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  Sense and Sensibility

  Jane Austen

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  "Know your own happiness. You want nothing but patience—or give it a more fascinating name: call it hope."
  
  When Mr. Henry Dashwood dies, his estate passes to his son from a first marriage, leaving his second wife and three daughters—Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret—nearly destitute. Forced to move to the modest Barton Cottage in Devonshire, the sisters must navigate the treacherous waters of love and social standing with very different philosophies. Elinor, representing "Sense," possesses a cautious, composed nature that hides a deep well of emotion. Marianne, representing "Sensibility," is passionate, impulsive, and unashamedly romantic. As they encounter the reserved Edward Ferrars, the dashing but unreliable John Willoughby, and the steadfast Colonel Brandon, both sisters must learn that life requires a delicate balance between the head and the heart.
  
  A Study in Contrasts: Austen brilliantly pits the restraint of the Enlightenment against the rising tide of Romanticism. Through the sisters' parallel heartbreaks, she examines whether it is better to suffer in dignified silence or to give oneself entirely over to the "luxury of grief."
  
  The Reality of Regency Survival: Beyond the romance, the novel is a sharp critique of the economic vulnerability of women in the 1800s. Without an inheritance, the Dashwood sisters' only "career" path is marriage, making every social interaction a high-stakes negotiation for their future security.
  
  The Redemption of the Heart: From the rainy rescue on the hills of Devonshire to the painful betrayals in London ballrooms, Sense and Sensibility is a story of resilience. It is a masterpiece that proves that while "sense" may protect the heart, "sensibility" is what makes life worth living.
  
  Find your balance. Purchase "Sense and Sensibility" today.

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  Ben Pitcher's Elly - Mann delves...

  Mary E. Mann

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  Mary Rackham was born in Norwich on 14th August 1848 to a merchant family.  Little is known of her early life and her biography only re-appears in September 1871 with marriage to Fairman Joseph Mann, a farmer with 800 acres.   
   
  Mary moved to Shropham, Norfolk and became involved with the workhouse, visiting the sick and other unfortunates of the parish, her observations and experiences a valuable source for her later stories.  
   
  She took up writing, partly to offset the dreary village life of her surroundings, in the 1880s and published her first novel, ‘The Parish of Hilby’ (1883) at her own expense. It was well received by the critics.  
   
  Thus began a career that spanning three decades provided thirty-three novels, hundreds of short stories, and fourteen plays.  Her work was largely focused on rural life in Norfolk and centered on the fictional town of Dulditch, with grim but authentic accounts of poverty and deprivation.  
   
  Her marriage produced one boy and three girls. With her husband's death in 1913, she moved to Sheringham.  
   
  She is regarded as a major contributor to East Anglian literature with particular praise given to her short stories. 
   
  Mary E Mann died on 19th May 1929.  She was 80.  Her grave-marker is a carved open book with the epitaph ‘We bring our years to an end, as if it were a tale that is told’. 
   
  Life in ‘Ben Pitcher's Elly’ is degrading, awful and unvarnished.  The chances of this young girl having a happy life are remote but her story must be heard.

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  The Nose

  Nikolai Gogol

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  "The Nose" is a satirical short story by Nikolai Gogol written during his time living in St. Petersburg. During this time, Gogol's works were primarily focused on surrealism and the grotesque, with a romantic twist. 
  Written between 1835 and 1836, "The Nose" tells the story of a St. Petersburg official whose nose leaves his face and develops a life of its own. "The Nose" was originally published in The Contemporary, a literary journal owned by Alexander Pushkin. 
  "The Nose" is divided into three parts and tells the story of Collegiate Assessor ('Major') Kovalyov, who wakes up one morning without his nose. He later finds out that his nose has developed a life of its own, and has apparently surpassed him by attaining the rank of State Councillor. The short story showcases the obsession with social rank that plagued Russia after Peter the Great introduced the Table of Ranks. By allowing commoners to gain hereditary nobility through service to the state, a huge population was given the chance to move up in social status. This opportunity, however, also gave way to large bureaucracies, in which many of Gogol's characters worked.

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  The Adventure of the Priory School

  Arthur Conan Doyle

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  The Adventure of the Priory School, one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is one of 13 stories in the cycle collected as The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Doyle ranked "The Adventure of the Priory School" tenth in his list of his twelve favorite Holmes stories.Holmes receives a visit from Dr. Thorneycroft Huxtable, the founder and principal of a preparatory school called Priory School in Northern England. He beseeches Holmes to come back to Mackleton with him to look into the disappearance of one of his pupils, the ten-year-old Lord Saltire, whose father is the very rich and famous Duke of Holdernesse. Huxtable explains that not only the boy has disappeared, but also the German master, Heidegger, along with his bicycle.Once in the North, the Duke says to Holmes that he does not think that his estranged wife has anything to do with his son's disappearance, nor has there been a ransom demand. Holmes establishes that the boy and his kidnappers could not have used the nearby road without being seen, suggesting that they went cross-country. As if to confirm this, the police find the boy's school cap in some gypsies' possession. They swear that they simply found it on the moor, but the police lock them up...Famous works of the author Arthur Conan Doyle: A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of the Four, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Return of Sherlock Holmes, The Valley of Fear, His Last Bow, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, Stories of Sherlock Holmes, The Lost World.

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  Master Humphrey's Clock

  Charles Dickens

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  'Its very pulse, if I may use the word, was like no other clock. It did not mark the flight of every moment with a gentle second stroke, but measured it with one sledge-hammer beat, as if its business were to crush the seconds as they came trooping on…'
  
  Originally published in instalments between 1840 and 1841, Master Humphrey's Clock was a weekly periodical tracing the life of Master Humphrey and his small circle of friends. It was the place in which future classics – such The Old Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Rudge, were born – cementing its place as one of Dickens's most important works.
  
  Master Humphrey, an elderly man who lives by himself in London, decides one day to start a club dedicated to reading manuscripts. He and a few friends begin a ritual of reading their various tales aloud to each other, while sitting beside Humphrey's antique clock – an ever-present reminder of the passing of time. Including stories of mystery, adventure, love, tragedy and everything in between, Dicken's compellingly investigates themes of memory, fate and mortality. A clever comment on the act of storytelling in itself, Master Humphrey's Clock is an exemplary example of Dickens's genius. This audiobook is brilliantly narrated by Malk Williams.
  Charles Dickens (1812 – 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by the twentieth century, critics and scholars had recognized him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are widely read, performed and adapted today.

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  Off on a Comet

  Jules Verne

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  A comet called Gallia touches the Earth in its flight and collects a few small chunks of it. On the territory that was carried away by the comet there remained a total of thirty-six people of French, English, Spanish and Russian nationality. These people did not realize at first what had happened, and considered the collision an earthquake.

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