In order to promote the ratification of the United States Constitution in the late 1780s, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Hay wrote a series of 85 articles and essays explaining their reasons to support the constitution. Most of these articles were published in The Independent Journal and The New York Packet and they later became known as “The Federalist Papers.”
In reading the articles, one will encounter very interesting issues like Hamilton’s opposition to including the Bill of Rights in the Constitution and why he thinks a Union is better than a Confederation. He opposed the inclusion of the Bill of Rights in the Constitution because he thought that people would...
Thomas Hardy's fame as a novelist rivals that of even Dickens in Victorian literature. Creator of unforgettable novels like Far from the Madding Crowd, Tess of the d'Ubervilles, Under the Greenwo...
This story opens with a mother and daughter found brutally murdered inside a locked room in an upstairs apartment on a street in Paris. The police are baffled by both the ferocity of the crime and the lack of clues. Neighbors give conflicting evidence. Two friends are intrigued by the entire situation as reported in the newspapers. They decide to do a little investigating on their own. What they come up with is one of the most shocking and strangest of conclusions.
The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe is perhaps the first modern detective tale, though similar stories by Voltaire and ETA Hoffman did appear a few decades earlier. It was published in Graham's ...
Eleven year old Rebecca Rowena Randall travels to Riverboro, Maine, to live with her spinster aunts, Jane and Miranda Sawyer. Her father has been dead for three years and her mother is unable to cope with her brood of seven growing children. Rebecca is being sent to her aunts' farm to try to improve her prospects in life and also ease the family's burden. The aunts had actually wanted her older and more placid sister, Hannah, who is more handy round the house to be sent, but Rebecca's mother sends the dreamy, more imaginative Rebecca instead.
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin was published in 1903. The fictional town of Riverboro is based on Hollis, Mai...
A delightful story supporting the notion of finding beauty in all aspects of life, Just David follows a young boy, who slowly transforms the lives of those around him, as he teaches them to embrace the smaller things in life. The classic presents an encouraging tale to look beyond the horizon and not allow the world to dictate one’s action.
The story begins with the introduction of a charismatic ten-year old boy David, who together with his father lives in the serene and secluded mountains. Raised to find peace and joy in his natural surroundings, David is ignorant to life outside his idyllic home. Furthermore, he has his beloved violin to keep him company, which he pl...
Mark Twain’s work on Joan of Arc is titled in full “Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, by the Sieur Louis de Conte.” De Conte is identified as Joan’s page and secretary. For those who’ve always wanted to “get behind” the Joan of Arc story and to better understand just what happened, Twain’s narrative makes the story personal and very accessible.
The work is fictionally presented as a translation from the manuscript by Jean Francois Alden, or, in the words of the published book, “Freely Translated out of the Ancient French into Modern English from the Original Unpublished Manuscript in the National Archives of France.”
It was originally published as a serialization i...