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Marilyn Monroe’s Literary Life

Marilyn Monroe’s Literary Life

  Beyond the movie magic and bleach blond waves, it is now well known that Marilyn Monroe had an intellectual side - a love of literature and a deep yearning for knowledge. As she matured, her collection of books grew into a huge library. Her favourite book was reportedly Ulysses by James Joyce.   Marilyn in Amagassett, reading her favourite book   Typecast by Hollywood, Marilyn lacked true fulfilment in the superficial and sometimes brutal world of celluloid. The movies had cemented her status as a beautiful blonde with few brains. To this day, her image is mostly associated with a kind of vapid beauty: bleach blonde hair, porcelain skin and big doe eyes. But this was merely a star...

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Song of Myself: The Life of America’s Poet, Walt Whitman

Song of Myself: The Life of America’s Poet, Walt Whitman

  Historians have said you can’t really have America without Walt Whitman. His works still speaks to the soul of the country, of freedom and self-determination. He himself lived a varied and unconventional life that no doubt shaped his writings.   Read our short biography on the man behind some of America’s greatest poetry.     He was born in 1819 in West Hills, Long Island, the second of nine children. At age four, the family moved to Brooklyn. Whitman remembered his childhood as marred with financial difficulties, and the family would have to move often.   Despite being the focus of many a high school English class, Whitman himself left school at age 11. He worked a variety of...

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Nature & Beauty: The Literary Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature & Beauty: The Literary Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson

A hundred and forty years after his death, Ralph Waldo Emerson retains his role as the father of Transcendentalism, one of several thinkers and writers of his time who created a whole  new way of looking at the world. Despite the world being a very different place from Emerson’s day, his words still ring true and new readers continue to find inspiration and illumination in them.      But where did Emerson come from, and what was his background?   Read my short bio to find out more about America’s greatest philosopher-thinker.   Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1857   Emerson was born in 1803 in Boston, Massachusetts, and was one of five children. His father was a Unitarian minister. He died...

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