Showing results by narrator "Linda Barrans" in All Categories

The Seagull is Anton Chekhov's first major play, originally produced in 1896. It dramatizes the romantic and artistic conflicts between four characters: the famous middlebrow story writer Boris Trigorin, the ingenue Nina, the fading actress Irina Arcadina, and her son, the symbolist playwright Constantine Treplef.

Freckles is the only name he has ever known. His right hand is missing at the wrist, and he is haunted by not knowing how it happened. Raised since infancy in a Chicago orphanage, he speaks with a slight Irish accent and sings with a beautiful voice. Now, exhausted after many days of walking, he applies for a job with the Grand Rapids Lumber Company, guarding timber in the Limberlost Swamp from timber thieves. His Swamp Angel declares her love for him and promises that she will find his parents and prove that Freckles comes from "a race of men that have been gentlemen for ages."

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.

The plot follows the usual trajectory of a young girl falling in love and the relationship becoming compromised by unforeseen circumstances. In this case, Austen’s heroine is a naïve country girl, Catherine Morland, who has an addiction to reading the Gothic horror novels which were so popular in the Regency period. When she is invited to stay at the family seat of her love interest and discovers it to be a vast and ancient castle, her romantic imagination runs riot. What secrets lie hidden in this vast pile over which the widowed head of the house exercises an iron control?

Much Ado About Nothing appears to have been written about 1599, shortly before As You Like It and Twelfth Night. The action combines two narrative threads: the spirited comedy of the courtship of Benedick and Beatrice, and the somber tale of confused love between Hero and Claudio. The first is a creation by Shakespeare and the second appears to have been drawn from an Italian source, either by Bandello or Ariosto. The action takes place in Messina. Eponymous lovers Hero and Claudio seem to be ideally matched and nearly everyone is looking forward to their impending marriage.

This collection of 35 short poems was first published in 1927, and is a sequel to When We Were Very Young, which was the first anthology of verse dealing with the domestic adventures of Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh.

This play is a dramatization of Boccaccio’s story of Gillette of Narbonne. Only the comic parts were of Shakespeare’s invention; he added the characters of the pusillanimous Parolles, the lofty courtier Lafew, the Clown Lavatch, and the long suffering Countess. He gave new depth and vitality to the leading characters, who are mere outlines in Boccaccio’s tale.

Together with The Tempest, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of Shakespeare’s most magical plays. One night, two parties creep from Athens into the surrounding forest. One includes sweethearts Lysander and Hermia, fleeing from Athenian law and the disapproval of Hermia’s father to get married. In pursuit is Demetrius, the suitor of Hermia favored by her father, and the doleful Helena, formerly affianced to Demetrius.

When it was first published in 1847, Wuthering Heights was considered highly controversial for its blunt portrayal of domestic abuse, alcoholism, and the dismissal of Christian values by some of its characters. Today, this gothic novel is considered one of the greatest in English literature.

European tourists travel languidly along the Nile River to Abousir, at the southern frontier of Egypt, aboard “a turtle-bottomed, round-bowed stern-wheeler,” the Korosko. But Dervish warriors threaten danger and then attack and kidnap the tourists. In this novel, Doyle explores themes of British Imperialism and a defensive European perspective on North Africa; racial paternalism; and debates on interference with other countries’ politics and religions. This wonderful novel was first published in 1898, long before Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile.

Emma is a vivacious twenty-year-old, who has spent her life in the pleasant seclusion of a village community and who lives with her widowed valetudinarian father. Most of the neighbors admire and approve of her, except for George Knightley, a local landowner, who often expresses his disapproval of Emma’s highhanded and controlling tendencies, in particular her assumption of the unofficial role of matchmaker.

First published in 1813, Pride and Prejudice is the most polished of Jane Austen’s novels, with a humorous and upbeat mood. It was written at a time when the author’s narrative powers were fully developed and the story flows with an ease that conceals the skill of its construction. The plot line follows the sequence of a love relationship apprehended, misunderstood, and finally realized, which has since become a standard format of the romcom genre. However, Austen complicates the action by involving not one but four romantic relationships in the plot.

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.

The Green Cockatoo is a short play set in a busy tavern on the night of the storming of the Bastille. Rich Parisian nobles come to watch some actors play at being rogues, thieves, and other criminals, but they quickly find reality and fantasy blending together in the most alarming of ways.

This play is a fictionalized account of the life of William Shakespeare, beginning from his humble origins in Stratford-upon-Avon with his wife, Anne Hathaway, to his life as a successful playwright in London. This play uses several biographical speculations about Shakespeare's life to tell a fascinating tale, such as his relationship with his wife (to whom he famously left his "second-best bed" in his will), his friendship with fellow playwright and competitor Christopher Marlowe, his interactions with Queen Elizabeth I, and an extramarital dalliance with the queen's maid of honor.

Exiles is the only play written by James Joyce. It draws material from "The Dead", the final story in his famous short stories collection, Dubliners. It centers around four individuals - Richard, Robert, Bertha, and Beatrice - and the complex romantic entanglements between them as tensions rise and relationships are tested.

Ludovico is a despised second son, only child of a scorned second wife. He finds love with Viola, a peasant girl, and they have a son. Their happiness is threatened when Ludovico's older brother dies suddenly and he becomes the heir. His father, the proud and cruel prince of Mondolfo, will let nothing stand in the way of his legacy.

In Jane Austen's unfinished novel, young Emma Watson returns to her father's house after being raised by her wealthy and refined uncle. As she gets to know her family, she finds that her father is reclusive and sickly, her sisters are crude and shallow, and her eldest brother has a petulance that is matched only by his wife's.

The Wind in the Willows, first published in 1908, is one of the most beloved of all children's classics and has been adapted on multiple occasions for presentation on stage, in film, and as an opera. The action centers on the efforts of Mole, Rat, and Badger to discipline and reform their wealthy and self-destructive friend Toad, who lives in a splendid mansion known as Toad Hall.

Sylvie and Bruno was the last novel completed by Lewis Carroll and was published in two parts. The first volume, which is the subject of this recording, appeared in 1889. The story is presented by an unnamed narrator, who oscillates between two worlds: a fantasy fairyland, populated by characters similar to those in Alice in Wonderland, and the real world environs of a small village by the sea, in which the narrator has taken up temporary residence for health reasons.