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The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52

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Essay/Short nonfiction, Fiction, History, Memoirs, Non-fiction, Travel
Chapter: 24 | Listen: 4

Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe moved to California from Massachusetts during the Gold Rush of the mid-1800’s. During her travels, Louise was offered the opportunity to write for The Herald about her travel adventures. It was at this point that Louise chose the name “Shirley” as her pen name. Dame Shirley wrote a series of 23 letters to her sister Mary Jane (also known as Molly) in Massachusetts in 1851 and 1852. The “Shirley Letters”, as the collected whole later became known, gave true accounts of life in two gold mining camps on the Feather River in the 1850s. She described these camps in Northern California with vividness in portraying the wildness of Gold Rush life. The letters give detailed accounts of the vast and beautiful landscape that was the background to the hustle and bustle of mining life. Louise’s perspective as a woman provided a contrast to the typically all-male mining camps that she occupied. The letters were later published in the Pioneer, a California literary magazine based out of San Francisco. [chương_files]

Short Poetry Collection 104

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Poetry
Chapter: 34 | Listen: 1

This is a collection of poems read by LibriVox volunteers for January 2012. [chương_files]

An Essay on Criticism

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Essay/Short nonfiction, Fiction, Literature, Poetry
Chapter: 1 | Listen: 4

An Essay on Criticism was the first major poem written by the English writer Alexander Pope (1688-1744). However, despite the title, the poem is not as much an original analysis as it is a compilation of Pope’s various literary opinions. A reading of the poem makes it clear that he is addressing not so much the ingenuous reader as the intending writer. It is written in a type of rhyming verse called heroic couplets. [chương_files]

Selection of Poems by Sir Walter Raleigh

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Poetry, Single Author
Chapter: 1 | Listen: 5

Sir Walter Raleigh (c. 1552 – 29 October 1618) was an English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer. He is also well known for popularising tobacco in England. Raleigh’s poetry is written in the relatively straightforward, unornamented mode known as the plain style. C. S. Lewis considered Raleigh one of the era’s “silver poets”, a group of writers who resisted the Italian Renaissance influence of dense classical reference and elaborate poetic devices. In poems such as “What is Our Life” and “The Lie”, Raleigh expresses a contemptus mundi (contempt of the world) attitude more characteristic of the Middle Ages than of the dawning era of humanistic optimism. But, his lesser-known long poem “The Ocean to Cynthia” combines this vein with the more elaborate conceits associated with his contemporaries Edmund Spenser and John Donne, expressing a melancholy sense of history. A minor poem of Raleigh’s captures the atmosphere of the court at the time of Queen Elizabeth I. His response to Christopher Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” was “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd”. “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” was written in 1592, while Raleigh’s “The Nymph’s Reply to The Shepherd” was written four years later. Both were written in the style of traditional pastoral poetry. They follow the same structure of six four-line stanzas employing a rhyme scheme of AABB. (Introduction by Wikipedia) Sir Walter Raleigh (c. 1552 – 29 October 1618) was an English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer. He is […]

A Miscellany of Men

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Essay/Short nonfiction, Fiction, Literature, Non-fiction
Chapter: 13 | Listen: 3

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was among the world’s most prolific writers who incorporated relentless logic, wonderful humor, and a clear view of truth into an amazing tool for exposing the foolishness of the policies of the world around him through the device of paradox. It is always great fun, and certainly always a learning experience to read Chesterton. A Miscellany of Men may be his hardest work to define, as it deals with a huge array of issues, using “personal types” as illustration. It would only be bewildering, if there was not these common threads: First that these types still exist, and the same faulty reasoning applies to issues of our day, and second, that underlying all of this is a firm and reasoned defense of democracy in a sense very close to that of the American Founding Fathers. [chương_files]

19/07/2024

Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, Collected Translations

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Poetry
Chapter: 4 | Listen: 4

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (Persian: رباعیات عمر خیام) is the title that Edward FitzGerald gave to his translation of a selection of poems, originally written in Persian and of which there are about a thousand, attributed to Omar Khayyám (1048–1131), a Persian poet, mathematician and astronomer. A Persian ruba’i is a two-line stanza with two parts (or hemistechs) per line, hence the word “Rubáiyát” (derived from the Arabic root word for “four”), meaning “quatrains”. (Introduction by Wikipedia) The three translations by women comprise this collection of recordings of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. (Note by Amy Gramour) [chương_files]

Short Poetry Collection 099

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Poetry
Chapter: 29 | Listen: 2

This is a collection of poems read by LibriVox volunteers for August 2011. [chương_files]

Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (Fitzgerald 5th edition)

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Poetry
Chapter: 5 | Listen: 2

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is so-named from the Persian word rubáiyát – a Persian word denoting a specific type of two-line stanza. Omar’s Rubaiyat is a beautiful anthology of Islamic wisdom literature: originally penned in medieval Persian during the late 11th century AD. The best known English translations are those by Edward Fitzgerald: his fifth (and last) translation includes a mere 101 quatrains – a fraction of Omar’s original work. Fitzgerald’s selection loosely groups quatrains by theme; rendering quatrains into English as four-line, rhymed stanzas. Omar’s writings are pervaded by the consciousness of the transient quality of life. In his Rubáiyát, the author ponders the limits of human knowledge and morality: and confronts his readers point-blank with the difficult questions that challenge every generation: – what is the ultimate benefit derived from human knowledge? – given human mortality; is is best to guide our lives by the dictates of reason, or sensuality? – what happens to my soul when I die? – why did God – the Creator – give me existence? (Introduction by Godsend) [chương_files]

Dryden vs Shadwell – a Poetic Duel

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Poetry, Satire
Chapter: 5 | Listen: 7

Throughout history there have been many creative artists whose fame depends largely on their association with a much greater artist. Such the case of Thomas Shadwell, poet and prolific writer of low brow comedies, who is today most famous as the butt of satire by one of greatest and most influential English poets, John Dryden. Shadwell and Dryden were at first colleagues and collaborators, but later fell out over some sharp divergences of opinion. In particular, Dryden disagreed with Shadwell’s high estimation of Ben Jonson, and even more of the latter’s claim to be be Jonson’s artistic heir. The most celebrated product of this controversy was Dryden’s satirical poem, Mac Flecknoe, in which he presents Shadwell as the apostle of dullness. This elegant satire was first circulated unpublished in pamphlet form and then published in 1682. Shadwell responded with “The Medal of John Bayes” which has as a preface a mocking “Epistle to the Tories.” Dryden’s reply was a further poem “The Medal” which likewise had a preface: “Epistle to the Whigs.” Shadwell is also the subject of harsh reference in Dryden’s Absolom and Achitophel (1681). In his lifetime, Shadwell emerged the victor from this dispute. In 1688, James II was deposed, and Dryden, as a Tory and a staunch Catholic, lost both favour at court and the position of Poet Laureate. His successor was Shadwell, a Whig and a convenient rather than a devout Protestant. Forced into retirement, Dryden concentrated on the translations of Latin classics, most notably the […]

Short Poetry Collection 181

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Poetry
Chapter: 35 | Listen:

This is a collection of 35 poems read in English by LibriVox volunteers for June 2018. Translated poems: The Bride of Corinth, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, translated by John Anster (1793-1867) The Diwan of Abu’l-Ala by Abu al-Ala Al-Ma’arri, translated by Henry Baerlein (1875-1960) [chương_files]