Peter Dann
Almayer's Folly (Version 3)
Joseph Conrad was born in former Poland, spent part of his childhood exiled in Russia because of his father's Polish nationalist political a…
The History of the Peloponnesian War (Version 2)
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Such may be the reaction of many listeners to Thucydides' compelling and rightly celebr…
The Mirror of the Sea (Version 2)
"Here speaks the man of masts and sails, to whom the sea is not a navigable element, but an intimate companion. The length of passages,…
'Twixt Land and Sea
While the central figures in each of the three stories in this collection are sailing captains, the main action in two of them takes place o…
The Nigger of the "Narcissus" (Version 2)
Today, we're likely to react to the title of this novella, on whose 'sincerity of expression' Conrad was willing to stake his artisitic repu…
A Personal Record
Conrad began dictating the series of loose autobiographical sketches that would become 'A Personal Record' in 1911, when he was half way thr…
The Rescue
"The Rescue" is the third of Conrad's novels to feature Captain Tom Lingard, an independent buccaneer operating in the Malayan arc…
Bliss, and Other Stories
"(N)ot to say that they are cheerful stories; they are anything but that; they have not, however, that element of trivial discomfort so…
A Set of Six
Each of the stories in this collection is spun from a simple, if typically wry and bleak, idea. In "Gaspar Ruiz", a South American…
In a German Pension, Version 2
Katherine Mansfield was only 22 years old when these stories were first published in book form. Mansfield was later reluctant to see them re…
Chance (version 2)
"You are the expert in the psychological wilderness," the nominal narrator of this engaging tale says at one point to Marlow, who …
An Outcast of the Islands (Version 2)
This, Conrad's second, novel serves as an illuminating prequel of his first, 'Almayer's Folly', teasing out the origins of the factional ten…
The Man of Property (Forsyte Saga Vol. 1)
At its heart, this is not so much the story of two might-be, could-be lovers whose blossoming liaison threatens to destroy the marriage of a…
Under Western Eyes (version 2)
"But it is a vain enterprise for sophisticated Europe to try and understand these doings." Set in St Petersburg and Geneva, this a…
The French Revolution: A History. Volume 3: The Guillotine
Of this third, and final, phase of the French Revolution, including that period known as The Terror, Carlyle comments "It is unfortunat…
No More Parades
When No More Parades was first published in 1925, a critic in The Observer wrote of the first 100 pages that they "easily surpass in tr…
The Charterhouse of Parma
In an astounding act of literary improvisation, Stendhal dictated this complex and innovative novel, combining political and psychological r…
Tales of Hearsay
In the time of Napoleon, a thoughtful and romantic young Russian officer finds himself asked to do something unthinkable. In 1868, a Polish …
A Man Could Stand Up
'A Man Could Stand Up' is the third, and culminating, part of Ford Madox Ford's 'Parade's End' tetralogy of novels, which begins with 'Some …
The Romany Rye
"The Romany Rye" is a direct continuation of George Borrow's "Lavengro", taking up the latter's story immediately where …