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Classic Short Story Collection
Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy,...
This audio book contains the following short stories: 1) To Build a Fire (Jack London) 2) In the Penal Colony (Franz Kafka) 3) White Nights (Fyodor Dostoyevsky) 4) The Chimes (Charles Dickens) 5) What Men Live By (Leo Tolstoy) 6) To Build a Fire (Jack London)
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The Provincial Lady in Wartime -...
E.M. Delafield
The Provincial Lady in Wartime, though the last of the Provincial Lady series, is one of the finest. No further ‘Diaries' had appeared since The Provincial Lady in America (published in 1934) when, in 1939, Harold Macmillan, then chairman of Macmillan publishers and a fan, made a personal request to E. M. Delafield for a new book. The onset of the war with Germany was serious, but, he said, Britain, was in need of the entertaining but pertinent observations from the Provincial Lady! Delafield duly set to work and produced the longest and in a way the most interesting of the ‘Diaries' without losing its sense of fun, of seemingly casual frivolity. The Provincial Lady in Wartime covers a short time - from 1 September 1939 (just before the declaration of war on 3 September) to 21 November 1939, when fact again met fiction and E. M. Delafield was really ‘called up' to work for the Ministry of Information. As a result, the focus in the book was on the ‘Phoney War' when the country found itself in a fever of preparation without the intense action that was to follow a short time after. The Provincial Lady finds herself in London, looking for voluntary work to support the war effort, which proves an unexpectedly difficult thing to achieve. Her interactions with a varied host of companions, also caught up in a strange frenzy, reflect so clearly the mood and tension of the time, yet the account is witty, apposite - and so very English, with the stiff upper lip underpinning it all. This book is both hugely entertaining and a faithful portrait of the months before hostilities began in earnest - as seen, of course, from the quirky eyes and particular milieu of the Provincial Lady, whom we have come to love and admire. Sad, then, that it was to be the last ‘Diary'. However, this recording also contains The Provincial Lady in Russia, the three articles Delafield wrote for Harper's Magazine in 1937 covering her three-month visit to the USSR. These deft pieces of more personal journalism are again witty, observant and informative, showing how ably Delafield combines a light touch with more serious conclusions. The three essays are: 'The Provincial Lady in Moscow' (Harper's Magazine, January 1937)'They Also Serve: The Provincial Lady in Leningrad' (Harper's Magazine, February 1937) 'To Speak My Mind About Russia: The Provincial Lady in Odessa' (Harper's Magazine, March 1937)As always, Georgina Sutton serves E. M. Delafield so well, with a vivacious yet perfectly placed reading.
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Christmas at Thompson Hall
Anthony Trollope
Christmas at Thompson Hall brings together the best of the Christmas stories of Anthony Trollope, one of the most successful, prolific, and respected English novelists of the nineteenth century. Characterized by insightful, psychologically rich, and sometimes wryly humorous depictions of the middle class and gentry of Victorian England—and inspired occasionally by missives in the “lost letter” box of the provincial post office that Trollope ran—these tales helped to enshrine the traditions of the decorated Christmas tree, the holiday turkey, and the giving of store-bought gifts. Today, they open a window onto a time when carolers filled the streets and each house’s door displayed a wreath of evergreen boughs, a time at once distant and yet startlingly familiar.
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The Gospel of Content
Frederick Greenwood
Frederick Greenwood was born on the 25th March 1830 in Kensington, London, the eldest of eleven. His working career began at a printing house and his literary career with small pieces in periodicals of the day. In 1853 he contributed a sketch of Napoleon III to ‘The Napoleon Dynasty’ volume. His work ‘An Essay Without End’ was published by Cornhill Magazine and with it an introduction to its editor, William Makepeace Thackeray. In 1862 Greenwood became its joint editor and later sole editor. In 1864 the magazine serialised his ‘sensation’ novel ‘Margaret Denzil's History’ and, following the death of Elizabeth Gaskell, he completed her unfinished novel ‘Wives and Daughters’. Greenwood was highly regarded both for his politics and journalistic abilities and was able several times during his career to attract both funds and resources for new magazines and newspapers. The first, in 1865, was his conception of an evening newspaper containing news, original articles, public affairs and culture and was launched as the Pall Mall Gazette. Within a few years he was also an influential and admired Tory. It was on his suggestion that the British Government purchased, in 1875, the Suez Canal shares of the Khedive Ismail. His continued work in various new publications also saw him keep an influential voice in the politics of the day. His ideas and works as editor included hiring new and brave writers who would later have writing careers that would in many cases eclipse his but not the wide spectrum of his interests and abilities. His career as a writer was marked by several novels, ‘The Loves of an Apothecary’ (1854), ‘The Path of Roses (1859)’, short stories and other works. The short story, ‘The Gospel of Content’, is a little gem of philosophy that is still, even today, remarkably modern. Frederick Greenwood died at Sydenham on the 14th December 1909.
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Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr...
Robert Louis Stevenson
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a chilling novella written by Robert Louis Stevenson and published in 1886. The subject matter may be partly that of a shilling shocker, but the whole is executed with great panache and a fine Gothic sensibility. Lawyer Gabriel Utterson leads us apace through the rain-swept streets of Victorian London in pursuit of the diminutive but thoroughly monstrous Mr. Hyde. The upright Dr. Jekyll, inexplicably Hyde's patron and defender, grows increasingly reclusive, and Utterson is further alarmed by the bizarre alterations made by Jekyll to his Last Will and Testament. Robert Louis Stevenson here explores the duality of man, examines concepts of good and evil and the desire to escape the straightjacket of social rectitude whilst keeping up appearances and avoiding the consequences. But like his other enduring classic, Treasure Island, it is much more than that: it is a thrilling tale brilliantly told.
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The Reticence of Lady Anne
Saki Saki
Edwardian satirist Hector Hugh Munro (1870-1916), who wrote under the pseudonym “Saki” tells the story of an unusual three-way domestic dispute between Egbert, his wife Lady Anne, and Don Tarquinio the cat. As often happens with Saki, there is a cynical twist at the end.
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