The book was delivered very quickly and in excellent condition. The book itself is excellent, I only wish in the description it had been mentioned that it was a French version, I did not see the fine print that it was in French. I purchased the book for my art school unfortunately I am the only French speaking person there. I would not have purchased it had I known.

Jean-Leon Gerome’s “Pollice Verso” of 1872
Young Greeks at a cock fight by Jean-Leon Gerome (combat de coqs)
Jean-Leon Gerome The Snake Charmer 1889. Oil on canvas. 33.07 x 48.03 inches
Gerome, The Slave Market, 1867, oil painting, Size 33 3/16 x 24 13/16 inches.
Jean-Leon Gerome, The Moorish bath, 1870. Oil on canvas.
Jean-Leon Gerome, 1869, oil on canvas. Pelt Merchant of Cairo
(1890) Jean-Leon Gerome -Pygmalion & Galatea
Jean-Leon Gerome The End of the Sitting
Jean-Leon Gerome Phryne before the Areopagus 1861
Jean-Leon Gerome Nude Woman Femme nue
Jean-Leon Gerome Lighting the Pipe, The Teaser of the Narghile, 1898
Jean-Leon Gerome A Moorish Bath Turkish Woman Bathing
Jean-Leon Gerome Pool in a Harem of 1876
Jean-Leon Gerome Greek Interior 1848
Jean-Leon Gerome Woman Bathing Her Feet Oil on canvas, 1889
Jean-Leon Gerome Bathsheba, 1889
Jean-Leon Gerome Working in Marble, The Artist’s Model
Jean-Leon Gerome Almehs Playing Chess, 1870
Jean-Leon Gerome An Arab Caravan outside a Fortified Town
Jean-Leon Gerome Anacreon 3
Jean-Leon Gerome King Candaules, 1859
Jean-Leon Gerome Nude Woman
Jean-Leon Gerome Slave Auction

Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations by Christopher Lasch

I think the death of Christopher Lasch was a loss for everyone in America as his was a voice of lucidity on topics which conceptually were beyond the range of our media’s comprehension. This is Lasch’s most famous book and one can certainly see why it would be given the profundity of the title. It’s applicability to our culture is even greater in 2005 than it was in 1979. The text is a lengthy indict of our shallow, consumerist culture which places conformity as one of its paramount values. Perhaps only to Lasch was the transcendence of a therapeutic America evident back in the seventies given that this term has only reached widespread use over the course of the last few years. It’s interesting to wonder what he would make of today’s talk shows emitting their sap through our air waves along with current popular cliches like “I have to love myself before I can love someone else.” After finishing the book, I could not help but wonder about the effect this release had on the political left as his indicts of liberalism are incredibly accurate and persuasive. Although, it was his criticisms of radicalism which will most stir the conservative heart. This one should be read, reread, and read again.

The Revolt of the Elites: And the Betrayal of Democracy by Christopher Lasch

In “the Revolt of the Elites” Christoper Lasch powerfully and persuasively contends that that the values and attitudes of professional and managerial elites and those of the working classes have dramatically diverged. Although the claim is controverted, many of us on the right (especially social conservatives) agree with the quasi-populist/communitarian notion that democracy works best when all members of society can participate in a world of upward mobility and of achievable status. In such a world, members of society will perceive themselves as belonging to the same team and care about ensuring that that team succeeds. But how can society achieve this sort of mutual interdependence if its members are not part of a community of shared values? As Christopher Lasch explains: “[T]he new elites, the professional classes in particular, regard the masses with mingled scorn and apprehension.” For too many of these elites, the values of “Middle America” - a/k/a “fly-over country” - are mindless patriotism, religious fundamentalism, racism, homophobia, and retrograde views of women. “Middle Americans, as they appear to the makers of educated opinion, are hopelessly shabby, unfashionable, and provincial, ill informed about changes in taste or intellectual trends, addicted to trashy novels of romance and adventure, and stupefied by prolonged exposure to television. They are at once absurd and vaguely menacing.” (28)

The tension between elite and non-elite attitudes is most pronounced with respect to religious belief. While our society admittedly is increasingly pluralistic, “the democratic reality, even, if you will, the raw demographic reality,” as Father Neuhaus has observed, “is that most Americans derive their values and visions from the biblical tradition.” Yet, Lasch points out, elite attitudes towards religion are increasingly hostile: “A skeptical, iconoclastic state of mind is one of the distinguishing characteristics of the knowledge classes. … The elites’ attitude to religion ranges from indifference to active hostility.” (215)

Lash claims that the divergence in elite and non-elite attitudes is troubling for the future of democracy. Its hard for me to gainsay him. Yet, while “The Revolt of the Elites” is sobering - even a tad depressing - it deserves to be read even more widely than it has been. Lasch is no partisan. Conservative proponents of unfettered capitalism get bashed about the head by Lasch just as much as liberal critics of capitalism. Populists will find themselves nodding in agreement with some sections, while communitarians will concur with other sections. About the only folks who will be offended by all of “The Revolt of the Elites” are hardened libertarians and extreme left-liberals. Highly recommended.

True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics by Christopher Lasch

I frequently argue that the breadth of Lasch’s moral vision requires a thorough reading of his ouevre, not just an individual title. That said, TRUE AND ONLY HEAVEN comes the closest to encapsulating what Lasch, as one of the last best public intellectuals, had to say. Part of HEAVEN’s success in this regard is its simple length, which allows for a more comprehensive statement. More important, though, is that here finally Lasch is explicitly taking as subject what was his central obsession all along: the locomotive degradation of allegiance to the Jeffersonian ideal in a heedless process called “progress.” Those accustomed to the spirited polemic of his more famous work may find themselves slowed by the more overtly scholarly nature of this one, but the payoff is big in terms of a foundation in the animating ideas of the lifework of the best cultural critic of his era. Lasch is never simple. He is always subtle, and always stoic: he makes Hawthorne and Nietszche look like playground amatuers. More importantly, his perspective is radical enough (meaning, truly alternative–almost anarchic)and his arguments innovative enough that one may finish his book and only think one has read it. A close, careful read, however, will yield a take on the malaise critical to any sort of “progress” in the discourse about the future of democracy in America.

Women and the Common Life: Love, Marriage, and Feminism by Christopher Lasch and Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn

Christopher Lasch was a magnificent cultural commentator who I, and many others far brighter than me, refer to as the American Orwell. He had a scholars eye for inconsistency and a serious regard for the truth–so much so that it continually put him at odds with the political left of which he was a part. Frankly, I saw a couple of the reviews below and laughed out loud as this work is not something one would expect your average feminist to have ever heard of let alone view as a threat to their hegemony. It’s too sober and erudite for them to even process so I’m surprised that any members of the womyn’s studies crowd found their way to this link in the first place. Women and the Common Life is a posthumous collection of essays which were mostly previously published in places like New Republic, Commonweal, and The New York Review of Books. If the reader is even remotely familiar with these publications, he or she will know that they would not be the places in which scathing assaults on feminism can be found. Part history, part philosophy, and part literary review, Women and the Common Life fixes Lasch’s high-brow upon marriage, attraction, and the economic relations between the sexes; although, my favorite chapter was the only one in which he came close to giving out a thrashing, and that was in his dissection of professor, and political operator, Carol Gilligan. Her absurd book, In a Different Voice, unwittingly demeaned women under the pretense of saying that they could not think in the same manner as men because they think differently. Lash skillfully, and subtlety refutes the prevailing nonsense of our day, and it is unfortunate that so few will be exposed to this final work.

The New Radicalism in America 1889-1963: The Intellectual As a Social Type by Christopher Lasch

Lasch’s “The New Radicalism in America,” published in 1965 tells the history of radicalism in America through a series of portraits of well-chosen individuals. Some, such as Jane Addams and Walter Lippmann are still relatively well known, others such as Mabel Luhan Dodge, Lincoln Steffens, Colonel House, and Randolph Bourne as less well-remembered. Part of the appeal of this approach is the how Lasch positions and contrasts these leading and lesser lights within the context of the social and cultural movements they led, followed, or reported upon.

Lasch, the son-in-law of the liberal American historian Henry Commager, belonged to the post WWII generation of historians which searched for more objective ways to tell history than the progressive historians and writers such as Parrington and Croly, and the generation immediately afterwards, for example, Commager. Best known for his “The Culture of Narcissism,” the “New Radicalism in America” is the work of a young historian attempting a critique of the grand, sweeping style of earlier generations, and to tell a story of a rise of a new class of personage on the public stage in America: the intellectual.

The intellectual in America rose out of the ashes of Victorianism. Its earliest avatars came from the bourgeoisie, appalled at the stifling, stunted one-dimensional roles assigned to their parents: the father as breadwinner, the predatory male who proved his fitness in the Spencerian business world, the mother who stayed home to create a haven in a heartless world for her husband and children, and who, as such was the arbiter of Victorian genteel culture and the inculcator of the social graces. For the daughters of the last generation of Victorians, such as Jane Addams and Mabel Dodge, the urge to strike through the pasteboard mask of the cult of Victorian womanhood was an almost physical necessity. Addams, observing a bullfight in Spain during a grand tour of Europe, was moved to finally act upon her sense of the emptiness of her position, and taking a cue from the early example of the settlement movement, went back Chicago and set up Hull House. Mabel Dodge, a banker’s daughter from Buffalo, set up a salon in Greenwich Village and played the Grande dame to the era’s intellectuals, socialists, union organizers, and writers. Going through husbands at a fairly rapid clip, she eventually moved to Taos, New Mexico and managed to get D.H. Lawrence and his wife to come to stay at her retreat. Narcissistic to the core, she embodies the free sexuality of the “new woman,” who used the parlor as Victorians would never have used it: as a ring for clashing ideas.

Randolph Bourne, who frequented Dodge’s salon along with cultural critics such as Waldo Frank, Van Wyck Brooks, John Dos Passos, and Walter Lippmann, wrote about the Young Americans who believed that they could create a new world starting with the new model of public education proposed by John Dewey. He eventually fell out with Dewey over WWI, refusing to accept Dewey’s argument that the war was necessary to pave the way for the pragmatic administration of elites who would bring the world closer to a rational state. Bourne comes off here as a prototype of the 60s cultural critic — rejecting earlier radical’s accommodation to power in the Wilson administration.

These new radicals diverged from earlier American traditions of philosophy and religion which tended to either support those in power, or whose criticisms were expressed in the political arena. The post-Victorians attack on the moribund culture they were intended to inherit was truly new. We can see its reverberations today in the emphasis on the cultural critique as the preferred technique of today’s post-modernists. These new radicals believed that by destroying the genteel tradition, by discovering and promoting native traditions or importing a more humanistic culture from Europe, they could throw a wrench into the dehumanizing dynamo of American industrialism and the debased high culture which served as the other pole of its debased dialectic.

These histories of intellectuals from the 1960s, such as “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life” by Richard Holfstadter, and “Men of Ideas” by Lewis Coser, are the histories of dead white men. They concentrate on telling of the growth of the intellectual class, their repeated induction into puissance and its gratifying perquisites, and their repulsion from power back to the margins. For a book that is now two generations removed from the fashionable currents of today, it remains remarkably fresh. Unlike so many writers of and on history now, who are so throttled by the theory and the malign influence of the first wave of post-modern critics that they do not dare write for a popular audience, Lasch writes to inform, to educate, and to provoke. Those whose retreat into academia a generation later and who generated a self-protective haze of obfuscation over their works, should consider ripping off that pasteboard mask (Melville), and forget their “knowingness.” Write boldly. Attack directly. Remember that white males created the discourse in earlier times and that learning about those who rebelled against the narrowness the genteel tradition at the turn of the century in books such as this might actually be of some use in this post-modern era which cries out for political engagement. Read Randolph Bourne.

The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Volume 1, Poems and Poems in Prose by Oscar Wilde, Bobby Fong, and Karl Beckson

The book that I read had only his short stories in it, so that is what I’m reviewing. Oscar Wilde was born in 1854 in Dublin, Ireland and his name has become synonymous with decadence from that era. But he wrote great short stories, and it’s wonderful to have them all here in one volume. Wilde’s outlook on life comes through loud and clear in his stories. I enjoyed all the stories, but my particular favourite is “The Portrait of Dorian Grey”. This story more than any others depicts in stark reality the effects that a life of debauchery, decadence and evil have on any individual. In it we see Dorian Grey - handsome, charming and fashionable as the world observes him, who apparently remains untouched by the terrible things he does. Only the reader and Dorian himself know that all his sins are written on a portrait of himself that he keeps hidden away. He becomes obsessed with the changes in the portrait, and descends into madness as the story goes on. It’s a very powerful story, that I have never forgotten. There are other stories in this book that are equally as entertaining. I recommend the book highly.

Complete Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde by Oscar Wilde, Jack Zipes, and Gyles Brandreth

Oscar Wilde was a self-described man of paradox. He was, simultaneously, a man very much of his time, and also very ahead of his time. He was a highly moral man who wrote clever epigrams about how good it is to be wicked (”Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.”) He was a happily married man who happily loved his two children but also led a gay life on the side and wrote hilarous satires of love and marriage (”Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.”) This huge book, which contains practically everything that Wilde ever wrote, shows the man in all his glory. After the introduction by his son, we are first launched into Oscar’s stories. His one novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, is a classic and a masterpiece. A devastating moral tale, this one deserves to be in everyone’s library. His shorter pieces, however, are of a more questionable quality. Consisting mostly of moral ancedotes dressed up in the thinly-veiled guise of fairy tales for children, these works are the least exciting part of Wilde’s oeuvre and of this book, and seem to lean heavily on his oft-spouted crutch of “Art for Art’s sake.” After the stories, we meet Wilde in the guise he was destined for: that of a dramatist. His play were an integral and ackwnoledged part of his genius, and their influence upon modern drama was enormous. His type of high, farcial “drawing room” comedy has left a permanent mark on the stage. It is easy to see how even the modern Hollywood sitcom sprung from these plays of Wilde’s. However funny and biting the satire may be, though, the high point of Oscar Wilde’s plays was always his epigram-laced dialogue - whatever the plot may be. Probably the finest - and most biting - aphorist the English language has ever produced, Wilde is probably quoted - whether people realize it or not - more often than any other source in the language, aside from The Bible and Shakespeare. The Importance of Being Earnest and Salome are his ackwnoledged masterpieces, but other plays - such as A Woman of No Importance and An Ideal Husband - are very good plays as well. He also has some very fine and underrated less original works, such as The Duchess of Padua that are quite well worth reading. From here, we move into Wilde’s poems. Although, as he himself admits, they sometimes contain “more rhyme than reason”, there is no doubting that Wilde was a master of language, and a fine poet. He won the Newdigate Prize for Poetry while at Oxford, and his “Ballad of Reading Gaol” is one of the finest poems in existence. What’s left are his essays and letters. The most famous of them - indeed, one of the most famous letters ever written - is De Profundis, his strangely moving and tragic love/hate letter to Lord Alfred Douglas from prison. This is a shocking and immensely moving piece of work, and deserves to be read by one and all for its unique look into the human psyche - particuarly that of a man under intense suffering, and possibly on the brink. The letter is fascinating, and should put a different spin on Wilde than many people inaccurately have of the man - he was obviously of a very high moral character. Several interesting essays are also included - among them are The Critic As Artist and The Decay of Lying, two masterful pieces of Plato-istic dialogue, putting Wilde’s severe wit and intimidating intellectualism on full display for all to see. One may wonder how much he actually believes of what he writes, but what he writes is brilliant. Another interesting essay is The Portrait of Mr. W.H., in which Wilde puts forth an interesting and unique theory about Shakespeare’s sonnets. Also, while Wilde was not generally known for his political opinions, it is quite interesting to read his essay on political and social reform, The Soul of Man Under Socialism, as well as two letters he wrote about proposed reformations of the prison system.

All in all, this is a collection of masterful writings from one of the most tragically overlooked and underrated writers in the whole of literature. As another reviewer has pointed out, while Wilde rarely gets the credit he deserves for his work - and is often ignored, overlooked, or simply dismissed - his works are also widely and frequently plagarised - not to mention quoted legitimately - and were obviously extremely influential. You owe it to yourself to read the man’s writings if you are not familar with his works; I guarantee you you won’t regret it.

Oscar Wilde’s Wit and Wisdom: A Book of Quotations (Dover Thrift Editions) by Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde was one of the most brilliant men to ever live and his oeuvre definitely deserves a quote book of its own. I realize that he has several but I bought this one recently and on the cheap (I got mine used from a z shop). Here the great playwright’s observations are subdivided into chapters concerning men, women, marriage, youth, sin, religion, journalism, wealth, England, America etc. It’s a concise collection but contains nearly 60 pages of priceless insight. Wilde sums up a large amount of human nature almost effortlessly via the words of the characters found in his works. In fact, if you ever need a source regarding just about anything cultural he’s a wonderful authority. It’s too bad he did not live in our times as his irreverence would have been better appreciated and celebrated–at least by those of us who are not politically correct. Rest in Peace, hero.

The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde by Neil McKenna

To me one of the saddest tragedies of a literary figure was the downfall of Oscar Wilde. At a time when his play _The Importance of Being Earnest_ was delivering its initial laughter on the London stage, Oscar was arrested for his homosexuality, imprisoned, and ruined. In his last years, he never stopped making people laugh, but he never wrote for humor again, and he died at forty-six. As an outstanding literary figure of his age and a real celebrity, he deserves and has gotten fine biographies, especially that of Richard Ellmann in 1988. But Oscar was more than an author and celebrity. Neil McKenna’s new book, _The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde: An Intimate Biography_ (Basic Books) looks not only at Oscar’s homosexuality, but at his commitment to the cause of the rights of homosexuals. “Gay Rights” in our time may still be controversial, but no one is shocked to learn that there is such a movement. In Oscar’s time, homosexuality was criminal, a crime some thought worse than murder, and to have insisted on legal and social rights for homosexuals would have instantly brought on all the ostracism the Victorians could muster. Nonetheless, along with being unable to repress his own homosexuality, Oscar was unable to refrain from flaunting it, making it at least a subtext within his works, and campaigning in his fictional prose and poems for acceptance of homosexuality as a way of life. Oscar was a sexual revolutionary, a leader of others in the cause, and this large and well-researched biography concentrates on this aspect of an astonishingly complex, flawed, and lovable figure.

Oscar’s short life was entirely encompassed within the reign of Queen Victoria, a time when the first homosexuals were coming out, often in the Uranian cause, that being the term by which he (and eventually Oscar’s cohorts) would designate themselves. Toward the end of the 1870s, Aestheticism promoted a new gospel of beauty through art, idealism, and politics, and Oscar and others turned to this cause as well, with the idealism and attention to beauty permanently identified with the Uranian cause. The movement had nothing like an elected leadership, but since Oscar wrote and was widely quoted, and since he wore his tonsure and clothes in the most exuberantly Aesthetic fashion, he was a beacon followed by many. Oscar married when he was thirty, and had two sons, but the marriage was a failure. Like many homosexuals, have been seeking marriage as a “cure”. He was bored by marriage, but invigorated by the lust, frustration, and irritation that his great love Lord Alfred Douglas (”Bosie”) gave him through the rest of his life. The two of them shared mountains of fine food, oceans of champagne, and battalions of lovers; McKenna’s descriptions of Oscar’s sexual appetites (anatomical details are not spared) are positively heroic. McKenna shows that in his ill-judged counterattacks on Queensbury, Bosie’s father, Oscar was acting out “both an expression of his love for Bosie and an article of his Uranian faith,” making him a martyr for love and for homosexual expression as well. He had chances to flee before his prosecution, and not only could he not abandon Bosie, but, as he wrote, “To have altered my life would have been to have admitted that Uranian love is ignoble.”

We think of homosexuality in different terms now, but Oscar’s battles have been largely won. There was no overt struggle for gay rights in his time, but even so, Oscar’s efforts in the cause have been underestimated until now. He famously said, “I have put my genius into my life but only my talent into my work.” The genius into life led inevitably to tragedy, and this is a great tragic story, the kind Oscar would have appreciated. He also would have appreciated the book’s concentration on how he lived in his unparalleled way, always to excess. McKenna’s is the book to read to bring Oscar the reformer and martyr to our times.

Oscar Wilde and a Death of No Importance: A Mystery by Gyles Brandreth

In 1889 literary phenomena Oscar Wilde rushes to 23 Crowley St. in London to keep an appointment and is let into the home by an anonymous woman. Upstairs he finds the beautiful male prostitute Billy Wood lying naked on a Persian carpet surrounded by candles, his throat cut from ear to ear. The next day he tells Arthur Conan Doyle about it; when they return to the scene of the crime, they find place void of blood except for a few drops on the wall and no body.

Doyle refers him to Scotland Yard Inspector Aidan Fraser who doesn’t seem to have much interest in the case as there is no body or evidence. A package arrives at Oscar’s home containing Billy’s severed head. He believes Fraser will be interested in the case now but to make sure justice is done, the author conducts his own investigation and finds a plethora of suspect ranging from Billy’s jealous step-father to a jealous lover. Oscar is determined to find out who the killer is.

Gyles Brandreth is a wonderful storyteller who creates a clever mystery while also providing a glimpse into literary late Victorian England. Oscar Wilde makes a great Sherlock Holmes and his sexual proclivities are implied for instance the club he belongs to is filled with sodomite members. This tale is told in the first person by Wilde’s good and logical friend another writer Robert Sherard adding to the sense of a literary journey into the late nineteen century.

Plays of Oscar Wilde (Wordsworth Classics) by Oscar Wilde

I prefer to read the original French SALOME as Wilde wrote it for Lady Sarah B., but amazon.com only has that at one hundred dollars (try the usual e-text sites)

This is an excellent useful no frills edition of all the essential plays with the unusual inclusion of Salome. Not a note about its unusual history, nor commentary for any of the other plays. Just what you need when all you want are the plays in one conveniently sized volume. Get it. Essential to any library.

My commentary: Wilde, the loving son of a fierce Irish nationalist, concealed his Catholic faith and true nation allegiance to infiltrate the oppressing Empire and reveal its corruption in these plays, albeit sugar-coated. He was jailed while researching its deepest perversities and broken there before he could write his magnus opus busting this wide open. The closest we have is Dorian Grey and the first scene of Ernest. But his unjust and unholy imprisonment produced De PRofundis and later his Ballad of Reading Goal, which read.

The Wit & Wisdom of Oscar Wilde by Ralph Keyes

This compendium of quotes from Oscar Wilde is arranged by subject matter alphabetically and provides a great deal of entertainment for $7 bucks. Not to mention it is the ultimate source for witty quotations to make you the life of the party. Seriously, a great book to page through at random for some laughs and thought provoking witticisms from the most quotable modern author.

Son of Oscar Wilde by Vyvyan Holland

For more than 20 years Oscar Wilde has been one of my favourite author, perhaps the favourite author. Because the life was taken away from him he could not wrote all the plays, poems and stories I want so much to read, so I have read his works over and over again. Each time I find something new/something to enjoy; partly it is his wonderful point of view, partly his good sense of humour. For a long time I have been aware of his downfall, but don’t know what exactly happened until recently. I also knew that he was married and that he and his wife had two sons, and sometimes I revolved in my mind: What happened to them? Where did they go? So when I found the book Son of Oscar Wilde at Amazon.com I bought it immediately. This is a beautiful book by man who knew and loved his father, but suddenly his father was no longer taken place in his life. Why? It took him more than ten years to let himself to try to find the answer. In this book he tells the world how. Everybody who like Wilde’s works, love an honesty, are interested in the Victorian time or want to try to understand the consequences of hate should do themselves the favour to read Son of Oscar Wilde. Vyvyan Holland wrote: …”my father’s character was his great humanity, his love of life and of his fellow-men, his sympathy with suffering. He was the kindest and gentles of men, an he hated to see anyone suffer.” After reading Son of Oscar Wilde I do believe this is also the description of his son. Vyvyan Holland died in the year 1968 so I will not get the opportunity to thank him for his book, nor can I thank his father for all the good times he have gave me, but both, father and son, deserved my thanks.

The Wit and Humor of Oscar Wilde by Oscar Wilde and Alvin Redman

Formerly published under the title of ‘The Epigrams of Oscar Wilde,’ this compilation of quotes is one of my favorites. I turn to it again and again when looking for a choice bit of humor to accentuate a letter or conversation. There are bits and pieces from all of Oscar Wildes plays, non-fiction works, and even conversations. Topics are as diverse as Religion (”Religion is the fashionable substitute for Belief.”–Dorian Gray) and Love (”…love and gluttony justify everything”-In Conversation) and Criticism (”…the first duty of an art critic is to hold his tongue at all times, and upon all subjects.”-The English Renaissance of Art). Highly Recommended, and makes a great gift as well.

Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde by Moises Kaufman and Stephen Wangh

i decided to read gross indecency after seeing something about it on tv. being a big fan of oscar wilde’s work, i thought that it would be informative. but it went so far beyond that… the play is a little hard to get into at first, and if you’re not a fan of oscar wilde, i really wouldn’t recommend reading it. you can really see the oscar’s transformation during the course of the three trials, from an independent artist with his own views on morality who refuses to be ashamed about his sexuality, to someone who has seen the people he was friends with testify against him over and over….i don’t know how anyone could survive in such a situation….. anyway, this play gave me a whole new knowledge of the life of oscar wilde and a new respect for him, the choices that he made, and the courage that he had. if you are really interested in the life of oscar wilde, read this.

The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde by Joseph Pearce

This very readable book is very useful corrective to what’s become the “standard” view of Wilde. It’s especially good at exposing the weaknesses of Richard Ellman’s now-standard biography of Wilde. For example, the claim that Wilde contracted (and later died of) syphillis is pretty much taken apart by Pearce.

Pearce has also very closely read Wilde’s works, so he offers some very valuable readings of Wilde’s writing in order to better understand Wilde’s inner life–a life, according to Pearce, that was marked by inner loathing and a self-rebuffed desire to embrace the Church.

Ellman’s book remains the standard biography in terms of prose quality (Ellman wrote with uncommon beauty and grace, and Ellman’s enthusiasm for Wilde’s work and personality is truly infectious). However, Pearce’s book really should be must reading for all fans of Wilde’s work. It doesn’t merely trot out all the old information and anecdotes, but actually offers a fresh view of Wilde.

The Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde, Vol. 1: The Selfish Giant & The Star Child by P. Craig Russell

I have a vivid memory of a film strip adaptation of “The Selfish Giant” that I saw several times in kindergarten and first grade. I didn’t really understand the Christian allegory at the time, but I was entranced by the beautiful, melancholy nature of the story. Years later I still find it deeply moving, and P. Craig Russell’s adaptation is as perfect a retelling as I can imagine. Though a non-Christian, I find that the story loses none of its impact or beauty. This is a story for anyone with an open mind and a love of well-told children’s tales. Russell is one of the modern masters of cartooning, and his artwork and sense of design really compliment the story. His second collection of Wilde’s fairy tales is also highly recommended, as are his adaptations of various operas and the fantasy stories of Michael Moorcock.

The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde by Merlin Holland

It wasn’t a capital trial, but the 1895 libel proceedings of Oscar Wilde against the Marquess of Queensberry were in their way tragic and terrible. Entering the trial, Wilde was a celebrity and a playwright with the magnificently silly _The Importance of Being Ernest_ in successful performance in London and New York. Afterwards, he was pursued, tried, convicted, and imprisoned at hard labor for the then crime of homosexuality. It is a story that has been told many times and turned into dramas. Those of us who love Wilde’s writing and outrageous wit will always wonder what would have happened if he had been able to write and live as he wished, instead of being ruined and sent to an early death. Amazingly, the trial record has until now been unavailable. There were summaries, and publication of extracts, but only with _The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde: The First Uncensored Transcript of the Trial of Oscar Wilde vs. John Douglas (Marquess of Queensberry)_, 1895 (Fourth Estate) do we have a full record. In 2000, an anonymous source donated a transcript of the trial to the British Library. It was authenticated, and has now been edited by Merlin Holland, Wilde’s grandson. Anyone interested in Wilde’s life and writing will be fascinated by this verbatim record which puts judge, prosecutor, defender, and of course Wilde himself on the stage of the Old Bailey to play out their roles verbatim.

Holland has a useful introduction to recall the details of how Wilde was snared into legal doom, spurred by his young man Lord Alfred Douglas (”Bosie”) to bother Bosie’s abominable father Queensberry. When, after several skirmishes, Queensberry left his calling card at Wilde’s club, with the words “To Oscar Wilde posing as somdomite” (spelling was one of the Marquess’s shortcomings), Wilde should have thrown it into the fire. Instead, egged on by Bosie, he took Queensberry to court for libel. It was the mistake of his life.; as Holland writes, “If I could ask my grandfather a single question, it would have to be, ‘Why on earth did you do it?’” Wilde did not take advice that he leave the country, and so sealed his own doom. Most of the pages of this book are the words from the trial, and most of those words come from the bouts with Wilde in the witness box. Initially he seemed to enjoy his role in the events, and gave as good as he got. For much of the repartee reported here, the transcriber notes: “(_laughter_.)” and “(_more laughter_.)” But an eventual flippant answer overthrew Wilde on the stand, although his case could not have been won. When Carson asked about a companion, “Did you ever kiss him?” Wilde replied, “Oh, no, never in my life; he was a peculiarly plain boy.” It was not long after that Wilde and his lawyers withdrew the charges, and Queensberry was declared not guilty.

If Queensbury was not guilty of libel, it was reasonable to think that his accusations were truthful, and with the evidence already gathered, Queensberry assisted in a speedy arrest of Wilde, who once again had refused advice that he leave the country. The subsequent trials, one with a hung jury and one finding him guilty of gross indecency, are not covered in this volume. Wilde had two years of hard labor, and three sad years of exile before his death in Paris in 1900. He produced the mordant “Ballad of Reading Gaol” but little else during these years, and while there are plenty of examples that his wit remained in conversation, we were robbed of subsequent examples of the delicious laughter that had come from each of his successively improving plays. This is a useful book as full documentation of the first trial, and Holland has given helpful notes throughout. Those who admire Wilde, however, will find it more than useful. Wilde was brilliant at Greek and admired Greek drama and life, and it is no exaggeration that the transcript of the trial, reading as it does like a piece of period theater, has all the marks of a classic tragedy.

The Happy Prince and Other Stories by Oscar Wilde, Lars Bo, and Michael MacLiammoir

In these tales, most of them being sad and even very sad, Oscar Wilde looks for a way to save one’s soul in front of the misery of the world. Anyone in society who lives in the upper classes does not necessarily see the ugliness and suffering of the world when one looks at the lower classes. But in these tales the Happy Prince, or the Selfish Giant, or any other character will manage to get salvation out of their upper class blindness, by opening their eyes to misery and suffering and by doing what they can to repair these pains and evils because they will realise they have to feel responsible for the world, because they are more powerful and could easily impose their selfish rule. But the giant will discover nature, if not God, punishes him for his selfishness. The nightingale will try to redeem a young student by giving him a red rose in a season when read roses do not bloom. And yet the student will not get the love he wants because he is nothing but a non-entity for the girl he would like to be loved by. There is also a very sad note in A Devoted Friend and how friendship can become a mask for selfishness, a nice appearance for an ugly and egoistic attitude. Those tales are sad and at the same time they convey a moral full of hope. All is not lost if the Happy Prince can give away his happiness for those who suffer, even if later the powerful of his society will reject him when he does not look happy and beautiful any more

The Portrait of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde was one of the foremost representatives of Aestheticism, a movement based on the notion that art exists for no other purpose than its existence itself (”l’art pour l’art”), not for the purpose of social and moral enlightenment. Born in Dublin and a graduate of Oxford’s Magdalen College, he initially worked primarily as a journalist, editor and lecturer, but gradually turned to writing and produced his most acclaimed works in the six-year span from 1890 to 1895, roughly coinciding with the period of his romantic involvement with Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas, sixteen years his junior. Douglas’s strained relationship with his father, John Sholto Douglas, Marquees of Queensberry, eventually resulted in a series of confrontations between Wilde and the Marquees, which first led to a libel suit brought by Wilde against his lover’s father (who had openly accused Wilde of “posing as a sodomite” and threatened to disown his son if he didn’t give up his acquaintance with the writer) and subsequently to two criminal trials against Wilde for “gross indecencies,” based on a law generally interpreted to prohibit homosexual relationships. Sentenced to a two-year term of “hard labor” in Reading Gaol, Wilde emerged from prison in 1897 a spiritually, physically and financially broken man and, unable to continue living in England or Ireland, after three years’ wanderings throughout Europe died in 1900 of cerebral meningitis, barely 46 years old.

“The Picture of Dorian Gray,” Wilde’s only novel besides seven plays as well as several works of short fiction, poetry, nonfiction and two fairy tale collections originally written for his two sons, is critical to an understanding of Wilde’s body of work and his personality primarily for two reasons: First, because it constitutes one of his earliest fully accomplished formulations of Aestheticism, and secondly because of its undeniable undercurrent of homoeroticism; an inclination which, after a six-year marriage widely thought to initially have been a true love match, Wilde had begun to explore more openly around the time of the novel’s creation (1890). The story’s title character is an exceptionally handsome young man who, both in the eyes of the artist tasked to paint his portrait, Basil Hallward, and in those of their somewhat older friend Lord Henry Wotton, epitomizes perfect beauty and is coveted by both men for that very reason. Seduced by hedonistic Lord Henry into believing that beauty can literally justify anything, including any act of immorality, Dorian sells his soul for maintaining his beautiful appearance, letting his portrait age in his stead. (In that, his character resembles Goethe’s and Marlowe’s Faust.) He then quickly turns from an innocent youth into a cruel and calculating man whom society, in its shallow adherence to appearances, nonetheless never associates with any of the results of his cruelty, never looking beyond the surface of his handsome exterior and assuming that a man so beautiful must necessarily also be good. Ultimately it is Dorian himself who brings about his own downfall when he is no longer able to face the manifestation of his evilness in Basil Hallward’s picture.

Upon its initial publication in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine in 1890, “The Picture of Dorian Gray” was widely scorned as immoral by a public neither familiar with nor particularly open to the concepts of Aestheticism and its mockery of middle class morality, and repulsed by the thinly veiled homoerotic relationship of the novel’s protagonists. Wilde republished the work the following year, adding a preface designed to explain his views on art. Yet, it was that preface which, along with several of his other publications and his written exchanges with Lord Alfred Douglas, ultimately would play a devastating role in his trials, where Queensberry’s attorney would come to use an excerpt from that very preface - “There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written” - to extract from Wilde statements to the effect that any book inspiring a sense of beauty (including, as implied in the attorney’s question, an “immoral” book, if “The Picture of Dorian Gray” could be qualified as such) was well-written and therefore commendable; that only Philistines, brutes and illiterates - whose views on art he considered invariably stupid and for which he therefore didn’t “care twopence” - could consider this novel “perverted,” and that the majority of the reading public would probably not be able to draw a proper distinction between a good and a bad book. It was testimony such as this, as well as the impending confrontation with a number of male witnesses ready to testify as to the nature of their relationship with Wilde, that not only caused the author’s attorney to convince his client to drop the libel suit against Queensberry but also opened the door for Wilde’s own subsequent prosecution.

If “The Picture of Dorian Gray” has a central theme besides the supremacy of beauty and the depiction of a society primarily interested in appearances, it is a call for individuality: Dorian’s cruelty is brought out only after he allows himself to be influenced by Lord Henry’s equally seductive and cynical hedonism; and similarly, Basil Hallward’s blind idolizing of Dorian eventually proves fatal for the painter. - Wilde’s only novel is one of the first and most poignant expressions of his own individualism; but unlike his protagonist, who ultimately pays a ghastly prize for selling his soul and giving up his individuality, Wilde paid as high a price for maintaining his. Like Dorian, he knew that “[e]ach of us has Heaven and Hell in him,” and although this novel’s preface ends with the provocative statement that “[a]ll art is quite useless,” it was the very fact that Wilde put his entire being into his art that ultimately destroyed him. But like beauty, which is finally restored to perfection in Dorian Gray’s portrait, Wilde’s works have stood the test of time; and not merely for their countless, pricelessly witty epigrams. They’re as well worth a read as ever.

The Soul of Man Under Socialism and Selected Critical Prose by Oscar Wilde and Linda Dowling

It may seem wilful to lead a selection of Oscar Wilde’s major critical prose with an essay on left-wing politics, but ‘The Soul of Man under Socialism’ is more concerned with aesthetics than ethics: Wilde found socialism ‘beautiful’ because it encouraged freedom and individualism, freeing man to develop his emotional and imaginative lives. Wilde’s Utopian scheme, as he admits, is gloriously impractical and contrary to human nature, but that’s the point - it’s because reforms are based on what is considered practical, rather than what might be possible or even unthinkable, that inequality and suffering persist. His vision of a future in which men dream and absorb Art as vaguely-imagined machines do all the menial work, reads like a delightful lampoon of HG Wells. Favourite Quotation: ‘the moment that an artist takes notice of what other people want and tries to supply the demand, he ceases to be an artist and becomes a dull or amusing craftsman, an honest or dishonest tradesman’).

The selection begins with examples of Wilde the professional reviewer at work, attending art lectures by Whistler, reading books by Pater and Swinburne, drawing attention to poetry anthologies by labouring socialists, praising an actress’s memoirs. Some of the pieces are more theoretical, arguing, for instance, the importance and legacy of actors as critics of great theatre. Each article presents difficult and often radical ideas in an accessible and witty manner. FQ: ‘where there is no exagerration there is no love, and where there is no love there is no understanding’.

‘The Portrait of Mr. W.H.’ (printed here in its extended 1889 revision) is quite simply one of the greatest achievements in the world literature of short fiction. ‘Short story’ doesn’t begin to describe this work about a young scholar who commits suicide after being caught forging evidence to ‘prove’ a theory claiming that Shakespeare dedicated his Sonnets to a young actor-lover. ‘Portrait’ is mostly a dazzling exercise in critical play, but it is also a touching gay fantasy, a Nabokovian study of mad academics, a defence of ‘forgery’ as an aesthetic mode, a literary detective story, a history of the Elizabethan stage, an anthology of Elizabethan gossip, a Borgesian metaphysical puzzle and so much more. FQ: ‘he always set an absurdly high value on personal appearance, and once read a paper before our Debating Society to prove that it was better to be good-looking than to be good’.

‘In Defence of Dorian Gray’ collects letters written by Wilde to hostile newspapers that branded his only novel immoral, decadent and demanded its interdiction. While it’s depressing to see our hero stoop to these tedious non-entities, we must remember the dangerous influence of the reactionary press, and at least the letters make galvanising reading, helping Wilde formulate ideas that would shape the novel’s famous ‘All art is quite useless’ preface. FQ: ‘Good people exasperate one’s reason; bad people stir one’s imagination’.

But the major achievement here is the four-part collection ‘Intentions’, a still explosive series of critical dialogues, memoirs and essays which are only ’safe’ today because they are labelled ‘classic’ - if anyone actually absorbed these radical, liberating pieces, with their provocative, teasing, shifting, playful, ironic, contradictory, unsystematic, aphoristic, hilarious assertions on Art, Beauty, Life, Philosophy, Morality, Ethics, Crime etc., the whole world would implode, or at least irrevocably change. ‘The Decay of Lying’ demolishes the depressing modes of realism and naturalism and the tyranny of facts; ‘Pen, Pencil and Poison’ is a portrait of Wainewright the Poisoner, Wilde discussing his crimes with the same aesthetic detachment as he does his art and writing; ”The Critic as Artist’ is his masterpiece, a credo and a gauntlet; ‘The Truth of Masks’ is an essay on the importance of costume and historical accuracy when staging Shakespeare, and seems to contradict eveything else in the volume, with Wilde winningly admitting, ‘Not that I agree with everything I have said in this essay’. FQ: ‘The truth of metaphysics are the truth of masks’.

There are (at least) two Wildes in this volume; one whose address is utterly contemporary and congenial, intellectually curious, blasting all that is deadening, hypocritical and humbug, an alien in his own time. The other is startlingly Victorian, passionately engaged with elitist subjects that have little importance or (ugh) ‘relevance’ today (Classical literature, Aesthetics, the importance of form etc.), couching his theories in language that is often ornate, oritund, exotic, even verbose, a lush challenge to his fusty, pedantic peers.

Linda Dowling’s introduction rescues Wilde from his earnest post-modern apologists and returns him fruitfully to his original context, the Oxford debates about ‘Art for Art’s sake’ and the function of poetry and criticism,. Her copious notes are a blessing and necessity, as well as recreating a strange, wonderful, intellectually audacious cultural world, one that shames our depleted, dead-end, theory-strangulated, accept-anything age. I know you’ve heard this before, but this time it’s true: BUY THIS BOOK AND LET IT CHANGE YOUR LIFE.

The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Writings by Oscar Wilde

Dorian Gray was quite the read.

Dorian Gray is a young man who has exquisite, wonderful features. He is good-looking. He is a model for Basil, a painter. Basil paints a portrait of Dorian Gray. Lord Henry, one of Basil’s friends, meets Dorian and remarks how sad it is that Dorian will not always retain his youth and beauty. Dorian grows sad about this - and thinks, if only this picture would grow old and I can always stay young! He envies his own picture, because he thinks that the picture will forever retain its youth - while he will bear the wrinkles of life.

Then things start becoming strange. After an unpleasant experience with his fiancée, an actress, he looks at his picture and notices a cruel twist of the mouth. This is only the beginning. As Dorian makes his descent into debauchery and sinfulness, the picture bears the weight of his actions. Everytime he commits a transgression, the picture grows uglier and uglier. The picture becomes his sort of “conscience.”

This book is one worth reading. I had heard of Dorian Gray and was curious. Wilde’s writing was descriptive, yet easy to read. It is one of the easier classics, in my opinion.

The only flaw to this novel was, at one point, there is a stage where Dorian collects a lot of things - like embroidery, etc. It describes the things he collects and makes lots of references and allusions to seemingly random people (perhaps famous people in history?). This seemed to me like a non sequitur, and just lots of rambling. Furthermore, it was confusing because I didn’t know who the people being mentioned were. It was tedious, although I endured it. I’m glad I did, because the story progressed wonderfully.

The ending is… quite morbid, but didn’t come across as a complete surprise.

The Picture of Dorian Gray is worth your while. It will make you think - is eternal youth worth it? It will trigger lots of probing questions in your brain. Highly recommended to anyone looking for a good classic read.

Salome/ Under the Hill: Oscar Wilde/Aubrey Beardsley by Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley

Along with his superb illustrations for Malory’s Morte Darthur, still very much in the style of Burne-Jones, Salome is surely Beardsley’s masterpiece. Stylized to an extreme degree, his illustrations also manage to be both erotic and strangely touching. He is more than a cold stylist, but a master of the extreme emotions which lie behind Wilde’s strange text. This, though repreatedly dismissed as absurd, has turned out to be one of the toughest works of the late nineteenth century decadent movement. Although rarely performed as a play, it lives on as the libretto for Richard Strauss’s great opera, a work that has continued to fascinate and horrify audiences for nearly a century. The unfinished fantasy Under the Hill is worth collecting too, and this economical volume is a bargain.

I’ll be absolutely honest with you. Normally I don’t read books from start to finish in the Internet marketing niche. I scan, find the bits and then dump the book.

Not this time.

Joel has created a book that thoroughly entertained me. It could be because I’m a fanboy when it comes to the Internet marketing industry, or it could be because I’ve made my living online from the time I left university or it could be because I love stories about the personalities involved - the real people stories.

The fact is, this book tells a great story as it’s primary achievement (as it should!) but also teaches you a ton of tactics you can directly apply to your own business. Perhaps best of all though, is how inspirational it is.

I wouldn’t buy this if you are looking for a step-by-step how to for beginners, but if you want to know how the pioneers of Internet marketing made their first dollars online and get inspired that you could follow in their footsteps, this is the book to buy.

You won’t find anything else out there like it simply because it’s written by one of the very pioneers that are the focus of the book. Only a guy like Joel could get in touch with so many people from the industry and get them to reveal such tiny details about their journey to make a living online.

Great stuff!

Good book about how God wants to work through each one of us to bring His Kingdom to earth. It all starts with an idea delivered by human effort. God’s Big idea is to use us to bring Heaven to earth.

Lord Hornblower continues C.S. Forester’s masterful examination of the trials of a conflicted soul, the publicly admired Commodore Sir Horatio Hornblower.

Hornblower is married to the woman of his dreams, Lady Barbara, and is enjoying raising his young son, Richard, while Hornblower recovers successfully from typhus contracted during the Baltic campaign described in Commodore Hornblower. All seems well.

His biggest immediate problem as the book opens is that he is both bored and uncomfortable sitting through a ceremony for the Knights of the Bath, of which he is one. Suddenly, a messenger breaks in to call away the First Lord of the Admiralty. Looking troubled, Lord St. Vincent immediately sends for Hornblower while the ceremony continues. A group of British naval seamen has mutinied against a tyrannical captain who had abused his authority, and now the seamen want to be granted amnesty . . . or they will defect to the French. Lying just outside of two French harbors, this is a very real threat. Hornblower asks for and is given orders to handle the situation as he sees fit. But he knows that amnesty can never be granted without undermining the discipline of the service. How will Hornblower handle this? He doesn’t know, but he’s soon on his way into a massive storm. Surely, the mutineers realize that they will dance at the end of a rope if they surrender. Is this the end of Hornblower’s fabulous reputation?

Set at the very end of the Napoleon Wars, Lord Hornblower shows once again that even the most dire situations are filled with opportunity . . . and peril.

This book is most like Flying Colours of the earlier novels, in that the action at sea is very limited while the time spent on land in France is extensive. Hornblower also meets with his old friends from that novel, M. le Comte and Mme. la Vicomtesse de Gracay.

As peace nears, it creates new challenges for Hornblower. Never a man to enjoy the salon, he finds that the demands of his wife’s family bringing both Lady Barbara and he into increased social interactions with royalty and political leaders. These interactions are despised by Hornblower, and life loses its zest for him. How will he recapture the spirited focus that beating Boney has provided him over the last 20 years?

The Hornblower marriage is also put to new strains by the prospects of peace, and Hornblower finds himself tempted to stand aside from his role as Lady Barbara’s social escort. How will Lady Barbara and her powerful brothers react?

Lord Hornblower reminds me of the story of Adam and Eve after they have tasted the fruit from the tree of knowledge. Hornblower knows himself better now, and also learns new things about Lady Barbara that had escaped him. He has new experiences that further add to his knowledge in this book. As a result, he’s a more mature person, but a much more troubled one. With his greater reputation, influence, and wealth, he’s also more inclined to stick his oar in to do what he thinks should be done . . . regardless of the consequences. The results are not always pretty for Hornblower, or for those who depend on him.

How does the warrior adapt to peace? Like in the StarTrek move, “The Undiscovered Country” you will find that it is a hard thing to do. Vigilance is also needed, lest the peace be lost.

Has some problem in your life become so continuing and pervasive that it dominates your perspective on everything? What would you do if you solved that problem, or it simply went away? Are you prepared to build from the fruits of your solution? Or will losing the problem be like losing a crutch instead, leaving you feeling crippled?

Look, think, and act for what is ahead . . . or be perpetually chained to what has been!

Reading 2/3 ( would be 3 but for the hiss )
Production 2/3
Story 3/3

Total Score 7/9

Available from the Internet Archive

Listen to the first show on the list.

“The Scarlet Pimpernel” was written by Baroness Orczy, the setting of the story is during the French Revolution, 1792. The French Revolution is well under hand; hundreds of aristocrats are being put to death through the guillotine. All in Paris is in terror of the guillotine and many of the aristocrats try to flee but are always caught until a band of brave and noble Englishmen risk their lives to protect the innocent. This group of men are led by a mysterious man known only as ‘the Scarlet Pimpernel’. No one knows who he is and the French Revolutionists want to know badly so that they can capture and kill him. One of the leaders, Chauvelin, comes up with a plan to use a former citoyenne of France, Marguerite St. Just, as a spy. Now that she is married to one of the most fashionable and richest Englishmen, Sir Percy of Blackeney, she is the pivot of social London who hears and sees everything. She might find out who the Scarlet Pimpernel is. Though she refuses and says she wants to have nothing to do with the Revolution, Chauvelin blackmails her with a signed letter proving that her brother, Armand St. Just, is in league with the Scarlet Pimpernel. If she does not cooperate with him, Chauvelin will produce the letter to the head of the French council and Armand will be put to death. Marguerite, seeing no choice, agrees reluctantly. She has had many problems of her own. When she married Percy, everyone was gossiping why ever would she marry such a fop and an idiot when she could have chosen to marry anyone. But Marguerite is in love with Percy, because she feels that he is wearing a mask, and that being a fop is just a façade. A terrible thing happens on their wedding day because Percy finds out that Marguerite was involved in the execution of the whole St. Cyr family when she tells the Committee that Marquis de St. Cyr is a spy for the Scarlet Pimpernel. Though she pleads that she is innocent, which is true, Percy does not believe her and is cold towards her. So thus Marguerite has no one to turn to when Chauvelin blackmails her. At the Prince of Waless ball, she finds out that the Scarlet Pimpernel will be waiting for two of his accomplices in the library at the ball. Will Marguerite betray the Scarlet Pimpernel, or will she hand over the life of her dear brother, Armand?

I love this book because it has plenty of adventure, action, mystery, suspense, and romance. One of my favorite parts of the book is where Sir Percy recites his poem, “The Scarlet Pimpernel.”

“They seek him here, they seek him there,
Those Frenchies seek him everywhere,
Is he in heaven or is he in hell,
That demmed illusive Pimernel.”

Baroness Orczy made me feel for the characters. When Marguerite was scorned by the Comtesse de Tournay, I felt so bad for her and when Chauvelin is about to go into the library to find the Scarlet Pimpernel, I was in such suspense as to whether he would find him or not. This is a book which can be enjoyed by everyone. One of those classics that must, MUST, be read!

If you enjoyed the book, I strongly recommend the 1982 version of “The Scarlet Pimpernel”. With great actors Anthony Andrews and Jane Seymore, this is one of my favorite films to watch even after watching it so many times. There’s also a 1934 version with Leslie Howard though I’m sorry to say I haven’t seen it yet. Do want to see it though!

Source: Librivox
Length: 7 hr, 49 min
Reader: Karen Savage

Rating: 7/10

The reader: In the hands of an extremely gifted reader, this novel could have been read with great narrative flourishes, enhansing the action and suspense of the plot while giving the characters expressive voices. On the other hand, an unskilled reader could have ruined the book by trying the same thing, but overshooting his mark and burdening the already melodramatic plot with silly voices and overwrought drama. Librivox reader Karen Savage plays it safe by giving a fairly straight reading. Her voice is plesant and slow, allowing the listener to fill in the action from Orczy’s prose. After the first few minutes of listening, Savage’s voice goes unnoticed as the words of the story take over for the listener.

You ever get that feeling where a book comes out and your immediate reaction is, “WELL, IT’S ABOUT BLOODY TIME!”? I tend to get this feeling only about books that it never would have occurred to me to hope for. A kid-friendly version of “Sleepy Hollow”? It seems self-evident when you say it like that, but I don’t prowl the stacks of my library looking for classics to freshen up. I leave that sort of thing to the professionals. Professionals going by pseudonyms like, “Gris Grimly” and the like. What we have here in our possession is a tidy little item with a certain panache and flair. Faithful to the original text (albeit with judicious cutting and abridgement here and there) Grimly brings Irving’s story to macabre life right before our eyes. Any book that has the wherewithal to introduce a classic tale to kids in a manner that they will not only understand but also seek out voluntarily should be considered in full. In Mr. Grimly we’ve real kid-sensibilities alongside some good old-fashioned storytelling horrors. Mr. Irving would be so pleased.

At the risk of sounding trite, you all know the story of “Sleepy Hollow” do you not? No, not the Tim Burton movie, sillies. This is the tale of the schoolteacher Ichabod Crane who, in spite of his innate goofiness and gall, was apparently the most desirable schoolteacher this side of the Mississippi. Sure, he looked like a “scarecrow eloped from a cornfield,” but in a town as small as Sleepy Hollow, any fellow with even a scant bit of intellectualism about him is worth checking out. But Ichabod doesn’t set his sights on just anyone. Oh no. He’s impressed with only the richest girl in the county, Katrina Van Tassel. Unfortunately for him, she is currently being wooed by the local county swain Brom Van Brunt a.k.a. Brom Bones. Ichabod is keen for the challenge however, and after being invited to a dance at the Van Tassel manor it looks as if all his hopes and dreams might come true. After a possible rejection, however, the naturally superstitious teacher finds himself going home, alone, from the party. It is then that he runs across the notorious supernatural figure that all the county discusses: The Headless Horseman. Whether the horseman truly does spirit away the teacher or whether Ichabod merely flees Sleepy Hollow for good is not known. What people do know, though, is that all that remains is his hat and a shattered pumpkin along the side of a brook.

As a kid, I was always mildly baffled that Ichabod was not supposed to be the hero of his own story. If you’ve watched the Disney version of the tale (and I’ll get to that later) then Brom Bones comes off as a bit of a jerk. This feeling isn’t alleviated any by Grimly’s adaptation, but it makes for an interesting change of pace from those other tales of rivals in love. In terms of the story itself, there is much here that a kid will incline towards. It’s rare to find a title for kids where the protagonist is A) human and B) and adult. Nigh unto impossible, almost. Still, Ichabod with all his flaws and greed is a quintessentially American figure. I’m a little shocked no one’s ever updated him into a contemporary book or movie. Talk about ripe pickings.

Some will write off the book as just another graphic novel, which is not entirely unwarranted, but also not entirely fair. I mean, what is it about this book that strikes you as comic booky? There aren’t any word balloons or snatches of dialogue. There are panels, however, and often they will display action sequences in a linear fashion. Just the same, I think that it’s safe to say that this book falls squarely into the category of “indefinable entity”. It’s maybe best described merely as an “illustrated novel”, and nothing more.

But really, the art is what makes it more than just a visual adaptation. On examining this book closer I found that often the lines on a character’s mouth would often extend far beyond the limits of their own face. If Ichabod smiles, for example, them the line of his smile carries on long after the flesh has ceased. At first I mistook this for some kind of moustache or facial hair, but then I found that everyone (except possibly Katrina) suffers the same technique. It’s interesting to consider. Does it indicate an extreme emotion or does it merely give one character or another a bit of visual pizzazz? Gris Grimly isn’t known for his sexy females (though Bella of the book “Boris and Bella comes close) so it’s interesting to see him work his magic on the character of Katrina. She’s all delicately lowered eyelids and curves. Grimly’s style in this book is restrained, it seems, and it plumbs the inner recesses of the “Sleepy Hollow” tale for all the humor it’s worth. It’s not a bad idea, really. When Ichabod cuts a rug you’ve never seen a more ridiculous sight. For finding the funny in both the implied and the obvious, Grimly pairs nicely with Irving’s fabulous text.

Let’s admit something together right now. A certain strain of American has probably seen the Disney version of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow at least once in their lives. As such, certain images and phrases from this book have a hard time separating themselves from that oddly faithful (just our luck) adaptation of the tale. Certain sentences in this book float through our mental ears to the sonorous tones of Bing Crosby. For the most part, Grimly does what he can to separate himself from Disney’s version, and as far as I can tell he only comes close to a direct reference once. That would be the moment where, in the midst of trying to escape the headless horseman, Ichabod briefly finds himself doing the running with his horse sitting on his back. Classic slapstick stuff, sure. Maybe too classic

Flaw: I read a few pages of this book then proceeded to stare at the cover intently for a good fifteen to thirty seconds sans blinking. I did this because I was convinced that the word “Abridged” was lurking somewhere in plain sight and I was just too thick to see it. Bemused by my inability to find it, I flipped to the title page. Nothing. The back bookflap? Nada. The front bookflap. Nothing a thi . . . . wait! Wait wait, I spoke too soon! What’s that teensy tiny itty bitty l’il nuthin’ of a sentence down there? That little snippet lurking beneath the description of the story? (removes magnifying glass from purse and peers closely) Ah. I see now. It says, “Be forewarned: The text has been slightly condensed for maximum fright.” Knowing, as we do, the frequency with which such bookflaps get lost, perhaps the book beneath the jacket says the same thing. Yeah, no such luck. So basically, you’re going to get a lot of confused parents who don’t know their Washington Irving very well and will be more than happy to think that this is the complete story. Or, more likely, you’ll end up with a lot of fast-moving teenagers who have been told to read the tale for their autumnal English class and can’t see why this book isn’t the original story since even the publication page is absent of any warnings or notations. BAD, Atheneum, BAD! You did a killer job on the bookjacket (I’m loving the faux binding peering out along the spine and the buckled “leather”) but when your author abridges something you need to let us know with big flashy lights. Seriously, now.

I anticipate so many kids falling under the thrall of this book that their parents seek out Irving’s original tale just to slake their headless horseman thirst for more. And anything that gets the kiddies reading real honest-to-goodness Washington Irving will have to be seen, even by the most jaded critics, as a good thing. Putting aside the question of whether or not the book should have been more forthcoming in the whole “is it abridged?” area of affairs, this is a great title and one that deserves a place in every library far and wide. Classy and keen. A keeper, if ever there was one.

Source: Librivox
Length: 1 hr, 23 min
Reader: Chip

Rating: 7/10

The Reader: Chip has a sonorous voice that would work well as professional radio host or announcer. He lends a sense of the melodramatic, which is exactly perfect for the story. He pauses for humorous effect, adds just a hint of sarcasm when needed, and generally makes this an enjoyable story to listen to. His telling of the pursuit of Ichabod Crane left my heart racing.

“… Cataloging-in-Publication Data Franklin, Benjamin, 1706-1790. [Autobiography] The autobiography of Benjamin Franklin/with …”

Written over a period of nearly thirty years and covering his life only until 1759 (he died in 1790), the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin nonetheless established the lore associated with the man. While many biographies of Franklin penned since his death have attempted to officially correct the record and convey a truer picture of him, a sense of the old Franklin endures in no small part due to his autobiography.

In this book, we encounter Franklin the reader, printer, civic leader, writer, inventor, diplomat and so much more. While perhaps the depths of his knowledge in his chosen fields are insufficient to classify him as a genuine renaissance man, he is, all the same, versatile, engaged, and devoted to self-improvement. Franklin is ambitious and desirous of seizing the day and enjoying all that life has to offer. He is also someone who is clearly proud of his accomplishments. Pride seems to be one contemporaneous arrow of criticism against him that found its mark. So much so, in fact, that he later added humility to his original list of 12 virtues. He writes that “there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride.” Franklin is also quite forthcoming with respect to his own failure to acquire humility, although he admits to success “with regard to the appearance of it.” It is, of course, possible that this introspection is all carefully constructed artifice designed to endear Franklin to the reader and to help secure his place in history as an enormously talented, but forgivably flawed man. While Franklin was certainly capable of shaping his public image, I think he reveals enough of himself for us to ascertain that there is truth amongst whatever tall tales or exaggerations exist in this brief volume.

The first part of this book, considered by many to be the best, exists as a letter to his son. It is here that we learn something of Franklin’s early life. We find a 12 year old, bookish Ben Franklin indentured to his brother James as a printer, despite his yearning to be at sea. Eventually, Ben manages to extricate himself from this arrangement by “asserting” his freedom and counting on his brother not to force the issue. While this was a success, he later believed it was somewhat unfair of him, even though his brother occasionally delivered blows to the young man. Franklin’s maritime proclivities eventually wane and he makes his way to Philadelphia. It is here that Franklin comes into his own. The establishment of his printing business, invention of the Franklin stove, formation of the first “circulating library” in the U.S., and the first fire department in Pennsylvania is recounted. We are given accounts of his time in London, dalliances with women, and some of the “errata” of his life. Lest we forget, there are also the virtues which he intended to make a part of his character: Temperance, Silence, Order, Resolution, Frugality, Industry, Sincerity, Justice, Moderation, Cleanliness, Tranquility, Chastity, and Humility.

While the remaining parts of the book may not be as strong or cohesive, they still impart interesting information and insight into the man. The Touchstone edition of the book contains a short introduction by Lewis Leary that is a worthwhile preface to the autobiography despite his disapproval that part of the book is “burdened with morality.” And yet, it is this morality and quest for “moral perfection” that is, above all, the driving force of Franklin. However future generations judge Benjamin Franklin, his contributions to the burgeoning United States of America and the reputation thereof are as undeniable and appealing as he himself is.

Source: ejunto
Length: Approx 6.2 hrs
Reader: Andrew Julow

Rating: 6/10

The reader: Andrew Julow reads with a clear, steady voice that conveys Franklin’s homespun wisdom. Unfortunately, he does not make it clear when Franklin is being witty, something that is hard to pick out when the reader voices a sarcastic comment with a straight tone. As I’ve mentioned before, one of the most difficult things to read is another person’s jokes, so I’ll cut Julow a large amount of slack in this regard. The recording is beautifully quiet and Julow’s voice comes through cleanly.

What a pleasant book. If you are interested to own a book of La Fontaine’s Fables with a little extra, don’t hesitate and go buy this book! The book itself is beautiful: it comes in a box and the colours are vivid (excellent quality of printing). You will be surprised at every page: the fables are all written in various styles (for example, the lines will be “bouncing” if the fable is about a rabbit, etc.). The paintings are all very colorful and will make you smile for sure. The only thing that is quite sad is that only 43 of the 100 lithographs illustrating the Fables have apparently been found and printed in that book. But despite that comment, it is worth the buy just the same. A beautiful and original gift for anyone who loves animals, litterature and art!

Zip file of the entire book (25 MB)

This is not a good book for children, since the author (in the early 1900’s) wrote an offensive caricature of the dark-skinned man of African descent. The publisher placed a disclaimer on the title page.

Zip file of the entire book - 134MB

I haven’t bought the book, because by simply searching inside it I encounter the greatest deterrant.
Going through the index and finding Chapter IX being titled “Uncivilized Nations” took any further interest away from me.

An author who considers himself a knowledgable person should have a richer vocabulary to define diverse ethnias from New Zealand, South America and so forth.
Condemnably shameful.

Zip file of the entire book 18 MB

Zip file of the entire book 19.1 MB

Five hundred and sixty poems give a very wide-ranging overview. Poems old and new include many standards and favorites, and are sure to introduce you to many new favorites as well. It certainly includes a lot of mine, such as Persimmons by Li-Young Lee.

The selection is sophisticated enough to be an introductory textbook, but also very accessible for the home, with plenty of aids such as notes on each poem, an explanation of meter, and something I wish a lot more anthologies had: a subject index.

If you’re going to have one collection of poetry–or at least a first collection–this could be it.

I am sorry, but this translation is unreadable. I waited two years to read War and Peace, knowing this translation was in the works. I bought it as soon as it came out and first read the introduction, which was superb. Then I started the book itself - struggling through the small-type footnotes to read the French, trying to move back and forth and still maintain the flow of the narrative. Impossible. (Tolstoy wrote for a Russian biligual readership, but most English readers today require it to be translated, and not in footnotes.) But the worst was the English prose itself. After struggling with almost every sentence, trying to understand its meaning, I read about four chapters before deciding this was torture. It was stilted - impossible to speak - and the dialogue was especially unnatural. I theorized that the problem was in the translators’ working method: I understand Volokhonsky does the initial “literal” translation first, from the Russian, after which Pevear perfects the English prose. And that many issues of nuance and balance will come up, which they discuss at length together. In other words, an over-emphasis upon accuracy and weighing each meaning - with the result that the context is de-emphasized. There is a sense of refined, even snobbish, precision in the choice of words, but Pevear seems to have no narrative pulse, rhythm, storytelling sense, or authority of voice. Certain reviewers claim that this awkwardness reflects Tolstoy’s style, but I find it hard to swallow that the original book was this frustrating. Yes, the Garnett translation has smoothed out much of the eccentricity with her quaint Victorianism. And the Briggs translation also seems blander in tone. But when I picked up the Maude translation, it was clear it is unmatched. It’s witty and aristocratic, the irony perfect, conversational in tone, pitch-perfect dialogue, a clear, flowing narrative, compelling, intense, easy and fast to read. In fact it was Tolstoy’s own authorized translation, written during his time. Do yourself a favor and discount all the hype. And if you think you really are in love with the new translation, at least look at a few pages of the Maude. You will be shocked that Tolstoy is actually an enjoyable reading experience.

Zip file of the entire book (76MB)

This is not the first time that I have read War and Peace. And the previous times have been under far better circumstances. Yet this time is remarkable. This translation is so much better, so much richer, yet easier to read. I have flown through a book that is famous for being a really tough slog. And concluded that it should never have been that hard.

War and Peace is arguably the greatest of all works of liturature. Yet it is one that has never really fit into any particular genre. Is it a novel? Yes, but few novels stop at times for an essay on the author’s view of history. (and end with a longer essay on both history and human nature) Is it a war story? I once read a collection of good war fiction which actually contained an excerpt from War and Peace- in fact most of Book 2 [Prince Bagration's holding action in Austria after the disaster at Ulm]: It was an excellent read by itself. But large portions of the book deal with people going about trying to get ahead in life far from any battlefield and largely outside of the military. In the final analysis War and Peace is not about history or war- it is about people living and dying, which just happens to be the ultimate stuff that history is made of- and the ultimate stuff of literature as well. Which is why everyone should read War and Peace: It is unique in its ability to bestow real perspective when it comes to looking at the events which constantly bombard us from every television screen.

So be very grateful that you now have a translation that is actually quite readable. Previous ones were simply clunkers. It was worth the slog to obtain the life lessons inside this work, but what a pain. And in truth the previous ones could be quite enjoyabe at times, at least in parts. But this translation is simply so much better. Not just because it seems easier but I felt like I was getting more of the actual texture of Tolstoy’s writing. Of course, to fully get the full texture I would have to master Russian- both the language and the culture. But few of us have that luxury- certainly I do not. Which is why I am ever so grateful for this splendid translation.

If there is one point where the more negative reviewers have a legitimate complaint it is in the failure to also translate the French language passages as well as the English (they are translated- but as footnotes). Would it not have been better to translate them but use a different font to indicate that the characters were speaking French rather than Russian? It was somewhat disconcerting at times, and hurt the flow of the story. But this is a minor quibble.