Showing results by narrator "Peter Joyce" in All Categories

Helen Rathbone meets her elderly uncle, James Ollerenshaw, in Bursley Park, after an estrangement of several years. Both are very strong-willed, independent characters. Helen has an extravagant lifestyle and likes to spend money while the old man has lived a thrifty life and intends to continue in the same way. However, they develop a friendship which progresses rapidly, and Helen moves in to James' house to look after him.

Anthony Hope was constrained to return to the fictional land of Ruritania by an appreciative public who wanted more swashbuckling and derring-do from the hero Rudolph and more Machiavellian moustache twirling from the suave villain Rupert. The author came up with a literary construction which ensured he would never again have to visit fictional Ruritania - but nothing he subsequently wrote appealed as much as the two Zenda stories.

An enthusiastic, committed but naïve priest, Peter Graham, leaves his fiancée, Hilda, to serve as chaplain in France during World War 1. He is rapidly made aware of the British tommies' total indifference to what he has to offer and is appalled at the decline in morality of the officers revealed by their disrespect and attitude towards the local French women, most of who consequently lead lives of easy virtue.

Grace Melbury, the timber merchant's daughter, comes back to Little Hintock after some years at finishing school. She was the childhood sweetheart of Giles Winterborne, a compassionate, caring man who works in the village. Melbury senior has promised himself that Grace and Giles will be married to recompense for him taking Giles' father's betrothed many years before. However, Grace is a different woman now, a sophisticated creature, and the suave, knowledgeable local doctor Fitzpiers takes an interest in her.

Vanessa Paris is besotted with Benji, the devil-may-care son of John and Elizabeth Herries. Despite returning her all-consuming passion, Benji will not commit himself to marriage because he fears he can never remain constant and will eventually betray her. Benji's actions finally prompt Vanessa to leave Cumbria and seek a life in London. She stays at Hill Street with the ever persistent Ellis, who worships her.

Walter Herries establishes himself in Keswick and constructs an imposing property overlooking Uldale, further encroaching upon the peaceful lives of Jennifer and the children. Adam resolves to pursue a career in London, much to his mother's displeasure. He meets the Chartist campaigner Caesar Kraft and lives with him and his daughter Margaret. On a visit to the capital, Elizabeth Herries chooses the opportunity to escape from her unhappy life but is finally pursued by John.

Victorian humour generally doesn't translate well across time. The Wrong Box is one of the exceptions. The plot revolves around the supposed death of Joseph Finsbury who, as a youth, with his brother Masterman joined a tontine - a scheme whereby each entrant pays a fixed amount and the sum total, with interest, is given to the one who lives the longest. At the beginning of the story there are three survivors and then two - the Finsbury brothers.

Phlegmatic Anne is the unappreciated strength within her family - a vain, pompous father, a self-regarding and self-deluding older sister and a dissatisfied and selfish younger one. At the age of 19, Anne is persuaded out of an engagement to Frederick Wentworth, an ambitious, highly principled and determined naval gentleman who departs in angry indignation. Eight years later, by coincidental circumstances, he is brought into her social circle once more, having obtained wealth and reputation.

The author dedicates his story to 'The Happy Few'. This presumably means those who lead lives free of hypocrisy and deceit. They are few indeed in the second part of this authoritative novel of early 19th-century France. Julien Sorel leaves the country town of Verrieres and flees to Paris with the sound of guns in pursuit. He is to take up a post as secretary to M. de la Mole, an influential businessman in the capital.

Edward Malone, an enthusiastic and ambitious columnist for the Daily Gazette, is urged by the woman he loves to undertake a heroic deed so that he may earn her love in return. In a few weeks, he is bound for the shores of South America in the company of the irascible academic Summerlee and debonair adventurer Lord John Roxton on an expedition to prove the claims of a bombastic genius. They venture to an isolated prehistoric land on top of a huge mountain in the tropical rain forests of the Amazonian jungle.

Includes 'Titbottoms Spectacles' by George William Curtis, 'The First Piano in Camp' by Samuel Davis, 'Mr Tolman' by Frank R. Stockton, 'Mrs Bullfrog' by Nathaniel Hawthorne, 'Against His Judgement' by Robert Grant, 'A Desperate Adventure' by Max Adeler, 'Occurence at Owl Creek' by Ambrose Bierce, 'The Stout Gentleman' by Washington Irving, 'Clothes 'by Gustav Kobbé and 'Negative Gravity' by Frank R. Stockton.

Julian Sorel is a handsome, naïve but not wholly innocent young man, born of peasant stock. He is, however, very ambitious and determined to succeed in life and make a career for himself. If this involves lying, guile and hypocrisy - so be it. Not so long ago, two professions would have been open to him - the army or the church - but in the wake of Waterloo and the defeat of Napoleon, it would be preferable to take Holy Orders.

'The manuscript was submitted to me by a young officer of the R.F.A., home from the front on leave. He explained that he had brought with him from France a bundle of papers which he had found in one of the dug-outs of an abandoned gun position. He discovered the papers secreted in a dark corner wedged in between a post and the wall of one of the bunks.' (Extract from the preface by John Lane, publisher)

The Woman Who Did, written in 1893 wholly and solely to satisfy the author's conscience, was perhaps the most controversial book of the late 19th century. Certainly, it was a succès de scandale and a commercial triumph. The heroine, Herminia Barton, chooses to live unmarried with her lover. When he dies, she endures many a trial for her beliefs - particularly after the stigma of bearing his child - being cast out from both families.

The third and final collection in this series of reflections written by one of the wittiest and most whimsical men to press pen against paper. As well as his usual take on the foibles of his fellow Englishmen and women, Jerome ruminates, in his typically liberal fashion, about far-flung countries such as Russia, Africa and China. Jerome was never a 'jelly-bellied flag-flapping imperialist', and his vision, experience and worldliness are revealed to us over multiple essays.

Captain Stephen Sorrell returns from the First World War decorated with the Military Cross but unnerved by the conflict. His mercenary wife has deserted him for 'one of the fellows who stayed behind' and left him responsible for their son, Christopher. A promised position in an antique shop fails to materialise, and Sorrell faces poverty. Despite losing status, he takes a job as a hotel porter, cleaning shoes and carrying luggage. Thus begins the long climb to financial security.

Mary and George love each other in early childhood, but George's father tears them apart, not believing that Mary, a bailiff's daughter, will be a fit match for his son. The family travel to America to pursue the father's dream of wealth. During George's absence, Mary moves to Scotland and, in order to survive, is forced into a marriage of convenience. George returns after 10 years to search for his promised bride and becomes obsessed and infatuated with a Mrs Van Brandt. Is the pursuit beginning to affect his sanity?

This wonderful comedy about orphan and innocent Arthur Kipps was the means by which Wells satirized what he saw as a gross stupidity and blight upon English society: the pretensions of and obsession with class. Humble drapers' assistant Arthur unexpectedly inherits his grandfather’s fortune and is instantly propelled into a higher social strata with the subsequent problems of attaining the required behaviour of a ‘gentleman’.

Love and Mr Lewisham is a hugely uplifting tale from the pen of one of our greatest writers. Wells drew on his own experience as a young teacher to provide the background and, one suspects, the emotional drama. The plot enables him to satirise the educational establishment and deliver many wry observations on Victorian morality and the obsession with the supernatural. One day Mr Lewisham sits at his makeshift desk at his lodgings. He is an assistant master at Whortley proprietary school.

Set against the international background of the late Victorian rich and privileged The African Millionaire is a far-fetched and farcical romp in which gullible Sir Charles Vandrift MP is slowly but steadily parted from his vast wealth by a series of confidence tricks and deceptions.