Neville Jason

British novelist, short story writer, and poet of the naturalist movement. He captured the epoch just before the railways and the industrial revolution changed the English countryside. His works are pessimistic and bitterly ironic, and his writing is rough but capable of immense power. His first novel, The Poor Man and the Lady, finished by 1867, failed to find a publisher and Hardy destroyed the manuscript. Only parts of the novel remain. He was...

A retelling of the Arthurian legend.

Largely a memoir of the years before and after Primo Levi's transportation from his native Italy to Auschwitz as an anti-Fascist partisan and a Jew, this book recounts, in clear, beautiful prose, the story of the Piedmontese Jewish community from which Levi came, of his years as a student and young chemist at the inception of the Second World War, and of his investigations into the nature of the material world. It provides crucial links and backgrounds,...

Swann's Way tells two related stories, the first of which revolves around Marcel, a younger version of the narrator, and his experiences in, and memories of, the French town Combray. Inspired by the "gusts of memory" that rise up within him as he dips a Madeleine into hot tea, the narrator discusses his fear of going to bed at night. He is a creature of habit and dislikes waking up in the middle of the night not knowing where he is. He claims that...

Five hundred years after they were written, Vasari’s ‘Lives of the Artists’ remains the principal source book on the remarkable flowering of Italian painting in the 15th century. Here are Giotto, Cimabue, Ucello, Brunelleschi, Donatello, Piero della Francesca, Fra Angelico, Fra Filippo, Botticelli, Mantegna, Leonardo, Raphael, Michaelangelo, Titian and even Vasari himself. In all there are biographies from over 35 Artists.

This set offers

...

Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past is one of the world's most celebrated books. And yet many people are daunted by its formidable size: it is more than 3,000 pages long. In this audio version Proust's masterpiece is presented in easily accessible form, the author's major themes and unique style are retained, and the key scenes are linked by a specially written narration. The Essential Remembrance of Things Past is an ideal

...

Hailed as the world's first novel, "Pamela: Or Virtue Rewarded" by Samuel Richardson is a gripping tale about a beautiful young maidservant in mid-1700's England. After her employer dies, the employer's son begins making advances toward her. The virtuous girl tries to stave off his advances, but Mr. B's desperation eventually causes him to kidnap her in a misguided attempt to try and make her understand how much he loves her. When he realizes that...

The poems - nearly 80 in total - are set in the context of his life and thought, including personal writings by him and those closest to him.