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  The Man Without a Temperament

  Katherine Mansfield

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  "The Man Without a Temperament" is a 1920 short story by Katherine Mansfield. It was first published in Arts and Letters in Spring 1920, and later reprinted in Bliss and Other Stories.
  Mrs Jinnie Salesby has tea with her husband, Robert. She receives a letter from Lottie, who is suffering from neuritis. In her letter, she explains it is snowing in London. Then The Honeymoon Couple come back from fishing. The Salesbys go for a turn; she stops and sits while he goes on for a longer walk.

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  The Frozen Deep

  Wilkie Collins

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  The Frozen Deep is a powerful tale of love, sacrifice, and redemption set against the merciless backdrop of the Arctic wilderness. Written by Wilkie Collins, master of suspense and psychological drama, this novel explores the depths of human emotion when tested by jealousy, loyalty, and extreme survival.
  
  The story follows two men bound by friendship yet divided by rivalry for the love of the same woman. When fate leads them on a perilous Arctic expedition, personal conflicts are thrust into a landscape of ice, isolation, and relentless danger. As the cold tightens its grip and survival becomes uncertain, past grievances resurface, forcing each character to confront their true nature. In the frozen silence of the polar night, courage and selflessness are measured at the highest cost.
  
  Blending elements of adventure, romance, and moral drama, The Frozen Deep is more than a survival story—it is a profound examination of the human heart. Collins masterfully contrasts the harsh external environment with the inner struggles of his characters, showing how love and honor can endure even in the most unforgiving conditions.
  
  Originally conceived as a stage play before being adapted into a novella, The Frozen Deep stands as an early example of Collins's ability to weave emotional intensity with dramatic tension. Fans of classic literature, psychological drama, and historical adventure will find this work both gripping and deeply moving.
  
  A timeless story of sacrifice and moral awakening, The Frozen Deep remains a haunting reminder that true heroism is often revealed not in triumph, but in selfless devotion.

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  Benediction - From their pens to...

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

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  Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on 24th September 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota into an upper-middle class family. Whilst his mother was pregnant with him, his two young sisters tragically died.  Fitzgerald once said this was when his destiny as a writer was ordained. 
  His intelligence and talent was recognised from an early age, with his first story, about a detective being published in the school magazine when he was just 13.   
  In 1913 he enrolled at Princeton but his devotion to his own literary pursuits resulted in him leaving and, rather bizarrely, joining the Army.  In 1918, stationed at Fort Sheridan near Montgomery, Alabama he met and became infatuated and then inseparable from Zelda Sayre.  Initially though she refused to marry him but with the success of ‘This Side of Paradise’, the fame and the flow of money enabled them both to begin a gilded life.  For them this was The Jazz Age.  For Fitzgerald he was already an alcoholic. 
  He continued to write with great mastery and the titles of his novels and many of his 164 short stories are household names.  The Great Gatsby, often cited as The Great American Novel was published to mixed reviews.  As America moved from the Great Depression to the slaughter of the Second World War his works and himself were seen as far too entwined with the decadent twenties. The world had moved on and he hadn’t.   
  Further tragedy was never far from his life. Zelda after years of erratic and now intolerable behaviour was committed to an institution in 1936.  His own sales began to decline and he became a hack for hire in Hollywood, dependent on increasing amounts of booze and the weekly pay check.  His drunken state had often resulted in arrest or hospitalisation, further imperiling his talents.   Despite his contribution to many MGM films he received only one credit. 
  The end came all too soon for one of America’s greatest ever writers.  On 21st December 1940, at only 44 years of age in Hollywood, F Scott Fitzgerald succumbed to a heart attack.

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  Roger Malvin's Burial

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

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  There are stories that stay quiet, even after you finish them. Roger Malvin's Burial is one of those. It's not about war, though it begins there. It's about what a man carries when no one's watching—what he tells no one, not even himself. Hawthorne doesn't accuse. He simply opens a door and lets us stand in the silence. This story doesn't resolve. It echoes.

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  The Facts in the Case of M Valdemar

  Edgar Allan Poe

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  "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" is a short story by the American author Edgar Allan Poe about a mesmerist who puts a man in a suspended hypnotic state at the moment of death. An example of a tale of suspense and horror, it is also to a certain degree a hoax, as it was published without claiming to be fictional, and many at the time of publication (1845) took it to be a factual account. Poe admitted it to be a work of pure fiction in letters to his correspondents.
  The narrator presents the facts of the extraordinary case of his friend Ernest Valdemar, which have incited public discussion. He is interested in mesmerism, a pseudoscience involving bringing a patient into a hypnagogic state by the influence of animal magnetism, a process that later developed into hypnotism. He points out that as far as he knows, no one has ever been mesmerized at the point of death, and he is curious to see what effects mesmerism would have on a dying person. He considers experimenting on Valdemar, an author whom he had previously mesmerized and who has recently been diagnosed with phthisis (tuberculosis).

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  Some Do Not…

  Madox Ford

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  The first installment of Ford Madox Ford's acclaimed Parade's End tetralogy.  
  There is a hard brightness overlying the emotion and the human suffering and the human passions… Mr. Ford achieves not only what is probably his own best work but what is certainly one of the ablest of recent English novels. — The New York Times, 1924  
  Some Do Not… is the first of four novels in Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End tetralogy, a work that Ford hoped would contribute to the obviating of all future wars. Following Christopher Tietjens, a wealthy British landowner and the last British Tory; his wife, Sylvia; and his mistress, Valentine Wannop, the novel begins in 1912 and progresses to 1917, in the middle of World War I.  
  The Parade's End tetralogy privileges not the conflict of World War I itself, but the impact the war had on its participants and upon society writ large. It is often referred to as one of the greatest 20th century novels, and one of the best depictions of war in literature. The 2012 television adaptation, written by Tom Stoppard and starring Benedict Cumberbatch, was nominated for two Primetime Emmy Awards and seven BAFTA TV Awards.

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