With Audio

†1889 Wilkie Collins

The Woman in White Full Movie Wilkie Collins was an English novelist and playwrightknown especially for The Woman in White (1859), a mystery novel and early sensation novel, and for The Moonstone (1868), which established many of the ground rules of the modern detective novel and is also perhaps the earliest clear example of the police procedural genre. Collins’s works were classified at the time as sensation novels, a genre that became the precursor to detective and suspense fiction. He also wrote penetratingly on the plight of women and on the social and domestic issues of his time. For example, his 1854 Hide and  Seek contained one of the first portrayals of a deaf character in English […]

Read More

†1910 Leo Tolstoy

War and Peace Full TV-series Lev Tolstoy usually referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most influential authors of all time. He received nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature every year from 1902 to 1906 and for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1901, 1902, and 1909. Tolstoy never having won a Nobel Prize was a major Nobel Prize controversy, and remains one. Born into an aristocratic family, Tolstoy first achieved literary acclaim in his twenties. Tolstoy’s notable works include the novels War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1878), often cited as pinnacles of realist fiction, as well as […]

Read More

†1881 Fyodor Dostoevsky

 Fyodor Dostoevsky  was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and journalist. Numerous literary critics regard him as one of the greatest novelists in all of world literature, as many of his works are considered highly influential masterpieces.  Dostoevsky’s literary works explore the human condition in the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmospheres of 19th-century Russia, and engage with a variety of philosophical and religious themes. His most acclaimed novels include Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), Demons (1872), The Adolescent (1875), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880). His 1864 novella Notes from Underground is considered to be one of the first works of existentialist literature. Dostoevsky’s body of work consists of thirteen novels, three novellas, seventeen short stories, and […]

Read More

†1900 Oscar Wilde

The Trials of Oscar Wilde Full Movie Oscar Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and his criminal conviction for gross indecency for homosexual acts. Wilde tried his hand at various literary activities: he wrote a play, published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on “The English Renaissance” in art and interior decoration, and then returned to London where he lectured on his American travels and wrote […]

Read More

†1991 Graham Greene

Monsignor Quixote Full Movie Henry Graham Greene was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading novelists of the 20th century. Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a reputation early in his lifetime as a major writer, both of serious Catholic novels, and of thrillers (or “entertainments” as he termed them). He was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times. Through 67 years of writing, which included over 25 novels, he explored the conflicting moral and political issues of the modern world. Part of Greene’s reputation as a novelist is for weaving the characters […]

Read More

†1924 Frans Kafka

The Trial Full Movie Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was an Austrian-Czech novelist and writer from Prague. He is widely regarded as a major figure of 20th-century literature; he wrote in German. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It typically features isolated protagonists facing bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible socio-bureaucratic powers. It has been interpreted as exploring themes of alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity. His best known works include the novella The Metamorphosis and the novels The Trial and The Castle. The term Kafkaesque has entered English to describe absurd situations like those depicted in his writing. Kafka was a prolific writer, spending most of his free time writing, often late […]

Read More

1959 Twilight Zone

The Twilight Zone (marketed as Twilight Zone for its final two seasons) is an American fantasy science fiction horror anthology television series created and presented by Rod Serling, which ran for five seasons on CBS from October 2, 1959, to June 19, 1964.  Each episode presents a standalone story in which characters find themselves dealing with often disturbing or unusual events, an experience described as entering “the Twilight Zone”, often with a surprise ending and a moral. Although often considered predominantly science-fiction, the show’s  paranormal and Kafkaesque events leaned the show much closer to fantasy and horror (there are about twice as many fantasy episodes as science fiction). The phrase “twilight zone” has entered the vernacular, used to […]

Read More

1939 Philip Marlowe Private Detective

Philip Marlowe is a fictional character created by Raymond Chandler who was characteristic of the hardboiled crime fiction genre. Marlowe first appeared under that name in The Big Sleep, published in 1939. Chandler’s early short stories, published in pulp magazines such as Black Mask and Dime Detective, featured similar characters with names like “Carmady” and “John Dalmas”, starting in 1933. Underneath the wisecracking, hard-drinking, tough private eye, Marlowe is quietly contemplative, philosophical and enjoys chess and poetry. While he is not afraid to risk physical harm, he does not dish out violence merely to settle scores. Morally upright, he is not fooled by the genre’s usual femmes fatales, such as Carmen Sternwood in The Big Sleep. […]

Read More

1953 Ian Fleming starts publishing James Bond

 Commander James Bond is a character created by the British journalist and novelist Ian Fleming in 1953. He is the protagonist of the James Bond series of novels, films, comics and video games. Fleming wrote twelve Bond novels and two short story collections. His final two books—The Man with the Golden Gun (1965) and Octopussy and The Living Daylights (1966)—were published posthumously. The character is a Secret Service officer, code number 007, residing in London but active internationally. Bond was a composite character who was based on a number of commandos whom Fleming knew during his service in the Naval Intelligence Division during the Second World War, to whom Fleming added his own style and a number of his own tastes. […]

Read More
Moonpub Times - English © 2022 Frontier Theme
Click to listen highlighted text!