Twain is so funny. You forget if you haven't read him in years. This little book includes stories about working at various newspapers and humorous misunderstandings and events.
The Rowe-Tonson edition of Shakespeare's plays (1709) is an important event in the history of both Shakespeare studies and English literary criticism. Though based substantially on the Fourth Folio (1685), it is the first, "edited" edition: Rowe modernized spelling and punctuation and quietly made a number of sensible emendations. It is the first edition to include dramatis personae, the first to...
This is a book of legends from around the world. Mostly they are from Eurasian areas and traditions, but there are a few from North America, too. While it claims in the title to be a book of legends that children should know, that is entirely arrogant, and not hardly true. At the very least it is stories for older "children," and possibly even older teens. But then you have the trouble where the...
The Wreck of the Golden Mary is the work of many hands but was originally started by Dickens. The story portrays an amazing voyage around Cape Horn, then north to the coast of California. The tale takes a stunning turn when the ship strikes an iceberg and passengers and crew languish in lifeboats. Dickens’s subtlety of style and picturesque depiction keeps reader rapt till the very...
In the year 1860, the reputation of Doctor Wybrow as a London physician reached its highest point. It was reported on good authority that he was in receipt of one of the largest incomes derived from the practice of medicine in modern times.
One afternoon, towards the close of the London season, the Doctor had just taken his luncheon after a specially hard morning's work in his consulting-room,...
Plain Tales from the Hills (published 1888) is the first collection of short stories by Rudyard Kipling. Out of its 40 stories, "eight-and-twenty", according to Kipling's Preface, were initially published in the Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore, Punjab, British India, between November 1886 and June 1887. "The remaining tales are, more or less, new." (Kipling had worked as a journalist for the...
The Return of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of 13 Sherlock Holmes stories, originally published in 1903-1904, by Arthur Conan Doyle.
The book was first published in February 1905 by McClure, Phillips & Co. (New York) then on March 7, 1905 by Georges Newnes, Ltd. (London).
This was the first Holmes collection since 1893, when Holmes had "died" in The Final Problem. Having published The...
A Diversity of Creatures by Rudyard Kipling.
Table of Contents
As Easy as A.B.C.
MacDonough’s Song
Friendly Brook
The Land
In the Same Boat
‘Helen all Alone’
The Honours of War
The Children
The Dog Hervey
The Comforters
The Village that Voted the Earth was Flat
The Press
In The Presence
Jobson’s Amen
Regulus
A Translation
The Edge of the...
Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.
Never resist temptation: prove all things: hold fast that which is good.
Do not love your neighbor as yourself. If you are on good terms with yourself it is an impertinence: if on bad, an injury.
The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.
"SHE: Do you like Kipling? HE: I don't know, I've never Kippled!" If you've never read Rudyard Kipling's science fiction, then you've never Kippled.
Having achieved international fame with The Jungle Book, Captains Courageous, Kim, and his Just So Stories, in 1905 Kipling serialized a thrilling science fiction novella, With the Night Mail: A Story of 2000 A.D, in which the reader learns-while...
Christian Science is a 1907 book by the American writer Mark Twain (1835–1910). The book is a collection of essays Twain wrote aboutChristian Science, beginning with an article that was published in Cosmopolitan in 1899. Although Twain was interested in mental healing and the ideas behind Christian Science, he was hostile towards its founder, Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910).
The Light That Failed is a novel by Rudyard Kipling that was first published in 1890 in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine dated January 1891. Most of the novel is set in London, but many important events throughout the story occur in Sudan or India. The Light that Failed follows the life of Dick Heldar, a painter who goes blind. A 1903 Broadway play starring Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson and his wife...
The story told in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic novel, A Little Princess, was first written as a serialized novella, Sara Crewe, or What Happened at Miss Minchin’s, and published in St. Nicholas Magazine, in 1888. It tells the story of Sara Crewe, an intelligent, wealthy, young girl at Miss Minchin’s Select Seminary for Young Ladies. Sara’s fortunes change when her...
The Uncommercial Traveller is a collection of literary sketches and reminiscences written by Charles Dickens.
In 1859 Dickens founded a new journal called All the Year Round and the Uncommercial Traveller articles would be among his main contributions. He seems to have chosen the title and persona of the Uncommercial Traveller as a result of a speech he gave on 22 December 1859 to the Commercial...
Agnes Grey is the debut novel of English author Anne Brontë, first published in December 1847, and republished in a second edition in 1850. The novel follows Agnes Grey, a governess, as she works within families of the English gentry. Scholarship and comments by Anne's sister Charlotte Brontë suggest the novel is largely based on Anne Brontë's own experiences as a governess for...
The Devil's Dictionary was begun in a weekly paper in 1881, and was continued in a desultory way at long intervals until 1906. In that year a large part of it was published in covers with the title The Cynic's Word Book, a name which the author had not the power to reject or happiness to approve. To quote the publishers of the present work:
"This more reverent title had previously been forced...
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...
This is collection of well known fairy tales by Grimm's and others, with an introductory on the history and importance of fairy tales for children.
The book includes:
One Eye, Two Eyes, Three Eyes
The Magic Mirror
Hansel and Grethel
The Story of Aladdin
The White Cat
The Second Voyage of Sinbad
The Golden Goose
The Twelve Brothers
Tom Thumb
Cinderella
Puss in Boots
Blue...
The Mysterious Stranger is the final novel attempted by the American author Mark Twain. He worked on it periodically from 1897 through 1908. The body of work is a serious social commentary by Twain addressing his ideas of the Moral Sense and the "damned human race".
Twain wrote multiple versions of the story; each is unfinished and involves the character of "Satan".
Charles Dickens is considered one of the greatest English authors of all time. Dickens often used the pen name Boz. Much of his work first appeared in periodicals and magazines in serialized form. Unlike many writers of his time Dickens wrote the entire novel before serializing it. He made frequent use of the cliffhanger to keep the public interested. Dickens talks of the joys of a quiet a Sunday...