Showing results by narrator "Peter Joyce" in All Categories

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.

This book was the inspiration for an enormous achievement. The Peoples Palace for the entertainment and instruction of the working class was opened in the East End in 1887, five years after the book was published. It had changed peoples lives and was an incredible support for those who had previously no art gallery, theatre, library, concert hall or gymnasium.

Hamlet was written between 1597 and 1600, just after the death of Shakespeare’s only son, Hamnet, one of twins, who died aged 11 in 1596. Despite scholarly argument that this was mere coincidence, it is impossible to believe that a writer as sensitive as Shakespeare would not be questioning the reason for the life and death of his son during those years.This production contends that Hamlet was to a large degree shaped by the answers to those questions.

A romantic adventure yarn of plotting and corruption largely set against the panorama of Imperialist Russia but with some of the skulduggery taking place in the major capitals of Europe. An old Etonian and half Russian, Prince Paul Alexis, inherits the Osterno estate in the Steppes. Naive and honest, but helped by experienced campaigner Steinmetz, he forms a progressive but illegal Charity League to succour the needs of the starving uneducated peasantry who are ravaged by cholera.

David Herbert... Lawrence was born into a mining family in Nottinghamshire in 1885. He created his finest work shortly after the finish of the First World War. Two of the themes in his writing are the gradual disintegration of the class system and the customs and sexual mores of people across class divisions. What made Lawrence unusual was the combination of this subject matter with the style of his direct, modern prose.

"Stacy Aumonier was profoundly in love with life, and impregnated through and through by curiosity about life and its manifestations. All types were fish to his net; and he has given us the fruits of his passion for existence with a deft and always interesting fidelity. He is never heavy, never boring, and never really trivial and can't he write?" John Galsworthy. The stories are: Miss Bracegirdle Does Her Duty, "Face",

Queen Victoria... and Prince Albert were married in 1840. Dickens uses this event as an ingenious ploy to salute and promote domestic felicity, advising young ladies upon several examples of the different types of male available as partners. There follows a section describing various married couples from whom the young ladies could possibly learn a lesson. The author then entertains with a tale of Nicholas Tulrumble, newly appointed Mayor of Mudfog, with ideas above his station.

"To Paragot I owe everything. He is at once my benefactor, my venerated master, my beloved friend, my creator." Thus begins the story of one of the greatest characters of English Literature - Paragot the lovable Bohemian and celebrated Bon Vivant. A young urchin from the London slums is adopted by the hero and given an adventurous education traveling through Europe, tambourine player in a group of ragamuffin musicians.

Inspired by an actual terrorist attack on Greenwich Laboratory in 1894 ‘The Secret Agent’ is arguably Conrad’s greatest work. Mr. Verloc, the spy, is roused to action by his masters. He is to instigate an act ‘of destructive ferocity so absurd as to be incomprehensible, inexplicable, and almost unthinkable; in fact, mad’. All does not run smoothly however and leads to Mr Verloc’s wife, Winnie, demonstrating how quickly rational equilibrium can change to frenzied destruction.

An exciting... adventure indeed as the Seagrave family, en route to Australia, are shipwrecked and become castaways on a desert tropical island. Thankfully Masterman Ready, a good man to have in a crisis, is on hand to build shelter and solve the many problems they encounter- to build a fish pool, catch turtles and how to cultivate the available resources .

Written in 1926...and published posthumously [without the authors customary revision] in 1930, The Virgin and the Gypsy is a minor masterpiece in short story writing. It provides an excellent introduction to Lawrence’s work, being a succinct distillation of his ideas about sexuality and its ability to transcend class barriers. Yvette and her sister Lucille come back from finishing school in Lausanne with a much broader outlook on life than the inhabitants of the cloistered world to which they return.

Written in 1926... and published posthumously [without the authors customary revision] in 1930, The Virgin and the Gypsy is a minor masterpiece in short story writing. It provides an excellent introduction to Lawrence’s work, being a succinct distillation of his ideas about sexuality and its ability to transcend class barriers.

This painfully funny slice of Cuban-American life in the suburbs is a cross between a Hispanic soap opera and an ethnic comedy with political overtones. This deft play can turn serious or silly in an instant and you’ll need a scorecard to keep track of the cascading and frequently arboreous calamities. A full-cast performance featuring: Max Casella, Peter Michael Goetz, Valerie Harper, Alexuna Lambros, Anna Sophie Loewenberg, Jonathan Silverman, and Joyce Van Patten.

In 'Washington Square' James treats on a subject about which he was passionate - the relationship between parents and their children. Dr Sloper, a wealthy man, is in a difficult position. His son has died aged three years old. His wife also dies within two weeks of giving birth to their surviving daughter Catherine. She is a plain awkward child, yet capable of giving immense affection. She becomes fascinated by would-be man of the world Morris Townsend, falling in love with him very swiftly. Is Morris a fortune hunter?

A Master of Craft was written in 1900. It was said of W.W.Jacobs that he was one of the few writers who succeeded in being deliberately humorous. In this yarn, dedicated to his wife, he tells of marital mishap and misadventure among mariners in the East End of London. Will Poppy Tyrell find happiness? What are the dark secrets of Cap’n Flower? Rest assured that all will be revealed and there will be a happy ending.

"This story is the record of a struggle between two temperaments, two consciences and almost two epochs. It ended, as was inevitable, in disruption. Of the two human beings here described, one was born to fly backward, the other could not help being carried forward. The affection of these two persons was assailed by forces in comparison with which the changes that health or fortune or place introduce are as nothing.

Dr. Wortle's School... is Trollope's most merciless attack on the false moralising and hypocrisy of the Victorian age. When Dr. Wortle, in good faith, hires a couple as teacher and matron at his school, scandal about their marriage is subsequently brought to light. Will the doctor submit to the social pressures brought to bear on him by the gossip, the local newspaper and the bishop or hold true to his humanism, perhaps losing his respect, school and livelihood as a result?

O. Henry was the greatest short-story writer of his day. His characters may be from America at the turn of the century, but their foibles and eccentricities are known to us all, irrespective of culture or time. This selection includes such classics as: 'The Gift of the Magi', 'A Service of Love', 'Makes the Whole World Kin', 'Let Me Feel Your Pulse', and, of course, 'Between Rounds'.

It is 1899. Old Jolyon has long since been buried at Robin Hill, and with the death of Aunt Susan in 1895 and Roger’s funeral opening this instalment of the Saga, the Forsytes are fast becoming aware of their mortality. Yet more problems beset the family.