Early life.

Howard was born Leslie Howard Steiner to a British mother, Lilian ("née" Blumberg), and a Hungarian-Jewish father, Ferdinand Steiner, in Upper Norwood, London. Lilian had been brought up as a Christian, but she was of partial Jewish ancestry—her paternal grandfather Ludwig Blumberg, a Jewish merchant originally from East Prussia, had married into the English upper-middle classes.  He received his formal education at Alleyn's School, London. Like many others around the time of the First World War, the family anglicised its name, in this case to "Stainer", although Howard's name remained Steiner in official documents, such as his military records.  He was a 21-year-old bank clerk in Dulwich when the First World War broke out; in September 1914 he voluntarily enlisted (under the name Leslie Howard Steiner) as a Private with the British Army's Inns of Court Officer Training Corps in London. In February 1915 he received a commission as a subaltern with the 3/1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry Regiment, with which he trained in England until 19 May 1916, when he resigned his commission and was medically discharged from the British Army with neurasthenia.  In March 1920, Howard gave public notice in "The London Gazette" that by deed poll he had abandoned the use of the name Steiner and thereafter would be known by the name of Howard instead.

Theatre career.

Howard began his professional acting career in regional tours of "Peg O' My Heart" and "Charley's Aunt" in 1916–17 and on the London stage in 1917, but had his greatest theatrical success in the United States in Broadway theatre, in plays such as "Aren't We All?" (1923), "Outward Bound" (1924) and "The Green Hat" (1925). He became an undisputed Broadway star in "Her Cardboard Lover" (1927). After his success as time traveller Peter Standish in "Berkeley Square" (1929), Howard launched his Hollywood career in the film version of "Outward Bound", but didn't like the experience and vowed never to return to Hollywood. However, he did return, many times—later repeating the Standish role in the 1933 film version of "Berkeley Square".  The stage, however, continued to be an important part of his career. Howard frequently juggled acting, producing and directing duties in the Broadway productions in which he starred. Howard was also a dramatist, and starred in the Broadway production of his own play "Murray Hill" (1927). He played Matt Denant in John Galsworthy's 1927 Broadway production "Escape" in which he first made his mark as a dramatic actor. His stage triumphs continued with "The Animal Kingdom" (1932) and "The Petrified Forest" (1936). He later repeated both roles in the film versions.  Howard loved to play Shakespeare, but according to producer John Houseman he could be lazy about learning lines. He first sprang to fame playing in "Romeo and Juliet" (1936) in the role of the leading man. During the same period he had the misfortune to open on Broadway in "Hamlet" (1936) just a few weeks after John Gielgud launched a rival production of the same play that was far more successful with both critics and audiences. Howard's production, his final stage role, lasted for only 39 performances before closing.  Howard was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 1981.

Film career.

In 1920 Howard suggested forming a film production company, British Comedy Films Ltd., to his friend Adrian Brunel. The two eventually settled on the name Minerva Films Ltd. The company's board of directors consisted of Howard, Brunel, C. Aubrey Smith, Nigel Playfair and A. A. Milne. One of the company's investors was H. G. Wells. Although the films produced by Minerva—which were written by A. A. Milne—were well received by critics, the company was only offered £200 apiece for films it cost them £1,000 to produce and Minerva Films Ltd. was short-lived. Early films include four written by A. A. Milne, including "The Bump", starring C. Aubrey Smith; "Twice Two"; "Five Pounds Reward"; and "Bookworms", the latter two starring Howard. Some of these films survive in the archives of the British Film Institute.  Following his move to Hollywood, Howard often played stiff upper lipped Englishmen. He appeared in the film version of "Outward Bound" (1930), though in a different role from the one he portrayed on Broadway. He had second billing under Norma Shearer in "A Free Soul" (1933), which also featured Lionel Barrymore and future "Gone With the Wind" rival Clark Gable six years prior to their Civil War masterpiece. He starred in the film version of "Berkeley Square" (1933), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor. He played the title character in "The Scarlet Pimpernel" (1934).  When Howard co-starred with Bette Davis in "The Petrified Forest" (1936) – having earlier co-starred with her in the film adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's book "Of Human Bondage" (1934) – he reportedly insisted that Humphrey Bogart play gangster Duke Mantee, repeating his role from the stage production. This re-launched Bogart's screen career, and the two men became lifelong friends; Bogart and Lauren Bacall later named their daughter "Leslie Howard Bogart" after him. In the same year Howard starred with Norma Shearer in a film version of Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" (1936)  Davis was again Howard's co-star in the romantic comedy "It's Love I'm After" (1937) (also co-starring Olivia de Havilland). He played Professor Henry Higgins in the film version of George Bernard Shaw's play "Pygmalion" (1938), with Wendy Hiller as Eliza, which earned Howard another Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, but went almost ignored in Britain. In 1939, as war approached, he played opposite Ingrid Bergman in "Intermezzo"; that August, Howard was determined to return to the country of his birth. He was eager to help the war effort, but lost any support for a new film, instead being obliged to relinquish £20,000 of holdings in the US before he could leave the country.  Howard is perhaps best remembered for his role as Ashley Wilkes in "Gone with the Wind" (1939), his last American film, but he was uncomfortable with Hollywood, and returned to Britain to help with the Second World War effort. He starred in a number of Second World War films including "49th Parallel" (1941), ""Pimpernel" Smith" (1941) and "The First of the Few" (1942, known in the U.S. as "Spitfire"), the latter two of which he also directed and co-produced. His friend and "The First of the Few" co-star David Niven said Howard was "...not what he seemed. He had the kind of distraught air that would make people want to mother him. Actually, he was about as naïve as General Motors. Busy little brain, always going."  During wartime Howard made documentaries with Noël Coward for the BBC, typically in "From the Four Corners" (1942), in which he eulogised on the principles of defending the British Commonwealth. "To hell", he said of his critics. He took to directing also with ""Pimpernel" Smith" (1941), after years of experience with technical cameramen. The film was a big success in Britain and US, but was deemed as deliberate attempt at propaganda. In throwing down the challenge to the Nazis, some critics have said the film spelt a death sentence to his career. He lived with Violette Cunnington at the weekend, now his girlfriend on the set of Pimpernel. In "49th Parallel" (1941) he delivered the famous lines, "So that's how you are, Nazis!" The first of his nearly death-defying films came in 1942 with "The First of the Few". R. J. Mitchell was the designer of the famous fighter aeroplane that featured in a romantic film that glorified the heroism of Mitchell's role. Mitchell's death was over-played and non-factual, but made more of the circumstances.(Matthew Sweet, film critic.). His son Ronald Howard worked in the Royal Navy during the war. His daughter married a Royal Canadian Army officer, Robert Dale-Harris. Howard's attitude was "marry that dull young man", and so she did in 1943. Howard then directed "The Gentle Sex" (1943). His biographer Quentin Falk believed the shock of Violette Cunnington's death was total and devastating. Another biographer, American Professor Robert Wheeler, believed that the cultural expedition to Spain through the British Council was an effort to contribute more to the war effort, after his lover had gone. On 1 June 1943, his flight was arranged for Flight 777; some people were asked to depart. Howard was late, and stopped to buy stockings for a lady friend. They flew over the Bay of Biscay, but were shadowed by enemy aircraft, "tapped by enemy aircraft" in the last message. The plane was shot down over the sea. On board were three VIPs: Ivan Sharp, Economic Warfare Ministry man; Mr Shervington, Director of Shell Oil and Chief of Secret Service; Wilfred Israel, Head of getting Jews out of Europe, Spain station. Subsequent biographers have tried to explain the theory that the Nazis targeted the civilian flight.  In 1944, after his death, British exhibitors voted him the second-most popular local star at the box office. His daughter said he was a "remarkable man".

Personal life.

Howard married Ruth Evelyn Martin (1895–1980) in March, 1916, and they had children Ronald "Winkie" and Leslie Ruth "Doodie" who appeared with her father and David Niven in the film "The First of the Few, playing the rôle of nurse to David Niven’s character, and as a major contributor in the filmed biography of her father, "The Man Who Gave A Damn". His son became an actor and played the title role in the television series "Sherlock Holmes" (1954). His younger brother Arthur was also an actor, primarily in British comedies. His sister Irene was a costume designer and a casting director for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. His sister Doris Stainer founded the Hurst Lodge School in Sunningdale, Berkshire in 1945 and remained its headmistress until the 1970s.  Howard was widely known as a "ladies' man", and he once said that he "didn't chase women but... couldn't always be bothered to run away". He reportedly had affairs with Tallulah Bankhead when they appeared on stage in the UK in "Her Cardboard Lover" (1927), with Merle Oberon while filming "The Scarlet Pimpernel" (1934), and with Conchita Montenegro, with whom he had appeared in the film "Never the Twain Shall Meet" (1931). There were also rumours of affairs with Norma Shearer and Myrna Loy during filming of "The Animal Kingdom".  Howard fell in love with Violette Cunnington in 1938 while working on "Pygmalion". She was secretary to Gabriel Pascal who was producing the film; she became Howard's secretary and lover, and they travelled to the United States and lived together while he was filming "Gone with the Wind" and "Intermezzo" (both 1939). His wife and daughter joined him in Hollywood before production ended on the two films, making his arrangement with Cunnington somewhat uncomfortable for everyone. He left the United States for the last time with his wife and daughter in August, 1939, and Cunnington soon followed. She appeared in ""Pimpernel" Smith" (1941) and "The First of the Few" (1942) in minor roles under the stage name of Suzanne Clair. She died of pneumonia in her early thirties in 1942, just six months before Howard's death. Howard left her his Beverly Hills house in his will.  The Howards' family home in Britain was Stowe Maries, a 16th-century, six-bedroom farmhouse on the edge of Westcott, Surrey. His will revealed an estate of £62,761, the equivalent of £ as of. An English Heritage blue plaque was placed at 45 Farquhar Road, Upper Norwood, London in 2013.

Death.

Howard died in 1943 when flying to Bristol from Lisbon, on KLM Royal Dutch Airlines/BOAC Flight 777. The aircraft, "G-AGBB" a Douglas DC-3, was shot down by "Luftwaffe" Junkers Ju 88C6 maritime fighter aircraft over the Atlantic (off Cedeira, A Coruña). Howard was among the 17 fatalities, including four KLM flight crew.  The BOAC DC-3 "Ibis" had been operating on a scheduled Lisbon–Whitchurch route throughout 1942–43 that did not pass over what would commonly be referred to as a war zone. By 1942, however, the Germans considered the region an "extremely sensitive war zone". On two occasions, 15 November 1942 and 19 April 1943, the camouflaged airliner had been attacked by Messerschmitt Bf 110 fighters (a single aircraft and six Bf 110s, respectively) whilst "en route"; each time, the pilots escaped via evasive tactics.  On 1 June 1943, "G-AGBB" again came under attack by a "schwarm" of eight V/KG40 Ju 88C6 maritime fighters. The DC-3's last radio message indicated it was being fired upon at longitude 09.37 West, latitude 46.54 North.  According to German documents, the DC-3 was shot down at, some from Bordeaux, France, and northwest of La Coruña, Spain. "Luftwaffe" records indicate that the Ju 88 maritime fighters were operating beyond their normal patrol area to intercept and shoot down the aircraft. First "Oberleutnant" Herbert Hintze, "Staffelkapitän" of 14 "Staffel", V./Kampfgeschwader 40, and based in Bordeaux, stated that his "Staffel" shot down the DC-3 because it was recognized as an enemy aircraft.  Hintze further stated that his pilots were angry that the "Luftwaffe" leaders had not informed them of a scheduled flight between Lisbon and the UK, and that had they known, they could easily have escorted the DC-3 to Bordeaux and captured it and all aboard. The German pilots photographed the wreckage floating in the Bay of Biscay, and after the war copies of these captured photographs were sent to Howard's family.  The following day, a search of the waters on the route was undertaken by "N/461", a Short Sunderland flying boat from No. 461 Squadron RAAF. Near the same coordinates where the DC-3 was shot down, the Sunderland was attacked by eight Ju 88s and, after a furious battle, it managed to shoot down three of the attackers, with an additional three "possibles", before crash-landing at Praa Sands near Penzance. In the aftermath of these two actions, all BOAC flights from Lisbon were re-routed and operated only under the cover of darkness.  The news of Howard's death was published in the same issue of "The Times" that reported the "death" of Major William Martin, the red herring used for the ruse involved in Operation Mincemeat.

Theories regarding the air attack.

A long-standing hypothesis states that the Germans believed that the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, was on board the flight. Churchill's history of World War II asserts that the Germans targeted the commercial flight because the British Prime Minister's "presence in North Africa [for the 1943 Casablanca conference] had been fully reported," and German agents at the Lisbon airfield mistook a "thickset man smoking a cigar" boarding the plane for Churchill returning to England. The death of the fourteen civilians including Leslie Howard "was a painful shock to me," Churchill wrote; "the brutality of the Germans was only matched by the stupidity of their agents".  Two books focusing on the final flight, "Flight 777" (Ian Colvin, 1957) and "In Search of My Father: A Portrait of Leslie Howard" (Ronald Howard, 1984) concluded instead that the target was Howard himself: that Germans deliberately shot down Howard's DC-3 to demoralise Britain. Howard had been travelling through Spain and Portugal lecturing on film, but also meeting with local propagandists and shoring up support for the Allies. The British Film Yearbook for 1945 described Leslie Howard's work as "one of the most valuable facets of British propaganda".  The Germans could have suspected even more surreptitious activities, since Portugal, like Switzerland, was a crossroads for internationals and spies from both sides. British historian James Oglethorpe investigated Howard's connection to the secret services. Ronald Howard's book explores the written German orders to the Ju 88 squadron, in great detail, as well as British communiqués that verify intelligence reports indicating a deliberate attack on Howard. These accounts indicate that the Germans were aware of Churchill's real whereabouts at the time and were not so naive as to believe he would be travelling alone on board an unescorted, unarmed civilian aircraft, which Churchill also acknowledged as improbable. Ronald Howard was convinced the order to shoot down Howard's airliner came directly from Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda in Nazi Germany, who had been ridiculed in one of Leslie Howard's films, and believed Howard to be the most dangerous British propagandist.  Most of the 13 passengers were either British executives with corporate ties to Portugal, or lower-ranking British government civil servants. There were also two or three children of British military personnel. The bumped passengers were the teenage sons of Cornelia Stuyvesant Vanderbilt: George and William Cecil, who had been recalled to London from their Swiss boarding school. Being bumped by Howard saved their lives. William Cecil is best associated with his ownership and preservation of his grandfather George Washington Vanderbilt's Biltmore estate in North Carolina. William Cecil described a story in which he met a woman, several months after his return to London, who said she had secret war information, and used his mother's phone to put in a call to the British Air Ministry. She told them that she had a message from Leslie Howard.  A 2008 book by Spanish writer José Rey Ximena claims that Howard was on a top-secret mission for Churchill to dissuade Francisco Franco, Spain's authoritarian dictator and head of state, from joining the Axis powers. Via an old girlfriend, Conchita Montenegro, Howard had contacts with Ricardo Giménez Arnau, a young diplomat in the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  Further circumstantial background evidence is revealed in Jimmy Burns's 2009 biography of his father, spymaster Tom Burns. According to author William Stevenson in "A Man called Intrepid", his biography of Sir William Samuel Stephenson (no relation), the senior representative of British Intelligence for the western hemisphere during the Second World War, Stephenson postulated that the Germans knew about Howard's mission and ordered the aircraft shot down. Stephenson further claimed that Churchill knew in advance of the German intention to shoot down the aircraft, but allowed it to proceed to protect the fact that the British had broken the German Enigma code. Former CIA agent Joseph B. Smith recalled that, in 1957, he was briefed by the National Security Agency on the need for secrecy and that Leslie Howard's death had been brought up. The NSA claimed that Howard knew his aircraft was to be attacked by German fighters and sacrificed himself to protect the British code-breakers.  The 2010 biography by Estel Eforgan, "Leslie Howard: The Lost Actor", examines currently available evidence and concludes that Howard was not a specific target, corroborating the claims by German sources that the shootdown was "an error in judgement". There is a monument in San Andrés de Teixido, Spain, dedicated to the victims of the crash. Howard's aircraft was shot down over the sea north of this village.  Sönke Neitzel and Harald Welzer's "Soldiers: Germans POW's on Fighting Killing, and Dying" includes a recently declassified transcript of a surreptitiously recorded conversation by two German Luftwaffe prisoners of war talking about the shooting down of Howard's flight. The Luftwaffe pilot seems to express pride in his accomplishment, but states clearly he knew nothing of the passenger's identities or importance until hearing an English broadcast later that evening. Asked why he shot down a civil aircraft, he states it was one of four such planes he shot down: "Whatever crossed our path was shot down."

Biographies.

Howard did not publish an autobiography, although a compilation of his writings, "Trivial Fond Records", edited and with occasional comments by his son Ronald, was published in 1982. This book includes insights on his family life, first impressions of America and Americans when he first moved to the United States to act on Broadway, and his views on democracy in the years prior to and during the Second World War.  Howard's son and daughter each published memoirs of their father: "In Search of My Father: A Portrait of Leslie Howard" (1984) by Ronald Howard, and "A Quite Remarkable Father: A Biography of Leslie Howard" (1959) by Leslie Ruth Howard.  Estel Eforgan's "Leslie Howard: The Lost Actor" is a full-length book biography published in 2010.

"Leslie Howard: The Man Who Gave a Damn".

"Leslie Howard: A Quite Remarkable Life", a film documentary biography produced by Thomas Hamilton of Repo Films, was shown privately at the NFB Mediatheque, Toronto, Canada in September 2009 for contributors and supporters of the film. Subsequently, re-edited and retitled "", the documentary was officially launched on 2 September 2011 in an event held at Howard's former home "Stowe Maries" in Dorking, and reported on BBC South News the same day. Lengthy rights negotiations with Warners then delayed further screenings until May 2012, although the situation now appears to have been resolved and Repo Films now intends to enter the film into various International Film Festivals.  "Leslie Howard: The Man Who Gave a Damn" premiered on Turner Classic Movies on 4 June 2018, opening a month-long tribute to Howard's films.

Radio career.

Howard was not only an accomplished actor on stage and screen, he appeared many times on radio as well. Howard began his career on radio in the early 1930s when he performed dramatic readings for "The Yardley Program." Not much is known about the programme because the recordings have been lost, but references to the show can be found in fan magazines of the time and the show is listed in "The New York Times" radio programme guide. Howard was also a guest performer on such shows as "The Rudy Vallee Show/Fleischmann's Yeast Hour, Lux Radio Theatre, The Silver Theatre, The Magic Key of RCA, Your Hit Parade" and "Kraft Music Hall with Bing Crosby".  In May, 1935, Leslie Howard and his daughter, Leslie Ruth Howard, aged 10, appeared on "The Rudy Vallee Show/Fleischmann's Yeast Hour" in "The Enchanted Forest" scene from James M. Barrie's "Dear Brutus." The show was so popular with audiences that for the first time in the show's history an encore was performed six weeks later on 27 June 1935. That show survives and can be heard on the Old Time Radio Library's website.  At the end of 1936 Howard began appearing as a guest on "Eddie Cantor's Texaco Town." It took six months and three appearances before he and Cantor finally delivered the punch line in the skit "Three Pairs of Rubbers." Howard's appearances were not limited to guest spots. Beginning in October 1935 and into the spring of 1936 Howard had his own show on CBS. It was a serial titled "The Amateur Gentleman". The show eventually became "Leslie Howard's Matinee" with each week bringing a new adapted play popular at the time to radio listeners. Howard also appeared in "Columbia Presents Shakespeare" as Benedick in the play "Much Ado About Nothing" with Rosalind Russell in the summer of 1937. Howard produced two shows for "Lux Radio Theatre: Lady for A Day", starring May Robson and Guy Kibbee, and "The Life of Emile Zola", starring Paul Muni and Josephine Hutchinson.  His last known radio appearance in the United States before returning to Britain to help with the war effort was the "Radio Tribute to the King and Queen" in which dozens of British stars performed skits while King George VI and Queen Elizabeth listened with President Roosevelt and Mrs. Roosevelt from Hyde Park. Howard's appearances on the BBC's "Britain Speaks" were broadcast to the United States from 16 July 1940, after the onset of the Second World War urging America to enter the war in support of Britain. By January 1941 Howard had completed 27 broadcasts of "Britain Speaks". Howard also appeared on a panel programme for the BBC called "The Brains Trust".  Unfortunately, most of Howard's radio broadcasts have been lost but a few have survived for the enjoyment of audiences today.

Leslie Howard Steiner (3 April 18931 June 1943) was an English actor and film maker. He also wrote many stories and articles for "The New York Times", "The New Yorker", and "Vanity Fair" and was one of the biggest box-office draws and movie idols of the 1930s.

莱斯利·霍华德(英语:Leslie Howard,1893年-4月3日-1943年-6月1日),英国舞台剧演员和电影演员,曾获得奥斯卡奖提名。他最著名的角色为《乱世佳人》中的卫希礼·威尔克斯。他还饰演了根据萧伯纳的话剧《卖花女》改编的同名电影中的希金斯教授,以及《化石森林》和《寒夜情挑》中的角色。他凭借电影《Berkeley Square》和《卖花女》两度获得奥斯卡最佳男主角奖提名。


Background.

Traditionally, registered mail was a manual process which gave rise to a great variety of distinctive postal markings, like handstamps, and usage of registration labels. Many countries have issued special postal stationery and postage stamps for registered mail. Earlier similar services were known as "Money Letters". Today, however, the registration process is largely computerized with barcode registration labels replacing the traditional analog labels having only a printed serial number.  Generally, the item is pre-paid with the normal postage rate and an additional charge known as a "registration fee". Upon payment of this fee the sender is given a receipt, and (usually) a unique numbered "registration label" is affixed to the letter. As the letter travels from post office to post office and through any sorting office, it has to be signed for on a ledger. This process is completed when the letter is delivered and the receiver signs for the item. With computerization and barcode technology, much of the logging once done manually has become simpler and leads to greater options for the sender and receiver alike to access the status of their shipment via the internet. Many postal authorities provide tracing information for registered items on their website.  Internationally, the use of registered mail requires labels with a 13-digit reference number and corresponding barcode. The first two letters indicate registration (usually "RR") while the last 2 letters usually represent the country where the registered item was posted. "E.g.", RR913282511SG indicating Singapore, RB5584847749CN indicating China or RR123456785KR indicating Korea.

History.

The earliest reference to a mail registration system dates to July 1556, during the reign of Mary Tudor, of England. In that example, "the poste between this and the Northe should eche of them keepe a booke and entrye of every letter that he shall receive, the tyme of the deliverie thereof unto his hands with the parties names that shall bring it unto him, whose handes he shall also take to his booke, witnessing the same note to be trewe." This was likely for state security rather than mail security. In 1603, another Order of Council was made whereby all letters had to be recorded. This system was, in effect, a registration system, although it applied to all items sent via the post.  William Dockwra's 1680s London Penny Post also recorded all details on letters accepted for onward transmission, but unlike the General Post Office, gave compensation for losses.  The registration of letters as known today was introduced in 1841 in Great Britain. The letter had to be enclosed within a large sheet of green paper. The green sheet was addressed to the Post Office where the recipient lived. The green sheet was then used as a receipt and was returned to the office of origin after delivery. On 1 July 1858 the green sheet was replaced by a green silk ribbon and shortly afterwards by a green linen tape. In 1870 the tape was replaced by green string. On the introduction of postal stationery registration envelopes in 1878 the string was replaced by printed blue crossed lines. The blue crossed lines have survived on registered letters to the present day.

By country.

Canada.

Canada Post's "Registered Mail" service provides the sender with a mailing receipt, and upon delivery of the item, with the delivery date and a copy of the signature of the addressee or the addressee's representative. Registered Mail may include lettermail, documents, valuables, and literature for the blind, but does not include parcels.

Israel.

Israel Post's "Registed Mail" service (, "doar rashum") provides the sender with a mailing receipt, and upon delivery of the item, the addressee must sign in order to obtain the item. The sender can monitor the item until its delivery, for items intended for 84 cities in Israel. A confirmation of delivery is sent to the sender for an additional fee. Registered Mail may include letters, postcards and printed matter.  On 25 November 2015 a preliminary reading of an amendment to Postal Law that forces the sender to mention his name on an item sent via registered mail, was passed. According to the press, the major opposition to this bill is the Courts Administration that sends most of its mail via registered mail with a confirmation of delivery, and claims that knowing the identity of the sender, many of their addressees will choose not to accept the items, thus delaying the legal proceedings they are a party to.

Sweden.

PostNord's service "Registered Mail" (Swedish: "Rekommenderad försändelse"), often shortened as "Rek", will only be delivered after the recipient have verified their identity with some form of ID card or BankID and had their personal identity number logged. The letter can also be collected by a courier, provided this courier carries both their own ID and the recipient's ID, or if the receiver have verified their identy in the app via BankID and sent a newly generated barcode to the courier. All "Registered Mail" is traceable in over 30 countries via PostNord's website and mobile app. Any domestic "Registered Mail" is insured for up to 10 000 SEK. International "Registered Mail" is insured for up to either 2 000 SEK or 10 000 SEK.  There is an optional added service called "Personal Delivery" (Swedish: "Personlig utlämning") where only the recipient can collect the letter and denies all else, including couriers and power of attorney. Another optional added service is Advice of Delivery (Swedish: "Mottagningsbevis") where a form signed by the receiver is sent back to the sender.  "Registered Mail" will be delivered to one of PostNord's service points, often a grocery store, where the identity of the receiver, and any courier, can be verified and logged before handing over the letter.  Since autumn 2017 Postnord no longer require signature for delivering registered mail from China Post. Registered mail from China Post is only traceable in the sense that the mailman marks the item as delivered when and if it is delivered to the recipients mailbox. No proof that the recipient has received the mail is collected.

United Kingdom.

Since 1998, the "Special Delivery" service has been the only registered service offered by Royal Mail, after the old-style "Registered Letter" service was discontinued.

United States.

The United States Postal Service offers two distinct services called "Certified Mail" and "Registered Mail".

Certified mail.

Certified mail allows the sender proof of mailing via a mailing receipt and, upon request electronic verification that an article was delivered or that a delivery attempt was made. Some in-transit tracking and delivery confirmation information may be provided, but there is no formal chain of custody. Certified mail is only available for Priority Mail and First Class Mail letters mailed within the United States and its territories (including APOs and FPOs). Each piece of certified mail is assigned a unique label number which serves as an official record of mailing of the item by the Postal Service.  U.S. certified mail began in 1955 after the idea was originated by Assistant U.S. Postmaster General Joseph Cooper. It is also acceptable to send U.S. Government classified information at the Confidential level using the certified mail service. Certified mail may be selected for many reasons, not just for important business mailings. It is used by anyone who needs or wishes to provide a tracking number to the receiver as proof of mailing. It also allows the receiver to track their package/envelope through the online system at usps.com using the unique tracking number provided by the mailer.  Certified mail can be done either with or without "return receipt requested", often called "RRR", which costs an additional fee. The return receipt is a green postcard-sized paper that is mailed back to the sender by the post office upon receipt by the addressee as proof of delivery. Today the USPS new Return Receipt Electronic (RRE) provides electronic proof of delivery information. When the letter reaches its final delivery destination the letter carrier captures the signature of the person that accepts the letter and the information is electronically stored. As indicated on the return receipt card, either the addressee or the addressee's "agent" may sign for the document.

Registered mail.

Registered mail service is offered by the United States Postal Service as an extra service for First Class or Priority Mail shipments. Registered Mail provides end-to-end security in locked containers. Registered Mail custody records are maintained, but are not normally provided to the customer, unless a claim is filed.  In the United States, registered mail may be used to send classified material up to the Secret classified level.

Russia.

In Russia registered mail may be sent by several postal services. In Russian any registered mail is called "заказное" (). The postal service provides sender with tracking number of registered mail which may prove whether recipient received mail or not. Major postal service in Russia also provides service of notification of reception.

References.

Notes Bibliography

Registered mail is a mail service offered by postal services in many countries, which allows the sender proof of mailing via a mailing receipt and, upon request, electronic verification that an article was delivered or that a delivery attempt was made. Depending on the country, additional services may also be available, such as: The name of this service varies from country to country, and postal services in some countries offer more than one level of service under different names (e.g., "certified mail" and "registered mail" in the U.S.). See the country-specific information below for details.

挂号邮件,亦被称为给据邮件,指在交寄时记录邮件资料,并被赋予唯一编码、提供收据,并在投递时要求可靠人员进行签收,运输时记录处理过程并提供跟踪的寄递信函、包裹、印刷品等邮件。是一项额外收费的邮政附加业务,邮件表面通常有戳记、挂号标签等特殊标志以便识别。


梅克伦堡-施特雷利茨的夏洛特

Early life.

Sophia Charlotte was born on 19 May 1744. She was the youngest daughter of Duke Charles Louis Frederick of Mecklenburg (1708–1752; known as "Prince of Mirow") and of his wife Princess Elisabeth Albertine of Saxe-Hildburghausen (1713–1761). Mecklenburg-Strelitz was a small north-German duchy in the Holy Roman Empire.  The children of Duke Charles were all born at the "Unteres Schloss" (Lower Castle) in Mirow. According to diplomatic reports at the time of her engagement to George III in 1761, Charlotte had received "a very mediocre education". Her upbringing was similar to that of a daughter of an English country gentleman. She received some rudimentary instruction in botany, natural history and language from tutors, but her education focused on household management and on religion, the latter taught by a priest. Only after her brother Adolphus Frederick succeeded to the ducal throne in 1752 did she gain any experience of princely duties and of court life.

Marriage.

When King George III succeeded to the throne of Great Britain upon the death of his grandfather, George II, he was 22 years old and unmarried. His mother and advisors were anxious to have him settled in marriage. The 17-year-old Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz appealed to him as a prospective consort partly because she had been brought up in an insignificant north German duchy; and therefore, would probably have had no experience or interest in power politics or party intrigues. That proved to be the case; to make sure, he instructed her shortly after their wedding "not to meddle," a precept she was glad to follow.  The King announced to his Council in July 1761, according to the usual form, his intention to wed the Princess, after which a party of escorts, led by the Earl Harcourt, departed for Germany to conduct Princess Charlotte to England. They reached Strelitz on 14 August 1761, and were received the next day by the reigning duke, Princess Charlotte's brother, at which time the marriage contract was signed by him on the one hand and Earl Harcourt on the other. Three days of public celebrations followed, and on 17 August 1761, the Princess set out for Britain, accompanied by her brother, Duke Adolphus Frederick, and by the British escort party. On 22 August, they reached Cuxhaven, where a small fleet awaited to convey them to England. The voyage was extremely difficult; the party encountered three storms at sea, and landed at Harwich only on 7 September. They set out at once for London, spent that night in Witham, at the residence of Lord Abercorn, and arrived at 3:30 pm the next day at St. James's Palace in London. They were received by the King and his family at the garden gate, which marked the first meeting of the bride and groom.  At 9:00 pm that same evening (8 September 1761), within six hours of her arrival, Charlotte was united in marriage with King George III. The ceremony was performed at the Chapel Royal, St. James's Palace, by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Secker. Only the royal family, the party who had travelled from Germany, and a handful of guests were present.

Queenship.

Upon her wedding day, Charlotte spoke no English. However, she quickly learned English, albeit speaking with a strong German accent. One observer commented, "She is timid at first but talks a lot, when she is among people she knows."  Less than a year after the marriage, on 12 August 1762, the Queen gave birth to her first child, George, Prince of Wales. In the course of their marriage, the couple became the parents of 15 children, all but two of whom (Octavius and Alfred) survived into adulthood.  St James's Palace functioned as the official residence of the royal couple, but the king had recently purchased a nearby property, Buckingham House, located at the western end of St James's Park. Relatively more private and compact, the new property stood amid rolling parkland not far from St James's Palace. Around 1762 the King and Queen moved to this residence, which was originally intended as a private retreat. The Queen came to favour this residence, spending so much of her time there that it came to be known as The Queen's House. Indeed, in 1775, an Act of Parliament settled the property on Queen Charlotte in exchange for her rights to Somerset House. Most of her 15 children were born in Buckingham House, although St James's Palace remained the official and ceremonial royal residence.  During her first years in Great Britain, Charlotte's strained relationship with her mother-in-law, Princess Augusta, caused her difficulty in adapting to the life of the British court. The queen mother interfered with Charlotte's efforts to establish social contacts by insisting on rigid court etiquette. Furthermore, Augusta appointed many of Charlotte's staff, among whom several were expected to report to Augusta about Charlotte's behaviour. When she turned to her German companions for friends, she was criticised for keeping favorites, notably her close confidante Juliane von Schwellenberg.  The King enjoyed country pursuits and riding and preferred to keep his family's residence as much as possible in the then rural towns of Kew and Richmond. He favoured an informal and relaxed domestic life, to the dismay of some courtiers more accustomed to displays of grandeur and strict protocol. Lady Mary Coke was indignant on hearing in July 1769 that the King, the Queen, her visiting brother Prince Ernest and Lady Effingham had gone for a walk through Richmond town by themselves without any servants. "I am not satisfied in my mind about the propriety of a Queen walking in town unattended."  From 1778 the Royal family spent much of their time at a newly-constructed residence, the Queen's Lodge at Windsor, opposite Windsor Castle, in Windsor Great Park, where the King enjoyed hunting deer. The Queen was responsible for the interior decoration of their new residence, described by friend of the Royal Family and diarist Mary Delany: "The entrance into the first room was dazzling, all furnished with beautiful Indian paper, chairs covered with different embroideries of the liveliest colours, glasses, tables, sconces, in the best taste, the whole calculated to give the greatest cheerfulness to the place."  Queen Charlotte endeared herself to her ladies and to her children's attendants by treating them with friendly warmth, reflected in this note she wrote to her daughters' assistant governess: My dear Miss Hamilton, What can I have to say? Not much indeed! But to wish you a good morning, in the pretty blue and white room where I had the pleasure to sit and read with you "The Hermit", a poem which is such a favourite with me that I have read it twice this summer. Oh! What a blessing to keep good company! Very likely I should not have been acquainted with either poet or poem was it not for you.  Charlotte did have some influence on political affairs through the King. Her influence was discreet and indirect, as demonstrated in the correspondence with her brother Charles. She used her closeness with George III to keep herself informed and to make recommendations for offices. Apparently her recommendations were not direct, as she on one occasion, in 1779, asked her brother Charles to burn her letter, because the King suspected that a person she had recently recommended for a post was the client of a woman who sold offices. Charlotte particularly interested herself in German issues. She took an interest in the War of the Bavarian Succession (1778–1779), and it is possible that it was due to her efforts that the King supported British intervention in the continuing conflict between Joseph II and the Charles Theodore of Bavaria in 1785.

Husband's first period of illness.

When the King had his first, temporary, bout of mental illness in 1765, her mother-in-law and Lord Bute kept Charlotte unaware of the situation. The Regency Bill of 1765 stated that if the King should become permanently unable to rule, Charlotte was to become Regent. Her mother-in-law and Lord Bute had unsuccessfully opposed this arrangement, but as the King's illness of 1765 was temporary, Charlotte was aware neither of it, nor of the Regency Bill.  The King's bout of physical and mental illness in 1788 distressed and terrified the Queen. The writer Fanny Burney, at that time one of the Queen's attendants, overheard her moaning to herself with "desponding sound": "What will become of me? What will become of me?" When the King collapsed one night, she refused to be left alone with him and successfully insisted that she be given her own bedroom. When the doctor, Warren, was called, she was not informed and was not given the opportunity to speak with him. When told by the Prince of Wales that the King was to be removed to Kew, but that she should move to Queen's House or to Windsor, she successfully insisted that she accompany her spouse to Kew. However, she and her daughters were taken to Kew separately from the King and lived secluded from him during his illness. They regularly visited him, but the visits tended to be uncomfortable, as he had a tendency to embrace them and refuse to let them go.  During the 1788 illness of the King, a conflict arose between the Queen and the Prince of Wales, who were both suspected of desiring to assume the Regency should the illness of the King become permanent, resulting in him being declared unfit to rule. The Queen suspected the Prince of Wales of a plan to have the King declared insane with the assistance of Doctor Warren, and to take over the Regency. The followers of the Prince of Wales, notably Sir Gilbert Ellis, in turn suspected the Queen of a plan to have the King declared sane with the assistance of Doctor Willis and Prime Minister Pitt, so that he could have her appointed Regent should he fall ill again, and then have him declared insane again and assume the Regency. According to Doctor Warren, Doctor Willis had pressed him to declare the King sane on the orders of the Queen.  In the Regency Bill of 1789, the Prince of Wales was declared Regent should the King become permanently insane, but it also placed the King himself, his court and minor children under the guardianship of the Queen. The Queen used this Bill when she refused the Prince of Wales permission to see the King alone, even well after he had been declared sane again in the spring of 1789. The conflict around the regency led to serious discord between the Prince of Wales and his mother. In an argument he accused her of having sided with his enemies, while she called him the enemy of the King. Their conflict became public when she refused to invite him to the concert held in celebration of the recovery of the King, which created a scandal. Queen Charlotte and the Prince of Wales finally reconciled, on her initiative, in March 1791. As the King gradually became permanently insane, the Queen's personality altered: she developed a terrible temper, sank into depression, no longer enjoyed appearing in public, not even at the musical concerts she had so loved, and her relationships with her adult children became strained. From 1792 she found some relief from her worry about her husband by planning the gardens and decoration of a new residence for herself, Frogmore House, in Windsor Home Park.  From 1804 onward, when the King displayed declining mental health, Queen Charlotte slept in a separate bedroom, had her meals separate from him, and avoided seeing him alone.

Interests and patronage.

King George III and Queen Charlotte were music connoisseurs with German tastes, who gave special honour to German artists and composers. They were passionate admirers of the music of George Frideric Handel.  In April 1764, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, then aged eight, arrived in Britain with his family as part of their grand tour of Europe and remained until July 1765. The Mozarts were summoned to court on 19 May and played before a limited circle from six to ten o'clock. Johann Christian Bach, eleventh son of the great Johann Sebastian Bach, was then music-master to the Queen. He put difficult works of Handel, J. S. Bach, and Carl Friedrich Abel before the boy: he played them all at sight, to the amazement of those present. Afterwards, the young Mozart accompanied the Queen in an aria which she sang, and played a solo work on the flute. On 29 October, the Mozarts were in London again, and were invited to court to celebrate the fourth anniversary of the King's accession. As a memento of the royal favour, Leopold Mozart published six sonatas composed by Wolfgang, known as Mozart's Opus 3, that were dedicated to the Queen on 18 January 1765, a dedication she rewarded with a present of 50 guineas.  Queen Charlotte was an amateur botanist who took a great interest in Kew Gardens. In an age of discovery, when such travellers and explorers as Captain James Cook and Sir Joseph Banks were constantly bringing home new species and varieties of plants, she ensured that the collections were greatly enriched and expanded. Her interest in botany led to the South African flower, the "Bird of Paradise", being named "Strelitzia reginae" in her honour.  Among the royal couple's favoured craftsmen and artists were the cabinetmaker William Vile, silversmith Thomas Heming, the landscape designer Capability Brown, and the German painter Johann Zoffany, who frequently painted the king and queen and their children in charmingly informal scenes, such as a portrait of Queen Charlotte and her children as she sat at her dressing table. In 1788 the royal couple visited the Worcester Porcelain Factory (founded in 1751, and later to be known as Royal Worcester), where Queen Charlotte ordered a porcelain service that was later renamed "Royal Lily" in her honour. Another well-known porcelain service designed and named in her honour was the "Queen Charlotte" pattern.  The queen founded orphanages and, in 1809, became the patron (providing new funding) of the General Lying-in Hospital, a hospital for expectant mothers. It was subsequently renamed as the Queen's Hospital, and is today the Queen Charlotte's and Chelsea Hospital. The education of women was of great importance to her, and she ensured that her daughters were better educated than was usual for young women of the day; however, she also insisted that her daughters live restricted lives close to their mother, and she refused to allow them to marry until they were well-advanced in years. As a result, none of her daughters had legitimate issue (one, Princess Sophia, may have had an illegitimate son).  Up until 1788, portraits of Charlotte often depict her in maternal poses with her children, and she looks young and contented; however, in that year her husband fell seriously ill and became temporarily insane. It is now thought that the King was suffering from porphyria, but at the time the cause of the King's illness was unknown. Sir Thomas Lawrence's portrait of her at this time marks a transition point, after which she looks much older in her portraits; the Assistant Keeper of Charlotte's Wardrobe, Mrs. Papendiek, wrote that the Queen was "much changed, her hair quite grey".

Relations with Marie Antoinette.

The French Revolution of 1789 probably added to the strain that Charlotte felt. Queen Charlotte and Queen Marie Antoinette of France had maintained a close relationship. Charlotte was 11 years older than Marie Antoinette, yet they shared many interests, such as their love of music and the arts, in which they both enthusiastically took an interest. Never meeting face to face, they relegated their friendship to pen and paper. Marie Antoinette confided in Charlotte upon the outbreak of the French Revolution. Charlotte had organized apartments to be prepared and ready for the refugee royal family of France to occupy. She was greatly distraught when she heard the news that the King and Queen of France had been executed.

During the Regency.

After the onset of his permanent madness in 1811, George III was placed under the guardianship of his wife in accordance with the Regency Bill of 1789. She could not bring herself to visit him very often, due to his erratic behaviour and occasional violent reactions. It is believed she did not visit him again after June 1812. However, Charlotte remained supportive of her spouse as his illness, now believed to be porphyria, worsened in old age. While her son, the Prince Regent, wielded the royal power, she was her spouse's legal guardian from 1811 until her death in 1818. Due to the extent of the King's illness he was incapable of knowing or understanding that she had died.  During the Regency of her son, Queen Charlotte continued to fill her role as first lady in royal representation because of the estrangement of the Prince Regent and his spouse. As such, she functioned as the hostess by the side of her son at official receptions, such as the festivities given in London to celebrate the defeat of Emperor Napoleon in 1814. She also supervised the upbringing of Charlotte of Wales. During her last years, she was met with a growing lack of popularity and sometimes subjected to demonstrations. After having attended a reception in London on 29 April 1817, she was jeered by a crowd. She told the crowd that it was upsetting to be treated like that after such long service.

Death.

The Queen died in the presence of her eldest son, the Prince Regent, who was holding her hand as she sat in an armchair at the family's country retreat, Dutch House in Surrey (now known as Kew Palace). She was buried at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. Her husband died just over a year later. She is the second longest-serving consort in British history (after the present Duke of Edinburgh), having served as such from her marriage (on 8 September 1761) to her death (17 November 1818), a total of 57 years and 70 days.  On the day before her death, the Queen dictated her will to her husband's secretary, Sir Herbert Taylor, appointing him and Lord Arden as her executors; at her death, her personal estate was valued at less than £140,000 (equivalent to £ in ), with her jewels accounting for the greater portion of her assets. In her will, proven at Doctor's Commons on 8 January 1819, the Queen bequeathed her husband the jewels she had received from him, unless he remained in his state of insanity, in which case the jewels were to become an heirloom of the House of Hanover. Other jewels, including some gifted to the Queen by the Nawab of Arcot, were to be evenly distributed among her surviving daughters. The furnishings and fixtures at the royal residence at Frogmore, along with "live and dead stock...on the estates", were bequeathed to her daughter Augusta Sophia along with the Frogmore property, unless its maintenance would prove too expensive for her daughter, in which case it was to revert to the Crown. Her youngest daughter Sophia inherited the Royal Lodge. Certain personal assets which the Queen had brought from Mecklenburg-Strelitz were to revert to the senior branch of that dynasty, while the remainder of her assets, including her books, linen, art objects and china, were to be evenly divided among her surviving daughters.  At the Queen's death, her eldest son, the Prince Regent, claimed Charlotte's jewels, but the rest of her property was sold at auction from May to August 1819. Her clothes, furniture, and even her snuff were sold by Christie's. It is highly unlikely that her husband ever knew of her death. He died blind, deaf, lame and insane 14 months later.

Legacy.

Places named after her include the Queen Charlotte Islands (now known as "Haida Gwaii") in British Columbia, Canada, and Queen Charlotte City on Haida Gwaii; Queen Charlotte Sound (not far from the Haida Gwaii Islands); Queen Charlotte Bay in West Falkland; Queen Charlotte Sound, South Island, New Zealand; several fortifications, including Fort Charlotte, Saint Vincent; Charlottesville, Virginia; Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island; Charlotte, North Carolina; Mecklenburg County, North Carolina; Mecklenburg County, Virginia; Charlotte County, Virginia, Charlotte County, Florida, Port Charlotte, Florida, Charlotte Harbor, Florida, and Charlotte, Vermont. The proposed North American colonies of Vandalia (because of her supposed Vandal ancestry; see below) and Charlotina were also named for her. Queen Street, or Lebuh Queen as it is known in Malay, is a major street in Penang, Malaysia named after her. In Tonga, the royal family adopted the name Sālote (Tongan version of Charlotte) in her honour, and notable individuals included Sālote Lupepauʻu and Sālote Tupou III.  Her provision of funding to the General Lying-in Hospital in London prevented its closure; today it is named Queen Charlotte's and Chelsea Hospital, and is an acknowledged centre of excellence amongst maternity hospitals. A large copy of the Allan Ramsay portrait of Queen Charlotte hangs in the main lobby of the hospital. The Queen Charlotte's Ball, an annual debutante ball that originally funded the hospital, is named after her.  A statue of Queen Charlotte stands in Queen Square in Bloomsbury, London, and at the Charlotte/Douglas International Airport in Charlotte, North Carolina.  Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, was chartered in 1766 as "Queen's College", in reference to Queen Charlotte. It was renamed in 1825 in honour of Henry Rutgers, a Revolutionary War officer and college benefactor. Its oldest extant building, Old Queen's (built 1809–1823), and the city block that forms the historic core of the university, Queen's Campus, retain their original names.  Queen Charlotte was played by Helen Mirren in the 1994 film "The Madness of King George."

Titles, styles and arms.

Arms.

The Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom are impaled with her father's arms as a Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. The arms were: Quarterly of six, 1st, Or, a buffalo's head cabossed Sable, armed and ringed Argent, crowned and langued Gules (Mecklenburg); 2nd, Azure, a griffin segreant Or (Rostock); 3rd, Per fess, in chief Azure, a griffin segreant Or, and in the base Vert, a bordure Argent (Principality of Schwerin); 4th, Gules, a cross patée Argent crowned Or (Ratzeburg); 5th, Gules, a dexter arm Argent issuant from clouds in sinister flank and holding a finger ring Or (County of Schwerin); 6th, Or, a buffalo's head Sable, armed Argent, crowned and langued Gules (Wenden); Overall an inescutcheon, per fess Gules and Or (Stargard).  The Queen's arms changed twice to mirror the changes in her husband's arms, once in 1801 and then again in 1816. A funerary hatchment displaying the Queen's full coat of arms, painted in 1818, is on display at Kew Palace.

Ancestry.

Claims of African ancestry.

Claim by J. A. Rogers.

In his book "Sex and Race: Volume I", first published in 1940, Jamaican-American writer J. A. Rogers uses anthropometric language of scientific racism to make the claims:  and  The portrait referred to in these claims is an Allan Ramsay variation(NPG 224 in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London), reproduced in the book as a monochromatic plate.  The full quote from Horace Walpole appears in his "Letters":  In "Sex and Race", he claims numerous other historical figures were "Negro," with the same meaning as the modern socioracial category "Black," whereas for Charlotte he specifically uses the terms "Negro strain" and "Negroid type."  The cover of Rogers' 1952 book "Nature Knows No Color-Line" shows a copy of a line engraving derived from an original mezzotint portrait by Thomas Frye and states that "With these Negroes in German nobility, the evident Negro strain in Queen Charlotte Sophia consort of George III of England, who was a German princess, might be explained (see her portrait)." In the 1957 edition of his book "100 Amazing Facts About the Negro with Complete Proof", Rogers includes a reprint of a July 1, 1940 article in The New York Times "Negroid Blood in Hitler's 'Aryans'" describing the work of Brunold Springer alongside a cropped headshot of Charlotte from the Ramsay portrait.

Claim by Motlalepula Chabaku.

The first printed instance of person claiming she was "black" comes from letter to the editor published in The Charlotte Observer, February 3, 1989, in which Rev. Motlalepula Chabaku, a South African civil rights activist and Methodist minister in Charlotte, North Carolina, states "She was a black woman even though she was the consort of King George III." This letter was in response to the recent unveiling in Charlotte, North Carolina, of a statue of Charlotte sculpted by B. Graham Weathers.  Chabaku claimed that Weathers' statue replaced Charlotte's "African features" with a "European or Caucasian appearance." Weathers responded with a description of the numerous portraits he used to composite his statue and claimed he did not see any "African features" to remove. This exchange was followed by a feature article that starts with the question "Was Queen Charlotte black?" and presents the perspective of several people on this issue. The article cites Rogers' claims about Charlotte from "Sex and Race", but erroneously states that he "[pronounced] her black" and misattributes some of Rogers' words to Horace Walpole.

Claim by Mario de Valdes y Cocom.

In 1999, PBS Frontline developed a website called "The Blurred Racial Lines of Famous Families" a companion to a documentary "Secret Daughter" produced by June Cross, described as "the story of a mixed race daughter and the white mother who gave her away" about Cross' experience as an adoptee. There are no references to Charlotte in the documentary. The website describes several white European and American individuals and families who had or possibly had non-white ancestors. The majority of the website content was developed by Mario de Valdes y Cocom (also named as Mario Valdes in other articles), a self-described "historian of the African diaspora." Valdes claims that Charlotte had an "unmistakable African appearance" and "negroid physiogomy["sic"]" that was the result of distant African ancestry. In a 2017 article in "The Washington Post", journalist DeNeen L. Brown quotes Valdes as saying, "I had heard these stories from my Jamaican nanny, Etheralda 'TeeTee' Cole."  Valdes speculates that Scottish painter Allan Ramsay emphasized Charlotte's supposed "Negroid characteristics" to paint "the most decidedly African of all her portraits" to support the anti-slave trade movement. Valdes notes that Baron Stockmar described her as "small and crooked, with a true Mulatto face", though without the context she was terminally ill and within months of dying. Valdes misdescribes Stockmar as "the Queen's personal physician"; instead he was physician-in-ordinary to her granddaughter Princess Charlotte of Wales and grandson-in-law Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Valdes also cites as evidence a Romantic poem by Samuel Bowden with the line "Descended from the warlike Vandal race, she still preserves that title in her face" with the unconventional interpretation that this allusion is to African ancestry because the Vandals conquered Numidia in what is present-day Algeria, rather than the simpler interpretation that the Vandals were a Germanic people and it alludes to Charlotte being ethnically German.  An article in "The Sunday Times" from June 1999 is the first published mention of Charlotte's connection to Madragana, referring to her by the name Madalena Gil. This article quotes an explicit claim by Valdes of her "mixed-race" ancestry and the authors use the term "black" ancestry, though they do not refer to Charlotte as "mixed-race" or "black". It is well-documented that Charlotte was descended from Margarita de Castro e Souza, a 15th-century Portuguese noblewoman, who traced her ancestry to King Afonso III of Portugal (1210–1279) and one of his mistresses, Madragana (c. 1230–?).  Critics of Valdes's claim point out that Margarita's and Madragana's distant position in Charlotte's ancestry makes any African ancestry that they may have contributed negligible. There is also no evidence that Madragana was "black", and Charlotte shared descent from Afonso III and Madragana with a large proportion of Europe's royalty and nobility. The claim of Madragana's African ancestry comes from her being described as a Moor by Duarte Nunes de Leão, a Portuguese royal chronicler of the 16th century. She was probably Mozarab, a modern historical term for Iberian Christians living in Muslim Iberia.

Additional claims.

DeNeen Brown claims incorrectly in her 2017 "Washington Post" article that "Sir Walter Scott described her as 'ill-coloured' and referred to her kin as 'a bunch of ill-coloured orangutans.'" Scott was instead describing paintings of Charlotte's ancestors that he thought to be comically bad:

Statements against claims.

In 2017, David Buck, a Buckingham Palace spokesperson, was quoted by the "Boston Globe" as saying: "This has been rumoured for years and years. It is a matter of history, and frankly, we've got far more important things to talk about."

Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (Sophia Charlotte; 19 May 1744 – 17 November 1818) was the wife of King George III. She was Queen of Great Britain and Ireland from her wedding in 1761 until the union of the two kingdoms in 1801, after which she was queen consort of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until her death in 1818. She was also the Electress consort of Hanover in the Holy Roman Empire until the promotion of her husband to King of Hanover on 12 October 1814, after which she was also queen consort of Hanover.

夏洛特王后,全名索菲亚·夏洛特(,1744年-5月19日-1818年-11月17日),英国国王乔治三世的王后。她是梅克伦堡-施特雷利茨公爵卡尔·路德维希·腓特烈与其夫人伊丽莎白·阿尔贝汀公主的幼女--第五个女儿(第二个未夭折的女儿)。同时,她也有三个哥哥两个弟弟(其中大弟夭折),二哥是公爵卡尔二世。她是维多利亚女王的祖母。


History.

The Christmas tree was adopted in upper-class homes in 18th-century Germany, where it was occasionally decorated with candles, which at the time was a comparatively expensive light source. Candles for the tree were glued with melted wax to a tree branch or attached by pins. Around 1890, candleholders were first used for Christmas candles. Between 1902 and 1914, small lanterns and glass balls to hold the candles started to be used. Early electric Christmas lights were introduced with electrification, beginning in the 1880s.  The illuminated Christmas tree became established in the UK during Queen Victoria's reign, and through emigration spread to North America and Australia. In her journal for Christmas Eve 1832, the 13-year-old princess wrote, "After dinner.. we then went into the drawing-room near the dining-room. There were two large round tables on which were placed two trees hung with lights and sugar ornaments. All the presents being placed round the trees". Until the availability of inexpensive electrical power in the early 20th century, miniature candles were commonly (and in some cultures still are) used.  In the UK, electric Christmas lights are generally known as fairy lights. In 1881, the Savoy Theatre, London was the first building in the world to be lit entirely by electricity. Sir Joseph Swan, pioneer of the incandescent light bulb, supplied about 1,200 Swan incandescent lamps, and a year later, the Savoy owner Richard D'Oyly Carte equipped the principal fairies with miniature lighting supplied by the Swan United Electric Lamp Company, for the opening night of the Gilbert and Sullivan opera "Iolanthe" on 25 November 1882. The term 'fairy lights', describing 'a small coloured light used in illuminations' had already entered English: its usage for a string of electrically powered Christmas lights has been common in the UK ever since.  The first known electrically illuminated Christmas tree was the creation of Edward H. Johnson, an associate of inventor Thomas Edison. While he was vice president of the Edison Electric Light Company, a predecessor of today's Con Edison electric utility, he had Christmas tree light bulbs especially made for him. He proudly displayed his Christmas tree, which was hand-wired with 80 red, white and blue electric incandescent light bulbs the size of walnuts, on December 22, 1882 at his home on Fifth Avenue in New York City. Local newspapers ignored the story, seeing it as a publicity stunt. However, it was published by a Detroit newspaper reporter, and Johnson has become widely regarded as the Father of Electric Christmas Tree Lights. By 1900, businesses started stringing up Christmas lights behind their windows. Christmas lights were too expensive for the average person; as such, electric Christmas lights did not become the majority replacement for candles until 1930.  In 1895, US President Grover Cleveland sponsored the first electrically-lit Christmas tree in the White House. It was a huge specimen, featuring over a hundred multicolored lights. The first commercially-produced Christmas tree lamps were manufactured in strings of multiples of eight sockets by the General Electric Co. of Harrison, New Jersey. Each socket took a miniature two-candela carbon-filament lamp.  From that point on, electrically-illuminated Christmas trees (only indoors) grew with mounting enthusiasm in the US and elsewhere. San Diego in 1904, Appleton, Wisconsin in 1909, and New York City in 1912 were the first recorded instances of the use of Christmas lights outside. McAdenville, North Carolina claims to have been the first in 1956. The Library of Congress credits the town for inventing "the tradition of decorating evergreen trees with Christmas lights dates back to 1956 when the McAdenville Men's Club conceived of the idea of decorating a few trees around the McAdenville Community Center." However, the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree has had "lights" since 1931, but did not have real electric lights until 1956. Furthermore, Philadelphia's Christmas Light Show and Disney's Christmas Tree also began in 1956. Though General Electric sponsored community lighting competitions during the 1920s, it would take until the mid-1950s for the use of such lights to be adopted by average households.  Christmas lights found use in places other than Christmas trees. By 1919, city electrician John Malpiede began decorating the new Civic Center Park in Denver, Colorado, eventually expanding the display to the park's Greek Amphitheater and later to the adjacent new Denver City and County Building - City Hall upon its completion in 1932.  In 1963, a boycott of Christmas lights was done in Greenville, North Carolina to protest the segregation that kept blacks from being employed by downtown businesses in Greenville, during the Christmas sales season. Known as the Black Christmas (boycott) or "Christmas Sacrifice", it was an effective way to protest the cultural and fiscal segregation in the town with 33% black population. Light decorations in the homes, on the Christmas trees, or outside the house were not shown, and only six houses in the black community broke the boycott that Christmas.  In 1973 during an oil shortage triggered by an embargo by the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (later OPEC) President Nixon asked Americans not to put up Christmas lights to conserve energy use. Many Americans complied, and there were fewer displays that year.  In the mid-2000s, the video of the home of Carson Williams was widely distributed on the internet as a viral video. It garnered national attention in 2005 from The Today Show on NBC, Inside Edition and the CBS Evening News and was featured in a Miller television commercial. Williams turned his hobby into a commercial venture, and was commissioned to scale up his vision to a scale of 250,000 lights at a Denver shopping center, as well as displays in parks and zoos.

Technology.

The technology used in Christmas lighting displays is highly diverse, ranging from simple light strands, "Christmas lights" (a.k.a. "Fairy lights"), through to full blown animated tableaux, involving complex illuminated animatronics and statues.  Christmas lights (also called twinkle lights, holiday lights, mini lights or fairy lights), that are strands of electric lights used to decorate homes, public/commercial buildings and Christmas trees during the Christmas season are amongst the most recognized form of Christmas lighting. Christmas lights come in a dazzling array of configurations and colors. The small "midget" bulbs commonly known as fairy lights are also called Italian lights in some parts of the U.S., such as Chicago.  The types of lamps used in Christmas lighting also vary considerably, reflecting the diversity of modern lighting technology in general. Common lamp types are incandescent light bulbs and now light-emitting diodes (LEDs), which are being increasingly encouraged as being more energy efficient. Less common are neon lamp sets. Fluorescent lamp sets were produced for a limited time by Sylvania in the mid-1940s.  Christmas lights using incandescent bulbs are somewhat notorious for being difficult to troubleshoot and repair. In the 1950s and 1960s, the series circuit connected light sets would go completely dark when a single bulb failed. So in the fairly recent past, the mini-lights have come with shunts to allow a set to continue to operate with a burned out bulb. However, if there are multiple bulb failures or a shunt is bad, the string can still fail. There are two basic ways to troubleshoot this: a one by one replacement with a known good bulb, or by using a test light to find out where the voltage gets interrupted. One example made specifically for Christmas lights is the LightKeeper Pro. For additional information, see the troubleshooting section of the Holiday lighting technology article.  When Christmas light manufacturers first started using LEDs the colors seemed very dull and uninspiring. Even the white lights, which were typically single-chip LEDs, glowed with a faintly yellowish color that made them look cheap and unattractive.

Outdoor displays.

Public venues.

Displays of Christmas lights in public venues and on public buildings are a popular part of the annual celebration of Christmas, and may be set up by businesses or by local governments. The displays utilize Christmas lights in many ways, including decking towering Christmas trees in public squares, street trees and park trees, adorning lampposts and other such structures, decorating significant buildings such as town halls and department stores, and lighting up popular tourist attractions such as the Eiffel Tower and the Sydney Opera House. It is believed that the first outdoor public electric light Christmas Holiday display was organized by Fredrick Nash and the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce in Altadena, California, on Santa Rosa Avenue, called Christmas Tree Lane. Christmas Tree Lane in Altadena has been continuously lit except during WW2 since 1920. Annual displays in Regent Street and Oxford Street, London, date from 1954 and 1959 respectively.

Neighborhoods.

From the 1960s, beginning with tract housing in the US, it became increasingly common to outline the house (particularly the eaves) with weatherproof Christmas lights. The Holiday Trail of Lights is a joint effort by cities in east Texas and northwest Louisiana that had its origins in the Festival of Lights and Christmas Festival in Natchitoches, started in 1927, making it one of the oldest light festivals in the US. Fulton Street in Palo Alto, California, has the nickname "Christmas Tree Lane" due to the display of lighted Christmas trees along the street. A familiar pastime during the holiday season is to drive or walk around neighborhoods in the evening to see the lights displayed on homes. While some homes have no lights, others may have ornate displays requiring weeks to construct. A few have made it to the "Extreme Christmas" TV specials shown on HGTV, at least one requiring a generator and another requiring separate electrical service to supply the electrical power required. In Australia and New Zealand, chains of Christmas lights were quickly adopted as an effective way to provide ambient lighting to verandas, where cold beer is often served in the hot summer evenings. Since the late 20th century, increasingly elaborate Christmas lights have been displayed, and driving around between 8 and 10 p.m. to view the lights has become a popular form of family entertainment. In some areas Christmas lighting becomes a fierce competition, with town councils offering awards for the best decorated house, in other areas it is seen as a co-operative effort, with residents priding themselves on their street or their neighbourhood. The town of Lobethal, South Australia, in the Adelaide Hills, is famed for its Christmas lighting displays. Many residents expend great effort to have the best light display in the town. Residents from the nearby city of Adelaide often drive to the town to view them. In the US, the television series "The Great Christmas Light Fight" features homes across the country in a competition of homes with elaborate Christmas light displays.

Other holidays.

In the United States, lights have been produced for many other holidays. These may be simple sets in typical holiday colors, or the type with plastic ornaments which the light socket fits into. Light sculptures are also produced in typical holiday icons.  Halloween is the most popular, with miniature light strings having black-insulated wires and semi-opaque orange bulbs. Later sets had some transparent purple bulbs (a representation of black, similar to blacklight), a few even have transparent green, or a translucent or semi-opaque lime green (possibly representing slime as in "Ghostbusters", or creatures like goblins or space aliens). Two types of icicle lights are sold at Halloween: all-orange, and a combination of purple and green known as "slime lights".  Easter lights are often produced in pastels. These typically have white wire and connectors.  Red, white, and blue lights are produced for Independence Day, as well as U.S. flag and other patriotic-themed ornaments. Net lights have been produced with the lights in a U.S. flag pattern. In 2006, some stores carried stakes with LEDs that light fiber-optics, looking similar to fireworks.  These above light strings are occasionally used on Christmas trees anyway, usually to add extra variety to the colors of the lights on the tree.  Various types of patio lighting with no holiday theme are also made for summertime. These are often clear white lights, but most are ornament sets, such as lanterns made of metal or bamboo, or plastic ornaments in the shape of barbecue condiments, flamingos and palm trees, or even various beers. Some are made of decorative wire or mesh, in abstract shapes such as dragonflies, often with glass "gems" or marbles. Light sculptures are also made in everything from wire-mesh frogs to artificial palm trees outlined in rope lights.  In Pakistan, fairy lights are often used to decorate in celebration of Eid ul-Fitr at Chaand Raat, which occurs at the end of Ramadan. In India on Diwali too, homes, shops and streets are decorated with strings of fairy lights.

Environment, recycling, and safety.

Christmas lighting leads to some recycling issues. Annually more than 20 million pounds of discarded holiday lights are shipped to Shijiao, China (near Guangzhou), which has been referred to as "the world capital for recycling Christmas lights". The region began importing discarded lights circa 1990 in part because of its cheap labor and low environmental standards. As late as 2009, many factories burned the lights to melt the plastic and retrieve the copper wire, releasing toxic fumes into the environment. A safer technique was developed that involved chopping the lights into a fine sand-like consistency, mixing it with water and vibrating the slurry on a table causing the different elements to separate out, similar to the process of panning for gold. Everything is recycled: copper, brass, plastic and glass.  More cities in the US are establishing schemes to recycle Christmas lights, with towns organizing drop-off points for handing in old lights.  As of December 2019, most scrap metal recycling centers will purchase traditional incandescent Christmas lights for between USD$0.10/Lb - USD$0.20/Lb (€0.20/Kg - €0.40/kg). This scrap value is primarily derived from the recycling value of the copper found inside the wire, and to a lesser degree, other metals and alloys. As an example, a standard 20 ft (6.1m) strand of modern incandescent Christmas lights weighing about 0.72 Lbs (0.33 kilo) was found to have less than 20% recoverable copper by weight.  Installing holiday lighting may be a safety hazard when incorrectly connecting several strands of lights, repeatedly using the same extension cords, or using an unsafe ladder during the installation process.

Light sculptures.

Christmas light sculptures, also called motifs, are used as Christmas decorations and for other holidays. Originally, these were large wireframe metalwork pieces made for public displays, such as for a municipal government to place on utility poles, and shopping centers to place on lampposts. Since the 1990s, these are also made in small plastic home versions that can be hung in a window, or on a door or wall. Framed motifs can be lit using mini lights or ropelight, and larger scale motifs and sculptures may use C7 bulbs.  Light sculptures can be either flat (most common) or three-dimensional. Flat sculptures are the motifs, and are often on metal frames, but garland can also be attached to outdoor motifs. Indoor motifs often have a multicolored plastic backing sheet, sometimes holographic. 3D sculptures include deer or reindeer (even moose) in various positions, and with or without antlers, often with a motor to move the head up and down or side to side as if grazing. These and other 3D displays may be bare-frame, or be covered with garland, looped and woven transparent plastic cord or acrylic, or natural or goldtone-painted vines. Snowflakes are a popular design for municipal displays, so as not to be misconstrued as a government endorsement of religion, or so they can be left up all winter.  Some places make huge displays of these during December, such as Callaway Gardens, Life University, and Lake Lanier Islands in the U.S. state of Georgia. In east Tennessee, the cities of Chattanooga, Sevierville, Pigeon Forge, and Gatlinburg have light sculptures up all winter. Gatlinburg also has custom ones for Valentine's Day and St. Patrick's Day, while Pigeon Forge puts flowers on its tall lampposts for spring, and for winter has a steamboat and the famous picture of U.S. Marines "Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima", in addition to the city's historic Old Mill.  Some sculptures have microcontrollers that sequence circuits of lights, so that the object appears to be in motion. This is used for things such as snowflakes falling, Santa Claus waving, a peace dove flapping its wings, or train wheels rolling.

Christmas lights (also known as fairy lights or string lights) are lights often used for decoration in celebration of Christmas, often on display throughout the Christmas season including Advent and Christmastide. The custom goes back to when Christmas trees were decorated with candles, which symbolized Christ being the light of the world. This custom was borrowed from pagan yule rituals that celebrate the return of the light of the sun as the days grow longer after solstice: the evergreen trees symbolising the renewal and continuance of life in dark times. The Christmas trees were brought by Christians into their homes in early modern Germany.

圣诞灯(英语:Christmas lights),又称仙女灯、童话灯(英语:Fairy lights),是庆祝圣诞节而装饰的灯,经常在整个圣诞节期间展出,包括将临期和圣诞节浪潮。


Early development and artistic training.

Bonheur was born on 16 March 1822 in Bordeaux, Gironde, the oldest child in a family of artists. Her mother was Sophie Bonheur (born Marquis), a piano teacher; she died when Rosa Bonheur was eleven. Her father was Oscar-Raymond Bonheur, a landscape and portrait painter who encouraged his daughter's artistic talents. Though of Jewish origin, the Bonheur family adhered to Saint-Simonianism, a Christian-socialist sect that promoted the education of women alongside men. Bonheur's siblings included the animal painters Auguste Bonheur and Juliette Bonheur, as well as the animal sculptor Isidore Jules Bonheur. Francis Galton used the Bonheurs as an example of "Hereditary Genius" in his 1869 essay of the same title.  Bonheur moved to Paris in 1828 at the age of six with her mother and siblings, after her father had gone ahead of them to establish a residence and income there. By family accounts, she had been an unruly child and had a difficult time learning to read, though she would sketch for hours at a time with pencil and paper before she learned to talk. Her mother taught her to read and write by asking her to choose and draw a different animal for each letter of the alphabet. The artist credited her love of drawing animals to these reading lessons with her mother.  At school she was often disruptive, and was expelled numerous times. After a failed apprenticeship with a seamstress at the age of twelve, her father undertook her training as a painter. Her father allowed her to pursue her interest in painting animals by bringing live animals to the family's studio for studying. Following the traditional art school curriculum of the period, Bonheur began her training by copying images from drawing books and by sketching plaster models. As her training progressed, she made studies of domesticated animals, including horses, sheep, cows, goats, rabbits and other animals in the pastures around the perimeter of Paris, the open fields of Villiers near Levallois-Perret, and the still-wild Bois de Boulogne. At fourteen, she began to copy paintings at the Louvre. Among her favorite painters were Nicholas Poussin and Peter Paul Rubens, but she also copied the paintings of Paulus Potter, Frans Pourbus the Younger, Louis Léopold Robert, Salvatore Rosa and Karel Dujardin.  She studied animal anatomy and osteology in the abattoirs of Paris and dissected animals at the École nationale vétérinaire d'Alfort, the National Veterinary Institute in Paris. There she prepared detailed studies that she later used as references for her paintings and sculptures. During this period, she befriended the father-and-son comparative anatomists and zoologists, Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire.

Early success.

A French government commission led to Bonheur's first great success, "Ploughing in the Nivernais", exhibited in 1849 and now in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Her most famous work, the monumental "The Horse Fair", was completed in 1855 and measured eight feet high by sixteen feet wide. It depicts the horse market held in Paris, on the tree-lined boulevard de l'Hôpital, near the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, which is visible in the painting's background. There is a reduced version in the National Gallery in London. This work led to international fame and recognition; that same year she traveled to Scotland and met Queen Victoria "en route", who admired Bonheur's work"." In Scotland, she completed sketches for later works including "Highland Shepherd," completed in 1859, and "A Scottish Raid," completed in 1860. These pieces depicted a way of life in the Scottish highlands that had disappeared a century earlier, and they had enormous appeal to Victorian sensibilities.  Bonheur exhibited her work at the Palace of Fine Arts and The Woman's Building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois.  Though she was more popular in England than in her native France, she was decorated with the French Legion of Honour by the Empress Eugénie in 1865, and was promoted to Officer of the order in 1894. She was the first female artist to be given this award.

Patronage and the market for her work.

Bonheur was represented by the art dealer Ernest Gambart (1814–1902). In 1855 he brought Bonheur to the United Kingdom, and he purchased the reproduction rights to her work. Many engravings of Bonheur's work were created from reproductions by Charles George Lewis (1808–1880), one of the finest engravers of the day.  In 1859 her success enabled her to move to the Château de By near Fontainebleau, not far from Paris, where she lived for the rest of her life. The house is now a museum dedicated to her.

Personal life and legacy.

Women were often only reluctantly educated as artists in Bonheur's day, and by becoming such a successful artist she helped to open doors to the women artists that followed her.  Bonheur can be viewed as a "New Woman" of the 19th century; she was known for wearing men's clothing, but she attributed her choice of trousers to their practicality for working with animals (see Rational dress). In her romantic life, she was fairly openly a lesbian; she lived with her first partner, Nathalie Micas, for over 40 years until Micas' death, and later began a relationship with the American painter Anna Elizabeth Klumpke. At a time when lesbian sex – particularly tribadism – was regarded as animalistic and deranged by most French officials, Bonheur's outspokenness about her personal life was groundbreaking. In a world where gender expression was policed, Rosa Bonheur broke boundaries by deciding to wear pants, shirts and ties. She did not do this because she wanted to be a man, though she occasionally referred to herself as a grandson or brother when talking about her family; rather, Bonheur identified with the power and freedom reserved for men. Wearing men's clothing gave Bonheur a sense of identity in that it allowed her to openly show that she refused to conform to societies' construction of the gender binary. It also broadcast her sexuality at a time where the lesbian stereotype consisted of women who cut their hair short, wore pants, and chain-smoked. Rosa Bonheur did all three. Bonheur never explicitly said she was a lesbian, but her lifestyle and the way she talked about her female partners suggests this. Bonheur, while taking pleasure in activities usually reserved for men (such as hunting and smoking), viewed her womanhood as something far superior to anything a man could offer or experience. She viewed men as stupid and mentioned that the only males she had time or attention for were the bulls she painted.  Having chosen to never become an adjunct or appendage to a man in terms of painting, she decided she would be her own boss and that she would lean on herself and her female partners instead. She had her partners focus on the home life while she took on the role of breadwinner by focusing on her painting. Bonheur's legacy paved the way for other lesbian artists who didn't favour the life society had laid out for them.  Bonheur died on 25 May 1899, at the age of 77, at Thomery (By), France. She was buried together with Nathalie Micas (1824 – 24 June 1889), her lifelong companion, at Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris. Klumpke was Bonheur's sole heir after her death, and later joined Micas and Bonheur in the same cemetery upon her death. Many of her paintings, which had not previously been shown publicly, were sold at auction in Paris in 1900. One of her works, "Monarchs of the Forest", sold at auction in 2008 for just over $200,000.  Along with other realist painters of the 19th century, for much of the 20th century Bonheur fell from fashion, and in 1978 a critic described "Ploughing in the Nivernais" as "entirely forgotten and rarely dragged out from oblivion"; that same year it was part of a series of paintings sent to China by the French government for an exhibition titled "The French Landscape and Peasant, 1820–1905". Since then her reputation has been somewhat revived.

Biographical works.

The first biography of Rosa Bonheur was published during her lifetime: a pamphlet written by Eugène de Mirecourt, "Les Contemporains: Rosa Bonheur," which appeared just after her Salon success with "The Horse Fair" in 1856. Bonheur later corrected and annotated this document.  The second account was written by Anna Klumpke, Bonheur's companion in the last year of her life. Klumpke's biography, published in 1909 as "Rosa Bonheur: sa vie, son oeuvre," was translated in 1997 by Gretchen Van Slyke and published as "Rosa Bonheur: The Artist's (Auto)biography," so-named because Klumpke had used Bonheur's first-person voice.  The most authoritative work is "Reminiscences of Rosa Bonheur", edited by Theodore Stanton (the son of Elizabeth Cady Stanton), and published in London and New York in 1910. This volume includes numerous correspondences between Bonheur and her family and friends, which lends greater insight into the artist's life and her views of the art world, as well as her art-making practices.  As a mark of her fame and good reputation, the 1905 book "Women Painters of the World" (assembled and edited by Walter Shaw Sparrow) was subtitled "from the time of Caterina Vigri, 1413–1463, to Rosa Bonheur and the present day".

Rosa Bonheur, born Marie-Rosalie Bonheur (16 March 1822 – 25 May 1899), was a French artist, mostly a painter of animals (animalière) but also a sculptor, in a realist style. Her best-known paintings are "Ploughing in the Nivernais", first exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1848, and now at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, and "The Horse Fair" (in French: "Le marché aux chevaux"), which was exhibited at the Salon of 1853 (finished in 1855) and is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York City. Bonheur was widely considered to be the most famous female painter of the nineteenth century.

罗莎·博纳(,1822年-3月16日-1899年-5月25日),原名玛丽-罗莎莉·博纳 (Marie-Rosalie Bonheur),19世纪最著名女性画家,以动物画出名。曾是国际间-不分性别-最出名、画作最畅销且售价最高的画家。也是法国荣誉军团勋章设立以来首位获颁「大军官勋位」的女性。罗莎·博纳亦被认为是艺术史上第一位画作被拿来炒作的画家。罗莎·博纳过世后,她的作品在当时正兴起的现代艺术冲激下很快失去了光环。不过生长在一个没有女权可言,甚至女性才能遭受质疑的年代,她勇于追求理想的精神与精益求精的工作态度一直都是后世楷模, 尤其1980年代一些美国女性主义者将其视为先锋、典范之后,越来越多与其相关著作、文章、媒体报导又再度出现。


History.

Francesco I Sforza ruled Milan, having acquired the title of Duke of Milan (1450–1466) after marrying in 1441 the natural daughter and only heir of the last Duke of Milan, Filippo Maria Visconti, Bianca Maria (1425–1468), making the Sforzas the heirs of the house of Visconti.  The family also held the seigniory of Pesaro, starting with Muzio Attendolo's second son, Alessandro (1409–1473). The Sforza held Pesaro until 1512, after the death of Costanzo II Sforza.  Muzio's third son, Bosio (1411–1476), founded the branch of Santa Fiora, who held the title of count of Cotignola; the Sforza ruled the small county of Santa Fiora in southern Tuscany until 1624. Members of this family also held important ecclesiastical and political positions in the Papal States, and moved to Rome in 1674, taking the name of Sforza Cesarini.  The Sforza became allied with the Borgia family through the arranged marriage (1493–1497) between Lucrezia Borgia and Giovanni (the illegitimate son of Costanzo I of Pesaro). This alliance failed, as the Borgia family annulled the marriage once the Sforza family were no longer needed.  In 1499, in the course of the Italian Wars, the army of Louis XII of France took Milan from Ludovico Sforza (known as "Ludovico il Moro", famous for taking Leonardo da Vinci into his service).  After Imperial German troops drove out the French, Maximilian Sforza, son of Ludovico, became Duke of Milan (1512–1515) until the French returned under Francis I of France and imprisoned him.  In 1521 Charles V drove out the French and restored the younger son of Ludovico, Francesco II Sforza to the duchy. Francesco remained the ruler of Milan until his death in 1535 and as he was childless the Duchy reverted to the Emperor, who passed it to his son Philip II in 1540, thus beginning the period of Spanish rule in Milan.

The House of Sforza () was a ruling family of Renaissance Italy, based in Milan. They acquired the Duchy of Milan following the extinction of the Visconti family in the mid-15th century, Sforza rule ending in Milan with the death of the last member of the family's main branch in 1535.

斯福尔扎家族(House of Sforza)是意大利文艺复兴时期以米兰为中心的统治家族。