Thomas A. Copeland
Weird Tales, Volume 2
Paradoxically, it is variety that unites the tales you are about to read. They take place in widely separated countries and historical perio…
The Lady of the Shroud
As the title suggests, this work does flirt with the supernatural. Yet it is essentially a political novel—a utopian experiment in a fictiti…
Fifty-One Tales
Fifty-One Tales by Lord Dunsany invites listeners into a world where the boundaries of reality blur and the extraordinary becomes commonplac…
The History of Britain
A reader of this history, encountering the frequent references to “my author,” meaning the current source, will be reminded of DON QUIXOTE a…
The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (Arabian Nights) Volume 13 (Supplemental Nights)
This is a collection of stories collected over thousands of years by various authors, translators, and scholars. They are an amalgam of myth…
The Radium Pool
Deep beneath the many-hued, volcanic sands of the Manalava Plains is an eerie world. And in this world, in a gem-encrusted cavern, is a pool…
The King of Elfland's Daughter, Version 2
The councilmen of an undistinguished hamlet entreat their ruler to find a way of ensuring that his successor will acquire some magic to add …
The Sea Lady (Version 2)
A mermaid contrives to have herself "rescued from drowning" and adopted by a respectable family on the English coast. Her motive,…
The Shadowy Thing
A tale of spiritualism cannot easily win a willing suspension of disbelief in the world of a country squire, in which Dick Bellew has grown …
The Defense of Poesy
Sidney envisions the world as an ideally ordered structure that rewards good and punishes evil, but this order, vitiated by sin, has fallen …
Absalom and Achitophel
John Dryden published Absalom and Achitophel: A Poem in 1681. It is an elaborate historical allegory using the political situation faced by …
Selected Poems
These poems, from Herbert’s book The Temple, show the evolution of a soul’s relationship with God. Sudden reversals of mood are common, for …
Gargantua and Pantagruel, Book IV
This fourth in the five novels about the giants Pantagruel and his father Gargantua is the last novel indusputably attributed to Franç…
Areopagitica (Version 2)
The noblest and most extensive defense of freedom of the press in English. Although Milton was sufficiently practical to serve as a censor o…
Jerusalem Delivered
The First Crusade provides the backdrop for a rich tapestry of political machinations, military conflicts, martial rivalries, and love stori…
Hero and Leander (version 2)
Two young people, the epitome of young masculine and feminine beauty, fall in love at first sight, but their union is forbidden by the tyran…
Monsieur Beaucaire
A madcap Frenchman posing as an ambassador's barber blackmails a dishonest duke to introduce him as a nobleman to a wealthy belle of Bath. S…
John Donne's Satires
Donne’s StyleIn John Donne’s day, a satire was such a poem as a satyr might compose. Satyrs were rough, savage creatures in Greek mythology…
Balder Dead (version 2)
The poem begins with the beloved god Balder, thought to be invulnerable, dead at the hands of the inoffensive blind god Hoder, in a game. L…
Orlando Furioso
Charlemagne's nephew Orlando (AKA Roland) is driven insane by the infidelity of his beloved Angelica. Angelica's relationship with him and o…