Altri libri che potrebbero interessarti

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  Walking and Other Excursions

  Henry David Thoreau

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  IN THE SPIRIT OF UNDYING ADVENTURE!    Sauntering through natural landscapes is a noble art; and one that Henry David Thoreau held in the highest regard.     Though he is perhaps best known for Walden: Life in the Woods and his essay “Civil Disobedience,” Thoreau was an early advocate of recreational hiking, canoeing, and conserving natural resources. A passionate nature writer, he penned many articles that shared these philosophies and perspectives.    This carefully restored re-creation of the 1863 essay collection Excursions features the nine original essays that were published posthumously:    “Natural History of Massachusetts”    “A Walk to Wachusett”    “The Landlord”    “A Winter Walk”    “The Succession of Forest Trees”    “Walking”    “Autumnal Tints”    “Wild Apples”    “Night and Moonlight”    This revised special edition also includes the original detailed biographical sketch of Thoreau by fellow transcendentalist and friend Ralph Waldo Emerson. Featuring a brand-new foreword by J.F. Penn, best-selling author of PILGRIMAGE: Lessons Learned from Walking Three Ancient Ways, and a fresh introduction from editor Mark Leslie.    ______    "In these ever more fast-moving times, as the constant noise of media in every form buffets us, and bad news from across the world shakes our sense of well-being daily, we can find truth in Thoreau’s words that 'in society you will not find health, but in nature.'" - J.F. Penn

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  Blackmail - From their pens to...

  John Galsworthy

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  John Galsworthy was born on the 14th August 1867 on the family estate, Parkfield, in Kingston-upon-Thames.  His family’s wealth came from the shipping industry 
  At age nine he began his education at Saugeen, a Bournemouth preparatory school, before moving to Harrow school in 1881, distinguishing himself as an athlete.  
  Galsworthy attended New College, Oxford to read law and left with a second-class degree with honours in 1889. The bar called him in 1890 but Galsworthy decided he would rather run the family’s shipping business. This also meant travelling to destinations such as Vancouver, South Africa and Australia. 
  In 1895 Galsworthy began a decade long affair with Ada Nemesis Pearson Cooper, the wife of his first cousin. It was only when, in 1905, she divorced and married Galsworthy that their affair became known. 
  His literary career began in 1897 with a short story volume, ‘From the Four Winds’, with the pseudonym John Sinjohn as were three further works. Under his own name, in 1904, came ‘The Island Pharisees’, a novel of social observation, seasoned with flashes of satire and propaganda. He also switched from small, independent publishers to the larger Heinemann and to whom he remained for the duration of his career. 
  1906 saw first major play, ‘The Silver Box’, and the novel ‘The Man of Property’. Each to considerable acclaim. The latter was the first in ‘The Forsyte Saga’ trilogy written between 1906 and 1921. It dealt with the questions of status, class and materialism through Soames Forsyte, who is acutely aware of his ‘new money’ status. Jealous of his wife, his machinations drive her into the arms of another. Soames engages in a terrible revenge with terrible consequences.  
  His social agenda was enlightened particularly in his condemnation over the use of solitary confinement in prisons, his attacks on theatrical censorship and campaigning for animal rights. 
  Galsworthy, having been passed over for active service, spent much of the First World War working as an orderly in a field hospital in France. 
  Despite his it was only in 1920 that he had his first blockbuster play ‘The Skin Game’, a melodrama dealing with ethics, property and class.  
  In 1920 ‘In Chancery’ also arrived with further discourse on the marital disharmony between Soames Forsyte and his wife.  
  The appreciation of his work gradually shifted from plays to novels, particularly through his detailing English social difference, tension and pretension with the Forsytes.  A second trilogy, ‘A Modern Comedy’, followed, examining his love for his daughter Fleur and the English commercial upper-middle class, its ideologies and Soames’ poisonous materialism.  
  Having rejected a knighthood in 1918 he was appointed, in 1929, to the Order of Merit. Galsworthy spent his last years writing a third Forsythe trilogy, ‘End of the Chapter’.   
  In 1932 he was awarded the Nobel Prize, but by now failing health meant he was too ill to attend the ceremony. 
  John Galsworthy died at his Hampstead home of a brain tumour on 31st January, 1933. He was cremated and his ashes scattered from an aeroplane over the South Downs.

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  Before the Supreme Court - From...

  Lafcadio Hearn

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  Lafcadio Hearn was born on the 27th June 1850 on the Ionian isle of Levkás in Greece to a British Army officer and a Greek Mother. 
  His father, fearing for his career prospects at being married to a Greek Orthodox wife, sent them to Dublin whilst he continued to advance his career with further postings.  Life there was difficult for mother and son.  His father returned, wounded and traumatised, when Lafcadio was three.  He annulled the marriage and she remarried but had to give up care of Lafcadio to her sister-in law.   
  After brief periods for Catholic education in England and France he emigrated to Ohio in the United States when he was 19, taking on a series of casual jobs before embarking on a career as a journalist, publishing poems and essays in Cincinnati.  It was whilst here that he began a side-line in translating, starting with Gautier and Flaubert.  He married in 1874 to a 20 year old African-American woman in violation of Ohio's anti-miscegenation law.  The marriage soon failed. 
  In 1877 he relocated to New Orleans to write on a variety of themes before picking up a two year assignment from Harper’s to write in the West Indies, where he also wrote his first novel. 
  In 1890 Harper’s sent him to Japan.  Here he left journalism and took the remarkable decision to become a schoolteacher in the north of Japan.   Enraptured by the culture he was driven to explain it in various Western publications to those who had little, if any, knowledge of its culture.  Within the year he had fallen in love with, and married, a high-born Japanese lady, together they would have four children.   
  In 1895 he became a Japanese national and took the name Koizumi Yakumo, Koizumi being his wife’s family name. 
  The following few years, whilst a professor of Literature at the Imperial University of Japan, were his most creative and admired period.   
  Lafcadio Hearn died of heart failure on the 26th of September 1904, in Tokyo, Japan shortly before leaving to deliver a series of lectures at Cornell University in New York State.  He was 54.

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  The Portrait of a Lady

  Henry James

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  When Isabel Archer, a beautiful, spirited American, is brought to Europe by her wealthy Aunt Touchett, it is expected that she will soon marry. But Isabel, resolved to determine her own fate, does not hesitate to turn down two eligible suitors. She then finds herself irresistibly drawn to Gilbert Osmond, who, beneath his veneer of charm and cultivation, is cruelty itself. A story of intense poignancy, Isabel's tale of love and betrayal still resonates with modern audiences. Support us at https://manifoldmedia.net/donate

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  My Life - The Classic Tale

  Helen Keller

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  When she was 19 months old, Helen Keller (1880–1968) suffered a severe illness that left her blind and deaf. Not long after, she also became mute. Keller mounted a tenacious struggle to overcome these handicaps with the help of her inspired teacher, Anne Sullivan. Here is one of the greatest stories of human courage ever committed to paper. In this classic autobiography, Miss Keller recounts the first 22 years of her life, including the magical moment at the water pump when she recognized the connection between the word "water" and the cold liquid on her hands. Subsequent experiences were equally noteworthy: her joy at eventually learning to speak, her friendships with Oliver Wendell Holmes and other notables, her education at Radcliffe, and extraordinary relationship with Miss Sullivan.

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  Treasure Island

  Robert Louis Stevenson

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  Jim Hawkins, the narrator of "Treasure Island", is a young man, yet most of the audiobooks available are performed by stately, mature men! This audiobook of the classic novel brings its characters - impulsive narrator Jim, two-faced John Silver, and each filthy pirate - to life in an energetic presentation full of charm and fun. Set sail with the Hispaniola with your course set for adventure! 
  Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island" was the first to sail many seas: Long John Silver was the first one-legged buccaneer stumping about on a wooden leg, Captain Flint was the first pirate's parrot, and the map of Skeleton Island was the first to be marked with an X for "Dig Here" - but its swashbuckling adventure remains as fresh and exciting today as it did when it was first published; that's one of the rewards of being first.

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