Jane Austen ever popular

This summer, the UK will honor its favorite writer, Jane Austen (1775-1817), by making her face on the new £ 10 note. In the 200 years since her death, Austen’s fame has increased from the modest amount she enjoyed in her lifetime to the global fame she receives today.

And yet Austen’s work is so very English that it’s rather strange she should be so popular all over the world. Her novels are so of her time that it’s remarkable that she’s still appreciated in this very different age. Her most famous works — including Pride and Prejudice, the one for which she is most known — are set in the world of the English gentry (绅士阶层) in the 18th century.

Most of her fiction is about young women of that time. Women of the gentry could not work so their chances of happiness or even basic living depended upon finding a husband. This is a very serious subject, of course, but the joy of Austen’s stories is her ability to make wonderful, but also touching comedy out of something so serious.

Take Pride and Prejudice as an example. Elizabeth Bennet is one of five daughters in a countryside family that struggles because daughters can’t inherit (继承) the property. Her mother wants to marry off as many of them as possible. The pushy and annoying Mrs Bennet is one of the great comic characters in English literature.

The main plot of the novel is driven by the love-hate relationship between Elizabeth and Mr Darcy, a wealthy noble. At first, they don’t get on. Elizabeth finds Darcy too proud; she feels he thinks he is better than everyone else in the countryside. She thinks that he looks down upon her family in particular. Darcy, while admiring Elizabeth, believes that she has treated him unfairly. The pleasure of the novel is reading how these obstacles (阻碍) are overcome and how the comical and unexpected ending is achieved.

If we think about this story, it’s obvious why Jane Austen is still popular 200 years after her death, and why readers can still identify with (与……产生共鸣) characters from the long dead world of the 18th century English gentry. Although there have been many changes since that time, it’s still the greatest challenge in life for men and women to find the partner of their dreams.

   Blind people can read. They do so by running their fingers along a line of raised points or dots on paper. Of course, they first have to learn the code（代码）. Here are some examples of it. One dot stands for the letter “A”. Two dots side by side mean “C”. Four dots arranged to look like a box（：：） stand for the letter “G”. By placing the dots in special patterns, all the letters of the alphabet can be formed.

This code was made up by a Frenchman called Louis Braille. Though he could see at birth, he became sightless when he was only three. Braille was cutting leather in his father’s shop. His knife slipped and cut his eye. Infection（感染）spread to both eyes, and he became blind.

At 10, he was placed in a home for the blind. But young Braille had great talent. He became a skilled musician and soon got a job as a church organist（风琴弹奏者）in Paris.

Because he had talent and was quick, he became a teacher at a school for the blind. While there, he heard that a captain had sent messages to his soldiers that they could read at night without light. His messages were in the simple form of raised dots and dashes. This was the clue Braille needed. At the age of 15, he worked out his own six-dot code. Each group of dots is called a cell. The cells are three dots high and two dots wide. For the rest of his life, Braille taught his young flock to read both written and musical works using his code.

For the last 17 years of his life, Braille was ill with tuberculosis. He died at the age of 43.

   Clara Barton,founder of the American Red Cross , gained worldwide honour for her devotion to easing human suffering and earned the nickname“Angel of the Battlefield”.

Barton was born into a freethinking family in 1821. Her elder brothers and sisters happily educated her in math and reading, so when she entered school at three years old, she could read and spell three-syllable words. 【小题1】

Concerned about Barton's difficulty in making friends, her parents sent her to a boarding school,hoping it would make her more comfortable with her peers. 【小题2】 Barton lost her appetite（食欲）and cried constantly. After only one term, she had to be brought home. Then, Barton stayed out of school to nurse her brother through a serious injury and also volunteered to care for poor families during a smallpox （天花）outbreak.

In 1861, the Civil War broke out. The sight of wounded soldiers touched Barton deeply. She began to collect and give away food , bandages, medicines, and other supplies to the Union Army.

 【小题3】 There, with little concern for her own safety, she cooked meals, assisted surgeons, and comforted wounded soldiers.

Eventually, because of working too hard , Barton broke down finally. 【小题4】 It was there that she learned of an organization based in Switzerland called the International Committee of the Red Cross , whose work mirrored her own.

Shortly after Barton arrived back home in 1873,her sister died. 【小题5】 When recuperating（康复）at a health facility in New York, she began planning for the establishment of an American wing of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Although at first the government opposed it, her efforts finally paid off. The American Red Cross was officially organized on May 21, 1881. Her influence lives on today in the work of the organization she founded.

   When John Gurdon was 15, he ranked last out of the 250 boys in his grade at biology. He also came in last for every other science subject. His teacher wrote in a _____ , "I believe he has ideas about becoming a _____; form his present performance this is quite foolish. "

Luckily the teacher's words didn't _____ Gurdon's love for science. He kept working hard. He went to labs earlier and left _____ than anyone else. Finally he realized his dream.

On Oct. 8, 2012, 64 years later, the British professor _____ the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka had contributed to the research and therefore _____ the award.

Gurdon got the honor _____ his research into cells and cloning. When he was studying at Oxford, he did some _____ on cells. He took a cell from an adult frog, moved its genes _____ , and put them into an egg cell. The egg cell then ______ into a clone of the adult frog. His research ______ for the first time that every cell in the body contains the same genes.

At that time, many people couldn't ______ Gurdon's idea. But later it helped to ______ Dolly the sheep in 1996, the first cloned mammal in history. It also led to important findings in the ______ use of cells. For example, cells from someone's skin can ______ into any type of tissue in the body. This is good news for those ____ who have diseased or damaged tissue.

Gurdon always remembers the ______ he had when he was 15. He even puts the report on his desk as a daily ______ to himself.

"When you have problems, like an experiment which doesn't work, it's ______ to remind yourself that perhaps you are not so good at your job and the teacher may be ______ ," he said.

However, the facts suggest Gurdon is pretty good indeed.