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Posts Tagged ‘ famous biographies ’

Coco Chanel: The Woman Who Changed Fashion

coco chanel 233x300 Coco Chanel: The Woman Who Changed FashionThe brand Chanel has long had  its reputation in the world of fashion, but few people know that it was Coco Chanel, who gave women bathing suits, pants, slacks, costume jewelry, and of course, Chanel No.5.
Her influence on 20th century fashion was so great that she was the only person in the courtier field to be named in Time 100: The Most Important People of the Century.
This story is her story.

An orphan girl

While Coco Chanel  gained world recognition, her early years, however, were anything but glamorous.
Gabrielle Bonheur “Coco” Chanel was born on 19th August 1883 in Saumur, France. Little is known about her childhood, apart that she had five siblings: two sisters and three brothers and that her father worked as a peddler.
When she was 12 years old her mother died of tuberculosis. One week later her father left the family, abandoning her at a provincial orphanage. For six years Chanel was raised by the nuns, who taught her how to sew – a skill that would prove to be very useful in her future life.
As soon as Gabrielle turned 18 she left the orphanage determined to become a famous singer. She moved to a little town of Moulins (south of Paris) and started singing at prestigious clubs and cabarets in  the town.  It was during this time that she began to be called “Coco”, which as Chanel later explained was a “shortened version of coquette, the French word for ‘kept woman’ ”.

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Amelia Earhart: Queen of the Air

Early childhood and the First “Flight”

Amelia Earhart 225x300 Amelia Earhart: Queen of the AirAmelia Mary Earhart was born in Atchison, Kansas on 24th of July, 1897. The daughter of a Rock Island Railroad attorney, while she was young she spent her time in various towns, but her favorite place was always her grandfather’s house in Atchison. Here Amelia and her younger sister Muriel passed their days playing outdoors, climbing trees, and even hunting rats with a rifle. To the distress of Amelia’s grandparents, their mother Amy Earhart did not believe in molding her children into “nice little girls”, instead she raised her daughters as free-spirited and headstrong.
In 1904, Amelia convinced her uncle to help her build a ramp fashioned after a roller coaster that she had seen on a trip to St. Louis. Earhart’s well-documented first flight ended dramatically. She emerged from the broken wooden box that had served as a sled with a bruised lip, torn dress and a “sensation of exhilaration”, exclaiming that “it was just like flying!”

Family struggles and growing up

In 1907 Amelia’s father Edwin Earhart got transferred to Des Moines, Iowa, where Amelia was enrolled in a public school.
While family affairs seemed to go well, it soon became apparent that Edwin had an alcoholism problem, leading him to lose his job. Her father’s failure and humiliation made Amelia develop a strong dislike for alcohol and a great desire for financial security.
In 1915, after many struggles Amy Earhart left her husband, taking her daughters with her to live with friends in Chicago, Illinois. Here in 1916 Amelia graduated from Hyde Park School. The yearbook described her as “A.E.—the girl in brown (her favorite color) who walks alone.”

C. S. Lewis: The Man Who Created Narnia

Early childhood of a little atheist

c.s.lewis 1 235x300 C. S. Lewis: The Man Who Created NarniaClive Staples Lewis, commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as “Jack”, was born in Belfast, Ireland on November 29th, 1898.

Lewis’s early childhood was relatively happy and carefree. Jack and his older brother Warnie (Warren) passed most of their time playing in an overgrown family garden or running around their large, gabled house.

Jack’s idyllic boyhood came to an end when he was 10 years old. It was in this year that his mother died of cancer and right after her death Jack and his brother were sent to boarding school in England.

Lewis hated it there. The strict rules of the boarding school and callous teachers made the boy miss Belfast tremendously. Fortunately for Jack, the school closed in 1910, and he returned to Ireland.

In 1913, Lewis enrolled at Malvern College where he remained for one year. It was here that, at the age of fifteen, he became an atheist, abandoning the Christian faith of his childhood. At school Jack developed a love for Greek poetry and modern languages, mastering French, German, and Italian.

Years at Oxford and a Promise to Keep

In 1916 Lewis was accepted at Oxford University. Only a year later Lewis took a break from his studies to serve in the British Army during the World War I. While in the army, Lewis became close friends with his roommate Paddy Moore, who was killed in battle in 1918. Before his friend’s death, Lewis had promised Moore to look after his family. He kept his promise and after the end of the war, Lewis moved in with Paddy’s mother, Jane Moore, and her daughter, Maureen, treating them as his own family. The three of them eventually moved into “The Kilns,” which they purchased jointly along with Lewis’s older brother, Warren.

After returning to the U.K., Lewis was able to continue his studies at Oxford, which he took up with great enthusiasm.
On May 20, 1925, Lewis was appointed Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Oxford University, where he served for twenty-nine years before taking up a post at Cambridge University.

At Oxford, Lewis met one of his closest friends J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of The Lord of the Rings.

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