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  Dethroned - Ukranian born...

  I N Potapenko

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  Ignaty Nikolayevich Potapenko was born on 30th December 1856 in the village of Fyodorovka in the Kherson Governorate of what was then the Russian Empire. 
   
  After an education that included studying at the Odessa University and the St Petersburg Conservatory Potapenko began his literary career, at first in tales detailing the lives of those Ukrainians all around him. 
   
  His undoubted talent soon took his canon beyond short stories to include both novels and plays.  
   
  I N Potapenko died on 17th May 1929 in Leningrad.  He was 72.

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  A Successful Rehearsal - From...

  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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  A Wicked Voice - Violet Paget...

  Vernon Lee

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  Vernon Lee was born Violet Paget on 4th October 1856 in Boulogne, France to intellectual expatriate British parents.   
   
  In common with several other very talented literary women of the day she felt it necessary to publish under a masculine pseudonym in order for her writing to be taken seriously.  Indeed she seems to have adopted that persona across her whole lifestyle becoming personally known and acknowledged by all as Vernon Lee and accordingly dressed as a man.    
   
  Her first published work, in 1880, was taken from her collection of essays that had originally appeared in Fraser’s Magazine with the scholarly title of; ‘Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy.’ It reflected her passion for music and centered on the rich creative lives of poet-librettist Pietro Metastasio and dramatists Carlo Goldoni and Carlo Gozzi.   
   
  She wrote over a dozen volumes of essays on art, music, and travel with her scholarly appreciation animated by wit and imagination.  Lee was well-regarded as an expert on the Italian Renaissance and was a proponent of the Aesthetic movement. 
   
  Her literary talents were extensive and she wrote a number of novels and plays.  Perhaps her best remembered works are her haunting and powerful short stories exploring the supernatural.  Lee has often received accolades for these and glowingly compared to other authors such as M R James. 
    
  A committed pacifist she was resolved to protest against World War I. Her social activism in other areas was perhaps fueled by her feminist beliefs.  In her private life she was a lesbian and had long-term passionate relationships with three women including the doomed author and poet, Amy Levy.   
   
  Vernon Lee died on 13th February 1935 in San Gervasio Bresciano, Italy.  
   
  In this story a writer of Operas discovers the history of a venetian singer whose very voice could lift an audience to ecstasy, love and even death.

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  Top 10 Short Stories The - The...

  George Eliot

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  Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart.  A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere. 
   
  In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author?  
   
  The theme itself will form the boundaries for our stories which range from well-known classics, newly told, to stories that modern times have overlooked but perfectly exemplify the theme.  Throughout the volume our authors whether of instant recognition or new to you are all leviathans of literature. 
   
  Some you may disagree with but they will get you thinking; about our choices and about those you would have made.  If this volume takes you on a path to discover more of these miniature masterpieces then we have all gained something. 
   
  In this Century England assembles more of the world’s territories, people and materials for her own Empire.  The arts also flourish with names in this volume that are bywords for talent beyond the reach of almost all other writers.  An ever hungry audience demands yet more and more. 
   
  1 - The Top 10 - The 19th Century - The English - An Introduction 
  2 - The Lifted Veil - Part 1 by George Eliot 
  3 - The Lifted Veil - Part 2 by George Eliot 
  4 - The Signalman by Charles Dickens 
  5 - The Man Who Would Be King - Part 1 by Rudyard Kipling 
  6 - The Man Who Would Be King - Part 2 by Rudyard Kipling 
  7 - The Magic Shop by H G Wells 
  8 - The Withered Arm by Thomas Hardy 
  9 - The Old Nurse's Story by Elizabeth Gaskell 
  10 - A Little Dinner At Timmin's by William Makepeace Thackeray 
  11 - Father Giles of Ballymoy by Anthony Trollope 
  12 - Lost Hearts by M R James 
  13 - A Terribly Strange Bed by Wilkie Collins

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  The New Catacomb

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

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  Though Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is best known for his detective stories, he also wrote other short stories which are masterpieces of mystery and suspense. In some of the stories, a suppressed uneasiness gradually builds up and evolves into sheer horror; in others, the story line unexpectedly changes and comes to an unexpected conclusion.  In "The New Catacomb," deceit and terror are buried in the deep recesses of an Roman archeological find.

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  The Old Adam

  D H Lawrence

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  ‘The Old Adam’  The story is set in lodgings in Croydon and the incident may again be autobiographical but the story examines for the first time in Lawrence’s writing, the different and conflicting loves between men and women.

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