Phil Benson
BLAST No. 1
BLAST, edited by Wyndham Lewis and subtitled 'Review of the Great British Vortex', was the magazine of the short-lived Vorticist movement in…
The Hampdenshire Wonder
By the age of three, Victor Stott's intellectual powers exceed those of any known human. He is the Hampdenshire Wonder, son of an extraordin…
Short stories (Early works 1837-1852)
A collection of Elizabeth Gaskell's early short stories. Following the publication of Mary Barton in 1848, Gaskell published many of her sho…
The Fates of the Princes of Dyfed
Cenydd Morus's (Kenneth Morris) imaginative retelling of tales from the Mabinogion, the great work of Welsh literature first recorded in the…
Short Stories (Later works 1858-65)
Elizabeth Gaskell was a regular contributor to Dickens's 'Household Worlds' and 'All The Round' until he later years. From 1858 onwards, she…
The Manchester Man
Jabez Clegg, the Manchester man, floats into this historical novel in 1799, carried downstream by the River Irk in flood. Jabez's rise to co…
Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods
A limbless reptilian monster that propels itself through the swamps with a propellor-tipped tail? A creature so ashamed of its monstrous app…
Travels in Lancashire
A collection of fiction, non-fiction and poetry on travels in Lancashire, England, with occasional sorties into adjacent counties. - Summary…
Kamakura
'Kamakura is nothing if she has no history, writes Japanese novelist, poet, and essayist Yone Noguchi. At the turn of the 20th century, Kama…
Two Tales about Aviation
Two science fiction stories in which Rudyard Kipling imagined a future world controlled by the Aërial Board of Control with its motto, …
The Story of the Glittering Plain
In this early example of the modern high fantasy genre, Hallblithe, a warrior of the House of Raven, sets out in pursuit of the pirates who …
The Wonderful Adventures of Phra the Phoenician
Phra, a Phoenician merchant and warrior, settles in the south of England as husband to Blodwen, a British princess. Slain during the Roman i…
When the Birds Fly South
Dan Prescott, an American adventurer, discovers the hidden valley of Sobul in a mountainous region of Afghanistan, inhabited by a strange ra…
Criminal Manchester: Experiences of a Special Correspondent
Follow the Manchester Evening News 'special correspondent' and his guide - recently back from a 'seven stretch' - as they take you on a tour…
Small Souls
Constance van der Welcke returns to the Hague and the bosom of her family after a twenty year exile caused by a marital indiscretion and div…
The Haunted Woman
Isabel Loment is engaged to the affectionate, but unemotional, Marshall Stokes. House-hunting for her aunt, she comes to Runhill Court, an a…
Child Christopher and Goldilind the Fair
A prose romance set in the forested kingdom of Oakenrealm, where a squirrel can go about from end to end without touching the ground, in whi…
The Cycle Industry, its origin, history and latest developments
From the velocipede to the motor cycle in twenty chapters. A short history of the British bicycle industry from its origins in a Coventry se…
Hartmann the Anarchist, or the Doom of a Great City
A gem of nineteenth-century science fiction from mountaineer, philosopher and occasional novelist, Edward Douglas Fawcett. Stanley, a wealth…
Orlando, A Biography (version 3)
Virginia Woolf's most successful novel recounts the extraordinary biography of Orlando from his youth in the reign of Elizabeth I to her lif…