"The Spirit of the Border" is Zane Grey's 1906 historical novel based on events occurring in the Ohio River Valley in the late 18th century. The second installment in a trilogy that includes «Betty Zane» and «The Last Trail», which details the exploits of Lewis Wetzel, an American frontiersman who has dedicated his life to fighting Native Americans. Known as «Deathwind», Lewis is faced with the challenge of having to single-handedly sa ...
George Gissing (1857-1903) was an English novelist of the late-Victorian era. Gissing's career as a novelist, at least until the late twentieth century, has been assessed in the framework of the nineteenth century realism and naturalism. Like many writers at the end of the nineteenth century, he was caught between the sociological realists with reform instincts and the adherents of an aesthetic movement with their emphasis on the attainment ...
"The Innocence of Father Brown" is the first in a series of Gilbert K. Chesterton's much-loved Father Brown mystery short story collections. In this volume are the following twelve tales: The Blue Cross, The Secret Garden, The Queer Feet, The Flying Stars, The Invisible Man, The Honour of Israel Gow, The Wrong Shape, The Sins of Prince Saradine, The Hammer of God, The Eye of Apollo, The Sign of the Broken Sword, The Three Tools of Deat ...
Immensely popular upon its publication in 1721 throughout France and other European countries, «Persian Letters» exemplifies the spirit of that definitive age of libertinism and Enlightenment. Told through the astute observations of two fictional Persian travelers in Europe, this satirical story of eighteenth century French society touches on fundamental questions of human nature, the manners and flirtations of polite society, attitudes on moral ...
"Three Men in a Boat" is the story of three Englishman who pile into a boat with food, clothes, and a fox terrier named Montmorency and set off on the Thames to see the English countryside. «Three Men in a Boat» is a first-class comic masterpiece. As the three well-to-do upper class gentleman set out on their excursion they are beset by a series of comic mishaps. Jerome K. Jerome masterfully weaves a tale that is a hilarious critique of the ...
A young wealthy Venezuelan named Abel flees Caracas, after a failed attempt at revolution, into the uncharted forests of the Guyana jungle. There he meets the mysterious Rima the Bird Girl. William Henry Hudson's «Green Mansion» is a romantic tale set in the exotic jungles of Venezuela. ...
Richard Blackmore (1825-1900) was a minor historical novelist whose works have been somewhat overlooked by the reading masses, but whose talent for characterization and setting rank his words among the finest of nineteenth-century English literature. «Lorna Doone,» Blackmore's acknowledged masterpiece, attained belated popularity a little more than a year after its publication. Rumors began that the novel was about the recent marriage of th ...
Sara Orne Jewett (1849-1909) was an American regionalist and feminist writer, in the circle of writers like Willa Cather, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. Born in South Berwick, Maine, Jewett had a happy, peaceful childhood where she developed a strong affinity to the nature and people of rural New England. Her first novel, «A Country Doctor», is a semi-autobiographical work about a young girl's struggle to choose between ...
"The author of «Little Women» seeks, and not without success, to draw from her «Old-Fashioned Girl» a contrast and a moral. She presents to our view two young ladies of opposite «styles.» One is fresh and rural: the other isn't. The difference is about as great as that between the warbling of woodside birds and the jingle of one of Offenbach's tunes on a corner barrel-organ."—Book Notice from Punchinello, April 30,1870. ...
