Phil Benson
The Story of the Glittering Plain
In this early example of the modern high fantasy genre, Hallblithe, a warrior of the House of Raven, sets out in pursuit of the pirates who …
The Wonderful Adventures of Phra the Phoenician
Phra, a Phoenician merchant and warrior, settles in the south of England as husband to Blodwen, a British princess. Slain during the Roman i…
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, …
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…
Small Souls
Constance van der Welcke returns to the Hague and the bosom of her family after a twenty year exile caused by a marital indiscretion and div…
Poems for my Children
Published in 1847, five years after her epic poem, 'Dionysus the Areopagite', 'Poems For My Children' was Ann Hawkshaw's second collection o…
Jaufry the Knight and the Fair Brunissende
Taulat de Rugimon arrives at the court of King Arthur and stabs one of Arthur's knights. Jaufry, a young and ambitious knight, sets off in p…
Manchester Poetry
Manchester's first published anthology of locally-written poetry was compiled by editor James Wheeler to show that Manchester, 'the most mec…
Lancashire
The county of Lancashire in the north-west of England is best known as the engine room of the nineteenth-century Industrial Revolution. Stee…
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…
Beckside Lights
John Ackworth was the pen name of the Rev. Frederick R. Smith, a Methodist minister who was born in Snaith, Yorkshire, but spent much of his…
To the Lighthouse (Version 2)
Virginia Woolf's classic modernist novel explores the lives and thoughts of the Ramsays and their guests at the family's summer home on the …
With Swag and Billy: A Guide to Walking Trips in Tourist Districts of New South Wales
A guide to hikes around Sydney, Australia, from the early years of the twentieth century. In 1895, Henry J. Tompkins and William Mogford Ham…
The Twilight of the Souls
The third book in Louis Couperus' Books of the Small Souls quartet. The Twilight of the Souls begins some months after the conclusion of The…
Mr. Moffatt
Mr. Moffatt owns a chemist's business in suburban Sydney, Australia, where he lives with his wife, Florence, and adult daughter, Naomi. The …
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…
Venice
Following his assignment to South Africa as Black and White Magazine's war artist, Mortimer Menpes travelled extensively, becoming the artis…
Wild and romantic: Early guides to the English lake district
A collection of some of the most significant literary work on the English Lake District prior to Thomas West’s A guide to the Lakes (1778). …
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…
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…