___Set in 1887 or 1888; The Sign of Four has a complex plot involving service in colonial India, a stolen treasure and a secret pact among four ex-convicts. It presents the detective's drug habit and humanizes him in a way that had not been done in the first novel, A Study in Scarlet. It also introduces Doctor Watson's future wife, Mary Morstan.
The English Novel
(24 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture)
Taught by Timothy Spurgin
Lawrence University
Ph.D., University of Virginia
Who can imagine life without novels?
They have served not merely as diversions but as companions for so much of our lives, offering hours of pleasure and, at their best, insights few of us can ever quantify. And if the speed at which they pile up by our bedside often exceeds our ability to read them, there's a security in looking ahead to the next enticing volume.
But the simple joy of reading novels sometimes obscures our awareness of the deeper roles they play in our lives: honing our intellect, quenching our emotional thirsts, and shaping our sense of ourselves and of the world we live in.
Many of our most basic assumptions, as Professor Timothy Spurgin notes, have been shaped by novels. To the extent that we see society as complex and interconnected, or view human personality as the product of early childhood experience, we are—whether we realize it or not—under the influence of novelists like Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, George Eliot and Virginia Woolf.
The impact and significance of the novel form may be especially obvious in the case of the English novel. Through the period that gave rise to the novel, England experienced a convulsive social transformation—one that produced the world's first modern, capitalist economy. Along the way, traditional social values often appeared to be outdated, and so did traditional narrative forms.
It is no surprise, then, that the great English novelists were eager to create something new and different. Breaking from traditions in which stories were usually centered on aristocrats and nobles, they focused on the thoughts and feelings of ordinary people, taking pains to capture the rhythms of everyday life. At the same time, they also reacted to a number of larger developments: industrialization and urbanization, democratization and globalization.
What insights and attitudes do we owe to these writers? How do their lives and works fit into the larger history of the novel form—and what is the meaning of that history for us today?
Professor Spurgin answers these questions and many others, tracing the novel from its beginnings in the 18th century, when Samuel Richardson penned Pamela, to its culmination in the work of the 20th century Modernists, including Lawrence, Joyce, and Woolf.l
"The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"
by Robert Heinlein
[UNABRIDGED AUDIOBOOK WITH TEXT]
Robert A. Heinlein was the most influential science fiction writer of his era, an influence so large that, as Samuel R. Delany notes, "modern critics attempting to wrestle with that influence find themselves dealing with an object rather like the sky or an ocean." He won the Hugo Award for best novel four times, a record that still stands. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress was the last of these Hugo-winning novels, and it is widely considered his finest work.It is a tale of revolution, of the rebellion of the former Lunar penal colony against the Lunar Authority that controls it from Earth. It is the tale of the disparate people-a computer technician, a vigorous young female agitator, and an elderly academic-who become the rebel movement's leaders. And it is the story of Mike, the supercomputer whose sentience is known only to this inner circle, and who for reasons of his own is committed to the revolution's ultimate success.The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is one of the high points of modern science fiction, a novel bursting with politics, humanity, passion, innovative technical speculation, and a firm belief in the pursuit of human freedom.
Deadly Letters: An English Through Stories Mystery
English Level: intermediate and up Type of English: American English
Deadly Letters is a mystery novel written especially for adults learning English. It is written in the form of a standard mystery novel with 15 chapters, but is written at an English level that is easier to understand. Listen to each chapter read at a comfortable speed, followed by a summary of the story and a preview of the next chapter. You can follow along with a transcript of every word said in each chapter, and learn the vocabulary in each Learning Guide.
The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien. BBC dramatization, audiobookThe Lord of the Rings is an epic high fantasy novel written by philologist J.R.R Tolkien. The story began as a sequel to Tolkien's earlier, less complex children's fantasy novel The Hobbit (1937), but eventually developed into a much larger work. It was written in stages between 1937 and 1949, much of it during World War II. Although intended as a single-volume work, it was originally published in three volumes in 1954 and 1955, due to post-war paper shortages, and it is in this three-volume form that it is popularly known. It has since been reprinted numerous times and translated into many different languages,becoming one of the most popular and influential works in 20th-century literature.
![The Sign Of Four [UNABRIDGED AUDIOBOOK WITH TEXT]](http://englishtips.org/uploads/old/posts/thumbs/1175528795_0587051272lsignoffouriiposters.jpg)
The English Novel !["The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Robert Heinlein [UNABRIDGED AUDIOBOOK WITH TEXT]](http://englishtips.org/uploads/old/posts/thumbs/1172341329_rhtmhm.jpg)
