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Pygmalion (1913) is a play by George Bernard Shaw based on the Greek myth of the same name. It tells the story of Henry Higgins, a professor of phonetics (based on phonetician Henry Sweet), who makes a bet with his friend Colonel Pickering that he can successfully pass off a Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, as a refined society lady by teaching her how to speak with an upper class accent and training her in etiquette. In the process, Higgins and Doolittle grow close, but she ultimately rejects his domineering ways and declares she will marry Freddy Eynsford-Hill – a young, poor, gentleman. - The play was later the basis for the successful movie adaptation My Fair Lady with Audrey Hepburn as Eliza and Rex Harrison as Prof. Higgins. ( Gesine)...

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Romance, Play, Languages, Comedy

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The author Thomas Archer lived 1830 – 1893; he wrote several juvenile stories, and this book: Miss Grantley’s Girls – And the Stories She Told Them , was published in 1886. It is a book in 7 chapters. Miss Grantley is a teacher and works as a governess, and she after some coaxing tells somewhat romantic stories to her girls. In the first chapter it says: There was nothing romantic in Miss Grantley's appearance, and yet she was the sort of person that you could not help looking at again and again if you once saw her. . . We found out too that she could tell stories of her own; and now and then we used to persuade her to 'spin a yarn,' as Bella Dornton, whose father had been a naval officer, used to say. . . I don't suppose that any of us will ever forget Miss Grantley's pretty parlour. So join the girls in the parlour and listen when Miss Grantley tells her stories. (Summary by Lars Rolander)...

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Teen/Young adult, Romance

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The two eldest Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne, one of whom (Elinor) embraces practicality and restraint while the other (Marianne) gives her whole heart to every endeavor. When the Dashwoods - mother Mrs. Dashwood, Elinor, Marianne, and youngest sister Margaret - are sent, almost impoverished, to a small cottage in Devonshire after the death of their father and the machinations of their brother's wife, they accept their new circumstances with as much cheer as they can muster even though their brother and his wife have taken over the family estate and fortune. Marianne finds herself falling in love with the dashing Willoughby, who ends up being not all that he appears. Elinor, the more sensible of the two, falls for Edward Ferrars, a match that seems much more suitable. All of these pleasant connections are, however, soon disrupted. Willoughby leaves and ignores Marianne. Elinor finds out an unexpected secret about Ferrars that puts her on her caution in pursuing their relationship. As these complications develop, Marianne soon finds herself distraught despite having attracted another suitor, the reliable, but older, Colonel B...

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Romance

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‘The Forsyte Saga’ is the story of a wealthy London family stretching from the eighteen-eighties until the nineteen-twenties. To Let is the third and final book in the saga (although Galsworthy later published two further trilogies which extend the story). We are now in 1920, about twenty years since Irene married Young Jolyon and gave birth to John and since Soames married Annette, who gave him a daughter, Fleur. The two sides of the family have not met since those times and John and Fleur do not even know of each other’s existence.All the old Forsytes are dead except for Timothy. Val and Holly have returned from South Africa and Val is training racehorses in Sussex. June has opened her gallery near Cork Street.Soames arranges to meet Fleur at June’s gallery and while there, and again later in a patisserie, they see Irene and Jon. Soames ignores them but Fleur and Jon are attracted to one another at a distance. As they leave, Fleur drops her handkerchief... (Summary by Andy Minter)...

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Literature, Romance

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Miss Frances, the youngest Ward sister, married, in the common phrase, to disoblige her family, and by fixing on a lieutenant of marines, without education, fortune, or connexions, did it very thoroughly. She could hardly have made a more untoward choice. Some years later, pregnant with her ninth child, Mrs. Price appeals to her family, namely to her eldest sister and her husband, Sir Thomas Bertram, for help with her over-large family. Sir Thomas provides assistance in helping his nephews into lines of work suitable to their education, and takes his eldest niece, Fanny Price, then ten years old, into his home to raise with his own children. It is Fanny's story we follow in Mansfield Park. (Summary by Karen Savage with text from Mansfield Park)...

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Fiction, Romance

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This novel, published in 1856, was one of the popular and beloved novels in the Victorian era. It is told in the first person by Phineas Fletcher, an invalid son of a Quaker tanner who is presented to us in the beginning as a lonely youth. John Halifax, the first friend he ever had, is a poor orphan who is taken in by his father to help in the work which his sickly son can't constantly do. Phineas tells us in an unforgettable way how John succeeded in rising from his humble beginning and become a wealthy and successful man. But with the money come horrible troubles... In an unforgettable manner, we learn to know all the characters of the novel as if they really lived. (Summary by Stav Nisser)...

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Fiction, Romance

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The soldier awakened from the brink of death eight months after his injury on the battlefield. As he slowly regained his senses and his memory, the face of a girl creeps into his mind, and he soon recalls that this girl had married him out of pity on the day he went into battle. The wedding had been a true war wedding. Inspired by the face and the vague recollections which were taking shape, and after learning that his day-bride had since remarried (believing her day-husband killed in action), the battle-scarred soldier decides to re-invent himself, take on a new name, and seek a new life. To what extent his former life would have upon his adopted life unfolds in unforgettable detail with each chapter of Where the Path Breaks. Captain Charles de Créspigny was a pseudonym used by Charles Norris (C.N.) Williamson. (Introduction by Roger Melin)...

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Romance

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After a tragedy in her family, Lucy Snow leaves her home to become a teacher at a French boarding school. Lucy soon begins to fight against an overwhelming sense of desolation. Meeting a charming doctor and a strict, peculiar schoolmaster changes her life forever-- and threatens to break her spirit. (summary by heatherausten)...

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Romance

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The story is set in Padua in a distant, but unspecified past. From his quarters, Giovanni, a young student of letters, observes Beatrice, the beautiful daughter of Dr. Rappaccini, a scientist working in isolation. Beatrice is confined to the lush and locked gardens filled with poisonous plants by her father. Having fallen in love, Giovanni enters the garden and meets with Beatrice a number of times regardless of the warning of his mentor, Professor Baglioni, that Rappaccini is up to no good and he and his work should be avoided. -- Wikipedia....

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Fiction, Romance

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The story takes place in a small woodland village called Little Hintock, and concerns the efforts of an honest woodsman, Giles Winterborne, to marry his childhood sweetheart, Grace Melbury. Although they have been informally betrothed for some time, her father has made financial sacrifices to give his adored only child a superior education and no longer considers Giles good enough for her. The Woodlanders marks the beginnings of controversy for Hardy's novels. At this point in his career he was established enough as a writer to take risks, especially in the areas of sex, sexual attraction, marriage, divorce, marital fidelity, unconventional plots and tones, and seemingly immoral conclusions. (Summary Wikipedia)...

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Fiction, Romance

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volunteers bring you 10 recordings of An Apology for Sadness by Anne Lynch Botta. This was the Weekly Poetry project for March 13, 2011. Anne Charlotte Lynch Botta was an American poet, writer, teacher and socialite whose home was the central gathering place of the literary elite of her era. At Mrs. Botta's receptions every Saturday night, attendees would find the most well-known writers, actors and artists, such as Poe, Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott, Louisa May Alcott, Horace Greeley, Richard Henry Stoddard, Andrew Carnegie, Mary Mapes Dodge, Julia Ward Howe, Charles Butler, Fitz-Greene Halleck, Delia Bacon, Grace Greenwood, Bayard Taylor, William Cullen Bryant, Helen Hunt Jackson, actress Fanny Kemble, Daniel Webster, and many more. Her friend Kate Sanborn started her literary lecturing career at these receptions. Said a Boston writer: It was not so much what Mrs. Botta did for literature with her own pen, as what she helped others to do, that will make her name a part of the literary history of the country. (summary from Wikipedia)...

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Romance, Poetry

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Throughout three years of school, Rae Malgregor had been perfectly pliant, perfectly compliant to all the demands placed on her. But now, on the eve of graduation, she couldn’t go on with the mask of artificiality and the air of perfection. She had been chasing this nursing job three whole years, but there was just no wag to it! The Superintendent was stunned. Her best student! The Senior Surgeon was all grey granite business and livid that his time was being taken up with a hysterical nurse! And yet, though he wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone, especially himself, his interest was piqued. (Introduction by MaryAnn)...

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Fiction, Romance, Humor