Otros libros que te pueden interesar

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  A Study in Scarlet

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

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  In a Study in Scarlet Conan Doyle fist presented to the world his unique creation Mr Sherlock Holmes almost complete. 
  Over successive stories we learn a little more about the man, but it is not for character development that we turn to the Chronicles of Dr John Watson M.D 
  An iconic figure such as Holmes is all the better for his predicatbility, and even in this, the first of his recorded cases we can be confident that our hero is all we would expect. 
  Part of the Complete Shelock Holmes from Head Stories Audio, narrated by Simon Hester and with specially composed theme music.

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  Anton Chekhov - A Short Story...

  Anton Chekhov

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  Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born on 29th January 1860 in Taganrog, on the south coast of Russia.  
   
  His family life was difficult; his father was strict and over-bearing but his mother was a passionate story-teller, a subject Chekhov warmed to. As he later said; ‘our talents we got from our father, but our soul from our mother’.  
   
  At school Chekhov was distinctly average. At 16 his father mis-managed his finances and was declared bankrupt. His family fled to Moscow. Chekhov remained and eked out a living by various means, including writing and selling short sketches to newspapers, to finish his schooling. That completed and with a scholarship to Moscow University obtained he rejoined his family. 
   
  He was able to help support them by selling satirical sketches and vignettes of Russian lifestyles and gradually obtained further commissions. In 1884, he qualified as a physician and, although it earned him little, he often treated the poor for free, he was fond of saying ‘Medicine is my lawful wife, and literature is my mistress.’ 
   
  His own health was now an issue as he began to cough up blood, a symptom of tuberculosis.  Despite this his writing success enabled him to move the family into more comfortable accommodation.  
   
  Chekhov wrote over 500 short stories which included many, many classics including ‘The Kiss’ and ‘The Lady with a Dog’.  His collection ‘At Dusk’ won him the coveted Pushkin Prize when was only 26.  
   
  He was also a major playwright beginning with the huge success of ‘Ivanov’ in 1887.   
   
  In 1892 Chekhov bought a country estate north of Moscow. Here his medical skills and money helped the peasants tackle outbreaks of cholera and bouts of famine. He also built three schools, a fire station and a clinic.  It left him with less time for writing but the interactions with real people gained him detailed knowledge about the peasantry and their living conditions for his stories.  
   
  His most famous work, ‘The Seagull’ was received disastrously at its premiere in St Petersburg. It was later restaged in Moscow to highlight its psychological aspects and was a huge success. It led to ‘Uncle Vanya’, ‘The Three Sisters’ and ‘The Cherry Orchard’.  
   
  Chekhov suffered a major lung hemorrhage in 1897 while visiting Moscow. A formal diagnosis confirmed tuberculosis and the doctors ordered changes to his lifestyle.  
   
  Despite a dread of weddings the elusive literary bachelor quietly married the actress Olga Knipper, whom he had met at rehearsals for ‘The Seagull’, on 25th May 1901. 
   
  By May 1904 with his tuberculosis worsening and death imminent he set off for the German town of Badenweiler writing cheerful, witty letters to his family and assuring them his health was improving.  
   
  On 15th July 1904 Anton Chekhov died at Badenweiler.  He was 44.  
  1 - Anton Chekhov - A Short Story Collection - An Introduction 
  2 - The Lady with the Dog by Anton Chekhov 
  3 - Volodya by Anton Chekhov 
  4 - Misery by Anton Chekhov 
  5 - The Death of a Government Clerk by Anton Chekhov 
  6 - The Bet by Anton Chekhov 
  7 - A Chameleon by Anton Chekhov  
  8 - Vanka by Anton Chekhov 
  9 - The Student by Anton Chekhov 
  10 - The Looking Glass by Anton Chekhov 
  11 - Gooseberries by Anton Chekhov 
  12 - About Love by Anton Chekhov 
  13 - The Kiss by Anton Chekhov

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  Utopia

  Thomas More

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  Utopia (Libellus vere aureus, nec minus salutaris quam festivus, de optimo rei publicae statu deque nova insula Utopia, "A little, true book, not less beneficial than enjoyable, about how things should be in the new island Utopia") is a work of fiction and socio-political satire by Thomas More (1478-1535), written in Latin and published in 1516. The book is a frame narrative primarily depicting a fictional island society and its religious, social, and political customs. Many aspects of More's description of Utopia are reminiscent of life in monasteries.

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  The Time Machine

  H. G. Wells

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  H.G Wells takes us on a fascinating and frightening journey forwards in time to find that the Human Race has divided into two distinct types. One, devoid of all obstacles to progress has become saturated in pleasure and leisure to the point of feebleness. The other, dwelling underground has become so acclimatised to its subterranean existence that only at night is it able to venture above ground. The Time Traveller slowly becomes aware of the horrific connection between these two races.

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  Kidnapped

  Robert Louis Stevenson

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  Kidnapped - written three years after Stevenson’s blockbuster hit Treasure Island - tells the story of David Balfour, a young Scot kidnapped by brigands during the Jacobite Rebellion who teams with master swordsman Alan Breck Stewart to cross battle-torn Scotland and claim his rightful inheritance. 
  Kidnapped was well received and sold well during Stevenson’s lifetime. There have been about 21 movie and TV versions of the book made, most notably by Disney.
  An Author's Republic audio production.

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  Mathilda

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

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  The second novel from Mary Shelley, written in 1819/20 but not published in full until 1959. The story deals with common Romantic themes, but also incest and suicide. 
  Narrating from her deathbed, Mathilda tells the story of her unnamed father’s confession of incestuous love for her, followed by his suicide by drowning; her relationship with a gifted young poet called Woodville fails to reverse Matilda’s emotional withdrawal or prevent her lonely death. The act of writing this short novel distracted Mary Shelley from her grief after the deaths of her one-year-old daughter Clara at Venice in September 1818 and her three-year-old son William in June 1819 in Rome. These losses plunged Mary Shelley into a depression that distanced her emotionally and sexually from Percy Shelley and left her, as he put it, “on the hearth of pale despair”. 
  The story may be seen as a metaphor for what happens when a woman, ignorant of all consequences, follows her own heart while dependent on her male benefactor. 
  Mary Shelley sent the finished Mathilda to her father in England, to submit for publication. However, though Godwin admired aspects of the novel, he found the incest theme “disgusting and detestable” and failed to return the manuscript despite his daughter’s repeated requests. In the light of Percy Shelley’s later death by drowning, Mary Shelley came to regard the novel as ominous; she wrote of herself and Jane Williams “driving (like Mathilda) towards the sea to learn if we were to be for ever doomed to misery”. The novel was published for the first time in 1959, edited by Elizabeth Nitchie from dispersed papers. It has become possibly Mary Shelley’s best-known work after Frankenstein.

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