The Prince and the Pauper is a novel by American author Mark Twain. It was first published in 1881 in Canada, before its 1882 publication in the United States. The novel represents Twain's first attempt at historical fiction. Set in 1547, it tells the story of two young boys who are identical in appearance: Tom Canty, a pauper who lives with his abusive father in Offal Court off Pudding Lanein...
Tom Sawyer, Detective is an 1896 novel by Mark Twain. It is a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), and a prequel to Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894). Tom Sawyer attempts to solve a mysterious murder in thisburlesque of the immensely popular detective novels of the time. Like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the story is told using the first-person narrative...
"Charles Dickens" here means editor as well as author. This is the fifth Christmas number, from 1854, of his journal Household Words. Dickens himself tops and tails the festive story cycle, set after an archetypal Christmas Eve dinner ("I never saw a finer turkey, finer beef") in a Rochester almshouse.
The "travellers" are voiced in their narrations by Wilkie Collins (who contributes a...
Tom Tidler's Ground, also known as Tom Tiddler's Ground or Tommy Tiddler's Ground, is an ancient children's game in which one player, "Tom Tidler," stands on a heap of stones, gravel, etc.; other players rush onto the heap, crying "Here I am on Tom Tidler's ground," while Tom tries to capture the invaders or keep them off. By extension, the phrase has come to mean the ground or tenement of a...
The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet: A Sermon in Crude Melodrama is a one-act play by George Bernard Shaw, first produced in in 1909. Shaw describes the play as a religious tract in dramatic form.
In 1909 Shaw jousted with governmental censorship, as personified by The Examiner Of Plays, an agency acting under the auspices of the Lord Chamberlain. The outcome, unsatisfactory to Shaw, is reviewed...
The Lady of the Camellias (French: La Dame aux camélias) is a novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils, first published in 1848, and subsequently adapted for the stage. The Lady of the Camellias premiered at the Théâtre du Vaudeville in Paris, France on February 2, 1852. The play was an instant success, and Giuseppe Verdi immediately set about putting the story to music. His work became...
Utopia (Libellus vere aureus, nec minus salutaris quam festivus, de optimo rei publicae statu deque nova insula Utopia) is a work of fiction and political philosophy by Thomas More (1478–1535) published in 1516 in Latin. The book is a frame narrative primarily depicting a fictional island society and its religious, social and political customs.
The title De optimo rei publicae statu deque...
The Iliad (/ˈɪliəd/;, Ancient Greek: Ἰλιάς, Ilias, sometimes referred to as the Song of Ilion or Song of Ilium) is an ancient Greek epic poem in dactylic hexameter, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy (Ilium) by a coalition...
La Peau de chagrin (French pronunciation: [la po dəʃaɡʁɛ̃], The Magic Skin or The Wild Ass's Skin) is an 1831 novel by French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850). Set in early 19th-century Paris, it tells the story of a young man who finds a magic piece of shagreen that fulfills his...
The Odyssey (/ˈɒdəsi/; Greek: Ὀδύσσεια, Odýsseia) is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second oldest extant work of Western...
Prester John is a 1910 adventure novel by John Buchan. It tells the story of a young Scotsman named David Crawfurd and his adventures in South Africa, where a Zulu uprising is tied to the medieval legend of Prester John. Crawfurd is similar in many ways to Buchan's later character, Richard Hannay.
It contains the notable line: "Perfect love casteth out fear, the Bible says; but, to speak it...
Mr Standfast is the third of five Richard Hannay novels by John Buchan, first published in 1919 by Hodder & Stoughton, London.
It is one of two Hannay novels set during the First World War, the other being Greenmantle (1916); Hannay's first and best-known adventure, The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915), is set in the period immediately before the war started.
The title refers to a character in John...
Huntingtower is a novel written by John Buchan in 1922. The first of his three Dickson McCunn books, it is set near Carrick in south-west Scotland around 1920. The hero is a 55-year-old grocer Dickson McCunn, who has sold his business and taken early retirement. As soon as he ventures out to explore the world, he is swept out of his bourgeois rut into bizarre and outlandish adventures, and forced...
The Half-Hearted is the one most influenced by John Buchan's study of Greek tragedy. It is a haunting, heartbreaking novel of romance and duty, where the social expectations of the main characters shape the paths they tread. Thwarted happiness is painful to read at any time, but when it is described under the masterful hand of a clear-sighted writer, the reader's protesting heart is wrung...
The Kama Sutra (Sanskrit: कामसूत्र About this sound pronunciation (help·info), Kāmasūtra) is an ancient Indian Hindu text written by Vātsyāyana. It is widely considered to be the standard work on human sexual behavior in Sanskrit literature.
A portion of the work consists of practical advice on sexual intercourse. It is largely in prose, with many inserted anustubh...