Showing results by author "Richard Le Gallienne" in All Categories

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. They can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere. The zenith of Empire is bookended by two catastrophic wars that slaughter vast swathes of humanity. And yet authors manage to record and create fragile libraries of humanity, its talents, its dreams and increasingly its nightmares.

Although unfamiliar with the Persian language, the eminent English poet and critic Richard le Gallienne had a profound interest in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. In 1901 he published a collection of 261 quatrains, which was based on earlier English translations, in particular the prose version by Justin Huntly McCarthy. In his introduction, Le Gallienne suggests that his ignorance of Persian was in fact an advantage as it allowed him to focus on producing good poetry rather than merely an accurate translation.

Richard Thomas Gallienne was born in Liverpool on 20th January, 1866. His first job was in an accountant's office, but this was quickly abandoned to pursue his first love as a professional writer. His first work, My Ladies’ Sonnets, was published in 1887. In 1889 he became, for a brief time, literary secretary to Wilson Barrett the manager, actor, and playwright. Barrett enjoyed immense success with the staging of melodramas, which would later reach a peak with the historical tragedy The Sign of the Cross (1895).

In 1890 W. B. Yeats and Ernest Rhys founded a poetry club. Based mainly at Fleet Street’s immortal ‘Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese’ pub, with occasional appearances at the Domino room in the Café Royal, poets gathered together to dine and drink. Whilst it was based on a core of poets, many others attended on an ad hoc basis including Oscar Wilde, Francis Thompson & Lord Alfred Douglas. The camaraderie, banter and poetry that played out in their dreams, ambitions and for many, their difficult lives led Yeats to call them ‘the tragic generation’.

Richard Le Gallienne was a notable example of the Bohemian literary figure. He travelled widely, had many acquaintances among notable figures of his day, including Oscar Wilde, Rupert Brooke, and John Cowper Powys, and worked through a long series of romantic relationships. However, his poetic verbiage is economical and disciplined, and free from rhetorical affectation. This collection was published in 1895, and reflects the mature style of the poet.

At some point in our lives we believe that creak, that low moan, that whisper is something unnatural, beyond our comprehension. And in these stories our instincts are right. We are afraid. And we should be. Perhaps even terrified. In this volume our classic authors take different approaches, but the result is inevitably the same. We are hooked by these unknowable forces, our emotions heightened and rattled by the expectation - or shock - of the next few words.

Love. Perhaps the one word solution for everything. An emotion, a state of mind that we strive for, search for. A wondrous force that binds, inspires, and a force that can spin out of control; unbalanced and fragile. Love reflects, changes and embraces us all. The capture of love in this life is a very special happening, it may only strike us once, and for some perhaps never. But what if those on the ‘other side’ have designs on us? What if their desire is just so strong that we can’t resist? Can true love survive?

Quest of the Golden Girl follows a man on a whimsical yet deeply philosophical journey to find the woman of his dreams. Along the way, he encounters a series of intriguing characters, each teaching him something new about love, destiny, and life itself. A thought-provoking and romantic pilgrimage.