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The Lost Girl is a novel by D. H. Lawrence, first published in 1920. It was awarded the 1920 James Tait Black Memorial Prize in the fiction category. Lawrence started it shortly after writing Women in Love, and worked on it only sporadically until he completed it in 1920.  Alvina Houghton, the daughter of a widowed Midlands draper, comes of age just as her...

Why not give Christianity a trial? The question seems a hopeless one after 2000 years of resolute adherence to the old cry of "Not this man, but Barabbas." Yet it is beginning to look as if Barabbas was a failure, in spite of his strong right hand, his victories, his empires, his millions of money, and his moralities and churches and political constitutions. "This man" has not been a failure...

The Monastery: a Romance (1820) is a historical novel by Sir Walter Scott. Along with The Abbot, it is one of Scott's Tales from Benedictine Sources and is set in the time of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the Elizabethan period. In the many conflicts between England and Scotland the property of the Church had hitherto always been respected; but her temporal possessions, as well as her spiritual...

Sons and Lovers is a 1913 novel by the English writer D. H. Lawrence. The Modern Library placed it ninth on their list of the 100 best novels of the 20th century. While the novel initially incited a lukewarm critical reception, along with allegations of obscenity, it is today regarded as a masterpiece by many critics and is often regarded as Lawrence's finest achievement.

Marmion is an epic poem by Walter Scott about the Battle of Flodden (1513). It was published in 1808. Scott started writing Marmion, his second major work, in November 1806. When Archibald Constable, the publisher, learnt of this, he offered a thousand guineas for the copyright unseen. William Miller and John Murray each agreed to take a 25% share in the project. Murray observed: "We both view...

The forenoon of the first of April, 1911. General Mitchener is at his writing table in the War Office, opening letters. On his left is the fireplace, with a fire burning. On his right, against the opposite wall is a standing desk with an office stool. The door is in the wall behind him, half way between the table and the desk. The table is not quite in the middle of the room: it is nearer to the...

Misalliance is a play written in 1909–1910 by George Bernard Shaw. The play takes place entirely on a single Saturday afternoon in the conservatory of a large country house in Hindhead, Surrey in Edwardian era England.  It is a continuation of some of the ideas on marriage that he expressed in 1908 in his play, Getting Married. It was...

This work starts with an Introduction by J.H. Stape, St Mary's University College, Strawberry Hill. First published in 1909, "The Man Shakespeare and his Tragic Life" is a lively biography of England and arguably the world's greatest playwright and poet by an ardent admirer. Pursuing the thesis that a man so elusive in the few surviving documents is found full blown in very one of his works,...

Notes from Underground (Russian: Записки из подполья, Zapiski iz podpol'ya), also translated as Notes from the Undergroundor Letters from the Underworld, is an 1864 novella by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Notes is considered by many to be the firstexistentialist novel. It presents itself as an excerpt from the rambling memoirs of a...

The Lady of the Lake is a narrative poem by Sir Walter Scott, first published in 1810. Set in the Trossachs region of Scotland, it is composed of six cantos, each of which concerns the action of a single day. The poem has three main plots: the contest among three men, Roderick Dhu, James Fitz-James, and Malcolm Graeme, to win the love of Ellen Douglas; the feud and reconciliation of King James V...

This collection contains eight stories by British writer Somerset Maugham: The Pacific, Mackintosh, The Fall Of Edward Barnard, Red, The Pool, Honolulu, Rain, Envoi. Includes an active table of contents for easy navigation. The Trembling of a Leaf was also published under the title "Rain, and Other Stories" after one of the stories was adapted for a film starring Joan Crawford.

The Bishop’s Apron is one of W. Somerset Maugham’s early novels. It has a curious history of being transferred from one genre to another. The skeleton of the story is already present in the story “Cupid and the Vicar of Swale” (1900), then it was written in 1902 as a novel called Loaves and Fishes; when it failed to find a publisher, Maugham rewrote it into a play of the...

The Abbot (1820) is a historical novel by Sir Walter Scott. A sequel to The Monastery, it is one of Scott's Tales from Benedictine Sources and is set in the time of Mary, Queen of Scots. The story follows the fortunes of certain characters Scott introduced in The Monastery, but it also introduces new characters such as Roland Graeme. Ten years had passed since the final events of The Monastery,...

Traffics and Discoveries, containing 11 stories and 11 poems, was published in 1904. Table of Contents: From the Masjid-al-Aqsa of Sayyid Ahmed (Wahabi) The Captive Poseidon's Law The Bonds of Discipline The Runners A Sahibs' War The Wet Litany "Their Lawful Occasions" The King's Task The Comprehension of Private Copper The Necessitarian Steam Tactics Kaspar's Song in...

Major Barbara is a three act play by George Bernard Shaw, written and premiered in 1905 and first published in1907. The story involves an idealistic young woman, Barbara Undershaft, who is engaged in helping the poor as an official (a Major) in the Salvation Army in London. For many years Barbara and her siblings have been estranged from their father, Andrew Undershaft, who...

Wilde’s literary reputation has survived so much that I think it proof against any exhumation of articles which he or his admirers would have preferred to forget. As a matter of fact, I believe this volume will prove of unusual interest; some of the reviews are curiously prophetic; some are, of course, biassed by prejudice hostile or friendly; others are conceived in the author’s...

Walter Scott's novel The Black Dwarf was part of his Tales of My Landlord, 1st series, published along with Old Mortality on 2 December 1816 by William Blackwood, Edinburgh, and John Murray, London. Originally the four volumes of the series were to tell separate stories, but Old Mortality came to occupy three of them. As Hobbie Elliot was returning over a wild moor from a day's sport, thinking...

The eleven papers which are collected here were written between 1899 and 1905. With the exception of one, entitled "Aspects of Shakespeare's Philosophy," which is now printed for the first time, they were published in periodicals in the course of those six years. The articles treat of varied aspects of Shakespearean drama, its influences and traditions, but I think that all may be credited...

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish author, playwright and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, his plays, as well as the circumstances of...

Set in the twelfth century, during the reign of Richard the Lionheart, Ivanhoe tells of the love of Wilfred of Ivanhoe for the Lady Rowena, his father Cedric's ward. Cedric, who is dedicated to the liberation of the Saxon people from Norman oppression and to the revival of the Saxon royal line, intends Rowena - a descendant of King Alfred - for the oafish Athelstane, and he banishes his son....