Showing results by narrator "Denis Daly" in All Categories

The Martians, finding the resources on their own planet dwindling dramatically, decided to invade and colonize Earth. They land in England and quickly establish control through their vastly superior military technology. The narrative focuses on the wanderings and deliberations of the narrator as he wanders around the country seeking refuge from the remorseless invaders. Two of the most significant characters he encounters are a curate and an artilleryman, neither of whom has an effective approach to dealing with the crisis.

The Invisible Man was the fourth sci-fi novel written by Wells in the 1890s. The main character, Griffin, is one of the intimidating villains in all popular literature. The archetypal "mad scientist," Griffin devotes himself to an obsessive study of optics and realizes his ambition to render livings things permanently invisible. After making a cat invisible, he successfully applies the procedure to himself. After causing chaos in London, he travels to the village of Iping in Sussex and takes up residence in a local hotel.

Christmases everywhere should be filled with gifts and good cheer. But in Australia, Christmas may also feature fires, snakes, droughts, injuries, epic journeys, and all kinds of challenges for children and adults alike. This is a collection of short stories by well-known Australian author, Mary...

This collection was published posthumously in 1869 under the title of Petits Poèmes En Prose, but is also known as Le Spleen de Paris. A prime influence was Gaspard de la Nuit, the prose poem collection by Aloysius Bertrand. Baudelaire described these short pieces as experiments, and also "confessions." The poet was seeking to create "the miracle of a poetic prose, musical without rhythm and without rhyme, subtle and staccato enough to follow the lyric motions of the soul, the wavering outlines of meditation, the sudden starts of the conscience."

Pierre Loti (1850-1923) was a French naval officer, traveler, and novelist. Many of his novels deal with exotic themes, drawn from the author's experiences in India, Turkey, and the Middle East. Lives of Two Cats, first published in 1900, is an affectionate memoir about two cats who were cared for by the author's mother and aunt during his extended periods of travel.

Thomas Love Peacock was a linguist, scholar and East India Company official. He had a wide circle of literary friends, including Coleridge and Shelley, and his early works were poems, some of a considerable length. In 1815 his first novel, Headlong Hall, was published, and between that year and 1831, he published a further five novels. His final completed novel, Gryll Grange, was written in 1860 and published the following year. Peacock also produced a number of articles on literary and historical subjects, and some other long poems, which have faded into obscurity.

Socrates, perhaps the most famous philosopher of the ancient world, left no writings. The method of philosophical investigation for which he is celebrated has come down to us in the form of dialogues, composed by his student, Plato. The four dialogues in this collection are known by the names of the chief characters in each: Lysis, Charmides, Laches, and Euthyphro. As they fall into a more or less natural group due to the fact that each one deals with a single ethical abstract—friendship, temperance, courage, and piety, respectively—they have been renamed based on their subjects.

This poetic exploration of the subject of love was composed in Italy 1821, and published anonymously, as the poet wished its circulation to be restricted to the "esoteric few." The title means "concerning or about a little soul", the subject, in this case, being Shelley's inamorata of the time, Countess Teresa (designated "Emily" in the poem) Viviani, a young woman who was immured in the Convent of Saint Anna by her father. Shelley had had a number of contacts with her by letter and in person.

Thomas Troward (1847-1916) was a divisional Judge in British-administered India, who, in his later years, developed a highly idiosyncratic New Thought philosophy. One of Troward's most startling assertions was that thought had the power to directly create phenomenal manifestation. This theme is explored in detail in this particular book. According to Troward, the universe is the expression of a Universal Creative Principle, which is activated by the self-contemplation of Spirit. To be complete, creation is obliged to incorporate physical expression.

Manly Palmer Hall was a lecturer and author, whose particular interest was in arcane spirituality and esoteric religious traditions. He was associated with a number of universalist religious groups, like the Rosicrucians, and, in later life, the Freemasons.

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.

In 1896, H.G Wells was stimulated to compose this dystopian fantasy about an obsessed scientist and his efforts to artificially accelerate the intellectual development of animals using bizarre medical procedures involving vivisection. Wells described the book as "an exercise in youthful blasphemy."

Lamia is a narrative poem that reflects Keat's intensive exploration of Greek mythology. It first appeared in 1820 in a collection entitled Lamia, Isabella, the Eve of St Agnes and Other Poems. The poem describes the search of the god Hermes for a beautiful nymph, during which he encounters Lamia, who is trapped in the form of a serpent. At her fervent request, Hermes transforms Lamia into a human form and she departs to pursue a liaison with her lover, the glamorous Corinthian youth, Lycias.

Isabella, or the Pot of Basil (1818) is a poetic retelling of a story from The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio. The poem relates the sad fate of two victims of youthful love. The aristocratic and nubile Isabella is intended for marriage to an eligible suitor but falls in love with the plebeian Lorenzo. Isabella's brothers murder Lorenzo and bury his body, the location of which is revealed to Isabella by a ghost. She exhumes the body and re-inters the head in a pot of basil.

The focus in Melincourt is the operation of the "rotten borough" which corrupted the English electoral system until the reform bill of 1832. A rotten borough was a constituency that had been established by royal prerogative but had subsequently lost most of its population. Nevertheless, it still retained the right to have two representatives in the House of Commons. On the other hand, many population centers which had expanded rapidly during the Industrial Revolution were not entitled to any electoral representation.

The Wonderful Visit tells the story of an angel who finds himself unexpectedly marooned on Earth. Wells used John Ruskin's remark that an angel appearing on earth in Victorian England would be shot on sight as the inspiration for this tale of a celestial being who is completely out of place in human society. Ironically, the angel's first confidant and protector is a clergyman, who never recovers from the eventual and inevitable disappearance of the angel. Wells dwells in detail on the contrast between the idealism of the celestial visitor and the discourtesy of his hosts.

The selection of eighteen poems is taken from Tennyson's first collection, published in 1830. The most famous poem in the collection is Mariana, a dramatic narrative, which, like The Lady of Shalott, describes the tragic fate of an abandoned woman. All the poems feature the elegant euphony for which Tennyson's verse has become famous.

Many of the short poems for which Keats has become famous were written in a burst of inspiration early in 1819, including these four odes: Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode to Psyche, and Ode on Melancholy. The generally melancholy and sometimes elegiac quality of these poems is reflective of Keats' inevitable preoccupation with his declining health. Another significant factor was his infatuation with Fanny Brawne, who returned his affection in an unfortunately non-exclusive manner.

Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374), known in the English-speaking world simply as Petrarch, was a 14th-century Italian scholar and poet who was one of the first to use Italian as a literary language. One of his close friends was Boccaccio, who was also a pioneer in literary composition in Italian. Although Petrarch was a notable Latin scholar, and most of his works were written in that language, today he is most famous for his many sonnets in Italian, which frequently feature the superior charms of his innamorata, Laura.

This self-help treatise by prominent New Thought author Christian D. Larson explores the accumulation and preservation of personal power, an essential ingredient in success. Larson defines this management of power as poise, an attitude that prevents the unnecessary loss of vital force. The title page bears the following epigraph: "A genius is slumbering in the subconscious of every mind. This genius can be awakened."