Clara Reeve

Clara Reeve (23 January 1729 – 3 December 1807) was an English novelist, best known for her Gothic novel The Old English Baron (1777).

Biography

Reeve was born in Ipswich, England, one of the eight children of Reverend William Reeve, M.A., Rector of Freston and of Kreson in Suffolk, and perpetual curate of St Nicholas. Her mother's maiden name was Smithies, daughter of a Smithies, a goldsmith and jeweller to King George I. In a letter to one of her friends Reeve said the following of her father and her early life:

After the death of her father, she lived with her mother and sisters in Colchester. It was there that she first became an author, publishing a translation of a work by Barclay under the title of The Phoenix (1772). She wrote several novels, of which only one is remembered: The Champion of Virtue, later known as The Old English Baron (1777), written in imitation of, or rivalry with, The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, with which it has often been printed. The first edition under the title of The Old English Baron was dedicated to the daughter of Samuel Richardson, who is said to have helped Reeve revise and correct the novel.

Clara

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Clara (Mirbeau)

Clara is the main character in the French Novel The Torture Garden ((French) Le Jardin des supplices, 1899), by Octave Mirbeau.

A free woman

Clara, who has no last name or civil status, is an English woman with red hair and green eyes--“a greyish green of the young fruits of the almond tree.” Single, rich and bisexual, Clara lives in near Canton, and leads an idle existence, entirely devoted to finding perverse pleasures. She is fully emancipated, financially and sexually, and freed from oppressive laws and taboos prevailing in the West and which, according to her critique of anarchist inspiration, prohibit the development of the individual. Clara thus claims to enjoy complete freedom. She particularly enjoys visiting the city prison every week, which is open to tourists on Wednesday. Clara delights in watching the death row inmates, many of whom are innocent or guilty of minor offenses, being brutally tortured and put to death.

This protagonist meets the anonymous narrator, a petty political crook, aboard the Saghalien, where the pseudo-embryologist was sailing to Ceylon, as part of an official mission. In reality, his primary goal is just to distance himself from France. She seduces him, awakening his sexual desire along with the need to unburden himself, and becomes his mistress. She takes him with her to China, where both the narrator and Clara share a lover, Annie.

Clara (TV series)

Clara is a German television series.

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