Katherine Austen

Katherine Austen (1629-ca.1683) was a British diarist and poet best known for Book M, her manuscript collection of meditations, journal entries, and verse.

Austen was born in London, one of seven children, to Katherine Wilson (d. 1648) and her husband Robert (d. 1639), a draper. She married Thomas Austen (1622–1658), a barrister, in 1645. After his death at the age of 36, she entered into an involved legal battle with his family in order to retain his manor in Middlesex for her three children, Thomas, Robert, and Anne.

Her manuscript of 114 folios, Book M (BL, Add. MS 4454), was written over six or seven years during her period of mourning — her “Most saddest Yeares” (60r) — and includes material on her lawsuit, interpretations of dreams (her own and others), historical commentary, prayers, letters, financial materials, and 34 verse meditations in rhyming couplets.

She declined to remarry, citing her regard for her late husband and her fears for the financial interests of her children. The date of her death is unknown but her will was proved in 1683.

Attila the Stockbroker

Attila the Stockbroker (born John Baine, 21 October 1957 in Southwick, West Sussex, England) is a punk poet, and a folk punk musician and songwriter. He performs solo and as the leader of the band Barnstormer. He describes himself as a “sharp tongued, high energy social surrealist poet and songwriter.” He has performed over 2500 concerts, published five books of poems, and released 29 recordings (CDs,LPs and singles). His latest book of poems, ‘My Poetic Licence’ was published in May 2008.

Baine started performing in 1980 after being inspired by the spirit and do it yourself ethos of the punk subculture, particularly The Clash’s overtly socialist stance. At first he performed poems and songs in between bands at punk rock concerts, accompanying himself on the phased electric mandolin. After this was smashed over his head by fascists during a fight at a performance in North London in May 1982, he got a mandola (a fifth lower) and has played this ever since. He has performed in 19 countries, playing venues ranging from the Oxford Union in England to squatted punk clubs in Germany, and has performed over 100 shows every year. He toured East Germany four times before the Berlin Wall came down, and once did an illegal performance in a hotel basement in Stalinist Albania.

In the 1980s, he was often the support act for punk bands, including The Jam, The Alarm, Newtown Neurotics, New Model Army and performed extensively with fellow punk-inspired ranting poets Swift Nick, Kool Knotes, Phill Jupitus and Seething Wells. Manic Street Preachers once supported him at a performance at Swansea University. In the 1990s, he toured with John Otway as Headbutts and Halibuts, and together they wrote a surreal rock opera called Cheryl. It was an everyday tale of Satanism, trainspotting, drug abuse and unrequited love. He has performed at every Glastonbury Festival since 1982, and continues to write topical, satirical material on all kinds of subjects.

Notable works from his 1980s heyday include the biting poem Contributory Negligence; various Russians-themed poems, satirizing the alleged Cold War Russian threat in the context of Margaret Thatcher’s Britain (such as “Russians in the DHSS” and “Russians in McDonald’s”); and the surreal Nigel series, such as Nigel wants to go to C&A (with the lines “…but I don’t understand why / ‘cos they don’t sell nerve gas in C&A / not even to SDP members in cashmere sweaters”). He recently wrote the poem “Asylum Seeking Daleks”, which satirises the right wing press’s attitudes to immigration, and the song “Hey Celebrity”, which rejects the need for the concept of celebrity.

Attila the Stockbroker formed the band Barnstormer in 1994. Their music combines punk rock and medieval music. The band released its debut album The Siege of Shoreham in 1996. They perform regularly all over Europe. The band features Attila the Stockbroker on vocals, violin, crumhorn and recorders; Dan Woods on guitar (also a member of The Fish Brothers); M. M. McGhee on drums (also a member of The Fish Brothers); and Dave Beaken on bass (also a member of The Fish Brothers).

Edwin Arnold

Sir Edwin Arnold CSI CIE (June 10, 1832 – March 24, 1904) was an English poet and journalist, who is most known for his work, The Light of Asia.

Arnold was born at Gravesend, Kent, the second son of a Sussex magistrate, Robert Coles Arnold. One of his six children was the novelist Edwin Lester Arnold. He was educated at King’s School, Rochester; King’s College London; and University College, Oxford. He became a schoolmaster, at King Edward’s School, Birmingham, and in 1856 went to India as principal of the Government Sanskrit College at Poona, a post which he held for seven years, which includes a period during the mutiny of 1857, when he was able to render services for which he was publicly thanked by Lord Elphinstone in the Bombay council. Here he received the bias towards, and gathered material for, his future works.

Returning to England in 1861 he worked as a journalist on the staff of The Daily Telegraph, a newspaper with which he continued to be associated as editor for more than forty years, and later became its editor-in-chief. It was he who, on behalf of the proprietors of the Daily Telegraph in conjunction with the New York Herald, arranged the journey of H.M. Stanley to Africa to discover the course of the Congo River, and Stanley named after him a mountain to the north-east of Albert Edward Nyanza.

Arnold must also be credited with the first idea of a great trunk line traversing the entire African continent, for in 1874 he first employed the phrase “Cape to Cairo railway” subsequently popularized by Cecil Rhodes. It was, however, as a poet that he was best known to his contemporaries. The literary task which he set before him was the interpretation in English verse of the life and philosophy of the East. His chief work with this object is The Light of Asia which was translated in various languages like Hindi (tr. by Acharya Ram Chandra Shukla). It appeared in 1879 and was an immediate success, going through numerous editions in England and America, though its permanent place in literature must remain very uncertain. It is an Indian epic, dealing with the life and teaching of the Buddha, which are unfolded with ample local color and comely prosody. The poem contains many lines of unquestionable beauty; and its immediate popularity was rather increased than diminished by the twofold criticism to which it was subjected. On the one hand it was held by Oriental scholars to give false impression of Buddhist doctrine; while, on the other, suggested analogy between Sakyamuni and Jesus offended the taste of some devout Christians.

The latter criticism probably suggested to Arnold the idea of attempting a second narrative poem of which the central figure should be Jesus, the founder of Christianity, as the founder of Buddhism had been that of the first. But though The Light of the World (1891), in which this took shape, had considerable poetic merit, it lacked the novelty of theme and setting which had given the earlier poem much of its attractiveness; and it failed to repeat the success gained by The Light of Asia. Arnold’s other principal volumes of poetry were Indian Song of Songs (1875), Pearls of the Faith (1883), The Song Celestial (1885), With Sadi in the Garden (1888), Tiphar’s Wife (1892) and Adzuma or, The Japanese Wife (1893).

In his later years Arnold resided for some time in Japan, and his third wife was Japanese. In Seas and Lands (1891) and Japonica (1892) he gives an interesting study of Japanese life. He received the CSI on the occasion of the proclamation of Queen Victoria as Empress of India in 1877, and in 1888 was created CIE He also possessed decorations conferred by the rulers of Japan, Persia, Turkey and Siam.

He was a founder member, together with Anagarika Dharmapala, of the Mahabodhi Society of India.

History of science in the Renaissance – Alchemy

Alchemy is the study of the transmutation of materials through obscure processes. It is sometimes described as an early form of chemistry. One of the main aims of alchemists was to find a method of transmuting lead to gold. A common belief of alchemists was that there is an essential substance from which all other substances formed, and that if you could reduce a substance to this original material, you could then construct it into another substance, like lead to gold. Medieval alchemists worked with two elements, sulphur and mercury.

Paracelsus was an alchemist and physician of the Renaissance. The Paracelsians added a third element, salt, to make a trinity of alchemical elements.