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Willa Sibert Cather was born on 7th December, 1873 on her grandmother's farm in the Back Creek Valley near Winchester, Virginia. After several years and moves the family eventually settled in Red Cloud, Nebraska and for the first time Cather could now attend school. In Red Cloud Cather had her earliest writings published in the local Red Cloud Chief newspaper. Her time in the mid-West created a vivid tranche of experiences for the young woman. It was still, for the most part, the frontier; a landscape of dramatic environment and weather, the vastness of the Nebraska prairie, as well as the many diverse cultures of the local families. Attending the University of Nebraska she published a well received essay on Thomas Carlyle in the Nebraska State Journal and thereafter became a regular contributor to its offerings. After being hired to write for the Home Monthly, in 1896, Cather moved to Pittsburgh. Within a year she became a telegraph editor and drama critic for the Pittsburgh Leader as well as contributing poetry and short fiction to The Library, another local publication. Her first collection of short stories,'The Troll Garden', was published in 1905 and contains several of her most famous including'A Wagner Matinee,''The Sculptor's Funeral,'and'Paul's Case.'As a writer Cather was now taking immense strides forward. By 1912 she had finished her first novel'Alexander's Bridge'which was serialized in McClure's to favourable reviews. Cather now began her Prairie Trilogy:'O Pioneers!'(1913),'The Song of the Lark'(1915), and'My Ántonia'(1918). All three were popular and critical successes nationwide. Throughout the 1910s and 1920s, Cather continued to establish herself as a major American writer and received the Pulitzer Prize in 1922 for her novel'One of Ours'. A determinedly private person, Cather destroyed many old drafts, personal papers, and letters. Her will would also restrict the ability of scholars to quote from personal papers that remained. In 1932, Cather published her final collection of short stories,'Obscure Destinies'which contained the highly regarded'Neighbour Rosicky.'She now began work on'Lucy Gayheart', a novel that was rather darker than those before it. With her career settled as one of America's greatest writers honours began to flow. In 1943 she was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The following year, 1944, Cather received the gold medal for fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. However time was about to settle scores with her. On April 24th, 1947, Willa Siebert Cather died of a cerebral haemorrhage at her home at 570 Park Avenue in Manhattan. She was 73.

THE YELLOW WALLPAPER is a story by the American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, first published in January 1892 in The New England Magazine. It is regarded as an important early work of American feminist literature, illustrating attitudes in the 19th century toward women's health, both physical and mental. Presented in the first person, the story is a collection of journal entries written by a woman whose physician husband (John) has rented an old mansion for the summer. Foregoing other rooms in the house, the couple moves into the upstairs nursery. As a form of treatment she is forbidden from working, and is encouraged to eat well and get plenty of exercise and air, so she can recuperate from what he calls a'temporary nervous depression - a slight hysterical tendency', a diagnosis common to women in that period. She hides her journal from her husband and his sister the housekeeper, fearful of being reproached for overworking herself. The room's windows are barred to prevent children from climbing through them, and there is a gate across the top of the stairs, though she and her husband have access to the rest of the house and its adjoining estate. The story depicts the effect of under-stimulation on the narrator's mental health and her descent into psychosis. With nothing to stimulate her, she becomes obsessed by the pattern and color of the wallpaper.'It is the strangest yellow, that wall-paper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw - not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things. But there is something else about that paper - the smell!... The only thing I can think of that it is like is the color of the paper! A yellow smell.'... (more on www.wsiehouse-classics.com)

The Yellow Wallpaper is regarded as an important early work of American feminist literature, illustrating attitudes in the 19th century toward women's health, both physical and mental. Presented in the first person, the story is a collection of journal entries written by a woman whose physician husband (John) has rented an old mansion for the summer. Foregoing other rooms in the house, the couple moves into the upstairs nursery. As a form of treatment she is forbidden from working, and is encouraged to eat well and get plenty of exercise and air, so she can recuperate from what he calls a'temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency', a diagnosis common to women in that period. She hides her journal from her husband and his sister the housekeeper, fearful of being reproached for overworking herself. The room's windows are barred to prevent children from climbing through them, and there is a gate across the top of the stairs, though she and her husband have access to the rest of the house and its adjoining estate. The story depicts the effect of understimulation on the narrator's mental health and her descent into psychosis. With nothing to stimulate her, she becomes obsessed by the pattern and color of the wallpaper.'It is the strangest yellow, that wall-paper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw – not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things. But there is something else about that paper – the smell!... The only thing I can think of that it is like is the color of the paper! A yellow smell.'In the end, she imagines there are women creeping around behind the patterns of the wallpaper and comes to believe she is one of them. She locks herself in the room, now the only place she feels safe, refusing to leave when the summer rental is up.'For outside you have to creep on the ground, and everything is green instead of yellow. But here I can creep smoothly on the floor, and my shoulder just fits in that long smooch around the wall, so I cannot lose my way.'

It is a sin to write this. It is a sin to think words no others think and to put them down upon a paper no others are to see. It is base and evil. It is as if we were speaking alone to no ears but our own. And we know well that there is no transgression blacker than to do or think alone. We have broken the laws. The laws say that men may not write unless the Council of Vocations bid them so. May we be forgiven! But this is not the only sin upon us. We have committed a greater crime, and for this crime there is no name. What punishment awaits us if it be discovered we know not, for no such crime has come in the memory of men and there are no laws to provide for it. It is dark here. The flame of the candle stands still in the air. Nothing moves in this tunnel save our hand on the paper. We are alone here under the earth. It is a fearful word, alone. The laws say that none among men may be alone, ever and at any time, for this is the great transgression and the root of all evil. But we have broken many laws. And now there is nothing here save our one body, and it is strange to see only two legs stretched on the ground, and on the wall before us the shadow of our one head. The walls are cracked and water runs upon them in thin threads without sound, black and glistening as blood. We stole the candle from the larder of the Home of the Street Sweepers. We shall be sentenced to ten years in the Palace of Corrective Detention if it be discovered. But this matters not. It matters only that the light is precious and we should not waste it to write when we need it for that work which is our crime. Nothing matters save the work, our secret, our evil, our precious work. Still, we must also write, for—may the Council have mercy upon us!—we wish to speak for once to no ears but our own. Our name is Equality 7-2521, as it is written on the iron bracelet which all men wear on their left wrists with their names upon it. We are twenty-one years old. We are six feet tall, and this is a burden, for there are not many men who are six feet tall. Ever have the Teachers and the Leaders pointed to us and frowned and said:'There is evil in your bones, Equality 7-2521, for your body has grown beyond the bodies of your brothers.'But we cannot change our bones nor our body. We were born with a curse. It has always driven us to thoughts which are forbidden. It has always given us wishes which men may not wish. We know that we are evil, but there is no will in us and no power to resist it. This is our wonder and our secret fear, that we know and do not resist. We strive to be like all our brother men, for all men must be alike. Over the portals of the Palace of the World Council, there are words cut in the marble, which we repeat to ourselves whenever we are tempted.

Thomas Love Peacock was born on October 18th 1785 in Weymouth, Dorset. His education was never completed and mainly self-taught Thomas was made a clerk with Ludlow Fraser Company, merchants in the City of London in 1800. For Thomas life was work and the nurturing of his writing. When time allowed he would visit the Reading Room of the British Museum to study classic literature. In 1804 and 1806 he published two volumes of poetry, The Monks of St. Mark and Palmyra. By 1809 he has also published his great poem ‘The Genius of the Thames'. Peacock travelled to North Wales in January 1810 where he visited Maentwrog and met his future wife, Jane Gryffydh. By September 1815 had settled at Great Marlow and wrote Headlong Hall in 1815. It was published the following year. With this work Peacock found the true field for his literary gift in the satiric novel. Peacock continued to produce; the satirical novels Melincourt in 1817 and Nightmare Abbey in 1818. At the beginning of 1819, Peacock was summoned to London for probation with the East India Company. Peacock's test papers earned the commendation,'Nothing superfluous and nothing wanting.'This career was to run alongside his literary one for several decades. Peacock married Jane Griffith or Gryffydh in 1820. They went on to have four children. In 1820 Peacock wrote The Four Ages of Poetry, which argued that poetry's relevance was being eclipsed by science, a claim which provoked Shelley's Defence of Poetry. In the winter of 1825–6 he wrote Paper Money Lyrics and other Poems'during the prevalence of an influenza to which the beautiful fabric of paper-credit is periodically subject.'In 1829 he published The Misfortunes of Elphin, and in 1831 Crotchet Castle, the most mature and perhaps most appreciated of his works. By 1836 his official career was crowned by his appointment as Chief Examiner of Indian Correspondence. In about 1852 towards the end of Peacock's service in the India office, his taste for leisure and appetite for writing returned and with it his entertaining and scholarly Horæ Dramaticæ. In 1860 came the publication of his last novel; Gryll Grange. Later, that same year he added the appendix of Shelley's letters, a matter of great literary importance. Thomas Love Peacock died at Lower Halliford, on 23rd January, 1866, from injuries sustained in a fire in attempting to save his library. He is buried in the new cemetery at Shepperton.

Thomas Love Peacock was born on October 18th 1785 in Weymouth, Dorset. His education was never completed and mainly self-taught Thomas was made a clerk with Ludlow Fraser Company, merchants in the City of London in 1800. For Thomas life was work and the nurturing of his writing. When time allowed he would visit the Reading Room of the British Museum to study classic literature. In 1804 and 1806 he published two volumes of poetry, The Monks of St. Mark and Palmyra. By 1809 he has also published his great poem ‘The Genius of the Thames'. Peacock travelled to North Wales in January 1810 where he visited Maentwrog and met his future wife, Jane Gryffydh. By September 1815 had settled at Great Marlow and wrote Headlong Hall in 1815. It was published the following year. With this work Peacock found the true field for his literary gift in the satiric novel. Peacock continued to produce; the satirical novels Melincourt in 1817 and Nightmare Abbey in 1818. At the beginning of 1819, Peacock was summoned to London for probation with the East India Company. Peacock's test papers earned the commendation,'Nothing superfluous and nothing wanting.'This career was to run alongside his literary one for several decades. Peacock married Jane Griffith or Gryffydh in 1820. They went on to have four children. In 1820 Peacock wrote The Four Ages of Poetry, which argued that poetry's relevance was being eclipsed by science, a claim which provoked Shelley's Defence of Poetry. In the winter of 1825–6 he wrote Paper Money Lyrics and other Poems'during the prevalence of an influenza to which the beautiful fabric of paper-credit is periodically subject.'In 1829 he published The Misfortunes of Elphin, and in 1831 Crotchet Castle, the most mature and perhaps most appreciated of his works. By 1836 his official career was crowned by his appointment as Chief Examiner of Indian Correspondence. In about 1852 towards the end of Peacock's service in the India office, his taste for leisure and appetite for writing returned and with it his entertaining and scholarly Horæ Dramaticæ. In 1860 came the publication of his last novel; Gryll Grange. Later, that same year he added the appendix of Shelley's letters, a matter of great literary importance. Thomas Love Peacock died at Lower Halliford, on 23rd January, 1866, from injuries sustained in a fire in attempting to save his library. He is buried in the new cemetery at Shepperton.

Thomas Love Peacock was born on October 18th 1785 in Weymouth, Dorset. His education was never completed and mainly self-taught Thomas was made a clerk with Ludlow Fraser Company, merchants in the City of London in 1800. For Thomas life was work and the nurturing of his writing. When time allowed he would visit the Reading Room of the British Museum to study classic literature. In 1804 and 1806 he published two volumes of poetry, The Monks of St. Mark and Palmyra. By 1809 he has also published his great poem ‘The Genius of the Thames'. Peacock travelled to North Wales in January 1810 where he visited Maentwrog and met his future wife, Jane Gryffydh. By September 1815 had settled at Great Marlow and wrote Headlong Hall in 1815. It was published the following year. With this work Peacock found the true field for his literary gift in the satiric novel. Peacock continued to produce; the satirical novels Melincourt in 1817 and Nightmare Abbey in 1818. At the beginning of 1819, Peacock was summoned to London for probation with the East India Company. Peacock's test papers earned the commendation,'Nothing superfluous and nothing wanting.'This career was to run alongside his literary one for several decades. Peacock married Jane Griffith or Gryffydh in 1820. They went on to have four children. In 1820 Peacock wrote The Four Ages of Poetry, which argued that poetry's relevance was being eclipsed by science, a claim which provoked Shelley's Defence of Poetry. In the winter of 1825–6 he wrote Paper Money Lyrics and other Poems'during the prevalence of an influenza to which the beautiful fabric of paper-credit is periodically subject.'In 1829 he published The Misfortunes of Elphin, and in 1831 Crotchet Castle, the most mature and perhaps most appreciated of his works. By 1836 his official career was crowned by his appointment as Chief Examiner of Indian Correspondence. In about 1852 towards the end of Peacock's service in the India office, his taste for leisure and appetite for writing returned and with it his entertaining and scholarly Horæ Dramaticæ. In 1860 came the publication of his last novel; Gryll Grange. Later, that same year he added the appendix of Shelley's letters, a matter of great literary importance. Thomas Love Peacock died at Lower Halliford, on 23rd January, 1866, from injuries sustained in a fire in attempting to save his library. He is buried in the new cemetery at Shepperton.

Novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and artist, D. H. Lawrence had an immense influence on twentieth century literature, in spite of his short and often persecuted life. His novels represent an extended reflection on the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation, establishing his name as one of the great imaginative novelists of his generation. For the first time in publishing history, this comprehensive eBook presents Lawrence's complete works, with numerous illustrations, rare texts, informative introductions and the usual Delphi bonus material. (Version 12) • Beautifully illustrated with images relating to Lawrence's life and works• Concise introductions to the novels and other texts• All 12 novels, with individual contents tables• Images of how the books were first published, giving your eReader a taste of the original texts• Excellent formatting of the texts• All 68 short stories, with many rare stories appearing in digital print for the first time• Special chronological and alphabetical contents tables for the poetry and the short stories• Easily locate the poems or short stories you want to read• All the plays, with separate contents tables• All the travel writing books• 7 poetry collections, including rare books available in no other digital collection• Includes many rare non-fiction essays and collections• Also includes ‘A STUDY OF THOMAS HARDY'– explore Lawrence's critique of the famous author• The rare school textbook Lawrence wrote when struggling financially• Includes Part I and Part II of PHOENIX: THE POSTHUMOUS PAPERS OF D. H. LAWRENCE – spends hours exploring this collection of literary papers that chart Lawrence's genius• Features a bonus biography by Lawrence's wife's – first time in digital print'explore the great writer's literary life!• Lawrence's translations of Italian novels and short stories• Also features Lawrence's paintings• UPDATED with two drafts of ‘Lady Chatterley's Lover': The First Lady Chatterley; John Thomas and Lady Jane• Ordering of texts into chronological order and literary genres CONTENTS: The NovelsThe White Peacock (1911)The Trespasser (1912)Sons and Lovers (1913)The Rainbow (1915)Women in Love (1920)The Lost Girl (1920)Mr Noon (1921)Aaron's Rod (1922)Kangaroo (1923)The Boy in the Bush (1924)The Plumed Serpent (1926)Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)The First Lady ChatterleyJohn Thomas and Lady Jane The Short StoriesThe Complete Short StoriesList of Short Stories in Alphabetical Order The PlaysThe Daughter-in-Law (1913)The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd (1914)Touch and Go (1920)David (1926)The Fight for Barbara (1933)A Collier's Friday Night (1934)The Married Man (1940)The Merry-Go-Round (1941) The Poetry CollectionsD.H. Lawrence's Poetry: A Brief IntroductionLove Poems and Others (1913)Amores (1916)Look! We Have Come Through! (1917)New Poems (1918)Bay: A Book of Poems (1919)Birds Beasts and Flowers (1923)Imagist Poetry (1923)Pansies (1929)Nettles (1930)Last Poems (1932)More Pansies (1932) The PoemsList of Poems in Chronological OrderList of Poems in Alphabetical Order The Travel WritingTwilight in Italy (1916)Sea and Sardinia (1921)Mornings in Mexico (1927)Sketches of Etruscan Places (1932) and more -- too many to list

One of Scotland's most celebrated storytellers, Stevenson deserves a place in everyone's digital library. This is the definitive digital Edition of the great author's works, with every published novel, short story, play, poem, letter, essay and piece of travel writing written by Robert Louis Stevenson. Why buy any other Stevenson eBook when you can have them ALL in one? (Current Version: 3) • ALL 12 Novels with concise introductions • Many of the texts are illustrated with the original Victorian artwork, including TREASURE ISLAND and DR JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE • Every short story and short story collection • Texts organised into scholarly chronological order and divided into literary forms • The complete poetry and plays • ALL of the collaboration works with other authors • Even includes the complete letters, with their contents table • Hundreds of images relating to Stevenson's life and works • The text has been carefully formatted for your enjoyment • Numerous images related to Stevenson's life and works • hree BONUS biographies – explore Stevenson's adventurous life by contemporary biographers – all with their own special contents tables Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of exciting titles CONTENTS: The Novels TREASURE ISLAND THE BLACK ARROW PRINCE OTTO THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL & HYDE KIDNAPPED THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE THE WRONG BOX THE WRECKER CATRIONA THE EBB-TIDE WEIR OF HERMISTON ST. IVES The Unfinished Novels HEATHERCAT THE GREAT NORTH ROAD THE YOUNG CHEVALIER The Short Story Collections NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS MORE NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS THE MERRY MEN AND OTHER TALES ISLAND NIGHTS'ENTERTAINMENTS FABLES TALES AND FANTASIES The Short Stories CHRONOLGOICAL LIST OF SHORT STORIES ALPHABETICAL LIST OF SHORT STORIES The Poetry Collections A CHILD'S GARDEN OF VERSES UNDERWOODS BALLADS SONGS OF TRAVEL AND OTHER VERSES ADDITIONAL POEMS The Poems CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF POEMS ALPHABETICAL LIST OF POEMS The Plays DEACON BRODIE BEAU AUSTIN ADMIRAL GUINEA MACAIRE THE CHARITY BAZAAR The Travel Writing AN INLAND VOYAGE TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY IN THE CEVENNES A MOUNTAIN TOWN IN FRANCE EDINBURGH: PICTURESQUE NOTES THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT ACROSS THE PLAINS THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS THE OLD AND NEW PACIFIC CAPITALS The Non-Fiction VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE AND OTHER PAPERS FAMILIAR STUDIES OF MEN AND BOOKS MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS MEMOIR OF FLEEMING JENKIN RECORDS OF A FAMILY OF ENGINEERS ADDITIONAL MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS LATER ESSAYS LAY MORALS PRAYERS WRITTEN FOR FAMILY USE A FOOTNOTE TO HISTORY IN THE SOUTH SEAS LETTERS FROM SAMOA LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE JUVENILIA AND OTHER PAPERS PIERRE JEAN DE BÉRANGER ARTICLE THE COMPLETE LETTERS The Biographies THE LIFE OF STEVENSON By Sir Graham Balfour THE LIFE FOR BOYS AND GIRLS By J.M. Overton THE LIFE OF MRS. STEVENSON By Nellie Sanchez Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of exciting titles

This fiftieth-anniversary edition commemorates Joseph Heller's masterpiece with a new introduction; critical essays and reviews by Norman Mailer, Alfred Kazin, Anthony Burgess, and others; rare papers and photos; and much more. Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read. Now a Hulu limited series starring Christopher Abbott, George Clooney, Kyle Chandler, and Hugh Laurie.Fifty years after its original publication, Catch-22 remains a cornerstone of American literature and one of the funniest—and most celebrated—books of all time. In recent years it has been named to “best novels” lists by Time, Newsweek, the Modern Library, and the London Observer. Set in Italy during World War II, this is the story of the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. But his real problem is not the enemy—it is his own army, which keeps increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. Yet if Yossarian makes any attempt to excuse himself from the perilous missions he's assigned, he'll be in violation of Catch-22, a hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule: a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but if he makes a formal request to be removed from duty, he is proven sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved. This fiftieth-anniversary edition commemorates Joseph Heller's masterpiece with a new introduction by Christopher Buckley; a wealth of critical essays and reviews by Norman Mailer, Alfred Kazin, Anthony Burgess, and others; rare papers and photos from Joseph Heller's personal archive; and much more. Here, at last, is the definitive edition of a classic of world literature.

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) was an English novelist of the 19th century. He was famous for his satirical works, particularly Vanity Fair (1847), a panoramic portrait of English society. Thackeray began as a satirist and parodist, with a sneaking fondness for roguish upstarts like Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair, Barry Lyndon in Barry Lyndon (1844) and Catherine in Catherine (1839). In his earliest works, writing under such pseudonyms as Charles James Yellowplush, Michael Angelo Titmarsh and George Savage Fitz-Boodle, he tended towards the savage in his attacks on high society, military prowess, the institution of marriage and hypocrisy. His writing career really began with a series of satirical sketches now usually known as The Yellowplush Papers, which appeared in Fraser's Magazine beginning in 1837. Between May 1839 and February 1840, Fraser's published the work sometimes considered Thackeray's first novel, Catherine also notable among the later novels are The Fitz-Boodle Papers (1842), Men's Wives (1842), The History of Pendennis (1848), The History of Henry Esmond, Esq., (1852), The Newcomes (1853) and The Rose and the Ring (1855).

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) was an English novelist of the 19th century. He was famous for his satirical works, particularly Vanity Fair (1847), a panoramic portrait of English society. Thackeray began as a satirist and parodist, with a sneaking fondness for roguish upstarts like Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair, Barry Lyndon in Barry Lyndon (1844) and Catherine in Catherine (1839). In his earliest works, writing under such pseudonyms as Charles James Yellowplush, Michael Angelo Titmarsh and George Savage Fitz-Boodle, he tended towards the savage in his attacks on high society, military prowess, the institution of marriage and hypocrisy. His writing career really began with a series of satirical sketches now usually known as The Yellowplush Papers, which appeared in Fraser's Magazine beginning in 1837. Between May 1839 and February 1840, Fraser's published the work sometimes considered Thackeray's first novel, Catherine also notable among the later novels are The Fitz-Boodle Papers (1842), Men's Wives (1842), The History of Pendennis (1848), The History of Henry Esmond, Esq., (1852), The Newcomes (1853) and The Rose and the Ring (1855).

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) was an English novelist of the 19th century. He was famous for his satirical works, particularly Vanity Fair (1847), a panoramic portrait of English society. Thackeray began as a satirist and parodist, with a sneaking fondness for roguish upstarts like Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair, Barry Lyndon in Barry Lyndon (1844) and Catherine in Catherine (1839). In his earliest works, writing under such pseudonyms as Charles James Yellowplush, Michael Angelo Titmarsh and George Savage Fitz-Boodle, he tended towards the savage in his attacks on high society, military prowess, the institution of marriage and hypocrisy. His writing career really began with a series of satirical sketches now usually known as The Yellowplush Papers, which appeared in Fraser's Magazine beginning in 1837. Between May 1839 and February 1840, Fraser's published the work sometimes considered Thackeray's first novel, Catherine also notable among the later novels are The Fitz-Boodle Papers (1842), Men's Wives (1842), The History of Pendennis (1848), The History of Henry Esmond, Esq., (1852), The Newcomes (1853) and The Rose and the Ring (1855).

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) was an English novelist of the 19th century. He was famous for his satirical works, particularly Vanity Fair (1847), a panoramic portrait of English society. Thackeray began as a satirist and parodist, with a sneaking fondness for roguish upstarts like Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair, Barry Lyndon in Barry Lyndon (1844) and Catherine in Catherine (1839). In his earliest works, writing under such pseudonyms as Charles James Yellowplush, Michael Angelo Titmarsh and George Savage Fitz-Boodle, he tended towards the savage in his attacks on high society, military prowess, the institution of marriage and hypocrisy. His writing career really began with a series of satirical sketches now usually known as The Yellowplush Papers, which appeared in Fraser's Magazine beginning in 1837. Between May 1839 and February 1840, Fraser's published the work sometimes considered Thackeray's first novel, Catherine also notable among the later novels are The Fitz-Boodle Papers (1842), Men's Wives (1842), The History of Pendennis (1848), The History of Henry Esmond, Esq., (1852), The Newcomes (1853) and The Rose and the Ring (1855).

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) was an English novelist of the 19th century. He was famous for his satirical works, particularly Vanity Fair (1847), a panoramic portrait of English society. Thackeray began as a satirist and parodist, with a sneaking fondness for roguish upstarts like Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair, Barry Lyndon in Barry Lyndon (1844) and Catherine in Catherine (1839). In his earliest works, writing under such pseudonyms as Charles James Yellowplush, Michael Angelo Titmarsh and George Savage Fitz-Boodle, he tended towards the savage in his attacks on high society, military prowess, the institution of marriage and hypocrisy. His writing career really began with a series of satirical sketches now usually known as The Yellowplush Papers, which appeared in Fraser's Magazine beginning in 1837. Between May 1839 and February 1840, Fraser's published the work sometimes considered Thackeray's first novel, Catherine also notable among the later novels are The Fitz-Boodle Papers (1842), Men's Wives (1842), The History of Pendennis (1848), The History of Henry Esmond, Esq., (1852), The Newcomes (1853) and The Rose and the Ring (1855).

A selection of the finest short stories from “one of the most popular writers in Russia,” praised by many as the female Chekhov (The New York Times) Teffi's genius with the short form made her a literary star in pre-revolutionary Russia, beloved by Tsar Nicholas II and Vladimir Lenin alike. These stories, taken from the whole of her career, show the full range of her gifts. Extremely funny—a wry, scathing observer of society—she is also capable, as capable even as Chekhov, of miraculous subtlety and depth of character. There are stories here from her own life (as a child, going to meet Tolstoy to plead for the life of War and Peace's Prince Bolkonsky, or, much later, her strange, charged meetings with the already-legendary Rasputin). There are stories of émigré society, its members held together by mutual repulsion. There are stories of people misunderstanding each other or misrepresenting themselves. And throughout there is a sly, sardonic wit and a deep, compelling intelligence. Pushkin Collection editions feature a spare, elegant series style and superior, durable components. The collection is typeset in Monotype Baskerville, litho-printed on Munken Premium White Paper and notch-bound by the independently owned printer TJ International in Padstow. The covers, with French flaps, are printed on Colorplan Pristine White Paper. Both paper and cover board are acid-free and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified.

Everything you need to make the grade! Test? Paper? Class discussion? Don't worry, we have you covered. This book has everything you need.Not only does it feature the complete text of As You Like It, it offers a comprehensive study guide that will easily help you understand Shakespeare's classic drama.You'll make the grade with complete and unabridged text, scene-by-scene summaries, explanations and discussions of the plot, question-and-answer sections, Shakespeare biography, a list of characters, and more.Includes the unabridged text of Shakespeare's classic play plus a complete study guide that helps readers gain a thorough understanding of the work's content and context. The comprehensive guide includes scene-by-scene summaries, explanations and discussions of the plot, question-and-answer sections, author biography, analytical paper topics, list of characters, bibliography, and more.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 1892 short story, The Yellow Wallpaper is a valuable piece of American feminist literature that reveals attitudes toward the psychological health of women in the nineteenth century. Diagnosed with'temporary nervous depression - a slight hysterical tendency'by her physician husband, a woman is confined to an upstairs bedroom. Descending into psychosis at the complete lack of stimulation, she starts obsessing over the room's yellow wallpaper:'It is the strangest yellow, that wall-paper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw - not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things. But there is something else about that paper - the smell!... The only thing I can think of that it is like is the color of the paper! A yellow smell.'

Excerpt:'The Owl shows its blue and gilt cover on the bookstalls every Saturday morning. Thursday nights are therefore nights of turmoil in the offices in Fleet Street. They are always wearing nights; more so, of course, in hot weather than in cold. They are nights of discomfort for the office-boy and of something worse for the editor. Spencer Hastings edited The Owl, and owned a third of it; and the little paper's success showed him to possess both brains and capacity for hard work. For a man of thirty-three he had achieved much; but that capacity for work was hard tested—especially on Thursday nights. As to the brains, there was really no doubt of their quality. Take, for instance, The Owl “specials.” After he had thought of them and given birth to the first, The Owl, really a weekly review, was enabled to reap harvests in the way of “scoops” without in any way degenerating into a mere purveyor of news.'

Excerpt:'My name is Martin—James Briggs Martin—but almost everybody calls me Tallow, because once when I was younger I saw old Uncle Ike Bond rubbing tallow on his boots to shine them, and then hurried home and fixed mine up with the stub of a candle and went to school. I guess it couldn't have smelled very good, for everybody seemed to notice it, even teacher, and she asked me what in the world I'd been getting into. After that all the boys called me Tallow, and always will, I guess. I tell you about me first only because I'm writing this account of what happened. Mark Tidd is really the fellow I'm writing about, and Mark's father and mother, and the engine Mr. Tidd was inventing out in his barn, and some other folks who will be told about in their places. I helped some; so did Plunk Smalley and Binney Jenks, but Mark Tidd did most of it. Mark Tidd sounds like a short name, doesn't it? But it isn't short at all, for it's merely what's left of Marcus Aurelius Fortunatus Tidd, which was what he was christened, mostly out of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, a big book that Mr. Tidd was so fond of reading that he never read much of anything else except the papers.'

Excerpt:'Primarily, there were the conditions under which she was brought to fifteen years of age: the crowded, scummy tenements; the narrow green-painted halls with their dim gas-jets, making the entrance look more like that of a morgue than a dwelling-place; the dirty halls and rooms with their green or blue or brown walls painted to save the cost of paper; the bare wooden floors, long since saturated with every type of grease and filth from oleomargarine and suet leaked from cheap fats or meats, to beer and whiskey and tobacco-juice. A little occasional scrubbing by some would-be hygienic tenant was presumed to keep or make clean some of the chambers and halls. And then the streets outside—any of the streets by which she had ever been surrounded—block upon block of other red, bare, commonplace tenements crowded to the doors with human life, the space before them sped over by noisy, gassy trucks and vehicles of all kinds. And stifling in summer, dusty and icy in winter; decorated on occasion by stray cats and dogs, pawing in ashcans, watched over by lordly policemen, and always running with people, people, people—who made their living heaven only knows how, existing in such a manner as their surroundings suggested.'

Excerpt:'Mr. H. G. WELLS brought out some time ago an Outline of History, the object of which was to deny the Christian religion. I examined this production for the benefit of my co-religionists in the columns of certain Catholic papers. I did full justice to Mr. Wells's talents as a writer, but I exposed his ill acquaintance with modern work on Biology, with early Christian writing and tradition, with Christian doctrine itself: and, in general, his incompetence. Stung by this exposure, Mr. Wells has just brought out against me a small pamphlet, under the title of Mr. Belloc Objects to the “Outline of History.” It is an excited, popular, crude attack, full of personal insult and brawling, and ample proof that he is hit. But it is singularly weak in argument, confused in reply, and, as I shall show in a moment, shirks nine-tenths of the very damaging criticism which I directed against his book. That book denies a creative God. There is no God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth. The Incarnation is a myth; the Resurrection a falsehood; the Eucharist a mummery.'

A Contemporary Classics hardcover edition of Virginia Woolf's fantastical novel about an Elizabethan nobleman who lives for three centuries and transitions into a woman. With a new introduction by Jeanette Winterson.Woolf's most lighthearted novel is a playful and exuberant romp through history. As a teenage nobleman, Orlando spends his days in revelry at the colorful Tudor court of Queen Elizabeth and his nights in writing earnest poetry. A favorite of the elderly queen, he falls in love with and is jilted by a wayward Russian princess. Two kings later, having reached his thirties, Orlando is sent to serve as ambassador to Constantinople, where he awakens one day to find himself in the body of a woman. The Lady Orlando takes this circumstance in stride and returns to England, where she engages in love affairs with both men and women, consorts with the famous poets of each age, finds happiness with an unconventional husband, and at last achieves publication of her own epic poem in the year 1928, the same year that Woolf published her novel. With its blend of fantastical adventure and satirical wit, Orlando was an immediate popular and critical success, one whose status as a classic has only grown with time. Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket. Contemporary Classics include an introduction, a select bibliography, and a chronology of the author's life and times.

Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace was born on the 1st April 1875 in Greenwich, London. Leaving school at 12 because of truancy, by the age of fifteen he had experience; selling newspapers, as a worker in a rubber factory, as a shoe shop assistant, as a milk delivery boy and as a ship's cook. By 1894 he was engaged but broke it off to join the Infantry being posted to South Africa. He also changed his name to Edgar Wallace which he took from Lew Wallace, the author of Ben-Hur. In Cape Town in 1898 he met Rudyard Kipling and was inspired to begin writing. His first collection of ballads, The Mission that Failed! was enough of a success that in 1899 he paid his way out of the armed forces in order to turn to writing full time. By 1904 he had completed his first thriller, The Four Just Men. Since nobody would publish it he resorted to setting up his own publishing company which he called Tallis Press. In 1911 his Congolese stories were published in a collection called Sanders of the River, which became a bestseller. He also started his own racing papers, Bibury's and R. E. Walton's Weekly, eventually buying his own racehorses and losing thousands gambling. A life of exceptionally high income was also mirrored with exceptionally large spending and debts. Wallace now began to take his career as a fiction writer more seriously, signing with Hodder and Stoughton in 1921. He was marketed as the ‘King of Thrillers'and they gave him the trademark image of a trilby, a cigarette holder and a yellow Rolls Royce. He was truly prolific, capable not only of producing a 70,000 word novel in three days but of doing three novels in a row in such a manner. It was in, estimating that by 1928 one in four books being read was written by Wallace, for alongside his famous thrillers he wrote variously in other genres, including science fiction, non-fiction accounts of WWI which amounted to ten volumes and screen plays. Eventually he would reach the remarkable total of 170 novels, 18 stage plays and 957 short stories.Wallace became chairman of the Press Club which to this day holds an annual Edgar Wallace Award, rewarding ‘excellence in writing'. Diagnosed with diabetes his health deteriorated and he soon entered a coma and died of his condition and double pneumonia on the 7th of February 1932 in North Maple Drive, Beverly Hills. He was buried near his home in England at Chalklands, Bourne End, in Buckinghamshire.

This collection brings together 23 chilling tales by landmark gothic writers, including Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Shelley, Sheridan Le Fanu, Sir Walter Scott and many more.Gothic fiction emerged in the 18th century, recognized for its bleak and sinister landscapes which housed unnatural forces of evil. Often controversial in their time, these stories pushed the boundaries of what was possible in fiction and evoked unsettling emotions as they told their tales of mysterious places, lost secrets, and sudden, shocking violence.Includes:• The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe• The Yellow Wall-paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman• Berenice by Edgar Allan Poe• The Invisible Girl by Mary Shelley• The Tapestried Chamber by Sir Walter ScottABOUT THE SERIES: The Arcturus Classic Mysteries and Marvels series brings together thrilling short stories from classic fiction, including spine-chilling ghost stories, gripping detective fiction and cosmic horror.

Max Reddick, a novelist, journalist, and presidential speechwriter, has spent his career struggling against the riptide of race in America. Now terminally ill, he has nothing left to lose. An expat for many years, Max returns to Europe one last time to settle an old debt with his estranged Dutch wife, Margrit, and to attend the Paris funeral of his friend, rival, and mentor Harry Ames. Among Harry's papers, Max uncovers explosive secret government documents outlining'King Alfred', a plan to be implemented in the event of widespread racial unrest and aiming'to terminate, once and for all, the Minority threat to the whole of the American society'. Realizing that Harry has been assassinated, Max must risk everything to get the documents to the one man who can help. Greeted as a masterpiece when it was published in 1967, The Man Who Cried I Am stakes out a range of experience rarely seen in American fiction: from the life of a Black GI to the ferment of postcolonial Africa to an insider's view of Washington politics in the era of segregation and the Civil Rights Movement. John A. Williams and his lost classic are overdue for rediscovery.

Jacques Heath Futrelle was born on the 9th April 1875 in Pike County, Georgia.His early career was as a journalist. Initially he worked for the Atlanta Journal where he began their sports section. This was followed by work for the New York Herald, the Boston Post and the Boston American. At the latter, in 1905, he published the serialized version of his short story ‘The Problem of Cell 13'who's main character was Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, commonly known as ‘The Thinking Machine', a detective, who used logic to solve crimes.In 1895 he married Lily May Peel with whom he had two children.In 1906 buoyed by the success of his short stories he left the paper to write novels. Such was his success that he had a house, ‘Stepping Stones', designed and built with a harbor view at Scituate, Massachusetts, where the family would spend most of their time together.On April 15th, 1912 he was returning from Europe as a first-class passenger aboard the Titanic when it stuck an iceberg. He refused to board a lifeboat but insisted that Lily did. She acquiesced and remembered the last she saw of him he was smoking a cigarette on deck with John Jacob Astor IV. His body was never recovered.

Jacques Heath Futrelle was born on the 9th April 1875 in Pike County, Georgia.His early career was as a journalist. Initially he worked for the Atlanta Journal where he began their sports section. This was followed by work for the New York Herald, the Boston Post and the Boston American. At the latter, in 1905, he published the serialized version of his short story ‘The Problem of Cell 13'who's main character was Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, commonly known as ‘The Thinking Machine', a detective, who used logic to solve crimes.In 1895 he married Lily May Peel with whom he had two children.In 1906 buoyed by the success of his short stories he left the paper to write novels. Such was his success that he had a house, ‘Stepping Stones', designed and built with a harbor view at Scituate, Massachusetts, where the family would spend most of their time together.On April 15th, 1912 he was returning from Europe as a first-class passenger aboard the Titanic when it stuck an iceberg. He refused to board a lifeboat but insisted that Lily did. She acquiesced and remembered the last she saw of him he was smoking a cigarette on deck with John Jacob Astor IV. His body was never recovered.

Jacques Heath Futrelle was born on the 9th April 1875 in Pike County, Georgia.His early career was as a journalist. Initially he worked for the Atlanta Journal where he began their sports section. This was followed by work for the New York Herald, the Boston Post and the Boston American. At the latter, in 1905, he published the serialized version of his short story ‘The Problem of Cell 13'who's main character was Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, commonly known as ‘The Thinking Machine', a detective, who used logic to solve crimes.In 1895 he married Lily May Peel with whom he had two children.In 1906 buoyed by the success of his short stories he left the paper to write novels. Such was his success that he had a house, ‘Stepping Stones', designed and built with a harbor view at Scituate, Massachusetts, where the family would spend most of their time together.On April 15th, 1912 he was returning from Europe as a first-class passenger aboard the Titanic when it stuck an iceberg. He refused to board a lifeboat but insisted that Lily did. She acquiesced and remembered the last she saw of him he was smoking a cigarette on deck with John Jacob Astor IV. His body was never recovered.

Evelyn May Clowes was born on 7th May 1872 in Cotgrave, Nottinghamshire. Growing up in genteel circumstances, her early childhood was spent at Charlton Down House near Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, and her teenage years near Heythrop in the Cotswolds. She was educated at home by governesses, excelling at German, Latin, Greek, shorthand, landscape painting, and fabric and wallpaper design.In 1897 she went to Mauritius as companion to her cousin Caroline and in 1898 married Maurice Wilhemn Wiehe, the owner of a sugar plantation. She gave birth to two stillborn children. After a few years of marriage, she found life difficult and returned to England. Shortly afterwards she went by herself to Australia, arriving in June 1902 and gave birth to a son a few months later. She lived in Melbourne for about eight years. To earn a living she took on a wide and varied range of jobs; she edited a woman's fashion paper, wrote short stories and articles, made blouses, designed embroideries, tilled gardens, acted as a housekeeper, and did other artistic work. Her health was not strong, but she undertook any kind of work which would provide a living for herself and her infant son. This gained her an experience of life which was readily put to use in her literary works.Her first book, ‘The Garden of Contentment', was published in 1902 under her pen-name Elinor Mordaunt. It was the first of many works that covered fiction, short stories, travel and autobiography.She changed her name by deed poll to Evelyn May Mordaunt on 1st July 1915 and gained a further reputation as a writer of short stories for magazines which display both her humour and sense of tragedy. Travel was always high on her priority and the experiences used not only for pleasure but in her writings and, as travel books, ideas in themselves. On 27th January 1933 at Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, she married a retired barrister from Gloucestershire. In her own words, the marriage ‘ended in tragedy.'Elinor Mordaunt died on 25th June 1942 at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford. She was 70.

Arrowsmith tells the story of bright and scientifically minded Martin Arrowsmith of Elk Mills, Winnemac (the same fictional state in which several of Lewis's other novels are set), as he makes his way from a small town in the Midwest to the upper echelons of the scientific community at a prestigious foundation in New York City. Along the way he begins medical school. He becomes engaged to one woman, cheats on her with another woman, becomes engaged to the second woman and then finally invites both women to a lunch to settle the issue. He eventually insults his mentor, Max Gottlieb, and is suspended from school. He takes up life as an ordinary worker, then marries Leora with her family supporting him based on the promise that he will take up private practice as the only doctor in tiny Wheatsylvania, North Dakota. Frustrated with the work, he moves on to a job at the state Department of Public Health branch in Nautilus, Iowa, then becomes romantically involved with the young daughter of its local director. After a series of political disputes, he resigns and joins the staff of an exclusive private hospital in Chicago. Finally, Arrowsmith is recognized by his former mentor, Gottlieb, for a scientific paper he has written, and is invited to take a post with a wealthy and elite research institute in New York City. The book's climax deals with Arrowsmith's discovery of a phage that destroys bacteria and his experiences as he faces an outbreak of bubonic plague on a fictional Caribbean island.

Excerpt:'Wilford Heaton is not my real name, for why should I publish it to the world? The reason I do not give it is, first, because I have no desire to be made the object of idle curiosity or speculation, and secondly, although the explanation herein given will clear the honour of one of the most powerful of the Imperial Houses in Europe, I have no wish that my true name should be associated with it. I have, however, a reason for writing this narrative—a very strong reason. The story is an enthralling one; the adventures stranger, perhaps, than ever happened to any other living person. I have resolved to relate the plain unvarnished facts in their sequence, just as they occurred, without seeking to suppress or embellish, but to recount the strange adventures just as they are registered in the small leather portfolio, or secret dossier, which still, at this moment, reposes in the archives of a certain Ministry in one of the European capitals. There have recently been stories afloat—strange stories. At first I laughed at all the absurd rumours, but very quickly I saw how seriously distorted the real facts had become, for ingenious paragraphs of certain so-called Society papers, grasping the story eagerly, worked it up into a narrative which reflected very seriously upon the honour of one who is dearest in all the world to me. Well, my tale—or exposure—is written here. In order that those who read may clearly follow the curious chain of circumstances, it is necessary for me to go back some eight years or so—not a long period as far as time goes, but to me a veritable century. I was young, just turned twenty five. I was decently well-off, having come into an income of nearly a couple of thousand a year left me by my father, a sum which put me beyond the necessity of entering business, pursuing the daily grind, or troubling about the morrow. My career at Oxford had, I fear, been marked by a good many shortcomings and many youthful escapades, but I ended it by taking my degree of Bachelor of Medicine, shortly afterwards pursuing the fashionable habit of “going abroad.” Within two years, however, I returned to London world-weary—like so many other young men who, being left comfortably off, commence to taste the enjoyment of life too early—and settled down in a suite of smoke-begrimed rooms in Essex Street, Strand.'

A Victorian lawyer's view of a fictional case from the The Pickwick Papers shows how Dickens'wit, combined with a detailed knowledge of the law, produced one of the funniest court cases in fiction When Samuel Pickwick uttered soothing words to Mrs. Bardell in her time of need, he never dreamed that he would find himself in a court of law, in a breach of promise suit. As a parade of his friends did their best as witnesses to help him out of a hole, not always successfully, the other side produced evidence that was manipulated by skillful lawyers to make a cast iron case for Pickwick's guilt. In this lawyerly but witty book, Fitzgerald treats Bardell v. Pickwick as if it were a real case, analyzes the tactics of the various lawyers, and scrutinizes the points of law Dickens made his fictional lawyers present.

Ethel Lina White was born on the 2nd April 1876 in Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, in Wales.Her family were wealthy due to her father's invention of a waterproofing material used, initially, for the London Underground.Ethel started writing when she was only a child and published essays and poems in children's papers. She was also a talented artist.As an adult she began to write short stories and, some years later, she started writing novels. At the time she was working for the Ministry of Pensions in London but resigned in order to accept an advance of ten pounds and begin a career as a novelist. It was this determination that helped her become one of the best-known crime writers in the English-speaking world during the 1930's and 40's.Perhaps her best-known books are the ‘The Lady Vanishes'and ‘The Spiral Staircase'both of which were originally entitled differently but were republished with new names after being filmed. Whilst today she lacks attention, in her day she was as popular and as highly regarded as Agatha Christie.Ethel Lina White died in London on the 13th of August 1944 of ovarian cancer. She was 68.In her will she made a bizarre condition in order for her sister to receive her estate of £5737. It read:'I give and bequeath unto Annis Dora White all that I possess on condition she pays a qualified surgeon to plunge a knife into my heart after death.'In life she had a fear of being buried alive.

Dorothy Edwards, an only child, was born on the 18th August 1902 at Ogmore Vale in Glamorgan.Her father was a headmaster and an early activist in the Independent Labour Party. At age 9 Dorothy, dressed in red, welcomed Keir Hardy on to the stage at Tonypandy during the national coal strike of 1912. She was taught that revolution was at hand, that class barriers would be a thing of the past. Dorothy won a scholarship and boarded at Howell's School for Girls in Llandaff before moving to University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire where she read Greek and philosophy.Her early hopes to be an opera singer were set to one side after graduating and the death of her father. Instead she took on part-time work to supplement her mother's pension with whom she now lived.Dorothy managed to write a number of short stories which appeared in the literary journals of the day. She spent several months with her mother in Vienna, all the time revising or writing before embarking on ‘Winter Sonata', a short novel published in 1928.Introductions to several members of the Bloomsbury Group meant a move to London and a division of her time between child-care for the family of Bloomsbury author David Garnett and the promise of an advance payment for her work on a new volume of stories.However, Dorothy's life was starting to spiral out of control; she was attracted to the Welsh nationalist movement but felt that her Welsh provincialism made her, in London at least, feel socially inferior. Leaving her mother dependent on a hired companion consumed her with guilt as did the end of an affair with a married musician.On the 5th January 1934, having spent the morning burning her papers, Dorothy Edwards threw herself in front of a train near Caerphilly railway station. Her suicide note read:'I am killing myself because I have never sincerely loved any human being all my life. I have accepted kindness and friendship and even love without gratitude, and given nothing in return.'Index of ContentsA Country House, A Garland of Earth, Mutiny, Rhapsody, The Problem of Life

The beloved children's author Arthur Ransome is noted for popularising the pattern for “holiday adventure” stories. A writer of various genres, his first success, ‘Bohemia in London', is a partly autobiographical account of his early days. He also published a noted general ‘History of Story-Telling', as well as landmark critical works on Edgar Allan Poe and Oscar Wilde. During the Great War, Ransome worked as a war correspondent in Russia, where he studied native folktales, which he retold for children. He also wrote extensively about his passion of angling, producing the seminal work in its field, ‘Rod and Line'. This eBook presents Ransome's collected works, with numerous illustrations, rare texts, informative introductions and the usual Delphi bonus material. (Version 1) • Beautifully illustrated with images relating to Ransome's life and works• Concise introductions to the major works• Rare children's books, with the original artwork• Many rare texts appearing for the first time in digital publishing • Images of how the books were first published, giving your eReader a taste of the original texts• Excellent formatting of the texts• Rare short stories available in no other collection• Includes Ransome's rare non-fiction works• Features the celebrated autobiography – discover Ransome's intriguing life• Ordering of texts into chronological order and genres CONTENTS: Other Children's BooksThe Child's Book of the Seasons (1906)Pond and Stream (1906)The Things in our Garden (1906)The Hoofmarks of the Faun (1911)Old Peter's Russian Tales (1916)Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp in Rhyme (1920)The Soldier and Death (1922) The Horror NovelThe Elixir of Life (1915) The Short StoriesMiscellaneous Stories The Non-FictionThe Souls of the Streets and Other Little Papers (1904)Bohemia in London (1907)A History of Story-telling (1909)Edgar Allan Poe (1910)Oscar Wilde (1912)Portraits and Speculations (1913)Six Weeks in Russia (1919)The Crisis in Russia (1921)Racundra's First Cruise (1923)Rod and Line (1929)Racundra's Third Cruise (1972) The AutobiographyThe Autobiography of Arthur Ransome (1976)

The English interwar writer Arthur Ransome, best known for the ‘Swallows and Amazons'children's books, is noted for popularising the pattern for “holiday adventure” stories. A writer of various genres, his first success, ‘Bohemia in London', is a partly autobiographical account of his early days. He also published a noted general ‘History of Story-Telling', as well as landmark critical works on Edgar Allan Poe and Oscar Wilde. During the Great War, Ransome worked as a war correspondent in Russia, where he studied native folktales, which he retold for children. He also wrote extensively about his passion of angling, producing the seminal work in its field, ‘Rod and Line'. For the first time in publishing history, this eBook presents Ransome's complete fictional works, with numerous illustrations, rare texts, informative introductions and the usual Delphi bonus material. (Version 1) • Beautifully illustrated with images relating to Ransome's life and works• Concise introductions to the major works• All the ‘Swallows and Amazons'novels, with individual contents tables• Includes Ransome's original illustrations to the novels• Many rare texts appearing for the first time in digital publishing • Images of how the books were first published, giving your eReader a taste of the original texts• Excellent formatting of the texts• Rare short stories available in no other collection• Includes Ransome's rare non-fiction works• Features the celebrated autobiography – discover Ransome's intriguing life• Ordering of texts into chronological order and genres CONTENTS: The Swallows and Amazons BooksSwallows and Amazons (1930)Swallowdale (1931)Peter Duck (1932)Winter Holiday (1933)Coot Club (1934)Pigeon Post (1936)We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea (1937)Secret Water (1939)The Big Six (1940)Missee Lee (1941)The Picts and the Martyrs (1943)Great Northern? (1947) Other Children's BooksThe Child's Book of the Seasons (1906)Pond and Stream (1906)The Things in our Garden (1906)The Hoofmarks of the Faun (1911)Old Peter's Russian Tales (1916)Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp in Rhyme (1920)The Soldier and Death (1922) The Horror NovelThe Elixir of Life (1915) The Short StoriesMiscellaneous Stories The Non-FictionThe Souls of the Streets and Other Little Papers (1904)Bohemia in London (1907)A History of Story-telling (1909)Edgar Allan Poe (1910)Oscar Wilde (1912)Portraits and Speculations (1913)Six Weeks in Russia (1919)The Crisis in Russia (1921)Racundra's First Cruise (1923)Rod and Line (1929)Racundra's Third Cruise (1972) The AutobiographyThe Autobiography of Arthur Ransome (1976)

In this'magical, brilliant'(Lev Grossman, New York Times bestselling author) reimagining of Pride and Prejudice, the youngest Bennett sister is given the spotlight. In this exuberant retelling of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Lydia Bennet puts pen to paper to relate the real events and aftermath of the classic story. Some facts are well known: Mrs. Bennet suffers from her nerves, Mr. Bennet suffers from Mrs. Bennet, and all five daughters suffer from an estate that is entailed only to male heirs. But Lydia also suffers from entirely different concerns: her best-loved sister Kitty is really a barn cat; Wickham is every bit as wicked as the world believes him to be, but what else would one expect from a demon? And if Mr. Darcy is uptight about etiquette, that's nothing compared to his feelings about magic. Most of all, Lydia has yet to learn that for a witch, promises have power... Full of enchantment, intrigue, and boundless magic, The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch, has all the irreverent wit, strength, and romance of Pride and Prejudice—while offering a highly unexpected redemption for the wildest Bennet sister.A NEW YORK TIMES BEST SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY PICK FOR 2023

Virginia Woolf sempre es va sentir atreta per l'univers de les festes, de la vida en societat, perquè en aquestes trobades els homes i les dones deixen de ser qui són i passen a representar el paper que els convé. La senyora Dalloway a Bond Street és un recull d'alguns dels contes que Virginia Woolf va incloure en el llibre La festa de la senyora Dalloway i d'altres relats que l'autora va escriure entre el 1922 i el 1925, l'època en què treballava en la seva gran novel·la: La senyora Dalloway. L'escriptor Sebastià Portell ha estat l'encarregat de fer la tria de relats, de traduir-los per primera vegada al català i d'escriure el pròleg a aquesta edició.

Lavishly opulent stories of sensual obsession, cultural heritage, and mythological creatures—translated into English for the first time—from a classic Japanese writerFeaturing “The Qilin,” “The Siren's Lament,” and the novella Killing O-Tsuya, this gorgeous new edition of 3 classic works translated by Bryan Karetnyk distills the essence of Jun'ichirō Tanizaki's shorter fiction: the co-mingling of Japanese and Chinese mythologies, the chillingly dark side of desire, and the paper-thin line between the sublime and the depraved. “The Qilin”: The sage Confucius travels to a kingdom ruled by a struggling duke, whose pursuit of virtue is threatened by his consort's obsession desire for pleasure.Killing O-Tsuya: A naïve servant elopes with his master's daughter, only to be plunged headlong into a world of murder and corruption.“The Siren's Lament”: Exhausted by a lifestyle of never-ending debauchery, a young prince finds himself in possession of a dazzling, beguiling mermaid.The essential short works of one of the most important and widely-read figured in modern Japanese literature, author of hugely popular works including In Praise of Shadows, The Makioka Sisters, and Naomi; renowned for his investigations of family dynamics, eroticism, and cultural identity.

Excerpt:'“Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favour of the Lord.”—Proverbs xviii, 22. “Have those urgent dispatches come in from Berlin, Deedes?” “Captain Hammerton has not yet arrived,” I answered. “Eleven o'clock! Tut, tut! Every moment's delay means greater risk,” and the Earl of Warnham, Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, strode up and down his private room, with his hat still on, impatiently snapping his bony fingers in agitation quite unusual to him. “Hammerton wired from Berlin yesterday, when on the point of leaving,” I observed, taking a telegram from the table before me. “In cipher?” “Yes.” “No accident is reported in the papers, I suppose?” “Nothing in the Times,” I replied. “Strange, very strange, that he should be so long overdue,” the Earl said, at last casting himself into his padded chair, and lounging back, his hands thrust deep into his pockets as he stared thoughtfully into space.'

In this chilling classic British mystery thriller, a Scotland Yard inspector and his sister search for her missing fiancé in a city of vanishing people. Petty con man Alfred Routh thinks a place like Milton Manor outside Oxford will have something nice to steal. When he learns what is inside, however, he is desperate to steal away with his life... Meanwhile, Sir John Appleby from Scotland Yard is headed to Oxford to help his sister Jane. Her fiancé, a war hero and promising academic, has gone missing and many are concerned for his safety. But he's not the only recent disappearance in the area. As Appleby's investigation begins, things only get more bizarre. The trail of clues leads him and Jane through the city of Oxford to the grounds of Milton Manor and the terrifying secrets within...Originally published as The Paper Thunderbolt. Praise for Michael Innes and Inspector Appleby “The author's ingenuity and wit are seemingly endless.” —The Daily Telegraph “Altogether a brilliant piece of work.” —Birmingham Post “Innes is in a class by himself when it comes to detective fiction.” —The Times Literary Supplement

Presented for the first time in English, the recently discovered early manuscripts of the twentieth century's most towering literary figure offer uncanny glimpses of his emerging genius and the creation of his masterpiece.One of the most significant literary events of the century, the discovery of manuscript pages containing early drafts of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time put an end to a decades-long search for the Proustian grail. The Paris publisher Bernard de Fallois claimed to have viewed the folios, but doubts about their existence emerged when none appeared in the Proust manuscripts bequeathed to the Bibliothèque Nationale in 1962. The texts had in fact been hidden among Fallois's private papers, where they were found upon his death in 2018. The Seventy-Five Folios and Other Unpublished Manuscripts presents these folios here for the first time in English, along with seventeen other brief unpublished texts. Extensive commentary and notes by the Proust scholar Nathalie Mauriac Dyer offer insightful critical analysis.Characterized by Fallois as the “precious guide” to understanding Proust's masterpiece, the folios contain early versions of six episodes included in the novel. Readers glimpse what Proust's biographer Jean-Yves Tadié describes as the “sacred moment” when the great work burst forth for the first time. The folios reveal the autobiographical extent of Proust's writing, with traces of his family life scattered throughout. Before the existence of Charles Swann, for example, we find a narrator named Marcel, a testament to what one scholar has called “the gradual transformation of lived experience into (auto)fiction in Proust's elaboration of the novel.”Like a painter's sketches and a composer's holographs, Proust's folios tell a story of artistic evolution. A “dream of a book, a book of a dream,” Fallois called them. Here is a literary magnum opus finding its final form.

Excerpt:'Italian humour, says Mr. J. A. Symonds, died with Ariosto; and, in the face of such a declaration, any attempt to bring together a collection of specimens, some of which at any rate belong to a more recent date, would seem to savour of presumption. Yet, even at the risk of differing from such a recognised authority on Italian literature, we venture to think that a good deal has been produced since the age of Ariosto which may legitimately be defined as humour, though, for various reasons presently to be detailed, there are peculiar difficulties connected with its presentation in a foreign tongue It may as well be said at once that the professed humorist, the writer who is comic and nothing else, or, at any rate, whose main scope is to be funny, is all but unknown in modern Italian literature. Strictly speaking, he is perhaps a Germanic rather than a Latin product. The jokes in Italian comic and other papers are not, as a rule, overpoweringly amusing; and if we do come across a book which sets itself forth as Umoristico, the chances are that it turns out to be very tragical mirth indeed. But in novels and tales, even in essays and descriptions, which have no specially humorous intention, you often come across passages of a pure and spontaneous humour, inimitable in its own kind.'

Ethel Lina White was born on the 2nd April 1876 in Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, in Wales.Her family were wealthy due to her father's invention of a waterproofing material used, initially, for the London Underground.Ethel started writing when she was only a child and published essays and poems in children's papers. She was also a talented artist.As an adult she began to write short stories and, some years later, she started writing novels. At the time she was working for the Ministry of Pensions in London but resigned in order to accept an advance of ten pounds and begin a career as a novelist. It was this determination that helped her become one of the best-known crime writers in the English-speaking world during the 1930's and 40's.Perhaps her best-known books are the ‘The Lady Vanishes'and ‘The Spiral Staircase'both of which were originally entitled differently but were republished with new names after being filmed. Whilst today she lacks attention, in her day she was as popular and as highly regarded as Agatha Christie.Ethel Lina White died in London on the 13th of August 1944 of ovarian cancer. She was 68.In her will she made a bizarre condition in order for her sister to receive her estate of £5737. It read:'I give and bequeath unto Annis Dora White all that I possess on condition she pays a qualified surgeon to plunge a knife into my heart after death.'In life she had a fear of being buried alive.

Ethel Lina White was born on the 2nd April 1876 in Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, in Wales.Her family were wealthy due to her father's invention of a waterproofing material used, initially, for the London Underground.Ethel started writing when she was only a child and published essays and poems in children's papers. She was also a talented artist.As an adult she began to write short stories and, some years later, she started writing novels. At the time she was working for the Ministry of Pensions in London but resigned in order to accept an advance of ten pounds and begin a career as a novelist. It was this determination that helped her become one of the best-known crime writers in the English-speaking world during the 1930's and 40's.Perhaps her best-known books are the ‘The Lady Vanishes'and ‘The Spiral Staircase'both of which were originally entitled differently but were republished with new names after being filmed. Whilst today she lacks attention, in her day she was as popular and as highly regarded as Agatha Christie.Ethel Lina White died in London on the 13th of August 1944 of ovarian cancer. She was 68.In her will she made a bizarre condition in order for her sister to receive her estate of £5737. It read:'I give and bequeath unto Annis Dora White all that I possess on condition she pays a qualified surgeon to plunge a knife into my heart after death.'In life she had a fear of being buried alive.

'One of the greatest Japanese writers… his work explores the destructive power of erotic obsessions'Guardian'Outstanding… rich and mysterious'New York Times Book Review A new selection and translation of short stories by a hugely prominent classic Japanese writer, filled with eroticism and fantasy The rich and mysterious short stories of Jun'ichiro Tanizaki pulse with a restless eroticism. Visiting a kingdom ruled by a weak-willed duke, the sage Confucius finds himself drawn into a battle of wills. A naïve servant boy is compelled down a path of vice and sin by his master's daughter. A young prince finds himself enraptured by his newest possession: a beguiling, enchanting mermaid. These three stories, two of which are here translated for the first time by Bryan Karetnyk, capture the essence of Tanizaki's shorter writings. Drawing on tales from both Japanese and Chinese mythology, combined with poignant psychological realism, Tanizaki reveals and revels in the paper-thin line between the sublime and the depraved.

Dorothy Edwards, an only child, was born on the 18th August 1902 at Ogmore Vale in Glamorgan.Her father was a headmaster and an early activist in the Independent Labour Party. At age 9 Dorothy, dressed in red, welcomed Keir Hardy on to the stage at Tonypandy during the national coal strike of 1912. She was taught that revolution was at hand, that class barriers would be a thing of the past. Dorothy won a scholarship and boarded at Howell's School for Girls in Llandaff before moving to University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire where she read Greek and philosophy.Her early hopes to be an opera singer were set to one side after graduating and the death of her father. Instead she took on part-time work to supplement her mother's pension with whom she now lived.Dorothy managed to write a number of short stories which appeared in the literary journals of the day. She spent several months with her mother in Vienna, all the time revising or writing before embarking on ‘Winter Sonata', a short novel published in 1928.Introductions to several members of the Bloomsbury Group meant a move to London and a division of her time between child-care for the family of Bloomsbury author David Garnett and the promise of an advance payment for her work on a new volume of stories.However, Dorothy's life was starting to spiral out of control; she was attracted to the Welsh nationalist movement but felt that her Welsh provincialism made her, in London at least, feel socially inferior. Leaving her mother dependent on a hired companion consumed her with guilt as did the end of an affair with a married musician.On the 5th January 1934, having spent the morning burning her papers, Dorothy Edwards threw herself in front of a train near Caerphilly railway station. Her suicide note read:'I am killing myself because I have never sincerely loved any human being all my life. I have accepted kindness and friendship and even love without gratitude, and given nothing in return.'

Excerpt: “The steamship Nemesis, of two thousand five hundred and fifty tons register, and belonging to the port of London, had nearly finished her loading one foggy afternoon in a foggy November. She was at Tilbury, taking in a general cargo for Capetown and Australian ports, and as the last few cases were coming on board the skipper came on board too by way of the big gangway, close by which the second mate was standing.'Is that the last of it?'asked the'old man'gloomily.'Yes, sir,'said Mr. Cade with equal gloominess. When a man is second mate at the age of fifty it is not surprising that he should be sulky.'And it is time it was, for we're well down to our mark, and no mistake about it, sir.'Captain Jordan said nothing, but walked for'ard to his cabin and sat down wearily. He threw a bundle of papers on his table, and filling his pipe smoked for a few minutes. He was a fine handsome white-headed man of some fifty-two years, and had once been ambitious. Now he worked for Messrs. Gruddle, Shody, & Co., and, as all seamen knew, to work for them was to have lost all chances that following the sea affords even in these days.'

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author's brain, their soul and heart. A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere.In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens'across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author?The theme itself will form the boundaries for our stories which range from well-known classics, newly told, to stories that modern times have overlooked but perfectly exemplify the theme. Throughout the volume our authors whether of instant recognition or new to you are all leviathans of literature.Some you may disagree with but they will get you thinking; about our choices and about those you would have made. If this volume takes you on a path to discover more of these miniature masterpieces then we have all gained something.The ideas and inventions of mankind on many occasions have their roots in the minds of authors. From Interplanetary journeys, time travel, robots and cyborgs to voice control, organ transplants, mobile phones and even the internet are just some that began as mere inky black on paper as thrills and adventures.