COMMUNICATION, BASE OF HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS (II)

Barriers in communication

Today, The Grandma has returned to Gavà to continue her communication course.

Communication is the base of human relationships. There are lots of things that difficult a good communication and The Grandma wants to talk about it. Barriers in communication, cultural aspects and noise are elements that make communication a little bit complicated.

Barriers to effective communication can retard or distort the message or intention of the message being conveyed. This may result in failure of the communication process or cause an effect that is undesirable. These include filtering, selective perception, information overload, emotions, language, silence, communication apprehension, gender differences and political correctness.

This also includes a lack of expressing knowledge-appropriate communication, which occurs when a person uses ambiguous or complex legal words, medical jargon, or descriptions of a situation or environment that is not understood by the recipient.

More information: PhiCare

Physical barriers are often due to the nature of the environment. An example of this is the natural barrier which exists if staff is located in different buildings or on different sites. Likewise, poor or outdated equipment, particularly the failure of management to introduce new technology, may also cause problems. Staff shortages are another factor which frequently causes communication difficulties for an organization.

System design faults refer to problems with the structures or systems in place in an organization. Examples might include an organizational structure which is unclear and therefore makes it confusing to know whom to communicate with. Other examples could be inefficient or inappropriate information systems, a lack of supervision or training, and a lack of clarity in roles and responsibilities which can lead to staff being uncertain about what is expected of them.

Barriers in communication

Attitudinal barriers come about as a result of problems with staff in an organization.

These may be brought about, for example, by such factors as poor management, lack of consultation with employees, personality conflicts which can result in people delaying or refusing to communicate, the personal attitudes of individual employees which may be due to lack of motivation or dissatisfaction at work, brought about by insufficient training to enable them to carry out particular tasks, or simply resistance to change due to entrenched attitudes and ideas.

Ambiguity of words/phrases. Words sounding the same but having different meaning can convey a different meaning altogether. Hence the communicator must ensure that the receiver receives the same meaning. It is better if such words are avoided by using alternatives whenever possible.

Individual linguistic ability. The use of jargon, difficult or inappropriate words in communication can prevent the recipients from understanding the message. Poorly explained or misunderstood messages can also result in confusion. However, research in communication has shown that confusion can lend legitimacy to research when persuasion fails.

Physiological barriers. These may result from individuals' personal discomfort, caused -for example- by ill health, poor eyesight or hearing difficulties.

More information: TOPPR

Bypassing. These happens when the communicators (sender and the receiver) do not attach the same symbolic meanings to their words. It is when the sender is expressing a thought or a word but the receiver takes it in a different meaning. For example- ASAP, Rest room.

Technological multi-tasking and absorbency. With a rapid increase in technologically-driven communication in the past several decades, individuals are increasingly faced with condensed communication in the form of e-mail, text, and social updates. This has, in turn, led to a notable change in the way younger generations communicate and perceive their own self-efficacy to communicate and connect with others.

With the ever-constant presence of another "world" in one's pocket, individuals are multi-tasking both physically and cognitively as constant reminders of something else happening somewhere else bombard them. Though perhaps too new of an advancement to yet see long-term effects, this is a notion currently explored by such figures as Sherry Turkle.

Barriers in communication

Fear of being criticized. This is a major factor that prevents good communication.

If we exercise simple practices to improve our communication skill, we can become effective communicators. For example, read an article from the newspaper or collect some news from the television and present it in front of the mirror. This will not only boost your confidence but also improve your language and vocabulary.

Gender barriers. Most communicators whether aware or not, often have a set agenda. This is very notable among the different genders. For example, many women are found to be more critical in addressing conflict. It's also been noted that men are more than likely to withdraw from conflict when in comparison to women. This breakdown and comparison not only shows that there are many factors to communication between two specific genders but also room for improvement as well as established guidelines for all.

Cultural differences exist within countries (tribal/regional differences, dialects etc.), between religious groups and in organisations or at an organisational level -where companies, teams and units may have different expectations, norms and idiolects. Families and family groups may also experience the effect of cultural barriers to communication within and between different family members or groups. For example: words, colours and symbols have different meanings in different cultures. In most parts of the world, nodding your head means agreement, shaking your head means no, except in some parts of the world.

More information: Skills You Need

Communication to a great extent is influenced by culture and cultural variables. Understanding cultural aspects of communication refers to having knowledge of different cultures in order to communicate effectively with cross culture people. Cultural aspects of communication are of great relevance in today's world which is now a global village, thanks to globalisation. Cultural aspects of communication are the cultural differences which influences communication across borders. Impact of cultural differences on communication components are explained below:

Verbal communication refers to form of communication which uses spoken and written words for expressing and transferring views and ideas. Language is the most important tool of verbal communication and it is the area where cultural difference play its role. All countries have different languages and to have a better understanding of different culture it is required to have knowledge of languages of different countries.

Noise in communication

Non-verbal communication is a very wide concept and it includes all the other forms of communication which do not uses written or spoken words. Non verbal communication takes following forms:

Paralinguistics are the voice involved in communication other than actual language and involves tones, pitch, vocal cues etc. It also include sounds from throat and all these are greatly influenced by cultural differences across borders.

Proxemics deals with the concept of the space element in communication. Proxemics explains four zones of spaces, namely intimate, personal, social and public. This concept differs from culture to culture as the permissible space varies in different countries.

Artifactics studies the non verbal signals or communication which emerges from personal accessories such as the dress or fashion accessories worn and it varies with culture as people of different countries follow different dressing codes.

Chronemics deals with the time aspects of communication and also includes the importance given to time. Some issues explaining this concept are pauses, silences and response lag during an interaction. This aspect of communication is also influenced by cultural differences as it is well known that there is a great difference in the value given by different cultures to time.

More information: Economics Discussion

Kinesics mainly deals with body language such as postures, gestures, head nods, leg movements, etc. In different countries, the same gestures and postures are used to convey different messages. Sometimes even a particular kinesic indicating something good in a country may have a negative meaning in another culture.

So in order to have an effective communication across the world it is desirable to have a knowledge of cultural variables effecting communication.

According to Michael Walsh and Ghil'ad Zuckermann, Western conversational interaction is typically dyadic, between two particular people, where eye contact is important and the speaker controls the interaction; and contained in a relatively short, defined time frame. However, traditional Aboriginal conversational interaction is communal, broadcast to many people, eye contact is not important, the listener controls the interaction; and continuous, spread over a longer, indefinite time frame.

More information: Virtual Speech

To effectively communicate,

we must realize that we are all different

in the way we perceive the world

and use this understanding as a guide

to our communication with others.
 

Tony Robbins

THE BATTLE OF MONTJUÏC DURING THE REAPERS' WAR

The Grandma & Claire visit Montjuïc, Barcelona

Today, the weather is good and The Grandma has decided to walk out with her closer friend Claire Fontaine. They have visited Montjuïc, the historic mountain that rises between the city of Barcelona and the Mediterranean Sea.

This mountain is a great witness of the history of the city and today, the city of Barcelona commemorates the anniversary of the Battle of Montjuïc, when in January 26, 1641, the Catalan troops defended the city from the attack of the Castilian troops during the Reapers' War.

Catalan troops won this battle and protected the city from the tyranny of the Castilian troops who killed all people -civilians and militaries- who found on their way.

This battle was an episode of the Reapers' War, a conflict that had an effect in the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659), which ceded the County of Rosselló and the northern half of the County of Cerdanya to France, splitting these northern Catalan territories off from the Principality of Catalonia and the Crown of Aragon.

Nowadays, Catalonia is an historic nation, one of the oldest European ones, whose territories are divided in two states -French and Spanish. There are other cases like this: Basque Country (France and Spain), Alsace (France and Germany), and Britain (France and United Kingdom)...

History demonstrates that borders do not determinate a community but culture does, and one of the most significate symbols of culture is language. A spoken language determinates a community and it is a vivid element of its history, past and present.

More information: Ajuntament de Barcelona

The Battle of Montjuïc took place on 26 January 1641 during the Reapers' War. A Spanish force under Pedro Fajardo launched an attack on the Catalan army led by Francesc de Tamarit, with French cavalry support.

The Catalan rebels had taken up position on the heights of Montjuïc which dominated the city of Barcelona.

The Spanish launched several concerted attempts to capture Montjuïc Castle, but were continually repulsed. Finally a large force of Catalan rebels counter-attacked from the direction of Barcelona. Large numbers of Spanish troops were killed and the remainder had to withdraw to Tarragona along the coast. The Spanish force had recently massacred hundreds of rebels who had tried to surrender at Cambrils.

The Battle of Cambrils or the Massacre of Cambrils took place in December 1640 during the Reapers' War.

Barcelona, 17th century

The revolt had started in May-June 1640 and as a reaction the Spanish Army had occupied Tortosa in Catalonia in September. On December 8 a large army under Pedro Fajardo de Zúñiga y Requesens headed for Barcelona, passing through Cambrils. Here, a small force of Catalan rebels attempted to ambush this much larger force, before withdrawing into the town and attempting to defend it. After several days of bombardment and heavy fighting the Spanish captured the town.

When the defenders tried to surrender, some 700 of them were massacred. The three leaders were quickly trialed and executed on the garrote. The next day, more people were hanged and the city was sacked.

The Spanish army then continued in the direction of Barcelona, taking Tarragona on December 24. Later this army was decisively defeated in the Battle of Montjuïc.

More information: Museu d'Història de Catalunya (MHCAT)

The Reapers' War, in Catalan la Guerra dels Segadors, also known as Catalan Revolt was a conflict that affected a large part of the Principality of Catalonia between the years of 1640 and 1659.

The war had its roots in the discomfort generated in Catalan society by the large presence of Castilian troops during the Franco-Spanish War between the Kingdom of France and the Monarchy of Spain as part of the Thirty Years' War.

Gaspar de Guzmán, Count-Duke of Olivares, the chief minister of Philip IV, had been trying to distribute more evenly the huge economic and military burden of the Spanish Empire, until then supported mainly by the Crown of Castile. But his Union of Arms policy raised hostilities and protests all across the states of the Monarchy of Spain.

Battle of Montjuïc, 1640

Resistance in Catalonia was especially strong; the Catalan Courts of 1626 and 1632 were never concluded, due to the opposition of the estates against the economical and military measures of Olivares, many of which violated the Catalan constitutions.

In 1638, the canon of La Seu d'Urgell Pau Claris, known for his opposition against non-Catalan bishops who always collaborated with the Crown, was elected by ecclesiastic estate as president of the Generalitat, while Francesc de Tamarit was elected member of the Generalitat by the military estate and Josep Miquel Quintana for the popular estate.

Around 1639, both causes approached and the identification and solidarity of the peasants took place with the attitude of political distrust of the authorities. Thus the political doctrine of the uprising and the popular ideology of the revolt were formed.

Catalan peasants, who were forced to quarter Castilian troops and reported events such as religious sacrileges, destruction of personal properties and rape of women by the soldiers, responded in a series of local rebellions against their presence.

More information: Ajuntament de Barcelona

The revolt grew, until the Corpus Christi day of May 1640 in Barcelona, with an uprising known as Bloody Corpus in Catalan Corpus de Sang, under the slogans Long live the faith of Christ!, The King our Lord has declared war on us!, Long live the land, death to bad government, Reape our chains. When the bishop of Barcelona, after blessing the furious crowd, asked them: Who is your captain? What is your flag? They raised a big Christ in the Cross Statue covered with an all black cloth and shouted Here is our captain, this is our flag!.

This Bloody Corpus which began with the death of a reaper, in Catalan segador and led to the somewhat mysterious death of The 2nd Count of Santa Coloma, the Spanish Viceroy of Catalonia, marked the beginning of the conflict.

The irregular militia involved were known as Miquelets. The situation took Olivares by surprise, with most of the Spanish army fighting on other fronts far from Catalonia. The Council of Aragon demanded more military presence in Barcelona as the only way to restore the order.

Pau Claris, MHP of the Generalitat

Pau Claris, President of the Generalitat of Catalonia, called the politician members of the all Principality in order to form a Junta de Braços or Braços Generals (States-General), a consultive body.

The calling was a success, and the presence of royal cities and feudal villages was exceptionally large. This assembly, which worked with individual voting, began to create and apply various revolutionary measures, such as the establishment of a Council of Defense of the Principality and a special tax for the nobility (the Batalló), while the tension with the monarchy grew.

At the same time, the Generalitat maintained contacts with France, in order to establish an alliance between the Principality of Catalonia and this country. By the pact of Ceret, French promised to help the Principality. In this way, the States-General presided by Pau Claris proclaimed the Catalan Republic under the protection of the French monarchy, on January 17, 1641, which lasted a week until January 21, 1641, when they declared the French king Louis XIII Count of Barcelona as Louis I.

The threat of the French enemy establishing a powerful base south of the Pyrenees caused an immediate reaction from the Habsburg monarchy. The Habsburg government sent a large army of 26,000 men under Pedro Fajardo to crush the Catalan Revolt.

On its way to Barcelona, the Spanish army retook several cities, executing hundreds of prisoners, and a rebel army of the Catalan Republic was defeated in Martorell, near Barcelona, on January, 23.

In response the Catalans reinforced their efforts and the Franco-Catalan armies obtained an important military victory over the Spanish army in the Battle of Montjuïc (January 26, 1641).

More information: The Culture Trip

Despite this success, the peasant uprising was becoming uncontrollable in some places, progressively focusing on the Catalan nobility and Generalitat itself. In effect, the conflict was also a class war, with the peasants revolting both against the Habsburg monarchy and against their own ruling classes, which turned to France for support.

For the next decade the Catalans fought under French vassalage, taking the initiative after Montjuïc. Meanwhile, increasing French control of political and administrative affairs -maritime ports, taxes, key bureaucratic positions- and a firm military focus on the neighbouring Spanish kingdoms of Valencia and Aragon, in line with Richelieu's war against Spain, gradually undermined Catalan enthusiasm for the French.

Battle of Montjuïc, 1641

A Franco-Catalan army under Philippe de La Mothe-Houdancourt moved south and gained several victories against the Spanish, but the sieges of Tarragona, Lleida and Tortosa finally failed and the allies had to withdraw. In the north of Catalonia in Rosselló, they were more successful. Perpinyà was taken from the Spanish after a siege of 10 months, and the whole of Rosselló was under French control. Shortly after, Spanish relief armies were defeated at the Battle of Montmeló and Battle of Barcelona.

In 1652 a Spanish offensive captured Barcelona bringing the Catalan capital under Spanish control again. Irregular resistance continued for several years afterwards and some fighting took place north of the Pyrenees but the mountains would remain from then on the effective border between Spanish and French territories.

The war was concurrent with the Arauco War in Chile where the Spanish fought a coalition of native Mapuches. With the Arauco War being a lengthy and costly conflict the Spanish crown ordered its authorities in Chile to sign a peace agreement with the Mapuche in order to concentrate the empire's resources in fighting the Catalans. This way the Mapuche obtained a peace treaty and a recognition on behalf of the crown in a case unique for any indigenous group in the Americas.

The conflict extended beyond the Peace of Westphalia, which concluded the Thirty Years' War in 1648 but remained part of the Franco-Spanish War (1635-1659) with the confrontation between two sovereigns and two Generalitats, one based in Barcelona, under the control of Spain and the other in Perpinyà, under the occupation of France.

In 1652 the French authorities renounced Catalonia, but held control of Rosselló, thereby leading to the signing of the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659.

More information: The Gates Hotel Barcelona

Here is our captain, this is our flag!
Catalans, let's go to fight!
The King our Lord has declared war on us!

Popular Romance

1961, 'ONE HUNDRED AND ONE DALMATIANS' PREMIERES

One Hundred and One Dalmatians

Today, The Grandma is still at home. Gloria storm has gone away and the weather starts to improve. She has decided to stay at home watching TV and she has chosen a wonderful movie, One Hundred and One Dalmatians, a 1961 American animated adventure film produced by Walt Disney Productions and based on the 1956 novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith.

The Grandma has received the visit of her closer friend Claire Fontaine. They have enjoyed this wonderful movie together, a classic movie that premiered on a day like today in 1961.

One Hundred and One Dalmatians is a 1961 American animated adventure film produced by Walt Disney Productions and based on the 1956 novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith.

Directed by Clyde Geronimi, Hamilton Luske, and Wolfgang Reitherman, it was Disney's 17th animated feature film. The film tells the story of a litter of Dalmatian puppies who are kidnapped by the villainous Cruella de Vil ("deVille"), who wants to use their fur to make into coats. Their parents, Pongo and Perdita, set out to save their children from Cruella, in the process rescuing 84 additional puppies that were bought in pet shops, bringing the total of Dalmatians to 101.

The film was originally released to theaters on January 25, 1961, by Buena Vista Distribution, and was a box office success, pulling the studio out of the financial slump caused by Sleeping Beauty, a costlier production released two years prior. Aside from its box office revenue, its commercial success was due to the employment of inexpensive animation techniques -such as using xerography during the process of inking and painting traditional animation cels- that kept production costs down.

Disney released a live-action adaptation in 1996 and a sequel, 102 Dalmatians in 2000, and a live-action spin-off/prequel directed by Craig Gillespie is scheduled to be released on May 28, 2021.

More information: Disney 23

Roger Radcliffe is a songwriter who lives in a bachelor flat in London, with his pet Dalmatian, Pongo, who decides to find a wife for Roger and a mate for himself, because he is bored with bachelor life.

While watching various women with their female dog look-alikes out the window, he spots the perfect pair, a woman named Anita and her female Dalmatian, Perdita. He quickly gets Roger out of the house and drags him through the park to arrange a meeting. Roger and Anita eventually fall in love and marry with their dogs.

Later, Perdita gives birth to a litter of 15 puppies. That same night, they are visited by Cruella De Vil, a wealthy former schoolmate of Anita's. She offers to buy the entire litter, but Roger says they are not for sale, leading to a falling out.

Perdita & Pongo

A few weeks later, she hires her henchmen, Jasper and Horace, to steal them. When Scotland Yard is unable to find them, Pongo and Perdita use the Twilight bark, a canine gossip line, to ask for help from the other dogs in London.

An Old English Sheepdog named Colonel, along with his compatriots, a gray horse named Captain, and a tabby cat named Sergeant Tibbs, find the puppies in a place called Hell Hall Cruella's abandoned and dilapidated family estate, also known as The De Vil Place, along with 84 other Dalmatian puppies that she had bought from various dog stores. 

When Tibbs learns they are going to be made into dog-skin fur coats, the Colonel quickly sends word back to London. Upon receiving the message, Pongo and Perdita leave town to retrieve their puppies. Winter has arrived, and they must cross the Stour River which is running fast and laden with slabs of broken ice.

Meanwhile, Tibbs overhears Cruella ordering Jasper and Horace to kill the puppies that night out of fear the police will soon find them. In response, Tibbs attempts to rescue them while Jasper and Horace are preoccupied watching television, but they finish their show and come for them before he can get them out of the house.

More information: Reel History

Pongo and Perdita break in and confront Jasper and Horace just as they are about to kill the puppies. While the adult dogs attack them, the Colonel and Tibbs guide the puppies from the house.

After a happy reunion with their own puppies, Pongo and Perdita realize there are dozens of others with them, 99 altogether including their own. Shocked at Cruella's plans, Pongo and Perdita decide to adopt the other 84 puppies, certain that Roger and Anita would never reject them.

The Dalmatians begin making their way back to London through deep snow, as all open water is frozen solid. Other animals help them along the way, while Cruella, Jasper, and Horace chase them. In one town, they cover themselves with soot to disguise themselves as Labradors, then pile inside a moving van bound for London.

One Hundred and One Dalmatians

As it is leaving, melting snow clears off the soot and Cruella sees them. Enraged, she follows the van in her car and rams it, but Jasper and Horace, who try to cut it off from above, end up crashing into her. 

Both vehicles are destroyed and fall into a deep ravine, leaving Cruella and her henchmen stranded and defeated at last. Cruella angrily scolds her henchmen before breaking down in tears as the van drives away. Back in London, Roger and Anita are attempting to celebrate Christmas and his first big hit, a song about Cruella. They miss their canine companions, but they hear barking outside and the house is filled with dogs after their nanny opens the door.

After wiping away the rest of the soot, they are delighted to realize their pets have returned home. After counting 84 extra puppies, they decide to keep all the puppies and use the money from Roger's song to buy a larger house in the country so they can have a Dalmatian plantation.

More information: Rotoscopers

Dodie Smith wrote the book The Hundred and One Dalmatians in 1956. When Walt Disney read it in 1957, it immediately grabbed his attention, and he promptly obtained the rights. Smith had always secretly hoped that Disney would make it into a film.

Disney assigned Bill Peet to write the story, which he did, marking the first time that the story for a Disney animated film was written by a single person. Writing in his autobiography, Peet was tasked by Disney to write a detailed screenplay first before storyboarding.

Because Peet never learned to use a typewriter, he wrote the initial draft by hand on large yellow tablets. He condensed elements of the original book while enlarging others, some of which included eliminating Cruella's husband and cat, as well compressing the two surrogate mother dogs into one character, Perdita. 

One Hundred and One Dalmatians

He also retained a scene in which Pongo and Perdita exchange wedding vows in unison with their owners, by which the censor board warned that it might offend certain religious audiences if the animals repeated the exact words of a solemn religious ceremony.

The scene was reworked to be less religious with Roger and Anita dressed in formal clothes. Two months later, Peet completed the manuscript and had it typed up. Walt said the script was great stuff and commissioned Peet to begin storyboarding. Additionally, Peet was charged with the recording of the voice-over process. Although Disney had not been as involved in the production of the animated films as frequently as in previous years, nevertheless, he was always present at story meetings.

When Peet sent Dodie Smith some drawings of the characters, she wrote back saying that he had actually improved her story and that the designs looked better than the illustrations in the book.

In order to have music involved in the narrative, Peet used an old theater trick by which the protagonist is a down-and-out songwriter. However, unlike the previous animated Disney films at the time, the songs were not composed by a team, but by Mel Leven who composed both lyrics and music.

More information: The Dissolve

Previously, Leven had composed songs for the UPA animation studio in which animators, who transferred to work at Disney, had recommended him to Walt. His first assignment was to compose Cruella de Vil, of which Leven composed three versions. The final version used in the film was composed as a bluesy number prior to a meeting with Walt in forty-five minutes.

The other two songs included in the film are Kanine Krunchies Jingle sung by Lucille Bliss, who voiced Anastasia Tremaine in Disney's 1950 film Cinderella, and Dalmatian Plantation in which only two lines are sung by Roger at its closure. Leven had also written additional songs that were not included in the film.

The first song, Don't Buy a Parrot from a Sailor, a cockney chant, was meant to be sung by Jasper and Horace at the De Vil Mansion.

A second song, Cheerio, Good-Bye, Toodle-oo, Hip Hip! was to be sung by the dalmatian puppies as they make their way into London.

A third song titled March of the One Hundred and One was meant for the dogs to sing after escaping Cruella by van. Different, longer versions of Kanine Krunchies Jingle and Dalmatian Plantation appear on the Disneyland Records read-along album based on the film.

One Hundred and One Dalmatians was first released in theaters on January 25, 1961. The film was re-released theatrically in 1969, 1979, 1985, and 1991. The 1991 reissue was the 20th highest-grossing film of the year for domestic earnings.

Download One Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith

They are my only true love dah-ling. 

I live for furs, I worship furs.

After all is there a woman in this wretched world who doesn't?

Cruella De Vil

EDITH WHARTON, WITNESS OF THE GILDED AGE MORALITY

Edith Wharton

Today, The Grandma is resting at home. The weather is better than yesterday but it is still bad and she has decided to read a little and relax. 

She has received the visit of Jordi Santanyí, one of her closest friends. Jordi and The Grandma love Literature and they have been talking about Edith Wharton, the American novelist, short story writer, playwright, and designer, who was born on a day like today in 1862.

Edith Wharton (January 24, 1862-August 11, 1937) was an American novelist, short story writer, playwright, and designer. Wharton drew upon her insider's knowledge of the upper class New York aristocracy to realistically portray the lives and morals of the Gilded Age. She was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1921. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1996.

Edith Wharton was born Edith Newbold Jones on January 24, 1862 to George Frederic Jones and Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander at their brownstone at 14 West Twenty-third Street in New York City. To her friends and family she was known as Pussy Jones. She had two older brothers, Frederic Rhinelander, who was 16, and Henry Edward, who was 12. She was baptized April 20, 1862, Easter Sunday, at Grace Church.

Wharton wrote and told stories from an early age. When her family moved to Europe and she was just four or five she started what she called making up. She invented stories for her family and walked with an open book, turning the pages as if reading while improvising a story.

More information: BBC

Wharton began writing poetry and fiction as a young girl, and attempted to write her first novel at age eleven. Her mother's criticism quashed her ambition and she turned to poetry. At age 15, her first published work appeared, a translation of a German poem Was die Steine Erzählen, What the Stones Tell by Heinrich Karl Brugsch, for which she was paid $50.

Her family did not want her name to appear in print, since writing was not considered a proper occupation for a society woman of her time. Consequently, the poem was published under the name of a friend's father, E. A. Washburn, a cousin of Ralph Waldo Emerson who supported women's education. In 1877, at the age of 15, she secretly wrote a 30,000 word novella Fast and Loose.

In 1878 her father arranged for a collection of two dozen original poems and five translations, Verses, to be privately published. Wharton published a poem under a pseudonym in the New York World in 1879.

In 1880 she had five poems published anonymously in the Atlantic Monthly, an important literary magazine. Despite these early successes, she was not encouraged by her family or her social circle, and though she continued to write, she did not publish anything more until her poem The Last Giustiniani was published in Scribner's Magazine in October 1889.

Edith Wharton

Between 1880 and 1890 Wharton put her writing aside to perform as debutante and socialite. Wharton keenly observed the social changes happening around her which appeared later in her writing. Wharton officially came out as a debutante to society in 1879.

Wharton was allowed to bare her shoulders and wear her hair up for the first time at a December dance given by a wealthy socialite, Anna Morton. Wharton began a courtship with Henry Leyden Stevens, the son of a wealthy businessman. Henry's father was Paran Stevens, a hotelier and real estate investor from rural New Hampshire. His sister Minnie Stevens Paget married Arthur Paget (British Army officer). Wharton's family did not approve of Stevens.

In the middle of Wharton's debutante season, the Jones family returned to Europe in 1881 for Wharton's father's health. Wharton's father, George Frederic Jones, died in Cannes in 1882 of a stroke. Stevens was with the Wharton family in Europe during this time. Wharton and her mother returned to the United States and Wharton continued her courtship with Stevens, announcing their engagement in August 1882. The month the two were to marry, the engagement abruptly ended.

Wharton's mother, Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander, moved back to Paris in 1883 and lived there until her death in 1901.

Wharton married in 1885 and began to build upon three interests -American houses, writing, and Italy.

On April 29, 1885, at age 23, Wharton married Edward (Teddy) Robbins Wharton, who was 12 years her senior, at the Trinity Chapel Complex. From a well-established Boston family, he was a sportsman and a gentleman of the same social class and shared her love of travel. The Whartons set up house at Pencraig Cottage in Newport. They then bought and moved to Land's End on the other side of Newport in 1893 for $80,000.

More information: WBUR

Wharton decorated Land's End with the help of designer Ogden Codman. The Whartons purchased their New York home, 884 Park Avenue, in 1897. They traveled abroad from February to June between 1886 and 1897 -mostly to Italy, but also to Paris and England.

From the late 1880s until 1902, Teddy Wharton suffered from acute depression, and the couple ceased their extensive travel. At that time his depression manifested as a more serious disorder, after which they lived almost exclusively at their estate The Mount. During those same years, Wharton herself was said to suffer from bouts of depression and health issues with asthma.

In 1908 her husband's mental state was determined to be incurable. In the same year, she began an affair with Morton Fullerton, a journalist for The Times, in whom she found an intellectual partner. She divorced Edward Wharton in 1913 after 28 years of marriage. Around the same time, Edith was beset with harsh criticisms leveled by the naturalist writers.

In addition to novels, Wharton wrote at least 85 short stories. She was also a garden designer, interior designer, and a taste-maker of her time. She wrote several design books, including her first major published work, The Decoration of Houses (1897), co-authored by Ogden Codman. Another of her home and garden books is the generously illustrated Italian Villas and Their Gardens of 1904. 

Edith Wharton

The Age of Innocence (1920) won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for literature, making Wharton the first woman to win the award.

The three fiction judges -literary critic Stuart Pratt Sherman, literature professor Robert Morss Lovett, and novelist Hamlin Garland- voted to give the prize to Sinclair Lewis for his satire Main Street, but Columbia University's advisory board, led by conservative university president Nicholas Murray Butler, overturned their decision and awarded the prize to The Age of Innocence. She was also nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927, 1928, and 1930.

Wharton was friend and confidante to many gifted intellectuals of her time: Henry James, Sinclair Lewis, Jean Cocteau, and André Gide were all her guests at one time or another. Theodore Roosevelt, Bernard Berenson, and Kenneth Clark were valued friends as well. Particularly notable was her meeting with F. Scott Fitzgerald, described by the editors of her letters as one of the better known failed encounters in the American literary annals. She spoke fluent French, Italian, and German, and many of her books were published in both French and English.

On June 1, 1937, Wharton was at the French country home of Ogden Codman, where she was at work on a revised edition of The Decoration of Houses, when she suffered a heart attack and collapsed.

Edith Wharton later died of a stroke on August 11, 1937 at Le Pavillon Colombe, her 18th-century house on Rue de Montmorency in Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt. She died at 5:30 p.m., but her death was not known in Paris. At her bedside was her friend, Mrs. Royall Tyler.

 
Wharton was buried in the American Protestant section of the Cimetière des Gonards in Versailles, with all the honors owed a war hero and a chevalier of the Legion of Honor...a group of some one hundred friends sang a verse of the hymn 'O Paradise'...

More information: The Guardian

Many of Wharton's novels are characterized by subtle use of dramatic irony. Having grown up in upper-class, late-19th-century society, Wharton became one of its most astute critics, in such works as The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence.

American children's stories containing slang were forbidden in Wharton's childhood home. This included such popular authors as Mark Twain, Bret Harte or Uncle Remus. She was allowed to read Louisa May Alcott but Wharton preferred Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Charles Kingsley's Water Babies.

Wharton's mother forbade her from reading many novels and Wharton said she read everything else but novels until the day of my marriage.  Instead Wharton read the classics, philosophy, history, and poetry in her father's library including Daniel Defoe, John Milton, Thomas Carlyle, Alphonse de Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Jean Racine, Thomas Moore, Lord Byron, William Wordsworth, John Ruskin, and Washington Irving.

Biographer Hermione Lee describes Wharton as having read herself out of Old New York and her influences included Herbert Spencer, Charles Darwin, Friedrich Nietzsche, T. H. Huxley, George Romanes, James Frazer, and Thorstein Veblen. These influenced her ethnographic style of novelization. Wharton developed a passion for Walt Whitman.

More information: Freeditorial

I have never known a novel that was good enough

to be good in spite of its being adapted

to the author's political views.

Edith Wharton

THE ROYAL EXCHANGE, CENTER OF COMMERCE IN LONDON

The Royal Exchange, London

Today, The Grandma has visited La Cambra de Comerç in Barcelona, a public law corporation founded in 1886 with headquarters in Barcelona, whose main function is to defend the general interests of companies and provide the necessary actions for to the promotion of trade and industry. Its historical background, however, goes back to the Consulate of the Sea or the Royal Particular Board of Trade, dating back directly to the Middle Ages. It is headquartered in the Llotja de Mar.

The Grandma wants to invest and offer new projects to her city and she has gone to participate in some trade seminars.

Visiting La Cambra de Barcelona is always an exercise of History and today The Grandma has remembered another historic building, The Royal Exchange in London, that opened on a day like today in 1571.

The Royal Exchange in London was founded in the 16th century by the merchant Sir Thomas Gresham on the suggestion of his factor Richard Clough to act as a centre of commerce for the City of London.

The site was provided by the City of London Corporation and the Worshipful Company of Mercers, who still jointly own the freehold. It is trapezoidal in shape and is flanked by Cornhill and Threadneedle Street, which converge at Bank junction in the heart of the City. It lies in the ward of Cornhill.

The building's original design was inspired by a bourse Gresham had seen in Antwerp, the Antwerp bourse, and was Britain's first specialist commercial building.

It has twice been destroyed by fire and subsequently rebuilt. The present building was designed by Sir William Tite in the 1840s. The site was notably occupied by the Lloyd's insurance market for nearly 150 years. Today the Royal Exchange contains a Courtyard Grand Cafe, Threadneedle Cocktail Bar, Sauterelle Restaurant, luxury shops, and offices.

More information: The Royal Exchange

Traditionally, the steps of the Royal Exchange is the place where certain royal proclamations, such as the dissolution of parliament, are read out by either a herald or a crier. Following the death or abdication of a monarch and the confirmation of the next monarch's accession to the throne by the Accession Council, the Royal Exchange Building is one of the locations where a herald proclaims the new monarch's reign to the public.

Richard Clough initially suggested building the exchange in 1562, and oversaw the importing of some of the materials from Antwerp: stone, slate, wainscot and glass, for which he paid thousands of pounds himself.

The Royal Exchange was officially opened on 23 January 1571 by Queen Elizabeth I who awarded the building its royal title and a licence to sell alcohol and valuable goods. Only the exchange of goods took place until the 17th century.

Stockbrokers were not allowed into the Royal Exchange because of their rude manners, hence they had to operate from other establishments in the vicinity, such as Jonathan's Coffee-House. Gresham's original building was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. 

The Royal Exchange, London

A second complex was built on the site, designed by Edward Jarman and opened in 1669, but that also burned down, on 10 January 1838. It had been used by the Lloyd's insurance market, which was forced to move temporarily to South Sea House following the 1838 fire.

The third Royal Exchange building, which still stands today, was designed by Sir William Tite and adheres to the original layout -consisting of a four-sided structure surrounding a central courtyard where merchants and tradesmen could do business. The internal works, designed by Edward I'Anson in 1837, made use of concrete- an early example of this modern construction method. It features pediment sculptures by Richard Westmacott, the younger, and ornamental cast ironwork by Henry Grissell's Regent's Canal Ironworks.

It was opened by Queen Victoria on 28 October 1844 though trading did not commence until 1 January 1845.

In June 1844, just before the reopening of the Royal Exchange, a statue of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, was unveiled outside the building. The bronze used to cast it was sourced from enemy cannons captured during Wellington's continental campaigns.

Paul Julius Reuter established the Reuters news agency at No. 1, Royal Exchange Buildings, opposite and to the east of the Royal Exchange, in 1851. It later moved to Fleet Street.

More information: British History Online

The western end of the building consists of a portico of eight Corinthian columns topped by a pediment containing a tympanum with a sculptured frieze by Richard Westmacott, the younger. The central figure represents Commerce, above an inscription from the Bible: The Earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof. The Latin inscription states that the Exchange was founded in the thirteenth year of Queen Elizabeth, and restored in the eighth of Queen Victoria.

Two statues stand in niches in the central courtyard. Charles II a copy of 1792 by John Spiller after Grinling Gibbons' statue in the centre of the C17 courtyard, and Queen Elizabeth I by M. L. Watson, 1844. The Charles II statue survived the fire of 1838 that destroyed the previous Exchange. The Elizabeth I statue was commissioned as she was the monarch who had conferred the status Royal on the Exchange.

In 1982 the Royal Exchange was in disrepair -particularly the glass roof was in danger of collapse. The newly-formed London International Financial Futures Exchange (LIFFE) was the main tenant, using the courtyard for the trading floor, all done without touching the framework of the original building. Other tenants moved in later and as a result of LIFFE's presence, not only did the City experience growth in trading and greater efficiency in pricing, but also a boost to the area around the Royal Exchange which had hitherto been sleepy at best.

In 2001 the Royal Exchange, interiors and courtyard, was once again extensively remodelled, this time by architects Aukett Fitzroy Robinson. Reconstruction of the courtyard created new boutiques and restaurants to add to the existing retailers on the perimeter. The Royal Exchange is now a retail centre with shops, cafes and restaurants. The restaurants include Royal Exchange Grand Cafe, Threadneedle Cocktail Bar and Sauterelle Restaurant. Shops include Boodles, Hermès, Georg Jensen and Tiffany & Co. In 2003 the Grand Café and Bar was launched and completed the building.

In Royal Exchange Buildings, a lane by the eastern entrance to the Royal Exchange, stand two statues: one of Paul Julius Reuter who founded his news agency there, and one of George Peabody who founded the Peabody Trust and a business which became J.P. Morgan & Co.

In 2013 the Royal Exchange was sold by the Anglo Irish Private Bank to Oxford Properties, a Canadian property company. It had been announced that the site would be sold with a 104-year lease. Oxford Properties Group, a division of the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, bought the retail centre for a reported £86.5 million.

More information: History

Enter into the Royal Exchange of London,

a place more respectable than many courts,

in which deputies from all nations assemble

for the advantage of mankind.

Voltaire