About the Authors
Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) was born in Odense, Denmark, the son of a poor shoemaker and a washerwoman. As a young teenager, he became quite well known in Odense as a reciter of drama and as a singer. When he was fourteen, he set off for the capital, Copenhagen, determined to become a national success on the stage. He failed miserably, but made some influential friends in the capital who got him into school to remedy his lack of proper education. In 1829 his first book was published. After that, books came out at regular intervals. His stories began to be translated into English as early as 1846. Since then, numerous editions, and more recently Hollywood songs and Disney cartoons, have helped to ensure the continuing popularity of the stories in the English-speaking world.
Richard Mitchley is an actor and narrator who has appeared in Auf Wiedersehen, Pet…, The Black Adder, and Doctor Who.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) was born of Irish parentage in Scotland. He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, but he also had a passion for storytelling. His first book introduced that prototype of the modern detective in fiction, Sherlock Holmes. Despite the immense popularity Holmes gained throughout the world, Doyle was not overly fond of the character and preferred to write other stories. Eventually popular demand won out and he continued to satisfy readers with the adventures of the legendary sleuth. He also wrote historical romances and made two essays into pseudoscientific fantasy: The Lost World and The Poison Belt.
John Banister
Tabb (1845-1909) was an American poet, Catholic priest, and
professor of English who descended from one of the oldest and wealthiest
Virginian families. He was ordained in 1884 and retained his academic position
teaching Greek and English at St. Charles College in Maryland. Father Tabb was
widely published in popular and prestigious magazines, including Harper’s Monthly and The Atlantic Monthly. He had been
plagued with poor eyesight since childhood and eventually became completely
blind.
Ghizela Rowe has worked in broadcast
television for thirty years on a broad range of programming. Her specialization
is in music. She helps run the Copyright Group, an extensive collection of
master recording rights, and has lent her voice to many audiobooks, including The Poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
Elizabeth Gaskell: The Short Stories, and The Romantics: An Introduction.
Jane Austen (1775–1817) is considered by many scholars to be the first great woman novelist. Born in Steventon, England, she later moved to Bath and began to write for her own and her family’s amusement. Her novels, set in her own English countryside, depict the daily lives of provincial middle-class families with wry observation, a delicate irony, and a good-humored wit.
Lord Byron (1788-1824), as the English poet
George Gordon Byron, sixth Baron Byron is commonly known, was the most
flamboyant and notorious of the Romantics and a leader of the era’s poetic
revolution. While pursuing a unconventional lifestyle of international travel,
risqué love affairs, and general debauchery, he produced massive amounts of beautiful,
emotion-stirring works. He died at the young age of 36 after falling ill while
commanding Greek troops in a fight for independence from the Ottoman Empire.
Though Lord
Byron was refused the honor of a burial at Westminster Abbey, as was custom for
someone of his stature, his memorial stone was finally placed in the abbey’s Poets’
Corner in 1969.
About the Narrators
Ghizela Rowe has worked in broadcast
television for thirty years on a broad range of programming. Her specialization
is in music. She helps run the Copyright Group, an extensive collection of
master recording rights, and has lent her voice to many audiobooks, including The Poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
Elizabeth Gaskell: The Short Stories, and The Romantics: An Introduction.
Ghizela Rowe has worked in broadcast
television for thirty years on a broad range of programming. Her specialization
is in music. She helps run the Copyright Group, an extensive collection of
master recording rights, and has lent her voice to many audiobooks, including The Poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
Elizabeth Gaskell: The Short Stories, and The Romantics: An Introduction.