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  The Child's Story

  Charles Dickens

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  The Child's Story by Charles Dickens 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: Once upon a time, a good many years ago, there was a traveller, and he set out upon a journey. It was a magic journey, and was to seem very long when he began it, and very short when he got half way through. He travelled along a rather dark path for some little time, without meeting anything, until 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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  Charles Wharton Stork

  Hjalmar Söderberg

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  Narrated in a collection of vignettes, the start of Martin Birck's young life in Stockholm is filled with the joys and frustrations of children everywhere. As he ages, his idealism falls away in a series of small shocks: stories of local murders told by an older friend, having to hold his own in school, an encroaching disbelief in the Christian faith his mother has instilled in him. These, along with his perceived trajectory, lead to the shattering revelation: "So this is life." Written in 1901, Martin Birck's Youth is split into three parts, covering Martin's experiences as a child, a late teenager, and a young man. It seems at least partially based on Hjalmar Söderberg's own life, and shares themes with his other work, including a deep interest in the psychology of his characters and a pervasive feeling of melancholy. These days it's seen as one of Söderberg's major works, alongside Doctor Glas and The Serious Game . Hjalmar Söderberg (died 1941) was an influential writer of the modernist period. Their work has endured across generations and continues to be read and studied worldwide. As a work of classic literary fiction, Charles Wharton Stork exemplifies the narrative craft and social insight that defined great storytelling of its era. Literary fiction of this period was characterized by careful attention to character psychology, social milieu, and the moral questions that animated public discourse.

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  The Modern Soul

  Katherine Mansfield

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  The Modern Soul is more about characters than action. The story begins with the stereotype of the pompous German music professor explaining to the young English narrator why he incessantly eats cherries: “There is nothing like cherries for producing free saliva after trombone playing, especially after Grieg’s ‘Ich Liebe Dich’” He’s cherry eating is connected with a consuming desire for women. The two older Germans, the Professor and the German actress’ mother, talk incessantly of food and soul. They agree that the English are “fish blooded,” cold and without soul. The modern soul is posture and hypocrisy; the varieties of sexual attraction are puzzles and complexities that human beings cannot handle. Characterisation

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  The Apple Cart

  George Bernard Shaw

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  It is some time in the future, and the King of England is beset by his ministers, who want him to stop expressing political opinions; around him circle his mistress, his Queen, his secretaries, and the American ambassador. What ensues is a battle of wits over who will run the country: will it be the King, the Prime Minister, or the powerful corporation Breakages, Limited? The Apple Cart presents a view of the future that is at times prescient, extrapolating from economic trends towards labor offshoring and the privatization of public services. In the preface, Shaw expands upon some of the play's themes, discussing the nature of democracy and the difficulties in trying to get a population to govern itself responsibly. He compares the undemocratic nature of royalty to the undemocratic natures of corporate control, or government by unelected civil service. Shaw wrote The Apple Cart in under two months in 1928 for the Malvern Theater Festival, but it first premiered in Polish in Warsaw, where it was a critical and popular success. It moved to the West End and ran on Broadway, and has seen numerous revivals in the years since, as well as translations and adaptations for radio and television. George Bernard Shaw (died 1950) was an influential writer of the modernist period. Their work has endured across generations and continues to be read and studied worldwide. The dramatic works of earlier centuries formed the backbone of a rich theatrical tradition. The Apple Cart was written to be performed as well as read, and its theatrical power remains fully evident on the page, with characters, conflict, and language that leap to life.

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  The End of the Affair

  Graham Greene

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  Graham Greene’s masterful novel of love and betrayal in World War II London is “undeniably a major work of art” (The New Yorker).   Maurice Bendrix, a writer in Clapham during the Blitz, develops an acquaintance with Sarah Miles, the bored, beautiful wife of a dull civil servant named Henry. Maurice claims it’s to divine a character for his novel-in-progress. That’s the first deception. What he really wants is Sarah, and what Sarah needs is a man with passion. So begins a series of reckless trysts doomed by Maurice’s increasing romantic demands and Sarah’s tortured sense of guilt. Then, after Maurice miraculously survives a bombing, Sarah ends the affair—quickly, absolutely, and without explanation. It’s only when Maurice crosses paths with Sarah’s husband that he discovers the fallout of their duplicity—and it’s more unexpected than Maurice, Henry, or Sarah herself could have imagined.   Adapted for film in both 1956 and 1999, Greene’s novel of all that inspires love—and all that poisons it—is “singularly moving and beautiful” (Evelyn Waugh).

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  The Jelly-Bean

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

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  The Jelly-Bean - one of the stories, which entered in a collection of eleven short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald "Tales of the Jazz Age" (1922). 
  This is a Southern story, with the setting laid in the small Lily of Tarleton, Georgia. Fitzgerald wrote that he had "a profound affection for Tarleton, but somehow whenever I write a story about it I receive letters from all over the South denouncing me in no uncertain terms." Written shortly after his first novel was published, the author also collaborated with his wife on certain scenes.
  The story momentarily follows the life of a "jelly-bean", or idler, named Jim Powell. An invitation to a dance with the old crowd revives his dreams of social advancement and love, until the consequences of drink and power of money come through and ruin them.

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