Books with title Rovers

Aphra Behn was among the wittiest and most prolific playwrights of her dayThe Rover is the most popular of Behn's plays, a comedy set in a 17th century Spanish colony during carnival time. Scenes of infidelity, elopement and seduction are juxtaposed with images of elaborate sword play creating a mood of frantic, endless celebration. In The Rover, Behn recreates a male-dominated society but responds with clear-sighted and sympathetic portrayal of the female predicament. The female voice gave the play a distinctiveness in its time and portrays "the fine line drawn and doodled around between the brutality of rape and the art of seduction" (Michael Coveney, Financial Times). The Rover was revived by the RSC in 1986, directed by John Barton with Jeremy Sams and Imogen Stubbs in the lead roles. This volume contains expert notes on the author's life and work, historical and political background to the play and a glossary of difficult words and phrases."Masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common…All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn." (Virginia Woolf on Aphra Behn)

"Layton's wildly exuberant illustrations provide the perfect accompaniment to the four legged narrator's refreshing brand of humour" - "The Guardian". This is a completely topsy-turvey view of a world seen from a dog's eye point of view - a very funny story which turns to real drama when the little girl gets lost on the beach and the search is on to find her.

In 1861 Captain Grant succeeded Captain Burgess on Matinicus, taking his son with him as assistant. The old keeper left Abby on the rock to instruct the newcomers in their duties, and she performed the task so well that young Grant fell in love with her, and asked her to become his wife. Soon after their marriage she was appointed an assistant keeper. A few years later the husband was made keeper and the wife assistant keeper of White Head, another light on the Maine coast. There they remained until the spring of 1890, when they removed to Middleborough, Mass., intending to pass the balance of their days beyond sight and hearing of the rocks and the waves. But the hunger which the sea breeds in its adopted children was still strong within them, and the fall of 1892 found them again on the coast of Maine, this time at Portland, where the husband again entered the lighthouse establishment, working in the engineers' department of the first lighthouse district. With them until his death lived Captain Grant, who in the closing months of 1890, being then aged eighty-five, retired from the position of keeper of Matinicus light, which he had held for nearly thirty years. Not less lonely, but far more perilous than the life of the keepers of a light like that on Matinicus is the lot of the crew of the South Shoal lightship, whose position twenty-six miles off Sankaty Head, Nantucket Island, makes it the most exposed light-station in the world. Anchored so far out at sea, it is only during the months of summer and autumn that the lighthouse tender ventures to visit it, and its crew from December to May of each year are wholly cut off from communication with the land. It is this, however, that makes the South Shoal lightship a veritable protecting angel of the deep, for it stands guard not only over the treacherous New South Shoal, near which it is anchored, but over twenty-six miles of rips and reefs between it and the Nantucket shore—a wide-reaching ocean graveyard, where bleach the bones of more than a half thousand wrecked and forgotten vessels. The lightship is a stanchly built two-hulled schooner of 275 tons burden, 103 feet long over all, equipped with fore-and-aft lantern masts 71 feet high, and with two masts for sails, each 42 feet high. The lanterns are octagons of glass in copper frames, so arranged that they can be lowered into houses built around the masts. In the forward part of the ship is a huge fog bell, swung ten feet above the deck, which, when foggy weather prevails, as it frequently does for weeks at a time, is kept tolling day and night. A two-inch chain fastened to a "mushroom" anchor weighing upward of three tons holds the vessel in eighteen fathoms of water, but this, so fiercely do the waves beat against it in winter, has not prevented her from going adrift many times. She was two weeks at sea on one of these occasions, and on another she came to anchor in New York Harbor. Life on the South Shoal lightship is at all times a hard and trying one, and, as a matter of fact, the crew are instructed not to expose themselves to danger outside their special line of duty. This, however, does not deter them from frequently risking their lives in rescuing others, and when, several years ago, the City of Newcastle went ashore on one of the shoals near the lightship, all hands, twenty-seven in number, were saved by the South Shoal crew and kept aboard of her over two weeks, until the story of the wreck was signalled to a passing vessel. Isaac H. Grant holds a silver medal given him by the Government for rescuing two men from drowning while he was keeper at White Head; while Frederick Hatch, keeper of the Breakwater station at Cleveland was awarded the gold bar. The last mentioned badge of honor is granted only to one who has twice distinguished himself by a special act of bravery. It was given Hatch in the winter of 1898.

Now in fantastic new big book size - perfect for shared reading lessons. Humans can be so confusing, especially when you're a dog. I live with a family of humans, you see. A big man-human, a big lady-human and a little girl-human. Well, one day the lady-human's tummy started getting bigger and bigger. Then - and you won't believe this - suddenly her tummy got smaller, but there was another human living with us! And the big humans won't let me anywhere near it! Honestly, I don't know what all the fuss is about ...'Fresh and entertaining, and ultimately enlightening' Scottish Sunday Herald

In a collaboration between the BBC and the Women's Playhouse Trust, this is an opportunity to see the stage production of Aphra Behn's restoration comedy on video. The play chronicles the adventures and misadventures of a group of British cavalier mercenaries in Naples at carnival time. A robust, dynamic and sometimes brutal look at relationships, sexual desires and sexual favours. Included are interviews with Jules Wright, WPT director, and a discussion of the translation from stage to screen.