Thomas A. Copeland
Amoretti and Epithalamion
Read by Thomas A. Copeland
Edmund Spenser
"These Sonnets furnish us with a circumstantial and very interesting history of Spenser's second courtship, which, after many repulses,…
Absalom and Achitophel
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John Dryden
John Dryden published Absalom and Achitophel: A Poem in 1681. It is an elaborate historical allegory using the political situation faced by …
Orlando Furioso
Read by Thomas A. Copeland
Ludovico Ariosto
Charlemagne's nephew Orlando (AKA Roland) is driven insane by the infidelity of his beloved Angelica. Angelica's relationship with him and o…
Monsieur Beaucaire
Read by Thomas A. Copeland
Booth Tarkington
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…
The Man in the Moone
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Francis Godwin
A self-serving Spaniard discovers a means of traveling to the moon, describing his sensations in transit in terms remarkably consistent with…
Jerusalem Delivered
Read by Thomas A. Copeland
Torquato Tasso
The First Crusade provides the backdrop for a rich tapestry of political machinations, military conflicts, martial rivalries, and love stori…
A Princess of Mars (Version 3)
Read by Thomas A. Copeland
Edgar Rice Burroughs
John Carter is mysteriously conveyed to Mars, where he discovers two intelligent species continually embroiled in warfare. Although he is a …
Rosalynde or, Euphues' Golden Legacie
Read by Thomas A. Copeland
Thomas Lodge
This novel, which Shakespeare adapted in his pastoral comedy As You Like It, is the archetypal pastoral adventure. Two young persons of high…
Fifty-One Tales
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Lord Dunsany
Very brief, well-crafted stories, many having surprise endings, all steeped in the dye of myth and calling to every reader's neglected imagi…
Hero and Leander (version 2)
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Christopher Marlowe
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…
The Gods of Mars (version 2)
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Edgar Rice Burroughs
In this second volume of the Barsoom series, John Carter returns to Mars to learn that his heroic effort to salvage the atmosphere plant sav…
Paradise Regain'd (version 2)
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John Milton
Having been publicly acknowledged as God's "beloved Son," Jesus retires to the desert to meditate upon what it means to be the Mes…
The Warlord of Mars (version 2)
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Edgar Rice Burroughs
In this third installment of the adventures of John Carter on Mars, our hero labors under sentence of death (for having returned from the la…
Areopagitica (Version 2)
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John Milton
The noblest and most extensive defense of freedom of the press in English. Although Milton was sufficiently practical to serve as a censor o…
The Faerie Queene Version 2
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Edmund Spenser
Spenser planned a 24-book romance-epic consisting of two parts, of which he completed half of the first. The first twelve books were to illu…
Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (Edition 1831)
Read by Thomas A. Copeland
Mary Shelley
A mentally unstable genius, Victor Frankenstein, inspired by the dreams of ancient alchemists and empowered by modern science, creates a hum…
Thuvia, Maid of Mars (version 2)
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Edgar Rice Burroughs
John Carter's son, Carthoris, falls in love with his father's true friend, Thuvia of Ptarth, but she has been promised to another and is kid…
The Chessmen of Mars (version 2)
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Edgar Rice Burroughs
Tara of Helium, John Carter's second child, is nearly as beautiful as her mother, Deja Thoris, and as independent-minded as her father. Thes…
Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women (version 2)
Read by Thomas A. Copeland
George MacDonald
An author who means to end a story with some variation of “And they all lived happily ever after” had better deal before that point not just…
Paradise Lost (version 2)
Read by Thomas A. Copeland
John Milton
As Vergil had surpassed Homer by adapting the epic form to celebrate the origin of the author’s nation, Milton developed it yet further to r…
Black Amazon of Mars (Version 3)
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Leigh Douglass Brackett
In his final adventure on Mars, Eric John Stark acquires a relic of an ancient Martian hero, a gem or lens which is believed to be the key t…
Brittains Ida or Venus and Anchises
Read by Thomas A. Copeland
Edmund Spenser
While hunting, the boy Anchises stumbles upon Venus's forest retreat and is so kindly entertained by the goddess that he becomes the proud f…
Balder Dead (version 2)
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Matthew Arnold
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…
Sohrab and Rustum: An Episode
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Matthew Arnold
A young soldier born among Tartars but sired by the mighty Persian lord Rustum, serves in the Tartar army, seeking his great father. To this…
The Sea Lady (Version 2)
Read by Thomas A. Copeland
H. G. Wells
A mermaid contrives to have herself "rescued from drowning" and adopted by a respectable family on the English coast. Her motive,…
The Master of Ballantrae
Read by Thomas A. Copeland
Robert Louis Stevenson
Heir to a noble Scottish house in the mid 18th century, the Master is a charming, clever, and resourceful villain whose daring but ill-advis…
The Anniversary Poems
Read by Thomas A. Copeland
John Donne
Elizabeth Drury, daughter of Donne's patron, Sir Robert Drury, died in 1610. A year later Donne laments her hyperbolically as the soul of th…
Le Paradis Perdu
Read by Thomas A. Copeland
John Milton
Comme Virgile a développé l’épopée à célébrer l’origine de sa propre patrie, Milton l’a ada…
The History of Britain
Read by Thomas A. Copeland
John Milton
A reader of this history, encountering the frequent references to “my author,” meaning the current source, will be reminded of DON QUIXOTE a…
The Moon Maid
Read by Thomas A. Copeland
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Sabotage accidentally takes Earth's first manned interplanetary expedition to the Moon, where a sublunar adventure ensues, involving two int…
Milton's Minor Poems
Read by Thomas A. Copeland
John Milton
“On Shakespear 1630” typifies much of Milton’s poetry. By some miracle never yet explained, at age 24 he managed to get a 16-line encomium i…
Songs of Innocence and Experience (version 3)
Read by Thomas A. Copeland
William Blake
The short, simple lines of these delicate poems resemble song lyrics, emphasizing the concrete but hinting at transcendent realities, althou…
John Donne's Satires
Read by Thomas A. Copeland
John Donne
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…
Weird Tales, Volume 1
Read by Thomas A. Copeland
E. T. A. Hoffmann
These stories form the first volume of the renowned Tales of Hoffman. They are fantasies with hints of the supernatural—quintessential Roman…
Venus and Adonis (Version 2)
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William Shakespeare
Both Ovid and Spenser also treat this ancient myth, but Spenser alters the ending, converting the tale into an archetype of fulfilled love, …
Selected Poems
Read by Thomas A. Copeland
George Herbert
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 …
The Lady of the Shroud
Read by Thomas A. Copeland
Bram Stoker
As the title suggests, this work does flirt with the supernatural. Yet it is essentially a political novel—a utopian experiment in a fictiti…
Four Hymns
Read by Thomas A. Copeland
Edmund Spenser
Spenser explains in the dedication of this volume that the hymns to love and to beauty were written early in his career and their "heav…
The Castle of Otranto (Version 2)
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Horace Walpole
The Castle of Otranto is regarded as the first Gothic novel, a genre appealing to a taste for terror and set in a remote past when prodigies…
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Weston Translation Version 2)
Read by Thomas A. Copeland
Jessie Laidlay Weston, Translated Byjessie Laidlay Weston and The Gawain Poettranslated Byjessie Laidlay Weston
This poem celebrates Christmas by exploring the mystery of Christ's mission on earth: his death, resurrection, and second coming as judge of…
Weird Tales, Volume 2
Read by Thomas A. Copeland
E. T. A. Hoffmann
Paradoxically, it is variety that unites the tales you are about to read. They take place in widely separated countries and historical perio…
The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (Arabian Nights) Volume 13 (Supplem…
Read by Thomas A. Copeland
Anonymoustranslated Byrichard Francis Burton and William James Mcglothlin
This is a collection of stories collected over thousands of years by various authors, translators, and scholars. They are an amalgam of myth…
The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes
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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
This final volume of detective stories was Doyle’s effort to put his most famous creation behind him at long last. It includes a variety of …
Astrophel and Stella
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Sir Philip Sidney
Sonnet sequences, which these poems by Sidney made very popular in the Elizabethan age, reflected the Medieval motif of courtly love, whereb…
The Defense of Poesy
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Sir Philip Sidney
Sidney envisions the world as an ideally ordered structure that rewards good and punishes evil, but this order, vitiated by sin, has fallen …
The Master Mind of Mars (Version 3)
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Edgar Rice Burroughs
The protagonist is a soldier from the Great War whose tale John Carter has brought to Earth. Having saved the life of an ancient Martian who…
Twilight Sleep
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Edith Wharton
Wharton miraculously finds it possible to satirize the very rich while simultaneously showing compassion and even grudging admiration for so…
Back to Methuselah
Read by Thomas A. Copeland
George Bernard Shaw
In this late work, Shaw examines many contemporary issues under the broad rubric of evolution and then illustrates his opinions in five brie…
The Radium Pool
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Edward Earl Repp
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…
Sonnets
Read by Thomas A. Copeland
Edna St. Vincent Millay
It has been observed that within the narrow confines of a sonnet the mind can turn around but cannot take flight. Some of Millay’s sonnets, …
The Age of Reason (version 3)
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Thomas Paine
In these volumes, Paine demonstrates the anonymity of the books contained in both the Old and the New Testaments, the only certainties being…
Gargantua and Pantagruel, Book IV
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François Rabelais
This fourth in the five novels about the giants Pantagruel and his father Gargantua is the last novel indusputably attributed to Franç…
The Shadow Flies
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Rose Macaulay
The title of the original, British release of this novel was They Were Defeated, referring, among other matters, to the English Civil War, 1…