Best of
19th-Century

1984

Wild Swan


Celeste De Blasis - 1984
    Across an ocean, through decades of danger and desire, this is Alexandria's life-the life of an indomitable woman who gives her tormented heart to two bold men, who travels to distant America in search of a dream and in flight from a love that would follow her to the end of her days, and who creates a dynasty in the years preceding the Civil War.

From Sea to Shining Sea


James Alexander Thom - 1984
    This powerfully written book recreates the warm life of the family, the dangers of the battlefield, the grueling journeys across an untamed wilderness, and the soul-stirring Lewis and Clark Expedition. This mighty epic is a fitting tribute to the wisdom and courage of Ann Rogers Clark, her husband John, and the ten sons and daughters they nurtured and inspired.

The Complete Short Stories


Ambrose Bierce - 1984
    Brought together in this volume, these stories represent an unprecedented accomplishment in American literature. In their iconoclasm and needle-sharp irony, their formal and thematic ingenuity and element of surprise, they differ markedly from the fiction admired in Bierce's time. Readers familiar with the classic An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge will want to turn to Bierce's other Civil War stories. Also included here are his horror stories, among them The Death of Halpin Frayser and The Damned Thing, and such tall tales as Oil of Dog and A Cargo of Cat.

Son of the Morning Star: General Custer and the Battle of the Little Bighorn


Evan S. Connell - 1984
    On the ridge five companies of United States cavalry - 262 soldiers, comprising officers and troopers - fought desperately but hopelessly. When the guns fell silent, no soldier - including their commanding officer, Lt Col. George Armstrong Custer - had survived. Custer's Last Stand is among the most enduring events in American history - 130 years after the fact, books continue to be written and people continue to argue about even the most basic details surrounding the Little Bighorn. Evan S. Connell, whom Joyce Carol Oates has described as 'one of our most interesting and intelligent American writers', wrote what continues to be the most reliable - and compulsively readable - account of the subject. Connell makes good use of his research and novelist's eye for story and detail to re-create the heroism, foolishness and savagery of this crucial chapter in the history of the West.

The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and His Followers - Revised Edition


T.J. Clark - 1984
    J. Clark describes the painting of Manet, Degas, Seurat, and others as an attempt to give form to that modernity and seek out its typical representatives—be they bar-maids, boaters, prostitutes, sightseers, or petits bourgeois lunching on the grass. The central question of The Painting of Modern Life is this: did modern painting as it came into being celebrate the consumer-oriented culture of the Paris of Napoleon III, or open it to critical scrutiny? The revised edition of this classic book includes a new preface by the author.

Victorian Fairy Tales: The Revolt of the Fairies and Elves


Jack D. Zipes - 1984
    Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

A Pioneer's Search for an Ideal Home


Phoebe Goodell Judson - 1984
    She was ninety-five when this book was first published in 1925. The years between were spent in “a pioneer’s search for an ideal home” and in living there, when it was finally found at the head of the Nooksack River, almost on the Canadian border. Phoebe Judson's account of the journey west is based on daily diary entries detailing her fear, excitement, and exhaustion. At the end of the trail, the Judsons encountered hardships aplenty, causing them to abandon a farm and business in Olympia before their arrival in the Nooksack Valley. During the Indian Wars they holed up in a fort at Claquato. In time, Phoebe overcame her fear of the Indians, learned the Chinook language, and won their friendship. All this is told in vivid detail by a woman of great dignity and charm whom readers will long remember. In a foreword, Susan Armitage, professor of history at Washington State University, calls A Pioneer's Search for an Ideal Home a "classic pioneering account," important for its woman's point of view.

Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights (Penguin Study Notes)


Stephen Coote - 1984
    It includes character studies, analysis of the plot with critical and historical notes, as well as an introduction to the life and work of Emily Bronte.

Literary Criticism, Vol 2: French Writers / Other European Writers / Prefaces to the New York Edition


Henry James - 1984
    It includes reviews of a great number of European writers, especially French writers, along with more general essays and the Prefaces Henry James wrote for the New York Edition of his works, published between 1907 and 1909.The collection attests to James’s nearly unparalleled creative energy and to the reach of his theoretical and interpretive curiosity. His unique authority as a commentator draws upon the European-American contrast that is a central circumstance of his own fiction. A member of intellectual circles on both continents, he became the foremost interpreter to American readers of the literary and cultural life of Europe.More than one hundred reviews and essays are gathered by author, so that readers can trace the development of James’s complex, meditative, and highly volatile attitudes toward a wide spectrum of literature. James reviews the formidable Honoré de Balzac (with his “huge, all compassing, all desiring, all devouring love of reality”), Gustave Flaubert (“a pearl-diver, breathless in the thick element while he groped for the priceless word”), and Ivan Turgenev, the Russian visitor in Paris, with whom James felt great personal affinity, even though Tugenev “lacked the immense charm of absorbed inventiveness.”James delivers his critical judgments with great elegance and point, especially when he discusses the performance of other critics like Hippolyte Taine and Augustin Sainte-Beuve, and, of course, he can be wonderfully acerbic. An early moralistic essay on Baudelaire finds Poe “vastly the greater charlatan of the two, and the greater genius.”James brings his critical zest, exhilaration, and independence of judgment to bear on writers as diverse as Alphonse Daudet, George Sand, Victor Hugo, Guy de Maupassant, Théophile Gautier, J. W. von Goethe, and Gabriele D’Annunzio.Readers will find, in the complete collection of the Prefaces, one of literature’s most revealing artistic autobiographies, a wholly absorbing account of how writing gets written, and a vision of the possibilities for fiction which critics and novelists of later times will find immensely instructive and liberating.

Literary Criticism, Vol. 1: Essays on Literature / American Writers / English Writers


Henry James - 1984
    This Library of America volume and its companion are a fitting testimony to his unprecedented achievement. They offer the only comprehensive collection of his critical writings ever assembled, more than one-third of which have never appeared in book form.This first volume focuses especially on his responses to American and English writers; the second volume contains his essays on European literature and the Prefaces to the New York Edition of his fiction.From 1864 until virtually the end of his life, James displayed an astonishing range and catholicity of critical interests, touching on nearly every facet of literature in America, England, and Europe. Here are his most important theoretical essays, including his witty and daring declarations of the novelist’s freedom in “The Art of Fiction,” “The Future of the Novel,” and “The Science of Criticism”—a gently ironic title from a writer who regarded criticism as a form of art.Appreciations of Ralph Waldo Emerson (“I knew he was great, greater than any of our friends”), pungent comments (which he later regretted) on Walt Whitman’s “Drum-Taps,” and assessments of Louisa May Alcott, Edgar Allan Poe, his friend and admirer William Dean Howells, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Francis Parkman, and scores of other American writers are joined, in revealing proximity, to commentaries on nearly every important English writer of fiction (and some poets, such as the Brownings) during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.These reviews of English writers include James’s stunning essay on Charles Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend, his provocative discussions of George Eliot, and his tough but appreciative estimates of Anthony Trollope, Matthew Arnold, Benjamin Disraeli, Elizabeth Gaskell, Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Hardy, William Morris, Rupert Brooke, Ouida, Algernon Charles Swinburne, and Robert Louis Stevenson. Also included here is his great essay on Shakespeare’s The Tempest. All of these pieces are gathered under the author considered, so that James’s supple changes in attitude can be followed across the years.Of particular interest, both critically and biographically, are James’s commentaries on Nathaniel Hawthorne, including his still-controversial book-length study of 1879. His estimates of his predecessor’s work remain highly debatable, but are perhaps more interesting as evidence of his own feelings about being an American writer of a later and, as he assumed, more complex time.Finally, this volume includes two invaluable collections: his “American Letters” and “London Notes,” wherein, with unsurpassed tact and grandeur of mind, he introduces readers of his native and of his adopted country to each other.

Genthe's Photographs of San Francisco's Old Chinatown


Arnold Genthe - 1984
    Almost immediately, Genthe was attracted by Chinatown, or "Tangrenbu" — a teeming ten-block area of crowded buildings, narrow streets, and exotic sights and sounds in the shadow of Nob Hill.Fascinated by a living culture totally foreign to his experience, Genthe began to photograph Tangrenbu and its inhabitants. Today, these photographs (over 200 are known to exist) are the best visual documentary record of Chinatown at the turn of the century, offering priceless glimpses of the rich street life of the district before it was leveled by the great earthquake and fire of 1906.Rediscover the lost world of old Chinatown in serene and enduring images of cobbled streets and bustling shops, street vendors and merchants, fish and vegetable markets, Devil's Kitchen, the Street of the Gamblers, Portsmouth Square and more. But most of all, enjoy distinctive candid portraits of the people of old Chinatown: a pipe-bowl member, a paper gatherer, itinerant peddlers, toy merchants, boys playing shuttlecock, a fortune-teller, a sword dancer, women and children in ornate holiday finery, an aged opium smoker and many other unaffected and revealing images.Rich in detail and atmosphere, the photographs are complemented by historian John Tchen's informative and well-researched text, which outlines the turbulent history of Chinese-Americans in California, dispels numerous myths about Chinatown and its residents, and illuminates the role of Genthe's photographs in capturing the subtle flavor and texture of everyday life in the district before 1906.

Wanton Splendor


Bobbi Smith - 1984
    From his simmering gaze to his lean strength, he infused heat throughout every part of Kathleen Kingsford's body. His very presence made the humid New Orleans nights even steamier. Caught amidst her aunt's schemings, her brother's foolishness, and her enemy's greed, Katie longed for the solace Christopher promised. But could she trust this high-stakes gambler who bet a fortune without batting an eyelash? As a vicious hurricane descended, she had no choice.Katie appeared at his door, her dress clinging to every curve, raindrops tracing tantalizing paths across her creamy skin. She had captivated him upon their first meeting, when she blackened his eye to protect her brother. Ever since, he'd wanted to be the one to protect her. And now she was here. Now she was his. Now they could finally surrender to their Wanton Splendor.

The Darling and Other Stories


Anton Chekhov - 1984
    This large print title is set in Tieras 16pt font as reccomended by the RNIB.

Days Of Grace


Brenda Jagger - 1984
    Now, as heiress to Clarrow Fell, Olivia brings her delightful, frivolous mother and her sisters home to Yorkshire - and to a different world. The elegant salons, the shabby lodgings, are replaced by the grim and alien grandeur of the moors and the mill towns. Olivia will inherit the land and the traditions she has come to love. But first she must check the ambitions of her wealthy cousin Max. Charming, sophisticated and ruthless, Max makes no secret of his desire to be master of Clarrow Fell - and of Olivia too . .

Shadow of a Star


Elmer Kelton - 1984
    In fact, he has a hard enough time keeping the peace between the drunks in the local saloon. But with tough Sheriff Mont Naylor to back him up he figures he can handle whatever comes his way.Jim-Bob's first real assignment is no piece of cake. He must escort a ruthless outlaw into the hands of justice. All seems well with the lawless killer firmly in Jim-Bob's custody. But nothing prepares him for an angry mob, determined to take the law into their own hands and provide their own brand justice: a hangman's noose.Shadow of a Star is a gripping tale by Elmer Kelton, voted one of the best Western Writers of all time by Westerns Writers of America, Inc.

The Land Before Her: Fantasy and Experience of the American Frontiers, 1630-1860


Annette Kolodny - 1984
    She finds that, although the American frontiersman imagined the wilderness as virgin land, an unspoiled Eve to be taken, the pioneer woman at his side dreamed more modestly of a garden to be cultivated. Both intellectual and cultural history, this volume continues Kolodny's study of frontier mythology begun in The Lay of the Land.

French Feminism In The Nineteenth Century


Claire Goldberg Moses - 1984
    Now, French Feminism in the Nineteenth Century completes the history books by restoring this missing--and vital--chapter of French history.The book recounts the turbulent story of nineteenth-century French feminism, placing it in the context of the general political events that influenced its development. It also examines feminist thought and activities, using the very words of the women themselves--in books, newspapers, pamphlets, memoirs, diaries, speeches, and letters. Featured is a wealth of previously unpublished personal letters written by Saint-Simonian women. These engrossing documents reveal the nuances of changing consciousness and show how it led to an autonomous women's movement.Also explored are the relationships between feminist ideology and women's actual status--legal, social, and economic--during the century. Both bourgeois and working-class women are surveyed.Beginning with a general survey of feminism in France, the book provides historical context and clarifies the later vicissitudes of the "condition feminine."

Paris Fashions of the 1890s: A Picture Sourcebook with 350 Designs, Including 24 in Full Color


Stella Blum - 1984
    Introduction and captions.

Kaunis hallayö : runoja


Kirsi Kunnas - 1984
    

Treasury of World Masterpieces: Rudyard Kipling


Rudyard Kipling - 1984
    

Salome


Angela Livingstone - 1984
    But as this book reveals, her relationships with Nietzsche, Rilke and Freud were complex and she had profound influences on each of them. This biography brings us up close to her writing as well as to her life and meeting with Tolstoy, Wagner and other remarkable men. It explores, in depth, her relationship with Nietzsche who saw in her a natural heir to his philosophy. Only since knowing her I was ripe for my Zarathustra, he wrote.Salome's marriage was to last for 45 years, yet never be consummated. She had her first love affair at age 36, with a twenty-one-year-old Rilke. He wrote, ...through the relentless force of your words, my work become consecrated.At fifty Salome met Freud and studied under him for two years. Freud had a special admiration for Lou Andreas Salome, wrote Ernest Jones. She pent the rest of her life as a psychoanalyst; her friendship with Freud was to last until her death in 1937.

Light of My Heart


Kathleen Karr - 1984
    Could the radiance of her love light their way?Emily - Glowing with hope, she longed for the love of a husband she barely knew.Keith - Dark and brooking, he was a man with a dismal past and a seemingly lusterless future. Emily was his one chance for happiness.Jason - The ship's captain burned with excitement and adventure and caused Emily to fear her feelings.On a remote island Keith kept the lighthouse and Emily nurtured her brand-new marriage. But Jason, thrust upon them by the sea, threatened their fledgling love.The light of faith was all that Emily had to show her the way to her husband's heart. She knew she must follow that light to the contentment that ever seemed just beyond her reach.

The War Against Proslavery Religion


John R. McKivigan - 1984
    McKivigan employs both conventional and quantitative historical techniques to assess the positions adopted by various churches in the North during the growing conflict over slavery, and to analyze the stratagems adopted by American abolitionists during the 1840s and 1850s to persuade northern churches to condemn slavery and to endorse emancipation. Working for three decades to gain church support for their crusade, the abolitionists were the first to use many of the tactics of later generations of radicals and reformers who were also attempting to enlist conservative institutions in the struggle for social change.To correct what he regards to be significant misperceptions concerning church-oriented abolitionism, McKivigan concentrates on the effects of the abolitionists' frequent failures, the division of their movement, and the changes in their attitudes and tactics in dealing with the churches. By examining the pre-Civil War schisms in the Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist denominations, he shows why northern religious bodies refused to embrace abolitionism even after the defection of most southern members. He concludes that despite significant antislavery action by a few small denominations, most American churches resisted committing themselves to abolitionist principles and programs before the Civil War.In a period when attention is again being focused on the role of religious bodies in influencing efforts to solve America's social problems, this book is especially timely.