Editorial: Greenbooks Editore
Set against the French and Indian siege of Fort William Henry in 1757, The Last of the Mohicans recounts the story of two sisters, Cora and Alice Munro, daughters of the English commander, who are struggling to be reunited with their father.
Great Expectations is the thirteenth novel by Charles Dickens and his penultimate completed novel. It depicts the education of an orphan nicknamed Pip (the book is a bildungsroman, a coming-of-age story).Ver libro
A wise man once said ‘The safest place for a child is in the arms of his mother’s voice’. This is a perfect place to start our anthology of female short stories. Some of our earliest memories are of our mothers telling us bedtime stories. This is not to demote the value of fathers but more to promote the often-overshadowed talents of the gentler sex. Perhaps ‘gentler’ is a word that we should re-evaluate. In the course of literary history it is men who dominated by opportunity and with their stranglehold on the resources, both financial and technological, who brought their words to a wider audience. Men often placed women on a pedestal from where their talented words would not threaten their own. In these stories we begin with the original disrupter and renegade author Aphra Behn. A peek at her c.v. shows an astounding capacity and leaves us wondering at just how she did all that. In those less modern days to be a woman, even ennobled, was to be seen as second class. You literally were chattel and had almost no rights in marriage. As Charlotte Smith famously said your role as wife was little more than ‘legal prostitute’. From such a despicable place these authors have used their talents and ideas and helped redress that situation. Slowly at first. Privately printed, often anonymously or under the cloak of a male pseudonym their words spread. Their stories admired and, usually, their role still obscured from rightful acknowledgement. Aided by more advanced technology, the 1700’s began to see a steady stream of female writers until by the 1900’s mass market publishing saw short stories by female authors from all the strata of society being avidly read by everyone. Their names are a rollcall of talent and ‘can do’ spirit and society is richer for their works. In literature at least women are now acknowledged as equals, true behind the scenes little has changed but if (and to mis-quote Jane Austen) there is one universal truth, it is that ideas change society. These women’s most certainly did and will continue to do so as they easily write across genres, from horror and ghost stories to tender tales of love and making your way in society’s often grueling rut. They will not be silenced, their ideas and passion move emotions, thoughts and perhaps more importantly our ingrained view of what every individual human being is capable of. It is because of their desire to speak out, their desire to add their talents to the bias around them that we perhaps live in more enlightened, almost equal, times. Within these stories you will also find very occasional examples of historical prejudice. A few words here and there which in today’s world some may find inappropriate or even offensive. It is not our intention to make anyone uncomfortable but to show that the world in order to change must reconcile itself to the actual truth rather than put it out of sight. Context is everything, both to understand and to illuminate the path forward. The author’s words are set, our reaction to them encourages our change. 01 - The Female Short Story. A Chronological History - An Introduction - Volume 4 02 - The Blue Laboratory by L T Meade 03 - Since I Died by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps 04 - Many Waters Cannot Quench Love by Louisa Baldwin 05 - In the Mist by Mary E Penn 06 - An Unexpected Fare by Mary Tuttiett writing as Maxwell Gray 07 - Extradited by Isabella Valancy Crawford 08 - The Little Room by Madeline Yale Wynne 09 - Dog or Demon by Dorothy Havers 10 - A Rainy Day by Mary Elizabeth Hawker writing as Lanoe Faulkenery 11 - Clomayne's Clerk by Mary E Mann 12 - Christmas Eve at a Cornish Manor House by Clara Venn 13 - A White Heron by SarahVer libro
The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus is a 1902 children's book, written by L. Frank Baum and illustrated by Mary Cowles Clark.Taking the beloved symbol of merriment out of his conventional trappings and into the world of imaginative folklore, Baum gives Santa Claus an exciting life that evokes all the charm, warmth, and fantasy that made his Oz stories American classics.Ver libro
Prince John has assembled a collection of avaricious nobles to take control of England while Richard the Lionhearted is imprisoned in Austria. This threatens to bring the country to civil war between the Norman nobles and the conquered Saxons. Standing above it all is Wilfred of Ivanhoe, a disinherited Saxon knight who has fought in the Holy Land. Now returned, he wishes to wed the fair Rowena, the highborn Saxon noble, in spite of the seemingly insurmountable obstacles that stand in his way. With dozens of colorful characters, clashing swords, burning castles, kings in disguise and damsels in distress, Ivanhoe remains Scott's best-loved novel of historical romance.Ver libro
First published in 1878, The Suicide Club is a collection of three gruesome adventure stories which combine into a single narrative, recounting the exploits of Floritzel, Prince of Bohemia and his trusty confidante Colonel Geraldine as they infiltrate a secret society of dubious individuals intent on losing their own lives. The stories are: Story of the Young Man with the Cream Tarts The Prince and the Colonel are out incognito in London, when they meet a strange young man giving free cream tarts to all he meets. He introduces them to the Suicide Club, a horrific society whose members gamble with their own lives each night. Our heroes succeed in disbanding the club and its president is sent abroad "for disposal" with Geraldine's brother. Story of the Physician and the Saratoga Trunk In the Latin Quarter of Paris, an unsuspecting American tourist finds himself at the heart of a dastardly plot. He is lured away by an attractive countess, only to discover a dead body in his bed on his return. His kind neighbour, Dr. Noel, arranges to hide the body in a trunk which is smuggled to London in the baggage of Prince Floritzel and Colonel Geraldine. When Floritzel discovers the plot, he also finds that the body is that of Geraldine's brother - and the President of the Suicide Club has escaped. The Adventure of the Hansom Cab In London, Lieutenant Brackenbury Rich is taken by a mysterious hansom cabman to a house where an odd party is underway. The host turns out to be Colonel Geraldine in disguise, who whisks him off to a secret location where Prince Floritzel and the President of the Suicide Club are to fight a final duel to the death.Ver libro
These British Isles, moored across from mainland Europe, are more often seen as a world unto themselves. Restless and creative, they often warred amongst themselves until they began a global push to forge a World Empire of territory, of trade and of language. Here our ambitions are only of the literary kind. These shores have mustered many masters of literature. So this anthology’s boundaries includes only those authors who were born in the British Isles - which as a geographical definition is the UK mainland and the island of Ireland - and wrote in a familiar form of English. Whilst Daniel Defoe is the normal starting point we begin a little earlier with Aphra Behn, an equally colourful character as well as an astonishing playwright and poet. And this is how we begin to differentiate our offering; both in scope, in breadth and in depth. These islands have raised and nurtured female authors of the highest order and rank and more often than not they have been sidelined or ignored in favour of that other gender which usually gets the plaudits and the royalties. Way back when it was almost immoral that a woman should write. A few pages of verse might be tolerated but anything else brought ridicule and shame. That seems unfathomable now but centuries ago women really were chattel, with marriage being, as the Victorian author Charlotte Smith boldly stated ‘legal prostitution’. Some of course did find a way through - Jane Austen, the Brontes and Virginia Woolf but for many others only by changing their names to that of men was it possible to get their book to publication and into a readers hands. Here we include George Eliot and other examples. We add further depth with many stories by authors who were famed and fawned over in their day. Some wrote only a hidden gem or two before succumbing to poverty and death. There was no second career as a game show guest, reality TV contestant or youtuber. They remain almost forgotten outposts of talent who never prospered despite devoted hours of pen and brain. Keeping to a chronological order helps us to highlight how authors through the ages played around with characters and narrative to achieve distinctive results across many scenarios, many styles and many genres. The short story became a sort of literary laboratory, an early disruptor, of how to present and how to appeal to a growing audience as a reflection of social and societal changes. Was this bound to happen or did a growing population that could read begin to influence rather than just accept? Moving through the centuries we gather a groundswell of authors as we hit the Victorian Age - an age of physical mass communication albeit only on an actual printed page. An audience was offered a multitude of forms: novels (both whole and in serialised form) essays, short stories, poems all in weekly, monthly and quarterly form. Many of these periodicals were founded or edited by literary behemoths from Dickens and Thackeray through to Jerome K Jerome and, even some female editors including Ethel Colburn Mayne, Alice Meynell and Ella D’Arcy. Now authors began to offer a wider, more diverse choice from social activism and justice – and injustice to cutting stories of manners and principles. From many forms of comedy to mental meltdowns, from science fiction to unrequited heartache. If you can imagine it an author probably wrote it. At the end of the 19th Century bestseller lists and then prizes, such as the Nobel and Pulitzer, helped focus an audience’s attention to a books literary merit and sales worth. Previously coffeehouses, Imperial trade, unscrupulous overseas printers ignoring copyright restrictions, publishers with their book lists as an appendix and the gossip and interchange of polite society had been the main avenues to secure sales and profits.Ver libro
