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Excerpt: It was about the beginning of September, 1664, that I, mong the rest of my neighbors, heard in ordinary dis course that the plague was returned again in Holland; for it had been very violent there, and particularly at Amsterdam and Rotterdam, in the year 1663, whither, they say, it was brought, some said from Italy, others from the Levant, among some goods which were brought home by their Turkey fleet; others said it was brought from Candia; others from Cyprus. It mattered not from whence it came; but all agreed it was come into Holland again....

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Excerpt: To whom, madame, but to you should I inscribe this work; to you whose lofty and candid intellect is a treasury to your friends; to you that are to me not only a whole public, but the most indulgent of sisters as well? Will you deign to accept a token of the friendship of which I am proud? You, and some few souls as noble, will grasp the whole of the thought underlying The Firm of Nucingen, appended to Cesar Birotteau. Is there not a whole social lesson in the contrast between the two stories?...

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Excerpt: When The Duchess Was Dead No one, probably, ever felt himself to be more alone in the world than our old friend the Duke of Omnium, when the Duchess died. When this sad event happened he had ceased to be Prime Minister. During the first nine months after he had left office he and the Duchess remained in England. Then they had gone abroad, taking with them their three children. The eldest, Lord Silverbridge, had been at Oxford, but had his career there cut short by some more than ordinary youthful folly, which had induced his father to agree with the college authorities that his name had better be taken off the college books,--all which had been cause of very great sorrow to the Duke. The other boy was to go to Cambridge, but his father had thought it well to give him a twelve-month?s run on the Continent, under his own inspection....

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. He had a mortal dislike, poor Stransom, to lean anniversaries, and loved them still less when they made a pretence of a figure. Celebrations and suppressions were equally painful to him, and but one of the former found a place in his life. He had kept each year in his own fashion the date of Mary Antrim?s death. It would be more to the point perhaps to say that this occasion kept him: it kept him at least effectually from doing anything else. It took hold of him again and again with a hand of which time had softened but never loosened the touch. He waked to his feast of memory as consciously as he would have waked to his marriage-morn. Marriage had had of old but too little to say to the matter: for the girl who was to have been his bride there had been no bridal embrace. She had died of a malignant fever after the wedding-day had been fixed, and he had lost before fairly tasting it an affection that promised to fill his life to the brim....

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Excerpt: A Woman of Thirty by Honore de Balzac, translated by Ellen Marriage.

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Excerpt: There is a special variety of human nature obtained in the Social Kingdom by a process analogous to that of the gardener?s craft in the Vegetable Kingdom, to wit, by the forcing-house--a species of hybrid which can be raised neither from seed nor from slips. This product is known as the Cashier, an anthropomorphous growth, watered by religious doctrine, trained up in fear of the guillotine, pruned by vice, to flourish on a third floor with an estimable wife by his side and an uninteresting family....

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Excerpt: Leviticus. And the LORD called unto Moses, and spake unto him out of the tabernacle of the congregation, saying -- 2. Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, If any man of you bring an offering unto the LORD, ye shall bring your offering of the cattle, even of the herd, and of the flock -- 3. If his offering be a burnt sacrifice of the herd, let him offer a male without blemish: he shall offer it of his own voluntary will at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the LORD -- 4. And he shall put his hand upon the head of the burnt offering; and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him....

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Excerpt: Volume Two of The Life And Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, containing a Faithful Account of the Fortunes, Misfortunes, Uprisings, Downfallings and Complete Career of the Nickelby Family by Charles Dickens....

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. His leaving it till called for the writer of these humble lines being a Waiter, and having come of a family of Waiters, and owning at the present time five brothers who are all Waiters, and likewise an only sister who is a Waitress, would wish to offer a few words respecting his calling; first having the pleasure of hereby in a friendly manner offering the Dedication of the same unto Joseph, much respected Head Waiter at the Slamjam Coffee-house, London, E.C., than which a individual more eminently deserving of the name of man, or a more amenable honour to his own head and heart, whether considered in the light of a Waiter or regarded as a human being, do not exist....

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Generally considered one of Shakespeare's problem plays, Measure for Measure examines the ideas of sin and justice. Duke Vincentio turns Vienna's rule over to the corrupt Angelo, who sentences Claudio to death for having impregnated a woman before marriage. His sister Isabella, a novice nun, pleads for her brother's life, only to be told that he will be spared if she agrees to relinquish her virginity to Angelo. (Summary by wildemoose)...

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Comedy, Play

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I have to thank all the previous students of Shelley as poet and man--not last nor least among whom is my husband--for their loving and truthful research on all the subjects surrounding the life of Mrs.Shelley. -Lucy Madox Brown Rossetti Mrs. Shelley is a biography of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley, author of Frankenstein and other works, wife of Percy Shelley, daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin who penned The Vindication of the Rights of Women, and daughter of William Godwin, a philosopher and novelist. The life of this woman, who at nineteen wrote a story that has become a part of everyday culture, is its own story to tell. The author Lucy Madox Brown Rossetti was the daughter of the artist Ford Madox Brown and the wife of William Michael Rossetti of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. (Summary by A.L. Gramour)...

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Biography

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Preface: No one can be more sensible than is the Author that the present is an overgrown book of a nondescript class, neither the ?tale? for the young, nor the novel for their elders, but a mixture of both....

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John Fletcher's comedy (probably written and performed around 1611) is a sequel to Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, in which, as the title suggests, the tamer will be tamed. Petruchio, the shrew-tamer, has been widowed, and marries a second wife, Maria, a chaste witty lady. At the instigation of her cousin Bianca, and with the fellowship of her sister Livia, Maria decides to go on strike for equal rights, refusing to behave as a proper 17th century wife. Fletcher's play addresses the issue of men and women's roles within marriage, a controversial issue for his day. (Summary by Elizabeth Klett)...

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Comedy, Play

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Excerpt: I am an Englishman, living, as all Englishman should do, in England, and my wife would not, I think, be well pleased were any one to insinuate that she were other than an Englishwoman; but in the circumstances of my marriage I became connected with the south of Spain, and the narrative which I am to tell requires that I should refer to some of those details....

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Excerpt: Prayers Written at Vailima and a Lowden Sabbath Morn by Robert Louis Stevenson.

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Contents Prayers Written At Vailima ...........................................................................4 FOR SUCCESS................................................................................................................................ 6 FOR GRACE.................................................................................................................................... 7 AT MORNING ................................................................................................................................. 7 EVENING ......................................................................................................................................... 7 ANOTHER FOR EVENING........................................................................................................... 8 IN TIME OF RAIN .......................................................................................................................... 8 ANOTHER IN TIME OF RAIN ..................................................................................................... 8 BEFORE A TEMPORARY SEPARATION ...................................

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Introduction: In September of the year during the February of which Hawthorne had completed ?The Scarlet Letter,? he began ?The House of the Seven Gables.? Meanwhile, he had removed from Salem to Lenox, in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, where he occupied with his family a small red wooden house, still standing at the date of this edition, near the Stockbridge Bowl....

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A young black man is shot down in the streets in a drive-by. But a mistake has been made. Kelly shouldn't have died. So he's returned to Earth?in the body of a young comatose white woman married to a hot looking Latino narc cop. Can Kelly resolve the questions surrounding his death? What will happen to Amire, the woman he loved in his previous life? And, most important, can he resolve his marriage?now that he's a woman named Dagny?to another man? (http://www.graciecmckeever.com)...

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Romantic comedy for mature audiences Chris O'Keith was a loving wife, mother and practising Christian. The end of her marriage brought a dramatic change of character. Her vicious hatred towards men is public knowledge and has males avoiding her like the plague. Chris and her four children live with Bill, her grandfather, who employs a builder, Rick Eastly, to do extensive renovations. She will attempt to insult and humiliate this builder; however, he can give as much he gets and has Bills full blessing to do so. Rick learns Chris has a secret. Without revealing he knows, he seeks to tame the shrew and get her to openly admit her problem....

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This experimental literary novel seeks to probe the mind of Kenyon, an isolated invalid in her home, as she goes through morphine induced sleep and lucid wakefulness, and in both seeking meaning for her life and to be reconciled to her estranged marriage...

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