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Life on the Mississippi is a memoir by Mark Twain detailing his days as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River before and after the American Civil War. The book begins with a brief history of the river. It continues with anecdotes of Twain's training as a steamboat pilot, as the 'cub' of an experienced pilot. He describes, with great affection, the science of navigating the ever-changing Mississippi River. In the second half, the book describes Twain's return, many years later, to travel on a steamboat from St. Louis to New Orleans. He describes the competition from railroads, the new, large cities, and his observations on greed, gullibility, tragedy, and bad architecture. He also tells some stories that are most likely tall tales. Simultaneously published in 1883 in the U.S. and in England, it is said to be the first book composed on a typewriter.
Candide: Or, All for the Best is Voltaire's most widely known work and one of the most widely read pieces of literature written in the French language. Voltaire invented the philosophical tale as a means to convey his own ideas and, at the same time, entertain his readers with satirical wit and ironic innuendo. Candide (the name refers to purity and frankness) is the tale's main character. He embodies the philosophical idea of optimism that Voltaire intends to oppose.As the story begins, Candide is forced to leave Wesphalia because he has been caught kissing the baron's daughter, the beautiful Cunegonde. Candide is driven from the splendid castle of the Baron Thunder-ten-tronckh, where Doctor Pangloss has been Candide's tutor and has taught him that all is well in this "best of all possible worlds." Little time passes before the naïve Candide finds himself conscripted into the Bulgarian army. As a soldier, he witnesses firsthand the terrible atrocities of war. Escaping to Holland, he miraculously encounters Pangloss, who is himself in a pitiful physical state. From the ever-optimistic philosopher, Candide learns that his former home in Germany has been burned to the ground and that all of those inside have been massacred by the advancing Bulgarian army.
The Elliots of Kellynch Hall, a family of minor nobility, are in financial trouble. Their sense of how important they are has long been larger than their bank account allows. The duct-tape patching job they've been doing on their finances is finally falling apart, so they come up with a last-ditch plan: move out of the ancestral mansion and rent out the place to someone else to increase their income. And so the Elliots move out, and the newly rich Admiral Croft and his wife move in.While the Crofts are total strangers to the Elliots, it turns out Mrs. Croft's brother, Captain Wentworth, is not. In fact, eight years ago Wentworth and the middle Elliot daughter, Anne, had hit it off so well that, after dating for a few months, they were already talking marriage. Wentworth's service in the navy, however, didn't give him enough steady income or social status to please Anne's family and her mentor, Lady Russell. Eventually Lady Russell persuaded Anne to break it off with Wentworth, and Anne has been kicking herself ever since. Meanwhile, Wentworth has struck it rich, but has never gotten back in touch.
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, adulteress Hester Prynne must wear a scarlet A to mark her shame. Her lover, Arthur Dimmesdale, remains unidentified and is wracked with guilt, while her husband, Roger Chillingworth, seeks revenge. The Scarlet Letter's symbolism helps create a powerful drama in Puritan Boston: a kiss, evil, sin, nature, the scarlet letter, and the punishing scaffold. Nathaniel Hawthorne's masterpiece is a classic example of the human conflict between emotion and intellect.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (often shortened to Huck Finn) is a novel written by American humorist Mark Twain. It is commonly used and accounted as one of the first Great American Novels. It is also one of the first major American novels written using Local Color Regionalism, or vernacular, told in the first person by the eponymous Huckleberry "Huck" Finn, best friend of Tom Sawyer and hero of three other Mark Twain books.The book is noted for its colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi River. By satirizing Southern antebellum society that was already a quarter-century in the past by the time of publication, the book is an often scathing look at entrenched attitudes, particularly racism. The drifting journey of Huck and his friend Jim, a runaway slave, down the Mississippi River on their raft may be one of the most enduring images of escape and freedom in all of American literature.
Incomplete records make it impossible to know for certain when Jane Austen originally wrote Lady Susan, but the novel was published in 1871 - over 50 years after her death. The novel is different than Jane Austen's typical work in a couple ways. First, it is epistolary novel, which means it is written as a series of letters. Second, unlike many of Jane Austen's more popular works, the main character, Lady Susan, is quite unlikeable. She has no redeeming qualities and while she seems to do well for herself in the novel by manipulating the other people in her life, the end of the novel appropriately punishes her for her misdeeds.
This is a story of three children, Roberta, Phyllis, and Peter, who live in a respectable suburban villa with a wonderful mother and father and a cook and servants, until one day great disgrace and poverty befalls them. Father is taken away to prison (but they do not know this at first), and they have to move to a poor cottage in the country near a railway line. Mother writes stories to earn what little they live on and they get used to being poor and have to learn not to steal coal from the railway station, even if they have so little to keep warm by. Sometimes they argue and have crises, as one does, but in time they make many new friends, and amusing adventures aplenty happen near the railway and the canal. They develop the habit of waving to the train as it goes past and sometimes the people in the coaches wave back. Their friendly habits makes them one special friend in particular, who although he mostly just goes by in the train, eventually gets to know them, and helps them out in various ways. And somehow all the good things that they do add up together and end up coming back to them, and there is happy ending to it all.
Twenty Years After (1845), the sequel to The Three Musketeers, is a supreme creation of suspense and heroic adventure.Two decades have passed since the musketeers triumphed over Cardinal Richelieu and Milady. Time has weakened their resolve, and dispersed their loyalties. But treasons and stratagems still cry out for justice: civil war endangers the throne of France, while in England Cromwell threatens to send Charles I to the scaffold. Dumas brings his immortal quartet out of retirement to cross swords with time, the malevolence of men, and the forces of history. But their greatest test is a titanic struggle with the son of Milady, who wears the face of Evil.
La teoría de Darwin de la evolución se basa en hechos clave e inferencias extraídas de los mismos, que el biólogo Ernst Mayr resumió como sigue: Cada especie es suficientemente fértil para que si sobreviven todos los descendientes para reproducir la población crecerá (hecho).Aunque hay fluctuaciones periódicas, las poblaciones siguen siendo aproximadamente del mismo tamaño (hecho).Los recursos, como los alimentos, son limitados y son relativamente estables en el tiempo (hecho).Sobreviene una lucha por la supervivencia (hecho).Los individuos de una población varían considerablemente de unos a otros (hecho).Gran parte de esta variación es hereditaria (hecho).Los individuos menos adaptados al medio ambiente tienen menos probabilidades de sobrevivir y menos probabilidades de reproducirse; los individuos más aptos tienen más probabilidades de sobrevivir y más posibilidades de reproducirse y de dejar sus rasgos hereditarios a las generaciones futuras, lo que produce el proceso de selección natural (inferencia).Este proceso lento da como resultado cambios en las poblaciones para adaptarse a sus entornos, y en última instancia, estas variaciones se acumulan con el tiempo para formar nuevas especies (inferencia).
Marcus Aurelius (121 - 180 AD) was Roman Emperor from 161 to 180, and is considered one of the most important Stoic philosophers. What today we call the Meditations take the form of a personal notebook; they weren't intended for publication and he called them "Writings To Myself." They were written in Greek, even though his native tongue was Latin, and were probably composed while Marcus was on military campaigns in central Europe, c. AD 171-175. He died, most likely from the plague or cancer, on a military campaign in present day Austria.
In early 21st century London, two priests, the white-haired Father Percy Franklin and the younger Father John Francis, are visiting the subterranean lodgings of the elderly Mr. Templeton. A Catholic and former Tory who witnessed the marginalization of his religion and the destruction of his Party, Mr. Templeton describes to the two priests the last century of British and world history.Since the Labour Party took control of the British Government in 1917, the House of Lords has been abolished, the British Royal Family has been deposed, Oxford and Cambridge have been closed down and all their professors exiled to Ireland. Marxism and Secular Humanism, which are described as the instruments of Freemasonry, dominate both culture and government. The Anglican Communion has been disestablished since 1929 and, like all forms of Protestantism, is almost extinct. The world now has only three main religious forces: Catholicism, Secular Humanism, and "the Eastern religions."Nationalism has been destroyed by Marxist internationalism and the world has been divided into three power-blocs. The first, which is generally marked in red on maps, is an European Confederation of Marxist one-party states and their colonies in Africa that use Esperanto for a world language. The second, marked in yellow, is "The Eastern Empire", whose Emperor, the "Son of Heaven", descends from both the Japanese and Chinese Imperial Families. The third, the blue marked, "The American Republic", consists of North, South, and Central America.In a move that almost toppled Marxism in the Confederation during the 1970s and '80s, the Eastern Empire invaded, annexed, and now rules India, Australia, New Zealand, as well as all of Russia east of the Ural Mountains. For this and other reasons, Mr. Templeton explains, the Confederation and the Eastern Empire are now on the brink of a global war.
Los hermanos De Witt, protegidos del gran rey Luis de Francia, encontrarán la muerte a manos de la enloquecida población de La Haya, que les cree culpables de conspiración. Pero antes de morir dejarán a su ahijado Cornelius unos comprometedores documentos que le llevarán a la cárcel, donde, en compañía de la joven Rosa, se afanará en conseguir lo que más desea en el mundo: el bulbo del tulipán negro. Con su habitual talento narrativo, Alejandro Dumas despliega en esta novela de intriga todos los ingredientes necesarios para atrapar al lector desde la primera página y sumergirlo en la tumultuosa sociedad holandesa de finales del siglo XVII.
Two friends are midway on a canoe trip down the Danube River. Throughout the story Blackwood personifies the surrounding environment-river, sun, wind-and imbues them with a powerful and ultimately threatening character. Most ominous are the masses of dense, desultory, menacing willows, which "moved of their own will as though alive, and they touched, by some incalculable method, my own keen sense of the horrible." Just after managing to land their canoe for the evening on the shifting, sandy islands just downstream across the Austria/Hungary frontier, the main character reflects on the river's potency, human qualities and will: Sleepy at first, but later developing violent desires as it became conscious of its deep soul, it rolled, like some huge fluid being, through all the countries we had passed, holding our little craft on its mighty shoulders, playing roughly with us sometimes, yet always friendly and well-meaning, till at length we had come inevitably to regard it as a Great Personage.Blackwood also specifically characterizes the silvery, windblown willows as sinister: And, apart quite from the elements, the willows connected themselves subtly with my malaise, attacking the mind insidiously somehow by reason of their vast numbers, and contriving in some way or other to represent to the imagination a new and mighty power, a power, moreover, not altogether friendly to us.At one point the two men see a man in a "flat-bottomed boat". However, the man appears to be warning the two, and ultimately crosses himself before hurtling forward on the river, out of sight. During the night and into the next day and night, the mysterious, hostile forces emerge in force, including large, dark shapes that seem to trace the consciousness of the two men, tapping sounds outside their tent, shifting gong-like sounds, and the appearance that the willows have changed location. In the morning the two discover that one of their two paddles is missing, there is a slit in the canoe that needs repair, and some of their food has disappeared. A hint of distrust arises between them. The howling wind dies down on the second day and night, and humming calm ensues. During the second night, the second man, the Swede, attempts to hurl himself into the river as a "sacrifice," "going inside to Them," but he is saved by the first character. The next morning, the Swede claims that the mysterious forces have found another sacrifice that may save them. They find the corpse of a peasant lodged in roots near the shore. When they touch the body, a flurry of living presence seems to rise from it and disappear into the sky, and later they see the body is pockmarked with funnel shapes as had been formed on the sands of the island during their experience. These are "Their awful mark!" the Swede says. The body is swept away, resembling an "otter" they thought they had seen the previous day, and the story ends.The precise nature of the mysterious entities in "The Willows" is unclear, and they appear at times malevolent and treacherous, and at times simply mystical, almost divine: "a new order of experience, and in the true sense of the word unearthly," and a world "where great things go on unceasingly...vast purposes...that deal directly with the soul, and not indirectly with mere expressions of the soul." These forces are also often contrasted with the fantastic natural beauty of the locale, itself a vigorous dynamic. In sum the story suggests that the landscape is an intersection, a point of contact with a "fourth dimension" - "on the frontier of another world, an alien world, a world tenanted by willows only and the souls of willows."
Lucy Snowe, a young Englishwoman of the educated class, narrates the story of her life-in a particularly partisan and sometimes unreliable manner. She is left destitute after the death of her mysterious family and, after briefly being a nurse-companion, takes herself off on a blind, daring trip to the Continent. She goes to the kingdom of Labassecour (perhaps modeled on Belgium) and, through a series of very fortunate occurrences, manages to land herself a job and a place to live on her first night in the town of Villette. She becomes a nursery governess to the three daughters of the proprietress of a large school for girls. During her time as the bonne d'enfants, she impresses her employer, Madame Beck, with her modesty and excellent English. She is elevated to the position of English teacher, though she has no qualifications for it and has a poor command of the French language spoken in Villette. Lucy, however, comes to excel at teaching and to love it.
Frona Welse, Jack London's feminine ideal, returns to the desolate north of Canada and meets Vance Corliss. An adventure novel of the first order.
Tom Sawyer, Detective is an 1896 novel by Mark Twain. It is a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), and Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894). Tom Sawyer attempts to solve a mysterious murder in this burlesque of the immensely popular detective novels of the time. Like the two preceding novels, the story is told using the first-person narrative voice of Huck Finn.
The Woman in White, published in 1860, is one of the earliest and most-beloved mystery novels, but at the time, critics were not exactly so positive. Novelist and critic Edward Bulwer-Lytton, for example, called the novel 'great trash.'On the other hand, the public loved the mystery and intrigue behind the identity of the mysterious Woman in White and anxiously waited to read the continuation of the story each week as a new chapter showed up in the weekly publication All the Year Round. The story still intrigues people; it was turned into a PBS Mystery! presentation and an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical in the last 15 years
The Secret Garden (1909) is one of Frances Hodgson Burnett's most popular novels. The book tells the story of Mary Lennox, a spoiled, contrary, solitary child raised in India but sent to live in her uncle's manor in Yorkshire after her parents' death. She is left to herself by her uncle, Mr. Craven, who travels often to escape the memory of his deceased wife. The only person who has time for Mary is her chambermaid, Martha. It is Martha who tells Mary about Mrs. Craven's walled garden, which has been closed and locked since her death. Mary becomes intrigued by the prospect of the forgotten garden, and her quest to find out the garden's secrets leads her to discover other secrets hidden in the manor. These discoveries combined with the unlikely friendships she makes along the way help Mary come out of her shell and find new fascination with the world around her.
The novel begins with a lawyer named Mr. Utterson going for a walk with his friend and relative Mr. Enfield. They walk past a door, which somehow prompts Mr. Enfield to tell a sad story: a brute of a man knocked down a little girl, everyone yelled at the rude man, and the man offered to pay a lot of money. He then disappeared through the door, only to return with a large check drawn from Dr. Jekyll's bank account. The nasty man? None other than Mr. Hyde.Mr. Utterson, it turns out, is Dr. Jekyll's lawyer, and we find out that in the event of Dr. Jekyll's death or disappearance, his entire estate is to be turned over to Mr. Hyde. Mr. Utterson, who thinks highly of Dr. Jekyll, is extremely suspicious of this whole arrangement. He resolves to get to the bottom of this mystery. He hunts down Mr. Hyde and is suitably impressed with the evil just oozing out of his pores. He then asks Dr. Jekyll about these odd arrangements. Dr. Jekyll refuses to comment, and there the matter rests until "nearly a year later."
Seventeen-year-old Catherine Morland is one of ten children of a country clergyman. She was born in room 114 of Murray Hall. Although a tomboy in her childhood, by the age of 17 she is "in training for a heroine" and is excessively fond of reading Gothic novels, among which Ann Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho is a favourite.Catherine is invited by the Allens, her wealthier neighbours in Fullerton, to accompany them to visit the town of Bath and partake in the winter season of balls, theatre and other social delights. Although initially the excitement of Bath is dampened by her lack of acquaintances, she is soon introduced to a clever young gentleman, Henry Tilney, with whom she dances and converses. Much to Catherine's disappointment, Henry does not reappear in the subsequent week and, not knowing whether or not he has left Bath for good, she wonders if she will ever see him again. Through Mrs Allen's old school-friend Mrs Thorpe, she meets her daughter Isabella, a vivacious and flirtatious young woman, and the two quickly become friends. Mrs Thorpe's son John is also a friend of Catherine's older brother, James, at Oxford where they are both students.
The novel represents Twain's first attempt at historical fiction. Set in 1547, it tells the story of two young boys who are identical in appearance: Tom Canty, a pauper who lives with his abusive father in Offal Court off Pudding Lane in London, and Prince Edward, son of King Henry VIII.
The Double is a novella written by the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky. It tells the tragic but comic tale of the polite and well-established titular councilor Yakov Petrovitch Golyadkin. His problems begin when his exact double enters his life and begins to take over. Golyadkin turns to his colleagues for help, but no matter whom he talks to, he increasingly feels surrounded by enemies.The novel begins with Golyadkin waking at his usual hour of 8am. He counts his 750 rubles in his notebook before checking on his servant Petrushka. Petrushka is talking to some fellow lackeys and Golyadkin orders him back into the apartment to make breakfast. After breakfast, Golyadkin climbs in a waiting carriage and tells the driver to stop at his doctor's house.
Jack London made a specialty of books about marvelous dogs. Jerry of the Islands tells the story of an Irish Terrier, a dog from the Southern seas, rather than the cold North. Jerry's life is colored by his experiences in the rough -- and sadly, racist -- land of Melanesia. First published in 1915, "Jerry of the Islands" tells the story of Jerry's narrow world, in which the dog has been born and raised to carry out the racist aims of his master, and his travels after that time...
Novela publicada en 1851 por el autor norteamericano. Cuenta la historia del pescador Ishmael y su viaje en el ballenero Pequod, comandado por el capitán Ahab. Pronto se entera que Ahab busca una ballena en específico, Moby Dick, una ballena blanca y feroz, que en un encuentro previo había destruido su bote y parte de su pierna; la busca para vengarse.
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.
Las Aventuras de Robinson Crusoe constituye una novela emblemática y un auténtico clásico de la literatura de aventuras. Es la historia de un hombre que abandonando los sabios consejos y enseñanzas recibidos de sus padres se hace a la mar y naufraga. Sin embargo, el ir a parar a una isla desierta no lo convierte en un animal desesperado por el infortunio, sino que le hace encontrarse consigo mismo. En la soledad del océano descubre su capacidad para sobrevivir en un medio hostil, a Dios y a si mismo.
La soñadora Emma, una joven de provincias casada con Charles Bovary, quien la ama pero es incapaz de comprenderla y satisfacerla, buscará la realización de sus sueños en otros amores, pasionales, platónicos..., pero ninguno de ellos logrará calmar su desesperada ansiedad y sus románticas inquietudes. La publicación de Madame Bovary (1856) provocó el escándalo de la burguesía francesa, esclava de mil prejuicios, y el proceso judicial que siguió contribuyó a un éxito editorial sin precedentes. Flaubert veía así cómo su obra servía más para satisfacer el morbo que para deleitarse en el caudal narrativo que contenía. Hoy, Madame Bovary es considerada el auténtico pórtico de la modernidad literaria.
Entertaining, atmospheric, and action-filled--yet difficult to obtain until now--the eight short stories in Jack London's A Son of the Sun center on the thrilling exploits of Captain David Grief in the dangerous and exotic South Seas.Captain Grief encounters the adventurers, scoundrels, pirates, and opportunists who followed the example of their colonial predecessors and exploited the islands and their resources early in the twentieth century. Inspired by London's own voyage through the South Seas on board his self-made yacht, the Snark, these stories paint a colorful--and at times horrifying--picture of the remote South Pacific.
Don Rodrigue, dit Le Cid, est un très bon commandant, reconnu de tous. Son père, Don Diego devient vieux, mais était aussi très reconnu dans sa jeunesse. Le père de Chimène lui a lancé un duel, d'une façon méprisante, à cause d'un poste que celui-ci avait reçu auprès du roi. Mais Don Diego est trop âgé pour se battre, il demande donc à son fils, Rodrigue de vaincre pour lui et de sauver son honneur et celui de la famille! Mais Rodrigue et Chimène s'aiment d'un amour tendre. Rodrigue se retrouve face à un dillemme Cornelien. (cette expression a été inventée à partir de cette oeuvre de Corneille.) Il ne sait que choisir, dans tous les cas il est piégé. S'il se bat et meurt, ou se laisse mourir, alors l'honneur sera perdu et Chimène ne l'aimera plus. Si par son épée, il verse le sang, l'honneur sera sauf, mais Chimène perdue. S'il refuse le combat l'honneur est perdu, l'amour de Chimène aussi... Il décide de sauver l'honneur même s'il lui faut perdre Chimène. Il combat et tue. Chimène, bien qu'aimant encore Rodrigue ne peut que le haïr. C'est pour elle aussi un cruel déchirement dans son coeur. Cependant de son côté, le roi a pris Chimène en affection et quand Rodrigue revient victorieux d'une grande embuscade tendue par des ennemis, il lui propose Chimène en mariage... Celle ci, le voulant de tout son coeur et ayant une bonne raison de le pouvoir, accepte.
A Tale of Two Cities is concerned with events in Paris and London before and during the French Revolution. The story focuses on Charles Darnay, the self-exiled nephew of French nobility, and his wife, Lucie Manette, daughter of Dr. Alexandre Manette. As the first of the novel's three sections begins, Jarvis Lorry is on his way to Paris to reunite Dr. Manette with the daughter who thought he has been dead for the past 18 years. Over this time Dr. Manette has forgotten his past life; he sits in a small attic room and makes shoes. Slowly, Jarvis and Lucie Manette
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