Showing results by narrator "Linda Barrans" in All Categories

Persuasion was the last novel completed by Jane Austen and was first published posthumously in December, 1817. The story represents an interesting configuration of Austen’s characteristic narrative patterns. The heroine, Anne Eliot, is something of an old maid—she is twenty-seven years old, still single and is considered by family and friends to have lost her youthful beauty. Several years earlier, her engagement to Captain Frederick Wentworth had been broken off, due to the insistence of her family that the Captain lacked the wealth and status needed for a suitable husband.

Pride and Prejudice is Jane Austen's classic comic romance, in which the five Bennet sisters try to find that most elusive creature: a single man in possession of a large fortune. Sparks fly when sweet, pretty Jane meets their new neighbor, Mr. Bingley, but her sister Elizabeth is offended by his haughty friend, Mr. Darcy. This is Jane Austen at the height of her powers, complete with ironic narration, hilariously drawn supporting characters, and romantic suspense.

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.

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.

Few of Emily Dickinson’s poems were published in her lifetime. Her posthumous fame is largely due to the efforts of her editors and supporters Thomas W. Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd.

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.

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?

In January 1817, Jane Austen began work on Sanditon, but died a few months later, leaving it unfinished. The surviving fragment begins the story of Charlotte Heywood, a sheltered young woman who is invited to the up-and-coming resort town of Sanditon. While there, she meets a host of memorable characters, drawn with Austen's classic wit and insight, including a fortune-hunting fop, a domineering dowager, and a hoard of hypochondriacs.

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.

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.

Wildly popular in its day, George du Maurier's Trilby is set in Paris of the 1850s. The book is funny, romantic, and full of glowing characters. It tells how Trilby, a young figure model, befriends three young British painters. She is adorable: not beautiful at first sight, but with the world's most perfect feet. She shocks them all when she tells them casually that she poses for 'the ensemble'—the altogether. Too quick to love and trust, she soon loves all three of them—and Little Billee, the youngest and sweetest, returns her affections.

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.

King Claudius, when a young man, wrote a five-act tragedy which was damned, and all reference to it forbidden under penalty of death. The King has a son - Hamlet - whose tendency to soliloquize has so alarmed his mother, Queen Gertrude, that she has sent for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to devise some Court revels for his entertainment. Rosencrantz is a former lover of Ophelia, to whom Hamlet is betrothed, and they lay their heads together to devise a plan by which Hamlet may be put out of the way. Some Court theatricals are in preparation.