Titus Maccius Plautus was a 2nd century BC Roman playwright known for his loose translations of Greek comedies. It is known that he developed an early attachment to the theater, beginning as a stage carpenter and scene shifter, eventually progressing into acting. During this time, he adopted the nom de plume “Maccius Plautus.” “Maccius” refers to a type of clown, and “Plautus” means flat-footed or bare-footed, thus his name loosely translates to “Titus the Flat-Footed Clown.”
After making some money in the theater, Plautus left the profession, only to lose all his money, forcing him to seek employment in a grain mill. Mill work in ancient Rome was usually reserved for slaves and mules, making it a humiliating job for a free person. However, the drudgery likely provided the motivation for his translation and repurposing of Greek comedies for the Roman audience.
The grind of mill work finds a voice in his plays. Wolfgang De Milo, the current editor and translator of Plautus’s plays for the Loeb Classical Library, states that his plays “…abound in young men doing business abroad and slaves being threatened with being sent to the mill.” While his plays were not strictly original, Plautus incorporated his Italian heritage and customs into his translations of Greek plays, thus making them his own.
Plautus borrowed Greek themes and infused them with his witty take on gods, family, love, money, and immorality. Like the old comedy Greek playwrights, he mocked everything for laughs and urged people to lighten up. His enduring popularity shows that his humor remains timeless and relevant.
Source: Plautus I edited and translated by Wolfgang De Milo, 2011. Graphic: Plautus engraving by Pierre Barrois, 1770, Public Domain
Aaron Poochigian earned a PhD in Classics from the University of Minnesota and an MFA in Poetry from Columbia University. He has authored four books of poetry and translated seven books from Greek and French. He won the Muse Book Award for his book of poetry, Manhattanite and the Richard Wilbur Award for another book of poetry, American Divine. He currently lives and writes in New York City.
In an interview with Heide Sander in 2021 she asked Poochigian to share a story about what first drew him poetry. His answer, to me anyway, was unexpected to say the least, “I had a religious experience when I was 18. Sitting outside an ivy-covered old brick building on the quad of my campus, I was looking at the opening lines of an epic poem in Latin, the Aeneid: ‘Arma virumque cano Troiae qui primus ab oris. . .‘ Though I did not yet know the language, the sky became brighter, and I could feel my synapses lighting up, and it became clear to me that I was supposed to spend my life writing poetry. For better or worse, for richer and poorer, that’s what I have done.”
I find this fascinating. What strain of curiosity exists for someone to read lines of poetry, or any text for that matter, in a language one doesn’t understand. Truly beguiling or maybe closer to the point, mystifying but I’m not a poet so I’m likely missing something important.
For those that are curious, The Aeneid an epic poem written in Latin by Virgil between 29-19 BC, describes the adventures of Aeneas, a Trojan who fled Troy after it fell to the Greeks and who subsequently made his way to Italy, becoming the ancestor of all Romans. The above quoted Latin phrase in bold type is a small snippet from the opening line of the Aeneid which the entire line in English reads as follows: “I sing of arms and the man who first from the shores of Troy came to Italy and Lavinian shores, exiled by fate, that man who was tossed much both on lands and on the deep by the power of the gods because of the mindful anger of savage Juno; also he suffered many things in war until he could found a city and bring his gods to Latium, whence the Latin race and the Alban fathers and the walls of high Rome” .
Poochigian, in his introduction, feels the need to point out that slavery existed during the Golden Age of Athens, as if it ever went away. He states: “…would do well to acknowledge that the entire edifice of the glorious civilization that was fifth century Athens including its rich tradition of theatrical performance, was built on a foundation of forced, uncompensated labor. Athenians themselves may have been willfully blind to the injustice of reserving democratic self-determination for themselves and relegating their defeated enemies to abject servitude, but it is impossible for us now to ignore it.”
The “built on a foundation” and “willfully blind” are very bold assumptions whose conclusive inerrancy would improve with a smidgen of support from the historical record. Also, to translate the works of a free Athenian citizen, whose works were supposedly built on the backs of slaves, then hold out your hand for payment does seem a bit much. One may wish to consider how the future humans will look upon present-day west coast cities in the U.S. Will their view of us be judged by the abhorrent spectacle of unending tent cities and homelessness, unchecked crime, filth in the streets, untreated mental illness, rampant drug use and addiction? Should the future disparage our attempts to uplift the human condition of some because we failed to uplift all? If we cannot accept the civilizational accomplishments from 2800 years ago because slavery existed then, as it does today, do we expect the future to treat us differently?
Aristophanes — Wikipedia
Aristophanes Biography:
Aristophanes, Greek playwright, born circa 448-6 and died circa 386-5 grew up in Athens during the Age of Pericles, 461-429 BC. His early adult years on into middle age occurred during the declining period of the Athenian Golden Age due to the mounting strategic failures and monetary costs of the city-state’s losing gambles in the Peloponnesian War from 431-404 BC.
It is unknown whether Aristophanes fought in the war, but it is believed he did due to the Athenian compulsory draft of all eligible citizens during the Peloponnesian War. Then again, if he did serve in the military, it didn’t appear to impede his prodigious writing output.
Aristophanes, known as the ‘Father of Comedy’, produced thirty-six to forty plays, maybe more, of which only eleven exist in completed form while another eleven are found in fragments. He is the only writer of Greek ‘Old Comedy’ whose plays still survive.
He submitted his first play, The Banqueters to the festival in Dionysia in 427 BC, receiving second prize out of the three that were accepted for live performance. His plays went on to garner eleven prizes at Dionysia and Lenaea even managing the exceptional feat of winning first and second prize at Lenaea in 422 BC for his plays The Preview and The Wasps respectively.
Aristophanes plays, at least the eleven surviving ones, are all stylistic examples of what is now called ‘Old Comedy’, the initial form of Greek theater comedy. Old Comedy was characterized by the merciless skewering of public figures while entertaining the audience with beautiful lyrical songs, dance, ribald and licentious speech, and absurd plots. Aristophanes plots began sane and logically, centered around an imaginative hero, progressing to a preposterous but victorious heroic conclusion such as in The Birds where a middle-aged burnout from Athens, searching the wilderness for peace, stumbles into a ruling role of the bird kingdom which in the end supplants the Greek gods for supremacy.
Greek Competitive Theater:
Ancient Greeks invented theater with Greek tragedy first appearing in the late sixth century BC. It is believed that Greek theater began as songs and dances, known as the dithyramb, honoring Dionysus or Bacchus, the Greek god of all that was fun: wine, fertility, festivity, insanity, and theater. The songs and dances celebrating fertility evolved into rites of spring with theatrical plays becoming central to the festivities. The Dionysia as the festival became known was the second most important Greek celebration after the Panathenaic, the quadrennial Athenian athletic games.
The theatric festival was eventually held as a competition where three tragic poets or playwrights wrote and produced three tragedies on a common theme. Additionally, the poets were also required to produce a satyr play, a heroic tragedy with cheerful atmospherics and rural backgrounds. An award, initially believed to have been a goat, fortunately becoming a wreath of ivy and/or a bronze tripod cauldron, was given to the best tragic poet. The term “tragedy” comes from the Greek word ‘tragoidia’, which translates to ‘goat song’. From 449 BC onward the best actors, known as protagonists, were also given prizes.
Comedy was introduced at Dionysia in 486 BC with five poets initially competing for the prize. In 440 BC a minor festival to Dionysus was established in January at Lenaea where initially, only comedy was staged. Tragedy was added at Lenaea in 432 BC. Five comedies were presented yearly at Lenaea except during the Peloponnesian War when only three plays were staged. Four tragedies were presented at this winter festival but were composed by only two poets.
Aristophanes’ Theater Awards for Comedy:
Second prize at the Dionysia in 427 BC for The Banqueters (now lost)
First prize at Dionysia in 426 BC for The Babylonians (only fragments remain)
First prize at the Lenaea in 425 BC for The Acharnians
First prize at Lenaea in 424 BC for The Knights
Third (last) prize at Dionysia in 423 BC for The Clouds (first edition now lost)
First prize at the Lenaea in 422 BC for The Preview (now lost)
Second prize at the Lenaea in 422 BC for TheWasps
Second prize at the Dionysia in 421BC for Peace
Second prize at the Dionysia in 414 BC for The Birds
First prize at the Lenaea in 411 BC for Lysistrata
First prize at the Lenaea in 405 BC for The Frogs
Aristophanes — Four Plays Plot Summaries and Commentary:
Clouds is a tale detailing the importance of an education and the resulting moral rot that accompanies it. A spendthrift and unappreciative son Pheidippides is driving his father, Strepsiades, into bankruptcy. Strepsiades counts on the wrong argument, taught by sophists at the Thinkery school with Socrates as the headmaster, to win him a reprieve from his debts.
Symposium by Feuerbach — First version — 1869 — Socrates is in the right center facing the wall.
Sophists, in the original Greek meaning were sages or experts imparting wisdom and learning. During the Golden Age of Athens in fifth century BC, professional educators roamed the Greek empire teaching for a fee on a wide range of subjects from rhetoric, poetry, music, philosophy, and mathematics. Rhetoric or the art of apprising and persuasion was the preeminent study for the litigious Athenians. When discussing sophists, one would be remiss not to mention that Aristophanes had numerous students under his care throughout his career as a playwright, which one can assume were not instructed for free, whereas Socrates taught and lectured for free.
The Clouds that took third (last) at Dionysia in 423 BC is now lost. The one that reaches us here in the 21st century is a revised version of the play from 418 BC, which Aristophanes, it is believed, never presented to the public.
In Plato’s Apology the author claims this play was a contributing factor in the conviction and execution of Socrates for the specious crime of corrupting Athen’s youth.
Birds, taking second prize at Dionysia in 414 BC, attempts to find utopia outside of the struggles of Athens. The plot begins with a worn-out Athenian, Pisthetaerus, wandering in the wilderness with his fellow traveler, Euelpides, looking for Tereus the Hoopoe, supreme leader of the birds. Upon finding Tereus, Pisthetaerus hatches a great idea to establish a city in the sky, Cloudcuckooland and reclaim the birds’ standing as the first among gods.
Many have tried to find allegorical meaning in the play, but sometimes a fairy-tale is just that, a fairy-tale, a fantasy that entertains without it being weighed down with heavy philosophical and political interpretations.
Destruction of Athenian army at Syracuse — Davis 1900 — Wikipedia
Lysistrata, taking first prize at Lenaea in 411 BC, has Aristophanes bringing the matriarchy to the forefront of Greek society were the Athenian wives, brides, and lovers of war-locked men attempt to end the Peloponnesian War. Lysistrata and the other women of Athens hatch a plan to deny sex to the men until they end the war thus denying themselves, their one and only desire in life.
By 411 BC Athens was losing badly in the Peloponnesian War through the treachery of Alcibiades, the incompetence of military commanders in Sicily and elsewhere, and the political blunders emanating from Athens. Having lost most of their navy in 413 BC, Athens was slowing and mercilessly succumbing to Sparta and its ally, Persia, with their tightening noose around Athens’ perimeter choking off their much-needed trade and silver resources to continue the war.
The play has feminist overtones, but it is unabashedly an enactment of societal male domination designed to protect women from their baser and irrational instincts. While the play is a creed to the ethos of patriarchy, it subtly informs the Athenians that all is lost, and it was time to make peace with Sparta.
Women of the Assembly goes by more names than the devil: Assemblywomen, Congresswomen, A Parliament of Women, Women at the Assembly, Women of Ecclesia, Women in Parliament, Women in Power, and possibly others. Ecclesia, along with the plethora of previously listed names, in ancient Greece was the assembly of citizens of the city-state which included all male citizens 18 years and older. In Aristophanes time the Ecclesia was summoned by the ruling Boule of four hundred, a Greek council or senate. The assemblies were charged with debating and voting on matters presented to them by the council.
The play, presented in 391 BC, is one of Aristophanes’ weaker and rightly, less appreciative efforts, garnering no awards at Dionysia or Lenaea. The women of Athens take over the Ecclesia, dressed as men and force a communistic system of sexual equity for all, the ugly and the beautiful, and a ban on the rich. Equality of outcomes, of one ring, to rule them all.
The play on the surface is an exploration of feminist power in government whereas it is truly a rebuke of effeminate men in the halls of government. Aristophanes believed in a binary world. If men and women were interchangeable and indistinguishable then madness and sadness is everyone’s just reward.
Literary Criticism:
German poet Henrich Heine said: “There is a God, and his name is Aristophanes.” Once a god is conceded all negatives melt away. I will concede the obvious–the negatives are not only trivial but possibly non-existent.
Aristophanes plays were filled not only with comedy but with fantasy and fetish, irrationalism, satire, ribald commentary, and vulgar ridicule of Athenian society. Aristophanes respected no sacred cows, skewering everyone and everything with impunity, an unrestrained destruction, fairly or unfairly, imparting a message to all comers that they were mostly fools. Open season was declared on poetry, religion, philosophy, and politics as were the famous and infamous of society such as Socrates, Cleon, fellow poet Euripides, and when he ran out of the famous, he turned his sharp swords of locution on the Athenian people. He truly was a god of Greek poetry, comedy, and theater.
Aristophanes surfeit use of vulgarity, phallic imaging, and sexual inuendo comes across as juvenile upon reading his plays but then these plays are for presentation at festivals honoring Bacchus, the Greek god of wine. It may not be unrealistic to assume that his audience, at a minimum, is slightly inebriated, in which case Aristophanes isn’t being crude but deliberately playing to his audience’s relaxed mental state.
Poochigian believes in magic. The magic of poetry, stating in 2021, “Poetry is a magic circle of sound and image in which anything can happen. Yes, poetry means magic to me, and I see the poet as a magician who, with his/her incantations, creates special spaces outside of prose and everyday life.” He is an able translator of Aristophanes plays bringing his Greek poetry into realm of the vernacular of almost blue-collar English but managing to leave the magic behind in the agoras and councils of the Athens.
Poochigian’s translation of Tereus’, king of the birds, great speech summoning his subjects is typical, “…come here, all you endowed with wings, all you who flutter over acres of fertile land, you myriad throngs who feed on grain, you swift seed-pickers who warble such delightful songs. Come all that over furrowed ground twitter, molto espressivo, this pleasant sound–tio, tio, tio, tio, tio, tio, tio, tio...” Where is the beauty, the magic in this translation? This is prose of the common man. It is amusing though that the Italian term, molto espressivo, meaning very expressive, is used to translate the Greek to English.
An anonymous translator from the early 20th century gives us Epops summoning his subjects, “…here, here, quick, quick, quick, my comrades in the air: all you who pillage the fertile farming lands, the numberless tribes who gather and devour the barley seeds, the swift flying race that sings so sweetly. And you whose gentle twitter resounds through the fields with the little cry of tiotiotiotiotiotiotiotio…” This is poetry. This is magic.
Tereus Confronted with the Head of his Son Itys — Rubens — 1636-38
Epops, in Latin and Greek, is a hoopoe. A bird with a long beak and a crest of feathers. Why the anonymous translator called Tereus Epops is unknown. The name of the king of birds in Aristophanes play is the hoopoe Tereus. Tereus is a character from Greek mythology who was the king of Thrace and the son of Ares, the god of war, and Bistonis, a water nymph. He married Procne, the daughter of Pandion, the king of Athens. However, he also raped and mutilated his sister-in-law Philomela, who was Procne’s sister. As a result, Procne and Philomela took revenge on Tereus by killing his son Itys and serving him as a meal to Tereus. When Tereus discovered the truth, he tried to kill them, but the gods intervened and turned them all into birds. Tereus became a hoopoe. Procne became a nightingale with a beautiful song. Philomela became a swallow who could not sing.
Aristophanes’ Surviving Complete Plays Bibliography:
The Victorian Era produced some of the greatest literature the world has ever had the pleasure to read. Any list of the greatest books ever written always contains, or should, Dickens, Bronte, Eliot, and Conrad, who was Polish but wrote in English from England, with an occasional inclusion of Wilde, Hardy, Wells, Trollop, and Stevenson. Bibliophiles would not forget to include Stroker, Barrie, Thackeray, Butler (everyone should read the poorly titled ‘The Way of All Flesh’), and Carroll. Stretching the definition of Victorian, one could bring in the Russians Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, Americans Twain, Poe, Cooper, and Melville along with the French authors Hugo, Flaubert, and Dumas.
Victorian literature is loosely defined as being written during the reign of Queen Victoria who ruled over the United Kingdom and Ireland for 63 years from 1837 to 1901, parenthetically, a reign exceeded in longevity only by Queen Elizabeth’s 70 years on the throne. The Victorian Era was bookended by the Industrial Revolution which ended around the 1840s and the beginning of the Technological Revolution that began in the 1870s and continued to the start of WWI. The era witnessed the beginning of the end of the labor intensive agricultural and mining sectors, with a subsequent weakening of the guild and manor systems. The hermetic British class system also sustained a permanent leak with the advent of a true middle class brought about by an unconstrained rise in economic fortunes and personal incomes.
All this brought about a renegotiation and a realignment of the social structures in place since the time of the pharaohs. Serfs and slavery gave way to agricultural innovations and the introduction of a managerial class in business. The existing economic and social fabrics were torn asunder with the way forward less than clear, but the status quo would not endure for long. The ensuing social upheaval provided a bonaza of topics and plots for the Victorian Era authors. Dickens wrote about poverty and children, Hardy plotted about morality and money, Trollop’s novels took on class and money, Emily Bronte took on immorality, class, and money, and Thackeray discussed hypocrisy. None of the subjects the authors approached were exclusive to their times, but in the Victorian age contrasts had sharp edges. Victorian times were either-or with little in between. Grey was tea, which incidentally dates to the Victorian Era.
Apologies for the preamble to this post which was meant to be just a listing of Victorian authors but somehow, I digressed into a brief discussion of 19th century all things British. The following table is a composite of other lists and sources dealing with Victorian authors, whether prose, poetry, or plays, fiction or non-fiction. The table below initially had additional information about the authors, but WordPress does not give the space needed to display them so squeeze the sides of table I did. Also, I initially was listing all authors, regardless of nationality, within the Victorian Era but that grew too large for web page. Finally, the “Best Sellers” column is subjective in that it may be the critics’ choice, or it may be based on current sales, and sometimes it’s just what I liked the most. As an example, the critics always list ‘Great Expectations’ or ‘The Tale of Two Cities’ as his best but I’ve always preferred ‘Oliver Twist’ and ‘A Christmas Carole’ which led me to list ‘Great Expectations’ and ‘A Christmas Carole’.
Name
Nationality
Born
Died
“Best Sellers”
Ainsworth, William Harrison
English
1805
1882
Windsor Castle
Arnold, Matthew
English
1822
1888
The Scholar Gipsy
Bagehot, Walter
English
1826
1877
The Economist
Ballantyne, Robert Michael
Scottish
1825
1894
The Coral Island
Barlas, John
Scottish
1860
1914
Bloody Heart – Phantasmagoria
Barr, Amelia
English
1831
1919
Remember the Alamo
Barrie, J.M.
Scottish
1860
1937
Peter Pan
Beerbohm, Max
English
1872
1956
Zuleika Dobson
Benson, A.C.
English
1862
1925
Basil Netherby
Besant, Walter
English
1836
1901
All in a Garden Fair
Blackmore, R.D.
English
1825
1900
Lorna Doone
Blunt, Wilfred Scawen
English
1840
1922
The Dream King: Ludwig II of Bavaria
Boucicault, Dion
Irish
1820
1890
The Bastile
Braddon, Mary Elizabeth
English
1835
1915
Lady Audley’s Secret
Bradley, Edward
English
1827
1889
The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green
Bray, Anna Eliza
English
1790
1883
Trelawneys of Trelawne
Brontë, Anne
English
1820
1849
Agnes Grey
Bronte, Charlotte
English
1816
1855
Jane Eyre
Bronte, Emily
English
1818
1848
Wuthering Heights
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
English
1806
1861
A Drama of Exile
Browning, Robert
English
1812
1889
The Ring and the Book
Buchanan, Robert
Scottish
1841
1901
The Shadow of the Sword
Bulwer-Lytton, Sir Edward
English
1803
1873
England and the English
Burney, Frances
English
1752
1840
Evelina
Butler, Samuel
English
1835
1902
Erewhon – The Way of All Flesh
Caine, Hall
English
1853
1931
The Blind Mother – The Last Confession
Caird, Mona
English
1854
1932
The Wing of Azrael
Carlyle, Thomas
Scottish
1795
1881
Sartor Resartus
Carroll, Lewis
English
1832
1898
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Chesterton, G.K.
English
1874
1936
Father Brown – The Man Who was Thrusday
Clare, John
English
1793
1864
The Shepherds Calendar
Clough, Arthur Hugh
English
1819
1861
The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich
Coleridge, Mary
English
1861
1907
The Lady on the Drawingroom Floor
Collins, Wilkie
English
1824
1889
The Woman in White – The Moonstone
Conrad, Joseph
Polish
1857
1924
Heart of Darkness – Lord Jim
Corelli, Marie
English
1855
1924
The Romance of Two Worlds
Corvo, Baron
English
1860
1913
Hadrian the Seventh
Craik, Dinah Mulock
English
1826
1887
John Halifax, Gentleman
Darwin, Charles
English
1809
1882
On the Orgin of Species
Davies, W.H.
English
1871
1940
The Autobiography of a Super-tramp
Dickens, Charles
English
1812
1870
A Christmas Carol – Great Expectations
Disraeli, Benjamin
English
1804
1881
Sybil; or, the Two Nations
Dobell, Bertram
English
1842
1914
The Poetical Works of Thomas Traherne
Dowson, Ernest
English
1867
1900
Vitae Summa Brevis (Days of Wine and Roses)
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan
English
1859
1930
Sherlock Holmes
Dunsany, Lord
Irish
1878
1957
A Dreamers Tale
Eliot, George
English
1819
1880
Middlemarch
Ewing, Juliana Horatia
English
1841
1885
Christmas Crakers and other Christmas Stories
Farningham, Marianne
English
1834
1909
Girlhood – Brothers and Sisters
Farrar, Frederic William
English
1831
1903
Life of Christ
Gaskell, Elizabeth
English
1810
1865
North and South – Ghost Stories
Gilbert, William Schwenck
English
1836
1911
H.M.S. Pinafore – The Pirates of Penzance
Gilchrist, Robert Murray
English
1867
1917
The Stone Dragon and Other Tragic Romances
Gissing, George
English
1857
1903
The Nether World
Gore, Catherine
English
1798
1861
Manners of the Day
Gosse, Edmund
English
1849
1928
Father and Son
Gosse, Philip
English
1810
1888
A Naturalist’s Rambles on Devonshire Coast
Grossmith, George
English
1847
1912
The Diary of a Nobody
Haggard, H. Rider
English
1856
1925
King Solomon’s Mines
Hallam, Arthur Henry
English
1811
1833
The Poems of Arthur Henry Hallam
Hardy, Thomas
English
1840
1928
The Mayor of Casterbridge
Harkness, Margaret
English
1854
1923
Assyrian Life and History
Helps, Sir Arthur
English
1813
1875
Leaves from the Journal of Our Life
Hemans, Felicia
English
1793
1835
Casabianca – Coeur De Lion at the Bier
Henley, William Ernest
English
1849
1903
Invictus
Hood, Thomas
English
1799
1845
The Bridge of Sighs – The Song of the Shirt
Hopkins, Gerard Manley
English
1844
1889
Binsey Poplars
Hornung, E.W.
English
1866
1921
Raffles Stories
Housman, A.E.
English
1859
1936
The Collected Poems of A.E. Housman
Housman, Laurence
English
1865
1959
The Field of Clover
Howitt, Mary
English
1799
1888
The Spider and the Fly
Howitt, William
English
1792
1879
The History of the Supernatural
Hubback, Catherine
English
1818
1877
The Younger Sister
Hughes, Thomas
English
1822
1896
Tom Brown School Days
Huxley, Thomas Henry
English
1825
1895
Man’s Place in Nature
James, M.R.
English
1862
1936
Ghost Stories
Jefferies, Richard
English
1848
1887
The Story of My Heart
Jennings, Louis
English
1836
1893
Mr. Gladstone
Jerome, Jerome
English
1859
1927
Three Men in a Boat
Jerrold, Douglas William
English
1803
1857
Black-Eyed Susan
Jewsbury, Geraldine
English
1812
1880
The Half-Sisters
Kingsley, Charles
English
1819
1875
Westward Ho!
Kingston, William Henry Giles
English
1814
1880
In the Rocky Mountains
Kipling, Rudyard
English
1865
1936
The Jungle Book – Kim
Landon, Letitia Elizabeth
English
1802
1838
The Poetical Works of Miss Landon
Landor, Walter Savage
English
1775
1864
Imaginary Conversations – Rose Aylmer
Le Fanu, Joseph Sheridan
Irish
1814
1873
Ghost Stories
Lear, Edward
English
1812
1888
The Complete Nonsense of Edward Lear
Lever, Charles
Irish
1806
1872
The Martins of Cro’Martin
Levy, Amy
English
1861
1889
The Romance of a Shop
Lewes, George Henry
English
1817
1878
The Spanish Drama
Linton, Eliza Lynn
English
1822
1898
The True History of Joshua Davidson
Macaulay, Thomas Babington
English
1800
1859
Lays of Ancient Rome
MacDonald, George
Scottish
1824
1905
The Princess and the Goblin
Marryat, Captain Fredrick
English
1792
1848
The Privateersman
Marshall, Emma
English
1830
1899
Under Salisbury Spire
Massey, Gerald
English
1828
1907
Ancient Egypt Light of the World
Maurier, George du
French
1834
1896
Trilby
Mayhew, Henry
English
1812
1887
London Labour and the London Poor
Melville, George John
Scottish
1821
1878
The Queen’s Maries: A Romance of Holyrood
Meredith, George
English
1828
1909
The Egoist – Diana of the Crossways
Mill, John Stuart
English
1806
1873
On Liberty
Molesworth, Mary Louisa
English
1839
1921
The Cuckoo Clock
Moore, George
Irish
1852
1933
Esther Waters
Moore, Thomas
Irish
1779
1852
Minstrel Boy – The Last Rose of Summer
More, Hannah
English
1745
1833
Sorrows of Yamba
Morley, Henry
English
1822
1894
English Writers
Morris, Francis Orpen
English
1810
1893
A History of British Butterflies
Morris, William
English
1834
1896
The Wood Beyond the World
Morrison, Arthur
English
1863
1945
The Adventures of Martin Hewitt
Newman, John Henry
English
1801
1890
Apologia Pro Vita Sua
Norton, Caroline
English
1808
1877
The Sorrows of Rosalie: A Tale with Other Poems
Oliphant, Margaret
Scottish
1828
1897
Supernatural Collection
Ouida (Maria Louise Ramé)
English
1839
1908
Under Two Flags – A Dog of Flanders
Pater, Walter
English
1839
1894
Studies in the History of the Renaissance
Patmore, Coventry
English
1823
1896
The Angle in the House
Potter, Beatrix
English
1866
1943
The Tale of Peter Rabbit
Rands, William Brighty
English
1823
1882
Lilliput Levee
Reade, Charles
English
1814
1884
Peg Woffington – Masks and Faces
Reynolds, George
English
1814
1879
Wagner the Werewolf – The Necromancer
Rogers, Samuel
English
1763
1855
Table-Talk and Recollections – Toils and Struggles
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