Audiobooks narrated by Jake Urry

One of the greatest of English poets, Edmund Spenser was born in East Smithfield, London, in 1552 and went to school at Merchant Taylors' School and later at Pembroke College, Cambridge. In 1579, he published The Shepheardes Calender, his first major work. Edmund journeyed to Ireland in July 1580, in the service of the newly appointed Lord Deputy, Arthur Grey, 14th Baron Grey de Wilton. His time included the terrible massacre at the Siege of Smerwick. The epic poem, The Faerie Queene, is acknowledged as Edmund's masterpiece. The first three books were published in 1590, and a second set of three books were published in 1596. Indeed the reality is that Spenser, through his great talents, was able to move Poetry in a different direction. It led to him being called a Poet's Poet and brought rich admiration from Milton, Raleigh, Blake, Wordsworth, Keats, Byron, and Tennyson, among others. Spenser returned to Ireland and in 1591, Complaints, a collection of poems that voices complaints in mournful or mocking tones was published. In 1595, Spenser published Amoretti and Epithalamion in a volume that contains eighty-nine sonnets. In the following year he wrote a prose pamphlet entitled A View of the Present State of Ireland, a highly inflammatory argument for the pacification and destruction of Irish culture.On January 13th 1599 Edmund Spenser died at the age of forty-six. His coffin was carried to his grave in Westminster Abbey by other poets, who threw pens and poetic pieces into his grave. This volume comes to you from Portable Poetry, a specialized imprint from Deadtree Publishing. Our range is large and growing and covers single poets, themes, and many compilations.

Edmund Spenser (Author), Ghizela Rowe, Jake Urry, Richard Mitchley (Narrator)

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The Poetry of Laurence Binyon

Robert Laurence Binyon, CH, was born on 10th August 1869 in Lancaster in Lancashire, England to Quaker parents, Frederick Binyon and Mary Dockray.He studied at St Paul's School, London before enrolling at Trinity College, Oxford, to read classics.Binyon's first published work was Persephone in 1890. As a poet, his output was not prodigious and, in the main, the volumes he did publish were slim, but his reputation was of the highest order. When the Poet Laureate, Alfred Austin, died in 1913, Binyon was considered alongside Thomas Hardy and Rudyard Kipling for the post which was eventually given to Robert Bridges.Binyon played a pivotal role in helping to establish the modernist School of poetry and introduced imagist poets such as Ezra Pound, Richard Aldington and H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) to East Asian visual art and literature. Most of his career was spent at The British Museum where he produced many books particularly on the art of the Far East.Moved and shaken by the onset of the World War I and its military tactics of young men slaughtered to hold or gain a few yards of shell-shocked mud Binyon wrote his seminal poem For the Fallen. It became an instant classic, turning moments of great loss into a National and human tribute.After the war, he returned to the British Museum and wrote numerous books on art; especially on William Blake, Persian and Japanese art.In 1931, his two volume Collected Poems appeared and in 1933, he retired from the British Museum.Between 1933 and 1943, Binyon published his acclaimed translation of Dante's Divine Comedy in an English version of terza rima.During the Second World War Binyon wrote another poetic masterpiece 'The Burning of the Leaves', about the London Blitz.Robert Laurence Binyon died in Dunedin Nursing Home, Bath Road, Reading, on March 10th, 1943 after undergoing an operation. This volume comes to you from Portable Poetry, a specialized imprint from Deadtree Publishing. Our range is large and growing and covers single poets, themes, and many compilations.

Laurence Binyon (Author), Ghizela Rowe, Jake Urry, Richard Mitchley (Narrator)

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The Poetry of Edward Thomas

Philip Edward Thomas was born on 3rd March, 1878 at 14 Lansdowne Gardens in Stockwell, Lambeth, which was then a part of Surrey. His family had a rich Welsh heritage.Thomas was educated at Battersea Grammar School before proceeding to St Paul's School in London and then becoming a history scholar, between 1898-1900, at Lincoln College, Oxford.Whilst still studying for his degree he married Helen Berenice Noble in June, 1899, in Fulham, London. Thomas had already decided by this time to fashion a career out of literature.As a book reviewer he reviewed in the order of fifteen books a week and began to be published as both a literary critic, for the Daily Chronicle, and as a biographer. His writing talents also extended to writing on the countryside and, in 1913, a novel, The Happy-Go-Lucky Morgans was published.Thomas is also responsible for the shepherding and mentoring of the career of maverick tramp poet W. H. Davies during the early years of the 20th Century. Despite Davies's years of wanderlust he was encouraged to take up accommodation in a small cottage near to where Thomas, Helen and his family lived at Elses Farm, near Sevenoaks in Kent.Ironically although Thomas believed that poetry was the highest form of literature and reviewed poetry books often it was only in 1914 that he began to write poetry himself. By this time, he was living at Steep, East Hampshire, and his early poems were published under the pseudonym of 'Edward Eastaway'. The American poet Robert Frost, who was living in England at the time, went to some lengths to encourage Thomas to continue writing poetry. Their friendship became so close that they planned to reside side by side in the United States. Frost's classic poem, "The Road Not Taken", was inspired by his long walks with Thomas and the latter's indecisiveness about which route to take.Thomas wrote several revered poems. For many his lines on the now abandoned railway station at Adlestrop, written after his train made a stop at the Cotswolds station on 24th June, 1914, shortly before the outbreak of the First World War are his best.Europe was now to be engulfed in a monumental armed struggle and many writers, poets and painters heeded the call to become part of the tide of humanity to serve their countries. Thomas enlisted in the Artists Rifles in July 1915, despite being a mature married man who could have avoided enlisting without too much difficulty.He was promoted to corporal, and by November 1916 had been commissioned into the Royal Garrison Artillery as a second lieutenant. Philip Edward Thomas was killed in action soon after his arrival in France at Arras on Easter Monday, 9th April 1917. To soften the blow to his widow Helen, a fiction was concocted of a "bloodless death"; that Thomas was killed by the concussive blast wave from an exploding shell as he stood to light his pipe and that there was no mark on his body. (It was only decades later that a letter from his commanding officer, Franklin Lushington, written in 1936, was discovered stating that Thomas had been "shot clean through the chest".)W. H. Davies was devastated by the death and his commemorative poem "Killed In Action (Edward Thomas)" is a moving tribute to the loss of his friend.Thomas is buried in the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery at Agny in France (Row C, Grave 43).As a poet Thomas's career was short but he has been grouped with the War Poets though his output of war poems is short in number, especially when set against those that feature the countryside. Aside from his poems and a novel Thomas wrote frequent essays and a number of travel books.On Armistice Day, 11th November, 1985, Thomas was among the 16 Great War poets commemorated on a slate stone unveiled in Westminster Abbey's Poet's Corner. The inscription, written by fellow poet Wilfred Owen, reads: "My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity."Thomas was described by British Poet Laureate Ted Hughes as "the father of us all." This volume comes to you from Portable Poetry, a specialized imprint from Deadtree Publishing. Our range is large and growing and covers single poets, themes, and many compilations.

Edward Thomas (Author), Ghizela Rowe, Jake Urry, Richard Mitchley (Narrator)

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The Poetry of Ivor Gurney

Ivor Bertie Gurney was born in Gloucester on 28th August 1890. A chorister at Gloucester cathedral Ivor began to compose music at 14 before winning a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music in 1911. Noted for his enormous potential he was equally thought by many to be un-teachable.His studies were interrupted by World War I and his enlistment with the Gloucestershire Regiment. He was wounded in April 1917. He returned to duty but was gassed a few months later. After his release from hospital he was posted to Seaton Delaval, a mining village in Northumberland, where he wrote poems including 'Lying Awake In The Ward'.His first volume of poetry, Severn and Somme, was published in November 1917, followed by War's Embers in 1919.Unfortunately his life was blighted by bi-polar disorder which had developed from his mid-teens and culminated in his first major breakdown whilst still in uniform in 1918. The trigger was a failed relationship with Annie Drummond.After the war he seemed to thrive for a while but the bi-polar return with increasing severity in 1922 to the point where we was declared insane. Although he continued to write poems and a few pieces of music he was to spend the next fifteen years of his life until his death in various mental hospitals.Ivor Gurney died on 26th December 1937.This volume comes to you from Portable Poetry, a specialized imprint from Deadtree Publishing. Our range is large and growing and covers single poets, themes, and many compilations.

Ivor Gurney (Author), Ghizela Rowe, Jake Urry, Richard Mitchley (Narrator)

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The Short Stories of Arthur Morrison

Arthur Morrison was born on November 1st, 1863, in Poplar, in the East End of London. From the age of 8, after the death of his father, he was brought up, along with two siblings, by his mother, Jane.Morrison spent his youth in the East End. In 1879 he began as an office boy in the Architect's Department of the London School Board and, in his spare time, visited used bookstores in Whitechapel Road. He first published, a humorous poem, in the magazine Cycling in 1880.In 1885 Morrison began writing for The Globe newspaper. In 1886, he switched to the People's Palace, in Mile End and, in 1888, published the Cockney Corner collection, about life in Soho, Whitechapel, Bow Street and other areas of London. By 1889 he was an editor at the Palace Journal, reprinting some earlier sketches, and writing commentaries on books and articles on the life of the London poor.In 1890 he was back at The Globe and published 'The Shadows Around Us', a supernatural collection of stories. At this time he also began to develop a keen interest in Japanese Art.In October 1891 his short story A Street appeared in Macmillan's Magazine. The following year he married Elizabeth Thatcher and then befriended publisher and poet William Ernest Henley for whom he wrote stories of working-class life in Henley's National Observer between 1892-94. In 1894 came his first detective story featuring Martin Hewitt, described as "a low-key, realistic, lower-class answer to Sherlock Holmes".Morrison published A Child of the Jago in 1896 swiftly followed by The Adventures of Martin Hewitt.In 1897 he published seven stories about Horace Dorrington, a deeply corrupt private detective, described as "a cheerfully unrepentant sociopath who is willing to stoop to theft, blackmail, fraud or cold-blooded murder to make a dishonest penny." To London Town, the final part of a trilogy including Tales of Mean Streets and A Child of the Jago was published in 1899. Following on came a wide spectrum of works, including novels, short stories and one act plays. In 1911 he published his authoritative work Japanese Painters, illustrated with art from his own collection. Although he retired from journalistic work in 1913 he continued to write about Art. In his last decades Morrison served as a special constable, and reported on the first Zeppelin raid on London. Tragically in 1921 his son, Guy, who had survived the war, died of malaria. The Royal Society of Literature elected him as a member in 1924 and to its Council in 1935. In 1930 he moved to Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire. Here he wrote the short story collection Fiddle o' Dreams and More.Arthur Morrison died on December 4th, 1945. In his will he left his collection of paintings, woodcuts, and ceremonial tea porcelain to the British Museum. He also directed that his library be sold and his papers burnt. This volume comes to you from Portable Poetry, a specialized imprint from Deadtree Publishing. Our range is large and growing and covers single poets, themes, and many compilations.

Arthur Morrison (Author), Ghizela Rowe, Jake Urry, Richard Mitchley (Narrator)

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The Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant

Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant was born on August 5th, 1850 near Dieppe in France. Maupassant's early life was badly torn when at age 11 (his younger brother Hervé was then five) his mother, Laure, a headstrong and independent-minded woman, risked social disgrace in order to obtain a legal separation from her husband.After the separation, Laure kept custody of her two boys. With the father now forcibly absent, Laure became the most influential and important figure in the young boy's life. Maupassant's education was such that he rebelled against religion and other societal norms but a developing friendship with Gustave Flaubert began to turn his mind towards creativity and writing.After graduation he volunteered for the Franco-Prussian war. With its end he moved to Paris to work as a clerk in the Navy Department. Gustave Flaubert now took him under his wing. Acting as a literary guardian to him, he guided the eager Maupassant to debuts in journalism and literature. For Maupassant these were exciting times and the awakening of his creative talents and ambitions.In 1880 he published what is considered his first great work, 'Boule de Suif', (translated as as 'Dumpling', 'Butterball', 'Ball of Fat', or 'Ball of Lard') which met with a success that was both instant and overwhelming. Flaubert at once acknowledged that it was 'a masterpiece that will endure.' Maupassant had used his talents and experiences in the war to create something unique. This decade from 1880 to 1891 was to be the most pivotal of his career. With an audience now made available by the success of 'Boule de Suif' Maupassant organised himself to work methodically and relentlessly to produce between two and four volumes of work a year. The melding of his talents and business sense and the continual hunger of sources for his works made him wealthy.In his later years he developed a desire for solitude, an obsession for self-preservation, and a fear of death as well as a paranoia of persecution caused by the syphilis he had contracted in his youth. On January 2nd, 1892, Maupassant tried to commit suicide by cutting his throat. Unsuccessful he was committed to the private asylum of Esprit Blanche at Passy, in Paris. It was here on July 6th, 1893 that Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant died at the age of only 42. This volume comes to you from Portable Poetry, a specialized imprint from Deadtree Publishing. Our range is large and growing and covers single poets, themes, and many compilations.

Guy De Maupassant (Author), Ian Holm, Jake Urry, Richard Mitchley (Narrator)

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The Short Stories of George Gissing

George Robert Gissing was born on November 22nd, 1857 in Wakefield, Yorkshire. He was educated at Back Lane School in Wakefield. Gissing loved school. He was enthusiastic with a thirst for learning and always diligent. By the age of ten he was reading Dickens, a lifelong hero.In 1872 Gissing won a scholarship to Owens College. Whilst there Gissing worked hard but remained solitary. Unfortunately, he had run short of funds and stole from his fellow students. He was arrested, prosecuted, found guilty, expelled and sentenced to a month's hard labour in 1876.On release he decided to start over. In September 1876 he travelled to the United States. Here he wrote short stories for the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers. On his return home he was ready for novels.Gissing self-published his first novel but it failed to sell. His second was acquired but never published. His writing career was static. Something had to change. And it did.By 1884 The Unclassed was published. Now everything he wrote was published. Both Isabel Clarendon and Demos appeared in 1886. He mined the lives of the working class as diligently as any capitalist.In 1889 Gissing used the proceeds from the sale of The Nether World to go to Italy. This trip formed the basis for his 1890 work The Emancipated.Gissing's works began to command higher payments. New Grub Street (1891) brought a fee of £250. Short stories followed and in 1895, three novellas were published; Eve's Ransom, The Paying Guest and Sleeping Fires. Gissing was careful to keep up with the changing attitudes of his audience. Unfortunately, he was also diagnosed as suffering from emphysema. The last years of his life were spent as a semi-invalid in France but he continued to write. 1899; The Crown of Life. Our Friend the Charlatan appeared in 1901, followed two years later by The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft.George Robert Gissing died aged 46 on December 28th, 1903 after catching a chill on a winter walk. This volume comes to you from Portable Poetry, a specialized imprint from Deadtree Publishing. Our range is large and growing and covers single poets, themes, and many compilations.

George Gissing (Author), Eve Karpf, Jake Urry, Richard Mitchley (Narrator)

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The Short Stories of Stacy Amounier

Stacy Aumonier was born at Hampstead Road near Regent's Park, London on 31st March 1877.He came from a family with a strong and sustained tradition in the visual arts; sculptors and painters.On leaving school it seemed the family tradition would also be his career path. In particular his early talents were that of a landscape painter. He exhibited paintings at the Royal Academy in the early years of the twentieth century.In 1907 he married the international concert pianist, Gertrude Peppercorn, at West Horsley in Surrey. A year later Aumonier began a career in a second branch of the arts at which he enjoyed a short but outstanding success-as a stage performer writing and performing his own sketches.The Observer newspaper commented that "...the stage lost in him a real and rare genius, he could walk out alone before any audience, from the simplest to the most sophisticated, and make it laugh or cry at will."In 1915, Aumonier published a short story 'The Friends' which was well received (and was subsequently voted one of the 15 best stories of 1915 by the Boston Magazine, Transcript).Despite his age in 1917 at age 40 he was called up for service in World War I. He began as a private in the Army Pay Corps, and then transferred as a draughtsman in the Ministry of National Service.By now he had four books published-two novels and two books of short stories-and his occupation is recorded with the Army Medical Board as 'author.'In the mid-1920s, Aumonier received the shattering diagnosis that he had contracted tuberculosis. In the last few years of his life, he would spend long spells in various sanatoria, some better than others.Shortly before his death, Stacy Aumonier sought treatment in Switzerland, but died of the disease in Clinique La Prairie at Clarens beside Lake Geneva on 21st December 1928. He was 55. This volume comes to you from Miniature Masterpieces, a specialized imprint from Deadtree Publishing. Our range is large and growing and covers single authors, themes, and many compilations.

Stacy Aumonier (Author), Jake Urry, Richard Mitchley (Narrator)

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The Short Stories of John Buchan

John Buchan was born on August 26th 1875. After a brief career in the legal profession he began a twin career as writer and politician. He was a prodigious writer not just of fiction but of such acclaimed works as a 24 volume history of World War I. It was during the war, where, as a sideline writing propaganda he wrote his most famous works 'The Thirty Nine Steps'. Its hero, Richard Hannay, continues his story in other Buchan novels, most notably Greenmantle (1916) and Mr Standfast (1919). After the war he became a Member of Parliament and in 1935 was appointed as Governor General of Canada. This title was added to his other very impressive collection: 1st Baron Tweedsmuir PC GCMG GCVO CH. He occupied the post of Governor General and continued to write until his death on February 11th 1940. In all he wrote 100 works including 30 novels, short stories, poems, biographies and many volumes about military history. This volume comes to you from Miniature Masterpieces, a specialized imprint from Deadtree Publishing. Our range is large and growing and covers single authors, themes, and many compilations.

John Buchan (Author), Jake Urry, Richard Mitchley (Narrator)

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The Short Stories of C.E. Montague

Charles Edward Montague was born in London on New Year's Day, 1867 and educated at the City of London School and then Balliol College, Oxford. At university, Montague, a keen writer, wrote several literary reviews for the Manchester Guardian and was then invited for a month's trial and, after impressing, to work there. Montague and the editor, C. P. Scott shared the same political views and between them they turned the Manchester Guardian into a vibrant and campaigning newspaper. They were for Irish Home Rule and against the Boer War and the First World War. But now that the war had begun. Montague believed that it was important to give full and unequivocal support to the British government.Despite his age, 47, he was determined to serve. Montague was soon promoted to the rank of second lieutenant and with it a transfer to Military Intelligence. The war also brought about a crisis in his faith and it was resolved by Montague temporarily putting it to one side and carrying on with the fighting. In November 1918 the war was over and Montague could now return home to his wife and family and also to the Manchester Guardian where he would continue to work until retirement in 1925.For Montague the war had been corrosive but it had given him much to write about both for the paper but also for his books which he now hoped to also spend more time on. Among those to flow from his pen are the novels A Hind Let Loose and Rough Justice as well as collections of short stories, other essays and a travel book. He finally retired in 1925, and settled down to become a full-time writer in the last years of his life. Charles Edward Montague died in Manchester on May 28th, 1928 at the age of 61.This volume comes to you from Miniature Masterpieces, a specialized imprint from Deadtree Publishing. Our range is large and growing and covers single authors, themes, and many compilations.

C.E. Montague (Author), Jake Urry, Richard Mitchley (Narrator)

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The Poetry of World War I - Vol II - The Fallen Poets

War may be rationalized as 'diplomacy by other means' but the reality is that when tribes, Nations and peoples bring themselves into armed conflict with one another mayhem, terror and slaughter are the result.In the First World War, The Great War, The War to End all Wars any idealistic aims that it was a 'just cause' and would be all over in a few months were shattered against the vast scale of millions dead or wounded all for the often temporary gains of a few miles of shell-pocked mud. Human bodies were of little more value than the bullets and shells which mowed them down.In this series of poetry volumes we look at the first world war from several viewpoints. From poets who died, often in battle, during its torturous years, to the women who write of war and its consequences as well as an anthology of those poets, some still of fame, and some now forgotten with only their words to bear witness for what they have experienced. Each has an individual point of view that bears its own truth.For the poets who fought in this conflict their first hand accounts often came at a terrible and irrevocable price. In this volume we collect together the works of many poets who died during this tumultuous time. Whilst their lives were cut tragically short their words endure. This volume comes to you from Portable Poetry, a specialized imprint from Deadtree Publishing. Our range is large and growing and covers single poets, themes, and many compilations.

Edward Thomas, Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen (Author), Gideon Wagner, Jake Urry, Richard Mitchley (Narrator)

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The Poetry of World War I - The Top 100

War may be rationalized as 'diplomacy by other means' but the reality is that when tribes, Nations and peoples bring themselves into armed conflict with one another mayhem, terror and slaughter are the result.In the First World War, The Great War, The War to End all Wars any idealistic aims that it was a 'just cause' and would be all over in a few months were shattered against the vast scale of millions dead or wounded all, for the often temporary gains of a few miles of shell-pocked mud. Human bodies were of little more value than the bullets and shells which mowed them down.In this poetry volume we have distilled an enormous number of poets and poems into a selection that moves from the witness to searing horror and terror of battle to almost forgotten moments of recuperation and reflection both at the front and at home.Out of the carnage has flowered works of fractured beauty, symbols of those we have lost and reminders of what we have lost.These words to bear witness for what they have experienced. Each has an individual point of view that bears its own truth.This volume comes to you from Portable Poetry, a specialized imprint from Deadtree Publishing. Our range is large and growing and covers single poets, themes, and many compilations.

Isaac Rosenberg, Ivor Gurney, Laurence Binyon (Author), Gideon Wagner, Jake Urry, Richard Mitchley (Narrator)

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Audiobooks Narrated by Jake Urry