Main Street (Barnes & Noble Classics Ser - Sinclair Lewis [240]
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“An Old Sweetheart of Mine,” a sentimental poem by American poet James Whitcomb Riley (1849-1916).
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Actually Llewellin, a type of English hunting setter.
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American businessman, writer, and aesthete (1856-1925), whose popular essay A Message to Garcia (1899) was inspirational among American businessmen of the period.
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Sadness over the state of the world, a state of mind often considered fashionably romantic; from the German for “world pain.”
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Meaning hoi polloi (Greek phrase for “the common people”); Raymie is pronouncing the words as though they were French.
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Grand Army of the Republic, a secret organization of Civil War veterans who fought in the Union Army or Navy.
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Muskrats.
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Meaning “a meditation on death,” from the Greek words thanatos (death) and opsis (a view).
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Realistic novel (1896) by Harold Frederic about a Methodist minister in a small town in New York State.
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The Protestant Episcopal Church.
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A nutria is a large rodent with light brown fur, native to South America.
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Belgian group of avant-garde artists and writers.
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The International Order of Odd Fellows, a fraternity dedicated to benefiting mankind established in seventeenth-century England.
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Order of the Eastern Star, a women’s auxiliary of the Order of Masons.
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Norwegian fish dish.
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Mock serenade to a newly married couple, played on noisy implements such as kettles and tin horns.
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St. Vincent de Paul (1581-1660), French priest sanctified for his widespread charity. The Society of St. Vincent de Paul, dedicated to charitable work, was established in France in 1833.
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Hard Norwegian bread.
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American writer, sociologist, and critic of social institutions (1857-1929); author of The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) and other influential works.
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Underground gnomes, in German folklore. ‡Double-breasted version of a frock coat, which is a man’s knee-length coat.
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Irish god of love and beauty.
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Kennicott is misquoting from Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s 1889 poem “Crossing the Bar” (“And let there be ...”) and William Wordsworth’s 1798 poem “We Are Seven” (“I met a little country boy ...”). tA series of poems (1859-1872) by Tennyson about the Arthurian legend. ‡From the poem “Route Marchin’,” in Barrack-Room Ballads (1892), by English writer Rudyard Kipling.
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Felicia Dorothea Hemans (1793-1835), a popular Victorian poet.
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Correctly titled “Recessional,” this poem was written by Kipling in 1897 to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee (the sixtieth anniversary of her reign).
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A long narrative poem (1817) by Irish poet Thomas Moore.
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A boys’ adventure novel (1869) by Harry Castlemon, pen name of Charles Austin Fosdick.
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Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859), English essayist and critic.
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Mary Augusta Ward (1851-1920), English novelist concerned with current social issues.
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Sinclair Lewis’s hometown in Minnesota and the inspiration for Gopher Prairie.
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American author (1868-1924) of sentimental romances.
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Robert Adam (1728-1792) and his brothers John and James were Scottish neoclassical architects and furniture designers who exerted a major influence in England and America.
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Country dance from Moneymusk, Scotland.
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James Gillespie Blaine (1830-1893), Republican politician who lost the 1884 presidential election to Grover Cleveland.
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William McKinley (1843-1901), twenty-fifth president of the United States, assassinated during his second term. ‡American Christian Church minister and best-selling novelist (1872-1944).
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Series of inexpensive editions of world classic literature produced by Maine publisher Thomas Bird Mosher (1852-1923).
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Heavy twilled silk fabric.
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William Morris (1834-1896) was an artist, designer, writer, and socialist who believed that beauty could improve social conditions; his 1891 novel News from Nowhere describes a pastoral utopia.
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Sir Henry Irving (1838-1905), Dame Ellen Terry (1847-1928), Eleonora Duse (1859-1924), and Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923) were great actors of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.