Showing results by author "Beauty_23" in All Categories

Florence Scovel Shinn, an illustrator living in New York City, became a teacher of New Thought after a divorce. New Thought was a movement which holds the belief that individuals can create their own reality through intentional thoughts and prayer, much like the current Law of Attraction movement. The Game of Life and How to Play It is her first book, and is remarkable for being written by a woman and meant for a genteel female audience. (Summary from Wikipedia)

Eleven-year-old Jude Fawley, inspired by his teacher Mr. Phillotson, who leaves Marygreen for Christminster to take a university degree, decides to adopt the same course for himself. Raised by his great-aunt, he studies hard with the aid of some old Latin and Greek books sent to him by Phillotson.He trains as a stonemason in order to enable him to support himself when at the university. However when he finally arrives in Christminster he soon finds that a university education is not easily come by for one of his social standing.Meeting and falling in love with his cousin Sue Bridehead his ...

A quiet, self-reliant, intelligent, 23-year-old woman, Lucy has, as Miss Ginevra Fanshawe asserts, "no attractive accomplishments – no beauty." She seems to have no living relatives.Though usually reserved and emotionally self-controlled, Lucy has strong feelings and affections for those whom she really values. She even sincerely cares for the giddy Ginevra, albeit in a blunt, curmudgeonly fashion. She is a firm Protestant and denounces Roman Catholicism as false ("God is not with Rome"). The novel is initially set in the English countryside, and later follows Lucy Snowe to the fictional ...

"I do not pretend to say the young man is without faults; but they are all the faults of wildness and of youth; faults which he may, nay, which I am certain he will, relinquish."One of the great works of the English literary canon, this comic masterpiece, first published in 1749, draws us into the lives of two neighbouring Somersetshire squires and friends, one genial and generous, the other a hot-headed lover of the hunt and the bottle, who conspire together, on the basis of a mutual misunderstanding, to marry the former's nephew to the latter's daughter, very much to the discomfort of the ...

Marcus Aurelius wrote Meditations in Greek while on campaign between 170 and 180, as a source for his own guidance and self-improvement. These memos survive and continue to inspire others to this day. These writings take the form of quotations varying in length from one sentence to long paragraphs. He explicates the Stoic philosophy that the only way a man can be harmed by others is to allow his reaction to overpower him. He shows no particular religious faith in his writings, but seems to believe that some sort of logical, benevolent force organizes the universe in such a way that even "bad" ...

What really killed Sir Charles Baskerville? Is his nephew, Sir Henry, in danger from the legendary family curse, a gigantic black hound? Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are on the case in this classic mystery, set on lonely Dartmoor in Devonshire. Neolithic ruins, a perilous quagmire, eerie sounds in the night, and (of course) fog all add to the fun, with an escaped convict thrown in for good measure. (Summary by Laurie Anne Walden)

Roughing It is semi-autobiographical travel literature written by American humorist Mark Twain. It was authored during 1870–71 and published in 1872 as a sequel to his first book Innocents Abroad. This book tells of Twain's adventures prior to his pleasure cruise related in Innocents Abroad.

I am Roderick Random. This is the contemporary story of my struggle against the adversity of orphan-hood, poverty, press gangs, bloody duels, rival fortune hunters, and the challenge to be well-dressed through it all. In the course of recounting my adventures to you, dear reader, I will give you a front row seat to the characters of English eighteenth century life including highway robbers, womanizing monks, debt-laden gallants, lecherous corrupt officials, effeminate sea captains, bloodthirsty surgeons, and my dear friend Miss Williams, a reformed prostitute. Educated in the classics, armed ...

The Last Man, Volume I by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Our Mutual Friend (written in the years 1864–65) is the last novel completed by Charles Dickens and is one of his most sophisticated works, combining psychological insight with social analysis. It centres on, in the words of critic J. Hillis Miller, "money, money, money, and what money can make of life" but is also about human values. In the opening chapters a body is found in the Thames and identified as John Harmon, a young man recently returned to London to receive his inheritance. Were he alive, his father's will would require him to marry Bella Wilfer, a beautiful, mercenary girl whom ...

In this enduring Victorian classic written in 1876, two stories weave in and out of each other: The first is about Gwendolen, one of Eliot's finest creations, who grows from a self-centered young beauty to a thoughtful adult with an expanded vision of the world around her. The second is about Daniel Deronda, adopted son of an aristocratic Englishman who becomes fascinated with Jewish traditions when he meets an ailing Jewish philosopher named Mordecai and his sensitive sister, Mirah.

The Children of the New Forest is a children's novel published in 1847 by Frederick Marryat. It is set in the time of the English Civil War and the Commonwealth. The story follows the fortunes of the four Beverley children who are orphaned during the war, and hide from their Roundhead oppressors in the shelter of the New Forest where they learn to live off the land.The story begins in 1647 when King Charles I has been defeated in the civil war and has fled from London towards the New Forest. Parliamentary soldiers have been sent to search the forest and decide to burn Arnwood, the house of ...

On Liberty by John Stuart Mill is an essay about individual freedom and its limits. Mill argues that people should be free to think, speak, and act as they wish, as long as they don’t harm others. He believes this freedom leads to progress and happiness. Governments and society shouldn’t control people’s choices unless those choices hurt someone else. On Liberty is pertinent to contemporary debates about free speech, personal rights, and social control and so retains its relevance, perhaps more urgently than ever. Mill’s work is key to a proper understanding of the balance between ...

"Leave it to Jeeves" was Bertie's motto, be the question one of a colour of a tie, the style of a hat, the cut of a coat. Jeeves was always right. There was no one like him to placate rich uncles or indignant mammas. He said just the right thing at just the right moment.What did it matter that Jeeves was somewhat of a tyrant, and that without his approval Bertie could not grow so much as a moustache? Was he not always there to lean on in moments of stress? And moments such as these were frequent in the life of Bertie and his friends. Jeeves service was extended to them all."Carry On, Jeeves" ...

This is an introduction to Einstein’s space-bending, time-stretching theory of Relativity, written by the master himself. Special and General relativity explain the structure of space time and provide a theory of gravitation, respectively. Einstein’s theories shocked the world with their counterintuitive results, including the dissolution of absolute time. In this book he brings a simplified form of his profound understanding of the subject to the layperson. In the words of Einstein: “The present book is intended, as far as possible, to give an exact insight into the theory of Relativity...

It’s a dreary February in post-World War I London when Mrs. Wilkins spots an advertisement in The Times for a small Italian castle for rent in April. She sees another member of her women’s club, Mrs. Arbuthnot, reading the same advertisement and manages to convince her that the two of them should rent it. Both are miserable and lonely in their marriages. They can’t afford the cost of the villa, San Salvatore, on their own and must advertise for two others, eventually recruiting an elderly widow named Mrs. Fisher, and Lady Caroline Dester, a beautiful young socialite desperate to escape ...

The Mahabharata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India. Traditionally, the authorship of the Mahabharata is attributed to Vyasa. With more than 74,000 verses, Mahabharata is said to be the longest poem. Mahabharata tells the story of the epic Kurukshetra War and the fates of the cousin brothers Kauravas and the Pandavas. But more than that the Mahabharata contains much philosophical and devotional material, such as a discussion of the four "goals of life" or 'purusharthas'. The latter are enumerated as dharma (right action), artha (purpose), kama (pleasure), and moksha (...

Daniel Defoe’s The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner (1719) is considered by many the first English novel. Based on the real-life experiences of the castaway Alexander Selkirk, the book has had a perennial appeal among readers of all ages-–especially the young adult reading public–-who continue to find inspiration in the inventive resourcefulness of its hero, sole survivor of a shipwreck who is marooned on an uninhabited island. Especially poignant, after more than two decades of unbroken solitude, is the affection that Robinson develops for ...

Inspector Hanaud is a member of the French Sûreté. He is said to have been the model for Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, as well as the opposite of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. The Affair At The Semiramis Hotel (1917), a novella, is the second Hanaud mystery. Did the robbery/murder really happen or was it the mescal-induced hallucination of the witness? The first novel is At The Villa Rose (1910). The third is The House Of The Arrow (1924) (there are seven through 1949, available at project gutenberg Australia). In 1910, Mason undertook to create a fictional detective as different as...

Considered by many to be the greatest war novel of all time, All Quiet on the Western Front is the chronicle of a German soldier fighting in the trenches of World War I, including the severe physical suffering and emotional trauma that will leave many unable to readjust to civilian life afterward. - Summary by the Mark Nelson