Join us on a literary world trip!
Add this book to bookshelf
Grey
Write a new comment Default profile 50px
Grey
Subscribe to read the full book or read the first pages for free!
All characters reduced
Back to Methuselah - cover

Back to Methuselah

Bernard Shaw

Publisher: Skyline

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

Summary

One day early in the eighteen hundred and sixties, I, being then a small boy, was with my nurse, buying something in the shop of a petty newsagent, bookseller, and stationer in Camden Street, Dublin, when there entered an elderly man, weighty and solemn, who advanced to the counter, and said pompously, 'Have you the works of the celebrated Buffoon?' My own works were at that time unwritten, or it is possible that the shop assistant might have misunderstood me so far as to produce a copy of Man and Superman. As it was, she knew quite well what he wanted; for this was before the Education Act of 1870 had produced shop assistants who know how to read and know nothing else. The celebrated Buffoon was not a humorist, but the famous naturalist Buffon. Every literate child at that time knew Buffon's Natural History as well as Esop's Fables. And no living child had heard the name that has since obliterated Buffon's in the popular consciousness: the name of Darwin.
Available since: 11/28/2017.

Other books that might interest you

  • Nsfw - cover

    Nsfw

    Lucy Kirkwood

    • 0
    • 1
    • 0
    Lucy Kirkwood's sharp comedy looks at power games and privacy in the media and beyond.
    Carrie's getting them out for the lads, Charlotte's just grateful to have a job, Sam's being asked to sell more than his body, and Aidan's trying to keep Doghouse magazine from going under. Set in the cut-throat media world, Lucy Kirkwood's timely new comedy exposes power games and privacy in the age of Photoshop.
    [NSFW = Not Safe For Work, online material which the viewer may not want to be seen accessing in a public or formal setting such as at work.]
    Show book
  • it felt empty when the heart went at first but it is alright now (NHB Modern Plays) - cover

    it felt empty when the heart...

    Lucy Kirkwood

    • 0
    • 1
    • 0
    A luminous journey exploring the life of Dijana Polancec: professional romantic, eternal optimist and accidental prostitute. Winner of the John Whiting Award, 2010
    Produced by acclaimed theatre company Clean Break. it felt empty premiered at the Arcola Theatre, London in October 2009.
    'unflinching... theatre that provokes in the best way, without lurid melodrama or sentimentality, but with wit and tenderness... demands that we watch and listen' The Times
    'superb... deeply painful and profoundly disturbing' The Stage
    Show book
  • A River of Crows - cover

    A River of Crows

    Shanessa Gluhm

    • 3
    • 23
    • 1
    In 1988, Sloan Hadfield’s brother Ridge went fishing with their father and never came home. Their father, a good-natured Vietnam veteran prone to violent outbursts, was arrested and charged with murder. Ridge’s body was never recovered, and Sloan’s mother—a brilliant ornithologist—slowly descended into madness, insisting her son was still alive.
     
    Now, twenty years later, Sloan’s life is unraveling. In the middle of a bitter divorce, she’s forced to return to her rural Texas hometown when her mother is discharged from a mental health facility.
     
    Overwhelmed by memories and unanswered questions, Sloan returns to the last place her brother was seen all those years ago: Crow’s Nest Creek. There, she is shocked to hear a crow muttering the same syllable over and over: Ridge, Ridge, Ridge.
     
    When the body of another boy is found, Sloan begins to question what really happened to her brother all those years ago. What she discovers will shock her small community and turn her family upside down.
     
    A River of Crows is a tale of family secrets, deception, and revenge perfect for fans of Julia Heaberlin and Jennifer Hillier.
     
    Praise for A River of Crows
     
    “In A River of Crows, Shanessa Gluhm spins a complex web of murder and family revelation that propels the reader forward at a breakneck pace. Just when you think you know where the story is headed, she reveals another thread. If you haven’t yet read Shanessa Gluhm, you need to put her on your to-be-read list.”—Allen Eskens, USA Today bestselling author of The Life We Bury
     
    “A twisted family dynamic and complex personal history combine with a touch of romance . . . grabs on with the opening pages and holds a reader tight to the very end.”—Elena Taylor/Elena Hartwell, author of All We Buried and the Wait, Wait, Don’t Query (Yet) series
     
    “. . . one of the strongest new voices in mysteries. [Gluhm] has invented what could be a new genre: the family-driven mystery.”—Rob Samborn, author of The Prisoner of Paradise and Painter of the Damned
     
    “. . . peels away layers of family secrets in this dual timeline narrative, right up until the climatic final reveal, a twist that truly surprised me.”—Laura Kemp, award-winning author of the Lantern Creek Series
     
    “. . . a thought-provoking story of revelation, family ties, discovery, and murder. Readers who choose A River of Crows for its mystery will find an unexpected draw and value in the emotional components which keep the plot action-packed and charged with transformation.”—D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review
     
    "Shanessa Gluhm, with literary panache, expertly shows what happens when a family strays from respect and honesty, with the consequence of it all, as dark as a crow’s wing, unfurling, touching, and changing everything and everyone in its path."—Lone Star Literary Life
     
    “Like the tumultuous river flowing at the center of this gripping tale, Shanessa Gluhm has crafted a pulsating story that is just waiting to pull you into its chilling depths and slowly reveal all its darkest secrets”—Indies Today
    Show book
  • Pennyroyal (NHB Modern Plays) - cover

    Pennyroyal (NHB Modern Plays)

    Lucy Roslyn

    • 0
    • 1
    • 0
    When Daphne is diagnosed with Premature Ovarian Insufficiency at the age of nineteen, her sister Christine steps in to help in the only way she knows how: by donating her eggs. For a while, the world seems corrected. But as the years go by – and Daphne sets out on the long road of IVF – the sisters' relationship begins to twist.
    Pennyroyal is a heartrending new play by Lucy Roslyn about sisterhood and motherhood, enduring love, and regrets many years in the making. Inspired by Edith Wharton's 1922 novella The Old Maid, it was premiered at the Finborough Theatre, London, in 2022, directed by Josh Roche.
    Show book
  • Mosquitoes (NHB Modern Plays) - cover

    Mosquitoes (NHB Modern Plays)

    Lucy Kirkwood

    • 0
    • 1
    • 0
    Lucy Kirkwood's new play is about families and particle physics. It premieres at the National Theatre, London, in July 2017.
    Alice is a scientist. She lives in Geneva. As the Large Hadron particle collider starts up in 2008, she is on the brink of the most exciting work of her life, searching for the Higgs Boson.
    Jenny is her sister. She lives in Luton. She spends a lot of time Googling.
    When tragedy throws them together, the collision threatens them all with chaos.
    Show book
  • Mike Bartlett Plays: Two (NHB Modern Plays) - cover

    Mike Bartlett Plays: Two (NHB...

    Mike Bartlett

    • 0
    • 1
    • 0
    Five ambitious and exciting plays by the multi-award-winning playwright, hailed as 'one of the prime movers in a new golden generation of British playwrights' (Independent), and introduced by the author.
    Earthquakes in London (National Theatre & Headlong, 2010) is an epic drama about climate change, population explosion, social breakdown and worldwide paranoia, travelling from 1968 to 2525 and back again. 'The theatrical equivalent of a thrilling roller-coaster ride' (Daily Telegraph)
    Love, Love, Love (Paines Plough & Drum Theatre Plymouth, UK tour, 2010; Royal Court & Paines Plough, 2012) examines the baby boomer generation, from coming-of-age in the 1960s to retirement-age more than forty years later, in a play that 'does the clash of generational world views with a devastating precision' (Guardian).
    The Enemy is a short play in which a journalist seizes an opportunity to interview the man who shot Osama bin Laden. It was staged by Headlong as part of Decade (St Katherine's Dock, London, 2011), exploring 9/11 and its legacy.
    13 (National Theatre, 2011) is a panoramic drama in which a young man returns to London, a city riven by social protest and upheaval, with a radical vision for the future. Premiered on the National's largest stage, it confirmed Bartlett's ability to tackle epic themes with supreme assurance: 'His ambition is distinctive and immense' (Evening Standard).
    Medea (Headlong, UK tour, 2012) is a startlingly modern version of Euripides' tragedy, exploring a woman's private fury at her husband's infidelity, while imprisoned in her marital home. 'A savage play for today, superbly well done' (Mail on Sunday)
    Show book