The novel “Settlers of the Marsh” is a foundational work of realism in Canadian fiction. Its author, Frederick Philip Grove, a German immigrant, settled in Manitoba and wrote vividly about the struggles of settlers in the early multi-ethnic communities of western Canada. The protagonist of “Settlers of the Marsh” is a Swedish immigrant who wrestles in stoic solitude with the hardships of pioneer life, only to discover that he has been catastrophically naïve about relations with women. Some early reviewers objected that the novel’s treatment of sexuality was “indecent,” but the book is today seen as a cornerstone of Canadian literature. - Summary by Bruce Pirie

Twelve of H. G. Wells' early short stories originally printed in various magazines and papers. His earlier works delve into the human condition, looked at through a humorous lens. Love, romance, infidelity, parenthood and more are the subjects of the various stories, often told with a wry twist of humor.

Home from college, Lynn is heartbroken to find her childhood friend Mark, has fallen away from his faith in God. After making some poor life choices, Mark is caught up in a local scandal. Billy, one of the bright young boys from Lynn's Sunday School class, is determined to clear Mark's name. But at what cost? And will Billy's betrayal hurt the people he's trying to protect? - Summary by Emily Grace

Aldous Huxley is best known as a philosopher and novelist – notably as the author of Brave New World. He also wrote poetry, short stories and critical essays. Most of his work is somewhat dark and mildly sardonic, partly because he came of age just after World War I, when all of Europe was in a state of cultural, political and social confusion. His novel, Crome Yellow, is a prime example. Mortal Coils includes four short stories and a play, including one of the author’s most famous short works: "The Gioconda Smile." - Summary by Kirsten Wever

An impossibly imperturbable old sea captain, with two hundred Chinese labourers aboard his steamship, faces a terrifying typhoon for the first time in his life. When emigré Austrian peasant Yanko is washed up on an English beach, he encounters widespread hostility from the local people on account of his foreign ways, and only in time earns a meagre measure of grudging respect. Captain Falk — seemingly half man, half tug boat - desperately loves a shapely young woman, but standing in the way of any possible match is a most delicate question indeed...

Ms. Pinckney says in her "Forward" to this book the following: "It is against this background of the world need that Mrs. Alice Dunbar-Nelson's book is seen to have peculiar significance to the colored race in America. Hers is the first attempt I have known of directly on the part of any Negro to frame a speaker composed entirely of literature produced by black men and women, and about black men and women, and embodying the finest spiritual ideals of the Negro race." And in addition, Alice Dunbar-Nelson includes some very meaningful support from some Caucasian writers.

Set in the stifling world of turn of the century Dutch aristocracy, the second volume of the 'Books of the Small Souls' quartet, begins where the first volume ended. Constance Van der Welcke has returned to The Hague after her twenty-year exile for a scandalous affair in Rome. Hoping for acceptance by her family and the society of her former 'set', Constance and her husband Henri are now estranged from the family and have given up all ambitions of acceptance in society. Determined to live quietly, they form new friendships - Henri with Constance's niece, Marianne, and Constance with Henri's eccentric old friend, Max Brauws - that lead each of them on a journey of self-discovery...

E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India is widely acclaimed as one of the hundred best literary works of 20th century. Time magazine rates it among the top 100 English-language novels of all time. A Passage to India is set at the moment when the lasting supremacy of the British Raj could no longer be taken for granted. Imperial power had been effectively supported by old and deep-seated religious and cultural conflicts between India’s Hindu and Muslim populations, which divided and sapped the local powers ultimately needed to overthrew imperial rule in 1947...

Prince D.S. Mirsky was a prominent Russian literary historian who spent several years in emigration, teaching at the University of London. This book, published in 1925, presents a brief and incisive overview of Russian literature of the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was written in English and meant to be accessible to the general reading public in the West. - Summary by Kazbek

“The Chouans” was the first novel published under Balzac’s own name . It became the first book in the great work of his lifetime — the novel series titled “The Human Comedy.” Balzac was impressed by the writings of Sir Walter Scott. Scott made Scottish history come alive by creating fictions that used real history as backdrop. Balzac’s novel is set in 1799 — the year that Napoleon became First Consul of France. In the far west of France , anti-revolutionary sentiment still simmered...

The third book in Louis Couperus' Books of the Small Souls quartet. The Twilight of the Souls begins some months after the conclusion of The Later Life. Constance Van der Welcke and her husband Henri have settled down to a quieter life in the Hague, sister Bertha and her daughter Marianne have moved to the country, and Mama Van Lowe's Sunday evenings are no longer the gatherings of the whole family they once were. But the family's troubles are far from over. The story shifts to the trials and tribulations of Constance's brothers, Gerrit and Ernst, and Bertha's son and daughter, Henri and Emilie, who have fled together to Paris. - Summary by Phil Benson

'A Man Could Stand Up' is the third, and culminating, part of Ford Madox Ford's 'Parade's End' tetralogy of novels, which begins with 'Some Do Not', followed by 'No More Parades', and whose coda would be 'Last Post'. While 'A Man Could Stand Up' can be appreciated on its own, it will make far better sense to a listener or reader already familiar with its predecessors. It's at once a war story , a story of immense upheaval in social mores, and a passionate, if extraordinarily restrained, love story. Just like, say, Virginia Woofe's 'Mrs Dalloway', published the previous year, Ford's novel is pitched at readers who are assumed to be highly literate and well-educated.

When a few men decide to go for looking for gold in the outback of Australia, days of extreme heat with no water and no rain in sight, make them turn back and give up the trip; all but two of them that is, Smith and Mandeville, aka the "Baker. Smith and Baker decide to tough it out and go after their dreams, chancing their lives to find "their luck". Little do they realize, they will put their lives in grave danger, and this quest for gold will turn into a nightmare. Life threatening food and water deprivation is a constant issue, and they had no idea they would stumble upon an unknown tribe of prehistoric white men that are head hunters and cannibals...

Aspiring academic Andrei Kovrin, while summering in the countryside per the advice of a physician, is haunted by the apparition of a black monk that appears only to him and encourages him in his intellectual pursuits. Although Kovrin is the only one who can see the apparition, the monk assures him that, even if he were a creation of the imagination, he would still be a thing of nature and consequently real. Chekhov uses this vehicle for a gothic exploration into scholarly obsession and madness. - Summary by Daniel Davison

The Ordeal of Mark Twain analyzes the literary progression of Samuel L. Clemens and attributes shortcomings to Clemens' mother and wife. The Encyclopaedia Britannica says, Brooks' work "was a psychological study attempting to show that Twain had crippled himself emotionally and curtailed his genius by repressing his natural artistic bent for the sake of his Calvinist upbringing." Also, Brooks says, his literary spirit was sidelined as "...Mark Twain was inducted into the Gilded Age, launched, in defiance of that instinct which only for a few years was to allow him inner peace, upon the vast welter of a society blind like himself, like him committed to the pursuit of worldly success...

This first collection of the correspondence of Oscar Wilde begins with the Irish playwright's earliest extant letter, thanking his mother for the hamper she had sent to him at school. It includes letters about his travels in Italy, his American lecture tour, the staging of his first play , arrangements for the publication of a friend's poetry collection, and exchanges in the press with artist James McNeill Whistler. The letters, some of which have been excerpted or redacted, are sourced from auction catalogues, newspapers, biographies, and other texts in the public domain...

A minor lord is killed and a rich socialite is missing, and they are both tied to the enigmatic Kazmah the Dream Reader, who has also disappeared. New Scotland Yard Chief Inspector Red Kerry scours post-WWI London looking for clues, encountering rich Bohemians, theatre people, landed gentry, sailors, and, stereotypically, sinister Chinese people and sneaky Jews. The story is based on the history of Billie Carleton, a young English actress whose scandalous lifestyle ended with her death from a drug overdose in 1918. - Summary by TriciaG

The eight short stories that comprise South Sea Tales are powerful tales that vividly evoke the early 1900’s colonial South Pacific islands. Tales of hurricanes, missionaries, brotherhood and seafaring are intertwined with enslavement, savagery, and lawless trading to expose the often-barbarous history of the South Pacific islands. You will also gain unsparing insight into the life, culture and relations between natives and Westerners during this period. If you like nautical and sea adventures, if you are interested in the history of the South Pacific islands, and especially if you want to read gripping tales set in the exotic lands, then this book will be perfect for you...

"And God tempted Abraham and said unto him: take Isaac, thine only son, whom thou lovest and go to the land Moriah and sacrifice him there on a mountain which I shall show thee. Genesis 22:1" Soren Kierkegaard wondered how Abraham made the movement of faith that made him the father of faith mentioned in the New Testament . Fear and Trembling is the product of his wonder. Work out your salvation in fear and trembling . One-third of "Fear and Trembling" was translated in 1923 by Lee Hollander in the University of Texas Bulliten. This book has already been read in parts in the Short Nonfiction Collection but I think some might be interested in listening to it as a complete reading.

This is the first volume of Thomas Jefferson's public and private writings edited and compiled by his oldest grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph and published three years after the president's death. There are a total of four volumes in Randolph's set. Summary by Joel Kindrick.

From the noted artist and father of the celebrated Irish poet William Butler Yeats comes this short collection of essays on the literary life of their age. Included are two short biographical remembrances of the author. - Summary by Larry Wilson

Bosanquet was secretary or amanuensis to James from 1907 to his death in 1916. She wrote this essay eight years after his death as part of the series Hogarth Essays by the Hogarth Press. It is a narrative of her experience of his methods, values, and life. - Summary by David Wales

"The Rover: A weekly magazine of tales, poetry and engravings, original and selected" was a magazine started in 1843 by Seba Smith and Lawrence Labree. The editors aimed at a high quality standard in their selection of short stories and poetry. Every half-year, the 26 weekly issues were also published under a bound compilation. This is the very first issue, containing 7 short stories. - Summary by Sonia

We present here ten stories and poems from the master of horror, Mr. Edgar Allan Poe. They are our personal favorites. We hope you enjoy them as much as we enjoy presenting them to you. - Summary by cavaet

Anna is the daughter of a clergyman in a small town in Vermont. She is very happy with her lot. But when she goes to nurse a woman in the big city, she starts to discover the world. She sees new places, meets new people, and falls in love. This will test all the resolutions she once held dear. - Summary by Stav Nisser.

The House of Mystery is based upon the complicated plot involving two women who look exactly alike, one rich and one poor, and so mistaken identities bring about comic and tragic madness.

"The Rover: A weekly magazine of tales, poetry and engravings, original and selected" was a magazine started in 1843 by Seba Smith and Lawrence Labree. The editors aimed at a high quality standard in their selection of short stories and poetry. Every half-year, the 26 weekly issues were also published under a bound compilation. This second issue contains 6 short stories, including a translation of Victor Hugo's narrative "Claude Gueux". - Summary by Sonia

The time of French king Louis XIV was a time of religious conflict. His father, Louis XIII had tried to suppress the teachings and followers of Calvin but was thwarted by his ministers. The son took a different path. The king was Catholic, and although he was tolerant of others, some in his government were less so, and persecuted the Protestant Huguenots. This is the story of Albert, Count of Morseiul as he treads the tightrope of being a Huguenot landowner and loyal subject and friend of the king.

"The Rover: A weekly magazine of tales, poetry and engravings, original and selected" was a magazine started in 1843 by Seba Smith and Lawrence Labree. The editors aimed at a high quality standard in their selection of short stories and poetry. Every half-year, the 26 weekly issues were also published under a bound compilation. This is the third issue, containing 5 stories. - Summary by Sonia

Many of B. B. Warfield's diverse and erudite theological writings were published as long articles in The Princeton Theological Review, sometimes spanning many issues of the periodical. The articles in this collection showcase the breadth of Warfield's scholarship and interest, his clarity of analysis of cultural trends and his deep Calvinistic piety. The B. B. Warfield Collection, Volume 2 The B. B. Warfield Collection, Volume 3 The B. B. Warfield Collection, Volume 4

This 5th volume of the Marie Antoinette Romances begins after the fall of the Bastille and the March on Versailles, which forced Louis XVI and his court to be escorted back to Paris. In Paris, political factions battle over the fate of the nation, the royal family, and anyone with royalist sympathies. Our heroes and our anti-heroes must navigate the blood-streaked landscape while keeping their necks out of the guillotine. All the while, the prophetic Balsamo urges on the revolution: "the quantity of blood which must be shed before the sun rises on the free world ...

Upon publication of “The Untempered Wind” in 1894, Joanna Wood quickly rose to international prominence, becoming in the next few years the most highly paid fiction-writer in Canada. In this novel, we find a detailed picture of village life. The narrative weaves through a variety of character types: the refined and the coarse, the humble and the self-righteous, the virtuous and the vicious. All these types are measured according to their treatment of Myron Holder, a young unwed mother — a “fallen woman” in the eyes of this “spiteful, narrow-minded village...

"It is so sad when relations don't get on together." "Sadder still when they think they've got a right to trample on you, just because you happen to be an orphan and - I don't want to talk about my relations. I want to forget them. I stood them for nearly six months. I don't want to be reminded of them. I want to forget that they ever existed." She is not going to have her wish. Oh, no, not at all. A comedy. - Summary by ToddHW Cast list: Fanny: Devorah Allen Vernon Wetherell, Lord Bantock...

"Mrs. Dalloway" recounts a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway in the middle of June 1923. Clarissa Dalloway is a high society London lady. On that day, she is hosting a party, meeting people, going to the park, and reflecting on her choices. Where would she have been if she married Peter Walsh and not Richard Dalloway? What if she would not invite this or that person to her party? Her feelings about Peter Walsh grow because on that particular day he returns from India to settle some affairs in London...

Set in 1925, this is a novel of the Jazz Age; of ambition, of the careless rich, of wild parties and flappers and bootleg booze; and the efforts of a dreamer to reunite with his lost love. - Summary by Kara

"The ambition of the editor has been to provide an accurate and complete text, with adequate critical and supplementary matter, of all those plays which can, without entire absurdity, be included in the 'doubtfully Shakespearian' class." This project provides the Preface and Introduction of this book, wherein some 42 candidate Shakespeares are whittled down to some 14 plays "which alone appear entitled, on grounds either of reason or of custom, to a place among the Shakespeare Apocrypha." The book then presents the text of the 14 plays; performances of these play texts will be presented separately in our catalog...

"The Rover: A weekly magazine of tales, poetry and engravings, original and selected" was a magazine started in 1843 by Seba Smith and Lawrence Labree. The editors aimed at a high quality standard in their selection of short stories and poetry. Every half-year, the 26 weekly issues were also published under a bound compilation. This is the fourth issue, containing 7 stories and a poem. - Summary by Sonia

Catherine Vernon has a firm hand on her family and on the family business. Her plans for her young protege Edward, whom she loves like a son, are disturbed by the arrival of Hester, a 14-year-old girl who is just as strong willed. The conflict between Catherine and Hester is resolved through their mutual love for Edward. On one level a love story, Hester is unusual for its time in its portrayal of women in business. - Summary by Anne Erickson

The epigram to this work from Christoher Marlowe applies to the plot of this story: "My men like satyrs grazing on the lawns / Shall with their goat-feet dance the antic hay." The plot follows Huxley and his cohorts in a search for meaning and hope and love in post WWI London.

"The Rover: A weekly magazine of tales, poetry and engravings, original and selected" was a magazine started in 1843 by Seba Smith and Lawrence Labree. The editors aimed at a high quality standard in their selection of short stories and poetry. Every half-year, the 26 weekly issues were also published under a bound compilation. This is the fifth issue, with another interesting mix of poetry and prose texts. - Summary by Sonia

This 1926 Pulitzer Prize winning novel centers on the title character, a promising medical student who, as a doctor and following several intervening ventures, becomes a medical researcher in New York. A widespread killer plague takes him to a Caribbean island to produce and inject sera and do research. Fascinating characters, some professional, others romantic, impact his life. Striking similarities of the epidemic in this novel to the pandemic of the 2020's may today seem prophetic. The author won the 1930 Nobel Prize in literature, chiefly for "Arrowsmith".

"The Rover: A weekly magazine of tales, poetry and engravings, original and selected" was a magazine started in 1843 by Seba Smith and Lawrence Labree. The editors aimed at a high quality standard in their selection of short stories and poetry. Every half-year, the 26 weekly issues were also published under a bound compilation. This is the sixth issue, containing 5 short stories and 3 poems. - Summary by Sonia

"The Rover: A weekly magazine of tales, poetry and engravings, original and selected" was a magazine started in 1843 by Seba Smith and Lawrence Labree. The editors aimed at a high quality standard in their selection of short stories and poetry. Every half-year, the 26 weekly issues were also published under a bound compilation. The seventh issue features five short stories and a poem. - Summary by Sonia

The story of Selina DeJong and her son Dirk, whom she affectionately calls So Big. After the death of her husband, Selina raises So Big on her own while managing her deceased husband's farm in Illinois. When So Big grows up, he moves to Chicago, where he finds himself drawn to the fast-money stock-broker lifestyle of the 1920s. So Big is conflicted: he wants to live in the world of speculation and finance, but he's aware that his mother are disappointed that he hasn't lived up to the hard-working, hardscrabble values instilled by his mother. - Summary by Alexandra Atiya

In 1841 and 1842, Fr. Pierre-Jean DeSmet traversed the wide and wild American West to bring the gospel to the Flatheads, who had sent multiple delegations from Montana to St. Louis, repeatedly requesting a Blackgown priest to instruct them in Christianity. Fr. DeSmet’s letters to his Jesuit Superiors show his heroic religious dedication and selflessness, as he recounts fatigues, hunger, thirst, and dangers that rival those of the apostle St. Paul. He also makes intelligent observations of geography, geology, weather , and the interesting customs of the different tribes he meets...

Joseph Addison was an English essayist, poet, playwright, and Whig politician. Today he is most famous for his contributions, with Richard Steele, to the "The Spectator" magazine. In this essay, Macaulay portrays the life and work of this quiet, compassionate man, who amidst the cut and thrust of bitter political and literary rivalries, was always a gentleman, loved by his friends and, in the person of the Spectator, by posterity, as well.

A compendium and analysis of similarities between the Bible and passages in Shakespeare's plays and other works, including Biblical references in Shakespeare and parallels between Shakespeare's characters and plots and Biblical characters and plots, all demonstrating the strong influence of the Bible on Shakespeare's writings. - Summary by Joanne Turner

“The Story of a Modern Woman” is a work of feminist social realism. In its time it was one of the most famous and influential novels to grow out of and shape the “New Woman” movement of the 1890s. It won such attention for its author that Ella Hepworth Dixon was given the nickname “The New Woman.” The story of the novel’s protagonist, Mary Erle, loosely follows the outline of Dixon’s own situation. As the well-educated daughter of a public intellectual, she enters the world of professional writing after his death, partly trading on his name...

Catherine Vernon has a firm hand on her family and on the family business. Her plans for her young protege Edward, whom she loves like a son, are disturbed by the arrival of Hester, a 14-year-old girl who is just as strong willed. The conflict between Catherine and Hester is resolved through their mutual love for Edward. On one level a love story, Hester is unusual for its time in its portrayal of women in business. - Summary by Anne Erickson

"The Rover: A weekly magazine of tales, poetry and engravings, original and selected" was a magazine started in 1843 by Seba Smith and Lawrence Labree. The editors aimed at a high quality standard in their selection of short stories and poetry. Every half-year, the 26 weekly issues were also published under a bound compilation. This is the eighth issue, featuring 5 short stories and 3 poems. "To be good is to be happy" is a short quote from the drama "The Fair Penitent" by Nicolas Rowe and "Passion - its history" is the final part of "Asmodeus at large" by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. - Summary by Sonia

John Milton was an English poet, classicist, and fearless advocate for civil liberty, who served the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell. He is best known for his epic poem "Paradise Lost" , a work of sublime imagery and hidden heresy. In this long essay, Macaulay combines literary criticism with political history, writing that to Milton, almost alone among his contemporaries, belonged "the glory of the battle which he fought for, the species of freedom which is the most valuable, and which was then the least understood, the freedom of the human mind."

Covering some of the plot of Shakespeare's Richard III, Jane Shore focuses on the mistress of the late Edward IV, also known as "The White Queen". In this short tragedy, Jane tries to thwart Richard's rise to power while experiencing love, betrayal, forgiveness, and an unexpected visitor who arrives in disguise. Cast ListLord Hastings: Tchaikovsky Duke of Gloster: ToddHW Belmour: Adrian Stephens Sir Richard Ratcliffe: Wayne Cooke Sir William Catesby: Alan Mapstone Dumont: Tomas Peter Jane Shore: Michele Eaton Alicia: WendyKatzHiller Jane's Servant: Larry Wilson Alicia's Servant: B. Jones Stage Directions: Adrienne Prevost

"The Rover: A weekly magazine of tales, poetry and engravings, original and selected" was a magazine started in 1843 by Seba Smith and Lawrence Labree. The editors aimed at a high-quality standard in their selection of short stories and poetry. Every half-year, the 26 weekly issues were also published under a bound compilation. This is the ninth issue, with yet another interesting mix of poetry and prose texts. - Summary by Sonia

Set immediately before and during the Great War, Some Do Not... is a tale of social cruelty among the English upper classes that pits real honour against shameless duplicity and subjects its principal characters to extremes of mental suffering that appear to be analogous to the physical horrors of the actual fighting. The plot revolves around the mores and desires of the intellectually brilliant but impossibly high-minded Christopher Tietjens, his icy wife Sylvia, and Valentine Wannop, a poor but well-educated young woman who loves Christopher, and is in many ways his moral and intellectual equal...

Darnel Park is situated in a county that thrives on gossip and secrets, and the Darnel family, as it turns out, has many of them. An attempt at Sir Allan Darnel’s life, after various misunderstandings and misdirections, reveals an estranged son and a mysterious fiancée, and the Darnel family scrambles to conceal these new developments from not only the county but the Scotland Yard detective called in to investigate. - Summary by Adrienne Prevost.

Excerpt from Introduction: "Nana" stands third in popularity among the Zola novels. It is a study of the prostitute type and it gives a memorable picture of the life of the tinsel underworld of the Paris theaters, night life, and its parasites. Perhaps Zola pursues Nana a bit too relentlessly: certainly his putting a period to her career by showing her as a putrefying corpse is more symbolic than is wholly necessary; but it remains a novel of truth and beauty, even if a beauty of a drab and often terrible sort. Summary by Burton Rascoe / Celine Major

"The Greeks were the most intellectual people of the old world. … The study of Greek literature is therefore a proper element in a liberal education. The Greek language, naturally flexible and rich in poetical words, becomes in the hands of the great writers a medium of unequalled force, clearness, and adaptability, able to express as well the highest aspirations of the poet as the subtlest shades of philosophical argument or the most abstruse technicalities. The books of Greece have passed the critical selection of the ages, and the student, unencumbered by masses of inferior material, can approach the works of acknowledged masters, the true fountain-head of European culture...

"The Rover: A weekly magazine of tales, poetry and engravings, original and selected" was a magazine started in 1843 by Seba Smith and Lawrence Labree. The editors aimed at a high quality standard in their selection of short stories and poetry. Every half-year, the 26 weekly issues were also published under a bound compilation. This is the tenth issue, with yet another interesting mix of poetry and prose texts. - Summary by Sonia

In this 1912 novel, Mary Hunter Austin draws inspiration from her own life to tell the story of a gifted woman caught between her public ambition and her private desire. Beginning with her post-Civil War Midwestern girlhood, Austin chronicles the tumultuous life -- its romantic and artistic challenges -- of "tragic actress" Olivia Lattimore. With lyrical insight, she explores the many social and economic obstacles talented women like Olivia face in their pursuit of self-fulfillment. In America’s cynical Gilded Age, Austin asks, can a “woman of genius” find both happiness and success? Summary by Amy Dunkleberger

"The Rover: A weekly magazine of tales, poetry and engravings, original and selected" was a magazine started in 1843 by Seba Smith and Lawrence Labree. The editors aimed at a high quality standard in their selection of short stories and poetry. Every half-year, the 26 weekly issues were also published under a bound compilation. This is the eleventh issue with poetry and prose texts. - Summary by Sonia

During the turbulent moment in English history involving King James 1 and 6, Nigel Olifaunt, a Scottish lord, seeks to protect his family home and holdings, but meets with recalcitrance and treachery, which eventually results in his imprisonment. But there are forces of good that help to set him free and right injustices.

"The Rover: A weekly magazine of tales, poetry and engravings, original and selected" was a magazine started in 1843 by Seba Smith and Lawrence Labree. The editors aimed at a high quality standard in their selection of short stories and poetry. Every half-year, the 26 weekly issues were also published under a bound compilation. This is the twelfth issue featuring seven short stories. - Summary by Sonia

Pinafore’s sublimely silly story is made even sillier by this 1908 story version of the 1878 Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. Gilbert, the author of the operetta’s lyrics, writes this version of the story with his tongue planted firmly in his cheek. Most adults and children will find this version vastly amusing. - Summary by David Wales

As well as being influential in the Arts and Crafts Movement and writing numerous poems and novels, William Morris was deeply involved in political reform. These poems, the earliest of which were first collected in 1885, reflect his socialist beliefs.

When No More Parades was first published in 1925, a critic in The Observer wrote of the first 100 pages that they "easily surpass in truth, brilliance and subtlety everything else that has yet been written in England about the physical circumstances and moral atmosphere of the war". The second novel in the Parade's End tetralogy, No More Parades places army captain Christopher Tietjens, his beautiful but cruel wife Sylvia, and Tietjens' jealous and tempestuous godfather and commanding officer General...

"The Rover: A weekly magazine of tales, poetry and engravings, original and selected" was a magazine started in 1843 by Seba Smith and Lawrence Labree. The editors aimed at a high quality standard in their selection of short stories and poetry. Every half-year, the 26 weekly issues were also published under a bound compilation. This issue features six short stories and two poems, "Th' unbusied shepherd" is a short quote from the drama "King Henry the Fifth" by Aaron Hill. - Summary by Sonia

"The Rover: A weekly magazine of tales, poetry and engravings, original and selected" was a magazine started in 1843 by Seba Smith and Lawrence Labree. The editors aimed at a high quality standard in their selection of short stories and poetry. Every half-year, the 26 weekly issues were also published under a bound compilation. This current issue features seven short stories and two poems. - Summary by Sonia

"The Rover: A weekly magazine of tales, poetry and engravings, original and selected" was a magazine started in 1843 by Seba Smith and Lawrence Labree. The editors aimed at a high quality standard in their selection of short stories and poetry. Every half-year, the 26 weekly issues were also published under a bound compilation. This current issue another interesting mix of short stories and poems. - Summary by Sonia

The Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, is a work of enormous proportions. Setting out with the simple goal of offering "American households a mass of good reading", the editors drew from literature of all times and all kinds what they considered the best pieces of human writing, and compiled an ambitious collection of 45 volumes . Besides the selection and translation of a huge number of poems, letters, short stories and sections of books, the collection offers, before each chapter, a short essay about the author or subject in question...

"The Rover: A weekly magazine of tales, poetry and engravings, original and selected" was a magazine started in 1843 by Seba Smith and Lawrence Labree. The editors aimed at a high quality standard in their selection of short stories and poetry. Every half-year, the 26 weekly issues were also published under a bound compilation. This current issue collects another interesting mix of short stories and poems, as well as shorter columns. - Summary by Sonia

The Blue Review was a short lived monthly journal published in London between May and July 1913. The successor to Rhythm, The Blue Review was edited by John Middleton Murry and Katherine Mansfield, but survived only three issues. In addition to poetry and short literary pieces, the review included reviews of theatre, music and the arts and of books recently published in English and French. The first issue of the journal includes the D. H. Lawrence short story, The Soiled Rose, which was later published as Shades of Spring. - Summary by Phil Benson

"The Rover: A weekly magazine of tales, poetry and engravings, original and selected" was a magazine started in 1843 by Seba Smith and Lawrence Labree. The editors aimed at a high quality standard in their selection of short stories and poetry. Every half-year, the 26 weekly issues were also published under a bound compilation. - Summary by Sonia

After her mother's death, Letty is forced to move in with her only relative, cousin Bev. From the start, the naive 18-year-old finds it difficult to adjust to life in the tiny homestead of Bev and his family, and her sheltered upbringing has left her unequipped for the hard life on the Texan prairie. Bev's wife is superficially friendly, but sees nothing but a rival in Letty, and although the girl quickly makes friends with the neighbors, she suffers from the loneliness and monotony of her daily life...

"The Rover: A weekly magazine of tales, poetry and engravings, original and selected" was a magazine started in 1843 by Seba Smith and Lawrence Labree. The editors aimed at a high quality standard in their selection of short stories and poetry. Every half-year, the 26 weekly issues were also published under a bound compilation. - Summary by Sonia

When Matilda's husband James dies, she marries rich Dr. Kennedy thinking he will provide a good home for her daughter Maude. However, the doctor is a miser and assumes that Matty will be his housekeeper. They have a little boy who is crippled and the doctor ignores him. Maude is totally devoted to him and on her mother's deathbed promises to look after him always. The story then evolves with Maude meeting her stepsister Nellie's cousins JC and James. Nellie has set her sights on JC who is after her money while Maude develops strong feelings towards James...

The Blue Review was a short lived monthly journal published in London between May and July 1913. The successor to Rhythm, The Blue Review was edited by John Middleton Murry and Katherine Mansfield, but survived only three issues. In addition to poetry and short literary pieces, the review included reviews of theatre, music and the arts and of books recently published in English and French. The second issue of the journal included two short stories by Katherine Mansfield. - Summary by Phil Benson

"The Rover: A weekly magazine of tales, poetry and engravings, original and selected" was a magazine started in 1843 by Seba Smith and Lawrence Labree. The editors aimed at a high quality standard in their selection of short stories and poetry. Every half-year, the 26 weekly issues were also published under a bound compilation. This is already the 19th issue of the series. - Summary by Sonia

"The Rover: A weekly magazine of tales, poetry and engravings, original and selected" was a magazine started in 1843 by Seba Smith and Lawrence Labree. The editors aimed at a high quality standard in their selection of short stories and poetry. Every half-year, the 26 weekly issues were also published under a bound compilation. The 20th issue of the series is yet another interesting collection of short stories, poems and miscellania. - Summary by Sonia

In his wonderful interpretation of the classic tale of Lamia - the mythological entity portrayed as being a deadly threat especially to children and young men - master poet John Keats construes this timeless and enigmatic story with a view towards intrigue, deception, loyalty, honor and fervor of a young man's lust for a life of passionate bliss with the newly found woman of his dreams. In retrospect, considering certain aspects of her past and recent serpent-like incarnation, the beautiful and seductive Lamia was a poor choice for the young man Lycius...

Wilde's short story about an attempt to uncover the identity of Mr. W. H., the dedicatee of Shakespeare's sonnets, was first published in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in 1889. He intended to publish an expanded version of the story as a separate book, a plan that was not realized until after his death. This audiobook is based on the expanded version. - Summary by Rob Marland

"The Rover: A weekly magazine of tales, poetry and engravings, original and selected" was a magazine started in 1843 by Seba Smith and Lawrence Labree. The editors aimed at a high quality standard in their selection of short stories and poetry. Every half-year, the 26 weekly issues were also published under a bound compilation. This is the 21st issue of the series with yet another interesting collection of short stories, poems and miscellania. - Summary by Sonia

"The Rover: A weekly magazine of tales, poetry and engravings, original and selected" was a magazine started in 1843 by Seba Smith and Lawrence Labree. The editors aimed at a high quality standard in their selection of short stories and poetry. Every half-year, the 26 weekly issues were also published under a bound compilation. The 22nd issue of the series presents 9 short stories, poems and interesting facts. - Summary by Sonia

As printed, this book contains an extensive listing of Mark Twain's work. Rather than repeating that listing, this recording simply reflects the bibliographer's entertaining analysis of Twain's books, speeches, letters, anecdotes, and notes. - Summary by John Greenman

Thomas Mann, author of Death in Venice was a winner of the Nobel Prize for literature. The main character in this novella is Gustav von Aschenbach, a famous author in his early 50s who was widowed at an early age. In poor health, he visits Venice and becomes increasingly obsessed by the sight of a stunningly beautiful lad of 14. This book has been acclaimed a masterpiece and in 1971 was adapted as a film starring Dirk Bogarde.

Frederic Taber Cooper, who was an editor and author, provides a superb insight into the works of some of the most popular authors of the turn of the century decade. Excerpt: The subjects of the essays included in this volume differ widely in aim and in accomplishment; but all of them possess, to a considerable extent, the gift that makes them next of kin to the minstrel and troubadour, to the ancient fabulist, and to the forgotten spinner of the world s first nursery tales, the gift of holding the attention by the spell of the spoken word. - Summary by Celine Major

Best known as a poet and playwright, Nobel Laureate T.S. Eliot also wrote many works of literary criticism. In this volume he gives us three essays: John Dryden, The Metaphysical Poets, and Andrew Marvell. Many quotations are given to illustrate his observations and analysis of these poets. This is an important work for those interested in gaining a deeper and broader knowledge of these seventeenth century poets and their influence. - Summary by Larry Wilson

These wonderful, whimsical poems from the incomparable Walter de la Mare describe the bliss of childhood, explore the marvel of a child's imagination and portray the intriguing landscapes of existences both lived and imagined by a young mind in a magical kingdom located somewhere between daydream and caprice. In these poems we experience aspects of a reality unencumbered by concern, unhindered by anxiety, and share an imagination free to wander, ponder, contemplate, envision and express itself in a marvelous mosaic of impression, inspiration and introspection...

"The Rover: A weekly magazine of tales, poetry and engravings, original and selected" was a magazine started in 1843 by Seba Smith and Lawrence Labree. The editors aimed at a high quality standard in their selection of short stories and poetry. Every half-year, the 26 weekly issues were also published under a bound compilation. The 23rd issue of the series presents another interesting mix of poetry, prose and trivia. - Summary by Sonia

When Thomas Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature , the citation made special mention of his first novel, “Buddenbrooks,” published in 1901, describing it as “the first great novel of the 20th century.” Events in the novel center on the Buddenbrook family, bourgeois owners of a wholesale grain enterprise in the northern German city of Lübeck. We follow four generations of Buddenbrooks through the middle decades of the 19th century. The novel is subtitled “The Decline of a Family...

The spiritual ethos and the philosophical outlook that the Bhagvad - Gita postulates paves the way for the liberation of man, who, as Rousseau said, ‘being born free, is everywhere in chains’. But equally it is a mirror of human psychology, which enables man to discern his debilities for appropriate redressal. All the same, the boon of an oral tradition that kept it alive for over two millennia became its bane with the proliferation of interpolations therein. Besides muddying its pristine philosophy, these insertions affect the sequential conformity and structural economy of the grand discourse...

InThis is an essay providing an extended analysis of the works of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen and of Ibsen's critical reception in England. Shaw uses this "exposition of Ibsenism" to illustrate the imperfections of British society, using the idea of an imaginary "community of a thousand persons," divided into three categories: Philistines, Idealists, and the lone Realist. The main discussion revolves around Ibsen's recurring topic of the strong character holding out against social hypocrisy, while stating in his essay's final sentence that the quintessence of Ibsenism is that "there is no formula." ( Michele Eaton)

Victorian Literature by Clement Shorter is a brief work that gives a good introduction to many of the important writers, historians, and critics of the Victorian era. Presented as a "gathering up (of) a few impressions of pleasant reading hours", this little book is sure to delight any one with an interest in this most fascinating of literary periods.

The work was composed between 1790 and 1793, in the period of radical foment and political conflict immediately after the French Revolution. The title is an ironic reference to Emanuel Swedenborg's theological work Heaven and Hell published in Latin 33 years earlier. Swedenborg is directly cited and criticized by Blake several places in the Marriage. Though Blake was influenced by his grand and mystical cosmic conception, Swedenborg's conventional moral structures and his Manichean view of good...

John Wesley, along with his brother Charles, are credited with founding the Methodist denomination. "The following Sermons contain the substance of what I have been preaching for between eight and nine years last past. Every serious man who peruses these, will therefore see, in the clearest manner, what these doctrines are which I embrace and teach as the essentials of true religion." This first series contains sermons concerning the way to heaven.

A mentally unstable genius, Victor Frankenstein, inspired by the dreams of ancient alchemists and empowered by modern science, creates a humanoid but fails to nurture and educate it after it comes to life. It wanders alone into a hostile world, where fear of its size and ugliness subjects it to violence and ostracism, which in time it learns to blame upon its maker. As compensation for its suffering, it demands that he create a companion with whom to share its outcast life. Moved by the creature's account of its sufferings, the scientist agrees, but a long period of procrastination awakens doubts that ultimately cause him to break his promise...

Is a defense attorney bound to defend his client, or with his conscience, when he knows that the man he is defending is guilty of the charges against him after the trial has already commenced? And if friends hold a belief that he may have been aware of it before the trial commenced, yet they are endeared to the man and his family as upstanding and of the highest grade? Might it not become cause for blackmail, and therefore potential retribution? "The House of White Shadows" brings these issues to the forefront, while the reader learns of the background of the advocate, his family history, and the house in question...

Justin Huntly McCarthy (1859 - 1936) was an Irish scholar, author and nationalist politician. In 1889 his prose translations of 466 quatrains of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám was published by David Nutt. An abbreviated edition, containing a shorter introduction and translations of 373 quatrains, was published by David Nutt in 1898, and this has been used for the present recording.

Rich and beautiful American girls heading to England to find themselves noble titles through marriage, and using their New World wealth to prop up the waning strength of the aristocracy, was almost a staple of late Victorian literature. "The Buccaneers," Edith Wharton called them, and their day is not over yet (think of Downton Abbey's Earl of Grantham, and his American heiress countess). In Lady Barbarina, however, Henry James explores the obverse of this old tale: what if the wealth is in the hands...

Best remembered for his poetry, James Elroy Flecker was also a playwright, novelist and prose writer. This collection of his idiosyncratic prose writings includes The Last Generation (a short science fiction story), short sketches, a dialogue, and several critical studies.

Maude is a novella by Christina Rossetti, written in 1850 but published posthumously in 1897. Considered by scholars to be semi-autobiographical, the protagonist is 15-year-old Maude Foster, a quiet and serious girl who writes poetry that explores the tensions between religious devotion and worldly desires. The text includes several of Rossetti's early verses, which were later published as part of her collections of poetry.