Book picks similar to
A Group of Noble Dames by Thomas Hardy
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The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes
Adrian Conan Doyle - 1954
The plots are all new, with painstaking attention to the mood, tone, and detail of the original stories. Here is a fascinating volume of mysteries for new Sherlock fans, as well as for those who have read all the classics and crave more!The Adventure of the Seven Clocks The Adventure of the Gold Hunter The Adventure of the Wax Gamblers The Adventure of the Highgate Miracle The Adventure of the Black Baronet The Adventure of the Sealed Room The Adventure of the Foulkes Rath The Adventure of the Abbas Ruby The Adventure of the Dark Angles The Adventure of the Two Women The Adventure of the Depthford Horror The Adventure of the Red Widow
The Lady of the Lake
Walter Scott - 1810
Scottish novelist and poet Sir Walter Scott (1771 - 1832), a literary hero of his native land, turned to writing only when his law practice and printing business foundered. Among his most beloved works are Rob Roy (1818), and Ivanhoe (1820). American writer William Vaughn Moody (1869 - 1910) served as co-editor of the Harvard Monthly and assistant professor of English at the University of Chicago. He authored several verse plays, books of poetry, and histories and criticisms of English literature.
The Beetle
Richard Marsh - 1897
It is narrated from the perspectives of multiple characters, a technique used to create suspense in many of the "sensation novels" pioneered by Wilkie Collins and others in the 1860s, as well as in many late nineteenth-century novels such as Dracula.Richard Marsh was the pseudonym of the British author, Richard Bernard Heldmann.
My Last Duchess and Other Poems
Robert Browning - 1842
In this compelling poetic form, he sought to reveal his subjects' true natures in their own, often self-justifying, accounts of their lives and affairs. A number of these vivid monologues, including the famed "Fra Lippo Lippi," "How It Strikes a Contemporary," and "The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church," are included in this selection of forty-two poems.Here, too, are the famous "My Last Duchess," dramatic lyrics such as "Memorabilia" and "Love among the Ruins," and well-known shorter works: "The Pied Piper of Hamelin," "Home-Thoughts, from Abroad," "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister," and more. Together these poems reveal Browning's rare gifts as both a lyric poet and a monologist of rare psychological insight and dramatic flair.
Flappers and Philosophers
F. Scott Fitzgerald - 1920
He was the self-styled spokesman of the "Lost Generation" and author of The Great Gatsby (1925). His debut novel, This Side of Paradise (1920) examines the lives and morality of post-World War I youth. Flappers and Philosophers (1920) was his first collection of short stories. His second novel, The Beautiful and Damned (1922), demonstrates an evolution and maturity in his writing, and provides an excellent portrait of America during the Jazz Age, as does Tales of the Jazz Age (1922).
The Portrait of a Lady
Henry James - 1881
But Isabel, resolved to determine her own fate, does not hesitate to turn down two eligible suitors. She then finds herself irresistibly drawn to Gilbert Osmond, who, beneath his veneer of charm and cultivation, is cruelty itself. A story of intense poignancy, Isabel's tale of love and betrayal still resonates with modern audiences.
Mrs Lirriper
Charles DickensHenry Spicer - 1863
Recently widowed, Mrs. Lirriper devotes her energies to attending to the needs of her assorted lodgers; but when a newborn child is abandoned to her care, her responsibilities grow to new levels. She enlists longtime lodger, the Major, into the role of �guardian,” and the two develop an increasing affection for the boy. In an effort to entertain the growing lad, they relate the stories of their fellow lodgers, little knowing that they are about to embark on their own real-life tale of impending death, guilty secrets, and mysterious legacies. Charles Dickens is one of England’s most important literary figures. His works enjoyed enormous success in his day and are still regarded as among the most popular and widely read classics of all time.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Anonymous - 1846
This edition offers the original story with all its atmospheric Victorian trimmings. The story of Todd's murderous partnership with pie-maker Margery Lovett--at once inconceivably unpalatable and undeniably compelling--has subsequently set the table for a seemingly endless series of successful dramatic adaptations, popular songs and ballads, novellas, radio plays, graphic novels, ballets, films, and musicals. Both gleeful and ghoulish, the original tale of Sweeney Todd, first published under the title The String of Pearls, combines the story of Todd's grisly method of robbing and dispatching his victims--by way of Mrs. Lovett's meat pies--with a romantic sub-plot involving deception, disguise, and detective work, set against the backdrop of London's dark and unsavory streets. Editor Robert Mack 'fleshes' out the story with a fascinating introduction touching on the origins of the tale, the growth of the legend, and a history of its many retellings. Mack also includes explanatory notes that point out interesting aspects, plus a full chronology of the many versions of Sweeney Todd.Since Sweeney Todd first entered the public imagination in the mid-nineteenth-century, his exploits have chilled and fascinated audiences around the world. This new edition allows modern readers to savor the ghastly original in all its gruesome glory.
Melmoth the Wanderer
Charles Maturin - 1820
In a satanic bargain, Melmoth exchanges his soul for immortality. The story of his tortured wanderings through the centuries is pieced together through those who have been implored by Melmoth to take over his pact with the devil. Influenced by the Gothic romances of the late 18th century, Maturin's diabolic tale raised the genre to a new and macabre pitch. Its many admirers include Poe, Balzac, Oscar Wilde and Baudelaire.
Deerbrook
Harriet Martineau - 1838
Grey and his wife, speculation is rife that one of them might marry the local apothecary, Edward Hope. Although he is immediately attracted to Margaret, Hope is ultimately persuaded to marry the beautiful Hester and becomes trapped in an unhappy marriage. His troubles are compounded when a malicious village gossip accuses Hope of grave-robbing, threatening his career. A powerful exploration of the nature of ignorance and prejudice, Deerbrook also may be regarded as one of the first Victorian novels of English domestic life.Excerpt:Every town-bred person who travels in a rich country region, knows what it is to see a neat white house planted in a pretty situation, - in a shrubbery, or commanding a sunny common, or nestling between two hills, - and to say to himself, as the carriage sweeps past its gate, "I should like to live there," - "I could be very happy in that pretty place." Transient visions pass before his mind's-eye of dewy summer mornings, when the shadows are long on the grass, and of bright autumn afternoons, when it would be luxury to saunter in the neighbouring lanes; and of frosty winter days, when the sun shines in over the laurustinus at the window, while the fire burns with a different light from that which it gives in the dull parlours of a city. Mr. Grey's house had probably been the object of this kind of speculation to one or more persons, three times a week, ever since the stage-coach had begun to pass through Deerbrook. Deerbrook was a rather pretty village, dignified as it was with the woods of a fine park, which formed the back-ground to its best points of view. Of this pretty village, Mr. Grey's was the prettiest house, standing in a field, round which the road swept. There were trees enough about it to shade without darkening it, and the garden and shrubbery behind were evidently of no contemptible extent. The timber and coal yards, and granaries, which stretched down to the river side, were hidden by a nice management of the garden walls, and training of the shrubbery. In the drawing-room of this tempting white house sat Mrs. Grey and her eldest daughter, one spring evening.
Moonfleet
John Meade Falkner - 1898
What will be the outcome of the conflict between smugglers and revenue men? How can the hero, John Trenchard, discover the secret of Colonel John Mohune's treasure? As the book progresses these two interwoven themes resolve themselves into a third and richer one, with the friendship and suffering of both John Trenchard and the craggy, taciturn Elzevir Block. Falkner's feeling for history and for the landscape of his Dorset setting combine with his gift for storytelling to turn Moonfleet into a historical romance of moving intensity.
Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm
Stella Gibbons - 1940
With Adam playing Santa while draped in Mrs. Starkadders's shawls, the family shares their traditional "Christmas pudding"-a mélange containing random objects of doom foretelling the coming year: a coffin nail for death, a bad sixpence for financial ruin, and a menthol cone to indicate that the lucky recipient will go "blind wi' headache." These lively tales will delight anyone who loves Stella Gibbons and her signature wit.
Youth
Joseph Conrad - 1898
"This could have occurred nowhere but in England, where men and sea interpenetrate, so to speak—the sea entering into the life of most men, and the men knowing something or everything about the sea, in the way of amusement, of travel, or of bread-winning."By all that’s wonderful, it is the sea, I believe, the sea itself—or is it youth alone? Who can tell? But you here—you all had something out of life: money, love—whatever one gets on shore—and, tell me, wasn’t that the best time, that time when we were young at sea; young and had nothing, on the sea that gives nothing, except hard knocks—and sometimes a chance to feel your strength—that only—what you all regret?"
Vile Bodies
Evelyn Waugh - 1930
A vivid assortment of characters, among them the struggling writer Adam Fenwick-Symes and the glamorous, aristocratic Nina Blount, hunt fast and furiously for ever greater sensations and the hedonistic fulfilment of their desires. Evelyn Waugh’s acidly funny and experimental satire shows a new generation emerging in the years after the First World War, revealing the darkness and vulnerability beneath the glittering surface of the high life.
A Shropshire Lad
A.E. Housman - 1896
E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad, first published in 1896. Scholars and critics have seen in these timeless poems an elegance of taste and perfection of form and feeling comparable to the greatest of the classic. Yet their simple language, strong musical cadences and direct emotional appeal have won these works a wide audience among general readers as well.This finely produced volume, reprinted from an authoritative edition of A Shropshire Lad, contains all 63 original poems along with a new Index of First Lines and a brief new section of Notes to the Text. Here are poems that deal poignantly with the changing climate of friendship, the fading of youth, the vanity of dreams — poems that are among the most read, shared, and quoted in our language.