Phil Benson
The Masque of Anarchy
The Masque of Anarchy was Shelley's response to the Peterloo massacre at St Peter's Fields, Manchester, where 18 died and hundreds were inju…
Orlando, A Biography (version 3)
Virginia Woolf's most successful novel recounts the extraordinary biography of Orlando from his youth in the reign of Elizabeth I to her lif…
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…
The Manchester Man
Jabez Clegg, the Manchester man, floats into this historical novel in 1799, carried downstream by the River Irk in flood. Jabez's rise to co…
Sonnets on Anglo-Saxon History
The history of Britain up to the Norman Conquest in the form of 100 prose commentaries, each followed by a sonnet. The commentaries set the …
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). …
Forty Seasons of First-Class Cricket
R. G. "Dick" Barlow was one of the most accomplished all-round cricketers of the late 19th Century. For many years he opened the b…
Froth
Clementina is losing her youth in the fashionable world of late-nineteenth century Madrid and takes a younger lover. Meanwhile her father, t…
Exeter
Exeter, county town of Devon, is one of England's most historic cities with remains of the Roman occupation and medieval times still on view…
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…
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…
Child Christopher and Goldilind the Fair
A prose romance set in the forested kingdom of Oakenrealm, where a squirrel can go about from end to end without touching the ground, in whi…
Two Cumberland Ballads
Two narrative ballads, based on local lore, by the Cumberland poet John Stagg. In 'The Hermit of Rockcliffe', a young fugitive takes refuge …
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…
'To the Lighthouse' by Virginia Woolf: Contemporary Reviews (1927)
Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse was published in May 1927 in both Britain and the United States. The publication of Mrs. Dalloway a year …
The Itinerary of John Leland in or About the Years 1535-1543
John Leland's 'Itinerary' was the product of several journeys around England and Wales undertaken between 1538 and 1543. The manuscript is m…
The Cycle Industry, its origin, history and latest developments
From the velocipede to the motor cycle in twenty chapters. A short history of the British bicycle industry from its origins in a Coventry se…
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…
The Blue Review, Number 3
The Blue Review was a short lived monthly journal published in London between May and July 1913. The successor to Rhythm, The Blue Review wa…
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…