Showing results by author "ciesse" in All Categories

Another 'dog's-eye view' book for children by this early activist for the American Humane Society. In this tale, we follow the travels and adventures of Boy, a loveable and loyal wire-haired fox-terrier in city and country. - Summary by Lynne Thompson

After the death of his father, Nicholas must provide for his mother and sister. His wealthy uncle provides him with employment at a boys' school, run by the villainous Mr. Squeers. But when Nicholas has seen enough of the brutal manner in which Squeers treats the boys, he attacks him--and is forced to go on the run to avoid the ramifications. - Summary by Brad "Hamlet" Filippone

The Mystery of Edwin Drood is the final novel by Charles Dickens. The novel was left unfinished at the time of Dickens' death, and readers have often speculated what the ending might have been. The novel is named after Edwin Drood, but it mostly tells the story of his uncle, a Jekyll-and-Hyde-esque choirmaster named John Jasper, who is in love with his pupil, Rosa Bud. Miss Bud is Drood's fiancée, and has caught the eye of the high-spirited and hot-tempered Neville Landless, who comes from Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) with his twin sister, Helena, and immediately makes an enemy of Drood. It is ...

Dickens' last complete novel was published serially 1864-5. It begins with an intriguing fortune offered to John Harmon by his late father, a rich dust contractor, in his will. To receive the money, John must marry a certain Bella Wilfer who he does not know from Eve. He is returning from the exile enforced by his father and confides in a ship's mate who attempts to murder him. The mate gets killed instead, leaving one inconvenient corpse. Because John is considered dead (the body is found with his papers), the money passes to Mr Boffin, old Harmon's foreman. Harmon adopts Bella and John comes...

Esta obra narra la vida de David Copperfield desde su infancia hasta la madurez. El padre de David muere seis meses antes de que él naciera, y siete años después, su madre se vuelve a casar, pero David y su padrastro no se llevan bien, y DAvid es enviado por ello a un internado. A medida que David va labrando su vida, nos encontramos con una deslumbrante variedad de amigos, compañeros, familiares, el amor, los celos,la miseria, la avaricia, la traición, unos personajes inolvidables y otros que no querremos recordar, hasta el descubrimiento, al final de su vida, de una felicidad completa. ...

Hard Times, the shortest of Dickens's full-length novels, is set in the fictitious Victorian-England city of Coketown, where facts are the rule and all fancy is to be stamped out. The plot centers around the men and women of the town, some of whom are beaten down by the city's utilitarian ideals and some of whom manage to rise above it. The novel was written in 1854 and was a scathing attack on then-current ideas of utilitarianism, which Dickens viewed as a selfish and at times oppressive philosophy. Perhaps the novel's best features are its clever, ironic narration and the larger-than-life ...

Before he became a novelist, Dickens wrote several successful plays. This one from 1836, his first, he called, “A Comic Burletta in Two Acts”. Characters arrive at a village inn called “The St. James Arms” and much confusion ensues. (Summary by ToddHW)Cast:MR. OWEN OVERTON: NoelBadrianJOHN JOHNSON: Nathanial W.C. HigginsTHE STRANGE GENTLEMAN: David GoldfarbCHARLES TOMKINS: Algy PugTOM SPARKS: John TrevithickJOHN, TOM, WILL - Waiters 1, 2, 3: ToddHWJULIA DOBBS: Tiffany Halla ColonnaFANNY WILSON: Amanda FridayMARY WILSON: DuanMRS. NOAKES: Christine NendzaCHAMBERMAID: Eden ...

Cuento largo o novela breve de intriga y suspense escrita por Charles Dickens. El inicio es ya prometedor: No hace al caso referir la manera cómo supe lo que voy a contar aquí ni quién me lo refirió ... Baste saber que lo ahorcaron y que su historia es como sigue... (Summary by Epachuko)

A Tale of Two Cities (1859) is a historical novel by Charles Dickens; it is moreover a moral novel strongly concerned with themes of guilt, shame, redemption and patriotism.The plot centers on the years leading up to French Revolution and culminates in the Jacobin Reign of Terror. It tells the story of two men, Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton, who look very alike but are entirely different in character.(Summary from Wikipedia)

Charles Dickens' 1854 novel opens with the philosophy of education espoused by the eminently practical Mr. Gradgrind, who prizes "facts and calculations." He raises his children, most prominently Louisa and Tom, to eschew imagination and emotion and embrace order and reason. The results are disastrous: Louisa marries out of duty to the supposed self-made man Mr. Bounderby, while Tom grows up dissolute, ultimately commits theft and blames it on an unfortunate laborer, Stephen Blackpool. Set in the fictional Coketown, a mill town in the north of England, Dickens' novel satirizes capitalism, ...

“Who ever lov’d, that lov’d not at first sight?”The wonder-decade of the English drama was suddenly interrupted in 1592, when serious plague broke out in London, forcing the closure of the theatres. Leading playwrights took to penning languorously erotic poetry to make ends meet: so we have Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece - and Marlowe’s blazing masterpiece, Hero and Leander.Marlowe’s poem became more notorious than either of Shakespeare’s, due not only to its homophile provocations but also to the scandal attaching to every aspect of Marlowe’s brief life, violently ended...

When orphaned Oliver Twist asks for more food, the workhouse board are horrified and immediately pack him off to work for an undertaker, who treats him badly. Oliver runs away and finds himself in the streets of London, where he meets the Artful Dodger and is lured into a gang of young pickpockets, led by the evil Fagin. Even amidst his horrible surroundings, Oliver escapes and finds his way into a loving home. But Fagin's gang are determined to steal him back to their life of crime, coming closer and closer...Dickens' classic tale of an orphan boy who has adventures with pickpockets and ...

Andrew Lang's Blue Fairy Book (1889) was a beautifully produced and illustrated edition of fairy tales that has become a classic. This was followed by many other collections of fairy tales, collectively known as Andrew Lang's Fairy Books. (Wikipedia)

This group project is a collection of 43 fairy tales (both old and new), folk lore, myths and real life stories by a variety of authors, brought together by writer Fanny E Coe. They are mostly short and are fun to read and tell to children and most teach valuable lessons about life. (Summary by Phil Chenevert)

The well known and delightful tale of Alice in Wonderland but retold in simpler language. All the characters are there, even the Cheshire Cat and the Mad Hatter. Note that even though the title says 'words of one syllable', there are quite a few two and even multiple syllable words which the author divides into smaller bites by using dashes. Don't let this bother you. The book is well written and would be an excellent choice for all listeners or those for whom English is not their first language.

This first collection of the correspondence of Oscar Wilde begins with the Irish playwright's earliest extant letter, thanking his mother for the hamper she had sent to him at school. It includes letters about his travels in Italy, his American lecture tour, the staging of his first play (Vera, or the Nihilists), arrangements for the publication of a friend's poetry collection, and exchanges in the press with artist James McNeill Whistler. The letters, some of which have been excerpted or redacted, are sourced from auction catalogues, newspapers, biographies, and other texts in the public ...

Luís Vaz de Camões é frequentemente considerado como o maior poeta de língua portuguesa e dos maiores da Humanidade. O seu gênio é comparável ao de Virgílio, Dante, Cervantes ou Shakespeare. A obra lírica de Camões foi publicada como "Rimas", não havendo acordo entre os diferentes editores quanto ao número de sonetos escritos pelo poeta e quanto à autoria de algumas das peças líricas. Alguns dos seus sonetos, como o conhecido "Amor é fogo que arde sem se ver", pela ousada utilização dos paradoxos, prenunciam o Barroco. Nesta coleção, apresentamos uma recolha de Sonetos de ...

LibriVox volunteers bring you 21 recordings of Seaside by Rupert Brooke. This was the Weekly Poetry project for August 19, 2012.Rupert Chawner Brooke (middle name sometimes given as "Chaucer" was an English poet known for his idealistic war sonnets written during the First World War, especially "The Soldier". He was also known for his boyish good looks, which were said to have prompted the Irish poet W. B. Yeats to describe him as "the handsomest young man in England" ( Summary from Wikipedia )

Michael Angelo and Campanella represent widely sundered, though almost contemporaneous, moments in the evolution of the Italian genius. Michael Angelo was essentially an artist, living in the prime of the Renaissance. Campanella was a philosopher, born when the Counter-Reformation was doing all it could to blight the free thought of the sixteenth century; and when the modern spirit of exact enquiry, in a few philosophical martyrs, was opening a new stage for European science. The one devoted all his mental energies to the realisation of beauty: the other strove to ascertain truth. The one ...

Luís Vaz de Camões (c. 1524 — 10 de Junho de 1580) é frequentemente considerado como o maior poeta de língua portuguesa e dos maiores da Humanidade. O seu gênio é comparável ao de Virgílio, Dante, Cervantes ou Shakespeare. A obra lírica de Camões foi publicada como "Rimas", não havendo acordo entre os diferentes editores quanto ao número de sonetos escritos pelo poeta e quanto à autoria de algumas das peças líricas. Alguns dos seus sonetos, como o conhecido "Amor é fogo que arde sem se ver", pela ousada utilização dos paradoxos, prenunciam o Barroco. Nesta coleção, ...