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Authors Authorship British literature History 19th century British literature History 20th century British literature History 21st century Classical drama Television adaptations English literature History and criticism Irish literature History 19th century Irish literature History 20th century Irish literature History 21st centurySummary: With the end of the Second World War, the cultural period W. H. Auden named the Age of Anxiety had begun-a time characterized by an intensifying fear of nuclear Armageddon as the Iron Curtain fell across Europe and the Cold War spread across the globe. This program examines the evolution of the British novel during the period 1945-69, spotlighting J. R. R. Tolkien, William Golding, Iris...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: The years between the World Wars generated self-doubt and ideological crisis as Britain contemplated the devastation of World War I and the decline of empire that would transform the British novel. "The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins," wrote D. H. Lawrence in Lady Chatterley's Lover. This program examines the evolution of the British novel during the period 1919-39, spotlighting...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: The 1970s and '80s were a time of turmoil and dislocating change in Britain as customs and values were repeatedly challenged-a period in which, as Angela Carter put it, there was nothing sacred. This program examines the evolution of the British novel during the period 1970-90, spotlighting Fay Weldon, Angela Carter, Penelope Fitzgerald, John Berger, Malcolm Bradbury, Hanif Kureishi, Alasdair...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: The most charming small mammals you'll ever meet team up with the world's most exasperating amphibian to pursue their merry adventures in this adaptation based on Kenneth Grahame's beloved children's classic The Wind in the Willows. This dramatization dispenses with animation and relies instead on the striking animal instincts of some very talented actors: Matt Lucas as gadget-crazed Mr. Toad;...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: This poignant adaptation of Andrea Levy's award-winning novel Small Island explores the lives of two couples, one Jamaican and the other English, whose worlds intertwine in post-World War II Britain at a turning point in the long relationship between the two countries. It is a story of tender emotion and sparkling wit, of crossings taken and passages lost, of shattering compassion and of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: This bold adaptation of Oliver Twist breathes new life into Charles Dickens' wonderfully sordid tale of the orphan Oliver (Sam Smith), sent to the workhouse where children are raised on a diet of hard work and thin gruel. But the story doesn't end there. As the shrewd Artful Dodger (Alex Crowley), menacing Fagin (Robert Lindsay), and vicious Bill Sikes (Andy Serkis) lead Oliver into a life of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: This installment of the Famous Authors series offers overviews of Jane Austen’s life and works. The video profiles Austen’s family and their connections to England’s society. Austen, born in 1775 and raised in the rectory of Steventon, had five brothers and a sister, all known for their cleverness and humor. She had no formal education but was well-read and came to admire Fanny Burney,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: The Earnshaw children expect gifts from their father when he returns to Wuthering Heights after a trip, but are instead greeted with the arrival of Heathcliff, an adopted young Gypsy boy. Quiet and mysterious, Heathcliff is befriended by his new step-sister Cathy Earnshaw, and the two become inseparable. In adulthood their bond deepens to love, but a forced absence opens Cathy to the affections...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: This program from the Famous Authors series introduces the rich imaginative life of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë, exposed to the world of literature by their father Patrick Brontë priest, examiner, and writer. The family struggled with poverty, and the family home Haworth and moorland provided inspiration for the daughters. Charlotte and Emily were educated at Cowan Bridge School, later...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: This overview of Charles Dickens' life and work from the Famous Authors series discusses the author's happy childhood, during which he was close to his father and went to school. However, financial troubles later forced the family to move to London, and Dickens began absorbing the bustling city couched in fog where his novels would be set. Due to his father's debt, he could no longer attend...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: In this overview of D.H. Lawrence's life and work from the Famous Authors series, viewers are introduced to the conditions of the mining town in England in which Lawrence was born and to his relationship with his mother, both which reappear in Sons and Lovers and his other fiction. The film follows Lawrence and his wife Frieda through their many moves, the inspiration he gained from their...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: This introduction to the life and work of Jonathan Swift from the Famous Authors series explores the political messages and social critiques in Swift's work, including the famous Gulliver's Travels and its public reception. The video begins with Swift's childhood and education in Dublin and England, and reviews the circumstances of the English monarchy, the Whigs and Tories, and other political...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: Catherine Morland has a too-ordinary life and a feverish imagination. When she gets invited to Bath, she is immersed in a world of elaborate balls and handsome men-and when Henry Tilney takes her to his family estate, she becomes mired in a world of fact and fantasy. Is there a dark mystery behind the locked doors of Northanger Abbey? And why is her budding romance suddenly cut short? Felicity...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: In this dramatization of one of Jane Austen's most complex plots, Billie Piper (Doctor Who, The Ruby in the Smoke) stars as Fanny Price, a young girl plucked from poverty and taken to live with prosperous relatives at Mansfield Park. Fanny navigates a labyrinth of intrigue and affairs among the occupants of the house, while her cousin Edmund Bertram (Blake Ritson, Inspector Lynley Mysteries)...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: At the age of 19, Anne Elliot fell deeply in love with the handsome young naval officer Frederick Wentworth...but with neither fortune nor rank to recommend him, she was persuaded by a family friend to break off her engagement. Eight years later, Anne-still unmarried and now in financial peril-has lived to regret that decision; she never stopped loving Frederick, and when he returns from sea...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: In this introduction to Robert Louis Stevenson's life and work from the Famous Author's series, the audience gets a look at the Scotland of the nineteenth century and the members of Stevenson's family. By the time Stevenson went to university, he'd committed to becoming a writer and sought out a bohemian, literary life, which upset and intermittently estranged his father. After he suffered some...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: This overview of Virginia Woolf's life and work from the Famous Author's series introduces the writer's upperclass family and their many literary friends who cultivated her talents and later inspired characters. The film takes a look at Woolf's response to the early loss of her mother and sister and her mental health struggles thereafter. Woolf secured an important position in London literary...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: Opening by introducing William Wordsworth's boyhood home in the Lake District of England, this film from the Famous Authors series offers an overview of the writer's work and biography. The Lake District greatly inspired Wordsworth and resulted in his apparent fascination with nature. The film contextualizes the poet's life at Cambridge and then in France, the ongoing conditions of the French...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: This overview of the life and literature of George Eliot from the Famous Authors series follows Eliot's comfortable childhood through the several phases of her education and religious development, during which she discovered major influences like Sir Walter Scott, Shakespeare, and evangelism. Later in ife, she moved away from her evangelist views, eventually leaving the Church of England all...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: This introduction to the life and literature of Oscar Wilde from the Famous Authors series begins by introducing Wilde's passionately political, literary, and flamboyant parents and nineteenth century Dublin, the earliest and strongest influences on the writer. Wilde went on to study classics at Oxford and develop his talents. The film discusses Walter Pater's large influence on Wilde's...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Opening with an excerpt from 'The Lady of the Lake', this introduction to the life and work of Sir Walter Scott from the Famous Author series contextualizes life in Scotland in the late 18th century. Scott spent much of his younger years touring the country with his lawyer father, becoming fascinated with Scottish culture, landscape, architecture, and people, and eventually going to school for...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: The Battle of Saratoga in 1777 conclusively decided the fate of British General John Burgoyne's army in the American Revolutionary War and is generally regarded as a turning point in the war. During this program viewers face the questions that could win or lose the battle from the viewpoint of the general himself.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Contents: Panzer Divisions in Egypt (1:52) -- British 8th Army in Egypt (2:54) -- German Supply Line (1:53) -- German Attack Refuted (1:29) -- British 8th Army Prepares Offensive (3:40) -- Kidney Ridge (1:53) -- Operation Super Charge (3:42) -- The Great Retreat at El Alamein (1:04) -- After El Alamein (0:42) -- Credits: El Alamein (1:09)
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011