Books published by Benediction Classics

"Saint Patrick for Ireland," first published in 1640, is notable as an early development in Irish theatre. The play was written and performed during Shirley's stay in Dublin in the years 1637-40. Shirley, one of the most prominent and successful London playwrights of the previous decade, moved to Dublin during the long closure of the London theatres, from May 1636 to October 1637, due to an epidemic of bubonic plague. It was performed in the autumn of 1639, at the Werburgh Street Theatre in Dublin, "the first Irish playhouse."

This, volume XIX of the complete works of John Ruskin, contains 'The Cestus of Aglaia' and'The Queen of the Air' and other papers and lectures on art and literature 1860-1870.

"Under the Red Robe has the most dramatic opening of any historical novel I know" Conan DoyleUnder the Red Robe is set in seventeenth-century France during the reign of Louis XIII, King of France. It follows Cardinal Richelieu's ascendancy which are marked by political games and conflicts of interest.

Bounds, a much loved Christian writer, has several classic books on prayer. He states that prayer is available to all, but that one must approach it with the right attitude. This volume deals with personal and corporate prayer.

First published in 1923, this is now available in a brand new edition. It is set in 1745 during the Jacobite Rebellion. A thrilling tale of intrigue, as Alastair Maclean, a close confidant of Prince Charles Edward Stewart, secretly sets out to raise support for the Jacobite cause in England.

This paperback includes all three Volumes of the novel 'Gomez Arias The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance'. It was written in 1826 by the Spaniard Joaquín Telesforo de Trueba y Cosío who wrote in English and belonged to the Romantic movement. It is set in the province of Granada. A censored version was produced in 1831.

George Worgan was an English naval surgeon who accompanied the First Fleet to Australia. He made expeditions to the Hawkesbury River and Broken Bay areas north of Sydney and spent a year on Norfolk Island after his was shipwrecked there. Although he kept a journal, it was not published on his return, unlike his contemporary, Watkin Tench. This book consists of letters to his brother in England, written in 1788, the second letter journaling the first six months after the First Fleet's arrival in Sydney Cove.

This, Gosson's polemic against melodrama and vulgar comedy, drew rebuttals from his contemporaries including Philip Sidney and and Thomas Lodge.

Many beautiful children's picture books were produced in the nineteenth century, often by anonymous authors and artists. Here we've put together a new collection from a variety of sources, lavishly illustrated with black-and-white drawings. The tales included are The History of Tom Thumb, The Old Woman and her Pig, The Story of Jack and the Giants, The Cat and the Mouse and Princess Belle-Etoile.

Challenged to write on the topic of slavery in a Cambridge essay contest, Thomas Clarkson uncovered the horrors of the enslavement of Africans in the slave trade, and purposed to do something about it. This essay won him an audience among the abolitionists, and he, along with William Wilberforce, would go on to lobby for the passage of the Slave Trade Act in 1807, which abolished the slave trade in the British empire.

The Buln-Buln and the Brolga is a long story, written by Joseph Furphy in 1905. This book is a study of Fred, the liar, set off by Bob, the Bush-yarner who is also prone to exaggeration. It challenges to look at the vagaries of marriage, death, deceit and the embarrassing dehumanisation of the native people. Written by the author of "Such is Life", and indeed the story started off as a discarded chapter in the novel, it deals with similar issues, most significantly the individual's perception of reality, sometimes with humour and parody.

Anatole France, the Nobel-prize winning French author, turns to a historical subject for this two-volume Life of Joan of Arc. Thoroughly researched with a wealth of references, he sought to bring a rationalist viewpoint to the legendary French heroine and to examine and, where necessary, overturn the superstitious additions to her history. He also hoped to counteract the Church's interpretation of her life, as that institution was, in 1908, well on the way to declaring her a saint. Volume II deals with Joan's later military campaigns, her capture, trial and execution and the events that followed her death.