Classic Love Stories

LISTINGS: The Sphinx Without a Secret by Oscar Wilde. Mr & Mrs Dove by Katherine Mansfield. Angela by W.S. Gilbert. Perilous Play by Louisa May Alcott. The Singing Lesson by Katherine Mansfield. The Melancholy Hussar of the German Legion by Thomas Hardy. Genefer by Sabine Baring-Gould. The Bagman’s Story - from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens.


This wide-ranging collection around the theme of love is read by husband and wife, Martin Jarvis and Rosalind Ayres. These are not love stories full of sentimentality, but a full range of clever, poignant, sometimes funny and often romantic stories set in an age of chivalry and honour. Enjoy aspects of humour and respect in “Mr. & Mrs. Dove”, love from afar in the poignant tale, “Angela”, and a woman clouded in mystery in “The Sphinx Without a Secret”. Then find love laced with comedy from an inebriated Tom Smart talking to the furniture in Dickens’ “The Bagman’s Story”, and tragedy from Phyllis and her love for a German Hussar. Meet the parents of Joe who want him to marry the wealthy Polly instead of his choice, “Genefer”, and the strange effect of drugs when two young people fall in love under the influence of hashish in a little known, but ahead of its time, story entitled “Perilous Play”.