75 лучших рассказов / 75 Best Short Stories

Doncaster Races – the Saint Leger horse race is held annually in September in Doncaster, a town in the county of South Yorkshire in north-central England.

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plainting – poet. weeping bitterly, sobbing, moaning

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the Fourth of July – Independence Day, an annual national holiday in the United States; it commemorates the Declaration of Independence adopted on July 4, 1776.

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delirium tremens – a mental disturbance with disorientation and hallucinations in cases of alcoholism

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Wessex – one of the historical Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of medieval England

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symbolist – a representative of symbolism, a literary and artistic movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries; symbolists expressed their emotional experience through subtle symbolized language.

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decadent – a representative of decadence, a period of decline in literature and art at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries

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Elizabethan fashion – fashion and style of the time of Elizabeth I (1533–1603), Queen of England

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Bond Street – a street in central London famous for its expensive shops

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Ivel, Casterbridge – fictional cities in Dorset invented by Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)

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General Wellesley – Arthur Wellesley, 1st duke of Wellington (1769–1852), the commander-in-chief of the British Army during the Napoleonic Wars and later prime minister of Great Britain

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coroner – an official who is to inquire into any death that seems unnatural

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felo-de-se = suicide

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Waterloo and the fall of Napoleon – the Battle of Waterloo was the final defeat of Napoleon

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Sabbath – a holy day of rest (Sunday for the Christians and Saturday for the Jews)

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Parthian volley – a number of curses and oaths directed at smb. one by one

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anathema – a curse and the forced expulsion of smb. from some communion (originally Christian)

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the Sierras – Sierra Nevada, a major mountain range in the west of North America

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Peleus – in Greek mythology, the king of the Myrmidons and the father of Achilles

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Achilles – in Greek mythology, the son of the mortal man Peleus and a sea nymph, the bravest hero of the Trojan War

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Homer (9th–8th century BC) – a great poet of ancient Greece, the author of the ‘Iliad’ and ‘Odyssey’

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dyspnoea – acute shortness of breath

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Lazarus – a biblical figure; when Lazaurus was dead for four days, he was raised by Jesus Christ from the dead.

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Hogarthian – painted by William Hogarth (1697–1764), an English artist, best known for his engravings and paintings

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Doxology – praise to God sung during masses in Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran and Protestant churches

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tarred and feathered – punished (originally by putting tar on smb. and then covering with feathers)

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reredos – in church, an ornamental screen covering the wall at the back of the altar

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Braille – a writing system used for the blind and consisting of a code of 63 characters, invented in 1824 by Louis Braille (1809–1852), a French educator who was blind himself

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Naples – a city in southern Italy, founded in 600 BC

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Grantham – a town in Lincolnshire in east-central England, first mentioned in 1086

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Stamford – a town on the River Welland in Lincolnshire in eastcentral England

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Wesleyan – belonging to the family of the Wesleys

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San Diego – a port and city on the Pacific coast in southern California

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Hippocrates (460 BC–375 BC) – an ancient Greek physician who is regarded as the father of medicine

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the Floridian peninsula – a peninsula in the southeast of the United States in the state of Florida; Juan Ponce de León (1460–1521), a Spanish explorer, discovered Florida in 1513 while searching for the mythical fountain of youth.

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grandam = obsolete an old woman

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Pygmalion – in Greek mythology, a sculptor who made an ivory statue of a woman and then fell in love with it; Venus, the goddess of love, brought life into the statue in answer for Pygmalion’s prayer.

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Albertus Magnus (1200–1280) – a bishop, philosopher and teacher of German origin; he is considered patron saint of those who cultivate natural sciences.

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Cornelius Agrippa (1486–1535) – a physician, theologian, philosopher and expert in occultism

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Paracelsus (1413–1541) – a German-Swiss physician and alchemist; he was the first to establish the role of chemistry in medicine.

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Newcastle – a city in the United States named for Newcastle upon Tyne in England

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Frisco = San Francisco

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Kidd – William Kidd (1645–1701), a British pirate, one of the most colourful outlaws of all time

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tomahawk – a war hatchet of the North American Indians

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