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  Thomas Hardy - Chapter & Verse -...

  Thomas Hardy

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  Literature is a world of words and wonder, able to take us on almost unimaginable journeys from the wild and fantastic to the grind and minutiae of life. 
   
  An author’s ideas are his building blocks, his architecture of the mind, building a structure on which all else will rest; the narrative, the characters, the words - those few words that begin the adventure. 
   
  In this series we look at some of our leading classic authors across two genres: the short story and the poem.  In this modern world there is an insatiable need to categorise and pigeon-hole everyone and everything.  But ideas, these grains and saplings of the brain, need to roam, to explore and find their perfect literary use vehicle.  Our authors are masters of many literary forms, perhaps known for one but themselves favouring another. 
   
  Story. Poems. Story.  Within these boundaries come all manner of invention and cast of characters.  And, of course, each author has their own way of revealing their own chapter and verse.    
   
  1 - Chapter & Verse - Thomas Hardy - An Introduction 
  2 - An Imaginative Woman by Thomas Hardy 
  3 - A Broken Appointment by Thomas Hardy 
  4 - The Mother Mourns by Thomas Hardy 
  5 - Rain on a Grave by Thomas Hardy 
  6 - The Dead Man Walking by Thomas Hardy 
  7 - Rome - Building a New Street in the Ancient Quarter, April 1887 by Thomas Hardy 
  8 - At the Royal Academy by Thomas Hardy 
  9 - In the Moonlight by Thomas Hardy 
  10 - The Seasons of Her Year  by Thomas Hardy 
  11 - Birds at Winter Nightfall (Triolet) by Thomas Hardy 
  12 - The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy 
  13 - The Calf by Thomas Hardy 
  14 - The Oxen by Thomas Hardy 
  15 - The Fiddler of the Reels by Thomas Hardy

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  Dark to Light and Other Stories

  Stephen Filbey

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  Life thwarts Floyd’s goals sooner or later. A rival challenges his new invention. His buried gold is confiscated by HM Treasury. He is wrongly charged with arson. He is unfairly dismissed. He campaigns to change part of English punctuation, yet inadvertently continues to use it afterwards. Helping a friend lands him in hospital. What has he done to deserve all this?Yet he is resourceful in dealing with his adverse situations, whether personal or confronting the might of the state. Other characters must eat humble pie to stay afloat. College lecturer Ed Beck forsakes his principles. And Matt abandons his business dreams to preserve an old friendship.

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  Captain Rogers - From their pens...

  W Jacobs

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  William Wymark Jacobs was born on 8th September 1863 in Wapping, East London.  
  He was educated at a private school and then Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institution, now part of the University of London. 
  In 1879, Jacobs began work as a clerk in the civil service, in the Post Office Savings Bank.  In 1885 his first short story was published but it was not until almost the turn of the century that he would abandon his post office career to that as a full-time writer. By then he was a very popular author, his collections selling extremely well and with an excellent income. 
  His best-known work is the macabre ‘The Monkey's Paw’ and he is also highly regarded for his ghost stories although much of his remaining short story output is streaked with humour.  His characters are immediately identifiable and we all know that life will take chunks out of them in no time at all.  
  Jacobs married the noted suffragette Agnes Eleanor Williams in 1900 at West Ham, Essex. They went on to have two daughters and three sons as they settled down to life.  
  By the outbreak of the First World War his literary output had declined and he now mainly spent his time rewriting his earlier stories for the stage.  In all he wrote 18 plays. 
  W W Jacobs died on 1st September 1943 at Hornsey Lane, Islington in London. He was 79.

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  A Fragment of Stained Glass -...

  D H Lawrence

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  David Herbert Lawrence was born on the 11th September 1885 in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, a coal mining town where the reality of a harsh life was only useful as experiences for future literary works. 
  He was educated at Beauvale Board School and became the first local boy to receive a scholarship to attend Nottingham High School. After 3 years he became a junior clerk in Haywood’s surgical appliances factory. He was also attempting a literary career which, in the short term, led to a teacher training position in Eastwood and later a teaching qualification from University College, Nottingham.  
  Lawrence’s first efforts were poems, short stories and a draft of ‘The White Peacock’. Moving to London and a teaching position in Croydon his writing attracted the attention of Ford Madox Ford, editor of The English Review, and he commissioned him to write ‘Odour of Chrysanthemums’.  
  Wanting to write full-time he now began work on what would become ‘Sons and Lovers.   
  In 1912 he met the older and married mother-of-three Frieda Weekley. They eloped to Germany and here Lawrence could see for himself the growing tensions with France.  So keen was his interest that he was arrested and accused of being a British spy.  
  In early 1914 Frieda obtained her divorce and they returned to Britain to be married just days before the outbreak of war. Owing to her German parentage, and his own public dislike of militarism and violence, the couple were treated with contempt and suspicion throughout the war years.  
  Despite this he continued to write but his reputation in England was so tarnished and, mirrored by his own disdain for the country, he and Frieda left England in November 1919, first for Europe and then America via Ceylon and Australia. 
  They bought a ranch in Taos, New Mexico and visited Mexico several times. The third visit in March 1925 caused a near fatal attack of malaria. To convalesce they moved to Florence. Here he continued work on ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ which for many years would cause controversy. A renewed interest in oil painting resulted in an exhibition in 1929 which was raided by the police and several works were confiscated.  
  D H Lawrence died of complications arising from a bout of tuberculosis on the 2nd of March 1930 in Vence, France.  He was 44.

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  A Society - From their pens to...

  Virginia Woolf

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  Adeline Virginia Woolf was born on the 25th January 1882 in South Kensington in London. 
  Although lauded as a founder of modernist writing with such classics as ‘Orlando’, ‘Mrs Dalloway’ and ‘To the Lighthouse’ and, of course, many classic short stories, her background is filled with elements of tragedy that she somehow overcame to become such a revered writer.   Her mother died when she was 13, her half-sister Stella two years later and with it her first of several nervous breakdowns.  Appallingly it was later found that three of her half-brothers had sexually abused her so darkness must have seemed ever present.   
  She began writing professionally at age 20 but her father’s death two years later brought a complete mental collapse and she was briefly institutionalised.  Somehow she found within herself a literary career and with it great innovations in writing; she was a pioneer of “stream of consciousness”.    
  Her tight circle of friends were the founders of the Bloomsbury Group, a movement whose legacy still influences across the arts and society in many way to this day.   
  Whilst the dark periods continued to interrupt her emotional state her rate of work never ceased.  Until, on 28th March 1941, Woolf put on her overcoat, filled up its pockets with stones, and walked into the River Ouse, in Lewes, East Sussex and drowned herself.  Her body was not recovered until the 18th April.  She was 59. 
  She left behind a note which read in part “Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again.  I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times.  And I shan't recover this time.  I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate.  So I am doing what seems the best thing to do”.

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  Whatever Happened to Rick Astley?

  Bryony Rheam

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  NOMINATED FOR THE 2023 BULAWAYO ARTS AWARDS FOR OUTSTANDING LITERARY WORK
  'In turn these stories are funny, poignant, at times shocking, but always deeply moving.' – Ian Holding, Unfeeling
  '[a] wonderful collection of short stories' – Siphiwe Ndlovu, The Theory of Flight
  'Bryony Rheam's short stories are skilled, perfectly formed, and compelling ... a deeply satisfying collection.' – Karen Jennings, An Island
  Whatever happened to Rick Astley? She imagined that he was happily married with children. A record producer, perhaps? That was the usual way with singers, wasn't it?
  From Bryony Rheam, the award-winning author of All Come to Dust and This September Sun, comes a collection of sixteen short stories shining a spotlight on life in Zimbabwe over the last twenty years. The daily routines and the greater fate of ordinary Zimbabweans are represented with a deft, compassionate touch and flashes of humour.
  From the potholed side streets of Bulawayo to lush, blooming gardens, traversing down- at-heel bars and faded drawing rooms, the stories in Whatever Happened to Rick Astley? ring with hope and poignancy, and pay tribute to the resilience of the human spirit.

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