Showing results by narrator "Rob Goll" in All Categories

Hard Times is set in and around Coketown, a fictitious, Victorian mill town in the North of England. A town of red brick, machinery, and tall chimneys. A town blackened by soot, shrouded in mist, and choked by smoke. The working men and women of Coketown, referred to generally as "Hands" as if they were merely extensions of the machinery they operate, and not individuals with loves and likes, memories and inclinations, souls to weary and souls to hope.

In a comprehensive and beautifully crafted first person narrative, David Copperfield recalls key stages, memories, and incidents of his life from infancy to maturity. Scenes, adventures, and characters are summoned to the narrator's remembrance so vividly that they are rendered with the vitality of the present moment.

Madame Pratolungo is a close companion to Lucilla Finch, a young woman who has been blind since birth. Madame Pratolungo records the narrative of Lucilla's trials from falling in love with Oscar Duborg, her wealthy and shy neighbor, to ending up in a romantic entanglement between Oscar and his brother Nugent. When Lucilla temporarily regains her sight thanks to Herr Grosse, mistaken identities and manipulative schemes are there to greet her.

Lucie Manette, long believing herself to be an orphan, meets with London banker Jarvis Lorry in the Royal George Hotel in Dover and finds out her father, Dr. Alexandre Manette, is alive and has been held for the last 18 years as a political prisoner in the Bastille. The three are reunited in an attic garret in Paris, close to the wine shop run by Ernest Defarge, the doctor's former servant, and his wife, Thérèse.

AD 1068: the armies of the Seljuk Sultanate tear at Byzantium's borders, poised to strike the death blow that will bring all Anatolia under their yoke. Alp Arslan's armies grow stronger with every passing season, while the beleaguered Byzantine soldiers defend for their lives, the hope in their hearts guttering its last.

A Doll's House, published in 1879, was the earliest of Ibsen's "social dramas", and the first of his works to attract attention outside of Scandinavia. The central theme of the play is a woman's right to individual self-development, and represents, as humourist Stephen Leacock observed of many Ibsen plays, "a profound problem stated but not solved".

In this haunting poem, a guest on his way to a wedding reception is stopped by the Ancient Mariner. With his "glittering eye" he transfixes the guest and then relates a compelling tale of a sea voyage fraught with strange happenings. The Mariner tells of journeying through tyrannous storms to ice mast-high, through mist and snow to the deadly inertia of the doldrums. There are unearthly visitations, ill omens, and supernatural happenings - all leading to the revelation of the Mariner's strange fate.

Conrad, the Corsair, is the chieftain of a pirate band, and plans to attack the Pacha, Seyd, and seize his possessions. Conrad's wife, Medora, prevails upon her husband to abandon his plan and remain at home. Confident in his plan and assured of his safe return, Conrad and his pirate crew set sail for the Pacha's island.

Wuthering Heights is Emily Brontë's only novel, first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell. A work of considerable power and intensity set in the Yorkshire moors in the late 18th century - the bleak and wild moorland often reflected in the natures of the characters. Unsettling at times, the novel is a heady mix of gritty realism, romance, Gothic horror, and tragedy.

The story of the orphan, Oliver Twist. Brought up in a workhouse and then apprenticed to an undertaker, he runs away to London. Meeting the charismatic "Artful" Dodger, he then falls in with a gang of backstreet pickpockets run by the sinister Fagin. Oliver Twist is Charles Dickens' second novel, originally serialized in Bentley's Miscellany between 1837 and 1839.

In this moody Russian drama, Ivanov is a melancholic impoverished landowner whose wife is dying of tuberculosis. However, he finds himself irresistibly drawn to the beautiful Sasha, the daughter of his wealthy neighbors. Augmented by a diverse array of colorful supporting characters and intrigues, this play provides a glimpse of master dramatist Anton Chekhov's early work.

The Battle of Life: A Love Story, published in 1846, is the fourth in Charles Dickens' series of "Christmas Books," five novellas with strong social and moral messages that he published during the 1840s.

The notorious pirate Captain Flint is dead, and his great horde of stolen treasure lies lost, stashed and buried on an island far, far away. Jim Hawkins, the humble son of a country innkeeper, comes into possession of the only map to Flint's treasure and is soon swept away on a high seas adventure of treachery and survival.

Euripides's play follows the fates of the women of Troy after their city has been sacked, their husbands killed, and their remaining families taken away as slaves. It serves as an anti-war narrative as it highlights the suffering of the women left behind. The tragedy also calls attention to how women were treated as commodities in the past by showing how they were divided among the remaining men as spoils of war.

I left her when she was eight. Just a child. Too young to be alone. I killed myself because I could never atone for the things he made me do. There is something wrong with my family, you see. A fear runs through us, through our blood. A fear that circles above us, shredding the sky and clawing at our hearts, and now, from a deathless realm, I am forced to watch as my lonely daughter is tortured by the life I gave her to endure....

The story is of a female slave, Leila, who loves the Giaour, an infidel, and is in consequence bound, thrown in a sack, and drowned in the sea by her Turkish lord, Hassan. In revenge the Giaour kills Hassan, then in grief and remorse banishes himself to a monastery.

In this narrative poem, the Pacha, Giaffir, has decreed that his beautiful daughter, Zuleika, is to be married to the rich and elderly Bey of Carasman. She confesses her grief to Selim, her beloved half-brother. Selim entreats Zuleika to meet him in a grotto later that night, where he appears in pirate garb. He declares that they are not brother and sister, but cousins and reveals that Giaffir murdered his father, Abdallah.

The Frozen Deep was originally written as a play by Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens. With Dickens himself gracing the stage as Wardour, the play was met with success, drawing audiences to tears night after night, and even performing for Queen Victoria herself. Drawing on reports of the real-life Franklin expedition of 1845, in which a crew had set out from England to discover the North Passage and disappeared without a trace, Collins and Dickens recreated the events of the ill-fated journey.

Jane Eyre is a plain orphan girl, unloved and abused by her Aunt Reed, who is sent away to boarding school. Strong of heart and craving independence, Jane embarks upon a life of governess to a young French girl named Adele, the benefactor of the mysterious Mr. Rochester. Life at Thornfield Hall proves just as mysterious as its owner with haunting laughter and a dark secret living in the attic.

North and South follows the young Margaret Hale as she is caught in the middle of the brutal world between employers and local workers following the Industrial Revolution. She finds herself at odds from the very start with John Thornton, a local factory owner and self-made man, as she believes him to be unfeeling and callous about the poverty and suffering of the workers while John sees Margaret as haughty and entitled. Further conflicts arise when the workers strike and Margaret feels compelled to intervene with no regard for her own safety.