Showing results by author "Beauty_23" in All Categories

"I do not pretend to say the young man is without faults; but they are all the faults of wildness and of youth; faults which he may, nay, which I am certain he will, relinquish."One of the great works of the English literary canon, this comic masterpiece, first published in 1749, draws us into the lives of two neighbouring Somersetshire squires and friends, one genial and generous, the other a hot-headed lover of the hunt and the bottle, who conspire together, on the basis of a mutual misunderstanding, to marry the former's nephew to the latter's daughter, very much to the discomfort of the ...

Dubliners is a collection of 15 short stories by James Joyce, first published in 1914. They form a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle class life in and around Dublin in the early years of the 20th century. The stories were written when Irish nationalism was at its peak and a search for a national identity and purpose was raging; at a crossroads of history and culture, Ireland was jolted by various converging ideas and influences. They centre on Joyce's idea of an epiphany: a moment where a character experiences self-understanding or illumination. Many of the characters in Dubliners later ...

The Souls of Black Folk is a well-known work of African-American literature by activist W.E.B. Du Bois. The book, published in 1903, contains several essays on race, some of which had been previously published in Atlantic Monthly magazine. Du Bois drew from his own experiences to develop this groundbreaking work on being African-American in American society. Outside of its notable place in African-American history, The Souls of Black Folk also holds an important place in social science as one of the first works to deal with sociology.

This work is based on the material which Alphonsus Rodriguez (a Spanish Jesuit priest) collected from his spiritual exhortations to his brethren, and published at the request of his superiors. Although intended for use by his religious brethren, he modified it so it would also profit laypersons. It is a book of practical instructions on all the virtues which perfect the Christian life, whether lived in a monastery or in the world. It became popular at once, and more than 25 editions of the original Spanish have been issued, 60 editions in French, 20 in Italian, 10 in German, and 8 in Latin. ...

On Liberty by John Stuart Mill is an essay about individual freedom and its limits. Mill argues that people should be free to think, speak, and act as they wish, as long as they don’t harm others. He believes this freedom leads to progress and happiness. Governments and society shouldn’t control people’s choices unless those choices hurt someone else. On Liberty is pertinent to contemporary debates about free speech, personal rights, and social control and so retains its relevance, perhaps more urgently than ever. Mill’s work is key to a proper understanding of the balance between ...

Life on the Mississippi is a memoir by Mark Twain detailing his days as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River before the American Civil War. (Summary from Wikipedia)

Roughing It is semi-autobiographical travel literature written by American humorist Mark Twain. It was authored during 1870–71 and published in 1872 as a sequel to his first book Innocents Abroad. This book tells of Twain's adventures prior to his pleasure cruise related in Innocents Abroad.

Faulkner's first book, containing two long poems. The Marble Faun is the first. The second poem in the book, The Green Bough, is not public domain yet. - Summary by Czandra

The Mystery of Edwin Drood is the final novel by Charles Dickens. The novel was left unfinished at the time of Dickens' death, and readers have often speculated what the ending might have been. The novel is named after Edwin Drood, but it mostly tells the story of his uncle, a Jekyll-and-Hyde-esque choirmaster named John Jasper, who is in love with his pupil, Rosa Bud. Miss Bud is Drood's fiancée, and has caught the eye of the high-spirited and hot-tempered Neville Landless, who comes from Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) with his twin sister, Helena, and immediately makes an enemy of Drood. It is ...

Dr. Watson sits down again to ruminate over his notes of all the mysteries he has joined Sherlock Holmes in investigating. In the “Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes”, he has gathered twelve more of the most interesting puzzles for the public’s appreciation. He concludes with the bittersweet note that he believes the last story will be his final collaboration with the famous sleuth. -

Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen's first published novel, focuses on the lives and loves of two sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood. The sensible Elinor and the sensitive Marianne both fall for men whose affections are otherwise engaged. The novel includes a wonderful cast of colorful supporting characters, as well as Austen's trademark dry wit and ironic narration. (Summary by Elizabeth Klett)

This warm and witty novel presents itself as the first person narration of an immensely likeable and resourceful woman who, born in the most shameful of circumstances, comes to be desired by, and indeed married to, many men, in the course of her life — some of whom she inveigles into marriage on false pretences — who, when all else fails, resorts to an extraordinarily successful life of crime, pulling many ingenious heists until at last she is nabbed and faced with a real prospect of being hanged. Moll's descriptions of the amorous inclinations of males are often very funny — and not the...

In 1908, the National Monetary Commission was established by Congress to study financial boom-and-bust cycles. Senator Nelson Aldrich (Republican-RI) was chair of the commission. He, in secret enclave with a group of bankers, drafted what was called The Aldrich Plan, which provided for a central "bank" that would hold funds individual banks could borrow in the case of a bank run, print currency, and act as the fiscal agent of the US government. However, the plan gave little power to the government and seemed to give almost absolute control of the country's currency to Wall Street financiers. ...

This is the account of the perilous mission of Michael Strogoff, courier for Czar Alexander II, who is sent from Moscow to the besieged city of Irkutsk, where the governor, brother of the Czar, has taken his last stand against a Tartar rebellion led by the fearsome Feofar-Khan. When telegraph lines are cut between the Russian Far East and the mainland, Strogoff must make his way through hostile territory to warn the governor of the return of the traitor Ivan Ogareff, a disgraced former officer who seeks vengeance against the Tsar’s family by the destruction of Irkutsk.

The Sign of the Four (1890), also called The Sign of Four, is the second novel featuring Sherlock Holmes written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle wrote four novels and 56 stories starring the fictional detective.The story is set in 1888. The Sign of the Four has a complex plot involving service in East India Company, India, the Indian Rebellion of 1857, a stolen treasure, and a secret pact among four convicts ("the Four" of the title) and two corrupt prison guards. It presents the detective's drug habit and humanizes him in a way that had not been done in the preceding novel A Study in Scarlet...

"The wrongdoing of one generation lives into the successive ones and... becomes a pure and uncontrollable mischief." Hawthorne's moral for "The House of the Seven Gables," taken from the Preface, accurately presages his story. The full weight of the gloomy mansion of the title seems to sit on the fortunes of the Pyncheon family. An ancestor took advantage of the Salem witch trials to wrest away the land whereon the house would be raised... but the land's owner, about to be executed as a wizard, cursed the Pyncheon family until such time as they should make restitution.Now, almost two centuries...

The story is told almost entirely from the point of view of the first person narrator, David Copperfield himself, and was the first Dickens novel to be written as such a narration. The story deals with the life of David Copperfield from childhood to maturity. David's father had died six months before he was born, and seven years later, his mother remarries but David and his step-father don’t get on and he is sent to boarding school. As David settles into life we are taken along with him and meet a dazzling array of characters, some of whom we will never forget and some of whom we won't want ...

A Tale of Two Cities is a novel by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. With well over 200 million copies sold, it ranks among the most famous works in the history of fictional literature. The novel depicts the plight of the French peasantry demoralized by the French aristocracy in the years leading up to the revolution, the corresponding brutality demonstrated by the revolutionaries toward the former aristocrats in the early years of the revolution, and many unflattering social parallels with life in London during the same time period. It follows ...

Bleak house is one of Dickens finest achievements. It was written for serialisation in 1853 when Dickens was at the peak of his career. Monthly sales substantially exceeded his previous bestseller David Copperfield.Dickens' mastery of the English language comes to the fore in this book. It is an energetic book: a complex mystery story revolving around the heroine Esther Summerson and her path from childhood to marriage. During the course of Esther’s narration Dickens introduces some wonderful and unforgettable characters, and at the same time provides a searing indictment of the laws’ ...

What really killed Sir Charles Baskerville? Is his nephew, Sir Henry, in danger from the legendary family curse, a gigantic black hound? Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are on the case in this classic mystery, set on lonely Dartmoor in Devonshire. Neolithic ruins, a perilous quagmire, eerie sounds in the night, and (of course) fog all add to the fun, with an escaped convict thrown in for good measure. (Summary by Laurie Anne Walden)