Showing results by narrator "Denis Daly" in All Categories

André Gide met Wilde many times and was one of the small number of celebrities who maintained contact with him until his death in Paris in 1900.

Passion and intrigue among the upper classes form the basis of Lady Windermere's Fan, Oscar Wilde's first successful play, which displays his trademark wit and wisdom. Beautiful and innocent Lady Windermere finds out that her husband has been keeping company with the scandalous and mysterious Mrs. Erlynne. Her discovery unleashes a host of tensions at her 21st birthday party, where London's elite have gathered to gossip.

Among the pioneers of the New Thought movement, William Walker Atkinson was one of the most active and most prolific. His many publications include texts on religion, the occult, concentration, memory, and healing. In the words of the author: "All students of Mental Influence have noticed the close resemblance that is manifested between the phenomena of electrical and magnetic energy on the one hand and the phenomena of mental energy on the other."

Little is known of the life of Zen master Huang-Po (Obaku in Japanese). He was born in Fuzhou, China, and died about 850 AD. His main teacher was Pai Chang (Hyakujo) (720 - 814). The main source for Huang-Po's teaching is the Treatise of the Essentials of the Transmission of the Mind, compiled by his student, Pei Xiu. Huang-Po's teaching is focused on the concept of Mind, the essence of intrinsic Buddahood. According to the master, the search for enlightenment was a useless distraction, as seeking for something inevitably separates the seeker from what is being sought.

While not being not particularly scary by the standards of today many of the ghost stories of the Victorian Era are very entertaining, and represent escapist literature of the highest quality. In To Be Taken With a Grain of Salt, which first appeared in the 1865 Christmas Edition of All the Year Round, the master novelist presents a lively portrait of the spectre of a murder victim with a desire for vengeance.

Thomas Troward (1847 - 1916) was a divisional Judge in the British administration of India. In his later years, he developed a distinctive discipline of personal development which he called Mental Science. He had a particular reverence for Jesus. In the introduction, the author asserts that "we possess latent powers which a better knowledge of the truth regarding ourselves will enable us to develop, and that the purpose of the Bible is to lead us into this knowledge in a perfectly natural manner while guarding us against the dangers arising from misuse of it."

Today Thomas Gray is remembered almost solely for this melancholy meditation on the inevitability of death and the insignificance of fame. The poem was originally thought to have been inspired by the death of Gray's close friend, Richard West, but modern critics think this to be unlikely. Retiring by nature, Gray did not want the elegy to be published, but his hand was forced by an unscrupulous editor who planned to publish the poem without permission. The polished elegance of the versification has ensured that the poem has retained its appeal over the centuries.

This collection of sixteen poems features several notable examples of his early work, including “Oenone” and “The May Queen”, as well as two of his most iconic works, “The Lady of Shalott” and “The Lotus Eaters."

This collection contains miscellaneous notes and fragments found after the death of Baudelaire. They reveal in miniature the many and varied aspects of the moral and intellectual life of the author. Included are reflections not only on poetry, but also on painting and music, displaying Baudelaire’s finely honed critical instincts.

The Martians, finding the resources on their own planet dwindling dramatically, decided to invade and colonize Earth. They land in England and quickly establish control through their vastly superior military technology. The narrative focuses on the wanderings and deliberations of the narrator as he wanders around the country seeking refuge from the remorseless invaders. Two of the most significant characters he encounters are a curate and an artilleryman, neither of whom has an effective approach to dealing with the crisis.

This poetic exploration of the subject of love was composed in Italy 1821, and published anonymously, as the poet wished its circulation to be restricted to the "esoteric few." The title means "concerning or about a little soul", the subject, in this case, being Shelley's inamorata of the time, Countess Teresa (designated "Emily" in the poem) Viviani, a young woman who was immured in the Convent of Saint Anna by her father. Shelley had had a number of contacts with her by letter and in person.

The Witch of Atlas is a poetic narrative, written in 1820 and published posthumously in 1824. The witch is the daughter of the Pleiades, the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione. The plot is built around her adventures, during which she creates an androgynous creature, Hermaphroditus, who is both the companion of and the servant to the witch. She plays a series of pranks upon mankind, with the ultimate aim of revealing the essential foolishness of oppression and conflict and enabling the realization of a final Utopia.

Much of Tennyson's poetry is elegiac in nature, featuring characters who have been disempowered by isolation, age, or lack of opportunity. One of the most famous examples of this is the dramatic soliloquy, "Ulysses". "Columbus", written many years later, is also a dramatic narrative. In both cases, the narrators are elderly mariners, who have a long history of daring forays into remote regions, and who are eager to venture forth again but are hampered by lack of opportunity and the effects of aging.

Háfiz (1315-1390) was a lyric poet, a major figure in classical Persian literature. The compendious anthology of his poetry simply titled the Divan contains several hundred odes, from which this small selection was made by the translator. In the introduction Bicknell writes: ...we must look upon Háfiz as one of the few poets in the world who utters an unbroken strain of joy and contentment. His poverty was to him a constant fountain of satisfaction, and he frankly took the natural joys of life as they came....

Dooman's translation of the Rubaiyat, containing 180 quatrains, was first published in 1911. It has a roughhewn quality, reminiscent of the style of an earlier American translator, John Payne, who published a collection of 845 quatrains in 1898.

This meditation on artistic creativity was written during the latter months of 1815, during a sojourn on the border of Windsor Forest. Critics have concurred in the opinion that the anonymous hero of the poem is Shelley himself, who feared that he too would become an "inheritor of unfulfilled renown". Today, the poem is considered to be the first major work of Shelley's maturity.

Christian D. Larson was a prominent representative of the New Thought movement and the author of more than 20 books covering many aspects of self-development. In this compact tract, Larson provides a trenchant examination of the basic principles of concentration and a straightforward plan for its development in the individual.

Christopher Smart (1722-1771) was an English poet and scholar. This extraordinary poem, which is a florid display of Smart's opinions on a variety of theological, historical, and scientific subjects, was written between 1759 and 1763, while the author was confined in a lunatic asylum. His condition was diagnosed as religious mania, as evidenced by his compulsion to break into spontaneous prayer in public.

This collection, first published in 1914, contains 28 short pieces in prose and verse, which present themes frequently explored in Gibran's other works. These include love, death, creation myths and spiritual realization.

Spend your next 30 minutes traveling to a future where first adopters have the most advanced robot butlers or where everyone has a superpower - except the young man you just met. Or perhaps you prefer a good hard-boiled detective story or one about a hardscrabble life in the Australian outback.