This book content includes:
PHILOSOPHY OF FURNITURE.
A TALE OF JERUSALEM
THE SPHINX
HOP-FROG
THE MAN OF THE CROWD.
NEVER BET THE DEVIL YOUR HEAD
THOU ART THE MAN
WHY THE LITTLE FRENCHMAN WEARS HIS HAND IN A SLING
SOME WORDS WITH A MUMMY.
THE POETIC PRINCIPLE
OLD ENGLISH POETRY
The very interesting and richly coloured masque or pantomimic play which is here printed in book form for the first time, was invented sometime in 1894 or possibly a little earlier. It was written, not for publication, but as a personal gift to the author’s friend and friend of his family, Mrs. Chan Toon, and was sent to her with the letter that follows and explains its...
Mother Goose in Prose is a collection of twenty-two children's stories based on Mother Goose nursery rhymes. It was the first children's book written by L. Frank Baum, and the first book illustrated by Maxfield Parrish. It was originally published in 1897 by Way and Williams of Chicago, and re-released by the George M. Hill Company in 1901.
The book opens with an introduction by Baum that traces...
Guy Mannering or The Astrologer is a novel by Sir Walter Scott, published anonymously in 1815. According to an introduction that Scott wrote in 1829, he had originally intended to write a story of the supernatural, but changed his mind soon after starting. The book was a huge success, the first edition selling out on the first day of publication.
Guy Mannering, after leaving Oxford, is...
Swift took up his permanent residence in the Irish capital in 1714. The Harley Administration had fallen never to rise again. Harley himself was a prisoner in the Tower, and Bolingbroke a voluntary exile in France, and an open adherent of the Pretender. Swift came to Dublin to be met by the jeers of the populace, the suspicion of the government officials, and the polite indifference of his...
This is the picture of a boy who was born in the north of the world. He loved his mother country and the music which the people sang. But he had music, all his own, that sang and sang in his heart. It was happy music and sad; solemn and joyous. You will hear it some day and love it all.
Even when this little boy was in the primary school the music knocked at his heart's door as if it would...
Those who read this romance for the sake of what history it may contain will find the histories from which I have helped myself more profitable.
Those antiquarians who hunt their hobbies through books had best drop the trail of this book at the preface, for they will draw but a blank covert in these pages. Better for the antiquarian that he seek the mansion of Sir William Johnson, which is still...
Puck of Pook's Hill is a fantasy book by Rudyard Kipling, published in 1906, containing a series of short stories set in different periods of English history. It can count both as historical fantasy – since some of the stories told of the past have clear magical elements, and as contemporary fantasy – since it depicts a magical being active and practising his magic in the England of...
The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today is an 1873 novel by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner that satirizes greed and political corruption in post-Civil War America in the era now referred to as the Gilded Age. Although not one of Twain's best-known works, it has appeared in more than one hundred editions since its original publication. Twain and Warner originally had planned to issue the novel with...
The room fronted the west, but a black cloud, barred with red, robbed the hour of twilight's tranquil charm. Shadows haunted it, lurking in corners like spies set there to watch the man who stood among them mute and motionless as if himself a shadow. His eye turned often to the window with a glance both vigilant and eager, yet saw nothing but a tropical luxuriance of foliage scarcely stirred by...
A revolutionist is one who desires to discard the existing social order and try another.
The constitution of England is revolutionary. To a Russian or Anglo–Indian bureaucrat, a general election is as much a revolution as a referendum or plebiscite in which the people fight instead of voting. The French Revolution overthrew one set of rulers and substituted another with different...
Douglas Cockerell was perhaps the premier bookbinder of the early twentieth century. Many of his pioneering techniques are still used today by hand bookbinders and curators of fine books. In this, his classic exposition of the bookbinder's art, he details the steps used in the hand-binding of books, various decorative techniques, and provides useful, practical information on the proper care of...
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...
The ironic satire of a decaying German duchy and its rejuvenation by the appearance of an independent-minded American woman. Peopled with a range of characters from aristocrat to mad woman, this novel is a microcosm of Europe before the Great War. The book's driving force is the development of a love between the young Prince, hidebound by tradition, and the exotic beautiful Imma. Written by Noble...
Poor Folk (Russian: Бедные люди, Bednye Lyudi), sometimes translated as Poor People, is the first novella by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, written over the span of nine months between 1844 and 1845. Dostoyevsky was in financial difficulty because of his extravagant living and his developing gambling addiction; although he had produced some translations of...
The Valley of Fear is the fourth and final Sherlock Holmes novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It is loosely based on the real-life exploits of the Molly Maguires and Pinkerton agent James McParland. The story was first published in the Strand Magazine between September 1914 and May 1915. The first book edition was copyrighted in 1914, published by George H. Doran Company in New York on 27 February...
Dombey and Son is a novel by Charles Dickens, published in monthly parts from 1 October 1846 to 1 April 1848 and in one volume in 1848. Its full title is Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son: Wholesale, Retail and for Exportation. Dickens started writing the book in Lausanne, Switzerland, before returning to England, via Paris, to complete it. Illustrations were provided by Hablot Knight...
Miss Arnott's Marriage is one of the much under-rated Richard Marsh's long stories. The plot revolves around the events which occur after Violet Arnott's husband, Bob Champion (not the Grand National winner, obviously!) is sent to prison. Violet decides to revert to her maiden name and forget about her wayward spouse. Initially, her task seems to be made easier as she comes...
Lady Susan is a short epistolary novel by Jane Austen, possibly written in 1794 but not published until 1871.
This epistolary novel, an early complete work that the author never submitted for publication, describes the schemes of the main character—the widowed Lady Susan—as she seeks a new husband for herself and one for her daughter. Although the...