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  Mary E Mann - A Short Story...

  Mary E. Mann

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  Mary Rackham was born in Norwich on 14th August 1848 to a merchant family.  Little is known of her early life and her biography only re-appears in September 1871 with marriage to Fairman Joseph Mann, a farmer with 800 acres.   
   
  Mary moved to Shropham, Norfolk and became involved with the workhouse, visiting the sick and other unfortunates of the parish, her observations and experiences a valuable source for her later stories.  
   
  She took up writing, partly to offset the dreary village life of her surroundings, in the 1880s and published her first novel, ‘The Parish of Hilby’ (1883) at her own expense. It was well received by the critics.  
   
  Thus began a career that spanning three decades provided thirty-three novels, hundreds of short stories, and fourteen plays.? Her work was largely focused on rural life in Norfolk and centered on the fictional town of Dulditch, with grim but authentic accounts of poverty and deprivation.  
   
  Her marriage produced one boy and three girls. With her husband's death in 1913, she moved to Sheringham.  
   
  She is regarded as a major contributor to East Anglian literature with particular praise given to her short stories. 
   
  Mary E Mann died on 19th May 1929.  She was 80.  Her grave-marker is a carved open book with the epitaph ‘We bring our years to an end, as if it were a tale that is told’. 
   
  1 - The Short Stories of Mary E Mann - An Introduction 
  2 - Wolf Charlie by Mary E Mann 
  3 - Ben Pitcher's Elly by Mary E Mann 
  4 - Some of the Shipwrecked by Mary E Mann 
  5 - Rats by Mary E Mann 
  6 - Clomayne's Clerk by Mary E Mann 
  7 - The Country Doctor by Mary E Mann 
  8 - Little Brother by Mary E Mann

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  Caterpillars - From their pens...

  E F Benson

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  Edward Frederic Benson was born in Berkshire, England on 24th July 1867. 
  Educated at Marlborough and Kings College Cambridge he began his career as a writer at an early age and was published whilst still studying. 
  Benson was also a gifted athlete and represented his country at figure skating. 
  His career was prodigious and widely acknowledged.  Perhaps he is best known for his collection of novels about ‘Mapp & Lucia’ which have proved very popular throughout the decades.   
  Benson was also well regarded as a writer of ghost stories—‘spook stories’ in the then vernacular—as well as biographies.  His ghost and supernatural fiction covered a range of subjects but all were exceptionally well-written, drenched in atmosphere, riven with chills and have stood the test of popularity over the decades as testament to his literary talents.  
  Benson was never married and practised his homosexuality discreetly. 
  E F Benson died on 29th February 1940 at University College Hospital, London of throat cancer.  He was 72.

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  War Of The Worlds - The Classic...

  H. G. Wells

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  The War of the Worlds is a science fiction novel by English author H. G. Wells, first serialized in 1897 by Pearson's Magazine in the UK and by Cosmopolitan magazine in the US. The novel's first appearance in hardcover was in 1898 from publisher William Heinemann of London. Written between 1895 and 1897, it is one of the earliest stories to detail a conflict between mankind and an extraterrestrial race. The novel is the first-person narrative of both an unnamed protagonist in Surrey and of his younger brother in London as southern England is invaded by Martians. The novel is one of the most commented-on works in the science fiction canon. 
   
  The plot has been related to the invasion literature of the time. The novel has been variously interpreted as a commentary on evolutionary theory, British imperialism, and generally Victorian superstitions, fears, and prejudices. Wells said that the plot arose from a discussion with his brother Frank about the catastrophic effect of the British on indigenous Tasmanians. What would happen, he wondered, if Martians did to Britain what the British had done to the Tasmanians? At the time of publication, it was classified as a scientific romance, like Wells's earlier novel The Time Machine. 
   
  The War of the Worlds has been both popular (having never been out of print) and influential, spawning half a dozen feature films, radio dramas, a record album, various comic book adaptations, a number of television series, and sequels or parallel stories by other authors. It was most memorably dramatized in a 1938 radio program directed by and starring Orson Welles that allegedly caused public panic among listeners who did not know the Martian invasion was fictional. The novel has even influenced the work of scientists, notably Robert H. Goddard, who, inspired by the book, helped develop both the liquid-fuelled rocket and multistage rocket.

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  The Picture of Dorian Gray

  Oscar Wilde

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  The story revolves around a portrait of Dorian Gray by Basil Hallward, an artist impressed and infatuated by Dorian's beauty. Through Basil, Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, and he soon is enthralled by the aristocrat's hedonistic worldview: that beauty and sensual fulfilment are the only things worth pursuing in life. Newly understanding that his beauty will fade, Dorian expresses the desire to sell his soul, to ensure that the picture, rather than he, will age and fade. The wish is granted, and Dorian pursues a libertine life of varied amoral experiences while staying young and beautiful; all the while, his portrait ages and records every one of Dorian's sins.

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  Middlemarch (Book 5: The Dead Hand)

  George Eliot

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  Middlemarch (Book 5: The Dead Hand), A Study of Provincial Life is a novel by English author George Eliot, the pen name of Mary Ann Evans. It appeared in eight installments (volumes) in 1871 and 1872. Set in Middlemarch, a fictional English Midlands town, from 1829 to 1832, it follows distinct, intersecting stories with many characters. Issues include the status of women, the nature of marriage, idealism, self-interest, religion, hypocrisy, political reform, and education. Leavened with comic elements, Middlemarch approaches significant historical events in a realist mode: the Reform Act 1832, early railways, and the accession of King William IV. It looks at medicine of the time and reactionary views in a settled community facing unwelcome change. Eliot began writing the two pieces that formed the novel in 1869–1870 and completed it in 1871. Initial reviews were mixed, but it is now seen widely as her best work and one of the great English novels.

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  Nightingale and the Rose The...

  Oscar Wilde

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  "The Nightingale and the Rose" A nightingale overhears a student complaining that the professor's daughter will not dance with him, as he is unable to give her a red rose; a lizard, a butterfly and a daisy laugh at the student for doing so. The nightingale visits all the rose-trees in the garden, and one of the roses tells her there is a way to produce a red rose, but only if the nightingale is prepared to sing the sweetest song for the rose all night with her heart pressing into a thorn, sacrificing her life.

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