Showing results by narrator "Denis Daly" in All Categories

This 1918 novella presents the life history of an ideal inamorata, universally admired and doomed to an untimely passing. The author uses the story to explore in-depth the concept of beauty, both personal and spiritual.

First published in 1813, Pride and Prejudice is the most polished of Jane Austen’s novels, with a humorous and upbeat mood. It was written at a time when the author’s narrative powers were fully developed and the story flows with an ease that conceals the skill of its construction. The plot line follows the sequence of a love relationship apprehended, misunderstood, and finally realized, which has since become a standard format of the romcom genre. However, Austen complicates the action by involving not one but four romantic relationships in the plot.

This book, a true spiritual classic, consists of notes of several conversations had with, and letters written by, Nicholas Herman, of Lorraine, a humble man of little education. After having served as a soldier and a footman, Herman was admitted as a lay brother to the order of the barefooted Carmelites at Paris in 1666, where he took the name "Brother Lawrence." The conversations are supposed to have been recorded by Joseph de Beaufort, who later became vicar general to the Archbishop of Paris.

Wells had a keen interest in the political and social issues of his day, one of the most significant of which was the outbreak of the First World War. This book, written in 1916, presents the story of Mr Britling, a political commentator, living in comfortable security in his country estate at Matchings Easy, in Essex. He entertains a varied assembly of guests, including Mr Direck, an American journalist, and Herr Heinrich, a German philology student who acts as a family tutor, and the general atmosphere is a hectic social whirl.

Although unfamiliar with the Persian language, the eminent English poet and critic Richard le Gallienne had a profound interest in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. In 1901 he published a collection of 261 quatrains, which was based on earlier English translations, in particular the prose version by Justin Huntly McCarthy. In his introduction, Le Gallienne suggests that his ignorance of Persian was in fact an advantage as it allowed him to focus on producing good poetry rather than merely an accurate translation.

During his lifetime, Hopkins, who was ordained as a Jesuit priest, was best known as a scholar and a teacher of languages. In his youth, he composed poetry prolifically, but destroyed all his juvenile work in 1867. In 1874, he commenced writing poetry again, but little of his verse was published in his lifetime. His work was rescued from obscurity by his friend and supporter, Robert Bridges, who later became poet laureate.

The story concerns the young and vivacious Emma Watson, one of six children of a widowed clergyman. Emma has spent most of her life under the care of a wealthy aunt of liberal views, and has received a good education. However, when her aunt enters into a second marriage, Emma is forced to return to the family home, where she is affronted by the crass hunting for husbands undertaken her sisters, Penelope and Margaret.

The turn of the 20th century saw radical developments in all art forms and particularly in poetry. The first volume of this series features the work of nine significant poets whose careers cover the period from the late 19th century to the early 20th century.

In Rhonda Byrne's self-help book, The Secret, published in 2006, the theory of the Law of Attraction is presented as a re-discovery of an ancient metaphysical principle, buried in ages of historical neglect. However, nothing could be further from the truth. Exactly a century earlier, prolific New Thought author William Walker Atkinson published Thought Vibration, a succinct but thorough examination of the power of thought and its function in the creation and control of personal circumstances.

This poem consists of 11 stanzas of varying length, the first four of which were composed in 1802. These deal with the subject of death, a concept with which Wordsworth confesses to having struggled within childhood.

According to Tertullian and others Marcion was the son of a bishop and was born at Sinope, in Pontus. He arrived in Rome in about 140 CE, bringing a scripture with him that he named "The Gospel of the Lord". Marcion described this not as a new gospel, but as that which Saint Paul had used and which he communicated to the churches he founded.

Many masters employed the form of the sonnet, including Petrarch, Spenser, Shakespeare, Keats, and Robert Bridges. However, the most celebrated, and oft quoted, examples are to be found in the collection by Shakespeare, first published in 1609. In the 154 poems, Shakespeare surveys and dissects the subject of love in all its guises, and its relationship with youth, age, illness, death, and memory.

Emma is a vivacious twenty-year-old, who has spent her life in the pleasant seclusion of a village community and who lives with her widowed valetudinarian father. Most of the neighbors admire and approve of her, except for George Knightley, a local landowner, who often expresses his disapproval of Emma’s highhanded and controlling tendencies, in particular her assumption of the unofficial role of matchmaker.

In regard to Christianity and, especially, Catholicism, Joseph McCabe was one of the most learned atheist writers of the 20th century. McCabe was a former Catholic priest, fluent in Latin and several other languages, who had taught philosophy and ecclesiastical history in a Catholic university. During his lifetime he wrote hundreds of books and pamphlets, and translated dozens of others, on various aspects of science and history, and a great many texts on religious topics.

This aggressive diatribe against the Bible was published in 1894 and is based on an assertion that formed the basis of many of Ingersoll's attacks on organized religion - the concept of divine inspiration and the evils that spring from this contention.

Wilde's first collection of verse, published in 1881, contains many poems which had already been published individually. Among the 61 poems can be found four major works, "The Garden of Eros", "The Burden of Itys", "Charmides", and "Humanitad". Although the initial critical reaction was not particularly enthusiastic, Wilde's poetry aroused enough attention for him to become the object of ridicule in the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera Patience, in which he is characterized as the "fleshly poet", Reginald Bunthorne.

Oedipus the King is the story of a man whose life is destroyed by his own good intentions. When a terrible secret from his past is brought to the light of day, the consequences are chilling - and ineluctable.

Socrates, perhaps the most famous philosopher of the ancient world, left no writings. The method of philosophical investigation for which he is celebrated has come down to us in the form of dialogues, composed by his student, Plato. The four dialogues in this collection are known by the names of the chief characters in each: Lysis, Charmides, Laches, and Euthyphro. As they fall into a more or less natural group due to the fact that each one deals with a single ethical abstract—friendship, temperance, courage, and piety, respectively—they have been renamed based on their subjects.

John Keats died in Rome in February 1821, at the age of 25. Shelley, who was to follow him to the grave the following year, was inspired to compose this pastoral lament, which consists of 55 Spenserian stanzas

This short work is one of the first great classics of self-help literature, and has never been out of print since it was first published in 1902. Allen's main thesis is that thought is not just a vehicle for comprehending and explaining the world, but is also the prime mechanism for creating and changing human experience. While Allen's views may remain controversial, a vast audience has found his work greatly inspiring. A new recording of one of the most revered self-help classics narrated by Denis Daly.