Philip Massinger was baptized at St. Thomas's in Salisbury on November 24th, 1583.Massinger is described in his matriculation entry at St. Alban Hall, Oxford (1602), as the son of a gentleman. His father, who had also been educated there, was a member of parliament, and attached to the household of Henry Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke. The Earl was later seen as a potential patron for Massinger.He left Oxford in 1606 without a degree. His father had died in 1603, and accounts suggest that Massinger was left with no financial support this, together with rumours that he had converted to Catholicism, meant the next stage of his career needed to provide an income.Massinger went to London to make his living as a dramatist, but he is only recorded as author some fifteen years later, when The Virgin Martyr (1621) is given as the work of Massinger and Thomas Dekker.During those early years as a playwright he wrote for the Elizabethan stage entrepreneur, Philip Henslowe. It was a difficult existence. Poverty was always close and there was constant pleading for advance payments on forthcoming works merely to survive.After Henslowe died in 1616 Massinger and John Fletcher began to write primarily for the King's Men and Massinger would write regularly for them until his death.The tone of the dedications in later plays suggests evidence of his continued poverty. In the preface of The Maid of Honour (1632) he wrote, addressing Sir Francis Foljambe and Sir Thomas Bland: "e;I had not to this time subsisted, but that I was supported by your frequent courtesies and favours."e;The prologue to The Guardian (1633) refers to two unsuccessful plays and two years of silence, when the author feared he had lost popular favour although, from the little evidence that survives, it also seems he had involved some of his plays with political characters which would have cast shadows upon England's alliances.Philip Massinger died suddenly at his house near the Globe Theatre on March 17th, 1640. He was buried the next day in the churchyard of St. Saviour's, Southwark, on March 18th, 1640. In the entry in the parish register he is described as a "e;stranger,"e; which, however, implies nothing more than that he belonged to another parish.

Arthur Conan Doyle's The Poison Belt is another work of fiction by the author of the celebrated masterpiece The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The novella centers around apocalyptic disasters that threaten to end human existence on Earth. Professor Challenger, an English scientist who is interested in preserving nature and human life, anticipates the Earth's contact with a poison belt of ether. The dangerous gas is believed to have the power to suffocate all living beings to death. Professor Challenger invites his closest companions, Malone, Roxton and Summerlee, to join him and his wife in his house. They are asked to bring oxygen tanks with them to find that Challenger has prepared a sealed room to protect their lives. Later, from their little shelter, Challenger's team watch the destruction of the outside world and the dying of almost everything. When they finally run out of oxygen, they are pushed to get out of the sealed room. Yet, to their surprise, they do not die. The Earth has passed through the poison belt and humanity has survived.

Henry Fielding was born at Sharpham Park, near Glastonbury, in Somerset on April 22nd 1707. His early years were spent on his parents' farm in Dorset before being educated at Eton.An early romance ended disastrously and with it his removal to London and the beginnings of a glittering literary career; he published his first play, at age 21, in 1728.He was prolific, sometimes writing six plays a year, but he did like to poke fun at the authorities. His plays were thought to be the final straw for the authorities in their attempts to bring in a new law. In 1737 The Theatrical Licensing Act was passed. At a stroke political satire was almost impossible. Fielding was rendered mute. Any playwright who was viewed with suspicion by the Government now found an audience difficult to find and therefore Theatre owners now toed the Government line.Fielding was practical with the circumstances and ironically stopped writing to once again take up his career in the practice of law and became a barrister after studying at Middle Temple. By this time he had married Charlotte Craddock, his first wife, and they would go on to have five children. Charlotte died in 1744 but was immortalised as the heroine in both Tom Jones and Amelia.Fielding was put out by the success of Samuel Richardson's Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded. His reaction was to spur him into writing a novel. In 1741 his first novel was published; the successful Shamela, an anonymous parody of Richardson's novel.Undoubtedly the masterpiece of Fielding's career was the novel Tom Jones, published in 1749. It is a wonderfully and carefully constructed picaresque novel following the convoluted and hilarious tale of how a foundling came into a fortune.Fielding was a consistent anti-Jacobite and a keen supporter of the Church of England. This led to him now being richly rewarded with the position of London's Chief Magistrate. Fielding continued to write and his career both literary and professional continued to climb.In 1749 he joined with his younger half-brother John, to help found what was the nascent forerunner to a London police force, the Bow Street Runners. Fielding's ardent commitment to the cause of justice in the 1750s unfortunately coincided with a rapid deterioration in his health. Such was his decline that in the summer of 1754 he travelled, with Mary and his daughter, to Portugal in search of a cure. Gout, asthma, dropsy and other afflictions forced him to use crutches. His health continued to fail alarmingly.Henry Fielding died in Lisbon two months later on October 8th, 1754.

Lorna Doone is a romance that tells the story of a seventeenth-century successful farmer, John Ridd, whose father is killed by the Doones, a clan of unruly brigands living in the wilderness. When John once accidently ventures into the clan's area, he meets the beautiful Lorna and falls in love with her. In order to rescue his beloved from the life that she hates, he has to go through a long and violent struggle with his rival Carver Doone who also claims Lorna's hand. He eventually succeeds in helping her escape from the clan to his family's home which is later attacked by Carver. Later, a family friend reveals to them that Lorna does not really belong to the Doone clan and that she was kidnapped after a raid during which her noble and extremely wealthy mother was murdered. As an heiress to her mother's fortunes, Lorna is now legally asked to leave for London and become her great-uncle's ward. Political upheaval shakes the whole kingdom and John is arrested for false accusations. After being brought to London and absolved from guilt, he meets Lorna who is still in love with him. Lorna is eventually allowed to go back to the country and marry John. In the midst of their wedding ceremony, Carver suddenly enters the church and hits Lorna. John follows him and they engage in a fight that ends in Carver's death.

As can be easily understood presenting an exact chronicle of the facts in the life of a 16th Century playwright is often difficult. Thomas Lodge is no exception. Thomas Lodge, born around 1558 in west Ham, was the second son of Sir Thomas Lodge, the Lord Mayor of London, and his third wife Anne. Lodge was educated at Merchant Taylors' School and thence to Trinity College, Oxford; taking his BA in 1577 and his MA in 1581. Lodge, disregarded his parents career wishes in order to take up literature. When the penitent Stephen Gosson published his Schoole of Abuse in 1579, Lodge responded with Defence of Poetry, Music and Stage Plays (1579 or 1580). His pamphlet was banned, but appears to have been circulated privately. Already in 1580 Lodge had published a volume of poems entitled Scillaes Metamorphosis, Enterlaced with the Unfortunate Love of Glaucus, also more briefly known as Glaucus and Scilla. Lodge seems to have married his first wife Joan in or shortly before 1583, when, "e;impressed with the uncertainty of human life"e;, he made a will. That his family viewed his conduct at the time with disdain may be noted by the absence of his name from his father's will in 1583. The marriage of Lodge and Joan produced a daughter, Mary. However, without an income from his family Lodge would have to provide it by other means. The debate in pamphlets between Lodge and Gosson continued with Gosson's Playes Confuted in Five Actions; and Lodge retorting with his Alarum Against Usurers (1585)-a "e;tract for the times"e;. That same year, 1585, he produced his first tale written in prose and verse, The Delectable History of Forbonius and Prisceria. Lodge appears to have been at sea on a number of long voyages. Usually these are described as 'freebooting voyages', an interchangeable term also used for piracy and plunder. Many nations endorsed these tactics and it seems fairly safe to suggest that these voyages were a source of revenue which would keep Joan and Mary with their heads above water. These long voyages also provided something else that Lodge would have been keen to gather and usefully use; time. During the expedition to Terceira and the Canaries (around 1586), to set aside the tedium of his voyage, Lodge composed his prose tale of Rosalynde, Euphues Golden Legacie, which, printed in 1590, would later be used by Shakespeare as the basis for As You Like It. Before starting on his next voyage, this time to South America, Lodge published a historical romance, The History of Robert, Second Duke of Normandy, surnamed Robert the Devil; and he left behind him for publication Catharos Diogenes in his Singularity, a discourse on the immorality of Athens (London). Both appeared in 1591. By now Lodge was on a voyage with Thomas Cavendish to Brazil and the Straits of Magellan and would only be able to return home in 1593. Whilst he was travelling another romance in the manner of Lyly, Euphues Shadow, the Battaile of the Sences, appeared in 1592. At either end of this voyage Lodge appears to have worked on some dramas, most notably with Robert Greene. It is thought that in 1590, together with Greene, he wrote A Looking Glass for London and England (published 1594). He had already written The Wounds of Civil War (produced perhaps as early as 1587, and published in 1594, and put on as a play reading at the Globe Theatre on 7 February 1606), a good second-rate piece in the half-chronicle fashion of its age. His second historical romance, the Life and Death of William Longbeard (1593), was more successful than the first. Lodge also brought back with him from the new world voyage A Margarite of America (published 1596), a romance between a Peruvian prince and a daughter of the king of Muscovy interspersed with many lyrics. The composition of Phillis, a volume and an early sonnet cycle sequence (an increasingly popular format in Elizabethan times), was published with the narrative poem, The Complaynte of Elsired, in 1593. A Fig for Momus was published in 1595 and gained him the accolade of being the earliest English satirist. This work contains eclogues addressed to Daniel and others as well as an epistle addressed to Michael Drayton. In the latter part of his life-possibly about 1596, when he published his Wits Miserie and the World's Madnesse, which is dated from Low Leyton in Essex, and the religious tract Prosopopeia (if, as seems probable, it was his), in which he repents of his "e;lewd lines"e; of other days-he became a Catholic and engaged in the practice of medicine, for which Wood says he qualified himself by a degree at Avignon, in France, in 1600. Two years later he received the degree of M.D. from Oxford University. Early in 1606 he seems to have left England, to escape the persecution then directed against the Catholics; and a letter from him dated 1610 thanks the English ambassador in Paris for enabling him to return in safety. At some point in his later life Lodge appears to have married again. T

Heartbreak House is a play written by George Bernard Shaw one of the truly great literary figures of our age. First published in 1919 and first played at the New York's Garrick Theatre in 1920. It is not often performed due to its complex structure. Based around a dinner party it's a mixture of farce, social manners and British Society's sad decline with their indifferent self-indulgent attitude. As the play progresses Shaw reveals each character as somewhat different to their starting position.

James Shirley was born in London in September 1596. His education was through a collection of England's finest establishments: Merchant Taylors' School, London, St John's College, Oxford, and St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he took his B.A. degree in approximately 1618. He first published in 1618, a poem entitled Echo, or the Unfortunate Lovers. As with many artists of this period full details of his life and career are not recorded. Sources say that after graduating he became "e;a minister of God's word in or near St Albans."e; A conversion to the Catholic faith enabled him to become master of St Albans School from 1623-25. He wrote his first play, Love Tricks, or the School of Complement, which was licensed on February 10th, 1625. From the given date it would seem he wrote this whilst at St Albans but, after its production, he moved to London and to live in Gray's Inn. For the next two decades, he would write prolifically and with great quality, across a spectrum of thirty plays; through tragedies and comedies to tragicomedies as well as several books of poetry. Unfortunately, his talents were left to wither when Parliament passed the Puritan edict in 1642, forbidding all stage plays and closing the theatres. Most of his early plays were performed by Queen Henrietta's Men, the acting company for which Shirley was engaged as house dramatist. Shirley's sympathies lay with the King in battles with Parliament and he received marks of special favor from the Queen. He made a bitter attack on William Prynne, who had attacked the stage in Histriomastix, and, when in 1634 a special masque was presented at Whitehall by the gentlemen of the Inns of Court as a practical reply to Prynne, Shirley wrote the text-The Triumph of Peace. Shirley spent the years 1636 to 1640 in Ireland, under the patronage of the Earl of Kildare. Several of his plays were produced by his friend John Ogilby in Dublin in the first ever constructed Irish theatre; The Werburgh Street Theatre. During his years in Dublin he wrote The Doubtful Heir, The Royal Master, The Constant Maid, and St. Patrick for Ireland. In his absence from London, Queen Henrietta's Men sold off a dozen of his plays to the stationers, who naturally, enough published them. When Shirley returned to London in 1640, he finished with the Queen Henrietta's company and his final plays in London were acted by the King's Men. On the outbreak of the English Civil War Shirley served with the Earl of Newcastle. However when the King's fortunes began to decline he returned to London. There his friend Thomas Stanley gave him help and thereafter Shirley supported himself in the main by teaching and publishing some educational works under the Commonwealth. In addition to these he published during the period of dramatic eclipse four small volumes of poems and plays, in 1646, 1653, 1655, and 1659. It is said that he was "e;a drudge"e; for John Ogilby in his translations of Homer's Iliad and the Odyssey, and survived into the reign of Charles II, but, though some of his comedies were revived, his days as a playwright were over. His death, at age seventy, along with that of his wife, in 1666, is described as one of fright and exposure due to the Great Fire of London which had raged through parts of London from September 2nd to the 5th. He was buried at St Giles in the Fields, in London, on October 29th, 1666.

Euripides is rightly lauded as one of the great dramatists of all time. In his lifetime, he wrote over 90 plays and although only 18 have survived they reveal the scope and reach of his genius. Euripides is identified with many theatrical innovations that have influenced drama all the way down to modern times, especially in the representation of traditional, mythical heroes as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. As would be expected from a life lived 2,500 years ago, details of it are few and far between. Accounts of his life, written down the ages, do exist but whether much is reliable or surmised is open to debate. Most accounts agree that he was born on Salamis Island around 480 BC, to mother Cleito and father Mnesarchus, a retailer who lived in a village near Athens. Upon the receipt of an oracle saying that his son was fated to win "e;crowns of victory"e;, Mnesarchus insisted that the boy should train for a career in athletics. However, what is clear is that athletics was not to be the way to win crowns of victory. Euripides had been lucky enough to have been born in the era as the other two masters of Greek Tragedy; Sophocles and schylus. It was in their footsteps that he was destined to follow. His first play was performed some thirteen years after the first of Socrates plays and a mere three years after schylus had written his classic The Oristria. Theatre was becoming a very important part of the Greek culture. The Dionysia, held annually, was the most important festival of theatre and second only to the fore-runner of the Olympic games, the Panathenia, held every four years, in appeal. Euripides first competed in the City Dionysia, in 455 BC, one year after the death of schylus, and, incredibly, it was not until 441 BC that he won first prize. His final competition in Athens was in 408 BC. The Bacchae and Iphigenia in Aulis were performed after his death in 405 BC and first prize was awarded posthumously. Altogether his plays won first prize only five times. Euripides was also a great lyric poet. In Medea, for example, he composed for his city, Athens, "e;the noblest of her songs of praise"e;. His lyric skills however are not just confined to individual poems: "e;A play of Euripides is a musical whole....one song echoes motifs from the preceding song, while introducing new ones."e; Much of his life and his whole career coincided with the struggle between Athens and Sparta for hegemony in Greece but he didn't live to see the final defeat of his city. Euripides fell out of favour with his fellow Athenian citizens and retired to the court of Archelaus, king of Macedon, who treated him with consideration and affection. At his death, in around 406BC, he was mourned by the king, who, refusing the request of the Athenians that his remains be carried back to the Greek city, buried him with much splendor within his own dominions. His tomb was placed at the confluence of two streams, near Arethusa in Macedonia, and a cenotaph was built to his memory on the road from Athens towards the Piraeus.

Sense and Sensibility (1811) is Jane Austen's first published novel. It is a book about love and romance that follows the life of Elinor and Marianne Dashwood. When their father dies and his property goes to his son and first wife, the Dashwood sisters move with their family to live in a modest cottage in Devonshire where start their romantic adventures and heartbreaks. The cottage belongs to their mother's cousin Sir John Middleton who welcomes them and presents them to his family and friends. One of John's friends, Colonel Brandon, soon falls in love with Marianne, yet the latter finds him unattractive and too old for her age. She later meets the philandering John Willoughby and becomes interested in him to be drowned in grief when he leaves to do business in London. As for Elinor, she develops a relationship with Edward Ferrars before they move to Devonshire. When the two sisters are disappointed by their lovers who go with other women, the novel depicts the different ways they react as well as their wavering between passion and reason. By the end of the novel, Edward comes to mend his relationship with Elinor and marries her while Marianne marries Colonel Brandon. We've also included a concise and informative biography of Jane's works and life at the end of the book. We hope it helps to give a little context and colour about how her life interacted with her art.

Edgar Rice Burroughs was born on September 1, 1875, in Chicago, Illinois. His early career was unremarkable. After failing to enter West Point he enlisted in the 7th Calvary but was discharged after heart problems were diagnosed. A series of short term jobs gave no indication as to a career path but finally, in 1911, married and with two young children, he turned his hand to writing. He aimed his works squarely at the very popular pulp serial magazines. His first effort 'Under The Moons Of Mars' ran in Munsey's Magazine in 1912 under the pseudonym Norman Bean. With its success he began writing full time. A continuing theme of his work was to develop series so that each character had ample opportunities to return in sequels. John Carter was in the Mars series and there was another on Venus and one on Pellucidar among others. But perhaps the best known is Tarzan. Indeed Burroughs wanted so much to capitalise upon the brand that he introduced a syndicated Tarzan comic strip, movies and merchandise. He purchased a large ranch north of Los Angeles, California, which he named "e;Tarzana."e; The surrounding communities outside the ranch voted in 1927 to adopt the name as their own. By 1932 Burroughs set up his own company to print his own books. Here we publish the seventh in the Tarzan series 'Tarzan the Untamed'. Another cultural classic.

John Edward Masefield was born in 1878 in the sleepy market town of Ledbury in rural Hertfordshire. An idyllic childhood was ruined when he was left an orphan and sent to live with an Aunt who decided his education and life would be better spent at sea. At age 13 he boarded a school ship and there his love of writing and reading blossomed. By 1899 he began to publish and apart from brief service during World War I he now had a life of writing and lecture tours. He published much; novels, poetry and even an account of the disastrous war effort in the Dardanelles at Gallipoli. Upon the death of Robert Bridges in 1930, Masefield was given the prestigious position of Poet Laureate, a role he would fulfill until his death; the only poet to hold the position for a longer period was Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Despite later ill health and the death of his wife in 1960, Masefield continued to write. In 1966, he published his last book of poems, In Glad Thanksgiving, at the age of 88. In the latter part of 1966 gangrene was diagnosed in his ankle. This gradually spread through his leg and claimed his life on May 12, 1967. He was cremated and his ashes placed in the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey. Here we present The Tragedy Of Pompey The Great.

William Somerset Maugham was born on 25 January 1874 and was to become a playwright and novelist of staggering talent. Losing both his parents at age 10, he was raised by a paternal uncle. Maugham eventually trained and qualified as a doctor. The initial print run of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, published in 1897, sold out so rapidly that Maugham gave up medicine to write full-time. His life was certainly full, as the short biography at the end of this book will attest to, but it is also a life full of marvellous works and dedication to his art. Here we publish The Circle.

The English dramatists Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, collaborated in their writing during the reign of James I of England (James VI of Scotland, 1567-1625; in England he reigned from 1603).Beaumont & Fletcher began to collaborate as writers soon after they met. After notable failures of their solo works their first joint effort, Philaster, was a success and tragicomedy was the genre they explored and built upon. There would be many further successes to follow.There is an account that at the time the two men shared everything. They lived together in a house on the Bankside in Southwark, "e;they also lived together in Bankside, sharing clothes and having one wench in the house between them."e; Or as another account puts it "e;sharing everything in the closest intimacy."e;Whatever the truth of this they were now recognised as perhaps the best writing team of their generation, so much so, that their joint names was applied to all the works in which either, or both, had a pen including those with Philip Massinger, James Shirley and Nathan Field.The first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647 contained 35 plays; 53 plays were included in the second folio in 1679. Other works bring the total plays in the canon to about 55. However there appears here to have been some duplicity on the account of the publishers who seemed to attribute so many to the team. It is now thought that the work between solely by Beaumont and Fletcher amounts to approximately 15 plays, though of course further works by them were re-worked by others and the originals lost.After Beaumont's early death in 1616 Fletcher continued to write and, at his height was, by many standards, the equal of Shakespeare in popularity until his own death in 1625.

Northanger Abbey is one of Jane Austen's earliest novels which is believed to be influenced by the Gothic works of Ann Radcliffe. The story centers around Catherine Morland, a country churchman's daughter who is fond of Gothic fiction. The story starts when Catherine is invited by her wealthy family friends to visit the famous town of Bath. She soon falls in love with the young gentleman Henry Tilney whose erudition and interest in fiction and history simply enchant her. She is later invited to visit Northanger Abbey, Henry's ancient family estate and expects the Abbey to be similar to the castles she is familiar with in the Gothic novels that she reads. However, she discovers that the building is far from being Gothic save for the mysterious suite of deserted rooms belonging to Henry's dead mother. Catherine imagines that the rooms hide some secret about the woman's death, suspecting that Henry's father may have killed her. When she finally sneaks into the rooms, she finds absolutely nothing that confirms her Gothic visions. Furthermore, she is caught by Henry who, after hearing about her motivations, informs her that his parents really loved each other. Catherine is finally convinced that despite their entertaining capacity, novels are not necessarily a faithful representation of every-day life. We've also included a concise and informative biography of Jane's works and life at the end of the book. We hope it helps to give a little context and colour about how her life interacted with her art.

Thomas Middleton was born in London in April 1580 and baptised on 18th April. Middleton was aged only five when his father died. His mother remarried but this unfortunately fell apart into a fifteen year legal dispute regarding the inheritance due Thomas and his younger sister. By the time he left Oxford, at the turn of the Century, Middleton had and published Microcynicon: Six Snarling Satirese which was denounced by the Archbishop of Canterbury and publicly burned. In the early years of the 17th century, Middleton wrote topical pamphlets. One - Penniless Parliament of Threadbare Poets was reprinted several times and the subject of a parliamentary inquiry. These early years writing plays continued to attract controversy. His writing partnership with Thomas Dekker brought him into conflict with Ben Jonson and George Chapman in the so-called War of the Theatres. His finest work with Dekker was undoubtedly The Roaring Girl, a biography of the notorious Mary Frith. In the 1610s, Middleton began another playwriting partnership, this time with the actor William Rowley, producing another slew of plays including Wit at Several Weapons and A Fair Quarrel. The ever adaptable Middleton seemed at ease working with others or by himself. His solo writing credits include the comic masterpiece, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, in 1613. In 1620 he was officially appointed as chronologer of the City of London, a post he held until his death. The 1620s saw the production of his and Rowley's tragedy, and continual favourite, The Changeling, and of several other tragicomedies. However in 1624, he reached a peak of notoriety when his dramatic allegory A Game at Chess was staged by the King's Men. Though Middleton's approach was strongly patriotic, the Privy Council silenced the play after only nine performances at the Globe theatre, having received a complaint from the Spanish ambassador. What happened next is a mystery. It is the last play recorded as having being written by Middleton. Thomas Middleton died at his home at Newington Butts in Southwark in the summer of 1627, and was buried on July 4th, in St Mary's churchyard which today survives as a public park in Elephant and Castle.

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) is regarded by many readers and literary critics to be THE major English novelist of the Victorian Age. He is remembered today as the author of a series of weighty novels which have been translated into many languages and promoted to the rank of World Classics. The latter include, but are not limited to, The Adventures of Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield, A Christmas Carol, Hard Times, Great Expectations and The Old Curiosity Shop. His talents extended to many other forms including short stories, poetry, letters and his serial magazines. Of course being such a talent he also wrote plays. We are very pleased to present his first of four plays first performed at St. James's Theatre, September 29, 1836: The Strange Gentleman

Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was born on October 16, 1888 in a hotel bedroom in what is now Times Square, New York. Much of his childhood was spent in the comfort of books at boarding schools whilst his actor father was on the road and his Mother contended with her own demons. He spent only a year at University - Princeton - and various reasons have been given for his departure. However whatever his background and education denied or added to his development it is agreed amongst all that he was a playwright of the first rank and possibly America's greatest. His introduction of realism into American drama was instrumental in its development and paved a path for many talents thereafter. Of course his winning of both the Pulitzer Prize (4 times) and the Nobel Prize are indicative of his status. His more famous and later works do side with the disillusionment and personal tragedy of those on the fringes of society but continue to build upon ideas and structures he incorporated in his early one act plays. Eugene O'Neill suffered from various health problems, mainly depression and alcoholism. In the last decade he also faced a Parkinson's like tremor in his hands which made writing increasingly difficult. But out of such difficulties came plays of the calibre of The Iceman Cometh, Long Day's Journey Into Night, and A Moon for the Misbegotten. Eugene O'Neill died in Room 401 of the Sheraton Hotel on Bay State Road in Boston, on November 27, 1953, at the age of 65. As he was dying, he whispered his last words: "e;I knew it. I knew it. Born in a hotel room and died in a hotel room."e;

John Galsworthy was born at Kingston Upon Thames in Surrey, England, on August 14th 1867 to a wealthy and well established family. His schooling was at Harrow and New College, Oxford before training as a barrister and being called to the bar in 1890. However, Law was not attractive to him and he travelled abroad becoming great friends with the novelist Joseph Conrad, then a first mate on a sailing ship. In 1895 Galsworthy began an affair with Ada Nemesis Pearson Cooper, the wife of his cousin Major Arthur Galsworthy. The affair was kept a secret for 10 years till she at last divorced and they married on 23rd September 1905. Galsworthy first published in 1897 with a collection of short stories entitled "e;The Four Winds"e;. For the next 7 years he published these and all works under his pen name John Sinjohn. It was only upon the death of his father and the publication of "e;The Island Pharisees"e; in 1904 that he published as John Galsworthy. His first play, The Silver Box in 1906 was a success and was followed by "e;The Man of Property"e; later that same year and was the first in the Forsyte trilogy. Whilst today he is far more well know as a Nobel Prize winning novelist then he was considered a playwright dealing with social issues and the class system. Here we publish Villa Rubein, a very fine story that captures Galsworthy's unique narrative and take on life of the time. He is now far better known for his novels, particularly The Forsyte Saga, his trilogy about the eponymous family of the same name. These books, as with many of his other works, deal with social class, upper-middle class lives in particular. Although always sympathetic to his characters, he reveals their insular, snobbish, and somewhat greedy attitudes and suffocating moral codes. He is now viewed as one of the first from the Edwardian era to challenge some of the ideals of society depicted in the literature of Victorian England. In his writings he campaigns for a variety of causes, including prison reform, women's rights, animal welfare, and the opposition of censorship as well as a recurring theme of an unhappy marriage from the women's side. During World War I he worked in a hospital in France as an orderly after being passed over for military service. He was appointed to the Order of Merit in 1929, after earlier turning down a knighthood, and awarded the Nobel Prize in 1932 though he was too ill to attend. John Galsworthy died from a brain tumour at his London home, Grove Lodge, Hampstead on January 31st 1933. In accordance with his will he was cremated at Woking with his ashes then being scattered over the South Downs from an aeroplane.

George Eliot opens her complex study of life in the provincial Midlands with a brilliant portrait of Dorothea Brooke in all her strengths and weaknesses. Dorothea's misguided marriage is only one of the many, at first seemingly quite separate, stories of thwarted ideals, passions and ambitions. In the end the 'web of relationships' comes together as every character meets an appropriate fate. The story links the struggles of the individuals with the problems of society as a whole, as it wrestles with the disturbances that are approaching through industrialisation and a changing social order.

In 1896 JM Synge met W. B. Yeats, who encouraged Synge to live for a while in the Aran Islands and then return to Dublin and devote himself to creative work. In 1897 Synge suffered his first attack of Hodgkin's disease, a form of untreatable cancer at the time, and also had an enlarged gland removed from his neck. In 1898, he spent his first summer on the Aran Islands and then continued for the next five collecting stories and folklore and perfecting his Irish but continued to live in Paris for the rest of the year. During this period, Synge wrote his first play, When The Moon Has Set. In 1903, Synge left Paris and moved to London. He had written two one-act plays, Riders to the Sea and The Shadow of the Glen the previous year. The Shadow of the Glen was performed at the Molesworth Hall in October 1903. Riders to the Sea was performed at the same venue in February the following year. The play widely regarded as his masterpiece, The Playboy of the Western World, was first performed in the Abbey on 26 January 1907. The comedy attracted a hostile reaction from the Irish public and thereafter a riot ensued. Described as "e;an unmitigated, protracted libel upon Irish peasant men, and worse still upon Irish girlhood"e;. Yeats returned from Scotland to address the crowd on the second night, and decided to call in the police. Press opinion soon turned against the rioters and the protests petered out. Synge died of Hodgkin's disease just weeks short of his 38th birthday on March 24th 1909 trying to complete his last play, Deirdre Of The Sorrows. He was buried in Mount Jerome Graveyard, Dublin.

The reality is that little is known of Aristophanes actual life but eleven of his forty plays survive intact and upon those rest his deserved reputation as the Father of Comedy or, The Prince of Ancient Comedy. Accounts agree that he was born sometime between 456BC and 446 BC. Many cities claim the honor of his birthplace and the most probable story makes him the son of Philippus of gina, and therefore only an adopted citizen of Athens, a distinction which, at times could be cruel, though he was raised and educated in Athens. His plays are said to recreate the life of ancient Athens more realistically than any other author could. Intellectually his powers of ridicule were feared by his influential contemporaries; Plato himself singled out Aristophanes' play The Clouds as a slander that contributed to the trial and condemning to death of Socrates and although other satirical playwrights had also caricatured the philosopher his carried the most weight. His now lost play, The Babylonians, was denounced by the demagogue Cleon as a slander against the Athenian polis. Aristophanes seems to have taken this criticism to heart and thereafter caricatured Cleon mercilessly in his subsequent plays, especially The Knights. His life and playwriting years were undoubtedly long though again accounts as to the year of his death vary quite widely. What can be certain is that his legacy of surviving plays is in effect both a treasured legacy but also in itself the only surviving texts of Ancient Greek comedy.