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Gentleman thief A.J. Raffles burgles his way through a series of homes in late Victorian England. A Thief in the Night is a short story collection and Hornung's third book in the Raffles series. (Summary by Cathy Barratt)...

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Adventure, Fiction

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Excerpt: Lady Susan Vernon to Mr. Vernon. My Dear Brother,--I can no longer refuse myself the pleasure of profiting by your kind invitation when we last parted of spending some weeks with you at Churchhill, and, therefore, if quite convenient to you and Mrs. Vernon to receive me at present, I shall hope within a few days to be introduced to a sister whom I have so long desired to be acquainted with. My kind friends here are most affectionately urgent with me to prolong my stay, but their hospitable and cheerful dispositions lead them too much into society for my present situation and state of mind; and I impatiently look forward to the hour when I shall be admitted into Your delightful retirement....

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Excerpt: ?The Fall of the House of Usher? by Edgar Allan Poe.

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Preface: It is sometimes treated as an impertinence to revive the personages of one story in another, even though it is after the example of Shakespeare, who revived Falstaff, after his death, at the behest of Queen Elizabeth. This precedent is, however, a true impertinence in calling on the very great to justify the very small!...

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Excerpt: Mr. President and Gentlemen of the convention:-- If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. ?A house divided against itself cannot stand.? I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing....

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Contents SPEECH AT SPRINGFIELD, JUNE 17, 1858 ............................................................................................................ 4 SPEECH AT CHICAGO, JULY 10, 1858. .................................................................................................................. 12 IN REPLY TO SENATOR DOUGLAS ...................................................................................................................... 12 SPEECH AT SPRINGFIELD, JULY 17, 1858. .......................................................................................................... 30 CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN ........................................................................................................................... 48 LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS ..................................................................................................................................... 48 FIRST JOINT DEBATE, AT OTTAWA, AUGUST 21, 1858 ..................................................................................... 50 SECOND JOINT DEBATE, AT FREEPORT, AUGUST 27, 1858 .....................................................

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. Joe Brownlow?s Fancy. The lady said, ?An orphan?s fate Is sad and hard to bear.? --Scott ?MOTHER, you could do a great kindness.? ?Well, Joe?? ?If you would have the little teacher at the Miss Heath?s here for the holidays. After all the rest, she has had the measles last and worst, and they don?t know what to do with her, for she came from the asylum for officers? daughters, and has no home at all, and they must go away to have the house purified. They can?t take her with them, for their sister has children, and she will have to roam from room to room before the whitewashers, which is not what I should wish in the critical state of chest left by measles.?...

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Excerpt: Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence.

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Contents PART ONE........................................................................................................................................ 4 CHAPTER I THE EARLY MARRIED LIFE OF THE MORELS ............................................................................ 4 CHAPTER II THE BIRTH OF PAUL, AND ANOTHER BATTLE......................................................................... 31 CHAPTER III THE CASTING OFF OF MOREL?THE TAKING ON OF WILLIAM ....................................... 51 CHAPTER IV THE YOUNG LIFE OF PAUL............................................................................................................ 64 CHAPTER V PAUL LAUNCHES INTO LIFE .......................................................................................................... 91 CHAPTER VI DEATH IN THE FAMILY................................................................................................................ 123 PART TWO................................................................................................................................... 153 CHAPTER VII LAD-AND-GIRL LOVE................................

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The Mysteries of Paris (French: Les Mystères de Paris) is a novel by Eugène Sue which was published serially in Journal des débats from June 19, 1842 until October 15, 1843. Les Mystères de Paris singlehandedly increased the circulation of Journal des débats. There has been lots of talk on the origins of the French novel of the 19th century: Stendhal, Balzac, Dumas, Gautier, Sand or Hugo. One often forgets Eugène Sue. Still, The Mysteries of Paris occupies a unique space in the birth of this literary genre: it entranced thousands of readers for more than a year (even illiterates who had episodes read to them) and was also a major work in the formation of a certain form of social consciousness. One often hears that the 1848 revolution was partly born in the pages of the Mysteries of Paris or, more appropriately, that the Mysteries of Paris helped create a climate which allowed the 1848 revolution to occur.The hero of the novel is the mysterious and distinguished Rodolphe, who is really the Grand Duke of Gérolstein (a fictional country) but is disguised as a Parisian worker. Rodolphe can speak in argot, is extremely strong and a good ...

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Mystery, Fantasy, Adventure

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Excerpt: The Works of Edgar Allan Poe in Five Volumes: Volume Five.

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Contents PHILOSOPHY OF FURNITURE .................................................................................................................................. 6 A TALE OF JERUSALEM ........................................................................................................................................... 12 THE SPHINX............................................................................................................................................................... 16 HOP-FROG ................................................................................................................................................................. 20 THE MAN OF THE CROWD ..................................................................................................................................... 29 NEVER BET THE DEVIL YOUR HEAD ..................................................................................................................... 38 THOU ART THE MAN................................................................................................................................................ 47 W...

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A man who has been condemned to death writes down his cogitations, feelings and fears while he is waiting for his execution. He does not betray his name to the reader or what he has done. He describes his life in prison, everything from what his cell looks like to the personality of the prison priest....

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Fiction

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The Fair Rewards by Thomas Beer . . . is a really distiguished novel. The writing is far above the average: it has style and sophistication and personality, intermingled with a truly vivid show of imagination. It even borders on brilliancy, but it is a hard, cold, cynical sort of brilliancy that chills. It almost hurts . . . The title itself is indicative of cynicism. It is derived from Shakespeare's quotation, These be the fair rewards of those that love, and it is an ironical reference, for Mark Walling, the blind, simple, loving idolater, in return for his great and unselfish devotion to Margot, reaps selfishness and ingratitude and lack of consideration. Hand in hand with the progress of Mark from country yokel to a stage producer goes the history of the American theatre. Intermingled with the imaginary characters are Clyde Fitch, Anna Held, Mr. Frohman and several other flesh-and-blood personages that strengthen the realism. (New York Times review, June 4, 1922)...

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Fiction

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This is the final volume in the trilogy following the smart, stylish, divorced and independent businesswoman Emma McChesney in her career from stenographer, then drummer (traveling salesman) to owner of her own company. (The first was Roast Beef, Medium and the second Personality Plus both in the catalog). Edna Ferber first gained success with these stories and later went on to write Show Boat, Giant and other well known books. First published in 1915, Emma's son, Jock, has moved to Chicago with his new wife. Emma decides to sell in South America and proves she has not lost her magic touch. Emma gets involved in romance, saving a business and many other things. Emma symbolizes the ideal woman at the dawn of the twentieth century: sharp, capable, charming, and progressive. ( Summary by Phil Chenevert)...

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Fiction

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I consider the story as a whole to he good, though I am not aware that the public ever corroborated that verdict. - the author The Claverings is the best wrought of the novels designed for The Cornhill, and as surely conceived as any book he ever wrote. - Sadleir. It is a novel of atmosphere, and the atmosphere is of that sort very dangerous for the English novelist, the atmosphere captured so supremely well by Thackeray the green-lighted, close-scented gambling rooms, the shabby adventures of half-deserted spas, the shelving beaches of foreign watering-places, concealed accents, stolen passports, impoverished counts and impertinent ladies' maids.... Trollope's most serious attempt to escape from his own personality. - Walpole (Summary by )...

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Fiction

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Miriam Henderson is one of what novelist Dolf Wyllarde (in her great work, The Pathway of the Pioneer ) termed nous autres, i.e., young gentlewomen who must venture forth and earn their living after their fathers have been financially ruined. Also, she has read Villette; she thus applies for and is offered a job teaching conversational English at a girls' school, albeit in Germany rather than France. Pointed Roofs describes her year abroad, as she endeavors to make her way in the hotbed of seething female personalities that populate the school, overseen by her employer, the formidable Fraulein. Richardson is adroit at conveying nuances of human perception through acutely observed physical and emotional detail. She was unfortunately labeled the inventor of stream of consciousness, and her later novels suffered when she started believing her own press; but her early ones (the first half-dozen are pre-1923) are free from stylistic excess, and are poignant -- or in this case -- pointed explorations of the workings of the human mind. (Introduction by Grant Hurlock)...

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Fiction

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Excerpt: Preface By Way Of Criticism. These studies are collected from the monthly press. One appeared in the New Quarterly, one in MacMillan?s, and the rest in the Cornhill Magazine. To the Cornhill I owe a double debt of thanks; first, that I was received there in the very best society, and under the eye of the very best of editors; and second, that the proprietors have allowed me to republish so considerable an amount of copy....

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Contents PREFACE BY WAY OF CRITICISM. ........................................................................................... 4 CHAPTER I ? VICTOR HUGO?S ROMANCES ........................................................................ 15 CHAPTER II ? SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS.......................................................... 34 CHAPTER III ? WALT WHITMAN............................................................................................. 63 CHAPTER IV ? HENRY DAVID THOREAU: HIS CHARACTER AND OPINIONS........... 84 CHAPTER V ? YOSHIDA-TORAJIRO..................................................................................... 107 CHAPTER VI ? FRANCOIS VILLON, STUDENT, POET, AND HOUSEBREAKER.........117 CHAPTER VII ? CHARLES OF ORLEANS ............................................................................ 141 CHAPTER VIII ? SAMUEL PEPYS .......................................................................................... 170 CHAPTER IX ? JOHN KNOX AND HIS RELATIONS TO WOMEN .................................. 190...

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. The Foreigner At Home. ?This is no my ain house; I ken by the biggin? o?t.? Two recent books* one by Mr. Grant White on England, one on France by the diabolically clever Mr. Hillebrand, may well have set people thinking on the divisions of races and nations. Such thoughts should arise with particular congruity and force to inhabitants of that United Kingdom, peopled from so many different stocks, babbling so many different dialects, and offering in its extent such singular contrasts, from the busiest over-population to the unkindliest desert, from the Black Country to the Moor of Rannoch. It is not only when we cross the seas that we go abroad; there are foreign parts of England; and the race that has conquered so wide an empire has not yet managed to assimilate the islands whence she sprang. Ireland, Wales, and the Scottish mountains still cling, in part, to their old Gaelic speech. It was but the other day that English triumphed in Cornwall, and they still show in Mousehole, on St. Michael?s Bay, the house of the last Cornish-speaking woman. English itself, which will now frank the traveller through the most of...

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Contents CHAPTER I: THE FOREIGNER AT HOME ..................................................................................... 5 CHAPTER II: SOME COLLEGE MEMORIES................................................................................ 14 CHAPTER III: OLD MORTALITY .................................................................................................. 20 CHAPTER IV: A COLLEGE MAGAZINE ...................................................................................... 28 CHAPTER V: AN OLD SCOTCH GARDENER ............................................................................. 36 CHAPTER VI: PASTORAL .............................................................................................................. 41 CHAPTER VII: THE MANSE .......................................................................................................... 48 CHAPTER VIII: MEMOIRS OF AN ISLET .................................................................................... 53 CHAPTER IX: THOMAS STEVENSON ? CIVIL ENGINEER...................................................... 58 CHAPTER X: TALK AND TALKERS ....................

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Introduction: Benjamin Franklin was born in Milk Street, Boston, on January 6, 1706. His father, Josiah Franklin, was a tallow chandler who married twice, and of his seventeen children Benjamin was the youngest son. His schooling ended at ten, and at twelve he was bound apprentice to his brother James, a printer, who published the ?New England Courant.? To this journal he became a contributor, and later was for a time its nominal editor....

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Published in 1901, The Sacred Fount delves into the interior observations and obsessions of one Englishman during a weekend gathering in the country. Regarding himself as a master of human psychology, the narrator watches the goings-on of the other guests and weaves theories about the interpersonal implications of what he witnesses, leaving the not infrequently perplexed reader the task of sorting out whether his conclusions are facts or fancies. (Introduction by S. Kovalchik)...

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Fiction, Literature

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What Is Man?, published by Mark Twain in 1906, is a dialogue between a young man and an older man jaded to the world. It involves ideas of destiny and free will, as well as of psychological egoism. The Old Man asserted that the human being is merely a machine, and nothing more. The Young Man objects, and asks him to go into particulars and furnish his reasons for his position. This collection of short stories covers a wide range of Twain's interests: the serious, the political and the ironically humorous. (Summary by Wikipedia and John Greenman)...

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Essay/Short nonfiction, Fiction, Satire

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Jane Austen demonstrated her mastery of the epistolary novel genre in Lady Susan, which she wrote in 1795 but never published. Although the primary focus of this short novel is the selfish behavior of Lady Susan as she engages in affairs and searches for suitable husbands for herself and her young daughter, the actual action shares its importance with Austen’s manipulation of her characters' behavior by means of their reactions to the letters that they receive. The heroine adds additional interest by altering the tone of her own letters based on the recipient of the letter. Thus, the character of Lady Susan is developed through many branches as Austen suggests complications of identity and the way in which that identity is based on interaction rather than on solitary constructions of personality. (Summary from Wikipedia)...

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Epistolary fiction, Fiction, Literature