Publisher: Good Press
The Anti-Pamela is one of several novels written in response to Richardson's novel Pamela, satirizing the innocence of his character Pamela Andrews. You will laugh and marvel at this criticism of the original virtuous, working-class Pamela.
Robert Murray Gilchrist (1867 – 1917) was an English novelist and author of short stories often set in the Peak District. He is best known today for his Gothic short horror stories, which earn him a deserved position alongside the likes of Stevenson, Stoker, Wilde and Stenbock.A Witch in the Peak tells the story of a money-lender trying to recover a debt from an old woman who has been recently widowed. She throws him out of her house with a curse... and what happens next terrifies the man almost to death.Show book
“Eight brief, pleasantly convoluted mysteries that resemble Sherlock Holmes stories without Sherlock . . . A cozy respite from television.” —Los Angeles Times This work brings together eight Arthur Conan Doyle mystery classics. When first gathered into one volume in 1908, the book was entitled Round the Fire Stories, since the author recommended that they be read ideally “’round the fire upon a winter’s night.” According to Barzun & Taylor in A Catalogue of Crime, “As one reads ‘The Man with the Watches,’ ‘The Lost Special,’ ‘The Jew’s Breastplate,’ ‘The Black Doctor’ and the rest, one marvels again at Doyle’s natural gift of storytelling and one relishes his ingrained habit of giving clues, even when they serve narrative and are not to be used for ratiocination. These stories are worth reading even around a radiator.”Show book
A wise man once said ‘The safest place for a child is in the arms of his mother’s voice’. This is a perfect place to start our anthology of female short stories. Some of our earliest memories are of our mothers telling us bedtime stories. This is not to demote the value of fathers but more to promote the often-overshadowed talents of the gentler sex. Perhaps ‘gentler’ is a word that we should re-evaluate. In the course of literary history it is men who dominated by opportunity and with their stranglehold on the resources, both financial and technological, who brought their words to a wider audience. Men often placed women on a pedestal from where their talented words would not threaten their own. In these stories we begin with the original disrupter and renegade author Aphra Behn. A peek at her c.v. shows an astounding capacity and leaves us wondering at just how she did all that. In those less modern days to be a woman, even ennobled, was to be seen as second class. You literally were chattel and had almost no rights in marriage. As Charlotte Smith famously said your role as wife was little more than ‘legal prostitute’. From such a despicable place these authors have used their talents and ideas and helped redress that situation. Slowly at first. Privately printed, often anonymously or under the cloak of a male pseudonym their words spread. Their stories admired and, usually, their role still obscured from rightful acknowledgement. Aided by more advanced technology, the 1700’s began to see a steady stream of female writers until by the 1900’s mass market publishing saw short stories by female authors from all the strata of society being avidly read by everyone. Their names are a rollcall of talent and ‘can do’ spirit and society is richer for their works. In literature at least women are now acknowledged as equals, true behind the scenes little has changed but if (and to mis-quote Jane Austen) there is one universal truth, it is that ideas change society. These women’s most certainly did and will continue to do so as they easily write across genres, from horror and ghost stories to tender tales of love and making your way in society’s often grueling rut. They will not be silenced, their ideas and passion move emotions, thoughts and perhaps more importantly our ingrained view of what every individual human being is capable of. It is because of their desire to speak out, their desire to add their talents to the bias around them that we perhaps live in more enlightened, almost equal, times. Within these stories you will also find very occasional examples of historical prejudice. A few words here and there which in today’s world some may find inappropriate or even offensive. It is not our intention to make anyone uncomfortable but to show that the world in order to change must reconcile itself to the actual truth rather than put it out of sight. Context is everything, both to understand and to illuminate the path forward. The author’s words are set, our reaction to them encourages our change. 01 - The Female Short Story. A Chronological History - An Introduction - Volume 8 02 - When Spirits Steal by Philippa Forest 03 - The Strange Looking Man by Fanny Kemble Johnson 04 - The Readjustment by Mary Austin 05 - Passed by Charlotte Mew 06 - The Woman Who Sat Still by Parry Truscott 07 - Sylvia by Bessie Kyffin-Taylor.wav 08 - The Preacher at Hill Station by Katherine Davis Chapman Tillman 09 - The Spirit of the Range by B M Bower 10 - The Wooing of Pastor Cummings by Georgia F Stewart 11 - Hodge by Elinor Mordaunt 12 - Fear by Catherine Wells 13 - The Difference by Ellen Glasgow 14 - Paul's Case by Willa CatheShow book
This classic by Sinclair Lewis shattered the sentimental American myth of happy small-town life with its satire. Main Street attacks the conformity and dullness of early-twentieth-century midwestern village life in the story of Carol Milford, the city girl who marries the town doctor. Her efforts to bring culture to the prairie village are met by a wall of gossip, greed, and petty, small-minded bigotry. The first popular bestseller to attack conventional ideas about marriage, gender roles, and small town life, Main Street established Lewis as a major American novelist.Show book
While the novel is humorous (one instance has the King sitting on top of an omnibus and speaking to it as to a horse: "Forward, my beauty, my Arab," he said, patting the omnibus encouragingly, "fleetest of all thy bounding tribe"), it is also an adventure story: Chesterton is not afraid to let blood be drawn in his battles, fought with sword and halberd in the London streets, and Wayne thinks up a few ingenious strategies; and, finally, the novel is philosophical, considering the value of one man's actions and the virtue of respect for one's enemies.Show book
The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the Iliad, the poem is divided into 24 books. It follows the Greek hero Odysseus, king of Ithaca, and his journey home after the Trojan War. After the war itself, which lasted ten years, his journey lasted for ten additional years, during which time he encountered many perils and all his crewmate were killed. In his absence, Odysseus was assumed dead, and his wife Penelope and son Telemachus had to contend with a group of unruly suitors who were competing for Penelope's hand in marriage.The Odyssey was originally composed in Homeric Greek in around the 8th or 7th century BCE and, by the mid-6th century BCE, had become part of the Greek literary canon. In antiquity, Homer's authorship of the poem was not questioned, but contemporary scholarship predominantly assumes that the Iliad and the Odyssey were composed independently, and the stories themselves formed as part of a long oral tradition. Scholars still reflect on the narrative significance of certain groups in the poem, such as women and slaves, who have a more prominent role in the epic than in many other works of ancient literature. This focus is especially remarkable when considered beside the Iliad, which centers the exploits of soldiers and kings during the Trojan War.The Odyssey is regarded as one of the most significant works of the Western canon. The first English translation of the Odyssey was in the 16th century. Adaptations and re-imaginings continue to be produced across a wide variety of mediums. In 2018, when BBC Culture polled experts around the world to find literature's most enduring narrative, the Odyssey topped the list. Here is the great tale as an exciting extended Icon Audiobook!Show book
