\"Dr. Claudius\" Francis Marion Crawford Hand Signed 3.5X2 Card For Sale

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\"Dr. Claudius\" Francis Marion Crawford Hand Signed 3.5X2 Card:
$349.99

Up for sale a "Dr. Claudius" Francis Marion Crawford Signed 3.5X2 Card.  

2, 1854 – April 9, 1909) was an American writer noted for his many novels,

especially those set in Italy, and for his classic weird and fantastic stories.

Crawford was born in Bagni di Lucca, in

the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, on

August 2, 1854. He was the only son of the American sculptor Thomas Crawford and

Louisa Cutler Ward. His sister was the writer Mary Crawford Fraser (aka Mrs. Hugh Fraser), and he was

the nephew of Julia Ward Howe, the

American poet.[2] After his father's death in 1857, his mother

remarried to Luther Terry, with whom she had Crawford's half-sister, Margaret Ward Terry, who

later became the wife of Winthrop Astor Chanler. He

studied successively at St Paul's

School, Concord, New Hampshire; Cambridge University; University of Heidelberg;

and the University of Rome.

In 1879, he went to India, where he studied Sanskrit and edited in Allahabad The Indian Herald. Returning to America

in February 1881, he continued to study Sanskrit at Harvard University for

a year and for two years contributed to various periodicals, mainly The Critic. Early in 1882, he established his lifelong

close friendship with Isabella Stewart Gardner. During

this period he lived most of the time in Boston at his Aunt Julia Ward Howe's

house and in the company of his Uncle, Sam

Ward. His family was concerned about his financial prospects. His

mother had hoped he could train in Boston for a career as an operatic baritone

based on his private renditions of Schubert lieder. In January 1882, George Henschel, conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra,

assess his prospects and determined Crawford would "never be able to sing

in perfect tune". His Uncle Sam Ward suggested he try writing about his

years in India and helped him develop contacts with New York publishers. In

December 1882, he produced his first novel, Mr Isaacs, a

sketch of modern Anglo-Indian life mingled with a touch of Oriental mystery. It

had an immediate success, and Dr Claudius (1883) followed

promptly. In May 1883, he returned to Italy, where he made his permanent home.

He lived at the historic Hotel Cocumella in Sorrento during 1885 and settled

permanently in Sant'Agnello, where in the fall he bought the Villa Renzi that

became Villa Crawford. More than half his novels are set in Italy. He wrote

three long historical studies of Italy and was well advanced with a history of

Rome in the Middle Ages when he died. This may explain why Marion Crawford's

books stand apart from any distinctively American current in literature. Year

by year Crawford published a number of successful novels. However his 1896

novel Adam Johnstone's Son was thought by the late nineteenth

century English novelist George Gissing to be "rubbish".Late in the

1890s, Crawford began to write his historical works. These are: Ave

Roma Immortalis (1898), Rulers of the South (1900)

renamed Southern Italy and Sicily and The Rulers of the South in

1905 for the American market, and Gleanings from Venetian History (1905)

with the American title Salvae Venetia, reissued in 1909 as Venice;

the Place and the People. In these, his intimate knowledge of local Italian

history combines with the romanticist's imaginative faculty to excellent

effect. His shorter book Constantinople (1895) belongs to this

category.After most of his fictional works had been published, most came to

think he was a gifted narrator; and his books of fiction, full of historic

vitality and dramatic characterization, became widely popular among readers to

whom the realism of problems or the eccentricities of subjective analysis were

repellent. In The Novel: What It Is (1893), he defended his

literary approach, self-conceived as a combination of romanticism and realism,

defining the art form in terms of its marketplace and audience. The novel, he

wrote, is "a marketable commodity" and "intellectual artistic

luxury" (8, 9) that "must amuse, indeed, but should amuse reasonably,

from an intellectual point of view. . . . Its intention is to amuse and please,

and certainly not to teach and preach; but in order to amuse well it must be a

finely-balanced creation." The Saracinesca series is perhaps known to be his best work,

with the third in the series, Don Orsino (1892) set against

the background of a real estate bubble, told with effective concision. The

second volume is Sant' Ilario [Hilary] (1889). A fourth book

in the series, Corleone (1897), was the first major treatment

of the Mafia in

literature, and used the now-familiar but then-original device of a priest

unable to testify to a crime because of the Seal of the Confessional; the novel is not one of his major

works, having failed to live up to the standard set by the books earlier in the

series. Crawford ended Rulers of the South (1900) with a

chapter about the Sicilian Mafia. Crawford

himself was fondest of Khaled: A Tale of Arabia (1891),

a story of a genie (genius is Crawford's word) who becomes

human, which was reprinted (1971) in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy

series of the early 1970s. A Cigarette-Maker's Romance (1890)

was dramatized, and had considerable popularity on the stage as well as in its

novel form; and in 1902 an original play from his pen, Francesca da

Rimini, was produced in Paris by his friend Sarah Bernhardt. Crawford's best known dramatization was that

of The White Sister (1909). Its main actress was Viola Allen, whose first film was the 1915 film of this novel;

it was filmed again in 1923 and 1933. In

the Palace of the King (1900) was filmed in 1915 and 1923; Mr. Isaacs (1882)

was filmed in 1931 as Son of India. Several

of his short stories, such as "The Upper Berth" (1886; written in

1885), "For the Blood Is the Life" (1905, a vampiress tale),

"The Dead Smile" (1899), and "The Screaming Skull" (1908),

are often-anthologized classics of the horror genre. An essay on Crawford's

weird tales can be found in S. T. Joshi's The Evolution of the Weird Tale (2004);

there are many other essays and introductions. The collected weird stories were

posthumously published in 1911 as Wandering Ghosts in the U.S.

and as Uncanny Tales in the UK, both without the

long-forgotten "The King's Messenger" (1907). The present definitive

edition is that edited by Richard Dalby as Uncanny Tales and

published by the Tartarus Press (1997;

2008). Crawford's novella Man Overboard! (1903) is often

overlooked, but belongs with his supernatural works. In 1901, the American

Macmillan firm began a deluxe uniform edition of his novels, as

reprintings required. In 1904 the P. F. Collier Co. (N. Y.) was authorized to

publish a 25-volume edition, later increased to 32 volumes. Around 1914 the

subscription firm McKinlay, Stone, Mackenzie was authorized to publish an

edition using the Macmillan binding decorations. In 1919 the American Macmillan

firm published the "Sorrento Edition". They also had issued some

first American editions and reprints in a uniform binding from 1891 through

1899. The British Macmillan firm

used two separate uniform bindings from 1889 until after 1910. Crawford wrote

numerous articles for major periodicals and a few contributions to books. See

the section "Bibliographical History" in An F. Marion

Crawford Companion (1981) by John C. Moran.

"Dr. Claudius" Francis Marion Crawford Hand Signed 3.5X2 Card

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