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1909: The Arts

Sep9

Director Sergei Diaghilev brings his Ballets Russes to Paris featuring the dancers Vaslav Njinsky and Anna Pavlova and with choreographer Michel Fokine and designer Léon Bakst. The Ballet Russes is regarded by some as finest ballet company of the twentieth century. When Diaghilev died in 1929, the ballet company was broken up, and the dancers scattered to other companies.

In December 1909, American architect Frank Lloyd Wright completes the famed Robie House in Chicago, one of the most important buildings in American architecture.

Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 is premiered in New York City on November 28, 1909.

Setting: Turn of the Century, 1900-1909

Sep2

Historical fiction is a great way to learn about history. In fact, I learned a lot of my history facts from novels. I’m often moved by a fiction book to go look up the story behind the story, to see if the author got her facts right. Here are a few adult fiction titles set in or around the turn of the century—nineteenth to twentieth, that is. No, I haven’t read all of these, but I have tried to give you a link to a review written by someone who has for each book listed. If you have reviewed any of these, leave a link in the comments, and I’ll add your review to the list. Or if you have read another book set in the early 1900’s that you liked, please share.

The Tale of Hilltop Farm by Susan Wittig Albert. Author Beatrix Potter solves mysteries in this book and the ones the follow in the series when she moves to Hill Top Farm after the death of her fiance. Reviewed by Allison at On My Bookshelf.

City of Tranquil Light by Bo Caldwell. Highly recommended. A young Mennonite missionary in China meets and marries a fellow missionary and lives through the turmoil of civil war. Semicolon review here.

Anna’s Book by Barbara Vine. Mystery and suspense in early twentieth century London. Reviewed by Superfast Reader.

Arthur and George by Julian Barnes. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle attempts to exonerate a falsely imprisoned man named George.

Beautiful Dreamer by Joan Naper. Chicago, 1900. Reviewed by Sarah Johnson at Reading the Past.

The Birth House by Ami McKay. A midwife in a Nova Scotia fishing village. Reviewed at Maw Books Blog..

Empire by Gore Vidal. Caroline Sanford runs a newspaper dynasty during the years 1898-1907–with insights into the Spanish-American War, the Hearst newspaper conglomerate, and the presidencies of William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, among other historical events and persons.

A Flickering Light by Jane Kirkpatrick. In 1907, a fifteen year old girl dreams of a career in photography, a dangerous job reserved for men. Reviewd by Tracy at Relz Reviewz.

Jack London: Sailor on Horseback by Irving Stone. Biographical novel about the eponymous author.

Lake of Fire by Linda Jacobs. Romance blossoms in Yellowstone National Park, June, 1900. Reviewed by Sarah Johnson at Reading the Past.

Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns. Highly recommended. Will’s grandfather elopes with a woman half his age three weeks after his wife dies in 1906, causing a scandal in their small Georgia town. Cold Sassy Tree is on my list of the 100 Best Novels of All Time.

City of Light by Lauren Belfer. 1901 in Buffalo, New York as Niagara Falls is being harnessed for electricity.

The Outlander by Gil Adamson. Idaho and Montana, 1903. A nineteen year old woman murders her abusive husband and then runs away from his brothers who are thirsty for revenge.

The Quickening by Michelle Hoover. American Midwest in the early 1900’s. Reviewed by Caribousmom.

Painted Ladies by Siobhan Parkinson. A community of artists in Skagen, a fishing village in the north of Denmark, live a Bohemian lifestyle while producing great works of art. Reviewed by Sarah Johnson at Reading the Past.

For more historical novels of the twentieth century, look at HistoricalNovels.info.

1909: Books and Literature

Aug31

Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton Porter was published in August, 1909. It tells the story of Elnora Comstock who lives with her widowed mother Katherine on the edge of the Limberlost, a marshland in Indiana where Elnora plans to catch moths and other nature specimens to sell to collectors to finance her continued high school education.

Elnora and her mother have a troubled relationship. Katherine Comstock blames Elnora for the death of her husband, Elnora’s father, in the swamp many years before. A young man, Phillip, comes to the Limberlost, and he and Elnora become friends and work together to explore and to gather Elnora’s moths.

Nature lovers should enjoy this lovely story in spite of the somewhat high-flown and archaic language. In fact, what with the modern environmental movement, I would think A Girl of the Limberlost is poised to make a comeback. Maybe as a movie or a simplified or updated ebook? It’s in the public domain, and you can download it to your favorite ereader here. The movie’s been done a few times, but I’ve not seen any of the versions. Any recommendations?

Selma Lagerlof, a Swedish novelist, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1909. Her most famous novel, Jerusalem, tells the story of a group of Swedish Christians who went to Jerusalem to join The American Colony, a Christian religious community whose members believed that if they were to do acts of service to humanity (feeding the hungry, caring for orphans, etc.) in Jerusalem it would hasten the day of Christ’s return. The leader of this community (before the Swedish Christians came to join) was Horation Spafford, the man who wrote the much beloved hymn, It Is Well with My Soul.

1909: Events and Inventions

Aug30

January, 1909. William Howard Taft is inaugurated president of the United States, and Teddy Roosevelt goes off on a safari to Africa to let the new president get to work out of his shadow. (Unfortunately, Teddy casts a big shadow, and even from Africa he begins to realize that he doesn’t like what Taft is doing as president.)

March 31, 1909. French film producers Emile and Charles Pathe begin to film the news. The brothers have sent cameramen to every continent to look for news stories of interest to the general public, and the resulting films, called newsreels, will be shown all over the world.

April 6, 1909. Robert E. Peary reaches the North Pole along with his assistant, Matthew Henson, and four Eskimo guides. Henson and two of the guides were actually the first to reach the Pole, and Peary arrived forty-five minutes later and confirmed that they were in the right place. Read more at Who Discoverd the North Pole at Smithsonian.com.

April 27, 1909. The Young Turks overthrow the sultan of Turkey, Abdulhamid II, and replace him with his brother who takes the title of Mohammed V. Abdulhamid II ruled the Ottoman Empire as an absolute monarch, but the Young Turks demand reforms and a constitutional government which begins to be implemented as Mohammed V becomes a constitutional monarch with very little real power.

May 1909. German bacteriologist Paul Ehrlich produces the first successful drug to treat for syphilis.

July 25, 1909. Frenchman Louis Bleriot becomes the first man to pilot an aircraft 21 miles across the English Channel from Calais, France to Dover in England. You can read more about Bleriot and his adventures in flight in the picture book, The Glorious Flight: Across the Channel with Louis Bleriot, written and illustrated by Alice and Martin Provenson. And Scholastic has some teaching suggestions for using The Glorious Flight in the classroom.

July, 1909. Mohammed Ali, Shah of Persia, flees to Russia as forces favoring a constitutional government replace him with his twelve year old son, Ahmad Mirza. Persia (Iran) becomes somewhat more free with democratic reforms implemented, or at least suggested, by the Grand Majiles, Persia’s parliament.

October 26, 1909. Prince Hirobumi Ito of Japan is assassinated by An Jung-geun, a Korean nationalist opposed to the annexation of Korea by Japan. Prince Ito had been the Japanese Resident-General of Korea, and the Japanese used the assassination as an excuse to take total control of Korea and try to absorb it into the Japanese empire.

December, 1909. U.S. chemist Leo Baekeland prepares to market his newly invented plastic which he calls “Bakelite.”

Movies Set In the First Decade of the Twentieth Century: 1900-1909

Aug27

Lagaan (2001). Bollywood movie actually set in 1893, but it shows the cultural mileau of India under British rule. Warning: it’s long, with subtitles, but well worth the time.

Finding Neverland stars Johnny Depp as playwright James Barrie. I wrote about my initial impressions of the movie here. I would like to see the move again, and I think it might make a better impression the second time around.

Miss Potter (2006). Fictionalized biography of authoress Beatrix Potter.

Meet Me in St. Louis (1944). Musical set in St. Louis, Missouri during the St. Louis World’s Fair of 1904.

Fiddler on the Roof (1971). Another classic musical set in Tsarist Russia in 1905.

How Green Was My Valley. Based on a 1939 novel by Richard Llewellyn, this film features a Welsh family and the mining community in which they live around the turn of the century. the movie won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1941.

Yankee Doodle Dandy. Biopic about American songwriter and composer George M. Cohan, starring James Cagney as Cohan. The song “Yankee Doodle Boy” was Cohan’s signature piece as a composer and as a song-and-dance man himself who performed his own work. The film came out in 1942, and production began on it just a few days before the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. So the movie was purposefully patriotic to the max in order to lift the spirits of an American audience headed into war.

The Winslow Boy. We just watched this movie, set in Britain and based on a true story, yesterday. Well, I watched, and the urchins fell asleep. It’s not an exciting or fast-moving plot-driven picture. However, the script and the setting are intriguing. The story is about an upper middle class family who sacrifice everything—their savings, the daughter’s upcoming marriage, the older son’s career—to defend the honor of the younger son who is accused of stealing a five shilling postal order and is expelled from military school. The boy, Ronnie, says he didn’t do it, and the family honor is at stake. Such a different world, different values. You can read more about the movie, the play by Terrence Rattigan, and the historical incident that Rattigan mined for his play at Wikipedia.

My twentieth century history students are supposed to choose one of these movies set in the first decade of the century to watch and then write a reflection paper (kind of like a blog post, at least like my blog posts) about the movie. Which one would you suggest to them if they asked your advice? Do you have any other suggestions for movies set in this time period?