Altri libri che potrebbero interessarti

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  English As She Is Spoke

  Pedro Carolino

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  In 1855 Pedro Carolino set out to write an English phrasebook for Portuguese travelers visiting England. The only problem was that he couldn't speak English. Undeterred by this minor setback, Carolino decided to base his guide on a respected Portuguese–French phrasebook written by José da Fonseca . He took the French translations of Portuguese, and used a French–English dictionary to translate those to English. The result was an unintentional comedy of literal translation, as English phrases like "the walls have ears" became "the walls have hearsay" (via the Portuguese as paredes têm ouvidos ), and "waiting for someone to open the door" became "to craunch the marmoset" (via a ridiculous misreading of archaic English, and the shape of the grotesque door knockers popular at the time). The entire guide was quite large, and not only was it of no practical use as an actual phrasebook, but its length made it too much of a slog to appeal as a comedy. But its legend slowly grew, until in 1883 it was republished in an abridged form as a book of humor titled English as She Is Spoke (a phrase which, incidentally, doesn't appear in the book itself). The abridged edition, taking the comedic highlights from the long and tedious original, is the edition that became famous.

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  The Mysteries of Udolpho

  Ann Radcliffe

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  The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe is offered here in a clean English digital edition prepared for fluent ebook reading. The work stands within classics and gives modern readers direct access to a public-domain classic with navigable structure and a restrained typographic presentation. The opening pages establish the book's atmosphere with this first movement: Home is the resort Of love, of joy, of peace and plenty, where, Supporting and supported, polish'd friends And dear relations mingle into bliss. —Thomson On the pleasant banks of the Garonne, in the province of Gascony, stood, in the year 1584, the chateau of Monsieur St. Aubert. From its windows we This edition is suited to readers who want a reliable, uncluttered version of the text for study, rediscovery, and sustained reading.

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  Gentle Breathing - From their...

  Ivan Bunin

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  Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin was born on 22nd October 1870 in Voronezh province, in the South-West of the Russian Empire. 
  His early life was plagued by his Father’s gambling habits which caused his education to be erratic and the family to lose most of their wealth. 
  Bunin published his first poem in 1887 in St Petersburg and later in Oryol he worked for the local paper and became its editor, handily allowing him to publish his own poems and short stories.  There he met and married Varvara Pashchenko.  Ivan Bunin's debut book of poetry ‘Poems (1887–1891)’ was published in 1891. 
  This poetry and his translation of Longfellow garnered him his first Pushkin Prize.  Now he switched to writing prose and his novella ‘Antonov Apples’ is regarded as his first masterpiece.  Many more would follow. 
  The October Revolution of 1905 found Bunin in the Crimea.  Scenes of ‘class struggle’ he saw more as the oppressed people's craving for anarchy and destruction. 
  In November 1906 he began a passionate affair with Vera Muromtseva, within a few months they were touring through Egypt and Palestine.  ‘The Bird's Shadow’ collection was the result.   
  His second Pushkin Prize came in 1909 for Poems (1903–1906) and further translations.  He was now elected to the prestigious Russian Academy. 
  More widespread fame came in 1910 with ‘The Village’, a controversial and bleak portrayal of Russian country life.  Travel too beckoned them back to the Middle East, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and for winters in Capri with their friend Maxim Gorky.  
  That friendship suddenly ended in April 1917 as the revolution began to ferment in war-ravaged Russia.  After the Bolsheviks took power and the upheavals continued, he decided to leave Russia, finally achieving that in early 1920.  
  It would take some time to heal the wounds and stress he had been under and for his writing to begin again.  Settled in France, Bunin published many of his previous works and collections of novellas.  He also made regular contributions to the Russian emigre press.  
  Although reluctant to become involved in politics, Bunin was now feted as both a writer and the figurehead of non-Bolshevik Russian values and traditions.  In 1933 he became the first Russian to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature ‘for following through and developing with chastity and artfulness the traditions of Russian classic prose.’  
  In 1938 Bunin began working on the celebrated cycle of nostalgic, and erotically themed stories known Dark Avenues (or Dark Alleys).  
  As World War II broke out he chose to remain in Grasse spending the war at his remote Villa Jeanette, high in the mountains.  
  Ivan Bunin was a staunch anti-Nazi, and often, under difficult conditions, sheltered fugitives after Vichy was occupied by the Germans.  He wrote but did not publish during these years until on August 23rd the Nazi’s fled Grasse without a fight.  The next day the Americans came.  
  In May 1945 he returned to Paris and, apart from convalescing at times in Juan-les-Pins, he stayed for the rest of his life. 
  After 1948, with his health deteriorating, Bunin concentrated upon writing his memoirs and a book on Chekhov.  His last years were overshadowed by bitterness and despair at the situation in Russia and the treatment of its peoples.  He was suffering now from asthma, bronchitis and chronic pneumonia. 
  Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin died in a Paris attic flat on 8th November 1953.  Heart failure, cardiac asthma and pulmonary sclerosis were given as the causes of death.  He was 83.

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  A Christmas Tree and a Wedding

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

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  This short story by Fyodor Dostoevsky was first published in 1848. A man walking past a wedding is reminded of a children's New Year's Eve party he attended 5 years previously – a party that was clearly an excuse for the parents to make advantageous connections in a casual setting. As an outsider at the party, he was able to observe the guests in greater detail than most, and took particular note of the children playing by the Christmas tree, and the social hierarchy they unwittingly participated in. This recording is based on the 1918 translation by Constance Garnett.

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  Where There's a Will

  Mary Roberts Rinehart

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  A young man inherits a fashionable health resort — sulphur baths, diets, cranks and all — on condition that he run it for a year without telling anyone who he is. Rinehart trained as a nurse and took up fiction at twenty-seven when a stock crash ruined her family, and became the highest-paid writer in America; the sanatorium here is a farce machine, and she knew hospitals from the inside.

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  Edgar Allan Poe - Six of the...

  Edgar Allan Poe

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  Six has always been a number we group things around – Six of the best, six of one half a dozen of another, six feet under, six pack, six degrees of separation and a sixth sense are but a few of the ways we use this number. 
   
  Such is its popularity that we thought it is also a very good way of challenging and investigating an author’s work to give width, brevity, humour and depth across six of their very best. 
   
  In this series we gather together authors whose short stories both rivet the attention and inspire the imagination to visit their gems in a series of six, to roam across an author’s legacy in a few short hours and gain a greater understanding of their writing and, of course, to be lavishly entertained by their ideas, their narrative and their way with words. 
   
  These stories can be surprising and sometimes at a tangent to what we expected, but each is fully formed and a marvellous adventure into the world and words of a literary master. 
   
   1 - Six of the Best - Edgar Allan Poe - An Introduction 
  2 - Edgar Allan Poe - An Introduction 
  3 - The Fall of the House of Usher - Part 1 by Edgar Allan Poe 
  4 - The Fall of the House of Usher - Part 2 by Edgar Allan Poe 
  5 - The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe 
  6 - The Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe 
  7 - The Premature Burial by Edgar Allan Poe 
  8 - The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe 
  9 - The Murders in the Rue Morgue - Part 1 by Edgar Allan Poe 
  10 - The Murders in the Rue Morgue - Part 2 by Edgar Allan Poe

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