Best of
Literature

1899

Resurrection


Leo Tolstoy - 1899
    It tells the story of a nobleman's attempt to redeem the suffering his youthful philandering inflicted on a peasant girl who ends up a prisoner in Siberia. Tolstoy's vision of redemption, achieved through loving forgiveness and his condemnation of violence, dominate the novel. An intimate, psychological tale of guilt, anger, and forgiveness, Resurrection is at the same time a panoramic description of social life in Russia at the end of the nineteenth century, reflecting its author's outrage at the social injustices of the world in which he lived. This edition, which updates a classic translation, has explanatory notes, and a substantial introduction based on the most recent scholarship in the field.

Nirmala


Munshi Premchand - 1899
    Clearly reformist in its agenda, this novel succeeds in exploring sensitive and even dangerous terrain. Alok Rai's English translation includes an Afterword which takes note of the novel's special context, placing it in perspective and making a contemporary reading of the work possible.

A Treasury of Irish Myth, Legend and Folklore


W.B. Yeats - 1899
    B&W illus.

Complete Novels and Stories


Kate Chopin - 1899
    Her stories of fiercely independent women, culminating in her masterpiece "The Awakening" (1899), challenged contemporary mores as much by their sensuousness as their politics, and today seem decades ahead of their time. Now, The Library of America collects all of Chopin's novels and stories as never before in one authoritative volume. The explosive novel "At Fault" (1890) centers on a love triangle between a strong-willed young widow, a stiff St. Louis businessman, and the man's alcoholic wife. In the story collections "Bayou Folk" (1894) and "A Night in Acadie" (1897), Chopin transforms the local color sketch into taut, perfectly calibrated tales of post-Civil War bayou culture. In "The Awakening," the now-classic novel that scandalized many of her contemporaries and effectively ended her writing career, Chopin tells the story of a restless, unsatisfied woman who embarks on a quixotic search for fulfillment. The volume also includes all the stories not collected by Chopin, including those meant for "A Vocation and a Voice," a projected volume that her publisher canceled in 1900, and three stories that were found in 1992 in a long-lost cache of Chopin's papers.

Collected Poems and Other Verse


Stéphane Mallarmé - 1899
    His writings, with their richly sensuous texture and air of slyly intangible mystery, perplexed or outraged many early readers; yet no writer has more profoundly influenced the course of modern poetry - in English as well as in French. This is the fullest collection of Mallarme's poetry ever published in the English language, and the only edition in any language that presents his Poesies in the last arrangement known to have been approved by the author. Prose poems, uncollected verse, and the unique, unclassifiable Un Coup de des... (A Dice Throw...) are also present, including over 20 items that have never previously been translated. Original spelling, punctuation, and lineation have been preserved throughout. The lucid, wide-ranging introduction provides a clear survey of Mallarme's work and deals fully with the difficulties that may face readers approaching it for the first time. Collected Poems offers both Mallarme lovers and first-time readers a full understanding of this astonishing poet's work."

Sir Knight of the Splendid Way (Rare Collector's Series)


W.E. Cule - 1899
    This beautifully bound work depicts life as a journey, reaching toward a beacon of hope in the City of the Great King. Beckoned by the King to travel the Splendid Way, the young knight must keep his armor on at all cost. All along the way he is challenged and tempted to take his armor off. Many try to convince him that the battle is not worth the fight. Only those who keep their armor on are able to see the real battle that rages before them, and only those with a pure heart will keep their armor on.

The Awakening and Selected Stories


Kate Chopin - 1899
    11 stories: The AwakeningBeyond the BayouMa'ame PelagieDesiree's BabyA Respectable WomanThe KissA Pair of Silk StockingsThe LocketA ReflectionAt the 'Cadian BallThe Storm

Selected Essays from the "Rambler," "Adventurer," and "Idler"


Samuel Johnson - 1899
    The edition provides in popular form the amplest selection available of Johnson’s essays, ranging from his great moral pieces to the valuable essays on literary criticisms. The text is that of the authoritative Yale Edition and includes full annotation. An introduction by W.J. Bate provides a concise summary of the publication history of the essays and probes in detail the moral vision that pervades most of them.Mr. Bate is Lowell Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University and joint editor of Volumes II-V of the Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson.

Firdaus e Bareen / فردوس بریں


Abdul Haleem Sharar - 1899
    The story of Husain and Zammarrud fallen in the grip of the Assassins take us back to the last days of Hasan Bin Sabah's merciless followers, at the end of which the sect's stronghold, the famous fort of Alamoot, was destroyed by the even more merciless Mongol hordes. Sharar writes famously in the style of a Walter Scott novel, the novel itself being a new literary form in his day. But there are shades of an earlier indigenous genre - the Dastaan - in his work. Yet although he tells a gripping tale, part Scott and part Dastaan, he is not unaware of character. Husain may be credulous, and smitten silly by his love for Zammarrud, but he can still ask Shaikh Vujoodi intelligent questions which the Shaikh can only parry by the display of great wrath and superhuman knowledge. Husain's credulity in accepting his answers immediately has a lot to do with his fear that he would not be allowed to visit his beloved in 'Paradise.' There is a definite modern streak in Sharar's work. His treatment of Zamarrud is different from the usual portrayal of female characters in his day. Zamarrud has a mind of her own. She is observant and intelligent and capable of rebuffing her lover when he sounds credulous and foolish. No old fashioned perceptions of female 'duty' or the superior status of men holds her back from realizing that she is more clear-headed than Husain. She is moreover not mild of manner or adulatory of her man, as the prototypes of female perfection tend to be in Urdu literature of the day. Yet non of this detracts from her femininity, as she runs around 'like a delicate, fleet-footed doe' but fully determined to have her way. Much has been written about the Assassins in English and other languages. Sharar's novel has its own charm, and given a chance it should become a very popular book. Translated into Tajik, Sharar's works have quite a lot of readers in Tajikistan, where they are also the subject of a Ph.D. dissertation by Vladimir Lanikin.

War Is Kind and Other Poems


Stephen Crane - 1899
    Described by William Dean Howells as a writer whose genius seemed to "spring to life fully armed," Crane also produced impressive free-form verse. This excellent anthology contains nearly all of Crane's verse, including two complete books of poems: The Black Riders and Other Lines, which garnered immediate praise; and War Is Kind, ablaze with vivid imagery. Here, too, are rewarding selections from his uncollected poetic works. Thought by some critics to anticipate the Imagist movement of the twentieth century, Crane's poems are usually brief, cadenced, and rhymeless, rich in drama and symbolism, and spiritually penetrating.

My Confession / My Religion / The Gospel in Brief


Leo Tolstoy - 1899
    Crowell

Rolling Stones


O. Henry - 1899
    William Sydney Porter (O. Henry) was the most popular short story writer of his time. His stories typically revolved around two of his favorite themes, the situation of the impostor and fate as the one unavoidable reality of life. Another device he used was the surprise ending, usually coming about through coincidence. He was the founder of the humorous weekly The Rolling Stone. When the weekly failed, he joined the Houston Post as a reporter and columnist. He was convicted of embezzling money, although there's much debate over his actual guilt, and while in prison he started to write short stories. His first work, Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking appeared in McClure's Magazine. After emerging from prison Porter changed his name to O. Henry. He then moved to New York and wrote a story a week for the New York World, also publishing in other magazines. This volume of O'Henry's work gets its title from his early newspaper venture of the same name. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.

Novels 1896–1899: The Other House / The Spoils of Poynton / What Maisie Knew / The Awkward Age


Henry James - 1899
    Hoping to convert his “infinite little loss” into “infinite little gain,” James returned to the novelistic examination of English society with a new appreciation for what he called the “divine principle of the Scenario,” “a key that, working in the same general way fits the complicated chambers of both the dramatic and the narrative lock.”His continued interest in dramatic form is demonstrated in The Other House (1896), which was derived from the scenario for a three-act play. Set in two neighboring houses and told mostly through dialogue, the novel explores the violent and tragic consequences of jealousy and frustrated passion. In The Spoils of Poynton (1897), one of the most tightly constructed of James’s late novels, a house and its exquisite antique furnishings and artwork become the source of a protracted struggle involving the proud and imperious Mrs. Gereth, her amiable son, Owen, his philistine fiancée, Mona Brigstock, and the sensitive Fleda Vetch, whose moral judgment is tested by her conflicting allegiances.What Maisie Knew (1897) explores with perception and sensitivity the effect upon a young girl of her parents’ bitter divorce and their subsequent remarriages. In writing the novel James chose as his point of view what he described as “the consciousness, the dim, sweet, scared, wondering, clinging perception of the child.” The Awkward Age (1899) examines the complicated relations among the members of a sophisticated London social circle almost entirely through dialogue as it depicts the shifting marital prospects of a young woman poised on the verge of adult life. Both of these novels insightfully explore the ambiguity of childhood “innocence” amid adult struggles over money, power, and love.

Ways of Wood Folk


William Joseph Long - 1899
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.