Other books that might interest you

• 

  The Lord of the Sea - A Romance...

  M. P. Shiel

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  A man wrongly imprisoned finds a fortune, builds a fortress on the sea and takes control of the world's shipping lanes, then has to decide what to do with the power. Shiel wrote it in 1901 and the book is as strange as everything else he did.

  Show book

• 

  Horse in the Moon - From their...

  Luigi Pirandello

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Luigi Pirandello was born on 28th June 1867 into an upper-class family in Agrigento, in Sicily. 
  In 1880, the family moved to Palermo and there he completed high school and thence to the University of Palermo, at that time the centre of what became the Fasci Siciliani movement.  Although not an active member he had close friendships with many of its leading ideologists.  Pirandello then completed his university studies in Rome and Bonn, receiving his Doctorate in March, 1891. 
  His time in Rome had provided him with the opportunity to visit its many theatres. "Oh the dramatic theatre! I will conquer it. I cannot enter into one without experiencing a strange sensation, an excitement of the blood through all my veins..." 
  1894 brought marriage, at his father's suggestion, to a shy, withdrawn girl: Mara Antonietta Portulano.  The marriage encouraged his studies and writings and, the following year, the first part of the ‘Dialoghi tra Il Gran Me e Il Piccolo Me’ was published. 
  In 1903 the flooding of the sulphur mines in which his father had invested the family capital and Antonietta's dowry, brought financial catastrophe.  She, on hearing the news, was mentally broken.  Pirandello would now work a full day and then watch over his troubled wife at night. Somehow he found time to write ‘The Late Mattia Pascal’.  It was an immediate and resounding success.  
  In 1909, Pirandello began his collaboration with the prestigious Corriere della Sera.  Whilst his fame as a writer was increasing his private life was poisoned by the suspicion and jealousy of Antonietta who now turned physically violent.  His plays were now being regularly performed but, within a decade, Antonietta had to be placed into an asylum from which she never left. 
  In 1921, in Rome his play, ‘Six Characters in Search of an Author’ debuted.  It was a failure.  However, when presented in Milan it was a great success, as it also was in London and New York. 
  In 1925, Pirandello, with Mussolini’s help, assumed the artistic direction and ownership of the Teatro d'Arte di Roma.  He now described himself both as ‘a Fascist because I am Italian’ and ‘I'm apolitical, I'm only a man in the world...’  However his later conflicts with fascist leaders meant he fell under close surveillance by the OVRA, the secret police. 
  In 1934 he won the Nobel Prize but asked that the medal be melted down for Italy’s occupation of Abyssinia Campaign to which he had given his support.  
  Pirandello's canon stretches across novels, short stories, poetry, essays and some 40 plays.  His tragic farces are often cited as forerunners of the Theatre of the Absurd. 
  Luigi Pirandello died on the 10th December 1936 at his home at Via Bosio, Rome, Italy.  He was 69.

  Show book

• 

  John Caldigate

  Anthony Trollope

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  John Caldigate by Anthony Trollope is offered here in a clean English digital edition prepared for fluent ebook reading. The work stands within classics and gives modern readers direct access to a public-domain classic with navigable structure and a restrained typographic presentation. The opening pages establish the book's atmosphere with this first movement: This novel was first published 1879 and boasts an elaborate and well-wrought narrative. After taking his degree at Cambridge, John Caldigate finds himself heavily in debt to a moneylender, with no means to meet his obligation. His father Daniel Caldigate, disgusted with his extravagance and folly, a This edition is suited to readers who want a reliable, uncluttered version of the text for study, rediscovery, and sustained reading.

  Show book

• 

  An Old-Fashioned Girl - Polly...

  Louisa May Alcott

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  A country girl visits rich city cousins, is laughed at for her plain clothes, and comes back six years later as a music teacher earning her own living. Alcott wrote the second half of the book after her readers asked what became of Polly, and used it to argue for work as the thing that makes a woman free. The fashionable family's collapse is handled without triumph, and the marriage at the end is the least interesting thing in it.

  Show book

• 

  Letters Written During A Short...

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  In June 1795, Mary Wollstonecraft embarked on a three-month trip around Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, on undisclosed business at the request of her lover Gilbert Imlay. During the course of this voyage she wrote twenty-five letters to him, which were compiled the following year at the behest of her publisher into this volume. As a travelogue, the letters of course contain descriptions of the natural beauty of the places she visited and the habits and interests of the people she met; but what is more apparent is Mary's growing realization that this journey she has undertaken for Imlay ultimately won't heal their relationship. Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark was the last work of Mary Wollstonecraft's published during her lifetime; she died two years later, shortly after the birth of her second child, Mary Shelley . It follows the themes of her earlier works: a belief in reason's ability to elevate people, the injustice of society's oppression of women, and a spreading idea that commercialism does more to deprave than to enlighten humankind. Mary Wollstonecraft (died 1797) was one of the foundational figures of Western literary tradition. Their work has endured across generations and continues to be read and studied worldwide. The nonfiction literature of previous centuries offers invaluable windows into the minds and preoccupations of earlier ages. Letters Written During A Short Residence In Sweden Norway And Denmark combines the personal and the universal in ways that continue to resonate with contemporary readers seeking to understand both history and human nature.

  Show book

• 

  All the Sad Young Men

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  All the Sad Young Men is the third collection of short stories written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, published by Scribners in February 1926. Fitzgerald wrote the stories at a time of disillusionment. He was in financial difficulty, he believed his wife Zelda was romantically involved with another man, she had suffered a series of physical illnesses, and his play The Vegetable had been a failure. The book was dedicated to Ring and Ellis Lardner, who were neighbors at the time the book was published.
  Included in this collection:
  1. The Rich Boy
  2. Winter Dreams
  3. The Baby Party
  4. Absolution
  5. Rags Martin-Jones and the Pr-nce of W-les
  6. The Adjuster
  7. Hot and Cold Blood
  8. "The Sensible Thing"
  9. Gretchen's Forty Winks

  Show book