Bøger udgivet af Brian Westland

A Tale of a Tub was the first major work written by Jonathan Swift, arguably his most difficult satire. The Tale is a prose parody divided into sections each delving into the morals and ethics of the English. Composed between 1694 and 1697, it was eventually published in 1704. It was long regarded as a satire on religion.

If you strip Stoicism of its paradoxes and its wilful misuse of language, what is left is simply the moral philosophy of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, dashed with the physics of Heraclitus. Stoicism was not so much a new doctrine as the form under which the old Greek philosophy finally presented itself to the world at large.

A Cynic Looks at Life is a classic collection of essays and observations on life by the great American humorist, Ambrose Bierce. This collection contains the following titles: Civilization -- The gift o' gab -- Natura benigna -- The death penalty -- Immortality -- Emancipated woman -- A mad world -- Epigrams of a cynic

A Confession or My Confession, is a short work on the subject of melancholia, philosophy and religion by the acclaimed Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy. It was written in 1879 to 1880, when Tolstoy was in his early fifties.

Milton composed Paradise Regained at his cottage in Chalfont St Giles in Buckinghamshire. Paradise Regained is four books long and comprises 2,065 lines; in contrast, Paradise Lost is twelve books long and comprises 10,565 lines. As such, Barbara K. Lewalski has labelled the work a "brief epic".

"Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street" is a short story by the American writer Herman Melville, first serialized anonymously in two parts in the November and December 1853 issues of Putnam's Magazine, and reprinted with minor textual alterations in his The Piazza Tales in 1856.

Alexander the Great died when he was quite young. He was but thirty-two years of age when he ended his career, and as he was about twenty when he commenced it, it was only for a period of twelve years that he was actually engaged in performing the work of his life. Napoleon was nearly three times as long on the great field of human action.

Those who really desire to attain an independence, have only to set their minds upon it, and adopt the proper means, as they do in regard to any other object which they wish to accomplish, and the thing is easily done.

By "Reincarnation" we mean the repeated incarnation, or embodiment in flesh, of the soul or immaterial part of man's nature. The term "Metempsychosis" is frequently employed in the same sense, the definition of the latter term being: "The passage of the soul, as an immortal essence, at the death of the body, into another living body."

SOCIALISM, like everything else that is vital, is rather a tendency than a strictly definable body of doctrine. A definition of Socialism is sure either to include some views which many would regard as not Socialistic, or to exclude others which claim to be included.

THE MEMOIR of my AUNT, JANE AUSTEN, has been received with more favour than I had ventured to expect. The notices taken of it in the press, as well as letters addressed to me by many with whom I am not personally acquainted, show that an unabated interest is still taken in every particular that can be told about her. James Austen-Leigh

Fathers and Sons is an 1862 novel by Ivan Turgenev, published in Moscow by Grachev & Co. It is one of the most acclaimed Russian novels of the 19th century. Arkady Kirsanov has just graduated from the University of Petersburg and returns with a friend, Bazarov, to his father's modest estate in an outlying province of Russia.

The Acquisitive Society was written by R. H. Tawney and published in 1920. Tawney herein criticizes the selfish individualism of modern industrial societies. He argues that capitalism corrupts via the promotion of economic self-interest, leading to aimless production in response to greed and insatiable acquisitiveness.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects (1792), written by the 18th-century British proto-feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy. In it, Wollstonecraft responds to those educational and political theorists of the 18th century who did not believe women should receive a rational education. She argues that women ought to have an education commensurate with their position in society, claiming that women are essential to the nation because they educate its children and because they could be "companions" to their husbands, rather than mere wives. Instead of viewing women as ornaments to society or property to be traded in marriage, Wollstonecraft maintains that they are human beings deserving of the same fundamental rights as men.Wollstonecraft was prompted to write the Rights of Woman after reading Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord's 1791 report to the French National Assembly, which stated that women should only receive a domestic education; she used her commentary on this specific event to launch a broad attack against sexual double standards and to indict men for encouraging women to indulge in excessive emotion. Wollstonecraft wrote the Rights of Woman hurriedly to respond directly to ongoing events; she intended to write a more thoughtful second volume but died before completing it.