CATALOGUE OF OUR LITERATURE BOOKS AND eBOOKS
ARRANGED IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER BY AUTHOR
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AVERY, ALAN
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These five one-act plays were written to stimulate debate in the faith community over such topics as the after-life (Stardust Melody), growing old (Now We Are Sixty), faith (The Word), pacifism (George Fox and Margaret Fell Get Stuck in a Lift) and Christian beliefs (One of That Despised People).
Five One Act Faith Plays by Alan Avery. 9781906259273 130 pages. Paperback 23.5 x 15.5 cms £4.99 eBook £2.99 |
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This book is written for men over 65 who want to lose weight and improve their fitness and sense of well-being.
The author has been on the journey over the last three years, losing weight, improving his fitness and gaining a sense of well-being. The book is realistic, understanding the demands of a busy life or a life which has been largely sedentary. It does not make excessive claims or make rash promises. Improvements are achieved gradually following exercises and diets suitable for the senior citizen but which have enough of a challenge to achieve the desired results. Changes made are long-lasting because they are achieved in a time-frame which allows the body and mind to adapt at its own pace and does not merely rely on superficial quick fixes. Weight Loss, Fitness and Well-being for Men Over 65 by Alan Avery 9781906259631 92 pages. Paperback. 15.24 x 22.86 cms £7.99 eBook £4.99 The ten authors published in this book: Patrick Belshaw, Tom Bryan, Alan Bryant, Paul B. Cohen, Aoife Inman, Barbara Murray, Joanne Preston, Stephen Edward Reid, Stephen Wade and Glenda Young were chosen by the Ryedale Book Festival judges as the best ten from the many entrants for the Blackthorn Press Short Story prize that they received.
Ten Short Stories for the Ryedale Book Festival edited by Alan Avery 9781906259501 126 pages. Paperback. 19.5 x 13.5 cms £9.99 eBook £6.99 |
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Every known British bird is illustrated in full colour and described in this check list.
There is information on where to see the birds and when to see them. This book is a basic tool for someone beginning bird watching as well as an aide-memoire for the more experienced ornithologist. Birds of the British Isles by Alan Avery 9781906259457 160 pages. Paperback. 19 x 10.5 cm £14.99 AVERY, ANTHONY |
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AVERY, HAROLD |
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The Wizard’s Wand, was written in 1908 by Harold Avery. It is chosen from his large output as being a typical school story but, it can be argued, it is the precursor of work by Enid Blyton and J K Rowling, dealing with school life, five children who go on an adventure and a mystical wizard who ends the story not with a wave of a wand but with kindness and consideration.
The Wizard's Wand by Harold Avery 9781906259235 200 pages 23.5 x 15.5 cms £14.95 eBook £0.99 |
BELSHAW, PATRICK
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From the lonely parsonage at Haworth in the West Riding of Yorkshire, the Bronte sisters led a solitary life, blighted by death and the reckless behaviour of their only brother Branwell. All the girls longed for marriage and children yet only Charlotte eventually married her father's curate only to die in pregnancy the following year. Death, loneliness and unfulfilled longings are the themes of these gripping poems.
Selected Poems by the Bronte Sisters 9781906259266 70 pages paperback 23.5 x 15.5 cms £6.99 eBook £0.99 |
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Here are ten of Charles Dickens most loved Christmas Stories featuring 'A Christmas Carol', the story of Mr Scrooge and the visit of the three spirits. The ten tales are: A Christmas Carol, The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton, A Christmas Tree, What Christmas is as we Grow Older, The Poor Relation's Story, The Child's Story, The Schoolboy's Story, Nobody's Story, The Holly Tree, The Seven Poor Travellers.
eBook £0.99 |
EDWARDS, DOROTHY
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The central theme of these thirteen short stories, mirrors Dorothy Edwards’ own life; that of people’s inability to fully empathise with each other. Her characters mix on a social level, often over tea or at the piano or on walks but when they fully reach out to each other, only disappointment ensues as they fail to come into human contact on anything but a superficial level. The stories are both sad and moving and deserve a wider audience.
Rhapsody and Other Short Stories by Dorothy Edwards 9798711781585 235 Pages. Paperback. 20.3 x 12.7 cms £8.99 eBook £0.99 audiobook £16.00 |
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The central theme of Dorothy Edwards' writing, mirrors her
own life, that of the marginalisation of women and the struggle of women to lead independent lives. In Winter Sonata, there is also the seeming inability for the men and women of the novel to connect in any deep way, reflecting Edward’s own lack of empathy. Winter Sonata by Dorothy Edwards 9798711809722 167 Pages. Paperback. 20.3 x 12.7 cms £8.99 eBook £0.99 audiobook £7.34 |
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GALT, JOHN The Howdie and other Tales draw on John Galt's Scottish upbringing to weave a series of character sketches from his youth and adventurous life. The Scots are not always portrayed sympathetically and some of the stories are somewhat flat but characters such as 'The Chief' are comic classics and his tales of early emigrants to Canada ring true. eBook £1.99 |
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HOLTBY, WINIFRED |
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Truth is Not Sober. Winifred Holtby (1898-1935) published six novels and many other publications of poems, pamphlets, short stories and newspaper articles and reviews which revealed her as an outstanding advocate of feminism, socialism and pacifism and a champion of other progressive and humanitarian causes. This collection of her short stories were written between 1923 and 1933 and range over all her interests and from her native Yorkshire to the wider world.
Truth is Not Sober by Winifred Holtby. 9781906259303 176 pages. 15.2 x 22.9 cm £12.99 eBook £2.99. audiobook £16.00 |
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The King James version of the Bible is one of the corner stones of the English Language. The ebook version has the complete text of the 1611 King James Bible with an introduction by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams and 15 colour illustrations by Harold Copping. Not available on Kindle in the UK. eBook £2.99 |
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LAWRENCE, DAVID HERBERT |
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THE NOVELS
The White Peacock, Lawrence's first novel, was begun in 1906, rewritten three times, and published in 1911. This edition uses the final manuscript as base-text, and faithfully recovers Lawrence's words and punctuation from the layers of publishers' house-styling and their errors; original passages, changed for censorship reasons, are reinstated.
eBook £0.99 |
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The Trespasser was Lawrence’s second novel, published in May 1912 and is based on the true story of Helen Corke and Herbert Macartney. The two main criticisms which have been levelled at the novel are its ‘artiness’ and florid prose and the lack of any real sexuality either heterosexual or lesbian. If ‘The Trespasser’ is to be read now, it is for the exquisite descriptions of nature and the hard writing describing the hero’s life at home when he returns from his elicit holiday. eBook £0.99 Paul Morel is made up of the second and third drafts of the book later to become ‘Sons and Lovers’. There is much that is familiar but also much that is new. There are scenes from Lawrence’s early childhood, characters who do not appear in ‘Sons and Lovers’ and events which were perhaps seen as ‘over dramatic’ and discarded from the finished novel. The work is clearly less polished than ‘Sons and Lovers’ but is full of telling detail. Includes the fragment 'Matilda' from 1910. eBook £0.99 |
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Sons and Lovers is D. H. Lawrence's most widely read novel and one of the great works of twentieth-century literature. In 1913, at the time of its first publication, Lawrence reluctantly agreed to the removal of no fewer than eighty passages which until now have never been restored. This edition presents the novel in the form that Lawrence himself wanted - about one tenth longer than the incomplete and expurgated version that has hitherto been available.
eBook £0.99 |
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The Rainbow. For
generations the Brangwen family had worked the earth. Slowly they moved into
the middle classes of Nottingham society, culminating in the daughter Ursula
who was sent to University. But Ursula wants more from life than conformity and
a place in society. She rejects her lover who could have given her that place
and that security and sets off for a life of her own choosing.
eBook £0.99 |
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The Lost Girl. As is usual with Lawrence, he is best when writing about the small provincial societies and people he knew so well and less good when he attempts to be grand and paint on a wider canvas. So the early part of the book rings true while as soon as the story is transposed to Italy it seems contrived. ‘The Lost Girl’ is still worth reading for its picture of provincial life and its insights into the mind of a young woman of her time, trying to be independent and yet caught up with the conventions which support and repress her.
eBook £0.99 |
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'Women in Love' was written in Cornwall in 1916. It is a sequel to his earlier novel ‘The Rainbow’ but did not appear
in Britain until 1921, dogged by opposition and controversy. The main theme of
the book is the relationship between two couples, Birkin and Ursula and Gerald
and Gudrun. Birkin is based on Lawrence himself and there is much in the book
about Lawrence’s own striving for an understanding of what makes for love
between a woman and a man and a man and a man.
eBook £0.99 |
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Lawrence
called Aaron's Rod 'the last of my serious English novels - the end of The Rainbow, Women in Love line.' Written in the years following the First World
War, Aaron's Rod questions many of the accepted social and political
institutions of Lawrence's own generation and raises issues still important in
our time.
eBook £0.99 |
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Kangaroo is Lawrence's eighth novel, set in Australia. He wrote the first draft in
just forty-five days while living south of Sydney, in 1922, and revised it
three months later in New Mexico. The descriptions of the country are vivid and
sympathetic and the book fuses lightly disguised autobiography with an
exploration of political ideas at an immensely personal level.
eBook £0.99 |
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The Boy in the Bush, is a novel whose unlikely genesis
has been surrounded in mystery and the subject of claim and counter-claim. At Lawrence's suggestion an Australian nurse and
part-time author, Mollie Skinner (whom he had met in 1922), wrote a tale set in
late nineteenth-century Western Australia about a newly-arrived young
Englishman's reactions to Perth and the outback. Lawrence then rewrote the story in his own style.
eBook £0.99 Lawrence wrote ‘The Plumed Serpent’ between 1923 to 1924 a time when he was in ill health, living in Mexico and becoming dependent on his wife Frieda. The plot revolves around a movement to replace the Christian God with the old pre-conquest gods, such as Quetzalcoatl, the plumed serpent of the title. We forgive Lawrence's politics because of the beauty of his writing and his ability to get beneath the surface of the country he describes. eBook £0.99 audiobook £22.89 |
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Lawrence wrote three drafts of ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ between 1926 and 1928: ‘The First Lady Chatterley’s Lover', ‘John Thomas and Lady Jane’ and the final version, ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’. All three books are published as ebooks and paperbacks by the Blackthorn Press. Although all three books have the same story line of an aristocratic woman falling in love with a working class man, there are differences in their tone and sensibilities. This first version is less sexual, more political and looks more closely at the conflict within Connie Chatterley as she comes to terms with her love and desire for a 'common' man.
9781730821462 282 pages 12.70 x 20.32 cm £12.99 eBook £0.99 |
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Lawrence wrote three drafts of ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ between 1926 and 1928: ‘The First Lady Chatterley’s Lover', ‘John Thomas and Lady Jane’ and the final version, ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’. All three books are published as ebooks and paperbacks by the Blackthorn Press. Although all three books have the same story line of an aristocratic woman falling in love with a working class man, there are differences in their tone and sensibilities. Many critics have preferred this, the second version, for its greater depth of understanding between the two main characters and for the more detailed explanation of the character of Clifford Chatterley.
9781729347089 392 pages 12.70 x 20.32 cm £12.99 eBook £4.99 audiobook £16.88 |
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‘Lady Chatterley's Lover’, despite its infamy, remains one of the most powerful novels written in the 20th century. Its frankness and honest examination of the human sexual condition liberated a generation. This is the full and unexpurgated version of the text.
9781730755644 338 pages 12.70 x 20.32 cm £12.99 eBook £0.99 |
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‘Mr Noon’ is D H Lawrence. The novel continues where ‘Sons and Lovers’ left off and relates Lawrence’s affair with Frieda Lawrence and their elopement to Europe. The main difference between the two novels is one of tone. ‘Sons and Lovers’ was always serious with little humour and Lawrence was never fully objective in his treatment of his early life. ‘Mr Noon’ on the other hand is full of humour and Lawrence adopts a gentle, almost mocking tone as he examines his later life. ‘Mr Noon’ is not finished and was not published in Lawrence’s life time.
eBook £0.99 |
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What makes for a successful novella and how good is
Lawrence's 'The Fox'? Without the space available in the full novel, the author
of a novella has to focus on a limited cast. This is usually the relationship
between a couple with the occasional outsider to trigger a conflict, or bring
about a realisation of the reality of the relationship. In The Fox the original
couple are Banford and March who are probably lesbians but the appearance of
the young soldier, Henry, makes March change her breeches for a skirt and
commit herself to marriage with the younger man.
eBook £0.99 |
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Lawrence wrote ‘St Mawr’ in the spring of 1924 and
it was published in the following year. F. R. Leavis described the novella as
presenting ‘a creative and technical originality more remarkable than that of
‘The Waste Land’ ‘St Mawr’ is a stallion which seems beyond control but is kept
by a rich young American girl and her mother who see the horse as ‘some living
background into which she wanted to retreat’ from the ‘battle of the wills’.
But they are defeated and rejected by society and return with the horse to
America.
eBook £0.99 |
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‘The Man Who Died’ was originally published in Paris in 1929 as ‘The Escaped Cock’ It gives a rational explanation of the resurrection of Christ. Lawrence commented on the story, ‘Church doctrine teaches the resurrection of the body; and if that doesn’t mean the whole man, what does it mean? And if a man is whole without a woman then I’m damned.’
eBook £0.99 |
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‘The Virgin and the Gipsy’ was published after Lawrence’s death in 1930. It tells the story of two sisters (perhaps based on Frieda Lawrence’s daughters) who live in a stultifying rectory with their dreadful grandmother, weak father and frustrated aunt. The girls are torn between the need to lead a ‘respectable’ life and the need to fulfil themselves both socially and sexually. The older sister finally breaks free when a flood forces her into the arms of a sensual Gipsy.
eBook £0.99 |
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'The Ladybird' is based on the life of Lady Cynthia Asquith. Lawrence saw that her natural sensitivity was being suppressed by the upper-class conventions which surrounded her and doomed her to marriage with a ‘finished being like herself.’ It can be seen as the forerunner of ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ in which the theme is explored more thoroughly and explicitly.
eBook £0.99 |
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'The Captain's Doll' is Lawrence at his best, ironically probing the relationships between men and women. Lawrence found it all very amusing and gently mocks the upper classes who make ‘suitable’, loveless marriages and then live behind the lie. The hero refuses to play the game and asserts, ‘if a woman loves you, she’ll make a doll out of you.' eBook £0.99 |
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The Selected Letters of D H Lawrence The life of D H Lawrence told through his letters. 100 annotated letters. Illustrated. Lawrence wrote thousands of letters throughout his life. This selection of 100 traces his life from a young man leaving school to his death in France in 1930. 9781906259570 176 pages. 15.6 x 23.4 cm £9.99 eBook £2.99. |
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THE COMPLETE PLAYS
All of Lawrence’s eight plays and two unfinished fragments are collected in this single volume. It was not until the rediscovery of his plays in the late twentieth century that their quality was recognised and they are now regularly performed. 9781906259129 Paperback 370 pages. 15.6 x 23.4 cm Book £19.95 eBook £6.99 |
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COMPLETE POETRY
For the first time, all of Lawrence’s poetry is collected in a single volume. The settings range from the scenes of his Nottinghamshire boyhood and his teaching years to the world of his travels, but the poems always encompass the eternal in the particular. It was Lawrence’s genius to mirror the joy of life and human sexuality in the small scenes of everyday living. This volume contains such popular poems as 'Snake' and 'Piano' along with every known Lawrence poem, variations and early versions. 9781906259563 Paperback 734 pages. 15.6 x 23.4 cm £19.95 eBook £6.99. |
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COMPLETE TRAVEL WRITING
For the first time, all of Lawrence's travel writings are collected in one book and amongst the popular works such as 'Twilight in Italy' are to be found comparative rarities such as 'Introductions to the Memoirs of MM' . 9781906259167 Paperback 588 pages. 15.6 x 23.4 cms Book £19.95 eBook £6.99 |
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THE COMPLETE SHORT STORIES For the first time, all of Lawrence's sixty-seven short stories are collected in a single volume. The settings range from the scenes of his Nottinghamshire boyhood and his teaching years to the world of his travels but the stories always encompass the eternal in the particular. 9780954630096 Paperback 650 pages. 15.6 x 23.4 cm Book £24.95 eBook £6.99 |
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'A Prelude' was written by D H Lawrence in 1907. It was the first of his sixty-seven short stories, all of which will be published individually in ebook format by the Blackthorn Press. The story is set on a Nottinghamshire farm and tells the tale of two lovers, almost separated by class and money but brought together by passion and love.
eBook £0.99 audio £1.13 |
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'A Modern Lover' was written by D H Lawrence in 1909. A young man returns home to his first love to declare his feelings for her but the moment is lost when the girl will not give herself sexually. This theme was to be explored fully in Lawrence’s novel, ‘Sons and Lovers’.
eBook £0.99 audiobook £5.68 |
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'Goose Fair' was written by D H Lawrence in 1910. Lawrence sets his story against the backdrop of the industrial troubles caused by the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. A young woman is torn between her need for a lover and her contempt for what she perceives to be his dishonesty in the burning down of a mill. Is all love a compromise between the ideal and the reality of life?
eBook £0.99 audiobook £2.88 |
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'The Christening' was written by D H Lawrence in 1911. Lawrence is at his best in this story, taken from the scenes of his childhood and based on characters he knew intimately. The theme of the unmarried mother, and the frictions the situation caused in the family and in the local community were further explored in his play ‘The Daughter-in-Law’. In this story, the emphasis moves around each member of the family and the visiting clergyman as the tensions in family life are released.
eBook £0.99 audiobook £2.88 |
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‘Odour of Chrysanthemums’ was written by D H Lawrence in 1911. Lawrence is at his best in this story, taken from the scenes of his childhood and based on characters he knew intimately. He reworked the story in the play, ‘The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd’ but in this short story version, Lawrence sees the tragic episode through the eyes of the wife. The theme of a loveless marriage, redeemed by death is one which Lawrence was to come back to in other stories.
eBook £0.99 audiobook £5.68 |
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‘Daughters of the Vicar’ was written by D H Lawrence in 1911. The main themes of the story are the class system which dominated society at the time and the pressures put on the young lovers who have to overcome it and the position of women in society who have nothing to offer but their bodies. For the sake of security and position one daughter makes a loveless marriage whilst the other daughter gives all that up for love. eBook £0.99 audiobook £6.82 |
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'The Miner at Home' written by D H Lawrence in 1912. Lawrence is at his best in this story, taken from the scenes of his childhood and based on characters he knew intimately. The scene can hardly be called a story in the traditional sense, being the altercation between a miner and his wife over an impending strike but as a picture of a working miner’s family, rich in detail and the Nottinghamshire dialect, it has a fascination and vividness.
eBook £0.99 audiobook £2.88 |
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'Her Turn' was written by D H Lawrence in 1912. Lawrence is at his best in this story, taken from the scenes of his childhood and based on characters he knew intimately. The scene can hardly be called a story in the traditional sense, being the altercation between a miner and his wife over the sharing of strike pay. Lawrence keeps the story light-hearted, almost comical but the tensions of married life in hard times are just below the surface.
eBook £0.99 audiobook £2.88 |
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'Delilah and Mr Bircumshaw was written by D H Lawrence in 1912. Lawrence is beginning to move away from his working class roots in this story, and exploring the relationship of a middle-class couple who have a slight argument, egged on by the wife's friend. Bircumshaw loses his dignity and self-respect for the comforts of married life. For all his insights into women, the misogynist in Lawrence can be detected.
eBook £0.99 audiobook £2.88 |
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'A Chapel and a Hayhut among the Mountains'. This piece of writing falls between the short story and travel writing but is presented here as a short story largely because it depicts the warm love between Lawrence and his wife Frieda (Anita in the story) as they begin their life of travel together.
eBook £0.99 |
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'Once' was written by D H Lawrence in 1912. The story is largely autobiographical, written when Lawrence and Frieda (Anita in the Story) had fled England together to live in Austria and Italy. Frieda had had an affair while they were in Austria and she told Lawrence about it. 'Once' explores Lawrence's reactions to being betrayed while still being in love and desiring the betrayer.
eBook £0.99 audiobook £2.88 |
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'New Eve and Old Adam' was written by D H Lawrence in 1912. The story is largely autobiographical, telling the simple tale of an argument between a husband and wife, reflecting the difficult time Lawrence and his new wife Frieda were having. What was the place of a woman to be in a modern marriage? Lawrence argued that it was the woman's place to submit or unhappiness would ensue at it did in this story. The wife is unable to submit to her husband and the marriage disintegrates.
eBook £0.99 audiobook £5.68 |
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'Love Among the Haystacks' was written by D H Lawrence in 1912. Lawrence returns to the scenes of his young manhood with farming scenes and life he experienced when courting Jessie Chambers at Haggs Farm in Nottinghamshire. Two brothers find love in two different women, both out of the ordinary for farm lads. Both men are redeemed from their rivalry for each other and their suppressed sexuality by the first experiences of love on the same night.
eBook £0.99 audiobook £5.68 |
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'Christs in the Tirol' is more of an essay on this peculiar art form than a short story, it is included in this series as forming part of Lawrence's record of his wanderings in Europe and partly as a record of Lawrence's attitude to religion and death and foreshadowing his own eventual suffering and death.
eBook £0.99 audiobook £1.74 |
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'Second Best' was written by D H Lawrence in 1912. In this delicate story of boy-girl love, Lawrence is at his best, intertwining the feelings of the two lovers with the natural world around them, the countryside, flowers and fields and the moles who are sacrificed to bring the lovers together. The young girl may consider her lover 'second best' but his passion and honesty ring true.
eBook £0.99 audiobook £2.88 |
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In 'Strike Pay', Lawrence returns to the scenes of his boyhood in Eastwood in Nottinghamshire. A group of miners, liberated from work by a strike, enjoy a day out but the hard realities of home life and mothers-in-law await their return. Tinged with good humour and the sense of comradeship among the miners and finally between the miner and his wife, this story epitomises working life before the Great War.
eBook £0.99 audiobook £2.88 |
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'The Shades of Spring' In this story the hero has moved on in the world and is married yet cannot forget his old love. He retraces the steps to her farm hoping for what? He finds his old love attached to a physical young man who can give the girl what he could not - pure physical love - and this she prefers to his more intellectual love.
eBook £0.99 audiobook £2.88 |
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'The Prussian Officer' There is an anti-militarism theme, unpopular as the nation drew near to war and an examination of latent homosexuality as the officer in the story struggles with his feelings for his orderly. The young soldier is driven beyond breaking point but finds a kind of redemption in his final return to natural surroundings and, symbolically, he finds equality in death with his tormentor as they are put side by side in the mortuary.
eBook £0.99 audiobook £5.07 |
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‘The Thorn in the Flesh’ was written by D H Lawrence in 1914. The story can be read in tandem with 'The Prussian Officer' which was written in the same year and has a similar setting and theme. In this story, the young soldier fights against his own shortcomings as a soldier and as a man. He flees the scene of his crime into the arms of his lover where he finds solace and comfort but he cannot escape the inevitable military machine that Lawrence hated.
eBook £0.99 £5.07 |
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'A Sick Collier' Lawrence returns in this story to the scenes of his childhood and the colliers he was brought up with. The wife in the story is probably based on his mother although the husband is unlike the drinking, brutal father portrayed in 'Sons and Lovers', Lawrence's autobiographical novel. The story is a vivid portrayal of the life of a young couple when an accident strikes the husband down but does not succeed as a short story, lacking any clear focus or message.
eBook £0.99 audiobook £2.88 |
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'The White Stocking' In this beautifully observed study of a new marriage and the sexual tensions that run through it, Lawrence returns to his theme that happiness in marriage can only come with the submission of the woman to the man. The young wife strains against the bonds of being married and dallies with another man but returns to the arms of her husband once he shows his true feelings for her.
eBook £0.99 audiobook £3.93 |
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'The Shadow in the Rose Garden' Lawrence is often accused of misogyny and this story used as evidence against him. There is the simple but honest mine worker, who has taken on a wife who is 'above' him but who is struggling to understand her and her feelings for him. Slowly, the story unravels the woman's past. The reader cannot be entirely unsympathetic to her plight, Lawrence is too good a writer to let that happen, but her dishonesty has probably ruined two lives and our feelings are for the husband.
eBook £0.99 audiobook £2.88 |
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'England, My England' The story is set in the years before the Great War of 1914, seen by some as an idyllic time of sunshine and peace before everything was shattered by the mechanised war of 1914 to 1918. The family are placed in an idealised setting, deep in the English countryside but there are snakes in this Garden of Eden. There is conflict between man and woman, brought to the fore by an accident to a child and there is the seeming purposeless life led by the husband. The story ripples with the eugenic theories popular at the time yet the conflicts are finally solved by the horror of the war.
eBook £0.99 audiobook £8.48 |
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'The Thimble' Lawrence moves here to the world of the affluent middle classes, a world to which he perhaps aspired. The story is a touching one of a disfigured husband returning home from the war to a beautiful new wife. The thimble of the story can be seen to represent purposeless, surface beauty, which has no function. The husband casts the thimble away but can this marriage survive the surface damage and find a deeper meaning?
eBook £0.99 audiobook £2.88 |
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'Samson and Delilah' is set against a Cornish backdrop. Lawrence and his wife tried to settle in Cornwall during the First World War but were hounded by the authorities and forced to leave. Lawrence pointedly describes the local people as' mindless' in this story. It is almost a Homeric story of a husband returning home after a long absence, having to fight to regain his wife. But in this story it is the wife who is the obstacle. But she succumbs to the man's physical presence as Lawrence demanded all women should if they were to attain happiness.
eBook £0.99 audiobook £2.88 |
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'Tickets Please' returns Lawrence to his native Nottingham during the war. The social revolution of women doing jobs previously done by men, also begins to change the relationship between the sexes and the women in the story are aggressive and wanting their rights. But are they happier for conquering the flighty male in the story or is the domination of man by woman one step too far only generating hate and unhappiness?
eBook £0.99 audiobook £2.88 |
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'Rex' is a riotous story of the turmoil caused in a household by the arrival of a puppy. The setting is similar to the one found in 'Sons and Lovers' but Lawrence thought this scene deserved the fuller treatment of a short story. The question of the destructive force of unconditional love is left open.
eBook £0.99 audiobook £2.88 |
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'The Witch à la Mode' The hero of the story returns to England to undertake a 'respectable' marriage but is drawn to see the passionate love of his life once more. Their mutual passion attracts and repels the couple in equal measure but the young man pulls away in a literal fire of passion. He escapes from the witch of his desires to the respectability he craves but we wonder if he can be truly happy without the sensual side of his life being satisfied.
eBook £0.99 audiobook £2.88 |
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'Wintry Peacock' is, on the surface, it is a tale of misdirected love or even irresponsible love, the relationship between the wife and the peacock being the most strange but it is the conspiracy of the two men in the story to prevent the truth coming out about the husband's love child that is most disturbing. The innocent are punished and the guilty get away with their sins and the author goes laughing down the hill at the end of the story.
eBook £0.99 audiobook £2.88 |
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'Fanny and Annie' The theme of the woman for whom the man is not 'good enough' is worked out fully in Lawrence's novel 'Sons and Lovers'. The story is beautifully observed as are the relationships in working families of the time. The suspense of 'will she, won't she marry him' is kept on the boil until the last line of the story. 'Fanny and Annie' is a small masterpiece of a short story.
eBook £0.99 audiobook £2.88 |
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‘The Wilful Woman’ was written by D H Lawrence in 1922. 'The Wilful Woman' remained unfinished and so the tough, spoiled, rich American woman, used to having her own way, does not get the nemesis Lawrence may have had in mind for her. Whether it was the Wordsworthian lessons of nature as she battles her way through the American wilderness or the harder lessons of a waiting husband who may or may not want her, we will never know.
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‘Monkey Nuts’ was written by D H Lawrence in 1922. 'Monkey Nuts' turns the traditional love story on its head. It is the woman (the new liberated woman Lawrence had little time for) who does the chasing and the boy who is reluctant. Lawrence seems to be saying it is the unspoken love between the two men in the story which is more satisfying than the possible love between the man and the woman which the boy rejects. Although the older man goes through the motions of chasing the girl, even he seems to realise the sterility of one-sided love.
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‘The Horse Dealer's Daughter’ The story, gripping in its content, encompasses the terror of death and disgrace, redeemed by passion and sexuality. The question Lawrence leaves open is whether the doctor's avowal of love is genuine or driven by the awakening of his own sexuality and pity for the woman.
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'The Overtone' looks at a sterile marriage with no children and no spontaneous sexual feeling between the couple. Lawrence seems to lose interest in the story, although he introduces a younger woman, who walks away baffled at the end. His purpose seems to be to analyse the relationship between men and women in religious terms - Christianity for the women and the old Pan religion for the men. Lawrence produces some fine writing but the argument at the end of the story seems contrived.
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'The Princess' of the story is a spoiled, sexless woman who is thrown in with a passionate man whom she takes into her bed and then rejects. This rejection leads to his ultimate death. Lawrence again pleads his case for the necessary domination of woman by man and shows the sterility of a life lead without sexual passion. Set against the bleak mountains of South America, it is one of Lawrence's most enduring tales.
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'The Border Line' is unusual in that Lawrence dabbles in the supernatural (as he was to do again in 'The Rocking-Horse Winner' two years later) and that this is less a story in the traditional sense and more an exploration of the mind of a particular woman, based on his own wife, Frieda. Katherine, in the story, realises that her real love was her first husband whom she should, according to Lawrence, have submitted to to gain real happiness. As Lawrence says in the story, thinking of his German wife perhaps, 'Beyond all race is the problem of man and woman'.
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'Jimmy and the Desperate Woman' tells the improbable story of an intellectual editor persuading a working woman to live with him. We would say now 'on the rebound' from a failed marriage but Lawrence crosses the class divide and poses questions about what makes us attracted to other people. The intellectual twists and turns of the magazine editor contrast nicely with the stark honesty of the spurned miner husband.
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'The Flying Fish' is unfinished but tells the story of an Englishman, Gethin Day, returning home after years in South America. There is a hint of the home-sickness Lawrence may have felt during his long exile. The bulk of the story is the time spent on the ship which is taking Day back to England. It is a ship of fools, a 'plague ship' and the only positive note is the joy Day sees in the play of the flying fish and porpoises around the ship. It is tantalising to speculate how Day would have adapted to English life again, confined to an old house in an old country.
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'Sun' is a sensual story of a woman rediscovering her sexuality through the power of the sun. But for the unexpected arrival of her businessman husband she was ready to give herself to a local peasant but is finally pulled back to respectability by her husband. But she is free to remain apart from him in the sun.
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‘The Woman Who Rode Away’ is a dark troubling story set in the wilderness of South America. What makes this story compelling is that the woman at the end of her personal tether and the Indians at the end of their cultural one, seek one another out for terrible, but perhaps predictable, uses. Each of them looks to the other for "salvation" in a way that expresses the desperation and futility of their situation.
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‘Smile’ is one of Lawrence's shorter pieces, a thumbnail sketch of an idea. A man is relieved that his wife is dead and struggles to hide his relief when confronted with his wife's body. The relief breaks out in a smile which he struggles to excuse. How much better it would have been, Lawrence seems to be saying, if he had just laughed out loud!
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‘The Last Laugh’ is another of Lawrence's supernatural stories, set in a dreamlike snowy London. The question left open is who the three people in the story saw on the snowy evening. Perhaps Pan, returned to destroy the Christian God, as the church is destroyed in the story and to bring love to the frigid young woman in the form of a policeman who is prevented from leaving the house. But why the other quite harmless, and Platonic lover, had to die is a mystery. Perhaps because he had made love to a Jewess?
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'The Rocking Horse Winner' is one of Lawrence's more popular short stories with its mixture of the supernatural and it moral lesson of the corrupting nature of the love of money. But it has nothing new to say on the subject and without the central core of Lawrence's passion for what he is writing, seems somewhat trite.
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'None of That' concerns itself with the nature of desire. The man in the story is no more than an animal with base instincts but is attractive to women. The woman looks for something deeper, with imagination but in the end is brought down by the more instinctive man. Lawrence again seems to be saying that a woman cannot exist beyond the control of a man, however crude and can only bring unhappiness on herself if she tries to live on her own terms.
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'The Undying Man' is a slight unfinished piece, drawing its inspiration from Shelley's 'Frankenstein' about the creation of life and the fear of death. It is interesting to speculate where Lawrence would have gone with the story but the sound of broken glass is the most likely ending.
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'The Man Who Loved Islands' is a haunting story of a man who tries to control his life by making his world ever smaller by moving to increasingly smaller islands. Each one proves to be beyond his ability to control either other people or his sexual desire and finally the last island conquers him. The story can even be seen as a metaphor of man's inexorable march to death when we are all finally alone.
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'The Lovely Lady' is a fine observation of a life - the lovely lady of the title - which thrives by sucking the life out of others. The two victims escape by a somewhat melodramatic and comical means but in the process destroy the lovely lady and form what will probably be a dull and passionless union.
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'The Man Who Was Through With the World' picks up the same themes as in Lawrence's short story 'The Man Who Loved Islands'. He asks if we can ever withdraw from the world, no matter how much it disgusts us. The ironic part of this fragment is that the hermit vainly seeks to think holy thoughts while all around him is the natural world which could provide his life with meaning. The fragment is unfinished leaving the reader to wonder if the hero would return to the world, would the world come to him or would nature take its course and let him die in his hut.
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'Two Blue Birds', the classic triangle of the man, the wife and the secretary, struggle to work out what their relationships are with each other. Neither of the women seem to want the man sexually but the secretary offers devotion while the parasitic wife has more insight into the man and his work. All the relationships seem unhealthy, all three seem to want something different but are incapable of expressing what they desire.
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'A Dream of Life', is unfinished but there is enough extant to let us know where Lawrence was going in this story. He begins by looking back and bemoaning what has become of his generation, under the thumb of women and lacking the spark of his father's mining friends. Then in a scene reminiscent of 'Pilgrim's Progress' he travels forward in time and sees his village in the distant future. The people are living in an idealised commune but do they have the spark of life?
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'The Blue Moccasins' has the charm of looking at some eternal human problems such as unequal marriage, the waning of sexual desire and a woman who cannot give herself wholly to her husband in a thoroughly English and local setting; the stage of an amateur dramatic society where all the passions and delusions come to a head.
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HENRY MEDWALL et al Ten Tudor Comedies. The Tudor stage was dominated by Shakespeare, Marlowe, Webster and Jonson yet, as this book shows, there were many other playwrights of note working at the time to fulfil the demand for secular plays. They should not be seen as precursors of the four great playwrights but craftsmen working in their own right producing plays of note, many of which influenced their better known contemporaries. Ten Tudor Comedies 9798738710421 15.6 x 23.4 cm 561 pages paperback £19.95 ebook £6.99 MORE, HANNAH Betty Brown is one of Hannah More's morality tales about a poor street urchin who is saved by kindness and Christian piety. It seems stilted to a modern reader but this short story is worth it for the splendid figure of Mrs Sponge, a female Fagin. ebook £0.99 |
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OWEN, WILFRED |
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This volume contains all of Owen's poetry, including his own Preface, an Introduction by Siegfried Sassooon and a Memoir by Edmund Blunden. It has been said that Owen's poems shaped the attitude of a generation to the futility and tragedy of war.
Complete Poems by Wilfred Owen 9781906259372 128 pages. Paperback. 15.6 x 23.4 cm £7.99 ebook £2.99 |
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The Chronicles of Albert Snodgrass
It is the reign of King ETHELBERT the flatulent. It is a small kingdom, with a small wall around it and a large forest around the small wall. It is sunny. And it is raining. And it is sunny again. One of the King’s subjects is Albert Snodgrass, known to all as Snodgrass, though no one knows why, as he was not green, had very few tufts of turf on his head and was decidedly not snodlike. The King had a wise old advisor, called Hedgebert, though known to all as Merlin. . Unknown to all in the kingdom, there was a secret scriptorium, where Gamelin the Lean was chronicling the events he witnessed. This Chronicle was retrieved from Time’s dustbin, and it is recorded here for the first time. 979-8359941662 Paperback 91 pages. 15.6 x 23.4 cm Book £6.99 SWIFT, JONATHAN Swift's 'Directions to Servants' is a witty satire aimed at the masters and mistresses of those servants, who, though no saints, deserved better treatment. eBook £0.99 TOLSTOY, LEO |
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Leo Tolstoy (1828 – 1910) is perhaps better known for his epic novels, such as War and Peace and Anna Karenina but he was also a prolific writer of novellas and short stories.
This collection of three stories, written for older children, does not shy away from asking demanding questions. The strong narrative drive holds the attention initially but when the story is finished, there are questions to be asked about justice and faith — (God Sees the Truth, but Waits), fortitude — (A Prisoner in the Caucasus) and finally pity — (The Bear-Hunt). These simply told but complex stories are a fitting introduction to one of the world’s great authors. eBook £0.99 Tales of Army Life not only dramatizes the campaigns Tolstoy experienced as seen through the eyes of young officers but points to his later convictions. No details of the horror and pointlessness of war is spared the reader nor the contrast with the simple lives of the country folk they encountered compared with the ‘sophisticated’ lives of the Russian officers. 9781906259594 241 pages. Paperback. 15.6 x 23.4 cm £12.99 ebook £2.99 TROLLOPE, ANTHONY The Wit and Wisdom of Anthony Trollope Anthony Trollope was a giant of the Victorian literary scene producing forty-seven full length novels as well as short stories, articles and an autobiography. Professor Blaisdell’s book contains 534 quotations culled from all these works. Edited by Bob Blaisdell. 0954053567 118 pages paperback 21.5 x 13.5 cms £4.99 eBook £0.99 |
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The Complete Short Stories This collection contains all forty-two of Trollope’s known short stories which range over every continent from The West Indies to the shores of New Zealand. Although the plots may seem repetitious, we forgive Trollope because of his wit, good sense and wide-ranging canvass. 9781906259556 722 pages. paperback 15.6 x 23.4 cms £19.95 eBook £4.99 Linda Tressel was written in 1868 and although a love story, it is a much darker novel, dealing with religious fanaticism and its blighting effects on a simple, cloistered girl. The story is set in Germany but Trollope, no doubt, had his eye on fanatics in England and his cause is that of toleration and common sense. eBook £0.99 |
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Miss Mackenzie was written in 1865 and looks at the love of a mature couple, John Ball and Miss Mackenzie. There are echoes of earlier novels, with love and fortune won and lost and clergymen acting as the villains. But the story is memorable for its treatment of how a lone woman could maintain her dignity while relying on the hope of marriage. Trollope pushes the bounds of writing about sexual attraction as far as the limits of his day would allow and the bedroom scene between the two lovers remains in the mind. eBook £0.99 North America Vols 1 & 2. Trollope visited North America at the time of the American Civil War and wrote, not only about the war but with humour and sympathy on all things American he saw on his travels. The book was well received in America, but met with a certain amount of British hostility because of its championing of the individual and American attitudes to equality. eBook £0.99 |
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Rachel Ray was written by Anthony Trollope in 1863 and tells the simple story of the eponymous heroine and Luke Rowan. Wrapped around this central tale, Trollope examines in his liberal and wry way, the lot of Victorian women. Mrs Prime, a tough , unlovable widow, faces the problems of modern women, wanting a husband and social standing but not willing to give up her financial independence or her chance to make her mark in the world. Interestingly, Trollope’s treatment of the clergymen in this novel is largely unsympathetic. eBook £0.99 |
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Any reader opening this ebook hoping to find a new Anthony Trollope novel set in New Zealand will be disappointed. The New Zealander takes its title from a prophecy by Lord Macaulay that one day, in the distant future a ‘New Zealander standing on the ruins of London Bridge’ would view the ruins of London in much the same way that tourists viewed the ruins of ancient Rome. All things must pass, even the great British Empire.
eBook £0.99 ‘Travelling Sketches’ were written by Trollope for the Pall Mall Gazette and then gathered and published by Chapman and Hall in 1866. These brief, benevolent pieces on the Englishman and woman abroad are of historic value but also ring true of the modern tourist – ‘If I may venture to give two words of advice to those of my fellow-countrymen who travel frequently during their vacations, and who feel on self-examination that they have not hitherto in reality liked their tourings, in those two words I will advise them both to affect less and to perform less.’ eBook £0.99 |
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WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM
The words of William Wordsworth are part of the fabric of the English language. His poem 'The Daffodils' was voted the second most popular poem in England (after Kipling's 'If') and phrases jump off the page like old friends when seen in their original setting: 'The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.' Wordsworth and the other 'Romantic' poets taught the public to appreciate the rural life and the lessons nature could teach on the living of the simple life, so apposite today. Selected Poems by William Wordsworth 9781906259181 92 pages Paperback 15.6 x 23. 4 £4.99 eBook £0.99 |
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