The Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men were five volumes of Dionysius Lardner's 133-volume Cabinet Cyclopaedia (1829-46). Aimed at the self-educating middle class, this encyclopedia was written during the 19th-century literary revolution in Britain that encouraged more people to read. The Lives formed part of the Cabinet of Biography in the Cabinet Cyclopaedia. The three-volume Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men of Italy, Spain and Portugal (1835-37) and the two-volume Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men of France (1838-39) consist of biographies of important writers and thinkers of the 14th to 18th centuries. Most of them were authored by the Romantic writer Mary Shelley. Shelley's biographies reveal her as a professional woman of letters, contracted to produce several volumes of works and paid well to do so. Her extensive knowledge of history and languages, her ability to tell a gripping biographical narrative, and her interest in the burgeoning field of feminist historiography are reflected in these works. At times Shelley had trouble finding sufficient research materials and had to make do with fewer resources than she would have liked, particularly for the Spanish and Portuguese Lives. She wrote in a style that combined secondary sources, memoir, anecdote, and her own opinions. (more...)

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• Thirty thousand people in North Carolina, United States, are evacuated ahead of Hurricane Earl (pictured), which has impacted the Leeward Islands.
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September 3: Quds Day (Iran, 2010); Independence Day in Qatar (1971); Flag Day in Australia; Armed Forces Day in Taiwan

• 301 - San Marino, one of the smallest nations in the world and the world's oldest republic still in existence, was founded by Saint Marinus.
• 590 - Gregory I became pope, the first one to come from a monastic background.
• 1189 - Richard the Lionheart was crowned King of England in Westminster.
• 1260 - Egyptian Mamluks defeated the Mongols at the Battle of Ain Jalut in Palestine.
• 1783 - Great Britain and the United States signed the Treaty of Paris, formally ending the American Revolutionary War.
• 1901 - The National Flag of Australia, a Blue Ensign defaced with the Commonwealth Star and the Southern Cross, flew for the first time atop the Royal Exhibition Building (pictured) in Melbourne.
• 1976 - The NASA Viking 2 spacecraft landed at Utopia Planitia on Mars.

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