Literature audiobooks page 112

This story is from Mary Cowden Clarke’s multi-volume work The Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Heroines, in which she imagined the early lives of characters from Portia to Beatrice to Lady Macbeth. In her revision of Ophelia from Hamlet, she creates a backstory for Shakespeare’s tragic heroine, from her infancy to just before the action of Hamlet begins.

This is not a children’s book, as may be supposed from the title, but a collection of essays first published in The Idler magazine, in which over twenty well-known writers describe with characteristic style and humour their experiences in producing their first book… and getting it published.

The book is profusely illustrated, not only with portraits of the authors, but also with scenes and illustrations from the books discussed.

Authors include Jerome K. Jerome, R. L. Stevenson, Bret Harte, Rider Haggard, Rudyard Kipling, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Mary Braddon. Full of charm, humour and pathos, this book is like a fireside chat with authors of the past, as well as...

Wessex Tales is a collection of six short stories written by Hardy in the 1880’s. If you’ve never read Hardy they’ll serve as a good introduction to his writing. Though not as comprehensive as his major works they do contain all the ingredients that make him instantly recognisable. (Introduction by T. Hynes.)

De Kleine Johannes is een sprookje, waarin de ontwikkeling van kind tot volwassene en de worsteling met de levensraadsels centraal staan. We volgen het opgroeien van de kleine Johannes of in realiteit de schrijver zelf.

Short summary in English: This book is a fairytale, which represents the growing up of the author from a small boy to an adult.

Mostly a collection of story-telling poems told by a group of friends in a tavern late one night. "Tales" includes the famous Paul Revere's ride, together with poems of many tales, countries and styles.

Rich and beautiful American girls heading to England to find themselves noble titles through marriage, and using their New World wealth to prop up the waning strength of the aristocracy, was almost a staple of late Victorian literature. "The Buccaneers," Edith Wharton called them, and their day is not over yet (think of Downton Abbey's Earl of Grantham, and his American heiress countess). In Lady Barbarina, however, Henry James explores the obverse of this old tale: what if the wealth is in the hands of an American man, in love with the beautiful daughter of an old and titled (but no longer so very rich) family? Legal marital settlements, common in England, less so in America, can be a pr...

The spiritual ethos and the philosophical outlook that the Bhagvad - Gita postulates paves the way for the liberation of man, who, as Rousseau said, ‘being born free, is everywhere in chains’. But equally it is a mirror of human psychology, which enables man to discern his debilities for appropriate redressal. All the same, the boon of an oral tradition that kept it alive for over two millennia became its bane with the proliferation of interpolations therein. Besides muddying its pristine philosophy, these insertions affect the sequential conformity and structural economy of the grand discourse. What is worse, to the chagrin of the majority of the Hindus, some of these legitimize t...

A well-to-do French farm family is destroyed by a flood. The story, thrilling to the very end, is told from the point of view of the family’s 70-year-old patriarch. The story speaks of the helplessness of mankind in the face of the forces of nature.

Les Chansons de Bilitis furent publiées en 1894 : il s'agit d'une collection de poèmes sulfureux et passionnés par une déesse fictive, Bilitis, inventée par le véritable auteur Pierre Louÿs, et dont la vie est retracée dans la préface. Elle aurait vécu sur l'île de Lesbos où elle aurait été rivale de Sappho, puis à Chypre.

Pierre Louÿs a poussé le jeu jusqu'à ponctuer ces poèmes érotiques de références pour perturber le lecteur (exemple: "non traduit"). (résumé par Nadine)

Eine reiche Witwe heiratet einen Gentleman ohne Vermögen. Bald schon kommt es zum Streit zwischen den Eheleuten und der Mann verschwindet spurlos. Die Aussage der Kammerzofe ruft die Ermittlungsbehörden auf den Plan.

Die Erzählung ist im Original unter dem Titel "A Plot in Private Live" in "The Queen of Heart's" erschienen. (Zusammenfassung von Hokuspokus)