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  A Nocturne - From their pens to...

  Clothilde Graves

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  Clotilde Augusta Inez Mary Graves was born on the 3rd June 1863 at Buttevant Castle, Co. Cork, to parents with military backgrounds. 
  At age nine, the family moved to Southsea in England for yet another military posting.  Her father’s postings gave her valuable experiences that would be put to good use in later years in some of her literary works. 
  She was educated at a Catholic convent in Lourdes before returning to London in 1884 to study art in Bloomsbury.  She worked part-time at the British Museum and the Royal Female School of Art and generated further income by drawing little pen-and-ink grotesques for the comic papers.  
  A few years later a chance meeting found her writing extra lyrics for a pantomime version of Puss in Boots.  She followed up with several financially successful plays, both in London and New York, and gained a measure of notoriety in one with the comparison of marriage and prostitution.   
  Despite her dramatic success she published her first novel in 1911 under the pseudonym of Richard Dehan which she continued to use for later works.  As well as novels and plays she published collections of short stories which glow with talent and invention. 
  She was an unusual figure in London society, wearing her hair short, taking on a masculine manner and cut of clothing, and smoking cigarettes in public when such traits were considered eccentric at best.  Add to this her admired collection of Chinese and Japanese trophies, her enthusiasm for fly-fishing and her riding of a tricycle and you have a perfect image of this fascinating writer. 
  Clotilde Graves died at the convent of Our Lady of Lourdes at Hatch End in Middlesex, on the 3rd December 1932.  She was 69.

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  About Smells

  Mark Twain

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  Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) was a great American writer and journalist. He was born in 1835 in Missouri. Twain started working at the age of 12. He helped his brother, who published a newspaper. That's how his first articles appeared. In 1864 he moved to San Francisco where cooperated with publishing houses . The most famous novels are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Hemingway said that the hole American literature starts from this books. His works are full of humor and adventures, but they also tell us about America of that time with it's cruelty, violence, injustice and racism.  In the short story "About smells" Mark Twain talks about some Rev. T. De Witt Talmage who complains of an unpleasant smell coming from the working man in a church. In sarcastic manner, Twain criticize these words and modern Christians who forgot what underlies their religion.A SmartTouch Media production.

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  The Bet - From their pens to...

  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.

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  Listening to Poetry 2

  Various

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  "Listening to Poetry not only introduces the finest work from some of the greatest poets
  who ever lived, it also resurrects the power of spoken poetry, bringing back to life
  the sheer pleasure of listening to verse. Textured with music by 3 Brothers & A Violin,
  this collection of 28 poems in two volumes, performed with panache by international
  stage actors Naseeruddin Shah, Gareth Armstrong, Shernaz Patel, and Dhritiman Chaterji,
  moves and inspires with its timeless quality."

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  Werewolves - A Short Story...

  Arthur Conan Doyle, E T A...

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  Many of us are cautious around dogs.  However friendly they seem their energy and open panting jaws seem to summon some primitive instinct within us to be aware. 
   
  Once we advance to wolves those fears become rather more persuasive. Their wild and seemingly vicious, determined natures can induce panic in even the most foolhardy of us.  Nature admires winners. 
   
  From there it is but a short step to the supernatural evil of Werewolves.  Now fear is definitely the thing we feel pulsing through our veins summoning a flight response.  But no matter what our hopes are werewolves, whether real or in the imaginations of this cast of chilling unrepentant authors, stroke knowing chords of terror into every sentence, as the pages turn our uneasiness begins to escalate.  Terror begins to track our every step.   
   
  With such literary craftsmen as Saki, Hugh Walpole, Ambrose Bierce, Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Conan Doyle and others, that feeling happens time and time again. 
   
  1 - Werewolves - A Short Story Collection - An Introduction 
  2 - Mark of the Beast by Rudyard Kipling 
  3 - A Pastoral Horror by Arthur Conan Doyle 
  4 - Gabriel-Ernest by Saki 
  5 - The Eyes of the Panther by Ambrose Bierce 
  6 - Tarnhelm or The Death of My Uncle Robert by Hugh Walpole 
  7 - The She-Wolf by Saki 
  8 - Vampirismus or Aurelia by E T A Hoffman 
  9 - TheThing in the Forest by Bernard Capes 
  10 - A Story of a Weir-Wolf by Catherine Crowe 
  11 - The Lame Priest by Susan Morrow writing as S Carleton 
  12 - Alymer Vance & The Vampire by Alice and Claude Askew

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  Frankenstein

  Mary Shelley

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  Frankenstein tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. Shelley started writing the story when she was 18, and the first edition was published anonymously in London on 1 January 1818, when she was 20. Her name first appeared in the second edition, which was published in Paris in 1821.Shelley travelled through Europe in 1815, moving along the river Rhine in Germany, and stopping in Gernsheim, 17 kilometres (11 mi) away from Frankenstein Castle, where, two centuries before, an alchemist had engaged in experiments.[note She then journeyed to the region of Geneva, Switzerland, where much of the story takes place. Galvanism and occult ideas were topics of conversation for her companions, particularly for her lover and future husband Percy B. Shelley. In 1816 Mary, Percy and Lord Byron had a competition to see who could write the best horror story. After thinking for days, Shelley was inspired to write Frankenstein after imagining a scientist who created life and was horrified by what he had made.Though Frankenstein is infused with elements of the Gothic novel and the Romantic movement, Brian Aldiss has argued for regarding it as the first true science-fiction story. In contrast to previous stories with fantastical elements resembling those of later science fiction, Aldiss states, the central character "makes a deliberate decision" and "turns to modern experiments in the laboratory" to achieve fantastic results. The novel has had a considerable influence on literature and on popular culture; it has spawned a complete genre of horror stories, films, and plays.Since the publication of the novel, the name "Frankenstein" has often been used, erroneously, to refer to the monster, rather than to his creator/father.

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