Showing results by author "ciesse" in All Categories

Le Comte de Monte-Cristo is an adventure novel and one of the author's most popular works. He completed the work in 1844. The story takes place in France, Italy, islands in the Mediterranean and in the Levant during the historical events of 1815-1838 (from just before the Hundred Days to the reign of Louis-Philippe of France). It deals with themes of hope, justice, vengeance, mercy and forgiveness. The book is considered a literary classic today. (Summary by David Clarke, ref. Wikipedia)

"The Story of the Exploration of Australia is one which we cannot willingly let die. There are many reasons for keeping alive the remembrance of such heroic deeds. It is due to the memory of those men who took their lives in their hands, and, in many cases, laid their bones in the desert; it is an act of gratitude on our part, who have entered on their labours; and it is a kind of information indispensable to every Australian who desires to know the history of his country." - Summary from the Author's Preface

The first book in the 20-novel Rougon-Macquart Cycle. A monument of French naturalism. The sprawling tale of a family in Provence, during the Second Empire, the family that grew out of the liaisons between Adelaide Fouque and her husband Rougons, and the smuggler Macquart. - Summary by Mark Leder

The framing story concerns a man who dreams of speaking to Venus about love while she wears furs. The unnamed narrator tells his dreams to a friend, Severin, who tells him how to break him of his fascination with cruel women by reading a manuscript, Memoirs of a Supersensual Man.This manuscript tells of a man, Severin von Kusiemski, so infatuated with a woman, Wanda von Dunajew, that he requests to be treated as her slave, and encourages her to treat him in progressively more degrading ways. At first Wanda does not understand or relate to the request, but after humouring Severin a bit she ...

After an unspecified family disaster, protagonist Lucy Snowe travels to the fictional city of Villette to teach at an all-girls school where she is unwillingly pulled into both adventure and romance. Summary by Wikipedia Cast list: Narrator: Mary J Lucy Snowe: Elizabeth Barr Graham/Dr. John: Robert Dixon Monsieur Paul: Herman Roskams Madame Beck: Elizabeth Klett Polly/Paulina: Amanda Friday Mrs. Bretton: Michele Eaton Ginevra Fanshawe: Libby Gohn Mr. Home/Bassompierre: tovarisch Rosine [the portress]: Leanne Mademoiselle St. Pierre [a teacher]: Kristin Gjerløw Isabelle [a student]: Arie Pere ...

Writer/entertainer Garrison Keillor (A Prairie Home Companion) on “The Innocents Abroad”: “…one of the best selling travel books of all time.” (The Writer’s Almanac, June 8, 2012)When you dive into Mark Twain’s (Samuel Clemens’) The Innocents Abroad, you have to be ready to learn more about the unadorned, ungilded reality of 19th century “touring” than you might think you want to learn. This is a tough, literary journey. It was tough for Twain and his fellow “pilgrims”, both religious and otherwise. They set out, on a June day in 1867, to visit major tourist sites in ...

Shakespeare's sequence of 154 sonnets deals with such themes as love, time, death, immortality, lust, and sex. The poems follow but also depart from the Petrarchan tradition of sonnets written by a frustrated male lover to an unattainable idealized female beloved. Shakespeare's sonnets are addressed to both male and female lovers: the androgynous "young man" and the alluring yet dangerously sexual "dark lady." (Summary by Elizabeth Klett)

These are the letters of John Keats, as written to family, close friends and others during his brief, eventful years as an artist. (However, the editor chose to exclude love letters to Fanny Brawne, respecting their private nature.) The celebrated Keats letters were written between 1816–1820, and include those colorful entries penned during his 44-day tour with Charles Brown as they rambled through England, Ireland and Scotland. Also included are the famous, lengthy "journal letters," written to his brother George and sister-in-law in America. Not only a poetic genius, Keats shines in ...

Northanger Abbey is a hilarious parody of 18th century gothic novels. The heroine, 17-year old Catherine, has been reading far too many “horrid” gothic novels and would love to encounter some gothic-style terror — but the superficial world of Bath proves hazardous enough. (Summary by Kara)

The Douay–Rheims Bible is a translation of the Bible from the Latin Vulgate into English made by members of the Catholic seminary English College, Douai, France. It is the foundation on which nearly all English Catholic versions are still based.It was translated principally by Gregory Martin, an Oxford-trained scholar, working in the circle of English Catholic exiles on the Continent, under the sponsorship of William (later Cardinal) Allen. The New Testament appeared at Rheims in 1582; the Old Testament at Douai in 1609.The translation, although competent, exhibited a taste for Latinisms ...

Personal correspondence of Bohemian religious reformer John Huss (Jan Hus) from 1411 when he was exiled from Prague through his death by burning as heretic in 1415 by order of the Council of Constance. These were first published in 1536 by the German Protestant reformer Martin Luther and his introduction is included here. - Summary by Rom Maczka

Antony and Cleopatra is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607. It was first printed in the First Folio of 1623. The plot is based on Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's Life of Marcus Antonius and follows the relationship between Cleopatra and Mark Antony from the time of the Parthian War to Cleopatra's suicide. The major antagonist is Octavius Caesar, one of Antony's fellow triumviri and the future first emperor of Rome. The tragedy is a Roman play characterized by swift, panoramic shifts in geographical locations and in registers,...

Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sévigné (5 February 1626 – 17 April 1696) was a French aristocrat famous for the precision, clarity, wit and vividness of her letters, which deal with personal issues and also with public events in the France of Louis XIV - Summary by Wikipedia

Daisy Miller is an 1878 novella by Henry James first appearing in Cornhill Magazine in June–July 1879, and in book form the following year. It portrays the courtship of the beautiful American girl Daisy Miller by Frederick Winterbourne, a sophisticated compatriot of hers. His pursuit of her is hampered by her own flirtatiousness, which is frowned upon by the other expatriates when they meet in Switzerland and Italy. (Summary by Wikipedia)CastFrederick Winterbourne: Brett W. DowneyDaisy Miller: Amanda FridayRandolph Miller: Arielle LipshawMrs. Miller: Libby GohnMrs. Costello: Elizabeth ...

Adam Bede, the first novel written by George Eliot (the pen name of Mary Ann Evans), was published in 1859. It was published pseudonymously, even though Evans was a well-published and highly respected scholar of her time. The novel has remained in print ever since, and is used in university studies of 19th century English literature. The story's plot follows four characters rural lives in the fictional community of Hayslope—a rural, pastoral and close-knit community in 1799. The novel revolves around a love triangle between beautiful but thoughtless Hetty Sorrel, Captain Arthur Donnithorne, ...

The wild and raw adventures of Catherine Hayes, who was burned for murder at Tyburn in 1742 - Summary by Mark Leder

孔子（公元前551年9月28日－前479年），子姓孔氏，名丘，字仲尼，鲁（今中國山东曲阜）人，中国春秋末期的思想家和教育家。孔子是中华文化中的核心学说儒家的首代宗師，集華夏上古文化之大成，在世時已被譽為“天縱之聖”、“天之木鐸”，是當時社會上最博學者之一，並且被后世尊为至聖（聖人之中的聖人）、至聖先師、万世师表。孔子和他创立的儒家思想对中国和朝鲜、台灣、日本、越南等地區有深远的影响，這些地區又被稱爲儒家文化圈...

The Moberly–Jourdain incident was an event that occurred on 10 August 1901 in the gardens of the Petit Trianon, involving two female academics, Charlotte Anne Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain. The women were both from educated backgrounds. During a trip to Versailles, they visited the Petit Trianon, a small château in the grounds of the Palace of Versailles, where they allegedly experienced a time slip, and saw Marie Antoinette as well as other people of the same period. After researching the history of the palace, and comparing notes of their experience, they published their work in a book ...

This is a sequel to Kidnapped. Many thought Kidnapped ended quite abruptly. The reason is Stevenson planned on writing a sequel. Catriona takes up the story of David Balfour on the same day Kidnapped ends. He must now try to clear his name and the name of James Stewart of the Appin murder. This will not be easy because the Campbells want James Stewart to hang."Catriona: Being Memoirs of the Further Adventures of David Balfour at Home and Abroad, in which are set forth his misfortunes anent the Appin Murder, his troubles with Lord Advocate Grant: captivity on the Bass Rock, Journey into Holland...

These twenty-eight lectures to laymen are elementary and almost conversational. Freud sets forth with a frankness almost startling the difficulties and limitations of psychoanalysis, and also describes its main methods and results as only a master and originator of a new school of thought can do. A text like this is the most opportune and will naturally more or less supersede all other introductions to the general subject of psychoanalysis. It presents the author in a new light, as an effective and successful popularizer, and is certain to be welcomed not only by the large and growing number ...