Maison d'édition: Bu Classics Books
A satirical tale of a confectioner whose ambition is only matched by his lack of scruples, this story exposes the comedic yet dark underbelly of greed. The arrival of a dim-witted brother threatens to topple a carefully constructed facade of respectability in a delightful twist of irony.
Washington Irving was born on 3rd April, 1783, the youngest of 11, in New York. Irving found his real interests away from school in literature and the theatre. An outbreak of yellow fever at 15 moved him away from Manhattan and into the surrounding countryside providing valuable settings for later works such as ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’. By 19 Irving was writing regularly to the New York Morning Chronicle, commenting on the theatrical and social scenes. When his health began to fail, he was sent on the Grand Tour of Europe. Bizarrely he ignored most of the great sights on offer to concentrate on developing his social and conversational powers. His health, though, did improve. In 1806, back in New York to study law, he scraped a pass at the bar and then founded with several others the literary magazine Salmagundi. Irving nicknamed the city ‘Gotham City’, a name still in use today. Moderately successful, the magazine spread Irving’s reputation beyond New York. In 1809 while mourning the death of his teenage fiancée Irving finished his first significant book, ‘A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynsasty, by Diedrich Knickerbocker’. It satirised local history, local historians and politics. It received great critical acclaim. Unfortunately his family’s established trading company was now facing great upheavals and Irving was dispatched to England to try to sort it out. After two years he could see no way out but bankruptcy. This left him in England with no real employment prospects, and so he returned to writing. He sent some short stories back to New York to be published as ‘The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent’. The first part included ‘Rip Van Winkle’ and was extremely successful. The sixth part contained ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’. Beset by literary piracy, with no copyright law at the time, he set about publishing legitimate copies in England to outwit the bootleggers. From now on Irving published concurrently in America and England in order to render piracy obsolete. In August 1824, he published ‘Tales of a Traveller’, which included the famed ‘The Devil and Tom Walker’. In 1826, the American Minister to Spain, invited him to Madrid where he could examine the many historical documents that he had access to. Irving reveled in both the size of the libraries he was granted access to and their rich quality. Historical works flowed from his pen further enhancing his reputation and fortune. Following the completion of ‘Tales of the Alhambra’ in 1832, Irving returned to America after 17 years abroad. He was now a figurehead of American literature and dispensed advice to Edgar Allan Poe amongst others. Irving also became an advocate for American copyright legislation. A later appointment as Minister to Spain in 1842 left him disheartened at the antics of the various political factions he encountered. It also afforded him no time to write as he had hoped. On his return home he began an ‘Author’s Revised Edition’ of his works agreeing an unprecedented deal for 12 per cent of the retail profits. Washington Irving died of a heart attack at his ‘Sunnyside’ home on the 28th November 1859 at the age of 76, a few months after completing his five volume George Washington biography, in whose honour he had been named. 01 - Washington Irving - A Short Story Collection - An Introduction 02 - The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving 03 - The Devil and Tom Walker by Washington Irving 04 - The Art of Book-Making by Washington Irving 05 - The Conquest of the Earth by the Moon by Washington Irving 06 - John Bull by Washington IrvingVoir livre
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a bold and groundbreaking novel by Anne Brontë that challenged Victorian norms and shocked readers upon its publication. The story centers on Helen Graham, a mysterious woman who arrives at the decaying mansion of Wildfell Hall with her young son. As rumors swirl and society judges her unconventional behavior, Helen's truth slowly unfolds—a past filled with emotional abuse, moral courage, and a desperate escape from a destructive marriage.Told through a series of letters and journal entries, this powerful novel addresses themes of alcoholism, women's independence, and the hypocrisy of social conventions. Anne Brontë's fearless portrayal of a woman who refuses to be broken makes The Tenant of Wildfell Hall a feminist classic ahead of its time.Voir livre
The extraordinarily evocative stories depict the generation born in a small-town America during the Depression and growing up in a world where the old sexual morality was turned around and material comforts were easily had. Yet, as these stories reflect so accurately, life was still unsettling, and Updike chronicles telling moments both joyful and painful. The texts are taken from his recent omnibus, The Early Stories, 1953-1975. In describing how he wrote these stories in a small, rented, smoke-filled office in Ipswitch, Massachusetts, he says, ""I felt that I was packaging something as delicately pervasive as smoke, one box after another, in that room, where my only duty was to describe reality as it had come to me -- to give the mundane its beautiful due.""Voir livre
Katherine O'Flaherty was born on the 8th February 1850 in St Louis, Missouri to parents of French and Irish descent. At age 5, she was sent to the Sacred Heart Academy and, apart from a 2 year period at home when her father died, remained there until graduating in 1868. Whilst there she began writing and became an avid reader of almost anything that crossed her path. Kate married Oscar Chopin in 1870 and the couple moved to New Orleans, and later to the rural setting of Cloutierville, Louisiana to raise their 6 children. In 1882 her husband died leaving her in a deep trench of debt. Despite her best efforts to turn the businesses around they were sold, and she moved the family back to St Louis and the financial help of her mother. Sadly, her mother died within the year. Kate, now struggling with depression, pushed herself to write and gained a local reputation as a writer of short stories that captured the local color and vibrancy of her surroundings. By the early 1890’s her short stories were published nationally. With this widespread audience also came negative reviews, controversy, and cries of immorality as themes such as interracial relationships, the rights of women and other burning issues of the day were written about. Despite the criticism, which unnerved her, she continued to write though in the main her works, around 100 short stories and two novels, were not attributed with any literary worth. Kate Chopin died from a brain haemorrhage in St Louis Missouri on the 22nd of August 1904. She was 54. For much of the 20th Century her work was forgotten and out of print. It was only in early 1970’s, with the rise of feminism and the call for a more just society that she was given the status her works had long described and shone a literary light at. She is now safely revered as one of America’s great authors.Voir livre
"The Ambassadors" is a 1903 novel by Henry James, originally published as a serial in the North American Review (NAR). This dark comedy follows the journey of the protagonist, Lewis Lambert Strether, to Europe. His mission is to bring back the son of his widowed fiancée to the family business. The novel is entirely told from Strether's point of view, chronicling his transformation from an American to a European perspective.Voir livre
London, 1888. A Ms. Mary Morstan arrives at 221B Baker Street with a case for Sherlock Holmes and his companion, Dr. John Watson. Some ten years prior, her father, Captain Arthur Morstan, returned to London while on leave from his post in India—only to go missing. Adding another layer to the mystery are six pearls in her possession, having received one per year since 1882. The sixth and most recently received pearl was accompanied by a letter asking for a meeting, claiming Ms. Morstan is a wronged woman. Holmes and Watson's deductive skills are put to the test in a thrilling adventure involving a map of a fortress bearing four names, poison darts, and high-speed boat chases. The second of the four Sherlock Holmes novels, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Sign of the Four follows Holmes and Watson's debut in A Study In Scarlet. Originally commissioned by Lippincott's Monthly, the novel was published in the magazine in 1890. In the summer of 2024, Doyle's original handwritten manuscript sold for over $900,000 at auction.Voir livre
