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  Aristocratic Education - From...

  Stephen Leacock

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  Stephen P H Butler Leacock FRSC was born on the 30th December 1869 in Swanmore, near Southampton, England, the third of eleven children. 
  The family emigrated to Canada in 1876 to live on a 100-acre farm in Sutton, Ontario.  There Leacock was home-schooled and later enrolled into the elite private school Upper Canada College in Toronto.  Academically he was very strong and enrolled at the University of Toronto to study languages and literature.  He left there after his alcoholic father abandoned the family and finances were too stretched to continue his attendance.  He now enrolled in a three-month course at Strathroy Collegiate Institute to become a qualified high school teacher and with it a regular income. 
  Leacock published humorous articles in many Canadian and US magazines but his real passion was economics and political theory.  In 1899 he enrolled for postgraduate studies at the University of Chicago and earned his PhD in 1903. 
  His marriage to Beatrix Hamilton produced a single child 15 years later.  Over time father and son developed a love-hate relationship, partially caused by his son’s diminutive stature of only four feet.  
  He accepted a post at McGill University and kept it until he retired in 1936.  His work ‘Elements of Political Science’, was adopted as a standard textbook for two decades and was also his most profitable.  He now also began public speaking and lecturing.  
  In 1910, he privately printed some articles as ‘Literary Lapses’.  It was then released by a recognised publisher, and he became a commercially successful writer.  His collections of light-hearted whimsy, parody, nonsense, and satire were now frequently published along with biographies and several award-winning volumes on Canada. 
  Politically Leacock was a difficult creature.  He opposed women’s right to vote, was a champion of Empire but advocated social welfare legislation and wealth redistribution, but he often caused friction with his racist views. 
  Leacock has been forgotten as an economist, but it’s often said that in 1911 more people had heard of him than had heard of Canada.  For the decade after 1915 Leacock was the most popular humorist in the English-speaking world. 
  Stephen Leacock died on 28th March 1944 of throat cancer in Toronto, Canada.  He was 74.

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  The Time Machine

  H. G. Wells

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  When the Time Traveller courageously stepped out of his machine for the first time, he found himself in the year 802,700—and everything had changed. In this unfamiliar, utopian age creatures seemed to dwell together in perfect harmony. The Time Traveller thought he could study these marvelous beings—unearth their secret and then return to his own time—until he discovered that his invention, his only avenue of escape, had been stolen. 
  H. G. Wells’ famous novel of one man’s astonishing journey beyond the conventional limits of the imagination first appeared in 1895. It won him immediate recognition and has been regarded ever since as one of the great masterpieces in the literature of science fiction.

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  The Call of Cthulhu

  H. P. Lovecraft

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  Step into the chilling world of H. P. Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu, a groundbreaking tale of cosmic horror that has shaped the genre for generations. Through mysterious accounts and unsettling discoveries, this classic short story unveils the haunting presence of powers beyond human comprehension. A must-read for fans of weird fiction and dark mythology, it immerses readers in an atmosphere of dread and awe, where the boundaries of reality and terror blur.

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  Father Brown: The Sign of the...

  G.K. Chesterton

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  "The Sign of the Broken Sword" is a short story by G. K. Chesterton featuring his famous characters Father Brown and former criminal Flambeau. In the centre of a story is a mysterious death of General Sir Arthur St. Clare, who was hanged on a tree with his broken sword hung round his neck. It is a detective story and throughout it Father Brown reveals to us the mystery of General St. Clare.

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  The Reigate Puzzle

  Arthur Conan Doyle

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  The Adventure of the Reigate Squire, also known as "The Adventure of the Reigate Puzzle" or "The Adventure of the Reigate Squires", was one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The Adventure of the Reigate Squires was first published in 1893. It is one of 12 stories in the cycle collected as The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. Doyle ranked "The Adventure of the Reigate Squire" twelfth in his list of his twelve favorite Holmes stories.The elder Cunningham's confidence is broken after his arrest and he tells all. It seems that William followed his two employers the night they broke into the Acton estate (Holmes has already deduced that it was they, in pursuit of documents supporting Mr. Acton's legal claim, which they did not find). William then proceeded to blackmail his employers – not realizing that it was dangerous to do such a thing to Alec – and they thought to use the recent burglary scare as a plausible way of getting rid of him. With a bit more attention paid to detail, they might very well have evaded all suspicion.Famous works of the author Arthur Conan Doyle: A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of the Four, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Return of Sherlock Holmes, The Valley of Fear, His Last Bow, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, Stories of Sherlock Holmes, The Lost World.

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  The Bottle Imp

  Robert Louis Stevenson

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  The Bottle Imp by Robert Louis Stevenson tells the story of Keawe, a Hawaiian man who buys a magical bottle containing an imp that grants its owner any wish. However, there's a catch: the bottle must be sold to another person for a lower price than what the current owner paid, otherwise, the owner's soul will be claimed by the devil upon their death. 
  Keawe experiences both the incredible joys and the terrifying anxieties that come with possessing such an object. He gains wealth and status, but lives under the constant shadow of needing to sell the bottle under a specific condition. The story explores themes of temptation, desire, the nature of happiness, and the value of one's soul.

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