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A Discovery of Witches

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Historical fiction is a literary genre in which a fictional plot takes place in the setting of particular real historical events . Although the term is commonly used as a synonym for historical fiction literature , it can also be applied to other types of narrative, including theatre , opera , cinema , and television , as well as video games and graphic novels . It often makes many use of symbolism in allegory using figurative and metaphorical elements to picture a story.

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189-527: A Discovery of Witches is a 2011 historical -fantasy novel and the debut novel by American scholar Deborah Harkness . It follows Diana Bishop, a history of science professor at Yale University , as she embraces her magical blood after finding a long-thought-lost manuscript and engages in a forbidden romance with a charming vampire , Matthew Clairmont. A Discovery of Witches was first published in hardcover on February 8, 2011, by Penguin Books , becoming

378-507: A New York Times Best Seller upon its release. It has since been released in paperback and also as an ebook . The novel has been translated into more than 36 languages. The book received mostly positive feedback from literary critics. It was praised for its intelligence and the mixture of history and fantasy, although some critics felt the plot was trite and the pacing was slow. Comparisons were made between other popular fantasy series, namely Twilight and Harry Potter . The novel began as

567-481: A " thought experiment " for Harkness, who had previously only published works of historical non-fiction. She drew upon her academic background as a historian and her studies of alchemy, magic, and the occult . A Discovery of Witches is the first installment in the All Souls trilogy, followed by Shadow of Night (2012) and completed with the third novel in the series The Book of Life (2014). Three seasons of

756-745: A 2.5 square mile area around each USC campus. The Department of Public Safety headquarters is on the University Park campus, and there are substations in the University Village and on the Health Sciences campus. The department operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. All USC Public Safety Officers are required to be police academy graduates so that under California Penal Code statute they can be granted peace officer power of arrest authority while on duty, enforce state laws and local city municipal codes, and investigate crimes. DPS

945-508: A century prior and its author asserted that her work could present a "fuller and therefore 'truer ' " version of history. One of the early examples of the historical novel in Europe is La Princesse de Clèves , a French novel published anonymously in March 1678. It is regarded by many as the beginning of the modern tradition of the psychological novel and as a great work. Its author generally

1134-453: A close resemblance to our own world at various points in history. Historiographic metafiction combines historical fiction with metafiction . The term is closely associated with postmodern literature including writers such as Salman Rushdie and Thomas Pynchon . Several novels by Nobel Prize laureate José Saramago are set in historical times including Baltasar and Blimunda , The Gospel According to Jesus Christ and The History of

1323-735: A contemporary Western literary genre has its foundations in the early-19th-century works of Sir Walter Scott and his contemporaries in other national literatures such as the Frenchman Honoré de Balzac , the American James Fenimore Cooper , and later the Russian Leo Tolstoy . However, the melding of historical and fictional elements in individual works of literature has a long tradition in many cultures; both western traditions (as early as Ancient Greek and Latin literature ) as well as Eastern, in

1512-478: A contemporary narrative, but rather as a distinct social and cultural setting. Scott's Scottish novels such as Waverley (1814) and Rob Roy (1817) focused upon a middling character who sits at the intersection of various social groups in order to explore the development of society through conflict. Ivanhoe (1820) gained credit for renewing interest in the Middle Ages . Many well-known writers from

1701-493: A distinct subgenre recognized by both publishers and libraries. Romantic themes have also been portrayed, such as Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak and Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell . One of the first popular historical romances appeared in 1921, when Georgette Heyer published The Black Moth , which is set in 1751. It was not until 1935 that she wrote the first of her signature Regency novels, set around

1890-575: A faculty of 10. Its first graduating class in 1884 was a class of three: two males and a female valedictorian . USC students and athletes are known as Trojans, epitomized by the Trojan Shrine , nicknamed "Tommy Trojan", near the center of campus. Until 1912, USC students (especially athletes) were known as Fighting Methodists or Wesleyans, though neither name was approved by the university. Tommy’s sword has been stolen so frequently that instead of replacing it with an expensive brass one each time, he

2079-466: A great deal of the surrounding city, and many of the older nonuniversity structures within the new boundaries were leveled. Most of the Pereira buildings were constructed in the 1970s. Pereira maintained a predominantly red-brick architecture for the new buildings, but infused them with his trademark technomodernism stylings. More recently under President C. L. Max Nikias , the architectural orientation of

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2268-644: A historical event or biography , to the degree that the available historical research will allow. Other historical dramas are fictionalized tales that are based on an actual person and their deeds, such as Braveheart , which is loosely based on the 13th-century knight William Wallace 's fight for Scotland 's independence. For films pertaining to the history of East Asia , Central Asia , and South Asia , there are historical drama films set in Asia , also known as Jidaigeki in Japan. Wuxia films like The Hidden Power of

2457-867: A historical work in the manner of Sir Walter Scott. This was subsequently incorporated into La Comédie Humaine . The bulk of La Comédie Humaine , however, takes place during the Bourbon Restoration and the July Monarchy , though there are several novels which take place during the French Revolution and others which take place of in the Middle Ages or the Renaissance, including About Catherine de Medici and The Elixir of Long Life . Victor Hugo 's The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831) furnishes another 19th-century example of

2646-532: A multitude of historical figures, particularly from the Medieval and Renaissance periods. Furthermore, the inclusion of Elias Ashmole and his collection of rare alchemical manuscripts give the novel a solid historical foundation. Ashmole 782 is a real alchemical text that is missing from the Ashmole collection. A Discovery of Witches first achieved attention from publishers at the 2009 Frankfurt Book Fair . It

2835-468: A novel. Works of historical fiction are sometimes criticized for lack of authenticity because of readerly criticism or genre expectations for accurate period details. This tension between historical authenticity and fiction frequently becomes a point of comment for readers and popular critics, while scholarly criticism frequently goes beyond this commentary, investigating the genre for its other thematic and critical interests. Historical fiction as

3024-499: A number of years prior to 1972, it was called The School of Architecture and Fine Art. The School of Fine Art (known as SOFA for a number of years after Architecture and Fine Art separated) was eventually named the Roski School of Fine Arts in 2006 during a ceremony to open the then-new Masters of Fine Art building, which occupies the previous and completely refurbished Lucky Blue Jean factory. This small department grew rapidly with

3213-451: A president, a provost , several vice-presidents of various departments, a treasurer, a chief information officer , and an athletic director . The current president is Carol Folt who on July 1, 2019, succeeded Board of Trustee member Wanda Austin who had been appointed the interim president by the board when the former president C. L. Max Nikias resigned in 2018. The USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences,

3402-542: A select number of undergraduates who wish to pursue dance as their major. This four-year professional degree is housed in the state-of-the-art Glorya Kaufman International Dance Center . In 2015, USC established the Bovard College, which offers graduate-level programs in Human Resource Management, Project Management, and Criminal Justice. The college is named after Emma Bovard, who was one of

3591-468: A series of events that slowly brings her witch heritage and family back into her life. Matthew Clairmont is a vampire who has spent at least 150 years looking for that book. When word travels that the book is in Oxford, he races over expecting to see the book but instead, he encounters Diana Bishop. Matthew's vampiric protective instincts set in, and he makes it his responsibility to ensure Diana's safety. As

3780-476: A starred review, Library Journal judged "A Discovery of Witches" to be an "enchanting novel... an essential purchase" and that Harkness "is an author to watch". On the novel, the review elaborated: "readers will find themselves invested in Diana’s success at unlocking the secrets of the manuscript. Although not a nail-biting cliffhanger, the finale skillfully provides a sense of completion while leaving doors open for

3969-402: A strong literary debut. Rating the novel a B+, Entertainment Weekly ' s Karen Valby was positive in her review, labeling it an "extraordinarily fun debut" and remarking that "Harkness writes with thrilling gusto about the magical world. Whether she's describing a yoga class for witches, daemons, and vampires or Diana's benignly haunted house, it's a treat to suspend disbelief." Though she thought

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4158-547: A television adaptation of the trilogy were acquired by Sky One and were broadcast in 2018, 2021, and 2022. In June 2019, Harkness released a novella, "Time's Convert". This followed the early lives of Matthew de Clermont and his soon-to-be son, Marcus MacNeil, during the American Revolution. Diana Bishop is a Yale history of science professor who is conducting research at the University of Oxford . Diana

4347-481: A total enrollment of roughly 47,500 students, of which 20,000 are at the undergraduate and 27,500 at the graduate and professional levels. Approximately 53% of students are female and 47% are male. For the entering first-year class in 2020, 43% of incoming students are drawn from California, 42% from the rest of the United States, and 15% from abroad. USC's student body encompasses 12,300 international students,

4536-444: A veiled attack on Austria, which controlled the region at the time the novel was written. The critical and popular success of The Betrothed gave rise to a crowd of imitations and, in the age of unification , almost every Italian writer tried his hand at the genre; novels now almost forgotten, like Marco Visconti by Tommaso Grossi (Manzoni's best friend) or Ettore Fieramosca by Massimo D'Azeglio (Manzoni's son-in-law), were

4725-478: Is Christopher Meredith (b. 1954), whose Griffri (1991) is set in the 12th century and has the poet of a minor Welsh prince as narrator. Nobel Prize laureate William Golding wrote a number of historical novels. The Inheritors (1955) is set in prehistoric times, and shows "new people" (generally identified with Homo sapiens sapiens ) triumphing over a gentler race (generally identified with Neanderthals ) by deceit and violence. The Spire (1964) follows

4914-475: Is Peter I (1929–34) by Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy , and I, Claudius (1934) and King Jesus (1946) by Robert Graves . Other recent biographical novel series, include Conqueror and Emperor by Conn Iggulden and Cicero Trilogy by Robert Harris. The gothic novel was popular in the late eighteenth century. Set in the historical past it has an interest in the mysterious, terrifying and haunting. Horace Walpole 's 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto

5103-513: Is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". According to the National Science Foundation , USC spent $ 891 million on research and development in 2018, ranking it 23rd in the nation. USC employs approximately 4,706 full-time faculty, 1,816 part-time faculty, 16,614 staff members, and 4,817 student workers. 350 postdoctoral fellows are supported along with over 800 medical residents. Among

5292-592: Is a full-service community hospital offering advanced cardiovascular services including cardiac catheterization, electrophysiology and open-heart surgery. Los Angeles County has designated it as both a heart attack receiving center and a comprehensive stroke center, as well as an Emergency Department Approved for Pediatrics. The hospital also offers a variety of surgical services in orthopaedics, neurosurgery, obstetrics, gynecology, and cancer care, plus physical rehabilitation and many other medical specialties. USC physicians serve more than one million patients each year. USC

5481-469: Is a genre of largely Italian-made historical or biblical epics (costume dramas) that dominated the Italian film industry from 1958 to 1965. Most pepla featured a superhumanly strong man as the protagonist, such as Hercules , Samson , Goliath , Ursus or Italy's own popular folk hero Maciste . These supermen often rescued captive princesses from tyrannical despots and fought mythological creatures. Not all

5670-544: Is a very silly novel. Characters and relationships are stereotyped. The historical background is a total pudding. The prose is terrible. And yet, the ideas have just enough suction, somehow, to present an undemanding reader with some nice frissons." Elizabeth Hand , writing for The Washington Post , criticized the subject matter and wrote that "this novel's pacing is so torpid that readers may feel that aged, too." Comparisons have been made between "A Discovery of Witches" and other popular fantasy series — namely Twilight , in

5859-518: Is a witch. However, she has rejected this aspect of her life since the death of her parents when she was seven. She has not learned to practice witchcraft and has minimized her interaction with other witches. She discovers a lost manuscript at the Bodleian Library , which not only causes a magical reaction in herself but attracts the attention of others who have long been searching for the manuscript. She finds that for her own safety and for

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6048-580: Is also home to the USC School of Pharmacy and several research buildings such as USC/Norris Cancer Research Tower, Institute for Genetic Medicine, Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute , Harlyne J. Norris Cancer Research Tower and Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research. The Keck Hospital of USC is ranked No. 7 out of 420 hospitals in the State of California and ranks in

6237-466: Is among the top 35 largest university library systems in the United States. The Leavey Library is the undergraduate library and is open 24 hours a day. The newly open basement has many discussion tables for students to share thoughts and have group discussions. The Edward L. Doheny, Jr. Memorial Library is the main research library on campus. USC was ranked 22nd in U.S. News & World Report ' s 2020 annual ranking of national universities. In

6426-590: Is an epic retelling of the story of an Italian nobleman who lives through the Napoleonic period in Italian history. It includes a description of the Battle of Waterloo by the principal character. Stendhal fought with Napoleon and participated in the French invasion of Russia . The Betrothed (1827) by Alessandro Manzoni has been called the most famous and widely read novel of the Italian language. The Betrothed

6615-605: Is classified as "comprehensive" and offers 134 master's, doctoral, and professional degrees through twenty professional schools. USC is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges . USC's academic departments fall either under the general liberal arts and sciences of the Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences for undergraduates, the Graduate School for graduates, or

6804-573: Is composed of one liberal arts school, the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences , and 22 undergraduate , graduate , and professional schools, enrolling roughly 21,000 undergraduate and 28,500 post-graduate students from all fifty U.S. states and more than 115 countries. It is a member of the Association of American Universities , which it joined in 1969. USC sponsors a variety of intercollegiate sports and competes in

6993-518: Is considered to be an influential work. Historical mysteries or "historical whodunits " are set by their authors in the distant past, with a plot that which involves the solving of a mystery or crime (usually murder). Though works combining these genres have existed since at least the early 1900s, many credit Ellis Peters 's Cadfael Chronicles (1977–1994) with popularizing them. These are set between 1137 and 1145 A.D. The increasing popularity of this type of fiction in subsequent decades has created

7182-524: Is held to be Madame de La Fayette . The action takes place between October 1558 and November 1559 at the royal court of Henry II of France. The novel recreates that era with remarkable precision. Nearly every character – except the heroine – is a historical figure. Events and intrigues unfold with great faithfulness to documentary records. In the United Kingdom, the historical novel "appears to have developed" from La Princesse de Clèves , "and then via

7371-451: Is now provided with a wooden one. During a fateful track and field meet with Stanford University , the USC team was beaten early and seemingly conclusively. After only the first few events, it seemed implausible USC would ever win, but the team fought back, winning many of the later events, to lose only by a slight margin. After this contest, Los Angeles Times sportswriter Owen Bird reported

7560-464: Is one of the earliest examples of the historical novel in English and went through at least 84 editions, including translation into French and German. The first true historical novel in English was in fact Maria Edgeworth 's Castle Rackrent (1800). In the 20th century György Lukács argued that Scott was the first fiction writer who saw history not just as a convenient frame in which to stage

7749-445: Is one of the most famous 19th-century American historical novels. Set in 17th-century Puritan Boston, Massachusetts during the years 1642 to 1649, it tells the story of Hester Prynne , who conceives a daughter through an affair and struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity. In French literature, the most prominent inheritor of Scott's style of the historical novel was Balzac . In 1829 Balzac published Les Chouans ,

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7938-597: Is operated and managed by the university. Most buildings are in the Romanesque Revival style, although some dormitories, engineering buildings, and physical sciences labs are of various Modernist styles (especially two large Brutalist dormitories at the campus's northern edge) that sharply contrast with the predominantly red-brick campus. Widney Alumni House, built in 1880, is the oldest university building in Southern California. In recent years

8127-604: Is overseen by an independent advisory board of 21 faculty, staff, student and community members appointed by the USC President. The board reviews DPS performance, stop, and misconduct data, and conducts periodic assessments of DPS policies, practices, and operational performance. The department has a formal working relationship with the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), which includes USC paying for newly hired Public Safety Officers to attend

8316-458: Is served by several rapid transit stations. The Metro E Line light rail service between Downtown Los Angeles and Santa Monica wraps around the south and eastern edges of the University Park campus. The E Line has three stations in the vicinity of the USC main campus: Jefferson/USC Station , Expo Park/USC Station , and Vermont/Expo Station . The Metro J Line bus service serves both the University Park campus at 37th Street/USC station and

8505-524: Is set amid the Gordon Riots , and A Tale of Two Cities in the French Revolution . In some works, the accuracy of the historical elements has been questioned, as in Alexandre Dumas ' 1845 novel Queen Margot . Postmodern novelists such as John Barth and Thomas Pynchon operate with even more freedom, mixing historical characters and settings with invented history and fantasy, as in

8694-537: Is set in 16th century Småland and his widely read novel series The Emigrants tells the story of Småland emigrants to the United States in the 19th century. Per Anders Fogelström wrote a hugely popular series of five historical novels set in his native Stockholm beginning with City of My Dreams (1960). Other writers of historical fiction in Swedish literature include Sara Lidman , Birgitta Trotzig , Per Olov Enquist and Artur Lundkvist . The historical novel

8883-510: Is set in the past and pays attention to the manners, social conditions and other details of the depicted period. Authors also frequently choose to explore notable historical figures in these settings, allowing readers to better understand how these individuals might have responded to their environments. The historical romance usually seeks to romanticize eras of the past. Some subgenres such as alternate history and historical fantasy insert intentionally ahistorical or speculative elements into

9072-779: Is staffed by USC faculty from the Keck School of Medicine , and is often referred to as USC's third campus. USC also operates an Orange County center in Irvine for business, pharmacy, social work, and education, and the Information Sciences Institute , with centers in Arlington, Virginia , and Marina del Rey . For its science students, USC operates the Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies on Catalina Island just 20 miles (32 km) off

9261-585: Is the German author Thomas Mann 's Buddenbrooks (1901). This chronicles the decline of a wealthy north German merchant family over the course of four generations, incidentally portraying the manner of life and mores of the Hanseatic bourgeoisie in the years from 1835 to 1877. Mann drew deeply from the history of his own family, the Mann family of Lübeck , and their milieu. This was Mann's first novel, and with

9450-612: Is the author of historical novels which were translated into 11 languages. Anton Donchev (1930–) is an old living author, whose first independent novel, Samuel's Testimony , was published in 1961. His second book, Time of Parting , which dealt with the Islamization of the population in the Rhodopes during the XVII century was written in 1964. The novel was adapted in the serial movie " Time of Violence ", divided into two parts with

9639-483: Is the official representative government of the undergraduate students at USC. It consists of a popularly elected president and vice president who lead an appointed executive cabinet, a popularly elected legislative branch, and judicial oversight. The executive cabinet oversees funding, communications, programming, and advocacy work. All USG activities are funded by the student activity fee. In addition to USG, residents within university housing are represented and governed by

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9828-676: The Leatherstocking Tales pentalogy. The Last of the Mohicans is set in 1757, during the French and Indian War (the Seven Years' War ), when France and Great Britain battled for control of North America. Cooper's chief rival, John Neal , wrote Rachel Dyer (1828), the first bound novel about the 17th-century Salem witch trials . Rachel Dyer also influenced future American fiction set in this period, like The Scarlet Letter (1850) by Nathaniel Hawthorne which

10017-653: The Niche Best Colleges rankings, USC ranked 19th overall for 2020 based on academics and quality of student life. USC is ranked 32nd among national universities in the U.S. and 55th in the world by the Academic Ranking of World Universities , and 13th (tied with seven other universities) among national universities by The Center for Measuring University Performance. In 2015, USA Today ranked USC 22nd overall for American universities based on data from College Factual. Among top 25 universities, USC

10206-536: The Twilight series. Some elements of this novel sprang directly from Harkness' own life: she has spent many hours engaged in research in the Bodleian Library , and in the course of her own research, Harkness discovered an ancient – and long-lost – book of spells, the Book of Soyga . Harkness drew primarily on her academic work as a historian of science. There are vast references to real alchemical processes as well as

10395-427: The 1930s and 1940s . The following American authors have also written historical novels in the 20th century: Gore Vidal , John Barth , Norman Mailer , E. L. Doctorow and William Kennedy . Thomas Pynchon 's historical novel Mason & Dixon (1997) tells the story of the two English surveyors, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, who were charged with marking the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland in

10584-844: The American Girl novels and the Magic Tree House series . A prominent award within children's historical fiction is the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction . Historical narratives have also found their way in comics and graphic novels. There are Prehistorical elements in jungle comics like Akim and Rahan . Ancient Greece inspired graphic novels are 300 created by Frank Miller , centered around Battle of Thermopylae , and Age of Bronze series by Eric Shanower , that retells Trojan War . Historical subjects can also be found in manhua comics like Three Kingdoms and Sun Zi's Tactics by Lee Chi Ching , Weapons of

10773-621: The Annenberg Center for Communication and a later additional gift of $ 100 million for the USC Annenberg School for Communication ; $ 112.5 million from Alfred Mann to establish the Alfred E. Mann Institute for Biomedical Engineering ; $ 110 million from the W. M. Keck Foundation for USC's School of Medicine ; $ 150 million from the W. M. Keck Foundation for USC's School of Medicine ; $ 175 million from George Lucas to

10962-578: The English Regency period (1811–1820), when the Prince Regent ruled England in place of his ill father, George III . Heyer's Regency novels were inspired by Jane Austen 's novels of the late 18th and early 19th century. Because Heyer's writing was set in the midst of events that had occurred over 100 years previously, she included authentic period detail in order for her readers to understand. Where Heyer referred to historical events, it

11151-555: The Glorya Kaufman School of Dance , the university's first new school in forty years, which was a gift from philanthropist Glorya Kaufman . The USC Kaufman School offers individual classes in technique, performance, choreography, production, theory and history open to all students at USC. In the fall of 2015, the USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance began to offer a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree to

11340-618: The Gothic architecture of France , leading to the establishment of the Monuments historiques , the French governmental authority for historic preservation . Rita Monaldi and Francesco Sorti 's historical mystery saga Imprimateur Secretum Veritas Mysterium has increased interest in European history and features famous castrato opera singer Atto Melani as a detective and spy. Although

11529-1069: The Gothic novel ". Another early example is The Unfortunate Traveller by Thomas Nashe , published in 1594 and set during the reign of King Henry VIII . Historical fiction rose to prominence in Europe during the early 19th century as part of the Romantic reaction to the Enlightenment , especially through the influence of the Scottish writer Sir Walter Scott , whose works were immensely popular throughout Europe. Among his early European followers we can find Willibald Alexis , Theodor Fontane , Bernhard Severin Ingemann , Miklós Jósika , Mór Jókai , Jakob van Lennep , Demetrius Bikelos , Enrique Gil y Carrasco , Carl Jonas Love Almqvist , Victor Rydberg , Andreas Munch , Alessandro Manzoni , Alfred de Vigny , Honoré de Balzac or Prosper Mérimée . Jane Porter 's 1803 novel Thaddeus of Warsaw

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11718-589: The Integrated Media Systems Center and the Center for Biomimetic Microelectronic Systems . The Department of Homeland Security selected USC as its first Homeland Security Center of Excellence. Since 1991, USC has been the headquarters of the NSF and USGS funded Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC). The University of Southern California is a founding and charter member of CENIC ,

11907-713: The Interactive Media & Games Division of the School of Cinematic Arts and the CS Games program in the Department of Computer Science at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. The Academic Ranking of World Universities in 2015 ranked USC's combined departments of engineering and computer sciences as 10th in the world, social sciences 31st, and economics and business departments 29th. USC has

12096-583: The Los Angeles County+USC Medical Center , which is one of the nation's largest teaching hospitals, the campus includes three patient care facilities: USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center , Keck Hospital of USC , and the USC Eye Institute. USC faculty staffs these and many other hospitals in Southern California, including the internationally acclaimed Children's Hospital Los Angeles . The health sciences campus

12285-400: The Marshall School of Business tied for 17th with the USC Leventhal School of Accounting 7th and the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies 9th; the Keck School of Medicine of USC was ranked tied for 30th in research and tied for 53rd in primary care, the Viterbi School of Engineering 9th, the Rossier School of Education 12th, the Roski School of Fine Arts graduate program 69th,

12474-727: The Napoleonic Wars . There are also adventure novels with pirate characters like Robert Louis Stevenson 's Treasure Island (1883), Emilio Salgari 's Sandokan (1895–1913) and Captain Blood (1922) by Rafael Sabatini . Recent examples of historical novels about pirates are The Adventures of Hector Lynch by Tim Severin , The White Devil (Белият Дявол) by Hristo Kalchev and The Pirate Devlin novels by Mark Keating. A number of work take place in variants of known history, in which events had occurred differently. This can involve time travel . There are also works of historical fantasy , which add fantastical elements to known (or alternative) history or which take place in second worlds with

12663-407: The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the Big Ten Conference . Members of USC's sports teams, the Trojans , have won 107 NCAA team championships and 412 NCAA individual championships. As of 2021, Trojan athletes have won 326 medals at the Olympic Games ( 153 golds, 96 silvers, and 77 bronzes ), more than any other American university. USC has had 571 football players drafted to

12852-467: The National Football League , the second-highest number of draftees in the country. The University of Southern California was founded following the efforts of Judge Robert Maclay Widney , who helped secure donations from several key figures in early Los Angeles history: a Protestant nurseryman, Ozro Childs ; an Irish Catholic former governor, John Gately Downey ; and a German Jewish banker, Isaias Wolf Hellman . The three donated 308 acres to establish

13041-443: The Partitions of Poland . Henryk Sienkiewicz wrote several immensely popular novels set in conflicts between the Poles and predatory Teutonic Knights , rebelling Cossacks and invading Swedes . He won the 1905 Nobel Prize in literature . He also wrote the popular novel Quo Vadis , which was about Nero 's Rome and the early Christians and has been adapted several times for film, in 1913 , 1924 , 1951 , 2001 to only name

13230-480: The Sol Price School of Public Policy 3rd, the USC School of Social Work 25th, and the USC School of Pharmacy tied for 9th. USC's graduate programs in occupational therapy and physical therapy are ranked the nation's 1st and 4th best programs, respectively, for 2021 by U.S. News & World Report . The Philosophical Gourmet Report in 2015 ranked USC's graduate philosophy program as 8th nationally. The Hollywood Reporter ranked

13419-421: The USC School of Cinema-Television , now renamed USC School of Cinematic Arts , $ 200 million from Dana and David Dornsife for USC's College of Letters, Arts and Sciences to support undergraduate and PhD programs, $ 110 million from John and Julie Mork for undergraduate scholarships, and $ 200 million from Larry Ellison to launch the Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine. In 1999, USC purchased

13608-659: The University Park campus, USC's Health Sciences campus is a major center for basic and clinical biomedical research in the fields of cancer , gene therapy , the neurosciences , and transplantation biology , among others. The 79-acre (32 ha) campus is home to the region's first and oldest medical and pharmacy schools, as well as acclaimed programs in nurse anesthesiology, occupational therapy , physical therapy , physician assistant, and pharmacy which are respectively ranked No. 11, No. 5, No. 6, No. 20, No. 12 by U.S. News & World Report in 2024. In addition to

13797-546: The historical romance genre and its subgenre Regency romance , which was inspired by Jane Austen . To ensure accuracy, Heyer collected reference works and kept detailed notes on all aspects of Regency life. While some critics thought the novels were too detailed, others considered the level of detail to be Heyer's greatest asset; Heyer even recreated William the Conqueror 's crossing into England for her novel The Conqueror . Naomi Mitchison's finest novel, The Corn King and

13986-514: The human condition , or to escape the depredations of the censor . In some historical novels, major historic events take place mostly off-stage, while the fictional characters inhabit the world where those events occur. Robert Louis Stevenson 's Kidnapped recounts mostly private adventures set against the backdrop of the Jacobite troubles in Scotland . Charles Dickens 's Barnaby Rudge

14175-444: The interquartile (middle 50%) range of SAT scores was 670-740 for evidence-based reading and writing, 680-790 for math, and 1370-1520 for the composite. The middle 50% ACT score range was 28-34 for math, 32-35 for English, and 31-34 for the composite. USC was ranked the 10th most applied to university in the nation for fall 2014 by U.S. News & World Report . Admission is need-blind for domestic applicants. The university

14364-428: The magnum opus by the 2018 Nobel Prize laureate Olga Tokarczuk . A 20th-century variant of the historical novel is documentary fiction, which incorporates "not only historical characters and events, but also reports of everyday events" found in contemporary newspapers. Examples of this variant form of historical novel include U.S.A. (1938), and Ragtime (1975) by E.L. Doctorow . Memoirs of Hadrian by

14553-493: The six major Hadith collections . Although the project currently parked, the referencing remains widely used throughout the Internet. USC is ranked by U.S. News & World Report as "Most Selective," and Princeton Review rates its admissions selectivity of 98 out of 99. Over 70,000 students applied for admission to the undergraduate class entering in 2021, with 12% being admitted. Among enrolled freshman for Fall 2019,

14742-948: The "Highly Cited" in the Institute for Scientific Information database. George Olah won the 1994 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and was the founding director of the Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute . Leonard Adleman won the Turing Award in 2003. Arieh Warshel won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry . The university also supports the Pacific Council on International Policy through joint programming, leadership collaboration, and facilitated connections among students, faculty, and Pacific Council members. The university has two National Science Foundation –funded Engineering Research Centers:

14931-403: The 18th century. More recently there have been works such as Neal Stephenson 's Baroque Cycle . In Italy, the tradition of historical fiction has flourished in the modern age, the nineteenth century in particular having caught writers’ interests. Southern Italian novelists like Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa ( The Leopard ), Francesco Iovine ( Lady Ava ), Carlo Alianello ( The Heritage of

15120-612: The Belgian-born French writer Marguerite Yourcenar is about the life and death of Roman Emperor Hadrian . First published in France in French in 1951 as Mémoires d'Hadrien , the book was an immediate success, meeting with enormous critical acclaim. Margaret George has written fictional biographies about historical persons in The Memoirs of Cleopatra (1997) and Mary, called Magdalene (2002). An earlier example

15309-1387: The Chinese Historical Society of Southern California. The USC Digital Library provides a wealth of primary and original source material in a variety of formats. In October 2010, the collections at ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives , the largest repository for documents from the LGBT community in the world, became a part of the USC Libraries system. The collections at ONE include over two million archival items documenting LGBT history including periodicals; books; film, video and audio recordings; photographs; artworks; ephemera, such clothing, costumes, and buttons; organizational records; and personal paper. USC's 22 libraries and other archives hold nearly 4 million printed volumes, 6 million items in microform , and 3 million photographs and subscribe to more than 30,000 current serial titles, nearly 44,000 feet (13,000 m) of manuscripts and archives, and subscribe to over 120 electronic databases and more than 14,000 journals in print and electronic formats. Annually, reference transactions number close to 50,000 and approximately 1,100 instructional presentations are made to 16,000 participants. The University of Southern California Library system

15498-542: The Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California, the nonprofit organization, which provides extremely high-performance Internet-based networking to California's K-20 research and education community. USC researcher Jonathan Postel was an editor of communications-protocol for the fledgling internet, also known as ARPANET , for which USC was one of the earliest nodes. In July 2016, USC became home to

15687-708: The Dragon Sabre (1984) and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), based on novels by Jin Yong and Wang Dulu , have also been produced. Zhang Yimou has directed several acclaimed wuxia films like Hero (2002), House of Flying Daggers (2004) and Curse of the Golden Flower (2006). Although largely fictional some wuxia films are considered historical drama. Samurai films like Zatoichi and Lone Wolf and Cub series also fall under historical drama umbrella. Peplum films also known as sword-and-sandal,

15876-693: The Eastern Zhou Kingdoms ), Chu Renhuo 's Sui Tang yanyi ( Romance of the Sui and Tang dynasties ), Xiong Damu 's Liang Song Nanbei Zhizhuan ( Records of the Two Songs, South and North ) and Quan han zhi zhuan , Yang Erzeng 's Dong Xi Jin yan yi ( Romance of the Eastern and Western Jin dynasties ), and Qian Cai's The General Yue Fei , etc. Classical Greek novelists were also "very fond of writing novels about people and places of

16065-601: The Gods by Wong Yuk Long as well as The Ravages of Time by Chan Mou . There are also straight Samurai manga series like Path of the Assassin , Vagabond , Rurouni Kenshin and Azumi . Several comics and graphic novels have been produced into anime series or a movie adaptations like Azumi and 300 . Historical drama film stories are based upon historical events and famous people. Some historical dramas are docudramas , which attempt an accurate portrayal of

16254-1117: The Graduate School, and the twenty professional schools are each led by an academic dean . USC occasionally awards emeritus titles to former administrators. There are six administrators emeriti. The University of Southern California's twenty professional schools include the USC Leventhal School of Accounting , USC School of Architecture , USC Roski School of Art and Design, USC Iovine and Young Academy , USC Marshall School of Business , USC School of Cinematic Arts , USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism , USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance , Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry of USC , USC School of Dramatic Arts , USC Rossier School of Education , USC Viterbi School of Engineering , USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology , USC Gould School of Law , Keck School of Medicine of USC , USC Thornton School of Music , USC School of Pharmacy , USC Bovard College, USC Sol Price School of Public Policy , and USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work . The Undergraduate Student Government (USG)

16443-568: The Health Sciences campus at LA General Medical Center station . In addition, both campuses are served by several Metro and municipal bus routes. Chaffey College was founded in 1883 in the city of Ontario, California , as an agricultural college branch campus of USC under the name of Chaffey College of Agriculture of the University of Southern California. USC ran the Chaffey College of Agriculture until financial troubles closed

16632-651: The Lion d'Or (concerned with the War's consequences); Pat Barker 's Regeneration Trilogy and Sebastian Barry 's A Long Long Way . American Nobel laureate William Faulkner 's novel Absalom, Absalom! (1936) is set before, during and after the American Civil War . Kenneth Roberts wrote several books set around the events of the American Revolution, of which Northwest Passage (1937), Oliver Wiswell (1940) and Lydia Bailey (1947) all became best-sellers in

16821-585: The No. 3 school to study undergraduate business in the nation, as of 2015 . In 2015, Forbes ranked the USC Marshall School of Business 3rd in the nation in producing graduates who are most satisfied with their jobs. The Princeton Review ranked USC video game design program as 1st out of 150 schools in North America. The university's video game design programs are interdisciplinary, involving

17010-695: The Patriarch (1975) by Gabriel García Marquez . Other writers of historical fiction include Abel Posse , Antonio Benitez Rojo , João Ubaldo Ribeiro , Jorge Amado , Homero Aridjis . In the first decades of the 21st century, an increased interest for historical fiction has been noted. One of the most successful writers of historical novels is Hilary Mantel . Other writers of historical fiction include Philippa Gregory , Bernard Cornwell , Sarah Waters , Ken Follett , George Saunders , Shirley Hazzard and Julie Orringer . The historical novel The Books of Jacob set in 18th century Poland has been praised as

17199-740: The Po , a patchwork saga of a family of millers from the time of Napoleon to the First World War , one of the most epic novels of the last century. In 1980, Umberto Eco achieved international success with The Name of the Rose , a novel set in an Italian abbey in 1327 readable as a historical mystery, as an allegory of Italy during the Years of Lead , and as an erudite joke. Eco's work, like Manzoni's preceding it, relaunched Italian interest in historical fiction. Many novelists who till then had preferred

17388-731: The Prioress ) and more recently Andrea Camilleri ( The Preston Brewer ) retold the events of the Italian Unification , at times overturning its traditionally heroic and progressive image. The conservative Riccardo Bacchelli in The Devil at the Long Point and the communist Vasco Pratolini in Metello described, from ideologically opposite points of view, the birth of Italian Socialism . Bacchelli also wrote The Mill on

17577-763: The Residential Housing Association (RHA), which is divided by residence hall. The Graduate Student Government (GSG) consists of senators elected by the students of each school proportional to its enrollment and its activities are funded by a graduate and professional student activity fee. The USC Department of Public Safety (DPS) is one of the largest campus law enforcement agencies in the United States, currently employing over 300 full-time personnel, including approximately 96 armed Public Safety Officers, 120 unarmed Community Service Officers, 60 CCTV monitors and dispatchers, and 30 part-time student workers. DPS's patrol and response jurisdiction includes

17766-522: The School for Communication in 1994, features a core curriculum that requires students to devote themselves equally to print, broadcast and online media for the first year of study. The journalism school consistently ranks among the nation's top undergraduate journalism schools. USC's Annenberg School's endowment rose from $ 7.5 million to $ 218 million between 1996 and 2007. In 2015, the new building named for Wallis Annenberg started serving all faculty and students. The Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry at

17955-408: The School of Cinematic Arts the No. 1 film school in the United States for the third year in a row in 2014. In addition, USA Today ranked the School of Cinematic Arts the No. 1 film school in the United States in 2014. The program's range of classes, facilities, and close proximity to the industry were the primary reasons for this ranking. USA Today ranked the USC Marshall School of Business as

18144-470: The Siege of Lisbon . In a parallel plot set in the 12th and 20th century where history and fiction are constantly overlapping, the latter novel questions the reliability of historical sources and deals with the difference of writing history and fiction. A prominent subgenre within historical fiction is the children's historical novel. Often following a pedagogical bent, children's historical fiction may follow

18333-644: The Spring Queen (1931), is regarded by some as the best historical novel of the 20th century. Mary Renault is best known for her historical novels set in Ancient Greece . In addition to fictional portrayals of Theseus , Socrates , Plato , Simonides of Ceos and Alexander the Great , she wrote a non-fiction biography of Alexander. The Siege of Krishnapur (1973) by J. G. Farrell has been described as an "outstanding novel". Inspired by events such as

18522-684: The Three Kingdoms concerns 3rd-century wars which ended the Han dynasty ; Wu Cheng'en 's 16th-century Journey to the West concerns the 7th-century Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang . In addition to those, there was a wealth of historical novels that became popular in the literary circles during the Ming and Qing periods in Chinese history; they include Feng Menglong 's Dongzhou Lieguo Zhi ( Chronicles of

18711-549: The USC Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, which both had previously been organized as "Independent Health Professions" programs at the USC College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, were administratively aligned under the School of Dentistry and renamed "Divisions," bringing the total number of Divisions at the School of Dentistry to seven. In 2010, alumnus Herman Ostrow donated $ 35 million to name

18900-679: The USC athletes "fought on like the Trojans of antiquity", and the president of the university at the time, George F. Bovard , approved the name officially. During World War II , USC was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program , which offered students a path to a Navy commission. The University Park campus is in the University Park district of Los Angeles, 2 miles (3.2 km) southwest of downtown Los Angeles . Located off exit 20B of Interstate 110 ,

19089-813: The USC faculty, 17 are members of the National Academy of Sciences , 16 are members of the National Academy of Medicine , 37 are members of the National Academy of Engineering , 97 are members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science , and 34 are members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , 5 to the American Philosophical Society , and 14 to the National Academy of Public Administration . 29 USC faculty are listed as among

19278-568: The United Kingdom published historical novels in the mid 19th century, the most notable include Thackeray 's Vanity Fair , Charles Dickens 's A Tale of Two Cities , George Eliot 's Romola , and Charles Kingsley 's Westward Ho! and Hereward the Wake . The Trumpet-Major (1880) is Thomas Hardy 's only historical novel, and is set in Weymouth during the Napoleonic wars , when

19467-652: The University Archives. The USC Warner Bros. Archives is the largest single studio collection in the world. Donated in 1977 to the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts by Warner Communications, the WBA houses departmental records that detail Warner Bros. activities from the studio's first major feature, My Four Years in Germany (1918), to its sale to Seven Arts in 1968. Announced in June 2006,

19656-406: The University Park shopping center, which was demolished in 2014. In September of the same year, the university began construction on USC Village, a 1.25-million-square-foot residential and retail center directly adjacent to USC's University Park campus on 15 acres of land owned by the university. The USC Village has over 130,000 square feet of retail space on the ground floor, with student housing on

19845-506: The University of Southern California was established in 1897 as The College of Dentistry, and today, awards undergraduate and graduate degrees. Headed by Dean Avishai Sadan, the school traditionally has maintained five Divisions: Academic Affairs & Student Life, Clinical Affairs, Continuing Education, Research, and Community Health Programs and Hospital Affairs. In 2006, the USC Department of Physical Therapy and Biokinesiology , and

20034-610: The Year 2000 by the Time/Princeton Review College Guide . Roughly half of the university's students volunteer in community-service programs in neighborhoods around campus and throughout Los Angeles. These outreach programs, as well as previous administrations' commitment to remaining in South Los Angeles amid widespread calls to move the campus following the 1965 Watts Riots , are credited for

20223-478: The alumni have become Pritzker Prize winners. In 2006, Qingyun Ma , a distinguished Shanghai-based architect, was named dean of the school. The Andrew and Erna Viterbi School of Engineering is headed by Dean Yannis Yortsos . Previously known as the USC School of Engineering, it was renamed on March 2, 2004, in honor of Qualcomm co-founder Andrew Viterbi and his wife Erna, who had donated $ 52 million to

20412-406: The best-sellers of their time. Many of these authors (like Niccolò Tommaseo , Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi and D'Azeglio himself) were patriots and politicians too, and in their novels, the veiled politic message of Manzoni became explicit (the hero of Ettore Fieramosca fights to defend the honor of the Italian soldiers, mocked by some arrogant Frenchmen). In them, the narrative talent not equaled

20601-494: The board of trustees are elected for five-year terms. One-fifth of the Trustees stand for re-election each year, and votes are cast only by the trustees not standing for election. Trustees tend to be high-ranking executives of large corporations (both domestic and international), successful alumni, members of the upper echelons of university administration, or some combination of the three. The university administration consists of

20790-403: The building (and near collapse) of a huge spire onto a medieval cathedral (generally assumed to be Salisbury Cathedral ); the spire symbolizing both spiritual aspiration and worldly vanity. The Scorpion God (1971) consists of three novellas, the first set in a prehistoric African hunter-gatherer band ( Clonk, Clonk ), the second in an ancient Egyptian court ( The Scorpion God ) and the third in

20979-483: The campus and provided the necessary seed money for the construction of the first buildings. Originally operated in affiliation with the Methodist Church, the school mandated from the start that "no student would be denied admission because of race". The university is no longer affiliated with any church, having severed formal ties in 1952. When USC opened in 1880, the school had an enrollment of 53 students and

21168-626: The campus has been renovated to remove the vestiges of old roads and replace them with traditional university quads and gardens. The historic portion of the main campus was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2015. Besides its main campus at University Park, USC also operates the Health Sciences Campus about 2 miles (3.2 km) northeast of downtown. In addition, the Children's Hospital Los Angeles

21357-419: The campus has moved towards a Gothic Revival style, taking cues from the scholastic styles of Oxford University and Harvard University , while underpinning USC's own historic identity that is present in the red-brick construction. USC's role in making visible and sustained improvements in the neighborhoods surrounding both the University Park and Health Sciences campuses earned it the distinction of College of

21546-527: The campus's boundaries are Jefferson Boulevard on the north and northeast, Figueroa Street on the southeast, Exposition Boulevard on the south, and Vermont Avenue on the west. Since the 1960s, through-campus vehicle traffic has been either severely restricted or entirely prohibited on some thoroughfares. The University Park campus is within walking distance to Los Angeles landmarks such as the Shrine Auditorium and Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum , which

21735-928: The coast of Los Angeles, and home to the Philip K. Wrigley Marine Science Center. The Price School of Public Policy also runs a satellite campus in Sacramento . A Health Sciences Alhambra campus holds the Primary Care Physician Assistant Program, the Institute for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Research (IPR), and the Masters in Public Health Program. In 2005, USC established a federal relations office in Washington, DC., and in March 2023, USC announced

21924-401: The college received a $ 200 million gift from USC trustees Dana and David Dornsife on March 23, 2011, after which the college was renamed in their honor, following the naming pattern of other professional schools and departments at the university. All PhD degrees awarded at USC and most master's degrees are under the jurisdiction of the Graduate School. Professional degrees are awarded by each of

22113-488: The contemporary novel tried their hand at stories set in previous centuries. Among them were Fulvio Tomizza ( The Evil Coming from North , about the Reformation ), Dacia Maraini ( The Silent Duchess , about the female condition in the eighteenth century), Sebastiano Vassalli ( The Chimera , about a witch hunt ), Ernesto Ferrero ( N ) and Valerio Manfredi ( The Last Legion ). Fani Popova–Mutafova (1902–1977)

22302-428: The conventions of many of the other subgenres of historical fiction. A number of such works include elements of historical fantasy or time travel to facilitate the transition between the contemporary world and the past in the tradition of children's portal fiction. Sometimes publishers will commission series of historical novels that explore different periods and times. Among the most popular contemporary series include

22491-630: The court of a Roman emperor ( Envoy Extraordinary ). The trilogy To the Ends of the Earth , which includes the Rites of Passage (1980), Close Quarters (1987), and Fire Down Below (1989), describes sea voyages in the early 19th century. Anthony Burgess also wrote several historical novels; his last novel, A Dead Man in Deptford , is about the murder of Christopher Marlowe in the 16th century. Though

22680-425: The dynamics of Diana and Matthew's relationship, and Harry Potter in the co-existence of magical and non-magical creatures. It has been referred to as "Harry Potter for grown-ups." The novel was also compared to the work of Diana Gabaldon . Harkness said that she is a huge fan of Gabaldon and sees the comparisons as flattering. Warner Bros. purchased the film rights to A Discovery of Witches in 2011. The film

22869-811: The eighteenth century, as well as historical novels written primarily in exile in France and California, including most prominently the Josephus trilogy set in Ancient Rome (1932 / 1935 / 1942), Goya (1951), and his novel Raquel: The Jewess of Toledo - set in Medieval Spain. Robert Graves of Britain wrote several popular historical novels, including I, Claudius , King Jesus , The Golden Fleece and Count Belisarius . John Cowper Powys wrote two historical novels set in Wales, Owen Glendower (1941) and Porius (1951). The first deals with

23058-472: The facility, which was officially renamed USC Verdugo Hills Hospital. This 40-year-old hospital provides the community a 24-hour emergency department, primary stroke center, maternity/labor and delivery, cardiac rehabilitation, and imaging and diagnostic services. In July 2022, the university acquired the 348 bed Methodist Hospital of Southern California in Arcadia, California . Renamed USC Arcadia Hospital it

23247-428: The familiar biblical stories of Genesis , from Jacob to Joseph (chapters 27–50), setting it in the historical context of the reign of Akhenaten (1353–1336 BC) in ancient Egypt . In the same era, Lion Feuchtwanger was one of the most popular and accomplished writers of historical novels, with publications between the 1920s and 1950s. His reputation began with the bestselling work, Jud Süß (1925), set in

23436-442: The film school, which at the time was the largest single donation to USC (and its fifth over $ 100 million). The donation will be used to build new structures and expand the faculty. The acceptance rate to the School of Cinematic Arts has consistently remained between 4-6% for the past several years. The USC School of Architecture was established in 1916, the first in Southern California . From at least 1972 to 1976, and likely for

23625-458: The films were fantasy-based, however. Many featured actual historical personalities such as Julius Caesar , Cleopatra , and Hannibal , although great liberties were taken with the storylines. Gladiators, pirates, knights, Vikings, and slaves rebelling against tyrannical kings were also popular subjects. There are also films based on Medieval narratives like Ridley Scott 's historical epics Robin Hood (2010) and Kingdom of Heaven (2005) and

23814-434: The first generation in their family to attend any form of college. Twenty-four percent of undergraduates at USC are Pell Grant -eligible, which is defined by having come from a family household income of less than $ 50,000. There are over 375,000 living Trojan alumni . The USC-MSA reference is a numbering system developed by the Muslim Students' Association of the University of Southern California to access their database of

24003-578: The first students to enroll at USC in 1880. The USC Libraries are among the oldest private academic research libraries in California . For more than a century USC has been building collections in support of the university's teaching and research interests. Especially noteworthy collections include American literature , Cinema-Television including the Warner Bros. studio archives, European philosophy , gerontology , German exile literature, international relations , Korean studies , studies of Latin America, natural history , Southern California history, and

24192-444: The form of oral and folk traditions (see mythology and folklore ), which produced epics , novels, plays and other fictional works describing history for contemporary audiences. Definitions differ as to what constitutes a historical novel. On the one hand the Historical Novel Society defines the genre as works "written at least fifty years after the events described", while critic Sarah Johnson delineates such novels as "set before

24381-480: The four floors above. The $ 700 million project is the biggest development in the history of USC and is also one of the largest in the history of South Los Angeles. With a grand opening held on August 17, 2017, the USC Village includes a Trader Joe's, a Target, a fitness center, restaurants, outdoor dining, 400 retail parking spots, a community room, and housing for 2,700 students. Located three miles (5 km) from downtown Los Angeles and seven miles (11 km) from

24570-500: The general education program for all USC undergraduates and houses a full-time faculty of almost 1,000, nearly 8,000 undergraduate majors (over a third of the total USC undergraduate population), and 1,300 doctoral students. In addition to thirty academic departments, the college also houses dozens of research centers and institutes. In the 2008–2009 academic year, 4,400 undergraduate degrees and 5,500 advanced degrees were awarded. Formerly called "USC College of Letters, Arts & Sciences",

24759-497: The genre has evolved since its inception, the historical novel remains popular with authors and readers to this day and bestsellers include Patrick O'Brian 's Aubrey–Maturin series , Ken Follett 's Pillars of the Earth and Dorothy Dunnett 's Lymond Chronicles . A development in British and Irish writing in the past 25 years has been a renewed interest in the First World War . Works include William Boyd 's An Ice-Cream War ; Sebastian Faulks ' Birdsong and The Girl at

24948-433: The half-tuition Presidential Scholarship; the one-quarter tuition Deans Scholarship), with only 5.5% of scholarship applicants being selected as finalists for the final interview invitation at the USC campus in Spring. This makes USC one of the highest ranked universities to offer half-tuition and full-tuition merit-based scholarships. These factors have propelled USC into being the 4th most economically diverse university in

25137-437: The help of a vampire, Matthew Clairmont, Diana sets out to discover more about her powers and gain control over her magic. A Discovery of Witches focuses largely on the co-existence of creatures in a world of humans. It questions the origin of all supernatural species, drawing on alchemical and historic sources for reference. When Diana Bishop returns to Oxford University, her life is flipped upside down. While researching in

25326-424: The help of the Allied Architects of Los Angeles. A separate School of Architecture was organized in September 1925. The school has been home to teachers such as Richard Neutra , Ralph Knowles, James Steele, A. Quincy Jones , William Pereira and Pierre Koenig . The school of architecture also claims notable alumni Frank Gehry , Jon Jerde , Thom Mayne , Raphael Soriano , Gregory Ain , and Pierre Koenig . Two of

25515-453: The inspiration for the novel, since 1983. The writing of the novel took place in the early mornings "in the blissful quiet before [she] switched on [her] email" while she also continued teaching at the University of Southern California during the day and blogging about wine in the evenings. Aside from Anne Rice novels that she "read and loved" in her twenties, Harkness claims she has not read other vampire fiction such as The Historian or

25704-409: The library, Diana requests a book called Ashmole 782. This manuscript, also known as the Book of Life, has been missing for over 150 years. As soon as Diana touches the ancient manuscript, her powers are activated. Frightened by her clear cosmic connection to Ashmole 782, Diana returns the book. It appears, however, that her discovery had already caught the attention of other creatures, which results in

25893-421: The line between fiction and history, in order to get closer to the truth. The novel is set 60 years before it was composed, and alongside researching the war through primary and secondary sources, he spoke with people who had lived through war during the French invasion of Russia in 1812; thus, the book is also, in part, ethnography fictionalized. The Charterhouse of Parma by Marie-Henri Beyle (Stendhal)

26082-435: The middle of the last [20th] century ... in which the author is writing from research rather than personal experience." Then again Lynda Adamson, in her preface to the bibliographic reference work World Historical Fiction , states that while a "generally accepted definition" for the historical novel is a novel "about a time period at least 25 years before it was written", she also suggests that some people read novels written in

26271-414: The most prominent. Sigrid Undset 's Kristin Lavransdatter fulfilled a similar function for Norwegian history ; Undset later won a Nobel Prize for Literature (1928). Many early historical novels played an important role in the rise of European popular interest in the history of the Middle Ages . Victor Hugo 's The Hunchback of Notre-Dame often receives credit for fueling the movement to preserve

26460-400: The name 'Monte Cristo' into their titles." Tolstoy's War and Peace offers an example of 19th-century historical fiction used to critique contemporary history. Tolstoy read the standard histories available in Russian and French about the Napoleonic Wars , and used the novel to challenge those historical approaches. At the start of the novel's third volume, he describes his work as blurring

26649-402: The nation. USC enrolls one of the largest amounts of National Merit Scholars of any university, offering finalists in the program its half-tuition Presidential Scholarship. As of 2021, about 72% of the student body receives about $ 810 million in financial aid annually. Twenty percent of admitted and attending students are SCions, or students with familial ties to USC, while 14 percent are

26838-425: The novel as "a mesmerizing and addictive read, equal parts history and magic, romance and suspense... This smart, sophisticated story harks back to the novels of Anne Rice, but it is as contemporary and sensual as the Twilight series with an extra serving of historical realism ." In a more mixed review for The Guardian , Jenny Turner panned the quality of the writing but admitted the ideas were interesting: "This

27027-637: The novel dragged for a bit, "the pages turned faster, almost as if on their own" as the action picked up and "by the most satisfying end, Harkness had made me a believer." Parade gave the novel a glowing endorsement, writing, "Harkness’ sure hand when it comes to star-crossed love and chilling action sequences in striking locales makes for an enchanting debut." O, The Oprah Magazine listed "A Discovery of Witches" as one of its 15 Books to Watch for in February 2011, deeming it "romantic, erudite, and suspenseful" and noting "Harkness attends to every scholarly and emotional detail with whimsy, sensuality, and humor." In

27216-497: The novels The Sot-Weed Factor (1960) and Mason & Dixon (1997) respectively. A few writers create historical fiction without fictional characters. One example is the series Masters of Rome by Colleen McCullough . Historical prose fiction has a long tradition in world literature. Three of the Four Classics of Chinese novels were set in the distant past: Shi Nai'an 's 14th-century Water Margin concerns 12th-century outlaws; Luo Guanzhong 's 14th-century Romance of

27405-461: The opening of a new Capital Campus in Washington, D.C. The university purchased a seven-story 60,000 square feet building and remodeled it to house classrooms, event venues, office spaces, a bookstore and a theater. Located in the heart of the Dupont Circle neighborhood, the USC Capital Campus is also home to USC's Office of Research Advancement, which helps university faculty researchers secure federal funding for multidisciplinary research projects. USC

27594-440: The past". The Iliad has been described as historic fiction, since it treats historic events, although its genre is generally considered epic poetry . Pierre Vidal-Naquet has suggested that Plato laid the foundations for the historical novel through the myth of Atlantis contained in his dialogues Timaeus and Critias . The Tale of Genji (written before 1021) is a fictionalized account of Japanese court life about

27783-410: The past, like those of Jane Austen (1775–1817), as if they were historical novels. Historical fiction sometimes encouraged movements of romantic nationalism . Walter Scott's Waverley novels created interest in Scottish history and still illuminate it. A series of novels by Józef Ignacy Kraszewski on the history of Poland popularized the country's history after it had lost its independence in

27972-444: The patriotic passion, and their novels, full of rhetoric and melodramatic excesses, are today barely readable as historical documents. A significant exception is The Confessions of an Italian by Ippolito Nievo , an epic about the Venetian republic 's fall and the Napoleonic age , told with satiric irony and youthful brio (Nievo wrote it when he was 26 years old). In Arabic literature, the Lebanese writer Jurji Zaydan (1861–1914)

28161-491: The possibility of wonderful sequel adventures. This reviewer, for one, hopes they come soon!" Critics praised Harkness' attention to detail and history, rare in paranormal romance novels. The San Antonio Express-News described it as a "rare historical novel that manages to be as intelligent as it is romantic [and] it is supernatural fiction that those of us who usually prefer to stay grounded in reality can get caught up in." Nisi Shawl of The Seattle Times noted that "though

28350-457: The publication of the 2nd edition in 1903, Buddenbrooks became a major literary success. The work led to a Nobel Prize in Literature for Mann in 1929; although the Nobel award generally recognizes an author's body of work, the Swedish Academy's citation for Mann identified "his great novel Buddenbrooks " as the principal reason for his prize. Mann also wrote, between 1926 and 1943, a four-part novel Joseph and His Brothers . In it Mann retells

28539-445: The quality of 'Discovery's' prose remains no more than clear and serviceable, its erudite references to the leather-bound boards of incunabulae and secret ingredients in medieval inks make it a welcome relief." Margot Adler of NPR called A Discovery of Witches "a tour de force, an artful and unusually skilled blending of hard science, history and the supernatural." A 'Best Book of the Month' for February 2011, Amazon.com described

28728-420: The rebellion of the Welsh Prince Owain Glyndŵr (AD 1400–16), while Porius takes place during the Dark Ages, in AD 499, just before the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain. Powys suggests parallels with these historical periods and Britain in the late 1930s and during World War II . Other significant British novelists include Georgette Heyer , Naomi Mitchison and Mary Renault . Heyer essentially established

28917-624: The respective professional schools. The School of Cinematic Arts , the oldest and largest film school in the country, confers degrees in six different programs. As the university administration considered cinematic skills too valuable to be kept to film industry professionals, the school opened its classes to the university at large in 1998. In 2001, the film school added an Interactive Media & Games Division studying stereoscopic cinema, panoramic cinema, immersive cinema, interactive cinema, video games, virtual reality, and mobile media. In September 2006, George Lucas donated $ 175 million to expand

29106-425: The romantic-historical novel. Victor Hugo began writing The Hunchback of Notre-Dame in 1829, largely to make his contemporaries more aware of the value of the Gothic architecture , which was neglected and often destroyed to be replaced by new buildings, or defaced by replacement of parts of buildings in a newer style. The action takes place in 1482 and the title refers to the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, on which

29295-401: The safety of the university during the 1992 Los Angeles Riots . The ZIP Code for USC is 90089 and that of the surrounding University Park community is 90007. USC has an endowment of $ 8.1 billion and carries out nearly $ 1 billion per year in sponsored research. USC became the only university to receive eight separate nine-figure gifts: $ 120 million from Ambassador Walter Annenberg to create

29484-482: The school in 1901. In 1906, the school was reopened by the municipal and regional government and thus officially separated from USC. Renamed as Chaffey College, it now exists as a community college as part of the California Community College System . USC is a private public-benefit nonprofit corporation controlled by a board of trustees composed of 50 voting members and several life trustees, honorary trustees, and trustees emeriti who do not vote. Voting members of

29673-540: The school the Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry. In 2013, the school introduced an eighth division, and in 2014, a $ 20 million gift endowed and named the USC Mrs. T.H. Chan Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy. USC collaborated with Shanghai Jiao Tong University to offer the USC Executive MBA program in Shanghai . USC Dornsife also operates two international study centers in Paris and Madrid. The Marshall School of Business has satellite campuses in Orange County and San Diego . In 2012, USC established

29862-454: The school. Viterbi School of Engineering has been ranked No. 11 and No. 9 in the United States in U.S. News & World Report ' s engineering rankings for 2018 and 2019 respectively. The Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism , founded in 1971, is one of the two communication programs in the country endowed by Walter Annenberg (the other is at the University of Pennsylvania ). The School of Journalism, which became part of

30051-609: The second most out of all universities in the United States. Of the regularly enrolled international students, the most represented countries/regions are China (Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan not included), India, South Korea, and Taiwan, in that order. Like other private universities, the nominal cost of attendance is high; however, the university's large endowment and significant revenue streams allow it to offer generous financial aid packages. USC also offer some very competitive and highly valued merit-based scholarships (the full-tuition, four-year Mork Family, Stamps and Trustee scholarships;

30240-432: The sieges of Cawnpore and Lucknow , the book details the siege of a fictional Indian town, Krishnapur, during the Indian Rebellion of 1857 from the perspective of the town's British residents . The main characters find themselves subject to the increasing strictures and deprivation of the siege, and the absurdity of maintaining the British class system in a town no one can leave becomes a source of comic invention, though

30429-414: The six month-long Los Angeles Police Academy. A special joint USC/LAPD crime task force composed of USC DPS personnel and approximately 40 selected Los Angeles police officers, including a dedicated specially trained LAPD SWAT team, is assigned exclusively to the USC campus community to address crime and quality of life issues. USC is a large, primarily residential research university. The majority of

30618-629: The story is centered. Alexandre Dumas also wrote several popular historical fiction novels, including The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers . George Saintsbury stated: " Monte Cristo is said to have been at its first appearance, and for some time subsequently, the most popular book in Europe." This popularity has extended into modern times as well. The book was "translated into virtually all modern languages and has never been out of print in most of them. There have been at least twenty-nine motion pictures based on it ... as well as several television series, and many movies [have] worked

30807-534: The story itself is fiction, many of the persona and events are not. The book is based on research by Monaldi and Sorti, who researched information from 17th-century manuscripts and published works concerning the siege of Vienna , the plague and papacy of Pope Innocent XI . The genre of the historical novel has also permitted some authors, such as the Polish novelist Bolesław Prus in his sole historical novel, Pharaoh , to distance themselves from their own time and place to gain perspective on society and on

30996-401: The story progresses, a forbidden romance starts to bloom between the vampire and the witch. According to Harkness, the novel began as "a thought experiment" after she noticed the plethora of novels surrounding vampires and magic at an airport bookshop. As a historian, she noted that people today were interested in reading about the same sorts of subjects as they would have in the past, including

31185-617: The strength of it. The Finnish writer Mika Waltari is known for the historical novel The Egyptian (1945). Faroes–Danish writer William Heinesen wrote several historical novels, most notably Det gode håb (1964, "Fair Hope") set in the Faroe Islands in 17th century. Historical fiction has long been a popular genre in Sweden, especially since the 1960s a huge number of historical novels has been written. Nobel laureates Eyvind Johnson and Pär Lagerkvist wrote acclaimed historical novels such as Return to Ithaca (1946) and Barabbas (1950). Vilhelm Moberg 's Ride This Night (1941)

31374-436: The student body was undergraduate until 2007, when graduate student enrollment began to exceed undergraduate. The four-year, full-time undergraduate instructional program is classified as "balanced arts & sciences/professions" with a high graduate coexistence. Admissions are characterized as "most selective, lower transfer in"; 95 undergraduate majors and 147 academic and professional minors are offered. The graduate program

31563-502: The subgenred films based on the Arthurian legend such as Pendragon: Sword of His Father (2008) and King Arthur (2004). University of Southern California The University of Southern California ( USC , SC , Southern Cal ) is a private research university in Los Angeles, California , United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney , it is the oldest private research university in California, and has an enrollment of more than 49,000 students. The university

31752-462: The subtitles ("The Threat" and "The Violence") by 1987 by the director Lyudmil Staykov. In June 2015, " Time of Violence " was chosen as the most beloved film of Bulgarian viewers in "Laced Shoes of Bulgarian Cinema", a large-scale consultation with the audience of Bulgarian National Television . One of the best known Scandinavian historical novels is Sigrid Undset 's Kristin Lavransdatter (1920–1922) set in medieval Norway. For this trilogy Undset

31941-402: The supernatural. "In some ways I think their popularity right now is about our feeling that we still want there to be magic and enchantment in the world," theorizes Harkness. "Magic provides a way of still having room for possibilities, an unlimited sense of what the world offers. Magic is always there when science is found wanting." Harkness has studied magic and the occult, which provided much of

32130-445: The testimony of 52,000 survivors, rescuers, and others involved in The Holocaust is housed in the USC College of Letters, Arts & Sciences as a part of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education . In addition to the Shoah Foundation, the USC Libraries digital collection highlights include photographs from the California Historical Society, Korean American Archives Automobile Club of Southern California, and

32319-560: The text is serious in intent and tone. In Welsh literature, the major contributor to the genre in Welsh is William Owen Roberts (b. 1960). His historical novels include Y Pla (1987), set at the time of the Black Death; Paradwys (2001), 18th century, concerning the slave trade; and Petrograd (2008) and Paris (2013), concerning the Russian revolution and its aftermath. Y Pla has been much translated, appearing in English as Pestilence , and Petrograd and Paris have also appeared in English. A contemporary of Roberts' working in English

32508-404: The top twenty nationally for specialities by U.S. News & World Report , including cancer, cardiology, gastroenterology, and geriatrics. In July 2013, the university expanded its medical services into the foothill communities of northern Los Angeles when it acquired the 185 bed Verdugo Hills Hospital in Glendale, California . USC planned on making at least $ 30 million in capital improvements to

32697-406: The town was then anxious about the possibility of invasion by Napoleon. In the United States, the first historical novelist was Samuel Woodworth , who wrote The Champions of American Freedom in 1816. James Fenimore Cooper was better known for his historical novels and was influenced by Scott. His most famous novel is The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 (1826), the second book of

32886-400: The university's 20 professional schools. The USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, the oldest and largest of the USC schools, grants undergraduate degrees in more than 180 majors and minors across the humanities, social sciences, and natural/physical sciences, and offers doctoral and masters programs in more than twenty fields. Dornsife College is responsible for

33075-410: The well-being of magical creatures, she must re-think her avoidance of magic and magical creatures. This volume is about Diana Bishop discovering her peril and qualities of herself that were unknown to her and discovering romance, friends, and enemies in the magical community. The later volumes develop her actions to protect herself and her friends and ameliorate a threat to the magical community. With

33264-1234: The world's most powerful quantum computer , housed in a super-cooled, magnetically shielded facility at the USC Information Sciences Institute , the only other commercially available quantum computing system operated jointly by NASA and Google . Notable USC faculty include or have included the following: Leonard Adleman , Richard Bellman , Aimee Bender , Barry Boehm , Warren Bennis , Todd Boyd , T.C. Boyle , Leo Buscaglia , Drew Casper , Manuel Castells , Erwin Chemerinsky , George V. Chilingar , Thomas Crow , António Damásio , Francis De Erdely , Percival Everett , Murray Gell-Mann , Seymour Ginsburg , G. Thomas Goodnight , Jane Goodall , Solomon Golomb , Midori Goto , Susan Estrich , Janet Fitch , Tomlinson Holman , Jascha Heifetz , Henry Jenkins , Thomas H. Jordan , Mark Kac , Pierre Koenig , Neil Leach , Leonard Maltin , Daniel L. McFadden , Viet Thanh Nguyen , George Olah , Scott Page , Tim Page (music critic) , Simon Ramo , Claudia Rankine , Irving Reed , Jacob Soll, Michael Waterman , Frank Gehry , Arieh Warshel , Lloyd Welch , Jonathan Taplin , Diane Winston , and Gabriel Zada . In February 2023, USC Graduate Student Workers voted 93% to unionize with

33453-411: Was a Bulgarian author who is considered by many to have been the best-selling Bulgarian historical fiction author ever. Her books sold in record numbers in the 1930s and the early 1940s. However, she was eventually sentenced to seven years of imprisonment by the Bulgarian communist regime because of some of her writings celebrating Hitler , and though released after only eleven months for health reasons,

33642-541: Was as background detail to set the period, and did not usually play a key role in the narrative. Heyer's characters often contained more modern-day sensibilities, and more conventional characters in the novels would point out the heroine's eccentricities, such as wanting to marry for love. Some historical novels explore life at sea, including C. S. Forester 's Hornblower series , Patrick O'Brian 's Aubrey–Maturin series , Alexander Kent 's The Bolitho novels , Dudley Pope 's Lord Ramage 's series, all of which all deal with

33831-430: Was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1928. Johannes V. Jensen 's trilogy Kongens fald (1900–1901, "The Fall of the King"), set in 16th century Denmark, has been called "the finest historical novel in Danish literature". The epic historical novel series Den lange rejse (1908–1921, "The Long Journey") is generally regarded as Jensen's masterpiece and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1944 partly on

34020-404: Was cast as Diana Bishop and Matthew Goode was cast as Matthew Clairmont. Filming was completed on February 16, 2018. The program premiered in the UK on Sky One on September 14, 2018, with its first series of eight episodes. On November 2, 2018, Sky One renewed A Discovery of Witches for a second and a third series. Historical novel An essential element of historical fiction is that it

34209-471: Was developed under two master plans drafted and implemented some forty years apart. The first was prepared by the Parkinsons in 1920, which guided much of the campus's early construction and established its Romanesque style and 45-degree building orientation. The second and largest master plan was prepared in 1961 under the supervision of President Norman Topping , campus development director Anthony Lazzaro , and architect William Pereira . This plan annexed

34398-474: Was forbidden to publish anything between 1943 and 1972. Stoyan Zagorchinov (1889–1969) also a Bulgarian writer, author of "Last Day, God's Day" trilogy and " Ivaylo ", continuing the tradition in the Bulgarian historical novel, led by Ivan Vazov . Yana Yazova (1912–1974) also has several novels that can be considered historical as " Alexander of Macedon ", her only novel on non-Bulgarian thematic, as well as her trilogy " Balkani ". Vera Mutafchieva (1929–2009)

34587-418: Was in the early stages of development, with few details released beyond the signing-on of playwright David Auburn to pen the screenplay and producers Denise Di Novi and Allison Greenspan who have worked on Little Women , Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and Practical Magic . British entertainment channel Sky One bought the rights for the books to adapt them into a television series. Teresa Palmer

34776-402: Was inspired by Walter Scott's Ivanhoe but, compared to its model, shows some innovations (two members of the lower class as principal characters, the past described without romantic idealization, an explicitly Christian message), somehow forerunning the realistic novel of the following decades. Set in northern Italy in 1628, during the oppressive years under Spanish rule, it is sometimes seen as

34965-445: Was quite popular in 20th century Latin American literature , including works such as The Kingdom of This World (1949) by Alejo Carpentier , I, the Supreme (1974) by Augusto Roa Bastos , Terra Nostra (1975) by Carlos Fuentes , News from the Empire (1987) by Fernando del Paso , The Lightning of August (1964) by Jorge Ibargüengoitia , The War of the End of the World (1981) by Mario Vargas Llosa and The Autumn of

35154-491: Was ranked as a "Top 10 Dream College" according to The Princeton Review , as conferred from a survey of 10,000 respondents. USC appeared in the Top 10 list for both parents and students. On the 2011 "Green Report Card", issued by the Sustainable Endowments Institute , the university received a B−. The Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism was ranked 1st in 2014 by USA Today . In its 2020 rankings, U.S. News & World Report rates USC's School of Law as 17th,

35343-401: Was ranked by U.S. News & World Report as having the 4th most economically diverse student body. Reuters ranked USC as the 14th most innovative university in the world in 2015, as measured by the university's global commercial impact and patents granted. USC was ranked 15th overall in the 2016 inaugural Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education ranking of U.S. colleges. In 2016, USC

35532-454: Was the most prolific novelist of this genre. He wrote 23 historical novels between 1889 and 1914. His novels played an important in shaping the collective consciousness of modern Arabs during the Nahda period and educated them about their history. The Fleeing Mamluk (1891), The Captive of the Mahdi Pretender (1892), and Virgin of Quraish (1899) are some of his nineteenth-century historical novels. A major 20th-century example of this genre

35721-408: Was then published by Viking Press for a North American release in February 2011. The novel was commercially successful, debuting at number two in Hardcover Fiction on the New York Times Best Seller list , and number eight on the USA Today Best-Selling Booklist. Two months after publication, A Discovery of Witches was already in its seventh printing. The novel was generally praised and deemed

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