These British Isles, moored across from mainland Europe, are more often seen as a world unto themselves. Restless and creative, they often warred amongst themselves until they began a global push to forge a World Empire of territory, of trade and of language.
Here our ambitions are only of the literary kind. These shores have mustered many masters of literature. So this anthology’s boundaries includes only those authors who were born in the British Isles - which as a geographical definition is the UK mainland and the island of Ireland - and wrote in a familiar form of English.
Whilst Daniel Defoe is the normal starting point we begin a little earlier with Aphra Behn, an equally colourful character as well as an astonishing playwright and poet. And this is how we begin to differentiate our offering; both in scope, in breadth and in depth. These islands have raised and nurtured female authors of the highest order and rank and more often than not they have been sidelined or ignored in favour of that other gender which usually gets the plaudits and the royalties.
Way back when it was almost immoral that a woman should write. A few pages of verse might be tolerated but anything else brought ridicule and shame. That seems unfathomable now but centuries ago women really were chattel, with marriage being, as the Victorian author Charlotte Smith boldly stated ‘legal prostitution’. Some of course did find a way through - Jane Austen, the Brontes and Virginia Woolf but for many others only by changing their names to that of men was it possible to get their book to publication and into a readers hands. Here we include George Eliot and other examples.
We add further depth with many stories by authors who were famed and fawned over in their day. Some wrote only a hidden gem or two before succumbing to poverty and death. There was no second career as a game show guest, reality TV contestant or youtuber. They remain almost forgotten outposts of talent who never prospered despite devoted hours of pen and brain.
Keeping to a chronological order helps us to highlight how authors through the ages played around with characters and narrative to achieve distinctive results across many scenarios, many styles and many genres. The short story became a sort of literary laboratory, an early disruptor, of how to present and how to appeal to a growing audience as a reflection of social and societal changes. Was this bound to happen or did a growing population that could read begin to influence rather than just accept?
Moving through the centuries we gather a groundswell of authors as we hit the Victorian Age - an age of physical mass communication albeit only on an actual printed page. An audience was offered a multitude of forms: novels (both whole and in serialised form) essays, short stories, poems all in weekly, monthly and quarterly form. Many of these periodicals were founded or edited by literary behemoths from Dickens and Thackeray through to Jerome K Jerome and, even some female editors including Ethel Colburn Mayne, Alice Meynell and Ella D’Arcy.
Now authors began to offer a wider, more diverse choice from social activism and justice – and injustice to cutting stories of manners and principles. From many forms of comedy to mental meltdowns, from science fiction to unrequited heartache. If you can imagine it an author probably wrote it.
At the end of the 19th Century bestseller lists and then prizes, such as the Nobel and Pulitzer, helped focus an audience’s attention to a books literary merit and sales worth. Previously coffeehouses, Imperial trade, unscrupulous overseas printers ignoring copyright restrictions, publishers with their book lists as an appendix and the gossip and interchange of polite society had been the main avenues to secure sales and profits.
Within these volumes are These British Isles, moored across from mainland Europe, are more often seen as a world unto themselves. Restless and creative, they often warred amongst themselves until they began a global push to forge a World Empire of territory, of trade and of language.
Here our ambitions are only of the literary kind. These shores have mustered many masters of literature. So this anthology’s boundaries includes only those authors who were born in the British Isles - which as a geographical definition is the UK mainland and the island of Ireland - and wrote in a familiar form of English.
Whilst Daniel Defoe is the normal starting point we begin a little earlier with Aphra Behn, an equally colourful character as well as an astonishing playwright and poet. And this is how we begin to differentiate our offering; both in scope, in breadth and in depth. These islands have raised and nurtured female authors of the highest order and rank and more often than not they have been sidelined or ignored in favour of that other gender which usually gets the plaudits and the royalties.
Way back when it was almost immoral that a woman should write. A few pages of verse might be tolerated but anything else brought ridicule and shame. That seems unfathomable now but centuries ago women really were chattel, with marriage being, as the Victorian author Charlotte Smith boldly stated ‘legal prostitution’. Some of course did find a way through - Jane Austen, the Brontes and Virginia Woolf but for many others only by changing their names to that of men was it possible to get their book to publication and into a readers hands. Here we include George Eliot and other examples.
We add further depth with many stories by authors who were famed and fawned over in their day. Some wrote only a hidden gem or two before succumbing to poverty and death. There was no second career as a game show guest, reality TV contestant or youtuber. They remain almost forgotten outposts of talent who never prospered despite devoted hours of pen and brain.
Keeping to a chronological order helps us to highlight how authors through the ages played around with characters and narrative to achieve distinctive results across many scenarios, many styles and many genres. The short story became a sort of literary laboratory, an early disruptor, of how to present and how to appeal to a growing audience as a reflection of social and societal changes. Was this bound to happen or did a growing population that could read begin to influence rather than just accept?
Moving through the centuries we gather a groundswell of authors as we hit the Victorian Age - an age of physical mass communication albeit only on an actual printed page. An audience was offered a multitude of forms: novels (both whole and in serialised form) essays, short stories, poems all in weekly, monthly and quarterly form. Many of these periodicals were founded or edited by literary behemoths from Dickens and Thackeray through to Jerome K Jerome and, even some female editors including Ethel Colburn Mayne, Alice Meynell and Ella D’Arcy.
Now authors began to offer a wider, more diverse choice from social activism and justice – and injustice to cutting stories of manners and principles. From many forms of comedy to mental meltdowns, from science fiction to unrequited heartache. If you can imagine it an author probably wrote it.
At the end of the 19th Century bestseller lists and then prizes, such as the Nobel and Pulitzer, helped focus an audience’s attention to a books literary merit and sales worth. Previously coffeehouses, Imperial trade, unscrupulous overseas printers ignoring copyright restrictions, publishers with their book lists as an appendix and the gossip and interchange of polite society had been the main avenues to secure sales and profits.
Within this complete collected edition of 10 volumes are 151 authors and 161 miniature masterpieces of a few pages that contain story arcs, narratives, characters and happenings that pull you one way and push you another. Literature for the ears, the heart, the very soul. As the world changed and reshaped itself our species continued to generate words, phrases and stories in testament of the human condition.
This collection has a broad sweep and an inclusive nature and whilst you will find gems by D H Lawrence, G K Chesterton, Anthony Trollope, Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram Stoker and many, many others you’ll also find oddballs such as Lewis Carroll and W S Gilbert. Take time to discover the black humour of Violet Hunt, the short story craft of Edith Nesbit and Amy Levy, and ask why you haven’t read enough of Ella D’Arcy, Mary Butts and Dorothy Edwards.
The Track Listing. Volume 1: The Unfortunate Bride by Aphra Behn; The History of the Pirates by Daniel Defoe; Directions to Servants (Footman & Chambermaid) by Jonathan Swift; The Female Husband by Henry Fielding; Betty, The Orange Girl by Hannah More; The Changeling by Mary Lamb; The White Pigeon by Maria Edgeworth; The Tapestried Chamber by Walter Scott; The Sea Voyage by Charles Lamb;
The Metropolitan Emigrant by John Galt; The Spectre of Tappington by Richard Harris Barham; The Mourner by Mary Shelley. Track Listing of Volume 2: The Prediction by Mary Diana Dods (who wrote as David Lyndsey); South West & by West Three Quarters by West Frederick Marryat; The Vampyre. A Tale by John William Polidori; The Indian Orphan by Letitia Elizabeth Landon; The First Evening by Catherine Crowe; The Botathen Ghost by Reverend R S Hawker; The Sexton''s Hero by Elizabeth Gaskell; A Little Dinner At Timmin''s by William Makepeace Thackeray; The Trial for Murder by Charles Dickens; The Baron of Grogzwig by Charles Dickens; The Lake Pibble Pobble by Edward Lear; Reality or Delusion by Mrs Ellen Wood (aka Mrs Henry Wood); Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter by Sheridan Le Fanu. Track Listing of Volume 3: Malachi''s Cove by Anthony Trollope; Napolean and the Spectre by Charlotte Bronte; The Knitted Collar by Mary Anne Hoare; The Lifted Veil by George Eliot; The Dream Woman by Wilkie Collins; Stephen Archer by George MacDonald; Frida or The Lover''s Leap by R D Blackmore; The Last House in C Street by Dinah Craik; A Story of a Wedding Tour by Margaret Oliphant; The Gospel of Content by Frederick Greenwood; The Phantom Coach by Amelia Edwards; The Blank Cheque by Lewis Carroll; Photography Extraordinary by Lewis Carroll; The Ghost in the Clock Room Hesba Stretton (also known as Sarah Smith). Track Listing of Volume 4: The Last of Squire Ennismore by Charlotte Riddell; Alexander the Ratcatcher by Richard Garnett; The Face in the Glass by Mary Elizabeth Braddon; The Astounding Adventure of Wheeler J Calamity, Related by Himself by W S Gilbert; The Story of the Rippling Train by Mary Louisa Molesworth; Fiddler of the Reels by Thomas Hardy; Mr Sprouts, His Opinions. A Night in Belgrave Square by Richard Whiteing; The Ghost at the Rath by Rosa Mulholland; The Papers of Basil Filimer by Harry Duff Traill; Many Waters To Quench by Louisa Baldwin; An Unexpected Fare, A Tale in Five Chapters by Mary Tuttiett (writing as Maxwell Gray); The Burial of the Rats by Bram Stoker; A Queer Business by William Edward Norris; A Rainy Day by Mary Elizabeth Hawker (writing as Lanoe Faulkener) The Body Snatcher by Robert Louis Stevenson; The Only Son of Aoife. A chapter from ''Cuchulain of Muirthemne'' by Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory. Track Listing of Volume 5: A Novel in a Nutshell by George Moore; The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde; The Hired Baby, A Romance of the London Streets by Marie Correlli (Mary Mackay); The Runaway by Marion Hepworth Dixon; Long Odds by H Rider Haggard; Shut Out by F Anstey (Thomas Anstey Guthrie); St George of Rochester by Henry Wodd Nevinson; Amour Dour by Violet Paget (writing as Vernon Lee); My Flirtations. A Chapter by Ella Hepworth Dixon writing as Margaret Wynham; Irremediable by Ella D’Arcy; A Capitalist by George Gissing. Track Listing of Volume 6: The Informer by Joseph Conrad; An Edited Story by Morley Roberts; An Irish Problem by Somerville & Ross (the writing pseudonym for Edith Somerville & Violet Florence Martin); From the Dead by Edith Nesbit; A Rich Woman by Katharine Tynan; A Saga of the Seas by Kenneth Grahame; Mutabile Semper by Kenneth Grahame; Freckles by William Pett Ridge; The Lesson by Jerome K Jerome; The Cabman''s Story. The Mysteries of a London Growler by Arthur Conan Doyle; The Striped Chest by Arthur Conan Doyle; Her Murderer by Mary Cholmondeley; The Dust of Death by Fred Merrick White; Lucy Wren by Ada Radford; A Lost Masterpiece by Mary Chavelita Dunne Bright (writing as George Egerton); The Inconsiderate Waiter by J M Barrie; The Christ of Toro by Gabriela Cunninghame Graham; Cohen of Trinity by Amy Levy; The Mezzotint by M R James; Rats by M R James; The Coach by Violet Hunt. Track Listing of Volume 7: Suggestion by Ada Ester Leverson (also known as Mrs Ernest Leverson); Young Alf. Being a Chapter from the book ''Hooligan Nights'' by Clarence Rook; Foreordained by Anthony Hope; A Successful Rehearsal by Anthony Hope; How They Stopped the ''Run'' by Anthony Hope; The Bowmen by Arthur Machen; Red Tape by May Sinclair (Mary Amelia St Clair); The Monkey''s Paw by W W Jacobs; Tales of Mean Streets – Lizerunt by Arthur Morrison; The Omnibus by Arthur Quiller-Couch; A Resurrection by H B Marriott Watson; Cheating the Gallows by Israel Zangwill; An Idyl of London by Beatrice Harrenden; The Diary of a God by Barry Pain; The Love Germ by Constance Cotterell; An Immortal by Sidney Benson Thorp; A Pen-and-Ink Effect by Frances E Huntley (the writing pseudonym for Ethel Colburn Mayne); Far Above Rubies by Netta Syrett; A Melodrama - The Union by T Baron Russell; Dhoya by W B Yeats; My Honoured Master by Catherine Amy Dawson Scott; The Mysterious Death on the Underground Railroad by Baroness Orczy. Track Listing of Volume 8: The Phantom Rickshaw by Rudyard Kipling; Second Thoughts by Arthur Moore; The Haunted Orchard by Richard Le Gallienne; The Lizard by C J Cutcliffe Hyne; The Ides of March by E W Hornung; All Soul''s Eve by Dora Sigerson Shorter; The Crystal Egg by H G Wells; Jezebel of Valley Farm by Edward Phillips Oppenheim; Two or Three Witnesses by C E Montague; The Crimson Weaver by R Murray Gilchrist; The Matador of the Five Towns by Arnold Bennett; Caterpillars by E F Benson; Apple Blossom in Brittany by Ernest Dowson; The Salvation of a Forsythe by John Galsworthy; The Coin of Dionysius by Ernest Bramah. Track Listing of Volume 9: Scarlet Runners by James S Pyke-Nott; The Kit Bag by Algernon Blackwood; Thurnley Abbey by Perceval Landon; Puppies and Otherwise by Evelyn Sharp; Passed by Charlotte Mew; Modern Melodrama by Hubert Crackanthorpe; The Cobweb by Saki; The Hounds of Fate by Saki; A Little Holiday by Oswald Valentine Sickert; Chopin Op 47 by Stanley Victor Makower; Fear by Catherine Wells; The Scaremongerer by Ford Maddox Ford; Pink Flannel by Ford Maddox Ford; As The Crow Flies by John Davys Beresford; The Miracle by John Davys Beresford; The Resurrection of Father Brown by G K Chesterton; Contrairy Mary by Edwin Pugh; The Death Room by Edgar Wallace; The Loathly Opposite by John Buchan; Where Was Wych Street by Stacy Aumonier; Carnacki, The Ghost Finder - No 1 - The Gateway of the Monster by William Hope Hodgson. Track Listing of Volume 10: The Connoisseur by Percival Gibbon; The Blind Man by James Stephens; Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself by Radclyffe Hall; Blessed Are the Meek by Mary Webb; Solid Objects by Virginia Woolf; Araby by James Joyce; Major Wilbraham by Hugh Walpole; August Heat by W F Harvey; A Modern Lover by D H Lawrence; Limehouse Nights - Gracie Good Night by Thomas Burke; Private Meyrick, Company Idiot by Cyril McNeile (who wrote as Sapper); The Waxworks by A M Burrage; After the Funeral by Mary Butts; Sophy Mason Comes Back by E M Delafield; The Casualty List by Winifred Holtby; Rhapsody by Dorothy Edwards.
151 authors and 161 miniature masterpieces of a few pages that contain story arcs, narratives, characters and happenings that pull you one way and push you another. Literature for the ears, the heart, the very soul. As the world changed and reshaped itself our species continued to generate words, phrases and stories in testament of the human condition.
This collection has a broad sweep and an inclusive nature and whilst you will find gems by D H Lawrence, G K Chesterton, Anthony Trollope, Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram Stoker and many, many others you’ll also find oddballs such as Lewis Carroll and W S Gilbert. Take time to discover the black humour of Violet Hunt, the short story craft of Edith Nesbit and Amy Levy, and ask why you haven’t read enough of Ella D’Arcy, Mary Butts and Dorothy Edwards.
Track Listing of Volume 10: The Connoisseur by Percival Gibbon; The Blind Man by James Stephens; Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself by Radclyffe Hall; Blessed Are the Meek by Mary Webb; Solid Objects by Virginia Woolf; Araby by James Joyce; Major Wilbraham by Hugh Walpole; August Heat by W F Harvey; A Modern Lover by D H Lawrence; Limehouse Nights - Gracie Good Night by Thomas Burke; Private Meyrick, Company Idiot by Cyril McNeile (who wrote as Sapper); The Waxworks by A M Burrage; After the Funeral by Mary Butts; Sophy Mason Comes Back by E M Delafield; The Casualty List by Winifred Holtby; Rhapsody by Dorothy Edwards
