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Krasavitse, Kotoraya Niuhala Tabak ( To a Beautiful woman, Who Was Smelling Tobacco ) is a small poem written by Alexander Pushkin, a famous Russian poet well known outside the Russia. The author describes in a fun and artistc way the conflict between an image inside of his head of the beautiful and lovely women on the one hand, and her action - smelling tobacco - on the other hand! Can anyone imagine two more incompatible things than a clean and bright woman and a dirty toy of alcoholics and sailors - tobacco! This conflict hit the author straight into his heart, so he couldn’t ignore it and wrote this amazing poem upon such a revelational theme.(Summary written by Yakovlev Valery)...

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Poetry

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volunteers bring you 14 recordings of Verses on a Young Lady Playing on a Harpsicord and Singing by Tobias Smollett. This was the Weekly Poetry project for November 21st, 2010. Tobias George Smollett (19 March 1721 – 17 September 1771) was a Scottish poet and author. He was best known for his picaresque novels, such as The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748) and The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751), which influenced later novelists such as Charles Dickens....

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Literature, Music, Poetry, Romance

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One of the earliest recorded histories of Britain; Nennius wrote the book around 796BC. These days Nennius is recognised as being a teller, and embellisher, of historic characters and events; but his book is notable as one of the earliest that mention Arthur (of Arthurian legend). (Summary by Alan Stealey)...

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History, Myths/Legends

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volunteers bring you 21 recordings of Symphony in Yellow by Oscar Wilde. This was the Weekly Poetry project for March 18, 2012. Oscar Wilde, an Irish author who lived for much of his life in London, is most famous for his witty, satirical plays. He also worked for some time as a journalist. Much of his poetry was written early in his career, with a notable exception being The Ballad of Reading Gaol. This poem, Symphony in Yellow, is probably one of his earlier works; in it he describes London in a flattering manner something he was disinclined to do after his trial and imprisonment. (Summary by Lucy Perry)...

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Poetry

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Having left Sherlock Holmes apparently deceased at the conclusion of The Final Problem (in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes), we now find that he is alive after all! In this collection, first published in 1905, the great detective causes Watson to faint (The Empty House), demonstrates that cryptography is elementary (The Dancing Men), and gets engaged (Charles Augustus Milverton). Join in the fun as Holmes deduces his way through these thirteen adventures. (summary by Laurie Anne Walden)...

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Adventure, Mystery, Short stories

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Text of the speech given by Brewster Kahle, founder of the http://www.archive.org/ Internet Archive , at the launch of the http://openlibrary.org/ Open Library in October 2005. was invited to the launch, and produced audio recordings for An International Episode, and Old Christmas, two of the first books scanned into the Open Library collection. (Summary by Hugh)...

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Essay/Short nonfiction

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Een verzameling van negen avonturen van Sherlock Holmes, de bekende Britse detective, en zijn compaan Dr. Watson. (Samenvatting door Julie VW)

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Short stories, Adventure, Fiction

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History

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The novel tells of a young man named Dorian Gray, the subject of a painting by artist Basil Hallward. Basil is impressed by Dorian's beauty and becomes infatuated with him, believing his beauty is responsible for a new mode in his art. Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, a friend of Basil's, and becomes enthralled by Lord Henry's world view. Espousing a new hedonism, Lord Henry suggests the only things worth pursuing in life are beauty and fulfillment of the senses. Realizing that one day his beauty will fade, Dorian expresses his desire to sell his soul to ensure the portrait Basil has painted would age rather than himself. Dorian's wish is fulfilled, plunging him into debauched acts. The portrait serves as a reminder of the effect each act has upon his soul, with each sin displayed as a disfigurement of his form, or through a sign of aging. This reading uses the 20-chapter 1891 version of Wilde's novel....

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Fantasy, Fiction, Horror/Ghost stories, Literature

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volunteers bring you 9 different recordings of Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight by Vachel Lindsay. This was the weekly poetry project for the week of February 18th, 2007....

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Poetry

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’s weekly poetry project for the week of January 29, 2006: This popular piece was voted Britain’s favourite poem in a BBC opinion poll in 1995. (Summary from Wikipedia)...

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Poetry

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Afloat on the Ohio, An Historical Pilgrimage, of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, From Redstone to Cairo. There were four of us pilgrims—my Wife, our Boy of ten and a half years, the Doctor, and I. My object in going—the others went for the outing—was to gather local color for work in Western history. The Ohio River was an important factor in the development of the West. I wished to know the great waterway intimately in its various phases,—to see with my own eyes what the borderers saw; in imagination, to redress the pioneer stage, and repeople it. ( From the Preface )...

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Adventure, History, Instruction, Memoirs, Nature, Travel

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volunteers bring you nine different readings of Clement C. Moore's 'Twas the Night Before Christmas , a weekly poetry project. (Summary by Annie Coleman)...

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Poetry, Holiday

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This is a collection of works -- short stories or poetry -- by women writers in English from around the world and first published before 1923. (Summary by BellonaTimes)...

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Fiction

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One of the great literary tragedies of all time, The Hunchback of Notre Dame features some of the most well-known characters in all of fiction - Quasimodo, the hideously deformed bellringer of Notre-Dame de Paris, his master the evil priest Claude Frollo, and Esmeralda, the beautiful gypsy condemned for a crime she did not commit. (Summary by Mark Nelson)...

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Fiction

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In 1895, Oscar Wilde was sentenced to 2 years of hard labor for acts of ‘gross indecency’. During his time at Reading Gaol, he witnessed a rare hanging, and in the three years between his release and his untimely death in 1900, was inspired to write the following poem, a meditation on the death penalty and the importance of forgiveness, even for (and especially for) something as heinous as murdering one’s spouse; for even the murderer, Wilde argues, is human and suffers more so for being the cause of his own pain, for ‘having killed the thing he loved’; for everyone is the cause of someone else’s suffering and suffers at the hands of another. It is this that Jesus Christ could see; he could continue to see the beauty of our humanity, despite all that we may do to each other, and encouraged us to love each other just the same. “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” was published in 1898 and would gain Wilde greater recognition as a poet (in addition to being a great playwright); although his only other volume of poetry, one of his earliest works that he’d published, was also well-received. Sadly, ‘The Ballad’ would be his last. (Summary by Lin...

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Poetry

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volunteers bring you 17 different recordings of Against Indifference by Charles Webbe. This was the weekly poetry project for the week of January 20th, 2008....

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Poetry

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volunteers bring you nine different readings of The Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay , by William McGonagall, to celebrate April Fool's Day. Scottish poet William McGonagall is widely considered to be one of the worst poets of the English language. He wrote this poem in honor of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_Rail_Bridge The Tay Rail Bridge which was opened in 1878 and which subsequently collapsed a year later, causing the death of 75 train passengers, and inspiring McGonagall to write yet famously bad poem entitled The Tay Bridge Disaster . This was the weekly poetry project for the week of March 26, 2006. (Summary by Annie Coleman)...

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Poetry

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This is Shakespeare's dutiful trubute to one of the most imposing and terrifying rulers in European history. The kingdom trembles as the giant monarch storms through his midlife crisis, disposing of the faithful Katharine of Aragon and starting a new life and, the king hopes, a line of succession with the captivating young Anne Bullen. Unlike his predecessors, Henry has no doubt about the security of his tenure on the throne, and dominates the royal court with absolute authority. The play has a surprising modern flavour: there is even a set of Royal watchers - the three gossipy gentlemen! (Summary by Algy Pug)...

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History, Play

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volunteers bring you 6 different recordings of the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, Lines 1-18 by Geoffrey Chaucer. This was the weekly poetry project for the week of July 15th, 2007....

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Poetry