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  Fear - From their pens to your...

  Catherine Wells

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  Little information survives on Catherine’s life. 
  She was born Amy Catherine Robbins in 1872. 
  In about 1892 she was a student in a biology cramming class where the teacher was H G Wells.  Though married he was quickly attracted to his student and within a short time they were living together in Woking, Surrey.  He then divorced his first wife and married Catherine in October 1895 at St Pancras register office. 
  In the early years they were poor to the point that they could not afford to start a family.  When they did they had two children; Philip in 1901 and Frank two years later. 
  For much of her life she seemed to pursue other interests, being a mother, a gardener, running much of her husband’s business affairs and this seemed to leave little time for her own literary pursuits.  She published little during her lifetime apart from a few poems and some short stories.  Indeed her prodigiously talented husband even referred to her as ‘Jane’ and soon all around her did too, her writing life seemingly in another personality far, far away.   
  By the mid 20’s she was ill with cancer and succumbed to its advance in 1927. 
  Wells, although wayward and promiscuous during much of the marriage, now attempted to put his wife’s literary merits into book form and published ‘The Book of Catherine Wells’, a collection of short stories and poems.

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  A Tale of Two Cities

  Charles Dickens

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  "A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens is a historical novel written in the mid-19th century. Set against the backdrop of the French Revolution, the story begins by exploring the social and political turmoil of the era, introducing key themes such as resurrection, sacrifice, and the contrast between oppression and liberty.  
  The narrative follows Mr. Jarvis Lorry on his mission to retrieve Dr. Alexandre Manette, an imprisoned former physician who has been "recalled to life" after years of suffering. Dickens vividly depicts the contrasting conditions in England and France, highlighting the hardships faced by ordinary people. 
  A notable scene unfolds as Mr. Lorry travels on a Dover mail coach and encounters a mysterious messenger who delivers a message concerning Dr. Manette. Upon arriving in Paris, the ominous undertones of the Revolution are palpable, with Madame Defarge's wine shop symbolizing the growing discontent.  
  The story hints at the challenges ahead as the characters intertwine in a tale of personal and political upheaval, setting the stage for a drama that explores the quest for justice in the face of tyranny.

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  Les Misérables: Volume 2:...

  Victor Hugo

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  Victor-Marie Hugo (26 February 1802 - 22 May 1885) was a French poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, and dramatist of the Romantic movement. During a literary career that spanned more than sixty years, he wrote abundantly in an exceptional variety of genres: lyrics, satires, epics, philosophical poems, epigrams, novels, history, critical essays, political speeches, funeral orations, diaries, and letters public and private, as well as dramas in verse and prose.
  BOOK 7: PARENTHESIS: Such being the case, and a convent having happened to be on our road, it has been our duty to enter it. Why? Because the convent, which is common to the Orient as well as to the Occident, to antiquity as well as to modern times, to paganism, to Buddhism, to Mahometanism, as well as to Christianity, is one of the optical apparatuses applied by man to the Infinite.

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  Adam Bede

  George Eliot

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  A bestseller from the moment of publication, Adam Bede, although on one level a rich and loving re-creation of a small community shaken to its core, is more than a charming, faultlessly evoked pastoral. However much the reader may sympathize with Hetty Sorrel and identify with Arthur Donnithorne, her seducer, and with Adam Bede, the man Hetty betrays,it is George Eliots's creation of the distant aesthetic whole - the complex, multifarious life of Hayslope - which so grips the reader's imagination. As Stephen Gill comments: 'Reading the novel is a process of learning simultaneously about the world of Adam Bede and the world of Adam Bede.'

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  August Heat - From their pens to...

  W F Harvey

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  William Fryer Harvey AM was born on 14th April 1885 into a wealthy Quaker family in Leeds, West Yorkshire. 
  He was educated at the Quaker Bootham School in Yorkshire and Leighton Park School in Reading before university at Balliol College, Oxford.  
  His health was fragile and he poured his energies into writing short stories and in 1910 published his first collection ‘Midnight House’. 
  In the Great War he was with the Friends' Ambulance Unit and then served as a surgeon-lieutenant in the Royal Navy.  There he received the Albert Medal for Lifesaving but lung damage received at that time troubled him for the rest of his life. 
  He continued to write short stories, and even a memoir, but by 1925 ill health had forced his retirement to any outside work.  Three years later he published his second collection which contained his macabre classic ‘The Beast with Five fingers’, only one more collection would come from his pen in his lifetime. 
  For many years of his life he now lived in Switzerland with his wife but a yearning to be home saw them come back to England in 1935. 
  W F Harvey died in Letchworth on the 4th June 1937. He was 52.

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  Knulp

  Hermann Hesse

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  Wandering from town to town, Knulp is the eternal vagabond who just does not want to settle down. Even in an aimless life, he realises, he has some purpose... 
  Knulp was Hesse's most popular book when it first came out. It remains one of his classic works: evocative, subtle and moving.

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