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  O Henry - A Short Story...

  O Henry

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  William Sydney Porter was born on 11th September 1862 in Greensboro, North Carolina. At age 3 his mother died from tuberculosis. From an early age it was clear Porter had a large appetite for reading as he absorbed the world around him. 
   
  He first attended at a school run by his aunt before enrolling at the Lindsey Street High School and then worked at his uncle’s drugstore and gained a pharmacists’ license in 1881.  
   
  A persistent cough took him to Texas in the hope that a change of climate would help his symptoms. He took on various types of work, initially from ranch hand and cook and then as varied as pharmacist, draftsman, bank teller and journalist. He also began to write, though for now, purely as a hobby. 
   
  He was a member of several singing and dramatic groups when he met 17 year old Athol Estes, daughter of a wealthy Austin family. Despite her mother’s objection owing to Athol’s tuberculosis, they began courting and in July 1887, they eloped and soon married. 
   
  Athol, impressed by his writing, encouraged him to get them published. A job as a draftsman at the Texas General Land Office paid a healthy $100 dollars per month and life was good. 
   
  But then life turned cruel. His son died a few hours after birth although a daughter, Margaret, came the following year.  His job had to be vacated but another was found at the First National Bank of Austin. The bank operated informally and Porter was careless in keeping the books. He lost that job but began writing for the humourous weekly The Rolling Stone and the Houston Post. Some time later the federal Bank auditors went through his former accounts and he was arrested on charges of embezzlement. 
   
  Porter fled the day before his trial to Honduras. Holed up for several months he began to write.  Athol had become too ill to travel to meet him and learning that her health was deteriorating he surrendered to the court in February 1897.  Bail was obtained so that he could stay with Athol during her final days.  
   
  Porter was sentenced to five years at the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus. His pharmacy qualifications got him the job of night druggist.  His sentence also gave him time to write and publish fourteen short stories. In December 1899 in McClure’s Magazine he published a short story as O Henry.  
   
  He was released two years early in July 1901, and reunited with Margaret, now 11, in Pittsburgh.  He now began his most prolific period of writing; a short story per week for the New York World, while also publishing works in other magazines.  Eventually over 600 of his short stories were published. 
   
  Porter was a heavy drinker and in 1908 his health, which had deteriorated for several years, took a dramatic turn for the worse, as did his writing. 
    
  O Henry died of cirrhosis of the liver complicated by diabetes and an enlarged heart on 5th June 1910. 
  1 - O Henry - A Short Story Collection - An Introduction - Volume 1 
  2 - The Gift of the Magi by O Henry 
  3 - A Harlem Tragedy by O Henry 
  4 - According to Their Lights by O Henry 
  5 - After Twenty Years by O Henry 
  6 - Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen by O Henry 
  7 - Transients in Arcadia by O Henry 
  8 - The Cop and the Anthem by O Henry 
  9 - The Caballero's Way by O Henry 
  10 - The Count and the Wedding Guest by O Henry 
  11 - The Dream by O Henry 
  12 - The Furnished Room by O Henry

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  Emma

  Jane Austen

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  The most perfect of Jane Austen's perfect novels begins with twenty-one-year-old Emma Woodhouse comfortably dominating the social order in the village of Highbury, convinced that she has both the understanding and the right to manage other people's lives-for their own good, of course. Her well-meant interfering centers on the aloof Jane Fairfax, the dangerously attractive Frank Churchill, the foolish if appealing Harriet Smith, and the ambitious young vicar Mr. Elton-and ends with her complacency shattered, her mind awakened to some of life's more intractable dilemmas, and her happiness assured.Austen's comic imagination was so deft and beautifully fluent that she could use it to probe the deepest human ironies while setting before us a dazzling gallery of characters-some pretentious or ridiculous, some admirable and moving, all utterly true.

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  Emma - A Fragment of a Story

  Charlotte Brontë

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  Miss Mabel Wilcox, the owner of a newly opened girl's boarding school, meets the wealthy Mr. Conway Fitzgibbon, who drops off his frail daughter to be educated there. When background checks are made, it is discovered that no well-to-do family by the name of Fitzgibbon exists! Supposed Matilda Fitzgibbon is a pseudo-heiress - a fake! What is Miss Wilcox to do?Published posthumously and prefaced by Charlotte Brontë's editor, W. M. Thackeray, these two chapters are the only existing fragments of Emma, the novel Brontë worked on until her untimely death. Since then, it has been "completed" twice by other authors.

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  The Age of Reason

  Thomas Paine

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  The Age of Reason written by legendary author Thomas Paine is widely considered to be one of the top 100 greatest books of all time. This great classic will surely attract a whole new generation of readers. The book was a bestseller in America, where it caused a short-lived deistic revival. British audiences, however, fearing increased political radicalism as a result of the French revolution, received it with more hostility. The Age of Reason presents common deistic arguments; for example, it highlights the corruption of the Christian Church and criticizes its efforts to acquire political power. Paine advocates reason in the place of revelation, leading him to reject miracles and to view the Bible as an ordinary piece of literature rather than as a divinely inspired text. The Age of Reason is not atheistic, but deistic: it promotes natural religion and argues for a creator-God.

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  The Tinderbox

  Hans Christian Andersen

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  The tale is about the cheerful soldier, who with a help from an old witch and her tinderbox, wins the princess and marries her.The famous and much-loved Danish author Hans Christian Andersen celebrated his 200 anniversary the year 2005. On this occasion we have published five of his best tales retold for children aged 3-9 years: Tinderbox, The Little Match Girl, The Nightingale, The Emperor's New Clothes and The Ugly Duckling.Hans Christian Andersen wrote The Tinderbox in 1835.

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  The Essential Robert Louis...

  Robert Louis Stevenson

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  Two historical adventure novels from the author of Treasure Island, as well as a rare travel memoir of his experiences in the Pacific Islands.The Master of Ballantrae: In this tragic tale of a family divided by the eighteenth-century Jacobite rising, two brothers join opposing sides of the conflict. The story follows their epic rivalry from Scotland to the high seas and the American wilderness.Kidnapped: This adventure novel, inspired by true events in eighteenth-century Scotland, tells the tale of young David Balfour—who is betrayed by his uncle and kidnapped onto a ship, and survives shipwreck with his friend, the famous Jacobite Alan Breck Stewart.In the South Seas: In the 1890s, Robert Louis Stevenson chartered a ship to the Pacific Islands and recorded his experiences and observations. This autobiography of his journey offers a rare window into the author’s real, adventurous life.

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