When George Mason signs up for a voyage to the Arctic in search of Sir John Franklin's lost expedition, his fiancée Lettie is left with only his portrait to console her during his long months of absence...
A new, original recording of a classic public domain text, read and performed by Simon Stanhope for Bitesized Audio.
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Tom Hood (1835-1874) was a hugely prolific author of the mid-Victorian era, but he has fallen into comparative obscurity today. A son of the celebrated poet Thomas Hood, who died when Tom was 10 years old, he went on to establish a writing career in his own right, as a poet, playwright and journalist, composing countless magazine articles as well as children's stories and books on English verse. He was also an accomplished artist and illustrated some of his father's comic poems. He became the editor of the magazine 'Fun' in 1865, and also established 'Tom Hood's Comic Annual' in 1867. He died suddenly, at the age of just 39, in 1874.
'The Shadow of a Shade' was first published in 'Bow Bells Annual' for Christmas 1869, as part of a series entitled "Snowed In: A series of stories related in a snow storm".
The Franklin expedition of 1845-47, and the subsequent search for the missing crews of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, seized the public imagination in the mid-nineteenth century, and inspired several works of literature and art, including a play, 'The Frozen Deep' (1854), written by Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens, in which Dickens himself appeared. Public interest in the mystery has been maintained ever since: indeed, it was only in 2014 and 2016 that the wrecks of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror respectively were discovered by a Canadian exploration team.
The title card for this story includes a detail from 'The Search for Sir John Franklin in the Arctic', a public domain work of art, painted in 1850 by the Belgian artist François Musin (1820-1888). The ship in this picture is HMS Resolute, which led several search missions between 1850 and 1854, when she herself became trapped in ice and had to be abandonded by her crew. HMS Resolute was subsequently found and rescued by an American whaler, and returned to Britain. The timbers of the ship were later used to make the Resolute Desk, which was presented as a gift from Queen Victoria to US President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880. The desk has been used by almost every President since then, in various locations in the White House. It is currently in the Oval Office.
Recording © Bitesized Audio 2020.
29 авг 2024
