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  Before the Law - From their pens...

  Franz Kafka

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  Franz Kafka was born on 3rd July 1883 in Prague, then in Bohemia, the eldest of 6, into a middle-class Jewish family. 
  Life for the young Kafka and his passion for literature was often made an ordeal by his over-bearing and domineering entrepreneur of a father.   
  In 1889 Kafka was sent to the Deutsche Knabenschule, an elementary school in Prague. His father would only allow him to be educated in German-speaking schools and even went so far as to limit visits to the synagogue to four a year. 
  In 1901 he graduated from the classics-oriented Altstädter Gymnasium. Kafka did well there and across a large range of subjects.  He now enrolled at the Charles Ferdinand University, to study chemistry, but quickly switched to law for which he obtained his degree in June 1906 and then performed the mandatory year of unpaid service as clerk at the civil and criminal courts. 
  A job at an Italian insurance company left him little time to write and after a year he took another job with the Worker's Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia where he stayed until ill health led to his resignation in 1922. 
  Although he saw work as a means to pay the bills and to allow him time to write, he received several promotions and was noted as a good employee. 
  By 1917 Kafka was suffering from tuberculosis, which required frequent periods of convalescence. Interspersed with this, were several intense affairs before he settled in Berlin with Dora Diamant, a 25-year-old kindergarten teacher who herself having left the ghetto now influenced Kafka's interest in the book of Jewish law, the Talmud. 
   
   
  Kafka’s on-going health was littered with problems. Apart from TB there were several other ailments, including migraines, insomnia, boils, depression, all usually brought on by excessive stresses and strains. He attempted to counteract all of this by naturopathic treatments, a vegetarian diet and consuming large quantities of unpasteurized milk. 
  His tuberculosis still worsened. He returned to Prague, where he died on 3rd June 1924. He was 40.

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  Casting the Runes - From their...

  M R James

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  Montague Rhodes James is cited as perhaps the greatest English writer of ghost stories, an opinion few would disagree with. 
  James was born on 1st August 1862 at Goodnestone Parsonage in Kent, where his father was Curate but at age 3 the family went to live at Livermere, near Bury St Edmunds in East Anglia.  
  From early childhood he had a passion for mediaeval books and antiques. He was educated initially as a boarder at Temple Grove School in East Sheen, west London, before gaining a scholarship to Eton and thence Cambridge where he gained a double first, becoming a distinguished linguist and mediaevalist.  
  Before the Great War vacations were usually spent touring Europe absorbing cultures and references for his later writing. 
  A man of enormous knowledge it was said he timed his breakfast egg whilst he completed the Times crossword.  
  Many of his elegant yet terrifying tales were created by discarding the prevailing gothic cliches and placing his characters and narrative in a realistic setting.  Thereby the stories gained atmosphere and menace on a grand scale and he was famed as the originator of the antiquarian ghost story. 
  Although story-telling and writing these 30 or so tales was a hobby, when published their effect transformed the genre and still chill the bones in our more modern times. 
  James was also a medievalist scholar and translator whose work remains highly respected. He was also Provost of Eton College between 1918 and 1936. 
  M R James died on 12th June 1936 at Eton in Buckinghamshire.  He was 73.

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  The Model Millionaire

  Oscar Wilde

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  "The Model Millionaire" is a short story by the Irish author Oscar Wilde. It first appeared in print in the newspaper The World in June 1887. It was published again in 1891 as part of the anthology Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories.
  The story concerns a young man who, although he does not have much money himself, is moved to pity by the sight of an elderly beggar who is posing as a model for his artist friend. Although he can barely afford to do so, the young man gives the beggar the largest denomination coin that he has in his pocket. The young man's act of kindness has unexpected positive consequences for him.

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  Our Mutual Friend - Book the...

  Charles Dickens

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  Charles Dickens was a writer and social critic who created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded 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 recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories enjoy lasting popularity.
  BOOK THE THIRD: A LONG LANE: It was a foggy day in London, and the fog was heavy and dark. Animate London, with smarting eyes and irritated lungs, was blinking, wheezing, and choking; inanimate London was a sooty spectre, divided in purpose between being visible and invisible, and so being wholly neither.

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  In the Fourth Dimension - From...

  Clothilde Graves

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  Clotilde Augusta Inez Mary Graves was born on the 3rd June 1863 at Buttevant Castle, Co. Cork, to parents with military backgrounds. 
  At age nine, the family moved to Southsea in England for yet another military posting.  Her father’s postings gave her valuable experiences that would be put to good use in later years in some of her literary works. 
  She was educated at a Catholic convent in Lourdes before returning to London in 1884 to study art in Bloomsbury.  She worked part-time at the British Museum and the Royal Female School of Art and generated further income by drawing little pen-and-ink grotesques for the comic papers.  
  A few years later a chance meeting found her writing extra lyrics for a pantomime version of Puss in Boots.  She followed up with several financially successful plays, both in London and New York, and gained a measure of notoriety in one with the comparison of marriage and prostitution.   
  Despite her dramatic success she published her first novel in 1911 under the pseudonym of Richard Dehan which she continued to use for later works.  As well as novels and plays she published collections of short stories which glow with talent and invention. 
  She was an unusual figure in London society, wearing her hair short, taking on a masculine manner and cut of clothing, and smoking cigarettes in public when such traits were considered eccentric at best.  Add to this her admired collection of Chinese and Japanese trophies, her enthusiasm for fly-fishing and her riding of a tricycle and you have a perfect image of this fascinating writer. 
  Clotilde Graves died at the convent of Our Lady of Lourdes at Hatch End in Middlesex, on the 3rd December 1932.  She was 69.

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  A Farewell to Arms

  Ernest Hemingway

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  Set against the harsh landscape of World War I-era Europe, this hauntingly beautiful tale of love and loss follows American ambulance driver Frederic Henry as he embarks on a romance with British nurse Catherine Barkley. Narrated with Hemingway's signature economy and power, the book navigates the brutal realities of war and the sacrifices one makes for those they love.
   
  Blending gritty realism with poignant romance, and daring escapes with focused emotion, A Farewell to Arms endures as one of Hemingway's most iconic novels.

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