bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Melmotte in Parliament
Authors: Trollope Anthony
Published: December 2020

Melmotte did not return home in time to hear the good news that day,—good news as he would regard it, even though, when told to him, it should be accompanied by all the extraneous additions with which Marie had communicated her purpose to Madame...
Down at Carbury
Authors: Trollope Anthony
Published: December 2020

When Roger Carbury returned to Suffolk, after seeing his cousins in Welbeck Street, he was by no means contented with himself. That he should be discontented generally with the circumstances of his life was a matter of course. He knew that he was farther...
Chapter III: Mr Riley Gives His Advice Concerning a School for Tom
Authors: Eliot George
Published: December 2020

The gentleman in the ample white cravat and shirt-frill, taking his brandy-and-water so pleasantly with his good friend Tulliver, is Mr Riley, a gentleman with a waxen complexion and fat hands, rather highly educated for an auctioneer and appraiser, but large-hearted enough to show...
Chapter IV: ‘The Young Idea’
Authors: Eliot George
Published: December 2020

The alternations of feeling in that first dialogue between Tom and Philip continued to mark their intercourse even after many weeks of schoolboy intimacy. Tom never quite lost the feeling that Philip, being the son of a ‘rascal,’ was his natural enemy, never thoroughly...
Chapter III: The Wavering Balance
Authors: Eliot George
Published: December 2020

I Said that Maggie went home that evening from the Red Deeps with a mental conflict already begun. You have seen clearly enough, in her interview with Philip, what that conflict was. Here suddenly was an opening in the rocky wall which shut...
Chapter III: Showing that Old Acquaintances Are Capable of Surprising Us
Authors: Eliot George
Published: December 2020

When Maggie was at home again, her mother brought her news of an unexpected line of conduct in aunt Glegg. As long as Maggie had not been heard of, Mrs Glegg had half-closed her shutters and drawn down her blinds: she felt assured that...
Chapter IV
Authors: Dostoevsky Fyodor
Published: December 2020

Reading his mother’s letter had been excruciating. But as for its main, central point, he had not a moment’s doubt, even as he read it. The essential issue was decided in his mind, and settled once and for all. ‘This marriage shall never happen,...
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Authors: Jacobs Harriet
Published: December 2020

‘The degradations, the wrongs, the vices, that grow out of slavery, are more than I can describe.’ Harriet Jacobs was born a slave in the American South and went on to write one of the most extraordinary slave narratives. First published pseudonymously in 1861, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl describes Jacobs’s treatment at the hands of her owners, her eventual escape to the North, and her perilous existence evading recapture as a fugitive slave. To save herself from sexual assault and protect her children she is forced to hide for seven years in a tiny attic space, suffering terrible psychological and physical pain. Written to expose the appalling treatment of slaves in the South and the racism of the free North, and to advance the abolitionist cause, Incidents is notable for its careful construction and literary effects. Jacobs’s story of self-emancipation and a growing feminist consciousness is the tale of an individual and a searing indictment of slavery’s inhumanity. This edition includes the short memoir by Jacobs’s brother, John S. Jacobs, ‘A True Tale of Slavery’.
XX. New Perils
Authors: Jacobs Harriet
Published: December 2020

The doctor, more exasperated than ever, again tried to revenge himself on my relatives. He arrested uncle Phillip on the charge of having aided my flight. He was carried before a court, and swore truly that he knew nothing of my intention to escape,...
XL. The Fugitive Slave Law
Authors: Jacobs Harriet
Published: December 2020

My brother, being disappointed in his project, concluded to go to California; and it was agreed that Benjamin should go with him. Ellen liked her school, and was a great favorite there. They did not know her history, and she did not tell it,...
Chapter XI The Banquet
Authors: Scott Sir Walter
Published: December 2020

The entertainment was ample, and handsome according to the Scotch ideas of the period, and the guests did great honour to it. The Baron eat like a famished soldier, the Laird of Balmawhapple like a sportsman, Bullsegg of Killancureit like a farmer, Waverley himself...
Chapter X A Confidant
Authors: Scott Sir Walter
Published: December 2020

Waverley awoke in the morning from troubled dreams and unrefreshing slumbers, to a full consciousness of the horrors of his situation. How it might terminate he knew not. He might be delivered up to military law, which, in the midst of civil war, was...
Chapter XI Things mend a little
Authors: Scott Sir Walter
Published: December 2020

About noon Mr Morton returned and brought an invitation from Major Melville that Mr Waverley would honour him with his company to dinner, notwithstanding the unpleasant affair which detained him at Cairnvreckan, from which he should heartily rejoice to see Mr Waverley completely extricated....
The Bull that Thought
Authors: Kipling Rudyard
Published: December 2020

Westward from a town by the Mouths of the Rhone, runs a road° so mathematically straight, so barometrically level, that it ranks among the world’s measured miles and motorists use it for records.

I had attacked the distance several times, but always with a...
Fairy-Kist
Authors: Kipling Rudyard
Published: December 2020

The Mother’s Son
Chapter IX
Authors: Eliot George
Published: December 2020

Godfrey rose and took his own breakfast earlier than usual, but lingered in the wainscoted parlour till his younger brothers had finished their meal and gone out; awaiting his father, who always took a walk with his managing-man* before breakfast. Every one...
Chapter VIII
Authors: Thackeray William Makepeace
Published: December 2020

Miss Rebecca Sharp to Miss Amelia Sedley, Russell Square, London

(Free*.—Pitt Crawley.)

My
Dearest, Sweetest
Amelia—With what mingled joy and sorrow do I take up the pen to write to my dearest friend ! Oh, what a change...
Chapter XXVII
Authors: Thackeray William Makepeace
Published: December 2020

—henJ°s’s fine carriage drove up to the inn door at Chatham, the first face which Amelia recognized was the friendly countenance of Captain Dobbin, who had been pacing the streetforanhourpast in expectation of his friends’ arrival. The captain,...
Chapter XXXIV
Authors: Thackeray William Makepeace
Published: December 2020

heamiable behaviour of Mr. Crawley, and Lady Jane’s kind reception of her, highly flattered Miss Briggs, who was enabled to speak a good word for the latter, after the cards of the Southdown family had been presented to . Miss Crawley....
Chapter XXXVII
Authors: Thackeray William Makepeace
Published: December 2020

nthe first place, and as a matter of the greatest necessity, we are bound to \ describe how a house may be got for I nothing a year. These mansions are I to be had either unfurnished, where, f if you...
Chapter LXVI
Authors: Thackeray William Makepeace
Published: December 2020

Frankness and kindness like Amelia’s were likely to touch even such a hardened little reprobate as Becky. She returned Emmy’s caresses and kind speeches with something very like gratitude, and an emotion which, if it was not lasting, for a moment was almost...
Chapter 3
Authors: Zola Émile
Published: December 2020

Every Tuesday Hélène had Monsieur Rambaud and Abbé Jouve to dinner. They were the ones who, when she had just been widowed, had insisted on making regular visits and, with a friendly informality, sitting at her supper table at least once a week, to...
Chapter II The House of Yule
Authors: Gissing George
Published: December 2020

‘I think,’ said Jasper, as he entered the room where his mother and Maud were busy with plain needlework,* ‘I must have met Alfred Yule and his daughter.’

‘How did you recognise them?’ Mrs Milvain inquired.

‘I passed an old buffer and...
Chapter V The Way Hither
Authors: Gissing George
Published: December 2020

Even in mid-rapture of his marriage month he had foreseen this possibility; but fate had hitherto rescued him in sudden ways when he was on the brink of self-abandonment, and it was hard to imagine that this culmination of triumphant joy could be a...
Chapter XXXIII The Sunny Way
Authors: Gissing George
Published: December 2020

On an evening of early summer, six months after the death of Edwin Reardon, Jasper of the facile pen was bending over his desk, writing rapidly by the warm western light which told that sunset was near. Not far from him sat his younger...
Gothic Tales
Authors: Conan Doyle Arthur
Published: December 2020

‘There was a rumour, too, that he was a devil-worshipper, or something of that sort, and also that he had the evil eye…’ Arthur Conan Doyle was the greatest genre writer Britain has ever produced. Throughout a long writing career, he drew on his own medical background, his travels, and his increasing interest in spiritualism and the occult to produce a spectacular array of Gothic Tales. Many of Doyle’s writings are recognised as the very greatest tales of terror. They range from hauntings in the polar wasteland to evil surgeons and malevolent jungle landscapes. This collection brings together over thirty of Conan Doyle’s best Gothic Tales. Darryl Jones’s introduction discusses the contradictions in Conan Doyle’s very public life - as a medical doctor who became obsessed with the spirit world, or a British imperialist drawn to support Irish Home Rule - and shows the ways in which these found articulation in that most anxious of all literary forms, the Gothic.
The Nightmare Room
Authors: Doyle Arthur Conan
Published: December 2020

T
he sitting-room of the Masons was a very singular apartment. At one end it was furnished with considerable luxury. The deep sofas, the low, luxurious chairs, the voluptuous statuettes, and the rich curtains hanging from deep and ornamental screens of metal-work made a...
Chapter I
Authors: Zola Émile
Published: December 2020

La
Teuse came in and propped her broom and her feather duster against the altar. She had spent too long setting about the six-monthly soap-making.* She made her way through the church to ring the Angelus, limping more than usual...
Chapter IV
Authors: Zola Émile
Published: December 2020

Once Abbé Mouret felt La Teuse no longer just behind him he stopped, glad to be on his own at last. The church was built on a slight mound that sloped down to the village; it was a long building, like an
Chapter VIII
Authors: Zola Émile
Published: December 2020

The house seemed asleep in the midday sun, with its shutters closed, and the buzzing of the big flies climbing along the ivy up to the tiles of the roof. The sunlit ruin was bathed in happy peacefulness. The doctor pushed open the gate...
Chapter XIII
Authors: Zola Émile
Published: December 2020

Inside the church, Abbé Mouret found about ten girls holding branches of olive, laurel, and rosemary. As garden flowers rarely grew on the rocks of Les Artaud, it was the custom to decorate the altar of the Virgin with hardy greenery that lasted through...
Chapter XIII
Authors: Zola Émile
Published: December 2020

Now, however, the entire park was theirs. They had taken sovereign possession of it. There was not one bit of ground that did not belong to them. It was for them that the roses bloomed, for them that the flower garden produced the sweet...
Chapter XV
Authors: Zola Émile
Published: December 2020

Next day, just before three o’clock, La Teuse and Brother Archangias were talking on the steps of the presbytery when they saw Dr Pascal’s gig dashing through the village at a gallop. The whip was lashing out violently from the lowered hood of the...
The Princess and the Peas
Authors: Andersen Hans Christian
Published: December 2020

There lived, once upon a time, a Prince, and he wished to marry a Princess, but then she must be really and truly a Princess. So he travelled over the whole world to find one; but there was always something or other to prevent...
Prince Prigio
Authors: Lang Andrew
Published: December 2020

Chapter I

how the fairies were not invited to court

upon a time there reigned in Pantouflia* a king and a queen. With almost everything else to make them happy, they wanted one thing: they had no children. This vexed the king...
23
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

Vronsky and Kitty danced several waltzes together. After the waltzing had finished, Kitty went over to her mother, and she had barely managed to say a few words to Countess Nordston before Vronsky arrived to collect her for the first quadrille. Nothing significant was...
8
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

Alexey
Alexandrovich saw nothing unusual or improper about his wife sitting with Vronsky at a separate table and talking animatedly about something; but he did notice that it seemed unusual and improper to everyone else in the drawing room, and for that reason it...
17
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

Stepan
Arkadyich went upstairs, his pocket bulging with the banknotes the merchant had paid him for three months in advance. The business with the wood was over, the money was in his pocket, the shooting had been marvellous, and Stepan Arkadyich was in the...
4
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

The personal matter occupying Levin’s thoughts during the conversation with his brother was the following: after turning up at the mowing one day the previous year and losing his temper with the steward, Levin had used his own method of calming down—he took a...
13
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

No
One except those closest to Alexey Alexandrovich knew that this apparently most cold and calculating of men had one weakness which went against the grain of his general character. Alexey Alexandrovich was unable to hear and see a child or a woman crying...
14
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

As he approached Petersburg, Alexey Alexandrovich not only settled firmly on this decision, but also composed in his head the letter he would write to his wife. Going into the porter’s office, Alexey Alexandrovich glanced at the letters and papers brought from the ministry,...
13
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

There are no circumstances to which a man cannot accustom himself, especially if he sees that everyone around him lives in the same way. Levin would not have believed three months earlier that he could have calmly fallen asleep in the circumstances...
20
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

Stepan
Arkadyich, as always, did not spend his time in Petersburg idly. Apart from tending to the business of his sister’s divorce and the position, in Petersburg he needed, as always, to freshen up, as he put it, after the fustiness of Moscow.

Despite...
13
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

And Levin remembered a recent scene with Dolly and her children. Left to their own devices, the children had started cooking raspberries over candles and pouring streams of milk into each other’s mouths. After catching them at it, their mother began impressing upon them...
The Bright Side of Life
Authors: Zola Émile
Published: December 2020

‘Neither spoke another word, they were gripped by a shared, unthinking madness as they plunged headlong together into vertiginous rapture.’ Orphaned with a substantial inheritance at the age of ten, Pauline Quenu is taken from Paris to live with her relatives, Monsieur and Madame Chanteau and their son Lazare, in the village of Bonneville on the wild Normandy coast. Her presence enlivens the household and Pauline is the only one who can ease Chanteau's gout-ridden agony. Her love of life contrasts with the insularity and pessimism that infects the family, especially Lazare, for whom she develops a devoted passion. Gradually Madame Chanteau starts to take advantage of Pauline's generous nature, and jealousy and resentment threaten to blight all their lives. The arrival of a pretty family friend, Louise, brings tensions to a head. The twelfth novel in the Rougon Macquart series, The Bright Side of Life is remarkable for its depiction of intense emotions and physical and mental suffering. The precarious location of Bonneville and the changing moods of the sea mirror the turbulent relations of the characters, and as the story unfolds its title comes to seem ever more ironic.
Chapter I
Authors: Disraeli Benjamin
Published: December 2020

The building which was still called Marney Abbey, though remote from the site of the ancient monastery, was an extensive structure raised at the latter end of the reign of James the First, and in the stately and picturesque style of that age. Placed...
Chapter VI
Authors: Disraeli Benjamin
Published: December 2020

‘I understand, then,’ said Lord Marney to his brother, as on the evening of the same day they were seated together in the drawing-room, in close converse. ‘I understand then, that you have in fact paid nothing, and that my mother will give...
Chapter X
Authors: Disraeli Benjamin
Published: December 2020

In the meantime Gerard and Stephen stopped before a tall, thin, stuccoed house, ballustraded and friezed, very much lighted both within and without, and, from the sounds that issued from it, and the persons who retired and entered, evidently a locality of great resort...
Chapter V
Authors: Disraeli Benjamin
Published: December 2020

The summer twilight had faded into sweet night; the young and star-attended moon glittered like a sickle in the deep purple sky; of all the luminous host, Hesperus alone was visible; and a breeze, that bore the last embrace of the flowers by the...
Chapter XI
Authors: Disraeli Benjamin
Published: December 2020

On the evening of the day that Egremont had met Sybil in the Abbey of Westminster, and subsequently parted from her under circumstances so distressing, the Countess of Marney held a great assembly at the family mansion in St. James’ Square, which Lord Marney...
Chapter XV
Authors: Disraeli Benjamin
Published: December 2020

During the week of political agitation which terminated with the inglorious catastrophe of the Bedchamber plot, Sybil remained tranquil, and would have been scarcely conscious of what was disturbing so many right honourable hearts, had it not been for the incidental notice of their...
Chapter VII
Authors: Austen Jane
Published: December 2020

Before the house-maid had lit their fire the next day, or the sun gained any power over a cold, gloomy morning in January, Marianne, only half dressed, was kneeling against one of the window-seats for the sake of all the little light she could...
Chapter IV
Authors: Austen Jane
Published: December 2020

‘Well, Miss Dashwood,’ said Mrs. Jennings, sagaciously smiling, as soon as the gentleman had withdrawn, ‘I do not ask you what the Colonel has been saying to you; for though, upon my honour, I tried to keep out of hearing, I...
Chapter IX
Authors: Austen Jane
Published: December 2020

Elinor, for some time after he left her, for some time even after the sound of his carriage had died away, remained too much oppressed by a croud of ideas, widely differing in themselves, but of which sadness was the general result, to think...
Chapter Five
Authors: Zola Émile
Published: December 2020

On this frozen December evening, Silvine and Prosper found themselves alone with Charlot in the large farmhouse kitchen, she sewing, he in the process of making himself a fine switch. It was seven o’clock, and they had dined at six without waiting for old Fouchard,...
Orley Farm
Authors: Trollope Anthony
Published: December 2020

There was a power of endurance about her, and a courage that was almost awful. Did Lady Mason forge a codicil to her husband's will, allowing Orley Farm to pass to her son or not? Orley Farm centres on this case of forgery, and the anguish and guilt of Lady Mason. Surrounding this enigmatic woman and her apparent crime are her elderly lover, Sir Peregrine Orme; her principled but thoughtless son, Lucius; and, not least, a group of determined lawyers. Orley Farm contains the plot with which Trollope was most pleased. Drawing on family experience of the loss of an inheritance, the novel tackles the tremendous question of property fraud. The result, as George Orwell observed, is one of the most brilliant novels about a law suit in English fiction. Orley Farm dates from a confident period of its authorâs life. It breathes an air of writerly assurance, with Trollope at the height of his competitiveness with Dickens. In this work Trollope claims the Victorian legal novel as his own.
The English Von Bauhr
Authors: Trollope Anthony
Published: December 2020

On the following morning, before breakfast, Felix Graham and Augustus Staveley prepared themselves for the labours of the coming day by a walk into the country; for even at Birmingham, by perseverance, a walk into the country may be attained, — and very pretty country it...
The Loves and Hopes of Albert Fitzallen
Authors: Trollope Anthony
Published: December 2020

Felix Graham, when he left poor Mary Snow, did not go on immediately to the doctor’s shop. He had made up his mind that Mary Snow should never be his wife, and therefore considered it wise to lose no time in making such...
The Last Day
Authors: Trollope Anthony
Published: December 2020

Mrs Orme was up very early on that last morning of the trial, and had dressed herself before Lady Mason was awake. It was now March, but yet the morning light was hardly sufficient for her as she went through her toilet. They had...
Jane Eyre
Authors: Brontë Charlotte , Atkinson Juliette
Published: December 2020

Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt!’ Throughout the hardships of her childhood - spent with a severe aunt and abusive cousin, and later at the austere Lowood charity school - Jane Eyre clings to a sense of self-worth, despite of her treatment from those close to her. At the age of eighteen, sick of her narrow existence, she seeks work as a governess. The monotony of Jane’s new life at Thornfield Hall is broken up by the arrival of her peculiar and changeful employer, Mr Rochester. Routine at the mansion is further disrupted by mysterious incidents that draw the pair closer together but which, once explained, threaten Jane’s happiness and integrity. A flagship of Victorian fiction, Jane Eyre draws the reader in by the vigour of Jane’s voice and the novel’s forceful depiction of childhood injustice, of the restraints placed upon women, and the complexities of both faith and passion. The emotional charge of Jane’s story is as strong today as it was more than 150 years ago, as she seeks dignity and freedom on her own terms. In this new edition, Juliette Atkinson explores the power of narrative voice and looks at the striking physicality of the novel, which is both shocking and romantic.
Chapter I
Authors: Brontë Charlotte
Published: December 2020

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it...
Chapter VI
Authors: Brontë Charlotte
Published: December 2020

I continued the labours of the village school as actively and faithfully as I could. It was truly hard work at first. Some time elapsed before, with all my efforts, I could comprehend my scholars and their nature. Wholly untaught, with faculties quite torpid,...
Nana
Authors: Zola Émile
Published: December 2020

‘She was the golden beast, an unconscious force, the very scent of her could bring the world to ruin.’ Nana, daughter of a drunk and a laundress, is the Helen of Troy of Paris. A sexually magnetic high-class prostitute and actress, she becomes a celebrity, rapidly conquering society, ruining all men who fall under her spell-especially Count Muffat, Chamberlain to the Empress. Nana herself meets a terrible fate, consumed by her own dissipation and extravagance, just as the disastrous war with Prussia is declared. Nana is the ninth instalment in the twenty volume Rougon-Macquart series. The novel opens in 1867, the year of the World Fair, when Paris, thronged by a cosmopolitan élite, was la Ville Lumière, the glittering setting-and object-of Zola's scathing denunciation of society's hypocrisy and moral corruption. Nana comes to symbolize the Second Empire regime itself in all its excesses; but in the final chapters, the narrator seems to suggest that the coming disaster is not so much a result of the corruption of the Empire, as of rampant female sexuality.
Chapter LXXXI
Authors: Eliot George
Published: December 2020

When Dorothea was again at...
Book II. The Paper Age.
Authors: Carlyle Thomas
Published: December 2020

Chapter I. Astræa Redux.*

A Paradoxical philosopher, carrying to the uttermost length that aphorism of Montesquieu’s, ‘Happy the people whose annals are tiresome,’ has said, ‘Happy the people whose annals are vacant.’* In which saying, mad as it looks, may there...
Book VII. The Insurrection of Women.
Authors: Carlyle Thomas
Published: December 2020

Chapter I. Patrollotism.

No, Friends, this Revolution is not of the consolidating kind. Do not fires, fevers, sown seeds, chemical mixtures, men, events; all embodiments of Force that work in this miraculous Complex of Forces, named Universe,—go on growing, through their natural...
Book I. September.
Authors: Carlyle Thomas
Published: December 2020

Chapter I. The Improvised Commune.

Ye have roused her, then, ye Emigrants and Despots of the world; France is roused! Long have ye been lecturing and tutoring this poor Nation, like cruel uncalled-for pedagogues, shaking over her your ferulas* of fire and...
Vigo Bay
Authors: Verne Jules
Published: December 2020

The Atlantic! that vast area of water covering 25 million square miles, 9,000 miles long by 2,700 miles wide on average. An important sea, almost unknown to the ancients except perhaps to the Carthaginians, those Dutchmen of antiquity, who travelled down the west coast...
47° 24´ N, 17° 28´ W
Authors: Verne Jules
Published: December 2020

After this storm we were pushed eastwards. All hope disappeared of escaping to the landfalls of New York or the St Lawrence. Poor Ned, desperate, shut himself away like Captain Nemo. Conseil and I never left each other’s company.

I have said that the...
Chapter IV
Authors: Collins Wilkie
Published: December 2020

I am truly sorry to detain you over me and my beehive chair. A sleepy old man, in a sunny back yard, is not an interesting object, I am well aware. But things must be put down in their places, as things actually...
Chapter XXII
Authors: Collins Wilkie
Published: December 2020

My mistress having left us, I had leisure to think of Sergeant Cuff. I found him sitting in a snug corner of the hall, consulting his memorandum book, and curling up viciously at the corners of the lips.

‘Making notes of the case?’ I asked....
Chapter II
Authors: Collins Wilkie
Published: December 2020

The next thing I have to do, is to present such additional information as I possess on the subject of the Moonstone, or, to speak more correctly, on the subject of the Indian plot to steal the Diamond. The little that I have to...
I
Authors: Collins Wilkie
Published: December 2020

The statement of Sergeant Cuff’s man (1849)

On the twenty-seventh of June last, I received instructions from Sergeant Cuff to follow three men; suspected of murder, and described as Indians. They had been seen on the Tower Wharf that morning, embarking on board the...
A General Survey of the Slave Plantation.
Authors: Douglass Frederick
Published: December 2020

Isolation of Lloyd’s plantation—public opinion there no protection to the slave—absolute power of the overseer—natural and artificial charms of the place—its business-like appearance—superstition about the burial ground—great ideas of Col. Lloyd—etiquette among slaves—the comic slave doctor—praying and flogging—‘old master’ losing its terrors—his business—character of ‘Aunt...
Liberty Attained.
Authors: Douglass Frederick
Published: December 2020

Transition from slavery to freedom—A wanderer in New York—Feelings on reaching that city—An old acquaintance met—Unfavorable impressions—Loneliness and insecurity—Apology for slaves who return to their masters—Compelled to tell my condition—Succored by a sailor—David Ruggles—The under-ground railroad—Marriage—baggage taken from me—Kindness of Nathan Johnson—The author’s change of...
The Prisoner of Zenda
Authors: Hope Anthony
Published: December 2020

‘If love were the only thing, I would follow you-in rags if need be ... But is love the only thing?’ Anthony Hope's The Prisoner of Zenda is a swashbuckling adventure set in Ruritania, a mythical pocket kingdom. Englishman Rudolf Rassendyll closely resembles the King of Ruritania, and to foil a coup by his rival to the throne, he is persuaded to impersonate him for a day. However, Rassendyll's role becomes more complicated when the real king is kidnapped, and he falls for the lovely Princess Flavia. Although the story is set in the near past, Ruritania is a semi-feudal land in which a strong sword arm can carry the day, and Rassendyll and his allies fight to rescue the king. But if he succeeds, our hero and Flavia will have to choose between love and honour. As Nicholas Daly's introduction outlines, this thrilling tale inspired not only stage and screen adaptations, but also place names, and even a popular board game. A whole new subgenre of ‘Ruritanian romances’ followed, though no imitation managed to capture the charm, exuberance, and sheer storytelling power of Hope's classic tale.
Dinner-Time
Authors: Eliot George
Published: December 2020

When Adam heard that he was to dine upstairs with the large tenants, he felt rather uncomfortable at the idea of being exalted in this way above his mother and Seth, who were to dine in the cloisters below. But Mr Mills, the butler,...
Adam and Dinah
Authors: Eliot George
Published: December 2020

It was about three o’clock when Adam entered the farm-yard and roused Alick and the dogs from their Sunday dozing. Alick said everybody was gone to church but “th’ young missis”—so he called Dinah; but this did not disappoint Adam, although the “everybody” was...
Chapter LII: Fluctuations
Authors: Brontë Anne
Published: December 2020

The tardy gig had overtaken me at last. I entered it, and bade the man who brought it drive to Grassdale Manor—I was too busy with my own thoughts to care to drive it myself. I would see Mrs. Huntingdon—there could be no impropriety...
The Château d’If
Authors: Dumas Alexandre
Published: December 2020

The commissar of police, as he traversed the antechamber, made a sign to two gendarmes, who placed themselves one on Dantès right and the other on his left. A door that communicated with the Palais de Justice was opened and they traversed a long...
The House at Auteuil
Authors: Dumas Alexandre
Published: December 2020

Monte
Cristo had noticed that, as they descended the staircase, Bertuccio signed himself in the Corsican manner—that is, had formed the sign of the cross in the air with his thumb—and as he seated himself in the carriage, muttered a short prayer.

Any one but...
Matrimonial Plans
Authors: Dumas Alexandre
Published: December 2020

The day following this scene, at the hour the banker usually chose to pay a visit to Madame Danglars on his way to his office, his coupé did not appear in the courtyard. At this time, that is, about half-past twelve, Madame...
The Promise
Authors: Dumas Alexandre
Published: December 2020

It was, indeed, Maximilian Morrel, who had been in a wretched state since the previous day. With that instinct peculiar to lovers he had anticipated, after the return of Madame de Saint-Méran and the death of the marquis, that something would occur at M....
Valentine
Authors: Dumas Alexandre
Published: December 2020

The night-light continued to burn on the chimney-piece, exhausting the last drops of oil which floated on the surface of the water; a dull and dismal light was shed over the bedclothes and curtains surrounding the young girl. All noise in the streets had...
Expiation
Authors: Dumas Alexandre
Published: December 2020

Despite the density of the crowd, M. de Villefort saw it open before him. There is something so awe-inspiring in great afflictions, that even in the worst times the first emotion of a crowd has generally been to sympathise with the sufferer in a...
Chapter II
Authors: Dickens Charles
Published: December 2020

My sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, was more than twenty years older than I, and had established a great reputation with herself and the neighbours because she had brought me up “by hand.”* Having at that time to find out for myself what...
Chapter XVI
Authors: Dickens Charles
Published: December 2020

With my head full of George Barnwell, I was at first disposed to believe that I must have had some hand in the attack upon my sister, or at all events that as her near relation, popularly known to be under obligations...
Chapter X
Authors: Dickens Charles
Published: December 2020

Betimes in the morning I was up and out. It was too early yet to go to Miss Havisham’s, so I loitered into the country on Miss Havisham’s side of town—which was not Joe’s side; I could go there to-morrow—thinking about my patroness, and...
Chapter XIII
Authors: Dickens Charles
Published: December 2020

One day when I was busy with my books and Mr. Pocket, I received a note by the post, the mere outside of which threw me into a great flutter; for, though I had never seen the handwriting in which it was addressed, I...
Chapter XVII
Authors: Dickens Charles
Published: December 2020

Herbert and I went on from bad to worse, in the way of increasing our debts, looking into our affairs, leaving Margins, and the like exemplary transactions; and Time went on, whether or no, as he has a way of doing; and I came...
Chapter I
Authors: Dickens Charles
Published: December 2020

It was fortunate for me that I had to take precautions to ensure (so far as I could) the safety of my dreaded visitor; for, this thought pressing on me when I awoke, held other thoughts in a confused concourse at a distance.

The impossibility...
Chapter VII
Authors: Dickens Charles
Published: December 2020

Eight o’clock had struck before I got into the air that was scented, not disagreeably, by the chips and shavings of the long-shore boat-builders, and mast oar and block makers. All that water-side region of the upper and lower Pool below Bridge,...
War and Peace
Authors: Tolstoy Leo , Mandelker Amy
Published: December 2020

If life could write, it would write like Tolstoy.’ Isaac Babel Tolstoy’s epic masterpiece intertwines the lives of private and public individuals during the time of the Napoleonic wars and the French invasion of Russia. The fortunes of the Rostovs and the Bolkonskys, of Pierre, Natasha, and Andrei, are intimately connected with the national history that is played out in parallel with their lives. Balls and soirées alternate with councils of war and the machinations of statesmen and generals, scenes of violent battles with everyday human passions in a work whose extraordinary imaginative power has never been surpassed. The prodigious cast of characters, both great and small, seem to act and move as if connected by threads of destiny as the novel relentlessly questions ideas of free will, fate, and providence. Yet Tolstoy’s portrayal of marital relations and scenes of domesticity is as truthful and poignant as the grand themes that underlie them. In this revised and updated version of the definitive and highly acclaimed Maude translation, Tolstoy’s genius and the power of his prose are made newly available to the contemporary reader.
2
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

Anna
Pavlovna’s drawing-room was gradually filling. The highest Petersburg society was assembled there: people differing widely in age and character but alike in the social circle to which they belonged. Prince Vasili’s daughter, the beautiful Hélène, came to take her father to...
6
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

Kutuzov fell back towards Vienna,* destroying behind him the bridges over the rivers Inn (at Braunau) and Traun (near Linz). On October 23rd the Russian troops were crossing the river Enns. At mid-day the Russian baggage-train, the artillery, and columns of troops,...
9
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

Pursued by the French army of a hundred thousand men under the command of Bonaparte, encountering a population that was unfriendly to it, losing confidence in its allies, suffering from shortness of supplies, and compelled to act under conditions of war unlike anything that...
14
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

At five in the morning it was still quite dark. The troops of the centre, the reserves, and Bagration’s right flank, had not yet moved, but on the left flank the columns of infantry, cavalry, and artillery which were to be the first to...
19
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

On the Pratzen heights, where he had fallen with the flagstaff in his hand, lay Prince Andrei Bolkonsky bleeding profusely and unconsciously uttering a gentle, piteous, and childlike moan.

Towards evening he ceased moaning and became quite still. He did not know how long his...
16
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

In April the troops were enlivened by news of the Emperor’s arrival, but Rostov had no chance of being present at the review he held at Bartenstein, as the Pavlograds were at the outposts far beyond that place.

They were bivouacking. Denisov and Rostov were...
19
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

Having returned to the regiment and told the commander the state of Denisov’s affairs, Rostov rode to Tilsit with the letter to the Emperor.

On the 13th of June the French and Russian Emperors arrived in Tilsit. Boris Drubetskoy had asked the important personage on...
2
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

After reaching home Nikolai was at first serious and even dull. He was worried by the impending necessity of interfering in the stupid business matters for which his mother had called him home. To throw off this burden as quickly as possible, on the...
3
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

The weather was already growing wintry, and morning frosts congealed an earth saturated by autumn rains. The verdure had thickened, and its bright green stood out sharply against the brownish strips of winter rye trodden down by the cattle, and against the pale yellow...
1
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

After Prince Andrei’s engagement to Natasha, Pierre without any apparent cause suddenly felt it impossible to go on living as before. Firmly convinced as he was of the truths revealed to him by his benefactor, and happy as he had been in perfecting his...
6
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

At the end of January old Count Rostov went to Moscow with Natasha and Sonya. The countess was still unwell and unable to travel but it was impossible to wait for her recovery. Prince Andrei was expected in Moscow any day, the trousseau had...
21
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

Pierre drove to Marya Dmitrievna’s to tell her of the fulfilment of her wish that Kuragin should be banished from Moscow. The whole house was in a state of alarm and commotion. Natasha was very ill, having, as Marya Dmitrievna told him in secret,...
9
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

Prince
Andrei reached the general headquarters of the army at the end of June. The first army with which was the Emperor, occupied the fortified camp at Drissa, the second army was retreating, trying to effect a junction with the first one from which...
2
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

The day after his son had left, Prince Nikolai Andreevich sent for Princess Marya to come to his study.

‘Well? Are you satisfied now?’ said he. ‘You’ve made me quarrel with my son! Satisfied, are you? That’s all you wanted! Satisfied? … It hurts me,...
13
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

On the 17th of August Rostov and Ilyin, accompanied by Lavrushka who had just returned from captivity and by a hussar orderly, left their quarters at Yankovo, ten miles from Bogucharovo, and went for a ride—to try a new horse Ilyin had bought and...
37
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

One of the doctors came out of the tent in a bloodstained apron, holding a cigar between the thumb and little finger of one of his small bloodstained hands, so as not to smear it. He raised his head and looked about him, but...
9
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

Scarcely had Pierre laid his head on the pillow before he felt himself falling asleep, but suddenly, almost with the distinctness of reality, he heard the boom, boom, boom of firing, the thud of projectiles, groans and cries,...
20
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

Meanwhile
Moscow was empty. There were still people in it, perhaps a fiftieth part of its former inhabitants had remained, but it was empty. It was empty in the sense that a dying queenless hive is empty.

In a queenless hive no life is left...
27
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

The absorption of the French by Moscow, radiating star-wise as it did, only reached the quarter where Pierre was staying by the evening of the 2nd of September.

After the last two days spent in solitude and unusual circumstances, Pierre was in a state bordering...
30
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

The glow of the first fire that began on the 2nd of September was watched from the various roads by the fugitive Moscovites, and by the retreating troops, with many different feelings.

The Rostov party spent that night at Mytishchy, fourteen miles from Moscow. They...
7
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

The dreadful news of the battle of Borodino, of our losses in killed and wounded, and the still more terrible news of the loss of Moscow, reached Voronezh in the middle of September.* Princess Marya having learnt of her brother’s wound only...
1
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

The human mind cannot grasp the causes of events in their completeness, but the desire to find those causes is implanted in the human soul. And the human mind, without considering the multiplicity and complexity of the conditions any one of which taken separately...
11
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

Early in the morning of the 6th of October Pierre went out of the shed, and on returning stopped by the door to play with a little blue-grey dog with a long body and short bandy legs, that jumped about him. This little dog...
17
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

Kutuzov like all old people did not sleep much at night. He often fell asleep unexpectedly in the day-time, but at night, lying on his bed without undressing, he generally remained awake thinking.

So he lay now on his bed, supporting his large, heavy, scarred...
4
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

After the encounter at Vyazma, where Kutuzov had been unable to hold back his troops from their anxiety to overwhelm and cut off the enemy and so on, the farther movement of the fleeing French, and of the Russians who pursued them, continued as...
Cousin Phillis and Other Stories
Authors: Gaskell Elizabeth
Published: December 2020

‘I see her now – cousin Phillis. The westering sun shone full upon her, and made a slanting stream of light into the room within.’ Elizabeth Gaskell has long been one of the most popular of Victorian novelists, yet in her lifetime her shorter fictions were equally well loved, and they are among the most accomplished examples of the genre. The novella-length Cousin Phillis is a lyrical depiction of a vanishing way of life and a girl’s disappointment in love: deceptively simple, its undercurrent of feeling leaves an indelible impression. The other five stories in this selection were all written during the 1850s for Dickens’s periodical Household Words. They range from a quietly original tale of urban poverty and a fallen woman in ‘Lizzie Leigh’ to an historical tale of a great family in ‘Morton Hall’; echoes of the French Revolution, the bleakness of winter in Westmorland, and a tragic secret are brought vividly to life. Heather Glen reflects on the stories’ original periodical publication and on the nineteenth-century development of the short story in her Introduction to these immensely readable and sophisticated tales.
Chapter II
Authors: Gaskell Elizabeth
Published: December 2020

Up to this time we had felt it rather impertinent to tell each other of our individual silent wonder as to what Miss Phillis lived on; but I know in our hearts we each thought about it, with a kind of respectful pity for...
Chapter V
Authors: Gaskell Elizabeth
Published: December 2020

In spite of Peggy's prophecy that Susan's life should not seem long, it did seem wearisome and endless, as the years slowly uncoiled their monotonous circles. To be sure, she might have made change for herself, but she did not care to do it....
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
Authors: Sterne Laurence
Published: December 2020

Read, read, read, read, my unlearned reader! read…’. Sterne’s great comic novel is the fictional autobiography of Tristram Shandy, a hero who fails even to get born in the first two volumes. It contains some of the best-known and best-loved characters in English literature, including Uncle Toby, Corporal Trim, Parson Yorick, Dr Slop and the Widow Wadman. Beginning with Tristram’s conception, the novel recounts his progress in ‘this scurvy and disasterous world of ours’, including his misnaming during baptism and his accidental circumcision by a falling sash-window at the age of five; unsurprisingly, Tristram declares that he has been ‘the continual sport of what the world calls Fortune’. Tristram Shandy also offers the narrator’s ‘opinions’, at once facetious and highly serious, on books and learning in an age of rapidly expanding print culture, and on the changing understanding of the roles of writers and readers alike. This revised edition retains the first edition text incorporating Sterne’s later changes, and adds two original Hogarth illustrations and a wealth of contextualizing information.
Chapter XIX
Authors: Sterne Laurence
Published: December 2020

What a conjuncture was here lost! My father in one of his best explanatory moods,—in eager pursuit of a metaphysic point into the very regions where clouds and thick darkness would soon have encompassed it about; my uncle Toby in one of...
Chapter XXXIV
Authors: Sterne Laurence
Published: December 2020

It is a singular blessing, that nature has form'd the mind of man with the same happy backwardness and renitency1 against conviction, which is observed in old dogs, "of not learning new tricks."

What a shuttlecock of a fellow would the greatest philosopher that...
CHAPTER XIII
Authors: Sterne Laurence
Published: December 2020

HOLLA!—you chairman!—here's sixpence—do step into that bookseller's shop, and call me a day-tall critick.1 I am very willing to give any one of 'em a crown to help me with his tackling, to get my father and my uncle...
Chapter IX
Authors: Sterne Laurence
Published: December 2020

——To us, Jonathan, who know not what want or care is— who live here in the service of two of the best of masters— (bating in my own case his majesty King William the Third, whom I had the honour to...
Chapter XXI
Authors: Sterne Laurence
Published: December 2020

——I would be picquetted to death, cried the corporal, as he concluded Susannah's story, before I would suffer the woman to come to any harm,—'twas my fault, an please your honour,—not hers.

Corporal Trim, replied my uncle Toby, putting on his...
Chapter XXVII
Authors: Sterne Laurence
Published: December 2020

MY father put on his spectacles—looked,—took them off,—put them into the case—all in less than a statutable minute; and without opening his lips, turned about, and walked precipitately down stairs: my mother imagined he had stepped down for lint and basilicon; but seeing him return...
CHAPTER IV
Authors: Sterne Laurence
Published: December 2020

Doctor
Slop and Susannah filed cross-bills against each other in the parlour; which done, as the cataplasm had failed, they retired into the kitchen to prepare a fomentation for me;—and whilst that was doing, my father determined the point as you will...