opening goal in a 2–1 win over Manchester United at Old Trafford that put Arsenal through to the semi-finals of the FA Cup. He played the full 90 minutes in the final, a 4–0 defeat of Aston Villa at Wembley Stadium.  On 19 January 2016, Monreal signed a new long-term contract with Arsenal. On 23 April 2017, he scored the vital equalizer as his team came from behind to defeat Manchester City in the FA Cup semi-final at Wembley.  On 6 November 2017, after good performances on the left side of a three-man defence, Monreal won the Professional Footballers' Association Player of the Month award for October of that year. The following 20 January, he netted once and made two assists before retiring injured 30 minutes into an eventual 4–1 home win against Crystal Palace.

Real Sociedad.

Monreal returned to Spain on 31 August 2019, with the 33-year-old joining Real Sociedad on a two-year contract. He scored on his competitive debut two weeks later, converting an easy tap-in at the hour mark of an eventual 2–0 victory over Atlético Madrid at Anoeta Stadium.

International career.

In 2007, Monreal earned his first call for the Spain under-21 team. He started all their matches in the 2009 UEFA European Championship, in an eventual group stage exit.  On 6 August 2009, Monreal was called up to the senior side for the first time, for an exhibition game with Macedonia. He played the last 15 minutes for Joan Capdevila in a 3–2 away success; on 7 September 2010, in the nation's second game after they won the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, he played the entire 1–4 friendly loss to Argentina.  Monreal was a member of the Spanish squad which reached the final of the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup in Brazil, although he was second-choice left back behind FC Barcelona's Jordi Alba. He started in the last two group games, beginning with a 10–0 win over Tahiti at the Maracanã in which he set up a David Villa goal.  Monreal scored his first goal for Spain on 12 November 2016, contributing to a 4–0 defeat of Macedonia for the 2018 World Cup qualifiers in Granada. He was then selected by manager Julen Lopetegui for the finals in Russia.

Style of play.

Upon signing with Arsenal in 2013, the club's manager Arsène Wenger described Monreal as: "a strong left-sided defender with good experience at both club and international level. He is a technically gifted player, a good crosser in the final third and strong in the air." Although he usually plays as a defensive–minded left-back in a four-man back-line, he is also capable of playing as a centre-back, or even as a left-sided defender in a back three.

Honours.

Arsenal  Spain  Individual

Ignacio "Nacho" Monreal Eraso (; born 26 February 1986) is a Spanish professional footballer who plays as a left back or centre back for Real Sociedad and the Spanish national team.

James Mallahan Cain (1. července 1892 – 27. října 1977) byl americký spisovatel a novinář. Ačkoliv Cain striktně odmítal „škatulkování“, je často spojován s tzv. drsnou školou amerického detektivního románu (anglicky: "hardboiled school of American crime fiction") a je považován za jednoho z tvůrců "románu noir". Několik jeho detektivních románů se stalo předlohou úspěšných hollywoodských filmů (např. "Pošťák vždy zvoní dvakrát", "Mildred Pierceová" nebo "Pojistka smrti").


Early life and career (1949 to 1972).

Richard Thompson was born in Ladbroke Crescent, Notting Hill, West London, England. His father, a Scot, was a Scotland Yard detective, and an amateur guitar player; several other family members had played music professionally. While attending William Ellis School in Highgate, he formed his first band, Emil and the Detectives (named after a book and a movie by the same title) with classmate Hugh Cornwell, later lead singer and guitarist of The Stranglers, on bass guitar.  Like so many musicians of his generation, Thompson was exposed to and embraced rock and roll music at an early age, and he was also exposed to his father's jazz and traditional Scottish music record collection. His father had seen Django Reinhardt play in Glasgow in the 1930s and played guitar himself. He was later described by his son as "a bad amateur player... with three chords, though, unfortunately, not C, F and G." All these musical genres were to colour Thompson's playing in the years to come.  Joe Boyd said:  By the age of 18 Thompson was playing with the newly formed Fairport Convention. Thompson's guitar playing caught the ear of American producer Joe Boyd. Largely on the strength of Thompson's playing, Boyd took them under his wing and signed them to his Witchseason production and management company.  Boyd said:  Shortly thereafter Thompson, already acquiring a reputation as an outstanding guitar player, started writing songs seriously. This seems to have been out of necessity as Fairport Convention was essentially a cover band at first.  By early 1969, when Fairport's second album "What We Did on Our Holidays" was recorded and released, Thompson was starting to emerge as a songwriter of distinction. As Fairport's lineup and their sound evolved, Thompson continued to grow in stature as a player and as a songwriter with compositions like "Meet on the Ledge".  On 12 May 1969, between the recording and release of their next album "Unhalfbricking", Fairport's van crashed on the M1 motorway on the way home from a gig at Mothers, a club in Birmingham. Drummer Martin Lamble, aged 19, and Thompson's girlfriend Jeannie Franklyn were killed. The rest of the band suffered injuries of varying severity. Later in 1969, Fairport re-grouped with a new drummer, Dave Mattacks, and also invited the well known fiddle player, Dave Swarbrick, to join. Thompson and Swarbrick worked together to create songs such as "Crazy Man Michael" from the band's seminal 1969 folk-rock album "Liege & Lief" and "Sloth" from its 1970 follow-up "Full House".  In January 1971 Thompson announced that he was leaving Fairport Convention. His decision seems to have been instinctive, rather than a calculated career move:  In April 1972 he released his first solo album "Henry the Human Fly", recording with Sandy Denny, Pat Donaldson, Sue Draheim, John Kirkpatrick, Barry Dransfield, Ashley Hutchings, Linda Peters, Andy Roberts, and others. The album sold poorly and was panned by the press, especially the influential "Melody Maker" magazine. With time "Henry" has come to be more highly regarded, but at the time the critics' response hurt both Thompson and his career.

1970s: Richard and Linda Thompson.

By the 1970s, Thompson had begun a relationship with the singer Linda Peters, who had sung on "Henry the Human Fly". In October 1972 the couple were married, and Thompson, with Linda now effectively his front woman, regrouped for his next album and the next phase of his career.  The first Richard and Linda Thompson album, "I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight", was recorded in May 1973 in short time and on a small budget. Largely because of the petrol shortage in Britain and its impact on the availability of vinyl for records, "Bright Lights" was held back by Island Records for nearly a year before being released in April 1974. The album was well received by critics, though sales were less than stellar.  Thompson's lyrics expressed a rather dismal world view, and it has been suggested that the bleak subject matter of his songs helped to keep his recordings off the hit parade. A more likely explanation was given by ex-Island A&R man Richard Williams in the 2003 BBC TV documentary "Solitary Life": Thompson was just not interested in fame and its trappings.  The Thompsons recorded two more albums—"Hokey Pokey" and "Pour Down Like Silver", both released in 1975—before Richard Thompson decided to leave the music business. The couple moved to a Sufi community in East Anglia.  It was not apparent from their records at first, but the Thompsons had embraced an esoteric Sufi strand of Islam in early 1974. "I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight" was recorded before this conversion, but released some time afterwards. The songs for the second Richard and Linda album, "Hokey Pokey", were similarly written some time ahead of the album's recording and eventual release. It was "Pour Down Like Silver", with its cover photo of a turbaned Richard Thompson, that tipped the public off to the Thompsons' growing preoccupation with their faith.  The trilogy of albums released before and after his sojourn in the commune was heavily influenced by Thompson's beliefs and by Sufi scripture, but in the long run his religious beliefs have not influenced his work in an obvious manner. The outlook expressed in his songs, his musical style, the subjects addressed by his lyrics have not shown any fundamental change. He remains a committed Muslim.  Thompson started to re-engage with the world of professional music in 1977. He played on an album by Sandy Denny, and had undertaken a short tour and started recording with a group of musicians who were also Sufis. Thompson asked Joe Boyd to produce these sessions, and two days were spent on the initial recordings. Boyd recalls that the sessions were not a success: "It was really, I felt, very poor. I didn't have much confidence in the musicians that he was working with. The atmosphere was very strange and it just didn't seem to work."  At about this time the Thompsons and their family moved out of the commune and back to their old home in Hampstead. Boyd had already invited Richard Thompson to play on Julie Covington's debut album. With spare studio time and the American session musicians hired to work on the Covington album available, the Thompsons went back into the studio to record under their own name for the first time in three years.  The resulting album, "First Light", was warmly received by critics but did not sell particularly well. Neither did its follow up, 1979's harder-edged and more cynical "Sunnyvista". Chrysalis Records did not take up their option to renew the contract, and the Thompsons found themselves without one.

1980s.

Gerry Rafferty had booked the Thompsons as the support act for his 1980 tour, and had also used Richard as a session player on his "Night Owl" album. Rafferty offered to finance the recording of a new Richard and Linda Thompson album which he would then use to secure a contract for the Thompsons. Richard Thompson fell out with Rafferty during this project and was not happy with the finished product. Nevertheless, Rafferty kept his side of the bargain and presented the album to several record companies – none of which expressed interest in signing the Thompsons. Rafferty did not recover his investment.  About a year later Joe Boyd signed the Thompsons to his small Hannibal label and a new album was recorded. "Shoot Out the Lights" included new recordings of many of the songs recorded in 1980. Linda Thompson was pregnant at the time of the recording, so the album's release was delayed until they could tour behind the album. Breathing problems arising from her pregnancy also meant that Linda could not sing the lead part on some of these songs as she had done on demo tapes and the Rafferty-produced recordings.  As an interim measure, Richard Thompson agreed to a short (5-day), low-key solo tour of the U.S. This tour was set up by Nancy Covey, then concert director for McCabe's Guitar Shop in Santa Monica. Covey, who had been in the UK in 1981 trying to sign Thompson to play at McCabe's, arranged for Thompson well-received 5 and 6 December shows. It was during this tour that Thompson and Covey developed an intimate relationship, and during that month, Richard and Linda Thompson separated.  Upon its release in 1982, "Shoot Out the Lights" was lauded by critics and sold quite well – especially in the U.S.  The Thompsons, now a couple for professional purposes only, toured the United States in support of the album, their only American tour together. Both the album and their live shows were well received by the American media, and "Shoot Out the Lights" effectively relaunched their career – just as their marriage was falling apart. The performances, with a backing band including both Simon Nicol and Dave Mattacks of Fairport Convention, were seen as strong, but the tension between Richard and Linda was all too obvious. For this reason, the Thompsons' fans often refer to the "Shoot Out the Lights" tour as "The Tour from Hell". Upon returning home, Richard and Linda went their separate ways.  Richard Thompson continued recording as a solo artist. His 1983 album "Hand of Kindness" saw him working with Boyd again, but with a revised backing band and a more extroverted and up-tempo song selection.  With his separation from Linda finalized, Richard Thompson began to commute between twin bases in London and Los Angeles and to tour regularly in the USA. Encouraged by the success of his solo shows in late 1981 and early 1982, he began to perform solo with increasing frequency and continued to tour with a band. In 1983 and 1984 he toured the US and Europe with the Richard Thompson Big Band, which included two saxophone players in addition to the more usual rhythm section, second guitar and accordion. Set lists included covers of classic rock 'n roll songs and jazz standards such as "Tuxedo Junction".  In 1985 Thompson signed with PolyGram and received a sizeable advance. He and Nancy Covey married at an alcohol-free wedding that included a who's who of roots-music performers who Covey knew well from McCabe's and the Los Angeles music scene, and had introduced to Thompson. After their wedding, Thompson moved his home and working base to California. As part of the settlement that allowed Thompson to leave Boyd's Hannibal label for Polygram, the live album "Small Town Romance" was released. This comprised recordings made during Thompson's solo shows in the US in late 1981 and early 1982.  1985's "Across a Crowded Room" was his last album to be recorded in England and the last to have Boyd as producer. Thompson put together a new look backing band for the tour to promote this album, and some shows were filmed for a live video release (see Richard Thompson discography).  In 1986 he released "Daring Adventures", which was recorded in Los Angeles and produced by Mitchell Froom. "Daring Adventures", with a rich sound, markedly different production and use of American session players, was perceived by some as evidence of Thompson's increasing "Americanisation". Perhaps more significantly, the album continued the trend, begun with "Across A Crowded Room," of Thompson's songs moving away from the seemingly personal material and towards the character sketches and narratives for which he has since become famous. Froom and PolyGram had plans to target college and the growing "alternative" markets with "Daring Adventures". Sales improved, but not substantially. Polygram declined an option to renew the contract. Thompson's management negotiated a new deal with Capitol Records.  In 1985 Fairport Convention reformed and recorded the album "Gladys' Leap". Thompson did not rejoin Fairport, but he did contribute a song to the project and played guitar on another track on the album.  1988 saw the release of Thompson's first album for Capitol, "Amnesia". Froom was retained as producer, and once again the album was recorded in Los Angeles with many of the same players that Froom had called upon for the "Daring Adventures" sessions.

1990s.

Thompson contributed music to BBC Northwest's documentary "Hard Cash" and appears on the eponymous accompanying album issued by Topic. A track from the album, "Time To Ring Some Changes" is included in the 2009 Topic Records 70-year anniversary boxed set "Three Score and Ten" as track thirteen on the sixth CD.  Thompson appears on Willie Nile's 1991 "Places I Have Never Been" album.  In 1991 Thompson recorded "Rumor and Sigh", his second album for Capitol. Once again Froom produced. This album, particularly the acoustic guitar ballad "1952 Vincent Black Lightning," was hailed by critics and fans alike and greatly advanced Thompson's reputation as a leading traditional-style guitarist.  "Rumor and Sigh" was nominated for a Grammy and sold well. However, a shake-up at Capitol saw Hale Milgrim (Thompson's champion and fan within the boardroom) replaced by Garry Gersh. Thus, Thompson's next album "Mirror Blue" was held back for almost a year before being released.  Thompson was awarded the Orville H. Gibson Award for best acoustic guitar player in 1997.  In 1992 he performed with David Byrne. Their joint acoustic concert at St. Ann & The Holy Trinity in Brooklyn Heights, New York on 24 March, produced the album "An Acoustic Evening", which was released the same year.  "Mirror Blue" was released in 1994, to often negative reviews sparked by the production decisions that Thompson and Froom took. Thompson took to the road to promote the album. He was joined by drummer Dave Mattacks, Danny Thompson (no relation) on double bass, and Pete Zorn on acoustic guitar, backing vocals, mandolin and various wind instruments. This line-up toured with Thompson the following two years.  Thompson continued recording for Capitol until 1999, when "Mock Tudor" was recorded and released. His deal with Capitol was modified so that he could release and directly market limited-quantity, live recorded, not-for-retail albums. The first of these was "Live at Crawley", released in 1995.

2000s.

In 2001 Thompson declined the option to renew his contract with Capitol.  Thompson appeared on his ex-wife Linda's studio album "Fashionably Late" on the song "Dear Mary". It was the first time the two had recorded together since "Shoot Out the Lights".  In 2003 the BBC produced a documentary about Thompson's long musical career, entitled "Solitary Life", directed by Paul Bernays and narrated by John Peel. It featured interviews with Thompson from his home in California and contributions from Billy Connolly, Bonnie Raitt, ex-wife Linda Thompson, Harry Shearer and Thompson's then wife Nancy Covey. The programme was re-broadcast by BBC Four in September 2012.  The move away from big labels and big budgets paradoxically brought a bigger marketing push and healthier sales. Thompson's first two self-funded releases, 2003's "The Old Kit Bag" and 2005's "Front Parlour Ballads", did well in the indie charts on both sides of the Atlantic. In May 2007 Thompson released "Sweet Warrior". The album was licensed to different labels in different territories: Shout! Factory in the US, P-Vine in Japan, Planet Records in Australia, and Proper Records in the UK and Europe. In August of the same year Island released a live Richard and Linda Thompson album, compiled from recordings made during the November 1975 tour to promote the "Pour Down Like Silver" album.  Thompson continued releasing "official bootlegs" on his boutique label as an additional source of revenue – all live recordings.

2010s.

In early 2010 Thompson assembled a band and did a string of shows showcasing new material. The aim was to record the new material in a live setting. The recording and touring band consisted of Thompson, Pete Zorn, (acoustic guitar, flute, saxophone, mandolin, vocals); Michael Jerome (drums, vocals), Taras Prodaniuk, (bass guitar, vocals); and Joel Zifkin, (electric violin, mandolin, vocals). The resulting album "Dream Attic", released in August the same year, was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album.  On 10 June 2010 Thompson was awarded the "Mojo" Les Paul Award for "Guitar Legend".  Thompson curated the 2010 Meltdown Festival. The festival included a tribute to the recently deceased Kate McGarrigle, a feature of which was a rare on-stage reunion of Richard and Linda Thompson.  Thompson was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2011 New Year Honours for services to music. On 5 July 2011, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Aberdeen.  In early 2013 Thompson released "Electric", recorded in Nashville with Buddy Miller producing. The record enjoyed good reviews and debuted in the UK top 20. Thompson took to the road with a stripped down "power trio" band on a multi-month tour on both sides of the Atlantic to promote the new album.  Also in 2013, Thompson appeared on his ex-wife Linda's fourth studio album "Won't Be Long Now", on the track "Love's for Babies and Fools". It was the second time the two have recorded together since "Shoot Out the Lights".  In 2014, Thompson released "Acoustic Classics," an album featuring acoustic renditions of 14 songs from his back catalogue, on his Beeswing label. The record reached number 16 on the UK Albums Chart.  Thompson appears alongside family members, both blood related and by marriage, on the album "Family" (2014) by Thompson (the band being named for all the Thompsons that appear), performing two songs solo and contributing to others as well. The album was produced by son Teddy Thompson and features ex-wife Linda Thompson, The Rails who are Thompson's daughter Kami Thompson and her husband James Walbourne, as well as other related musicians, including Walbourne's brother and Richard Thompson's son from his second marriage. Thompson released "Still" in June 2015, an album produced by Jeff Tweedy of Wilco and recorded in Tweedy's The Loft Studio. The album reached number 10 in the UK Album chart, his first album to reach the UK top 10. In September 2015 he appeared on BBC Two's "Later... with Jools Holland", where he performed "All Buttoned Up" and ""She Never Could Resist a Winding Road" from his album "Still". This was followed, in 2017, by a second acoustic album "Acoustic Classics II" which reached number 24 on the UK Albums Chart. and "Acoustic Rarities", an album of new recordings of some of the more obscure songs in the Thompson catalogue, some previously existing only as cover versions.  Thompson's eighteenth studio album, "13 Rivers" was released on 14 September 2018. Thompson produced the record himself at Boulevard Recording in Los Angeles.  On 30 September 2019 Thompson played at the Royal Albert Hall to celebrate his 70th birthday.

Side projects and collaborations.

In between leaving Fairport Convention in early 1971 and releasing his debut solo album in 1972 he undertook a large amount of session work, most notably on albums by John Martyn, Al Stewart, Matthews Southern Comfort, Sandy Denny, Mike Heron and Nick Drake.  During the same period he also worked on two collaborative projects. "Morris On" was recorded with Ashley Hutchings, John Kirkpatrick, Dave Mattacks and Barry Dransfield, and was a collection of English traditional tunes arranged for electric instruments. "The Bunch" were almost the reverse conceptually – a grouping of English folk rock musicians (including Sandy Denny, Linda Peters and members of Fairport Convention) recording a selection of classic rock and roll tunes.  Thompson has continued to guest on albums by an array of artists, from Crowded House, Bonnie Raitt and Vivian Stanshall, to Norma Waterson and BeauSoleil and folk artists like Loudon Wainwright III, Cathal McConnell (of The Boys of the Lough) and Bob Davenport. He has also performed and recorded with Teddy Thompson, his son from his marriage to Linda Thompson. Since the early 1980s Thompson has appeared at Fairport Convention's annual Cropredy Festival, both in his own right and as a participant in sets with current and previous Fairport members. These sets are seldom confined to performances of songs out of the Thompson or Fairport Convention canons, and in recent years some surprise offerings have included the soul classic "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" (with Thompson backed by the Roy Wood Big Band), The Beatles' "I'm Down" and even "The Lady Is a Tramp".  Thompson has displayed a penchant for the avant garde as well, working with former Pere Ubu singer David Thomas's grouping The Pedestrians on two albums in 1981 and 1982, respectively. In the 1980s, he was associated with a loose-fitting group called The Golden Palominos, who were led by drummer Anton Fier and included at times on stage and on record Jack Bruce, Michael Stipe, Carla Bley, John Lydon, Bill Laswell and others. He has worked with experimental guitarist Henry Kaiser, most notably as part of the ad hoc grouping French Frith Kaiser Thompson with whom he recorded two albums. In 1997 he worked with long-time friend and band member Danny Thompson to record a concept album "Industry" that dealt with the decline of British industry. A year later he worked with early music expert Philip Pickett on the acclaimed "Bones of All Men" which fused renaissance tunes with contemporary music.  For several years Thompson devised and toured his show "1000 Years of Popular Music". The inspiration for this came when "Playboy" asked Thompson (and many other music industry figures) in 1999 for their suggestions for the "top ten songs of the millennium". Guessing that "Playboy" expected most people's lists to start at around 1950, Thompson took the magazine at its word and presented a list of songs from the 11th century to the present day. Perhaps not surprisingly, "Playboy" did not use his list, but the exercise gave him the idea for a show which takes a chronological trip through popular music across the ages. Thompson acknowledges that this is an ambitious undertaking, partly because he reckons that he is technically unqualified to sing 98% of the material, and partly because of the sparse musical setting he restricts himself to: besides his acoustic guitar, he's backed by singer/pianist Judith Owen and percussionist/singer Debra Dobkin. A typical performance would start with a medieval round, progress via a Purcell aria, Victorian music hall and Hoagy Carmichael and end with Thompson's take on the Britney Spears hit "Oops!... I Did It Again".  In 2004 Thompson was asked to create the soundtrack music for the Werner Herzog documentary "Grizzly Man". The score, which was recorded over a two-day period in December 2004, brought Thompson together with a group of improvisational musicians, mostly from the San Francisco Bay area; video footage from the sessions was edited into a mini-documentary, "In the Edges," which was included with the DVD release of "Grizzly Man".  In 2009 Thompson was commissioned to write a piece for the International Society of Bassists in honour of Danny Thompson. The resulting Cabaret of Souls, a musical play set in the underworld, has been performed in State College (Pennsylvania), London, and Los Angeles with a cast that includes Harry Shearer, Judith Owen, Debra Dobkin, Pete Zorn, either Danny Thompson or David Piltch, and a 12-piece string section conducted by Peter Askim. This suite was eventually commercially released in late 2012.  In 2006 and 2013, Thompson recorded Hugh S. Roberton's "Mingulay Boat Song" and the traditional "General Taylor" for the sea shanty-compilations "" and "".  In July 2019 New West Records released a soundtrack album for the documentary "The Cold Blue", featuring the film's original score composed by Thompson. The film, directed by Erik Nelson, tells the story of the Eighth Air Force which flew multiple deadly missions during World War II and features newly restored 4K footage and outtakes, shot by director William Wyler, during the summer of 1943 for his 1944 documentary "".

Retrospectives and tributes.

There are a number of retrospective collections of Thompson's work, many containing material which is unavailable elsewhere. 1976's "(guitar, vocal)" was a collection of unreleased material from the previous eight years of Thompson's appearances on the Island label. The 3-CD set "Watching the Dark" combines his better-known songs and previously unreleased live and studio tracks. "Action Packed" is a compilation of tracks from his Capitol releases, plus three hard-to-find songs. Finally, in 2006, the independent label Free Reed released "RT- The Life and Music of Richard Thompson", a 5-CD box set consisting almost entirely of previously unreleased performances of songs from throughout Thompson's long career.  Thompson's songs have been extensively covered; for example, Dimming of the Day has been performed by artists such as The Neville Brothers, Bonnie Raitt, Emmylou Harris, David Gilmour, The Blind Boys of Alabama, June Tabor, The Corrs and Alison Krauss and Union Station. There have been several tribute compilations of other artists' interpretations of his work, including: Capitol's "" and Green Linnet's "", both released in 1994.

Playing style.

Thompson makes use of the "pick and fingers" technique (sometimes referred to as "hybrid picking") where he plays bass notes and rhythm with a pick between his first finger and thumb, and adds melody and punctuation by plucking the treble strings with his fingers. He also makes use of different guitar tunings, such as (low to high) CGDGBE, DADGBE, DADGAD, and more. This enables him to adapt traditional songs, as on "Strict Tempo!" and "1000 Years of Popular Music". Thompson occasionally makes use of a thumb-pick, playing in fingerstyle, the most notable example being on the motorcycle ballad "1952 Vincent Black Lightning."

Guitars.

Electric.

Thompson is often associated with the Fender Stratocaster guitar. He has made prominent use of Stratocasters, as he has a general preference for the sound of single coil pick-ups.  Prior to using a Stratocaster with Fairport Convention he used a Gibson Les Paul with P-90 pick-ups. he then switched to a late 60s Stratocaster. Since leaving Fairport Convention he has continued to use electric guitars with single coil pick-ups, most famously a late-1950s Stratocaster but also two custom built electrics by Danny Ferrington as well as other Stratocasters, various Telecaster-type guitars and, in the studio, a Danelectro U2.  As regards effects, he has made significant use of modulation and vibrato type effects pedals, most notably the Univibe and emulations thereof.  Thompson has made intermittent use of Roland's GK-1 pick-up and GL-2 synthesiser over the years. He made use of these devices on 1979's "Sunnyvista" album and has occasionally used them in concert.

Acoustic.

Since the early 1990s Thompson has made prominent use of Lowden acoustic guitars for studio and live work; Lowden have made a signature model for him. Before this he used a Martin 000-18 as well as instruments built by Danny Ferrington.  For live work his acoustic guitars are fitted with a Sunrise pick-up and an internal condenser microphone. The output from the pick-up is usually fed into some effects pedals, typically a delay pedal and a Uni-Vibe.

References.

Bibliography

Richard Thompson (born 3 April 1949) is an English singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Thompson first gained prominence in the late 1960s as the lead guitarist and songwriter for the folk rock group Fairport Convention, which he had co-founded in 1967. After departing the group in 1971, Thompson released his debut solo album "Henry the Human Fly" in 1972. The next year, he formed a duo with his then-wife Linda Thompson, which produced six albums, including the critically acclaimed "I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight" (1974) and "Shoot Out the Lights" (1982). After the dissolution of the duo, Thompson revived his solo career with the release of "Hand of Kindness" in 1983. He has released a total of eighteen solo studio albums. Three of his albums – "Rumor and Sigh" (1991), "You? Me? Us?" (1996), and "Dream Attic" (2010) – have been nominated for Grammy Awards, while "Still" (2015) was his first UK Top Ten album. He continues to write and record new material regularly and frequently performs live at venues throughout the world.

Richard Thompson, OBE (* 3. dubna 1949 Notting Hill Gate, Londýn Anglie) je britský zpěvák a kytarista. V roce 1967 spoluzaložil skupinu Fairport Convention, ve které působil do roku 1971. Po jejím opuštění začal vydávat vlastní alba a rovněž společná alba se svou manželkou Lindou Thompson. Spolupracoval s mnoha dalšími hudebníky, mezi něž patří například John Cale, David Byrne a Nick Drake.


History.

Wikipedia started being multilingual in May 2001., Wikipedia had approximately 9.25 million articles in 253 languages. The Urdu Wikipedia was created on January 27, 2004. At first, Urdu Wikipedia faced technical problems with the Urdu script font, but now this matter is mostly settled; some unsolved areas remain. Urdu is written in Perso-Arabic script, a right-to-left writing system. As a result, users sometimes need to configure their operating systems and web browsers accordingly.  Currently Urdu Wikipedia uses "Urdu Naskh Asiatype" font, which was introduced and is freely distributed by BBC at BBC Urdu Service website. The font is primarily used for article bodies and headings. Urdu variation of Times New Roman is used for navigation links. Both of these fonts are variations of Naskh style.  Some Pakistani variations of complex Nasta'liq script are also supported only as a secondary choice in class definitions of CSS, i.e. if default font is not found on client system, then Nasta'liq script is used.  The translation of the Wikipedia interface and project information pages into Urdu is still in progress. Some pages about how to edit have been translated.

Research.

In 2019, the Urdu Wikipedia has 178 thousand unique categories and 4.96% of them do not have appropriate page in the category. The average article in this language version has 7 categories, while number of unique categories per articles ratio is 1.23. The largest number of articles has Government (19%) and Politics (18%) category. In Urdu Wikipedia articles related to Organizations and Crime has the highest average quality. Content about Military is read more often and articles in Education category have the highest authors' interest on average.

Urdu Wikipedia (), started in January 2004, is the Urdu language edition of Wikipedia, a free, open-content encyclopedia. As of, it has articles, registered users, files, and ranks among Wikipedias. It is also the 50th largest edition of Wikipedia by article count.

Urdská Wikipedie je jazyková verze Wikipedie v urdštině. Byla založena v lednu 2004. V lednu 2020 obsahovala přes 150 000 článků a pracovalo pro ni 13 správců. Registrováno bylo přes 105 000 uživatelů, z nichž bylo asi 280 aktivních. V počtu článků byla 53. největší Wikipedie.


Australia.

Most of the mineral springs in Australia are in the Central Highlands of Victoria, although there are a few springs in South Australia, Moree, New South Wales and Queensland. Most are within 30 km of Daylesford, Victoria: the Daylesford and Hepburn Springs call themselves 'Spa Country' and the 'Spa Centre of Australia'.

Bosnia and Herzegovina.

"See: List of spa towns in Bosnia and Herzegovina"  Banja Vrućica, Teslić

Brazil.

"See: List of spa towns in Brazil"  Brazil has a growing number of spa towns. The traditional ones are: Águas de Lindoia, Serra Negra, Águas de São Pedro, Caxambu, Poços de Caldas, Caldas Novas, Araxá, and São Lourenço.

Bulgaria.

"See: List of spa towns in Bulgaria"  Bulgaria is known for its more than 500 mineral springs, including the hottest spring in the Balkans at Sapareva Banya - 103 °C. Other famous spa towns include Sandanski, Hisarya, Bankya, Devin, Kyustendil, Varshets, Velingard.  In Bulgarian, the word for a spa is "баня" (transliterated "banya").

Canada.

"See: List of spa towns in Canada  Harrison Hot Springs is one of the oldest among 18 in British Columbia; there are also two in Alberta and one in Ontario.

Croatia.

"See: List of spa towns in Croatia"  In Croatia, the word "Toplice" implies a spa town. The most famous spa towns in Croatia are Daruvar, Šibenik and Sisak.

Czech Republic.

"See: Spa towns in the Czech Republic"  In the Czech Language, the word "Lázně" implies a spa town. The most famous spa towns in Czech Republic are Teplice and the of Karlovy Vary, Františkovy Lázně and Mariánské Lázně.

France.

"See: List of spa towns in France"  In France, the words "bains, thermes," and "eaux" in city names often imply a spa town. There are more than 50 spa towns in France, including Vichy, Aix-les-Bains, Bagnoles-de-l'Orne, Dax, and Enghien-les-Bains.

Georgia.

Borjomi

Germany.

"See: List of spa towns in Germany"  In Germany, the word "Bad" implies a spa town. Among the many famous spa towns in Germany are Bad Aachen, Baden-Baden, Bad Brückenau, Bad Ems, Bad Homburg, Bad Honnef, Bad Kissingen, Bad Kreuznach, Bad Mergentheim, Bad Muskau, Bad Oeynhausen, Bad Pyrmont, Bad Reichenhall, Bad Saarow, Bad Schandau, Bad Segeberg, Bad Soden, Bad Tölz, Bad Wildbad, Bad Wimpfen, Bad Wildstein, Berchtesgaden, Binz, Freudenstadt, Heiligendamm, Heringsdorf, Kampen, Königstein, Radebeul, Schwangau, St. Blasien, Titisee, Tegernsee, Travemünde and Zingst. Wiesbaden is the largest spa town in Germany.

Greece.

"See: List of spa towns in Greece"  The most popular spa towns in Greece are Aidipsos, Agkistro, Serres, Loutraki, Kamena Vourla, Kimolos, Loutra Kyllinis, Sidirokastro, Serres, Lakkos Milos, Loutrochori, Aridaia, Pella (Pozar)

Hungary.

"See: List of spa towns in Hungary"  In Hungary, the word "fürdő" or the more archaic "füred" ("bath"), "fürdőváros" ("spa town") or "fürdőhely" ("bathing place") implies a spa town. Hungary is rich in thermal waters with health benefits, and many spa towns are popular tourist destinations. Budapest has several spas, including Turkish style spas dating back to the 16th century. Eger also has a Turkish spa. Other famous spas include the ones at Hévíz, Harkány, Bük, Hajdúszoboszló, Gyula, Bogács, Bükkszék, Zalakaros, the Cave Bath at Miskolctapolca and the Zsóry-fürdő at Mezőkövesd.

Italy.

"See: List of spa towns in Italy"  In Italy, spa towns, called "città termale" (from Latin "thermae"), are very numerous all over the country because of the intense geological activity of the territory. These places were known and used since the Roman age.

Poland.

"See: List of spa towns in Poland"  Most spa towns in Poland are located in the Lesser Poland and Lower Silesian Voivodeships. Some of them have an affix ""Zdrój"" in their name (written with hyphen or separately), meaning "water spring", to denote their spa status, but this is not a general rule (e.g. Ciechocinek and Inowrocław are spa towns, but do not use the affix).

Portugal.

Portugal is well known by famous spa towns throughout of the country.  Due to its high quality, as well as the landscape where are located, the most important ones are:

Romania.

"See: List of spa towns in Romania"  In Romania, the word "Băile" implies a spa town. The most famous spa towns in Romania are Băile Herculane, Băile Felix, Mangalia, Covasna, Călimănești & Borsec.

Serbia.

"See: List of spa towns in Serbia"  Serbia is known for its many spa cities. Some of the best known springs are the Vrnjačka Banja, Bukovička Banja, Vrujci, Sokobanja and Niška Banja. The hottest spring in Serbia is at Vranjska Banja (96°C)  In Serbia, the word "Banja" implies a spa town.

Slovakia.

"See: Spa towns in Slovakia"  Slovakia is well known by its spa towns. The most famous is Piešťany. The most important spa towns in Slovakia are:

Slovenia.

Spa towns in Slovenia include Rogaška Slatina, Radenci, Čatež ob Savi, Dobrna, Dolenjske Toplice, Šmarješke Toplice and Moravske Toplice. They offer accommodation in hotels, apartments, bungalows, and camp sites. The Slovenian words "terme" or "toplice" imply a spa town.

Spain.

Spa towns in Spain include:

Taiwan.

Taiwan is home to a number of towns and cities with tourism infrastructure centered on hot springs. These include:

United Kingdom.

Some but not all UK spa towns contain "Spa", "Wells", or "Bath" in their names, e.g., Matlock Bath. Some towns are designated Spa Heritage Towns. Two out of three of the English towns granted the title "Royal", Royal Leamington Spa and Royal Tunbridge Wells, are spa towns.

Other countries.

"See: List of spa towns"

A spa town is a resort town based on a mineral spa (a developed mineral spring). Patrons visit spas to "take the waters" for their purported health benefits. The word "spa" is derived from the name of Spa, a town in Belgium.

Lázně (slovensky "kúpele", anglicky, francouzsky a polsky "spa", německy "Heilbad") jsou zařízení sloužící k léčbě nebo rehabilitaci lidí zejména formou koupání ve vodě. Přeneseně se lázněmi rozumí také sídelní útvar, v němž jsou provozovány lázně. Mezi nejnavštěvovanější česká lázeňská města patří Karlovy Vary, Mariánské Lázně, Františkovy Lázně, Luhačovice a Poděbrady. V roce 2011 navštívilo lázně v Česku kolem 700 000 hostů, z nichž přibližně polovina byli cizinci, a to především z Německa, Ruska a Rakouska.


Biography.

Early years and education.

Kenner was born in Peterborough, Ontario, on January 7, 1923. His father H. R. H. Kenner taught classics and his mother Mary (Williams) Kenner taught French and German at Peterborough Collegiate Institute. Kenner attributed his interest in literature to his poor hearing, caused by a bout of influenza during his childhood.  Attending the University of Toronto, Kenner studied under Marshall McLuhan, who wrote the introduction to Kenner's first book "Paradox in Chesterton", about G. K. Chesterton's works. Kenner's second book, "The Poetry of Ezra Pound" (1951) was dedicated to McLuhan, who had introduced Kenner to Pound on June 4, 1948, during Pound's incarceration at St. Elizabeths Hospital, Washington, DC, where Kenner and McLuhan had driven as a detour from their trip from Toronto to New Haven, Connecticut. (Pound, who became a friend of Kenner's, had suggested the book be titled "The Rose in the Steel Dust".) Later, Kenner said of McLuhan, "I had the advantage of being exposed to Marshall when he was at his most creative, and then of getting to the far end of the continent shortly afterward, when he couldn't get me on the phone all the time. He could be awfully controlling." Later, when McLuhan wrote that the development of cartography during the Renaissance created a geographical sense that had never previously existed, Kenner sent him a postcard reading in full: "Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, Yours, Hugh."  In 1950, Kenner earned a PhD from Yale University, with a dissertation on James Joyce, "James Joyce: Critique in Progress", for Cleanth Brooks. This work, which won the John Addison Porter Prize at Yale, became "Dublin's Joyce" in 1956.

Academic career.

Kenner's first teaching post was at the University of California, Santa Barbara (1951 to 1973); he then taught at Johns Hopkins University (from 1973 to 1990) and the University of Georgia (from 1990 to 1999).  Kenner played an influential role in raising Ezra Pound's profile among critics and other readers of poetry. The publication of "The Poetry of Ezra Pound" in 1951 "was the beginning, and the catalyst, for a change in attitude toward Pound on the American literary and educational scenes." "The Pound Era", the product of years of scholarship and considered by many to be Kenner's masterpiece, was published in 1971. This work was responsible for enshrining Pound's reputation (damaged by his wartime activities) as one of the greatest Modernists.  Though best known for his work on modernist literature, Kenner's range of interests was wide. His books include an appreciation of Chuck Jones, an introduction to geodesic math, and a user's guide for the Heathkit H100/Zenith Z-100 computer; in his later years he was a columnist for both "Art & Antiques" and "Byte" magazine. Kenner was a friend of William F. Buckley, Jr., to whom Kenner introduced word processing, and a contributor to "National Review". He also shared a close correspondence with Guy Davenport, the noted scholar and fiction writer.

Personal life.

Kenner was married twice: his first wife, Mary Waite, died in 1964; the couple had three daughters and two sons. His second wife, whom he married in 1965, was Mary-Anne Bittner; they had a son and a daughter.

Death.

Hugh Kenner died at his home in Athens, Georgia, on November 24, 2003.

William Hugh Kenner (January 7, 1923 – November 24, 2003) was a Canadian literary scholar, critic and professor. He published widely on Modernist literature with particular emphasis on James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and Samuel Beckett. His major study of the period, "The Pound Era", argued for Pound as the central figure of Modernism, and is considered one of the most important works on the topic.

William Hugh Kenner (7. ledna 1923 Peterborough – 24. listopadu 2003 Athens) byl kanadský literární teoretik a historik. Na Torontské univerzitě byl žákem Marshalla McLuhana, který později napsal i předmluvu k první Kennerově knize "Paradox in Chesterton". Byl přítelem Ezry Pounda, o němž napsal svou druhou knihu "The Poetry of Ezra Pound". Jeho dalšími velkými tématy byly James Joyce, Thomas Stearns Eliot či Samuel Beckett.