Showing results by narrator "Richard Mitchley" in All Categories

Gustave Flaubert was born on 12th December 1821 in Rouen, in Normandy, France. In September 1849, Flaubert completed ‘The Temptation of Saint Anthony’. A long journey to the Middle East brought encounters with both female and male prostitutes and a case of syphilis caught in Beirut. On his return he began ‘Madame Bovary’, a work he would take 5 years to complete. He toiled on his unfinished ‘Bouvard et Pécuchet’ but did complete ‘Three Tales’ in 1877, from which ‘The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller’ is taken.

The year reaches its end with the Twelfth month. The landscape may be bleak, a sculpture of lines, monochrome dominates. The air carries the sounds of winter: wind, storms, silence. Our classic poets flex their lexicons with verse that describes all manner of events, sights and sounds. Among their ranks are Hardy, Shakespeare, Rossetti, Nesbit, Burns and a wealth of others, who, with their thoughts and desires express the world in lines of inky marvel.

Barry Eric Odell Pain was born at 3 Sydney Street in Cambridge, on 28th September 1864. He was one of 4 children. It is often said that Pain was discovered by Robert Louis Stevenson, who compared his work to that of Guy de Maupassant. It’s an apt comparison. Pain was also a master of disturbing prose but able to inject parody and light comedy into many of his works. A simple premise could in his hands suddenly expand into a world very real but somehow emotionally fraught and on the very edge of darkness as many of these short stories demonstrate.

Franz Kafka was born on 3rd July 1883, in Prague, then in Bohemia, the eldest of 6, into a middle-class Jewish family. His literary works are few in number but towering in influence. His masterpieces include ‘The Trial’, ‘The Metamorphosis’ as well as a number of short stories which reveal facets of humankind that truthfully could only be born from Kafka’s brain and pen. His classic short story ‘In the Penal Colony’ begins with the innocuous words “It’s a peculiar apparatus,” as the Officer explains to the Traveller, what this grisly machine will do to the prisoners who serve their time here.

Montague Rhodes James is cited as perhaps the greatest English writer of ghost stories, an opinion few would disagree with. Many of his elegant yet terrifying tales were created by discarding the prevailing gothic clichés and placing his characters and narrative in a realistic setting. Thereby the stories gained atmosphere and menace on a grand scale and he was famed as the originator of the antiquarian ghost story. Although story-telling and writing these 30 or so tales was a hobby, when published their effect transformed the genre and still chill the bones in our more modern times.

Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant was born on August 5th, 1850, near Dieppe in France. In 1880 he published what is considered his first great work, ‘Boule de Suif’, (translated as as ‘Dumpling’, ‘Butterball’, ‘Ball of Fat’, or ‘Ball of Lard’), which met with a success that was both instant and overwhelming. Flaubert at once acknowledged that it was ‘a masterpiece that will endure.’ Maupassant had used his talents and experiences in the war to create something unique.

Once more the year begins. The first month of the Gregorian calendar. Cold winds howl, the landscape shivers, frost, snow, ice are the many blankets for the land. Daylight is thin; it arrives late and leaves early, ceding the hours to shadow and the ink of night. From the pens of our remarkable poets, including Shelley, Dickenson, Shakespeare, Whitman, Gilbran and a wealth of others, come sumptuous verse that describe our moods, feelings, travels and desires of the dawning year.

David Herbert Lawrence was born on the 11th September 1885 in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, a coal mining town where the reality of a harsh life was only useful as experiences for future literary works. Lawrence’s first efforts were poems, short stories and a draft of ‘The White Peacock’. Moving to London and a teaching position in Croydon his writing attracted the attention of Ford Madox Ford, editor of The English Review, and he commissioned him to write ‘Odour of Chrysanthemums’.

Algernon Blackwood was born on 14th March 1869 in Shooter’s Hill, South East London, to a religious middle-class family. Blackwood was interested in the paranormal and the supernatural at an early age, and had a thirst for anything on Buddhism, other Oriental philosophies, mysticism and occultism. The Empty House is one of his most famous ghost stories. A man accompanies his adventurous aunt to a notorious haunted house. As the two exploring its dark, empty rooms, it becomes apparent that the house has not forgotten the earlier tragedy.

Isobel Violet Hunt was born on 28th September 1862, in Durham. As a young child her family moved to London and Hunt was brought up amongst the Pre-Raphaelite circle of artists. As a writer she was comfortable and talented enough to write across several forms, including short stories, novels, memoir, and biography. Her short story ‘The Coach’ is an excellent example of her black comedy writing. This cramped setting turns into a macabre tour de force delivering literary punch and emotional heft.

Aleksander Głowacki, who wrote under the nom de plume Boleslaw Prus, was born on 20th August 1847 at Hrubieszów in the Kingdom of Poland, at that time, controlled by the Russian Empire. It seems he had doubts as to the scale of his talents and early on adopted the name ‘Boleslaw Prus’, for both his journalistic and literary offerings. His work as a short-story writer met with much acclaim. He wrote several dozen of them, originally published in newspapers and ranging in length from micro-story to novella. His keen observation of everyday life and sense of humor are evident in them.

Christmas may come but once a year but human emotions, the driving force of our characters, are with us every day. Yet, somehow these same emotions when they happen at Christmas seem amplified; we seem more tender to their touch, their words. In this volume we take the verse and poems of our classic poets and put them alongside our short story masters to reveal a Christmas that everyone remembers and that everyone wants to be part of.

During the Victorian era the publishing of magazines and periodicals accelerated at a phenomenal rate. This really was mass market publishing to a hungry audience eager for literary sustenance. Many of our greatest authors contributed and expanded their reach whilst many fledging authors also found a ready source for their nascent works and careers. Amongst the very many was ‘The Yellow Book’.

The creation of a human hybrid with our closest living relative, the chimpanzee, has not been ruled out as an impossibility, but would any laboratory want to be involved? Why invite global condemnation and raise social, moral, and legal storms? It was certainly not the intention of the Strickland family, who are innocently involved with research and a veterinary practice in rural England.

Henry James was born 15th April 1843 in New York City. His youth was spent travelling with his family receiving what was an "extraordinarily haphazard and promiscuous" education as they journeyed through London, Paris, Geneva, Boulogne-sur-Mer and Newport, Rhode Island, according to the father's current interests and publishing ventures. James studied primarily with tutors and only briefly attended schools. Undoubtedly the quality of his writing has ensured his name is enshrined in the American literary tradition.

As private as she was eccentric, Emily Dickinson published only a handful of poems in her lifetime. Most of her work, much of which dealt with themes of death and immortality, was published posthumously, to mixed reviews. But it would be her unconventional poetic style, which was most criticized early on, that would ultimately gain her recognition as one of the greatest American poets of all time. Here, a lovely sampling of the poems of Emily Dickinson is presented for your listening pleasure.

This volume proves that the assertion that women are the gentler sex is frequently an unfounded and unlikely description. From the minds and pens of some of the best female writers of the last century comes a series of macabre, twisted tales that are anything but gentle. But as they weave their magic - usually black - and entrance you with their narratives you just know that “sugar and spice and everything nice” are not likely to be what all girls really are made of - and certainly not these femme fatales....

If ever a writer needed an introduction, Arthur Conan Doyle would not be considered that man. After all, Sherlock Holmes is perhaps the most well-known literary detective of any age. Add to this canon his stories, his historical novels, his political campaigning, and his efforts in establishing a Court Of Appeal, and there is little room for anything else. Except he was also a poet. Not perhaps the finest but his distinctive voice is certainly evident amongst his lines and verses. And it’s a voice worth listening to; something very different from what you might expect.

Peter Pan is a classic story. The Admirable Crichton is a classic play. And here, in this volume, are two classic short stories. They are certainly of their day and perfect pieces of their craft. And really that’s not surprising, for JM Barrie was a writer of great note. Short stories are often overlooked as being the poor, under-developed relatives of greater works. But from writers of the calibre of Barrie, this is just not so. He creates stories and characters that drive, meld, and develop into narratives that in their numerically shorter length are, in fact, the perfect length.

May - the fifth month of the year in the Gregorian calendar and popular for May Day and Workers Rights celebrations. for our poets, including Milton, Hopkins, Von Goethe, Wordsworth, and Longfellow, much else is on their minds, and of course, it's beautifully put.