Verlag: Bu Classics Books
In the smoke-choked slums of Clerkenwell, the struggle for survival strips humanity down to its rawest elements. Characters fight against a destiny dictated by crushing poverty, where hope is a dangerous luxury and charity is often futile. This is a bleak, uncompromising vision of the urban underclass that refuses to look away from the darkness.
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.Zum Buch
At the beginning of Virginia Woolf's fantastical and satirical 1928 novel, Orlando is a young nobleman in Elizabethan England. At the age of 30, Orlando awakens to have found he's now a woman. Moving through the following centuries, the novel stretches over 300 years, during which time Orlando meets several key figures of English literary history.Zum Buch
Shawl-Straps by Louisa May Alcott is a part of the Aunt Jo’s Scrap Bag series. The book follows the real exploits of Louisa May Alcott and her sister May as they travel through Europe in 1870-71, unencumbered by any male solicitude or patronage, along with their sidekick, Alice Bartlett. The story involves a mysterious lady in green velvet with many diamonds, and a shabby, speechless companion, who sailed about the ship, regardless of the rumors told of her.Zum Buch
Our Mutual Friend, written in 1864-1865, is the last novel completed by Charles Dickens and is one of his most sophisticated works, combining savage satire with social analysis. It centres on, in the words of critic J. Hillis Miller, quoting the book's character Bella Wilfer, "money, money, money, and what money can make of life". Most reviewers in the 1860s continued to praise Dickens's skill as a writer in general, but did not review this novel in detail. Some found the plot both too complex and not well laid out. The Times of London found the first few chapters did not draw the reader into the characters. In the 20th century, however, reviewers began to find much to approve in the later novels of Dickens, including Our Mutual Friend. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, some reviewers suggested that Dickens was, in fact, experimenting with structure, and that the characters considered somewhat flat and not recognized by the contemporary reviewers were meant rather to be true representations of the Victorian working class and the key to understanding the structure of the society depicted by Dickens in the novel.Zum Buch
One ordinary day. A thousand unspoken thoughts. A life measured in moments. As Clarissa Dalloway prepares for an evening party in postwar London, her mind drifts through memories of love, youth, regret, and possibility. Interwoven with her story is that of Septimus Smith, a haunted war veteran whose inner struggles mirror the fragile pulse of the modern world. Through flowing consciousness and poetic insight, Woolf captures the quiet drama of being alive. Celebrated as "one of the great masterpieces of modern literature," Mrs Dalloway transforms a single day into a profound exploration of identity, time, and human connection. Its beauty lies in the thoughts we rarely speak and the emotions that shape us unseen. If you love introspective storytelling, lyrical prose, and novels that linger in the mind, this timeless work will deeply move you. Open the book—and step into a day that contains an entire lifetime.Zum Buch
"A Study in Scarlet" was written by Arthur Conan Doyle in 1887, and he marks the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, who would go on to become one of the most well-known mystery-solving duos in literature. When a gruesome murder is discovered with the word "RACHE" scrawled in blood, Sherlock Holmes uses his unique powers of deduction to uncover a hidden story of passion, betrayal, vengeance and retribution.Zum Buch
