Phil Benson
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…
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…
Cycling in the Alps
A guide to cycling in the European Alps in the days before surfaced roads and automobile tourism. As the author explains, the spectacular vi…
The Story of Peterloo
On 16th August 1819 around 60,000 people gathered at St. Peter’s Fields, Manchester, to rally for parliamentary reform. Shortly after the me…
The Present Picture of New South Wales
Convicted of forgery at the age of 23, David Dickenson Mann narrowly escaped hanging and was transported instead to New South Wales, where h…
Things Seen in Venice
Venice, once among the most powerful states of the Western world, now a much-visited but still romantic city of canals, architecture and art…
Short Stories (Household Words, 1854-58)
Elizabeth Gaskell published 18 short works in Charles Dickens' Household Words between 1850 and 1858. This collection follows the Librivox c…
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…
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…
Tim Bobbin: A View of the Lancashire Dialect
A comic dialogue written in John Collier's idiosyncratic version of the 18th century South Lancashire dialect together with a collection of …
Kamakura
'Kamakura is nothing if she has no history, writes Japanese novelist, poet, and essayist Yone Noguchi. At the turn of the 20th century, Kama…
BLAST No. 1
BLAST, edited by Wyndham Lewis and subtitled 'Review of the Great British Vortex', was the magazine of the short-lived Vorticist movement in…
A Guide to the Lakes
In the late eighteenth century, English writers discovered the landscape, not only in the paintings of Claude Lorrain, Nicolas Poussin and S…
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…
Three Accounts of Peterloo
A companion volume to F.A. Bruton's 'The Story of Peterloo', the full title of this short collection is 'Three Accounts of Peterloo by Eyewi…
Dionysius the Areopagite, with other poems
An early figure in the birth of poetry in industrial Manchester, Ann Hawkshaw published three collections and another was circulated private…
North Lancashire
Cambridge County Geographies was a 75 volume series covering the counties of England, Scotland and Wales. Separate volumes were produced for…
Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods
A limbless reptilian monster that propels itself through the swamps with a propellor-tipped tail? A creature so ashamed of its monstrous app…
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…
Coniston Tales
A selection of poems and short prose pieces grounded in the landscape, history and legends of Coniston in the English Lake District. W. G. C…