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  Jerome K Jerome - Six of the...

  Jerome K

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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 - Jerome K Jerome - An Introduction 
  2 - Jerome K Jerome - An Introduction  
  3 - The Absent Minded Man by Jerome K Jerome 
  4 - The Man of Science by Jerome K Jerome 
  5 - The Man Who Went Wrong by Jerome K Jerome 
  6 - The Man Who Did Not Believe in Luck by Jerome K Jerome 
  7 - 76 - The Lesson by Jerome K Jerome 
  8 - Told After Supper - The Doctor's Story by Jerome  K Jerome

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  Counterparts (Unabridged)

  James Joyce

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  James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 - 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, short story writer, poet and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century.COUNTERPARTS: The bell rang furiously and, when Miss Parker went to the tube, a furious voice called out in a piercing North of Ireland accent: "Send Farrington here!" Miss Parker returned to her machine, saying to a man who was writing at a desk...

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  Gods in Exile - Heine pulls at...

  Heinrich Heine

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  Christian Johann Heinrich Heine was born in Düsseldorf, Germany on 13th December 1797 to assimilated Jewish parents. 
   
  Heine studied law at the universities of Bonn, Göttingen, and Berlin but his greater commitment was to studying poetry and literature.   
   
  He converted to Protestantism in order to obtain work as there were draconian anti-Jewish laws in force at the time.   
   
  He was part of the German Romantic movement but also responsible in part for ushering in the post-Romantic crisis and the presumed failure of art as unable to overcome or explain the growing traumas of modernity.  However, his literary reputation was cemented in the second half of the 1820’s with his poetry collection ‘The Book of Songs’ together with his collection of ‘Pictures of Travel’ stories that blended fact and fiction together into commercial and critical successes. 
   
  After the July 1830 Revolution in France, he went to live in Paris, where he remained until his death.  
   
  Here he wrote much in the way of essays discussing the political and cultural scene in France together with volumes of social criticism on Germany. 
   
  By 1835, his works had been banned by the German government.  His lifelong subsidised lifestyle ended in 1844 when his uncle died leaving him nothing.  He turned once more to lyric poetry and created perhaps his finest poetical works.  A trip to Germany resulted in the long satirical poem ‘Germany. A Winter's Tale’. His second volume of poetry, ‘New Poems’ in 1844, included poems that had originally appeared in Karl Marx’s newspaper ‘Forward’ and continued the satirical style he now preferred.   
   
  In May 1848, Heine, in poor health, fell and was paralyzed and confined to his bed.  He called it his ‘mattress-grave’ and only death would remove him from it.  He was also experiencing eye problems and suffering from chronic lead poisoning. 
   
  Heinrich Heine died on 17th February 1856.  He was 58.   
   
  ‘Gods in Exile’ is perhaps a prophetic piece on his own life.  The old gods are overthrown by the new novelty of Christianity.  What will be their role now?  Is there life after for them?

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  Oliver Twist

  Charles Dickens

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  Oliver Twist, subtitled The Parish Boy's Progress, is the second novel by English author Charles Dickens, published by Richard Bentley in 1838. The story is about an orphan, Oliver Twist, who endures a miserable existence in a workhouse and then is placed with an undertaker. He escapes and travels to London where he meets the Artful Dodger, leader of a gang of juvenile pickpockets. Naïvely unaware of their unlawful activities, Oliver is led to the lair of their elderly criminal trainer Fagin. 
  Oliver Twist is notable for Dickens's unromantic portrayal of criminals and their sordid lives. The book exposed the cruel treatment of the many orphans in London during the Dickensian era. The book's subtitle, The Parish Boy's Progress, alludes to Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress and also to a pair of popular 18th-century caricature series by William Hogarth, A Rake's Progress and A Harlot's Progress. 
  An early example of the social novel, the book calls the public's attention to various contemporary evils, including child labour, the recruitment of children as criminals, and the presence of street children. Dickens mocks the hypocrisies of his time by surrounding the novel's serious themes with sarcasm and dark humour. The novel may have been inspired by the story of Robert Blincoe, an orphan whose account of hardships as a child labourer in a cotton mill was widely read in the 1830s. It is likely that Dickens's own early youth as a child labourer contributed to the story's development.

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  Merry Adventures of Robin Hood...

  Howard Pyle

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  The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood of Great Renown in Nottinghamshire is an 1883 novel by the American illustrator and writer Howard Pyle. Consisting of a series of episodes in the story of the English outlaw Robin Hood and his band of Merry Men, the novel compiles traditional material into a coherent narrative in a colorful, invented "old English" idiom that preserves some flavor of the ballads, and adapts it for children. The novel is notable for taking the subject of Robin Hood, which had been increasingly popular through the 19th century, in a new direction that influenced later writers, artists, and filmmakers through the next century.

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  The Sorrows of Young Werther

  Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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  "The Sorrows of Young Werther" (in German, "Die Leiden des jungen Werthers") is a novel by the German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, first published in 1774. This novel is considered one of the foundational works of the Sturm und Drang literary movement, characterized by emotional intensity and individualism. The story is presented as a series of letters written by the young artist Werther to his friend Wilhelm. It explores themes of unrequited love, longing, and the conflict between societal expectations and personal desires. Werther's intense and tragic passion for Charlotte, who is already engaged to another man, forms the central emotional narrative.

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