Classic Gutenberg

To Be Read at Dusk is a short, traditional ghost story by Charles Dickens.

The Prince and the Pauper is a novel by American author Mark Twain. It was first published in 1881 in Canada, before its 1882 publication in the United States. The novel represents Twain's first attempt at historical fiction. Set in 1547, it tells the story of two young boys who are identical in appearance: Tom Canty, a pauper who lives with his abusive father in Offal Court off Pudding Lanein...

Tom Sawyer, Detective is an 1896 novel by Mark Twain. It is a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), and a prequel to Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894). Tom Sawyer attempts to solve a mysterious murder in thisburlesque of the immensely popular detective novels of the time. Like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the story is told using the first-person narrative...

"Charles Dickens" here means editor as well as author. This is the fifth Christmas number, from 1854, of his journal Household Words. Dickens himself tops and tails the festive story cycle, set after an archetypal Christmas Eve dinner ("I never saw a finer turkey, finer beef") in a Rochester almshouse. The "travellers" are voiced in their narrations by Wilkie Collins (who contributes a...

Tom Tidler's Ground, also known as Tom Tiddler's Ground or Tommy Tiddler's Ground, is an ancient children's game in which one player, "Tom Tidler," stands on a heap of stones, gravel, etc.; other players rush onto the heap, crying "Here I am on Tom Tidler's ground," while Tom tries to capture the invaders or keep them off. By extension, the phrase has come to mean the ground or tenement of a...

The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet: A Sermon in Crude Melodrama is a one-act play by George Bernard Shaw, first produced in in 1909. Shaw describes the play as a religious tract in dramatic form. In 1909 Shaw jousted with governmental censorship, as personified by The Examiner Of Plays, an agency acting under the auspices of the Lord Chamberlain. The outcome, unsatisfactory to Shaw, is reviewed...

The Stolen White Elephant is a short story written by Mark Twain and published in 1882 by James R. Osgood. In this detectivemystery, a Siamese white elephant, en route from Siam to Britain as a gift to the Queen, disappears in New Jersey. The local police department goes into high gear to solve the mystery but it all comes to a tragic end. The main characters of the story include: Mark Twain,...

Pudd'nhead Wilson is a novel by Mark Twain. It was serialized in The Century Magazine (1893–4), before being published as a novel in 1894. The setting is the fictional Missouri frontier town of Dawson's Landing on the banks of the Mississippi River in the first half of the 19th century. David Wilson, a young lawyer, moves to town and a clever remark of his is misunderstood, which causes...

The Grand Inquisitor is a parable in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880). It is told by Ivan, who questions the possibility of a personal and benevolent God, to his brother Alyosha, a novice monk. The Grand Inquisitor is an important part of the novel and one of the best-known passages in modern literature because of its ideas about human nature and freedom, and...

King Richard the Second is a history play by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in approximately 1595. It is based on the life of King Richard II of England (ruled 1377–1399) and is the first part of a tetralogy, referred to by some scholars as the Henriad, followed by three plays concerning Richard's successors: Henry IV, Part 1; Henry IV, Part 2; and Henry V. It may not...

The American Claimant is an 1892 novel by American humorist and writer Mark Twain. Twain wrote the novel with the help ofphonographic dictation, the first author (according to Twain himself) to do so. This was also (according to Twain) an attempt to write a book without mention of the weather, the first of its kind in fictitious literature. Indeed, all the weather is contained in an appendix, at...

The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain, A Fancy for Christmas-Time (better known as The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain or simply as The Haunted Man) is a novella by Charles Dickens first published in 1848. It is the fifth and last of Dickens's Christmas novellas. The story is more about the spirit of the holidays than about the holidays themselves, harking back to the first in the series, A...

The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices was co-written by Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins and features two characters (Mr. Goodchild and Mr. Idle) that are stand-ins for these two. It is told over the course of what was originally five issues of Dickens' journal Household Words and depicts an "idle" (but actually quite frantic) vacation, with long walks/hikes and explorations of inns and other...

In some collection of old English Ballads there is an ancient ditty which I am told bears some remote and distant resemblance to the following Epic Poem. I beg to quote the emphatic language of my estimable friend (if he will allow me to call him so), the Black Bear in Piccadilly, and to assure all to whom these presents may come, that "I am the original." This affecting legend is given in the...

The Man is a romance novel by Bram Stoker (the author of Dracula), written in 1905. The Man has also been published under the name The Gates of Life. The novel begins with a "Fore-glimpse" or preface, where the two main characters Miss Stephen Norman and Harold An Wolf are sitting in the graveyard of their town's church, eavesdropping on the conversation of two little girls below them, Marjorie...

Nicholas Nickleby; or, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby is a novel by Charles Dickens. Originally published as aserial from 1838 to 1839, it was Dickens' third novel. The novel centres on the life and adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, a young man who must support his mother and sister after his father dies. Nicholas Nickleby's father dies unexpectedly after losing all of his money in...

Collection of short pieces. Includes: The Curious Republic of Gondour, A Memory, Introductory to "Memoranda," About Smells, A Couple of Sad Experiences, Dan Murphy, The "Tournament" in A.D. 1870, Curious Relic For Sale, A Reminiscence of the Back Settlements.

No Thoroughfare is a stage play and novel by Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, both released in December 1867. In 1867 Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins collaborated to produce a stage play titled No Thoroughfare: A Drama: In Five Acts. This was the last stage production to be associated with Dickens, who died in June 1870. The play opened at the Adelphi Theatre on 26 December 1867. The novel...

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...

Northanger Abbey /ˈnɔrθˌæŋɡər/ was the first of Jane Austen's novels to be completed for publication, though she had previously made a start on Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. According to Cassandra Austen's Memorandum, Susan (as it was first called) was written circa 1798-99. It was revised by Austen for the press in 1803, and sold in the same year for £10...