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Period Name and Date: Period Characteristics

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Period Name and Date: Period Characteristics

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*Either put an image of the chart here or type them

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*Either put an image of that portion of the chart here or type them

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Insert first fact and image here

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Direction note: Be sure to add any special events according to their date as needed.

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Lets give a tangible example for you to see

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The first Native Americans had come to North America over a land bridge from Asia and Siberia approximately 13,000 to 13,500 years ago.

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Native Americans used to speak more than 300 languages. However many of the languages have disappeared due assimilation policies by the government.

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Puritanism and Early Settlement of First "American" colonies 1600-1800

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Puritanism and Early Settlement of First "American" colonies 1600-1800

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Puritanism and Early settlement of First "American colonies 1600-1800: Authors and Works

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Puritanism and Early settlement of First "American colonies 1600-1800: Authors and Works

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Puritanism and Early settlement of First "American" colonies: Fact #1

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Puritanism and Early settlement of First "American" colonies: Fact #1

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The Puritans wanted their colony to be based on the laws of God. They thought that God would protect them if they followed religious laws and were righteous.

Works cited: https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/puritans-and-iron-making.htm#:~:text=The%20Puritans%20wanted%20their%20colony,term%20of%20Governor%20in%201630.

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Puritanism and Early settlement of First "American" colonies: Fact #2

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Puritanism and Early settlement of First "American" colonies: Fact #2

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Puritans were industrious people, and made most everything by hand. Men and boys would do mostly stuff outside like farming, fixing things, and taking care of the livestock. The women would do most everything in the house like cook, clean, tend to the garden and make soap.

Works cited: https://mrnussbaum.com/life-in-puritan-massachusetts#:~:text=The%20Puritans%20were%20an%20industrious,took%20care%20of%20the%20house.

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1507: Early settlement of the first American colonies- Jamestown.

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1692: Salem witch trials

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1741: Johnathan Edwards "Sinners in the hand of an angry God."

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Rationalism "The Age of Reason" "The Enlightenment"

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Rationalism "The Age of Reason" "The Enlightenment"

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Rationalism "The Age of Reason" "The Enlightenment"

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Rationalism "The Age of Reason" "The Enlightenment"

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Rationalism "The Age of Reason" "The Enlightenment" Fact #1

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Rationalism "The Age of Reason" "The Enlightenment" Fact #1

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The Age of Reason was known as an intellectual and cultural movement in the eighteenth century that emphasized reason over superstition and science of blind faith.

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Rationalism "The Age of Reason" "The Enlightenment" Fact #2

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Rationalism "The Age of Reason" "The Enlightenment" Fact #2

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The central doctrines of the Enlightenment were individual liberty and religious tolerance.

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Special event #1- 1607- Early settlement Jamestown

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Special event #1- 1607- Early settlement Jamestown

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Special event #2- 1775-1783 Revolutionary War

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Special event #2- 1775-1783 Revolutionary War

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The Enlightenment's emphasis on concepts such as individual rights, the social contract, and the separation of powers had a profound impact on political thought and played a pivotal role in inspiring two of the most significant revolutions in history: American Revolution and French Revolution.

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10 Facts About the Enlightenment - Have Fun With History

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The Enlightenment was a remarkable intellectual and philosophical movement that swept across Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries. This period was marked by a profound shift in thinking, emphasizing the power of reason, science, and individualism. Enlightenment thinkers championed secularism, advocated for the separation of church and state, and laid the foundations for modern ... Read more

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Enlightenment ideas were often disseminated and debated in informal social gatherings known as salons and coffeehouses.

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10 Facts About the Enlightenment - Have Fun With History

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The Enlightenment was a remarkable intellectual and philosophical movement that swept across Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries. This period was marked by a profound shift in thinking, emphasizing the power of reason, science, and individualism. Enlightenment thinkers championed secularism, advocated for the separation of church and state, and laid the foundations for modern ... Read more

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Transcendentalism "The American Renaissance" 

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Transcendentalism "The American Renaissance" 

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Transcendentalism "The American Renaissance" Fact #1

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Transcendentalism "The American Renaissance" Fact #1

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Transcendentalism was a visionary way of thinking that was widespread in 19th-century American art and thinking.

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Transcendentalism "The American Renaissance" Fact #2

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Transcendentalism "The American Renaissance" Fact #2

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As a group, the transcendentalists led the celebration of the American experiment as one of individualism and self-reliance. They took progressive stands on women's rights, abolition, reform, and education. They criticized government, organized religion, laws, social institutions, and creeping industrialization.

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Transcendentalism !840-1860

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The American Transcendentalists were a group of young New Englanders, mostly of Unitarian background, who found liberal religion too formal and rationalistic to meet their spiritual and emotional needs. Logic and reason, they believed, were incapable of explaining the fundamental mysteries of human existence.

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Printable Version The American Transcendentalists were a group of young New Englanders, mostly of Unitarian background, who found liberal religion too formal and rationalistic to meet their spiritual and emotional needs. Logic and reason, they believed, were incapable of explaining the fundamental mysteries of human existence. Where, then, could people find answers to life's fundamental problems? The deepest insights, the transcendentalists believed, were to be found within the human individual, through intuition.

The transcendentalists shared a common outlook: a belief that each person contains infinite and godlike potentialities; an emphasis on emotion and the senses over reason and intellect; and a glorification of nature as a creative, dynamic force in which people could discover their true selves and commune with the supernatural. Like the romantic artists and poets of Europe, they emphasized the individual, the subjective, the imaginative, the personal, the emotional, and the visionary.

The central figure in transcendentalism was Ralph Waldo Emerson. Trained, like his father, to be a liberal Unitarian minister, Emerson found his parents' faith unsatisfying. Unitarian theology and ritual, he wrote, was "corpse cold"; it was the "thin porridge or cold tea" of genteel Bostonians. Emerson's life was marked by personal tragedy and illness--his father died when he was a boy; his first wife died after less than two years of marriage; his firstborn son died at the age of five; a brother went insane. Consequently, Emerson could never believe that logic and reason offered answers to life's mysteries.

Appalled by the complacency, provinciality, and materialism of Boston's elite, the 29-year-old Emerson resigned as minister of the prestigious Second Church of Boston in 1832. Convinced that no external answers existed to the fundamental problems of life, he decided to look inward and "spin my thread from my own bowels."

In his essays and public lectures, Emerson distilled the essence of the new philosophy: All people contain seeds of divinity, but society, traditionalism, and lifeless religious institutions thwart the fulfillment of these potentialities. In his essay "Nature" (1836), Emerson asserted that God's presence is inherent in both humanity and nature and can best be sensed through intuition rather than through reason.

In his essay "Self-Reliance" (1841), he called on his readers to strive for true individuality in the face of intense social pressures for conformity: "Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members....The virtue in most request is conformity....Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist."

Although Emerson himself was not an active reformer (he once wrote that whenever he saw a reformer, he felt like asking, "What right, Sir, do you have to your one virtue?"), his philosophy inspired many reformers far more radical than he. His stress on the individual, his defense of nonconformity, and his vocal critique of the alienation and social fragmentation that had accompanied the growth of cities and industry led others to try to apply the principles of transcendentalism to their personal lives and to society at large.

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) was one of the transcendentalists who strove to realize Emersonian ideals in his personal life. A pencilmaker, surveyor, and poet, Thoreau, like Emerson, was educated at Harvard. He felt nothing but contempt for social conventions and wore a green coat to chapel because Harvard's rules required black. After college, he taught school and worked at his father's pencil factory, but these jobs brought him no fulfillment.

In March 1845, the 28-year-old Thoreau, convinced that his life was being frittered away by details, walked into the woods near Concord, Massachusetts, to live alone. He put up a cabin near Walden Pond as an experiment--to see if it was possible for a person to live truly free and uncommitted: "I went into the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." The aim of his experiment was to break free from the distractions and artificialities of life, to shed himself of needless obligations and possessions, and to establish an original relationship with nature. His motto was "simplify, simplify."

During his 26 months at Walden Pond, he constructed his own cabin, raised his own food ("seven miles of beans"), observed nature, explored his inner self, and kept a 6,000-page journal. He served as "self-appointed inspector of snow-storms and rain-storms," "surveyor of forest-paths," and protector of "wild-stock." He also spent a night in jail, for refusing to pay taxes as a protest against the Mexican-American War. This incident led him to write the classic defense of nonviolent direct action, "Civil Disobedience."

Another figure who sought to realize transcendentalist ideals in her personal life was Margaret Fuller (1810-1850), editor of the transcendentalist journal The Dial. Often mocked as an egotist, she once said: "I know all the people worth knowing in America, and I find no intellect comparable to my own." She did indeed possess one of 19th century America's towering minds. She was the first woman to use the Harvard College library and later became one of the nation's first woman journalists, writing for Horace Greeley's New York Tribune. A determined social reformer, she became a leading advocate of women's rights, publishing Woman in the 19th Century in 1845. The book, in which she called for the complete equality of women and men, became a central work of the emerging women's rights movement.

Active in Rome's revolution of 1849, she shocked Bostonians by taking an Italian revolutionary nobleman, 11 years her junior, as her lover, and bearing his child out of wedlock (they secretly married later). She died in a shipwreck off Long Island, at the age of 40, along with her husband and son. Edgar Allan Poe spoke for many Americans when he said of her: "Humanity is divided into men, women, and Margaret Fuller."

Another key figure in the transcendentalist circle was Bronson Alcott (1799-1888), a pioneer in the areas of child development and education. Often ridiculed--reviewers mockingly described one of his books as "clear as mud"--Alcott was far ahead of his time in his conception of education, which he viewed as a process of awakening and drawing out children's intellectual and moral capacities through dialogue, individualized instruction, nature study, and encouragement of creative expression through art and writing. Critics scoffed at his techniques, particularly his rejection of corporal punishment and his substitution of "vicarious atonement," a method of child discipline in which Alcott had naughty children spank him. When his own daughters misbehaved, Alcott went without dinner.

Convinced that adults had a great deal to learn about children's physical, intellectual, and moral development, Alcott recorded 2,500 pages of observations on the first years of his daughters' lives (who included Louisa May, later the author of Little Women and Little Men). He also published his dialogues with pupils on such controversial topics as the meaning of the Christian gospel and the processes of conception and birth.

Two dramatic attempts to apply the ideas of transcendentalism to everyday life were Brook Farm, a community located near Boston, and Fruitlands, a utopian community near Harvard, Massachusetts. In 1841, George Ripley, like Emerson a former Unitarian clergyman, established Brook Farm in an attempt to substitute transcendentalist ideals of "brotherly cooperation," harmony, and spiritual fulfillment for the "selfish competition," class division, and alienation that increasingly characterized the larger society. "Our ulterior aim is nothing less than Heaven on Earth," declared one community member. Brook Farm's residents, who never numbered more than 200, supported themselves by farming, teaching, and manufacturing clothing. The most famous member of the community was Nathaniel Hawthorne, who based his 1852 novel The Blithedale Romance on his experiences there. The community lasted in its original form just three years.

In 1843, Bronson Alcott and others attempted to form a "New Eden" at Fruitlands--a community where they could achieve human perfection through high thinking, manual labor, and dress and diet reform. Practices at Fruitlands included communal ownership of property, frequent cold water baths, and a diet based entirely on native grains, fruits, herbs, and roots. Residents wore canvas shoes and linen tunics, so as not to have to kill animals for leather or use slave-grown cotton. Division of labor by gender, however, remained traditional. Responsibility for housekeeping and food preparation fell on Alcott's wife Abba. Asked by a visitor if there were any beasts of burden at Fruitlands, Abba Alcott replied: "There is one woman."

Copyright 2021 Digital History

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Printable Version The American Transcendentalists were a group of young New Englanders, mostly of Unitarian background, who found liberal religion too formal and rationalistic to meet their spiritual and emotional needs. Logic and reason, they believed, were incapable of explaining the fundamental mysteries of human existence.

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Transcendentalism was created as a way for writers, thinkers, and philosophers to rebel against the norm, and it's three essential values still followed today are individualism, idealism, and the divinity of nature.

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Period Characteristics:

1. President of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP), an organization set up to defend the environmental and human rights of the Ogoni People who live in the Niger Delta

2. In return the Ogoni, a group of 550,000 farmers and fishermen inhabiting this coastal land, have received little except a ravaged environment. Farmland that was once fertile turned to contaminated fields from oil spills and acid rain. Uncontrolled oil spills dotted the landscape with puddles of ooze the size of football fields. Virtually all fish and wildlife have vanished.

3. Out of Shell’s Nigerian workforce of 5,000, less than 100 jobs went to Ogoni.

4. Saro-Wiwa gathered 300,000 Ogoni to march peacefully to demand a share in oil revenues and some form of political autonomy. MOSOP also asked the oil companies to begin environmental remediation and pay compensation for past damage.

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Ken Saro-Wiwa

-Sozaboy: A Novel in Rotten English

- A Month and A Day: A Detention Diary

- A Month and a Day & Letters

- Genocide in Nigeria

- Prisoners of Jebs

- On a Darkling Plain

- Basi and Company

- The Singing Anthill

- Silence Would Be Treason: Last

- MR B Again

- Lemona's Tale

- A Forest of Flowers

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At the peak of his non-violent campaign, he was tried by a special military tribunal for allegedly masterminding the murder of Ogoni chiefs at a pro-government meeting, and hanged in 1995 by the military dictatorship of General Sani Abacha.

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In 1990 the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP) was formed with poet Ken Saro-Wiwa as president. MOSOP developed an Ogoni Bill of Rights, demanding environmental justice and opposing the method of allocation of oil funds. They also organized a number of peaceful protests.

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1958- Royal Dutch Shell struck oil on Ogoni lands

1993- Saro-Wiwa gathered 300,000 Ogoni to march peacefully to demand a share in oil revenues and some form of political autonomy. MOSOP also asked the oil companies to begin environmental remediation and pay compensation for past damage.

1994- Saro-Wiwa, who had been briefly imprisoned several times before, was abducted from his home and jailed along with other MOSOP leaders in connection with the murder of four Ogoni leaders.

October 1995- military tribunal tried and convicted Saro-Wiwa of murder. Governments and citizens’ organizations worldwide condemned the trial as fraudulent, and urged the Nigerian dictator to spare Saro-Wiwa’s life.

November 10, 1995- Saro-Wiwa and his eight co-defendants were hanged.

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Saro-Wiwa was educated at Government College, Umuahia, and at the University of Ibadan. He briefly taught at the University of Lagos before joining federal forces in the civil war of the late 1960s.

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Ken Saro-Wiwa, (born Oct. 10, 1941, Bori, near Port Harcourt, Nigeria-died Nov. 10, 1995, Port Harcourt), Nigerian writer and activist, who spoke out forcefully against the Nigerian military regime and the Anglo-Dutch petroleum company Royal Dutch/Shell for causing environmental damage to the land of the Ogoni people in his native Rivers state.

Saro-Wiwa was educated at Government College, Umuahia, and at the University of Ibadan. He briefly taught at the University of Lagos before joining federal forces in the civil war of the late 1960s. Afterward he worked as a government administrator until 1973, when he left to concentrate on his literary career. His first novels were Songs in a Time of War and Sozaboy (both 1985); the latter, written in pidgin English, satirized corruption in Nigerian society. He reached his largest audience with Basi and Company, a comedic television series that ran for some 150 episodes in the 1980s. He was also a journalist and wrote poetry and children's stories.

From about 1991 he devoted himself full-time to the causes of the Ogoni, a minority ethnic group that numbered about 500,000 people. In mid-1992 he broadened the reach of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, an organization he led. In particular, he focused on Britain, where Shell had one of its headquarters. He criticized the destructive impact of the oil industry-the main source of Nigeria's national revenue-on the Niger delta region and demanded a greater compensatory share of oil profits for the Ogoni. As a result of mounting protest, Shell suspended operations in Ogoni lands in 1993.

Saro-Wiwa was arrested in 1994 after the deaths of four Ogoni chiefs at a political rally. In a trial by special tribunal that was denounced by foreign human rights groups, he was found guilty for alleged complicity in the murders. His execution by hanging, along with those of eight fellow activists, aroused international condemnation and led to calls for economic sanctions against Nigeria, which was suspended from the Commonwealth a day after the executions. Shell later announced its commitment to a natural gas project worth nearly $4 billion, one of the largest foreign investments in Nigerian history. In 2009 Shell paid $15.5 million in an out-of-court settlement intended to resolve a lawsuit brought against it in 1996 on behalf of members of Saro-Wiwa's family and others. Shell, accused in the lawsuit of being complicit in human rights abuses in Nigeria and in the 1995 executions, denied any wrongdoing.

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Ken Saro-Wiwa | Nigerian Author, Environmental Activist & Martyr

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Ken Saro-Wiwa, Nigerian writer and activist, who spoke out forcefully against the Nigerian military regime and the Anglo-Dutch petroleum company Royal Dutch/Shell for causing environmental damage to the land of the Ogoni people in his native Rivers state. Saro-Wiwa was educated at Government

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The Ogoni are a minority ethnic people who live in the Western Niger Delta Region of southern Nigeria. During the 1970s, Ogoniland, or the Ogoni Nation, became part of the Rivers State of Nigeria. There are approximately 500,000 Ogoni who represent less than 0.05 percent of Nigeria's 100 to 120 million people.

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DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln

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Citation

FROM: Endangered Peoples of Africa and the Middle East : Struggles to Survive and Thrive. Edited by Robert K. Hitchcock and Alan J. Osborn (Westport, Conn. : Greenwood Press, 2002).

Abstract

The Ogoni are a minority ethnic people who live in the Western Niger Delta Region of southern Nigeria. During the 1970s, Ogoniland, or the Ogoni Nation, became part of the Rivers State of Nigeria. There are approximately 500,000 Ogoni who represent less than 0.05 percent of Nigeria's 100 to 120 million people. The population density of this region equals 1,233 people per square mile, making it one of the most densely populated areas of Nigeria. Reliable information about the origin of the Ogoni is limited. Archaeological and oral historical evidence suggests that the Ogoni have inhabited the area for over 500 years. Presently, two theories exist about the origin of this people. First, the Ogoni may have migrated into their present territory from across the Imo River sometime around the eighteenth or the nineteenth century. Vestiges of this migration are two Ogoni villages, Warife and Utetuk, that still exist at the other side of the river. Warife still speak Khana, whereas Utetuk have adopted the customs and language of Annang, a neighboring tribe in the Akwa Ibom State. When they arrived in the region, the Ogoni did not find this area to be occupied. As a consequence, they were able to keep their identity from their neighbors-the Ibibios in the southeast, the Igbos to the north, the Ikwerres to the west, and the Andoni and Ijaws to the south. According to this theory, the first Ogoni settlement was in the Khana kingdom, followed by Tai, Gokana, and Eleme, respectively. The Ogoni Nation grew from these first settlements. The second theory claims that the Ogoni people came on the trading ships, which often visited Bonny, a small city-state island in the delta. They began to settle in Bonny until their population began to outgrow the little town. This necessitated their migration further inland. Once they arrived at Bonny, the resident Ibani people referred to the new arrivals as the "Igoni" or "strangers." As time passed, the Ibani then became known as the "Ogoni." Today, in Bonny, people say that the Ogoni and the Ibani are "brothers." It is quite possible that Ogoni residence on this island in the delta prevented them from being captured during the slave raids that ravaged the mainland.

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The Ogoni are a minority ethnic people who live in the Western Niger Delta Region of southern Nigeria. During the 1970s, Ogoniland, or the Ogoni Nation, became part of the Rivers State of Nigeria. There are approximately 500,000 Ogoni who represent less than 0.05 percent of Nigeria's 100 to 120 million people.

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Romanticism and Industrialization Fact #1

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Romanticism and Industrialization Fact #1

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Romanticism was a rebellion against the Neoclassic period of reason and ushered in the age of sensibility when artists choose passion and intuition over reasonable neutrality.

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Romanticism and Industrialization Fact #2

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Romanticism and Industrialization Fact #2

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To a large extent, English Romantic intellectuals and artists felt that the modern industrial world was harsh and deadening to the senses and spirit. These intellectuals called for a return, both in life and in spirit, of the emotional and natural, as well as the ideals of the pre-industrial past.

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The war of 1812

1812-1815

California Gold Rush 1848-1855

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To a large extent, English Romantic intellectuals and artists felt that the modern industrial world was harsh and deadening to the senses and spirit. These intellectuals called for a return, both in life and in spirit, of the emotional and natural, as well as the ideals of the pre-industrial past.

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Romanticism is marked by a focus on individualism, an emphasis on nature, emotion over reason, freedom of form, and an exploration of the Gothic and unknown.

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The Puritans were remarkably disciplined. They kept diaries of their thoughts and actions. They would write an account of their day, what they had thought and why and what they had done and why. They would list their sins, ask forgiveness, and plot out the best way in which to avoid such sin tomorrow. This daily diary was a thankful statement of God's goodness as well as an acknowledgment of personal sin and failure.

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10 Things You Should Know about the Puritans

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10 Things You Should Know about the Puritans

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McCarthyism became strong because of the increasing fear of Communism in China and Eastern Europe that came to the United States.

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The term "McCarthyism" comes from Senator Joseph McCarthy, who spearheaded the drive to defeat communist infiltration, despite having no proof for many of his accusations.

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Robert Frost was a college dropout, not once, but twice. He attended Dartmouth college for just two months, then he attened Harvard, but dropped out there to support his family.

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​Robert Frost has long been gone but his works remain timeless and are widely read even today. Here we list down eight interesting facts about the American poet.

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When Frost was 20, he sold his first poem "My Butterfly" for just $15 in 1894.

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​Robert Frost has long been gone but his works remain timeless and are widely read even today. Here we list down eight interesting facts about the American poet.

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John F. Kennedy was a big fan of Frost, and invited him to do a reading at his 1961 inauguration. He read his piece "The Gift Outright."

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​Robert Frost has long been gone but his works remain timeless and are widely read even today. Here we list down eight interesting facts about the American poet.

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Robert Hayden studied poetry at the University of Michigan, and went on to teaching at both Michigan University and Fisk University.

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Robert had an emotionally tumultuous childhood and lived with his parents sometimes, and other times with his foster family.

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Born Asa Bundy Sheffey on August 4, 1913, Robert Hayden was raised in the Detroit neighborhood Paradise Valley. He had an emotionally tumultuous childhood and lived at times with his parents and with a foster family. In 1932, he graduated from high school and, with the help of a scholarship, attended Detroit City College (later Wayne State University).

Hayden published his first book of poems, Heart-Shape in the Dust, in 1940, at the age of twenty-seven. He enrolled in a graduate English literature program at the University of Michigan, where he studied with W. H. Auden. Auden became an influential critical guide in the development of Hayden's writing. Hayden admired the work of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Elinor Wiley, Carl Sandburg, and Hart Crane, as well as the poets of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Jean Toomer. He had an interest in African American history and explored his concerns about race in his writing.

In 1944, Hayden received his graduate degree from the University of Michigan and remained there for two years as a teaching fellow. He was the first Black member of the English department. He then joined the faculty at Fisk University in Nashville, where he would remain for more than twenty years.

Hayden's poetry gained international recognition in the 1960s and he was awarded the grand prize for poetry at the First World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, Senegal, in 1966 for his book Ballad of Remembrance.

Hayden ultimately authored nine collections of poetry in his lifetime, as well as a collection of essays, and some children's literature.

Explaining the trajectory of Hayden's career, the poet William Meredith wrote: "Hayden declared himself, at considerable cost in popularity, an American poet rather than a Black poet, when for a time there was posited an unreconcilable difference between the two roles. There is scarcely a line of his which is not identifiable as an experience of Black America, but he would not relinquish the title of American writer for any narrower identity."

In 1975, Hayden received the Academy of American Poets Fellowship, and in 1976, he became the first Black American to be appointed as consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress (later called the poet laureate). He died in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on February 25, 1980.

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Born Asa Bundy Sheffey on August 4, 1913, Robert Hayden was raised in the Detroit neighborhood Paradise Valley. He had an emotionally tumultuous childhood and lived at times with his parents and with a foster family. In 1932, he graduated from high school and, with the help of a scholarship, attended Detroit City College (later Wayne State University).

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Hayden published his first book of poems, Heart-Shape in the Dust (Falcon Press), in 1940, at the age of twenty-seven.

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Born Asa Bundy Sheffey on August 4, 1913, Robert Hayden was raised in the Detroit neighborhood Paradise Valley. He had an emotionally tumultuous childhood and lived at times with his parents and with a foster family. In 1932, he graduated from high school and, with the help of a scholarship, attended Detroit City College (later Wayne State University).

Hayden published his first book of poems, Heart-Shape in the Dust, in 1940, at the age of twenty-seven. He enrolled in a graduate English literature program at the University of Michigan, where he studied with W. H. Auden. Auden became an influential critical guide in the development of Hayden's writing. Hayden admired the work of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Elinor Wiley, Carl Sandburg, and Hart Crane, as well as the poets of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Jean Toomer. He had an interest in African American history and explored his concerns about race in his writing.

In 1944, Hayden received his graduate degree from the University of Michigan and remained there for two years as a teaching fellow. He was the first Black member of the English department. He then joined the faculty at Fisk University in Nashville, where he would remain for more than twenty years.

Hayden's poetry gained international recognition in the 1960s and he was awarded the grand prize for poetry at the First World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, Senegal, in 1966 for his book Ballad of Remembrance.

Hayden ultimately authored nine collections of poetry in his lifetime, as well as a collection of essays, and some children's literature.

Explaining the trajectory of Hayden's career, the poet William Meredith wrote: "Hayden declared himself, at considerable cost in popularity, an American poet rather than a Black poet, when for a time there was posited an unreconcilable difference between the two roles. There is scarcely a line of his which is not identifiable as an experience of Black America, but he would not relinquish the title of American writer for any narrower identity."

In 1975, Hayden received the Academy of American Poets Fellowship, and in 1976, he became the first Black American to be appointed as consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress (later called the poet laureate). He died in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on February 25, 1980.

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Born Asa Bundy Sheffey on August 4, 1913, Robert Hayden was raised in the Detroit neighborhood Paradise Valley. He had an emotionally tumultuous childhood and lived at times with his parents and with a foster family. In 1932, he graduated from high school and, with the help of a scholarship, attended Detroit City College (later Wayne State University).

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When the Civil War began, Whitman's brother enlisted, and when Whitman saw his brother on the list of the wounded in 1862, he went to visit to make sure he was okay. When he saw all the other soldiers and the toll the war had taken on them he stayed and began a steady rotation of the area's hospitals.

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Known as the "Bard of Democracy," poet and journalist Walt Whitman-who was born on May 31, 1819-used unconventional verse and frank talk of sexuality and politics to become one of the most lauded writers of the 19th century. He might be best known for Leaves of Grass (which also happens to play a crucial role in the climax of AMC's Breaking Bad). But there's a lot more to Whitman than that. Check out some facts about his life, his love of nudity, and how he managed to write rave reviews of his own work.

1. Walt Whitman started working at age 11.

Whitman's formal education didn't last very long. Living in New York with his parents, and with his father struggling to make ends meet, Whitman left school at age 11 to help contribute to the household. He got work assisting a law office in the city before turning to the printing business, developing skills that would later inform his work in self-publishing. He continued to educate himself, eventually becoming a teacher at the age of 17.

2. Whitman kept revising Leaves of Grass.

After stints in teaching and journalism, Whitman collected 12 of his poems for Leaves of Grass, a self-published 1855 book that would go on to become his best-known work. But where most authors leave finished titles behind, Whitman considered Leaves to be a malleable volume. He repeatedly went back to it, changing the order of poems, adding new ones, retitling old ones, and tinkering with the typeset. By the time of his death in 1892, nine versions of Leaves had been published, the last with around 400 poems (including two annexes).

3. Whitman reviewed-and raved-about Leaves of Grass (anonymously).

To stir up interest for Leaves, Whitman took the audacious step of "reviewing" his book for New York area newspapers without a byline. "An American bard at last!" he wrote, raving, "Transcendent." The endorsements apparently didn't help sales much, with the initial run of the book selling just a few copies.

4. One version of Leaves of Grass was banned in Boston.

Whitman's tinkering with Leaves of Grass reflected his evolving attitudes regarding human sexuality, including the then-unpopular belief that homosexuality was natural. In 1882, Boston district attorney Oliver Stevens banned a version of the book that Whitman purposely had printed to resemble a Bible. The contents, Stevens believed, violated statutes about "obscene literature."

5. Whitman was a missionary during the Civil War.

Whitman, nearly 42, was an unlikely candidate for a soldier when the Civil War began, but his brother George enlisted in the Army. When Whitman saw his brother's name listed as one of the wounded in 1862, he traveled to Washington and then Virginia to visit. George was fine, but Whitman was struck by the physical toll the war had taken on other soldiers. He stayed in Washington and began a steady rotation of the area's hospitals, bringing food and books to the wounded. The goods were paid for by donations from friends, as well as Whitman's own salary working for the Army Paymaster.

6. Whitman was a health and fitness guru.

Whitman did not cut a figure as a man of action, but he was still very much interested in physical fitness. He wrote a series of articles for the New York Atlas in the 1850s under the pen name "Mose Velsor" that detailed his approach to diet and wellness. Whitman advocated "manly training" like brisk walks, dancing, and frequent bathing to cure ills and ward off depression. He also considered beards to be effective barriers against germs.

7. Whitman liked to be nude around friends.

Whitman's exhortations about nature extended to having a cavalier attitude about being constrained by clothing. In the 1870s and 1880s, Whitman was known to visit with friends while being completely nude. Nakedness, Whitman wrote, was freeing: "Nature was naked, and I was also." Whitman historians continue to debate whether a series of photos taken by photographer Thomas Eakins in the mid-1880s were of an elderly Whitman posing in the nude.

8. Bram Stoker was a big fan of Whitman's.

The future author of Dracula was so enamored with Whitman's work that he and his friends called themselves "Walt Whitmanites." Stoker didn't consider himself a peer, however: After composing a gushing letter to Whitman in 1872, he kept it in a drawer for four years before working up the courage to send it. "I do not know whether it is unusual for you to get letters from utter strangers who have not even the claim of literary brotherhood to write you," Stoker wrote. "If it is you must be frightfully tormented with letters and I am sorry to have written this. I have, however, the claim of liking you-for your words are your own soul and even if you do not read my letter it is no less a pleasure to me to write it." Whitman wrote a gracious letter back thanking him for the kind words.

9. Whitman wrote a mystery novel that was lost for more than 165 years.

In 1852, Whitman serialized a short 36,000 word mystery novel titled The Life and Adventures of Jack Engle in a New York newspaper. Few readers paid it much attention, and fewer still had any reason to try and retrieve it from any archives-Whitman published it without a byline. It was rediscovered in 2017 by Whitman historian Zach Turpin, who found some familiar phrases during an online newspaper search for Whitman material. The book was reissued that year. The finding pleased Whitman enthusiasts but probably would not have been pleasing to Whitman himself, who threatened to "shoot" anyone who dredged up his earlier, "crude" works for republication.

10. Whitman designed his own tomb.

As a final creative impulse, Whitman elected to design his own granite mausoleum in Camden, New Jersey's Harleigh Cemetery. Shaped like a house, the monument was paid for using monetary gifts given by admirers. Visitors sometimes leave letters or pennies at the iron gate in front of the grave-the latter because the coin bears the image of Abraham Lincoln, whom Whitman wrote a well-known elegy for following his death in 1865.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
10 Things You Might Not Know About Walt Whitman

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Known as the "Bard of Democracy," poet and journalist Walt Whitman-who was born on May 31, 1819-used unconventional verse and frank talk of sexuality and politics to become one of the most lauded writers of the 19th century.

# data[].attributes.body
Whitman advocated “manly training” like brisk walks, dancing, and frequent bathing to cure ills and ward off depression.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Known as the "Bard of Democracy," poet and journalist Walt Whitman-who was born on May 31, 1819-used unconventional verse and frank talk of sexuality and politics to become one of the most lauded writers of the 19th century. He might be best known for Leaves of Grass (which also happens to play a crucial role in the climax of AMC's Breaking Bad). But there's a lot more to Whitman than that. Check out some facts about his life, his love of nudity, and how he managed to write rave reviews of his own work.

1. Walt Whitman started working at age 11.

Whitman's formal education didn't last very long. Living in New York with his parents, and with his father struggling to make ends meet, Whitman left school at age 11 to help contribute to the household. He got work assisting a law office in the city before turning to the printing business, developing skills that would later inform his work in self-publishing. He continued to educate himself, eventually becoming a teacher at the age of 17.

2. Whitman kept revising Leaves of Grass.

After stints in teaching and journalism, Whitman collected 12 of his poems for Leaves of Grass, a self-published 1855 book that would go on to become his best-known work. But where most authors leave finished titles behind, Whitman considered Leaves to be a malleable volume. He repeatedly went back to it, changing the order of poems, adding new ones, retitling old ones, and tinkering with the typeset. By the time of his death in 1892, nine versions of Leaves had been published, the last with around 400 poems (including two annexes).

3. Whitman reviewed-and raved-about Leaves of Grass (anonymously).

To stir up interest for Leaves, Whitman took the audacious step of "reviewing" his book for New York area newspapers without a byline. "An American bard at last!" he wrote, raving, "Transcendent." The endorsements apparently didn't help sales much, with the initial run of the book selling just a few copies.

4. One version of Leaves of Grass was banned in Boston.

Whitman's tinkering with Leaves of Grass reflected his evolving attitudes regarding human sexuality, including the then-unpopular belief that homosexuality was natural. In 1882, Boston district attorney Oliver Stevens banned a version of the book that Whitman purposely had printed to resemble a Bible. The contents, Stevens believed, violated statutes about "obscene literature."

5. Whitman was a missionary during the Civil War.

Whitman, nearly 42, was an unlikely candidate for a soldier when the Civil War began, but his brother George enlisted in the Army. When Whitman saw his brother's name listed as one of the wounded in 1862, he traveled to Washington and then Virginia to visit. George was fine, but Whitman was struck by the physical toll the war had taken on other soldiers. He stayed in Washington and began a steady rotation of the area's hospitals, bringing food and books to the wounded. The goods were paid for by donations from friends, as well as Whitman's own salary working for the Army Paymaster.

6. Whitman was a health and fitness guru.

Whitman did not cut a figure as a man of action, but he was still very much interested in physical fitness. He wrote a series of articles for the New York Atlas in the 1850s under the pen name "Mose Velsor" that detailed his approach to diet and wellness. Whitman advocated "manly training" like brisk walks, dancing, and frequent bathing to cure ills and ward off depression. He also considered beards to be effective barriers against germs.

7. Whitman liked to be nude around friends.

Whitman's exhortations about nature extended to having a cavalier attitude about being constrained by clothing. In the 1870s and 1880s, Whitman was known to visit with friends while being completely nude. Nakedness, Whitman wrote, was freeing: "Nature was naked, and I was also." Whitman historians continue to debate whether a series of photos taken by photographer Thomas Eakins in the mid-1880s were of an elderly Whitman posing in the nude.

8. Bram Stoker was a big fan of Whitman's.

The future author of Dracula was so enamored with Whitman's work that he and his friends called themselves "Walt Whitmanites." Stoker didn't consider himself a peer, however: After composing a gushing letter to Whitman in 1872, he kept it in a drawer for four years before working up the courage to send it. "I do not know whether it is unusual for you to get letters from utter strangers who have not even the claim of literary brotherhood to write you," Stoker wrote. "If it is you must be frightfully tormented with letters and I am sorry to have written this. I have, however, the claim of liking you-for your words are your own soul and even if you do not read my letter it is no less a pleasure to me to write it." Whitman wrote a gracious letter back thanking him for the kind words.

9. Whitman wrote a mystery novel that was lost for more than 165 years.

In 1852, Whitman serialized a short 36,000 word mystery novel titled The Life and Adventures of Jack Engle in a New York newspaper. Few readers paid it much attention, and fewer still had any reason to try and retrieve it from any archives-Whitman published it without a byline. It was rediscovered in 2017 by Whitman historian Zach Turpin, who found some familiar phrases during an online newspaper search for Whitman material. The book was reissued that year. The finding pleased Whitman enthusiasts but probably would not have been pleasing to Whitman himself, who threatened to "shoot" anyone who dredged up his earlier, "crude" works for republication.

10. Whitman designed his own tomb.

As a final creative impulse, Whitman elected to design his own granite mausoleum in Camden, New Jersey's Harleigh Cemetery. Shaped like a house, the monument was paid for using monetary gifts given by admirers. Visitors sometimes leave letters or pennies at the iron gate in front of the grave-the latter because the coin bears the image of Abraham Lincoln, whom Whitman wrote a well-known elegy for following his death in 1865.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
10 Things You Might Not Know About Walt Whitman

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Known as the "Bard of Democracy," poet and journalist Walt Whitman-who was born on May 31, 1819-used unconventional verse and frank talk of sexuality and politics to become one of the most lauded writers of the 19th century.

# data[].attributes.body
As a final creative impulse, Whitman elected to design his own granite mausoleum in Camden, New Jersey’s Harleigh Cemetery.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Known as the "Bard of Democracy," poet and journalist Walt Whitman-who was born on May 31, 1819-used unconventional verse and frank talk of sexuality and politics to become one of the most lauded writers of the 19th century. He might be best known for Leaves of Grass (which also happens to play a crucial role in the climax of AMC's Breaking Bad). But there's a lot more to Whitman than that. Check out some facts about his life, his love of nudity, and how he managed to write rave reviews of his own work.

1. Walt Whitman started working at age 11.

Whitman's formal education didn't last very long. Living in New York with his parents, and with his father struggling to make ends meet, Whitman left school at age 11 to help contribute to the household. He got work assisting a law office in the city before turning to the printing business, developing skills that would later inform his work in self-publishing. He continued to educate himself, eventually becoming a teacher at the age of 17.

2. Whitman kept revising Leaves of Grass.

After stints in teaching and journalism, Whitman collected 12 of his poems for Leaves of Grass, a self-published 1855 book that would go on to become his best-known work. But where most authors leave finished titles behind, Whitman considered Leaves to be a malleable volume. He repeatedly went back to it, changing the order of poems, adding new ones, retitling old ones, and tinkering with the typeset. By the time of his death in 1892, nine versions of Leaves had been published, the last with around 400 poems (including two annexes).

3. Whitman reviewed-and raved-about Leaves of Grass (anonymously).

To stir up interest for Leaves, Whitman took the audacious step of "reviewing" his book for New York area newspapers without a byline. "An American bard at last!" he wrote, raving, "Transcendent." The endorsements apparently didn't help sales much, with the initial run of the book selling just a few copies.

4. One version of Leaves of Grass was banned in Boston.

Whitman's tinkering with Leaves of Grass reflected his evolving attitudes regarding human sexuality, including the then-unpopular belief that homosexuality was natural. In 1882, Boston district attorney Oliver Stevens banned a version of the book that Whitman purposely had printed to resemble a Bible. The contents, Stevens believed, violated statutes about "obscene literature."

5. Whitman was a missionary during the Civil War.

Whitman, nearly 42, was an unlikely candidate for a soldier when the Civil War began, but his brother George enlisted in the Army. When Whitman saw his brother's name listed as one of the wounded in 1862, he traveled to Washington and then Virginia to visit. George was fine, but Whitman was struck by the physical toll the war had taken on other soldiers. He stayed in Washington and began a steady rotation of the area's hospitals, bringing food and books to the wounded. The goods were paid for by donations from friends, as well as Whitman's own salary working for the Army Paymaster.

6. Whitman was a health and fitness guru.

Whitman did not cut a figure as a man of action, but he was still very much interested in physical fitness. He wrote a series of articles for the New York Atlas in the 1850s under the pen name "Mose Velsor" that detailed his approach to diet and wellness. Whitman advocated "manly training" like brisk walks, dancing, and frequent bathing to cure ills and ward off depression. He also considered beards to be effective barriers against germs.

7. Whitman liked to be nude around friends.

Whitman's exhortations about nature extended to having a cavalier attitude about being constrained by clothing. In the 1870s and 1880s, Whitman was known to visit with friends while being completely nude. Nakedness, Whitman wrote, was freeing: "Nature was naked, and I was also." Whitman historians continue to debate whether a series of photos taken by photographer Thomas Eakins in the mid-1880s were of an elderly Whitman posing in the nude.

8. Bram Stoker was a big fan of Whitman's.

The future author of Dracula was so enamored with Whitman's work that he and his friends called themselves "Walt Whitmanites." Stoker didn't consider himself a peer, however: After composing a gushing letter to Whitman in 1872, he kept it in a drawer for four years before working up the courage to send it. "I do not know whether it is unusual for you to get letters from utter strangers who have not even the claim of literary brotherhood to write you," Stoker wrote. "If it is you must be frightfully tormented with letters and I am sorry to have written this. I have, however, the claim of liking you-for your words are your own soul and even if you do not read my letter it is no less a pleasure to me to write it." Whitman wrote a gracious letter back thanking him for the kind words.

9. Whitman wrote a mystery novel that was lost for more than 165 years.

In 1852, Whitman serialized a short 36,000 word mystery novel titled The Life and Adventures of Jack Engle in a New York newspaper. Few readers paid it much attention, and fewer still had any reason to try and retrieve it from any archives-Whitman published it without a byline. It was rediscovered in 2017 by Whitman historian Zach Turpin, who found some familiar phrases during an online newspaper search for Whitman material. The book was reissued that year. The finding pleased Whitman enthusiasts but probably would not have been pleasing to Whitman himself, who threatened to "shoot" anyone who dredged up his earlier, "crude" works for republication.

10. Whitman designed his own tomb.

As a final creative impulse, Whitman elected to design his own granite mausoleum in Camden, New Jersey's Harleigh Cemetery. Shaped like a house, the monument was paid for using monetary gifts given by admirers. Visitors sometimes leave letters or pennies at the iron gate in front of the grave-the latter because the coin bears the image of Abraham Lincoln, whom Whitman wrote a well-known elegy for following his death in 1865.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
10 Things You Might Not Know About Walt Whitman

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Known as the "Bard of Democracy," poet and journalist Walt Whitman-who was born on May 31, 1819-used unconventional verse and frank talk of sexuality and politics to become one of the most lauded writers of the 19th century.

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There is an analysis of thought and feelings in realism.

The environment has a function in shaping of characters.

The setting is generally in the present or recent past.

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Realist writers exposed political corruption, economic inequity, business deception, the exploitation of labor, women rights problems, racial inequity.

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Civil War 1861-1865

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Reconstruction Era 1865-1877

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Unlike some other artistic movements, there was little sculpture or architecture as part of this movement.

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Summary of Realism

Though never a coherent group, Realism is recognized as the first modern movement in art, which rejected traditional forms of art, literature, and social organization as outmoded in the wake of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. Beginning in France in the 1840s, Realism revolutionized painting, expanding conceptions of what constituted art. Working in a chaotic era marked by revolution and widespread social change, Realist painters replaced the idealistic images and literary conceits of traditional art with real-life events, giving the margins of society similar weight to grand history paintings and allegories. Their choice to bring everyday life into their canvases was an early manifestation of the avant-garde desire to merge art and life, and their rejection of pictorial techniques, like perspective, prefigured the many 20 th-century definitions and redefinitions of modernism.

Key Ideas & Accomplishments

Realism is broadly considered the beginning of modern art. Literally, this is due to its conviction that everyday life and the modern world were suitable subjects for art. Philosophically, Realism embraced the progressive aims of modernism, seeking new truths through the reexamination and overturning of traditional systems of values and beliefs.

Realism concerned itself with how life was structured socially, economically, politically, and culturally in the mid-19th century. This led to unflinching, sometimes "ugly" portrayals of life's unpleasant moments and the use of dark, earthy palettes that confronted high art's ultimate ideals of beauty.

Realism was the first explicitly anti-institutional, nonconformist art movement. Realist painters took aim at the social mores and values of the bourgeoisie and monarchy upon who patronized the art market. Though they continued submitting works to the Salons of the official Academy of Art, they were not above mounting independent exhibitions to defiantly show their work.

Following the explosion of newspaper printing and mass media in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, Realism brought in a new conception of the artist as self-publicist. Gustave Courbet, Édouard Manet, and others purposefully courted controversy and used the media to enhance their celebrity in a manner that continues among artists to this day.

Overview of Realism

Artworks and Artists of Realism

Artist: Gustave Courbet

Artist: Jean-François Millet

Artist: James Whistler

Artist: Jules Breton

Beginnings of Realism

Before Realism: History Painting and the Academy

Established in 1648 by Louis XIV, the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture or Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture governed the production of art in France for nearly two centuries. Given France's prominence in European culture during that time, the Academy set standards for art across the continent, providing studio training for young talent and recognizing artistic achievement at its semi-regular Salon exhibitions.

The "highest" form of art, established by the Academy in a 1668 conference, was history painting: the large-scale depiction of a narrative, typically drawn from classical mythology, the Bible, literature, or the annals of human achievement. Only the strongest painters were allowed to paint in this genre, and their works were the most celebrated by the Academy. Descending in importance in the hierarchy of genres were portraiture (the depiction of important persons), genre scenes (the depiction of peasants, or "unimportant" persons), landscape (the depiction of living nature), and still life ( nature morte, or "dead nature").

Spurred by archaeological discoveries in Greece and Italy in the mid-18 th century and Enlightenment ideals of reason and order, Neoclassicism became the mode par excellence for history painting in the late 1700s. Neoclassical history painting, exemplified in the work of Jacques-Louis David, used classical references, compositional techniques, and settings to comment upon contemporary events. His famous Oath of the Horatii (1784), for example, communicated the civic value of patriotism in the guise of a story from the Roman historian Livy.

In response to Neoclassicism, the Industrial Revolution, and the Enlightenment's rationalization of life and society, Romanticism embraced irrational, intense emotion and exotic subject matter as more authentic sources for artistic creativity. Rather than beautifully ordered outdoor scenes, Romantic landscapes became arenas for the sublime conflict between man and nature. In place of David's praise of civic virtue were history paintings like Eugène Delacroix's Death of Sardanapalus (1827): a turbulent, chaotic scene inspired by a Lord Byron play wherein the titular king of Assyria commands his possessions destroyed and his terrified, beseeching wives massacred in the face of final military defeat.

Revolution, the Rejection of Tradition, and the Importance of Photography

While Romanticism might have rejected certain tenets of Neoclassicism, it did not drastically change the 17 th- and 18 th-century institutions of art and society. The near-perpetual state of revolution in France in the 19 th century provided an impetus to enact a more radical change. After the initial 1789 Revolution, France went through the First Republic, the First Empire under Napoleon Bonaparte, the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy, the 1830 Revolution, the July Monarchy, the 1848 Revolution, the Second Republic, the Second Empire, the Franco-Prussian War and institution of the Paris Commune of 1871, and the establishment of the Third Republic.

Challenging Neoclassicism and Romanticism as escapist in the face of the larger societal issues brought by the turbulent 19 th century, Realism began in France in the 1840s as the cultural aspect of a larger response to ever-changing governance, military occupation and economic exploitation of the colonies, and industrialization and urbanization in the cities. Realism, more than the simple representation of nature, was an attempt to situate oneself in the "real": in scientific, moral, and political certainty.

In the 1830s, this push toward scientific positivism manifested itself in the advent of photography. Louis Daguerre publicly demonstrated the daguerreotype in 1839, mechanically fixing an image from nature onto a metal support by the use of a camera. Simultaneously in England, William Henry Fox Talbot accomplished the same with the calotype, which fixed the image onto paper coated with silver iodide. In turn, the photograph fueled Realism. While Realist artists rarely worked from photographs (some did), the photograph's biggest conceptual strength was its claim to veracity. If the right to rule had traditionally been supported by art that idealized the powerful, the photograph suggested the possibility to literally show rulers' real flaws. In the midst of a revolutionary century, Realist painters sought to adapt photography's truth value to their art.

Honoré Daumier and an Art of Social Critique

Another major influence on Realism was the explosion of socially critical journalism and caricature at the beginning of the July Monarchy (1830-48). Though the authoritarian reign of Louis Phillippe I would end in overthrow, the first five years of his rule allowed greater freedom of the press. It was in this moment that Honoré Daumier began publishing caricatures critical of the monarchy, such as the lithograph Gargantua (1831), in which he mockingly depicted the king as the gluttonous giant of François Rabelais's 1534 novel.

Engraving, which could be reproduced and disseminated in the press, enabled Daumier to circulate his critical compositions. Despite being imprisoned for six months for his negative depiction of the king as Gargantua, he continued to create the Realist lithograph Rue Transnonain, le 15 Avril 1834 (1834), which showed the brutal aftermath of a massacre of working-class innocents by the French government. The work was considered so powerful and dangerous to the monarchy that Louis-Philippe sent men to purchase as many copies as possible to be destroyed. Daumier would continue painting and engraving for several decades, producing socially focused works such as Third-Class Carriage (1862-64).

Gustave Courbet, the Revolutions of 1848, and the Origins of Socialism

When the July Monarchy came crashing down in France in 1848, ushering in the Second Republic (1848-51), it was as part of a larger wave of European revolution that brought wide-ranging social changes in Germany, Italy, the Austrian Empire, the Netherlands, and Poland. These events, combined with the publication of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's The Philosophy of Poverty in 1846 and Marx and Engels's Communist Manifesto in 1848, cast a new light on the margins of society, and Realism became the visual language for their representation.

A friend of Proudhon and Realism's main proponent, Gustave Courbet led a multifaceted assault on French political power, bourgeois social mores, and the art institution. His exhibition of A Burial at Ornans (1849-50) at the Salon of 1850-51 marked the debut of Realism as a significant force in the European art scene, causing a scandal with its matter-of-fact depiction of a rural funeral on a scale traditionally reserved for allegory and history painting. The Stone Breakers (1849-50), exhibited in the same year, represented two anonymous, lower-class workers participating in poorly compensated, backbreaking labor, a scene that carried uncomfortable associations with Socialism for the Salon's middle-class audience. Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine (Summer) (1856) caused a similar sensation at the Salon of 1857 with a frank depiction of two prostitutes lazily reclining on a riverbank with their garments in disarray that offended bourgeois taste.

Realism: Concepts, Styles, and Trends

Challenging the Norm and Courting Scandal: Courbet and Manet

If in the 1850s Courbet painted large works with subject matter that questioned the values of French society, Édouard Manet pushed Realism even further in the 1860s. Having made a name for himself at the Salon of 1861 with his exhibition of The Spanish Singer (1860), he submitted Le déjeuner sur l'herbe (1863) to the Salon of 1863. Though the painting was rejected, it was shown in the Salon des Refusés ("Exhibition of Rejects"). There, Manet's frank depiction of two young dandies dining in a forest with a fully nude woman offended the sensibilities of its salon-going audience, especially middle-class men who participated in exactly those sorts of dalliances with Parisian prostitutes and who did not like to be reminded of this when out at art exhibitions, potentially with their families. Manet built upon and fed into all of these scandalous charges when he submitted Olympia (1863) to the Salon of 1865. Olympia, which places the viewer in the position of a bordello visitor attempting to procure a disinterested prostitute, made Manet's intervention even more obvious.

The critics, however, were playing directly into Courbet's and Manet's hands: the notoriety they commanded from their works was intentional, turning them into celebrities within the art world. Beside muddying the traditional categories and subjects of academic painting, Courbet, and Manet in his turn, would challenge the state art institution itself. When three of his fourteen submissions to the Exposition Universelle of 1855 were rejected for size considerations, Courbet rented space adjacent to the Exposition to construct his own Pavilion of Realism, in which he housed forty of his own works for free public view. When Manet was excluded from the Exposition Universelle of 1867, he too exhibited independently. Beyond drawing attention away from government exhibitions and creating publicity for their work, Courbet's and Manet's interventions emboldened future artists (most notably the Impressionists of the following generation) to exhibit their art independently.

Realism's Visual Revolution

While the Realist painters' manipulation of controversy through their subject matter is an obvious manifestation of their anti-authoritarian goals, their technical innovations may be less obvious to eyes conditioned by 150 years of modern art. At the time, however, the artistic distance between a canvas by Courbet and a traditional history painting were obvious and confrontational.

When Courbet debuted The Stone Breakers, critics accused him of purposeful ugliness and complained of the "flatness" of his composition, which was enhanced by the bold outlines surrounding his two key figures. A year later, his painting Young Ladies of the Village (1851-52) was attacked as clumsy, lacking in correct perspective, and disregarding scale in its portrayal of a trio of women who dwarf the cattle that stand near them. Eleven years later, Manet's painting Le déjeuner sur l'herbe was attacked on nearly the same grounds, with critics commenting negatively on Manet's coarseness of paint handling, the flatness of his composition, and the stark, contoured whiteness of his female figure. When critics correctly connected Manet's composition of the three-person figural group to High Renaissance works by Marcantonio Raimondi and Giorgione, their outrage heightened at his indecorous treatment of the Old Masters.

The follow-up exhibition of Olympia (coarser, flatter, more starkly contoured, and based on Titian's Venus of Urbino (1538)) proved that these manipulations to traditional academic painting were not the mistakes of a young, clumsy artist. Unwittingly, the critics had stumbled onto what would become the groundbreaking visual achievement of Realism: Courbet and Manet each made an artistic choice to move away from the Renaissance conception of a canvas as a "window onto the world" toward a flatness that revealed the canvas as a two-dimensional support to be creatively covered with pigment. This first step away from painting as a mere representational format was a crucible for generations of modern artists and a major reason for the continued popularity of Realism today. While Courbet was outspoken in his conviction that art could never be wholly abstract, his and Manet's nontraditional painting empowered future artists to move further away from the direct pursuit of naturalism.

The Ennobled Peasant: Jean-François Millet, Rosa Bonheur and Jules Breton

Despite Courbet's insistence that socialism informed his Realist painting, not every Realist artist pursued his political goals. They did, however, share an interest in the life of the lower class and desire to represent it in high art. Jean-François Millet completed a trio of works, The Sower (1850), The Gleaners (1857), and The Angelus (1857-59), that represented the hard work of the rural peasant class with dignity, but with a less confrontational air than Courbet's canvases. The female painter Rosa Bonheur, whose progressive-minded parents allowed her to study animal anatomy in barns and slaughterhouses at a young age (while dressed as a boy!), first achieved fame for Plowing in the Nivernais (1848), a government-commissioned painting that depicts four farmhands driving steer to plow a field. As it was thought to reference a scene from George Sand's La Mare au Diable, this early example of Realism was spared the criticism cast on Courbet's large works. The Horse Fair (1852-55) further demonstrated her focus on blue-collar work and her ability to create dynamic compositions through close observation.

However, even Millet's seemingly innocuous celebration of France's rural backbone was received as potentially dangerous socialist content by conservative critics in the wake of the 1848 Revolution, which granted greater rights to provincial men. Jules Breton's paintings were considered a safer alternative, and has been referred to as "popular Realism." Breton's The Gleaners (1854) depicts the same practice as Millet's painting, wherein poor rural women are allowed to pick up bits of grain left behind after the harvest. However, Breton imagined the scene as one happening within a strict order: despite gleaning being "women's work," a man with a dog dominates the scene, overseeing the fieldwork. A steeple on the horizon would have communicated both the pious nature and Christian values of the peasantry as well as another form of governance to Parisians concerned about the growing equality they shared with their rural counterparts.

Realism Outside of France

Though Realism was first a French phenomenon, it obtained adherents across Europe and in the United States. The American James Abbott McNeill Whistler befriended Courbet in the 1860s and painted in a Realist style. Yet Whistler was an advocate for "art for art's sake" and rejected the idea of painting as a moral or social enterprise a la Courbet. Nonetheless, his Symphony in White, no. 1: the White Girl caused controversy at the same Salon of 1863 where Manet courted scandal, because critics argued that it contained connotations of a bride's lost innocence.

Thomas Eakins became the United States' most prominent Realist painter, integrating photographic study into his works and revealing the character of his subjects through close observation. The Gross Clinic (1875), a portrait of the doctor Samuel Gross performing invasive surgery in an operating theater is rendered in unflinching detail. His choice of a contemporary subject (modern surgery) follows the Realist belief that an artist must be of his own time.

The German Realist Wilhelm Leibl met Courbet and saw his work when the French painter visited Germany in 1869. Recognizing his abilities, Courbet lured him back to Paris, where Leibl achieved considerable success, also meeting Manet before returning to Munich to establish himself as his country's premier Realist painter. He is best known for his images of peasant scenes such as Three Women in Church (1881), which brought the frank naturalism of the Dutch and German Old Masters into the modern era. Though the somewhat dated outfits that the three women wear indicate their low economic status (the new trends of the city have passed them by), Leibl ennobles them in their patience and humility.

The Realist Ilya Repin was the most prominent painter of his country in the 19 th century, responsible for bringing Russian visual art to the attention of European audiences. His large canvas Barge Haulers on the Volga (1870-73) celebrated the strength of Russia's lowest-ranking physical laborers. The novelist Leo Tolstoy would write of Repin that he depicted "the life of the people much better than any other Russian artist." Having traveled to Paris and become aware of the nascent movement of Impressionism, Repin chose to continue painting in a Realist vein, because he felt that Impressionist painting lacked the social motivations necessary to modern art.

Realism in Literature

The Realist painting movement ran parallel to the Realist movement in literature, exemplified in the work of writers like Honore de Balzac, Champfleury, and Emile Zola. Realist authors recognized in the artistic movement the shared desire to divorce from tradition and celebrated it, contributing to its success. Balzac's witty and incisive representation of society in the early-19 th century contrasted with the emotional grandeur of his Romantic counterparts much as Courbet's painting would in the visual arts.

Champfleury promoted Courbet's work as early as 1848, continuing to do so for decades, and Courbet painted him among his supporters in the 1855 masterwork The Painter's Studio (1854-55). Of Courbet's Pavilion of Realism, Champfleury wrote: "It is an incredibly audacious act, it is the subversion of all institutions associated with the jury, it is a direct appeal to the public, some are saying it is freedom."

Zola was one of Manet's earliest and most devoted defenders, recognizing his importance to modern art and declaring him a master of the future. By 1868, Zola could write: "I don't need to plead for modern subjects here. This cause was won a long time ago. After those remarkable works by Manet and Courbet, no one would dare now say that the present day is unworthy of being painted."

Later Developments - After Realism

There was no defined "group" in Realism, as we might conceive of the later Impressionists as a coherent group who exhibited together: the Realist movement comprised of a number of artists working independently among similar lines. Though they knew each other, and the artists and writers were mutually supportive friends, there was no "breakup" or dissolution of the group. Thus, the historical and artistic motives that led to Realism's genesis and development continued in the art and ethos of painters across the globe for generations to come.

As the enfants terribles of the 19 th-century art world, Courbet and Manet are often invoked as the first avant-garde artists, and their mixture of art and critique laid groundwork for every socially engaged artist in their wake. Moreover, their visual trajectory into flatness had widespread ramifications for painting without which Manet's next step into Impressionism could not have happened. Their use of contour lines to structure form and separate it into panes of color were also an inspiration to the Post-Impressionist Paul Cézanne and his followers, as well as the Cubists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque.

Even artists with drastically different goals than Realism named their debt to the movement. Giorgio de Chirico, the head of the Metaphysical Painting movement, wrote about his reverence for Courbet, who he acknowledged as an artistic father figure. Surrealism founder André Breton would celebrate Courbet's mixing of the artistic with the political; Surrealist dissident Georges Bataille named Manet the father of modern art for being the first to "destroy" the subject of painting, in Olympia.

The Ashcan School of the late-19 th and early-20 th century in the U.S. derived from the sometimes gritty, matter-of-fact depiction of city life was partially based on the figurative language and social awareness of Realism. Similarly, Social Realism, less an art movement than a cultural phenomenon, took Realism's relation to social justice as a given and made figurative works to combat the abstract art in vogue in the early part of the century. The Mexican muralists, American art workers in Depression-era New Deal programs, and French and German painters in the years leading up to World War II worked in this mode to create straightforward, legible works to transmit messages to their audiences. Social Realism should not be confused with Socialist Realism, decreed by Joseph Stalin as the state art of the Soviet Union in 1934. Though both shared a commitment to the education and edification of a lower-class, uneducated populace, the Soviet variant - a visual mélange of Repin's Realism and a sunnier Impressionism - became an official, academic art, supporting the regime and remaining largely unchanged until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

In Weimar Germany (1918-33), the artists of Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) took lessons from the matter-of-factness of Leibl's Realist canvases to move beyond the distortions and abstraction of German Expressionism. Photorealism in the 1960s was born of a similar relationship to Abstract Expressionism, and though its artists did not always share the social motivations of Realism (preferring to link themselves to the example of contemporary Pop art, also a figurative language), their debt to the movement is visually apparent.

Useful Resources on Realism

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Born in a chaotic era marked by revolution and social change, Realism revolutionized painting, expanding conceptions of art. Manet, Courbet, Whistler, Millet+

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Realism is recognized as the first modern movement in art, which rejected traditional forms of art, literature, and social organization as outmoded in the wake of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution.

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Summary of Realism

Though never a coherent group, Realism is recognized as the first modern movement in art, which rejected traditional forms of art, literature, and social organization as outmoded in the wake of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. Beginning in France in the 1840s, Realism revolutionized painting, expanding conceptions of what constituted art. Working in a chaotic era marked by revolution and widespread social change, Realist painters replaced the idealistic images and literary conceits of traditional art with real-life events, giving the margins of society similar weight to grand history paintings and allegories. Their choice to bring everyday life into their canvases was an early manifestation of the avant-garde desire to merge art and life, and their rejection of pictorial techniques, like perspective, prefigured the many 20 th-century definitions and redefinitions of modernism.

Key Ideas & Accomplishments

Realism is broadly considered the beginning of modern art. Literally, this is due to its conviction that everyday life and the modern world were suitable subjects for art. Philosophically, Realism embraced the progressive aims of modernism, seeking new truths through the reexamination and overturning of traditional systems of values and beliefs.

Realism concerned itself with how life was structured socially, economically, politically, and culturally in the mid-19th century. This led to unflinching, sometimes "ugly" portrayals of life's unpleasant moments and the use of dark, earthy palettes that confronted high art's ultimate ideals of beauty.

Realism was the first explicitly anti-institutional, nonconformist art movement. Realist painters took aim at the social mores and values of the bourgeoisie and monarchy upon who patronized the art market. Though they continued submitting works to the Salons of the official Academy of Art, they were not above mounting independent exhibitions to defiantly show their work.

Following the explosion of newspaper printing and mass media in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, Realism brought in a new conception of the artist as self-publicist. Gustave Courbet, Édouard Manet, and others purposefully courted controversy and used the media to enhance their celebrity in a manner that continues among artists to this day.

Overview of Realism

Artworks and Artists of Realism

Artist: Gustave Courbet

Artist: Jean-François Millet

Artist: James Whistler

Artist: Jules Breton

Beginnings of Realism

Before Realism: History Painting and the Academy

Established in 1648 by Louis XIV, the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture or Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture governed the production of art in France for nearly two centuries. Given France's prominence in European culture during that time, the Academy set standards for art across the continent, providing studio training for young talent and recognizing artistic achievement at its semi-regular Salon exhibitions.

The "highest" form of art, established by the Academy in a 1668 conference, was history painting: the large-scale depiction of a narrative, typically drawn from classical mythology, the Bible, literature, or the annals of human achievement. Only the strongest painters were allowed to paint in this genre, and their works were the most celebrated by the Academy. Descending in importance in the hierarchy of genres were portraiture (the depiction of important persons), genre scenes (the depiction of peasants, or "unimportant" persons), landscape (the depiction of living nature), and still life ( nature morte, or "dead nature").

Spurred by archaeological discoveries in Greece and Italy in the mid-18 th century and Enlightenment ideals of reason and order, Neoclassicism became the mode par excellence for history painting in the late 1700s. Neoclassical history painting, exemplified in the work of Jacques-Louis David, used classical references, compositional techniques, and settings to comment upon contemporary events. His famous Oath of the Horatii (1784), for example, communicated the civic value of patriotism in the guise of a story from the Roman historian Livy.

In response to Neoclassicism, the Industrial Revolution, and the Enlightenment's rationalization of life and society, Romanticism embraced irrational, intense emotion and exotic subject matter as more authentic sources for artistic creativity. Rather than beautifully ordered outdoor scenes, Romantic landscapes became arenas for the sublime conflict between man and nature. In place of David's praise of civic virtue were history paintings like Eugène Delacroix's Death of Sardanapalus (1827): a turbulent, chaotic scene inspired by a Lord Byron play wherein the titular king of Assyria commands his possessions destroyed and his terrified, beseeching wives massacred in the face of final military defeat.

Revolution, the Rejection of Tradition, and the Importance of Photography

While Romanticism might have rejected certain tenets of Neoclassicism, it did not drastically change the 17 th- and 18 th-century institutions of art and society. The near-perpetual state of revolution in France in the 19 th century provided an impetus to enact a more radical change. After the initial 1789 Revolution, France went through the First Republic, the First Empire under Napoleon Bonaparte, the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy, the 1830 Revolution, the July Monarchy, the 1848 Revolution, the Second Republic, the Second Empire, the Franco-Prussian War and institution of the Paris Commune of 1871, and the establishment of the Third Republic.

Challenging Neoclassicism and Romanticism as escapist in the face of the larger societal issues brought by the turbulent 19 th century, Realism began in France in the 1840s as the cultural aspect of a larger response to ever-changing governance, military occupation and economic exploitation of the colonies, and industrialization and urbanization in the cities. Realism, more than the simple representation of nature, was an attempt to situate oneself in the "real": in scientific, moral, and political certainty.

In the 1830s, this push toward scientific positivism manifested itself in the advent of photography. Louis Daguerre publicly demonstrated the daguerreotype in 1839, mechanically fixing an image from nature onto a metal support by the use of a camera. Simultaneously in England, William Henry Fox Talbot accomplished the same with the calotype, which fixed the image onto paper coated with silver iodide. In turn, the photograph fueled Realism. While Realist artists rarely worked from photographs (some did), the photograph's biggest conceptual strength was its claim to veracity. If the right to rule had traditionally been supported by art that idealized the powerful, the photograph suggested the possibility to literally show rulers' real flaws. In the midst of a revolutionary century, Realist painters sought to adapt photography's truth value to their art.

Honoré Daumier and an Art of Social Critique

Another major influence on Realism was the explosion of socially critical journalism and caricature at the beginning of the July Monarchy (1830-48). Though the authoritarian reign of Louis Phillippe I would end in overthrow, the first five years of his rule allowed greater freedom of the press. It was in this moment that Honoré Daumier began publishing caricatures critical of the monarchy, such as the lithograph Gargantua (1831), in which he mockingly depicted the king as the gluttonous giant of François Rabelais's 1534 novel.

Engraving, which could be reproduced and disseminated in the press, enabled Daumier to circulate his critical compositions. Despite being imprisoned for six months for his negative depiction of the king as Gargantua, he continued to create the Realist lithograph Rue Transnonain, le 15 Avril 1834 (1834), which showed the brutal aftermath of a massacre of working-class innocents by the French government. The work was considered so powerful and dangerous to the monarchy that Louis-Philippe sent men to purchase as many copies as possible to be destroyed. Daumier would continue painting and engraving for several decades, producing socially focused works such as Third-Class Carriage (1862-64).

Gustave Courbet, the Revolutions of 1848, and the Origins of Socialism

When the July Monarchy came crashing down in France in 1848, ushering in the Second Republic (1848-51), it was as part of a larger wave of European revolution that brought wide-ranging social changes in Germany, Italy, the Austrian Empire, the Netherlands, and Poland. These events, combined with the publication of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's The Philosophy of Poverty in 1846 and Marx and Engels's Communist Manifesto in 1848, cast a new light on the margins of society, and Realism became the visual language for their representation.

A friend of Proudhon and Realism's main proponent, Gustave Courbet led a multifaceted assault on French political power, bourgeois social mores, and the art institution. His exhibition of A Burial at Ornans (1849-50) at the Salon of 1850-51 marked the debut of Realism as a significant force in the European art scene, causing a scandal with its matter-of-fact depiction of a rural funeral on a scale traditionally reserved for allegory and history painting. The Stone Breakers (1849-50), exhibited in the same year, represented two anonymous, lower-class workers participating in poorly compensated, backbreaking labor, a scene that carried uncomfortable associations with Socialism for the Salon's middle-class audience. Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine (Summer) (1856) caused a similar sensation at the Salon of 1857 with a frank depiction of two prostitutes lazily reclining on a riverbank with their garments in disarray that offended bourgeois taste.

Realism: Concepts, Styles, and Trends

Challenging the Norm and Courting Scandal: Courbet and Manet

If in the 1850s Courbet painted large works with subject matter that questioned the values of French society, Édouard Manet pushed Realism even further in the 1860s. Having made a name for himself at the Salon of 1861 with his exhibition of The Spanish Singer (1860), he submitted Le déjeuner sur l'herbe (1863) to the Salon of 1863. Though the painting was rejected, it was shown in the Salon des Refusés ("Exhibition of Rejects"). There, Manet's frank depiction of two young dandies dining in a forest with a fully nude woman offended the sensibilities of its salon-going audience, especially middle-class men who participated in exactly those sorts of dalliances with Parisian prostitutes and who did not like to be reminded of this when out at art exhibitions, potentially with their families. Manet built upon and fed into all of these scandalous charges when he submitted Olympia (1863) to the Salon of 1865. Olympia, which places the viewer in the position of a bordello visitor attempting to procure a disinterested prostitute, made Manet's intervention even more obvious.

The critics, however, were playing directly into Courbet's and Manet's hands: the notoriety they commanded from their works was intentional, turning them into celebrities within the art world. Beside muddying the traditional categories and subjects of academic painting, Courbet, and Manet in his turn, would challenge the state art institution itself. When three of his fourteen submissions to the Exposition Universelle of 1855 were rejected for size considerations, Courbet rented space adjacent to the Exposition to construct his own Pavilion of Realism, in which he housed forty of his own works for free public view. When Manet was excluded from the Exposition Universelle of 1867, he too exhibited independently. Beyond drawing attention away from government exhibitions and creating publicity for their work, Courbet's and Manet's interventions emboldened future artists (most notably the Impressionists of the following generation) to exhibit their art independently.

Realism's Visual Revolution

While the Realist painters' manipulation of controversy through their subject matter is an obvious manifestation of their anti-authoritarian goals, their technical innovations may be less obvious to eyes conditioned by 150 years of modern art. At the time, however, the artistic distance between a canvas by Courbet and a traditional history painting were obvious and confrontational.

When Courbet debuted The Stone Breakers, critics accused him of purposeful ugliness and complained of the "flatness" of his composition, which was enhanced by the bold outlines surrounding his two key figures. A year later, his painting Young Ladies of the Village (1851-52) was attacked as clumsy, lacking in correct perspective, and disregarding scale in its portrayal of a trio of women who dwarf the cattle that stand near them. Eleven years later, Manet's painting Le déjeuner sur l'herbe was attacked on nearly the same grounds, with critics commenting negatively on Manet's coarseness of paint handling, the flatness of his composition, and the stark, contoured whiteness of his female figure. When critics correctly connected Manet's composition of the three-person figural group to High Renaissance works by Marcantonio Raimondi and Giorgione, their outrage heightened at his indecorous treatment of the Old Masters.

The follow-up exhibition of Olympia (coarser, flatter, more starkly contoured, and based on Titian's Venus of Urbino (1538)) proved that these manipulations to traditional academic painting were not the mistakes of a young, clumsy artist. Unwittingly, the critics had stumbled onto what would become the groundbreaking visual achievement of Realism: Courbet and Manet each made an artistic choice to move away from the Renaissance conception of a canvas as a "window onto the world" toward a flatness that revealed the canvas as a two-dimensional support to be creatively covered with pigment. This first step away from painting as a mere representational format was a crucible for generations of modern artists and a major reason for the continued popularity of Realism today. While Courbet was outspoken in his conviction that art could never be wholly abstract, his and Manet's nontraditional painting empowered future artists to move further away from the direct pursuit of naturalism.

The Ennobled Peasant: Jean-François Millet, Rosa Bonheur and Jules Breton

Despite Courbet's insistence that socialism informed his Realist painting, not every Realist artist pursued his political goals. They did, however, share an interest in the life of the lower class and desire to represent it in high art. Jean-François Millet completed a trio of works, The Sower (1850), The Gleaners (1857), and The Angelus (1857-59), that represented the hard work of the rural peasant class with dignity, but with a less confrontational air than Courbet's canvases. The female painter Rosa Bonheur, whose progressive-minded parents allowed her to study animal anatomy in barns and slaughterhouses at a young age (while dressed as a boy!), first achieved fame for Plowing in the Nivernais (1848), a government-commissioned painting that depicts four farmhands driving steer to plow a field. As it was thought to reference a scene from George Sand's La Mare au Diable, this early example of Realism was spared the criticism cast on Courbet's large works. The Horse Fair (1852-55) further demonstrated her focus on blue-collar work and her ability to create dynamic compositions through close observation.

However, even Millet's seemingly innocuous celebration of France's rural backbone was received as potentially dangerous socialist content by conservative critics in the wake of the 1848 Revolution, which granted greater rights to provincial men. Jules Breton's paintings were considered a safer alternative, and has been referred to as "popular Realism." Breton's The Gleaners (1854) depicts the same practice as Millet's painting, wherein poor rural women are allowed to pick up bits of grain left behind after the harvest. However, Breton imagined the scene as one happening within a strict order: despite gleaning being "women's work," a man with a dog dominates the scene, overseeing the fieldwork. A steeple on the horizon would have communicated both the pious nature and Christian values of the peasantry as well as another form of governance to Parisians concerned about the growing equality they shared with their rural counterparts.

Realism Outside of France

Though Realism was first a French phenomenon, it obtained adherents across Europe and in the United States. The American James Abbott McNeill Whistler befriended Courbet in the 1860s and painted in a Realist style. Yet Whistler was an advocate for "art for art's sake" and rejected the idea of painting as a moral or social enterprise a la Courbet. Nonetheless, his Symphony in White, no. 1: the White Girl caused controversy at the same Salon of 1863 where Manet courted scandal, because critics argued that it contained connotations of a bride's lost innocence.

Thomas Eakins became the United States' most prominent Realist painter, integrating photographic study into his works and revealing the character of his subjects through close observation. The Gross Clinic (1875), a portrait of the doctor Samuel Gross performing invasive surgery in an operating theater is rendered in unflinching detail. His choice of a contemporary subject (modern surgery) follows the Realist belief that an artist must be of his own time.

The German Realist Wilhelm Leibl met Courbet and saw his work when the French painter visited Germany in 1869. Recognizing his abilities, Courbet lured him back to Paris, where Leibl achieved considerable success, also meeting Manet before returning to Munich to establish himself as his country's premier Realist painter. He is best known for his images of peasant scenes such as Three Women in Church (1881), which brought the frank naturalism of the Dutch and German Old Masters into the modern era. Though the somewhat dated outfits that the three women wear indicate their low economic status (the new trends of the city have passed them by), Leibl ennobles them in their patience and humility.

The Realist Ilya Repin was the most prominent painter of his country in the 19 th century, responsible for bringing Russian visual art to the attention of European audiences. His large canvas Barge Haulers on the Volga (1870-73) celebrated the strength of Russia's lowest-ranking physical laborers. The novelist Leo Tolstoy would write of Repin that he depicted "the life of the people much better than any other Russian artist." Having traveled to Paris and become aware of the nascent movement of Impressionism, Repin chose to continue painting in a Realist vein, because he felt that Impressionist painting lacked the social motivations necessary to modern art.

Realism in Literature

The Realist painting movement ran parallel to the Realist movement in literature, exemplified in the work of writers like Honore de Balzac, Champfleury, and Emile Zola. Realist authors recognized in the artistic movement the shared desire to divorce from tradition and celebrated it, contributing to its success. Balzac's witty and incisive representation of society in the early-19 th century contrasted with the emotional grandeur of his Romantic counterparts much as Courbet's painting would in the visual arts.

Champfleury promoted Courbet's work as early as 1848, continuing to do so for decades, and Courbet painted him among his supporters in the 1855 masterwork The Painter's Studio (1854-55). Of Courbet's Pavilion of Realism, Champfleury wrote: "It is an incredibly audacious act, it is the subversion of all institutions associated with the jury, it is a direct appeal to the public, some are saying it is freedom."

Zola was one of Manet's earliest and most devoted defenders, recognizing his importance to modern art and declaring him a master of the future. By 1868, Zola could write: "I don't need to plead for modern subjects here. This cause was won a long time ago. After those remarkable works by Manet and Courbet, no one would dare now say that the present day is unworthy of being painted."

Later Developments - After Realism

There was no defined "group" in Realism, as we might conceive of the later Impressionists as a coherent group who exhibited together: the Realist movement comprised of a number of artists working independently among similar lines. Though they knew each other, and the artists and writers were mutually supportive friends, there was no "breakup" or dissolution of the group. Thus, the historical and artistic motives that led to Realism's genesis and development continued in the art and ethos of painters across the globe for generations to come.

As the enfants terribles of the 19 th-century art world, Courbet and Manet are often invoked as the first avant-garde artists, and their mixture of art and critique laid groundwork for every socially engaged artist in their wake. Moreover, their visual trajectory into flatness had widespread ramifications for painting without which Manet's next step into Impressionism could not have happened. Their use of contour lines to structure form and separate it into panes of color were also an inspiration to the Post-Impressionist Paul Cézanne and his followers, as well as the Cubists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque.

Even artists with drastically different goals than Realism named their debt to the movement. Giorgio de Chirico, the head of the Metaphysical Painting movement, wrote about his reverence for Courbet, who he acknowledged as an artistic father figure. Surrealism founder André Breton would celebrate Courbet's mixing of the artistic with the political; Surrealist dissident Georges Bataille named Manet the father of modern art for being the first to "destroy" the subject of painting, in Olympia.

The Ashcan School of the late-19 th and early-20 th century in the U.S. derived from the sometimes gritty, matter-of-fact depiction of city life was partially based on the figurative language and social awareness of Realism. Similarly, Social Realism, less an art movement than a cultural phenomenon, took Realism's relation to social justice as a given and made figurative works to combat the abstract art in vogue in the early part of the century. The Mexican muralists, American art workers in Depression-era New Deal programs, and French and German painters in the years leading up to World War II worked in this mode to create straightforward, legible works to transmit messages to their audiences. Social Realism should not be confused with Socialist Realism, decreed by Joseph Stalin as the state art of the Soviet Union in 1934. Though both shared a commitment to the education and edification of a lower-class, uneducated populace, the Soviet variant - a visual mélange of Repin's Realism and a sunnier Impressionism - became an official, academic art, supporting the regime and remaining largely unchanged until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

In Weimar Germany (1918-33), the artists of Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) took lessons from the matter-of-factness of Leibl's Realist canvases to move beyond the distortions and abstraction of German Expressionism. Photorealism in the 1960s was born of a similar relationship to Abstract Expressionism, and though its artists did not always share the social motivations of Realism (preferring to link themselves to the example of contemporary Pop art, also a figurative language), their debt to the movement is visually apparent.

Useful Resources on Realism

Similar Art

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Born in a chaotic era marked by revolution and social change, Realism revolutionized painting, expanding conceptions of art. Manet, Courbet, Whistler, Millet+

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After his father died when Finney was three years old, he was renamed Walter Braden Finney in honor of his father, but continued to be known as "Jack."

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After attending Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, Finney lived in New York City and worked for an advertising agency sometime in the 1940s. He began writing his first works, suspenseful short stories, in 1946, and around that time he won an award from Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine for “The Widow’s Walk.”

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( b. 2 October 1911 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; d. 14 November 1995 in Greenbrae, California), writer known for his novel of travel into the past, Time and Again (1970), and for his novel The Body Snatchers (1954), which was adapted into film three times.

Finney was an intensely private, almost reclusive man. He never wrote any memoir pieces; he spoke in public only twice, one of those times to his goddaughter's grade-school class, and he rarely gave interviews. Thus, little is known of his personal life, and his writing is largely left to speak for itself, perhaps as Finney intended. In one interview Finney stated that when he was two years old his father, whose name is unknown, died. Finney and his mother moved to live with his grandparents in Chicago. One on-line biography adds that his stepfather, Frank Berry, was a railroad and telephone worker, and his mother, a homemaker, was also skilled in sewing and woodworking. Another source reports that Finney "amended his name to Jack for writing purposes," while the on-line biography states that he was born John Finney and called Jack but was legally renamed for his dead father.

After attending Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, Finney lived in New York City and worked for an advertising agency sometime in the 1940s. He began writing his first works, suspenseful short stories, in 1946, and around that time he won an award from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine for "The Widow's Walk." Soon he wrote stories for other magazines, including Collier's, Saturday Evening Post, and McCall's. Although his short stories often featured fantasy or science-fiction elements, he marketed them to these "slicks" instead of "pulps" such as Amazing Science-Fiction Stories.

Around 1950 Finney married Marguerite Guest, who was called "Marg" with a hard g. According to an interview, they met in Reno while each was divorcing a previous spouse, but no other source mentions another wife for Finney. Jack and Marg had two children. Sometime between 1947 and 1954 Finney and his family moved to Mill Valley, California, near Sausalito, where he lived for the rest of his life. Finney remained little known, even in his hometown. He avoided friendships with other writers, spending most of his time at home and later visiting his children and his one granddaughter. His marriage with Marg was obviously close and mutually supportive, although he never told her about his stories before they were finished. Finney was careful with money and investments. In early 1995 Don Congdon, his agent for four decades, called Finney "an agent's dream" because he never asked for advances and always delivered a full manuscript for sale.

Doubleday published Five against the House, Finney's first novel, in 1954. This story of college students who plan to rob a casino in Reno, Nevada, was made into a movie starring Kim Novak in 1955. Finney disliked the film. The author's reputation rests largely on his next novel, The Body Snatchers, which was serialized in Collier's in 1954. The novel was adapted for the screen in 1956, 1978, and 1993 as Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The earliest adaptation, directed by Don Siegel, is generally considered the best. Finney collaborated on that screenplay.

The Body Snatchers, depicting a small town in which pods from space replace the inhabitants with almost exact duplicates, has been interpreted as an allegory of the perils of communism, of McCarthy-style anticommunism, of consumer conformity, and of fringe-cult obedience. Finney insisted he had no allegory in mind, just a striking suspense story inspired by scientific thought that life may have originated in outer space. The novel's happy ending appears in none of the film adaptations. Finney earned only $15,000 from all three films, $7,500 in the 1950s for selling all rights forever and $3,750 for each of the remakes due to a loophole in the copyright law. The setting of the novel, called Santa Mira in the first editions, was revealed as Mill Valley in later editions.

Finney's one play, Telephone Roulette, was published in 1956. The novel Assault on a Queen, a thriller about a plot to burglarize the luxury ship Queen Elizabeth, and Good Neighbor Sam, a humorous novel based on Finney's advertising experience, were published in 1959 and 1963, respectively. Both were made into movies in the 1960s.

Time travel, especially into the past, is a theme in much of Finney's work, both novels and short stories. Many critics find this fiction escapist, too nostalgic, and sentimental. Finney argued that he did show the past as flawed, though overall it is presented as offering a cleaner, gentler way to live. Simon and Schuster published Finney's second best known novel, Time and Again, in 1970. This book tells the story of a New York City advertising illustrator who travels back to the 1880s and falls in love. Its exceptional historical detail, including photographs, made the book a favorite even among readers who dislike fantasy fiction, and the novel garnered critical praise that was unusual for fantastic fiction. Urged by his agent, Finney wrote a somewhat less successful sequel, From Time to Time, published by Simon and Schuster in 1995. It was his last novel. In 1987 he won the World Fantasy Convention Life Achievement Award. He died of pneumonia in Marin General Hospital after a long, if little-publicized, career.

The impression of Finney that remains is of his books-well written, often ingenious, and emotionally effective whether thrilling or nostalgic-and the movies made from them. The Pod People of Body Snatchers have become cultural icons, like Frankenstein or Dracula, despite or perhaps because of their many possible interpretations. His time-travel stories, sometimes dismissed as overly sentimental, appeal to even hardheaded readers due to Finney's precise detail and atmospheric power.

Despite copious interpretations of films based on Finney's works, especially Invasion of the Body Snatchers, little has been written about his life. The New York Times Magazine (19 Mar. 1995) and the Washington Post (13 Feb. 1994) offer useful facts about and interpretations of Finney the man. Obituaries are in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times (all 17 Nov. 1995).

Bernadette Lynn Bosky

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
walter braden (“jack”)(b. 2 october 1911 in milwaukee

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
wisconsin; d. 14 november 1995 in greenbrae

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
writer known for his novel of travel into the past

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
and for his novel the body snatchers (1954)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
which was adapted into film three times.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Finney, Walter Braden (“Jack”) | Encyclopedia.com

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Finney, Walter Braden (“Jack”)(b. 2 October 1911 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; d. 14 November 1995 in Greenbrae, California), writer known for his novel of travel into the past, Time and Again (1970), and for his novel The Body Snatchers (1954), which was adapted into film three times. Source for information on Finney, Walter Braden (“Jack”): The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives dictionary.

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In early 1995 Don Congdon, his agent for four decades, called Finney “an agent’s dream” because he never asked for advances and always delivered a full manuscript for sale.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
( b. 2 October 1911 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; d. 14 November 1995 in Greenbrae, California), writer known for his novel of travel into the past, Time and Again (1970), and for his novel The Body Snatchers (1954), which was adapted into film three times.

Finney was an intensely private, almost reclusive man. He never wrote any memoir pieces; he spoke in public only twice, one of those times to his goddaughter's grade-school class, and he rarely gave interviews. Thus, little is known of his personal life, and his writing is largely left to speak for itself, perhaps as Finney intended. In one interview Finney stated that when he was two years old his father, whose name is unknown, died. Finney and his mother moved to live with his grandparents in Chicago. One on-line biography adds that his stepfather, Frank Berry, was a railroad and telephone worker, and his mother, a homemaker, was also skilled in sewing and woodworking. Another source reports that Finney "amended his name to Jack for writing purposes," while the on-line biography states that he was born John Finney and called Jack but was legally renamed for his dead father.

After attending Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, Finney lived in New York City and worked for an advertising agency sometime in the 1940s. He began writing his first works, suspenseful short stories, in 1946, and around that time he won an award from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine for "The Widow's Walk." Soon he wrote stories for other magazines, including Collier's, Saturday Evening Post, and McCall's. Although his short stories often featured fantasy or science-fiction elements, he marketed them to these "slicks" instead of "pulps" such as Amazing Science-Fiction Stories.

Around 1950 Finney married Marguerite Guest, who was called "Marg" with a hard g. According to an interview, they met in Reno while each was divorcing a previous spouse, but no other source mentions another wife for Finney. Jack and Marg had two children. Sometime between 1947 and 1954 Finney and his family moved to Mill Valley, California, near Sausalito, where he lived for the rest of his life. Finney remained little known, even in his hometown. He avoided friendships with other writers, spending most of his time at home and later visiting his children and his one granddaughter. His marriage with Marg was obviously close and mutually supportive, although he never told her about his stories before they were finished. Finney was careful with money and investments. In early 1995 Don Congdon, his agent for four decades, called Finney "an agent's dream" because he never asked for advances and always delivered a full manuscript for sale.

Doubleday published Five against the House, Finney's first novel, in 1954. This story of college students who plan to rob a casino in Reno, Nevada, was made into a movie starring Kim Novak in 1955. Finney disliked the film. The author's reputation rests largely on his next novel, The Body Snatchers, which was serialized in Collier's in 1954. The novel was adapted for the screen in 1956, 1978, and 1993 as Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The earliest adaptation, directed by Don Siegel, is generally considered the best. Finney collaborated on that screenplay.

The Body Snatchers, depicting a small town in which pods from space replace the inhabitants with almost exact duplicates, has been interpreted as an allegory of the perils of communism, of McCarthy-style anticommunism, of consumer conformity, and of fringe-cult obedience. Finney insisted he had no allegory in mind, just a striking suspense story inspired by scientific thought that life may have originated in outer space. The novel's happy ending appears in none of the film adaptations. Finney earned only $15,000 from all three films, $7,500 in the 1950s for selling all rights forever and $3,750 for each of the remakes due to a loophole in the copyright law. The setting of the novel, called Santa Mira in the first editions, was revealed as Mill Valley in later editions.

Finney's one play, Telephone Roulette, was published in 1956. The novel Assault on a Queen, a thriller about a plot to burglarize the luxury ship Queen Elizabeth, and Good Neighbor Sam, a humorous novel based on Finney's advertising experience, were published in 1959 and 1963, respectively. Both were made into movies in the 1960s.

Time travel, especially into the past, is a theme in much of Finney's work, both novels and short stories. Many critics find this fiction escapist, too nostalgic, and sentimental. Finney argued that he did show the past as flawed, though overall it is presented as offering a cleaner, gentler way to live. Simon and Schuster published Finney's second best known novel, Time and Again, in 1970. This book tells the story of a New York City advertising illustrator who travels back to the 1880s and falls in love. Its exceptional historical detail, including photographs, made the book a favorite even among readers who dislike fantasy fiction, and the novel garnered critical praise that was unusual for fantastic fiction. Urged by his agent, Finney wrote a somewhat less successful sequel, From Time to Time, published by Simon and Schuster in 1995. It was his last novel. In 1987 he won the World Fantasy Convention Life Achievement Award. He died of pneumonia in Marin General Hospital after a long, if little-publicized, career.

The impression of Finney that remains is of his books-well written, often ingenious, and emotionally effective whether thrilling or nostalgic-and the movies made from them. The Pod People of Body Snatchers have become cultural icons, like Frankenstein or Dracula, despite or perhaps because of their many possible interpretations. His time-travel stories, sometimes dismissed as overly sentimental, appeal to even hardheaded readers due to Finney's precise detail and atmospheric power.

Despite copious interpretations of films based on Finney's works, especially Invasion of the Body Snatchers, little has been written about his life. The New York Times Magazine (19 Mar. 1995) and the Washington Post (13 Feb. 1994) offer useful facts about and interpretations of Finney the man. Obituaries are in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times (all 17 Nov. 1995).

Bernadette Lynn Bosky

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
walter braden (“jack”)(b. 2 october 1911 in milwaukee

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
wisconsin; d. 14 november 1995 in greenbrae

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
writer known for his novel of travel into the past

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
and for his novel the body snatchers (1954)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
which was adapted into film three times.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Finney, Walter Braden (“Jack”) | Encyclopedia.com

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Finney, Walter Braden (“Jack”)(b. 2 October 1911 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; d. 14 November 1995 in Greenbrae, California), writer known for his novel of travel into the past, Time and Again (1970), and for his novel The Body Snatchers (1954), which was adapted into film three times. Source for information on Finney, Walter Braden (“Jack”): The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives dictionary.

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While growing up she was accidentally blinded in one eye, and her mother gave her a typewriter, allowing her to write instead of doing chores.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Alice Walker, in full Alice Malsenior Walker, (born February 9, 1944, Eatonton, Georgia, U.S.), American writer whose novels, short stories, and poems are noted for their insightful treatment of African American culture. Her novels, most notably The Color Purple (1982), focus particularly on women.

Walker was the eighth child of African American sharecroppers. While growing up she was accidentally blinded in one eye, and her mother gave her a typewriter, allowing her to write instead of doing chores. She received a scholarship to attend Spelman College, where she studied for two years before transferring to Sarah Lawrence College. After graduating in 1965, Walker moved to Mississippi and became involved in the civil rights movement. She also began teaching and publishing short stories and essays. She married in 1967, but the couple divorced in 1976.
(Read W.E.B. Du Bois' 1926 Britannica essay on African American literature.)
Walker's first book of poetry, Once, appeared in 1968, and her first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970), a narrative that spans 60 years and three generations, followed two years later. A second volume of poetry, Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems, and her first collection of short stories, In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Woman, both appeared in 1973. The latter bears witness to sexist violence and abuse in the African American community. After moving to New York, Walker completed (1976), a novel describing the coming of age of several civil rights workers in the 1960s.

Walker later moved to California, where she wrote her most popular novel, The Color Purple (1982). An epistolary novel, it depicts the growing up and self-realization of an African American woman between 1909 and 1947 in a town in Georgia. The book won a Pulitzer Prize and was adapted into a film by Steven Spielberg in 1985. A musical version produced by Oprah Winfrey and Quincy Jones premiered in 2004.

Walker's later fiction includes The Temple of My Familiar, an ambitious examination of racial and sexual tensions (1989); Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992), a narrative centred on female genital mutilation; By the Light of My Father's Smile (1998), the story of a family of anthropologists posing as missionaries in order to gain access to a Mexican tribe; and Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart (2005), about an older woman's quest for identity. Reviewers complained that these novels employed New Age abstractions and poorly conceived characters, though Walker continued to draw praise for championing racial and gender equality in her work. She also released the volume of short stories The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart (2000) and several other volumes of poetry, including Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth (2003), A Poem Traveled Down My Arm (2003), Hard Times Require Furious Dancing (2010), and Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart (2018). Her Blue Body Everything We Know: Earthling Poems (1991) collects poetry from 1965 to 1990.
(Read Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s Britannica essay on "Monuments of Hope.")
Walker's essays were compiled in In Search of Our Mother's Gardens: Womanist Prose (1983), Sent by Earth: A Message from the Grandmother Spirit After the Bombing of the World Trade Center and Pentagon (2001), We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For (2006), and The Cushion in the Road: Meditation and Wandering as the Whole World Awakens to Being in Harm's Way (2013). Walker also wrote juvenile fiction and critical essays on such female writers as Flannery O'Connor and Zora Neale Hurston. She cofounded a short-lived press in 1984. Throughout her career Walker occasionally attracted criticism. Notably, some African Americans strongly objected to the perceived negative portrayal of Black men in The Color Purple. In later years Walker, who often spoke out against Israel's policies toward Palestinians, was accused of being anti-Semitic, with her support of a Holocaust denier drawing particular attention.

In the unconventional memoir The Chicken Chronicles (2011), Walker discussed caring for a flock of chickens while also musing on her life. Gathering Blossoms Under Fire (2022) is a collection of her journals. The documentary Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth was released in 2013.

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Alice Walker | Biography, Books, The Color Purple, & Facts

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Alice Walker, in full Alice Malsenior Walker, (born February 9, 1944, Eatonton, Georgia, U.S.), American writer whose novels, short stories, and poems are noted for their insightful treatment of African American culture. Her novels, most notably The Color Purple (1982), focus particularly on women. Walker was the eighth child of African American sharecroppers.

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After graduating college in 1965, Walker moved to Mississippi and became involved in the civil rights movement. She also began teaching and publishing short stories and essays.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Alice Walker, in full Alice Malsenior Walker, (born February 9, 1944, Eatonton, Georgia, U.S.), American writer whose novels, short stories, and poems are noted for their insightful treatment of African American culture. Her novels, most notably The Color Purple (1982), focus particularly on women.

Walker was the eighth child of African American sharecroppers. While growing up she was accidentally blinded in one eye, and her mother gave her a typewriter, allowing her to write instead of doing chores. She received a scholarship to attend Spelman College, where she studied for two years before transferring to Sarah Lawrence College. After graduating in 1965, Walker moved to Mississippi and became involved in the civil rights movement. She also began teaching and publishing short stories and essays. She married in 1967, but the couple divorced in 1976.
(Read W.E.B. Du Bois' 1926 Britannica essay on African American literature.)
Walker's first book of poetry, Once, appeared in 1968, and her first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970), a narrative that spans 60 years and three generations, followed two years later. A second volume of poetry, Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems, and her first collection of short stories, In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Woman, both appeared in 1973. The latter bears witness to sexist violence and abuse in the African American community. After moving to New York, Walker completed (1976), a novel describing the coming of age of several civil rights workers in the 1960s.

Walker later moved to California, where she wrote her most popular novel, The Color Purple (1982). An epistolary novel, it depicts the growing up and self-realization of an African American woman between 1909 and 1947 in a town in Georgia. The book won a Pulitzer Prize and was adapted into a film by Steven Spielberg in 1985. A musical version produced by Oprah Winfrey and Quincy Jones premiered in 2004.

Walker's later fiction includes The Temple of My Familiar, an ambitious examination of racial and sexual tensions (1989); Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992), a narrative centred on female genital mutilation; By the Light of My Father's Smile (1998), the story of a family of anthropologists posing as missionaries in order to gain access to a Mexican tribe; and Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart (2005), about an older woman's quest for identity. Reviewers complained that these novels employed New Age abstractions and poorly conceived characters, though Walker continued to draw praise for championing racial and gender equality in her work. She also released the volume of short stories The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart (2000) and several other volumes of poetry, including Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth (2003), A Poem Traveled Down My Arm (2003), Hard Times Require Furious Dancing (2010), and Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart (2018). Her Blue Body Everything We Know: Earthling Poems (1991) collects poetry from 1965 to 1990.
(Read Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s Britannica essay on "Monuments of Hope.")
Walker's essays were compiled in In Search of Our Mother's Gardens: Womanist Prose (1983), Sent by Earth: A Message from the Grandmother Spirit After the Bombing of the World Trade Center and Pentagon (2001), We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For (2006), and The Cushion in the Road: Meditation and Wandering as the Whole World Awakens to Being in Harm's Way (2013). Walker also wrote juvenile fiction and critical essays on such female writers as Flannery O'Connor and Zora Neale Hurston. She cofounded a short-lived press in 1984. Throughout her career Walker occasionally attracted criticism. Notably, some African Americans strongly objected to the perceived negative portrayal of Black men in The Color Purple. In later years Walker, who often spoke out against Israel's policies toward Palestinians, was accused of being anti-Semitic, with her support of a Holocaust denier drawing particular attention.

In the unconventional memoir The Chicken Chronicles (2011), Walker discussed caring for a flock of chickens while also musing on her life. Gathering Blossoms Under Fire (2022) is a collection of her journals. The documentary Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth was released in 2013.

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Alice Walker | Biography, Books, The Color Purple, & Facts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Alice Walker, in full Alice Malsenior Walker, (born February 9, 1944, Eatonton, Georgia, U.S.), American writer whose novels, short stories, and poems are noted for their insightful treatment of African American culture. Her novels, most notably The Color Purple (1982), focus particularly on women. Walker was the eighth child of African American sharecroppers.

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Alice and her husband had one daughter, the writer and feminist activist Rebecca Walker, but their life in Mississippi was isolating and lonely. The family was subject to threats from the Ku Klux Klan, and her husband was often away working on legal cases involving civil rights throughout the state.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Alice Walker, in full Alice Malsenior Walker, (born February 9, 1944, Eatonton, Georgia, U.S.), American writer whose novels, short stories, and poems are noted for their insightful treatment of African American culture. Her novels, most notably The Color Purple (1982), focus particularly on women.

Walker was the eighth child of African American sharecroppers. While growing up she was accidentally blinded in one eye, and her mother gave her a typewriter, allowing her to write instead of doing chores. She received a scholarship to attend Spelman College, where she studied for two years before transferring to Sarah Lawrence College. After graduating in 1965, Walker moved to Mississippi and became involved in the civil rights movement. She also began teaching and publishing short stories and essays. She married in 1967, but the couple divorced in 1976.
(Read W.E.B. Du Bois' 1926 Britannica essay on African American literature.)
Walker's first book of poetry, Once, appeared in 1968, and her first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970), a narrative that spans 60 years and three generations, followed two years later. A second volume of poetry, Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems, and her first collection of short stories, In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Woman, both appeared in 1973. The latter bears witness to sexist violence and abuse in the African American community. After moving to New York, Walker completed (1976), a novel describing the coming of age of several civil rights workers in the 1960s.

Walker later moved to California, where she wrote her most popular novel, The Color Purple (1982). An epistolary novel, it depicts the growing up and self-realization of an African American woman between 1909 and 1947 in a town in Georgia. The book won a Pulitzer Prize and was adapted into a film by Steven Spielberg in 1985. A musical version produced by Oprah Winfrey and Quincy Jones premiered in 2004.

Walker's later fiction includes The Temple of My Familiar, an ambitious examination of racial and sexual tensions (1989); Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992), a narrative centred on female genital mutilation; By the Light of My Father's Smile (1998), the story of a family of anthropologists posing as missionaries in order to gain access to a Mexican tribe; and Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart (2005), about an older woman's quest for identity. Reviewers complained that these novels employed New Age abstractions and poorly conceived characters, though Walker continued to draw praise for championing racial and gender equality in her work. She also released the volume of short stories The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart (2000) and several other volumes of poetry, including Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth (2003), A Poem Traveled Down My Arm (2003), Hard Times Require Furious Dancing (2010), and Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart (2018). Her Blue Body Everything We Know: Earthling Poems (1991) collects poetry from 1965 to 1990.
(Read Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s Britannica essay on "Monuments of Hope.")
Walker's essays were compiled in In Search of Our Mother's Gardens: Womanist Prose (1983), Sent by Earth: A Message from the Grandmother Spirit After the Bombing of the World Trade Center and Pentagon (2001), We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For (2006), and The Cushion in the Road: Meditation and Wandering as the Whole World Awakens to Being in Harm's Way (2013). Walker also wrote juvenile fiction and critical essays on such female writers as Flannery O'Connor and Zora Neale Hurston. She cofounded a short-lived press in 1984. Throughout her career Walker occasionally attracted criticism. Notably, some African Americans strongly objected to the perceived negative portrayal of Black men in The Color Purple. In later years Walker, who often spoke out against Israel's policies toward Palestinians, was accused of being anti-Semitic, with her support of a Holocaust denier drawing particular attention.

In the unconventional memoir The Chicken Chronicles (2011), Walker discussed caring for a flock of chickens while also musing on her life. Gathering Blossoms Under Fire (2022) is a collection of her journals. The documentary Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth was released in 2013.

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Alice Walker | Biography, Books, The Color Purple, & Facts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Alice Walker, in full Alice Malsenior Walker, (born February 9, 1944, Eatonton, Georgia, U.S.), American writer whose novels, short stories, and poems are noted for their insightful treatment of African American culture. Her novels, most notably The Color Purple (1982), focus particularly on women. Walker was the eighth child of African American sharecroppers.