Mary Martha Sherwood

Mary Martha Sherwood (née Butt; 6 May 1775 – 22 September 1851) was a nineteenth-century English children's writer. Of her more than four hundred works, the best known include The History of Little Henry and his Bearer (1814) and the two series The History of Henry Milner (1822–1837) and The History of the Fairchild Family (1818–1847). Her evangelicalism permeated her early writings, but later works cover common Victorian themes such as domesticity.

Mary Martha Butt married Captain Henry Sherwood and moved to India for eleven years. She converted to evangelical Christianity, opened schools for the children of army officers and local Indian children, adopted neglected or orphaned children, and founded an orphanage. She was inspired to write fiction for the children in the military encampments. Her work was well received in Britain, where the Sherwoods returned in 1816 for medical reasons. She opened a boarding school, edited a children's magazine, and published hundreds of tracts, novels, and other works for children and the poor, which increased her popularity in both the United States and Britain. She died in 1851 in Twickenham, Middlesex.

Sherwood's career included three periods: her romantic period (1795–1805), her evangelical period (1810 – c. 1830), in which she produced her most popular and influential works, and her post-evangelical period (c. 1830–1851). Themes in her writing included "her conviction of inherent human corruption", her belief that literature "had a catechetical utility" for every rank of society, her belief that "the dynamics of family life" should reflect central Christian principles, and her "virulent" anti-Catholicism. Sherwood was called "one of the most significant authors of children's literature of the nineteenth century". Her depictions of domesticity and ties with India may have influenced many young readers, but her work fell from favour as children's literature broadened in the late nineteenth century.

## Early life

Mary Martha Butt was born on 6 May 1775 in Stanford-on-Teme, Worcestershire, the eldest daughter and second child of Martha Butt and Reverend George Butt, the chaplain in ordinary to George III. As a young child, before the age of six, Sherwood composed stories in her head before she could write and begged her mother to copy them down. Her brother was her constant companion. She was forced to stand in the stocks while doing her lessons:

> It was the fashion then for children to wear iron collars round the neck, with back-boards strapped over the shoulders. To one of these I was subjected from my sixth to my thirteenth year. I generally did all my lessons standing in stocks, with this same collar round my neck; it was put on in the morning, and seldom taken off till late in the evening. ... And yet I was a very happy child, and when relieved from my collars I not unseldom manifested my delight by starting from our hall-door and taking a run for half a mile through the woods.

Sherwood's and her sister Lucy Lyttelton's education was wide-ranging for girls in the late eighteenth century: Sherwood learnt Latin and Greek and was allowed to read freely in her father's library. Sherwood states in her autobiography that by the age of thirteen, she had reached her full height, but her mother continued to dress her like a child, so she hid in the woods with a book and a doll. Despite her lonely childhood, she seems to have enjoyed attending Madame St. Quentin's School for Girls at Reading Abbey, which was run by French émigrés and also attended by Jane Austen.

Sherwood spent some of her teenage years in Lichfield, where she enjoyed the company of the naturalist Erasmus Darwin, the educational reformer Richard Lovell Edgeworth, his daughter Maria Edgeworth, and the poet Anna Seward. Although she was intellectually stimulated by them, she was distressed by their lack of faith and later described Richard Edgeworth as an "infidel". She also criticized Seward's persona of the female author, writing in her autobiography that she would never model herself on a woman who wore a wig and accumulated male flatterers. She was determined to become a writer and her father encouraged her. When she was 17, her father helped her publish her first story, Traditions (1795).

When Sherwood's father died in 1795, her family retired from active social life, since her mother preferred seclusion, and moved to Bridgnorth, Shropshire, into "a somewhat uncomfortable house" in the town's High Street. At Bridgnorth Sherwood began writing sentimental novels; in 1802 she sold Margarita for £40 to Mr. Hazard of Bath, and The History of Susan Grey, a Pamela-like novel, for £10. She also taught at a local Sunday school.

## Marriage and India

In 1799, Sherwood married her cousin, Captain Henry Sherwood. For several years, she accompanied her husband and his regiment, the 53rd Foot, on postings throughout Britain. In 1804, he was promoted to paymaster, which slightly improved their finances. In 1805 the regiment was ordered to India and the Sherwoods were forced to leave behind their first child, Mary Henrietta, with Sherwood's mother and sister in England.

Sherwood's four-month voyage to India was hard; she was pregnant again and the regiment's ship was attacked by French warships. The Sherwoods stayed in India for eleven years, moving with the army and a growing family from Calcutta (Kolkata) to Dinapore (Danapur), Berhampore (Baharampur), Cawnpore (Kanpur) and Meerut. They had six children there: Henry (1805–1807), Lucy Martha (1807–1808), Lucy Elizabeth (1809–1835), Emily (1811–1833), Henry Martyn, who became a minister (1813 – 21 January 1912), and Sophia (born 1815).

After the death of her second child, Henry, of whooping cough, Sherwood began to consider converting to evangelical Christianity. The missionary Henry Martyn (after whom she had named her sixth child) finally convinced her, but it was the chaplain to the company who first made her aware of her "human depravity" and need for redemption. After her conversion, she was anxious to pursue evangelical missionary work in India, but she first had to persuade the East India Company that its policy of religious neutrality was ill-conceived. The social and political support for missionary programmes in Britain eventually persuaded the company to approve her endeavours. Sherwood set up schools for the children of army officers and for the local Indian children attached to the camp. They were often taught in her home because no buildings were available. The first school began with 13 children and grew to over 40, with pupils ranging from the very young to adolescents; uneducated soldiers attended at times. Sherwood discovered that traditional British teaching materials did not appeal to children raised in India and so wrote her own Indian and army-themed stories, such as The History of Little Henry and his Bearer (1814) and The Memoirs of Sergeant Dale, his Daughter and the Orphan Mary (1815).

Sherwood adopted neglected or orphaned children from the camp. In 1807 she adopted a three-year-old who had been given too much medicinal gin and in 1808 a malnourished two-year-old. She found homes for those she could not adopt and founded an orphanage. In 1816, on medical advice, she and her family returned to Britain. Sherwood relates in her autobiography that she was continually ill in India; it was believed at the time that neither she nor her children could survive in a tropical climate.

## Return to Britain and death

When the Sherwoods returned to Britain, they were financially strapped. Captain Sherwood, having been put on half-pay, opened a school in Henwick, Worcestershire. Relying on her fame as an author and her teaching experience in India, Sherwood decided to establish a boarding school for girls in Wick; it remained in operation for eight years. She taught English, French, astronomy, history, geography, grammar, writing and arithmetic. At the same time, she wrote hundreds of tracts, novels, and other works for children and the poor, increasing her popularity in both the United States and Britain. The History of Henry Milner (1822) was one of Sherwood's most successful books; children sent her fan mail, begging her to write a sequel; one child sent her "ornamental pens" with which to do so. Babies were named after the hero. Sherwood published much of what she wrote in The Youth's Magazine, a children's periodical that she edited for over 20 years.

By the 1830s, the Sherwoods had become more prosperous and the family decided to travel to the European continent. The texts that Sherwood wrote following this trip reflect her exposure to French culture. She also embarked on a large and complex Old Testament project at this time, for which she learned Hebrew. To assist her, her husband assembled, over the course of ten years, a large Hebrew-English concordance. Sherwood's autobiography provides few details of the last approximately forty years of her life, although even in her seventies, Sherwood wrote for four or five hours a day; many of the books were co-authored with Sherwood's daughter, Sophia. According to M. Nancy Cutt, a Sherwood scholar, this joint authorship led to a "watery sentimentality" not evident in Sherwood's earlier works as well as a greater emphasis on issues of class.

In 1849, the Sherwoods moved to Twickenham, Middlesex, and in December of that year Captain Sherwood died. Sherwood herself died almost two years later on 20 September 1851.

## Literary analysis

Sherwood scholar M. Nancy Cutt has argued that Sherwood's career divides into three periods: (1) her romantic period (1795–1805), in which she wrote a few sentimental novels, (2) her evangelical period (1810 – c. 1830), in which she produced her most popular and influential works, and (3) her post-evangelical period (c. 1830–1851). Several underlying themes pervade most of Sherwood's works through these periods: "her conviction of inherent human corruption", her belief that literature "had a catechetical utility" for every rank of society, her belief that "the dynamics of family life" should reflect central Christian principles, and her "virulent" anti-Catholicism.

### Early writings: Sentimental novels

Sherwood's earliest works are the sentimental novels Traditions (1795) and Margarita (1795). Both are more worldly than her later works, but neither received much recognition. By contrast, The History of Susan Gray, written for the girls of her Sunday school class in Bridgnorth, made Sherwood a famous author. Like Hannah More's tracts, it is designed to teach middle-class morality to the poor. This novel, which children's literature scholar Patricia Demers, describes as a "purified Pamela", tells the story of Susan, an orphaned servant girl who "resists the advances of a philandering soldier; though trembling with emotion at the man's declaration of love and promise of marriage". Susan's story is told from her deathbed, so the reader is regularly reminded of the "wages of sin". A separate narrator, seemingly Sherwood, often interrupts the tale to warn readers against particular actions, such as deceiving themselves that God will spare "bad women" because there are so many of them. Despite a didactic tone that is often distasteful to modern readers, Susan Gray was so popular at the time of its publication that it was pirated by several publishers. In 1816, Sherwood published a revised version, which Sarah Trimmer reviewed positively in The Guardian of Education. Sherwood wrote a companion story to Susan Gray, The History of Lucy Clare, which was published in 1810.

### French literary influences

Although Sherwood disagreed with the principles espoused by French revolutionaries, her own works are modelled on French children's literature, much of it infused with Rousseauvian ideals. For example, in The History of Henry Milner, Part I (1822) and The History of the Fairchild Family, Part I (1818), Sherwood adopts Arnaud Berquin's "habitual pattern of small domestic situations acted out by children under the eye of parents or fellows". Likewise, The Lady of the Manor (1823–1829) shares similar themes and structures with Madame de Genlis' Tales of the Castle (1785). David Hanson, a scholar of nineteenth-century literature, has questioned this interpretation, arguing that the tales told by the maternal figure in The Lady of the Manor demonstrate a "distrust of parents", and of mothers in particular, because they illustrate the folly of overly permissive parenting. In these inset stories, only outsiders discipline children correctly.

One of Sherwood's aims in her evangelically-themed The History of Henry Milner (1822–1837) was to challenge what she saw as the irreligion inherent in French pedagogy. Henry Milner was written in response to Thomas Day's The History of Sandford and Merton (1783–1789), a novel founded on the philosophy of Rousseau (whose writings Sherwood had lambasted as "the well-spring of infidelity"). The children's literature scholar Janis Dawson indicates that the structure and emphasis of Henry much resemble Rousseau's Emile (1762): their pedagogies are similar, even if their underlying assumptions about childhood conflict. Both books isolate the child in order to encourage learning from the natural world, but Sherwood's Henry is naturally depraved, while Rousseau's Emile is naturally good. As the series progressed, Sherwood's views of religion changed (she became a universalist), causing her to place greater emphasis on childhood innocence in later volumes.

### Evangelicalism

The strongest themes in Sherwood's early evangelical writings are the need to recognize one's innate "depravity" and the need to prepare for eternity. For Sherwood, her main themes emphasize "faith, resignation, and implicit obedience to the will of God". In her adaptation of John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (1678), The Infant's Progress (1821), she represents original sin as a child named "In-bred Sin" who tempts the young pilgrims on their way to the Celestial City (Heaven). It is these battles with In-bred Sin that constitute the major conflict of the text. The allegory is complex and, as Demers admits, "tedious" for even the "willing reader". According to Demers, "some young readers may have found [In-bred Sin's] activities more interesting than the spiritual struggles of the little heroes, reading the book as an adventure story rather than as a guide to salvation". Such religious allegory, though not always so overt, continued to be a favourite literary device of Sherwood's.

Sherwood infused her works with political and social messages dear to evangelicals in the 1810s and 1820s, such as the crucial role of missions, the value of charity, the evils of slavery, and the need for Sabbath observance. She wrote biblically-based introductions to astronomy and ancient history so that children would have Christian textbooks. As Cutt argues, "the intent of these (as indeed of all Evangelical texts) was to offset the deistic tendency to consider knowledge an end in itself". She revised classic children's books on religious grounds, such as Sarah Fielding's The Governess (1749). These efforts to make religion more palatable through children's fiction were not always seen favourably by the evangelical community; The Evangelical Magazine reviewed harshly her Stories Explanatory of the Church Catechism (1817), complaining it was overly reliant on exciting fictional tales to convey its religious message.

#### The History of the Fairchild Family (1818–1847)

As Cutt argues, "the great overriding metaphor of all [Sherwood's] work is the representation of divine order by the harmonious family relationship (inevitably set in its own pastoral Eden). ... No writer made it clearer to her readers that the child who is dutiful within his family is blessed in the sight of God; or stressed more firmly that family bonds are but the earthly and visible end of a spiritual bond running up to the very throne of God". Demers has referred to this "consciously double vision" as the quintessentially Romantic element of Sherwood's writing.

Of all Sherwood's evangelically themed books, The History of the Fairchild Family was the most popular. It was published by John Hatchard of Piccadilly, which gave it and the other ten other books published with him a "social distinction" not attached to her other publications. The Fairchild Family tells the story of a family striving towards godliness and consists of a series of lessons taught by the Fairchild parents to their three children (Emily, Lucy and Henry) regarding not only the proper orientation of their souls towards Heaven but also the right earthly morality (envy, greed, lying, disobedience, and fighting are immoral). The overarching narrative of the tale includes a series of tract-like stories that illustrate these moral lessons. For example, stories of the deaths of two neighbourhood children, Charles Trueman and Miss Augusta Noble, help the Fairchild children to understand how and why they need to look to the state of their own hearts. The faithful and "true" Charles has a transcendent deathbed experience, suggesting he is saved; by contrast, the heedless, disobedient Augusta burns up while playing with candles and is presumably damned. Unlike previous allegorical literature with these themes, such as Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Sherwood domesticated her story with actions in the children's day-to-day lives, such as stealing fruit. These are important because they relate directly to their salvation. Each chapter includes thematically linked prayers and hymns, by Philip Doddridge, Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, William Cowper, Ann and Jane Taylor, and others.

The Fairchild Family remained in print until 1913, despite the increasingly popular Wordsworthian image of childhood innocence. Dickensian scholar Lois E. Chaney has suggested that it "influenced Dickens's depictions of Pip's fears of the convict, the gibbet, and 'the horrible young man' at the close of Chapter 1" in Great Expectations (1860–1861). The children's literature scholar Gillian Avery has argued that The Fairchild Family was "as much a part of English childhood as Alice was later to become". Although the book was popular, some scraps of evidence have survived suggesting that readers did not always interpret it as Sherwood would have wanted. Lord Frederic Hamilton writes, for instance, that "there was plenty about eating and drinking; one could always skip the prayers, and there were three or four very brightly written accounts of funerals in it". Although The Fairchild Family has gained a reputation in the twentieth century as didactic, in the early nineteenth century it was viewed as delightfully realistic. Charlotte Mary Yonge (1823–1901), a critic who also wrote children's literature, praised "the gusto with which [Sherwood] dwells on new dolls" and "the absolutely sensational naughtiness" of the children. Most twentieth-century critics, including George Orwell, who called it "an evil book", have condemned the book's harshness, pointing to the Fairchilds' moral-filled visit to a gibbet with a rotting corpse swinging from it; but Cutt and others argue that the positive depiction of the nuclear family in the text, particularly Sherwood's emphasis on parents' responsibility to educate their own children, was important to the book's appeal. She argues that Sherwood's "influence", through books such as the Fairchild Family, "upon the domestic pattern of Victorian life can hardly be overestimated".

The Fairchild Family was so successful that Sherwood wrote two sequels, in 1842 and 1847. These reflected her changing values as well as those of the Victorian period. Significantly, the servants in Part I, "who are almost part of the family, are pushed aside in Part III by their gossiping, flattering counterparts in the fine manor-house." The most extensive thematic change in the series was the disappearance of evangelicalism. Whereas all the lessons in Part I highlight the children's "human depravity" and encourage the reader to think in terms of the afterlife, in Parts II and III, other Victorian values such as "respectability" and filial obedience come to the fore. Dawson describes the difference in terms of parental indulgence; in Parts II and III, the Fairchild parents employ softer disciplinary tactics than in Part I.

#### Evangelical tract literature in the 1820s and 1830s

During the 1820s and 1830s, Sherwood wrote a great many tracts for the poor. Like her novels for the middle class, they "taught the lessons of personal endurance, reliance on Providence, and acceptance of one's earthly status". Emphasizing individual experience and one's personal relationship with God, they discouraged readers from attributing their successes or failures to "larger economic and political forces". In this, they resembled the Cheap Repository Tracts, many written by Hannah More. As Linda Peterson, a scholar of nineteenth-century women's literature, argues, Sherwood's tracts use a Biblical "interpretative frame" to highlight the fleetingness of earthly things. For example, in A Drive in the Coach through the Streets of London (1819), Julia is granted the privilege of shopping with her mother only if she will "behave wisely in the streets" and "not give [her] mind to self-pleasing". She cannot keep this promise and she eagerly peeks in at every store window and begs her mother to buy her everything she sees. Her mother, therefore, allows her to select one item from every shop. Julia, ecstatic, chooses blue satin boots, a penknife, and a new hat with flowers, and other items until the pair reach the undertaker's shop. There her mood droops considerably and she realizes the moral of the lesson, recited by her mother, as she picks out a coffin: "but she that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth" (1 Timothy 5:6).

#### Anti-Catholicism in the 1830s

Sherwood's anti-Catholicism appears most obviously in her works from the 1820s and 1830s. During the 1820s in Britain, Catholics were agitating for greater civil rights and it was at this time that Sherwood wrote her most sustained attacks against them. When the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 was passed, Sherwood and many like her were frightened of the influence Catholics might gain in the government and wrote Victoria (1833), The Nun (1833), and The Monk of Cimies (1834) to illustrate some of the supposed dangers of Catholicism. The Monk narrates, in the first person, Edmund Etherington's decision to renounce the Church of England and join the Catholic church. While a monk, he ridicules his fellow brothers, plans a murder and debauches a young woman. Some evangelicals disagreed with her views on Catholic Emancipation and were uncomfortable with these books; one evangelical reviewer called The Monk of Cimies "unfair and unconvincing".

### Colonialism

While in India, Sherwood wrote a series of texts based on colonial life. Her most popular, The History of Little Henry and his Bearer (1814), tells of a young British boy who, on his deathbed, converts Boosy, the Indian man who has taken care of him throughout his childhood. The book was enormously successful; it reached 37 editions by 1850 and was translated into French, German, Spanish, Hindustani, Chinese, and Sinhalese. Sherwood's tale blends the realistic with the sentimental and introduces her readers to Hindustani words and descriptions of what she felt was authentic Indian life. As Cutt explains, "With this work, the obituary tract (which invariably stressed conversion and a Christian death) had assumed the colouring of romance." Sherwood also wrote a companion story titled Little Lucy and her Dhaye (1825) that told a similar tale.

The Indian Pilgrim (1818) demonstrates Sherwood's religious biases: "Muslims and Jews receive better treatment than Hindus because of their belief in one God, but Roman Catholics fare little better than the Hindu idolaters." The Indian Pilgrim, though never published in India, was popular in Britain and America. Sherwood also wrote texts for Indian servants of British families in the style of British writings for the poor. One such was The Ayah and Lady (1813) in which the ayah or maid is "portrayed as sly, selfish, lazy, and untrustworthy. Her employers are well aware of her faults, yet they tolerate her". A more culturally sensitive and realistic portrayal of Indians appears in The Last Days of Boosy (1842), a sequel to The History of Little Henry and his Bearer, where the converted Boosy is cast out of his family and community after his conversion to Christianity.

Sherwood's writings on India reveal her sense of superiority over the inhabitants of India; the subcontinent therefore appears in her works as a morally corrupt land in need of reformation. She wrote The History of George Desmond (1821) to warn young men of the dangers of emigrating to India. Sherwood's books shaped the minds of several generations of young Britons. According to Cutt, Sherwood's depictions of India were among the few available to young British readers; such children "acquired a strong conviction of the rightness of missions, which, while it inculcated sincere concern for, and a genuine kindness towards an alien people for whom Britain was responsible, quite destroyed any latent respect for Indian tradition."

Using a postcolonial analysis, Nandini Bhattacharya emphasizes the complex relationship between Sherwood's evangelicalism and her colonialism. She argues that Sherwood's evangelical stories demonstrate the deep colonial "mistrust of feminized agency", represented by a dying child in Little Henry and his Bearer. Henry "subvert[s] the colonialist's fantasy of universal identity by generating a subaltern identity that mimics and explodes that fantasy". But ultimately, Bhattacharya argues, Sherwood creates neither a wholly colonialist text nor a post-colonial text; the deaths of children such as Henry eliminate any possibility for an alternative consciousnesses to mature.

### Later writings: Victorianism

By 1830, Sherwood's works had drifted from evangelicalism and reflected more conventional Victorian plots and themes. For example, Gipsy Babes (1826), perhaps inspired by Walter Scott's Guy Mannering (1815), emphasizes "human affections". In 1835, she wrote a Gothic novel for adolescents entitled Shanty the Blacksmith, which Cutt calls "a gripping [and] exciting tale" and employs the tropes of the genre: "lost heir, ruined castle, humble helpers and faithful retainer, sinister and mysterious gypsies, prisoner and plot". In 1835, Sherwood published the novel Caroline Mordaunt, about a young woman forced to become a governess. Her parents die when she is young, but luckily relatives pay to educate her, so she can earn her own living. It follows her progress from a flighty, discontented girl to a reliable, content woman; she learns to accommodate herself to the whims of a proud nobility, silly literati, and dogmatic evangelicals. She realizes that in her dependent position she must be content with less than complete happiness. Once she recognizes this, though, she finds God, and in the last chapter an ideal husband, so granting her near-complete happiness after all. Cutt suggests that in these works, Sherwood drew on Jane Austen and Jane Taylor for a new "lively, humorous, and satirical strain".

In both later works such as Caroline Mordaunt and her earlier evangelical texts, Sherwood followed the Victorian project of prescribing gender roles; while her later works outlined ever more stringent and narrow roles for each sex, her early works such as The Fairchild Family suggested demarcations as well: Lucy and Emily learn to sew and keep house while Henry tends the garden and learns Latin.

## Legacy

As Britain's education system became more secular in the later nineteenth century, Sherwood's evangelical books were used mainly to teach the poor and in Sunday schools. Her missionary stories were the most influential of all her works, for according to Cutt, they "kept alive the missionary spirit and perpetuated that paternal attitude towards India that lasted into the [twentieth century], were widely imitated" and "an unfortunate assumption of racial superiority was fostered by the over-simplification of some of Mrs. Sherwood's successors". They influenced Charlotte Maria Tucker ("A.L.O.E.") and even perhaps Rudyard Kipling. In the United States, Sherwood's early works were popular and republished well into the 1840s; thereafter a tradition of specifically American children's literature began to develop with authors such as Louisa May Alcott. Sherwood was also instrumental in developing the ideology of the Victorian family. Cutt acknowledges that "the omniscient Victorian parent was not the creation of Mrs. Sherwood, but of the Victorians themselves; nevertheless, by presenting the parent as God's vicar in the family, she had planted and fostered the idea".

The prevalence of death in Sherwood's early stories and vivid portrayal of its worldly and otherworldly consequences have often caused twentieth-century critics to deride her works. However, Sherwood's stories influenced the styles for other writers such as Charles Kingsley and Charlotte Mary Yonge. It has been surmised that John Ruskin used Henry Milner as the basis for his imaginative autobiography Praeterita (1885–1889). Sherwood's narrative experiments with various genres allowed other writers to pursue innovative forms of children's fiction. Her imaginative use of tracts domesticated reformist literature and encouraged radicals such as Harriet Martineau to employ the same genre, although for opposite purposes. Due to the popularity of Sherwood's works and their impact on later writers, Janis Dawson writes: "Though her books are no longer widely read, she is regarded as one of the most significant authors of children's literature of the nineteenth century".

## Selected works

- The History of Little Henry and his Bearer, 1814
- The History of Susan Gray, 1815, revised
- Stories Explanatory of the Church Catechism, 1817
- The History of the Fairchild Family, 1818
- The Indian Pilgrim, 1818
- An Introduction to Geography, 1818
- The Governess, or The Little Female Academy, 1820
- The History of George Desmond, 1821
- The Infant's Progress, 1821, 2nd edition
- The History of Henry Milner, 1822
- The History of Little Lucy and her Dhaye, 1823
- The Lady of the Manor, 1823–1829
- Soffrona and her Cat Muff, 1828
- Scripture Prints, with Explanations in the Form of Familiar Dialogues, 1831
- The Monk of Cimies, 1834
- Caroline Mordaunt, or The Governess, 1835
- Shanty the Blacksmith, 1835
- The Last Days of Boosy, the Bearer of Little Henry 1842
- The Youth's Magazine (1822–1848) – "This periodical ... brought out tales, tracts, and articles by Mrs. Sherwood for over twenty-five years (signed at first M.M., and after 1827, M.M.S.) The earlier tales were rapidly reprinted by Houlston, Darton, Melrose, Knight and Lacey and the R.T.S. [Religious Tract Society], as well as by various American publishers".
- The Works of Mrs. Sherwood by Harper & Bros. (1834–1857) –  collected works

English children's author and editor (1775–1851)


Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace

Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace is the sixth studio album by American rock band Foo Fighters, released on September 25, 2007, through Roswell and RCA Records. The album is noted for a blend of regular rock and acoustic tracks with shifting dynamics, which emerged from the variety of styles employed on the demos the band produced. It also marks the second time the band worked with producer Gil Norton, whom frontman Dave Grohl brought to fully explore the potential of his compositions and have a record that sounded different from their previous work. Grohl tried to focus on songs with messages that resonated with his audience, writing reflective lyrics that drew inspiration from the birth of his daughter.

Critical reception to Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace was mostly positive, with praise to the sonic variety and songwriting, though some reviewers found the record inconsistent and uninspired. The album topped the charts in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Austria, and had three successful singles, "The Pretender", "Long Road to Ruin" and "Let It Die". Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace was nominated for five Grammy Awards, winning Best Rock Album, and was also awarded the Brit Award of Best International Album.

## Background and recording

The tour for the Foo Fighters' fifth album, In Your Honor, had both acoustic and electric shows to fit the song variety in that record. Frontman Dave Grohl discussed this with RCA Music Group president Clive Davis, on how "it'd be so cool" if the Foo Fighters were the band that did those different shows that appealed to specific audiences "and they wouldn't necessarily have to go to both", to which Davis replied that "you can do both together". Grohl took this advice when composing his following album. Grohl added that "we didn't plan the new album to be half rock and half acoustic", picking the songs the band considered the best, with "demos which ranged from psycho fucking Nomeansno to sloppy, Tom Petty country to fucking piano-driven songs".

Since Grohl felt the songs were different from the band's previous input and "had the potential to be something great", he considered that instead of doing something like the last three albums, the band had to go out of "our own comfort zone" and "needed someone to push us out of there". So Grohl decided to work again with Gil Norton, who produced the band's second album The Colour and the Shape, citing how Norton taught the band of the importance of pre-production and refining the composition, and claiming Norton's "unconventional" approach "seems to capture the best of this band", considering that with him "we're not going to do a straightforward AC/DC record, he's gonna make it different".

Preparation was extensive: first Grohl had his usual start-off by developing demos with drummer Taylor Hawkins, but for the first time Grohl tried to input vocals and lyrics in this early composition stage. After rounding up composition with guitarist Chris Shiflett and bassist Nate Mendel, Grohl spent two weeks with Norton discussing "arrangements, harmony and melody" and reducing the song ideas, and then the band spent four weeks rehearsing, playing "a song a day, from noon to midnight". Hawkins stated that "we basically played each of these songs 100 different times, trying every little thing every different way" and that it was the first time since The Colour and the Shape "that Dave had to deal with someone in the room questioning all his ideas", given the more laid-back approach of previous producer Nick Raskulinecz. Grohl claimed the choices were for the "most powerful, dramatic songs", and that there was an effort to "make everything sound as natural as possible – just like on the albums we grew up listening to", citing 1970s artists such as Neil Young and Wings as a major influence. Shiflett added that for the first time he played lead guitar in some tracks while Grohl "usually works out all the bits" of composition.

Recording began in March 2007 at Studio 606 in Dave Grohl's Virginia home's basement (the studio has since been moved to Northridge, California). As the band took a ten-day break in April, Grohl thought that the record needed another uptempo song, so he spent his time developing an unfinished song that became "The Pretender". The sessions wrapped in mid-June, and for the first time the band did not feel the need to rerecord any song. Grohl stated that while In Your Honor was a double album because he felt "schizophrenic" to alternate between loud and acoustic songs, Norton helped on sequencing the tracks into "an album that makes sense".

The album features the Foo Fighters' first instrumental, "Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners". It was written by Grohl after meeting with one of the miners involved in the Beaconsfield mine collapse who requested an iPod with In Your Honor in it during the incident. As Grohl was moved by this action, he decided to "write something just to dedicate to him that night because he definitely seemed like a hero", and later promised to include the instrumental on the album. The album version features Kaki King, whom Grohl invited to record the song as she was visiting Studio 606. Grohl later said that "I showed it to her once, and she shredded 10 times better than I ever played it". Another guest was guitarist Pat Smear, who had been a band member from 1995 to 1998, and a guest musician on the tour for In Your Honor. Smear, who has since been reinstated as a full-on member, described his participation as "the oddest recording experience I had with Foo Fighters" given he had no input in composition and was "going in and playing on a song that was already written". This is their first Foo Fighters' album, since The Colour and the Shape (1997) to feature Smear, before officially rejoining the band for their next album, Wasting Light in 2011.

## Composition

Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace offers a mix of both electric and acoustic songs, which Grohl likened to the band growing older and "comfortable with all kinds of music" instead of just focusing on straight rock songs, saying that listening to the album he felt like "we've gotten over our insecurities, because it presents us in a way that we probably hid in the past." Grohl also stated that "the idea now is to step up and make [The Zombies'] Odessey and Oracle" - the album he claimed to have listened the most during production - and that "it has always been my dream to mix Steely Dan with Nomeansno." Amidst the number of heavier tracks and themes Grohl decided to include the song "Cheer Up, Boys (Your Make Up Is Running)", described as "the most light-hearted, melodic song of all" which "seemed like a little ray of hope in the middle of all this despair." Grohl added that there was a bigger focus on melodies even in heavier tracks such as "The Pretender", "Let It Die" and "Erase/Replace", and that album closer "Home", a ballad featuring Grohl on the piano, was "the best song I've ever written".

The songs of the album are noted for their changing dynamics – with "middle sections [that] turn into this mass orchestrated swarm and ridiculous time signatures" which include musical references to 1970s soft rock bands such as Wings, Eagles and Bread - summed by Hawkins by saying the band "wanted to make sure that everything 'built' on this record, that each instrument started somewhere and went somewhere else in the course of a song". The drummer attributed this to the acoustic tour leading the band to "shed some of the fear of incorporating mellower stuff with the heavy stuff", and Grohl added that "we wanted the stops to be pin-drop silent before exploding. If we had a beautiful melody, we'd throw a fucking string quartet in there. So we did everything we could to really magnify all those elements and that was fun. Usually you have a few parameters you're afraid to pass but, this time, there was no fear of going too far." Mix engineer Rich Costey added that his work to "preserve what [the band] had done to a fairly large degree" with "balancing and rides to get the dynamics to happen" was difficult given the sonic variety of Echoes, which went from "[the Foo Fighters'] endless walls of guitar overdubs, almost like a swarm of bees" to string quartets: "The challenge of this type of mix is to retain the power of the track, yet define a space for everything."

As the acoustic tour made Grohl realize "we were making music worth listening to, rather than music made for pummelling the person next to you" he decided to give more importance to the lyrics and "have a connection with the crowd in front of us", considering that among the many compositions the band made on pre-production "the ones that stand out are the ones that say something". So for the first time the lyrics started being written before recording begun, with Grohl stating that he "sat in the back of the studio and just wrote every day for about 14 hours a day." Most of the lyrics of the album deal with themes of birth, death and life, which Grohl attributed to the birth of his daughter Violet, considering that having a child "changes your entire outlook on the world", and that he was suddenly more emotional - "So when you're writing music with that in mind or that in your heart, everything just blooms into this fucking incredibly colourful, colourful feeling." Helped by the extensive lyrical preparation, the lyrics also tried to show more of Grohl's feelings, "those things that you've always wanted to do or always wanted to say", with Hawkins adding that he could not listen to "Stranger Things Have Happened" as "I'm one of his best friends, and the last thing I want to do is read a love letter to his wife or whoever it is."

## Packaging

The cover art was made by Invisible Creature, and features a combination between an aerial bomb and a vacuum tube to juxtapose the weapon "with another object that traditionally wasn’t associated with war or violence". The remainder of the album sleeve has similar juxtapositions of objects "that reflected the album's tone of life and mortality".

The album's title comes from a lyric on the album's final song, "Home". Grohl stated that as he struggled to think of a title given the musical variety of the album, even considering the title "The One With That Song On It"; regarding the chosen title, Grohl "thought it was nice because it's open to interpretation and it's a beautiful title and I think the album is beautiful in its diversity and its melody and its musicality – it goes from delicate acoustic moments to the heaviest shit we’ve ever done."

## Release and promotion

The album's first single, "The Pretender", had a forty-second preview released on a cross-promotional campaign with rock radio stations in July 2007, and eventually saw its debut on August 3, 2007 at ESPN's broadcast of the X Games XIII. It was released for music download and for radio play in August 2007, with a CD single coming out on September 17, 2007. "Long Road to Ruin" was released as the second single in December 2007. In 2008, "Cheer Up, Boys (Your Make Up Is Running)" was issued as a download single in the UK, with "Let It Die" being picked instead for the United States. All three North American singles topped Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks charts, making it only the ninth album in history to spawn three number one hits on this chart, and "The Pretender" set a record by spending eighteen weeks at the summit.

Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace was released on September 24, 2007. Pre-orders through iTunes were awarded with a free download of "The Pretender", advance access to tickets through Ticketmaster, and the bonus tracks "Seda" and "Once and For All". The album was also issued as a double vinyl record.

The promotional tour begun in September 2007, after some concerts in the United Kingdom during the summer, and lasted until Fall 2008. While the back-up band compiled for the In Your Honor tour – guitarist Pat Smear, keyboardist Rami Jaffe, violinist Jessy Greene, and percussionist Drew Hester – remained to perform complex songs such as "Come Alive", a few tracks had more stripped-down arrangements.

"Home" was used in the TV shows Brothers & Sisters, One Tree Hill, Private Practice, Bosch, 911 Season 5 Episode 7 and in the 2015 animated movie Shaun the Sheep Movie.

## Critical reception

Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace was met with positive reviews. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album has received an average score of 71, based on 30 reviews, indicating generally favorable reviews.

Writing for Entertainment Weekly, Tom Sinclair considered that while the record was not ground-breaking, "the Foos have found a way to create their own archetype, with an instinctive feel for what constitutes a killer song", and praised "how damn near flawless the tone of the whole set feels". Rolling Stone's David Fricke praised the sonic variety, described by him as "an anthology of strong new songs by a great bunch of bands, all calling themselves Foo Fighters". Jessica Letkemann of Billboard was acceptive of the "delicious sundown grooves" of the quieter piece and "the Foos' usual soft-louder-loudest 'radio friendly unit shifters'" - referencing a track of Nirvana's In Utero – while considering "Home" the only disappointing track. Robert Christgau rated the album a B, describing it as a "candid attempt to recapitulate Nirvana Mark II's 10-year-old triumph, The Colour and the Shape". Henrik Holmgren of Melodic praised the production of the album and felt that Grohl singing "gets better and better with every record." Dave Simpson of The Guardian called Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace the band's "most accomplished album", praising the composition and saying that "Gil Norton's stunning production can't disguise the raw humanity beneath the sheen".

A few critics considered the album not as inspired as the band's previous work. Kyle Anderson of Spin wrote that "two-thirds of these tracks sound a lot like songs Grohl has done before", considering that album's strengths came from "the handful of songs that deviate from the wallop'n'wail template". Allmusic reviewer Stephen Thomas Erlewine also felt the rock songs were not as remarkable "compared to the almost effortlessly engaging melodies of the softer songs", ultimately describing Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace as "just another Foo Fighters album instead of the consolidation of strengths that it was intended to be". Pitchfork's Adam Moerder considered that the album "feels like a retread" and that the band was "sounding less and less relatable", with ineffective acoustic tracks and rock songs that "sound cold and detached compared to heart-wrenching Foo pop gems like 'Big Me' or 'Everlong'". While Sputnikmusic reviewer John Hanson was acceptive of the rock songs, where he felt "the boys are most comfortable," he considered that the songwriting "has just become stale" and ultimately described Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace as "extremely boring and uninspired". PopMatters' Josh Timmermann was very critical of the overtly serious tone of the record compared to the lighthearted work the band had done before, joking that the title of "Cheer Up, Boys" "sounds like the suggestion of a concerned fan for a band he or she used to actually care about."

### Accolades

At the 50th Grammy Awards, Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Album, and "The Pretender" was chosen for Best Hard Rock Performance. The album was also nominated for Album of the Year, while "The Pretender" was also nominated for Record of the Year and Best Rock Song. The album also won Best International Album at the 2008 Brit Awards. Q ranked it the 12th best album of 2007, while Rolling Stone put the album at the 45th spot in a similar list.

## Commercial performance

In the United States, Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace entered the Billboard 200 album chart at number three, selling 168,000 copies in its first week, and has since been certified Gold by the RIAA. As of April 14, 2011, it has sold 897,000 copies in US. On October 6, 2017, Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace was certified Platinum by the RIAA.

The album debuted at the top of the UK Albums Chart, selling 135,685 albums in its first week; Australia and New Zealand, being certified platinum in its first week in both countries; and Canada, where the album went Platinum.

## Track listing

## Personnel

Personnel adapted from Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace liner notes

- Dave Grohl – lead vocals, rhythm guitar, piano on "Summer's End", "Statues" and "Home"
- Nate Mendel – bass
- Taylor Hawkins – drums, backing vocals on "Erase/Replace", "Cheer Up, Boys (Your Make Up Is Running)" and "But, Honestly", piano on "Summer's End"
- Chris Shiflett – lead guitar, backing vocals on "Cheer Up, Boys (Your Make Up Is Running)" and "Long Road to Ruin"

### Additional musicians

- Drew Hester – percussion on "Come Alive", "Let It Die", "Cheer Up, Boys (Your Make Up Is Running)", "Long Road to Ruin" and "Summer's End"
- Rami Jaffee – keyboards on "Let It Die", "Erase/Replace", "Long Road to Ruin", "Come Alive" and "But, Honestly", accordion on "Statues"
- Brantley Kearns Jr. – fiddle on "Statues"
- Kaki King – acoustic guitar on "Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners"
- Pat Smear – rhythm guitar on "Let It Die"
- Strings on "The Pretender", "Statues", "Home" and "Come Alive" by The Section Quartet (arranged and conducted by Audrey Riley)
- Oliver Allgood – lute on "Long Road to Ruin"

### Production

- Gil Norton – production
- Adrian Bushby – engineering
- Jake Davies – Pro Tools engineering
- John Lousteau – engineering assistance
- Rich Costey – mixing
- Claudius Mittendorfer – mixing assistance
- Brian Gardner – mastering

## Charts

### Weekly charts

### Year-end charts

## Certifications


1956 FA Cup final

The 1956 FA Cup final was the final match of the 1955–56 staging of English football's primary cup competition, the Football Association Challenge Cup, better known as the FA Cup. The showpiece event was contested between Manchester City and Birmingham City at Wembley Stadium in London on Saturday 5 May 1956. Two-time winners Manchester City were appearing in their sixth final, whereas Birmingham City were seeking to win the competition for the first time, having lost their only previous final in 1931.

Each club needed to win five matches to reach the final. Manchester City's victories were close affairs, each settled by the odd goal, and they needed a replay to defeat fifth-round opponents Liverpool. Birmingham City made more comfortable progress: they scored eighteen goals while conceding only two, and won each match at the first attempt despite being drawn to play on their opponents' ground in every round. They became the first team to reach an FA Cup final without playing at home.

Birmingham City entered the match as favourites, in a contest billed as a contrast of styles. Watched by a crowd of 100,000 and a television audience of five million, Manchester City took an early lead through Joe Hayes, but Noel Kinsey equalised midway through the first half. Second half goals from Jack Dyson and Bobby Johnstone gave Manchester City a 3–1 victory. The match is best remembered for the heroics of Manchester City goalkeeper, Bert Trautmann, who continued playing despite breaking a bone in his neck in a collision with Birmingham City's Peter Murphy. Due to his heroics, the game is often referred to as "the Trautmann final".

## Route to the final

### Manchester City

As both Birmingham City and Manchester City were First Division clubs, they entered the competition in the third round. Manchester City's cup run started with a home tie against Blackpool. The visitors took the lead after only 10 seconds (their fastest goal ever), but midway through the match, fog enveloped Maine Road. The match was abandoned during the second half, immediately after City had scored an equalising goal, and replayed the following Wednesday; City won 2–1. In the fourth round Manchester City faced Southend United at Roots Hall. The Essex club's ground had only opened five months previously, and was suffering from drainage problems. Torrential rainfall meant that in the week before the match a trench was dug across the pitch, and sand added. Though Southend were a Third Division team, their familiarity with the uneven pitch meant the match was closely contested. Southend pressured the Manchester City goal, requiring Bert Trautmann to make several saves, but Joe Hayes scored the only goal of the game on a City counter-attack to earn a fifth-round tie against Liverpool.

In the fifth-round match, the teams saw out a 0–0 draw at Maine Road, and the match was replayed at Anfield. Goals from Jack Dyson and Bobby Johnstone gave Manchester City a 2–1 lead, but the game finished in controversial circumstances when the referee blew his whistle for full time as Liverpool's Billy Liddell was bearing down on goal. Liddell put the ball in the net, but unbeknown to him the goal did not count as the match was already over. In the quarter final Manchester City again played opposition from Liverpool, facing Everton at Maine Road. Trailing 1–0 at half-time after a Jimmy Harris goal, City overcame the deficit in the second half with goals from Hayes and Johnstone. Further controversy followed in the semi-final against Tottenham Hotspur, when in the final minutes of the match, with the score at 1–0 to Manchester City, Tottenham were denied a penalty after goalkeeper Trautmann grabbed forward George Robb's leg. No further goalscoring opportunities occurred, and City hung on for the victory.

### Birmingham City

Manager Arthur Turner called on his team to match their Third Division opponents Torquay United for fighting spirit and to produce a "90-minute performance". The players complied; leading 4–0 at half-time, they finished as comfortable 7–1 winners. In the fourth round, Leyton Orient, who had beaten Birmingham at the same stage four years earlier, posed more of a potential problem. In reality the win was equally comfortable: Eddy Brown added two goals to his hat-trick at Torquay. A tight local derby game followed on a snow-covered frozen pitch at The Hawthorns. In the first half, goalkeeper Gil Merrick and his defence did well to keep West Bromwich Albion out; Trevor Smith had to clear a Ronnie Allen header from under the crossbar. In the second half, Birmingham wasted several chances before a one-two with Brown allowed Peter Murphy to score from the edge of the penalty area.

In the sixth round, Birmingham faced Arsenal on a muddy pitch. In order to relieve the tension on the way to important matches, manager Turner used to encourage the players to sing. Scotsman Alex Govan's contribution, Harry Lauder's rousing "Keep right on to the end of the road", was adopted by his teammates. As the team coach approached Highbury with the windows wound down, the fans joined in, continuing their rendition during the game. After first-half goals from Gordon Astall and Murphy, Birmingham went 3–0 up through Brown with twenty minutes left. Two minutes later, Arsenal scored from 30 yards (27 m), Birmingham were unsettled, and Merrick needed to make a fine save from Vic Groves to prevent a second Arsenal goal. Turner felt the motivation from such a powerful song played a significant part in the day's victory.

Semi-final opponents Sunderland found Birmingham without "hard-man" left-half Roy Warhurst, who had injured a thigh against Arsenal, but in Jack Badham they had an effective replacement. The club's official history describes this as "probably the finest team performance against top class opposition ever produced" by a Birmingham team. They attacked from the kick-off and nullified Sunderland's pressure and the threat of Len Shackleton. Noel Kinsey scored early and the second goal came from a passing move down the left side finished by Astall. As Sunderland threw everyone forward, which left them open at the back, Brown picked up a long through ball and lobbed the goalkeeper. Astall said afterwards that he was surprised they had not scored five, and Brown wrote in his newspaper column:

> Now Sunderland found out how hard it is to score against this terrific defence of ours. Not for nothing have we scored 18 goals against two (both of them freaks) conceded in five ties all away from home. What can I say to do justice to that brilliant goalkeeper Gil Merrick, to wonderful young Trevor Smith and to the matchless Jeff Hall and Ken Green? Once again they mixed the old cement and constructed that brilliant wall of a defence. Sunderland would have needed to call in a firm of demolition contractors to destroy it.

Birmingham City thus reached the final without playing a single tie at home, a feat which had never previously been accomplished.

## Build-up

The 1956 final was the second time that Birmingham had reached the showpiece match, having lost 2–1 to West Bromwich Albion in 1931. Manchester City were appearing in the final for the sixth time, and for the second consecutive year. They had won the cup twice previously (in 1904 and 1934), and had been beaten in the final three times (in 1926, 1933 and 1955). Though Birmingham had less pedigree in the competition, the press viewed them as favourites. The Daily Telegraph contrasted Birmingham's "dazzling Cup run" with the manner in which Manchester City "scraped through", describing the Midlanders as "firm favourites". Interviews with players were typically bullish in tone. Manchester City's Bobby Johnstone opined that "Even an unbiased fan must regard Manchester City with favour", whereas Birmingham's Len Boyd gauged opinion quite differently: "They say Birmingham City are the hottest Cup favourites since Wolves crashed to Portsmouth in 1939".

During the 1950s the FA Cup final was the only football match to be televised nationally, resulting in heightened media attention for the players and clubs involved. The Players' Union successfully requested an additional £5 per man for appearing in a televised match, the first time such appearance money had been paid. Birmingham's players signed an exclusive contract with the BBC committing them to appear only on BBC programmes in the weeks leading up to the final, though their post-match celebration would be covered live by the regional commercial station ATV. The match itself attracted a television audience of five million, a high figure for the period.

Each club received 15,000 tickets for the final from the Football Association. Birmingham distributed their share by ballot among those supporters who had followed the team in the earlier rounds of the competition; 22,000 had attended the semi-final, so many thousands were left disappointed. Of the remaining tickets, 4,640 were allocated to the FA, 40,640 to County Associations, 20,090 to Football League clubs, 2,550 to FA members and 2,080 to the FA Council and stadium authorities. An enquiry into the black market held following the previous year's Cup Final meant ticket touts kept a lower profile than usual. However, in the week leading up to the game, the cheapest standing tickets, originally sold for 3s 6d, were changing hands in Birmingham for twenty times face value, or 35% of a manual worker's weekly earnings.

Manchester City spent the week preceding the final at a training camp in Eastbourne. Two days before the final Bert Trautmann, who had originally arrived in England as a prisoner of war, was named Footballer of the Year. Eight players who had played in the previous year's final were selected in the starting line-up. Press speculation in the run-up to the match pondered which of Don Revie and Bobby Johnstone would be selected, as Johnstone had been suffering from a calf problem. Bill Leivers was also an injury doubt due to a twisted ankle, and Billy Spurdle had a boil on his left arm lanced on the eve of the final. Consequently, the Manchester City line-up was not named until the morning of the match. Leivers was passed fit after having two pain-killing injections, but contrary to press expectations Spurdle missed out. This meant both Revie and Johnstone appeared in the line-up, Johnstone switching to outside right.

Birmingham also had doubts over their selection. Captain Len Boyd had for some time been suffering from a debilitating back problem, and relied on injections to keep him playing. He missed five of the last seven games of the season, but was passed fit on the Wednesday before the game. Fellow wing half Roy Warhurst had injured his thigh in the sixth-round match and played no further part in the season, while Badham, who damaged an ankle three weeks before the final, travelled on the Thursday with the rest of the team to their base in Twyford, Berkshire. Jeff Hall was struggling with a virus. When manager Turner announced his team on the eve of the match, Boyd took Warhurst's position at left-half, Badham, who had proved an able deputy in the semi-final, was omitted, and the inexperienced 22-year-old Johnny Newman came in on the right.

British Railways laid on 38 special trains to take some 19,000 supporters to London, the first of which arrived at St Pancras station from Manchester Central shortly after 3 a.m. For the first time, the official match programmes were on sale from early morning in an attempt to thwart sellers of unofficial versions. The Birmingham Mail set up a temporary press in a Wembley car park to produce a special edition of their Saturday sports paper, the Sports Argus, on blue paper rather than the usual pink. As the teams prepared in the dressing rooms, the crowd was led in communal singing, including songs with resonance for each of the two teams, "She's a lassie from Lancashire" and "Keep right on to the end of the road", and the hymn "Abide with Me", traditionally sung before every FA Cup final. As the teams emerged from the tunnel, Manchester City captain Roy Paul seized one last opportunity to stir emotion within the players by stopping, raising his fist and shouting "If we don't fucking win, you'll get some of this".

## Match

### Summary

Both teams employed the formation typical of the era: two full backs, a centre half, two wing halves, two outside forwards, two inside forwards and a centre forward. However, their tactical approaches differed. Birmingham, described by The Times as using "iron determination, powerful tackling and open direct methods", employed the traditional English approach of getting the ball to the outside-forwards as quickly as possible, whereas Manchester City adopted tactics inspired by the Hungarian team which had soundly beaten England at Wembley three years before. The system involved using Don Revie in a deeper position than a traditional centre-forward in order to draw a defender out of position, and was therefore known as the "Revie Plan". As both teams' first-choice colours were blue, each team wore their change strip to prevent confusion. Manchester City therefore wore maroon stripes, and Birmingham City wore white.

Birmingham won the toss and Manchester City kicked off. The Birmingham goal came under pressure almost immediately. Within a minute a far post cross from Roy Clarke narrowly eluded Hayes. Two corners followed, the second resulting in a shot by Roy Paul. The next attack, in the third minute, resulted in the opening goal. Revie began the move, exchanging passes with Clarke, and back-heeling for the unmarked Hayes to sweep the ball past Gil Merrick to put Manchester City ahead. Birmingham's confidence was shaken, resulting in a series of Manchester City corners and a chance for Hayes, but they fought back to equalise in the 15th minute. Astall slipped the ball to Brown, who helped it forward. It rebounded off a Manchester City defender into the path of Welsh international inside‐forward Noel Kinsey, who fired home via Trautmann's far post. For the remainder of the first half Birmingham had most of the play, exerting pressure on Manchester City full-back Leivers, but were unable to make a breakthrough. Though Birmingham put the ball in the net twice, Brown was adjudged to be offside on both occasions. With Warhurst missing and Boyd out of position and not fully fit, Birmingham's strength and balance was disrupted, leaving them particularly vulnerable to Manchester City's unconventional style.

During the half-time interval, a row erupted between the Birmingham manager and some of his players about their fitness; in the Manchester City dressing room, a heated exchange took place between Barnes and Revie. Barnes had played defensively in the first half to counter the threat of Peter Murphy, but Revie urged him to play further forward. Meanwhile, manager Les McDowall exhorted his players to keep possession and make their opponents chase the ball.

The period immediately after half‐time saw few chances, but then, after just over an hour's play, Manchester City regained their stride and suddenly went two goals ahead. A throw-in to Revie led to interplay on the right wing involving Barnes, Dyson, and Johnstone, resulting in a through-ball which put Dyson clear of the defence to score. Two minutes later, Trautmann collected the ball at the end of a Birmingham attack and kicked the ball long to Dyson, over the heads of the retreating Birmingham players. Dyson flicked the ball on to Bobby Johnstone, who scored Manchester City's third, becoming the first player ever to score in consecutive Wembley finals in the process.

With 17 minutes remaining, a Birmingham chance arose when Murphy outpaced Dave Ewing. Goalkeeper Trautmann dived at the feet of Murphy to win the ball, but in the collision Murphy's right knee hit Trautmann's neck with a forceful blow. Trautmann was knocked unconscious, and the referee stopped play immediately. Trainer Laurie Barnett rushed onto the pitch, and treatment continued for several minutes. No substitutes were permitted, so Manchester City would have to see out the game with ten men if Trautmann was unable to continue. Captain Roy Paul felt certain that Trautmann was not fit to complete the match, and wished to put Roy Little in goal instead. However, Trautmann, dazed and unsteady on his feet, insisted upon keeping his goal. He played out the remaining minutes in great pain, with the Manchester City defenders attempting to clear the ball well upfield or into the stand whenever it came near. Trautmann was called upon to make two further saves to deny Brown and Murphy, the second causing him to recoil in agony due to a collision with Ewing, which required the trainer to revive him.

No further goals were scored, and the referee blew for full time with the final score 3–1 to Manchester City. As the players left the field, the crowd sang a chorus of "For he's a jolly good fellow" in tribute to Trautmann's bravery. Roy Paul led his team up the steps to the royal box to receive Manchester City's third FA Cup. Trautmann's neck continued to cause him pain, and the Duke of Edinburgh commented on its crooked state as he gave Trautmann his winner's medal. Three days later, an examination revealed that Trautmann had broken a bone in his neck.

### Details

## Post-match

Trautmann attended the evening's post-match banquet (where Alma Cogan sang to the players) despite being unable to move his head, and went to bed expecting his injury to heal with rest. As the pain did not recede, the following day he went to St George's Hospital, where he was told he merely had a crick in his neck which would go away. Three days later, he got a second opinion from a doctor at Manchester Royal Infirmary. An X-ray revealed he had dislocated five vertebrae in his neck, the second of which was cracked in two. The third vertebra had wedged against the second, preventing further damage which could have cost Trautmann his life.

When Manchester City's train from London reached Manchester, the team were greeted by cameras from Granada TV and an open-top bus. They embarked on a journey from London Road station to the town hall in Albert Square, taking a route along some of Manchester's main shopping streets. The size and spirit of the crowds led the Manchester Evening Chronicle to make comparisons with VE Day. The boisterousness of the crowds in Albert Square meant the Lord Mayor struggled to make his speech heard above chants of "We want Bert". After the civic reception at the Town Hall and a banquet at a Piccadilly restaurant, the team returned to the open-top bus and headed to Belle Vue Pleasure Gardens, near the club's former home of Hyde Road in east Manchester, where the Chronicle held a function.

An estimated 10,000 people met the Birmingham City party on their return to Snow Hill station. The players, in the first of a convoy of four coaches, waved to the assembled crowds through the open sun-roof as they proceeded to the Council House, where the Lord Mayor welcomed them on behalf of the city. Len Boyd addressed the crowds from the balcony before the coaches continued through the city centre and back to St Andrew's, Birmingham City's home ground. The following Wednesday, a dinner was held to honour the club's achievements. Guests included the 84-year-old Billy Walton, who had joined the club in 1888, six members of Birmingham's 1931 cup final team, and a trade delegation from the Soviet city of Sverdlovsk.

Though the thousands gathered outside the Council House roared "No!" when Boyd said the team felt they had let the supporters down, there were recriminations concerning Birmingham's performance and team selection. The local press suggested that attempts to combat "Wembley nerves" had resulted in an "over-casual approach to the game". The row at half-time had done little for second-half morale, but speaking fifty years later, Gil Merrick placed the blame less on Boyd's questionable fitness than on a failure to discuss how to stop Revie. Alex Govan, convinced that "if Roy Warhurst had been fit then there would only have been one winner", blamed "bad team selection", saying that even without Warhurst he firmly believed "that if Badham had been in we would have won that game. He would never have given Don Revie the room to run the match." Warhurst himself thought the selection of Newman "meant the team had to adapt its style and in the end we used different tactics to those that had been successful all season".

Football match between Manchester City and Birmingham City

May 1956 sports events in the United Kingdom


Fuzuli (poet)

Muhammad bin Suleyman (Azerbaijani: Məhəmməd Süleyman oğlu, مَحمد سلیمان اوغلی; 1483–1556), better known by his pen name Fuzuli (Füzuli, فضولی), was a 16th-century poet who composed works in his native Azerbaijani, as well as Persian and Arabic. He is regarded as one of the greatest poets of Turkic literature and a prominent figure in both Azerbaijani and Ottoman literature. Fuzuli's work was widely known and admired throughout the Turkic cultural landscape from the 16th to the 19th centuries, with his fame reaching as far as Central Asia and India.

Born in 1483 in modern-day Iraq, Fuzuli studied literature, mathematics, astronomy, and languages as a child. During his lifetime, his homeland changed hands between the Aq Qoyunlu, Safavid, and Ottoman states. He composed poetry for officials in all three empires, writing his first known poem to Shah Alvand Mirza of the Aq Qoyunlu. Fuzuli wrote most his poetry during the Ottoman rule of Iraq, which is why he is also sometimes called an Ottoman poet. Throughout his life, he had several patrons but never found one that fully satisfied him, and his desire to join a royal court was never realised. Despite expressing a desire to see places like Tabriz in modern-day Iran, Anatolia, and India, he never travelled outside Iraq. In 1556, Fuzuli died from the plague and was buried in Karbala.

Fuzuli is best known for his Azerbaijani works, especially his ghazals (a form of love poem) and his lyric poem Leylī va Macnūn, which is an interpretation of a Middle Eastern story of tragic love. He also wrote dīvāns (collections of poems) in Azerbaijani, Persian, and possibly Arabic. His style has been described as being distinguished by his "intense expression of feelings" and his use of mystic metaphors and symbols. His poetry shows influences from Persian poets like Nizami, Jami, and Hafez, as well as Azerbaijani poets like Habibi and Nasimi.

Fuzuli played a role in the development of the Azerbaijani language, with his writings being described as elevating Azerbaijani poetry and language to new heights. His work has been characterised as a reconciliation of Azerbaijani, Persian, and Arabic literary practices, as well as of Shia and Sunni beliefs. He remains a popular poet in Azerbaijan, Turkey, Iran, and Iraq.

## Biography

Fuzuli, whose given name was Muhammad and whose father's name was Suleyman, was born in 1483. He wrote under the name Fuzuli, which can be translated either as "presumptuous, superfluous" or "exalted, superior, virtuous". In his Persian dīvān (a collection of poems), he wrote that he picked this name to stand out, knowing that no one else would choose such a pen name. Little is known about Fuzuli's youth. He was probably a Shia Muslim of Azerbaijani Turkic origin, descending from the Bayat tribe. Although some contemporary sources refer to him as Fuz̤ūlī-yi Baghdādī (lit. 'Fuzuli of Baghdad'), suggesting he was born or raised in that city or its surroundings, other sources cite the nearby cities of Najaf, Hilla, or Karbala as his birthplace. His father was reported to have once been a mufti (Islamic jurist) in Hilla, which suggests that Fuzuli likely came from an educated family. As a child, he studied literature, mathematics, astronomy and languages, learning Persian and Arabic in addition to his native Azerbaijani. He had an interest in poetry since his childhood, with his poems suggesting that his initial inspiration was drawn from the works of the late-15th-century Azerbaijani poet Habibi.

Fuzuli lived in Iraq under the Aq Qoyunlu confederation, which ruled the region between 1470 and the conquest of the region by Shah Ismail I of the Iranian Safavid dynasty in 1508. By the time of the Safavid takeover, Fuzuli was already a popular young poet and had dedicated his first known poem, a Persian qaṣīdah (eulogy), to Shah Alvand Mirza of the Aq Qoyunlu. After 1514, the poet received patronage from Ibrahim Khan Mawsillu, the Safavid administrator of Baghdad, whom he met during Mawsillu's visit to Najaf and Karbala. He dedicated his first known Azerbaijani poem, a mas̱navī (a poem written in rhyming couplets) entitled Bang va Bādah (lit. 'Hashish and Wine'), to Ismail I and two qaṣīdahs and one tarjī'band [tr] (a poem with repeating verses) to Mawsillu. After Mawsillu was murdered by his own nephew in 1527, Fuzuli lost his patron and moved to either Hilla or Najaf, likely because he could not find another reliable patron among the Safavid nobles. During this time, he worked as a custodian of the Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf. Despite his employment, he did not have much money and relied on different patrons for support. His life between 1527 and 1534 is largely unknown.

When Sultan Suleiman I of the Ottoman Empire captured Baghdad in 1534, Fuzuli was already in his fifties. He presented the sultan with a long qaṣīdah and also wrote qaṣīdahs to Ottoman officials in his entourage in order to earn their favour. One of these officials, Celalzade Mustafa Çelebi [tr], was appointed nişancı (head of the Ottoman Empire's imperial chancery) while in Baghdad and arranged for the poet to receive a daily grant of nine akçes from the excess of donations made to Shia shrines. When Fuzuli was unable to obtain the money from the officers of the Ministry of Evkaf, who were responsible for distributing it, he expressed his disappointment in a poetic letter called Şikāyatnāmah (lit. ''Complaint''), written in Azerbaijani and addressed to Çelebi. In the letter, he declared that he had abandoned all hope, explaining that he had been greatly affected by the political and theological instability of his age. His stipend was restored following the letter. At the time, he was working as a candle-lighter at the Bektashi convent in the Imam Husayn Shrine in Karbala. He wrote in his poems that he had never found a patron who satisfied his needs and his desire to join a royal court had never been realised. Despite expressing a strong desire to see places like Tabriz in modern-day Iran, Anatolia, and India, he never travelled outside modern-day Iraq. In 1556, he died from the plague, either in Baghdad or Karbala, and was buried in Karbala near the Imam Husayn Shrine, in a türbah (a small tomb-mausoleum). According to Bektashi oral tradition, the türbah was built by Abdü'l-mü'min Dede, the Bektashi sheikh (a spiritual guide) of Fuzuli, and the poet was buried next to him.

## Poetry

Fuzuli composed poetry and prose in Azerbaijani, Persian and Arabic. Fifteen of his works are extant. The Encyclopædia Iranica distinguishes his work by "the way in which he integrates the mystic and the erotic, in the combination of the conventionality of his topics with the sincerity of his style, and in his intense expression of feelings of passionate love, of pity for the unfortunate, and of patience in the face of adversity". His frequent use of love themes in his poetry has earned him the nickname poet of love by scholars. Abdülkadir Karahan, a scholar of medieval Turkic literature, notes that what distinguished Fuzuli was his "sincerity, enthusiasm, simplicity, sensitivity, and power of expression". Alireza Asgharzadeh, an academic studying Iranian and Azerbaijani culture, describes Fuzuli's poetry as having "manifested the spirit of a profound humanism, reflecting the discontent of both the masses and the poet himself towards totalitarianism, feudal lords, and establishment religion". His poems have also been described by the literary researcher Muhsin Macit as having a "multi-layered structure" because of his "skilful use of metaphors and mystic symbols". Macit has also stated that Fuzuli's poems in Azerbaijani "have a multi-faceted structure, which, combined with perfection of expression, gives them permanence". His works show influence from Persian poets like Nizami, Jami, and Hafez, as well as Azerbaijani poets like Habibi and Nasimi.

### Leylī va Macnūn

Fuzuli is best known for his works in Azerbaijani, especially his ghazals (a form of love poem) and his mas̱navī Leylī va Macnūn (lit. 'Leylī and Macnūn'). Written in 1535 or 1536, the latter is a lyric poem that interprets the Middle Eastern story of the tragic romance between Leylī and Macnūn. Fuzuli reveals in the work that he was prompted to write it upon the request of some Ottoman poets who had accompanied Sultan Suleiman during his invasion of Baghdad. Accepting the request as a challenge, he completed the work within a year. Before beginning the work, he studied Persian versions of the story, particularly drawing inspiration from the 12th-century poet Nizami's rendition. Despite this, Fuzuli made significant changes to the narrative. For instance, while Nizami's work concludes with Majnun's death, Fuzuli's version sees the two lovers reunited in heaven and their graves transformed into türbahs.

His interpretation of the story generated more interest than previous Arabic and Persian versions, which the Turkish literature scholar İskender Pala attributes to the sincerity and lyricism of the poet's expression. The work has been described by the Encyclopædia Iranica as "the culmination of the Turk[ic] mas̱navī tradition in that it raised the personal and human love-tragedy to the plane of mystical longing and ethereal aspiration". Through his interpretation, the story of Leylī and Macnūn became widely known and Fuzuli's poem is considered one of the greatest works of Turkic literature.

### Other Azerbaijani works

Another well-known work by Fuzuli is the maqtal (a poem about a historic death) Ḥadīqat al-Su'adā [az] (lit. 'The Garden of the Blessed'), which is about the death of Husayn ibn Ali, the grandson of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, in the Battle of Karbala, which he fought in 680 CE against the second Umayyad Caliph Yazid I. In the introduction, the poet explains that while there were existing works about the battle in Arabic and Persian, there were none in a Turkic language, leaving the Turkic people deprived of this knowledge. Adapted from the 15th-century Persian poet Husayn Kashifi's Rawz̤at al-Shuhadā [fa] (lit. 'The Garden of Martyrs'), it is considered a masterpiece of the Turkic maqtal genre and is the most popular among contemporary works covering the Battle of Karbala. It was written before 1546, as library records show that the oldest available copy, the Cairo manuscript, dates back to that year.

Fuzuli was also the author of a dīvān in Azerbaijani, which is his most extensive work in this language. It comprises around 300 ghazals, 40 qaṣīdahs, 42 qiṭ'ahs (a form of monorhyme poetry), several dozen rübā'īs (four-line poems), and more. In the preface of his dīvān, he emphasises the importance of science to poetry, writing that without it, poetry is fleeting and compares it to a wall without a base. Karahan regards several of the qaṣīdahs in the dīvān as masterpieces, including the radif (couplet poems with same end-word) eulogies to the Prophet Muhammad titled Ṣabā (lit. 'Wind'), Sū (lit. 'Water'), Gül (lit. 'Flower'), and Xancar (lit. 'Dagger'), as well as the qaṣīdah composed by Fuzuli to commemorate Sultan Suleiman's capture of Baghdad. Nonetheless, the ghazals in the dīvān were more popular. Karahan states that Fuzuli "reached the peak of lyricism, mystical love and excitement in his ghazals".

Other works by him in Azerbaijani include the allegorical-satirical poem Bang va Bādah, which is over 400 couplets long and imagines a dispute between wine and hashish over their respective merits; a translation of the Persian poet Jami's Forty Hadith titled Ḥadīs̱-i Arba'īn tarcümasī [azb] (lit. 'Translation of Forty Hadiths'); and an allegorical mas̱navī titled Ṣöḥbat al-As̱mār [az] (lit. 'Conversation of Fruits'), which depicts vineyard fruits engaging in self-praise and arguments. Additionally, he wrote a poetic letter to Sultan Bayezid II and four others to his Ottoman officials.

### Persian works

Fuzuli also wrote several works in Persian, including a dīvān that comprises 410 ghazals, 46 qiṭ'ahs, several dozen qaṣīdahs, over a hundred rübā'īs, and more. Karahan states that this collection of poems demonstrates that the poet's proficiency in Persian was equal to that of any classical Iranian poet. The collection opens with a prose preface, where the poet praises the merits of poetry, his enduring fascination with it, and its ability to turn pain into pleasure. In the dīvān, he shows influences from Persian poets like Hafez and Jami.

He also wrote Haft Jām (lit. 'Seven Goblets', also called Sāqīnāmah, lit. 'Book of the Cupbearer'), a seven-part mas̱navī consisting of 327 couplets, with each part focusing on a specific musical instrument. The work is notable for its mystical elements. Another Persian mas̱navī by the poet is Ṣiḥḥat va Maraz̤ (lit. 'Health and Sickness', also called Ḥusn va ‘Ishq, lit. 'Beauty and Love'). It was inspired by the 15th-century Persian poet Fattahi Nishapuri's Ḥusn va Dil (lit. 'Beauty and Heart') and is an important work in demonstrating Fuzuli's knowledge of both medicine and well-being of the body and the soul. It tells the story of a dervish losing and regaining his body's health physically because of its struggle with a disease and later psychologically because of its struggle with love. Fuzuli also has a prose work in Persian titled Rind va Zāhid (lit. 'Rind and Zahid'), which describes a relationship between a father named Zāhid and his son Rind. Zāhid is trying to guide Rind to live according to Sharia (Islamic religious law) by encouraging him to attend the mosque, read the Quran, and avoid writing poetry. Rind initially resists his father's views, but ultimately chooses to accept them of his own accord.

Additionally, Fuzuli wrote Risālah-i Mu'ammīyāt (lit. 'Treatise of Riddles'), a work consisting of 190 riddle poems, and Anīs al-Qalb (lit. 'Close to the Heart'), a 134-couplet-long qaṣīdah. The latter piece is in the form of a naṣīḥatnāmah, a type of guidance letter for Ottoman sultans, that Fuzuli wrote for Sultan Suleiman. In the qaṣīdah, Fuzuli offers guidance to the Sultan on how to govern and serve the people. According to the professor of Turkic literature Hamide Demirel, Fuzuli presents the people's viewpoint towards a tyrannical ruler, presenting his opinions "in what were for the age very advanced terms" on the appropriate relationships between the populace, the Sultan, and the state. Demirel states that the language used in the work is stronger than a typical naṣīḥatnāmah and even possesses characteristics of a revolutionary manifesto. She concludes from Fuzuli's works that "he must have been no less highminded as a man than he was great as a poet".

### Arabic works

Arabic works by Fuzuli include eleven qaṣīdahs and a prose work titled Maṭla' al-I'tiqād (lit. 'The Birth of the Belief'). The prose work analyses the origins and destiny of humanity according to the Islamic theological discipline ʿIlm al-Kalām. Fuzuli presents the perspectives of Greek and Muslim philosophers on these topics in the work. The only known manuscript copy is housed in the library of the Asiatic Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia. His Arabic qaṣīdahs are believed to be fragments from a larger dīvān. All of them discuss the Islamic prophet Muhammad and his cousin and son-in-law Ali, who is also the first Shia Imam. Mazıoğlu states that Fuzuli's qaṣīdahs to Ali are indicative of his Shia devotion. The content and metaphors used in his Arabic qaṣīdahs are similar to those in his Azerbaijani and Persian qaṣīdahs. Mazıoğlu adds that these qaṣīdahs are "perfect in terms of expression and form", demonstrating his proficiency in the Arabic language.

## Legacy and assessment

Described by Kathleen Burrill, a professor of Turkish studies, as the "foremost of all the Azeri [Azerbaijani] poets", Fuzuli is also regarded as one of the greatest Turkic poets. He had a major influence on Azerbaijani and Ottoman literature, and is sometimes considered an Ottoman poet because he composed most of his poetry after the Ottoman conquest of Iraq. His work also had an impact on literature written in Chagatai, a Turkic literary language that was once widely spoken across Central Asia; later writers in Ottoman and Chagatai literature drew on the poet's work because of his ability to reinterpret traditional themes and ideas through his poetry, which brought the two literary traditions closer together. Bektashis consider Fuzuli to be one of the "Seven Great Poets" who lived between 14th and 16th centuries and represent Bektashi literature. His work has been characterised as a successful reconciliation of Azerbaijani, Persian, and Arabic literary practices, as well as of Shia and Sunni beliefs. He had a son who was also a poet and adopted the name Fazli in tribute to his father. Fazli is believed to have received his poetic education from Fuzuli, and wrote both religious and secular poems in Azerbaijani, Persian, and Arabic.

Widely recognised and admired throughout the Turkic cultural landscape from the 16th to the 19th centuries, Fuzuli's work was famous not only in the Ottoman Empire, Iran, and Central Asia, but also in the Indian subcontinent, as indicated by Indian library catalogues. The poems were transcribed by scribes from various linguistic backgrounds using different writing systems over a vast area. Fuzuli's Leylī va Macnūn was particularly popular in India's Muslim-inhabited regions. As many Muslim Indians migrated to places like South Africa, the work's popularity spread there as well. This has elevated Fuzuli's prominence among South African Muslims, who view Leylī and Macnūn as the "Islamic equivalents of what Romeo and Juliet have stood for culturally, and literarily, in the West", as described by the literary scholar Salvador Faura. Some of Fuzuli's works have been translated into English. Ṣöḥbat al-As̱mār was translated by the Turkologist Gunnar Jarring in 1936 in Lund under the title The Contest of the Fruits, and Leylī va Macnūn was translated by the writer-translator Sofi Huri in 1970 in London under the title Leyla and Mejnun.

Fuzuli's poetry played an important role in the development of the Azerbaijani language, with the modern scholar Sakina Berengian referring to him as the "Ferdowsi and Hafez of Azeri literature", comparing him to two poets regarded as among the greatest in Persian literature, and stating that Azerbaijani poetry and language reached new heights in his writings. Karahan regarded Fuzuli as a "brilliant linguist" because of his ability to compose poetry in non-native languages without any errors in language or technique. While he drew inspiration from earlier Persian works for most of his Azerbaijani pieces, he was able to add a "particular stamp of his personality" on his interpretations of subjects, which made them popular.

The harmonious and expressive nature of Fuzuli's poems, informed by his musical knowledge, makes them suitable for setting to music. His ghazals continue to be enjoyed in Turkey, including by members of high society and performers in rural areas, where classical Turkish music merges with folk music. The first opera in the Islamic world, Leyli and Majnun, was composed by the Azerbaijani composer Uzeyir Hajibeyov in 1908 and based on Fuzuli's work of the same name. The poet's ghazals were also the subject of Fuzuli Cantata, a cantata composed by another Azerbaijani composer, Jahangir Jahangirov, in 1959.

Fuzuli remains a popular poet in countries such as Azerbaijan, Turkey, Iran, and Iraq. An administrative region and its capital city in Azerbaijan are named after him. Additionally, a street in Tabriz is named after the poet. In October 1994, the Turkish Authors' Association and Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality jointly organised an academic conference in Istanbul about Fuzuli to honour the 500th anniversary of his birth. Another conference took place in Konya in December of the same year.

Azerbaijani poet (1483–1556)

16th-century poets from the Ottoman Empire