This enchanting Christmas gift book features stories and poems by St. Luke, William Blake, Alfred Lord Tennyson, William Wordsworth, Hans Christian Andersen, Christina Rossetti, and other literary luminaries. Charming color illustrations complement the brief tales and verses of this holiday treasury — an ideal read-aloud resource for children and families. ...
American author, critic, newspaper man, and iconoclast, H. L. Mencken maintained that women are smarter than men and cited numerous examples of the female's overwhelming skill and cunning to support his position. Originally published in 1922, this book considers topics that remain of vital interest to today's readers, including monogamy and polygamy, prostitution, the double standard, sexual harassment, and declining birth and marriage ...
Because women in ancient Japan enjoyed high status, they were well-educated and reasonably independent. They also produced much of the country's best literature. Three of these amazing ladies wrote these diaries, among them the highly skilled writer Murasaki Shikibu (ca. 973-1025 a.d.). A lady-in-waiting to the Japanese Empress, she became very adept at observing the daily activities and attitudes of the upper classes. Her diary is a remark ...
"Throughout the whole vast shadowy world of ghosts and demons there is no figure so terrible, no figure so dreaded and abhorred, yet [looked upon] with such fearful fascination, as the vampire, who is himself neither ghost nor demon, but yet who partakes the dark natures and possesses the mysterious and terrible qualities of both."So begins this riveting study by one of the foremost authorities on witchcraft and occult phenomena. An indefat ...
"No American fiction of the year merits recognition more than this Russian's stories of Yiddish life. … [Mr. Cahan] is a humorist, and his humor does not spare the sordid and uncouth aspects of the character whose pathos he so tenderly reveals." — William Dean HowellsYekl (1896), the novel upon which the highly successful film Hester Street was based, was written by Abraham Cahan, editor of the prestigious Jewish Da ...
Originally reviled as obscure and obscene, Joyce's masterpiece now stands as one of the great literary achievements of the twentieth century. Loosely based on Homer's Odyssey, the novel traces the paths of Leopold Bloom and other Dubliners through an ordinary summer day and night in 1904 — a typical day, transformed by Joyce's narrative powers into an epic celebration of life.First editions of Ulysses rank among the mode ...
"The world will never starve for want of wonders, but only for want of wonder."— G. K. ChestertonThe thirty-nine short essays that make up Chesterton's delightful book are the result of «sitting still and letting marvels and adventures settle on him like flies.» Actually, the author does move around quite a bit—to Germany, France, and on foot in England when he tires of waiting for a train. Everywhere he goes, Chest ...
These memoirs recount the writer and humorist's scuffling years, during which he beat a path across the American West and all the way to Hawaii. His spirited narrative relates a series of triumphs and misadventures and profiles a many-faceted succession of personalities and locales: the stage drivers and desperadoes of the Great Plains; Mormon society; the mines and miners of Nevada; the climate and characteristics of San Francisco; and the ...
Metaphysical poetry, a term generally applied to the works of a group of English poets of the seventeenth century, is among the most read and studied verse in English literature, having proved enduringly popular and major influence on many twentieth-century poets. Dramatic and conversational in rhythm and tone, intriguing and complex in theme and idea, metaphysical poetry is also rich in striking and unusual imagery chosen from philosophy, theol ...
