৪০ দিনে ৪৭তম বিসিএস প্রস্তুতি - Archived

Alice Munro:
- Original: name Alice Ann Laidlaw.
- Born:  July 10, 1931, Wingham, Ontario, Canada.
- Canadian short-story writer who gained international recognition with her exquisitely drawn narratives. 
- Awarded Nobel Prize in 2013.
- The Swedish Academy dubbed her a “master of the contemporary short story”.

Best Works:
- Dance of the Happy Shades
- Dear Life” “Runaway
- The Bear Came over the Mountain
- The Lives of Girls and Women
- The View from Castle Rock

Awards & Achievements: 
- Nobel Prize (2013)
- O. Henry Award (2012)
- Man Booker International Prize (2009)

Source:  Britannica.com 

William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939):
- Irish dramatist, poet and critic.
- He is famous for his use of “Symbolism and Mysticism”.
- He wrote the preamble of Tagore's “Gitanjali” in 1912, which later got Nobel prize in 1913.
- W.B Yeats got the Nobel prize in 1923.

Major Works:
Poems:
- The Wild Swans at Coole,
- The Tower
- The Winding Stair and Other poems
- The Resurrection, The Second Coming
- The Cat and the Moon
- Sailing to Byzantium
- The Lake Isle of Innisfree
- Among School Children
- A Prayer for My Daughter
- When You Are Old.

Drama:
- The Countess Cathleen
- Cathleen in Houlihan.

W.B Yeats & Rabindranath Tagore:
- 'Gitanjali' is the most famous work by Rabindranath Tagore.
- Tagore then translated it into prose poems in English as 'Gitanjali: Song Offerings' and it was published in 1912 with a preamble written by W.B. Yeats.
- Tagore won Nobel Prize in literature in 1913 for Song Offerings.

Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica and Live MCQ Lecture.

Rudyard Kipling: 
- Full name: Joseph Rudyard Kipling.
- He was an Indian born British Journalist.
- Born: December 30, 1865, Bombay [now Mumbai], India.
- Death:  January 18, 1936, London, England.
- English short-story writer, poet, and novelist.
- He is chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, his tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children.
- He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1907.

Best Works:
- Kim,
- The Jungle Book,
- Puck of Pook's Hill,
- Captain Courageous,
- Limits & Renewals,
- Just So Stories,
- Soldiers Three,
- The Light that Failed,
- Plain Tales from the Hills,
- Seven Seas,
- The White Man's Burden

**The other two writers in the option:
- Arundhati Roy won Booker Prize (1997)
- J.K. Rowling won: Costa Book Awards (1999) for brilliant contribution in modern day literature. 

Source: An ABC of English Literature, Dr. M Mofizar Rahman and Encyclopedia of Britannica.

To Helen:
- To Helen" is the first of two poems to carry that name written by Edgar Allan Poe.
- The 15-line poem was written in honor of Jane Stanard, the mother of a childhood friend.
- It was first published in the 1831 collection Poems of Edgar A. Poe.

Edgar Allan Poe:
- Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, editor, and literary critic.
- He was born in January 19, 1809 Boston Massachusetts.
- He is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre.
- Edgar Allan Poe created this new literary genre when he wrote ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’.
- Nearly forty-five years after Poe’s death, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle popularized the detective story when he created Sherlock Holmes.

Best Works: 
- The Tell Tale Heart,
- The Raven,
- The fall of the house of usher,
- The Black Cat,
- The Oval Portrait,
- The Gold Bug,
- The Light House.
- Annabel Lee 
- Eleonora
- Eureka

Source: Britannica.com

Winston Churchill: (1874-1965)
- British statesman, orator, author and prime minister (1940-45, 1951-55).
- In 1953 Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature ''for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values''.

Source: nobelprize.org.

Ernest Hemingway:
- He is an American novelist.
- He was awarded the Nobel prize in 1954 for literature.
- Death: He was suffering from depression and anxiety.  On July 2, 1961, he took his life with a shotgun at his house in Ketchum.

Best Works:
- For Whom The Bell Tolls
- The Old Man and The Sea
- A Farewell to Arms
- The Sun Also Rises
- Death in the Afternoon
- To Have and Have not.


On the other hand,
Sylvia Plath (American author) - also committed suicide in 11 February, 1962 at the age of 30.
- Sylvia Plath was one of the most dynamic and admired poets of the 20th century.

Notable Works:
 - Ariel,
- Crossing the Water,
- Daddy,
- Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams,
- Lady Lazarus,
- Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom,
- The Bell Jar,
- The Collected Poems,
- The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath,
- Three Women,
- Winter Trees.

- She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1982.

Source: Britannica.com and Poetryfoundation.

Salman Rushdie:
- In full, Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie
- Born: June 19, 1947 Bombay (Now Mumbai) India).
- Indian-born British writer

Key Works:
- Midnight's Children
- Shame 
- Satanic Verses 

Source: An ABC of English Literature, Dr M Mofizar Rahman

Arundhati Roy:
- full name Suzanna Arundhati Roy
- Born: November 24, 1961, Shillong, Meghalaya, India. 
- Indian author, actress, and political activist.
- She is best known for the award-winning novel The God of Small Things (1997) and for her involvement in environmental and human rights causes.

Key Works: 
- The God of Small Things
- The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.

Source: Britannica.com

Dover Beach:
- It is a lyric poem by the English poet Matthew Arnold.
- It was first published in 1867 in the collection New Poems.


Mathew Arnold (1822-88):
He was a poet and a critic. Mostly known for his strong moral voice. He was a professor of poetry at Oxford University.
Best works:
Dover Beach: (Poem)
The Scholar Gypsy
Essays in Criticism
Culture and anarchy
Rugby Chapel. (Elegy, written in memoriam of his father)
Sohrab and Rustum (Inspired by and retold from the epic Shahnama, written By Ferdousi)

Source: Britannica.com

The Time Machine:
- The Time Machine is a science fiction novella by H. G. Wells.
- It was first published in 1895.

H. G. Wells:
- পুরো নাম - Herbert George Wells. তিনি একজন ব্রিটিশ লেখক।
- ‘The Time Machine’ H. G. Wells রচিত একটি বিখ্যাত science fiction.
তার রচিত উল্লেখযোগ্য আরো কয়েকটি সায়েন্স ফিকশান -
- The Invisible Man,
- The War of the Worlds,
- The Island of Doctor Moreau,
- The First Men in the Moon ইত্যাদি।

উৎস: ব্রিটানিকা।

Russell studied both: Philosophy and Mathemetics at University of Cambridge.

Bertrand Russell: (1872-1970)

- He was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, history writer, social critic, and political activist.
- He was awarded the Nobel prize in literature in 1950.

Notable Works:
- Mysticism and Logic,
- The Analysis of Mind,
- History of Western philosophy,
- Authority and Individual.

Source: An ABC of English Literature - Dr M Mofizar Rahman, and Britannica.

Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam:
- It is the title that Edward FitzGerald gave to his 1859 translation from Persian to English of a selection of quatrains (rubāʿiyāt) attributed to Omar Khayyam (1048–1131), dubbed "the Astronomer-Poet of Persia".
- Omar Khayyam chiefly known to English-speaking readers through the translation of a collection of his robāʿīyāt (“quatrains”) in The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (1859), by the English writer Edward FitzGerald
- Omar Khayyam chiefly known to English-speaking readers through the translation of a collection of his robāʿīyāt (“quatrains”) in The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (1859), by the English writer Edward FitzGerald.

Source: Britannica.com 

T. S. Eliot is famous for his 'Theory of Objective Correlative'.
Famous poem of T.S. Eliot are:
- The Waste Land,
- Journey to the Magi,
- Ash Wednesday,
- Four Quarters,
- The Hollow Man,
- Portrait of a Lady.

The lines in question is taken from - The Waste Land.
The Waste Land
BY T. S. ELIOT
"April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers."

Source: Britannica and Poetryfoundation.

Lord of the Flies:
- It is a 1954 debut novel by Nobel Prize-winning British author William Golding.
- The book focuses on a group of British boys stranded on an uninhabited island and their disastrous attempt to govern themselves.


William Gerald Golding: (1911-1993):
-British novelist, dramatist and poet.
-Awarded Nobel Prize in 1983 for his novel ‘Lord of the Files’.
Notable works:
- Darkness Visible,
- The Pyramid
- Pincher Martin
- Free Fall
- The Inheritors
- The Spire etc.

Source:  Encyclopedia Britannica