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  Esme - From their pens to your...

  Saki Saki

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  Hector Hugh Munro, more familiarly known by his pen-name ‘Saki’ was born in what was then Akyab in British Burma on 18th December 1870. His father was an Inspector General for the Indian Imperial Police, and his mother the daughter of a Rear Admiral. 
  When he was 2 his mother died and he and his siblings were sent back to England to be raised by their grandmother and paternal maiden aunts in a strict, puritanical household near Barnstaple, Devon. Educated by governesses Saki used many of these women as character models for his later writing. 
  At 17 his father retried and returned to England and then embarked on a series of European travels with Saki and his siblings. 
  After a short stint working in Burma with the Indian Imperial Police Saki decided to move to London to make a living as a writer. Initially he wrote as a journalist for a number of newspapers and magazines before attempting an historical study, ‘The Rise of the Russian Empire’, whose real value lay in directing him to writing short stories instead, the first of which, ‘Dogged’, he published in 1899. 
  From here it was a short stab of the pen to writing political satire before in 1902 he became the foreign correspondent for The Morning Post, first in the Balkans, then Russia, Paris and back to London in 1908, where 'the agreeable life of a man of letters with a brilliant reputation awaited him.'  
  Collections of his short stories full of witty, mischievous and often macabre stories that satirized Edwardian society and two novels now appeared in the years up to the Great War.  At its’ outbreak he was 43 but managed to join as an ordinary trooper. More than once he returned to the battlefield when officially too sick or injured.  
  On 14th November 1916 Hector Hugh Munro was sheltering in crater during the Battle of the Ancre, when he was shot and killed by a German sniper. According to several sources, his last words were "Put that bloody cigarette out!"

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  Nikaloi Gogol: The Cloak

  Nikolái Gógol

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  The Cloak or the Overcoat as in some translations, is a famous story by Ukrainian-born Russian author Nikolai Gogol, published in 1842. The story and its author have had great influence on Russian literature, as expressed in a quote attributed to Fyodor Dostoyevsky: "We all come out from Gogol's 'Overcoat'." It is pointed to as the start of the realistic style of writing. 

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  A Dreamer - From their pens to...

  Barbara Baynton

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  The bookshelves of World literature are incredible collections that have gathered together centuries of very talented authors.  From their countries and continents their fame spread and whilst among their number many are now forgotten or neglected their talents endure.  Among them is Barbara Baynton.

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  A Perfect Christmas with Chaos -...

  Darby Briar

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  Need more of Mav and Ember? Or better yet…Luce and Doll? A Perfect Christmas with Chaos is a short story that gives you a peek into Ember's first Christmas with Mav. Read a part of their story that was never told before. Find out a little bit more about your favorite couple and Mav's sexy biker brothers. It's Christmas. It's Chaos. And the Harbingers of Chaos are coming for dinner.

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  Virginia Woolf - Six of the Best...

  Virginia Woolf

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  Six has always been a number we group things around – Six of the best, six of one half a dozen of another, six feet under, six pack, six degrees of separation and a sixth sense are but a few of the ways we use this number. 
   
  Such is its popularity that we thought it is also a very good way of challenging and investigating an author’s work to give width, brevity, humour and depth across six of their very best. 
   
  In this series we gather together authors whose short stories both rivet the attention and inspire the imagination to visit their gems in a series of six, to roam across an author’s legacy in a few short hours and gain a greater understanding of their writing and, of course, to be lavishly entertained by their ideas, their narrative and their way with words. 
   
  These stories can be surprising and sometimes at a tangent to what we expected, but each is fully formed and a marvellous adventure into the world and words of a literary master.

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  Richard Middleton - A Short...

  Richard Middleton

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  Richard Barham Middleton was born on the 28th October 1882 in Staines, Middlesex. 
   
  His education was primarily at Cranbrook School in Kent before he began work as a clerk, in 1901, at the Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation in London.  There he struggled with constraints and boundaries and by night he took to a bohemian lifestyle.   
   
  Middleton moved into rooms in Blackfriars and joined the New Bohemians club where his literary contacts grew. 
   
  He became an editor at Vanity Fair where he told a fellow editor, the notorious Frank Harris, that he wanted to pursue a career as a poet.  Shortly afterwards Harris published Middleton’s poem ‘The Bathing Boy’. 
   
  As an author he is most remembered for his short ghost stories. 
   
  Richard Middleton died on 1st December 1911.  He was 29.

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