Phil Benson
Two Cumberland Ballads
Two narrative ballads, based on local lore, by the Cumberland poet John Stagg. In 'The Hermit of Rockcliffe', a young fugitive takes refuge …
Geraldine Jewsbury in Jerrold's Shilling Magazine, 1846-47
'The most striking feature in the present day, far more than that of railways even, is the utter chaos into which all previously received pr…
Sydney Past and Present
An account of the early history of Sydney, Australia's first colonial city. Best known for his collection of light-hearted yarns, Steve Brow…
War Impressions: Being a Record in Colour
A personal account of the second Boer War by Australian expatriate artist Mortimer Menpes. Menpes travelled to South Africa as a corresponde…
Six lectures on literature
C. H. Herford was Professor of English Literature at the Victoria University of Manchester in era when public lectures were published in pam…
Things Seen in Florence
One of the largest and wealthiest cities of medieval Europe, the home of Dante and Giotto has long been a magnet for lovers of art, architec…
The Story of Peterloo
On 16th August 1819 around 60,000 people gathered at St. Peter’s Fields, Manchester, to rally for parliamentary reform. Shortly after the me…
The Blue Review, Number 3
The Blue Review was a short lived monthly journal published in London between May and July 1913. The successor to Rhythm, The Blue Review wa…
A Guide to the Lakes
In the late eighteenth century, English writers discovered the landscape, not only in the paintings of Claude Lorrain, Nicolas Poussin and S…
The Evergreen, A Northern Seasonal. Spring 1895
The Evergreen was a short lived seasonal magazine, edited by William Sharp (Fiona Macleod) and published by Patrick Geddes, which proposed a…
The Cycle Industry, its origin, history and latest developments
From the velocipede to the motor cycle in twenty chapters. A short history of the British bicycle industry from its origins in a Coventry se…
Six lyrics from the Ruthenian of Taras Shevchenko, also The Song of the Merchant Kalashnikov from the Russian of Mikhaíl Lermontov
Poetry by two radical poets, born in the same year, who suffered exile and punishment under the Tsarist Russian empire. Taras Shevchenko is …
The Blue Review, Number 1
The Blue Review was a short lived monthly journal published in London between May and July 1913. The successor to Rhythm, The Blue Review wa…
The Lady Macbeth of the Mzinsk District
In Mzinsk, a remote Russian town, adultery is Katerina's relief from boredom. Before long she has developed a passion for he lover, Sergei, …
Extracts from a Diary Kept by the Rev. R. Burrows during Heke's War in the North, in 1845
An eye-witness account of the so-called Flagstaff War, fought between Maori warriors, led by Hone Heke, and British troops between March 184…
Manchester Poetry
Manchester's first published anthology of locally-written poetry was compiled by editor James Wheeler to show that Manchester, 'the most mec…
The Later Life
Set in the stifling world of turn of the century Dutch aristocracy, the second volume of the 'Books of the Small Souls' quartet, begins wher…
Lancashire Characters and Places
An eclectic collection of essays on late 19th-century Lancashire culture and life, including essays on the poets John Critchley Prince and E…
Little Johannes
In this allegory of childhood and youth, a series of increasingly sinister mentors - Windekind, Wistik, Pluizer and Dr. Cypher - guide the a…
Prose Romances from the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine (1856)
William Morris initiated the genre of high fantasy in a number of short novels written toward the end of his life. But he had already experi…