Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell was an English novelist, biographer, and short story writer. The main heroine of North and South, Margaret Hale, is uprooted from her comfortable home in Hampshire to move with her family to the north of England. Initially repulsed by the ugliness of her new surroundings in the industrial town of Milton, Margaret becomes aware of the poverty and suffering of the local mill workers. There Margaret meets Mr. Thornton, a wealthy cotton mill owner, and dislikes him immediately, but he falls passionately in love with her.
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell was an English novelist, biographer, and short story writer. This volume contains three famous novels by Gaskell. The "Moorland Cottage" is a story of Maggie Browne, the daughter of a deceased clergyman who is encouraged to give up her own life and passions and devote herself to her brother Edward. "Lois the Witch" is a story set against the backdrop of the Salem witch hunts, where recently orphaned Lois is forced to leave the English parsonage and sail to America. And "Mr. Harrison`s Confessions" is a story of country doctor William Harrison who is prevailed upon by his longtime friend Charles, a bachelor, to dispense some advice on the "wooing and winning" of women`s affections.
Wilkie Collins was an English novelist, playwright, and short story writer. This volume contains some of his mysterious stories. John Jago`s Ghost, is a novella based on the Boorn Brothers murder case. The Family Secret and Dream Woman are classic mysteries. And Mad Monkton is a bizarre ghost story. Collins`s works were classified at the time as "sensation novels", a genre seen nowadays as the precursor to detective and suspense fiction.
Joseph Conrad was a Polish-British writer regarded as one of the greatest novelists to write in the English language. His first novel Almayer`s Folly is a tale of personal tragedy as well as a broader meditation on the evils of colonialism. Set in the lush jungle of Borneo in the late 1800s, it tells of the Dutch merchant Kaspar Almayer, whose dreams of riches for his beloved daughter, Nina, collapse under the weight of his own greed and prejudice. Conrad established in Almayer`s Folly the themes of betrayal, isolation, and colonialism that he would explore throughout the rest of his life and work. Portraying a young man`s first sea-voyage to the East in Youth, and the blind old age of Captain Whalley in The End of the Tether, the...
Daniel Defoe was an English trader, writer, pamphleteer and journalist. He is most famous for his novel "Robinson Crusoe", which is second only to the Bible in its number of translations. This volume contains some of his less famous novels. Colonel Jack is the supposed autobiography of an English gentleman who begins life as a child of the London streets. He and his brothers are brought up as pickpockets and highwaymen, but Jack seeks to improve himself. Kidnapped and taken to America, he becomes first a slave, then an overseer on plantations in Maryland. Also, following the success of Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe composed a further tale of high adventure at sea, The King of Pirates, a story of pirate life.
Sir Henry Rider Haggard was an English writer of adventure novels set mostly in Africa, and a founder of the Lost World literary genre. This volume contains three famous novels by Haggard. The Mahatma and the Hare is the story of the selfcalled mahatma - a spiritual man who is able, when asleep, to view "The Great White Road" on which the souls of those recently departed enter heaven. Barbara Who Came Back is the story of Septimus Walrond, who was returning from a professional visit to a distant cottage upon the coast of East Anglia. His errand had been sad, to baptise the dying infant of a fisherman. And The Witch`s Head is the second novel by Haggard, which he wrote just prior to King Solomon`s Mines. Zulu magic comes to the British...
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell was an English novelist, biographer, and short story writer. This volume contains three beautifully written novels set in England. Cousin Phillis is a novel about 19-year-old Paul Manning, who moves to the country and befriends his mother`s family and his cousin Phillis Holman. Cranford is a story of adventures of Miss Matty and Miss Deborah, two middle-aged sisters striving to live with dignity in reduced circumstances. Through a series of vignettes, Elizabeth Gaskell portrays a community governed by old-fashioned habits. "A Dark Night`s Work" turns on concealed crime and a false accusation of murder. The secret goes unknown for about 15 years until the body is dug up during the construction of a railroad.
Sir Henry Rider Haggard was an English writer of adventure novels set mostly in Africa, and a founder of the Lost World literary genre. This volume contains three famous novels by Haggard. The Wizard is a book about adventures and the nature of miracles that could be enjoyed by both adults and children alike. In Elissa Haggard takes his readers to the Phoenician city in South Central Africa, a trading town that was built by civilized men. And in Black Heart and White Heart, the author mounts once more those trusty steeds of his, the nobility of the savage and the rascality of the civilized white.
Jack London was an American novelist, journalist and social activist. Pioneering the genre of magazine fiction and prototyping science fiction, he became one of the first writers, who gained worldwide fame and a large fortune. On the Makaloa Mat is a collection of seven short stories that describes life on the beautiful Hawaiian Islands. Full of descriptions of local nature and sea, it dives into the lives of characters and the effect that the contact with Western civilization causes. The Road is an autobiographical memoir full of London`s experiences living as a hobo during the economic crisis in the United States, hopping freight trains, begging for money or food, and making up stories for the police to avoid prison term.
Charles Dickens was an English writer and social critic. Our Mutual Friend is Charles Dickens` last novel and one of his most sophisticated works, combining psychological insight with social analysis. John Harmon returns to England after years in exile to claim his inheritance: a great fortune and a beautiful young woman to whom he is betrothed, but has never met. When Harmon`s body is pulled out of the Thames, all of London is fascinated by the mystery of the murdered man and his unclaimed riches. Social-climbers, lawyers, teachers, a money-lender, men and women both honest and villainous will all become embroiled in this tale of love and obsession, death and rebirth,
Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist, a dark romantic, and short story writer. Our Old Home is a collection of essays, based on Hawthorne`s stay in England from 1853 to 1857 as American Consul in Liverpool. It was first published in the form of a series of travel papers for "The Atlantic Monthly". In his essays Hawthorne aimed to show us the splendors of London, and the horrors of the poverty that so many suffered.
Jerome Klapka Jerome was an English writer and humorist. In the semi-autobiographical novel Paul Kelver he describes a rocky road through life, including his stints as an actor, a few disastrous love affairs, and a meeting with an influential stranger, eventually leading to his decision to become a writer.
Jane Austen is one of the most enduring and skilled English novelists. This volume contains two of her most famous stories: Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. Persuasion is a story of twenty-seven-year old Anne Elliot, Austen`s most adult heroine. Eight years before the story proper begins, she is happily betrothed to a naval officer, Frederick Wentworth, but she precipitously breaks off the engagement when persuaded by her friend Lady Russell that such a match is unworthy. The breakup produces in Anne a deep and long-lasting regret Northanger Abbey is often referred to as Jane Austen`s Gothic parody. Decrepit castles, locked rooms, mysterious chests, cryptic notes, and tyrannical fathers give the story an uncanny air, but one with a...
The Brontes were a nineteenth-century literary family, born in the village of Thornton and later associated with the village of Haworth in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England. The sisters are well known as poets and novelists. This is a volume of poetry published jointly by the three Bronte sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne in 1846 and it is their first work to ever go in print. To evade contemporary prejudice against female writers, the Bronte sisters adopted masculine first names. The book was published under the title Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. All three retained the first letter of their first names: Charlotte became Currer Bell, Anne became Acton Bell, and Emily took the name Ellis.
James Fenimore Cooper was a prolific and popular American writer of the first half of the 19th century. His historical romances of frontier and Indian life in the early American days created a unique form of American literature. Precaution is the first novel written by Cooper written in imitation of Jane Austen`s novels of English gentry manners. It is mainly interesting today as a document in the history of American cultural colonialism and as an example of an attempt to imitate Jane Austen`s investigation of the ironic discrepancy between illusion and reality.
Sir Henry Rider Haggard was an English writer of adventure novels set mostly in Africa, and a founder of the Lost World literary genre. Lauded by many as one of the greatest storytellers of the Victorian period, he created Queen Sheba`s Ring, a thrilling page-turner set in exotic foreign lands. The discovery of a ring, given to the Queen of Sheba by King Solomon himself, launches this tale of romance and adventure.
Arthur Conan Doyle was a British writer best known for his detective fiction featuring the character Sherlock Holmes. His works also include fantasy and science fiction, as well as plays, romances, non-fiction and historical novels. Rodney Stone is a fantastic gothic mystery novel set in the world of boxing fights in England during the Napoleonic Wars. The plot also has some attributes of an adventure genre, including a haunted house and a false murder accusation.
Joseph Conrad was a Polish-British writer regarded as one of the greatest novelists to write in the English language. Romance is a novel written by Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford. Serafina is captured by Don Balthasar`s pirates on a Caribbean island, when Jose Armando arrives from Spain to the rescue.
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell was an English novelist, biographer, and short story writer. Round the Sofa is a collection of short stories, which introduces us to a set of characters who take turns to recount stories during their weekly soiree. It contains several tales, including "An Accursed Race", an essay about a persecuted minority group of Cagots in Western France, and "The Half Brothers" - touching and sad story about brotherly love and a sheep-dog named Lassie.
