Mostrando resultados por narrador "David Shaw-Parker" en Todas las categorías

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. They can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere. In this decade the equality of the sexes is now law. In real life it’s patchy. Power refuses to ebb or cede. In literary terms though women are again second to none with writing that strides confidently forward addressing the issues, the characters and the stories in unique and individual ways.

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born on the 16 October 1854 in Dublin, Ireland. The son of Dublin intellectuals, Oscar proved himself an outstanding classicist at Trinity College and then at Oxford. Wilde then moved to London and its fashionable cultural and social circles. With his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversation, Wilde became one of the most well-known personalities of his day.

In this volume we examine the German language. Or rather the authors who wrote in German but are here translated into English. German is most often called the language of philosophers due to its precision and clarity. However, if you’ve studied German, you will know that sentence construction can be difficult to grasp. However, within these stories the language of these great talents express themselves in dazzling prose and searching narratives. And the characters? Clearly the works of genius.

As Islam moved from its Arabian heartland to a wider geographic area, its core message remained albeit adapted to different lands, to different ears. Poets were ever eager to provide an alternate way of delivering the ‘message’ in beautiful verse. Their simplicity was embracing, their ornateness a humble offering to greater forces. The poems here are both profound and wide-ranging.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Thomas Hardy by Claire Tomalin, read by Jill Balcon and David Shaw Parker. Paradox ruled Thomas Hardy's life. His birth was almost his death; he became one of the great Victorian novelists and reinvented himself as one of the 20th-century's greatest poets; he was an unhappy husband and a desolate widower; and he wrote bitter attacks on the English class system yet prized the friendship of aristocrats.

Throughout the long centuries of human history is the want, and the need, to share information, to exchange ideas and for that knowledge and experience, for curiosity and learning, to be the basis of a civil society. In this volume we offer up a small selection of talents from the literary landscape of Continental Europe and its male authors whose time has now come again.

When Hedda Hellberg fails to return from a retreat in Italy where she has recently been grieving for her dead father, her husband discovers that her life is tangled in mystery. Hedda never left Oslo, the retreat has no record of her and, what's more, she appears to be connected to the murder of an old man gunned down on the first day of the hunting season in the depths of the Swedish forests....

With classics such as ‘My Last Duchess’ and ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’ Robert Browning’s status as one of the great Victorian poets will always be secure in popular culture, while for the more literary he is considered a master of dramatic verse and dramatic monologues. It is interesting to note that his career bloomed late. Indeed, it was only after the death of his wife Elizabeth in 1861 and his return to England from their life in Italy that his work came into wider acceptance and critical acclaim.

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. They can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that are difficult to achieve elsewhere. The Gothic short story is one of the most enduring of genres. In this volume we explore works by classic authors from all corners of Europe as they explore and exploit narratives with their undeniable talents.

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born on 29th January 1860 in Taganrog, on the south coast of Russia. His family life was difficult; his father was strict and overbearing, but his mother was a passionate story-teller, a subject Chekhov warmed to. As he later said; ‘our talents we got from our father, but our soul from our mother’. Chekhov wrote over 500 short stories which included many, many classics including ‘The Kiss’ and ‘The Lady with a Dog’. His collection ‘At Dusk’ won him the coveted Pushkin Prize when was only 26.

In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author? In this volume the once forgotten literary backwaters of Scandinavia, and its hinterland, reveal the storied works of their own literature. Some names are familiar, some decidedly not. But each has literary talents and compelling narratives.

Netta Syrett was born Janet Syrett on 17th March 1865 in Ramsgate, Kent, one of 13 children. Her debut novel, Nobody's Fault (1896) was the beginning of a long and prolific output. For the next several years her writing and teaching careers ran alongside each other.

Our fear of the Devil, whatever his temptations and rewards, is amplified by the thought of eternal damnation in his hell house service. In this volume our authors are all from Europe and see the Devil in ways that we recognise and yet are culturally distinct to the European mainland.

Anton Chekhov is amongst the most vaunted of authors. His tales can take a small fragment of a person’s life and turn it into a narrative of unrivalled and compelling power. This volume perfectly illustrates Chekhov and his miniature masterpieces.

Móric Jókay de Ásva was born on the 18th February 1825 in Komárom, then in the Kingdom of Hungary but now part of Slovakia. Due to his timid and delicate constitution he was educated at home until the age of 10 and then sent away to complete his studies at the Calvinist college at Pápa. In 1848 he married the actress, Róza Laborfalvi. That same year Europe was awash with revolutions and Jókai, a moderate Liberal, enthusiastically supported the nationalist cause and its decision to depose the Habsburg dynasty. The attempt failed. Mór Jókai died in Budapest on the 5th May 1904. He was 79.

John Clare was the forgotten Romantic poet, until the late 20th century. Known by his contemporaries as the Peasant Poet, he recorded in his poems the natural landscape of rural England before the Industrial Revolution. His poems rival Wordsworth’s for their sensitivity to nature and pantheism: ‘I feel a beautiful providence ever about me,’ Clare wrote. But his life was a long struggle against poverty and mental collapse. Some of his finest poems were written in the local asylum

Arnold Bennett was born in 1867 in Hanley one of the six towns that formed the Potteries that later joined together to become Stoke on Trent; the area in which most of his works are located. For a short time he worked for his solicitor father before realising that to advance his life he would need to become his own man. At the turn of the century he turned full time to writing and shortly thereafter in 1903 he moved to Paris and in 1908 published to great acclaim The Old Wives Tale. With this his reputation was set. Clayhanger and The Old Wives Tale are perhaps his most lauded novels.

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. They can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere. This decade is resplendent with literature and its many prodigiously talented authors who write on as varied a range of subjects as might be thought possible. Yet each is studded with careful literary precision and narrative verve. It is a remarkable decade.

There is something about the number 3. The Ancient Greeks believed 3 was the perfect number, and in China 3 has always been a lucky number, and they know a thing or two. Most religions also have 3 this and 3 that and, of course, in these more modern times, three’s a crowd may be too many, except when it’s a ménage à trois. It seems good things usually come in threes. Whatever history and culture says WE think 3, a hat-trick of stories, is a great number to explore themes and literary avenues that classic authors were so adept at creating.

Poetry has over the centuries grouped poets or poems into many different themes and movements. Amongst its most unusual movements are the English wordsmiths, The Silver Poets. This select band lived during the sixteenth century reign of Queen Elizabeth 1st. Amongst their storied ranks were Sir Thomas Wyatt, Sir Philip Sidney, Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey, Sir Walter Raleigh, John Davies, Michael Drayton and Mary Sidney (Herbert), the Countess of Pembroke.