Publisher: Delboy
Mansfield Park tells the story of protagonist Fanny Price as she navigates her adolescence and young adulthood. As a child, Fanny is sent to live with her aunt, Lady Bertram, and her uncle, Sir Thomas, at their country estate, Mansfield Park.
Christmas Comes but Once a Year is the classic Christmas tale by John Leighton.Show book
Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. Born and educated in Edinburgh, Stevenson suffered from serious bronchial trouble for much of his life, but continued to write prolifically and travel widely in defiance of his poor health. As a young man, he mixed in London literary circles, receiving encouragement from Andrew Lang, Edmund Gosse, Leslie Stephen and W. E. Henley, the last of whom may have provided the model for Long John Silver in Treasure Island.ON SOME TECHNICAL ELEMENTS OF STYLE IN LITERATURE: There is nothing more disenchanting to man than to be shown the springs and mechanism of any art.Show book
Joseph Smith Fletcher (1863-1935) was a British journalist and author. He wrote more than 230 books on a wide variety of subjects, both fiction and nonfiction. He was one of the leading writers of detective fiction in the Victorian 'golden age' of the short story. "Against Time" is the adventure of a young clerk, Ledbitter, who realises, to his horror, that he has forgotten to post an important letter from his employer to a prospective client containing a valuable tender. He had left the letter in the inside pocket of the waistcoat he had been wearing the day before. But when he gets home, he discovers that his wife has sold the waistcoat with a bundle of other second-hand clothes. In a panic, he sets off to track down the waistcoat and recover the letter before it is too late.Show book
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.A MONUMENT OF FRENCH FOLLY: It was profoundly observed by a witty member of the Court of Common Council, in Council assembled in the City of London, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and fifty, that the French are a frog-eating people, who wear wooden shoes.Show book
Here are twelve magnificent stories in which John Cheever celebrates -- with unequaled grace and tenderness -- the deepest feelings we have. As Cheever writes in his preface, 'These stories seem at times to be stories of a long-lost world when the city of New York was still filled with a river light, when you heard the Benny Goodman quartets from a radio in the corner stationery store, and when almost everybody wore a hat.' John Cheever was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1912. He is the author of seven collections of stories and five novels. His first novel, The Wapshot Chronicle, won the 1958 National Book Award. In 1965 he received the Howells Medal for Fiction from the National Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 1978 The Stories of John Cheever won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Shortly before his death, in 1982, he was awarded the National Medal for Literature from the Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Benjamin Cheever is the author of The Plagiarist, The Parisian and Famous after Death. The Enormous Radio read by Meryl Streep The Five-Forty-Eight read by Edward Herrmann O City of Broken Dreams read by Blythe Danner Christmas is a Sad Season for the Poor read by George Plimpton The Season of Divorce read by Edward Herrmann The Brigadier and the Golf Widow read by Peter Gallagher The Sorrows of Gin read by Meryl Streep O Youth and Beauty! read by Peter Gallagher The Chaste Clarissa read by Blythe Danner The Jewels of the Cabots read by George Plimpton The Death of Justina read by John Cheever The Swimmer read by John CheeverShow book
Jack London lived for a time within the grim and grimy world of the East End of London, where half a million people scraped together hardly enough on which to survive. Even if they were able to work, they were paid only enough to allow them a pitiful existence. He grew to know and empathise with these forgotten (or ignored) people as he spoke with them and tasted the workhouse, life on the streets, ... and the food, which was cheap, barely nutritious, and foul. He writes about his experiences in a fluid and narrative style, making it very clear what he thinks of the social structures which created the Abyss, and of the millionaires who live high on the labours of a people forced to live in squalor. "... The food this managing class eats, the wine it drinks, ... the fine clothes it wears, are challenged by eight million mouths which have never had enough to fill them, and by twice eight million bodies which have never been sufficiently clothed and housed."Show book
