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  The Scapegoat - From their pens...

  Paul Laurence Dunbar

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  Paul Laurence Dunbar was born on June 27th, 1872 in Dayton Ohio. His parents had been slaves in Kentucky before the Civil War.  
  Dunbar wrote his first poem at age 6 and gave his first public recital at age 9. By 16 he was already published as a poet in ‘The Herald’, a local newspaper. 
  After completing his formal schooling in 1891, Dunbar was employed as an elevator operator, at $4 a week. His hopes of a legal career floundered on a lack of funds and racial discrimination. However, he wrote his poetry and took every opportunity to publish. In 1892 his employers sent him to the United Brethren Publishing House which, in 1893, printed his dialect poetry, ‘Oak and Ivy; Dunbar subsidized the printing and earned back his investment in two weeks by selling copies himself. 
  Dunbar also wrote the lyrics for ‘In Dahomey’, the first musical written and performed entirely by African Americans. It was produced on Broadway in 1903; and then toured England and the United States for four years. 
  After returning from a literary tour of United Kingdom, Dunbar married Alice Ruth Moore on March 6th, 1898. She was a teacher and poet from New Orleans. Dunbar called her "the sweetest, smartest little girl I ever saw". Alice would become as famous as Paul during her life for her own literary works. 
  In 1900, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and his doctors recommended drinking whisky to alleviate his symptoms.  The couple moved to Colorado as the cold, dry mountain air was considered favorable for his health. Dunbar and Alice separated in 1902, but never divorced. But Depression and declining health drove him to depend on alcohol, and health deteriorated. 
  His short career was prolific; a dozen books of poetry, four books of short stories, four novels, lyrics for ‘In Dahomey’, and a play. Dunbar’s essays and poems were published widely in leading journals including ‘Harper's Weekly’ and ‘The Saturday Evening Post’.  He was also a committed civil rights activist. 
  In 1904 he returned to Dayton to be with his mother.  
  Paul Laurence Dunbar died of tuberculosis on February 9th, 1906, at the age of only thirty-three.

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  The Stranger of the Night - A...

  Edgar Wallace

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  Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace was born on the 1st April 1875 in Greenwich, London.  Leaving school at 12 because of truancy, by the age of fifteen he had experience; selling newspapers, as a worker in a rubber factory, as a shoe shop assistant, as a milk delivery boy and as a ship’s cook.  
   
  By 1894 he was engaged but broke it off to join the Infantry being posted to South Africa. He also changed his name to Edgar Wallace which he took from Lew Wallace, the author of Ben-Hur.  
   
  In Cape Town in 1898 he met Rudyard Kipling and was inspired to begin writing. His first collection of ballads, The Mission that Failed! was enough of a success that in 1899 he paid his way out of the armed forces in order to turn to writing full time.  
   
  By 1904 he had completed his first thriller, The Four Just Men. Since nobody would publish it he resorted to setting up his own publishing company which he called Tallis Press. 
    
  In 1911 his Congolese stories were published in a collection called Sanders of the River, which became a bestseller. He also started his own racing papers, Bibury’s and R. E. Walton’s Weekly, eventually buying his own racehorses and losing thousands gambling.  A life of exceptionally high income was also mirrored with exceptionally large spending and debts.  
   
  Wallace now began to take his career as a fiction writer more seriously, signing with Hodder and Stoughton in 1921. He was marketed as the ‘King of Thrillers’ and they gave him the trademark image of a trilby, a cigarette holder and a yellow Rolls Royce. He was truly prolific, capable not only of producing a 70,000 word novel in three days but of doing three novels in a row in such a manner. It was estimated that by 1928 one in four books being read was written by Wallace, for alongside his famous thrillers he wrote variously in other genres, including science fiction, non-fiction accounts of WWI which amounted to ten volumes and screen plays. Eventually he would reach the remarkable total of 170 novels, 18 stage plays and 957 short stories. 
   
  Wallace became chairman of the Press Club which to this day holds an annual Edgar Wallace Award, rewarding ‘excellence in writing’.  
   
  Diagnosed with diabetes his health deteriorated and he soon entered a coma and died of his condition and double pneumonia on the 7th of February 1932 in North Maple Drive, Beverly Hills. He was buried near his home in England at Chalklands, Bourne End, in Buckinghamshire.

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  Jane Eyre - A Courageous Journey...

  Charlotte Brontë

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  From the moment Jane Eyre steps into the harsh world of Victorian England, her story captivates with courage, resilience, and a relentless search for love and self-respect. This timeless audiobook brings to life one of the most enduring classics in literature, combining rich gothic romance with a heroine whose strength and independence continue to inspire generations. Listeners searching for classic romance audiobooks and Victorian literature will find themselves immersed in a narrative that resonates across time. 
  As you follow Jane from the orphaned hardships of Gateshead to the complex halls of Thornfield Hall, you experience a profound journey of personal growth and emotional discovery. This audiobook allows you to witness how determination, moral integrity, and self-discovery shape a life defined by courage and love. Along the way, you gain insights into female empowerment classics, Gothic romance, and the enduring appeal of stories that explore both heart and principle. 
  Listeners of this audiobook will enjoy:Experiencing a deeply emotional and transformative story of love, independence, and self-worthUnderstanding the struggles and triumphs of a strong, principled heroine navigating Victorian societyEngaging with themes of moral courage, personal growth, and enduring human resilienceImmersing in a richly atmospheric setting brought vividly to life through narration 
  Written by Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre has endured for over a century as a literary masterpiece. Its exploration of love, morality, and self-discovery remains profoundly relevant, cementing its place as a cornerstone of classic literature. This audiobook preserves the elegance, depth, and emotional intensity of the original text while offering a listening experience that feels immediate and alive

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  The Quest of the Silver Fleece

  W. E. B. Du Bois

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  In The Quest of the Silver Fleece there is little, I ween, divine or ingenious; but, at least, I have been honest. In no fact or picture have I consciously set down aught the counterpart of which I have not seen or known; and whatever the finished picture may lack of completeness, this lack is due now to the story-teller, now to the artist, but never to the herald of the Truth.—Author’s Note from The Quest of the Silver Fleece 
  W. E. B. Du Bois considered his first novel, The Quest of the Silver Fleece, to be an “economic study” of the post-Reconstruction relationship between the North and the South, but this first foray into fiction proves itself to be much more than that. Filled with literary realism, social commentary, and romance, Silver Fleece chronicles the love story between Zora, a free-spirited Black girl from a Southern swamp, and Bles, a Black man educated in the North. The couple must find a way to unite and overcome the racist Alabama town in which they live and, through working with the titular silver fleece (cotton), create an economic community that would help the rural Black community become self-sufficient. 
  Controversial and provocative at the time of its publication, Du Bois’s debut novel is a cutting and thorough examination, and condemnation, of America’s views on race both at the time of the novel’s publication and the time in which it is set. As a sociologist and civil-rights leader, Du Bois was uniquely positioned to bring the themes of racism, prejudice, and racial equality found in The Souls of Black Folk, which he had published just before Silver Fleece, to a larger audience that had not read his nonfiction titles. 
  The Quest of the Silver Fleece is a rousing and beautiful work of fiction from one of America’s most important intellects, and it continues to inspire conversation and debate around systemic racism in America today.

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  Mrs Warren's Daughter - A Story...

  Harry Johnston

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  The daughter of Shaw's Mrs Warren, taken up thirty years later - a barrister, a suffragette and a war. Harry Johnston asked Shaw's leave and got it; this is the rarest thing in fiction, an authorised sequel to somebody else's play. This edition pairs the text with fifty-nine plates of painting, among them works by George Clausen, Walter Sickert and Thomas Sidney Cooper, dating from 1724 to 1920.

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  The Type-Writer Girl - A Woman...

  Grant Allen

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  A girl who has learned shorthand takes work in a City office and finds independence is real but costs more than the wage covers. Grant Allen wrote it in 1897 with the typewriter still new and the working woman newer, and made his heroine cycle and argue. This edition binds 57 plates of painting with the text, among them works by Frith, Munch and Pissarro.

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