"The London Venture" by Michael Arlen is a reflective story from the early 1900s. It explores themes of love, identity, and the complicated nature of city life through the main character's memories of London and the people he met there. In the beginning, the narrator leaves London, happy to escape its boring routine, but soon regrets his decision and thinks about going back. He remembers feeling alone when he first arrived and trying to find his place as an Armenian in a busy city. He can't stop thinking about Shelmerdene, a fascinating but distant woman who greatly affects his ideas about love and life, epitomizing beauty, desire, and short-lived relationships. This sets the stage for a look at emotions, emphasizing the challenge of finding real connections in a world that often feels uncaring.
The London Venture
By Michael Arlen
Haunted by a mysterious woman, a man grapples with regret and lost identity after fleeing the enthralling, yet isolating, embrace of London.
Summary
About the AuthorMichael Arlen was an essayist, short story writer, novelist, playwright, and scriptwriter. He had his greatest successes in the 1920s while living and writing in England, publishing the best-selling novel The Green Hat in 1924. Arlen is most famous for his satirical romances set in English smart society, but he also wrote gothic horror and psychological thrillers, for instance "The Gentleman from America", which was filmed in 1948 as The Fatal Night, and again in 1956 as a television episode for Alfred Hitchcock's TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Near the end of his life, Arlen mainly occupied himself with political writing. Arlen's vivid but colloquial style "with unusual inversions and inflections with a heightened exotic pitch" came to be known as 'Arlenesque'.
Michael Arlen was an essayist, short story writer, novelist, playwright, and scriptwriter. He had his greatest successes in the 1920s while living and writing in England, publishing the best-selling novel The Green Hat in 1924. Arlen is most famous for his satirical romances set in English smart society, but he also wrote gothic horror and psychological thrillers, for instance "The Gentleman from America", which was filmed in 1948 as The Fatal Night, and again in 1956 as a television episode for Alfred Hitchcock's TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Near the end of his life, Arlen mainly occupied himself with political writing. Arlen's vivid but colloquial style "with unusual inversions and inflections with a heightened exotic pitch" came to be known as 'Arlenesque'.
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May Fair : $b being an entertainment purporting to reveal to gentlefolk the real state of affairs existing in the very heart of London during the fifteenth and sixteenth years of the reign of His Majesty King George the Fifth: together with suitable reflections on the last follies, misadventures and galanteries of these charming people
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These charming people : $b being a tapestry of the fortunes, follies, adventures, gallantries and general activities of Shelmerdene (that lovely lady), Lord Tarlyon, Mr. Michael Wagstaffe, Mr. Ralph Wyndham Trevor and some others of their friends of the lighter sort
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