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  Evening Guest An - From their...

  Alexandr Kuprín

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  Alexander Kuprin was born in Narovchat, Penza in Russia on 7th September 1870. 
  At 3 his Father died and he and mother moved to Moscow. By 10 he was enrolled at the Second Moscow Military High School and there his interest in literature began. The Alexander Military Academy followed and two years later he was a sub-lieutenant and posted to an Infantry Regiment for a further four years. 
  Despite his duties he was a now a keen writer and published his first short story at this time. His military duties also garnered him experiences for his breakthrough work ‘The Duel’.  Leaving the military he left for Kiev to work for local newspapers.  He continued to publish both stories and novels and by 1901 he was in St Petersburg becoming part of a group that included Chekhov, Ivan Bunin, Maxim Gorky and Leonid Andreyev.  
  In the years that followed further controversial works and acclaim followed.  His comments on the regime meant he was also put under secret police surveillance.   
  As World War I erupted, Kuprin opened a military hospital but was then given command of an infantry company in Finland. He was soon discharged on grounds of ill health.  
  The October Revolution saw him praise Lenin, but he warned that the Bolsheviks threatened Russian culture and might cause further widespread suffering to the peasants.  As Civil War raged he took his family to Helsinki and then on to Paris. 
  Exile saw his talents decline further and his succumbing to alcoholism. He became lonely and withdrawn. The family's poverty increased his malaise.   
  In May 1937, the Kuprin’s returned to Moscow.  He now saw his work published but wrote almost nothing new.  In 1938 his health rapidly deteriorated.  Already suffering from a kidney problems and sclerosis, he had now developed cancer of the oesophagus.  
  Alexander Kuprin died on 25th August 1938.

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  The Promissory Note

  Lucy Maud Montgomery

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  Lucy Maud Montgomery (November 30, 1874 – April 24, 1942), published as L. M. Montgomery, was a Canadian author best known for a series of novels beginning in 1908 with Anne of Green Gables. The book was an immediate success. The title character, orphan Anne Shirley, made Montgomery famous in her lifetime and gave her an international following.
  The Promissory Note: Ernest Duncan swung himself off the platform of David White's store and walked whistling up the street. Life seemed good to Ernest just then. Mr. White had given him a rise in salary that day, and had told him that he was satisfied with him.

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  The Complete Short Works of...

  George Meredith

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  Meredith at short length: the tale of a chaste ordeal in the Rhineland, a farce about a house of quarrelling relations, sketches and comedies from the pen of the most difficult stylist of the Victorian age. He read manuscripts for a publisher for thirty years — turning down East Lynne and, notoriously, Erewhon — and wrote prose that other novelists studied as a craft. Sixty plates of horses, letters, and far-off summits from William James Müller and Benjamin Herring II carry the eye across the same ground Meredith's restless prose covers.

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  The Man In A Case

  Anton Chekhov

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  A Man in a Case, written by Anton Chekhov, is an example of realist literature and serves to illustrate his mastery of the craft. The story centers around the protagonist, Belikov, who is characterized by his extremely rigid adherence to social conventions and strictures. By confining himself within the boundaries of socially accepted norms, Belikov creates a metaphorical "case" that further restricts his access to self-expression and freedom. Read in English, unabridged.

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  Ghost Stories of an Antiquary -...

  M. R. James

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  Both series of the ghost stories a Cambridge provost wrote to read aloud to friends at Christmas: the scrapbook that should not have been bought, the whistle blown on a lonely beach, the ash tree outside the window. James was a medievalist by trade and put the horror in the margins of manuscripts and cathedral records, where he worked. Fifty-eight plates by painters including Munch and Goya turn on the same haunted architecture the tales do: cathedrals, winter streets, and the shadowed places where scholars meet what they should not.

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  Through lands that were dark

  F. H. HAWKINS

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  This short record of a year's missionary journey in Africa and Madagascar is written at the request of the Directors of the London Missionary Society, and is based upon a series of Journal Letters written to my family and friends while I have been on my travels. This fact must be my excuse for writing in the first person. This little book has been prepared in the midst of the pressure of Secretarial work.

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