Showing results by narrator "Rob Goll" in All Categories

Nicholas Nickleby's father dies unexpectedly after losing all of his money in a poor investment. Nicholas, his mother, and his younger sister, Kate, are forced to give up their comfortable lifestyle in Devonshire and travel to London to seek the aid of their only relative, Nicholas's uncle, Ralph Nickleby. Ralph, a cold-hearted businessman, is reluctant to help his relations and has an immediate dislike of Nicholas, perhaps because he reminds him of his dead brother.

Isabella, or the Pot of Basil is a Romantic narrative poem of 63 stanzas. Written in 1818 and first published in 1820, it is adapted from a story in Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron. It tells the tragic tale of Isabella and her love for Lorenzo, an employee of her two brothers. 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.

In January 1817, Jane Austen began work on Sanditon, but died a few months later, leaving it unfinished. The surviving fragment begins the story of Charlotte Heywood, a sheltered young woman who is invited to the up-and-coming resort town of Sanditon. While there, she meets a host of memorable characters, drawn with Austen's classic wit and insight, including a fortune-hunting fop, a domineering dowager, and a hoard of hypochondriacs.

Old Friends and New Fancies is the first ever Jane Austen fan fiction and was originally published in 1913. Sybil Brinton imagines an entirely new story of romantic entanglements using a mashup of characters from all of Austen's major novels. Have you ever wondered what happened to Georgiana Darcy and Kitty Bennet from Pride and Prejudice or Mary Crawford and Tom Bertram from Mansfield Park? Find out in this delightfully comic homage to Austen's beloved characters.

In this moody Russian drama, Ivanov is a melancholic impoverished landowner whose wife is dying of tuberculosis. However, he finds himself irresistibly drawn to the beautiful Sasha, the daughter of his wealthy neighbors. Augmented by a diverse array of colorful supporting characters and intrigues, this play provides a glimpse of master dramatist Anton Chekhov's early work.

This extended moralistic fable, Oscar Wilde's longest work of fiction, was first published in 1890. It may be described as a tragedy of manners, in which a wealthy young man, endowed with great powers of physical and personal attractiveness, embarks on a hectic course of life which brings destruction to many around him, and ultimately to himself.

Hard Times is set in and around Coketown, a fictitious, Victorian mill town in the North of England. A town of red brick, machinery, and tall chimneys. A town blackened by soot, shrouded in mist, and choked by smoke. The working men and women of Coketown, referred to generally as "Hands" as if they were merely extensions of the machinery they operate, and not individuals with loves and likes, memories and inclinations, souls to weary and souls to hope.

The Wind in the Willows, first published in 1908, is one of the most beloved of all children's classics and has been adapted on multiple occasions for presentation on stage, in film, and as an opera. The action centers on the efforts of Mole, Rat, and Badger to discipline and reform their wealthy and self-destructive friend Toad, who lives in a splendid mansion known as Toad Hall.

Hedda and George Tesman have just returned from their six-month honeymoon tour of the Tyrol. George, a studious and somewhat dull academic has spent most of the time continuing his research. Hedda, the daughter of the celebrated, aristocratic General Gabler, recently deceased, has been accustomed to the finer things in life. She is already bored in her marriage and diverts herself with her father's pistols and the attentions of family friend, Judge Brack.

Hands Around, also known as La Ronde or Reigen, is possibly Schnitzler's most provocative and controversial work. In a series of 10 conversations occurring before or after a sexual encounter, between 10 pairs of characters from all walks of life, Hands Around offers a playful scrutiny of the sexual morals and class ideology of the era.

The story is told from the point of view of Pip, an orphan of humble origins who dreams of being a gentleman. From a chilling encounter with a convict when he was seven, through his coming of age and early adulthood, he tells of his "memorable days" and the "great changes" they wrought in him. Pip is apprenticed to kind-hearted Joe Gargery, the blacksmith, husband to his ill-tempered sister. On meeting the eccentric and reclusive Miss Havisham and her proud and haughty ward, the beautiful Estella, Pip becomes ashamed of his origins and hopes to one day better himself.

Wilfred Owen is widely regarded as one of the greatest poets of the First World War. He was tragically killed on patrol on 4 November 1918, a week before the armistice was signed. Owen was to see only five of his poems published during his lifetime. This collection of 23 poems, containing many of his best known works, uses the texts as published in Poems - edited by Wilfred Owen’s friend and mentor Siegfried Sassoon with the assistance of Edith Sitwell and first published in 1920.

America a Prophecy (1793) is the first book in Blake’s Continental Prophecies - the other two being Europe a Prophecy (1794) and The Song of Los (1795). The poem was engraved on 18 plates with illustrations by Blake, and survives in 14 known copies. Written during a time of great political and social upheaval, Blake uses his own complex invented mythology to explore the human need to resist tyranny. His verse is rich in metaphor, powerful, and apocalyptic in scope.

A Tale of Two Cities is one of Charles Dickens’ later novels, published and serialized in 1859. It is a compelling tale of love, sacrifice, and redemption set against the backdrop of the violence and horror of the French Revolution.

A House of Pomegranates is a collection of four fairy tales, published in 1891, as a follow on collection for The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888). Written in the form of parables with strong evidence of a Christian tone, Oscar Wilde again revisits the themes of suffering and sacrifice, in a collection which he once claimed was ‘intended neither for the British child nor the British public.’ “Of what use is my soul to me? I cannot see it. I may not touch it. I do not know it”

After he is found adrift in the Arctic by Captain Fredrick Walton, a gravely ill Victor Frankenstein recounts the story of his life up to his discovery. He tells how his obsession with science led to the creation of an abomination who, to his horror and shame, he abandoned. The creature's quest for both revenge and understanding from his creator leaves a violent trail of devastation in Victor’s life that affects all those he holds dear. Frankenstein is a powerful story of love and ambition, of friendship and morality, and of horror and violence.

The story of the orphan, Oliver Twist. Brought up in a workhouse and then apprenticed to an undertaker, he runs away to London. Meeting the charismatic "Artful" Dodger, he then falls in with a gang of backstreet pickpockets run by the sinister Fagin. Oliver Twist is Charles Dickens' second novel, originally serialized in Bentley's Miscellany between 1837 and 1839.

A Christmas Carol is one of Charles Dickens' best loved tales. Ebenezer Scrooge, described as "a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner," is certainly no lover of the Christmas season. He is visited on Christmas Eve by the ghost of his former partner, Jacob Marley, who warns him that he will be visited by three further spirits: The Ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Yet to Come.

Something was dead in each of us,
And what was dead was Hope. In this moving poetic study of his experiences in the Victorian penal system, Wilde relates the relentlessness and tedium of prison life, and of the haunted thoughts which trouble these "souls in agony" within their "numbered tombs". Oscar Wilde wrote "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" after his two-year imprisonment at the establishment. During his incarceration, a former trooper was convicted of the murder of his wife and hanged at the Gaol. This event is central to the poem's narrative.

In this haunting poem, a guest on his way to a wedding reception is stopped by the Ancient Mariner. With his "glittering eye" he transfixes the guest and then relates a compelling tale of a sea voyage fraught with strange happenings. The Mariner tells of journeying through tyrannous storms to ice mast-high, through mist and snow to the deadly inertia of the doldrums. There are unearthly visitations, ill omens, and supernatural happenings - all leading to the revelation of the Mariner's strange fate.