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  A Dialogue Among Clever People -...

  Leo Tolstoy

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  Leo Tolstoy was born in 1828 in the Russian province of Tula to a wealthy noble family. As a child, he had private tutors but he showed little interest in any formal education. When he went to the University of Kazan in 1843 to study oriental languages and law, he left without completing his courses.  Life now was relaxed and idle but with some writing also taking place.  Gambling debts forced an abrupt change of path and he joined the army to fight in the Crimean War.  He was commended for his bravery and promoted but was appalled at the brutality and loss of life.  He recorded these and other earlier experiences in his diaries which formed the basis of several of his works. 
  In 1852 ‘Childhood’ was published to immediate success and was followed by ‘Boyhood’ and ‘Youth’. 
  His experience in the army and the horrors he witnessed resulted in ‘The Cossacks’ in 1862 and the trilogy ‘Sevastopol Tales’. After the war he travelled around Europe, visiting London and Paris and meeting such luminaries as Victor Hugo and Charles Darwin.  
  It was now that Tolstoy began his masterpiece, ‘War and Peace’. Published in 1869 it was an epic work that changed literature. He quickly followed this with ‘Anna Karenina’.  
  These successes made Tolstoy rich and helped him accomplish many of his dreams but also brought problems as he grappled with his faith and the lot of the oppressed poor. These revolutionary views became so popular that the authorities now kept him under surveillance.  
  He led a life of asceticism and vegetarianism and put his socialist ideals into practice by establishing numerous schools for the poor and food programmes. He also believed in giving away his wealth, which caused much discord with his wife.  
  His writing continued to bring forth classics such as ‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich’ and many brilliant and incisive short stories such as ‘How Much Land Does A Man Need’.  
  In 1901 Tolstoy was excommunicated from the Church and controversially deselected for the Nobel Prize for Literature. 
  Whilst undertaking a pilgrimage by train in October 1910 with his daughter Aleksandra he caught pneumonia in the nearby town of Astapovo.  Leo Tolstoy died on November 9th, 1910, he was 82.

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  The Ivory Child

  H. Rider Haggard

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  The timeless adventure featuring explorer Allan Quatermain, the inspiration for Indiana Jones, from one of the first authors of the “Lost World” genre.  The Ivory Child is a novel by H. Rider Haggard featuring Allan Quatermain—explorer, treasure hunter, and adventurer. In one of his strangest undertakings yet, Quatermain finds himself in the throes of a war between two African tribes, one of them led by an evil spirit that resides in the body of a gigantic elephant.   Two foreigners, Harût and Marût, call upon Quatermain by the name he uses among the Africans: Macumazana. They are convinced by divination that only Quatermain can defeat the elephant god and save Africa from an epic battle destined to plunge the continent into chaos . . .

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  10 Masterpieces You Have to Read...

  Edgar Allan Poe, William...

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  This book contains the following works:1. Edgar Allan Poe: The Gold Bug2. William Shakespeare: Romeo And Juliet3. Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: Faust4. Mark Twain: Adventures of Tom Sawyer5. Leo Tolstoy: The Death of Ivan Ilyich (Translator: Constance Garnett)6. Arthur Conan Doyle: The Lost World7. Henry James: The Turn of the Screw8. Antoine de Saint-Exupery: The Little Prince (Translator: Marina Zhigalova)9. Oscar Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray10. Kate Chopin: The Awakening

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  History of Herodotus The - Book...

  Herodotus, George Rawlinson

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  One of the masterpieces of classical literature, the "Histories" describes how a small and quarrelsome band of Greek city states united to repel the might of the Persian empire. But while this epic struggle forms the core of his work, Herodotus' natural curiosity frequently gives rise to colorful digressions - a description of the natural wonders of Egypt; an account of European lake-dwellers; and far-fetched accounts of dog-headed men and gold-digging ants. With its kaleidoscopic blend of fact and legend, the "Histories" offers a compelling Greek view of the world of the fifth century BC.
  BOOK 7: POLYMNIA: Now when tidings of the battle that had been fought at Marathon reached the ears of King Darius, the son of Hystaspes, his anger against the Athenians, which had been already roused by their attack upon Sardis, waxed still fiercer, and he became more than ever eager to lead an army against Greece.

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  Antarctic Mystery or the Sphinx...

  Jules Verne

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  "An Antarctic Mystery", also known as "The Sphinx of the Ice Fields", is a captivating two-volume novel written by the renowned French author Jules Verne. This work, penned in 1897, serves as a continuation of Edgar Allan Poe's 1838 novel "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket".During his twilight years, the French author Jules Verne (1828-1905) wrote two original sequels to books that had fired his own youthful imagination but which he felt to be Johann Wyss's Swiss Family Robinson and Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. Arthur Gordon Pym (1845) was only one of many Poe stories which Verne admired; no other single author had more impact on his writing.

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  War and Peace (Book Six: 1808-10)

  Leo Tolstoy

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  War and Peace is a literary work mixed with chapters on history and philosophy by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy. It was first published serially, then published in its entirety in 1869. It is regarded as one of Tolstoy's finest literary achievements and remains an internationally praised classic of world literature.
  Book 6: 1808-10: Prince Andrew had spent two years continuously in the country. All the plans Pierre had attempted on his estates and constantly changing from one thing to another had never accomplished were carried out by Prince Andrew without display and without perceptible difficulty.

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