Autobiographies from remote historical periods can be especially fascinating. Modes of self-presentation vary greatly across the centuries, as of course does the very concept of Self.
Peter Abelard, the medieval philosopher and composer, here gives a concise but vivid survey of his notoriously calamitous life. The work is couched in the form of a letter to an afflicted friend. Abelard’s abrasively competitive, often arrogant personality emerges at once in the brief Foreword, where he informs his correspondent: “(I)n comparing your sorrows with mine, you may discover that yours are in truth nought.. and so shall you come to bear them the more easily.”
The compiler of [this book] having entered early in life upon a train of duties, was frequently embarrassed by her ignorance of domestic affairs. For, whilst receipt books for elegant preparations were often seen, those connected with the ordinary, but far more useful part of household duties, were not easily procured; thus situated, she applied to persons of experience, and embodied the information collected in a book, to which, since years have matured her judgment, she has added much that is the result of her own experiments.
Familiar, then, with the difficulties a young housekeeper encounters, when she finds herself in reality the mistress of an establishment, the Authoress o...
How to live on 5 cents a day! How to survive financial ruin without losing your house! How to keep to a bare bones budget and still have money left over to buy books! Tough questions! They were tough questions even in the 1870’s, when Sarah Elizabeth Harper Monmouth penned her quirky memoir, the subtitle of which was “How a Lady, Having Lost a Sufficient Income from Government Bonds by Misplaced Confidence, Reduced to a Little Homestead Whose Entire Income is But .00 per Annum, Resolved to Hold It, Incurring no Debts and Live Within it. How She has Lived for Three Years and Still Lives on Half a Dime a Day.” Sarah Elizabeth (‘Lizzie‘) Monmouth, born in 1829, was a Civil War widow, liv...
“Many who scoff at a book of etiquette would be shocked to hear the least expression of levity touching the Ten Commandments...” Thus opens the introduction to one of the most popular American non-fiction books – one that was avidly studied by both men and women, children and adults, leaders of society and those who yearned to be part of the charmed circle!
Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics and at Home by Emily Post was first published in 1922 and became an instant bestseller. It has gone through several revisions, been updated frequently and continues to be an encyclopedia for those who are confused and in despair about which fork to use, and what to wea...
How does occultism regard vegetarianism? It regards it very favorably, and that for many reasons. These reasons may be divided into two classes: those which are ordinary and physical, and those which are occult or hidden. Let us see in detail why a vegetarian diet is emphatically the purest and the best.