Polly Honeycombe is a 1760 afterpiece farce by George Colman the Elder. [1] It comically deals with the effect of novel-reading on not only young women, but on various members of polite 18th-century English society. It was Colman's first play and helped establish his reputation, which he built on with The Jealous Wife the following year.
The title character, Polly Honeycombe, is a young woman who reads many novels from the circulating library. Her expectations for her own future are shaped by the actions and characters in these novels. She tells her nurse that "a novel is the only thing to teach a girl life, and the way of the world." [2] Her father plans to marry her to Ledger, "the rich Jew's wife's nephew," [3] who shares none of Polly's notions of romance. Polly wants, instead to marry Scribble, who is merely an attorney's clerk, but who, like Polly, is self-consciously aware of the ways he follows novelistic conventions of plot and character. [4] When Honeycombe discovers his daughter's intentions, he locks her in her room—an action which Polly recognizes as a typical plot point. Scribble, however, had already been hiding in the room, and the two escape together. Ledger tracks them down and brings them back, only for the family to discover that Polly and Scribble had already begun the process of marrying, according to the 1753 Marriage Act, by pronouncing their bans. The play ends with Honeycombe and Ledger frustrated and Polly and Scribble happily leaving together.
George Colman was an English dramatist and essayist, usually called "the Elder", and sometimes "George the First", to distinguish him from his son, George Colman the Younger. He was also a theatre owner.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1760.
Hatter's Castle (1931) is the first novel of author A. J. Cronin. The story is set in 1879, in the fictional town of Levenford, on the Firth of Clyde. The plot revolves around many characters and has many subplots, all of which relate to the life of the hatter, James Brodie, whose narcissism and cruelty gradually destroy his family and life. The book was made into a successful film in 1942 starring Robert Newton, Deborah Kerr, and James Mason.
The Clandestine Marriage is a comedy by George Colman the Elder and David Garrick, first performed in 1766 at Drury Lane. It is both a comedy of manners and a comedy of errors. The idea came from a series of pictures by William Hogarth entitled Marriage à-la-mode.
Arrowsmith is a 1931 American drama film directed by John Ford and starring Ronald Colman, Helen Hayes, Richard Bennett, and Myrna Loy. It was adapted from Sinclair Lewis's 1925 novel Arrowsmith by Sidney Howard, departing substantially from the book regarding Arrowsmith's womanizing and other key plot elements. The pre-Code film received four Oscar nominations, including the Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Writing, Adaptation (Howard), Best Cinematography, and Best Art Direction.
The Eyre Affair is the debut novel by English author Jasper Fforde, published by Hodder and Stoughton in 2001. It takes place in an alternative 1985, where literary detective Thursday Next pursues a master criminal through the world of Charlotte Brontë's 1847 novel Jane Eyre. Fforde had received 76 rejections for earlier works before being accepted by a publisher. Critical reception of this novel was generally positive, remarking on its originality.
Curtain: Poirot's Last Case is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in September 1975 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year, selling for $7.95.
Uncle Fred in the Springtime is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United States on 18 August 1939 by Doubleday, Doran, New York, and in the United Kingdom on 25 August 1939 by Herbert Jenkins, London.
French Leave is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United Kingdom on 20 January 1956 by Herbert Jenkins, London and in the United States on 28 September 1959 by Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York.
Macabre is a 1958 American horror film directed by William Castle, written by Robb White, and starring William Prince and Jim Backus. The film falls into both the horror and suspense genres.
Le Père de famille is a 1758 play by Denis Diderot. In this play, Saint Albin, a young man, falls in love with Sophie, a poor young woman of unknown parentage. His father, the title character, is against the match, and his uncle actively plots against it by trying to force Sophie into a convent. Against her better judgement, Cécile, Saint-Albin's sister, hides Sophie in their home at the behest of Germeuil, a friend of the family. When the father discovers the disobedience of his children, he is dismayed; and the entire situation is exacerbated by the ill-intentioned uncle. When the uncle is confronted by the young woman in person, however, he realizes that she is his niece. With the question of her parentage solved, Saint-Albin is free to marry Sophie, Cécile is free to marry Germeuil, and the father welcomes all his children with open arms.
Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister is an anonymously published three-volume roman à clef playing with events of the Monmouth Rebellion and exploring the genre of the epistolary novel. It has been attributed to Aphra Behn, but this attribution remains in dispute. The novel is "based loosely on an affair between Ford, Lord Grey of Werke, and his wife's sister, Lady Henrietta Berkeley, a scandal that broke in London in 1682". It was originally published as three separate volumes: Love-Letters Between a Noble-Man and his Sister (1684), Love-Letters from a Noble Man to his Sister: Mixt with the History of Their Adventures. The Second Part by the Same Hand (1685), and The Amours of Philander and Silvia (1687). The copyright holder was Joseph Hindmarsh, later joined by Jacob Tonson.
The Group is the best-known novel of American writer Mary McCarthy. It made New York Times Best Seller list in 1963 and remained there for almost two years. In 1966, United Artists released a film adaptation of the novel directed by Sidney Lumet.
Richard Yates was an English comic actor, who worked at the Haymarket Theatre and Drury Lane among others, appearing in David Garrick's King Lear. He also worked in theatre management, and set up the New Theatre in Birmingham in 1773. Both his first wife, Elizabeth Mary and Mary Anne Graham were actresses.
Emmeline, The Orphan of the Castle is the first novel written by English writer Charlotte Smith; it was published in 1788. A Cinderella story in which the heroine stands outside the traditional economic structures of English society and ends up wealthy and happy, the novel is a fantasy. At the same time, it criticises the traditional marriage arrangements of the 18th century, which allowed women little choice and prioritised the needs of the family. Smith's criticisms of marriage stemmed from her personal experience and several of the secondary characters are thinly veiled depictions of her family, a technique which both intrigued and repelled contemporary readers.
A Shabby Genteel Story is an early and unfinished novel by William Makepeace Thackeray. It was first printed among other stories and sketches in his collection Miscellanies. A note in Miscellanies by Thackeray, dated 10 April 1857, describes it as "only the first part" of a longer story which was "interrupted at a sad period of the writer's own life" and never subsequently completed. He also describes it as being written "seventeen years ago", therefore c. 1840. This was the period when Thackeray's wife became mentally unstable, throwing his personal life into confusion.
Blackout and All Clear are the two volumes that constitute a 2010 science fiction novel by American author Connie Willis. Blackout was published February 2, 2010 by Spectra. The second part, the conclusion All Clear, was released as a separate book on October 19, 2010. The diptych won the 2010 Nebula Award for Best Novel, the 2011 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, and the 2011 Hugo Award for Best Novel. These two volumes are the most recent of four books and a short story that Willis has written involving time travel from Oxford during the mid-21st century.
Copper Sun is a 2006 young adult novel by Coretta Scott King Award-winning author Sharon Draper. It was a National Book Award winner.
Falstaff's Wedding is a play by William Kenrick. It is a sequel to Shakespeare's plays Henry IV, Part 2 and The Merry Wives of Windsor. Most of the characters are carried over from the two Shakespeare plays. The play was first staged in 1766, but was not a success. It was infrequently revived thereafter.
Mary Bradshaw was a British stage actress at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane for 37 years. She appeared with David Garrick and she was included in a painting by Johann Zoffany.
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