Ghizela Rowe has narrated 11 audiobooks on Listento.it by 18 authors, with an average listener rating of 5★ across 1 ratings. The most-rated is The Poetry of William Morris.
The Poetry of William Morris
Summary
William Morris was born in Walthamstow, London, on 24 March 1834 and is regarded today as a foremost poet, writer, textile designer, artist and libertarian. Morris began to publish poetry and short stories in 1856 through The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, which he founded with his friends and financed while at university. His first volume, in 1858, The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems, was the first published book of pre-Raphaelite poetry. Due to its lukewarm reception he was discouraged from poetry writing for a number of years. However, his return to the form was met with great success in the poem 'The Life and Death of Jason' in 1867, which was followed by 'The Earthly Paradise', themed around a group of medieval wanderers searching for a land of everlasting life; after much disillusion, they discover a surviving colony of Greeks with whom they exchange stories. In the collection are retellings of Icelandic sagas. From then until his Socialist period Morris' fascination with the ancient Germanic and Norse peoples dominated his writing, and he was the first to translate many of the Icelandic sagas into English; the epic retelling of the story of Sigurd the Volsung being his favourite. In 1884 he founded the Socialist League, but with the rise of the Anarchists in the party he left it in 1890, and the following year he founded the Kelmscott Press, publishing limited-edition illuminated style books. His design for The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer is a masterpiece. Morris was quietly approached with an offer of the Poet Laureateship after the death of Tennyson in 1892 but declined. William Morris died at age 62 on 3 October 1896 in London. This volume comes to you from Portable Poetry, a specialised imprint from Deadtree Publishing. Our range is large and growing and covers single poets, themes and many compilations.
©2019 Deadtree Publishing (P)2019 Copyright Group
The Poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar
Summary
Paul Laurence Dunbar was born on 27th June 1872 in Dayton, Ohio. His parents had been slaves in Kentucky before the Civil War. Dunbar wrote his first poem at age six and gave his first public recital at age nine. By 16, he was already published as a poet in The Herald, a local newspaper. After completing his formal schooling in 1891, Dunbar was employed as an elevator operator, at four dollars a week. His hopes of a legal career floundered on a lack of funds and racial discrimination. However, he wrote his poetry and took every opportunity to publish. In 1892 his employers sent him to the United Brethren Publishing House which, in 1893, printed his dialect poetry, Oak and Ivy; Dunbar subsidized the printing and earned back his investment in two weeks by selling copies himself. Dunbar also wrote the lyrics for In Dahomey, the first musical written and performed entirely by African Americans. It was produced on Broadway in 1903 and then toured England and the United States for four years. After returning from a literary tour of United Kingdom, Dunbar married Alice Ruth Moore on 6th March 1898. She was a teacher and poet from New Orleans. Dunbar called her "the sweetest, smartest little girl I ever saw". Alice would become as famous as Paul during her life for her own literary works. In 1900, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, and his doctors recommended drinking whisky to alleviate his symptoms. The couple moved to Colorado, as the cold, dry mountain air was considered favorable for his health. Dunbar and Alice separated in 1902 but never divorced. But depression and declining health drove him to depend on alcohol, and his health deteriorated. His short career was prolific; a dozen books of poetry, four books of short stories, four novels, lyrics for In Dahomey and a play. Dunbar’s essays and poems were published widely in leading journals including Harper's Weekly and The Saturday Evening Post. He was also a committed civil rights activist. In 1904, he returned to Dayton to be with his mother. Paul Laurence Dunbar died of tuberculosis on 9th February 1906, at the age of only 33.
©2020 Deadtree Publishing (P)2020 Copyright Group
The Poetry of Algeron Charles Swinburne
Summary
Algernon Charles Swinburne was born on April 5th, 1837, in London, into a wealthy Northumbrian family. He was educated at Eton and at Balliol College, Oxford, but did not complete a degree. In 1860 Swinburne published two verse dramas but achieved his first literary success in 1865 with Atalanta in Calydon, written in the form of classical Greek tragedy. The following year Poems and Ballads brought him instant notoriety. He was now identified with 'indecent' themes and the precept of art for art's sake. Although he produced much after this success, in general his popularity and critical reputation declined. The most important qualities of Swinburne's work are an intense lyricism, his intricately extended and evocative imagery, metrical virtuosity, rich use of assonance and alliteration and bold, complex rhythms. Swinburne's physical appearance was small, frail and plagued by several other oddities of physique and temperament. Throughout the 1860s and 1870s he drank excessively and was prone to accidents that often left him bruised, bloody, or unconscious. Until his 40s he suffered intermittent physical collapses that necessitated removal to his parents' home while he recovered. Throughout his career Swinburne also published literary criticism of great worth. His deep knowledge of world literatures contributed to a critical style rich in quotation, allusion, and comparison. He is particularly noted for discerning studies of Elizabethan dramatists and of many English and French poets and novelists. As well he was a noted essayist and wrote two novels. In 1879, Swinburne's friend and literary agent, Theodore Watts-Dunton, intervened during a time when Swinburne was dangerously ill. Watts-Dunton isolated Swinburne at a suburban home in Putney and gradually weaned him from alcohol, former companions and many other habits as well. Much of his poetry in this period may be inferior, but some individual poems are exceptional: 'By the North Sea', 'Evening on the Broads', 'A Nympholept', 'The Lake of Gaube' and 'Neap-Tide'. Swinburne lived another 30 years with Watts-Dunton. He denied Swinburne's friends access to him, controlled the poet's money, and restricted his activities. It is often quoted that 'he saved the man but killed the poet'. Swinburne died on April 10th, 1909, at the age of 72. This volume comes to you from Portable Poetry, a specialised imprint from Deadtree Publishing. Our range is large and growing and covers single poets, themes, and many compilations.
©2019 Portable Poetry (P)2019 Portable Poetry
The Poetry of Anne Bradstreet
Summary
Anne Bradstreet was born in 1612 in Northampton, England. Her parents' position allowed them to educate Anne across many subjects, which was unusual for its day. In her teens, she contracted smallpox, which was to undermine her health in later years. She married Simon at the age of 16. They, along with her parents, emigrated to America with other Puritans in 1630, arriving on June 14 in Massachusetts. They moved south to Charlestown almost immediately to find better conditions. After a short stay, they moved yet farther south to help found the ‘City on the Hill’, Boston. By 1632 they had moved once more, this time to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Anne gave birth to her first child, Samuel. The family was instrumental in setting up Harvard University in 1636, but by the early 1640s, Anne, pregnant with her sixth child, and her family, moved for the sixth time to Andover Parish. In all, Anne bore eight children although her health was always weak. She did, however, write some beautiful poetry, and in 1650, the Rev. John Woodbridge had her collection of verse, The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, composed by 'A Gentlewoman from Those Parts', published in London, making Anne the first female poet ever published in both England and the New World. On July 10, 1666, their North Andover family home burned down to leave them homeless. Tragically, her own personal library of some 800 books was also lost in the flames. By now, Anne's health was slowly failing. She suffered from tuberculosis and had to deal with the loss of cherished relatives. But her will remained strong and her faith in God undiminished. Anne Bradstreet died on September 16, 1672 in North Andover, Massachusetts, at the age of 60. This volume comes to you from Portable Poetry, a specialised imprint from Deadtree Publishing. Our range is large and growing and covers single poets, themes and many compilations.
©2019 Deadtree Publishing (P)2019 Copyright Group
15 Minutes of Love Poems - Volume 3
Summary
Love. What is love? The question is asked by each of us, but the answer remains elusive. Dictionaries summon up many words, but none fulfill. Love itself is often ethereal, felt but only seen in a glance, a look, a fleeting touch. Part of love’s beauty is perhaps in the fact that the question never can be adequately answered; it's ephemeral, a chimera of the heart and only felt. Our own experiences are unique and personal to ourselves and of little help defining it for another. Love is perhaps best expressed through poetry. As Plato said 2,500 years ago, “At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.” Writing a love poem for ones’ partner is seen as the most romantic of gestures. It opens our hearts to another's. Lovers love. Here, in this volume history’s greatest poets convey thoughts, feelings and sentiments of love to you in quick (or bite-size) conversations of verse that can slip into your day and your partner's heart.
©2020 Deadtree Publishing (P)2020 Copyright Group
John Keats - A Tribute in Verse
Summary
Keats. The name is synonymous with great Romantic poetry and great Romantic poets. A short life but a legacy of works that few, if any, can rival. And of course his end was to be tragically Romantic. Keats was returning one night to his home in Hampstead when he coughed. He coughed a single drop of blue blood upon his hand and said, ‘I know the colour of that blood, it is arterial blood, it is my death warrant, I must die’. And so it was that tuberculosis took its slow, devastating hold. He moved to Rome, hoping the warmer climate would help but died, at age 25, in the Eternal City in 1821. His death robbed the world of its young and beautifully talented wordsmith. Such was the esteem among his fellow poets that so many wrote of the joy of his works and the grief of his death. This is their tribute.
Public Domain (P)2019 The Copyright Group
15 Minutes of Love Poems - Volume 2
Summary
Love. What is love? The question is asked by each of us, but the answer remains elusive. Dictionaries summon up many words, but none fulfill. Love itself is often ethereal, felt but only seen in a glance, a look, a fleeting touch. Part of love’s beauty is perhaps in the fact that the question never can be adequately answered; it's ephemeral, a chimera of the heart and only felt. Our own experiences are unique and personal to ourselves and of little help defining it for another. Love is perhaps best expressed through poetry. As Plato said 2,500 years ago, “At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.” Writing a love poem for ones’ partner is seen as the most romantic of gestures. It opens our hearts to another's. Lovers love. Here, in this volume history’s greatest poets convey thoughts, feelings and sentiments of love to you in quick (or bite-size) conversations of verse that can slip into your day and your partner's heart.
©2020 Deadtree Publishing (P)2020 Copyright Group
The Poetry of Radclyffe Hall
Summary
Marguerite Radclyffe-Hall was born on August 12th, 1880 to wealthy parents who separated while she was still an infant. Her parents thereafter paid little attention to her. Hall was educated privately, and then at King’s College London. Later she travelled to Europe, settling in Dresden, Germany. With the death of her paternal grandfather she inherited a large estate and was then able to live as she pleased. In Germany, Hall met Mabel Batten and fell in love despite the 23 year age difference. Batten gave Hall the nickname ‘John’ by which she was henceforward known in every circumstance throughout her life except in her work as an author. In 1915, Hall met and, in 1917, moved in with sculptor Una Troubridge, with whom she would remain for the rest of her life. Hall wrote poetry all throughout her 20s and 30s. She had published Dedicated to Arthur Sullivan as early as 1894, and five further volumes of collected works were released before she stopped writing poetry and published her first novel, The Forge, in 1924. That same year also saw publication of The Unlit Lamp, the first work for which Hall was known as simply Radclyffe Hall. The Well of Loneliness, the most important novel of Hall’s career, was published in 1928 to immediate sensation and controversy. It is Hall’s most direct artistic expression of her own personal sexual orientation. After the controversy of The Well of Loneliness, Hall would publish only two more novels and a collection of short stories. After years spent travelling in Italy and France and a series of long lasting affairs with other women (of which Troubridge was apparently aware), Hall retired with Troubridge to Rye, in East Sussex. Here, suffering from tuberculosis, she also underwent eye surgery and thereafter had difficulty reading and writing. On October 7, 1943, Radclyffe Hall died from colon cancer at the age of 63. She is buried in Highgate Cemetery in London. This volume comes to you from Portable Poetry, a specialised imprint from Deadtree Publishing. Our range is large and growing and covers single poets, themes, and many compilations.
©2018 Deadtree Publishing (P)2018 The Copyright Group
The Female Poets of the Seventeeth Century, Volume 1
Summary
For much of history women have been seen rather than heard. Their thoughts, their views have lain too long in the shadows of our culture. Whilst this traditional view has some merit, it is not entirely accurate. Here, gathered together in these volumes, we can, through their words, experience their lives; we can hear their voices, their thoughts, joys, loves and losses. For the female poet there was always the confining hand of men to instruct that their time was perhaps spent more productively elsewhere. These lines, these gilded verses, often protest otherwise. The contribution of women in these earlier centuries is immense, and in this series we bring together poets who have created some of the most beautiful and expressive verses ever written. And remember these words, these telling lines, have been written against the grain of society's male bias. With their remembered words these female poets have given us a history that we can all now share. This volume comes to you from Portable Poetry, a specialised imprint from Deadtree Publishing. Our range is large and growing and covers single poets, themes and many compilations.
©2018 Deadtree Publishing (P)2018 The Copyright Group
The Pre-Raphaelite Poets
Summary
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood began as a group of painters, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt, who wished to reject the stern and academic strictures of current painting and return to the simpler and more uncomplicated days before the Italian High Renaissance and the days of Raphael. The movement was short lived but very influential and, as well, was taken up by a number of different arts. For poetry, it was a major movement and, because of its depiction of pleasures of the flesh, was, at the time, heavily criticised. One critic called it ‘The Fleshly School of Poetry’. However, the sensationalist aside, it unleashed works that had instant appeal. The movement pushed back against contemporary writings, which seemed full of tradition and the more mundane problems of society. To exploit and gain attention for their ideas, the Brotherhood started their own periodical, The Germ, which, although it lasted only four numbers, did much to bring them attention. Its devotion to the mediaeval, to symbols and a more naturalistic and detailed approach to poetry, was refreshing, especially as the movement sprang up from a Victorian society that believed morals should be strictly managed, at least in public. The Pre-Raphaelites as an organised group eventually went their own way but had behind them works which heavily influenced painting and literature for decades to come. With poets of the calibre of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, his sister Christina Georgina Rossetti, William Morris, Charles Algernon Swinburne and George Meredith, poetry of great beauty, tenderness and even rawness was placed on the page. This volume comes to you from Portable Poetry, a specialized imprint from Deadtree Publishing. Our range is large and growing and covers single poets, themes, and many compilations.
Public Domain (P)2019 The Copyright Group NET
The Poetry of Edmund Spenser
Summary
One of the greatest of English poets, Edmund Spenser was born in East Smithfield, London, in 1552 and went to school at Merchant Taylors' School and later at Pembroke College, Cambridge. In 1579, he published The Shepheardes Calender, his first major work. Edmund journeyed to Ireland in July 1580, in the service of the newly appointed Lord Deputy, Arthur Grey, 14th Baron Grey de Wilton. His time included the terrible massacre at the Siege of Smerwick. The epic poem The Faerie Queene is acknowledged as Edmund’s masterpiece. The first three books were published in 1590, and a second set of three books were published in 1596. Indeed the reality is that Spenser, through his great talents, was able to move poetry in a different direction. It led to him being called a poet’s poet and brought rich admiration from Milton, Raleigh, Blake, Wordsworth, Keats, Byron, and Tennyson, among others. Spenser returned to Ireland and in 1591, Complaints, a collection of poems that voices complaints in mournful or mocking tones, was published. In 1595, Spenser published Amoretti and Epithalamion in a volume that contains 89 sonnets. In the following year he wrote a prose pamphlet entitled A View of the Present State of Ireland, a highly inflammatory argument for the pacification and destruction of Irish culture. On January 13th, 1599 Edmund Spenser died at the age of 46. His coffin was carried to his grave in Westminster Abbey by other poets, who threw pens and poetic pieces into his grave. This volume comes to you from Portable Poetry, a specialised imprint from Deadtree Publishing. Our range is large and growing and covers single poets, themes, and many compilations.
Public Domain (P)2019 The Copyright Group