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  Bellerophon To Anteia - From...

  Mary Butts

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  Mary Frances Butts was born on 13th December 1890 in Poole, Dorset. 
  Her early years were spent at Salterns, an 18th-century house overlooking Poole Harbour.  Sadly in 1905 her father died, and she was sent for boarding at St Leonard's school for girls in St Andrews. 
  Her mother remarried and, from 1909, Mary studied at Westfield College in London, and here, first became aware of her bisexual feelings.  She was sent down for organising a trip to Epsom races and only completed her degree in 1914 when she graduated from the London School of Economics.  By then Mary had become an admirer of the occultist Aleister Crowley and she was given a co-authorship credit on his ‘Magick (Book 4)’. 
  In 1916, she began the diary which would now detail her future life and be a constant reference point for her observations and her absorbing experiences. 
  During World War I, she was doing social work for the London County Council in Hackney Wick, and involved in a lesbian relationship.  Life changed after meeting the modernist poet, John Rodker and they married in 1918. 
  In 1921 she spent 3 months at Aleister Crowley's Abbey of Thelema in Sicily; she found the practices dreadful and also acquired a drug habit.  Mary now spent time writing in Dorset, including her celebrated book of short stories ‘Speed the Plough’ which saw fully develop her unique Modernist prose style. 
  Europe now beckoned and several years were spent in Paris befriending many artists and writing further extraordinary stories.   
  She was continually sought after by literary magazines and also published several short story collections as books. Although a Modernist writer she worked in other genres but is essentially only known for her short stories.  Mary was deeply committed to nature conservation and wrote several pamphlets attacking the growing pollution of the countryside. 
  In 1927, she divorced and the following year her novel ‘Armed with Madness’ was published.  A further marriage followed in 1930 and time was spent attempting to settle in London and Newcastle before setting up home on the western tip of Cornwall.  By 1934 the marriage had failed. 
  Mary Butts died on 5th March 1937, at the West Cornwall Hospital, Penzance, after an operation for a perforated gastric ulcer. She was 46.

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  Candide - Audiobook

  Voltaire, Classic Audiobooks,...

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  Candide is Voltaire's razor-sharp philosophical satire that follows the naive young man Candide as he travels the world, enduring war, betrayal, natural disasters, and heartbreak — all while clinging to his mentor Pangloss's absurd claim that "all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds." Through Candide's misadventures, Voltaire mercilessly mocks blind optimism, organized religion, and the cruelty of human institutions.Packed with irony, wit, and fast-paced action, Candide remains one of the most influential works of the Enlightenment. Beneath its humor lies a serious call for reason, practical action, and compassion — a reminder that cultivating one's own garden may be the truest form of wisdom.

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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 2: EUTERPE: On the death of Cyrus, Cambyses, his son by Cassandane, daughter of Pharnaspes, took the kingdom. Cassandane had died in the lifetime of Cyrus, who had made a great mourning for her at her death, and had commanded all the subjects of his empire to observe the like.

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  Lair of the White Worm The...

  Bram Stoker

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  The Lair of the White Worm is a horror novel by the Irish writer Bram Stoker. It was first published by Rider and Son of London in 1911 - the year before Stoker's death - with colour illustrations by Pamela Colman Smith. The story is based on the legend of the Lambton Worm. It has also been issued as The Garden of Evil.

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  Estranged - A Novel

  P. O. Dixon

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  Spirited Miss Elizabeth Bennet finds herself drawn to the dashing Mr. Darcy. Though initially spellbound by his taciturn charm, a compromising situation, duty, and desperation compel their hasty marriage, binding two virtual strangers. But misunderstandings soon divide them, leaving them estranged and living separate lives. Even after circumstances bring them back together under the same roof, the gulf between them seems only to widen. When unforeseeable heartbreak forces Elizabeth and Darcy to confront the truth of what happened one fateful night at Pemberley, will the path bring them closer, or are some divides too deep to bridge?

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  A Thousand Deaths - From their...

  Jack London

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  John Griffith Chaney was born on January 12th, 1876 in San Francisco.   
  His father, William Chaney, was living with Flora Wellman when she became pregnant.  Chaney insisted she have an abortion.  Flora's response was to turn a gun on herself.  Although her wounds were not severe the trauma made her temporarily deranged. 
  In late 1876 his mother married John London and the young child was brought to live with them as they moved around the Bay area, eventually settling in Oakland where now, calling himself Jack, he completed grade school. 
  Jack worked hard at several jobs, sometimes 12-18 hours a day, but his dream was university.  He studied hard and borrowed the money to enrol in the summer of 1896 at the University of California in Berkeley. 
  In 1897, at 21, Jack searched out newspaper accounts of his mother's suicide attempt and for the name of his biological father. He wrote to Chaney, then living in Chicago, who claimed he could not be Jack’s father because he was impotent and casually asserted that London's mother had relations with other men.  Jack, devastated by the response, quit Berkeley and went to the Klondike. Other accounts suggest that his dire finances presented Jack with the excuse he needed to leave. 
  In the Klondike Jack began to gather material for his writing but also accumulated many health problems, including scurvy, which together with hip and leg problems he would carry for the rest of his life. 
  During the late 1890's Jack was regularly publishing short stories and by the turn of the century full blown novels. 
  By 1904 Jack had married, fathered two children and was now in the process of divorcing.  A stint as a reporter on the Russo-Japanese war of 1904 was equal amounts trouble and experience. But that experience was always put to good use in a continuing and remarkable output of work. 
  In 1905 he married Charmian Kittredge who at last was a soul and companion who brought him some semblance of peace despite his advancing alcoholism and his incurable wanderlust. 
  Twelve years later Jack had amassed both wealth and a literary reputation through such classics as ‘The Call of the Wild’, ‘White Fang’ and many others. He had a reputation as a social activist and was a tireless friend of the workers.   
  Jack London died suffering from dysentery, late-stage alcoholism and uremia, aged only 40, on November 22nd 1916 at his property in Glen Elen in California.

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