Showing results by narrator "Rob Goll" in All Categories

John Keats (1795-1821) was one of the foremost English Romantic poets. Despite his early death from tuberculosis at the age of 25 he had a considerable poetic output, the majority of his best-known works being written in the year 1819. The six odes composed during this year are among his most famous and well-regarded poems. The first five were composed during the spring of 1819, while 'To Autumn' was composed in September. The exact order of composition of the first five is unknown.

After breaking off his engagement with Agnes Lockwood, Lord Montbarry marries the eccentric Countess Narona before embarking on a whirlwind honeymoon tour of Europe culminating in Venice. There they reside in the decaying Palace Hotel with the Countess' brother, Baron Rivar, and their courier, Ferrari. Lord Montbarry later dies of bronchitis and upon hearing of this from Henry Westwick, Montbarry's brother, Agnes agrees to meet with Henry at the newly renovated Palace Hotel to investigate the insurance claim that was purchased prior to his death.

The narrator walks the streets of St. Petersburg at night, contemplating how ridiculous his life is.

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) re-introduced the world to the famous consulting detective Sherlock Holmes, who Arthur Conan Doyle seemingly killed off in 1894 in his story "The Final Problem." Based on British legend, this novella has Holmes and his colleague Dr. Watson trying to solve a supernatural killing in the wilds of Devonshire.

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes is the second published collection of short stories featuring the famous consulting detective and his friend and colleague Dr. Watson.

The lyrical ballad The Lady of Shalott is one of Tennyson's best-known and best-loved poems. It is based on the story of Elaine of Astolat, a figure from Arthurian legend, who dies from her unrequited love for Sir Lancelot. The subject matter provided inspiration for many of the Pre-Raphaelite painters. Tennyson published two versions of the poem, both of which are included in this recording. The first was written in 1832, and the second—the better-known of the two versions—in 1842.

Lamia is a tragic narrative poem in two parts. It was written in 1819 and first published in 1820 with "Isabella" and "The Eve of St. Agnes". The Greek god Hermes has left Olympus in search of a beautiful nymph. He comes across Lamia, a woman trapped in the form of a snake, who promises to reveal the nymph to him if he, in exchange, restores her human form so she may seek the love of Lycius, a youth of Corinth.

On New Year's Eve, an elderly ticket porter, Toby "Trotty" Veck, a hardworking but poor man, is disillusioned with the state of the world. He is appalled by newspaper reports of crime and immorality, and fears for the future prospects of his daughter, Meg, who is to be married on New Year's Day. Trotty has always fancied that the bell chimes of the nearby church offer him encouragement when he is most in need. On this particular night, he is drawn to the church tower, where he is greeted by the spirits of the bells and their goblin attendants who show him a vision of the future.

The Happy Prince and Other Tales is a collection of five stories first published in 1888. Oscar Wilde said of these stories that "they are studies in prose, put for Romance's sake into a fanciful form: meant partly for children, and partly for those who have kept the childlike faculties of wonder and joy, and who find in simplicity a subtle strangeness." The five stories in this collection are "The Happy Prince", "The Nightingale and the Rose", "The Selfish Giant", "The Devoted Friend", and "The Remarkable Rocket".

Meet the indomitable lady detective Loveday Brooke. Able to assume a multitude of disguises and possessed of analytical powers rivaling those of the great Sherlock Holmes, she masters every baffling situation and solves each perplexing crime in these seven atmospheric and entertaining Victorian mysteries.

Richard Marsh's The Beetle outsold Bram Stoker's Dracula in 1897, the year both novels were published. Like Dracula, The Beetle is about a strange, unearthly being from a foreign land who infiltrates Britain by hypnotizing and preying upon his victims. This exciting adventure is narrated by four different characters who have close encounters with this rapacious creature and attempt to hunt down and destroy him.

North and South follows the young Margaret Hale as she is caught in the middle of the brutal world between employers and local workers following the Industrial Revolution. She finds herself at odds from the very start with John Thornton, a local factory owner and self-made man, as she believes him to be unfeeling and callous about the poverty and suffering of the workers while John sees Margaret as haughty and entitled. Further conflicts arise when the workers strike and Margaret feels compelled to intervene with no regard for her own safety.

The first novel written by Charlotte Bronte, The Professor follows a young man named William Crimsworth on his teaching career in Brussels as well as the relationships he forms while residing there. At the behest of the headmistress, Zoraide Reuter, William tutors fellow teacher Frances Henri in English and finds himself falling in love with her. Jealousy drives Zoraide to dismiss Frances from the school as well as refusing to assist William in discovering her whereabouts.

Wuthering Heights is Emily Brontë's only novel, first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell. A work of considerable power and intensity set in the Yorkshire moors in the late 18th century - the bleak and wild moorland often reflected in the natures of the characters. Unsettling at times, the novel is a heady mix of gritty realism, romance, Gothic horror, and tragedy.

Francis Raven awakens on the eve of his birthday, frightened by the appearance of a woman attempting to murder him. He is continually haunted by this woman and years later marries Alicia Warlock, who looks strikingly identical to the figure from his dream. Is this Dream Woman simply an apparition or will her attempts to kill Francis become reality? Also known as The Ostler in earlier versions, The Dream Woman is another of Collins' finest detective stories.

Parisina was first published in 1816. The tragic narrative poem is the sixth, and shortest, in the series of Byron's "Oriental Romances" or "Heroic Tales". Prince Azo, overhearing his wife, Parisina, muttering in her sleep, discovers that she is having an affair with his illegitimate son, Hugo. Parisina and Hugo were engaged to be married before Azo claimed her for his own bride. Hugo is sentenced to death, and Parisina is forced to watch the execution as her punishment.

"The Siege of Corinth" is a tragic narrative poem first published in 1816. It was inspired by the Ottoman siege of the Venetian-held Acrocorinth in 1715.

This is the second novella detailing the continuing adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the world's first consulting detective, and his friend and colleague, Dr. John Watson. In The Sign of Four, Holmes and Watson are hired by Mary Morstan to investigate the mysterious circumstances of her father's death, which will set them on the trail of a lost Indian treasure and in pursuit of two of the strangest criminals in the Holmes canon.

Arthur Conan Doyle's 1887 novella introduced the world to Sherlock Holmes, the brilliant consulting detective, as portrayed through the eyes of his friend and colleague Dr. John Watson, a retired army physician. In A Study in Scarlet, Holmes and Watson take on their first case together, involving a body discovered in an abandoned London house with a bloody message scrawled on the wall above.

The Frozen Deep was originally written as a play by Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens. With Dickens himself gracing the stage as Wardour, the play was met with success, drawing audiences to tears night after night, and even performing for Queen Victoria herself. Drawing on reports of the real-life Franklin expedition of 1845, in which a crew had set out from England to discover the North Passage and disappeared without a trace, Collins and Dickens recreated the events of the ill-fated journey.