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A Book for Kids, first published in 1921, may be regarded as the Australian equivalent of Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses. The collection contains 55 short poems on a wide variety of subjects, and two stories, "The Little Red House" and "The Boy Who Rode into the Sunset".

In De Profundis, Oscar Wilde, in a lengthy letter to his former lover, reflects on suffering, forgiveness, and redemption. As a confessional text, it ranks with the Confessions of Saint Augustine as an examination of the nature of penitence, its origin and transformative effect. T. W. H. Crosland (1865-1924), a social commentator, was extremely moralistic. Among his targets was Oscar Wilde, whose contrition, as expressed in De Profundis, he believed to be an elaborate and convenient sham.

This short text is widely accepted as one of the canonical wisdom books of the Bible. It is narrated by one who calls himself a teacher, and also a king, traditionally held to be Solomon. The general recommendation is that the wise man should consider all created things as symbols of vanity and that one's prime concern should be to avoid offending God. As with the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, commentators have been arguing for centuries about the true philosophical orientation of the author. View range from the advocacy of a radical nihilism to the recommendation of a stringent and unwavering piety.

The Raven Edition of the works of Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) presents his complete literary output in five volumes. In addition to The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, Poe's longest work, Volume 3 contains six stories, which feature Poe's characteristic interest in death, dissolution, and twisted relationships.

Listeners are invited to sit back and enjoy this collection of classic Yuletide tales....

It is said that there is no-one more zealous in a cause than an adult convert. A notable example of this was Joseph McCabe, whose conversion was not to a religion, but from religious faith to secularism. Ordained as a Franciscan priest in 1890, and later recognized by the Catholic Church as an able scholar and teacher, by 1897 McCabe had completely lost his faith and had left the priesthood. He became a very active secularist, delivering thousands of public lectures and publishing over two hundred books on a wide range of religious, historical and scientific topics.

Between 1895 and 1897 Oscar Wilde served a prison sentence for offences "of gross indecency". Most of this time was spent at Reading Gaol, where Wilde encountered another prisoner, Harles Thomas Wooldridge, sentenced to death for the murder of his wife. Wooldrige was hanged at the gaol on 7th July, 1896. Wilde wrote the poem in France in 1897 after his release from prison. The poem is a long reflection on the inequity and ineffectiveness of statutory punishment and the redeeming power of the Christian message of forgiveness.

The Raven Edition of the works of Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) presents his complete literary output in five volumes. The second volume contains 22 stories, which illustrate the author's fascination with the macabre, the unexpected, and the terrifying.

First published in 1874, "The City of Dreadful Night" is an extended poetic meditation on melancholy, or what is generally termed today as depression. Thomson's "city" is the "città dolente" of Dante, the domain of souls trapped in a round of ceaseless misery. However, the inhabitants of Thomson's world endure a torment more subtle and more devastating than the acute and picturesque tortures of Dante's Inferno - a complete loss of purpose and a relentless draining of energy, a desperate and ever wakeful ennui.

Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (aka PG Wodehouse) wrote in excess of 90 books, 40 plays, and 200 short stories between 1902 and 1974 and is widely regarded as one of the greatest humorists of the 20th century. Right Ho, Jeeves! is his second in a series of books written about a luckless young British millionaire named Bertram Wooster and his sharp valet, Jeeves.

This anthology, first published in 1919, is very much a record of its time. Many of the poems deal with the cataclysmic trauma of World War One and the emergence of a new world order after the fading of the Edwardian era. Among the authors of the 151 poems can be found the names of Rupert Brooke and Ivor Gurney, best known as war poets, as well as James Joyce and the mystic philosopher Evelyn Underhill.

Although Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) is best known today as a master of macabre fiction, his writings cover a wide range of other forms, including poetry, drama, criticism, and historical commentary. The Raven Edition presents his complete literary output in five volumes, the first of which contains three tributes to Poe and eight of his stories.

Stephen Leacock was a prolific and brilliant writer, whose tongue-in-cheek writings have been amusing Canadian fans for decades. He first published Winsome Winnie in 1920 as part of a compendium of short stories entitled Winsome Winnie and Other New Nonsense Novels. It relates the trials and tribulations of the recently orphaned and penniless Winnifred Clair.

John Pollen (1855-1923) was an official in the Indian Civil Service. A keen linguist, he learned Russian, Esperanto, and Persian and in 1915 published an English translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. His collection contains 158 quatrains and includes a set of seven prefatory quatrains by Andrew Lang and a foreword by the Aga Khan.

Dooman's translation of the Rubaiyat, containing 180 quatrains, was first published in 1911. It has a roughhewn quality, reminiscent of the style of an earlier American translator, John Payne, who published a collection of 845 quatrains in 1898.

This book, a true spiritual classic, consists of notes of several conversations had with, and letters written by, Nicholas Herman, of Lorraine, a humble man of little education. After having served as a soldier and a footman, Herman was admitted as a lay brother to the order of the barefooted Carmelites at Paris in 1666, where he took the name "Brother Lawrence." The conversations are supposed to have been recorded by Joseph de Beaufort, who later became vicar general to the Archbishop of Paris.

Despite its patina of humor, the work is a merciless exposé of the commercial middle class dishonesty, and the convenient immorality hiding behind social conventions, which are characteristic of a developing urban society. The most noble character, Serafima, is a compelling mixture of naïveté, whimsicality, sentimentality, and obstinate practicality - one of the finest character portraits in Russian drama.

The final volume of this collection features the work of 20 poets who were active just after the First World War.

The First World War shook loose the foundations not only of political structures, but also artistic conventions. New styles of poetry emerged which challenged not just the traditional presentation of poetry, but even the structure and function of language itself. This volume pays tribute to the pioneers who redefined the poetic landscape in this challenging period.

This volume pays tribute to the work of 20 poets whose careers were profoundly influenced by the First World War - "the war to end all wars".