Other books that might interest you

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  British Short Story The - Volume...

  Joseph Conrad, Arthur Conan...

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  These British Isles, moored across from mainland Europe, are more often seen as a world unto themselves.  Restless and creative, they often warred amongst themselves until they began a global push to forge a World Empire of territory, of trade and of language. 
   
  Here our ambitions are only of the literary kind.  These shores have mustered many masters of literature. So this anthology’s boundaries includes only those authors who were born in the British Isles - which as a geographical definition is the UK mainland and the island of Ireland - and wrote in a familiar form of English. 
   
  Whilst Daniel Defoe is the normal starting point we begin a little earlier with Aphra Behn, an equally colourful character as well as an astonishing playwright and poet.  And this is how we begin to differentiate our offering; both in scope, in breadth and in depth.  These islands have raised and nurtured female authors of the highest order and rank and more often than not they have been sidelined or ignored in favour of that other gender which usually gets the plaudits and the royalties. 
   
  Way back when it was almost immoral that a woman should write.  A few pages of verse might be tolerated but anything else brought ridicule and shame.  That seems unfathomable now but centuries ago women really were chattel, with marriage being, as the Victorian author Charlotte Smith boldly stated ‘legal prostitution’.  Some of course did find a way through - Jane Austen, the Brontes and Virginia Woolf but for many others only by changing their names to that of men was it possible to get their book to publication and into a readers hands.  Here we include George Eliot and other examples. 
   
  We add further depth with many stories by authors who were famed and fawned over in their day.  Some wrote only a hidden gem or two before succumbing to poverty and death. There was no second career as a game show guest, reality TV contestant or youtuber. They remain almost forgotten outposts of talent who never prospered despite devoted hours of pen and brain. 
   
  Keeping to a chronological order helps us to highlight how authors through the ages played around with characters and narrative to achieve distinctive results across many scenarios, many styles and many genres. The short story became a sort of literary laboratory, an early disruptor, of how to present and how to appeal to a growing audience as a reflection of social and societal changes.  Was this bound to happen or did a growing population that could read begin to influence rather than just accept? 
   
  Moving through the centuries we gather a groundswell of authors as we hit the Victorian Age - an age of physical mass communication albeit only on an actual printed page.  An audience was offered a multitude of forms: novels (both whole and in serialised form) essays, short stories, poems all in weekly, monthly and quarterly form.  Many of these periodicals were founded or edited by literary behemoths from Dickens and Thackeray through to Jerome K Jerome and, even some female editors including Ethel Colburn Mayne, Alice Meynell and Ella D’Arcy. 
   
  Now authors began to offer a wider, more diverse choice from social activism and justice – and injustice to cutting stories of manners and principles.  From many forms of comedy to mental meltdowns, from science fiction to unrequited heartache.  If you can imagine it an author probably wrote it.  
   
  At the end of the 19th Century bestseller lists and then prizes, such as the Nobel and Pulitzer, helped focus an audience’s attention to a books literary merit and sales worth. Previously coffeehouses, Imperial trade, unscrupulous overseas printers ignoring copyright restrictions, publishers with their book lists as an appendix and the gossip and interchange of polite society had been the main avenues to secure sales and profits.

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  The Torch Bearers

  Alexander Fullerton

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    From a British author known for “superb” action sequences, a WWII navel thriller set during Allied invasion of North Africa in 1942 (The Observer). Autumn 1942: Sir Nicholas Everard, Captain of HMS Harbinger, has a convoy to escort—big and slow, with just one destroyer, two corvettes, and a few trawlers to protect it. This will not be an easy mission. Meanwhile, U-boat pack commander Max Looff can hardly believe his luck. His nerve is going and he knows it: but now he has a one-in-a-million chance to annihilate an entire convoy. Little does Looff know, however, that Everard and his ships are bait: designed to distract the Germans from the real ‘Torch’ invasion forces. The game is on.  Praise for the writing of Alexander Fullerton:    “Impeccable in detail and gripping in impact.” —Irish Independent “The research is unimpeachable and the scent of battle quite overwhelming.” —The Sunday Times   “Has the ring of truth and the integrity proper to a work of art.” —The Daily Telegraph    “The prose has a real sense of urgency, and so has the theme. The tension rarely slackens.” —Times Literary Supplement

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  H P Lovecraft - Chapter & Verse...

  H P Lovecraft

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  Literature is a world of words and wonder, able to take us on almost unimaginable journeys from the wild and fantastic to the grind and minutiae of life. 
   
  An author’s ideas are his building blocks, his architecture of the mind, building a structure on which all else will rest; the narrative, the characters, the words - those few words that begin the adventure. 
   
  In this series we look at some of our leading classic authors across two genres: the short story and the poem.  In this modern world there is an insatiable need to categorise and pigeon-hole everyone and everything.  But ideas, these grains and saplings of the brain, need to roam, to explore and find their perfect literary use vehicle.  Our authors are masters of many literary forms, perhaps known for one but themselves favouring another. 
   
  Story. Poems. Story.  Within these boundaries come all manner of invention and cast of characters.  And, of course, each author has their own way of revealing their own chapter and verse.    
   
  1 - Chapter & Verse - H P Lovecraft - An Introduction 
  2 - The Lurking Fear by H P Lovecraft 
  3 - Laeta - a Lament by H P Lovecraft 
  4 - Despair by H P Lovecraft 
  5 - The Conscript by H P Lovecraft 
  6 - Nemesis by H P Lovecraft 
  7 - Hallowe'en in a Suburb by H P Lovecraft 
  8 - What the Moon Brings by H P Lovecraft 
  9 - Sunset by H. P. Lovecraft 
  10 - The City by H P Lovecraft 
  11 - Providence by H P Lovecraft 
  12 - The Wood by H P Lovecraft 
  13 - Fact and Fancy by H P Lovecraft 
  14 - The Picture In The House by H P Lovecraft

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  Stories by Beatrix Potter

  Beatrix Potter

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  Enchanting animal tales by Beatrix Potter.

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  Shells on the Beach

  Maria K

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  A new anthology by writer and translator Maria K., including all three "Nightmare Hunters " stories, holiday specials "Yuletide with Meem" and Madam Enigma", and a brand new tale "A Mermaid's Song".

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  The Camel's Back

  F Scott itzgerald

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  This short story is included in Tales of the Jazz Age, a collection written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald goes on to summarize the story below. I suppose that of all the stories I have ever written this one cost me the least travail and perhaps gave me the most amusement. As to the labor involved, it was written during one day in the city of New Orleans, with the express purpose of buying a platinum and diamond wrist watch which cost six hundred dollars. I began it at seven in the morning and finished it at two o'clock the same night. It was published in the "Saturday Evening Post" in 1920 and later included in the O. Henry Memorial Collection for the same year. I like it least of all the stories in this volume. My amusement was derived from the fact that the camel part of the story is literally true; in fact, I have a standing engagement with the gentleman involved to attend the next fancy-dress party to which we are mutually invited, attired as the latter part of the camel—this as a sort of atonement for being his historian.

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