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  Tristram Shandy

  Laurence Sterne

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  Tristram Shandy is an ironic masterpiece, a work of extraordinary originality, wit and learning. It is a work of considerable philosophical complexity but at the same time it is just a piece of flim-flam: it has been called the longest shaggy dog story in English literature. It is both a classic novel and an anti-novel. It includes passages of seemingly serious theology – but it can also be read as an elaborate bawdy joke.

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  Cymbeline

  William Shakespeare

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  Two Gentlemen Of Verona is believed to be one of Shakespeare’s early comedies and as a result provides us with the first examples of a number of themes and devices that are further explored in many of his plays.  These include loyalty, friendship and the nature of love.  Also women dressing up as men is introduced by one of the central characters, Julia, dressing up as the page, Sebastian, to serve her loved one, Proteus, who has betrayed her.  Although fewer characters than most of Shakespeare’s other plays, they are interesting ones and Ghizela Rowe in her reading, captures the story of this intriguing play with clarity.

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  The Merry Wives of Windsor

  William Shakespeare

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  First published in 1602 by William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor features the popular figure Sir John Falstaff, who first appeared in Henry IV, Part 1 and Part 2. Some speculate that Merry Wives was written at the behest of Queen Elizabeth I, who wanted to see Falstaff in love; and that Shakespeare was forced to rush its creation as a result, and so it remains one of Shakespeare's lesser-regarded plays.The play revolves around two intertwined plots: the adventures of the rogue Falstaff who plans to seduce several local wives, and the story of young Anne Page who is being wooed by prominent citizens while she has her sights set on young Fenton. The wives come together to teach Falstaff a lesson, and in the end love triumphs.The Merry Wives of Windsor is believed to have been first performed in 1597 and was subsequently published in quarto in 1602, in a second quarto in 1619, and then in the 1623 First Folio. Despite holding a lesser place in Shakespeare's canon, it was one of the first Shakespearean plays to be performed in 1660, after the reinstatement of Charles II and theatre once again was permitted to be performed in London.

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  Begging-letter Writer The...

  Charles Dickens

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  A begging letter is a letter to a rich person or organisation, usually written by a poor person, or a person claiming to be poor, begging for money or help. Examples of begging letters include where a letter is sent to a wealthy individual asking for financial assistance for orphaned children, emergency surgery, etc. The May 1850 edition of Household Words contained an article entitled The Begging-Letter Writer written by the novelist Charles Dickens. In the article Dickens describes examples of the many begging letters he had received over the years, and the ruses employed by their writers to gain funds from the recipients. Charles John Huffam Dickens (7 February 1812 - 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic.

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  At Fault (Unabridged)

  Kate Chopin

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  Widowed at thirty, beautiful, resourceful Therese Lafirme is left alone to run her Louisiana plantation. When Therese falls in love with David Hosmer, a divorced businessman, her strong moral and religious convictions make it impossible for her to accept his marriage proposal. Her determined rejection sets the two on a tumultuous path that involves Hosmer's troubled former wife, Fanny. At Fault is set in the Post-Reconstruction rural South against a backdrop of economic devastation and simmering racial tensions. Written at the beginning of her career, it has parallels to Chopin's own life and contains characters and themes that prefigure her later works, including The Awakening.

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  Alexander's Bridge - Willa...

  Willa Cather

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  Alexander's Bridge was Willa Cather's first novel and one of her best. Bartley Alexander was the world's leading bridge builder, something that was considered an awesome skill in the early 20th century. Alexander has the strength and regret that weave throughout Cather's male characters much as they do through those of her contemporary authors, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Dreiser, Anderson, Lewis, and others. Mrs. Alexander has the strength and forbearance of Cather's female characters, shown off most clearly after the great bridge collapses along with Alexander himself.The novel bathes its locations in a glow reminiscent of a lovely Impressionist painting, full of light and luminosity. Boston has never appeared more glorious than in her descriptions, as one example.The novel starts with great strength but with a forbidding air. It ends as a great Greek drama with the collapse of the hero and the literal collapse of his great work. This is the Cather novel to start with.

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