Showing results for "John Scott" in Classics

Swann's Way is Marcel Proust's literary masterpiece and the first part of the multivolume audiobook Remembrance of Things Past. In the opening volume, the narrator travels back in time to recall his childhood and to introduce the listener to Charles Swann, a wealthy friend of the family and celebrity in the Parisian social scene. He again travels back, this time to the youth of Charles Swann in the French town of Combray, to tell the story of the love affair that took place before his own birth.

Magdalen and Norah Vanstone have known only comfort and affluence for their entire lives. Orphaned suddenly following the unexpected deaths of their parents, the illegitimate sisters find themselves flung into the other extreme of living: their father had neglected to amend his will following their parents' recent marriage, leaving them with nothing, and their bitter, estranged uncle, the legal inheritor of the family fortune, mercilessly refuses them support.

First appearing in 1782, Dangerous Liaisons is one of the most scandalous and controversial novels in European literature. The plot unfolds through a series of letters as the two main protagonists, the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil, attempt to bring about the seduction of a young woman. The epistolary nature of the novel gives a multi-faceted perspective of the action, which places the book firmly in the tradition of libertine literature.

Wilkie Collins' follow-up to The Woman in White and No Name is an innovative take on mistaken identity, the nature of evil, and the dark underbelly of Victorian England. The story concerns two distant cousins, both named Allan Armadale, and the impact of a family tragedy, which makes one of them a target of the murderous Lydia Gwilt, a vicious and malevolent charmer determined to get her hands on the Armadale fortune. Will the real Allan Armadale be revealed, and will he survive the plot against his life?

It is almost impossible to envision what childhood would be like without the enchanting world of fairyland. Three-headed trolls, horses that carry their masters up mountains of glass, giants and dwarfs, monsters and magicians, fairies and ogres - these are the companions who will thrill young boys and girls of all lands and all times, as Andrew Lang's phenomenally successful collections of stories have proved.

She Walks in Beauty draws on poetry’s eloquent wisdom to ponder the many joys and challenges of being a woman. Caroline Kennedy has divided the collection into sections that signify to her the most notable milestones, passages, and universal experiences in a woman’s life, and she begins each of these sections with an introduction in which she explores and celebrates the most important elements of life’s journey.

A third adventure for Sir Edward Leithen, in which Leithen befriends young Vernon Milburne, a man haunted by an annually recurring dream in which some dark and mysterious challenge moves year by year closer. After the war, as the culmination of Vernon’s dream approaches, both men meet – and take an instant dislike to – Miss Koré Arabin, a young Englishwoman who has inherited a remote Greek island from her disreputable father.

A collection of radio readings of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s fiction - plus two bonus programmes. Over the years the BBC has broadcast readings of many of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novels, novellas and short stories. This collection includes some of his most famous works alongside various lesser-known tales, including three 'lost stories' (first published in 2017 and with an introduction written by editor Anne Margaret Daniel).

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. Whether they hail from the Lowlands or the Highlands, to be a Scottish author is to part of a quite an extraordinary band of authors and its literary traditions. These beguiling stories example the full range and majesty of their talents and the subjects they explore.

In the days before the First World War, the measured routine of barrister and accidental Member of Parliament Edward Leithen is disrupted when Charles Pitt-Heron, an Oxford contemporary and now the husband of Leithen’s old flame, abruptly goes missing. As he investigates the mystery, Leithen is soon pitted against the murderous forces of “the Power-House,” an international network of anarchists, and its chilling leader.

A milestone in the history of the novel, Samuel Richardson's epistolary and elaborate Clarissa follows the life of a chaste young woman desperate to protect her virtue. The recording is divided into three volumes.

Queen Marguerite de Navarre was one of the most powerful women of her age. Her masterpiece, The Heptameron, is a collection of some 72 stories told by five gentlemen and five ladies who find themselves stranded in an abbey. Proposed as an edifying way of passing the time while a bridge is being repaired, the tale-telling - as well as the conversations that follow each story - quickly becomes a battle of wits between the sexes, with tales concerning illicit lovers, romantic conquests, lecherous monks, manly honor, and women's virtue.

Three gentlemen not wholly useless to their country—a lawyer, a banker, and a cabinet minister—have suddenly fallen into a state of profound ennui. Each seeks to rediscover the comfort of their lives through ‘the tonic of difficulty': adopting the nom de guerre of ‘John Macnab', they take to poaching in the Highlands of Scotland, issuing challenges to three landowners and declaring their intention to take a salmon or a stag on their lands between specific dates. But can they overcome the challenges they have set themselves, and escape with their reputations intact?

Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Blake, Coleridge, and Byron. The poets of the Romantic Period celebrated with readings by Sir Ralph Richardson, Christopher Hassall, Margaretta Scott, and Tyrone Power.

For six long Martian months, John Carter has haunted the terrifying Temple of the Sun. Inside the walls of this mysterious revolving tower is his beloved wife, Dejah Thoris, the beautiful princess of Barsoom. Worse yet, his wife is trapped there with the lovely but wicked Phaidor, who has sworn to make John Carter her own - even if it means murder. How can Carter gain access to the Temple, whose doors swing open only once a year? And when he does find his way inside, will he find Dejah Thoris's welcoming embrace - or her corpse?

Poet, novelist, critic and campaigner Walter Scott invented the historical novel and shaped the world’s image of Scotland. His tales of heroism, romance and adventure were hugely successful, outselling Jane Austen and Lord Byron, and are still popular today. Included here are adaptations of five of the best-loved books in his ‘Waverley’ series, as well as two bonus programmes.

First published in 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson's rollicking historical novel Kidnapped was an instant bestseller. It was followed by an 1893 sequel, Catriona, which Stevenson regarded as his 'high water mark', declaring that he would 'never do a better book'. Included here is the epic 10-part BBC radio dramatisation of both action-packed tales.

Captain John Carter of the Virginia Cavalry finds himself transported to Mars, and is immediately captured by the great and fierce Thark, Tars Tarkas. While still in captivity, he meets another captive, the raven-haired beauty, Dejah Thoris, grand-daughter of the ruler of Helium, the greatest city-state on all of Mars. John Carter sets about to deliver the beautiful Martian princess from the green men, and realizes that not only is she loved by all the red men of Mars, but she is also the one he loves.

Poetry can capture the imagination in a few short lines but narrative verse or poetry takes the form of telling a story, whether it be simple or complex in a longer form. Among the most ancient forms of poetry, it has widespread roots through almost every culture. In Volume 4 we bring you the classics 'The Eve of St Agnes' by John Keats; 'Flodden' by Sir Walter Scott; 'The Ballad of Agincourt' by Michael Drayton; 'Tam O'Shanter' by Robert Burns; and 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin' by Robert Browning.

The Great Gatsby is a classic work of American literary fiction. Set in the Jazz Age in the 1920s, the story is deeply interesting from a historical lens. The plot centers around a mysterious wealthy figure, Jay Gatsby. Jay Gatsby lives a lavish lifestyle, but as it turns out his money does not buy him happiness or love. Told from the perspective of narrator Nick Carraway, the plots follows the lives of lavish New Yorkers and their love lives.