Best of
Literature

1904

The Gift of the Magi and Other Short Stories


O. Henry - 1904
    For nearly a century, the work of O. Henry has delighted readers with its humor, irony and colorful, real-life settings. The writer's own life had more than a touch of color and irony. Born William Sidney Porter in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1862, he worked on a Texas ranch, then as a bank teller in Austin, then as a reporter for the Houston "Post." Adversity struck, however, when he was indicted for embezzlement of bank funds. Porter fled to New Orleans, then to Honduras before he was tried, convicted and imprisoned for the crime in 1898. In prison he began writing stories of Central America and the American Southwest that soon became popular with magazine readers. After his release Porter moved to New York City, where he continued writing stories under the pen name O. Henry. Though his work earned him an avid readership, O. Henry died in poverty and oblivion scarcely eight years after his arrival in New York. But in the treasury of stories he left behind are such classics of the genre as "The Gift of the Magi," "The Last Leaf," "The Ransom of Red Chief," "The Voice of the City" and "The Cop and the Anthem" — all included in this choice selection. A selection of the Common Core State Standards Initiative.

The Four Major Plays: The Seagull / Uncle Vanya / Three Sisters / Cherry Orchard


Anton Chekhov - 1904
    Curt Columbus loves actors and his new translations of Chekhov's four major plays are his gift to them. These are wonderfully actable, clear, and concise, and Columbus has perfectly captured Chekhov's unique blend of comic and tragic sensibilities.-Robert Falls, Artistic Director, Goodman Theatre.

The Sea Wolf


Jack London - 1904
    He is set adrift in the Bay, eventually being picked up by Wolf Larsen.Larsen is the captain of a seal-hunting schooner, the Ghost. Brutal and cynical, yet also highly intelligent and intellectual, he rules over his ship and terrorizes the crew with the aid of his exceptionally great physical strength.

The Late Mattia Pascal


Luigi Pirandello - 1904
    Then, providentially, he discovers that he has been declared dead. Realizing he has a chance to start over, to do it right this time, he moves to a new city, adopts a new name, and a new course of life—only to find that this new existence is as insufferable as the old one. But when he returns to the world he left behind, it's too late: his job is gone, his wife has remarried. Mattia Pascal's fate is to live on as the ghost of the man he once was.An explorer of identity and its mysteries, a connoisseur of black humor, Nobel Prize winner Luigi Pirandello is among the most teasing and profound of modern masters. The Late Mattia Pascal, here rendered into English by the outstanding translator William Weaver, offers an irresistible introduction to this great writer's work

Shakespearean Tragedy


A.C. Bradley - 1904
    Bradley put Shakespeare on the map for generations of readers and students for whom the plays might not otherwise have become 'real' at all" writes John Bayley in his foreword to this edition of Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth.Approaching the tragedies as drama, wondering about their characters as he might have wondered about people in novels or in life, Bradley is one of the most liberating in the line of distinguished Shakespeare critics. His acute yet undogmatic and almost conversational critical method has—despite fluctuations in fashion—remained enduringly popular and influential. For, as John Bayley observes, these lectures give us a true and exhilarating sense of "the tragedies joining up with life, with all our lives; leading us into a perspective of possibilities that stretch forward and back in time, and in our total awareness of things."

Peasants and Other Stories


Anton Chekhov - 1904
    This powerful and revealing selection from Chekhov's final works, made by the legendary American critic Edmund Wilson, offers stories of novelistic richness and complexity, published in the only formatp edition to present them in chronological order.Table of Contents003 A Woman’s Kingdom (1894)053 Three Years (1895)161 The Murder (1895)199 My Life (1896)311 Peasants (1897)363 The New Villa (1899)383 In The Ravine (1900)433 The Bishop (1902)455 Betrothed (1903)

Six Great Sherlock Holmes Stories


Arthur Conan Doyle - 1904
    Drawing on his remarkable powers of observation and deduction, coupled with an encyclopedic knowledge of crimes and criminals, Holmes seeks out his prey in the London underworld, where no evildoer is safe from his keen wits and tenacious pursuit.Reprinted from a standard text, this inexpensive volume offers mystery lovers a choice selection of six of the finest Sherlock Holmes stories: "A Scandal in Bohemia," "The Red-headed League," "The Adventure of the Speckled Band," "The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb," "The Final Problem," and "The Adventure of the Empty House." In these richly atmospheric stories, Victorian London comes vividly to life as hansom cabs clatter over the cobblestoned streets, gas lamps flare in the thick fog, and an almost palpable sense of excitement seizes the reader as Holmes and Dr. Watson set off on another adventure.(back cover)

Tragedije: Hamlet / Romeo i Julija / Otelo / Kralj Lear


William Shakespeare - 1904
    Sadrži slijedeća djela:- Hamlet (The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark)- Romeo i Julija (Romeo and Juliet)- Otelo (Othello)- Kralj Lear (King Lear)

Cabbages and Kings


O. Henry - 1904
    In this book, O. Henry coined the term "banana republic".Table of Contents:I. "FOX-IN-THE-MORNING"II. THE LOTUS AND THE BOTTLEIII. SMITHIV. CAUGHTV. CUPID'S EXILE NUMBER TWOVI. THE PHONOGRAPH AND THE GRAFTVII. MONEY MAZEVIII. THE ADMIRALIX. THE FLAG PARAMOUNTX. THE SHAMROCK AND THE PALMXI. THE REMNANTS OF THE CODEXII. SHOESXIII. SHIPSXIV. MASTERS OF ARTSXV. DICKYXVI. ROUGE ET NOIRXVII. TWO RECALLSXVIII. THE VITAGRAPHOSCOPE

Catullus


Catullus - 1904
    In this book Charles Martin, himself a poet, offers a deeper reading of Catullus, revealing the art and intelligence behind the seemingly spontaneous verse. Martin considers Catullus's life, habits of composition, and the circumstances in which he worked. He places him among the modernists of his age, who created a new ironic and subjective poetics, and he shows the affinity between Catullus and the modernists of our own age. Martin offers original interpretations of Catullus's poems, viewing the love poems to "Lesbia" as a unified, artfully arranged poetic sequence, and the short poems, often dismissed as unworthy of serious critical attention, as the irreverent products of a sophisticated poetic innovator.  Unlike Horace, Virgil, and Ovid, Catullus did not influence our literary culture until the beginning of the modern era, but he is now regarded as a poet who speaks to our age with a singular directness. Pointing to Catullus's self-awareness, playfulness, and comic invention and to the elaborate complexity of his experiments in poetic form, Martin gives both the scholar and the general reader a fresh appreciation of his poetic art.

Extracts from Adam's Diary, translated from the original ms.


Mark Twain - 1904
    I said I was innocent, then, for I had not eaten any chestnuts. She said the Serpent informed her that chestnut was a figurative term meaning an aged and mouldy joke. I turned pale at that, for I have made many jokes to pass the weary time, and some of them could have been of that sort, though I had honestly supposed that they were new when I made them. She asked me if I had made one just at the time of the catastrophe. I was obliged to admit that I had made one to my self, though not aloud. It was this.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres


Henry Adams - 1904
    Using the architecture, sculpture, and stained glass of the two locales as a starting point, Adams breathes life into what others might see merely as monuments of a past civilization. With daring and inventive conceits, Adams looks at the ordinary people, places, and events in the context of the social conventions and systems of thought and belief of the thirteenth century turning the study of history into a kind of theater.As Raymond Carney discusses in his introduction, Adams' freeedom from the European traditions of study lends an exuberance—and puckish wit—to his writings.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Crossing


Winston Churchill - 1904
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Black Opium


Claude Farrère - 1904
    Follow the narrator through a smoke-hazed vision of opium dens in the Orient, cat-fights among the cream of New Orleans Creole society, and the nightmare corridors of his own private hell, soaked in the juice of the poppy…

Lord Jim & Nostromo


Joseph Conrad - 1904
    Kaplan.Commentary by Virginia Woolf, Harold Bloom, Edward Said, F.R. Leavis, and Robert Penn Warren.Originally published in 1900, Lord Jim is one of Joseph Conrad's most complex literary masterpieces. The story of a young sailor whose moment of cowardice haunts him for the rest of his life, Lord Jim explores Conrad's lifelong obsessions with the nature of guilt and the possibility of redemption.        Nostromo is considered by many to be Conrad's supreme achievement, and Conrad himself referred to Nostromo as his "widest canvas." Set in the fictitious South American republic of Costaguana, Nostromo reveals the effects that misguided idealism, unparalleled greed, and imperialist interests can have on a fledging nation. V. S. Pritchett wrote: "Nostromo is the most strikingly modern of Conrad's novels. It is pervaded by a profound, even morbid sense of insecurity which is the very spirit of our age."        Robert D. Kaplan's Introduction explains why the two novels together form Conrad's darkest glimpse into the flawed nature of humankind.

Little Sir Galahad


Lillian Holmes - 1904
    Facing new restrictions and challenges, David learns that real strength comes in controlling his own spirit.

War, Progress, and the End of History


Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov - 1904
    Solovyov addresses what seem to him the three main trends of our time: economic materialism, Tolstoyan abstract moralism, and Nietzschean hubris--the first is already present, the second imminent, while the last is the apocalyptic precursor of the Antichrist.

Séadna


Peadar Ua Laoghaire - 1904
    Fáilteofar roimh an deis Gaeilge shaibhir an tsaothair a bhlaiseadh athuair agus cuirfidh réamhrá cuimsitheach Mhic Mhathúna (ina bhfuil suas le leathchéad leathanach) le heolas an léitheora faoi stair a fhoilsithe agus chúlra an scéil.A new edition of this important work which helped shape modern Irish Literature. The rich vernacular employed by An tAthair Peadar still retains much of its freshness and Mac Mathúna's comprehensive 50 page introduction adds new light to the background and events surrounding its earlier publication.

The Eliza Stories


Barry Pain - 1904
    Eliza uncomplainingly smoothes over arguments and watches from the sidelines as her other half tries to scramble up the social ladder. From insulting the domestic staff to ill-advisedly lending money to social superiors, our narrator is by turns patronizing and authoritarian. And just when you think you can’t stand anymore, their son Ernest brings a new and sinister twist to the tale. Written and set in the early 1900s, this is a comic gem.

Caesar A Sketch


James Anthony Froude - 1904
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The Complete Adventures of the Treasure Seekers: The Story of the Treasure Seekers, The Wouldbegoods, The New Treasure Seekers


E. Nesbit - 1904
    

The Lynching of Jube Benson


Paul Laurence Dunbar - 1904
    Born in Dayton, Ohio, to parents who had been slaves in Kentucky before the American Civil War, Dunbar started to write as a child and was president of his high school's literary society. He published his first poems at the age of 16 in a Dayton newspaper. Much of his more popular work in his lifetime was written in the Negro dialect associated with the antebellum South. His work was praised by William Dean Howells, a leading critic associated with the Harper's Weekly, and Dunbar was one of the first African-American writers to establish a national reputation. He wrote the lyrics for the musical comedy, In Dahomey (1903), the first all-African-American musical produced on Broadway; the musical also toured in the United States and the United Kingdom. Dunbar also wrote in conventional English in other poetry and novels; since the late 20th century, scholars have become more interested in these other works. Suffering from tuberculosis, Dunbar died at the age of 33. Dunbar's work is known for its colorful language and a conversational tone, with a brilliant rhetorical structure. These traits were well matched to the tune-writing ability of Carrie Jacobs-Bond (1862-1946), with whom he collaborated. Dunbar became the first African-American poet to earn national distinction and acceptance. The New York Times called him "a true singer of the people - white or black." Frederick Douglass once referred to Dunbar as, "one of the sweetest songsters his race has produced and a man of whom [he hoped] great things." His friend and writer James Weldon Johnson highly praised Dunbar, writing in The Book of American Negro Poetry: "Paul Laurence Dunbar stands out as the first poet from the Negro race in the United States to show a combined mastery over poetic material and poetic technique, to reveal innate literary distinction in what he wrote, and to maintain a high level of performance. He was the first to rise to a height from which he could take a perspective view of his own race. He was the first to see objectively its humor, its superstitions, its short-comings; the first to feel sympathetically its heart-wounds, its yearnings, its aspirations, and to voice them all in a purely literary form."