Benjamin "e;Ben"e; Jonson was born in June, 1572. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays; Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, and his equally accomplished lyric poems. A man of vast reading and a seemingly insatiable appetite for controversy, including time in jail and a penchant for switching faiths, Jonson had an unparalleled breadth of influence on Jacobean and Caroline playwrights and poets. In 1616 Jonson was appointed by King James I to receive a yearly pension of GBP60 to become what is recognised as the first official Poet Laureate. He died on the 6th of August, 1637 at Westminster and is buried in the north aisle of the nave at Westminster Abbey. A master of both playwriting and poetry his reputation continues to endure and reach a new audience with each succeeding generation.

The short story is often viewed as an inferior relation to the Novel. But it is an art in itself. To take a story and distil its essence into fewer pages while keeping character and plot rounded and driven is not an easy task. Many try and many fail. In this series we look at short stories from many of our most accomplished writers. Miniature masterpieces with a lot to say. In this volume we examine some of the short stories of Arthur Conan Doyle. If ever a writer needed an introduction Arthur Conan Doyle would not be considered that man. After all, Sherlock Holmes is perhaps the foremost literary detective of any age. Add to this canon his stories of science fiction and his poems, his historical novels, his political campaigning, his efforts in establishing a Court Of Appeal and there is little room for anything else. Except he was also an exceptional writer of short stories of the horrific and macabre. Something very different from what you might expect. Born in Arthur Conan Doyle was born on 22 May 1859 at 11 Picardy Place, Edinburgh, Scotland. From 1876 - 1881 he studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh following which he was employed as a doctor on the Greenland whaler Hope of Peterhead in 1880 and, after his graduation, as a ship's surgeon on the SS Mayumba during a voyage to the West African coast in 1881. Arriving in Portsmouth in June of that year with less than GBP10 (GBP700 today[13]) to his name, he set up a medical practice at 1 Bush Villas in Elm Grove, Southsea. The practice was initially not very successful. While waiting for patients, Conan Doyle again began writing stories and composed his first novel The Mystery of Cloomber. Although he continued to study and practice medicine his career was now firmly set as a writer. And thereafter great works continued to pour out of him. Many of these stories are also available as an audiobook from our sister company Word Of Mouth. Many samples are at our youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/PortablePoetry?feature=mhee The full volume can be purchased from iTunes, Amazon and other digital stores.

John Fletcher was born in December, 1579 in Rye, Sussex. He was baptised on December 20th. As can be imagined details of much of his life and career have not survived and, accordingly, only a very brief indication of his life and works can be given. Young Fletcher appears at the very young age of eleven to have entered Corpus Christi College at Cambridge University in 1591. There are no records that he ever took a degree but there is some small evidence that he was being prepared for a career in the church. However what is clear is that this was soon abandoned as he joined the stream of people who would leave University and decamp to the more bohemian life of commercial theatre in London. The upbringing of the now teenage Fletcher and his seven siblings now passed to his paternal uncle, the poet and minor official Giles Fletcher. Giles, who had the patronage of the Earl of Essex may have been a liability rather than an advantage to the young Fletcher. With Essex involved in the failed rebellion against Elizabeth Giles was also tainted. By 1606 John Fletcher appears to have equipped himself with the talents to become a playwright. Initially this appears to have been for the Children of the Queen's Revels, then performing at the Blackfriars Theatre. Fletcher's early career was marked by one significant failure; The Faithful Shepherdess, his adaptation of Giovanni Battista Guarini's Il Pastor Fido, which was performed by the Blackfriars Children in 1608. By 1609, however, he had found his stride. With his collaborator John Beaumont, he wrote Philaster, which became a hit for the King's Men and began a profitable association between Fletcher and that company. Philaster appears also to have begun a trend for tragicomedy. By the middle of the 1610s, Fletcher's plays had achieved a popularity that rivalled Shakespeare's and cemented the pre-eminence of the King's Men in Jacobean London. After his frequent early collaborator John Beaumont's early death in 1616, Fletcher continued working, both singly and in collaboration, until his own death in 1625. By that time, he had produced, or had been credited with, close to fifty plays.

Robert Browning is one of the most significant Victorian Poets and, of course, English Poetry.Much of his reputation is based upon his mastery of the dramatic monologue although his talents encompassed verse plays and even a well-regarded essay on Shelley during a long and prolific career. He was born on May 7th, 1812 in Walmouth, London. Much of his education was home based and Browning was an eclectic and studious student, learning several languages and much else across a myriad of subjects, interests and passions. Browning's early career began promisingly. The fragment from his intended long poem Pauline brought him to the attention of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and was followed by Paracelsus, which was praised by both William Wordsworth and Charles Dickens. In 1840 the difficult Sordello, which was seen as willfully obscure, brought his career almost to a standstill. Despite these artistic and professional difficulties his personal life was about to become immensely fulfilling. He began a relationship with, and then married, the older and better known Elizabeth Barrett. This new foundation served to energise his writings, his life and his career. During their time in Italy they both wrote much of their best work. With her untimely death in 1861 he returned to London and thereafter began several further major projects. The collection Dramatis Personae (1864) and the book-length epic poem The Ring and the Book (1868-69) were published and well received; his reputation as a venerated English poet now assured. Robert Browning died in Venice on December 12th, 1889.

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.

If ever a writer needed an introduction Arthur Conan Doyle would not be considered that man. After all, Sherlock Holmes is perhaps the foremost literary detective of any age. Add to this canon his stories of science fiction and his poems, his historical novels, his political campaigning, his efforts in establishing a Court Of Appeal and there is little room for anything else. Born in Arthur Conan Doyle was born on 22 May 1859 at 11 Picardy Place, Edinburgh, Scotland. From 1876 - 1881 he studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh following which he was employed as a doctor on the Greenland whaler Hope of Peterhead in 1880 and, after his graduation, as a ship's surgeon on the SS Mayumba during a voyage to the West African coast in 1881. Arriving in Portsmouth in June of that year with less than GBP10 (GBP700 today to his name, he set up a medical practice at 1 Bush Villas in Elm Grove, Southsea. The practice was initially not very successful. While waiting for patients, Conan Doyle again began writing stories and composed his first novel The Mystery of Cloomber. Although he continued to study and practice medicine his career was now firmly set as a writer. And thereafter great works continued to pour out of him. Here we have twelve stories about the great detective Mr Sherlock Holmes.

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 Girl From Farris's' somewhat different to what the title might suggest in the hands of an ordinary writer but in the hands of Edgar Rice Burroughs the title is just the beginning.....

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (aka Samuel Langhorne Clemens) (1835 1910) is a childrens novel first published in 1876. The scene is set around the 1940s along the Mississippi river (St Petersburg) and is about a young boy called Tom who gets up to all sorts of mischief. This Mermaids Classics epublication is a reproduction of the 1884 edition by The American Publishing Company. Mermaids Classics, an imprint of Mermaids Publishing brings the very best of old book classics to a modern era of digital reading by producing high quality books in ebook format.

What Katy Did (1872) by Sarah Chauncey Woolsey (aka Susan Coolidge) (1835-1905) is a classic childrens novel based on a young 12 year tomboyish type of girl named Katy Carr who endures an accident by falling off a swing and becomes an invalid. Her cousin Helen also an invalid teaches Katy how to be a happier and kinder person by appreciating and making the most of what she has and how to be optimistic and cheerful especially around her siblings. At the end of the story, Katy learns to walk.The sequel to What Katy Did is What Katy Did At School.Mermaids Classics, an imprint of Mermaids Publishing brings the very best of old classic literature to a modern era of digital reading by producing high quality books in ebook format. All of the Mermaids Classics epublications are reproductions of classic antique books that were originally published in print format, mostly over a century ago and are now republished in digital format as ebooks. Begin to build your collection of digital books by looking for more literary gems from Mermaids Classics.

schylus is often regarded as the father of Greek tragedy; he moved play writing from the simple interaction of a single character and a chorus to one where many characters interact and thereby create more dynamic and dramatic situations. schylus, was the son of Euphorion, and a scion of a Eupatrid or noble family. He was born at Eleusis 525 B.C., or, as the Greeks calculated time, in the fourth year of the 63rd Olympiad. He first worked at a vineyard and whilst there claimed to have been visited by Dionysis in a dream and told to turn his attention to the tragic art. It was a dream that would deliver a rich and incredible legacy through his writing talents. His earliest tragedy, composed when he was twenty-six years of age, failed to win the fabled Dionysia, (a revered festival of theatre) and it was not until fifteen years later that he gained this victory in 484BC going on to win it again in 472 BC (for The Persians), 467 BC (for Seven Against Thebes) and 463 BC (for The Suppliants). schylus was also known for his military skills and was ready to fight in defence of Athens whenever the call was made. He and his brother, Cynegeirus, fought against Darius's invading Persian army at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BCE and, although the Greeks won against overwhelming odds, Cynegeirus died in the battle, which had a naturally had a profound effect on schylus. He made several visits to the important Greek city of Syracuse in Sicily at the invitation of the tyrant Hieron, and it is thought that he also travelled extensively in the region of Thrace. His writing continued to be the envy of others. With the series of plays of which Seven Against Thebes was a part, his supremacy was undisputed. He was the "e;father of tragedy."e; schylus made many changes to dramatic form. The importance of the chorus was demoted and a second added to give prominence to the dialogue and making that interchange the leading feature of the play. He removed all deeds of bloodshed from the public view, and in their place provided various spectacular elements, improving the costumes, making the masks more expressive and convenient, and probably adopting the cothurnus to increase the stature of the performers. Finally, he established the custom of contending for the prize with trilogies, an inter-connecting set of three independent dramas. The closing years of the life of schylus were mainly spent in Sicily, which he had first visited soon after his defeat at the Dionysia by Sophocles. schylus returned to Athens to produce his Orestean trilogy, probably the finest of his works, although the Eumenides, the last of the three plays, revealed so openly his aristocratic tendencies that he became extremely unpopular, and returned to Sicily for the last time in 458 BCE and it was there that he died, while visiting the city of Gela in 456 or 455 BCE.

If ever a writer needed an introduction Arthur Conan Doyle would not be considered that man. After all, Sherlock Holmes is perhaps the foremost literary detective of any age. Add to this canon his stories of science fiction and his poems, his historical novels, his plays, his political campaigning, his efforts in establishing a Court of Appeal and there is little room for anything else. Except he was also an exceptional writer of short stories of the horrific and macabre. Something very different from what you might expect. Born in Arthur Conan Doyle was born on 22 May 1859 at 11 Picardy Place, Edinburgh, Scotland. From 1876 - 1881 he studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh following which he was employed as a doctor on the Greenland whaler Hope of Peterhead in 1880 and, after his graduation, as a ship's surgeon on the SS Mayumba during a voyage to the West African coast in 1881. Arriving in Portsmouth in June of that year with less than GBP10 (GBP700 today) to his name, he set up a medical practice at 1 Bush Villas in Elm Grove, Southsea. The practice was initially not very successful. While waiting for patients, Conan Doyle again began writing stories and composed his first novel The Mystery of Cloomber. Although he continued to study and practice medicine his career was now firmly set as a writer. And thereafter great works continued to pour out of him.

Thomas Otway was born on March 3rd, 1652 at Trotton near Midhurst. He was educated at Winchester College before entering Christ Church, Oxford, in 1669 as a commoner. For reasons unknown he left without a degree in 1672 but what is known is that Oxford create a passion in him for books. Travelling to London that same year he met and obtained work as an actor from the playwright Aphra Behn. He was cast as the old king in her play, Forc'd Marriage but on his debut he had such a severe attack of stage fright that his acting career finished there and then. His career now turned to writing plays and it was a career that was to prove of immense worth to the literary canon of England. In 1675, Otway's first play, Alcibiades was first performed. It is a tragedy, written in heroic verse, saved from absolute failure only by the actors. In his play Don Carlos, Prince of Spain (1676) Otway made the leap to the front rank of playwrights and quickly followed it in 1677 with two plays adapted from French sources; Titus and Berenice, and the Cheats of Scapin followed in 1678 Otway by an original comedy, Friendship in Fashion, which continued his run of very successful plays. In February 1680, the first of Otway's two tragic masterpieces, The Orphan, or The Unhappy Marriage, was performed followed by an indifferent comedy, The Soldier's Fortune (1681), and 1682 perhaps his best work, Venice Preserv'd, or A Plot Discover'd. The play won instant success. However, in the last few years of his life poverty ensnared Otway. The success of his earlier plays had finished with Venice Preserv'd and the downward slope was both precipitous and destructive. Thomas Otway, aged 33, died in the most awful poverty on April 14th, 1685 and was buried two days later on April 16th, in the churchyard of St. Clement Danes.

Nicholas Rowe was born in Little Barford, Bedfordshire, England, on June 20th, 1674. He was educated at Highgate School, and then at Westminster School under the tutelage of Dr. Busby.In 1688, Rowe became a King's Scholar, and then in 1691 gained entrance into Middle Temple. This was his father's decision (he was a barrister) who felt that his son had made sufficient progress to study law. While at Middle Temple, he decided that studying law was easier if seen as a system of rational government and impartial justice and not as a series of precedents, or collection of positive precepts.On his father's death, when he was nineteen, he became the master of a large estate and an independent fortune. His future path now was to ignore law and write poetry with a view to eventually writing plays.The Ambitious Stepmother, Rowe's first play, produced in 1700 at Lincoln's Inn Fields by Thomas Betterton and set in Persepolis, was well received. This was followed in 1701 by Tamerlane. In this play the conqueror Timur represented William III, and Louis XIV is denounced as Bajazet. It was for many years regularly acted on the anniversary of William's landing at Torbay. In 1704, he tried his hand at comedy, with The Biter at Lincoln's Inn Fields. The play is said to have amused no one except the author, and Rowe returned to tragedy in Ulysses (1706). For Johnson, this play was to share the fate of many such plays based on mythological heroes, as, "e;We have been too early acquainted with the poetical heroes to expect any pleasure from their revival"e;The Royal Convert (1707) dealt with the persecutions endured by Aribert, son of Hengist and the Christian maiden Ethelinda. The story was set in England in an obscure and barbarous age. Rodogune was a tragic character, of high spirit and violent passions, yet with a wicked with a soul that would have been heroic if it had been virtuous.Rowe is however well known for his work on Shakespeare's plays. He published the first 18th century edition of Shakespeare in six volumes in 1709. His practical knowledge of the stage helped him divide the plays into scenes and acts, with entrances and exits of the players noted. The spelling of names was normalized and each play prefixed with a dramatis personae. This 1709 edition was also the first to be illustrated, a frontispiece engraving being provided for each play. Unfortunately, Rowe based his text on the discredited Fourth Folio, a failing which many succeeding him also followed.Rowe also wrote a short biography of William Shakespeare, entitled, Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespeare.In Dublin in 1712 a revival of his earlier play, Tamerlane, at a time when political passions were running high, the performance provoked a serious riot.The Tragedy of Jane Shore, played at Drury Lane with Mrs Oldfield in the title role in 1714. It ran for nineteen nights, and kept the stage longer than any other of Rowe's works. In the play, which consists chiefly of domestic scenes and private distress, the wife is forgiven because she repents, and the husband is honoured because he forgives.Whilst his plays met with little success at the time his poems were received extremely well. Although he was not prolific nor his output large the quality was high. With the accession to the throne of George I he was made a surveyor of customs, and then, in 1715, he succeeded Nahum Tate as poet laureate. It was the high point of his artistic life.He was also appointed clerk of the council to the Prince of Wales, and in 1718 was nominated by Lord Chancellor Parker as clerk of the presentations in Chancery. Nicholas Rowe died on December 6th, 1718, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.Rowe married first a daughter of a Mr Parsons and left a son John. By his second wife Anne, nee Devenish, he had a daughter Charlotte.

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. 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. 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. 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.

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born on the 16th October 1854 in Dublin Ireland. The son of Dublin intellectuals Oscar proved himself an outstanding classicist at Dublin, then at Oxford. With his education complete Wilde moved to London and its fashionable cultural and social circles. With his biting wit, flamboyant dress, and glittering conversation, Wilde became one of the most well-known personalities of his day. His only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray was published in 1890 and he then moved on to writing for the stage with Salome in 1891. His society comedies produced enormous hits and turned him into one of the most successful writers of late Victorian London. Whilst his masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest, was on stage in London, Wilde had the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, prosecuted for libel. The trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and trial for gross indecency. He was convicted and imprisoned for two years' hard labour. It was to break him. On release he left for France, There he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol in 1898. He died destitute in Paris at the age of forty-six sipping champagne a friend had brought with the line 'Alas I am dying beyond my means'. And here indeed is that master work The Picture Of Dorian Gray. Compelling, diabolical and at the time it caused great outrage. But as we know the pen of Oscar Wilde leads us where many others fear to go.

James Elroy Flecker was born on November 5th 1884 in London. He was educated at Dean Close School, Cheltenham, where his father was headmaster, and Uppingham School then on to Trinity College, Oxford, and Caius College, Cambridge. At Oxford he was much influenced by the vestiges of the Aesthetic movement there. In 1910 he was in the consular service, in the Eastern Mediterranean. On a ship to Athens he met Helle Skiadaressi and married her in 1911. Perhaps his best known work is "e;To A Poet A Thousand Years Hence"e;. Here we publish his five act play Hassan The Story Of Hassan Of Bagdad And How He Came To Make The Golden Journey To Samarkand. Tragically James was to die at age 30 on January 3rd 1915, in Davos, Switzerland of tuberculosis. An immense loss to English Poetry - he had already been measured against the work of Keats.

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 Griffith "e;Jack"e; London was born John Griffith Chaney on January 12th, 1876 in San Francisco. His father, William Chaney, was living with his mother Flora Wellman when she became pregnant. Chaney insisted she have an abortion. Flora's response was to turn a gun on herself. Although her wounds were not severe the trauma made her temporarily deranged. In late 1876 his mother married John London and the young child was brought to live with them as they moved around the Bay area, eventually settling in Oakland where Jack completed grade school. Jack also worked hard at several jobs, sometimes 12-18 hours a day, but his dream was university. He was lent money for that and after intense studying enrolled in the summer of 1896 at the University of California in Berkeley. In 1897, at 21 , Jack searched out newspaper accounts of his mother's suicide attempt and the name of his biological father. He wrote to William Chaney, then living in Chicago. Chaney said he could not be London's father because he was impotent; and casually asserted that London's mother had relations with other men. Jack, devastated by the response, quit Berkeley and went to the Klondike. Though equally because of his continuing dire finances Jack might have taken that as the excuse he needed to leave. In the Klondike Jack began to gather material for his writing but also accumulated many health problems, including scurvy, hip and leg problems many of which he then carried for life. By the late 1890's Jack was regularly publishing short stories and by the turn of the century full blown novels. By 1904 Jack had married, fathered two children and was now in the process of divorcing. A stint as a reporter on the Russo-Japanese war of 1904 was equal amounts trouble and experience. But that experience was always put to good use in a remarkable output of work. Twelve years later Jack had amassed a wealth of writings many of which remain world classics. He had a reputation as a social activist and a tireless friend of the workers. And yet on November 22nd 1916 Jack London died in a cottage on his ranch at the age of only 40.

Thomas Dekker was a playwright, pamphleteer and poet who, perhaps, deserves greater recognition than he has so far gained. Despite the fact only perhaps twenty of his plays were published, and fewer still survive, he was far more prolific than that. Born around 1572 his peak years were the mid 1590's to the 1620's - seven of which he spent in a debtor's prison. His works span the late Elizabethan and Caroline eras and his numerous collaborations with Ford, Middleton, Webster and Jonson say much about his work. His pamphlets detail much of the life in these times, times of great change, of plague and of course that great capital city London a swirling mass of people, power, intrigue.

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born on the 16th October 1854 in Dublin Ireland. The son of Dublin intellectuals Oscar proved himself an outstanding classicist at Dublin, then at Oxford. With his education complete Wilde moved to London and its fashionable cultural and social circles. With his biting wit, flamboyant dress, and glittering conversation, Wilde became one of the most well-known personalities of his day. His only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray was published in 1890 and he then moved on to writing for the stage with Salome in 1891. His society comedies produced enormous hits and turned him into one of the most successful writers of late Victorian London. Whilst his masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest, was on stage in London, Wilde had the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, prosecuted for libel. The trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and trial for gross indecency. He was convicted and imprisoned for two years' hard labour. It was to break him. On release he left for France, There he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol in 1898. He died destitute in Paris at the age of forty-six sipping champagne a friend had brought with the line 'Alas I am dying beyond my means'. Here we publish the infamous play 'Salome'. A work of great art that is now being accepted and placed where it rightfully belongs.

John 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 was The Silver Box, an immediate success when it debuted in 1906 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. We publish here 'The Fugitive' a great example of both his writing and his demonstration of how the class system worked at the time. 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.