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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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  Middleton's Model - From their...

  Anthony Hope

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  Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins was born on 9th February 1863 in Clapton, London.  
  He was educated at St John's School, Leatherhead, Marlborough College and Balliol College, Oxford.  Hope trained as a lawyer and barrister and was called to the Bar by the Middle Temple in 1887. Despite what was thought to be a promising legal career he had literary ambitions and wrote in his spare time. 
  His early works appeared in various periodicals of the day but for his first book ‘A Man of Mark’ (1890), with no publisher interested, he published with his own resources.  
  More novels and short stories followed, including the mildly successful ‘Mr Witt's Widow’ in 1892. Hope even found time to run as the Liberal candidate for Wycombe in the election that same year but was unsuccessful. 
  His first major literary success came with ‘The Dolly Dialogues’, a collection of previously published magazine pieces followed very quickly by his instant classic, ‘The Prisoner of Zenda’. He now gave up the vestiges of his legal career to pursue writing full-time. 
  Despite never again reaching the same pinnacle of success he was popular and wrote prolifically across novels, plays and of course, short stories though his writing output rapidly diminished after the war. 
  In 1918 he was knighted for his contribution to propaganda efforts during World War I.  
  His short stories are delicate, mannered and often surprising with their wit, humour and interplay of characters who say one thing and usually mean another.  He was very definitely a writer of escapist rather than serious fare but they are no less enjoyable for that. 
  Anthony Hope died of throat cancer on 8th July 1933 at his country home, Heath Farm at Walton-on-the-Hill in Surrey. He was 70.

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  First Love

  Ivan Turgenev

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  The title of the novella is almost an adequate summary in itself. The "boy-meets-girl-then-loses-her" story is universal but not, I think, banal - despite a surprise ending which notoriously turns out to be very little of a surprise. First Love is given its originality and poignancy by Turgenev's mastery of the piercing turning-point (akin to Joyce's "epiphanies") that transforms the character's whole being, making a tragic outcome inevitable. Even the nature symbolism is rescued from triteness by lovely poetic similes - e.g. "but at that point my attention was arrested by the appearance of a speckled woodpecker who busily climbed up the slender stem of a birch-tree and peeped out uneasily from behind it, first to the right, then to the left, like a musician behind the bass-viol." (Summary by Martin Geeson)

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  The Duchess of Wiltshire's Diamonds

  Guy Boothby

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  Charismatic socialite Simon Carne adopts the persona of "Klimo" to solve crimes. Does professional jealousy explain antagonism to the celebrated private detective? Or is it something more? And even though Klimo solves case after case for his clients, why are none of the perpetrators ever caught?

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  The Episode in Room 222 - Short...

  Arnold Bennett

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  Enoch Arnold Bennett was born on the 27th May 1867 in Hanley, one of the six towns that formed the Potteries and that later joined together to become Stoke-On-Trent.  
  After passing entrance examinations for Cambridge University his solicitor father instead decided that he should work for him, unpaid, in his thriving office.  In the evenings the young Bennett wrote or studied and one skill he developed was Pitman’s shorthand which gave him entrance to a position as a clerk at a solicitor’s office in London.  From there followed various jobs but none seemed to be able to ignite his career as a full-time author. 
  By 1903 he had moved to live in Paris; he was 35, unmarried and keen to settle into his new life.  In 1908 he published his first remarkable novel; ‘Clayhanger’, that drew on his earlier life in the Potteries.   
  A prolific writer he was able to deliver very fine works but also write many that were described as ‘potboilers’.  Despite this disclaimer many were lapped up by an audience eager for his prose and helped turn him into the most financially successful author of the times.    
  As the First World War drew to a close, he was appointed to run the Ministry of Information.  During the 1920s he was reputedly the highest paid literary journalist in the land and continued to write novels, plays and short stories.   
  Arnold Bennett died in his flat at Chiltern Court on the 27th March 1931, from typhoid after drinking water in France on his last holiday.  He was 63.

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  Red Star Over Hebrides

  Donald S. Murray

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  Even as he grew up on the edge of Lewis, the vastness of Russia never felt too distant for Donald S Murray. Its great literary traditions were often discussed in his home village, while the political unrest and religious fervour that marked its past and present were occassionally reflected in his life on the island. Inspired by the Russian canon, the songs, verse and stories contained within these pages draw upon the experiences of his youth, shifting continually between myth and history, the absurd and moving, the satirical and everyday. Its extraordinary and diverse narratives underline the truth of its opening line: 'I can see these islands mirror Russia.'

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