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The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius: Selections Annotated and Explained Russell McNeil, PhD Editor, Malaspina Great Books In 1862 the English literary critic and poet Matthew Arnold described Marcus Aurelius as "the most beautiful figure in history." The Stoicism of Aurelius is grounded in rationality and rests solidly on an ethical approach rooted in nature. Stoicism promises real happiness and joy in this life and a serenity that can never be soured by personal misfortune. This philosophy has universal appeal with practical implications on problems ranging from climate change and terrorism to the personal management of sickness, aging, depression and addiction. I truly believe that the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius has much to offer us now...(Click on book cover for more)

Category:	Modern Literature
Name:	Fay Weldon
Birth Year:	1931
Death Year:	na
Representative Image:
Biography, Lectures, and Research Links:	Biography Blog Fay Weldon SEARCH NOW: by title by author Fay Weldon was supposed to be born in New Zealand, but instead was born in England in 1931. At 5 weeks old she and her mother returned to New Zealand. Her father was a doctor and her mother was a writer of commercial fiction under the pen name "Pearl Bellairs", among others. Her parents divorced when she was five. She lived with her mother, sister and grandmother until she started college and, as a result, grew up believing "the world was peopled by females." She returned to England with her mother and studied economics and psychology at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. Her actual christened name was "Franklin Birkinshaw" (something to do with her mother's interest in numerology) which she feels contributed to her being accepted at St Andrews and permitted to study economics: the school assumed she was a male student applicant. In her early twenties she was briefly married to a man more than twenty years her senior. It is not clear whether she had her first son during this marriage or earlier. Raising her son as a single mother, she looks back on her twenties as times fraught with "odd jobs and hard times." She worked on the problem page of the Daily Mirror and then as a copywriter for the Foreign Office. She then embarked on an extremely successful career as an advertising copywriter becoming famous for her slogan 'Go to work on an egg'. "Advertising was the only thing I could do in order to earn a decent enough living. . . I did it for about eight years." She married Roy Weldon in 1962 and had three more sons. She then went through a mid-life crisis: "I was thirty, inadequate and depressed and ignorant, and knew it." She went through psychoanalysis, which gave her the self-knowledge and courage to give up advertising and start writing. Her first novel, The Fat Woman's Joke, was published in 1967, but by then she had already written some fifty plays for radio, stage, or television, the most well-known being Upstairs, Downstairs and her adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. For the next 30 years she built a wonderfully successful career, publishing over 20 novels, collections of short stories, television movies, newspaper and magazine articles and becoming a well-known face and voice on the BBC. She and Ron divided their time between bucolic splendour in Somerset and a flat in London. Eventually they did divorce in 1994. Fay subsequently married Nick Fox, a poet, and her writing and career continue to flourish. They live in Hamptead, London. [Adapted from Jan Hanford] The Great Books: Fay Weldon Please browse our Amazon list of titles about Fay Weldon. For rare and hard to find works we recommend our Alibris list of titles about Fay Weldon. Post Comments, Questions or Suggestions! This database is maintained by Malaspina Great Books.
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Records from Related Period and Category:	Modern Literature

About this Database:

This web page is part of a biographical database on Great Ideas. These are living ideas that have shaped, defined and directed world culture for over 2,500 years. By definition the Great Ideas are radical. As such they are sometimes misread, or distorted by popular simplifications. Understanding a Great Idea demands personal engagement. Our selection of Great Ideas is drawn from literature and philosophy, science, art, music, theatre, and cinema. We also include biographies of pivotal historical and religious figures, as well as contributions from women and other historically under-represented minorities. The result is an integrated multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary database built upon the framework of the always controversial Great Books Core List published in 1940 by the late Great Books Pioneer Mortimer Adler (1902-2001). Most of the works on that list are available in the 60 volume Great Books of the Western World.