Showing results by narrator "David Shaw Parker" in All Categories

In Framley Parsonage, the fourth novel of Trollope's Chronicles of Barsetshire, the author leaves the confines of Barchester and looks to the countryside, where he relates the moral difficulties of Mark Robarts, the young clergyman who has recently been appointed Vicar of Framley. Desperate to keep up with the local aristocracy, the country parson is persuaded to underwrite the debts of Sowerby, a well-respected peer.

Along the centuries numerous interpretations and definitions of Sufism have waxed and waned but the undeniable beauty of their verse in its myriad of forms including the musical Ghazal (love song), Masnavi (narrative) and Rubai (quatrain) always remains. Our chronological volume of the classic Sufi poets helps us understand the spiritual direction of Sufism, starting with Rabia in the 8th century through to Khwaja Ghulam Farid over a thousand years later.

Shamela is a bawdy, spirited, and hilarious response to Samuel Richardson's hugely popular 1740 novel, Pamela. In this pointed satire, Shamela (which transpires to be the real name of Richardson's Pamela) reveals the ulterior motives behind the events that took place in Pamela. Shamela is unlike the virtuous young lady portrayed in Richardson's novel and she takes command of her master, Squire Booby. Our heroine has planned it all out from the start and she is determined to entrap her master into marriage.

Returned from Ireland after the death of his wife, Phineas Finn has a newfound ambition to rise through the ranks of English politics. But not long after regaining his seat in parliament, Phineas's luck begins to desert him. His reputation is tarnished after the press circulate rumours of an affair with Laura Kennedy, and his ambitions are frustrated by opposition from within the Party. Then, when his Party rival Mr Bonteen is discovered dead, all fingers point towards Phineas, leading to his incarceration and humiliation at the dock.

In The Last Chronicle of Barset, Trollope concludes his saga of ecclesiastical life. At the heart of the novel is the plight of Josiah Crawley, a proud, impoverished clergyman who faces difficult legal circumstances. Caught amid poverty, Josiah appears to have stolen a check and is forced to stand trial - despite the fact that he cannot remember its origins. To make matters worse, his daughter, Grace, desperately seeks the approval of Archdeacon Grantly, whose son she intends to marry.

Visible Gods is an imaginary dialogue between Socrates and four fictitious modern-day characters. Socrates' worldview is of a living cosmos with man only half-way up the hierarchy of all beings; above him reign suprahuman beings of great majesty and power - the visible gods. The moderns with whom Socrates converses disdain his ancient Greek cosmos as primitive and false.

Leo Tolstoy was born in 1828 in the Russian province of Tula to a wealthy noble family. As a child, he had private tutors but he showed little interest in any formal education. When he went to the University of Kazan in 1843 to study oriental languages and law, he left without completing his courses. Life now was relaxed and idle but with some writing also taking place. In 1852 ‘Childhood’ was published to immediate success and was followed by ‘Boyhood’ and ‘Youth’. His experience in the army and the horrors he witnessed resulted in ‘The Cossacks’ in 1862 and the trilogy ‘Sevastopol Tales’.

Barchester Towers, the sequel to The Warden, is the second novel in Trollope's major series, the Chronicles of Barsetshire. It focuses on the power struggle between Archdeacon Grantly, Mr. Slope and the Proudies as they fight for control of the diocese of Barchester. Meanwhile, another struggle is taking place for the heart of Eleanor Bold. Who will win her? The vile Mr. Slope, the idling Bertie Stanhope or someone else entirely?

The German peoples spent centuries as tribes and regions without being a whole. Otto von Bismarck was instrumental in unifying these central European states into one country albeit based on the militaristic doctrine of Prussia. In the 20th Century its history was blighted by its capacity to resort to war to fulfill its ambitions, or right its perceived historical wrongs. In this volume the short stories by its greatest authors readily attest that their talents are equal to the greatest in World literature.

The fifth novel in the Chronicles of Barsetshire, The Small House at Allington, concerns the lives of the two Dale girls, Lily and Bell, who live at the Small House. While Bell is in love with the local doctor James Crofts, Lily is pursued by two men: the worldly, rich and handsome Adolphus Crosbie and the poor but honest Johnny Eames. With each determined to gain her hand in marriage, who will she choose?

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

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.

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.

Perhaps England’s greatest literary family. To find one brilliant novelist in a family is extremely rare. But two? Three?

The Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily Jane and Anne, together with their brother Patrick, are famed throughout the world. And amongst their many talents was poetry. Of course, being Brontë’s, they were rather good at that too.

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.

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.

Catching all the fascination and humour of travel in out-of-the-way places, One's Company is Peter Fleming's account of his journey through Russia and Manchuria to China when he was Special Correspondent to The Times in the 1930s. Fleming spent seven months with the "object of investigating the Communist situation in South China" at a time when, as far as he knew, "no previous journey had been made to the anti-communist front by a foreigner", and on its publication in 1934, One's Company won widespread critical acclaim.

Hailed as one of the world's supreme masterpieces on the subject of death and dying, The Death of Ivan Ilyich is the story of a worldly careerist, a high court judge who has never given the inevitability of his death so much as a passing thought. But one day death announces itself to him, and to his shocked surprise he is brought face to face with his own mortality. How, Tolstoy asks, does an unreflective man confront his one and only moment of truth?

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.

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.