Showing results by narrator "Denis Daly" in All Categories

Spring Awakening (German: Frühlings Erwachen) was the first major play by Frank Wedekind. It was written in the early 1890s but, due to opposition from censorship authorities, was not presented on stage until 1906. The play explores two contentious themes: the development of adolescent sexuality and the repressive nature of the German education system.

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."

Although the historicity of Sun Tzu is today in dispute, his short treatise on the art of war has remained a pre-eminent classic of military philosophy and practice. In this small audiobook, the author describes in trenchant detail the approach and methods required for success in any combative endeavor. The principles he enunciates have been widely applied not only by leaders in the military but also in business, politics, sports, and education.

In the introduction, anthologist Douglas Sladen stated that the purpose of this collection was "to lay before the English public a selection of poems inspired by life and scenery in Australia". He further comments, "This volume is essentially the work of people who have meditated in the open air and not under the lamp; and if its contents oftentimes want the polish that comes only with much midnight oil, they are mostly a transcript from earth and sea and sky, and not from books."

Unlike many of his contemporaries, the English poet Francis Thompson (1859-1907) was a true mystic. While more celebrated poets, like Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Arnold, were content to express their religious leanings in traditional devotional formulae, Thompson strove to portray the divine directly, in all its terrifying majesty. In this way he is more akin to earlier masters, like Henry Vaughan and George Herbert, than to the poets of his own day.

In recent times the philosophy and practices promoted by the New Thought movement have attracted much attention through the burgeoning of the self-help industry and films such as "The Secret." Among New Thought authors, William Walker Atkinson was not only one of the most eminent, but also one of the most prolific. One of his most notable works is the mental training manual, Your Mind and How to Use It, first published in 1911. A new recording of a self-help classic, narrated by Denis Daly.

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 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.

Duke Vincentino, the ruler of Vienna, fears that under his mild sovereignty, the people may have become lazy and lax. He decides to “go over cover” in the disguise of a monk and appoint his deputy, Angelo, who is a reputed paragon of virtue, as temporary ruler. On assuming power, Angelo inaugurates draconian provisions regarding sexual propriety. One of the first victims of this new regime is young Claudio, who has impregnated his lover Juliet, and is accordingly sentenced to death.

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.

Amongst all the figures in the history of Western art forms, Beethoven is one of the most radical and influential. Not only did he produce some of the most celebrated and recognizable music of all time, but his influence dramatically accelerated the development of musical composition. He was instrumental in raising the status of the composer from that of a court servant to one of an independent artist.

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?

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.

This collection of Japanese poetry was compiled and translated into English from an anthology known as The Collection of Myriad Leaves, and from a number of other anthologies made by imperial decree between the tenth and fifteenth centuries. This period has come to be considered the golden age of Japanese literature. These examples of Japanese poetry exhibit the most exquisite polish, allied with an avoidance of every shocking or perturbing theme; they combine the enduring luster of a precious metal with the tenuity of gold-leaf.

This enigmatic scripture is attributed to the mysterious sage Lao Tze, who is believed to have lived in the sixth century BCE. In the present translation by religious scholar Paul Carus, the title is presented as The Canon of Reason and Virtue, and in the body of the text Carus renders the word usually translated as “Tao” as “reason.” This book is an extract from the author’s larger work, Lao-Tze’s Tao Teh King. The latter contained an historical introduction, the Chinese text, a transliteration, explanatory notes and an index, including the Chinese terms.

The Invisible Man was the fourth sci-fi novel written by Wells in the 1890s. The main character, Griffin, is one of the intimidating villains in all popular literature. The archetypal "mad scientist," Griffin devotes himself to an obsessive study of optics and realizes his ambition to render livings things permanently invisible. After making a cat invisible, he successfully applies the procedure to himself. After causing chaos in London, he travels to the village of Iping in Sussex and takes up residence in a local hotel.

William Wordsworth composed hundreds of sonnets, among which are some of his best-known poems. The sonnet form particularly suited Wordsworth, enabling the poet to encapsulate the beauties of mundane life in language of appealing directness and simplicity. This recording contains 122 poems, ranging across many decades of Wordsworth’s writing career.

The four canonical gospels contain little information about the childhood of Jesus. To provide details of this period, a number of infancy gospels were composed in the second century, the text of this recording being one of the most notable. In this book, the sketchy infancy narrative of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke is embellished in great detail. The events of Jesus’ boyhood days, richly garnished with tales of miraculous feats and the occasional visitation of punishment on unfortunate delinquents, are also described.

This collection was published posthumously in 1869 under the title of Petits Poèmes En Prose, but is also known as Le Spleen de Paris. A prime influence was Gaspard de la Nuit, the prose poem collection by Aloysius Bertrand. Baudelaire described these short pieces as experiments, and also "confessions." The poet was seeking to create "the miracle of a poetic prose, musical without rhythm and without rhyme, subtle and staccato enough to follow the lyric motions of the soul, the wavering outlines of meditation, the sudden starts of the conscience."

Pierre Loti (1850-1923) was a French naval officer, traveler, and novelist. Many of his novels deal with exotic themes, drawn from the author's experiences in India, Turkey, and the Middle East. Lives of Two Cats, first published in 1900, is an affectionate memoir about two cats who were cared for by the author's mother and aunt during his extended periods of travel.