検索キーワード： ナレーター "Richard Mitchley" すべてのカテゴリー

Between then and now poets have written verse, both serious and humorous, in attempts to keep a poetic track both of feelings and as a tribute to our four-legged friends and their adventures.

Whilst writer Charles Dickens needs no introduction, his Haunted House anthology might, not least because in his role as editor he introduces a formidable array of known and lesser-known literary talents.

Henry James was born 15th April 1843 in New York City. His youth was spent travelling with his family receiving what was an "extraordinarily haphazard and promiscuous" education as they journeyed through London, Paris, Geneva, Boulogne-sur-Mer and Newport, Rhode Island, according to the father's current interests and publishing ventures. James studied primarily with tutors and only briefly attended schools. Undoubtedly the quality of his writing has ensured his name is enshrined in the American literary tradition.

Mental illness though can still carry a stigma. A case of ‘you’re not trying hard enough’, ‘or knuckling down and getting on with it’. But in more recent decades mental issues have come to be recognised as an illness, a disease rather than an affliction. We all remember horror stories of lobotomy’s and electric shock being used to ‘cure’ what society viewed as anti-social behaviour but illness, mental or physical is very real. Depression, schizophrenia, breakdown, psychosis are alarming events to have or to witness.

The ninth month of the Gregorian calendar strides onto stage with the autumn equinox and the first glimpses of a new season. Nature may adorn the coming days with a blaze of Indian summer, or the early showers and storms of autumn may begin their symphony. Regardless of Nature’s elemental whims the landscape is a riot of colours, hues and swathes, the harvest of crops continues, the orchards heave with bounty.

During the Victorian era the publishing of magazines and periodicals accelerated at a phenomenal rate. This really was mass market publishing to a hungry audience eager for literary sustenance. Many of our greatest authors contributed and expanded their reach whilst many fledging authors also found a ready source for their nascent works and careers. Amongst the very many was ‘The Yellow Book’.

Mary Anne Evans was born on 22nd November 1819, at Nuneaton in Warwickshire, England. Her first major literary work was completing an English translation of Strauss's ‘The Life of Jesus’ in 1846. Under the pseudonym of George Eliot that we know so well, ‘Adam Bede’ was published in 1859, followed by her other great novels: ‘Mill on the Floss’, ‘Silas Marner’ and ‘Middlemarch’. ‘The Lifted Veil’ is a both a beautiful story and typical of Eliot’s formidable powers of writing.

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.

In 1890 W. B. Yeats and Ernest Rhys founded a poetry club. Based mainly at Fleet Street’s immortal ‘Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese’ pub, with occasional appearances at the Domino room in the Café Royal, poets gathered together to dine and drink. Whilst it was based on a core of poets, many others attended on an ad hoc basis including Oscar Wilde, Francis Thompson & Lord Alfred Douglas. The camaraderie, banter and poetry that played out in their dreams, ambitions and for many, their difficult lives led Yeats to call them ‘the tragic generation’.

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky was born in Moscow on 11th November, 1821, to distinguished multi-ethnic parents from a Lithuanian background. In 1846 he published his first novel ‘Poor Cow’ to great literary acclaim. His next was unable to emulate that success but his short stories helped provide an income. ‘The Dream of a Ridiculous Man’ is one of his many classic short stories that turn a splinter of the ordinary into the spiralling descent of chaos.

Gustave Flaubert was born on 12th December 1821 in Rouen, in Normandy, France. In September 1849, Flaubert completed ‘The Temptation of Saint Anthony’. A long journey to the Middle East brought encounters with both female and male prostitutes and a case of syphilis caught in Beirut. On his return he began ‘Madame Bovary’, a work he would take 5 years to complete. He toiled on his unfinished ‘Bouvard et Pécuchet’ but did complete ‘Three Tales’ in 1877, from which ‘The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller’ is taken.

Anton Chekhov, Guy de Maupassant, Kate Chopin. These three names thrill the literary world as well as our own. They have gravitas, they have knowledge, experience and they have the literary style and panache to seduce our imagined world. Each has written a short story on pleasured lips placed on another’s flesh. For Chekhov it was a kiss in a darkened room that happened by mistake. Who was she? For Chopin it was a kiss that almost derailed a hoped-for marriage proposal. Why did he do that? For de Maupassant it was a niece seeking advice from her Aunt on when to kiss and whom. And did she?

Montague Rhodes James is cited as perhaps the greatest English writer of ghost stories, an opinion few would disagree with. Many of his elegant yet terrifying tales were created by discarding the prevailing gothic clichés and placing his characters and narrative in a realistic setting. Thereby the stories gained atmosphere and menace on a grand scale and he was famed as the originator of the antiquarian ghost story. Although story-telling and writing these 30 or so tales was a hobby, when published their effect transformed the genre and still chill the bones in our more modern times.

Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant was born on August 5th, 1850, near Dieppe in France. In 1880 he published what is considered his first great work, ‘Boule de Suif’, (translated as as ‘Dumpling’, ‘Butterball’, ‘Ball of Fat’, or ‘Ball of Lard’), which met with a success that was both instant and overwhelming. Flaubert at once acknowledged that it was ‘a masterpiece that will endure.’ Maupassant had used his talents and experiences in the war to create something unique.

Franz Kafka was born on 3rd July 1883, in Prague, then in Bohemia, the eldest of 6, into a middle-class Jewish family. His literary works are few in number but towering in influence. His masterpieces include ‘The Trial’, ‘The Metamorphosis’ as well as a number of short stories which reveal facets of humankind that truthfully could only be born from Kafka’s brain and pen. His classic short story ‘In the Penal Colony’ begins with the innocuous words “It’s a peculiar apparatus,” as the Officer explains to the Traveller, what this grisly machine will do to the prisoners who serve their time here.

Once more the year begins. The first month of the Gregorian calendar. Cold winds howl, the landscape shivers, frost, snow, ice are the many blankets for the land. Daylight is thin; it arrives late and leaves early, ceding the hours to shadow and the ink of night. From the pens of our remarkable poets, including Shelley, Dickenson, Shakespeare, Whitman, Gilbran and a wealth of others, come sumptuous verse that describe our moods, feelings, travels and desires of the dawning year.

The year reaches its end with the Twelfth month. The landscape may be bleak, a sculpture of lines, monochrome dominates. The air carries the sounds of winter: wind, storms, silence. Our classic poets flex their lexicons with verse that describes all manner of events, sights and sounds. Among their ranks are Hardy, Shakespeare, Rossetti, Nesbit, Burns and a wealth of others, who, with their thoughts and desires express the world in lines of inky marvel.

Dorothy Kathleen Broster was born on 2nd September 1877, at Devon Lodge in Grassendale Park, Garston, Liverpool. Her novels, mainly historical fiction, peaked in popularity with ‘The Flight of the Heron’, in 1925, a best-seller followed up by two sequels. As well as poetry and various articles, she also wrote several short stories, the best known of which is a classic of weird fiction ‘The Couching at the Door’, in which an artist appears to be haunted by a mysterious entity.

In this collection of short stories some of our most popular and well-known authors are grouped together with an unfortunate tag: dead at 44. These authors are not run-of-the-mill or ten a penny; they are literary leviathans who left enduring works of literature and sadly may have left us many more had they lived. We will never know.

Silence is rare in Nature. When we really listen, Nature is conducting symphonies of sound as her world goes about the day and night. Her invisible heartbeat is everywhere, for everyone. Our eyes are constantly bathed in the wonder of her ways, the soft drizzle of rain from soft grey clouds, the bleached harsh desert sand of a noon day, a wave caressing the shore, to the ravenous colours of a departing sunset. Indeed, whenever we look and listen to the vastness of our world Nature’s beauty is always there for us. In these 60 minutes Nature takes us through her world of wonder.