The poet Katherine Philips was called “The Matchless Orinda” in her day and was well known for her works, both personal and political. She was a staunch Royalist (a supporter of Charles I and his son during the English Civil Wars) and wrote poetic defenses of the monarchy. She was also part of a literary coterie, in which she and her friends had “code names.” Philips herself was “Orinda,” her husband “Antenor,” and her friend Anne Owen “Lucasia.” She is perhaps best known today for her passionate poems celebrating female friendship.

A fascinating look back at the state of the art of chemistry 100 years ago, this book by James C. Philip, PhD, an assistant professor of chemistry at The Imperial College of Science and Technology, Kensington, provides a "description in non-technical language of the diverse and wonderful way which chemical forces are at work, and their manifold application in modern life" in 1910. Professor Philip relates many of the key chemical discoveries of early academic researchers in the context of the practical uses to which these discoveries were applied in the early 20th century.

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps's 1877 novel is set in a New England college town, and focuses on Avis Dobell, a professor's daughter. Avis is a talented painter, and bucks against the constraints placed on women in the 19th century. She wants to pursue a career as an artist and rejects marriage and motherhood, until she meets the charismatic young professor Philip Ostrander. Phelps's novel is a beautifully-written examination of the conflicts between marriage and career for women that is still relevant today.

The fable is a small narrative, in prose or verse, which has as its main characteristic the aim of conveying a moral lesson (the “moral”), implicitly or, more normally, explicitly expressed. Even though the modern concept of fable is that it should have animals or inanimated objects as characters – an idea supported by the works of famous fabulists such as Aesop and La Fontaine – Phaedrus, the most important Latin fabulist, is innovative in his writing. Although many of his fables do depict animals or objects assuming speech, he also has many short stories about men, writing narratives that seem to the modern eye more like short tales than fables.

Despite many other fables being ...

Ida Pfeiffer travelled alone in an era when women didn’t travel. She went first on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, then went on to Egypt and Italy. Understanding the difficulties a woman would face travelling alone and on a budget, she made a will before she left. Go she did, however; and upon her return she wrote this book. She used the proceeds to finance her next trip – six months in Iceland.

Brief, and in some cases incomplete, stories of magic from ancient Egypt.

Au printemps 1336, François Pétrarque entreprend avec son frère l’ascension du mont Ventoux, qui, de ses 1912 mètres, domine le Comtat Venaissin et la Provence.

C’est cette ascension et son pendant mystique que François Pétrarque relate, le jour même, dans une lettre datée du 26 avril, à son ami et confesseur Dionigi di Borgo San Sepolcro, lettre qui fut ensuite publiée sous le titre L’ascension du mont Ventoux.

Le texte original est en latin. Il a été traduit en français en 1880 par Victor Develay.

(de Aldor)

A János vitéz mára már klasszikussá vált Magyarország-szerte. Kukorica Jancsi történetével már általános iskolában megismerkednek a magyar diákok, de bármelyik korosztály számára élvezetes végigkövetni, ahogy az árva juhászból Tündérország királya lesz.

(Az ismertetőt írta: Majlinger Diána)

János Vitéz (Sir John) is a poem written in Hungarian by Sándor Petőfi. It has gained immense popularity in Hungary, and is today considered a classic of Hungarian literature.

Fishing with a Worm by Bliss Perry includes the poignant and philisophical observations of a fly fisherman lured by the worm. Bliss Perry was a professor of literature at Princeton and Harvard Universities and spent time in Vermont writing and fly fishing.

Cette édition de 1742 nous rapporte les contes de ma mère l’Oye adaptés par Charles Perrault et agrémentés de moralités.
Pleines d’enseignements, ces histoires du temps passé, contées, en France, depuis le Moyen Âge, nous ferons encore rêver ou frissonner avec leurs jeunes filles et jeunes gens dans l’adversité, leurs princesses et leurs princes et, bien sûr, leurs fées.
Retrouvons donc le petit Chaperon rouge, Cendrillon, le Chat botté, … et redécouvrons d’où nous vient ce « Anne, ma soeur Anne, ne vois-tu rien venir ? »

In this book, published in 1742, Charles Perrault accompanies his Tales of passed times, by Mother Goose, with witty morals.
In the French lang...