The British Toy Business

The British Toy Business

Author: Kenneth D. Brown

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 1996-01-01

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 9781852851361

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At its height British toymaking was a significant industry, with famous names such as Britains and Meccano known throughout the world. While in essence a specialised form of small-scale engineering, its products and market have always been unique, reflecting the current priorities of both parents and children. Yet, while individual toys and marques have been catalogued extensively, no previous history of toymaking as a whole exists. The British Toy Business provides a fascinating example of the development of a specific industry. Many early early toys were home-made. From the eighteenth century, with its growing recognition of children as something other than small adults, date the beginnings of specialised toys, usually produced by small workshops and sold by street-sellers. The nineteenth century, with its industrial growth and middle-class prosperity, saw an expansion of toymaking. The 1960s and 1970s were the most successful years of British toymaking, with companies like Lesney making record profits. Yet British toy makers failed to solve a number of fundamental problems. Following an unexpected sudden downturn in sales at a time of high interest rates, the major names in British toy making, Lesney, Airfix, Mettoy and Dunbee Combex Marx, all collapsed between 1979 and 1985, leaving the business to be dominated largely by importers.


Victoria

Victoria

Author: Catherine Reef

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2017-11-07

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 0544715950

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Catherine Reef brings history vividly to life in this sumptuously illustrated account of a confident, strong-minded, and influential woman. Victoria woke one morning at the age of eighteen to discover that her uncle had died and she was now queen. She went on to rule for sixty-three years, with an influence so far-reaching that the decades of her reign now bear her name—the Victorian period. Victoria is filled with the exciting comings and goings of royal life: intrigue and innuendo, scheming advisors, and assassination attempts, not to mention plenty of passion and discord. Includes bibliography, notes, British royal family tree, index.


British Hymn Books for Children, 1800-1900

British Hymn Books for Children, 1800-1900

Author: Dr Alisa Clapp-Itnyre

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published: 2016-01-28

Total Pages: 520

ISBN-13: 1472407016

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Examining nineteenth-century British hymns for children, Alisa Clapp-Itnyre argues that the unique qualities of children's hymnody created a space for children's empowerment. Unlike other literature of the era, hymn books were often compilations of many writers' hymns, presenting the discerning child with a multitude of perspectives on religion and childhood. In addition, the agency afforded children as singers meant that they were actively engaged with the text, music, and pictures of their hymnals. Clapp-Itnyre charts the history of children’s hymn-book publications from early to late nineteenth century, considering major denominational movements, the importance of musical tonality as it affected the popularity of hymns to both adults and children, and children’s reformation of adult society provided by such genres as missionary and temperance hymns. While hymn books appear to distinguish 'the child' from 'the adult', intricate issues of theology and poetry - typically kept within the domain of adulthood - were purposely conveyed to those of younger years and comprehension. Ultimately, Clapp-Itnyre shows how children's hymns complicate our understanding of the child-adult binary traditionally seen to be a hallmark of Victorian society. Intersecting with major aesthetic movements of the period, from the peaking of Victorian hymnody to the Golden Age of Illustration, children’s hymn books require scholarly attention to deepen our understanding of the complex aesthetic network for children and adults. Informed by extensive archival research, British Hymn Books for Children, 1800-1900 brings this understudied genre of Victorian culture to critical light.


The New Girl

The New Girl

Author: Sally Mitchell

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 9780231102476

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In 1880 the concept of girlhood as a separate stage of existence was barely present. But in the decades that followed, due in part to changes in the legal definition of childhood, a new cultural category was inscribed in a flood of popular books and magazines. Indeed, by the turn of the century working-class and middle-class girls were beginning to control enough of their own time and pocket money that publishing for them was a lucrative business.


To Paradise

To Paradise

Author: Hanya Yanagihara

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2022-01-11

Total Pages: 720

ISBN-13: 0385547943

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • From the award-winning, best-selling author of the classic A Little Life—a bold, brilliant novel spanning three centuries and three different versions of the American experiment, about lovers, family, loss and the elusive promise of utopia. A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: VOGUE • ESQUIRE • NPR • GOODREADS To Paradise is a fin de siècle novel of marvelous literary effect, but above all it is a work of emotional genius. The great power of this remarkable novel is driven by Yanagihara’s understanding of the aching desire to protect those we love—partners, lovers, children, friends, family, and even our fellow citizens—and the pain that ensues when we cannot. In an alternate version of 1893 America, New York is part of the Free States, where people may live and love whomever they please (or so it seems). The fragile young scion of a distinguished family resists betrothal to a worthy suitor, drawn to a charming music teacher of no means. In a 1993 Manhattan besieged by the AIDS epidemic, a young Hawaiian man lives with his much older, wealthier partner, hiding his troubled childhood and the fate of his father. And in 2093, in a world riven by plagues and governed by totalitarian rule, a powerful scientist’s damaged granddaughter tries to navigate life without him—and solve the mystery of her husband’s disappearances. These three sections comprise an ingenious symphony, as recurring notes and themes deepen and enrich one another: A townhouse in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village; illness, and treatments that come at a terrible cost; wealth and squalor; the weak and the strong; race; the definition of family, and of nationhood; the dangerous righteousness of the powerful, and of revolutionaries; the longing to find a place in an earthly paradise, and the gradual realization that it can’t exist. What unites not just the characters, but these Americas, are their reckonings with the qualities that make us human: Fear. Love. Shame. Need. Loneliness.


Portrait of a Marriage

Portrait of a Marriage

Author: Nigel Nicolson

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1998-11

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 9780226583570

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Vita Sackville-West, novelist, poet, and biographer, is best known as the friend of Virginia Woolf, who transformed her into an androgynous time-traveler in Orlando. The story of her love affair with Violet Keppel Trefusis in 1920 is one of intrigue and bewilderment. In Portrait of a Marriage, Nigel Nicolson combines his mother's vivid memoir of escapade with what he learned from copious family letters and explains the context of this romantic crisis. He also describes how Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson went on to live the rest of their lives in harmonious marriage.


It Takes a Certain Type to be a Writer

It Takes a Certain Type to be a Writer

Author: Erin Barrett

Publisher: Conari Press

Published: 2003-08-01

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 9781573247221

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Erin Barrett and Jack Mingo surely haven't stumbled on a writer's block, at least not their own. It Takes a Certain Type to Be a Writer gushes with amusing footnotes of literary history with hundreds of underscored facts and boldfaced quotes -- illuminating the amusing, ironic, and unbelievable in the world of publishing. Did you know that... Prior to achieving literary fame, Amy Tan wrote horoscopes. Anais Nin wrote erotica for hire. An anonymous rich patron paid her $1 a page. Anais was told to "take out all the poetry; it has to be nothing but descriptions of sex." John Irving played a wrestling referee in The World According to Garp. Alice B. Toklas was unjustly credited with being the inventor of those famous hashish brownies. In fact, she may have been the victim of a hoax... Read on to find out the details! Book jacket.


Portrait of Camelot

Portrait of Camelot

Author: Richard Reeves

Publisher: Abrams

Published: 2013-12-09

Total Pages: 650

ISBN-13: 1613122365

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A revealing and intimate portrait of a president, husband, and father as seen through the lens of the first official White House photographer. Cecil Stoughton’s close rapport with President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy gave him extraordinary access to the Oval Office, the Kennedys’ private quarters and homes, state dinners, cabinet meetings, diplomatic trips, and family holidays. Drawing on Stoughton’s unparalleled body of photographs, most rarely or never before reproduced, and supported by a deeply thoughtful narrative by political historian Richard Reeves, Portrait of Camelot is an unprecedented portrayal of the power, politics, and warmly personal aspects of Camelot’s 1,036 days. “Reveals an intimate account of a very public figure...the rare archive of images features the president during state dinners and cabinet meetings at the White House to family holidays and vacations at their private homes.” —Vanity Fair