Classic English Style

Homer's Odyssey is the thrilling and moving tale of the wanderings of the hero Odysseus after the end of the Trojan war. For ten years he experiences storms, shipwrecks, and seductions as he tries to find a way home to Ithaca, contending with the wrath of Poseidon but protected by Pallas Athena. Meanwhile, his wife Penelope is beset by suitors who believe him dead.

Jean-Michel La Grenouille has a lot going for him. He's a prince. Handsome. Filthy rich. And definitely charming. But he also spent his first few years as a fly-catching, pond-dwelling frog. All that saved him was the kiss of The One, the girl who saw nobility through his slimy form and fell into True Love. Okay, fine. Technically she was a toddler who tried to eat him, but whatever. The curse broke, and as long as he finds and marries her by his 30th birthday, he's a free man.

Widely known as the master of horror, Edgar Allan Poe has held the world enraptured for more than 150 years with his dark and powerful works. This collection will sweep you away into a world of literary brilliance.

Paradise (Paradiso) is the third canticle of Dante Alighieri's world-renowned narrative poem describing the poet's journey through the realms of the afterlife. Here Dante is guided by his beloved Beatrice through the nine celestial regions of Paradise, leading to the last, Empyrean Heaven, the dwelling place of God and the angels.

The Witch of Atlas is a poetic narrative, written in 1820 and published posthumously in 1824. The witch is the daughter of the Pleiades, the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione. The plot is built around her adventures, during which she creates an androgynous creature, Hermaphroditus, who is both the companion of and the servant to the witch. She plays a series of pranks upon mankind, with the ultimate aim of revealing the essential foolishness of oppression and conflict and enabling the realization of a final Utopia.

Many masters employed the form of the sonnet, including Petrarch, Spenser, Shakespeare, Keats, and Robert Bridges. However, the most celebrated, and oft quoted, examples are to be found in the collection by Shakespeare, first published in 1609. In the 154 poems, Shakespeare surveys and dissects the subject of love in all its guises, and its relationship with youth, age, illness, death, and memory.

Paradiso is the third and final part of The Divine Comedy, Dante's epic poem describing man's progress from hell to salvation. In it, the author progresses through nine concentric spheres of heaven. Corresponding with medieval astronomy, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn deal with the four cardinal virtues Prudence, Fortitude, Justice, and Temperance. The remaining two spheres are the fixed stars and the Primum Mobile, containing the purely virtuous and the angels, followed by the Empyrean, or God itself.

This is a story from the Canterbury Tales II: Modern Verse Translation collection.

Drum-Taps is a collection of poetry written by Walt Whitman during the American Civil War and first published in 1865. Drum-Taps contains poems that bear witness to the violence of war.

Down through the millennia the emotion of love has inspired countless poets to great heights of lyrical expression. In this volume listeners can sample great love poems by English and American poets. Spanning over four centuries of literary creation in the service of amour, the works include a selection of Shakespeare's sonnets, John Donne's "The Ecstasy", William Blake's "The Garden of Love", Robert Burns' "The Banks o'Doon" and "John Anderson My Jo", Lord Byron's "She Walks in Beauty", and more.

A collection of classic erotic poetry including "The Kiss", "A Woman Waits for Me", and "Between Your Sheets".

Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. Originally published in 1667 in ten books and later revised to twelve, here Anthony Quayle reads book 1 and book 4.

"Ex Oblivione" is a prose poem by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft, written in late 1920 or early 1921 and first published in The United Amateur in March 1921, under the pseudonym Ward Phillips. It is written in first person and tells of the dreams of a presumably dying man. In his dreams, the man is walking through a valley and encounters a vine-covered wall with a locked bronze gate therein. He longs to know what lies beyond the gate.

This collection was published in 1923 and won the Pulitzer Prize for the author in the following year. It is laid out in three main sections. The first is a lengthy poem, titled New Hampshire, the name being given to the entire collection. The second section bears the title "Notes", and consists of 14 poems, including the mini drama, "The Witch of Coös". The final section, which contains 30 poems, many of which are very short, is titled "Grace Notes."

Peter Hartley wrote the poems in this book in a little over a year but they represent many of the joys and some of the sorrows of a lifetime. They reflect a love of Labrador retrievers and penguins, cryptic crosswords, mountains and travel, wild and lonely places, the poetry of Hopkins, baroque music (especially Handel), a dislike for most modern art and architecture, and an extremely odd attitude towards cats. While nearing completion the author’s partner was struck down by motor neuron disease.

A witty, bawdy, erotic but classic collection of poetry designed to celebrate the most sensual of human pleasures. Over the ages, many poets have put pen to paper in celebration of that most raw and yet most beautiful of human instincts - erotic love. This anthology includes verse by Herrick, Marlowe, Jonson, Byron, Verlaine, Whitman, Yeats, Cummings and, from our own time, John Betjeman. All aspects of erotic love are to be found in these poems - from the bawdy to the sensuous and tender.

The best and most engaging portraits of the Romans as living people are to be found in the works like those of the four poets featured in this recording. In Howard Felperin’s lively translations, these pieces become verbal postcards of the era, revealing in exquisite detail the passion and the grief, the joy and the pain experienced by the people of Rome as they deal with the inevitable fascination of love as it permeates their daily lives.

Caliban is a major character in The Tempest by Shakespeare. He is a deformed monster, the offspring of Sycrorax, a witch. Prospero, a magician who presides over the island where Caliban dwells, has made him a servant. This galls Caliban's spirit, as he believes himself to be the rightful ruler of the island. Setebos is the deity who was worshipped by Sycorax and is mentioned by Caliban in two scenes.

Mark Redfield narrates from a specially prepared text for performance by Dickens himself, and performs all of your favorite characters, in this beloved Christmas tale of forgiveness and redemption. Since 1843, “A Christmas Carol” has delighted millions around the globe and has come to embody the spirit of Christmas for all who have been touched by its magic.

This is a story from the Canterbury Tales III: Modern Verse Translation collection.