Irish Literature Classic

His beloved wife having died in childbirth, Phineas Finn finds Irish society and his job as a poorhouse inspector dull and unsatisfying, particularly after the excitement of his former career as a Member of Parliament. Back in England, the Whigs are determined to overturn the Tory majority in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Since Finn had once been considered the most promising of the younger set, he is encouraged to run for office again. Bribery, romance, and murder are peppered throughout this Trollope novel.

The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories, written in the Middle English vernacular, supposedly told among a group of pilgrims traveling from London to Canterbury. Chaucer uses the form, possibly based on knowledge of Boccaccio’s Decameron gained on a visit to Italy in 1373, to provide a highly varied portrait of his society, both secular and religious. The journey of the pilgrims, unlike that of, say, Homer’s Odysseus or of Dante in the Divine Comedy, is relatively unimportant compared to the tales themselves, where Chaucer’s true interest lies.

When her father remarries, the honest, innocent Molly Gibson suddenly finds herself with a new stepsister, Cynthia, who is beautiful, worldly and impetuous. This would be more than enough to deal with, but the new wife is the deeply snobbish (and darkly secretive) Hyacinth. Thwarted love, scheming ambition and small-town gossip underlie the warmth, irony and brilliant social observation which link the relationships and the inevitable conflicts as profound change comes to rural England.

This is the classic tale of a knight from King Arthur's Round Table who makes a dangerous deal with a mysterious visitor. The production is based on Jessie L. Weston's 1900 prose edition of a 14th-century poem.

Conrad, the Corsair, is the chieftain of a pirate band, and plans to attack the Pacha, Seyd, and seize his possessions. Conrad's wife, Medora, prevails upon her husband to abandon his plan and remain at home. Confident in his plan and assured of his safe return, Conrad and his pirate crew set sail for the Pacha's island.

"Mansfield Park" is the third novel by Jane Austen, published in 1814. The protagonist of the novel, Fanny Price is sent to live with her wealthy uncle and aunt Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram, as her own parents do not have enough money to support their many children. At Mansfield Park, Fanny grows up with her four older cousins, Tom, Edmund, Maria, and Julia, but is always treated as an unwanted poor relation. Only Edmund shows real kindness and the two develop a friendship that grows as the years progress.

The Book of Wonder is the seventh book and fifth original short story collection of Irish fantasy writer Lord Dunsany, who is considered a major influence on the work of J. R. R. Tolkien, H. P. Lovecraft, Ursula K. Le Guin, and others. The book collects 14 fantasy short stories. Lord Dunsany employed the talents of Sidney Sime to illustrate his fantasy short story collections, but The Book of Wonder’s unique in that Sydney Sime drew the illustrations first, and Lord Dunsany wrote the narratives afterward.

"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and "Kubla Khan" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge are brought to listeners here as part of the New Classics series by Camerado Media. This edition is narrated by award-winning producer-narrator Jason Rosette, with audio mastering by producer-musician Gone Marshall for an enhanced listening experience.

The Irish Classics Collection is a wide-ranging collection of 9 classic works of fiction and poetry by Irish authors, read by an award-winning cast of narrators. Included here are stories by some of the greatest writers of all time, including James Joyce; Bram Stoker; Oscar Wilde; W.B. Yeats; Elizabeth Bowen; and more.

The brilliant conclusion to the Palliser novels, this touching story follows the elderly Duke of Omnium, the former prime minister of England, as he struggles to overcome his grief at the loss of his beloved wife, Lady Glencora. To complicate matters, he must also deal with the willfulness of his three adult children as he tries to guide and support them - his plans for them are quite different from their own. While his two sons, sent down from university in disgrace, rack up gambling debts, the duke’s only daughter yearns to marry the poor son of a country squire.

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?

When Prince Oroonoko's passion for the virtuous Imoinda arouses the jealousy of his grandfather, the lovers are cast into slavery and transported from Africa to the colony of Surinam. Oroonoko's noble bearing soon wins the respect of his English captors, but his struggle for freedom brings about his destruction. Inspired by Aphra Behn's visit to Surinam, Oroonoko reflects the author's romantic view of native peoples as noble savages in 'the first state of innocence, before man knew how to sin'.

The Parliamentry troops believe he will hide in the home of Colonel Beverly, a famous Cavalier - they surround the house believeing they will smoke him out. No King is found and they are told that they have killed the four children who were in the house - but they escape with the old forester, Jacob Armitage, who must now teach them to lose their lace, and velvet manners and behave and look like Puritans

Pudgy, scowling Ogden Ford, spoiled child of divorced parents with far more money than is good for them, is "the Little Nugget" - the El Dorado of the American kidnapping industry. When Ogden's father sends him to an isolated English preparatory school, Mr. Peter Burns, gentleman of leisure - persuaded by his brand new fiancee - becomes a master at the school in order to steal the Nugget and take him back to his doting mother.

From New York Times Bestselling Author Norah Hess, author of Hawke’s Pride, comes the gripping story of a beautiful girl and her determination to find her one true love. Rachael Jobe in colonial Jamestown loses her mother as a young child. She is raped as a young girl and taken advantage of by one opportunistic man after another. Rachael has to resort to shameful measures to feed herself and her father and to survive she will do almost anything for men. She keeps whatever she earns to feed her family, taking care of her father, who seems like he loves drink more than he loves her. Rachael...

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by the English poet William Blake consists of a series of texts written in the style of biblical prophecy but expressing Blake's own beliefs. Composed between 1790 and 1793, the book makes reference to Milton and Swedenborg, and adopts a device from Dante's Divine Comedy and Milton's Paradise Lost: a visit to hell. Blake expresses a deliberately depolarized and unified vision of the cosmos in which the material world and physical desire are both part of the divine order.

The energetic, pretentious and sometimes malicious Lucia's reign over Riseholme's gentry is challenged by a dazzling diva, a fraudulent guru and the exposur eof her faulty Italian.

The Irish Short Story tradition is packed with literary leviathans who take the raw ingredients of the land, it’s people and their own talents to create quite dazzling narratives in these perfectly pitched short stories. Genius has many names.

The 1660s were a time of turmoil in England: Cromwell had been defeated and Charles II, who was sympathetic to the Catholics, was restored to the throne; the Dutch declared war on England; the Plague raged; and the Great Fire of London destroyed half the city! Our hero, Cyril, at the death of his father Sir Aubrey Shenstone, inherits nothing except his father's title, and works as a bookkeeper for various London tradesmen.

Zuleika Dobson, internationally famous prestidigitator visits her grandfather, the Warden of Judas College, Oxford. But Zuleika, "though not strictly beautiful" is a devastatingly attractive young woman, and proves utterly irresistible among the all-male undergraduate body - including the snobbish and trend-setting young Duke of Dorset. Thus begins a chain of events that culminates in a very watery end to the Eights Week boat races...