Showing results by author "Beauty_23" in All Categories

Florence Scovel Shinn, an illustrator living in New York City, became a teacher of New Thought after a divorce. New Thought was a movement which holds the belief that individuals can create their own reality through intentional thoughts and prayer, much like the current Law of Attraction movement. The Game of Life and How to Play It is her first book, and is remarkable for being written by a woman and meant for a genteel female audience. (Summary from Wikipedia)

The Old Curiosity Shop tells the story of Little Nell, a beautiful and virtuous young girl who lives with her grandfather in his shop of curiosities. Her grandfather loves her dearly, and Nell does not complain, but she lives a lonely existence without friends of her own age. Her only friend is Kit, an honest young lad who works at the shop, and whom she is teaching to write. Unbeknownst to Nell, her grandfather is obsessed with their precarious financial position and is attempting to make Nell a good inheritance by winning at cards. He keeps these nocturnal activities a secret, but borrows ...

A quiet, self-reliant, intelligent, 23-year-old woman, Lucy has, as Miss Ginevra Fanshawe asserts, "no attractive accomplishments – no beauty." She seems to have no living relatives.Though usually reserved and emotionally self-controlled, Lucy has strong feelings and affections for those whom she really values. She even sincerely cares for the giddy Ginevra, albeit in a blunt, curmudgeonly fashion. She is a firm Protestant and denounces Roman Catholicism as false ("God is not with Rome"). The novel is initially set in the English countryside, and later follows Lucy Snowe to the fictional ...

What really killed Sir Charles Baskerville? Is his nephew, Sir Henry, in danger from the legendary family curse, a gigantic black hound? Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are on the case in this classic mystery, set on lonely Dartmoor in Devonshire. Neolithic ruins, a perilous quagmire, eerie sounds in the night, and (of course) fog all add to the fun, with an escaped convict thrown in for good measure. (Summary by Laurie Anne Walden)

In this enduring Victorian classic written in 1876, two stories weave in and out of each other: The first is about Gwendolen, one of Eliot's finest creations, who grows from a self-centered young beauty to a thoughtful adult with an expanded vision of the world around her. The second is about Daniel Deronda, adopted son of an aristocratic Englishman who becomes fascinated with Jewish traditions when he meets an ailing Jewish philosopher named Mordecai and his sensitive sister, Mirah.

Miss Frances, the youngest Ward sister, "married, in the common phrase, to disoblige her family, and by fixing on a lieutenant of marines, without education, fortune, or connexions, did it very thoroughly. She could hardly have made a more untoward choice." Some years later, pregnant with her ninth child, Mrs. Price appeals to her family, namely to her eldest sister and her husband, Sir Thomas Bertram, for help with her over-large family. Sir Thomas provides assistance in helping his nephews into lines of work suitable to their education, and takes his eldest niece, Fanny Price, then ten years...

"I do not pretend to say the young man is without faults; but they are all the faults of wildness and of youth; faults which he may, nay, which I am certain he will, relinquish."One of the great works of the English literary canon, this comic masterpiece, first published in 1749, draws us into the lives of two neighbouring Somersetshire squires and friends, one genial and generous, the other a hot-headed lover of the hunt and the bottle, who conspire together, on the basis of a mutual misunderstanding, to marry the former's nephew to the latter's daughter, very much to the discomfort of the ...

Considered by many to be the greatest war novel of all time, All Quiet on the Western Front is the chronicle of a German soldier fighting in the trenches of World War I, including the severe physical suffering and emotional trauma that will leave many unable to readjust to civilian life afterward. - Summary by the Mark Nelson

Eleven-year-old Jude Fawley, inspired by his teacher Mr. Phillotson, who leaves Marygreen for Christminster to take a university degree, decides to adopt the same course for himself. Raised by his great-aunt, he studies hard with the aid of some old Latin and Greek books sent to him by Phillotson.He trains as a stonemason in order to enable him to support himself when at the university. However when he finally arrives in Christminster he soon finds that a university education is not easily come by for one of his social standing.Meeting and falling in love with his cousin Sue Bridehead his ...

Dubliners is a collection of 15 short stories by James Joyce, first published in 1914. They form a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle class life in and around Dublin in the early years of the 20th century. The stories were written when Irish nationalism was at its peak and a search for a national identity and purpose was raging; at a crossroads of history and culture, Ireland was jolted by various converging ideas and influences. They centre on Joyce's idea of an epiphany: a moment where a character experiences self-understanding or illumination. Many of the characters in Dubliners later ...

The Souls of Black Folk is a well-known work of African-American literature by activist W.E.B. Du Bois. The book, published in 1903, contains several essays on race, some of which had been previously published in Atlantic Monthly magazine. Du Bois drew from his own experiences to develop this groundbreaking work on being African-American in American society. Outside of its notable place in African-American history, The Souls of Black Folk also holds an important place in social science as one of the first works to deal with sociology.

Our Mutual Friend (written in the years 1864–65) is the last novel completed by Charles Dickens and is one of his most sophisticated works, combining psychological insight with social analysis. It centres on, in the words of critic J. Hillis Miller, "money, money, money, and what money can make of life" but is also about human values. In the opening chapters a body is found in the Thames and identified as John Harmon, a young man recently returned to London to receive his inheritance. Were he alive, his father's will would require him to marry Bella Wilfer, a beautiful, mercenary girl whom ...

Bleak house is one of Dickens finest achievements. It was written for serialisation in 1853 when Dickens was at the peak of his career. Monthly sales substantially exceeded his previous bestseller David Copperfield.Dickens' mastery of the English language comes to the fore in this book. It is an energetic book: a complex mystery story revolving around the heroine Esther Summerson and her path from childhood to marriage. During the course of Esther’s narration Dickens introduces some wonderful and unforgettable characters, and at the same time provides a searing indictment of the laws’ ...

I am Roderick Random. This is the contemporary story of my struggle against the adversity of orphan-hood, poverty, press gangs, bloody duels, rival fortune hunters, and the challenge to be well-dressed through it all. In the course of recounting my adventures to you, dear reader, I will give you a front row seat to the characters of English eighteenth century life including highway robbers, womanizing monks, debt-laden gallants, lecherous corrupt officials, effeminate sea captains, bloodthirsty surgeons, and my dear friend Miss Williams, a reformed prostitute. Educated in the classics, armed ...

In the unsettled years of England's War of the Roses, where a man stood on the issue of kingship could make his fortune... or end his life. Dick Shelton, a nobly-born lad, is on the cusp of manhood, and he is thrust bodily into this stew where allegiances shift under one's feet. Circumstances cause him to fall in with a gentlemaiden in boy's disguise. Until he learns of the deception, Dick is unaware that the young lady is an heiress whom his guardian Sir Daniel had kidnapped. And the introduction of an outlaw with a penchant for putting black arrows into the bodies of the men who had wronged ...

After the death of his father, Nicholas must provide for his mother and sister. His wealthy uncle provides him with employment at a boys' school, run by the villainous Mr. Squeers. But when Nicholas has seen enough of the brutal manner in which Squeers treats the boys, he attacks him--and is forced to go on the run to avoid the ramifications. - Summary by Brad "Hamlet" Filippone

It’s a dreary February in post-World War I London when Mrs. Wilkins spots an advertisement in The Times for a small Italian castle for rent in April. She sees another member of her women’s club, Mrs. Arbuthnot, reading the same advertisement and manages to convince her that the two of them should rent it. Both are miserable and lonely in their marriages. They can’t afford the cost of the villa, San Salvatore, on their own and must advertise for two others, eventually recruiting an elderly widow named Mrs. Fisher, and Lady Caroline Dester, a beautiful young socialite desperate to escape ...

The Mahabharata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India. Traditionally, the authorship of the Mahabharata is attributed to Vyasa. With more than 74,000 verses, Mahabharata is said to be the longest poem. Mahabharata tells the story of the epic Kurukshetra War and the fates of the cousin brothers Kauravas and the Pandavas. But more than that the Mahabharata contains much philosophical and devotional material, such as a discussion of the four "goals of life" or 'purusharthas'. The latter are enumerated as dharma (right action), artha (purpose), kama (pleasure), and moksha (...

I should have thought that no preface would have been required to introduce Mrs. Seacole to the British public, or to recommend a book which must, from the circumstances in which the subject of it was placed, be unique in literature. If singleness of heart, true charity, and Christian works; if trials and sufferings, dangers and perils, encountered boldly by a helpless woman on her errand of mercy in the camp and in the battle-field, can excite sympathy or move curiosity, Mary Seacole will have many friends and many readers. She is no Anna Comnena, who presents us with a verbose history, but a...

Among the most “banned” books in the United States, Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is a novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe which treats slavery as a central theme. Stowe was a Connecticut-born teacher at the Hartford Female Academy and an active abolitionist. The novel is believed to have had a profound effect on the North’s view of slavery. In fact, when he met Harriet Beecher Stowe, President Lincoln is said to have commented, “So you’re the little lady whose book started the Civil War.” First published on March 20, 1852, the story focuses on the tale ...