A woman in prison awaiting a death sentence is given a reprieve because she is pregnant. She migrates to America abandoning the baby to the care of a foster mother. The child, a girl, grows up and begins working as a servant in a wealthy household. Here she is pursued by the two sons of the house and ultimately marries the younger one. When he dies, leaving her with two young children to look after, she begins a life of deception and confidence trickery which ends in great tragedy and disgrace. In her old age, events take a less tragic turn and her redemption comes from sources she least expects.
First published in 1762, The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flan...
Learn more about the famous and respected Royal Canadian Mounted Police. This book is the personal recollections of one ‘Mountie’; his life, experiences and trials as an officer in a new frontier – The Canadian Northwest.
“Thou hast the keys of Paradise, O just, subtle, and mighty Opium!”
Though apparently presenting the reader with a collage of poignant memories, temporal digressions and random anecdotes, the Confessions is a work of immense sophistication and certainly one of the most impressive and influential of all autobiographies. The work is of great appeal to the contemporary reader, displaying a nervous (postmodern?) self-awareness, a spiralling obsession with the enigmas of its own composition and significance. De Quincey may be said to scrutinise his life, somewhat feverishly, in an effort to fix his own identity.
The title seems to promise a graphic exposure of horrors; these pas...
A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder is the most popular of James De Mille’s works. It was serialized posthumously in Harper’s Weekly, and published in book form by Harper and Brothers of New York City in 1888. This satirical romance is the story of Adam More, a British sailor. Shipwrecked in Antarctica, he stumbles upon a tropical lost world of prehistoric animals, plants, and a cult of death-worshipping primitives. He also finds a highly developed human society which has reversed the values of Victorian society. Wealth is scorned and poverty revered; death and darkness are preferrable to life and light. Rather than accumulating wealth, the natives seek to div...
Ophelia, poem of the week for February 25, 2007; read here by twelve of our readers.
Ophelia loved Hamlet, was repulsed by him, and went insane. She drowned in a stream, gathering flowers of remembrance. This is one of a number of poems that de la Mare wrote about Shakespeare characters.
Voltairine de Cleyre (November 17, 1866 – June 20, 1912) was an American anarchist. She was skilled in many subjects and wrote essays, poems, letters, sketches, stories and speeches. These are her selected poems.
Voltairine de Cleyre (November 17, 1866 – June 20, 1912) was an American anarchist. She was skilled in many subjects and wrote essays, poems, letters, sketches, stories and speeches. These are her selected Haymarket speeches.
Voltairine de Cleyre (November 17, 1866 – June 20, 1912) was an American anarchist. She was skilled in many subjects and wrote essays, poems, letters, sketches, stories and speeches. These are her selected letters, sketches and stories.
Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912) was, according to Emma Goldman, “the most gifted and brilliant anarchist woman America ever produced.” Today she is not widely known as a consequence of her short life. De Cleyre was especially influenced by Thomas Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft and Clarence Darrow. After the hanging of the Haymarket protesters in 1887, she became an anarchist. “Till then I believed in the essential justice of the American law of trial by jury,” she wrote in an autobiographical essay, “After that I never could”. She was known as an excellent speaker and writer – in the opinion of biographer Paul Avrich, she was “a greater literary talent than any other American anarchist” –...
Formatosi all’Accademia militare di Modena fu sempre forte in lui lo spirito patriottico, che seppe ben utilizzare come elemento di critica nella descrizione di altre città come Parigi.
Affascinato da “quest’immensa rete dorata” seppe darne una descrizione accurata, dapprima cogli occhi storditi di un semplice turista poi con la consapevolezza quasi di un parigino. E’ minuzioso nel descrivere le sue bellezze ed altrettanto nel rilevarne le tentazioni alle quali è impossibile resistere.
Dedica un ampio spazio alla “Esposizione universale”, frastuono di colori, arte, civiltà, soffermandosi sulle figure un pò grottesche di uomini e donne che la riempiono. Uno spettacolo che defi...