PUBLIC MARKS with tag manybooks

Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde

The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Wilde’s meditation on capital punishment, the Ballad of Reading Gaol comes after he was convicted and imprisoned under charges of gross indecency. The charges stemmed from his affair with Lord Alfred Douglas, the son of the Marquis of Queensberry. It relates the story of an execution of a man who murdered his wife which Wilde witnessed during his internment. Published in 1898, it was Wilde’s last published poem as he would die in 1900 from cerebral menengitis, caused by syphilis. (Summary by John Gonzalez) * Gutenberg e-text * Wikipedia - Oscar Wilde * Wikipedia - The Ballad of Reading Gaol * LibriVox’s The Ballad of Reading Gaol Internet Archive page * Zip file of the entire book 15.7MB * RSS feed · Subscribe in iTunes · Chapter-a-day Read by John Gonzalez mp3 and ogg files * The Ballad of Reading Gaol - 00:33:12 [mp3@64kbps - 15.9MB] [mp3@128kbps - 31.8MB] [ogg vorbis - 15.7MB]

Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde English, published in 1898 Categories: Poetry, Audiobook

A Plea for Captain John Brown by Henry David Thoreau - 00:55:05 Source: E-text [mp3@64kbps - 26.4MB] [mp3@128kbps - 52.8MB] [ogg vorbis - 29MB] Read by: Matthew Westra

Walden by Henry David Thoreau

Walden by Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) Walden by Henry David Thoreau is one of the best-known non-fiction books written by an American. Published in 1854, it details Thoreau’s life for two years, two months, and two days around the shores of Walden Pond. Walden is neither a novel nor a true autobiography, but a social critique of the Western World, with each chapter heralding some aspect of humanity that needed to be either renounced or praised. Along with his critique of the civilized world, Thoreau examines other issues afflicting man in society, ranging from economy and reading to solitude and higher laws. He also takes time to talk about the experience at Walden Pond itself, commenting on the animals and the way people treated him for living there, using those experiences to bring out his philosophical positions. This extended commentary on nature has often been interpreted as a strong statement to the natural religion that transcendentalists like Thoreau and Emerson were preaching. (Description amended from Wikipedia).

A Plea for Captain John Brown

On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) Civil Disobedience is an essay by Henry David Thoreau. Published in 1849 under the title Resistance to Civil Government, it expressed Thoreau’s belief that people should not allow governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that people have a duty both to avoid doing injustice directly and to avoid allowing their acquiescence to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice. Thoreau was motivated in part by his disgust with slavery and the Mexican-American War. (Summary from Wikipedia).

On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

and On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

Henry David Thoreau

end to it. But there was one curious circumstance. I had taken a loathing to my gentleman at first sight. So had the child's family, which was only natural. But the doctor's case was what struck me. He was the usual cut and dry apothecary, of no particular age and colour, with a strong Edinburgh accent and about as emotional as a bagpipe. Well, sir, he was like the rest of us; every time he looked at my prisoner, I saw that Sawbones turn sick and white with desire to kill him. I knew what was in his mind, just as he knew what was in mine; and killing being out of the question, we did the next best. We told the man we could and would make such a scandal out of this as should make his name stink from one end of London to the other. If he had any friends or any credit, we undertook that he should lose them. And all the time, as we were pitching it in red hot, we were keeping the women off him as best we could for they were as wild as harpies. I never saw a circle of such hateful faces; and there was th

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a novella by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, first published in 1886. London lawyer Utterson is driven to investigate Edward Hyde, the unlikely protégé of his friend Dr Henry Jekyll, suspecting the relationship to be founded on blackmail. The truth is worse than he could have imagined. Jekyll’s ‘full statement of the case’, the final chapter of the book, explores the idea of dual personality that led him to his experiments, and his inexorable and finally fatal descent into evil. (Summary by David Barnes)

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Treasure Island is an adventure novel, a thrilling tale of “buccaneers and buried gold.” Traditionally considered a coming of age story, it is an adventure tale of superb atmosphere, character and action, and also a wry commentary on the ambiguity of morality—as seen in Long John Silver—unusual for children’s literature then and now. (Summary from wikipedia.org)

A masterful tale of ''buccaneers and buried gold''. First published in the children's magazine Young Folks, and considered a coming of age story, it is an adventure tale of superb atmosphere, character, and action, as well as a wry commentary on the ambiguity of morality—as seen in Long John Silver—unusual for children's literature then and now. It is one of the most frequently dramatised of all novels, and its influence on popular lore about pirates can not be overestimated. Approx. 68,021 words.

Librivox recording of Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. Read by Zachary Brewster-Geisz, Geoff Cowgill, Michelle Crandall, hosmer_angel, Lee Ann Howlett, Larysa Jaworski, JemmaBlythe, Lady Maria, Lord Peter, Martina, Mellors, Alison Raouf, scrappylibrarian and Jennifer Stearns. A tale of passion set in the bleak Yorkshire moors in mid 19thC, far from the Victorian uprightness, Wuthering Heights depicts the mutual love of Catherine and Heathcliff till destruction rends the narration; yet cruelty is only to be met with forgiveness in the following generations. Romantic, impassioned and wild, it is also a dark journey in the human soul. (Summary by Lady Maria).

Wuthering Heights, 1847

Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë's only novel, this tale portrays Catherine and Heathcliff, their all-encompassing love for one another, and how this unresolved passion eventually destroys them both, leading Heathcliff to shun and abuse society. First published in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell, Wuthering Heights is considered to be a classic of English literature. Approx. 119,192 words.

s, the rain falling through the leaves, or the dew creeping over the grass and making it silver - would all be tainted for me, and lose their healing power, and their power of communicating joy. To regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development. To deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul. For just as the body absorbs things of all kinds, things common and unclean no less than those that the priest or a vision has cleansed, and converts them into swiftness or strength, into the play of beautiful muscles and the moulding of fair flesh, into the curves and colours of the hair, the lips, the eye; so the soul in its turn has its nutritive functions also, and can transform into noble moods of thought and passions of high import what in itself is base, cruel and degrading; nay, more, may find in these its most august modes of assertion, and can often reveal itself most perfectly through what was intended to desecrate

tes me to heaven, for nothing contributes so much to tranquillize the mind as a steady purpose--a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye. This expedition has been the favourite dream of my early years. I have read with ardour the accounts of the various voyages which have been made in the prospect of arriving at the North Pacific Ocean through the seas which surround the pole. You may remember that a history of all the voyages made for purposes of discovery composed the whole of our good Uncle Thomas' library. My education was neglected, yet I was passionately fond of reading. These volumes were my study day and night, and my familiarity with them increased that regret which I had felt, as a child, on learning that my father's dying injunction had forbidden my uncle to allow me to embark in a seafaring life. These visions faded when I perused, for the first time, those poets whose effusions entranced my soul and lifted it to heaven. I also became a poet and for one year lived in a paradi

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley