Literary Links
July/August 2006
Good News and Announcements
Available Now!--Pick up a copy of My So-Called Love Life by Allie Pleiter, author of Queen Esther and the Second Graders of Doom. Also, Michelle Prima has gathered years of experience in research and writing, and written a 14-page booklet for authors, 101 Organizing Tips for Writers. Click here for more information on how you can become more organized and more productive with your writing.
Coming Soon!--It's the book you've been waiting for. Pat White's third book in her wrestling romance line, Love on the Ropes, will be out in November 2006. Check back for details. Also from Pat, will be Silent Memories in September 2006, her first Harlequin Intrigue.
RWA National Conference--The 2006 annual RWA conference will be at the Atlanta Marriott Marquis in Atlanta, Georgia from July 26-29. Blythe Gifford will be speaking with Debbie Pfeiffer on Saturday, July 29 at 8:30a.m. The topic is "60 Minutes to Your Marketing Strategy."
Services Available--Need to get your writing organized? How about research for your new book? Michelle Prima, President of Literary Liaisons, is now offering organizing, research and errand services through her company, Prima By Design, Inc., a Professional Organizing business for residential customers. She currently works in the Chicago area only, but will provide research services on-line for others. Contact Michelle for more information.
New On Literary Liaisons
There are many new additions to Literary Liaisons. After reading about them below, check them out on the web site.
Bookstore:
NEW
101 Organizing Tips for Writers
Non-fiction:
100 Words Almost Everyone Confuses & Misuses by the Editors of the American Heritage Dictionaries
The Hanging Tree by V.A.C. Gatrell
A Prescription for Murder by Angus McLaren
Victorian Houseware, Hardware and Kitchenware by Ronald S. Barlow
Word and Phrase Origins by Robert Hendrickson
Feature Title:
Hints in Household Taste by Charles L. Eastlake
The Video Library
The Inheritance
Researching the Romance
100 Words Almost Everyone Confuses & Misuses by the Editors of the American Heritage Dictionaries
The Hanging Tree by V.A.C. Gatrell
A Prescription for Murder by Angus McLaren
Victorian Houseware, Hardware and Kitchenware by
Word and Phrase Origins by Robert Hendrickson
Writers' Resources Online
The British Rail System--A brief look at the British Railway in the Victorian Era
Cash4Books--Get cash for your used books--and they pay the shipping!
Fun with Words--The wordplay web site
Poet Seers--Texts of Victorian Poems
Victorian Fashion--From Apparel Search, a thorough look at fashion through the decades
Feature Article
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American English vs. British English by Michelle Prima
If you've ever been to London, you already know that although both countries English, there is a world of difference in our use of words. Here is a fun list of words the British use on a regular basis that would make us scratch our heads in wonder.
Sources:
British English A to Zed by Norman Schur, Harper Perennial, 1987. For more information on these books, visit our Features Page. For more sources like these, visit our Reference Books Page.
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Editor's Note
As I am going through the process of fixing up our house to sell, searching for a new one, and starting a new job, it makes me realize how change influences our lives. Each action, each decision we make, results in another action or reaction. Sometimes the results are not so favorable, other times they are. This is also true in our writing. For every action our characters make, there is an action or reaction. This is a very strong plot device, as just one simple decision can change lives forever. Keep this in mind while plotting your book. Not only should you have your characters make life-changing decisions, you should also keep their actions appropriate to their backgrounds. And remember this in life also, before you make a critical decision that could change other people's lives.
--Michelle Prima
President, Literary Liaisons, Ltd.
Q&A Column
Q: I'm writing a paper for school, and found some good information on your web site. Can I use the articles as my source?
Lindsay D..
A: Lindsay--Yes, you may use the articles on my web site as a source. But please cite the articles in your paper. I have allowed many people to use my articles for a variety of reasons, from non-fiction research to radio talk shows. All I ask is that you e-mail me the name of the article you want to cite, the reason you want to use the information, and a copy of the completed work with the source quoted. Either hard copy or an e-mail attachment is fine. Good luck on your project!
Michelle Prima
President, Literary Liaisons, Ltd.
Historical Calendar of Events
1892
Births
Pearl Buck--American novelist
Tito--Yugoslav statesman
A.H. Compton--U.S. physicist
Deaths
Walt Whitman
Alfred Lord Tennyson
E.W. Siemens
Politics
Gladstone became Prime Minister of England.
Kier Hardie became the first Labour member of Parliament.
Giolotti became Premier of Italy.
Prince Ito became Premier of Japan.
Grover Cleveland elected President of the United States.
The Pan-Slav Conference was held at Cracow.
Iron and steel workers went on strike in the United States.
Australia had a strike that closed down ports, mines, and sheep-shearing stations. It was ended by military intervention.
Cheap grain from America and Russia depressed French farm prices.
Congress was petitioned to hold pure food law hearings.
Former clergyman Francis Bellamy wrote a "pledge of allegiance" for U.S.
schoolchildren to recite October 12 in commemoration of the discovery of America
400 years ago.
The Ohio Supreme Court outlawed John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Trust
under the 1890 Sherman Act.
The New York legislature created Adirondack Park, setting aside the nation's
largest forest reserve after years of unrestricted logging:
A presidential proclamation April 19 opened 3 million acres of former Arapaho
and Cheyenne lands in Oklahoma to settlement.
The Geary Chinese Exclusion Act passed by Congress May 5 extended for another 10
years all existing Chinese exclusion laws and required all Chinese residing in
the United States to register within a year or face deportation.
The Arts
Paintings:
"At the Moulin Rouge" by Toulouse-Lautrec
"The Spirit of the Dead Walking" by Paul Gauguin
"Woman Sweeping" by Jean Edouard Vuillard
Sculpture:
"Diana" by Augustus Saint-Gaudens
Fiction:
Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde
Barrack-Room Ballads by Rudyard Kipling
La Debacle by Emile Zola
The American Claimant by Mark Twain
The Children of the Ghetto by Israel Zangwill
The Soul of Lillith by Marie Corelli
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by A. Conan Doyle
Non-fiction:
Darwin and After Darwin by G.J. Romanes
Poetry:
Barrack-Room Ballads by Rudyard Kipling
The Song of the Sword by William Ernest Henley
Music:
"Symphony No. 8" by Bruckner premiered in Vienna
Popular Songs:
"Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-de-ray" sung by Lottie Collins
"Daisy Bell" by Harry Dacre
"The Bowery" by Percy Gaunt
Opera:
"I Pagliacci" by Leoncavallo in Milan on May 21
"Iolanta" by Pater Tchaikovsky in St. Petersburg on Dec 18
Theater:
"Lady Windermere's Fan" by Oscar Wilde
"Widower's Houses" by George Bernard Shaw
"Charley's Aunt" by Brandon Thomas
Ballet:
"The Nutcracker" by Tchaikovsky in St. Petersburg
Daily Life
The Toronto Star began publication.
The Ridder newspaper chain that would grow to include 19 daily newspapers had its beginnings.
Baltimore's Afro-American
began publication on a semiweekly basis with John Murphy as editor.
The Ladies' Home Journal announced that it would accept no more patent
medicine advertisements.
Monet began his series of paintings
on the Rouen Cathedral.
Dvorak became director of the New York National Conservatory of Music.
Pineapple was canned for the first time.
Chicago salesman William Wrigley, Jr. started selling chewing gum.
New York Condensed Milk Co. added
evaporated milk to its Borden product line.
Asa Candler organized the Coca-Cola Co. at Atlanta.
Famine crippled Russia, and by late
January 3 million barrels of U.S. flour were en route to relieve the starvation
that was killing millions.
Gentleman Jim Corbett defeated John
Sullivan to win the heavyweight boxing title.
Chicago's 16-year-old A. G. Spalding acquired Wright & Ditson, which would become a major factor in tennis balls and rackets.
The cornerstone of New York's St.
John the Divine was laid December 27 on an 11.5-acre site acquired the previous
year for $850,000. Planned as the world's largest cathedral, it was designed by
George Lewis Heins.
Brooklyn's Grand Army Plaza was graced with a Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial
Arch dedicated to the Civil War dead.
William K. Vanderbilt's Marble House was completed at Newport, Rhode Island by
architect Richard Morris Hunt.
The Dalton gang, including former train robbers Robert Dalton and his brother
Grattan, arrived at Coffeyville, Kansas on October 5 intending to rob two banks,
but were killed by alerted townspeople.
Shell Oil had its beginnings as English entrepreneur Marcus Samuel sent his
first tanker through the Suez Canal with oil for Singapore, Bangkok, and other
destinations to break the Standard Oil monopoly in the Far East.
General Electric Co. was created through a merger engineered by J. P. Morgan who
combined Edison General Electric with Thomson-Houston.
The Sierra Club was founded by John Muir and others to protect America's natural
environment.
The $1 Ingersoll pocket watch was introduced by U.S. mail-order and chain store
entrepreneur Robert Hawley Ingersoll.
Cholera arrived in the United States August 30 with steerage passengers from the
Hamburg-Amerika line ship S.S. Moravia.
Andrew T. Still founded The American School of Osteopathy in Kirksville,
Missouri.
Italy raised the minimum age for marriage for girls to 12.
New York's immigrant receiving station moved to Ellis Island in the Upper Bay of
New York Harbor.
Player's Navy Cut cigarettes were introduced at London.
Wills' Three Castle cigarettes were packed in the first push-up cardboard
cigarette packets.
Technology
C.F. Cross and E. J. Bevan discovered viscose.
Diesel patented his international combustion engine.
The first automatic telephone switchboard was introduced.
The Cape-Johannesburg railroad was completed.
The first successful U.S. gasoline tractor is produced by Waterloo, Iowa, farmer
John Froelich.
Canadian druggist William Saunders, head of the Dominion Experimental Farms,
produced the hardy Markham wheat strain.
March 15--The Reno Inclined Elevator patented by U.S. mining engineer Jesse
Wilford Reno was the world's first escalator. It would be installed in the fall
of 1896 at Coney Island's Old Iron Pier.
Telephone service between New York and Chicago begins October 18.
The Addressograph invented by Sioux City, Iowa, engineer Joseph Smith Duncan
printed mailing addresses automatically.
Danish veterinarian Bernhard Laurits Frederik Bang developed a method for
eradicating tuberculosis from dairy herds.
R.H. Macy partner Nathan Straus launched a campaign for pasteurized milk.
An improved carburetor invented by Gottlieb Daimler mixed vaporized fuel with
air to create a combustible or explosive gas.
German-American engineer Charles Steinmetz discovered the law of hysteresis,
which would improve the efficiency of electric motors, generators, and
transformers.
New York City got new torrents of clean drinking water as the $24 million New
Croton Aqueduct was completed after 7 years of construction.
U.S. inventor Joshua Pusey patented book matches, which contain poisonous white
phosphorus that will be replaced by safer chemicals in 1911.
Baltimore machine-shop foreman William Painter patented a clamp-on tin-plated
steel bottle cap with an inner seal disk of natural cork and a flanged edge; he
also patents a capping machine for beer and soft drink bottles.
Russian botanist Dmitri Iosifovich Ivanovski discovered filterable viruses,
pioneering the science of virology.
A gasoline buggy produced at Springfield, Massachusetts, by Charles and Franklin
Duryea may be the first U.S. motorcar. It had a four-cycle water-cooled engine
and a rubber and leather transmission.
French auto makers René Panhard and E. C. Levassor produced the first motorcar
to be equipped with pneumatic tires.
South Africa's first trains from Cape Town reached Johannesburg in September.
Chicago's first elevated railway went into operation to begin the "Loop" that
will circle the city's downtown area.
Union Carbide had its beginnings at Spray, North Carolina where local
entrepreneurs Thomas Leopold Willson and James T. Morehead accidentally produced
calcium carbide while trying to make aluminum.
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