Showing results by narrator "Martin Shaw" in All Categories

'It happen'd one Day about Noon going towards my Boat, I was exceedingly surpriz'd with the Print of a Man's naked Foot on the Shore.' Shipwrecked in a storm at sea, Robinson Crusoe is washed up on a remote and desolate island. As he struggles to piece together a life for himself, Crusoe's...

Set in Hardy's Wessex, Tess of the D'Urbervilles is a moving novel of hypocrisy and double standards. Its challenging sub-title, "A Pure Woman", infuriated critics when the book was first published in 1891, and it was condemned as immoral and pessimistic. The novel tells the story of Tess Durbeyfield, the daughter of a poor and dissipated villager, who learns that she may be descended from the ancient family of d'Urbeville.

In a fit of drunken anger, Michael Henchard sells his wife and baby daughter for five guineas at a country fair. Over the course of the following years, he manages to establish himself as a respected and prosperous pillar of the community of Casterbridge, but behind his success there always lurk the shameful secret of his past and a personality prone to self-destructive pride and temper. Hardy’s powerful and sympathetic study of the heroic but deeply flawed Henchard is also an intensely dramatic work.

Oscar Wilde’s only published novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray presents an intriguing idea: the main character, Dorian Gray, allows a painting to be subjected to the consequences of his actions and general aging, allowing him, in turn, to live a carefree and youthful life.

Swift’s scornful satire, written “to vex the world rather than divert it”, takes a caustic look at those most contemporary concerns irrational prejudice, social inequality, ivory tower elitism and the correct way to open a boiled egg. 'I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be...