Here is a collection of 20 short plays drawn from various books by Charles Dickens such as Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Bleak House, and Our Mutual Friend. "For the use of Amateur and School Dramatic Societies" - Summary by ToddHW Cast list: Introduction: ToddHW Mrs Tibbs Boarding House - From Sketches by Boz Mrs Tibbs - A boarding-house keeper: Availle Mr Tibbs - Her husband: Tim Watkins Mrs Maplesone - Boarder at Mrs. Tibbs': TriciaG Miss Matilda Maplesone - Boarder at Mrs. Tibbs': Rachel Miss Julia Maplesone - Boarder at Mrs...

Jane Holland is a genius, the greatest of a group of extraordinary literary friends. She has an intense artistic and intellectual kinship with George Tanqueray, another remarkable novelist. Despite this keen spiritual relationship, both Holland and Tanqueray allow themselves to fall against their wills into more conventional romantic commitments, leading to agonizing crises of heart and mind and art. Another of May Sinclair’s marvelous philosophical novels, this masterpiece explores the great dilemmas of artistic Genius and the obstacles posed to it by Love, by philistine society, by the two-faced allure of popularity, by human jealousy, by the conventions of marriage and family...

Hans of Iceland was written in 1821 and is the very first novel written by young Victor, years before he became the great Hugo. It has all the ingredients of a gothic novel: dreadful murders by the hand of a human monster, a young hero in love with the destitute heroine, royal court-intrigues and rebellious uprising, all set in dungeons, dark towers and the untamed nature of Norway.This audio-book has been recorded as Dramatic Reading with all the voices performed by one single reader, including laughs, sobs, groans, occasional screams and a lot of growls. I hope you will enjoy listening to this adventurous journey just as much as I enjoyed recording it. - Summary by Sonia

This extract, taken from Parodies of the works of English and American Authors, vol 1, of parodies of Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade covers such topics as the Clergy, the Fairer Sex, Doctors, Engineers and many others. - Summary by Kim

Eric, artist for the king, has created a marvelous painting of a royal wedding. It is finished except for the face of the queen, which appeared to him in a dream. When he awoke, he had forgotten the form of the features. Obsessed with recapturing this vision, he goes on a quest to find the woman because he cannot paint another stroke until he sees those eyes again. During his journey, he discovers much more, perhaps even the true meaning of his dream and of his life. - Summary by Amy Gramour

The author of Frankenstein returns with her take on an Austen novel. The mother is proud, the father has many vices, yet the aristocratic name must be kept. Even more so when lord Lodore dies. His wife and daughter find themselves without protection. This novel is conserned with gender equality, education and social justice. - Summary by Stav Nisser.

Don Quixote is a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Published in two volumes, in 1605 and 1615, Don Quixote is considered the most influential work of literature from the Spanish Golden Age and the entire Spanish literary canon. As a founding work of modern Western literature and one of the earliest canonical novels, it regularly appears high on lists of the greatest works of fiction ever published.... The story follows the adventures of a hidalgo named Mr. Alonso Quixano who reads so many chivalric romances that he loses his sanity and decides to set out to revive chivalry, undo wrongs, and bring justice to the world, under the name Don Quixote de la Mancha...

Ivan Matveich, the most ordinary person you might hope to meet, is swallowed alive by a crocodile at a sideshow. Finding life inside the belly of the beast quite comfortable, he makes a home for himself there. His disquisitions on the state of the world from inside the crocodile make him quite a name for himself; while all the while the discussion rages outside as to whether the beast is going to be cut open to release him or not, its value as a sideshow attraction having massively increased owing to the presence of the human voice buried inside it. One of Jorge Luis Borges' seven most favourite stories. - Summary by Tony Addison

A series of tales -- told by men, of course -- about women. Though the book first appeared in 1842, Balzac later added to it as an addenfum a tale of 1831, La Grande Bretèche. That will be read later, keeping it separate to mirror the form of the English translation here used. - Summary by Nicholas Clifford

An 1859 essay by the prominent philosopher and literary critic, G. H. Lewes, who was an enthusiastic promoter of the novels of Jane Austen at a time when they were yet to achieve great critical acclaim. Lewes was the life partner of the novelist George Eliot. - Summary by barbara2

A collection of essays on 19th century novelists, both famous ones and those largely forgotten now. Among the writers presented most wrote in English, but three foreign authors are also discussed. Phelps taught a course on novels at a university and he added to those biographical essays some of his ideas about the importance of novels in the process of teaching about literature.

Jenny Winge is a Norwegian expatriate studying art in Rome, part of a Bohemian group of friends who explore the ancient City in an intoxicating passion for Beauty. Yearning for an immortal Love, she allows herself to fall into less-than-ideal romantic relationships and then has to struggle with all her might to recover her independence. Constantly resisting conformity, she demands absolute freedom for herself while always being tempted to fall back into the comfortable ruts of provincial domesticity...

This collection of the 195 known, publicly-printed speeches of Mark Twain was compiled by Paul Fatout and published by the University of Iowa Press. The speeches are in the Public Domain, and our thanks go to the University of Iowa for making them available for this Public Domain audio recording. They were compiled in the University of Iowa Press book entitled "Mark Twain Speaking" and are arranged, chronologically, from Twain's first authenticated public speech in 1864, to his last speech, exactly 7 months before he died. Extensive analysis , notes, appendix and index are included in the printed work. - Summary by John Greenman

In this work, first published in 1883, James once again writes of an American trying to settle in England. The woman at the center, however, is not a product of the Boston or New York upper classes, but of the American West, and is thus distinguished from the characters of many of his other transatlantic works. - Summary by Nicholas Clifford

Emily Brontë is best known for her only novel, "Wuthering Heights." She was born in Yorkshire, northern England, where her father was an Anglican curate. When Brontë was three years old her mother died of cancer. At the age of six she joined her three sisters briefly at the Clergy Daughters' School, where privations and abuse contributed to the deaths of two of them. Her elder sister, Charlotte, immortalized this terrible place in "Jane Eyre." In 1846 Emily Brontë, under the pseudonym Ellis Bell, published a selection of her poetry...

Many books are dry and dusty, there is no juice in them; and many are soon exhausted, you would no more go back to them than to a squeezed orange; but some have in them an unfailing sap, both from the tree of knowledge and the tree of life. Here I have written about a few of these books which have borne me good company, in one way or another, -- and about their authors, who have put the best of themselves into their work. Such criticism as the volume contains is therefore mainly in the form of appreciation with reasons for it...

Our central character is Isabel Archer of Albany, New York, a young woman of no great means, and no great beauty yet of rich imagination, high ideals and a thirst for knowledge of the world. Carried off by her aunt to England, she quite unexpectedly finds herself the beneficiary of a substantial legacy from her uncle, a very successful American banker in London. It will, her admiring cousin says to his father, allow her “to put a little wind in her sails” and to see the world. Though some American reviewers rather dismissed the book when it appeared in the mid-1880s, for other readers today The Portrait of a Lady has become THE Great American Novel, or at least very close to the top...

Within these pages find passages from the "lost diaries" of a wide range of people: royal, regular, famous, infamous, historical, and fictional. - Summary by A. Gramour

Armand Durand, published in 1868, was written by Rosanna Leprohon, an English-speaker with an insider’s knowledge of French Canada, thanks to her Montreal education and marriage to a man from an old Québécois family. Paul Durand, a prosperous Québécois farmer, marries in quick succession two very different wives, and fathers two very different sons. The first son, Armand, delicate and bookish, is destined for a legal career in the city; the second, Paul Junior, tougher and down-to-earth, continues life on the farm...

The world knows the fate of the classic lovers Cleopatra and Mark Antony, so there is no need to announce a spoiler alert. Georg Ebers was a German Egyptologist who deftly applied his comprehensive knowledge of Rome and Egypt into a fictionalized account of the ill-fated romance between the Egyptian Queen and her Roman lover Mark Antony.

An extraordinary work of the aesthetic imagination, cast in the form of a psycho-drama detailing the events of one night in the life of the aged hermit, later Saint, Anthony, in the course of which his claims to sainthood are severely tested by, among other things, Gods, Magicians, Science, Food, Monstres, Lust and Death. Beautifully translated by Lafcadio Hearn, justly celebrated for his eerie re-tellings of Japanese ghost stories and legends, it boasts equally extraordinary printworks by renowned symbolist artist Odilon Redon. - Summary by Tony Addison

Basil Kent marries Jenny Bush, because he believes that is the honourable thing to do after getting her pregnant, but he realizes that he is really in love with Hilda Murray. Grace Castillyon, an established married woman of position, has fallen hopelessly in love with young Reggie Bassett, who is only playing with her. Bella Langton ignores the short remaining days of Herbert Field who is suffering from consumption, and determines to marry him so that he can afford to spend the winters abroad. The Merry-Go-Round weaves together these relationships, adorned by the peripheral figures of Miss Ley and Frank Hurrell, observers of what is going on, who also have their own stories to tell...

This story, about a man who wakes up transformed into a bug and the repercussions it has on his life and the people around him, has intrigued me for many years. The translation is by Ian Johnston, not the translator that is in Gutenberg; I like Johnston's more. What does it mean? [Spoiler possibly]In my mind it is not complicated at all and is most probably an autobiography of how Kafka himself had experienced his early life living with his parents. Kafka describes how he had experienced his parents’ financial and emotional exploitation's of him, to the point of detaching from them and thereby ceasing to be their son ...

Recitation was a vital part of the curriculum in education in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. It not only enabled students to gain practice in addressing groups in public, but also provided models for the study of accent and elocution – vital skills in the days before public address systems were universally available. Accordingly, a number of “reciters,” or collections of texts suitable for recitation, were published in this period. The Coo-ee Reciter, published in 1904, was one of the most popular of these collections in Australia...

A frank look at the revolt of the younger generation following World War I, the book follows the Trelawney family. The father looks eagerly forward to his return home after serving an important but harrowing stint in the army. What he finds at home is not what he expects, as his two daughters test the boundaries of new morals, ethics, and dress. Many of the generational and class issues central to the theme continue to resonate in families and society. The book was made into a silent movie starring Gloria Swanson in 1923. Summary by Kate Follis

A whimsical collection of stories about a wandering street urchin, Lazarillo de Tormes is a classic of the Spanish Golden Age, even paid homage in Cervantes’ Don Quixote. Rendered homeless by the arrest of his father and poverty of his mother, the boy Lazarillo has no choice but to go out and find masters to serve. Unfortunately, each of his masters is worse than the one before, and in each case Lazarillo is cast upon his own wits in order to survive. Clever, hungry, and desperate, he always has a sharp eye for lessons on how to outwit the greedy and unscrupulous people who surround him...

A discussion about the life and works of the playwright Arthur Wing Pinero. The perfect accompaniment to the plays by Pinero available here at. - Summary by ToddHW

C. H. Herford was Professor of English Literature at the Victoria University of Manchester in era when public lectures were published in pamphlet form. The six lectures in this collection span Herford's career at the University during the turbulent first two decades of the twentieth century. Taking a historical view, Herford covers a wide range of eras and writers in an exploration of the roots of English literature. - Summary by Phil Benson

"It was part of my daily work, for a good many years, to read the principal English newspapers and reviews; it has been part of my work, all the time, to read the more important English novels, essays, poetry and criticism. An American born and bred, I early noted, as everyone else in like case must note, certain salient differences between the English of England and the English of America as practically spoken and written—differences in vocabulary, in syntax, in the shades and habits of idiom, and even, coming to the common speech, in grammar...

Poe’s famous narrative poem and the author’s reflections on its composition.

In this third installment from the “Ragged Dick” series by Horatio Algers, Jr., the reader is reacquainted with some old friends and meets young Mark Manton. Mark is a match boy plagued by bad luck and an even worse guardian. But, with new friends, hard work, and smart choices, Mark may just find his luck taking a turn for the better. summary by tfaulder

Francis Bickford Hornbrooke was an American Unitarian minister who in later years was recognized as an expert commentator on literature, in particular the works of Robert Browning. Of all Browning's output, it was his monumental epic, the Ring and the Book, which most attracted Hornbrooke's attention, and he said that " I have read the poem throughout at least thirty times, and every time with increased pleasure. The more I read it, the more I love it, and the less I find in it to censure." His interpretation...