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  New Machiavelli The - Book the...

  H. G. Wells

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  Herbert George "H. G." Wells (1866 - 1946) was an English writer.
  He was prolific in many genres, including the novel, history, politics, social commentary, and textbooks and rules for war games. Wells is now best remembered for his science fiction novels and is called a "father of science fiction"
  BOOK THE FIRST: THE MAKING OF A MAN: Since I came to this place I have been very restless, wasting my energies in the futile beginning of ill-conceived books. One does not
  settle down very readily at two and forty to a new way of living, and I have found myself with the teeming interests of the life I have abandoned still buzzing like a swarm of homeless bees in my head.

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  At Christmas Time - From their...

  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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  Top 10 Short Stories The - Born...

  Anthony Trollope, G K...

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  The Top 10 – Born in London – An Introduction 
   
  The teeming metropolis of London has a long history of innovation. Amongst its most gilded are the literary talents of its world-famous authors.  From Anthony Trollope and Daniel Defoe to Mary Shelley and Virginia Woolf and many others, have come iconic works that still to this day underpin our culture. 
   
  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. 
   
  1 - The Top 10 - Born in London - An Introdction 
  2 - The Resurrection of Father Brown by G K Chesterton 
  3 - Salvation of a Forsythe - Part 1 by John Galsworthy 
  4 - Salvation of a Forsythe - Part 2 by John Galsworthy 
  5 - An Unwritten Novel by Virginia Woolf 
  6 - Malachi's Cove by Anthony Trollope 
  7 - The Apparition of Mrs Veal by Daniel Defoe 
  8 - The Death Room by Edgar Wallace 
  9 - The Kit Bag by Algernon Blackwood 
  10 - The Mortal Immortal by Mary Shelley 
  11 - The Sexton's Hero by Elizabeth Gaskell 
  12 - Where Was Wych Street by Stacy Aumonier

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  Romeo and Juliet

  William Shakespeare

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  Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare early in his career about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately reconcile their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular plays during his lifetime and along with Hamlet, is one of his most frequently performed plays. Today, the title characters are regarded as archetypal young lovers.
  Romeo and Juliet had a profound influence on subsequent literature. Before then, romance had not even been viewed as a worthy topic for tragedy. In Harold Bloom's words, Shakespeare "invented the formula that the sexual becomes the erotic when crossed by the shadow of death". Of Shakespeare's works, Romeo and Juliet has generated the most—and the most varied—adaptations, including prose and verse narratives, drama, opera, orchestral and choral music, ballet, film, television, and painting. The word "Romeo" has even become synonymous with "male lover" in English. 
  The most famous and inspirational works of William Shakespeare include: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Orpheus, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Troilus and Cressida, The Tempest, Venus and Adonis, Antony and Cleopatra, Measure for Measure, The Winter's Tale and many more.

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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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  The Blazing World

  Margaret Cavendish

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  'I had rather die in the adventure of noble achievements, than live in obscure and sluggish security.'
  
  Part romance, part adventure story, The Blazing World is a seventeenth century classic, and a prime example of proto-science fiction.
  
  Often considered an early feminist work, Cavendish compellingly chronicles how a young Lady became a powerful empress of a fantastical parallel kingdom. Captured by a lustful merchant in the hope of marrying the young woman, we first find our protagonist travelling towards the North Pole, unsure of her future. But soon the merchant and his crew freeze to death, allowing the young Lady to escape and discover a pole to an alternative land: the Blazing World. Here, the laws of science and nature are upturned: peculiar hybrid creatures – with animal bodies but minds like humans – inhabit the kingdom. Believed to be a goddess by the Emperor of Paradise city, the young woman soon becomes betrothed to the leader of the strange land, and is able to rule and govern the world as she pleases. This audiobook edition is brilliantly brought to life by Karen Cass.
  Margaret Cavendish (1632 – 1673), Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, was a successful poet, playwright, scientist and philosopher. She was one of the first women of her time to publish extensively under her own name, and used her work to explore topics such as gender, marriage and courtship.

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