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  Alexander's Bridge - Willa...

  Willa Cather

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  Alexander's Bridge was Willa Cather's first novel and one of her best. Bartley Alexander was the world's leading bridge builder, something that was considered an awesome skill in the early 20th century. Alexander has the strength and regret that weave throughout Cather's male characters much as they do through those of her contemporary authors, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Dreiser, Anderson, Lewis, and others. Mrs. Alexander has the strength and forbearance of Cather's female characters, shown off most clearly after the great bridge collapses along with Alexander himself.The novel bathes its locations in a glow reminiscent of a lovely Impressionist painting, full of light and luminosity. Boston has never appeared more glorious than in her descriptions, as one example.The novel starts with great strength but with a forbidding air. It ends as a great Greek drama with the collapse of the hero and the literal collapse of his great work. This is the Cather novel to start with.

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  Man-Size in Marble

  E. NESBIT

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  E. Nesbit is best known for her children's books such as The Railway Children, the “Psammead” series. and the stories of the “Bastable” family. She was also a poet and wrote many works for adults including short stories in the genre of the supernatural and the macabre.  Man-Size in Marble is one of her strangest and most unsettling.Public Domain (P)2016 Spiders' House Audio/Roy Macready

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  The Man Who Could Work Miracles

  H G Wells

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  Herbert George Wells was born on September 21st, 1866 in Bromley in Kent. He was the youngest of four siblings and his family affectionately knew him as ‘Bertie’. 
   
  The first few years of his childhood were spent fairly quietly, and Wells didn’t display much literary interest until, in 1874, he accidentally broke his leg and was left to recover in bed, largely entertained by the library of books his father regularly brought him. Through these Wells found he could escape the boredom and misery of his bed and convalescence by exploring the new worlds he encountered in these books. 
   
  From these humble beginnings began a career that was, after several delays, to be seen as one of the most brilliant of modern English writers. 
   
  Able to write comfortably in a number of genres he was especially applauded for his science fiction works such as The Time Machine and War of the Worlds but his forays into the social conditions of the times, with classics such as Kipps, were almost as commercially successful.  His short stories are miniature masterpieces many of which bring new and incredible ideas of science fiction to the edge of present day science fact.  Wells also received four nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature. 
   
  Despite a strong and lasting second marriage his affairs with other women also brought the complications of fathering other children.  His writings and work against fascism, as well as the promotion of socialism, brought him into increasing doubts with, and opposition to, religion.  His writings on what the world could be in works, such as A Modern Utopia, are thought-provoking as well as being plausible, especially when viewed from the distressing times they were written in. 
   
  His diabetic condition pushed him to create what is now the largest Diabetes charity in the United Kingdom.  Wells even found the time to run twice for Parliament. It was a long, distinguished and powerfully successful career by the time he died, aged 79, on August 13th, 1946.

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  The Blue Pearl

  John G. Brandon

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  John Gordon Brandon (1879-1941) was an Australian-born writer who started life as a professional heavyweight boxer.He moved to England after the First World War and wrote more than 120 novels, and numerous short stories."The Blue Pearl" is an adventure story set in the Dutch East Indies.  "Bad Luck" Jim Barton is slaving in a chain-gang and facing five more years penal servitude under the Dutch. Suddenly, on a short break, his neighbour on the chain gang  - an evil looking Frenchman - slips something hard and round into his shoe and gives him a Chinese coin with a strange character on it. He whispers quickly that Barton is about to be released and that he must take the mystery object and the coin to Quong Meng, the richest Chinese tycoon in the district. The object turns out to be a breathtaking flawless blue pearl. There follows a breathless and racy series of daring adventures, brutal murders, narrow escapes and pirate attacks as Barton attempts to deliver the pearl to its destination.

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  Value of System In Home Life The...

  Booker T. Washington

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  Booker Taliaferro Washington (April 5, 1856 - November 14, 1915) was an American educator, author, orator, and adviser to several presidents of the United States. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the dominant leader in the African American community and of the contemporary black elite. Washington was from the last generation of black American leaders born into slavery and became the leading voice of the former slaves and their descendants. They were newly oppressed in the South by disenfranchisement and the Jim Crow discriminatory laws enacted in the post-Reconstruction Southern states in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.THE VALUE OF SYSTEM IN HOME LIFE: Most of you are going out from Tuskegee sooner or later to exert your influence in the home life of our people. You are going to have influence in homes of your own, you are going to have influence in the homes of your mothers and fathers, or in the homes of your relatives.

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  The Birth-Mark

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

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  Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on 4th July 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, a town synonymous with the earlier Salem Witch Trials. It was instrumental in Hawthorne’s later use of American Gothic and dark romanticism in his writing. 
   
  He was a mere four years old when his father died and his mother took him and his two sisters to live with her family and then on to their own home in Raymond, Maine. The young Hawthorne had a passion for fiction and poetry and voraciously read the works of Ann Radcliffe, Henry Fielding and Lord Byron.  
   
  He was sent to college at his maternal uncle’s insistence. During these years he met and befriended Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and future U S president Franklin Pierce. These friendships were lifelong and to have a crucial impact on his writings and career.  
   
  At college Hawthorne had made attempts at writing short stories and essays but without opportunities to publish. It was only in 1828 that he finally published his novel ‘Franshawe’ to little success and so he began work as editor for the American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge.  
   
  Hawthorne’s short stories were first published in magazines but in 1837 were collected and published as ‘Twice-Told Tales’. A steady literary career still did not come his way and so he worked in a good position at Salem’s port and married the love of his life Sophia Peabody. They moved to live in ‘The Old Manse’ at Concord, Massachusetts.   
   
  Finally. in 1850 came spectacular literary and commercial success with ‘The Scarlet Letter’ followed by ‘The House of the Seven Gables’ the following year.  
   
  In 1852, Hawthorne published a biography of presidential candidate Franklin Pierce. After Pierce’s victory he was appointed consul in Liverpool, a position that offered prestige, money and fame. At the end of this appointment he returned several times to Europe before settling in Massachusetts and resuming writing and publication. 
   
  During the early 1860’s his health declined and on 19th May 1864 during a trip to Plymouth, New Hampshire. He was 59 and was buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts.  
   
  The Birthmark is a classic tale from Hawthorne’s pen.  Georgina has a small red birthmark on her cheek.  Her husband, a brilliant scientist and philosopher becomes obsessed with what he thinks is this blemish on her beauty.

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