Phil Benson

The Birth of Professional Rugby League in Australia: A selection from the Sydney Morning Herald (1907-08)

by Sydney Morning Herald Read by Phil Benson
In early 1907 the world of Australian rugby was rocked by the news that a professional New Zealand All Blacks team was set to tour the north…

The Itinerary of John Leland in or About the Years 1535-1543

by John Leland Read by Phil Benson
John Leland's 'Itinerary' was the product of several journeys around England and Wales undertaken between 1538 and 1543. The manuscript is m…

Tim Bobbin: A View of the Lancashire Dialect

by Various Read by Phil Benson
A comic dialogue written in John Collier's idiosyncratic version of the 18th century South Lancashire dialect together with a collection of …

The Story of Peterloo

by Francis Archibald Bruton Read by Phil Benson 4.1
On 16th August 1819 around 60,000 people gathered at St. Peter’s Fields, Manchester, to rally for parliamentary reform. Shortly after the me…

Six lyrics from the Ruthenian of Taras Shevchenko, also The Song of the Merchant Kalashnikov from the Russian of Mikhaíl Lermontov

by Mikhail Yurevich Lermontov Read by Phil Benson 4
Poetry by two radical poets, born in the same year, who suffered exile and punishment under the Tsarist Russian empire. Taras Shevchenko is …

Selections from Harris's Cabinet

by William Roscoe Read by Phil Benson 5
In the early 1800s, London publisher John Harris began producing small books for children that were designed not to instruct, but to enterta…

John Bull's Vineyard: Australian Sketches

by Hubert de Castella and Hubert De Castella Read by Phil Benson 4.5
An account of the origins of the wine industry in Victoria, Australia. Born in Neuchatel, Switzerland, Hubert de Castella was one of a numbe…

Sonnets on Anglo-Saxon History

by Ann Hawkshaw Read by Phil Benson 5
The history of Britain up to the Norman Conquest in the form of 100 prose commentaries, each followed by a sonnet. The commentaries set the …

Two Cumberland Ballads

by John Stagg Read by Phil Benson 5
Two narrative ballads, based on local lore, by the Cumberland poet John Stagg. In 'The Hermit of Rockcliffe', a young fugitive takes refuge …

Aladore

by Sir Henry Newbolt Read by Phil Benson 3.7
Ywain, a knight bored with his administrative duties, abandons his estate to his younger brother and goes on a pilgrimage to seek his heart'…

Geraldine Jewsbury in Jerrold's Shilling Magazine, 1846-47

by Geraldine Jewsbury Read by Phil Benson 5
'The most striking feature in the present day, far more than that of railways even, is the utter chaos into which all previously received pr…

Cecil's Own Book

by Ann Hawkshaw Read by Phil Benson 4
Ann Hawkshaw's fourth and final collection was published privately and named for her young grandson, Cecil Wedgwood. Written for children, t…

Six lectures on literature

by Charles Harold Herford Read by Phil Benson 3.3
C. H. Herford was Professor of English Literature at the Victoria University of Manchester in era when public lectures were published in pam…

Every Man His Own Art Critic

by Patrick Geddes Read by Phil Benson
This collection includes two texts written to accompany two blockbuster art exhibitions: Every man his own art critic at the Manchester Exhi…

Three Accounts of Peterloo

by Francis Archibald Bruton Read by Phil Benson 5
A companion volume to F.A. Bruton's 'The Story of Peterloo', the full title of this short collection is 'Three Accounts of Peterloo by Eyewi…

Little Johannes

by Frederik van Eeden and Frederik Van Eeden Read by Phil Benson
In this allegory of childhood and youth, a series of increasingly sinister mentors - Windekind, Wistik, Pluizer and Dr. Cypher - guide the a…

Art in Australia, No. 1, 1916

by Various Read by Phil Benson 5
In 1916, three prominent identities in the Sydney art world - Sydney Ure Smith, Bertram Stevens and Charles Lloyd Jones - got together to pu…

War Impressions: Being a Record in Colour

by Mortimer Menpes Read by Phil Benson 4.5
A personal account of the second Boer War by Australian expatriate artist Mortimer Menpes. Menpes travelled to South Africa as a corresponde…

Poems by Charles Harpur

by Charles Harpur Read by Phil Benson 4.8
Charles Harpur was arguably the first major Australia-born poet, best known for Australia-themed poems such as 'The Kangaroo Hunt' and the '…

The Evergreen, A Northern Seasonal. Spring 1895

by William Sharp Read by Phil Benson
The Evergreen was a short lived seasonal magazine, edited by William Sharp (Fiona Macleod) and published by Patrick Geddes, which proposed a…

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