Class VIII Unit-2 On Telling a Tale-Matilda (Ballad)

Hilaire Belloc

Belloc was born on 27 July, 1870 in La Celle-Saint-Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc was an Anglo-French writer and historian. He was one of the most prolific writers in England during the early twentieth century. He was known as a writer, orator, poet, satirist, man of letters, and political activist. He was President of the Oxford Union and later MP for Salford from 1906 to 1910. 
Cloud, France to a French father and an English mother. He grew up in England where much of his boyhood was spent in Slindon, West Sussex, for which he often felt homesick in later life. 
His mother Elizabeth Rayner Parkes (1829–1925) was also a writer and a great-granddaughter of the English chemist Joseph Priestley. 
After being educated at John Henry Newman's Oratory School in Edgbaston, Birmingham, Belloc served his term of military service, as a French citizen, with an artillery regiment near Toul in 1891.
After his military service, Belloc proceeded to Balliol College, Oxford, as a History scholar. He went on to obtain first-class honours in History.
He was powerfully built, with great stamina, and walked extensively in Britain and Europe. While courting his future wife Elodie, whom he first met in 1890, the impecunious Belloc walked a good part of the way from the midwest of the United States to her home in northern California, paying for lodging at remote farm houses and ranches by sketching the owners and reciting poetry.
 In 1896, he married Elodie Hogan, an American. In 1906, he purchased land and a house called King's Land at Shipley, West Sussex, where he brought up his family and lived until shortly before his death. Elodie and Belloc had five children before her 1914 death from influenza. After her death, Belloc wore mourning for the remainder of his life, keeping her room exactly as she had left it.
Belloc suffered a stroke in 1941 and never recovered from its effects. He died on 16 July 1953 in Guildford, Surrey, following a fall he had at King's Land. He is buried at the Shrine of Our Lady of Consolation of West Grinstead.

Class VIII Unit-2 On Telling a Tale-The Enchanted Shirt (Ballad)

John Hay

John Milton Hay was an American statesman, diplomat, author, journalist, and served as the private secretary and assistant to Abraham Lincoln. Hay's highest office was serving as United States Secretary of State under Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt.
Hay was born in Salem, Indiana,[1] of Scottish ancestry, the third son of Dr. Charles Hay and Helen Leonard from Middleborough, Massachusetts,  He was educated first at the private school of the Reverend Stephen Childs, an Episcopal clergyman. In 1851 John went to an academy at Pittsfield in Pike County, where he met an older student, John G. Nicolay, with whom he would later work as private secretary to Abraham Lincoln. In 1852 John Hay went to the college at Springfield, (later known as Carthage College) and in 1855 was sent to Brown University, where he joined Theta Delta Chi. At Brown, he developed an interest in poetry. He left Brown in 1858 before receiving his diploma and went home to Warsaw to study law with his uncle, Milton Hay.
Abraham Lincoln's law office was next door to the law office of Milton Hay, John's uncle, and Lincoln thus became acquainted with John Hay. When Lincoln won election as president, his secretary, John G. Nicolay, recommended John Hay to Lincoln as assistant private secretary. Thus, at age 22 he began a lifelong career in government, except for a stint in journalism from 1870–78. Though technically a clerk in the Interior Department, he served as Lincoln's secretary until 1864. 
Hay was present when Lincoln died after being shot at Ford's Theatre. Hay and Nicolay wrote a formal 10-volume biography of Lincoln (Abraham Lincoln: A History, 1890) and prepared an edition of his collected works.
Portions of Hay's diaries and letters from 1861–1870, published in the book Lincoln and the Civil War, show Lincoln in a far more intimate light.
In 1870 he left government and worked for 6 years as an editor for the New York Tribune under Whitelaw Reid.

In August 1898, Hay was named by President McKinley as Secretary of State and helped negotiate the Treaty of Paris of 1898, which ended the Spanish–American War. Hay continued serving as Secretary of State after Theodore Roosevelt succeeded McKinley, serving until his own death in 1905. 

Class VIII Unit-2 On Telling a Tale-I can't Climb Trees any more (short story)

Ruskin Bond

Ruskin Bond is an Indian author of British descent. In 1992, he received the Sahitya Akademi Award for his short story collection, Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra, given by the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Literature. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 1999 for contributions to children's literature. 
Ruskin Bond was born on 19 July, 1934 in Kasauli to Edith Clerke and Aubrey Bond. His siblings were Ellen and William. Ruskin’s father was with the Royal Air Force. When Bond was four years old, his mother was separated from his father. At the age of ten Ruskin went to live at his grandmother's house in Dehradun after his father's sudden death in 1944 from malaria. Ruskin was raised by his mother, who remarried an Indian businessman. He completed his schooling at Bishop Cotton School in Shimla, from where he graduated in 1952 after winning several writing competitions in the school like the Irwin Divinity Prize and the Hailey Literature Prize.
Following his high school education he spent four years in England. In London he started writing his first novel, The Room on the Roof, the semi-autobiographical story of the orphaned Anglo-Indian boy Rusty. It won the 1957 John Llewellyn Rhys prize, awarded to a British Commonwealth writer under 30. 
Since 1963 he has lived as a freelance writer in Mussoorie, a town in the Himalayan foothills.He wrote Vagrants in the Valley, as a sequel to The Room on the Roof. These two novels were published in one volume by Penguin India in 1993. The following year a collection of his non-fiction writings, The Best Of Ruskin Bond was published by Penguin India. His interest in the paranormal led him to write popular titles such as Ghost Stories from the Raj, A Season of Ghosts, A Face in the Dark and other Hauntings.
The Indian Council for Child Education recognised his pioneering role in the growth of children's literature in India, and awarded him the Sahitya Academi Award in 1992 for Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra. He received the Padma Shri in 1999. He has written over three hundred short stories, essays and novels, including Vagrants in The Valley, The Blue Umbrella, Funny Side Up, A Flight of Pigeons and more than 30 books for children. He has also published two volumes of autobiography. Scenes from a Writer's Life describes his formative years growing up in Anglo-India; The Lamp is Lit is a collection of essays and episodes from his journal.
His novel, The Flight of Pigeons, has been adapted into the film Junoon. The Room on the Roof has been adapted into a BBC-produced TV series. Several stories have been incorporated in the school curriculum in India, including "The Night Train at Deoli", "Time Stops at Shamli", and Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra. In 2007, the Bollywood director Vishal Bharadwaj made a film based on his popular novel for children, The Blue Umbrella. The movie won the National Award for Best Children's film.

Class VIII Unit-2 On Telling a Tale-The Story Teller

Hector Hugh Munro
Hector Hugh Munro better known by the pen name Saki, and also frequently as H. H. Munro, was a British writer whose witty, mischievous and sometimes macabre stories satirised Edwardian society and culture. He is considered a master of the short story.
Born in Akyab, Burma (now Myanmar) on December 18, 1870, Hector Hugh Munro was the son of Charles Augustus Munro and Mary Frances Mercer. Charles Munro was an Inspector-General for the Burmese Police. Munro was educated at Pencarwick School in Exmouth, Devon and at Bedford School. After the death of his wife Charles Munro sent his children, including two-year-old Hector, to England, where they were brought up by their grandmother and aunts in a strict puritanical household.
In 1893, Hector followed his father into the Indian Imperial Police, where he was posted to Burma. Two years later, having contracted malaria, he resigned and returned to England.
At the start of World War I,  Munro  joined 2nd King Edward's Horse as an ordinary trooper, later transferring to 22nd Battalion, the Royal Fusiliers, where he rose to the rank of lance sergeant. More than once he returned to the battlefield when officially still too sick or injured. On November 13, 1916, when sheltering in a shell crater near Beaumont-Hamel, France, during the Battle of the Ancre he was killed by a German sniper. 
He started his career as a journalist, writing for newspapers such as the Westminster Gazette, Daily Express, Bystander, Morning Post, and Outlook. In 1900, Munro's first book appeared: The Rise of the Russian Empire, a historical study modelled upon Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
From 1902 to 1908, Munro worked as a foreign correspondent for The Morning Post in the Balkans, Warsaw, Russia (where he witnessed Bloody Sunday), and Paris; he then gave that up and settled in London. 
Beside his short stories (which were first published in newspapers, as was customary at the time, and then collected into several volumes), he wrote a full-length play, The Watched Pot, in collaboration with Charles Maude; two one-act plays; a historical study, The Rise of the Russian Empire, the only book published under his own name; a short novel, The Unbearable Bassington; the episodic The Westminster Alice (a Parliamentary parody of Alice in Wonderland), and When William Came, subtitled A Story of London Under the Hohenzollerns, a fantasy about a future German invasion of Britain.

Class IX Unit - III Tales of Toil - The Man who Knew Too Much (Short Story)

Alexander Baron

He was a British author and screenwriter. He is best known for his highly acclaimed novel about D-Day entitled From the City from the Plough (1948) and his London novel The Lowlife (1963).
Baron was born in Maidenhead on December 4, 1917, and raised in the Hackney district of London to Polish-Jewish immigrant parents. He attended Hackney Downs School.
During the 1930s, with his schoolfriend Ted Willis, Baron was a leading activist and organiser of the Labour League of Youth (at that time aligned with the Communist Party), campaigning against the fascists in the streets of the East End. Baron became increasingly disillusioned with far left politics  and finally broke with the communists after the Hitler–Stalin Pact of August 1939.
Baron served in the Pioneer Corps of the British Army during World War II, experiencing fierce fighting in the Italian campaign, Normandy and in Northern France and Belgium. As a pioneer, he was among the first Allied troops to be landed in Sicily, Italy and on D-Day.
He used his wartime experiences as the basis for his three best-selling war novels.[ After the war he became assistant editor of Tribune before publishing his first novel From the City from the Plough (1948). At this time, at the behest of his publisher Jonathan Cape, he also changed his name from Bernstein to Baron.
In the 1950s Baron wrote screenplays for Hollywood, and by the 1960s he had become a regular writer on BBC's Play for Today. He wrote several episodes of the A Family at War series: 'The Breach in the Dyke' (1970), 'Brothers in War' (1970), 'A Lesson in War' (1970), 'Believed Killed' (1971), 'The Lost Ones' (1971), and 'Two Fathers' (1972). Later he became well known for drama serials like Poldark and A Horseman Riding By, and in the 1980s for BBC classic literary adaptions including Ivanhoe, Sense And Sensibility (1981), Jane Eyre (1983), Oliver Twist (1985) and Vanity Fair (1987). He contributed several episodes to Granada Television's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1984–1985).
Baron's personal papers are held in the archives of the University of Reading. His wartime letters and unpublished memoirs were used by the historian Sean Longden for his book To the Victor the Spoils, a social history of the British Army between D Day and VE Day. Baron has also been the subject of essays by Iain Sinclair and Ken Worpole.
Since Baron's death on December 6, 1999 his novels have been republished several times, testifying to a strong resurgence of interest among in his work among the reading public as well as among critics and academics. 

Class IX Unit II Breaking Barriers - Only Daughter (Memoir)

Sandra Cisneros

She is an American writer best known for her acclaimed first novel The House on Mango Street (1984) and her subsequent short story collection Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories (1991). She is the recipient of numerous awards including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and is regarded as a key figure in Chicana literature.
Sandra Cisneros was born in Chicago, Illinois on December 20, 1954, the third born of seven children. 
She grew up as the only daughter in a family of six brothers, which often made her feel isolated, and the constant migration of her family between Mexico and the USA instilled in her the sense of "always straddling two countries ... but not belonging to either culture. Cisneros's work deals with the formation of Chicana identity, exploring the challenges of being caught between Mexican and Anglo-American cultures, facing the misogynist attitudes present in both these cultures, and experiencing poverty.
 Cisneros's childhood loneliness was instrumental in shaping her later passion for writing.Cisneros’s one 
strong female influence was her mother, Elvira, who was a voracious reader and more enlightened and socially conscious than her father.
Cisneros was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree from Loyola University Chicago in 1976, and received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1978. 
Cisneros has held a variety of professional positions, working as a teacher, a counsellor, a college recruiter, a poet-in-the-schools, and an arts administrator, and has maintained a strong commitment to community and literary causes. In 1998 she established the Macondo Foundation, which provides socially conscious workshops for writers, and in 2000 she founded the Alfredo Cisneros Del Moral Foundation, which awards talented writers connected to Texas. Cisneros currently resides in San Antonio, Texas.

Class X Unit II The World of Mystery-Skimbleshanks: The Railway Cat (Poem)

Thomas Stearns Eliot

Thomas Stearns Eliot OM  was a publisher, playwright, literary and social critic and "one of the twentieth century's major poets. Born in the United States on September 26, 1888,  he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 (at age 25) and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.
From 1898 to 1905, Eliot attended Smith Academy, where his studies included Latin, Ancient Greek, French, and German. He began to write poetry when he was fourteen under the influence of Edward Fitzgerald's Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, a translation of the poetry of Omar Khayyam. He said the results were gloomy and despairing, and he destroyed them. His first published poem, "A Fable For Feasters", was written as a school exercise and was published in the Smith Academy Record in February 1905.Also published there in April 1905 was his oldest surviving poem in manuscript, an untitled lyric, later revised and reprinted as "Song" in The Harvard Advocate, Harvard University's student magazine. He also published three short stories in 1905, "Birds of Prey", "A Tale of a Whale" and "The Man Who Was King". The last mentioned story significantly reflects his exploration of Igorot Village while visiting the 1904 World's Fair of St. Louis. 
Following graduation, Eliot attended Milton Academy in Massachusetts for a preparatory year, where he met Scofield Thayer, who would later publish The Waste Land. He studied philosophy at Harvard College from 1906 to 1909, earning his bachelor's degree after three years, instead of the usual four. Frank Kermode writes that the most important moment of Eliot's undergraduate career was in 1908, when he discovered Arthur Symons's The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1899).
After working as a philosophy assistant at Harvard from 1909 to 1910, Eliot moved to Paris, where from 1910 to 1911, he studied philosophy at the Sorbonne. 
 In 1915 he taught English at Birkbeck, University of London.
Eliot attracted widespread attention for his poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915), which is seen as a masterpiece of the Modernist movement. It was followed by some of the best-known poems in the English language, including The Waste Land (1922), The Hollow Men (1925), Ash Wednesday (1930) and Four Quartets (1945). He is also known for his seven plays, particularly Murder in the Cathedral (1935). He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948.
Awards
Order of Merit (awarded by King George VI (United Kingdom), 1948)
Nobel Prize in Literature "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry" (Stockholm, 1948)
Officier de la Legion d'Honneur (1951)
Hanseatic Goethe Prize (Hamburg, 1955)
Dante Medal (Florence, 1959)
Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (1960)
Presidential Medal of Freedom (1964)
Thirteen honorary doctorates (including Oxford, Cambridge, the Sorbonne, and Harvard)
Tony Award in 1950 for Best Play: The Broadway production of The Cocktail Party
Two posthumous Tony Awards (1983) for his poems used in the musical Cats
Eliot College of the University of Kent, England, named after him
Celebrated on commemorative postage stamps
A star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame

Class X Unit II The World of Mystery-The Method of Sherlock Holmes (Novel)

Arthur Conan Doyle

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL  was a Scottish physician and writer who is most noted for his fictional stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes. He was a prolific writer whose other works include fantasy and science fiction stories, plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction, and historical novels.
Arthur Conan Doyle was born on 22 May 1859 at 11 Picardy Place, Edinburgh, Scotland.
Supported by wealthy uncles, Conan Doyle was sent to the Roman Catholic Jesuit preparatory school Hodder Place, Stonyhurst, at the age of nine (1868 -1870). He then went on to Stonyhurst College until 1875. From 1875 to 1876, he was educated at the Jesuit school Stella Matutina in Feldkirch, Austria.
From 1876 to 1881 he studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh.While studying, Conan Doyle began writing short stories. His earliest extant fiction, "The Haunted Grange of Goresthorpe", was unsuccessfully submitted to Blackwood's Magazine. His first published piece "The Mystery of Sasassa Valley", a story set in South Africa, was printed in Chambers's Edinburgh Journal on 6 September 1879. On 20 September 1879, he published his first non-fiction article, "Gelsemium as a Poison" in the British Medical Journal.
While living in Southsea, Doyle played football as a goalkeeper for Portsmouth Association Football Club, an amateur side, under the pseudonym A. C. Smith. (This club, disbanded in 1896, had no connection with the present-day Portsmouth F.C., which was founded in 1898.) Conan Doyle was also a keen cricketer, and between 1899 and 1907 he played 10 first-class matches for the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC). His highest score, in 1902 against London County, was 43. He was an occasional bowler who took just one first-class wicket (although one of high pedigree — it was W. G. Grace). Also a keen golfer, Conan Doyle was elected captain of the Crowborough Beacon Golf Club, East Sussex for 1910. He moved to Little Windlesham house in Crowborough with his second wife Jean Leckie and their family from 1907 until his death in July 1930.

Class X Unit II The World of Mystery- The Himalayas (Poem)

Sujata Bhatt

She was born in Ahmedabad on 6 May 1956, and brought up in Pune until 1968, when she emigrated to the United States with her family. She has an MFA from the University of Iowa, and for a time was writer-in-residence at the University of Victoria, Canada.  Her translations from the German include Mickle Makes Muckle: poems, mini plays and short prose by Michael Augustin (Dedalus Press, 2007). Bhatt was a visiting fellow at Dickinson College, Pennsylvania and currently works as a freelance writer. She has translated Gujarati poetry into English for the Penguin Anthology of Contemporary Indian Women Poets. Combining both Gujarati and English, Bhatt writes "Indian-English rather than Anglo-Indian poetry." Her poems have appeared in various journals in the United Kingdom, Ireland, the United States, and Canada, and have been widely anthologised, as well as being broadcast on British, German, and Dutch radio.
Bhatt now lives in Bremen, Germany with her husband, German writer Michael Augustin, and daughter.
Poetry collections 
1988 Bruzinem Carcanet Press
1991 Monkey Shadows Carcanet Press
1995 The Stinking Rose Carcanet Press
1997 Point No Point. Carcanet Press
2000: Augatora. Carcanet Press
2002: The Colour of Solitude (Second edition). Carcanet Press
2008: Pure Lizard. Carcanet Press
Awards
1988 Commonwealth poetry prize (Asia) Brunizem
1988 Alice Hunt Bartlett Prize Brunizem
1991 Poetry Book Society Recommendation Monkey Shadows
1991 Cholmondeley Award
2000 Poetry Book Society Recommendation Aguatora

2000 Tratti Poetry Prize

Class V Unit-2 Dream On Wheels

Class VI Unit-2 The Friends-Barefoot Days

Rachel Lyman Field (1894-1942)

He was an American novelist, poet, and children's fiction writer. She is best known for the Newbery Award-winning Hitty, Her First Hundred Years. Field also won a National Book Award, Newbery Honor award and two of her books are on the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award list.
Field  grew up in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. As a child, she contributed to the St. Nicholas Magazine. She was educated at Radcliffe College. According to Ruth Hill Viguers, Field was "fifteen when she first visited Maine and fell under the spell of its 'island-scattered coast'. Field married Arthur S. Pederson in 1935, with whom she collaborated in 1937 on To See Ourselves. In 1938 one of her plays was adapted for the British film The Londonderry Air. She was also successful as an author of adult fiction, writing the bestsellers Time Out of Mind (1935), All This and Heaven Too (1938), and And Now Tomorrow (1942). They were adapted as films produced under their own titles in 1947, 1940, and 1944 respectively. Field also wrote the English lyrics for that version of Franz Schubert's "Ave Maria" used in the Disney film Fantasia. Field is famous, too, for her poem-turned-song "Something Told the Wild Geese".She also wrote a story about the nativity of Jesus, "All Through the Night".She moved to Hollywood, where she lived with her husband and two children. Rachel Field died at the Good Samaritan Hospital on March 15, 1942, of pneumonia following an operation.

Class VII English Unit-1The voice of the voiceless:The little black boy

Ayyankali (1863–1941) 

Ayyankali was a leader of the native Indian people treated as untouchables. He pioneered many reforms to improve the lives of the Dalits. 
History
Ayyankali was born in 1863 in Venganoor, Trivandrum, Travancore. He was one of  theseven children born to a Pulaya (Cheramar) family. He was illiterate as were all Dalits at that time. In those days Dalits were not allowed to walk along public roads. The Dalit women were not allowed to cover their breasts in public places. Ayyankali organized Dalits and fought against these discriminations.Ayyavu Swami, a saint and scholar  whom Ayyankali loved and respected as his teacher, was a major inspiration for him to fight against all social discriminations.
He was in the forefront of movements against "Manusmrithi" colour system and casteism. He passed through the public roads of Venganoor on a bullock cart which was not allowed for the Dalits.  Ayyankali demanded right for Dalit children to study in school. He started a school to teach Dalit children at Venganoor. 
The significance of Ayyankali lies in the fact that he could spearhead a struggle for human rights of the untouchables raising demands which find expressions in international human rights documents well before their adoption. He pioneered a movement for democratizing public places and assertedthe rights of workers . The most amazing part of it is that he did all this in spite of his illiteracy. Ayyankali was later nominated to the assembly of Travancore namely, Sri Moolam Legislative Assembly, in 1910 by the then rulers in recognition of his leadership ability. In his efforts Ayyankali also received the support of his great contemporary Sree Narayana Guru and other social reformers. By 1900 Dalits were given the freedom to walk on public roads, and by 1914, Dalit children were allowed to join schools. Dalit women were allowed to cover their nakedness in public through his efforts.
In 1937 he was praised by Mahatma Gandhi when he visited Venganoor, Ayyankali's home town. In November 1980, Indira Gandhi unveiled the statue of Ayyankali at Kowdiar square, in Trivandrum.

Sahodaran Ayyappan 

Sahodaran Ayyappan was a social reformer, thinker, journalist, and politician of Kerala, India. 
Sahodaran Ayyappan was born into a traditional Ezhava family of Cherai in Vypin Island of Ernakulam district as the son of Kumabalathuparambil Kochavu Vaidyar and Unnuli on 21 August 1889. He lost his father at an early age and was brought up under the guidance of his elder brother Achuthan Vaidyar. After having his school education primarily in Cherai and North Paravoor, Ayyappan did his pre-university course at the Malabar Christian College, Kozhikode. 
 It was at this time that he had the opportunity to interact closely with Sree Narayana Guru at whose encouragement he decided to continue his studies and took B.A. from Maharaja's College, Ernakulam, in 1916. He also met the poet Kumaran Asan during this time. 
At Cherai, in 1917, Ayyappan organized a misra bhojanan (a grand feast of all castes sitting together under one roof ). The feast was organized under the aegis of the Sahodara Sangham. The feast was attended by about 200 people including the so-called untouchable Pulayas. This was opposed forcibly by conservative sections of society, including Ezhava lords.From then on, Ayyappan came to be known as Sahodaran Ayyappan.
By this time he had also acquired a Law degree from the Government Law College, Trivandrum. His consuming passion was still directed towards effecting radical reforms in the society. With this aim in view he started the journal ‘Sahodaran’ from Mattancherry, containing articles and poems, which continued to be on print until 1956.
An inquisitive soul from childhood, K. Ayyappan’s mind kept probing beyond caste, religion and other dogmas.   He didn't believe in any religion. He became the founder editor of the magazine Yukthivadi (The Rationalist) which was started in 1928. Ayyappan proclaimed his slogan of Jati Venda, Matham Venda, Daivam Venda (No Caste, No Religion, No God for Human-beings). Despite such atheism, he nevertheless had deep respect for the Guru.
In 1928, Ayyappan was elected to Cochin Legislative Council of which he continued to be a member for the next 21 years. 
He served as a minister two times in Cochin Legislative Assembly and one time in Thiru-Kochi Assembly.
He was widely respected by all sections of people across the society because of his selfless social work and also on account of his impeccable personal integrity. For the last 15 years of his life he stayed away from active social life. On 6 March 1968 Ayyappan breathed his last.

Kumara Gurudevan

Poykayil Johannan was born on 17 February 1879, to parents Kandan and Lechi of the Paraiyar ("Pariah") community, at Eraviperoor, Pathanamthitta, Kerala.  Though at birth he was named Komaran, he was later renamed Kumaran. Being a slave to a Christian family, Kumaran had to follow Christianity and have a Christian name, and was called Johannan. He became literate and well- versed with Bible. Johannan left the Sankaramangalam family, intent on organising the Christian Dalit communities.
He joined the Marthoma church, a reformist sect among the Syrian Christians, but realized the church treated Dalits as an inferior class, and left the church. He then joined a new sect called the Brethren Mission. Here he faced similar instances of caste-based discrimination. 
In 1909, Johannan left Christianity and started his own Dalit liberation movement named Prathyaksha Raksha Daiva Sabha (PRDS). He was known as Poikayil Appachan or Kumara Gurudevan afterwards. Hewas successful in convincing the majority of his brethren to abandon Christianity and embrace PRDS.
He bought 125 acres of land in various parts of Travancore for the use of PRDS. The new organisation was headquartered at Eraviperoor. Poikayil Yohannaan set up schools and industrial training centres in different places in addition to constructing buildings for religious ceremonies and public functions.
Johannan was also twice nominated, in the years 1921 and 1931, to the Sree Moolam Praja Sabha, the legislative council of the princely state of Travancore.
In the Praja Sabha, Johannan made a forceful case for the education and employment of the Depressed Classes.  Some of the measures he advocated for these Dalits included provision for concession in fee for studies beyond fifth class, job reservations and land for each Dalit family. Johannan died on 29 June 1939 at the age of 61.

Pandit Karuppan

Pandit Karuppan was a poet, dramatist, and social reformer. He was called the "Lincoln" of Kerala for steering socio-economically and educationally backward communities to the forefront. Hailing from a community of inland fishermen who engaged in localised fishing in backwaters and rivers, Karuppan became a Sanskrit scholar, poet and dramatist of repute.
Karuppan’s famous work ‘Jathikummi,’ which criticised the prevailing caste system, was written in 1904 during the period of his study at Kodungallur Kovilakam and it became popular among the poor. Jaathikkummi is a pioneering attempt in Malayalam literature questioning the caste system and untouchability.Though most of Karuppan’s writings were in scholarly Sanskrit, Jaathikkummi employs simple, everyday Malayalam that illiterate people from the local communities were able to understand and propagate. Karuppan’s talents in Sanskrit came to the notice of Rajarshi Ramavarma Raja, the Maharaja of Cochin. The Maharaja arranged for Karuppan's advanced study of Sanskrit under ‘Sahridayathilkan’ Rama Pisharody, the principal guru of the royal family. Karuppan was appointed Sanskrit teacher at the St. Theresa’s Convent Girls’ High School in Ernakulam.
Later, he joined the staff of Caste Girls’ High School, Ernakulam, and Victoria Girls’ High School, Thrissur in 1918. Subsequently, he was posted at the Teacher Training School ther. 
In August 1925, he was nominated as a member of the Cochin Legislative Council. He pressed the Government to establish a separate Department for this purpose leading to the establishment of the Department for the Protection of the Depressed Classes with the then Director of Public Instruction, Rao Sahib C. Mathai as ex-officio Protector and Karuppan as full-time Assistant Protector. He persuaded the Government to provide scholarships, fee concessions and a number of other incentives for the education of children from the depressed classes. The Depressed Classes Department was later renamed the Harijan Welfare Department.
Pandit Karuppan was then appointed as Secretary to the Elementary Education Committee and the Bhashaparishkarana Committee. In 1931, he assumed the newly created post of Superintendent of Vernacular Education of Cochin State. In 1932, he was appointed lecturer of Sanskrit at the Maharaja’s College. During this time, Karuppan also served as Chairman of the Board of Examiners of the Madras University and as Member of the Municipal Council, Ernakulam.
The Maharaja of Cochin honoured Karuppan with the title Kavithilakan or Great Poet. Impressed by Karuppan, Kerala Varma Valiya Koil Thampuran of Travancore, known as Kerala Kalidasan for his translation of Shakunthalam into Malayalam, conferred the title of Vidwan upon him in 1913. Karuppan decided to quit his teaching job to spend more time and energy spearheading social reforms. With this purpose, he organized the people of his own community into regional groups called sabhas. The main agenda of the sabhas was to persuade people to fight ignorance and superstitions. He put strong pressure on his fellow countrymen to become better educated and accept a healthier lifestyle. 
He gave equal emphasis to the emancipation of other communities too as seen through the formation of the Cochin Pulaya Maha Sabha for the uplift of the Pulaya community in 1913. Treated as untouchables by the upper caste Hindus, they were not allowed to assemble in any common place for meetings. To keep such meetings away from the eyes of the landlords, Karuppan asked the Pulayas to come in rowboats to the expanse of the Ernakulam backwaters and tie their boats together. There, he addressed them on a wooden-planked platform and charted out strategies for their emancipation by forming a Sabha. Subsequently, Karuppan persuaded other communities like Velas, Sambavas, Ulladas and Kudumbis to form similar Sabhas to give momentum to their fight against social evils and discrimination.
Pandit Karuppan’s wife Kunhamma hailed from Panambukad and the couple lived in Sahithyakudeeram, a house near the St. Teresa’s College, Ernakulam, with their only daughter Parvathy. Pandit Karuppan died of pleurisy on March 23, 1938 at the age of 53.

K. Kelappan

He was a founding member and president of Nair Service Society, a reformer, an Indian freedom fighter, educationist and journalist. He was born on August 24, 1889 in the small village of Muchukunnu in Calicut in Kerala. He studied in Calicut and Madras and graduated from the University of Madras. He began his career as a teacher at in St. Berchmans High School, Changanassery and was the founding President of the Nair Service Society. Later he became the Principal of a school run by the society.
He was called Kerala Gandhi. He worked hard for eradication of untouchability and worked for upliftment of Harijans. He set up many Harijan hostels and schools in Kerala. 
He joined studies in Law at Bombay which he gave up to join the Non-cooperation movement led by Mahatma Gandhi and joined the Freedom movement.

During the Malabar rebellion, he faced a group of rebels who came to loot the Ponnani Treasury and persuaded them to retreat by appealing to their good sense.
He gave the lead to the Payyannur and Calicut salt Satyagraha and was chosen as the first Satyagrahi from Kerala in the individual satyagraha movement launched by Gandhiji. He played a dominant role in the famous Vaikom Satyagraha and was the leader of the Guruvayur Satyagraha in 1932.  
He was jailed by several times during the Indian freedom movement including the Quit India Movement.
He was in the forefront of Swadeshi Movement and did his best to build up a base of Khadi and village industries. He died on October 7, 1971.

Chattampi Swamikal

Sree Vidyadhiraja Parama Bhattaraka Chattampi Swamikal was a Hindu sage and social reformer. His thoughts and work influenced the launching of many social, religious, literary and political organizations and movements in Kerala and for the first time gave voice to those who were marginalized. Chattampi Swamikal denounced the orthodox interpretation of Hindu texts citing sources from the Vedas.  Swamikal promoted vegetarianism and professed non-violence (Ahimsa). Swamikal believed that the different religions are different paths that lead to the same place.
Chattampi Swami was born on 25 August 1853 at Kollur, a suburban village of Trivandrum in southern Travancore. Knowing his thirst for learning an uncle took him to the traditional school conducted by Pettayil Raman Pillai Asan, a renowned scholar and writer who taught him without any fee. It was there that he earned the name Chattampi on account of his assignment as the monitor of the class.
Kunjan Pillai took to many manual works. For some time he worked as a document writer and also as an advocate's clerk. He stood first in a test for clerical posts in Government Secretariat, Trivandrum conducted by Sir T Madhava Rao the then Divan of Travancore State. But he left the service after a short while as it curtailed his freedom and prevented his wanderings for spiritual exploitations and research. Kunjan Pillai met Subba Jatapadikal from Kalladaikurichin in Southern Tamil Nadu; a renowned teacher well versed in Tarka, Vyakarana, Mimasa, and Vedanta. He spent many years learning under Subba Jatapadikal.  After completing his studies under Subba Jatapadikal he spent long periods of learning and under a Christian priest.  Later he spent lived with an old Muslim well versed in Koran and Sufi mysticism who taught him the main tenet of Islam.  These days revealed to him that the basic concepts of all religions are the same. It is misinterpretation that causes conflicts and makes religion a tool for oppression and subjugation. At the end of his wanderings and quest Kunjan Pillai was led to self-realization by an avaduta.  It is believed that this avaduta belonged to the line of immortal masters of southern India, the Sidddhas who knew the scientific art for realizing God. He returned to Kerala as a great scholar and saint.
Maha Samadhi
Toward the end of his life Swamikal settled down at Panmana, a village in Kollam district. After a short period of illness during which he objected to take any medicine, at an auspicious time marked by him on May 5, 1924 Swamikal attained Maha Samadhi.

Mannathu Padmanabhan 

Mannathu Padmanabhan  was a social reformer and a freedom fighter from the State of Kerala. He was born in Perunna village in Changanacherry, Travancore, on 2 January 1878 to Eswaran Namboothiri of Nilavana Illam and Mannathu Parvathy Amma. He began his career as a teacher in 1893 in a Government primary school. After a few years, from 1905 he changed his profession and started practising law, in the Magistrates Courts.
On 31st October, 1914 with the help of a few others, he established the Nair Service Society. His main ambition was to uplift the status of the Nair community. In 1924-25 the NSS persuaded the Travancore Government to enact the Nair Regulation which broke up the materiarchal joint family providing for paternal and maternal property to divided among all the children. He fought for social equality, the first phase of being the Vaikom Satyagraha, demanding the public roads near the temple at Vaikom be opened to low caste Hindus. He took part in the Vaikom and Guruvayoor temple-entry and anti-untouchability agitation. He became a member of the Indian National Congress in 1947 and took part in the agitation against Sir C. P. Ramaswamy Iyer’s administration in Travancore. 
In 1949 Padmanabhan became a member of the Travancore Legislative Assembly. In 1959 he, along with Christian Churches, led a united opposition against the State Communist Ministry, which became known as the Vimochana Samaram (liberation struggle). 
Padmanabhan was involved with the Nair Service Society as its Secretary for 31 years and as its President for three years. He was honoured with the title Bharata Kesari by the President of India. He also received Padma Bhushan in 1966. He died on February 25, 1970. 

Class VIII Unit-1 On the Wings of Wishes-A Shattered Dream

M P Anil Kumar 

He served as a MiG-21 pilot in the Indian Air Force until when a road accident left him paralaysed below the neck. He was just 24.
Since then he has lived in the military's Paraplegic Rehabilitation Centre in Pune.
Today Anil Kumar uses a keyboard with his mouth and is a gifted writer whose by-line rediff.com readers will instantly recognise. An article he wrote about his disability was so inspirational that it found its way in school textbooks in Maharashtra.
M P Anil Kumar comes from a small village about 35 kilometres from Thiruvananthapuram. At the age of 9, he left home to join the Sainik School. After spending some time there he made up his mind to join the air force one day.
He underwent training at the NDA for three years. Thrown in the cauldron of multi-faceted, multi-dimensional training, the cadets hardly got enough time to interact with each other, primarily because of the fact that there is no time from rigorous training. He actively indulged in all the games that were on offer and was particularly good at football, basketball, hockey, volleyball, cricket and athletics.
Not only that, MP was good at studies too.  It came as no surprise that MP was awarded the 'best in aerobatics' trophy at the end of training at the Academy.

Class VIII Unit-1 On the Wings of Wishes-Macbeth

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". His extant works, including some collaborations, consist of about 38 plays, 154 sonnets and two long narrative poems.

Shakespeare was born and brought up in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613 at age 49, where he died three years later.
Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the 16th century. He then wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest works in the English language.