ANNOTATED

By Steve Ahlquist

Book Cover

Cover Page

-The original Irregulars are a group of fictional characters featured in the Sherlock Holmes stories. They were a group of street urchins who helped Holmes out from time to time. The head of the group was called Wiggins. Holmes paid them a shilling a day (plus expenses), with a guinea prize (worth one pound and one shilling) for a vital clue.

The Baker Street Irregulars are also an organization of Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts founded in 1934 by Christopher Morley. Members have included Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Rex Stout and Isaac Asimov. They continue to convene every January in New York City for an annual dinner, which forms part of a weekend of celebration and study involving other Sherlockian groups and individuals as well. The present leader of is Michael Whelan of Indianapolis, Indiana.

The BSI, as it calls itself, is considered the preeminent Sherlockian group in the United States. There are also ≥scion societies≤ approved by the BSI in dozens of local communities. Most scion societies welcome new members, but the BSI does not accept applications for membership - instead, membership and the awarding of an ≥Irregular Shilling≤ comes as an honor to those who have made a name for themselves in local groups or in Sherlockian publications. The BSI has published The Baker Street Journal, an ≥irregular quarterly of Sherlockiana≤ since 1946.

-Basilian: In this context it means anything referring to or relating to the scholarship of Basil, the Great Mouse Detective. (There is also the term as it applies to Basilian monks. Basilian monks follow the Rule of Basil the Great. The chief importance of the monastic rule and institute of St. Basil lies in the fact that to this day his reconstruction of the monastic life is the basis of the monasticism of the Eastern Orthodoxy (Greek Orthodox Church and Russian Orthodox Church) though the monks do not call themselves Basilians.)

Dr. Dawson, Basil and Mrs. Judson.

Chapter 1: Basil the Brilliant

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-≥You may ask ≠ does Sherlock spy him? I think he does, and is charmed by his wee imitator in the deerstalker cap.≤ : The second indication that Sherlock Holmes is aware of the existence of intelligent mice.

-Mouseland Yard: The mouse world version of Scotland Yard.

-October, 1894: This book picks up pretty much where Basil and the Pygmy Cats left off. Basil and Dawson are set to sail for Mexico on a secret mission at midnight.

-Mexican mouse president: wrote to Basil, requesting his presence.

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-Mouse Times: A London mouse newspaper.

-Case of the Counterfeit Cheese: Hundreds of mice with broken teeth crowd into dentistsπ waiting rooms. The fake cheeses look and smell like real cheeses. Mice sniff them in dark passages and gnaw away. They break their teeth on the fake cheeses. Policemice remove the counterfeits, but others appear.

Ratigan has kidnapped the sons of prominent dentists, and is taking the money they make from the broken teeth.

Basil freed the children, and told the police where to find Ratiganπs fake cheese factory, but Ratigan and his gang escaped.

Basil was paid ≥a princely fee≤ for his efforts and he and Dawson were offered free dental services for life.

A mouse ruins his teeth on counterfeit cheese.

-Case of the Lost Colony: Basil refers to a trap set by Ratigan that almost killed Dawson during the adventure, Basil and the Lost Colony. Dawson lost all sense when confronted with a delicious pile of cheese.

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-Dr. Bernard Tuchman: Dawsonπs dentist. Schooling: Spring View, Brierley Preparatory, Rodental College. Has a son, Adam, at Brierley.

-Dr. Stanley Richardson: Basilπs dentist. Schooling: Spring View, Brierley Preparatory, Rodental College. Married Simone Vernet, has a son, Alex Richardson, at Brierley.

-oddly, Basil, Dawson and Mrs. Judson all have different dentists. You would think that they would all go to a dentist in Holmestead, rather than walking all about London, and it seems unlikely that Holmestead could support three dentists.

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-Inspector Hollyer: of Mouseland Yard. His name is reminiscent of Cameron Hollyer, Sherlockian scholar. Cameron Hollyer was the original curator of the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection at what's now the Toronto Reference Library, from 1971 until his retirement in 1991. He was a Master Bootmaker, a Baker Street Irregular, a scholar and a poet.

-Superintendent Bigelow: of Mouseland Yard. Basil says that Bigelowπs ≥äwise as a judgeä≤ His name is reminiscent of S. Tupper Bigelow, Canadian judge and Sherlockian scholar.

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Chapter 2: Off to the Orient!

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-There are thirty-two mouse dentists in London.

-London Mouse Dental Directory: No explanation necessary.

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-Simone Vernet: Female mouse, married to Dr. Stanley Richardson, has a son Alex. Sheπs French. (In The Greek Interpreter Holmes mentions the only facts about his family that are in any of the stories - ≥My ancestors were country squires... my grandmother... was the sister of Vernet, the French artist.≤) (Mona Morsteinπs The Childhood of Sherlock Holmes (2000) names his father as David William Holmes and his mother Catherine Simone Lecomte-Vernet.)

-Alex Richardson: Son of Dr. Stanley Richardson and Simone Vernet, attends Briarly school.

-Adam Tuchman: Son of Dr. Bernard Tuchman, attends Briarly School.

-N. St. Clair: London mouse dentist. His name is reminiscent of Neville St. Clair, from the Holmes story The Man With the Twisted Lip. (One of the 56 short Sherlock Holmes stories written by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is the sixth of the twelve stories in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The story was first published in the Strand Magazine in December 1891.)

-V. Trevor: London mouse dentist. His name is reminiscent of Victor Trevor from the Holmes story The Adventure of the Gloria Scott. (One of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is one of 12 stories in the cycle collected as The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. This story is related mainly by Holmes rather than Watson, and is the first case to which Holmes applied his powers of deduction, having treated it as a mere hobby until this time.)

-J. Windibank: London mouse dentist. His name is reminiscent of James Windibank from the Holmes story A Case of Identity. (One of the 56 short Sherlock Holmes stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and is the third story in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.)

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-Brierley School: Located in the mouse town of Brierley Glen, outside the human city of Chatham.Only accepts the sons of London dentists. Every October the school closes and the students go on a camping and cycling trip.

-Brierley Glen: A mouse town outside the human city of Chatham.

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-≥City mice risk death by squashing far too often, and we are ever watchful.≤ Which is why so many mice choose to build mouse towns, cities and even kingdoms away from humans.

-Charing Cross Station: Charing Cross was opened in 1864 and was the product of the Southern Eastern Railway's need to extend westward from London Bridge to get its passengers from Kent right into the heart of London.

Charing Cross Station

Ratigan terrorizes Stanley and Simone Richardson.

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Basil discovers the bicycles.

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Chapter 3: On the High Seas

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-Ruth Low: A people ship bound for Mexico itπs a medium-sized cargo vessel. The mice maintain a corner where people seldom went, having built comfortable quarters.

The name of the ship is reminiscent of Ruth Lowe, (1915 ≠1981) a Canadian pianist and songwriter. She wrote the song ≥I'll Never Smile Again≤ after her husband died during surgery . The song was later covered by many artists, including Frank Sinatra and The Ink Spots.

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-Cecil Ryder: Mouse Captain aboard the Ruth Low. A former classmate of Basil and Dawson at Ratcliffe.

-Ratcliffe: This is the first time that Dawson mentions that he attended Ratcliffe with Basil. It is known that Basil went to Ratcliffe with both Ratigan and the Maharajah of Bengistan, with whom Basil shared a room. The ships captain, Cecil Ryder, also attended Ratcliffe.

-Marlane: Lovely lady mouse, with large lustrous eyes and the velvety smooth fur typical of English females. Sheπs the wife of the Mexican mouse president, Diego Novato. Born in Mexico of British parents, speaks Spanish and English equally well. She is researched her book, Famous Female Mice in Europe.

On the journey by ship from Britain to Mexico Marlene teaches Basil and Dawson Spanish.

-Diego Novato: Mexican president, led a revolt against the cruel dictator El Bruto.

-El Bruto: The former brutal dictator of the Mexican mice, he was overthrown in a revolution led by Diego Novato.

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-≥ämouse captains and their crews sailed twice a year on peopleπs ships, to learn more by watching men navigate.≤ : Thereby showing that mice intentionally and purposefully learn human technology by close observation of humans.

-Eunice R.: Captain Cecil Ryderπs ship, awaiting him in Vera Cruz. It is a mouse ship, mouse scaled.

-Vera Cruz: The city of Veracruz is a major port city on the Gulf of Mexico in the Mexican state of Veracruz. It is located 105 km (65 miles) along Federal Highway 140 from the state capital Xalapa, and is the stateπs third most populous city (after the Coatzacoalcos -Minatitl·n conurbation and Orizaba), with a population of about 500,000 in 2000. It is often referred to as Puerto de Veracruz to distinguish it from the state.

Dawson here spells Vera Cruz as two words.

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Basil, Dawson and Marlane.

-≥äpride and propriety; snobs and society; chocolate and cheeses; bridges and breezes; ghosts and geography; pigs and photography; music and mystery; humans and history; sailors and scenery; mice and machinery.≤ : It would be interesting to know Basilπs (and Marleneπs) opinion and ideas on these subjects, but unfortunately Dawson does not go into detail.

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≥Et tu, Basil?≤ : paraphrased from Shakespeareπs Julius Caesar.

-Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell: (February 3, 1821 - May 31, 1910) was the first woman to practice medicine in the United States. She was born in Bristol, England, the third of nine children born to a sugar refiner who could afford to give his numerous daughters, as well as his sons, an education. In 1831, the family emigrated to the United States, and set up a refinery in New York City. After the death of her father, she took up a career in teaching. Desiring to apply herself to the practice of medicine, she took up residence in a physicianπs household, using her time there to study from the familyπs medical library. She became active in the anti-slavery movement (as did her brother Henry Brown Blackwell, who married Lucy Stone), in the course of which she made friends with Harriet Beecher Stowe. Another brother, Samuel C. Blackwell, married another important figure in womenπs rights, Antoinette Brown.

Blackwell applied to several prominent medical schools but was rejected by all. Her second round of applications was sent to smaller colleges, including Geneva College in New York. She was accepted there -anecdotally, because the faculty put it to a student vote, and the students thought her application a hoax -and braved the prejudice of some of the professors and students to complete her training. She persisted, ranking first in her class. On January 23, 1849, she became the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States.

Barred from practice in most hospitals, she founded her own infirmary, the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children, in 1857. When the American Civil War began, she trained nurses, and in 1868 she founded a Womenπs Medical College at the Infirmary to formally train women physicians and doctors.

In 1869 she left her sister Emily in charge of the College and returned to England. There, with Florence Nightingale, she opened the Womenπs Medical College. Blackwell taught at the newly-created London School of Medicine for Women and became the first female physician and doctor in the UK Medical Register. She retired at the age of 86.

Her sex education guide, The Moral Education of the Young, was published in Britain, as was her autobiography, Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women (1895). On her death, she was buried in a remote part of Scotland.

-Florence Nightingale: lived a long and remarkable life.  Although she is known as the founder of modern nursing and one of the most famous women in history, few people know that she spent the last half of her life confined to her home and often bedridden, suffering from an illness similar to what we now call ME/CFS (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome).

She was born on May 12, 1820 to wealthy British parents traveling in Italy.  Named for the city in which she was born, young Florence never quite fit the mold of a Victorian lady.  She was well educated in literature, music, drawing and the domestic arts.  A woman of her social standing was expected to marry and devote her life to her family, entertaining, and cultural pursuits.  However, she felt an early calling to serve, and refused to marry.  When she attempted to go to work as a nurse, her horrified family repeatedly opposed her.  In those days, hospitals were often dirty and dark and nurses were untrained, sometimes drunken women.  Finally, at age 33 she was able to obtain some minimal training and begin her career.

In 1854, the British press began reporting that soldiers wounded in the Crimean War were being poorly cared for in deplorable conditions.  Nightingale recruited and equipped a group of nurses and went off to Turkey to help.  Her arrival was not celebrated by the surgeons there, who resented the interference of a woman.  Undaunted, she worked tirelessly to improve conditions in the hospital.  Her changes revolutionized British military medical care, increasing standards for sanitation and nutrition and dramatically lowering mortality rates.  While visiting the front lines, she became ill and never really recovered. 

Although an invalid for the rest of her life, Nightingale continued to have an influence on standards of nursing care and training.  In 1859 she helped to establish the first Visiting Nurse Association and in 1860, she established a school that became a model for modern nurses training.  She was considered an expert on the scientific care of the sick and was asked by the United States for her advice on caring for the wounded soldiers of the Civil War.  Through correspondence and reports, she continued her influence throughout her last years.  She was the first women to receive the British Order of Merit.  In 1907 the International Conference of Red Cross Societies listed her as a pioneer of the Red Cross Movement.  She died in 1910 at the age of ninety.

Florence Nightingale was known by the British soldiers in the Crimea as the ≥lady with the lamp≤ because of the late hours that she worked tending to the sick and wounded.  Today, she is remembered as a symbol of selfless caring and tireless service.

-Clara Harlowe Barton (1821-1912) Born on December 25, 1821 in Oxford, MA, the youngest of 5 children in a middle-class family, Barton was educated at home, and at 15 started teaching school. Her most notable antebellum achievement was the establishment of a free public school in Bordentown, NJ. Though she is remembered as the founder of the American Red Cross, her only prewar medical experience came when for 2 years she nursed an invalid brother.

In 1861 Barton was living in Washington, DC, working at the US Patent Office. When the 6th Massachusetts Regiment arrived in the city after the Baltimore Riots, she organized a relief program for the soldiers, beginning a lifetime of philanthropy.

When Barton learned that many of the wounded from First Bull Run had suffered, not from want of attention but from need of medical supplies, she advertised for donations in the Worcester, MA, Spy and began an independent organization to distribute goods. The relief operation was successful, and the following year U.S. Surgeon General William A. Hammond granted her a general pass to travel with army ambulances ≥for the purpose of distributing comforts for the sick and wounded, and nursing them.≤

For 3 years she followed army operations throughout the Virginia theatre and in the Charleston, SC, area. Her work in Fredericksburg, VA, hospitals, caring for the casualties from the Battle of the Wilderness, and nursing work at Bermuda Hundred attracted national notice. At this time she formed her only formal Civil War connection with any organization when she served as superintendent of nurses in Major General Benjamin F. Butlers command.

She also expanded her concept of soldier aid, traveling to Camp Parole, MD, to organize a program for locating men listed as missing in action. Through interviews with Federals returning from Southern prisons, she was often able to determine the status of some of the missing and notify families.

By the end of the war Barton had performed most of the services that would later he associated with the American Red Cross, which she founded in 1881. In 1904 she resigned as head of that organization, retiring to her home at Glen Echo, outside Washington, DC, where she died on April 12, 1912.

-Marie Curie, nÈe Maria Sklodowska, was born in Warsaw on November 7, 1867, the daughter of a secondary-school teacher. She received a general education in local schools and some scientific training from her father. She became involved in a studentsπ revolutionary organization and found it prudent to leave Warsaw, then in the part of Poland dominated by Russia, for Cracow, which at that time was under Austrian rule. In 1891, she went to Paris to continue her studies at the Sorbonne where she obtained Licenciateships in Physics and the Mathematical Sciences. She met Pierre Curie, Professor in the School of Physics in 1894 and in the following year they were married. She succeeded her husband as Head of the Physics Laboratory at the Sorbonne, gained her Doctor of Science degree in 1903, and following the tragic death of Pierre Curie in 1906, she took his place as Professor of General Physics in the Faculty of Sciences, the first time a woman had held this position. She was also appointed Director of the Curie Laboratory in the Radium Institute of the University of Paris, founded in 1914.

Her early researches, together with her husband, were often performed under difficult conditions, laboratory arrangements were poor and both had to undertake much teaching to earn a livelihood. The discovery of radioactivity by Henri Becquerel in 1896 inspired the Curies in their brilliant researches and analyses which led to the isolation of polonium, named after the country of Marieπs birth, and radium. Mme. Curie developed methods for the separation of radium from radioactive residues in sufficient quantities to allow for its characterization and the careful study of its properties, therapeutic properties in particular.

Mme. Curie throughout her life actively promoted the use of radium to alleviate suffering and during World War I, assisted by her daughter, Irene, she personally devoted herself to this remedial work. She retained her enthusiasm for science throughout her life and did much to establish a radioactivity laboratory in her native city - in 1929 President Hoover of the United States presented her with a gift of $ 50,000, donated by American friends of science, to purchase radium for use in the laboratory in Warsaw.

Mme. Curie, quiet, dignified and unassuming, was held in high esteem and admiration by scientists throughout the world. She was a member of the Conseil du Physique Solvay from 1911 until her death and since 1922 she had been a member of the Committee of Intellectual Co-operation of the League of Nations. Her work is recorded in numerous papers in scientific journals and she is the author of Recherches sur les Substances Radioactives (1904), L'Isotopie et les …lÈments Isotopes and the classic TraitÈ' de RadioactivitÈ (1910).

The importance of Mme. Curieπs work is reflected in the numerous awards bestowed on her. She received many honorary science, medicine and law degrees and honorary memberships of learned societies throughout the world. Together with her husband, she was awarded half of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903, for their study into the spontaneous radiation discovered by Becquerel, who was awarded the other half of the Prize. In 1911 she received a second Nobel Prize, this time in Chemistry, in recognition of her work in radioactivity. She also received, jointly with her husband, the Davy Medal of the Royal Society in 1903 and, in 1921, President Harding of the United States, on behalf of the women of America, presented her with one gram of radium in recognition of her service to science.

-Mary Shelley was born in London ,England , the second daughter of famed feminist, educator and writer Mary Wollstonecraft and the equally famous liberal philosopher, anarchic journalist and atheist dissenter, William Godwin. Her mother died eleven days after her birth and her father, left to care for Mary and her older half-sister Fanny Imlay, quickly married again. Under his tutelage, Mary received an excellent education unusual for girls at the time.

She met Percy Bysshe Shelley , a political radical and free-thinker like her father, when Percy and his first wife Harriet visited Godwin's home and bookshop in London. Percy, unhappy in his marriage, began to visit Godwin more frequently (and alone). In the summer of 1814 he and Mary (then only 16) fell in love. They eloped to France on 27 July , with Mary's stepsister, Jane Clairmont , in tow. This was the poet's second elopement, as he had also eloped with Harriet three years before. Upon their return several weeks later, the young couple were dismayed to find that Godwin, whose views on free love apparently did not apply to his daughter, refused to see them.

Mary consoled herself with her studies and with Percy, who would always be, despite disillusionment and tragedy, the love of her life. Percy, too, was more than satisfied with his new partner in these first years. He exulted that Mary was "one who can feel poetry and understand philosophy" - although she, like Harriet before her, refused his attempts to share her with his friend Thomas Hogg. Mary thus learned that Percy's loyalty to Godwin's free love ideals would always conflict with his deep desire for "true love" as expressed in so much of his poetry.

Mary and Percy shared a love of languages and literature. They enjoyed reading and discussing books together, such as the classics that Percy took to reading upon their return to London towards the end of the year. During this time Percy Shelley wrote ≥Alastor≤ and ≥The Spirit of Solitude,≤ in which he counsels against the loss of "sweet human love" in exchange for the activism that he himself was to promote and indulge in for much of his life.

During May of 1816, the couple, again with Jane (now Claire) Clairmont, traveled to Lake Geneva to summer near the famous and scandalous poet Lord Byron , whose recent affair with Claire had left her both pregnant and somewhat obsessed with him. In terms of English literature, it was to be a productive summer. Percy began work on "Hymn To Intellectual Beauty" and "Mont Blanc". Mary, in the meantime, was inspired to write an enduring masterpiece of her own.

Forced to stay indoors by the climatic events of " The Year Without a Summer " on one particular evening, the group of young writers and intellectuals decided to have a ghost-telling contest. Another guest, Dr John Polidori, came up with The Vampyre, later to become a strong influence on Bram Stoker 's Dracula . Other guests wove tales of equal horror, but Mary found herself unable to invent one. That night, however, she had a waking dream where she saw "the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together." Then she set herself to put the story on paper. In time it would be published as Frankenstein. Its success would endure long after the other writings produced that summer had faded.

Mary had incorporated a number of different sources into her work, not the least of which was the Promethean myth from Ovid . The influence of John Milton 's Paradise Lost , the book the 'monster' finds in the cabin, is also clearly evident within the novel. Also, both Shelleys had read William Beckford 's Vathek (a Gothic novel that has been likened to an Arabesque ). Can one miss the darkling reflection of the Beckford character's "insolent desire to "penetrate the secrets of heaven" in both "Alastor" ("I have made my bed In charnels and on coffins") and Mary's acclaimed piece ("Who shall perceive the horrors ...as I dabbled among the unhallowed damp of the grave, or tortured the living animal to animate the lifeless clay")? Indeed, many, if not most, commentators take this "desire" to be a major theme of Frankenstein .

Mary and Percy were both ethical vegetarians and strong advocates for animals. One can see references to vegetarianism in her writing. For example, in her novel Frankenstein, the 'monster' was a vegetarian.

Returning to England in September of 1816, Mary and Percy were stunned by two family suicides in quick succession. In November, Mary's older half-sister, Fanny Imlay, left the Godwin home and took her own life at a distant inn. Only weeks later, Percy's first wife drowned herself in London's Hyde Park . Discarded and pregnant, she had not welcomed Percy's invitation to join Mary and himself in their new household.

On 30 December 1816, shortly after Harriet's death, Percy and Mary were married, now with Godwin's blessing. Their attempts to gain custody of Percy's two children by Harriet failed, but their writing careers enjoyed more success when, in the spring of 1817 , Mary finished Frankenstein .

Over the following years, Mary's household grew to include her own children by Percy, occasional friends, and Claire's daughter by Byron. Shelley moved his menage from place to place first in England and then in Italy. Mary suffered the death of her young son Will in Rome, after which her infant daughter died, too, as Percy moved the household yet again. By now Mary had resigned herself to her husband's self-centered restlessness and his romantic enthusiasms for other women. The birth of her only surviving child, Percy Florence Shelley, consoled her somewhat for her losses.

Eventually the group settled in Lerici , a town close to La Spezia in Italy , but it was an ill-fated choice. It was here that Claire learned of her daughter's death at the Italian convent to which Byron had sent her, and that Mary almost died of a miscarriage. And it was from here, in July 1822, that Percy sailed away up the coast to Livorno to plan the founding of a journal with a group of friends. Caught in a storm on his return, he drowned at sea on July 8 ,1822 , along with his friend Edward Williams and a young boat attendant. Percy left his last poem, a shadowy work called "The Triumph Of Life", unfinished.

Mary was tireless in promoting her late husband's work, including editing and annotating unpublished material. Despite their troubled later life together, she revered her late husband's memory and helped build his reputation as one of the major poets of the English Romantic period. But she also found occasions to write a few more novels, including Valperga ,The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck and Falkner . Critics say these works do not begin to approach the power and fame of Frankenstein ;The Last Man , a pioneering science fiction novel of the human apocalypse in the distant future , is, however, sometimes considered her best work, as is Maria , a novel published posthumously.

Mary Shelley died on February 1 ,1851 in London and was interred at St. Peter's Churchyard in Bournemouth , in the English county of Dorset.

- BrontÎ sisters: The BrontÎ family is best known for Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, famous English writers of the 1840s and 1850s. They were three of the six children of the Rev. Patrick BrontÎ and his wife Maria Branwell. They wrote under the pseudonym Bell (Currer, Ellis and Acton) and lived in Haworth, in the Southern Pennines (Yorkshire).

There were two other sisters, Maria and Elizabeth , who died in 1825 of tuberculosis , and a brother: the artist and writer Branwell BrontÎ .

In 1846, Charlotte, Emily and Anne published a book of poems under the pseudonyms Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, but it was not a hit, selling only two copies. They turned to novel writing, and Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey were published.

On December 19, 1848, Emily died of tuberculosis, followed by Anne's death on May 24, 1849 from the same infection.

The Rev. BrontÎ, a native of County Down in Ulster, was the eldest son of Hugh Prunty, also known as Hugh Brunty, and changed the orthography of his last name several times during his lifetime, from Brunty to Branty to Bronte to BrontÈ to BrontÎ. The diaeresis over the final e indicates that it is pronounced rather than silent.

The spelling changes have been said to have been influenced by the classical figure Brontes, or by the gift of land in the town of Bronte, Sicily in 1799 from Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies to Admiral Horatio Nelson.

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Marlane.

-George Sand: Amandine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin , later Baroness Dudevant (July 1 ,1804 ≠June 8 ,1876 ) was a French novelist and early feminist (prior to the invention of the word) who wrote under the pen name of George Sand .

Born in Paris to a father of aristocratic lineage and a "common" mother, Sand was raised for much of her childhood by her grandmother at the family estate, Nohant, in the French region of Berry, a setting later used in many of her novels. In 1822 , she married Baron Casimir Dudevant, and they had two children, Maurice (b. 1823 ) and Solange (b. 1828 ). In 1835 , taking the children with her, she left her husband.

Her first novel, "Rose et Blanche" ( 1831 ) was written in collaboration with Jules Sandeau , from whom she allegedly took her pen-name, Sand.

After parting from her husband Sand made less and less a secret of preferring men's clothes to women's, although she continued to dress as a woman for social occasions. This male "disguise" enabled Sand to circulate more freely about Paris, and gave her increased access to venues that might have been denied to a woman of her social standing. This was an exceptional practice for the 19th century, where social codes - especially in the upper class - were of the highest importance. As a consequence Sand lost a good deal of the privileges attached to being a Baroness. Ironically, it was also a part of the mores of this period that women of higher classes could live physically separated from their husbands without losing face, if they didnπt show any blatant irregularity to the outer world.

She was linked romantically with Alfred de Musset (summer 1833 - March 1834), Franz Liszt and FrÈdÈric Chopin (1810 - 1849) whom she had met in Paris in 1831.

In Majorca one can still visit the (then abandoned) Carthusian monastery of Valldemossa , where she spent the winter of 1838≠39 with FrÈdÈric Chopin and her children. This trip to Mallorca was described by her in Un hiver ‡ Majorque ("A winter in Mallorca"), published in 1855. She left Chopin shortly before he died from tuberculosis.

Her successful novels include "Indiana" ( 1832 ), "LÈlia" ( 1833 ), "Mauprat" ( 1837 ), "Le Compagnon du Tour de France" ( 1840 ), "Consuelo" ( 1842 ≠1843 ), and "Le Meunier d'Angibault" ( 1845 ).

Drawing from her childhood experiences of the countryside, she wrote the rural novels "La Mare du Diable" ( 1846 ), "FranÁois le Champi" ( 1847 ≠1848 ), "La Petite Fadette" ( 1849 ), and "Les Beaux Messieurs Bois-Dore".

Further theatre pieces and autobiographical pieces include "Histoire de ma vie" ( 1855 ), "Elle et Lui" ( 1859 ) (about her affair with Musset), "Journal Intime" (posth. 1926 ), and "Correspondance".

In addition, Sand authored literary criticism and political texts.

George Sand died at Nohant , near Ch‚teauroux , in the Indre dÈpartement of France on June 8 ,1876 at the age of 72 and was buried in the grounds of her home at Nohant. In 2004, controversial plans were suggested to move her remains to the Pantheon in Paris.

-George Eliot: Mary Ann Evans, better known by the pen name George Eliot (22 November 1819 -22 December 1880 ), was an English novelist . She was one of the leading writers of the Victorian era, whose novels, largely set in provincial England, are well known for their realism and psychological perspicacity.

She used a male pen name, she said, to ensure that her works were taken seriously. Female authors published freely under their own names, but Eliot wanted to ensure that she was not seen as a writer of romances. An additional factor may have been a desire to shield her private life from public scrutiny and to prevent scandals attending her relationship with George Henry Lewes.

Works:

Scenes of Clerical Life (1858)

Adam Bede (1859)

The Lifted Veil (1859)

The Mill on the Floss (1860)

Silas Marner (1861)

Romola (1863)

Brother Jacob (1864)

Felix Holt, the Radical (1866)

The Spanish Gypsy (1868)

Agatha (1869)

Brother and Sister (1869)

The Legend of Jubal (1870)

Armgart (1871)

Middlemarch (1871)

Arion (1874)

A