Cædmon was an Anglo-Saxon herdsman attached to the double monastery of Streonæshalch (657–681). Originally ignorant of the art of song, Cædmon learned to compose one night in the course of a dream. Cædmon’s only known surviving work is Cædmon’s Hymn, the nine-line alliterative vernacular praise poem in honour of the Christian god he supposedly learned to sing in his initial dream. The poem is one of the earliest attested examples of Old English and is one of three candidates for the earliest attested example of Old English poetry. It is also one of the earliest recorded examples of sustained poetry in a Germanic language.

Few stories of shipwreck and survival can equal that of the 16th century Spaniard Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca who, cast ashore near present day (USA) Tampa Bay, Florida, in 1528, survived eight years of hand-to-mouth existence among the Indians of the South and Southwest, and who walked on foot across the plains to the Pacific Coast, arriving in Mexico in 1536. In 1542 he published an account of his adventures, and the present reading is based on Fanny Bandelier’s English translation of that text.

Cabeza de Vaca, along with three other survivors, two Spaniards and a North African (Estévanico, a black slave) endured incredible hardships. Cabeza da Vaca was, himself, at first enslave...

An American heiress nicknamed the Manitou Princess (after her daddy’s richest silver mine) is devastated to find that her fiancé only loves her money, so she does what anyone might do: she bolts for Europe, dons male attire and sets out on a walking tour of the Alps, passing as a teenage boy. Though professing hatred of all men, she soon falls in with a just-jilted English lord, aptly named Monty Lane, who is attempting to walk off a broken heart of his own. The Princess Passes presents the ups and downs of their alpine relationship through the unpenetrating eyes of Lord Lane. Why, he wonders, is he thus drawn to this beautiful youth? And has the boy a sister?

Co-author Alice Liv...

This powerful poem narrates the fateful return of Count Lara to the British Isles after spending years abroad traveling the orient.

Returning to his patrimony with a retinue consisting of one foreign-born page, Count Lara resumes the management of his landed estates. Lara's first efforts are crowned with success: only to be undermined by the jealousy and envy of his his peers. After a successful duel to defend his honour, the count becomes inexorably caught up in local blood-feuds; which quickly escalate to open warfare between his own followers and the private armies of his enemies.

- Count Lara remains a bold and skillful leader: is he strong enough to triumph yet over adv...

These are the last four Cantos of his mock epic that Byron completed in the year before his death at the age of 36 in Messolonghi, Greece, where he had gone to fight for the nationalists against the Ottoman Empire. Juan, now in England, is invited to spend the autumn with a hunting party at the ancient country seat of Lord Henry and Lady Adeline Amundeville. There, he meets the most intriguing of the Byronic heroines, Aurora Raby, and is visited by a ghost with ample breasts (!). That is the narrative outline but hardly the focus of the last Cantos. Byron is more interested satirizing the frailty of faith, the fecklessness of the English aristocracy, the futility of English pastimes and t...

Juan, captured by Turkish pirates and sold into slavery is bought by a beautiful Princess as her toy-boy. Dressed as an odalisque, he is smuggled into the Sultan’s harem for a steamy assignation. Unbelievably, Byron’s publisher almost baulked at this feast of allusive irony, blasphemy (mild), calumny, scorn, lesse-majeste, cross-dressing, bestiality, assassination, circumcision and dwarf-tossing. This was the last Canto published by the stuffy John Murray (who had, however, made a tidy fortune on the earlier parts of the Epic). Although Byron’s mood starts, after this, to grow darker and his bitterness at English hypocrisy to grow sharper, his discursive comedy and precise and intrigui...

The legend of Don Juan is one that's been told and retold over the centuries by poets and novelists. His life has been the subject of operas, musicals and film. The earliest reference was in a fourteenth century Spanish play and compiled in book form in the seventeenth century. His life continued to fascinate writers like Moliere, Byron, Bernard Shaw, Pushkin, Shakespeare, Jose Saramago and musicians like Mozart, whose Don Giovanni is a brilliant work that still charms audiences and music lovers all over the world.

The legend of Don Juan in Spain portrays him as a wealthy and amoral character, who prides himself on his marvelous power to attract women of all ages. He a...

The Way of All Flesh (1903) is a semi-autobiographical novel by Samuel Butler which attacks Victorian-era hypocrisy. Written between 1873 and 1884, it traces four generations of the Pontifex family. It represents the diminishment of religious outlook from a Calvinistic approach, which is presented as harsh. Butler dared not publish it during his lifetime, but when it was published it was accepted as part of the general revulsion against Victorianism.

Erewhon, or Over the Range is a novel by Samuel Butler, published anonymously in 1872. The title is also the name of a country, supposedly discovered by the protagonist. In the novel, it is not revealed in which part of the world Erewhon is, but it is clear that it is a fictional country. Butler meant the title to be read as the word Nowhere backwards, even though the letters “h” and “w” are transposed. It is likely that he did this to protect himself from accusations of being unpatriotic, although Erewhon is obviously a satire of Victorian society.

Max und Moritz – Eine Bubengeschichte in sieben Streichen (Erstveröffentlichung 4. April 1865) ist das wohl bekannteste Werk von Wilhelm Busch. Das Werk wird oft als Vorläufer der modernen Comics bezeichnet da die zahlreichen, von Busch selbst gezeichneten Bilder, in so enger Beziehung zu dem Text stehen. In Paarreimen erzählt die Geschichte von den bösartigen Streichen der zwei Buben Max und Moritz, deren Streiche sich hauptsächlich gegen Respektspersonen der damaligen Gesellschaft richten. Diese Geschichte ist für ein sehr junges sowohl als auch für ein erwachsenes Publikum geeignet. Viele werden sich an diese Geschichte aus ihrer Kindheit liebevoll erinnern.