Gideon Wagner has narrated 4 audiobooks on Listento.it by 6 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 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
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
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