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  A Lesson on a Tortoise - From...

  D H Lawrence

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  David Herbert Lawrence was born on the 11th September 1885 in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, a coal mining town where the reality of a harsh life was only useful as experiences for future literary works. 
  He was educated at Beauvale Board School and became the first local boy to receive a scholarship to attend Nottingham High School. After 3 years he became a junior clerk in Haywood’s surgical appliances factory. He was also attempting a literary career which, in the short term, led to a teacher training position in Eastwood and later a teaching qualification from University College, Nottingham.  
  Lawrence’s first efforts were poems, short stories and a draft of ‘The White Peacock’. Moving to London and a teaching position in Croydon his writing attracted the attention of Ford Madox Ford, editor of The English Review, and he commissioned him to write ‘Odour of Chrysanthemums’.  
  Wanting to write full-time he now began work on what would become ‘Sons and Lovers.   
  In 1912 he met the older and married mother-of-three Frieda Weekley. They eloped to Germany and here Lawrence could see for himself the growing tensions with France.  So keen was his interest that he was arrested and accused of being a British spy.  
  In early 1914 Frieda obtained her divorce and they returned to Britain to be married just days before the outbreak of war. Owing to her German parentage, and his own public dislike of militarism and violence, the couple were treated with contempt and suspicion throughout the war years.  
  Despite this he continued to write but his reputation in England was so tarnished and, mirrored by his own disdain for the country, he and Frieda left England in November 1919, first for Europe and then America via Ceylon and Australia. 
  They bought a ranch in Taos, New Mexico and visited Mexico several times. The third visit in March 1925 caused a near fatal attack of malaria. To convalesce they moved to Florence. Here he continued work on ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ which for many years would cause controversy. A renewed interest in oil painting resulted in an exhibition in 1929 which was raided by the police and several works were confiscated.  
  D H Lawrence died of complications arising from a bout of tuberculosis on the 2nd of March 1930 in Vence, France.  He was 44.

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  3 Stories - Set Entirely on...

  Virginia Woolf, Saki Saki, W G...

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  There is something about the number 3.    
   
  The Ancient Greeks believed 3 was the perfect number, and in China 3 has always been a lucky number, and they know a thing or two.   
   
  Most religions also have 3 this and 3 that and, of course, in these more modern times, three’s a crowd may be too many, except when it’s a ménage à trois.  It seems good things usually come in threes. 
   
  Whatever history and culture says WE think 3, a hat-trick of stories, is a great number to explore themes and literary avenues that classic authors were so adept at creating. 
   
  From their pens to your your ears.

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  Better Dead - From their pens to...

  J M Barrie

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  Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM, was born in Kirriemuir, Angus on 9th May, 1860.  
  Barrie knew from an early age that he wished to be an author. His family wished otherwise. The compromise was that he would attend university to study literature at the University of Edinburgh. He graduated with an M.A. in April, 1882. 
  His first job was as a staff journalist for the Nottingham Journal. The London editor of the St. James's Gazette "liked that Scotch thing" in Barrie’s work and he wrote several stories for them and later several novels based on his mother’s early life.  
  Barrie though was increasingly drawn to working in the theatre.  His first plays achieved little attention but in 1901 and 1902, Barrie had back-to-back theatre successes with Quality Street and The Admirable Crichton. 
  The character of ‘Peter Pan’ first appeared in The Little White Bird in 1902. This most famous and enduring of his works; Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up had its first stage performance on December 27th, 1904.  
  Peter Pan would overshadow all his other works.  But his short stories cannot be overlooked.  Indeed, from today’s vantage point they are excellent gems of social manners, of class and the way characters, sometimes in the most mundane of circumstances, react in the most surprising of ways.

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  Chelkash by Maxim Gorky - A...

  Maxim Gorky

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  Alexei Maximovich Peshkov was born on 28th March 1868, in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. 
   
  Better known as Maxim Gorky he was orphaned at 11 and ran away from home at 12.  At 19 he had already attempted suicide and thereafter travelled, by foot, across the Russian Empire for 5 years. 
   
  His first book ‘Essays & Stories’ in 1898 was a sensation and so began a long career as an author of short stories, novels and plays.  Gorky saw writing as a moral and political act that would help to change the unjust world around him.  He was an ardent early advocate of the emerging Marxist movement and publicly opposed the Tsarist regime leading several times to his arrest.  
   
  In 1904 he began his own theatre but the censor banned every play and Gorky was forced to abandon the project. 
   
  But Gorky was a financially successful author, editor, and playwright and gave monies to political parties as well as for civil rights and social reform.  The brutal shooting of workers, which set in motion the Revolution of 1905, pushed Gorky more decisively toward radical solutions.  
   
  In 1906 he went to the United States to raise funds for the Bolsheviks. Those experiences including a scandal over travelling with his lover and not his wife deepened his contempt for the ‘bourgeois soul.’ 
   
  Gorky now moved to Capri in Italy, both for health reasons and to escape the increasingly repressive times in Russia.  
   
  An amnesty for the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty saw him return to Russia in 1914. His politics remained close to the Bolshevik cause.  But soon, after the 1918 revolution, his essays referred to Lenin as a tyrant for his senseless arrests and repression.  He was soon appealing to the outside world for food aid after the catastrophic crop failure. 
   
  In October 1921 Gorky returned to Italy, now in Fascist hands, and settled in Sorrento until 1932.  His health worsened with the onset of tuberculosis. 
   
  He wrote several successful books there but now decided to find an understanding with the communist regime. Stalin invited him home and his return was hailed as a major propaganda victory.  He was decorated with the Order of Lenin, and a province, a park, and various streets re-named in his honour. 
   
  But he had his faults too.  In 1933, Gorky co-edited a book on the White Sea-Baltic Canal and denied even a single prisoner died during its construction, but thousands had. As well, knowing that some Nazis were homosexual, a phrase was attributed to him that said ‘exterminate all homosexuals and fascism will vanish’.  Although he was himself was quoting another he was decidedly homophobic. 
   
  With the increase of Stalinist repression in 1935 Gorky was placed under unannounced house arrest. 
   
  Maxim Gorky died on the 18th June 1936 from pneumonia.  He was 68. 
   
  Stalin and Molotov were among those who carried Gorky's urn of ashes at his funeral.  
   
  In Gorky’s story, a thief, Chelkash, ensnares a young man into his scheme to steal silk from a ship.  When he then sells the stolen goods he is set upon by the young accomplice.  What happens then is as unexpected as it is remarkable.

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  A Moonlight Fable

  H. G. Wells

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  In H.G. Wells' short story "A Moonlight Fable," we meet a young boy whose mother gives him a beautiful, silver-white suit, instructing him to save it for a special occasion. The boy, enchanted by the suit’s beauty, dons it one moonlit night, drawn by the desire to experience its magic. Against the surreal backdrop of the moonlit landscape, the boy embarks on a whimsical adventure, seeking freedom and transcendence. However, his innocent act of rebellion leads to an unexpected, poignant conclusion. Wells crafts a fable about the fleeting nature of beauty and the bittersweet pangs of youth, love, and loss.

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  The House In The Woods

  SULI Daniel Johnson

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  Edmund Blake is diving down a deserted road trying to escape the rigors of his life. A collection of unlikely events and irrational decisions lead him to discover a house in the woods. The house from a time long forgotten competes with him to investigate. The endeavor leads him to one terror-stricken mystery after another.

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