Showing results by publisher "Spoken Realms" in European

Amiable but stolid peer Bill, Lord Dawlish, possessor of a slender income and a querulous fiancée, resolves to seek his fortune in America. But before he can even get on the boat, he discovers that the eccentric American millionaire whom he cured of slicing his approach-shots on the links at Marvis Bay a few months earlier has unexpectedly left him five million dollars, as a reward for his altruistic action. But to Bill, noblesse more or less obliges him to share the fortune with the old man's disinherited niece, Elizabeth.

Award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti reads "Ode to a Nightingale", a personal poem that describes Keats's journey into a state of negative capability. The tone of the poem rejects the optimistic pursuit of pleasure found within Keats's earlier poems and, instead, explores the themes of nature, transience, and mortality, the latter being particularly relevant to Keats.

Imagine waking up one morning and finding that you are a giant insect, a cockroach, still perceiving your surroundings and family as they are, but unable to comminicate. This is what happens to Gregor Samsa. Yesterday he was a traveling salesman, and today he finds himself a repulsive vermin.

This collection of 35 poems is a sequel to a volume of lyrical ballads first published in 1798. While the first volume was a collaboration between Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, this anthology contains verses by Wordsworth only. Generally, the poems are less well-known than those of the earlier volume but do include major narrative pieces, like "The Pastoral Epics", "The Brothers", and "Michael".

When Louis Trevelyan's young wife meets an old family acquaintance, his unreasonable jealousy of their friendship sparks a quarrel that leads to a brutal and tragic estrangement.

Funny, outrageous, sometimes touching, and perhaps a little bit naughty - in Queen Lucia, E. F. Benson has created not only a wonderful character study in Mrs. Lucas, but a whole village of memorable characters.

Almustafa, the chosen and beloved, must leave the port of Orphalese upon the ship he has waited upon for 12 years. As he descends to the waterfront, the people of Orphalese gather to question him and hear his wisdom on important topics of their daily lives. Kahlil Gibran's masterpiece is a series of enlightening, philosophical answers to those questions. The inspirational and spiritual words of The Prophet, written in an almost Biblical, poetic style, reveal deep insights into each of the subjects in question.

The Beetle tells the tale of an evil, ancient Egyptian spirit seeking revenge on an up-and-coming British politician, Paul Lessingham. The shape-shifting creature that pursues Lessingham is possessed of hypnotic powers and takes different forms, both male and female, as well as morphing into a beetle - a figure that induces terror in its victims.

John Keats (1795-1821) was one of the foremost English Romantic poets. Despite his early death from tuberculosis at the age of 25 he had a considerable poetic output, the majority of his best-known works being written in the year 1819. The six odes composed during this year are among his most famous and well-regarded poems. The first five were composed during the spring of 1819, while 'To Autumn' was composed in September. The exact order of composition of the first five is unknown.

Alexander Pope was celebrated for his command of classical Greek and produced seminal translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Prior to the preparation of these translations, Pope took advantage of his mastery of the classical style and also his waspish wit to compose a burlesque epic about the theft of a lock of hair. The incident that inspired Pope was related to him by his friend John Caryll. Lord Petre had cut off a lock of the hair of Arabella Fermor, whom he was courting at the time, without asking the lady's permission.

The action of this play, which occurs during a conflict on the Balkans, is initiated by the discovery by Raina, the daughter of an military officer, of a man who has taken refuge in her bedroom. Unfortunately, the man belongs to the opposing army. How will she deal with a notional enemy who behaves with such quixotic courtesy?

Christopher Marlowe's play about a man who sells his soul to the devil is not only one of the first of many works to explore this theme but also one of the most startling. Eschewing the usual division of the drama into acts, it presents the story of Faustus' fall in a series of apparently disconnected scenes. However, the integrity of the drama is maintained by the remorseless unraveling of Faustus' fortunes as he approaches his inevitable damnation.

Possibly one of the most dissected poems ever, Eliot's poem loosely follows the legend of the Holy Grail and the Fisher King combined with vignettes of contemporary British society. Eliot employs many literary and cultural allusions from the Western canon, Buddhism, and the Hindu Upanishads. The poem shifts between voices of satire and prophecy featuring abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location, and time and conjuring a vast and dissonant range of cultures and literatures.

"The Eve of St. Agnes" was written in January 1819 and first published in 1820. It is a Romantic Narrative poem written in 42 Spenserian stanzas. John Keats based his poem on the superstition that a girl could see her future husband in a dream if she performed certain rites on the eve of the feast of St. Agnes (the patron saint of virgins who died a martyr in 4th century Rome.) The eve falls on January 20th; the feast day on the 21st.

The Eve of St. Agnes was first published in 1820 in a collection containing many of Keat's best-known poems. Several of these were retellings of stories that were popular in the Middle Ages and earlier times.

The Prophet is Kahlil Gibran's most famous work. He focuses on human relationships, as well as many other topics, including love, friendship, passion, work, good and evil, and time in a beautiful, simple, lyrical style.

Oliver Twist is the well-loved tale of an orphan, who starts life in a workhouse and finds himself embroiled in London's criminal underworld, before being saved by a kind gentleman who knows something of his surprising family history. A satire and social commentary as well as a page-turning yarn, full of grit, wit, and some of the most memorable characters in English Literature. The second published serialised novel by Charles Dickens, The British Library remarks that "it has proven to be one of the best-loved novels in the history of literature".

Andrea Del Sarto (1836 - 1530) was a Florentine painter whose career flourished during the High Renaissance. In this dramatic monologue, "the faultless painter" (Andrea Senza Errori, as he was surnamed by the Italians) is the speaker. He addresses his unsympathetic wife, Lucrezia, upon whom he dotes, and for whom he has broken faith with his royal patron, Francis I of France so that he can meet the expenses of her indulgent lifestyle. He laments that he has not realized the possibilities of his genius, partly blaming and partly excusing the woman who has failed to support his high ideals.

This poem, rich in its palette of human emotions, is couched in simple narrative language. Some critics have sought to interpret the poem as an allegory and find a specific meaning for every phrase and picture, but the richness of its symbolism is not favorable to this kind of treatment. In some ways, it resembles a piece of music. Each mind can draw from it a personal, and, to the individual, satisfactory interpretation.

Epithalamion is an ode included in an anthology, Amoretti, first published in 1595. Spenser's purpose was to celebrate his courtship of Elizabeth Boyle whose marriage with him is glorified in the Epithalamion.