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Male opera singers occupied a problematic place in nineteenth-century Britain, where music was often perceived as a feminized and foreign pursuit, and not a respectable profession. It therefore became imperative for British singers to find ways in which to assert their masculinity, their Britishness, and their respectability. The autobiography offered them an ideal opportunity. The British tenor Sims Reeves (1821–1900) left two memoires, the first of which is especially unusual. While some sections of the volume conform to a conventional autobiographical style, the majority of its chapters could more accurately be defined as gothic fiction, containing a number of sensational short stories that are mostly set in the world of music. These stories function as an attempt to negotiate their author's problematic identity. While some offer a coded defense against contemporary accusations of greed and alcoholism, others present opera as a respectable profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Appearances of cinema in fiction were numerous even in the earliest years. This article discusses the evidence about impressions of the new technology preserved in nine short stories written before 1905, all of which were first published in the UK, and all of which make cinema the fulcrum of the plot. It focuses on the popular profile that these dramatic structures show cinema to have possessed in these years of least agreement about its purposes and predilections, and suggests that this deeply embedded 'spontaneous intermediality' nonetheless awarded cinema a distinctive identity even before it achieved a media identity of its own in the ensuing years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the lingering remnants of a late Victorian 'paganism' in Britain during the 1940s, and traces some of the cultural consequences of the meeting between this and the often propagandist concern with a mythic England seen throughout World War II. A loose network of literary texts, art works and films is examined in order to suggest that the 1940s is a pivotal decade between the relatively genteel and individualistic 'pagan' sympathies of the early twentieth century and the more systematic modes of allegiance that have characterized recent times. The article focuses in detail on Algernon Blackwood's short story 'Roman Remains' (1948), Jocelyn Brooke's novel The Scapegoat (1948), Powell and Pressburger's film A Canterbury Tale (1944) and the art of Cecil Collins, chiefly The Vision of the Fool (1947). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduces several short stories applicable for the Green Bookshop Award in Great Britain. Impact of the stories written by Anton Chekhov; Application of the medical literature written by Chris and Heather Suckling; Description on the collections of true stories about psychiatry from Lauren Slater.

Analyzes the impact of the short story "The Male Sharer," by Joseph Conrad on reinventing masculinity in British culture. Accounts on Conrad's literary works which challenges the gender ideology of the nineteenth century; Implications of boys' adventure stories on stereotyped masculine identity; Common traits of men in Conrad's fiction stories; Aspects of male-male intimate relationships in the story which portrays deviant masculinity.

Focuses on the experience of the author in reading books and magazines in Great Britain. Importance of reading; Details on the journey on the train; Enjoyment in reading short stories.