Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880) was a romantic era German, French composer and impresario. A child prodigy, at four he studied violin with his father; at nine he fell in love with the cello. At 14 he was accepted as a student to the prestigious Paris Conservatoire. International Fame But Offenbach grew bored and left after a …
Category Archives: 19th century
E. T. A. Hoffmann
E. T. A. Hoffmann, (1776-1822) born Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann was a German author of fantasy and Gothic horror. He was also a jurist, composer, music critic and artist. Hoffmann is one of the major creators of the Romantic movement. Jacques Offenbach His stories were the basis of the famous opéra fantastique by Jacques Offenbach, …
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) was an escaped slave from Maryland. He was an author, editor, diplomat, suffragist, and a national leader of the abolitionist movement. Orator & writer A brilliant orator Northerners had a hard time imaging that he had once been a slave. This inspired him to write his first autobiography which became a best …
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was one of the great English Romantic era poets. He was married when he met Mary Wollstonecraft when she was 17. He was much older and married. Still she ran away with him. They traveled Europe. And he eventually was able to marry her. They were together at Lord Byron’s home …
Alexandre Gustave Eiffel
Alexandre Gustave Eiffel built the Eiffel Tower. Alexandre Gustave Eiffel (1832-1923) was a French civil engineer. A graduate of École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures, he made his name with various bridges for the French railway network, most famously the Garabit Viaduct. But he is most famous for the Eiffel Tower with its wrought-iron lattice …
Sarah Bernhard
Famed stage actress Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923) was a French stage actress. She starred in some of the most popular theater productions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Her most famous French plays including La Dame Aux Camelias by Alexandre Dumas fils; Ruy Blas by Victor Hugo, Fédora and La Tosca by Victorien Sardou, …
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) was a British nurse, social reformer. She was the founder of modern nursing. Known as “The Lady With the Lamp,” her experiences as a nurse during the Crimean War were foundational in her views about sanitation. Nightingale was a manager and nursing trainer during the Crimean War, organizing care for wounded soldiers …
Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier
Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier (1811-1872) was a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, and art and literary critic. He was widely admired by writers as different as Balzac, Baudelaire, the Goncourt brothers, Flaubert, Pound, Eliot, James, Proust, and Wilde.Amazon T-shirts available at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BR983XHXand in France https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B0BR8Z5312
Friedrich Nietzche
Nietzsche was a German philosopher, cultural critic, composer, and poet. He influenced modern intellectual history. Amazon T-shirts at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KXFJRXS
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson was a revered American poet (1830-1886). She was a member of a prominent family with strong ties to its community in Massachusetts. She was reclusive most of her life. Her talent was a unique ability to distill meaning from the ordinary things and translate them into poetry. Illustration by Kathleen McGuinness. Visit her …