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Pamphilia to Amphilanthus is the first sonnet sequence written by an Englishwoman. Published in 1621, the poems invert the usual format of sonnet sequences by making the speaker a woman (Pamphilia, whose name means all-loving) and the beloved a man (Amphilanthus, whose name means lover of two.). It is possible that Wroth based the story on her own fraught relationship with her cousin, William Herbert. (Summary by Elizabeth Klett.)...

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A collection of short stories by author Jack London

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Published in 1766 'The Vicar of Wakefield' was Oliver Goldsmith's only novel. It was thought to have been sold to the publisher for £60 on Oliver Goldsmith's behalf by Dr Johnson to enable Goldsmith to pay off outstanding rent and to release himself from his landlady's arrest. It is the story of the family of Dr Primrose, a benevolent vicar, and follows them through their fall from fortune and their ultimate rise again. The story provides insight into family life and circumstances in the mid 18th century and the plot has many aspects of a pantomime like quality: Impersonation, deception, an aristocratic villain and the abduction of a beautiful heroine. Goldsmith himself dissipated his savings on gambling whilst a student at Trinity College Dublin and subsequently travelled in Europe sustaining himself by playing the flute and disputing doctrinal matters in monasteries and universities. Later he worked as an apothecary's assistant, a doctor and a school usher (experiences shared in this story by Dr Primrose's son). (Summary by Martin Clifton)...

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Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street is a short story by Herman Melville. The story first appeared, anonymously, in Putnam's Magazine in two parts. The first part appeared in November 1853, with the conclusion published in December 1853. It was reprinted in Melville's The Piazza Tales in 1856 with minor textual alterations. The work is said to have been inspired, in part, by Melville's reading of Emerson, and some have pointed to specific parallels to Emerson's essay, The Transcendentalist. The story has been adapted twice: once in 1970, starring Paul Scofield, and again in 2001, starring Crispin Glover. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartleby...

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This book contains a collection of poems compiled by Florentin Smarandache.

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An author who frequently played with the borders of his own identity, Borges loved to create works in collaboration with others. One of his longtime companions in this literary game of exquisite corpse was Norman Thomas Di Giovanni, who translated this edition of El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan. They worked together on English editions of much of Borges’ fiction, poetry, and non-fiction, all of which was signed by both authors together as a collaborative effort. Borges loved translation, and brought a creative infidelity to the effort that embraced the inevitable transformations of the original and highlighted his own interests in the source text. His translations of his own work with Di Giovanni are no more faithful, and represent an important part of his literary output. Unfortunately, they were allowed to go out of print after Borges’ death, most likely because Borges’ widow María Kodama and Viking-Penguin could secure more royalties for themselves if they broke the 50/50 agreement Borges had established with Di Giovanni for all their shared projects. Di Giovanni has even been legally barred from making his translations ava...

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The writing of vast books - setting out in five hundred pages an idea which could be perfectly expressed orally in a few minutes - is an exhausting and impoverishing piece of extravagance. Far better to pretend that such books already exist and to provide them with a summary or commentary. This is what Carlyle did in Sartor Resartus and Butler in The Fair Haven, works that have the imperfection of also being books and no less tautological than any others. More rational, more inept, more idle, I have chosen to write reviews of imaginary books. These are ‘Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius’, ‘A Glimpse into the Work of Herbert Quain’,and ‘The Approach to al-Mu’tasim’...

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Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5 The Approach to al-Mu’tasim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Pierre Menard, the Author of Don Quixote . . . . . . . . . 15 Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 The Circular Ruins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 The Lottery in Babylon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 A Glimpse into the Work of Herbert Quain . . . . . . . . 65 The Library of Babel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 The Garden of Branching Paths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85...

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Translations of poems in the European Languages from: Sappho, Catullus, Dante, Petrarch, Goethe, Leopardi, Pushkin, Heine, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Mandelstam, Machado, Akhmatova, Quasimodo, Celan, and Neruda....

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The Lifted Veil is a novella by George Eliot, first published in 1859. Quite unlike the realistic fiction for which Eliot is best known, The Lifted Veil explores themes of extrasensory perception, the essence of physical life, possible life after death, and the power of fate. The novella is a significant part of the Victorian tradition of horror fiction. (Summary from Wikipedia)...

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The Pioneers: The Sources of the Susquehanna; a Descriptive Tale is one of the Leatherstocking Tales, a series of five novels by American writer James Fenimore Cooper. The Pioneers was first of these books to be published (1823), but the period of time covered by the book (principally 1793) makes it the fourth chronologically. (The others are The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, and The Prairie.) The story takes place on the rapidly advancing frontier of New York State and features a middle-aged Leatherstocking (Natty Bumppo), Judge Marmaduke Temple of Templeton, whose life parallels that of the author's father Judge William Cooper, and Elizabeth (the author Susan Cooper), of Cooperstown. The story begins with an argument between the Judge and the Leatherstocking over who killed a buck, and as Cooper reviews many of the changes to his fictional Lake Otsego, questions of environmental stewardship, conservation, and use prevail. The plot develops as the Leatherstocking and Chingachgook begin to compete with the Temples for the loyalties of a young visitor, Oliver Effingham. Effingham eventually marries Elizabeth. ...

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A lecture on the art of fiction, given by the English critic Walter Besant on April 25, 1884, and an answer to the lecture by American writer Henry James in the same year. (Summary by Julie VW)...

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The Death of Ivan Ilyitch is the story of a socially ambitious middle-aged judge who contracts an unexplained and untreatable illness. As Ivan Ilyitch is forced to face the death he fears, he asks himself whether the life he thought was so correct was, in fact, a moral life after all. Written after Tolstoy's religious conversion, the novella is widely considered to be one of his masterpieces. (Summary by Laurie Anne Walden)...

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King Coal is a book by Upton Sinclair, first published in 1917, that exposes the dirty working conditions in the coal mining industry in the western United States during the 1910s. As in an earlier work, The Jungle, Sinclair expresses his socialist viewpoints from the perspective of a single protagonist, Hal Warner, caught up in the schemes and plots of the oppressive American capitalist system. The book itself is based on the 1914-1915 Colorado coal strikes. Reader's note: In Book 4, there is no chapter numbered Section 16 in the public domain Gutenberg e-text. However, no actual text from the book appears to be missing....

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The rich and flegmatic Kin-Fo loses his fortune and decides to die, but not before experiencing some strong emotions. He asks his friend Wang to kill him before a given date. Everything changes when Kin-Fo discovers he is not poor after all and he sets on a journey around China, trying to find his friend to cancel their deal. (Summary by Nadine)...

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Scenes of Clerical Life, which appeared in book form in 1858 (after serial publication in the previous year), was the first published fiction by George Eliot, the pen name for Mary Anne Evans. It consists of three novellas based on the lives of country clergymen and their communities. These characters interest Eliot not for their theology — she had abandoned conventional Christian belief — but for their humanity. In these stories, we find the earliest signs of the narrative voice, the humanism, and the realism that would make George Eliot one of the greatest novelists of the 1800s. (Introduction by Bruce Pirie)...

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Far From The Madding Crowd is Hardys fourth novel.It centres on the lives of five characters,Gabriel Oak,Bathsheba Everdene,Mr Boldwood,Sgt.Troy and Fanny Robin.The plot involves love,loyalty,death and betrayal and all this is delivered to us in Hardys most eloquent prose.The images of character and nature are painted for our minds eye with sublime style.Finally,but not least, Hardys use of the Greek chorus is unsurpassed in injecting comedy and nudging the story along(Summary by Tadhg Hynes)...

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Two boys from the Foundling Hospital are given the same name, with disastrous consequences in adulthood. Two associates, wishing to right the wrong, are commissioned to find a missing heir. Their quest takes them from fungous wine cellars in the City of London to the sunshine of the Mediterranean—across the Alps in winter. Danger and treachery would prevail were it not for the courage of the heroine and the faithful company servant. - The story contains crafted descriptions, well-drawn and diverse characters, eerie and exotic backgrounds, mystery, semi-concealed identities, brinkmanship with death, romance, the eventual triumph of Good over Evil, and many other elements expected in classic Dickens. - First published in 1867 there are thematic parallels with other books from Dickens' mature writings, including Little Dorrit (1857) and especially Our Mutual Friend (1865). The Listener will decide if this story yields insights into The Mystery of Edwin Drood (unfinished 1870). - Wilkie Collings collaborated with Charles Dickens to produce this ‘Christmas’ book and the stage play of the same name. In the book Collins assisted in Act 1 a...

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Recollections of the life of Axel Heyst, one-time manager of the liquidated Tropical Belt Coal Company in a fictitious island in the Pacific. After retreating from society in response to his professional failures, the misanthrope is drawn back by a romantic affair. (Introduction by S. Kovalchik)...

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A collection of volunteers’ favourite chapters. Some were chosen for being the key chapter in a great novel, others for the wonderful clarity with which great ideas are expressed, and still others because the reader did a wonderful job. Whatever the reason they were chosen, we hope they will give you as much pleasure as they did us. (Summary by David Barnes)....

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Charles W. Eliot, 21st President of Harvard University, edited this volume of prefaces ... authored by a Who's Who of World Literature: Bacon, Calvin, Caxton, Condell, Copernicus, Dryden, Fielding, Goethe, Heminge, Hugo, Johnson, Knox, Newton, Raleigh, Spenser, Taine, Whitman and Wordsworth. Eliot wrote in his preface to these prefaces, No part of a book is so intimate as the Preface. Here, after the long labor of the work is over, the author descends from his platform, and speaks with his reader as man to man, disclosing his hopes and fears, seeking sympathy for his difficulties, offering defence or defiance, according to his temper, against the criticisms which he anticipates. (Summary by DSayers)...

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Is housekeeping such a trial? Mrs. Smith thinks so and confesses all in this merry account of her escapades and near disasters! (Summary by Kehinde)

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