Irish World

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.

Gwendolen Harleth gambles her happiness when she marries a sadistic aristocrat for his money. Beautiful, neurotic, and self-centered, Gwendolen is trapped in an increasingly destructive relationship, and only her chance encounter with the idealistic Deronda seems to offer the hope of a brighter future. Deronda is searching for a vocation, and in embracing the Jewish cause he finds one that is both visionary and life-changing.

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.

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 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.

Funny, outrageous, sometimes touching, and perhaps a little bit naughty - in Queen Lucia, E. F. Benson has created not only a wonderful character study in Mrs. Lucas, but a whole village of memorable characters.

Since the tragic loss of her parents, Enid has lived alone in a coastal cottage in Jersey. But this year someone new has come into her life: Fred, who truly gets her, and who knows how to make her happy. The only problem is that Enid has Asperger’s and doesn’t like to leave her comfort zone - and Fred lives in Australia. Like Enid, Fred has survived heartbreak and is searching for a way to start again. Could a stranger on the other side of the world really bring new meaning to his life, or is he just setting himself up for another fall?

"Three Men on the Bummel" (1900) is a comical travelogue by Jerome K. Jerome. The three companions are on a bicycle tour through the German Black Forest. What does Bummel mean? D. C. Browning writes: "The title must be puzzling to many readers, for 'bummel' will not be found in English dictionaries." You can learn its meaning at the last chapter of the book, which is a series of humorous vignettes, each of which builds slowly, through accumulation of layer on layer of detail, through several pages.

Leo Vincey is haunted by a goddess. In a nighttime vision, she appears to him, revealing her location deep in the mountains of Central Asia. Determined to discover his lost love, he searches for 16 years, finally discovering a lost civilization, ruled by an ambitious queen of unearthly beauty. Could this be his Ayesha reborn? And if so, will the secret of immortality bind them together for eternity?

Lady Audley is universally adored: Beautiful, kind and charming, she enamors all whom she meets. It is not until the strange disappearance of widower George Talboys that her behavior takes an odd turn. George's friend, Robert Audley, Lady Audley's nephew-in-law, is on the case; an upper-class layabout turned detective, he is determined to get to the bottom of things.

It tells the tale of Frank Gresham and Mary Thorne, a couple intent on marriage despite their conflicting social backgrounds. Frank is engaged in a fierce battle with his family as his mother vehemently opposes the marriage and pushes him to marry a wealthy heiress; however, Frank shuns her attempts and is determined to accept Mary on her own terms.

Another sexy, adventurous, historical romance from the RITA-nominated author of eighteen novels, Lisa Ann Verge! Bound by a family curse, Maeve journeys to the Samhain fires of a distant village for one purpose alone: To conceive a child with a nameless stranger. The gentle giant who catches her eye proves a passionate lover. But when moonlight gives way to dawn, Maeve has no choice but to leave him behind. For the strong Irishman she’d spent the night loving is now the one man she can never have.

When Nick’s wife Kerry falls ill and dies, he realises for the first time how fragile his happiness has always been, and how much he’s been taking his good life and wonderful family for granted. Now, he suddenly finds himself navigating parenthood alone, unsure how to deal with his own grief, let alone that of his teenage son, Olly.

As heir to Ardinmuir, Connor MacKean had one job: fulfill the marriage pact that's held his family captive for 300 years. Except his sister's the one who took the plunge, and now there's nothing standing in the way of him finding a real and lasting love. Nothing except the fact that the object of his affections has never seen him as anything more than her best friend's little brother.

Sheridan's most famous play, The School for Scandal, has been called 'the best existing English comedy of intrigue'. A favourite with audiences and critics alike since its premiere in 1777, this play is a classic English comedy of manners. Full of satirical wit, it subverts the Georgian social mores of its day with subtlety and charm. This historic recording features Edith Evans, Cecil Parker and Harry Andrews: Some of the finest actors of their generation.

Written when women---and workers generally---had few rights in England, Agnes Grey exposes the brutal inequities of the rigid class system in mid-19th-century Britain. Agnes comes from a respectable middle-class family, but their financial reverses have forced her to seek work as a governess.

From the author of The Nationalists and The Scribe comes War, a mix of action and war stories, some with an Irish slant like The Pitboys, a tale of two young Irish lads working the coalmines of Tipperary at a time of great social upheaval - the Young Irelander rebellion and the Irish famine. Many of the stories are told from the perspective of the Second World War, but not exclusively so. Stories about modern conflicts also surface - the Gulf War, the Yugoslavia conflict and the Israeli and Palestinian conflicts. In a time of War, nobody's innocent.

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.

At the end of his life, William Blake (1757-1827) gave up hope of being widely understood, but the twentieth century brought to his work a new and intense interest and acclaim.

Jenny Diski was a fearless writer, for whom no subject was too difficult, even her own cancer diagnosis. Her columns in the London Review of Books - selected here by her editor and friend Mary-Kay Wilmers, on subjects as various as death, motherhood, sexual politics and the joys of solitude - have been described as ‘virtuoso performances’ and ‘small masterpieces'. Why Didn’t You Just Do What You Were Told? is a collective interrogation of the universal experience from a very particular psyche.