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In this collection of short stories some of our most popular and well-known authors are grouped together with an unfortunate tag: dead at 44. These authors are not run-of-the-mill or ten a penny; they are literary leviathans who left enduring works of literature and sadly may have left us many more had they lived. We will never know.

Silence is rare in Nature. When we really listen, Nature is conducting symphonies of sound as her world goes about the day and night. Her invisible heartbeat is everywhere, for everyone. Our eyes are constantly bathed in the wonder of her ways, the soft drizzle of rain from soft grey clouds, the bleached harsh desert sand of a noon day, a wave caressing the shore, to the ravenous colours of a departing sunset. Indeed, whenever we look and listen to the vastness of our world Nature’s beauty is always there for us. In these 60 minutes Nature takes us through her world of wonder.

Barry Eric Odell Pain was born at 3 Sydney Street in Cambridge, on 28th September 1864. He was one of 4 children. It is often said that Pain was discovered by Robert Louis Stevenson, who compared his work to that of Guy de Maupassant. It’s an apt comparison. Pain was also a master of disturbing prose but able to inject parody and light comedy into many of his works. A simple premise could in his hands suddenly expand into a world very real but somehow emotionally fraught and on the very edge of darkness as many of these short stories demonstrate.

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born on 29th January 1860, in Taganrog, on the south coast of Russia. Chekhov wrote over 500 short stories, which included many, many classics, including ‘The Kiss’ and ‘The Lady with a Dog’. His collection ‘At Dusk’ won him the coveted Pushkin Prize when was only 26. He was also a major playwright beginning with the huge success of ‘Ivanov’ in 1887.

Isobel Violet Hunt was born on 28th September 1862, in Durham. As a young child her family moved to London and Hunt was brought up amongst the Pre-Raphaelite circle of artists. As a writer she was comfortable and talented enough to write across several forms, including short stories, novels, memoir, and biography. Her short story ‘The Coach’ is an excellent example of her black comedy writing. This cramped setting turns into a macabre tour de force delivering literary punch and emotional heft.

Algernon Blackwood was born on 14th March 1869 in Shooter’s Hill, South East London, to a religious middle-class family. Blackwood was interested in the paranormal and the supernatural at an early age, and had a thirst for anything on Buddhism, other Oriental philosophies, mysticism and occultism. The Empty House is one of his most famous ghost stories. A man accompanies his adventurous aunt to a notorious haunted house. As the two exploring its dark, empty rooms, it becomes apparent that the house has not forgotten the earlier tragedy.

David Herbert Lawrence was born on the 11th September 1885 in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, a coal mining town where the reality of a harsh life was only useful as experiences for future literary works. Lawrence’s first efforts were poems, short stories and a draft of ‘The White Peacock’. Moving to London and a teaching position in Croydon his writing attracted the attention of Ford Madox Ford, editor of The English Review, and he commissioned him to write ‘Odour of Chrysanthemums’.

Aleksander Głowacki, who wrote under the nom de plume Boleslaw Prus, was born on 20th August 1847 at Hrubieszów in the Kingdom of Poland, at that time, controlled by the Russian Empire. It seems he had doubts as to the scale of his talents and early on adopted the name ‘Boleslaw Prus’, for both his journalistic and literary offerings. His work as a short-story writer met with much acclaim. He wrote several dozen of them, originally published in newspapers and ranging in length from micro-story to novella. His keen observation of everyday life and sense of humor are evident in them.

Algernon Blackwood was born on 14th March 1869 in Shooter’s Hill, South East London, to a religious middle-class family. His mother was a widowed Duchess and his father was a Post Office administrator. Blackwood was interested in the paranormal and the supernatural at an early age, and had a thirst for anything on Buddhism, other Oriental philosophies, mysticism and occultism. In his writings the weaving of the supernatural into his various works, from ghost stories and children’s stories to plays and long novels is clearly seen.

Christmas may come but once a year but human emotions, the driving force of our characters, are with us every day. Yet, somehow these same emotions when they happen at Christmas seem amplified; we seem more tender to their touch, their words. In this volume we take the verse and poems of our classic poets and put them alongside our short story masters to reveal a Christmas that everyone remembers and that everyone wants to be part of.

Do men need poems? Is the gender of brawn and ‘can-do’ really a candidate for honeyed verse? Obviously yes. Through the centuries men seem to dominate the writing of poetry. From books of epics to quatrains of love poetry it seemed to be a man’s world. His domain. A volume purely for men, to show other facets of their personalities and characters seems to be an obvious choice. One verse fits all is, in fact, far removed from the truth. Men needs words. They need support, understanding as well as goals, ambition and structure. They need purpose, desire; the need to love and be loved.

During the Victorian era the publishing of magazines and periodicals accelerated at a phenomenal rate. This really was mass market publishing to a hungry audience eager for literary sustenance. Many of our greatest authors contributed and expanded their reach whilst many fledging authors also found a ready source for their nascent works and careers. Amongst the very many was ‘The Yellow Book’.

Love whether fleeting or of the ages, expressed with a look, a touch, or a thought is wanted by us all. Our classic poets did not surrender to the logic of the group or seek advice from others quick to blame but slow to embrace. Their legacy remains because it is true, because in that look, that touch, that thought, that display of words the heart remembers us and treasures us. Here are words and verse of love. For your ears, your loved one’s ears and hearts everywhere.

Between then and now poets have written verse, both serious and humorous, in attempts to keep a poetic track both of feelings and as a tribute to our four-legged friends and their adventures.

Whilst writer Charles Dickens needs no introduction, his Haunted House anthology might, not least because in his role as editor he introduces a formidable array of known and lesser-known literary talents.

Henry James was born 15th April 1843 in New York City. His youth was spent travelling with his family receiving what was an "extraordinarily haphazard and promiscuous" education as they journeyed through London, Paris, Geneva, Boulogne-sur-Mer and Newport, Rhode Island, according to the father's current interests and publishing ventures. James studied primarily with tutors and only briefly attended schools. Undoubtedly the quality of his writing has ensured his name is enshrined in the American literary tradition.

Francis Marion Crawford, an only child, was born on 2nd August 1854 at Bagni di Lucca, Italy. He was a nephew to Julia Ward Howe, the American poet and writer of ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’. In the late 1890s, Crawford began work on his historical works which would later include ‘Corleone’, in 1897, the first major treatment of the Mafia in literature. Crawford is also exceedingly popular and anthologized as a short story writer of bizarre and creepy tales.

The character of Peter Pan first appeared in The Little White Bird in 1902. This most famous and enduring of his works, Peter Pan; or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, had its first stage performance on December 27, 1904. Peter Pan would overshadow all his other works, but his short stories cannot be overlooked. Indeed, from today’s vantage point, they are excellent gems of social manners, of class, and of the way characters, sometimes in the most mundane of circumstances, react in the most surprising of ways.

In the Scottish canon, to be placed alongside Robert Burns is high praise indeed, but it’s a rightful place for one of Scotland’s finest novelists. Born in 1850, he managed to cram much into his 44 years, traveling widely to France, the United States, Samoa and the South Seas. Of course, he is widely feted for his classics: Dr Jeckyll & Mr Hyde, Treasure Island, and poetry volumes such as A Child’s Garden of Verses.

Rudyard Kipling was one of the most popular writers of prose and poetry in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1907. Born in Bombay on December 30, 1865, both he and his sister were sent back to England when he was five, as was the custom of the British ruling elite in India. The ill-treatment and cruelty by the couple they boarded with in Portsmouth had one useful effect that Kipling himself suggested; it gave him an early impetus for a literary life.