Glenn Lord, American editor, died he was 80.

Glenn Lord was an American literary agent, editor, and publisher of the prose and poetry of fellow Texan Robert E. Howard (1906–1936), and the first and most important researcher and scholar of Howard’s life and writings died he was 80..

(November 17, 1931 – December 31, 2011) 

Background and discovery

Lord was born November 17, 1931 in Pelican, De Soto Parish, Louisiana. A Korean War veteran and a paper warehouse manager by trade, he discovered Howard through Skull-Face and Others (1946)^[2] around 1951. He sought out earlier publications with Howard’s work, most notably the pulp magazines of the 1920s and 1930s. Starting in 1956, he scoured the country for all Howard stories, poems, and letters. Over the course of his life he amassed the world’s largest collection of such publications and original manuscripts (actually typescripts).^[3]

Literary agent

Lord became literary agent for the Howard heirs around March, 1965, and served as such for 28 and a half years. In 1965, he tracked down the contents of Robert E. Howard’s famous storage trunk, which were then owned by pulp writer and Howard friend E. Hoffmann "Ed" Price. The contents consisted of tens of thousands of pages typed by Howard, including hundreds of unpublished stories, poems, and fragments.^[4] Using the contents of the trunk as well as his vast collection of previously published REH materials, Lord provided the source text for almost every published Howard work appearing in books, magazines, or chapbooks from 1965 through 1997, including collections of Howard letters^[5][6][7] Lord also provided introductions, afterwords, or commentary for dozens of Howard books.^{[3][8][9][10]}

Glenn Lord in 2006

Tirelessly promoting Howard’s stories, Lord secured their publication in any promising venue, leading directly to the Howard Boom of the 1970s. This included books by Ace, Arkham House, Avon, Baen, Ballantine, Bantam, Barnes & Noble Books, Baronet, Berkley, Beagle, Belmont, Bonanza, Carroll & Graff, Centaur, Century-Hutchinson, Chelsea House, Chaosium, DAW, Dell, Delta, Dodd-Mead, Dorset, Doubleday, Fawcett Gold Medal, FAX, Fedogan & Bremer, Fictioneer, Five Star, Gollancz, Grafton, Gramercy, Donald M. Grant, Grossett & Dunlap, Harper Collins, Jove, Kaye & Ward, Lancer, Leisure, MacFadden, Manor, Mayflower, Meys, Morning Star Press, New English Library, Neville Spearman, Orbit, Oxford University Press, Pan, Panther, Prentice-Hall, Putnam, Pyramid, REH Foundation Press, Robinson, Ryerson, Science Fiction Book Club, Sidgwick & Jackson, Signet, Sphere, Taplinger, TOR, Tower, Underwood-Miller, University of Nebraska Press, Walker & Co., Warner Books, WH Allen, Xanadu and Zebra; periodicals such as Amazing Science Fiction Stories, Amazing Stories, Ariel, Chacal, Coven 13/Witchcraft & Sorcery, Different Worlds, Fantastic Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories/Fantastic Stories of Imagination, Fantasy Book, Fantasy Commentator, Fantasy Crossroads, Fantasy Crosswinds, Fantasy Tales, The Haunt of Horror, Heavy Metal, Lost Fantasies, Magazine of Horror, Pulp Review, The Riverside Quarterly, Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone Magazine, Spaceway Science Fiction, Startling Mystery Stories, Sword and Sorcery, Trumpet, Weird Tales, Weirdbook, The West, White Wolf Magazine, Worlds of Fantasy, Xenophile, and Zane Grey Western Magazine; and several series of Marvel comic books and magazines. In many cases, he was also the uncredited editor of the published version of the Howard works. He also supplied texts to amateur publications and to literally hundreds of books and magazines in non-English languages, including Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, and Yugoslavian.^[11][12]
In the fall of 1977, he arranged with Berkley Medallion to put out three Conan paper- and hardbacks of Conan stories edited by Karl Edward Wagner, the first Conan series without any posthumous revisions and pastiches, which previous collections had in excess.^[10]
Lord published a few REH collections on his own, such as the periodical The Howard Collector #1-18^[13] and the chapbook Etchings in Ivory.^[14] In The Howard Collector, from 1961 to 1973, Lord featured previously unpublished (or very rare) pieces by Howard, letters by REH and those who knew him, indices of poems and stories, reprints of articles related to Howard, and news about upcoming publications and other events. Thereafter, he published similar material in fanzines of the Robert E. Howard United Press Association, the Hyperborian League, and the Esoteric Order of Dagon (an amateur press association primarily concerned with the writings of H. P. Lovecraft).

Glenn Lord with REHupa members in 2006

An early admirer of Howard’s poetry, Lord published the first Howard poetry collection Always Comes Evening (1957)^[15] through famed Arkham House, subsidizing the costs of the printing himself. Later, he was instrumental in the publication of the Howard verse collections Etchings in Ivory (1968),^[14] Singers in the Shadows (1970),^[16] Echoes from an Iron Harp (1972),^[17] The Road to Rome (1972),^[18] Verses in Ebony (1975),^[19] Night Images (1976),^[20] Shadows of Dreams (1989),^[21] and A Rhyme of Salem Town and Other Poems (2007).^[22]
He published the first comprehensive bibliography of Howard, complete through 1973, in his The Last Celt: A Bio–Bibliography of Robert Ervin Howard (1976),^[3] a bible for REH scholars and collectors. The book also contains biographical and autobiographical material about Howard, as well as letters, story synopses and fragments, ephemera, covers illustrating REH stories, and photographs. Lord wrote many articles on Howard (e.g. in The Dark Barbarian^[23]). Lord contributed much information to the latest bibliography, The Neverending Hunt (2006, 2008), by Paul Herman and the online bibliography Howardworks.
When Conan Properties was incorporated in 1978 to establish a single entity to deal with Hollywood in negotiations that led to the two Conan movies, Lord served as a corporate director.^[10]

Legacy, honors and personal life

Lord befriended, assisted, advised, and mentored two generations of Howard fans, scholars, and editors, providing copies of his typescripts, letters, and vast knowledge to many of them. For his dedication, achievements, and scholarship, Lord received the World Fantasy Convention Award in 1978 and the Lifetime Achievement Award of the fan magazine The Cimmerian, in 2005. The next year, he was Guest of Honor at the Centennial Robert E. Howard Days festival in Howard’s hometown of Cross Plains, Texas,^[24] and in 2007 was Guest of Honor at PulpCon 36 in Dayton, Ohio. He served as Director Emeritus of the Robert E. Howard Foundation and lived with his wife in Pasadena, Texas,^[10] where he died on December 31, 2011.^[25] They had a son and a daughter.^[10]


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Stanley Kwan, Hong Kong banker, creator of the Hang Seng Index, died from heart failure he was 86.

Stanley Shih Kuang Kwan was a Hong Kong banker who created the internationally known Hang Seng Index in 1969 died from heart failure he was 86..^[1] The Hang Sang Index opened on November 24, 1969.^[1]

^{(January 10, 1925 – December 31, 2011)}

Kwan creation, the Hang Seng Index, has been widely used to measure the health and growth of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. In 2008, Kwan published his book and memoir, "The Dragon and the Crown: Hong Kong Memoirs." In the book's forward, written by Robert Neild, the President of the Hong Kong chapter of the Royal Asiatic Society, Neild calls the Hang Seng, "the ultimate capitalist measure of Hong Kong."^[1] As of 2012, the Hang Seng Index consists of forty-eight companies incorporating some of the largest in Asia. These include PetroChina, which is Asia's largest company in terms of market value, and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the largest lender in the world based on market value.^[1]
Kwan was born in Hong Kong on January 10, 1925, to a family involved in the banking industry.^[1] Kwan lived through the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong. However, he moved to mainland China, where he worked as a language interpreter for American forces during World War II.^[1]
Kwan launched his career within the Hong Kong banking industry following the end of the war.^[1] He joined the staff of Hang Seng Bank in 1962.^[1] In 1969, Hang Seng Bank chairman Ho Sin Hang and general manager Q.W. Lee decided that there should be a Hong Kong version of New York's Dow Jones Industrial Average.^[1] Kwan headed the Hang Seng Bank's research department at the time.^[1] Together with his staff of seven employees, Kwan created the Hang Seng Index using input from economists, statisticians and government officials.^[1] The Index debuted in Hong Kong on November 24, 1969.
The Hang Seng Index would benefit, or suffer, based on the political and economic fortunes of Hong Kong. The Index crashed in 1974 following the 1973 oil crisis, and again in 1983, during a political stalemate in negotiations between China and the United Kingdom over the future status of Hong Kong.^[1] The Index grew following the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997, when mainland Chinese markets were opened to Hong Kong business interests.^[1]
Stanley Kwan retired from the banking industry and moved to Canada. He died in Toronto, Ontario, on December 31, 2011, at the age of 86.^[1]


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Penny Jordan, British romantic novelist, died she was 65.

Penny Halsall, née Penelope Jones better known by her pen name of Penny Jordan, was a best-selling and prolific English writer of over 200 romance novels died he was 65.. She started writing regency romances as Caroline Courtney, and wrote contemporary romances as Penny Jordan and historical romances as Annie Groves (her mother's maiden name). She had also signed novels as Melinda Wright and Lydia Hitchcock. Her books have sold over 70 million copies worldwide^[2] and have been translated into many languages.
Widowed, she lived in Nantwich, Cheshire, England, surrounded by her pets.^[3]

^{(24 November 1946 – 31 December 2011)} 

Personal life

Penelope "Penny" Jones was born on 24 November 1946 in Preston, Lancashire, England, and weighed about eight pounds. She was the first child of Anthony Winn Jones, who died aged 85, and his wife, Margaret Louise Groves Jones, 86,^[1] who passed to Jones her Scots Celtic heritage.^[3] She has a brother, Anthony Jones, and a sister, Prudence "Pru" Jones.
She had been a keen reader from childhood. Her mother would leave her in the children's section of the local library while she changed her father's library books.^[3] Her story-telling career began at the age of eight when she began telling original bedtime stories to her younger sister.^[4]
Her all-time favourite books were those of Jane Austen, Dorothy Dunnett, Catherine Cookson, Georgette Heyer, Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare's plays and poetry and the Bible.^[5] After reading a serialised Mills & Boon book in a woman's magazine, she fell in love with the hero. Jones was eleven and she quickly became an avid fan.^[4]
Jones left grammar school in Rochdale with O-Levels in English Language, English Literature and Geography.^[1] In her early days, she spent fourteen years working as a shorthand typist in Manchester.
Jones married Steve Halsall, an accountant and "lovely man", who smoked and drank too heavily, and suffered oral cancer with bravery and dignity.^[1] They did not have children, but she had a bakers dozen of assorted godchildren nieces and nephews.^[3]
Widowed, Jordan wrote from an office in her mock Tudor house in Nantwich, Cheshire, a home that she shared with her dog, Sheba, and cat, Posh.
Jordan ran a writing group where she helped other aspiring writers to develop their craft, pointing them to agents and publishers who might be interested in their work. She was also active in women's charities in her native England.
Jordan died of cancer on 31 December 2011.^[6]

Writing career

By her early twenties, Jordan was writing for herself, but her writing career began in earnest when she was 30, encouraged and supported by her husband. He bought her, at a time when he could ill afford it, the small electric typewriter on which she typed her first books.^[3]
She entered a competition run by the Romantic Novelists' Association. Although she did not win, an agent, who was looking for a new-style Georgette Heyer, contacted the R.N.A.^[1]
In March 1979, she published her first novel under the pseudonym Caroline Courtney, Duchess in Disguise, the same year she published other 4 books. Under this penname she published 25 regency romances until 1986. Her novels was published by different editorials: Arlington Books, Warner Books, G.K. Hall, Corgi Books, Prior...
From 1981 to 1983, she signed 3 air-hostess romps as Melinda Wright and 2 thrillers as Lydia Hitchcock, published by Columbine House.^[1]

In 1981, Mills & Boon accepted her first novel for them, Falcon's Prey signed as Penny Jordan. Since then, almost 70 million copies of her 167 Mills & Boon (or Harlequin) novels have been sold worldwide.^[1]
Some of Penny Jordan's novels are part of series, created by her or in collaboration with other authors. Her favourite Penny Jordan's Series is The Perfect Crightons.^[5] The surname for Crighton family came from her late mother in law as it was her family name prior to her marriage. The Crighton live in the fictional town Haslewich, inspired in Nantwich, the Hasle is a play on her own married surname.^[7]

Ellie Price as Annie Groves, 2003/08

From 2003, she returned to writing historical novels as Annie Groves (she adopted her mother's maiden-name^[1]). Jordan gained much of her inspiration from human interest stories in the news as well as her own family history. She adapted a story told by her grandmother Elsie Jones in Ellie Pride.^[2] This novel also began a family saga.



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Alfonso Gómez-Lobo, Chilean-born American academic, professor of metaphysics and moral philosophy (Georgetown University), died he was 71.

Alfonso Gómez-Lobo was a professor of metaphysics and moral philosophy at Georgetown University known for his critical evaluations of modern day ethics died he was 71..^[1] He was a member of The President's Council on Bioethics of USA. He was born in Viña del Mar, Chile.

(January 1, 1940 – December 31, 2011)

Born in Chile in 1940, Gomez-Lobo studied at the Catholic University of Valparaiso in Santiago, Chile, the University of Athens in Greece and three German universities: the University of Tübingen, the University of Munich and the University of Heidelberg.^[1] He completed his PhD in Munich in Philosophy, Classic and Ancient History in 1966, graduating magna cum laude. He then went on to teach at universities in Valparaiso, Puerto Rico, and finally at Penn State before joining with Georgetown University in 1977.^[1]
He has received a number of awards and several research fellowships, including one from the Guggenheim Foundation.^[1] His work translating Ancient Greek texts into Spanish has also received considerable attention.^[1]

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Murray Barnes, Australian soccer player (Sydney Hakoah), national captain (1980–1981), died he was 57.

Murray Barnes was an Australian football (soccer) player died he was 57.. Barnes played for the Australian team for six years, captaining the team nine times.

(16 January 1954 – 31 December 2011)

Playing career

Club career

Barnes played for a number of junior soccer clubs including Northern Tigers and Kissing Point in New South Wales.^[1][2] He also spent a year with the youth team of English club Leeds United.^[3] During his senior club career Barnes played for Sydney Hakoah (later known as Sydney City Soccer Club) in the New South Wales State League and in the National Soccer League.^[4]

International career

He played 32 full international games for the national side scoring six goals.^[5][6] He was captain of the Socceroos for nine matches between 1978 and 1981 including World Cup qualifiers against New Zealand, Fiji, Chinese Taipei and Indonesia.^[5][7]

Death

Murray died on 31 December 2011, at the age of 57.^[8]

Honours

Barnes has received the Football Hall of Fame (Australia), Award of Distinction. In June 2008, Football Federation Australia created the Socceroo Club made up of former national team members. Barnes was announced as a founding member.^[9]


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Eva Zeisel, Hungarian-born American ceramic artist and designer, died she was 105.

Eva Striker Zeisel^[2] was a Hungarian-born American industrial designer known for her work with ceramics, primarily from the period after she immigrated to the United States died she was 105.. Her forms are often abstractions of the natural world and human relationships.^[4] Work from throughout her prodigious career is included in important museum collections across the world. Zeisel declared herself a "maker of useful things".^[4]

^{(born Éva Amália Striker,[3] November 13, 1906 – December 30, 2011)}

Early life and family

She was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1906^[5] to a wealthy, highly educated assimilated Jewish family. Her mother, Laura Polanyi Striker, a historian, was the first woman to get a PhD from the University of Budapest. Laura's work on Captain John Smith's adventures in Hungary added fundamentally to our understanding and appreciation of his reliability as a narrator. Laura's brothers, Karl Polanyi, the sociologist and economist, and Michael Polanyi, the physical chemist and philosopher of science, are also very well known.^[6] Despite her family's intellectual prominence in the field of science, Eva Striker always felt a deep attraction towards art. At 17, Zeisel entered Budapest's Magyar Képzőművészeti Akadémia (Hungarian Royal Academy of Fine Arts)^[7] as a painter.^[5] However, to support her painting, she eventually decided to pursue a more practical profession and apprenticed herself to Jakob Karapancsik, the last pottery master in the medieval guild system. From him she learned ceramics from the ground up. After graduating as a journeyman she found work with German ceramic manufacturers.^[5]

Early career, imprisonment, and emigration

In 1928 Eva Striker became the designer for the Schramberger Majolikafabrik in the Black Forest region of Germany where she worked for about two years creating many playfully geometric designs for dinnerware, tea sets, vases, inkwells and other ceramic items. Her designs at Schramberg were largely influenced by modern architecture. In addition, she had just learned to draft with compass and ruler and was proud to put them to use. In 1930, Eva moved to Berlin, designing for the Carstens factories.
After almost two years of a glamorous life among intellectuals and artists in decadent Berlin, Eva decided to visit Russia at the age of 26 (1932).^[5] She stayed for 5 years.
At the age of 29, after several jobs in the Russian ceramics industry—inspecting factories in the Ukraine as well as designing for the Lomonosov^[5] and Dulevo factories —Zeisel was named artistic director of the Russian China and Glass industry. On May 26, 1936, while living in Moscow, Zeisel was arrested. She had been falsely accused of participating in an assassination plot against Joseph Stalin.^[5] She was held in prison for 16 months, 12 of which were spent in solitary confinement.^[4] In September, 1937, Zeisel was expelled and deported to Vienna, Austria. Some of her prison experiences form the basis for Darkness at Noon, the well known anti-Stalinist novel written by a childhood friend, Arthur Koestler.^[5] It was while in Vienna that Zeisel re-established contact with her future husband Hans Zeisel, later a noted legal scholar, statistician, and professor at The University of Chicago. A few months after her arrival in Vienna the Nazis invaded, and Eva took the last train out. She and Hans met up in England where they married and sailed for the U.S. with $67 between them.

Later career to present day

Zeisel's career in design continued to develop in the United States. In addition to designing for companies such as Hall China, Rosenthal China, Castleton China, Western Stoneware, Federal Glass, Heisey Glass and Red Wing Pottery, Zeisel developed and taught the first course in Ceramics for Industry at the Pratt Institute in New York.^[5] In 1946, Zeisel was given her first one-woman show "Eva Zeisel: Designer for Industry", at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Zeisel stopped designing during the 1960s and 1970s, to work on American history writing projects, returning to work in the 1980s.^[8] Many of her recent designs have found the same success as her earlier designs. Zeisel’s recent designs have included porcelain, crystal and limited-edition prints for KleinReid, glasses and giftware for Nambé, a teakettle for Chantal, furniture and gift-ware for Eva Zeisel Originals, rugs for The Rug Company, one of Crate and Barrel’s best selling dinner services "Classic-Century" and a coffee table and stoneware / dinnerware set for Design Within Reach,.^[9] "Classic-Century" is an updated version of the Hallcraft sets, most of the pieces made from the original molds (dishwasher safe).
In addition, a bone china tea set, designed in 2000, is being manufactured by the Lomonosov Porcelain factory in St. Petersburg, Russia, her new designs for a line of glass lamps (pendant, wall and table lamps) was introduced in 2012 by Leucos USA, and in 2013 her designs for dimensional wall tiles and space dividers will be launched by Cumulus Design Group.
Eva released two designs in 2010 through EvaZeiselOriginals.com: Eva Zeisel Lounge Chair and Eva Zeisel Salt & Pepper Shakers. The Lounge Chair was featured in the February 2010 issue of O Magazine and The S&P shakers were featured in the April 2010 issues of O Magazine.
Reproduction of earlier designs have been sold at MoMa, Brooklyn Museum and Neue Gallery, as well as other museum gift shops.
Eva Zeisel’s designs are made for use. The inspiration for her sensuous forms often comes from the curves of the human body. Zeisel’s more organic approach to modernism most likely comes as a reaction to the Bauhaus aesthetics that were popular at the time of her early training. Her sense of form and color, as well as her use of bird themes, show influence from the Hungarian folk arts she grew up with.^[9] Most of Zeisel’s designs, whether in wood, metal, glass, plastic or ceramics, are designed in family groups. Many of her designs nest together creating modular designs that also function to save space.
Zeisel describes her designs in a New York Sun article: “I don’t create angular things. I’m a more circular person—it’s more my character….even the air between my hands is round.” ^[10]
Among her most collected shapes are the eccentric, biomorphic "Town and Country" dishes, produced by Red Wing Pottery, in 1947.^[11] This set includes the iconic "mother and child" salt and pepper shakers.

Personal life

Eva raised two children with Hans: son, John Zeisel and daughter, Jean Richards. Jean, was born in 1940 and John was born in 1944. In the documentary Throwing Curves: Eva Zeisel, John and Jean comment on their parents' tempestuous relationship in the 1940s and 50s when the children were young. In the film John claims, that both Hans and Eva had dominant personalities, and that this often led to "a collision of forcefields".^[12]

Museums and exhibitions

Zeisel’s works are in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum; Brooklyn Museum; New-York Historical Society, Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum and The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the British Museum;The Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Bröhan Museum, Germany; as well as Dallas, Chicago, Atlanta and Milwaukee museums and others in the US and abroad.
In the 1980s a 50 year retrospective exhibit of her work organized by Musée des Arts Décoratifs and the Smithsonian Institution traveled through the US, Europe and Russia. In 2004, a significant retrospective exhibition "Eva Zeisel: The Playful Search for Beauty" was organized by the Knoxville Museum of Art, which subsequently traveled to the Milwaukee Art Museum, the High Museum, Atlanta, and the Hillwood Museum & Gardens, Washington D.C.
On December 10, 2006, The Mingei International Museum in Balboa Park, San Diego, opened a major centenary retrospective exhibit "Eva Zeisel: Extraordinary Designer at 100", showing her designs from Schramberg (1928) through to current designs for Nambe, Chantal, Eva Zeisel Originals and others (2006). The show ran through August 12, 2007. In the same year, the Pratt Institute Gallery also organized an Exhibition celebrating her centenary.

Awards

In 2005, Zeisel won the Lifetime Achievement award from the Cooper-Hewett National Design Museum.^[13] She has also received the two highest civilian awards from the Hungarian government, as well as the Pratt Legends award and awards from the Industrial Designers Society of America and Alfred University. She is an honorary member of the Royal Society of Industrial Designers, and has received honorary degrees from Parsons (New School), Rhode Island School of Design, the Royal College of Art, and the Hungarian University of the Arts.

Publications

• Eva Zeisel on Design by Eva Zeisel, Overlook Press 2004
• Eva Zeisel: The Playful Search for Beauty by Lucie Young, Chronicle Books 2003
• Eva Zeisel, Designer for Industry, 1984. (Out of print. Available through EvaZeiselForum)
• Eva Zeisel: Throwing Curves 2002 (documentary film, Canobie Films, Director: Jyll Johnstone
• Regular Bulletins from EvaZeiselForum
• Available as enhanced iBook (iPad, iPhone, iPod: including photos, audio and video); also for Kindle: Eva Zeisel: A Soviet Prison Memoir."

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Mirko Tremaglia, Italian politician, Minister without portfolio (2001–2006), died he was 85.

Mirko Tremaglia  was an Italian politician died he was 85..

(17 November 1926 – 30 December 2011)

He was a Minister without portfolio with specific responsibility for Italians abroad from 2001 to 2006.^[1][2] As a young man he fought for Italy in World War II. He was also a co-founder of the Italian Social Movement, and a former leader of the National Alliance. Tremaglia died at his home in Bergamo in northern Italy, after a long illness (Parkinson's disease)^[3]


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