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  A Dead Woman's Secret - From...

  Guy de Maupassant

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  Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant was born on August 5th, 1850 near Dieppe in France.  
  Maupassant’s early life was badly torn when at age 11 (his younger brother Hervé was then five) his mother, Laure, a headstrong and independent-minded woman, risked social disgrace in order to obtain a legal separation from her husband. 
  After the separation, Laure kept custody of her two boys. With the father now forcibly absent, Laure became the most influential and important figure in the young boy's life.   
  Maupassant’s education was such that he rebelled against religion and other societal norms but a developing friendship with Gustave Flaubert began to turn his mind towards creativity and writing. 
  After graduation he volunteered for the Franco-Prussian war. With its end he moved to Paris to work as a clerk in the Navy Department.  Gustave Flaubert now took him under his wing.  Acting as a literary guardian to him, he guided the eager Maupassant to debuts in journalism and literature.  For Maupassant these were exciting times and the awakening of his creative talents and ambitions. 
  In 1880 he published what is considered his first great work, ‘Boule de Suif’, (translated as as ‘Dumpling’, ‘Butterball’, ‘Ball of Fat’, or ‘Ball of Lard’) which met with a success that was both instant and overwhelming.  Flaubert at once acknowledged that it was ‘a masterpiece that will endure.’ Maupassant had used his talents and experiences in the war to create something unique.  
  This decade from 1880 to 1891 was to be the most pivotal of his career.  With an audience now made available by the success of ‘Boule de Suif’ Maupassant organised himself to work methodically and relentlessly to produce between two and four volumes of work a year.  The melding of his talents and business sense and the continual hunger of sources for his works made him wealthy. 
  In his later years he developed a desire for solitude, an obsession for self-preservation, and a fear of death as well as a paranoia of persecution caused by the syphilis he had contracted in his youth.  
  On January 2nd, 1892, Maupassant tried to commit suicide by cutting his throat.  Unsuccessful he was committed to the private asylum of Esprit Blanche at Passy, in Paris.  It was here on July 6th, 1893 that Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant died at the age of only 42.

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  Northanger Abbey

  Jane Austen

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  Northanger Abbey was the first of Jane Austen's novels to be completed for publication, in 1803. However, it was not published until after her death in 1817, along with another novel of hers, Persuasion. Northanger Abbey is a satire of Gothic novels, which were quite popular at the time, in 1798-99. This coming-of-age story revolves around Catherine Morland, a young and naïve "heroine", who entertains the reader on her journey to a better understanding of the world and those around her. In the course of the novel, she discovers that she differs from those other women who crave wealth or social acceptance, as instead she wishes only to have happiness supported by genuine morality.
  Seventeen-year-old Catherine Morland is one of ten children of a country clergyman. Although a tomboy in her childhood, by the age of 17 she is "in training for a heroine" and is excessively fond of reading Gothic novels, among which Ann Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho is a favourite.

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  War and Peace (Book Eight: 1811-12)

  Leo Tolstoy

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  War and Peace is a literary work mixed with chapters on history and philosophy by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy. It was first published serially, then published in its entirety in 1869. It is regarded as one of Tolstoy's finest literary achievements and remains an internationally praised classic of world literature.
  Book 8: 1811-12: After Prince Andrew’s engagement to Natásha, Pierre without any apparent cause suddenly felt it impossible to go on living as before. Firmly convinced as he was of the truths revealed to him by his benefactor, and happy as he had been in perfecting his inner man, to which he had devoted himself with such ardor—all the zest of such a life vanished after the engagement of Andrew and Natásha and the death of Joseph Alexéevich.

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  The Crime at Black Dudley

  Margery Allingham

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  Book #1 in the Albert Campion series.
  
  Albert Campion, an eccentric but intelligent and resourceful man, becomes involved in a mysterious crime in Black Dudley, an isolated country estate owned by the wealthy and secretive Dudley family. A grand gathering is taking place at the house, but not all will leave.

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  The Blind Man

  D H Lawrence

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  'The Blind Man' is a delicate study of a loving relationship blighted by the man's blindness and disfigurement in the first world war. The arrival of an old friend of the woman brings into the open feelings and fears previously suppressed.

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  Imaginative Woman An - From...

  Thomas Hardy

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  Thomas Hardy was born in the hamlet of Upper Bockhampton about three miles east of Dorchester in Dorset, England, on 2nd June 1840.  
  Despite a fairly wide education and being an avid reader his parents thought it unlikely he would lead a successful scholarly or clerical career and he was apprenticed in 1856, at age 16, to a local architect whose speciality was in church restoration.  Hardy’s only opportunity to read was in the morning before work between the hours of five and eight.  
  On the back of a failed love affair he moved to London and spent five years working as an assistant to the architect Arthur Blomfield, also a restorer and designer of churches. Hardy though had by now become disillusioned with institutionalised forms of Christianity and abandoned any lingering hopes of ordination in the Anglican Church.  However, his writing of poetry was now flourishing, although it was still rejected for publication.  
  His novel ‘Desperate Remedies’, was published anonymously in 1871 and he now resolved to write full time though he was not yet in a position to achieve financial security or literary success. His second novel, ‘Under the Greenwood Tree’, appeared in 1872 and in 1873 ‘A Pair of Blue Eyes’, the most autobiographical of his works arrived. With ‘Far From the Madding Crowd’ in 1874, came critical acclaim, public attention and financial success. This was repeated in 1878 with ‘The Return of the Native’, and the ensuing years saw him rise to ever greater popularity.  
  His classic ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’ arrived in 1886 and 5 years later ‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles’. The latter only saw publication after extensive alterations to its plot and the deletion of long passages to lessen the shock to the prudish Victorian audience who were dismayed by the seduction and ruin of a young girl by a rakish aristocrat.  
  ‘Jude the Obscure’, his last novel, suffered the same fate when it was published in 1895.  The uproar so disturbed him that he returned to poetry. In 1898 he had an earlier poetry collection, ‘Wessex Poems’ published. 
  Hardy spent the years between 1903 and 1908 writing ‘The Dynasts’, an epic poem on the Napoleonic Wars. 
  In his twilight years came honours and awards from the great and the good in recognition of his stature as one of the most outstanding of British authors across novels, short stories and poetry. George V conferred on him the Order of Merit in 1910. 
  From 1920 to 1927 he worked, in secret, on his autobiography, which was later published after his death as the work of his second wife, Florence Hardy.  
  Thomas Hardy OM died on the 11th January 1928. 
  His heart was buried alongside his first wife in Stinsford churchyard, Dorchester.

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