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'Goodbye, Mr, Chips!' and 'and Now Good-Bye'

出版	CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014-09-12
主題	Fiction / Classics
ISBN	15023410349781502341037
URL	http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=AsRergEACAAJ&hl=&source=gbs_api

註釋1. 'Goodbye, Mr. Chips!' was first submitted by James Hilton to the British Weekly in 1933, but it came to prominence when it was printed as the leading article of The Atlantic in April 1934. Later, the Little, Brown and Co. first printed a small number of copies in June 1934 and continued reprinting the book in small weekly and fortnightly lots for several months. In Britain, the first edition was released in October 1934 by Hodder & Stoughton after the great success of 'Goodbye, Mr. Chips!' in the United States. They printed a large number of books in their first printing and kept on reprinting to satisfy the demand. The great success of this book made James Hilton one of the best-selling authors.2. 'And Now Good-bye', the second story in this book, was first published in 1931 by Ernest Benn Ltd, London. It is the story of a boy who, passing through all ups and downs of his life, marries a girl from the family that adopts him. Later, when he becomes a respected clergyman and the father of two boys and a girl, he falls in real love of his life with a girl of less than half his age. The train, in which they travel, collides and the coach catches. Howat Freemantle saves five persons from the engulfing flames when he desperately tries to save his girl from the raging inferno. It was only he who knew that one of the two unidentified charred bodies solely belonged to him. Of all stories of James Hilton, this story, 'And Now Goodbye,' is the most balanced one without an exaggeration of a single aspect of human life and emotions, though there is plenty. James Hilton was born on September 9, 1900 in Leigh, Lancashire. His father, John Hilton was a schoolmaster and his mother, Elizabeth had been a schoolmistress before her marriage. James attended the George Monoux School in Walthamstow, London before attending Leys School, Cambridge, where he was a student from 1915 to 1918. In Leys, he edited and contributed to the school magazine. He studied English and History at Christ's College, Cambridge and his first novel, Catherine Herself, was published in 1920 while he was still an undergraduate. He left university in 1921 and became a freelance journalist, wrote articles, book reviews and worked on a number of his novels which had no commercial success until the publication of And Now Goodbye in 1931. In 1933 he wrote Lost Horizon which won the Hawthornden Prize in 1934.In 1933 Hilton was asked to write a 3,000 word short story for the magazine The British Weekly. After a week without inspiration he suddenly had an idea to write the story of the much-loved schoolmaster which he entitled Goodbye, Mr. Chip! It was an immediate success both in Britain and America and by early 1934 Hilton was a best-selling author. There was an insatiable appetite to read his work and all of his earlier novels were reprinted on popular demand. In 1935, Hilton married his English wife, Alice Brown, and left for the film capital Hollywood where, at first, he found the glitter of "Tinseltown" to be congenial. Many of his books became world-wide hit movies, most notably Lost Horizon (1937), Goodbye Mr Chips (1939) and Random Harvest (1942). Hilton became established as a sought-after Hollywood scriptwriter and contributed to the Greer Garson wartime classic Mrs Miniver. He was a popular figure in Hollywood and counted Frank Capra, Ronald Coleman and Greer Garson amongst his friends and won the Best Screenplay Oscar for Mrs. Miniver in 1942. Sadly, his first marriage ended in divorce in 1937 and he married Galina Kopineck, a young starlet. This marriage also proved volatile and Hilton again divorced eight years later. He continued to write best-selling novels during and after the Second World War including Random Harvest, So Well Remembered and Time and Time Again. On December 20, 1954 Hilton died in hospital in Long Beach, California of liver cancer. By this time his first wife, Alice, had been reconciled with him and nursed him till his death.