Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class, and the State


Judith R. Walkowitz - 1980
    Prostitution and Victorian Society makes a major contribution to women's history, working-class history, and the social history of medicine and politics. It demonstrates how feminists and others mobilized over sexual questions, how public discourse on prostitution redefined sexuality in the late nineteenth century, and how the state helped to recast definitions of social deviance.

His Brother's Wife


Val Wood - 2013
    And so begins her new life with Noah Tuke.But instead of marital bliss, Harriet finds herself in the cramped farmhouse which Noah calls home, and in this overcrowded and angry household she meets with hostility and bitterness. The only person who offers her friendship is Noah's brother, Fletcher. Gradually she learns the true reasons behind Noah's desire to marry her - and realises that the only person she finds real companionship with is the person she can't possibly be with.

Lucky Jim


Kingsley Amis - 1954
    This is the story of Jim Dixon, a hapless lecturer in medieval history at a provincial university who knows better than most that “there was no end to the ways in which nice things are nicer than nasty ones.” Kingsley Amis’s scabrous debut leads the reader through a gallery of emphatically English bores, cranks, frauds, and neurotics with whom Dixon must contend in one way or another in order to hold on to his cushy academic perch and win the girl of his fancy.More than just a merciless satire of cloistered college life and stuffy postwar manners, Lucky Jim is an attack on the forces of boredom, whatever form they may take, and a work of art that at once distills and extends an entire tradition of English comic writing, from Fielding and Dickens through Wodehouse and Waugh. As Christopher Hitchens has written, “If you can picture Bertie or Jeeves being capable of actual malice, and simultaneously imagine Evelyn Waugh forgetting about original sin, you have the combination of innocence and experience that makes this short romp so imperishable.”

The Napoleon of Crime: The Life and Times of Adam Worth, Master Thief


Ben Macintyre - 1997
    . . .--Sherlock Holmes on Professor Moriarty in The Final ProblemThe Victorian era's most infamous thief, Adam Worth was the original Napoleon of crime. Suave, cunning Worth learned early that the best way to succeed was to steal. And steal he did.Following a strict code of honor, Worth won the respect of Victorian society. He also aroused its fear by becoming a chilling phantom, mingling undetected with the upper classes, whose valuables he brazenly stole. His most celebrated heist: Gainsborough's grand portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire--ancestor of Diana, Princess of Wales--a painting Worth adored and often slept with for twenty years.With a brilliant gang that included "Piano" Charley, a jewel thief, train robber, and playboy, and "the Scratch" Becker, master forger, Worth secretly ran operations from New York to London, Paris, and South Africa--until betrayal and a Pinkerton man finally brought him down.In a decadent age, Worth was an icon. His biography is a grand, dazzling tour into the gaslit underworld of the last century. . . and into the doomed genius of a criminal mastermind.

The Divine Comedy by Dante, Illustrated, Purgatory, Volume 1


Dante Alighieri - 2004
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife, and the Missing Corpse: An Extraordinary Edwardian Case of Deception and Intrigue


Piu Marie Eatwell - 2014
    The extraordinarily wealthy 5th Duke of Portland had a mania for it, hiding in his carriage and building tunnels between buildings to avoid being seen. In 1897, an elderly widow asked the court to exhume the grave of her late father-in-law, T. C. Druce, under the suspicion that he’d led a double life as the 5th Duke. The eccentric duke, Anna Maria contended, had faked his death as Druce, and her son should inherit the Portland millions. Revealing a dark underbelly of Victorian society, Piu Marie Eatwell evokes an era when the rise of sensationalist media blurred every fact into fiction and when family secrets and fluid identities pushed class anxieties to new heights.

Dodge & Twist: A Sequel To Oliver Twist


Tony Lee - 2011
    When a meeting with the now grown-up Artful Dodger leads Oliver into a scheme to regain his money, he begins to wonder just how accidental the meeting was, as friends and foes from his past begin to mount up in a plan to steal the fabled Koh-I-Noor diamond from the 1851 Great Exhibition.As the heist progresses, Oliver is pulled back into a world he hoped to escape from a decade earlier, a world of deception and betrayal, where every ally is a potential enemy and where his so called 'friend' Dodger is speaking to the ghost of the long dead Fagin - and planning his revenge on Oliver.Oliver finds himself in a maze of lies and half truths while escaping the police, the East End underworld and Dodger's own violent plans - visiting his once home town and workhouse, Fagin's Saffron Hill den, Sowerberry's Undertakers, the British Museum and Newgate Prison in the process, as he faces his own demons, including the now destitute Mister Bumble, his one time bully Noah Claypole, and his guilt over the death of Nancy, a decade earlier...In a situation that can only end with a noose around his neck, Oliver must find a way out of this nightmare - or forever stay a pawn in a game far bigger than that of the people around him, a game he must win at all costs...DODGE & TWIST is a rollercoaster ride through Victorian London, involving characters from OLIVER TWIST in a brand new, thrilling adventure.TONY LEE is an award winning writer of audio dramas and comics, the ongoing writer of IDW's DOCTOR WHO series for both Tenth and Eleventh Doctors and the writer of OUTLAW: THE LEGEND OF ROBIN HOOD and EXCALIBUR: THE LEGEND OF KING ARTHUR, both American Library Association 'Books for Teens' finalists. His graphic novel adaptation of PRIDE & PREJUDICE & ZOMBIES topped the New York Times Bestselling Graphic Novel list in 2010."Tony Lee is one of the best story-tellers working in comics today" - Michael Moorcock"Tony Lee is a supremely talented writer" - MTV Network"One of the fastest rising stars among the new generation of British comic writers" - Comics International

Villette


Charlotte Brontë - 1853
    First published in 1853, Villette is Brontë's most accomplished and deeply felt work, eclipsing even Jane Eyre in critical acclaim. Her narrator, the autobiographical Lucy Snowe, flees England and a tragic past to become an instructor in a French boarding school in the town of Villette. There she unexpectedly confronts her feelings of love and longing as she witnesses the fitful romance between Dr. John, a handsome young Englishman, and Ginerva Fanshawe, a beautiful coquette. The first pain brings others, and with them comes the heartache Lucy has tried so long to escape. Yet in spite of adversity and disappointment, Lucy Snowe survives to recount the unstinting vision of a turbulent life's journey - a journey that is one of the most insightful fictional studies of a woman's consciousness in English literature.

An Introduction to the History of Western Europe


James Harvey Robinson
    This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

The Condition of the Working Class in England


Friedrich Engels - 1845
    It was also Engels's first book, written during his stay in Manchester from 1842 to 1844. Manchester was then at the very heart of the Industrial Revolution and Engels compiled his study from his own observations and detailed contemporary reports. The fluency of his writing, the personal nature of his insights, and his talent for mordant satire combine to make this account of the life of the victims of early industrial change into a classic - a historical study that parallels and complements the fictional works of the time by such writers as Gaskell and Dickens. What Cobbett had done for agricultural poverty in his Rural Rides, Engels did - and more - in this work on the plight of the industrial workers in the England of the early 1840s. This edition includes the prefaces to the English and American editions, and a map of Manchester c.1845.

Electricity


Victoria Glendinning - 1995
    'Electricity' is the story of a spirited, sensual young woman's adventures in 1880s, recounted with wit, candour and an intimacy of closely observed domestic and technical detail.

A Clergyman's Daughter


George Orwell - 1935
    Her thoughts are taken up with the costumes she is making for the church school play, by the hopelessness of preaching to the poor and by debts she cannot pay in 1930s Depression England. Suddenly her routine shatters and Dorothy finds herself down and out in London. She is wearing silk stockings, has money in her pocket and cannot remember her name. Orwell leads us through a landscape of unemployment, poverty and hunger, where Dorothy's faith is challenged by a social reality that changes her life.

Two Caravans


Marina Lewycka - 2007
    When a ragtag international crew of migrant workers is forced to flee the strawberry fields they have been working in, they set off across England looking for employment. Displaying the same sense of compassion, social outrage, and gift for hilarity that she showed in A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, Marina Lewycka chronicles their bumpy road trip with a tender affection for her downtrodden characters and their search for a taste of the good life.

Edward VII: The Last Victorian King


Christopher Hibbert - 2007
    Shedding new light on the scandals that peppered his life, Hibbert reveals Edward's dismal early years under Victoria's iron rule, his terror of boredom that led to a lively social life at home and abroad, and his eventual ascent to the throne at age 59. Edward is best remembered as the last Victorian king, the monarch who installed the office of Prime Minister.

Queen Victoria's Gene: Haemophilia and the Royal Family


D.M. Potts - 1996
    Medically, there are only two possibiities: either one of Victoria's parents had a 1 in 50,000 random mutation, or Victoria was the illegitimate child of a haemophiliac man.