History of modern literature Puccini's opera "La Bohème" was staged, as was Chekov's play "The Seagull". H. G. Wells published "The Time Machine" and "The Island of Dr. Moreau". William Morris died 3 October. Mark Twain published "Tom Sawyer, Detective". Alfred Jarry, only 23 years old, wrote his highly influential play "Ubu Roi", which is often cited as a forerunner to the Theatre of the Absurd. In 1897 Bram Stoker published "Dracula". H.G. Wells published "The Invisible Man". In 1898 Henry James published "The Turn of the Screw". H.G. Wells publishes "The War of the Worlds". Oscar Wilde published "The Ballad of Reading Gaol".
Ballad of the Goodly Fere Ballad of the Goodly Fere The Ballad of the Goodly Fere is a poem by Ezra Pound, first published in 1909. The narrator is Simon Zelotes, speaking after the Crucifixion about his memories of Jesus (the "goodly fere"—Old English for "companion"—of the title). Pound wrote the poem as a direct response to what he considered inappropriately effeminate portrayals of Jesus, comparing Jesus—a "man o' men"—to "capon priest(s)"; he subsequently told "T.P.'s Weekly" that he had "been made very angry by a certain sort of cheap irreverence". Charles Elkin Mathews expressed his concerns that readers would find "Fere"s humanization of Jesus