Showing results by publisher "Spoken Realms" in Themes & Styles

Written when Vita became homesick for her beautiful home in Kent, it had six print runs within three years of its publication in 1926. Vita has always been popular for her gardening, her lifestyle, and bohemian companions like Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury group. Her nostalgia for farming and the beauty of the seasons is described with an artist’s eye for detail.

Isabella, or the Pot of Basil is a Romantic narrative poem of 63 stanzas. Written in 1818 and first published in 1820, it is adapted from a story in Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron. It tells the tragic tale of Isabella and her love for Lorenzo, an employee of her two brothers. John Keats (1795-1821) was one of the foremost English Romantic poets. Despite his early death from tuberculosis at the age of 25 he had a considerable poetic output.

Isabella, or the Pot of Basil (1818) is a poetic retelling of a story from The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio. The poem relates the sad fate of two victims of youthful love. The aristocratic and nubile Isabella is intended for marriage to an eligible suitor but falls in love with the plebeian Lorenzo. Isabella's brothers murder Lorenzo and bury his body, the location of which is revealed to Isabella by a ghost. She exhumes the body and re-inters the head in a pot of basil.

A narrative poem of 14 stanzas, written by Lord Byron following a visit to the Château of Chillon on Lake Geneva in 1816. It was inspired by the story of 16th-century Swiss monk and patriot François Bonivard, held captive in the dungeons of Chillon between 1532 and 1536.

The Iliad, set 9 years into the Trojan War, tells the story of the wrath of Achilles. The Odyssey tells the story of Odysseus as he wearily travels home from the war. The two epics provide the basis of Greek education and culture in the classical age. They have long remained among the most significant poems of European tradition. Produced here in full cast arrangement and narrated by Rob Goll, one can experience these age-old stories in a brand new way.

The Eve of St. Agnes was first published in 1820 in a collection containing many of Keat's best-known poems. Several of these were retellings of stories that were popular in the Middle Ages and earlier times.

Award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti reads "Ode to a Nightingale", a personal poem that describes Keats's journey into a state of negative capability. The tone of the poem rejects the optimistic pursuit of pleasure found within Keats's earlier poems and, instead, explores the themes of nature, transience, and mortality, the latter being particularly relevant to Keats.

In this moody Russian drama, Ivanov is a melancholic impoverished landowner whose wife is dying of tuberculosis. However, he finds himself irresistibly drawn to the beautiful Sasha, the daughter of his wealthy neighbors. Augmented by a diverse array of colorful supporting characters and intrigues, this play provides a glimpse of master dramatist Anton Chekhov's early work.

In this haunting poem, a guest on his way to a wedding reception is stopped by the Ancient Mariner. With his "glittering eye" he transfixes the guest and then relates a compelling tale of a sea voyage fraught with strange happenings. The Mariner tells of journeying through tyrannous storms to ice mast-high, through mist and snow to the deadly inertia of the doldrums. There are unearthly visitations, ill omens, and supernatural happenings - all leading to the revelation of the Mariner's strange fate.

Alexander Pope was celebrated for his command of classical Greek and produced seminal translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Prior to the preparation of these translations, Pope took advantage of his mastery of the classical style and also his waspish wit to compose a burlesque epic about the theft of a lock of hair. The incident that inspired Pope was related to him by his friend John Caryll. Lord Petre had cut off a lock of the hair of Arabella Fermor, whom he was courting at the time, without asking the lady's permission.

Keats commenced writing his epic poem, Hyperion, in 1818 and ceased working on it in the spring of 1819. He said that he gave the project up for having "too many Miltonic inversions." The unfinished poem, which ceases in the middle of the third canto, was published in 1820. The narrative is based on the Titanomachia, or War of the Titans, and describes the aftermath of their fall to the Olympian Gods.

Welcome to Dante's The Divine Comedy, the ultimate journey to Paradise. Follow Italian writer and philosopher Dante Alighieri and his guide, the poet Virgil, through each circle of hell, over the mountain of Purgatory, and ultimately to Paradise, to be reunited with his beloved Beatrice. Dante meets many familiar faces among the sinners and the saved and learns many things of value throughout his long, dangerous journey.

This anthology of twenty poems was Yeats's first major collection after he received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1923.

This poem consists of 11 stanzas of varying length, the first four of which were composed in 1802. These deal with the subject of death, a concept with which Wordsworth confesses to having struggled within childhood.

As the Enlightenment movement was gathering strength in the early 18th century, various challenges to established religious faith were launched. In response, a number of celebrated commentators produced defences of religion and morality, and among these was Alexander Pope, who was inspired to write "some pieces on Human Life and Manners." The result was a collection of poems in rhyming couplets, designated "Epistles", which were published in instalments.

"Ode To Autumn" is a poem by English Romantic poet John Keats. The work was composed on 19 September, 1819 and published in 1820 in a volume of Keats's poetry that included "Lamia" and "The Eve of St. Agnes". "To Autumn" is the final work in a group of poems known as Keats's "1819 odes".

Sappho was a female poet who was well known in ancient Greece and Rome for her lyrical poetry. She was most famous for her poems involving women who loved women, and it is from her name that sapphic, a term referring to sexual relations between women, originated. This is a compendium of her surviving work, a collection of 54 fragments translated by Henry de Vere Stacpoole.

Today Thomas Gray is remembered almost solely for this melancholy meditation on the inevitability of death and the insignificance of fame. The poem was originally thought to have been inspired by the death of Gray's close friend, Richard West, but modern critics think this to be unlikely. Retiring by nature, Gray did not want the elegy to be published, but his hand was forced by an unscrupulous editor who planned to publish the poem without permission. The polished elegance of the versification has ensured that the poem has retained its appeal over the centuries.

Award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti reads 11 lovely love poems. Poems of young love, mature love, lost love, lustful love ,and more. What a way to start a wonderful evening with your lover!

Remember those biggies we loved in high school English? Well, here they are again performed by award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti. You'll hear "Chicago" by Carl Sandberg, "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne, "Because I Could Not Stop for Death" by Emily Dickinson, "Mending Wall" by Robert Frost, "Ode on a Grecian Urn" by John Keats, "Song VII ("My song has put off her adornments")" by Rabindranath Tagore, and who can ever forget "The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot.