This brilliant, classic and scholarly study provides the fullest treatment of a key subject. It is one of the essential works on Dickens's work and life. Dickens's treatment of women is a central aspect of his artistic achievement. Professor Slater examines the novelist's experience of women - as son, brother, lover, husband, and father, and as it affected the deepest emotional currents in his life. His perception of female nature and his conception of women's role in the home and outside it - and the ways in which these found expression in his art - are pivotal topics. Professor Slater has sifted the mass of legends and doubtful traditions about Dickens's private life to present a close examination of his relations with women, and of his views of woman's nature and the womanly ideal.

An illustrated history of America's musical heritage ranges from the earliest examples of Native American traditional song to the innovative sound of contemporary rock and jazz.

Set in the idyllic landscape of Milan, Italy, 'Clari; or, The Maid of Milan' follows the story of a young, hopeful singer striving for a better life. Filled with music, romance, and drama, Payne's classic play is a must-read for fans of opera and musical theater. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Fromental Halevy, best known for his opera La Juive, captured the romantic and contentious spirit of his time. His was one of the most eventful eras in French history, ranging from the fall of Napoleon to the establishment of the Second Empire, and he took part in what was happening around him, often reflecting it in his music. As a composer, Halevy regarded opera as a magic spectacle fusing drama, music, dance and art. His work - innovative, demanding, captivating - included more than 30 grand operas and operas comiques, almost all widely performed and many immensely popular throughout nineteenth century Europe and the United States. And, loyal to his Jewish faith, Halevy set to music several psalms for liturgical use in French synagogues. Wagner, for all his virulent anti-Semitism, hailed "Halevy's brilliant energy that has sped French grand opera along a new road". This book, our century's first full-length biography of Halevy, which includes previously unpublished excerpts from his diaries and correspondence, illuminates that road.

This book is composed of short excerpts from and about all kinds of matters American. Bombaugh, who has collated this work, describes it as a kind of banquet into which one may dip and pick.

Using hundreds of primary sources, Charles Dickens in Love narrates the story of the most intense romances of Charles Dickens' life and shows how his novels both testify to his own strongest affections and serve as memorials to the young women he loved all too well, if not always wisely. When Charles Dickens died in 1870, he was the best-known man in the English-speaking world - the preeminent Victorian celebrity, universally mourned as both a noble spirit and the greatest of novelists. Yet, the first person named in his will was an unknown woman named Ellen Ternan - only a handful of people had any idea who she was. Of his romance with Ellen, Dickens had written, "it belongs to my life and probably will only die out of the same with the proprietor," and so it was. She remained the most important person in his life until his death. She was not the first woman who had fired his imagination. As a young man he had fallen deeply in love with a woman who "pervaded every chink and crevice" of his mind for three years, Maria Beadnell. When she eventually jilted him he vowed that "I never can love any human creature but yourself." A few years later he was stunned by the sudden death of his young sister-in-law, Mary Scott Hogarth, and worshiped her memory for the rest of his life. "I solemnly believe that so perfect a creature never breathed," he declared, and he died over thirty years later still wearing her ring. Charles Dickens has no rival as the most fertile creative imagination since William Shakespeare, and no one influenced his imagination more powerfully than these three women, his muses and teachers in the school of love.