Woolf in Ceylon

Woolf in Ceylon PDF Author: Christopher Ondaatje
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781590482223
Category : Civil service, Colonial
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
Leonard Woolf was born in London in 1880 and spent five years at Trinity College, Cambridge where he began lasting friendships with men such as Lytton Strachey, E. M. Forster and John Maynard Keynes. In 1904 Woolf applied to join the home civil service but failed the exam. Instead, he was sent to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) as a cadet in the Ceylon civil service, joining the small group of white administrators who ruled the colony. He remained there for nearly seven years. In Woolf in Ceylon Christopher Ondaatje, who was himself born and brought up on the island, follows in the footsteps of Woolf. Drawing on his personal experience of Ceylon and empire, he compares the way of life during imperial days with that of the post-colonial era. We learn as much about the country, its people and their transformation of the country during the past century as we do about the man who used his colonial career to become one of the leading English men of letters of the twentieth century. Ondaatje s sensitive descriptions, illustrated with period and modern photographs, tell the compelling story of Woolf s sojourn in Ceylon and his developing disillusionment with the British colonial system. The result is a unique evocation of both a vanished imperial world and a colonial servant s enduring legacy in the contemporary culture of an enchanted but troubled island.

Woolf in Ceylon

Woolf in Ceylon PDF Author: Christopher Ondaatje
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781590482223
Category : Civil service, Colonial
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Get Book Here

Book Description
Leonard Woolf was born in London in 1880 and spent five years at Trinity College, Cambridge where he began lasting friendships with men such as Lytton Strachey, E. M. Forster and John Maynard Keynes. In 1904 Woolf applied to join the home civil service but failed the exam. Instead, he was sent to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) as a cadet in the Ceylon civil service, joining the small group of white administrators who ruled the colony. He remained there for nearly seven years. In Woolf in Ceylon Christopher Ondaatje, who was himself born and brought up on the island, follows in the footsteps of Woolf. Drawing on his personal experience of Ceylon and empire, he compares the way of life during imperial days with that of the post-colonial era. We learn as much about the country, its people and their transformation of the country during the past century as we do about the man who used his colonial career to become one of the leading English men of letters of the twentieth century. Ondaatje s sensitive descriptions, illustrated with period and modern photographs, tell the compelling story of Woolf s sojourn in Ceylon and his developing disillusionment with the British colonial system. The result is a unique evocation of both a vanished imperial world and a colonial servant s enduring legacy in the contemporary culture of an enchanted but troubled island.

The Village in the Jungle

The Village in the Jungle PDF Author: Leonard Woolf
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : British
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description


Stories of the East

Stories of the East PDF Author: Leonard Woolf
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Asia
Languages : en
Pages : 68

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Book Description


Growing

Growing PDF Author: Leonard Woolf
Publisher: Eland Publishing
ISBN: 9781780600710
Category : Civil service
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Growing is a portrait of a young man sent straight out from university to help govern Ceylon. It is doubtful that any Empire at any time has been served by such an intelligent, dutiful, hardworking and incorruptible civil servant as the young Leonard Woolf. He was determined to do what was good but discovered for himself that colonial rule, be it ever so high-minded, is fated to do wrong. Growing is also a deeply affectionate account of the mystery, magic and savage beauty of Ceylon at the turn of the century, an island whose diverse beliefs and cultures Woolf had the time and wit to explore in detail.

Leonard Woolf

Leonard Woolf PDF Author: Victoria Glendinning
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743289188
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 513

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Book Description
Award-winning biographer Victoria Glendinning draws on her deep knowledge of the twentieth century literary scene, and on her meticulous research into previously untapped sources, to write the first full biography of the extraordinary man who was the "dark star" at the center of the Bloomsbury set, and the definitive portrait of the Woolf marriage. A man of extremes, Leonard Woolf was ferocious and tender, violent and self-restrained, opinionated and nonjudgmental, always an outsider of sorts within the exceptionally intimate, fractious, and sometimes vicious society of brilliant but troubled friends and lovers. He has been portrayed either as Virginia's saintly caretaker or as her oppressor, the substantial range and influence of his own achievements overshadowed by Virginia's fame and the tragedy of her suicide. But Leonard was a pivotal figure of his age, whose fierce intelligence touched the key literary and political events that shaped the early decades of the twentieth century and would resonate into the post-World War II era. Glendinning beautifully evokes Woolf 's coming-of-age in turn-of-the-century London. The scholarship boy from a prosperous Jewish family would cut his own path through the world of the British public school, contending with the lingering anti-Semitism of Imperial Age Britain. Immediately upon entering Trinity College, Cambridge, Woolf became one of an intimate group of vivid personalities who would form the core of the Bloomsbury circle: the flamboyant Lytton Strachey; Toby Stephen, "the Goth," through whom Leonard would meet Stephen's sister Virginia; and Clive Bell. Glendinning brings to life their long nights of intense discussion of literature and the vicissitudes of sex, and charts Leonard's course as he becomes the lifelong friend of John Maynard Keynes and E. M. Forster. She unearths the crucial influence of Woolf 's seven years as a headstrong administrator in colonial Ceylon, where he lost confidence in the imperial mission, deciding to abandon Ceylon in order to marry the psychologically troubled Virginia Stephen. Glendinning limns the true nature of Leonard's devotion to Virginia, revealing through vivid depiction of their unconventional marriage how Leonard supported Virginia through her breakdowns and in her writing. In co-founding with Virginia the Hogarth Press, he provided a secure publisher for Virginia's own boldly experimental works. As the éminence grise of the early Labour Party, working behind the scenes,Woolf became a leading critic of imperialism, and his passionate advocacy of collective security to prevent war underpinned the charter of the League of Nations. After Virginia's death, he continued to forge his own iconoclastic way, engaging in a long and happy relationship with a married woman. Victoria Glendinning's Leonard Woolf is a major achievement -- a shrewdly perceptive and lively portrait of a complex man of extremes and contradictions in whom passion fought with reason and whose far-reaching influence is long overdue for the full appreciation Glendinning offers in this important book.

A Tale Told by Moonlight

A Tale Told by Moonlight PDF Author: Leonard Woolf
Publisher: Modern Voices
ISBN: 9781843914242
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
An after-dinner walk in the moonlight leads to a series of confessions of first loves. That is until Jessop takes his turn and decries the notion of love itself. He speaks of a tragic affair between an old schoolfriend of his and an innocent Sinhalese girl, and so introduces the motif of these three stories - the incompatibility of East and West.

Running in the Family

Running in the Family PDF Author: Michael Ondaatje
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307776646
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
In the late 1970s Ondaatje returned to his native island of Sri Lanka. As he records his journey through the drug-like heat and intoxicating fragrances of that "pendant off the ear of India, " Ondaatje simultaneously retraces the baroque mythology of his Dutch-Ceylonese family. An inspired travel narrative and family memoir by an exceptional writer.

Serendib

Serendib PDF Author: Eugenia W. Herbert
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781951928025
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Since antiquity Ceylon?--?long known as Serendib, now Sri Lanka?--?has been renowned for its beauty and its wealth. Shipwrecked on its shores, Sindbad the Sailor found it a land of "unrivalled splendor and magnificence," the air filled with the fragrance of spices and rare gems glittering in the streams of a lofty mountain. He returned home loaded with riches, as many were to do after him: Portuguese, Dutch, and finally, in the nineteenth century, the British. Serendib tells the stories in the voices and through the eyes of those who ultimately made and lost fortunes not in the cinnamon and pearls that first lured them but in coffee and tea; it tells the stories, too, of those who came to govern, to convert, to hunt, to unearth the island's antiquities, and simply to delight in its natural wonders.

Library of Luminaries: Jane Austen

Library of Luminaries: Jane Austen PDF Author: Zena Alkayat
Publisher: Chronicle Books
ISBN: 1452157944
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 129

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Book Description
Discover the stories behind the stories in this treasurable illustrated biography of Jane Austen. Enchanting illustrations and handwritten text featuring excerpts from Austen's personal letters outline the intimate details of the literary icon's life—her childhood on a farm, the writing of her first novella, her marital woes, the inspiration behind Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, and more. Brimming with delightful details like the objects Austen kept on her desk and how much Emma originally sold for, this beautiful ebook is a lovely new way to celebrate Austen's legacy.

Who's Afraid of Leonard Woolf?

Who's Afraid of Leonard Woolf? PDF Author: Irene Coates
Publisher: Soho Press
ISBN: 9781569472941
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 468

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Book Description
Was Virginia Woolf suicidal, or was she betrayed and driven to taking her own life? Irene Coates argues, with forensic precision, that Leonard Woolf was responsible for the unraveling of his wife's sanity and her subsequent suicide. These two people were at the heart of the Bloomsbury Group; one a mad genius, the other a so-called selfless husband. But underneath that caring veneer beat the heart of a pessimistic, repressed, bullying, and hypocritical man, one who may have been responsible for the death of Virginia Woolf