Aunt Lee's Library

Aunt Lee, editor

(2012)

Tags:

Curated Library, Annotated Bibliography

Curated Libraryttt Annotated Bibliographyttt

Intro Technical Legal

Aunt Lee's Library

For more info: subscribe to me on Twitter: auntleeonbooks, or email me at auntlee.onbooks@gmail.com, or search for Aunt Lee's Library at www.mobileread.com and join the discussion.

This is basically what our English teachers called an "annotated bibliography," morphed into grandeur as curated e-content for the digital age.

I obsessively cross-checked "Best Books Ever" lists with public domain e-books, obtained reprint permission from wonderful online book reviewers and inserted a link to my meta-search engine that searches the best of the free e-book sites, and this e-book is the result.

Think of a browsing in a bookstore/coffee house where friendly, literate folk have gathered to argue the merits of great books -- and then they just give them to you -- armfuls of great, free books.

When you've downloaded this e-book to your e-reader, you can browse the reviews of great books, get a hankering to read one, search the meta-search engine for it, download & transfer to your e-reader, and be reading in a matter of minutes.

"I cannot comprehend the neglect of a family library in such days as these." -- Fitzwilliam Darcy, Pride and Prejudice

Clearly, you will never again be bored waiting in line somewhere, but you can also use Aunt Lee's Library to start building an impressive family e-book library using Calibre-- I've written up tutorials that you will find alongside the search engine.

Technical Notes

This e-book was created from Aunt Lee's personal Calibre e-book library using the catalog function; there may be idiosyncrasies associated with the process, but we will all just have to live with them.

Legal Notes:

At the time of the collection of these reviews, all links to online blogs lead to bookish, academic sorts of sites hosted by rational, pleasant people. It is to be hoped that this remains so, but it is not something I have control over. I specifically disclaim liability, moral or otherwise, for anything that happens when any link is clicked.

Any given work reviewed is not necessarily in the public domain in all countries.

Aunt Lee's Library - Best Works in the Public Domain is about works in the public domain but it is not itself in the public domain.

You are free to:

- redistribute the e-book in its entirety, including the e-book cover, keeping this legal notice intact;

- recognize the literary genius of any of the contributors and contact them with the offer of a lucrative book deal;

- recognize your soul mate in the literary genius of any romantically unattached contributors and, romantically unattached yourself, contact them with the offer of your heart and hand; however, in that event you will be contractually obligated to name your firstborn offspring "Lee";

- become a substantially more literate human being;

- email Aunt Lee (auntlee.onbooks@gmail.com) with your review of other great books in the public domain for inclusion in Volume II;

- join in a discussion of e-books at http://www.mobileread.com/

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The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or creating derivative works based on this work. The editor makes no representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any country.

Intro Technical Legal

- Authors

- Titles

- Genres

- Descriptions

Authors

A

Henry Adams

The Education of Henry Adams (1918)

Machado de Assis

Dom Casmurro (1882)

Jane Austen

Emma (1816)

B

Honore de Balzac

Eugenie Grandet (1830)

Sir Max Beerbohm

Zuleika Dobson, or, an Oxford love story (1911)

Arnold Bennett

The Old Wives' Tale (1908)

R.D. Blackmore

Lorna Doone (1869)

M. E. Braddon

Lady Audley's Secret (1862)

Charles Brockden Brown

Wieland: or, the Transformation, an American Tale (1798)

Fanny Burney

Evelina (1778)

C

Miguel de Cervantes-Saavedra

Don Quixote (1605)

JAMES HADLEY CHASE

No Orchids for Miss Blandish (1939)

Erskine Childers

The Riddle of the Sands (1903)

Kate Chopin

The Awakening (1899)

Wilkie Collins

The Woman in White (1859)

Joseph Conrad

Heart of Darkness (1903)

Richmal Crompton

Just William (1922)

D

Daniel Defoe

Roxana the Fortunate Mistress (1724)

E. M. Delafield

The Diary of a Provincial Lady, free ebooks, ebook, etext (2011)

Charles Dickens

Martin Chuzzlewit (1843)

Earl of Beaconsfield Benjamin Disraeli

Sybil, or the Two Nations (1845)

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The Sign of the Four (1890)

E

Maria Edgeworth

Ennui (1809)

Albert Einstein

Sidelights on Relativity (2010)

George Eliot

Daniel Deronda (1876)

F

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Uncle Silas (1864)

Henry Fielding

History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749)

Gustave Flaubert

Bouvard and Pecuchet / A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life (1881)

E. M. Forster

A Room with a View (1908)

James George Frazer

The Golden Bough (1890)

G

Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

Mary Barton (1848)

Edward Gibbon

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776)

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Herland (1915)

Oliver Goldsmith

The Vicar of Wakefield (1766)

Goncharov, Ivan Aleksandrovich

Oblomov (1915)

Maxim Gorky

Creatures That Once Were Men (1905)

George Grossmith & Weedon Grossmith

The Diary of a Nobody (1892)

H

Thomas Hardy

Far From the Madding Crowd (1874)

Anthony Hope

The Prisoner of Zenda (1894)

Thomas Hughes

Tom Brown's School Days (1857)

Aldous Huxley

Crome Yellow (1921)

J

Henry James

The Ambassadors (1903)

William James

Pragmatism (1907)

K

Immanuel Kant

Critique of Pure Reason (1781)

Rudyard Kipling

Just So Stories (1902)

L

Madame de Lafayette

The Princess of Cleves (1678)

Le Sage, Alain Rene

The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillana (1715)

M. G. Lewis

The Monk; A Romance (1796)

David Lindsay

A Voyage to Arcturus (1920)

Edward Bulwer Lytton

Vril: The Power of the Coming Race (1871)

M

George Barr McCutcheon

Brewster's Millions (1902)

George Meredith

The Egoist (1879)

Montaigne, Michel de

The Essays of Michel de Montaigne (1580)

N

Neumann,John Von.

Theory Of Games And Economic Behavior (1944)

O

E. Phillips Oppenheim

The Great Impersonation (1920)

P

Popper,K.R.

The Open Society And Its Enemies (1945)

Abbe Prevost

Manon Lescaut (1731)

R

John Reed

Ten Days That Shook the World (1919)

Dorothy Richardson

Pointed Roofs (1915)

Henry Handel RICHARDSON

The Fortunes of Richard Mahony (1930)

S

Rafael Sabatini

Scaramouche (1921)

Saki

The Unbearable Bassington (1912)

Tobias Smollett

The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom (2010)

The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748)

Pierre Souvestre

Fantomas (1911)

Olaf Stapledon

Starmaker (1937)

Laurence Sterne

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759)

Giles Lytton Strachey

Eminent Victorians (1918)

Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745

A Tale of a Tub (1704)

T

Anthony Trollope

Doctor Thorne (1858)

The Warden (1855)

Turgenev, Ivan

First Love (1861)

Frederick Jackson Turner

The Frontier in American History (1921)

V

Various

Genji (1021)

W

P. G. WODEHOUSE

Piccadilly Jim (1917)

Woolf, Virginia

Mrs. Dalloway (1925)

Z

Emile Zola

Theresa Raquin (1867)

Aunt Lee, editor

Aunt Lee's Library (2012)

Titles

A

The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom * Tobias Smollett

The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillana * Le Sage, Alain Rene

The Adventures of Roderick Random * Tobias Smollett

The Ambassadors * Henry James

Aunt Lee's Library * Aunt Lee, editor

The Awakening * Kate Chopin

B

Bouvard and Pecuchet / A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life * Gustave Flaubert

Brewster's Millions * George Barr McCutcheon

C

Creatures That Once Were Men * Maxim Gorky

Critique of Pure Reason * Immanuel Kant

Crome Yellow * Aldous Huxley

D

Daniel Deronda * George Eliot

The Diary of a Nobody * George Grossmith & Weedon Grossmith

The Diary of a Provincial Lady, free ebooks, ebook, etext * E. M. Delafield

Doctor Thorne * Anthony Trollope

Dom Casmurro * Machado de Assis

Don Quixote * Miguel de Cervantes-Saavedra

E

The Education of Henry Adams * Henry Adams

The Egoist * George Meredith

Eminent Victorians * Giles Lytton Strachey

Emma * Jane Austen

Ennui * Maria Edgeworth

The Essays of Michel de Montaigne * Montaigne, Michel de

Eugenie Grandet * Honore de Balzac

Evelina * Fanny Burney

F

Fantomas * Pierre Souvestre

Far From the Madding Crowd * Thomas Hardy

First Love * Turgenev, Ivan

The Fortunes of Richard Mahony * Henry Handel RICHARDSON

The Frontier in American History * Frederick Jackson Turner

G

Genji * Various

The Golden Bough * James George Frazer

The Great Impersonation * E. Phillips Oppenheim

H

Heart of Darkness * Joseph Conrad

Herland * Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire * Edward Gibbon

History of Tom Jones, a Foundling * Henry Fielding

J

Just So Stories * Rudyard Kipling

Just William * Richmal Crompton

L

Lady Audley's Secret * M. E. Braddon

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman * Laurence Sterne

Lorna Doone * R.D. Blackmore

M

Manon Lescaut * Abbe Prevost

Martin Chuzzlewit * Charles Dickens

Mary Barton * Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

The Monk; A Romance * M. G. Lewis

Mrs. Dalloway * Woolf, Virginia

N

No Orchids for Miss Blandish * JAMES HADLEY CHASE

O

Oblomov * Goncharov, Ivan Aleksandrovich

The Old Wives' Tale * Arnold Bennett

The Open Society And Its Enemies * Popper,K.R.

P

Piccadilly Jim * P. G. WODEHOUSE

Pointed Roofs * Dorothy Richardson

Pragmatism * William James

The Princess of Cleves * Madame de Lafayette

The Prisoner of Zenda * Anthony Hope

R

The Riddle of the Sands * Erskine Childers

A Room with a View * E. M. Forster

Roxana the Fortunate Mistress * Daniel Defoe

S

Scaramouche * Rafael Sabatini

Sidelights on Relativity * Albert Einstein

The Sign of the Four * Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Starmaker * Olaf Stapledon

Sybil, or the Two Nations * Earl of Beaconsfield Benjamin Disraeli

T

A Tale of a Tub * Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745

Ten Days That Shook the World * John Reed

Theory Of Games And Economic Behavior * Neumann,John Von.

Theresa Raquin * Emile Zola

Tom Brown's School Days * Thomas Hughes

U

The Unbearable Bassington * Saki

Uncle Silas * Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

V

The Vicar of Wakefield * Oliver Goldsmith

A Voyage to Arcturus * David Lindsay

Vril: The Power of the Coming Race * Edward Bulwer Lytton

W

The Warden * Anthony Trollope

Wieland: or, the Transformation, an American Tale * Charles Brockden Brown

The Woman in White * Wilkie Collins

Z

Zuleika Dobson, or, an Oxford love story * Sir Max Beerbohm

Adventure and Adventurers

Anthony Hope

The Prisoner of Zenda (1894)

Rafael Sabatini

Scaramouche (1921)

Annotated Bibliography

Aunt Lee, editor

Aunt Lee's Library (2012)

Biography

Henry Adams

The Education of Henry Adams (1918)

Giles Lytton Strachey

Eminent Victorians (1918)

Detective and Mystery Stories; English

M. E. Braddon

Lady Audley's Secret (1862)

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The Sign of the Four (1890)

Detective and mystery stories

E. Phillips Oppenheim

The Great Impersonation (1920)

Pierre Souvestre

Fantomas (1911)

England -- Fiction

Earl of Beaconsfield Benjamin Disraeli

Sybil, or the Two Nations (1845)

Essays

Montaigne, Michel de

The Essays of Michel de Montaigne (1580)

Fiction - Japan

Various

Genji (1021)

Fiction -- America

Kate Chopin

The Awakening (1899)

Joseph Conrad

Heart of Darkness (1903)

Henry James

The Ambassadors (1903)

Woolf, Virginia

Mrs. Dalloway (1925)

Fiction -- Australia

Henry Handel RICHARDSON

The Fortunes of Richard Mahony (1930)

Fiction -- Brazil

Machado de Assis

Dom Casmurro (1882)

Fiction -- English 19th Century

Jane Austen

Emma (1816)

George Eliot

Daniel Deronda (1876)

Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

Mary Barton (1848)

Thomas Hardy

Far From the Madding Crowd (1874)

Anthony Trollope

Doctor Thorne (1858)

The Warden (1855)

Fiction -- English 20th Century

Sir Max Beerbohm

Zuleika Dobson, or, an Oxford love story (1911)

Arnold Bennett

The Old Wives' Tale (1908)

Dorothy Richardson

Pointed Roofs (1915)

Saki

The Unbearable Bassington (1912)

E. M. Forster

A Room with a View (1908)

Aldous Huxley

Crome Yellow (1921)

Fiction -- English Restoration

Daniel Defoe

Roxana the Fortunate Mistress (1724)

Fiction -- English Victorian

R.D. Blackmore

Lorna Doone (1869)

George Meredith

The Egoist (1879)

Fiction -- Ireland

Oliver Goldsmith

The Vicar of Wakefield (1766)

French literature

Madame de Lafayette

The Princess of Cleves (1678)

Abbe Prevost

Manon Lescaut (1731)

Games

Neumann,John Von.

Theory Of Games And Economic Behavior (1944)

Gothic

Charles Brockden Brown

Wieland: or, the Transformation, an American Tale (1798)

Wilkie Collins

The Woman in White (1859)

M. G. Lewis

The Monk; A Romance (1796)

History

John Reed

Ten Days That Shook the World (1919)

Frederick Jackson Turner

The Frontier in American History (1921)

Horror & Ghost Stories

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Uncle Silas (1864)

Humor

Richmal Crompton

Just William (1922)

E. M. Delafield

The Diary of a Provincial Lady, free ebooks, ebook, etext (2011)

Charles Dickens

Martin Chuzzlewit (1843)

Maria Edgeworth

Ennui (1809)

Henry Fielding

History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749)

Gustave Flaubert

Bouvard and Pecuchet / A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life (1881)

Goncharov, Ivan Aleksandrovich

Oblomov (1915)

George Grossmith & Weedon Grossmith

The Diary of a Nobody (1892)

Le Sage, Alain Rene

The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillana (1715)

George Barr McCutcheon

Brewster's Millions (1902)

P. G. WODEHOUSE

Piccadilly Jim (1917)

Juvenile Fiction

Thomas Hughes

Tom Brown's School Days (1857)

Mythology

James George Frazer

The Golden Bough (1890)

Philosophy;

Maxim Gorky

Creatures That Once Were Men (1905)

William James

Pragmatism (1907)

Immanuel Kant

Critique of Pure Reason (1781)

Popper,K.R.

The Open Society And Its Enemies (1945)

Physics

Albert Einstein

Sidelights on Relativity (2010)

Romance

Honore de Balzac

Eugenie Grandet (1830)

Emile Zola

Theresa Raquin (1867)

Rome

Edward Gibbon

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776)

Russia -- Fiction

Turgenev, Ivan

First Love (1861)

Satire

Fanny Burney

Evelina (1778)

Tobias Smollett

The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom (2010)

Laurence Sterne

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759)

Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745

A Tale of a Tub (1704)

Science

Albert Einstein

Sidelights on Relativity (2010)

Science Fiction

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Herland (1915)

David Lindsay

A Voyage to Arcturus (1920)

Edward Bulwer Lytton

Vril: The Power of the Coming Race (1871)

Olaf Stapledon

Starmaker (1937)

Sea stories

Tobias Smollett

The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748)

Short Stories

Rudyard Kipling

Just So Stories (1902)

Spain -- Fiction

Miguel de Cervantes-Saavedra

Don Quixote (1605)

Spy

Erskine Childers

The Riddle of the Sands (1903)

pulp

JAMES HADLEY CHASE

No Orchids for Miss Blandish (1939)

The Education of Henry Adams

by Henry Adams

1918

Biography

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

The Modern Library - 100 Best Nonfiction

The Greatest Books - "The Greatest Non-Fiction Book of All Time"

The Education of Henry Adams records the struggle of Bostonian Henry Adams (1838-1918), in his later years, to come to terms with the dawning 20th century, so different from the world of his youth. It is also a sharp critique of 19th century educational theory and practice. In 1907, Adams began privately circulating copies of a limited edition printed at his own expense. Commercial publication had to await its author's 1918 death, whereupon it won the 1919 Pulitzer Prize. The Modern Library placed it 1st in a list of the top 100 English-language nonfiction books of the twentieth century.

Wikipedia contributors. "The Education of Henry Adams." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 19 Feb. 2012. Web. 21 Mar. 2012.

Probably the most famous quotation from the work: A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.

More quotations from Wikiquotes:

Ch. 6

Only on the edge of the grave can man conclude anything.

No man, however strong, can serve ten years as schoolmaster, priest, or Senator, and remain fit for anything else. All the dogmatic stations in life have the effect of fixing a certain stiffness of attitude forever, as though they mesmerised the subject.

Ch. 7

Although the Senate is much given to admiring in its members a superiority less obvious or quite invisible to outsiders, one Senator seldom proclaims his own inferiority to another, and still more seldom likes to be told of it.

Friends are born, not made.

A friend in power is a friend lost.

The effect of power and publicity on all men is the aggravation of self, a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim's sympathies.

Get it free now. Search Aunt Lee's Library: The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams

Dom Casmurro

by Machado de Assis

1882

Fiction -- Brazil

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

On Gutenberg Best Books Ever Bookshelf

Alex (review reprinted by kind permission):

Machado de Assis is apparently Brazil's best-loved author and an antecedent of the magical realist style, and I'd never heard of him until this year. It's exciting when I find things like this. Well, that and a little humbling.

Dom Casmurro is a weird and wonderful book. It's about a lifelong love affair in which one person betrays the other; the mystery is who has done the betraying. The narrator doubles back on himself, loses track of his thoughts, lies both to us and to himself, and generally mucks everything up in a series of short,sharp chapters with titles like "Let us proceed to the chapter" and "Let us enter the chapter."

Early on, a minor character explains that life is an opera. Not metaphorically. Satan, "a young maestro with a great future," is cast out of the conservatory of heaven after rebelling, but not before stealing a cast-off libretto of God's. He turns it into a full opera and begs God to hear it. At last God relents, but refuses to have it played in heaven; instead, he creates this world as a special stage to hear Satan's composition - which, in the lonely fleshing out, has accidentally lost or distorted some of God's themes. "Indeed in some places the words go to the right and the music to the left...Certain motifs grow wearisome from repetition. There are obscure passages...and there are some who say that this is the beauty of the composition and keeps it from being monotonous." I can't do it justice; you'll have to read it for yourself. It's beautiful.

Get it free now. Search Aunt Lee's Library: Dom Casmurro by Machado de Assis

Emma

by Jane Austen

1816

Fiction -- English 19th Century

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

On Gutenberg Best Books Ever Bookshelf

The Guardian's 100 Greatest Novels of All Time

The Greatest Books -36th Greatest Fiction Book of All Time

"Emma has been meaning to read more ever since she was twelve years old. I have seen a great many lists of her drawing-up at various times of books that she meant to read regularly through--and very good lists they were--very well chosen, and very neatly arranged--sometimes alphabetically, and sometimes by some other rule. The list she drew up when only fourteen--I remember thinking it did her judgment so much credit, that I preserved it some time; and I dare say she may have made out a very good list now. But I have done with expecting any course of steady reading from Emma. She will never submit to any thing requiring industry and patience, and a subjection of the fancy to the understanding." -- Mr. Knightley

Aunt Lee :

Well, with the convenience of e-books, even Emma might have engaged upon a course of steady reading.

Guys, I know you're about to skip over this entry; you see Austen as frou-frou and girlie. Couple things: one, when you're reading on an e-reader, nobody can tell that you're not reading manly, and more importantly, Mr. Knightley can teach you something very important about getting the girl -- something that may not be available to you in any other venue.

Mr. Knightley: "How could you be so unfeeling to Miss Bates? How could you be so insolent in your wit to a woman of her character, age, and situation?-- Emma, I had not thought it possible."

With the search functions of e-books, you can find this speech quickly, but at the very least, read the Box Hill outing, Knightley's speech, and the speech's aftermath. Now, I know from current popular culture that you guys have stumbled upon a variation of the truth about women that Knightley demonstrates here; the twenty-five year old boys who create our popular culture are very proud of the discovery, but they don't really understand it, and it won't really work. Modern dweebs will tell you that the way to pick up a girl is to insult her just a bit, and Mr. Knightley's speech to Emma may come across that way at first blush. The actual truth of the thing is that you get the girl's attention when you tell her the truth about herself, certainly, but you get the girl herself when you know who she really is, and you're telling her the truth because it matters to you what happens to her. You think that she won't love you unless she only hears from you an unending stream of pretty compliments, but you are wrong.

"I cannot make speeches, Emma:" he soon resumed; and in a tone of such sincere, decided, intelligible tenderness as was tolerably convincing.--"If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. But you know what I am.--You hear nothing but truth from me."

Tell us the truth. Because women are actually real people, not just a collection of highly interesting parts.

And, sure, you can try the "if I loved you less" as a pickup line if you like.

Get it free now. Search Aunt Lee's Library: Emma by Jane Austen

Eugenie Grandet

by Honore de Balzac

1830

Romance

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

On Gutenberg Best Books Ever Bookshelf

MJ Nicholls (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

A heartclenching pain-turner of a classic, a perfect manifesto for choosing love over money. The French do desolation and hopelessness so well! Must be the heat. In certain respects, Eugenie gets off lightly. She steals a kiss with her cousin before her bastard father packs him off to the Indies to get rich off slave plantations, and stays a virgin her whole life for that one moment of stolen love. Nowadays, anyone marrying their cousin would be hounded out the hamlet, Daily Mails flung at their backs, ruined forever in their hometowns. The relationship would buckle under the weight of this shame, and the couple would fall apart, doomed to shoot smack in tower blocks to numb the pain. The novel is excellent, though takes thirty-odd pages to properly kick into gear.

Get it free now. Search Aunt Lee's Library: Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac

Zuleika Dobson, or, an Oxford love story

by Sir Max Beerbohm

1911

Fiction -- English 20th Century

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

On Gutenberg Best Books Ever Bookshelf

Wm (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

Oh, my heck. Totally the funniest book about mass suicide ev-er! Zuleika Dobson was, like, such the Paris Hilton of her day -- except a bazillion times hotter.

But seriously, the novel is a slim, arch, stupendously written thing of horror and hilarity that also has one of the oddest narrators in all of literature and some totally bizarre narrative digressions. One of the best satires I've ever read.

Get it free now. Search Aunt Lee's Library: Zuleika Dobson, or, an Oxford love story by Sir Max Beerbohm

The Old Wives' Tale

by Arnold Bennett

1908

Fiction -- English 20th Century

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

On Gutenberg Best Books Ever Bookshelf

100 Best English-Language Novels of the 20th Century

Bennett was initially inspired to write the book by a chance encounter in a Parisian restaurant. In the introduction to the book, he says

...an old woman came into the restaurant to dine. She was fat, shapeless, ugly, and grotesque. She had a ridiculous voice, and ridiculous gestures. It was easy to see that she lived alone, and that in the long lapse of years she had developed the kind of peculiarity which induces guffaws among the thoughtless.

and

I reflected, concerning the grotesque diner: "This woman was once young, slim, perhaps beautiful; certainly free from these ridiculous mannerisms. Very probably she is unconscious of her singularities. Her case is a tragedy. One ought to be able to make a heartrending novel out of the history of a woman such as she." Every stout, ageing woman is not grotesque--far from it!--but there is an extreme pathos in the mere fact that every stout ageing woman was once a young girl with the unique charm of youth in her form and movements and in her mind. And the fact that the change from the young girl to the stout ageing woman is made up of an infinite number of infinitesimal changes, each unperceived by her, only intensifies the pathos.

Wikipedia contributors. "The Old Wives' Tale." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 26 Jan. 2012. Web. 21 Mar. 2012.

Get it free now. Search Aunt Lee's Library: The Old Wives' Tale by Arnold Bennett

Lorna Doone

by R.D. Blackmore

1869

Fiction -- English Victorian

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

On Gutenberg Best Books Ever Bookshelf

Rebecca Griffin (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

I was assigned a (vastly abridged) version of this when I was in grade school, which kept 90% of the plot but cut out a lot of the description and the on and on. This was in 4th or 5th grade, but it has stayed with me ever since. I read the abridged version so many times it literally fell to pieces, and this was my first time reading the unabridged version. Blackmore wrote in the dialogue of the time, writing "in accent" so to speak, which was difficult to get through at times. For some of his characters, I literally had to read the dialogue out loud to try to sound out what he was writing. Thankfully, this was only one or two of the characters, the rest were much easier to read through. He does kind of go on at points, and the plot has so many twists and turns that you practically need a diagram to keep up with it--but that was very much the style of the time. It's well worth the effort you put in to get through it; obviously, if 15 years after the first time I read it it's still haunting me.

Get it free now. Search Aunt Lee's Library: Lorna Doone by R.D. Blackmore

Lady Audley's Secret

by M. E. Braddon

1862

Detective and Mystery Stories; English

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

On Gutenberg Best Books Ever Bookshelf

Boof ( http://boofsbookshelf.com/ ) (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

This book was really good fun. A 19th century who-dunnit complete with beautiful but cunning villainess, rambling old houses and an upper-class layabout-turned-detective. Fabulous!

This was one of the first "sensation" novels ever written, and while it doesn't have the sophisticated and multi-layered plots of today that keep us guessing until the very end and on the edge of our seats, it is nonetheless a great page turner and so much fun. This book was originally serialised in a paper back in 1862, and I can imagine eagerly awaiting the next installment as they would have done back then. The language is not complex either, which makes for an easy and much quicker read than some novels of this era.

I thoroughly enjoyed Lady Audley's Secret although I am ashamed to say that I had never even heard of the author until I picked this up. I will now be checking out her others.

Get it free now. Search Aunt Lee's Library: Lady Audley's Secret by M. E. Braddon

Wieland: or, the Transformation, an American Tale

by Charles Brockden Brown

1798

Gothic

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

On Gutenberg Best Books Ever Bookshelf

Nicole (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

A melodramatic heroine? Impossible!

In fact, Clara Wieland is quite level-headed, and demonstrates that throughout most of the narrative. But at certain times of climactic passion she gives over to depression--with good reason.

The first part of the narrative is heavy on exposition. Clara's father was an immigrant to Pennsylvania from Europe, with his own strange, personal religion. He began a homestead outside Philadelphia and prospered and had a family. He also built a small temple on the outskirts of the property, and it was his unshakable habit to go there each day at noon and midnight. He had attempted, for a time, to evangelize the natives, but failed, and believed this failure damned him eternally. He became more and more peculiar until finally, one midnight, he seemed to spontaneously combust alone in the temple, and no satisfactory explanation for his death was found.

Years later Clara and her older brother Theodore inhabit the homestead. Theodore has married a childhood friend, Catharine, and her brother, Pleyel, rounds out a group of four kindred spirits who seem to spend all their time together, reading plays and epic poems and discussing matters intellectual. Wieland has inherited his father's contemplative religious nature, but unsurprisingly not his habits at the temple. Mysterious voices begin to be heard about the farm, and while they are disturbing nothing seems too sinister--at first. The friends speculate on the supernatural possibilities, but are mostly skeptical.

The group of four is augmented by a fifth friend, a Carwin, whom Pleyel knows from his time touring Europe. Carwin used to live in Spain and was Catholic, though his origin and reason for coming to the new world were unclear. Clara, always extremely upright and chaste, is intrigued by Carwin at first but is truly in love with Pleyel. On the day she expects her longtime friend to propose, she is first attacked in the night in her own bedroom, and then Pleyel arrives not to console but to level accusations and part from her for good. While Clara tries, with the help of her brother, to retrieve her good name, unimaginable tragedy strikes and her entire family--everyone she loves and holds dear but Pleyel--is destroyed.

This is where, naturally, Clara descends into a great depression. She cannot, of course, contemplate suicide, but expects to lie abed until her life simply slips away. She firmly believes Carwin to be an evil man and at the root of the tragic occurrences, but he has disappeared and the authorities blame another. Clara must return to the scene of her former happiness one last time, and when she does she receives the very mundane, earthly reasons for the seemingly spiritual events that plagued the family. She doesn't want to accept this--or Carwin's innocence (however flawed)--but is eventually forced to see the truth of it when she herself is almost killed.

This is very firmly a late-18th/early-19th century novel, but shouldn't be shied away from as boring or staid. Yes, there is a perfect and pure heroine who faints away from time to time, but really the narrative is almost entirely plot-driven and a real page-turner. Setting a gothic romance among American Quakers proves to be an interesting conceit, as is allowing the swooning heroine to narrate the whole thing herself. The tale also has many elements of the mystery, and Carwin's long soliloquy presages in many ways the final scene of a detective novel, where the investigator reveals everything and all becomes so suddenly obvious. (That explanation, in this case, may seem to us a bit silly but I understand it was much more exciting in 1798.) Those who follow the 50-page rule (of which I seriously disapprove) may not make it out of the initial exposition and into the real story, which would be a shame, because soon enough the plot takes a much more exciting and breathless turn.

This was not just an enjoyable and unusual execution of the gothic novel, but simply a good read, and a fascinating precursor to other American writers like Edgar Allen Poe.

Get it free now. Search Aunt Lee's Library: Wieland: or, the Transformation, an American Tale by Charles Brockden Brown

Evelina

by Fanny Burney

1778

Satire

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

On Gutenberg Best Books Ever Bookshelf

Wikipedia says:

Evelina or the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World is a novel written by English author Frances Burney and first published in 1778. It was first published anonymously, but its authorship was revealed by the poet George Huddesford in what Burney called a "vile poem."

In this 3-volume epistolary novel, title character Evelina is the unacknowledged but legitimate daughter of a dissipated English aristocrat, thus raised in rural seclusion until her 17th year. Through a series of humorous events that take place in London and the resort town of Hotwells, near Bristol, Evelina learns to navigate the complex layers of 18th-century society and earn the love of a distinguished nobleman. This sentimental novel, which has notions of sensibility and early romanticism, satirizes the society in which it is set and is a significant precursor to the work of Jane Austen and Maria Edgeworth, whose novels explore many of the same issues.

Wikipedia contributors. "Evelina." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 12 Feb. 2012. Web. 18 Apr. 2012.

Aunt Lee says:

I love this book -- certain of Evelina's adventures recalled to me incidents from my own entrance into the world; the joy of finding oneself in society one has admired and now enjoys, and the converse, finding oneself in company with whom even the most minor communication is excruciatingly baffling on all sides.

Again, guys, you are ready to skip over an epistolary novel published in 1778, but you really shouldn't skip. This novel is absolutely unique (so far as I have seen) in its first person, straight-from-the-pretty-girl's mouth account of what y'all sound like to the pretty girl. Evelina writes, mostly to her beloved guardian, of her adventures in London as guys hit on her relentlessly; she has no idea how pretty she is; she has no idea why she is such a target for all this attention; she simply relates what the guys said and did and her confused reactions. Short of somehow falling into a body-switching movie premise for real, this is your best bet for understanding how young girls perceive you, how they think.

Get it free now. Search Aunt Lee's Library: Evelina by Fanny Burney

Don Quixote

by Miguel de Cervantes-Saavedra

1605

Spain -- Fiction

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

The Guardian's 1000 Novels Everyone Should Read

Belarius aka Greg Jensen (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

I'll be the first to admit it: I'm a fan of popular fiction. I desire enjoyment from certain factors of pacing and style that the literary elite consider "common" and I, in turn, generally find "literature" to be incredibly pretentious. This has led me to hold what some might consider "uncultured" opinions about various great works.

Which brings us to Don Quixote, which many in the literary elite consider to be the greatest novel ever written.

Did I love Don Quixote? I wouldn't go that far. Does it deserve to be called the greatest novel ever written? I'm willing to put it on the short list.

Here's the thing: Cervantes published Don Quixote in the early 17th century, while Shakespeare was still working through his "tragic" phase (Hamlet & whatnot). By rights, it should be like so much other "classic literature:" dense, slow, utterly irrelevant to modern life, and soporific. Instead, it's dense, slow, engaging, and surprisingly relevant. Cervantes manages, almost continuously, to be clever in ways that transcend the 400-year gap and resonate with us now. There's no question that adapting to the writing style of that era is a challenge, and Don Quixote will be slow going to readers accustomed to modern pop fiction. But most intelligent readers will consider this a price worth paying.

Why Don Quixote still works stems largely from its having taken the formulas of "heroic knighthood" (which we are still vaguely familiar with as legend today) and showing it to be cartoonish and absurd. Despite the cultural gap, modern readers will still get the gist of the parody, even if they haven't read the chivalric literature that it is an explicit parody of.

The other reason the story works is because, strangely, we find ourselves continuously at odds with the author over the character of Don Quixote himself. We are told, at every turn, that Quixote is a fool, a madman, and a sinner. Cervantes breaks from the traditional role of a passive narrator to make constant judgment on Quixote's failures and flaws. And because we see Quixote so maligned by both his own author and everyone in the book, we as the reader fall in love with him. By writing a book about a dreamer with unassailable ideals but using the narrative voice of a vitriolic cynic, Cervantes forces us to stand up for the nobility and purity that Quixote achieves. Cervantes has, in effect, martyred his own protagonist in such a dramatic way that it falls to the reader to elevate Quixote to the status of saint.

And any book that can pull that off is worth the difficult prose.

Get it free now. Search Aunt Lee's Library: Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes-Saavedra

No Orchids for Miss Blandish

by JAMES HADLEY CHASE

1939

pulp

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

On Gutenberg Best Books Ever Bookshelf

James Newman (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

This was the third Chase novel I picked up (there's about eighty of 'em) and I knew that I was in for a treat. Generally considered his best work, this his first novel, was a massive hit when it first arrived in the late thirties. This once best-seller is the kind of book any would be crime writer must read. Graham Greene was a fan commenting that there is not a wasted word, or scene, throughout. He was right. Say what you like about Chase he was an absoloute master of plot, and plot development, the king of thriller writers.

The short novel begins with two down-and-out hoodlums who decide to steal a socialite Miss Blandish's diamond necklace. She was to be wearing the stones at a party for her birthday. The plan goes wrong, the hi-so's boyfriend is shot and the heiress kidnapped, and then kidnapped from the kidnappers by a stronger gang that keep her hostage for a crazed gang member to use as his girlfriend. The hero is introduced late in the novel, a private eye has to find the girl and return her to her father.

This is an excellent novel especially considering that Chase sets the book in the states, without having been there. Whether he gets the setting right I don't know and I don't care this book sits alongside Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye and Hammet's Thin Man.

Get it free now. Search Aunt Lee's Library: No Orchids for Miss Blandish by JAMES HADLEY CHASE

The Riddle of the Sands

by Erskine Childers

1903

Spy

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

The Guardian's 100 Greatest Novels of All Time - ranks it 37th

The Greatest Books - ranks it the 177th Greatest Fiction Book of All Time

David (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

Erskine Childers was shot by firing squad during the Irish civil war in 1922. According to Wikipedia, his last words were a joke at the expense of his executioners: "Take a step or two forward, lads. It will be easier that way."

His son was subsequently elected fourth president of Ireland in an upset election in the 1970's, sadly to die in office a year or so later.

Whatever the circumstances of his life and death, this story is a "cracking good read", one of the earliest novels in the genre of spy fiction. Don't be put off by the various maps and charts at the beginning of the book - it is entirely possible to enjoy the story without knowing anything about sailing (though presumably the fun of the story will be heightened for those who do have some knowledge of sailing and maritime affairs). The voice of the narrator is irresistibly charming, the story is an excellent one, tautly told. I feel almost ashamed to be discovering this story as late in life as I am. But better late than never.

I highly recommend this book.

Get it free now. Search Aunt Lee's Library: The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers

The Awakening

by Kate Chopin

1899

Fiction -- America

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

The Greatest Books - 91st Greatest Fiction Book of All Time

Radcliffe's 100 Best Novels Read

Elizabeth (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

(**SPOILERS in the comments**)

One of the earliest sleep-with-whoever-you-want feminist rhetoric books. I think much of what feminists fought for and accomplished was vital for protecting women. Women have never lived with such freedom. I stand behind many of the advances. This book, however, as part of the general 60's feminist philosophy(not the major thinking of the early feminists), I believe has had a destructive effect. Instead of promoting a philosophy that men should be more honest about the power of physical relationships - which would have helped to correct many of the true problems (and thus would have been truly progressive) they encourged women to be just as selfish. This type of thought has pulled us backwards. Their courage faltered when they didn't set the standard that was really needed. The havoc wreaked on the souls of human beings, both those involved in sexuality that professes one thing physically but another spiritually - selfish sexuality - and the children who live in the chaos of these relationships (or non-relationships) is a step back in the progression of the individual who should be moving towards actual love and away from selfishness.

Get it free now. Search Aunt Lee's Library: The Awakening by Kate Chopin

The Woman in White

by Wilkie Collins

1859

Gothic

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

The Guardian's 100 Greatest Novels of All Time

The Greatest Books - The 69th Greatest Fiction Book of All Time

Christina (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

I really wanted to read a novel by Wilkie Collins after reading the Dan Simmons novel Drood where Collins is the narrator. Collins talk a lot about his books and how they compare to Charles Dickens' novels in this book so I wanted to see for myself. I chose The Woman in White since I've heard a lot of good about it. So I got it from the library and I'm so glad I did. I ended up reading more than 350 pages in a day just to figure out what happened (and after having kids, that doesn't happen often).

Collins doesn't waste any time in this novel. The novel begins with Walter Hartright being engaged as a drawing teacher to two young women, residing at Limmeridge House. Afterwards, he walks home from his mother's late at night and meets a strange woman dressed all in white. This woman starts the mystery in this book - on page 23. Walter helps her to get to London where she gets in a cab and drives away. He later overhears two men talking about her and how she has escaped from an insane asylum.

When he arrives at Limmeridge, he gets kind of a shock when he sees the young lady he's supposed to teach how to draw. This young lady, Laura Fairlie, turns out to have a striking resemblance to the woman, Walter met on the road to London. Walter then confides in Laura's half sister, Marian Halcombe, and tells her about the woman in white - especially because the woman mentioned having at one point been happy at Limmeridge House.

Now Marian isn't your typical heroine. She has the most beautiful figure - but an ugly face with a mustache. Marian is almost masculine and spends the entire novel making excuses for her sex. My favorite one: 'Being, however, nothing but a woman, condemned to patience, propriety, and petticoats for life /.../' (p. 198). I'm not quite sure what Collins wanted to say about woman with this novel - yes, Marian is resourceful, intelligent and wonderful - but she's ugly and masculine, almost a man. And Laura, her beautiful sister, is sweet and kind, but weak and without the courage to do much for herself. So his view on women doesn't seem to be too positive - nevertheless, he created a heroine that men lined up to marry when the novel was first published.

Walter of course falls in love with Laura, but unfortunately, Laura is engaged to marry Sir Percival Glyde. Of course, Sir Percival Glyde turns out to be somehow involved with the woman in white - and in fact, she tries to stop Laura from marrying him. But there's no proof that there's something wrong with Sir Percival so even though both Laura and Marian feels something is off, the marriage takes place.

And now the action really goes into overdrive. Who is the woman in white and what is her connection with Sir Percival? What is Sir Percival's secret that he's doing everything in his power to protect? How is Count Fosco involved - besides being Sir Percival's best friend?

I must admit that I just fell under the spell of this novel. The actual secret and much of the plot, is nothing new. But the way Collins does it, just drags you along for an exciting and excellent ride. I really loved this book. There were twists and turns and even though I did guess some of the twists, I was still intrigued enough to just read, read, read. No wonder people where queuing up to get each new installment as they were published weekly originally! I'm glad I didn't have to wait but could just read whenever I could find the time.

This is a epistolary novel. It's written from the points of view of various characters - some have a lot to say (especially the two main characters Walter Hartright and Marian Halcombe). They write journals, diaries, letters, tombstones - and all this comes together and creates a mystery where we are constantly trying to keep up with what's actually happening. We don't know more than the characters do. Writing in this way, gives the character the opportunity of speaking for themselves. We are creating the story out of the various testimonies and eye witness accounts we receive.

I've read some review stating that there are several narrators who are unreliable. And yeah, there are definitely some narrators who don't tell the truth as we get to know it - or at least as we think we know it. But they believe they tell the truth - they tell the truth as they saw it. They are not (all) trying to mislead, they simply don't have all the information we do. For instance, the housekeeper thinks one of the guests in the house is all nice and friendly - and as long as he is kind to her, how should she know otherwise? I know I can't trust all these, but my definition of an unreliable narrator has probably hitherto been that it was someone who was either deliberately trying to mislead or who was influenced by drugs, alcohol or suffering from mental illness. I guess I need to change my definition - since I definitely can't trust all of these! One can even question to what extent it's possible to trust Walter Hardright himself, the main narrator. He gets the chance of a lifetime to dispose of his rival - and the question is whether he takes it or not, whether he tries to save the man or not. Also, he doesn't try to get justice from a legal standpoint. He becomes a regular vigilante and goes after what he thinks is justice. Can we trust what he says? Is he just trying to justify that he took action in this way? As a first-time reader, I at least was so caught up in the plot that I trusted Marian and Walter completely and just read and read and never looked back. I think this novel will benefit greatly from a reread where I'll be more able to look beneath the layers of deceit and look behind all the action to try to discover what's really going on.

Besides being an epistolary novel, this is also generally regarded as the first sensation novel. It combined the 'thrills of Gothic literature with the psychological realism of the domestic novel'. (p. xiii) The scary things from the Gothic novels was suddenly present in the well-known middle-class Victorian England. Home isn't exactly a happy place - which is very true for the characters in this novel. Home is a place where you get poisoned, drugged and insulted. It's not a safe place.

In some ways, this remind me of the movie The Ususal Suspects. When I first saw it, I doubted everything about who Kaiser Soze really was - when I saw it the second time, I had no doubts. If I see it a third time, who knows what I'll think? I think it will be the same with this one - your perception of it will change by where you are in life at the moment, you sit down and read.

Get it free now. Search Aunt Lee's Library: The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

Heart of Darkness

by Joseph Conrad

1903

Fiction -- America

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

Radcliffe's 100 Best Novels

Boston Public Library's list of "The 100 Most Influential Books of the Century"

The Greatest Books - the 40th Greatest Fiction Book of All Time

Aunt Lee : Heart of Darkness is as good a place as any to talk about the wondrous efficacy of the e-reader. Opinions differ in the extreme about what this book means and whether it's actually any good, but all agree that the writing is dense and confusing; all agree that it's something that everybody should read.

Enter the e-reader, which goes a long way to smoothing the difficulties -- one : most e-readers have built-in dictionaries and quick access to online resources, to help out with vocabulary and historic figures and terms. You're much more likely to get the background info you need to understand what's going on if you can do it without getting out of your chair. Two , once the thing has been downloaded to your e-reader, it's always there; you can read short sections of it anytime that your brain is clear. Three , you can highlight passages and make notes -- as many and as lengthy as you like, which can't be done with a paper-and-ink book. You can even copy and paste notes from online sources; your notes are organized and easily accessible from a tab at the beginning of the e-book, organized by date. Four , you can use the e-reader's search feature to refresh your memory on characters and places and quotations.

But then again, what do I, a mere woman, know? Conrad says:

It's queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there had never been anything like it, and never can be. It is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset.

Get it free now. Search Aunt Lee's Library: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Just William

by Richmal Crompton

1922

Humor

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

The Guardian's 1000 Novels Everyone Should Read

Scurra (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

This is a stand-in for the whole Just William series by Richmal Crompton . As with Molesworth , these books are not only really, really funny, but also offer an insight into aspects of the British class system - the subtle distinctions, prejudices and interactions between the different strata of the middle classes (frankly, the working class and aristocrats are virtually absent here.)

And all of this filtered through William's eyes, making perfectly normal social situations into mystifying, suspicious or simply hilarious experiences, with William also able to find the most improbable explanations for the most innocuous events.

And the introduction of Violet Elizabeth Bott also led to one of the great double-acts of English literature - Douglas, Ginger and Henry had to take a back-seat to this magnificent creation.

A glorious evocation of childhood, and subtle social commentary. Fantastic.

Get it free now. Search Aunt Lee's Library: Just William by Richmal Crompton

Roxana the Fortunate Mistress

by Daniel Defoe

1724

Fiction -- English Restoration

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

On Gutenberg Best Books Ever Bookshelf

Kylie W (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

I found this book entertaining. The writing style is a little heavy-going, but overall this is a great romp - especially when compared to other books from the era that consist almost entirely of annoying and heavy-handed moralising.

The basic story is of a woman who marries an absolute pig and has several children by him. After he leaves her and she's sold all her possessions to keep the children alive (right down to the tablecloths) she decides to move in with a lovely bloke and become his mistress. For one reason or another she jumps a few times from one chap to another, but she's ususally pretty nice about it. All the way through the book the voice of the protagonist is "but doom was to befall me for being such an evil whore, as you, dear reader, will see".

This meant that I read it the whole time thinking "but gee, she seems quite nice and she didn't have many choices here". So I personally was very happy when she made it all the way through the book to a ripe old age and her come-uppance (for all her evil ways and moral vices) really happened on the last paragraph, more like an an afterthought: "And then after many happy years, my fortunes were reversed and I died poor and alone" (so don't sleep around boys and girls). It was so silly that it was easy to ignore and think of Roxanna living long and dying happy after the end of the book.

This last paragraph is so ridiculous that it makes me think that Defoe was writing a feminist tract and just put this paragraph at the end so he could get the book published.

Get it free now. Search Aunt Lee's Library: Roxana the Fortunate Mistress by Daniel Defoe

The Diary of a Provincial Lady, free ebooks, ebook, etext

by E. M. Delafield

2011

Humor

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

The Guardian's 1000 Novels Everyone Should Read

Stuck In A Book (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

'This is one of the occasions where expectation has been busy, and is to be abundantly rewarded. Is the Provincial Lady as entertaining as ever? There is no doubt of it. Whatever else may be said about the past few months on the home front, they have been satisfactorily productive of the kind of conservations [sic] and encounters and minor comedies and tragedies which Ms. Delafield's humour delights in. From September onwards her quiet satire plays upon the worthies of village and town, and the experiences which have befallen (it may be) a good many of those who have been endeavouring to give their services to their country in the Emergency. The Provincial Lady succeeded in the end, but it was a queer time until the official mind decided to make use of her talents; and meanwhile she had been filling her sketch-book with studies of Aunt Blanche, Our Vicar's Wife, poor Mrs. Winter-Gammon (who claimed to have been, during the last war, a favourite of Lord Kitchener), the Blowfields, the mysterious but incompetent Monsieur Gitnik, and lots besides who will be seen to have flourished at this period. There they are, doing so in her books, to be our recreation now and the discovery of future readers when the war has receded. Let us hope to look back in some measure of serenity later on, and remind ourselves through these social pages that such were the themes, the rumours, the people of the second half of 1939; that there was a lighter side. And, apart from all that the future will want to know about us, let all those who have recoiled from recent interviews with a sense of injustice - vague, burning or blatant - see how the Provincial Lady made them thoroughly enjoyable, and say, content with the artistic revenge, "Here's my comfort". But sometimes a truly doleful note is struck, which may sound really like the horrors of war. "An attractive pamphlet," says Lady Blowfield, desirous of directing the literary energies of the Provincial Lady, "on the subject of Root Vegetables might do a lot just now." Then there is a Commandant who "lives in description" here so fiercely that some of us may be grateful for past mercies; but presumably the successful conduct of a canteen depends on such displays of energy and dictatorship as the Provincial Lady records with such unheroic candour. Or does it? There are signs of instability about this dictatorship by the fifth week of the War, and the Provincial Lady, when last engaged, appears to be winning the war of nerves. But she finds other people who would be sufficiently difficult to disturb: the old lady, for instance, who arrives at Coxton Hall with a protest. "She was paying a visit in Scotland when National Registration took place and her host and hostess registered her without her knowledge or permission. This resulted in her being issued with a ration book. She does not wish for a ration book. She didn't ask for one, and won't have one." But, naturally, this is a book of countless touches of the kind, and it is clear that the time we have just been living through was one particularly likely to offer Ms. Delafield the "minor calamaties of life" which she presents so easily and wittily. I can scarcely think that The Provincial Lady in Wartime will fail of a big welcome even while we move from day to day under the vast gloom and insistent injuries of this war. We may as well make the best of all the opportunities for cheerfulness and the pleasantly absurd while we can; and so, here is a first-class opportunity.'

Get it free now. Search Aunt Lee's Library: The Diary of a Provincial Lady, free ebooks, ebook, etext by E. M. Delafield

Martin Chuzzlewit

by Charles Dickens

1843

Humor

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

The Guardian's 1000 Novels Everyone Should Read

Lauren (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

Mr. Pecksniff's oily hypocrisy and self-serving behavior know no earthly bounds. Oh, but isn't he a joy to poke fun of. "Martin Chuzzlewit" is a darkly humoresque social commentary on the sort of contagious greed that always seems to surface in particular circumstances - in this case, the declining health of an elderly, and childless, wealthy relative. Who will get to inherit his fortune? Between the rather unsavory lot of family members, which include the aforementioned Pecksniff and his two unmarried (and equally selfish) daughters, a prodigal grandson, a miserly and scheming brother and his quite possibly murderous son, the choice doesn't appear to be a very sensible one whomsoever he chooses. Like most Dickensian novels, it is a rather long one, with so many -albeit richly drawn- characters and subplots, it can get a little confusing at times. If this sort of description intimidates you, I recommend first checking out the brilliant 1994 BBC adaptation available on Netflix. If you want to see Dickens in his element, though, best read the book afterward. A true classic.

Get it free now. Search Aunt Lee's Library: Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens

Sybil, or the Two Nations

by Earl of Beaconsfield Benjamin Disraeli

1845

England -- Fiction

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

On Gutenberg Best Books Ever Bookshelf

Catherine Siemann (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

I have really mixed feelings about this book: on the one hand, how fascinating to read a political novel by an actual politician, who's writing not in his retirement, but as a way of putting across his political platform. On the other hand, his platform, which involves the natural alliance between the working classes and the aristocracy, is idiosyncratic, to say the least. Moreover, Disraeli seems never to have actually met a member of the working classes. There's satire, which is biting and rather delightful, but the bits of the novel that are meant to be serious are so melodramatic and over the top that they're rather funny as well. More here: http://christabel.dreamwidth.org/2112.ht...

Get it free now. Search Aunt Lee's Library: Sybil, or the Two Nations by Earl of Beaconsfield Benjamin Disraeli

The Sign of the Four

by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

1890

Detective and Mystery Stories; English

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

On Gutenberg Best Books Ever Bookshelf

Kirstine (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

I find I prefer the Sherlock Holmes novels to the short-stories. This one was slightly better than A Study in Scarlet, but not at all on level with The Hound of the Baskervilles.

I'm a Sherlock Holmes and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle fan, so disliking any of his work is rather impossible. What I liked best about this story wasn't the plot itself, although it is very interesting and certainly manages to keep your attention, the way these stories usually do (at least in my experience). No, instead I love this story because of what it shows us of the friendship between Holmes and Watson. I've seen a few people comment that this story makes Holmes much more human, and thus more likeable, and to me, this humanity is expressed through his relationship with Watson, their friendly banter, how Holmes clearly relies on Watson as an ally and a friend, and how they seem to know each other better than anyone else. Their friendship is one of my favourite in literary history. Honestly, Holmes plays the violin to help Watson sleep. Isn't that something? To me, this is what makes the story so compelling.

It also introduces the lovely Mary Morstan, Watson's future wife, and I have to admit, she is a lot more amiable in the novel, than in the 2009 adaption. Actually, I really liked her in this story, she was intelligent, intuitive, independent, and very charming. Even Sherlock liked her.

The crime they solve is of course a mystery of proportions, and a very good one at that. It did, however, get a bit boring in the end, when our culprit starts telling his life story. I never quite liked that part, it's too long for my taste, and to be honest I have little interest in the background story, at least not in such great detail. That's one thing Sir Arthur did better in The Hound of the Baskervilles, that story was thrilling from first to last.

Still, a fantastic book, and a great look into the Sherlock Holmes/John Watson relationship.

Get it free now. Search Aunt Lee's Library: The Sign of the Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Ennui

by Maria Edgeworth

1809

Humor

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

The Guardian's 1000 Novels Everyone Should Read

Elizabeth (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

Although the book's stated aim is to teach the reader how to escape from the ennui which afflicts the idle wealthy, it is far more entertaining than its premise suggests. The main character inherits a title, a large fortune, and near-complete absence of supervision at a very young age. He works his way through the usual diversions, from travel to extravagance to gambling without being able to shake off the deadly ennui which keeps creeping up on him. Finally, when seriously injured and taken for dead, he realizes how shallow all those who surround him are and heads off for his Irish estates. There he continues to fight ennui, but eventually gains an interest in life through an interest in his tenants and his neighbors just before an unexpected twist of plot robs him of his material wealth and forces him to start life again--happier than he ever was when wealthy.

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Sidelights on Relativity

by Albert Einstein

2010

Physics * Science

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

Boston Public Library's list of "The 100 Most Influential Books of the Century"

Derek Davis (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

If you want to know anything about the basics of relativity, Einstein's pretty much the only one to read. He brings an unusual and remarkable clarity to his own work without grandstanding.

This short bit combines two lectures from the early 1920s answering some of the inherent queries on his recent work. The first deals with the idea of the "ether" which his work both discredited and, as he shows, retained in its essence. The second shows, remarkably, that you CAN envision a finite unbounded universe. The analogy he uses also hints at the holographic outlook on the universe that popped up some decades later. There was little that Einstein didn't presage in one way or another. There's also in quick side comment that indicates he was not so put off by quantum theory as is sometimes suggested.

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Daniel Deronda

by George Eliot

1876

Fiction -- English 19th Century

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

The Guardian's 100 Greatest Novels of All Time

The Greatest Books - The 167th Greatest Book of All Time

KH (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

Now here's a book that combines two of my very favorite things: classic British romance with - YES! - Jewish themes. No major spoilers, but it is a pretty detailed plot summary, so if you want to be 100% safe, skip to the last two paragraphs.

In the opening scene, we meet Gwendolen Harleth (as in, sounds like "harlot") who is on a winning streak at a roulette table. Observing her is the title character, Daniel Deronda. She feels he is judging her negatively, which disconcerts her, so she begins to lose. Within the next few scenes, he takes a mysterious action which really unnerves her. And that is the last we see of him until Chapter 16.

The story then backtracks to Gwendolen's family life, and this is the part that is most reminiscent of a Jane Austen novel (though Eliot's prose is much denser). Gwendolen's social position is similar to that of the Dashwood girls; she's not rich, but she socializes in the upper class circle of a small country-town. As a character, though, she is more of an anti-heroine than heroine. Like Lydia Bennet, she's out first and foremost for a good time, except she's cleverer and more calculating. She wants admirers, especially male admirers, but then scorns them without caring about how many hearts she breaks. This section of the book is called "The Spoiled Child," and George Eliot paints the hateful portrait in painstaking detail.

Enter Mr. Grandcourt. (Read grand + court = landed gentry.) He's way too suave for Gwendolen to scorn, and her family watches their courtship with eagerness. After all, from a financial standpoint, he's a Good Catch. But even when Gwendolen gets evidence of his rakishness, she finds she can't resist him. They marry.

Then the novel shifts back to Daniel Deronda, a young gentleman with no clear direction. He was a serious scholar at Cambridge and proved himself to be exceptionally kind to his friends, but he lives in the shadow of not knowing who his parents are. Rumor has it that he is the illegitimate son of Sir Hugo Mallinger, the nobleman who raised him. Daniel also believes the rumors, but loves Sir Hugo too much to confront him about it. Meanwhile, Sir Hugo's legal heir is none other than Gwendolen's husband, Mr. Grandcourt.

In a scene I won't dare spoil, Daniel encounters Mirah, a Jewess. She is literally a " tinok she nishbu ," a kidnapped child raised away from Judaism. When Daniel finds her, she is nineteen years old, has escaped her captors, and is in desperate search of her family. Daniel, like Harry Potter, has "a thing about saving people," so he joins in the search, and this leads him into the Jewish communities of London and Frankfurt.

Jews, especially baalei teshuva , will appreciate if not love Chapter 32. It includes the descriptions of the Frankfurt synagogue - taken from Rav Hirsch; I just can't get over it! - and Mirah's passionate declaration to her Christian friends, "I will always cling to my people." Mirah is a bit of a Mary Sue, but she gives voice to the pintele Yid that motivates all us BTs. How in the world did George Eliot know ?

The rest of the novel alternates between scenes of Gwendolen in her souring marriage and scenes with the Jewish characters, which notabley includes a visionary named Mordecai who is preaching religious Zionism. Daniel, with his "thing about saving people," weaves his way through all of their lives. (Comic relief from Daniel's friend, Hans Meyrick.) Naturally, I am partial to the Jewish sections, but from a literary point of view, the portrayal of Gwendolen is the most masterful part of the novel. No character goes through as dramatic a transformation as she.

I must reiterate that George Eliot does not reach Jane Austen in terms of prose style. At times the text is so heavy and full of extraneous detail that I suspected that like Dickens, she was paid by the word. But while Dickens was making it big with Fagin, Eliot was taking on anti-Semitism, not just by creating positive Jewish characters, but by letting her Christian characters work through their prejudices in the course of the novel. That makes her a heroine in my eyes.

Personally, I loved both parts of the book - the British and the Jewish. If you're a fan of either genre, this is a worthwhile read. And if, like me, you're a fan of both, chances are that you'll find in this book a lifetime favorite you'll be happy to immerse yourself in over and over again.

Get it free now. Search Aunt Lee's Library: Daniel Deronda by George Eliot

Uncle Silas

by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

1864

Horror & Ghost Stories

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Charmed Lassie (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

I was kept on the edge of my seat for the duration and it encouraged me to be both more scared and suspicious in everyday life! Essentially, the plot revolves around an orphaned young woman who is sent by her father's will to live with her uncle, Silas Ruthyn. This man has lived in strict seclusion since a stain attached itself to his character many years ago. Lady Monica Knollys, another relation, is extremely worried about protagonist Maud being sent to live with an uncle who will gain her money should she die before the age of twenty-one. It seems she has reason to be.

The plot itself is foreshadowed to the extent that knowing what Silas will eventually attempt is part of the delicious fear that pervades each page. But Le Fanu doesn't rely solely on a sensational plot. He also creates some memorable and vivid characters. My post last week talked about Madame de la Rougierre, Maud's governess, but Silas himself is a worthy creation. This is the first view we get of him:

A face like marble, with a fearful monumental look, and, for an old man, singularly vivid strange eyes, the singularity of which rather grew upon me as I looked; for his eyebrows were still black, though his hair descended from his temples in long locks of the purest silver and fine as silk, nearly to his shoulders. (p187)

A few lines later, Maud adds to herself:

I know I can't convey in words an idea of this apparition, drawn as it seemed in black and white, venerable, bloodless, fiery-eyed, with its singular look of power, and an expression so bewildering - was it derision, or anguish, or cruelty, or patience? (p188)

That's quite a question. More than that, it's quite a face. Le Fanu is adept at portraying figures so entirely memorable that they will stay with me for some time. Silas's children, Milly and Dudley, are identified by their 'country bumpkin' ways but are markedly different. Neighbour and worker, Meg Hawkes, is another outstanding character who assists the plot in unexpected ways. Lady Knollys always seems a lot younger than she is - which is Le Fanu's intention - and makes a welcome change from the darkness on occasion. Maud, however, seems to me the weakest character. Her rebellions against the fate her uncle has in mind are fairly weak and she fulfils the stereotype of the innocent young woman as victim. That's a typical sensation fiction plot device and shouldn't necessarily be seen to Le Fanu's detriment. Some of his other female characters - Madame de la Rougierre, Lady Knollys and Meg Hawkes - prove that he doesn't always place woman into this 'helpless' category. Maud had to be relatively helpless to facilitate the plot but she does have an underlying motivation in accepting her move to her uncle's property: she is staying true to her deceased father's wishes for her.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It's a spine-tingling read that doesn't entertain pretensions to grandeur.

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History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

by Henry Fielding

1749

Humor

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

The Guardian's 1000 Novels Everyone Should Read

Kate (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

If a crazed literature professor ever holds a gun to your head and threatens to pull the trigger if you don't read one of two interminable, gazillion-page satirical British novels (that would be Vanity Fair of the 19th Century or Tom Jones of the 18th Century), I recommend you choose Tom Jones. Tom Jones is more original (some say it's the first modern novel), 'way funnier than VF, and even has a few naughty bits to make you giggle--though tame by modern standards. To read Vanity Fair, you need to brush up your Napoleonic Wars. For Tom Jones, you need to brush up just a bit on your Jacobites, and that conflict isn't quite so central to the story, so, in that way, Tom Jones is a bit less work. Vanity Fair really is about vanity. Tom Jones is about human nature, as Fielding reminds you again and again in his amusing "blowhard author" introductions to each of the books in the novel. If you think, reading these introductions, that they are ridiculous and irrelevant and you don't want to read them, Fielding gives you a pass, saying in one of the early introductions that they are indeed ridiculous and superfluous to the story and you don't have to read them if you don't want to. He also has a passage of a physician opining unintelligibly about a patient that could be coming out of the mouth of a 21st century physician opining unintelligibly about a patient. One of the hallmarks of a classic is timelessness. This book is timeless, and, for the most part, hilarious.

Get it free now. Search Aunt Lee's Library: History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding

Bouvard and Pecuchet / A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life

by Gustave Flaubert

1881

Humor

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

The Guardian's 1000 Novels Everyone Should Read

Josh (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

What does it mean to want to write, as Flaubert famously did, a book about nothing? If Bouvard and Pecuchet is any answer, it might be the attempt to move what we think of as fiction out of the province of princesses and Wutherings and so on, and move it into the drawing room of a pair of incidental little clerks - much the same way that Larry David/Jerry Seinfeld made us realize that spending a day trapped in a parking garage was as suitable a subject for a sitcom as, for example, having an alien Robin Williams as a foster son. As Tolstoy and Gombrowicz both show, art is a continual act of debunking/rebunking: artists look at what they see as the current artistic agenda, then cry Not The Truth, then proceed to give us another set of fictions. This is all to the good - but a compressed study of all these motions (one similar to the vast exercised undertaken by Flaubert's two heroes) does seem to inevitably lead to a view of the enterprise that is paradoxically both flattened and enriched. This is what I learn from reading Bouvard and Pecuchet: not that all human activity is useless, but that all human activity is essentially the expression of a reflex as simple as the flailing of an amoeba's pseudopod. As such it is more lovable, to me at least, than tragic. I mean, who doesn't eventually become endeared to these two? And yet you are reading a book as deeply patient as The Castle (patience, which Kafka called "the only virtue). Reading this kind of book (like reading B&P's great contemporary successor, Roberto Bolano's 2666) is a discipline, as ridiculously entertaining as it is eventually decentering. What it teaches us - what it has taught me, I think - is as trite and true as an Aerosmith lyric. Life is a journey, not a destination. Or an oasis of suffering in a desert of despair. Or it's just incredibly funny. In any event, you will never get it. As a manual, B&P excels, since it shows how to fill a life that is suffused with this recognition with purpose and joy.

Get it free now. Search Aunt Lee's Library: Bouvard and Pecuchet / A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life by Gustave Flaubert

A Room with a View

by E. M. Forster

1908

Fiction --English 20th Century

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Aunt Lee : Guys. if you plan to fall in love and marry the woman of your dreams, you must read this book; it will help with the mystery of us. There are things we say that we want you to say and probably at some level think that we want but will freak out and reject you if you do say them, and there are other things that we really do absolutely want from you, AND, AND, AND, there are things that only gay guys understand about us but that you can approximate.

Okay, if you say all but the last sentence of this speech to us, you will get the girl, but the last line will blow it.

Next, I meet you together, and find him protecting and teaching you and your mother to be shocked, when it was for YOU to settle whether you were shocked or no. Cecil all over again. He daren't let a woman decide. He's the type who's kept Europe back for a thousand years. Every moment of his life he's forming you, telling you what's charming or amusing or ladylike, telling you what a man thinks womanly; and you, you of all women, listen to his voice instead of to your own. So it was at the Rectory, when I met you both again; so it has been the whole of this afternoon. Therefore--not 'therefore I kissed you,' because the book made me do that, and I wish to goodness I had more self-control. I'm not ashamed. I don't apologize. But it has frightened you, and you may not have noticed that I love you. Or would you have told me to go, and dealt with a tremendous thing so lightly?"

Okay, this exchange has extremely important truths in it, that basically necessitated a gay guy to actually compose so that we can all understand it. Unfortunately, even though we girls think we want you to give us this whole speech, again, if you do we will giggle and bolt. Don't say "come to me as you came in the spring" but DO say, "I want you to have your own thoughts even when I hold you in my arms."

Lucy thought of a very good remark.

"You say Mr. Vyse wants me to listen to him, Mr. Emerson. Pardon me for suggesting that you have caught the habit."

And he took the shoddy reproof and touched it into immortality. He said:

"Yes, I have," and sank down as if suddenly weary. "I'm the same kind of brute at bottom. This desire to govern a woman--it lies very deep, and men and women must fight it together before they shall enter the garden. But I do love you surely in a better way than he does." He thought. "Yes--really in a better way. I want you to have your own thoughts even when I hold you in my arms," He stretched them towards her. "Lucy, be quick--there's no time for us to talk now--come to me as you came in the spring, and afterwards I will be gentle and explain. I have cared for you since that man died. I cannot live without you, 'No good,' I thought; 'she is marrying some one else'; but I meet you again when all the world is glorious water and sun. As you came through the wood I saw that nothing else mattered. I called. I wanted to live and have my chance of joy."

Okay - a brilliant gay writer wrote this scene -- he understands us girls, the romance we think we crave, the words we think we want from you, and this scene is perfect in a book, but if you actually talk like this to a real woman it won't work for you. Just take the essential truth from it - we want you to want us to have our own thoughts even when you hold us in your arms. Really, if you can get that concept in your head and have it come out in your own words at some point, you will be golden.

Get it free now. Search Aunt Lee's Library: A Room with a View by E. M. Forster

The Golden Bough

by James George Frazer

1890

Mythology

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

Boston Public Library's list of "The 100 Most Influential Books of the Century"

The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion is a wide-ranging, comparative study of mythology and religion, written by Scottish anthropologist Sir James George Frazer (1854-1941). It first was published in two volumes in 1890; the third edition, published 1906-15, comprised twelve volumes. It was aimed at a broad literate audience raised on tales as told in such publications as Thomas Bulfinch's The Age of Fable, or Stories of Gods and Heroes (1855). It offered a modernist approach to discussing religion, treating it dispassionately as a cultural phenomenon rather than from a theological perspective. The impact of The Golden Bough on contemporary European literature was substantial.

Its influence on the emerging discipline of anthropology was pervasive and undeniable. For example, Bronislaw Malinowski, stricken with tuberculosis shortly after receiving his doctorate in physics and mathematics, read Frazer's work in the original English to distract himself from his illness. "No sooner had I read this great work than I became immersed in it and enslaved by it. I realized then that anthropology, as presented by Sir James Frazer, is a great science, worthy of as much devotion as any of her elder and more exact studies and I became bound to the service of Frazerian anthropology."

Despite whatever controversy the work may have generated, and its critical reception amongst other scholars, The Golden Bough had a tremendous effect on the literature of the period. Robert Graves adapted Frazer's concept of the dying king who is sacrificed for the good of the kingdom to the romantic idea of the poet's necessary suffering for the sake of his Muse-Goddess in his Frazer-esque book on poetry, rituals, and myths The White Goddess, which was published in 1948. William Butler Yeats makes reference to it in his poem "Sailing to Byzantium". H. P. Lovecraft mentions the book in his short story "The Call of Cthulhu". T. S. Eliot acknowledged indebtedness to Frazer in his first note to his poem The Waste Land. William Carlos Williams references it as well in Book Two, part two, of his extended poem in five books Paterson. Sigmund Freud, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, D. H. Lawrence, Aleister Crowley, Ezra Pound, William Gaddis, Mary Renault, Joseph Campbell, Roger Zelazny, Haruki Murakami, Naomi Mitchison (in her The Corn King and the Spring Queen), and Camille Paglia are but a few authors deeply influenced by The Golden Bough. Its literary impact has given it continued life, even as its direct influence in anthropology has waned.

Wikipedia contributors. "The Golden Bough." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 14 Mar. 2012. Web. 27 Mar. 2012.

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Mary Barton

by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

1848

Fiction -- English 19th Century

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

On Gutenberg Best Books Ever Bookshelf

Jessica (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

Mary Barton is a wonderful failure of a novel, in all of the classic Victorian ways-the love plot is overwrought, the ending is melodramatic, the moralizing is far too heavy, and the epigraphs are obnoxious. But, somehow, in the middle of all those problems, Elizabeth Gaskell manages to capture perfectly something important. Mary Barton is a "Condition of England" novel, a meditation on the plight of Manchester cotton weavers in the depression of the early 1840's. This is the Manchester of Freidrich Engels, where people live in squalor so deep that it surpasses comprehension. Engels, however, in what I've read from his account, utterly dehumanizes the people he examines. The citizens of his Manchester slums almost literally become their own excrement. Gaskell, on the other hand, has faced an onslaught of criticism for her "tidy" Manchester. Her very "tidiness" though, makes her message more effective. She cuts away the filth, but not the starvation or disease that haunted Manchester. She suppresses the reality only enough to draw out sympathy from an audience who understood child mortality, say, in a way that they didn't understand inadequate sewage systems. She denies the terror of Manchester life only enough to make it more imaginable. Gaskell's Manchester is, at its surface, a relentlessly didactic world-a constant circle of learning one's Christian Duty-but the didacticism is founded on something that, somehow, seems more genuinely human than anything Dickens or Eliot ever manage to find.

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The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

by Edward Gibbon

1776

Rome

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Here's a section from Edward Gibbon's less-famous autobiographical work, Memoirs of My Life and Writings (subtitled Journey of a History SuperGeek); if the writing and the topic appeal to you, you may also enjoy his histories of Rome:

My first introduction to the historic scenes, which have since engaged so many years of my life, must be ascribed to an accident. In the summer of 1751, I accompanied my father on a visit to Mr. Hoare's, in Wiltshire; but I was less delighted with the beauties of Stourhead, than with discovering in the library a common book, the Continuation of Echard's Roman History, which is indeed executed with more skill and taste than the previous work. To me the reigns of the successors of Constantine were absolutely new; and I was immersed in the passage of the Goths over the Danube, when the summons of the dinner-bell reluctantly dragged me from my intellectual feast. This transient glance served rather to irritate than to appease my curiosity; and as soon as I returned to Bath I procured the second and third volumes of Howel's History of the World, which exhibit the Byzantine period on a larger scale. Mahomet and his Saracens soon fixed my attention; and some instinct of criticism directed me to the genuine sources.

Simon Ockley, an original in every sense, first opened my eyes; and I was led from one book to another, till I had ranged round the circle of Oriental history. Before I was sixteen, I had exhausted all that could be learned in English of the Arabs and Persians, the Tartars and Turks; and the same ardour urged me to guess at the French of D'Herbelot, and to construe the barbarous Latin of Pocock's Abulfaragius. Such vague and multifarious reading could not teach me to think, to write, or to act; and the only principle that darted a ray of light into the indigested chaos, was an early and rational application to the order of time and place. The maps of Cellarius and Wells imprinted in my mind the picture of ancient geography: from Stranchius I imbibed the elements of chronology: the Tables of Helvicus and Anderson, the Annals of Usher and Prideaux, distinguished the connection of events, and engraved the multitude of names and dates in a clear and indelible series. But in the discussion of the first ages I overleaped the bounds of modesty and use. In my childish balance I presumed to weigh the systems of Scaliger and Petavius, of Marsham and Newton, which I could seldom study in the originals; and my sleep has been disturbed by the difficulty of reconciling the Septuagint with the Hebrew computation. I arrived at Oxford with a stock of erudition, that might have puzzled a doctor, and a degree of ignorance, of which a school-boy would have been ashamed.

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Herland

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

1915

Science Fiction

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Rob (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

In theory, this has the same flaws that made Woman on the Edge of Time such a slog for me: a feminist utopian vision that beats you over the head with its didacticism, no matter how right that didactic point may be. But I actually found myself enjoying Herland quite a bit. Gilman's book really has to be read as a feminist satire of the brave-male-explorers-go-off-into-the-jungle subgenre of adventure novels, where our three hapless heroes are powerless against a tribe of women. The women of Herland are strangely desexed, androgynous figures completely lacking any kind of sexuality except for a frantic desire for motherhood. Gilman's feminist politics are alternately powerful and hopelessly conflicted and compromised, making this an interestingly uneven book from a historical perspective, capturing the contradictions of an age (or perhaps just a prominent writer). And it may just be because of brevity, but it feels a lot more fun than some of the utopian feminist novels that would come later. Not without its problems, but still heartily recommended.

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The Vicar of Wakefield

by Oliver Goldsmith

1766

Fiction -- Ireland

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Pamela (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

A curious book. I honestly didn't know what to expect. However, as I read the outrageous twists and turns of fate of Doctor Primrose (the titular vicar) and his family, I couldn't help but think that everything was meant satirically, and not as a true sentimental novel, with heaving bosoms, last-minute pardons, etc., etc. (although those do make appearances!). Everything is so absolutely over-the-top, and the vicar himself so very out of touch with the world and, at times, with rationality, that I can't help but think that we are meant to laugh at him and his rather silly, stupid family. They fall for every scheme thrown in their path, lap up the praises of every villain and scoundrel in the neighborhood. I'm not at all familiar with Goldsmith's writing, but I do hope to readShe Stoops to Conquer. Perhaps the most difficult part of the book (aside from the VERY lengthy harangues on politics, liberty, philosophy, and those other ones I am not ashamed to say I paged over) is that it's difficult to tell how you, the reader are supposed to take the story. Is it at face value, or is it as satire? A little mystery is a good thing, but obscurity is quite another. I'm too confused to say whether I would recommend this or not.

Wikipedia: The Vicar of Wakefield is a novel by Irish author Oliver Goldsmith. It was written in 1761 and 1762, and published in 1766, and was one of the most popular and widely read 18th-century novels among Victorians. The novel is mentioned in George Eliot's Middlemarch, Jane Austen's Emma, Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities and David Copperfield, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Sarah Grand's The Heavenly Twins, Charlotte Bronte's The Professor and Villette, Louisa May Alcott's Little Women and in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, as well as his Dichtung und Wahrheit.

In literary history books the Vicar of Wakefield is often described as a sentimental novel, which displays the belief in the innate goodness of human beings. But it can also be read as a satire on the sentimental novel and its values, as the vicar's values are apparently not compatible with the real "sinful" world. It is only with Sir William Thornhill's help that he can get out of his calamities. Moreover, an analogy can be drawn between Mr. Primrose's suffering and the Book of Job. This is particularly relevant to the question of why evil exists.

Wikipedia contributors. "The Vicar of Wakefield." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 28 Jan. 2012. Web. 22 Mar. 2012.

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Oblomov

by Goncharov, Ivan Aleksandrovich

1915

Humor

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

The Guardian's 1000 Novels Everyone Should Read

Alun Williams - http://www.alunw.freeuk.com/ (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

My mother frequently used to accuse me of being "like Oblomov" when I was a teenager, and probably later on as well, so when I came across Oblomov in my father's attic this year, I thought I should read the book at last.

It is the only book I can recall reading where the main character is still in bed 40 pages in, and still not washed and dressed when he falls asleep again at about page 100 (despite the scoldings from his faithful but truculent man-servant Zakhar who is perhaps the most entertaining character in the book)!

But later on Oblomov is briefly roused from his torpor by a young woman with whom he falls in love. This was the most enjoyable part of the book for me, for the insight it gives into the social mores of mid 19th-century Russia. I think feminists would find the portrayal of Olga very interesting - as she tries to escape some of the constraints of the time. However, even love cannot keep Oblomov awake for long, and eventually Olga realises this and they part. Oblomov sinks definitively into lethargy, and yet finds some kind of happiness with a degrading marriage to his land-lady.

I found the book very uneven: a long section, ostensibly a dream, narrating Oblomov's childhood at his estate Oblomovka might have benefited from some pruning. One of the book's other main characters, is Stolz, perhaps Oblomov's only true male friend, who first introduces Olga to him,. and then later marries her himself. Energetic and industrious, like his German father, he is clearly intended as a counter-point to Oblomov, but he is an artistic failure and I found it necessary to skip some of the passages towards the end describing his life with Olga.

Nevertheless this is certainly a book well worth reading, and which is deservedly considered a classic of Russian literature.

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Creatures That Once Were Men

by Maxim Gorky

1905

Philosophy

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From introduction by G.K. Chesterton: "Gorky is preeminently Russian, in that he is a revolutionist; not because most Russians are revolutionists (for I imagine that they are not), but because most Russians -- indeed, nearly all Russian -- are in that attitude of mind which makes revolution possible, and which makes religion possible, an attitude of primary and dogmatic assertion. To be a revolutionist it is first necessary to be a revelationist. It is necessary to believe in the sufficiency of some theory of the universe or the State. But in countries that have come under the influence of what is called the evolutionary idea, there has been no dramatic righting of wrongs, and (unless the evolutionary idea loses its hold) there never will be. These countries have no revolution, they have to put up with an inferior and largely fictitious thing which they call progress."

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The Diary of a Nobody

by George Grossmith & Weedon Grossmith

1892

Humor

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Scott (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

Bumbling Charles Pooter's memoir of timeless suburban angst The Diary of a Nobody (1892) remains remarkably modern and amusing even a century after it was first printed in Punch. Pooter can't understand his son's slang or dismal work ethic ... his wife is spellbound by new age spiritualism ... his friends continually clean out his larder and drain his wine bottles without reciprocating ... the plumbing doesn't work ... the neighbors throw garbage into his garden ... and fate seems determined to insult and embarrass the stodgy old Pooter at every turn. And yet you can't help but like him as he strives to retain his dignity, grace, and composure in the face of life's small yet annoying trials. Best read a few pages at a time, the Diary offers wonderful comic relief when read along with heavier contemporary novels.

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Far From the Madding Crowd

by Thomas Hardy

1874

Fiction -- English 19th Century

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bookyeti (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

Forget the infamous "love triangle"

In Far from the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy introduces us to the precarious "love square". At the core of all the turmoil is beautiful farm girl, Bathsheba Everdene - spirited, vain, intelligent and adept at toying with the hearts of men.

Inevitably beguiled by her charms a humble and kind farmer, Gabriel Oak, fervently attempts to win Bathsheba's affections. Enter the competition: (suitor#2) Farmer Boldwood - a wealthy and temperate middle-aged man respected in the community, eventually plunges into maniacal obsession at the mere possibility of making the beloved Miss Everdene his wife; and (suitor#3) Sergeant Francis Troy - a dashing young philandering soldier, with his share of inner demons, ruthlessness and vanity, vies for Bathsheba's hand in marriage. Bathsheba's ultimate decision, and the cataclysm it evokes, lies at the epicenter of Hardy's unforgettable ambivalent story.

Far from the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy's fourth novel, saw publication in 1874 and earned him widespread popularity as a writer. A delicately woven tale of unrequited love and regret, set in the mid-19th century, Far From the Madding Crowd is a masterpiece of pure story-telling. Hardy's classic style is a pleasure to read as he masterfully brings his characters and their dealings to life.

I would not hesitate to say it definitely captured my heart as another favourite.

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The Prisoner of Zenda

by Anthony Hope

1894

Adventure and Adventurers

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Sarah Sammis (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

The Prisoner of Zenda is one of those books I've been meaning to read for about twenty years. Over the Thanksgiving holiday I finally took the time to read this classic adventure written by Anthony Hope in 1894.

The Prisoner of Zenda brings the fairy tale of Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper (1888) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1893-4) into the adventure genre for adults. Anthony Hope's story of a king kidnapped on the eve of his coronation and his English cousin who takes his place is derring-do at its best.

Sure the story has been done over and over again but that's because the story is so entertaining. It was written at at time before two world wars forever altered the map of Europe. Ruritania exists in a time when it was possible to still imagine tiny kingdoms and principalities tucked among the better known countries. Think of Ruritania existing along side the duchy of Luxembourg and the principality of Monaco.

The hero and narrator of Zenda is twenty-nine year Rudolf Rassendyll who shares a name and certain physical features with soon to be crowned Rudolph IV of Ruritania. Unfortunately for all those involved, Rudolph IV is an idiot and easily falls prey to a plot to take the crown away from him and possibly end his life. To keep things in check while the king can be found and rescued, Rudolf Rassendyll must play the king.

Throughout the narrative Rassendyll gives amusing commentary on politics and the responsibilities of leadership. All the while he is putting himself in harms way both in his portrayal of the king and in trying to rescue Rudolf IV.

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Tom Brown's School Days

by Thomas Hughes

1857

Juvenile Fiction

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Tom Brown's School Days (1857) is a novel by Thomas Hughes. The story is set at Rugby School, a public school for boys, in the 1830s; Hughes attended Rugby School from 1834 to 1842. The novel has been the source for several film and television adaptations in the 20th century.

The novel was originally published as being "by an Old Boy of Rugby", and much of it is based on the author's experiences. Tom Brown is largely based on the author's brother, George Hughes; and George Arthur, another of the book's main characters, is generally believed to be based on Arthur Penrhyn Stanley. The fictional Tom's life also resembles the author's in that the culminating event of his school career was a cricket match.

Tom Brown's School Days was tremendously influential on the genre of British school novels, which began in the 19th century, and led to St. Trinians, Billy Bunter's Greyfriars, Mr Chips' Brookfield, and Hogwarts. It is one of the few still in print from its time. A sequel, Tom Brown at Oxford, was published in 1861 but is not as well known. Tom's principal enemy at Rugby is the bully Flashman. The 20th-century writer George MacDonald Fraser would feature the grown-up Flashman in a series of successful historical novels. Wikipedia contributors. "Tom Brown's School Days." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 12 Mar. 2012. Web. 28 Mar. 2012.

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Crome Yellow

by Aldous Huxley

1921

Fiction --English 20th Century

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Louise (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

Aldous Huxley his first novel, Crome Yellow in 1921. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that the novel was "the highest point so far attained by Anglo-Saxon sophistication" and that Huxley was "the wittiest man now writing in English".

Crome Yellow brought Huxley instant fame but upset his friends who appeared in the novel. This included Dora Carrington (Mary Bracegirdle). In the novel Huxley recreated his many discussions with Carrington. She explained what she was looking for in a man: "It must be somebody intelligent, somebody with intellectual interests that I can share. And it must be somebody with a proper respect for women, somebody who's prepared to talk seriously about his work and his ideas and about my work and my ideas. It isn't, as you see, at all easy to find the right person."

Ottoline Morrell felt betrayed by Huxley for writing about her in Crome Yellow. The character, Priscilla Wimbush, was described as having a "large square middle-aged face, with a massive projecting nose and little greenish eyes, the whole surmounted by a lofty and elaborate coiffure of a curiously improbable shade of orange." Ottoline was also furious about his rude and unfunny descriptions of her friends, Dorothy Brett, Dora Carrington, Bertram Russell and Mark Gertler. She told Huxley that his book reminded her of "poor photography".

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The Ambassadors

by Henry James

1903

Fiction -- America

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oh_pete (Amazon review reprinted by kind permission of author)

THE AMBASSADORS demands more effort and concentration from the reader than probably any other novel written by an American. But the payoff is worth the effort, however we may begrudge James' frustratingly and intentionally thick prose. James does indeed describe intense human situations in great depth and detail: duty, honor, nostalgia; the contrast between the starchy-collared stiffness of Brahmin Boston (read: America) contrasted with the joie de vivre of Paris (read: Europe); how difficult certain of life's choices can be. These are just a few themes that make this book worthwhile. James' America is young and trying to assert itself (and so takes itself too seriously); his Europe is old and satisfied (and perhaps doesn't take itself seriously enough).

Lambert Strether, a fiftysomething turn-of-the-20th-century bourgeois Bostonian gentleman on an aristocratic lady's errand--she will not marry him until he convinces her son Chad to return to Massachusetts. We see his struggle with his uncomfortable position when he realizes Chad is no longer a spoiled young prep-schooler, but a young gentleman of increasing refinement and self-awareness. And if Strether is anything, by the way, he is one of the most supremely self-aware characters in literary history. Once that Paris air starts to play its magic with Strether himself, we are off to the races. Keeping in mind, of course, that with James' prose we are racing with tortoises. James invites us to ponder how many chances a person truly gets in this life to reinvent his or her self? And if we get the chance, do we always take it? How much should we weigh the consequences before we decide? How much are we willing to accept them after we have chosen?

For similar themes with clearer, faster-paced, and wittier prose, try Edith Wharton's marvelous homage to James, THE AGE OF INNOCENCE.

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Pragmatism

by William James

1907

Philosophy

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From the book: Lecture I. The Present Dilemma in Philosophy

In the preface to that admirable collection of essays of his called 'Heretics,' Mr. Chesterton writes these words: "There are some people--and I am one of them--who think that the most practical and important thing about a man is still his view of the universe. We think that for a landlady considering a lodger, it is important to know his income, but still more important to know his philosophy. We think that for a general about to fight an enemy, it is important to know the enemy's numbers, but still more important to know the enemy's philosophy. We think the question is not whether the theory of the cosmos affects matters, but whether, in the long run, anything else affects them."

I think with Mr. Chesterton in this matter. I know that you, ladies and gentlemen, have a philosophy, each and all of you, and that the most interesting and important thing about you is the way in which it determines the perspective in your several worlds. You know the same of me. And yet I confess to a certain tremor at the audacity of the enterprise which I am about to begin. For the philosophy which is so important in each of us is not a technical matter; it is our more or less dumb sense of what life honestly and deeply means. It is only partly got from books; it is our individual way of just seeing and feeling the total push and pressure of the cosmos. I have no right to assume that many of you are students of the cosmos in the class-room sense, yet here I stand desirous of interesting you in a philosophy which to no small extent has to be technically treated. I wish to fill you with sympathy with a contemporaneous tendency in which I profoundly believe, and yet I have to talk like a professor to you who are not students. Whatever universe a professor believes in must at any rate be a universe that lends itself to lengthy discourse. A universe definable in two sentences is something for which the professorial intellect has no use. No faith in anything of that cheap kind! I have heard friends and colleagues try to popularize philosophy in this very hall, but they soon grew dry, and then technical, and the results were only partially encouraging. So my enterprise is a bold one. The founder of pragmatism himself recently gave a course of lectures at the Lowell Institute with that very word in its title-flashes of brilliant light relieved against Cimmerian darkness! None of us, I fancy, understood ALL that he said--yet here I stand, making a very similar venture.

I risk it because the very lectures I speak of DREW--they brought good audiences. There is, it must be confessed, a curious fascination in hearing deep things talked about, even tho neither we nor the disputants understand them. We get the problematic thrill, we feel the presence of the vastness. Let a controversy begin in a smoking-room anywhere, about free-will or God's omniscience, or good and evil, and see how everyone in the place pricks up his ears. Philosophy's results concern us all most vitally, and philosophy's queerest arguments tickle agreeably our sense of subtlety and ingenuity.

Believing in philosophy myself devoutly, and believing also that a kind of new dawn is breaking upon us philosophers, I feel impelled, per fas aut nefas, to try to impart to you some news of the situation.

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Critique of Pure Reason

by Immanuel Kant

1781

Philosophy

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Aunt Lee :

Here's the deal: if you're young, you can download this important, impossibly dense book onto your e-reader and promise yourself you'll read bits of it along the way. E-readers are great for reading complex books - you can make notes to yourself, use the dictionary to look up words, use the internet search function to look up terms, develop an impossibly dense variegated highlighting color scheme. When you come back to it over the years, you'll have good notes to get you back into gear.

If you're middle-aged, you can download this important, impossibly dense book onto your e-reader and read bits of it as mental aerobics -- stretching your mind in middle age is supposedly good for keeping away the senility monster. You may be sufficiently prosperous to afford the many companion volumes available.

It's entirely possible that you are the next great philosopher and that reading Kant will kick-start something in you that will eventually change the world as we know it. Me, I got a headache just trying to read the Wikipedia entry.

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Just So Stories

by Rudyard Kipling

1902

Short Stories

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Dorothy Sayers assumes you've read this...

Tom (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

The book that made me fall in love with storytelling. I still have my mother's hardbound edition, with marvelous color plates, published in the 20s. Kipling may have been a romantic apologist for the British Empire, but the man knew how to weave a spell in children's stories, and he can be quite playful and inventive with language. Just read the first line of any number of stories and you'll immediately understand his timeless appeal. My favorites are from The Cat that Walked by Himself -- "Here and attend and listen; for this befell and became and behappened and was, O my best beloved, when the tame animals were wild." The rhythm is absolutely hypnotic! My other favorite is from The Elephant's Trunk -- "In the high and far off times, O my best beloved, the elephant had no trunk."

These stories are just as delightful for adults as they are for children. (I'm 53 and never tire of rereading them!)

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The Princess of Cleves

by Madame de Lafayette

1678

French literature

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Catherine Delors (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

One of the finest literary works ever written in French is a historical novel, La Princesse de Cleves, published in 1678. I first read it in high school, because it was part of the curriculum. Truth be told, I found the Princesse rather dry and uninspiring at the time.

And then one night, many years later, I flew to France from California and was suffering from a bad case of jetlag. I rose and went to the bookshelves in my aunt and uncle's home, searching for something to while away the hours that still separated me from daylight. I happened upon La Princesse de Cleves, and began reading.

And I was amazed! I was a grown woman now and I found the story of the heroine heartbreaking.

The plot is very simple: a young noblewoman, Mademoiselle de Chartres, marries the Prince de Cleves, a man she esteems and respects but does not love. This is not a forced marriage as was all too often the case then, not even an arranged marriage.

Madame de Chartres, the heroine's mother, is a caring parent, though she is also ambitious and wants the best possible match for her daughter. The husband, the Prince de Cleves, is a completely decent man, very much in love with his young bride. What is tragic thing here is that the heroine does not even suspect that something is missing from her marriage. She is, in a way, happy in her naivete.

Her peaceful universe collapses when she meets, and falls passionately in love with the dashing Duc de Nemours. She is torn between her passion and her high religious and moral standards. I said earlier that Princess is a historical. It has all the makings of one. The setting is the French Court in the 16th century, during the final years of the reign of Henri II. The author lived 120 years later and thoroughly researched the era of the Renaissance.

The Princesse herself is fictional, but many historical characters appear in the novel: Queen Catherine de Medici, her fearsome rival, the King's mistress, Diane de Poitiers, Duchesse de Valentinois, and Mary Queen of Scots. Young Marie Stuart was then married to the Dauphin, future Francois II and was known as La Reine Dauphine. The intrigues and shifting alliances between the followers of these three powerful women form a complex web that surrounds the heroine.

I will simply translate the first sentence of the novel: "Magnificence and chivalry have never appeared in France with such brilliance as in the last years of the reign of Henri Second."

You read the rest...

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The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillana

by Le Sage, Alain Rene

1715

Humor

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Aunt Lee :

Searching for reviews of this book on literary blogs, I found its existence on many lists of books intended to be read but not much in the way of anyone actually reading and reviewing it. Make of that what we will, here is a bit from Wikipedia on the topic:

Gil Blas (French: L'Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane) is a picaresque novel by Alain-Rene Lesage published between 1715 and 1735. It is considered to be the last masterpiece of the picaresque genre.

Gil Blas is related to Lesage's play Turcaret (1709). In both works, Lesage uses witty valets in the service of thieving masters, women of questionable morals, cuckolded yet happy husbands, gourmands, ridiculous poets, false savants, and dangerously ignorant doctors to make his point. Each class and each occupation becomes an archetype.

In a letter to William Dean Howells (July 5, 1875), Mark Twain tells of just completing the manuscript for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (written in third-person) and deciding against taking Tom into adulthood: to do so, he says, "would be fatal . . . in any shape but autobiographically--like Gil Blas." Walter Blair (Mark Twain and Huck Finn) thus concludes that Twain's new novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which, picaresque-like, "would run its protagonist 'through life,' had to be written in the first person; Gil Blas was the model."

Wikipedia contributors. "Gil Blas." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 24 Feb. 2012. Web. 31 Mar. 2012.

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The Monk; A Romance

by M. G. Lewis

1796

Gothic

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Aunt Lee

I read the final pages of this gothic insanity as the clock struck midnight on December 31, and cries and explosions were heard throughout the city.

Since its publication in 1796, this lurid gothic novel has inspired intense critical and popular praise and criticism; famously, Samuel Coleridge commented, "the Monk is a romance, which if a parent saw in the hands of a son or daughter, he might reasonably turn pale."

And that's still true! Reviewing the thing requires a delicate balancing -- I want to pique and entice you to read it without over-picquing to the point that you research it on Wikipedia and then read the thing knowing too much about it. I read it without knowing much beforehand, and I'm telling you: this is a book you should read and this is a book you should read without knowing in advance its weird dark twists.

You'll thank me later. In fact, after you've read it, go to http://www.mobileread.com/ , and we'll discuss it.

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A Voyage to Arcturus

by David Lindsay

1920

Science Fiction

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Erik Graff (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

The Scottish writer David Lindsay died in 1945. He is usually regarded as a fantasy writer. While he wrote a great deal, most of his works have been hard to find, out-of-print, neglected. Voyage to Arcturus is the exception, having become a bit of a cult classic and reprinted again and again in paperback editions.

The title suggests science fiction. It is not. Arcturus is a device, a metaphysical stage, arrived at through mediumship, not spacecraft. The book is a modern Pilgrim's Progress, a moral parable, a snare and, until the last few pages, a deception. Lindsay was, at best, a pedestrian writer, incapable of concrete characterization. In Voyage, however, there are no persons in any ordinary sense after the first few pages. The characters are principles, points of view. The path of the protagonist is transformative and darkly revelatory.

One is reminded of another metaphysical fiction, another modern Pilgrim's Progress, viz. C.S. Lewis' Perelandra trilogy. But while Lewis is defending the establishment, retelling the biblical tale in modern terms, Lindsay, after exploring it rather convincingly, demolishes it and replaces it with something like a Teutonic hero's gnostic saga. When first finishing this book, I was profoundly upset, shaken to the core of my unthinking adolescent presuppositions. I very, very rarely reread a book, especially a mere fiction. This, I reread immediately and, then, again, years later.

Students of dualistic "gnostic" systems will find this book interesting as a modern, and apparently quite sincere, take on a belief system quite common in the antique and early Christian worlds.

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Vril: The Power of the Coming Race

by Edward Bulwer Lytton

1871

Science Fiction

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Vril, the Power of the Coming Race is an 1871 science fiction novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, originally printed as The Coming Race. Many early readers believed that its account of a superior subterranean master race and the energy-form called "Vril" was accurate, to the extent that some theosophists accepted the book as truth.

The book was quite popular in the late 19th century, and for a time the word "Vril" came to be associated with "life-giving elixirs". The best known use of "Vril" in this context is in the name of Bovril (a blend of Bovine and Vril).Some readers believe the book is non-fiction, and "Vril" has become associated with theories about Nazi-piloted Flugscheiben ("Flight Discs"), Vril-powered KSK (Kraftstrahlkanone, "force-ray cannon" -- transmission rods that produce potent energy rays), Jesuit "spiritual exercises", and Atlanteans to name a few. The novel centers on a young, independently wealthy traveler (the narrator), who accidentally finds his way into a subterranean world occupied by beings who seem to resemble angels and call themselves Vril-ya.

The hero soon discovers that the Vril-ya are descendants of an antediluvian civilization who live in networks of subterranean caverns linked by tunnels. It is a technologically supported Utopia, chief among their tools being the "all-permeating fluid" called "Vril", a latent source of energy which his spiritually elevated hosts are able to master through training of their will, to a degree which depends upon their hereditary constitution, giving them access to an extraordinary force that can be controlled at will. The powers of the will include the ability to heal, change, and destroy beings and things; the destructive powers in particular are awesomely powerful, allowing a few young Vril-ya children to wipe out entire cities if necessary. It is also suggested that the Vril-ya are fully telepathic. The narrator states that in time, the Vril-ya will run out of habitable spaces underground and start claiming the surface of the Earth, destroying mankind in the process if necessary. Wikipedia contributors. "Vril." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 11 Mar. 2012. Web. 31 Mar. 2012.

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Brewster's Millions

by George Barr McCutcheon

1902

Humor

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John Sheiry

You know, it's funny how we often forget how exceptional truly talented authors are. By that I mean those authors who can tell a story which is inventive, interesting, engaging, and timeless. All too often today, we get caught up with both what I call "series work", where the author continues developing a character through a series of novels (and expects you to continue to buy the series regardless of whether he/she is able to write well), or by novels that are sensational, yet only in the context of today.

Brewster's Millions, by George Barr McCutcheon, is just one of those timeless yet beautifully written books which, even though first published in 1902, is now, and will forever be, relevant to the human condition. The premise is not so far fetched given the ever present eccentricities of human behavior and the pace of the story and the character development that McCutcheon achieves makes this a truly wonderful read.

I won't include any spoilers here but if you want a great read that will engage both your mind and your heart, then read this book. Oh, I forgot the to tell you something really terrific.......this book is in the public domain and is available for FREE on your Ipod, Iphone, or virtually any other portable device which you might own. WOW, now that makes it almost the "perfect" read...excellent story, easily found, and FREE!

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The Egoist

by George Meredith

1879

Fiction -- English Victorian

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John Fuller (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

This is a fantastic story about Willoughby, a man who is so self-centered he never considers the possibility that other people are separate human beings. Dead-on portrayal of awful social situations (think Jane Austen). I laughed over and over at the awkwardness of Willoughby's bride-to-be, and the painfully clueless behavior of the Egoist himself.

One caveat, though : you gotta love Victorian novels to make it through this one. The Egoist contains some of the densest English I have ever read. (I had to reread many sentences three times, and some I never really understood.) This is my third time through The Egoist, and I am reading it aloud with my Sweetie.

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The Essays of Michel de Montaigne

by Montaigne, Michel de

1580

Essays

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Jan-Maat Landlubber (review reprinted by kind permission of author)"To learn that one has said or done a foolish thing, that is nothing; one must learn that one is nothing but a fool, a much more comprehensive and important lesson".There is sheer joy for me in that sentence. It opens up a new starting point in life, not one of humility but of humour. There is basic honesty about one's own ridiculousness, but also an honesty about the validity and value of one's own experience and life, as clumsy and awkward as this may be.

The honesty and directness about his own life can make reading Montaigne little settling down and listening to an old friend talk, about how he started off preferring white wine, grew over the years to prefer red and then some time later drifted back to white again, or about how he managed to trick a friend on his wedding night so he could overcome his fear of being unable to perform and consummate the marriage or how as he has grown older he has taken to wearing thicker and heavier hats to keep his head warm. It allows a for a remarkably intimate connection with somebody from a very different time.

The material is varied, the subject of the essay, like many a students' first attempts, simply a jumping off point for a long ramble interrupted by quotations. Over the years as he continues to write the essays become more confident and frequently longer, but they are bound together by his way of thinking about himself and his society. A way of thinking that often turns back to thinking about thinking in the broadest sense as in "when I am playing with my cat, how do I know she is not playing with me". This can give the sense that he is looking in on his society as a stranger. This can be seen in his contrast between the crowds of people eager to see the savage cannibals brought over from Brazil with savagery of the ongoing wars of religion in his native France. Possibly this is not so surprising as we learn in another essay that his Father had him brought up by a German teacher of Latin with the intention that Latin should be his first language. If his wet-nurse was not involved in this Gascon may have been the first langauge he was actually exposed to. But the result of Montaigne's Father's decision was that his family, their retainers and tenants all had to themselves to learn at least some Latin in order to talk to the young Montaigne as a child. This leaves me with the impression that he grew up as a foreigner in his own country. This of course could come across as tragic but the effect is comic. Montaigne notes the peasants in his area are still using Latin names for tools, it is as though Montaigne's father involved them all in a great game, on the basis of a singular educational notion, that are all still playing years later. Something of this playfulness matures in the son into an openness that allows him to see the peculiarity of his own point of view and to appreciate how far it is shaped by where he happens to stand.

A book to read and return to.

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Theory Of Games And Economic Behavior

by Neumann,John Von.

1944

Games

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

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Adrian (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

One of the titanic founding works of Game Theory. Requires an extensive background of mathematics to understand, but it is very comprehensive, covering many types of games (including a version of poker). Some significant advances have been made in the field after this was published (Nash, etc.) but still something worth reading if you can handle it.

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The Great Impersonation

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

1920

Detective and mystery stories

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Dave Law (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

The difference between a good story and a great story is how it ends. A hero become more heroic and past evil is overcome. This is a great story about a man who impersonates another man and the consequences of it. Admittedly, I found the circumstances unsettling while reading the story but it all made sense in the end.

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The Open Society And Its Enemies

by Popper,K.R.

1945

Philosophy

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The Modern Library - 100 Best Nonfiction

The Open Society and Its Enemies is an influential two-volume work by Karl Popper written during World War II. Failing to find a publisher in the United States, it was first printed in London by Routledge in 1945. The work criticises theories of teleological historicism in which history unfolds inexorably according to universal laws, and indicts as totalitarian Plato, Hegel and Marx for relying on historicism to underpin their political philosophies[citation needed]. It was on the Modern Library Board's 100 Best Nonfiction books of the 20th century.

Wikipedia contributors. "The Open Society and Its Enemies." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 4 Mar. 2012. Web. 21 Mar. 2012.

From Wikiquotes

The open society is one in which men have learned to be to some extent critical of taboos, and to base decisions on the authority of their own intelligence.

Vol. 1, Endnotes to the Chapters : Notes to the Introduction.

The so-called paradox of freedom is the argument that freedom in the sense of absence of any constraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave the meek. The idea is, in a slightly different form, and with very different tendency, clearly expressed in Plato.

Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. -- In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.

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Manon Lescaut

by Abbe Prevost

1731

French literature

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Dfordoom (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

The books of Antoine Francois Prevost (1697-1763) or the Abbe Prevost as he's generally known are all forgotten, apart from one short novel, Manon Lescaut . It's one of the classic tales of obsessive (and destructive) love.

It was originally written as part of a much longer work, Memoirs and Adventures of a Man of Quality , but achieved enormous success when published separately.

The Chevalier des Grieux is a young man who had been studying for the priesthood. His life was irrevocably altered by his meeting with the young and beautiful Manon Lescaut. His affair with Manon causes him to be disowned by his father and leads him on a downward spiral towards ruin and crime. Manon betrays him repeatedly, but his devotion to her is unwavering. In fact it seems as if the more she betrays him the more he loves her. He becomes a swindler and a card shark in order to find the money he needs to keep Manon in the style to which she is accustomed.

The manner in which the story is told is more interesting than the story itself. It is told by the des Grieux himself and he can be seen as a kind of unreliable narrator in the sense that we only see Manon through his eyes and it is obvious that he does not see her clearly at all. Whether she is a better person that the narrative will lead us to believe, or (as is perhaps more likely) a much worse person, remains uncertain. In any case we know virtually nothing of Manon's real motivations or of her real feelings (if any) for the hapless narrator.

The Chevalier des Grieux is in some ways just as interesting as Manon, being an object lesson in the perils of self-pity. He displays monumentally bad judgment and is incapable of understanding the extent to which he is the author of his own calamities.

The Abbe Prevost himself was torn between his conflicting desires for a religious life on the one hand and his taste for worldly pleasure in the other. It seems likely that the character of des Grieux is based at least partly on the author and there may even have been a real-life counterpart to Manon.

The book's message is certainly somewhat ambiguous. It's as much a celebration of the joys of sacrificing everything for love as it is a warning of the dangers of doing so, this ambiguous message being undoubtedly part of the reason the book was banned in France.

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Ten Days That Shook the World

by John Reed

1919

History

Ten Days that Shook the World has received mixed responses since its publication in 1919, resulting in a wide range of critical reviews from negative to positive. However, the book was overall positively received by critics at the time of its first publication, despite some critics' vocal opposition to Reed's political beliefs.

George F. Kennan, an American diplomat and historian who had no love for Bolshevism and is best known as "the father of containment," praised the book: "Reed's account of the events of that time rises above every other contemporary record for its literary power, its penetration, its command of detail" and would be "remembered when all others are forgotten." Kennan saw it as "a reflection of blazing honesty and a purity of idealism that did unintended credit to the American society that produced him, the merits of which he himself understood so poorly."[8] On March 1, 1999, The New York Times reported[9] New York University's "Top 100 Works of Journalism" list, which placed Ten Days that Shook the World at #7. Project director Mitchell Stephens explains the reasoning behind the judges' decision:

Perhaps the most controversial work on our list is the seventh, John Reed's book, "Ten Days That Shook the World," reporting on the October revolution in Russia in 1917. Yes, as conservative critics have noted, Reed was a partisan. Yes, historians would do better. But this was probably the most consequential news story of the century, and Reed was there, and Reed could write. The magnitude of the event being reported on and the quality of the writing were other important standards in our considerations.

But not all responses were positive. Joseph Stalin argued in 1924 that Reed was misleading in regards to Leon Trotsky. The book portrays Trotsky (head of the Red Army) as a man who co-led the revolution with Lenin and mentions Stalin only twice -- one of them being only in the recitation of a list of names, as both Lenin and Trotsky were internationally known, whereas the activities of other Bolshevik militants were virtually unknown. Russian writer Anatoly Rybakov elaborates on Stalinist Soviet Union's ban on Ten Days that Shook the World: "The main task was to build a mighty socialist state. For that, mighty power was needed. Stalin was at the head of that power, which mean that he stood at its source with Lenin. Together with Lenin he led the October Revolution. John Reed had presented the history of October differently. That wasn't the John Reed we needed." After Stalin's death, the book was allowed to recirculate.

Wikipedia contributors. "Ten Days that Shook the World." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 14 Jan. 2012. Web. 21 Mar. 2012.

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Pointed Roofs

by Dorothy Richardson

1915

Fiction -- English 20th Century

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A gallimaufry blog review :

Published in 1915 but based on Dorothy Richardson's six months teaching at a school in Germany in 1890, it received mixed reviews: the Observer called it a 'Fine New Novel', adding, 'the whole is clear with a clarity as keen as the gables of the charming "pointed roofs"' and the New York Times Book Review recognised a 'remarkable' achievement, while the Saturday Review Literary Supplement declared: 'The book is a charted dissection of an unsound mind. It lays bare the workings of a sick imagination...' (All reviews quoted from the Dorothy Richardson website.)

Setting the novel in a girls' boarding school necessarily places female concerns at its heart. Pointed Roofs is essentially domestic in scope, and as a finishing school producing young ladies who are to be suitable middle-class wives, Fraulein Pfaff's establishment is modest in its educational ambitions. Indeed, Fraulein Pfaff reveals as much in her outburst against the 'impurity' of talking about men - 'Like a dawn, like a dawn for purity should be the life of a maiden. Calm, and pure and with holy prayer' - and talks hysterically of 'cleaning' the school of 'vile' influences. But Miriam is a feminist, horrified at the contempt of the German masters to girls' education, driven to contrast this school with the one she attended (based on Southborough House, a progressive school where Richardson was a pupil) which valued women's intelligence and scholarship. When she fancifully toys with the idea of marrying a German, she is secretly repelled by the dutiful hausfrau figure she conjures up as her future.

So Dorothy Richardson takes women and women's education as her subject matter and the consciousness of an individual woman as her vehicle (but also her subject), inventing a new form in which to do so. There are shades of Villette here, but the tone is much lighter and often humorous. Should anyone have managed to wade this far through my post, then go immediately from here and buy a copy. If you enjoy the work of Virginia Woolf or Katherine Mansfield, you will love this. Really. Dorothy Richardson ought to be much more widely read. I feel strongly. I may campaign.

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The Fortunes of Richard Mahony

by Henry Handel RICHARDSON

1930

Fiction -- Australia

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Kim (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

I read this book shortly after the birth of my second child (who turns 29 in about six weeks time). It was on the syllabus for a university course I was doing at the time. My enduring memory is sitting in bed at 2.00 am, reading while feeding the baby, with my tears falling onto his head. And then, continuing to read, well after the baby was asleep again, because I couldn't put it down. An epic book.

Jennifer (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

Fantastic epic of what it means to be human, by following the life of a man and a marriage, with all the foibles of humanity and love and weakness and fear, but the memory is love. A rereading of a favourite.

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Scaramouche

by Rafael Sabatini

1921

Adventure and Adventurers

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Kori (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

"He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad," so begins Scaramouche, Rafael Sabatini's 1921 novel set during the French Revolution. That single and unforgettable sentence propelled me back to my childhood and awoke in me nostalgia for the excitement and adventure I once held for books and movies Scaramouche is a tale of revenge, an astonishing tour de force - every single page seethes with incident, color, and detail. How could it no be? It is the story of a man born on the wrong side of the blanket, fugitive from the King's justice, star of traveling players, and the finest swordsman in all of France. A tale of revenge and revolution. Scaramouche helped me rediscover everything I loved about the classic swashbucklers of the 40s starring Tyrone Power, Errol Flynn and Robert Donat. Sabatini also led me back to other great tales of adventure by Alexandre Dumas, Emilio Salgari, Henry Rider Haggard, and Samuel Shellabarger. Scaramouche definitely has a special place in my heart ;)

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The Unbearable Bassington

by Saki

1912

Fiction -- English 20th Century

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Dolly Delightly (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

Relayed in a masterfully stalwart fashion, every page loaded with a meteor of witticisms, The Unbearable Bassington chronicles the fate of one Comus Bassington, a flagitious wise-cracking, young, rapscallion endowed with every power to bring about his own downfall. Much to his mother Francesca's despair, Comus is one of those "untameable young lords of misrule" who "laugh through a series of catastrophes that has reduced everyone else concerned to tears or Cassandra-like forebodings". Describing Comus in greater detail, Saki says: "His large green-grey eyes seemed forever asparkle with goblin mischief and the joy of revelry, and the curved lips might have been those of some wickedly-laughing faun; one almost expected to see embryo horns fretting the smoothness of his sleek dark hair. The chin was firm, but one looked in vain for a redeeming touch of ill-temper in the handsome, half-mocking, half-petulant face. With a strain of sourness in him Comus might have been leavened into something creative and masterful; fate had fashioned him with a certain whimsical charm, and left him all unequipped for the greater purposes of life. Perhaps no one would have called him a lovable character, but in many respects he was adorable; in all respects he was certainly damned."

And, "damned" is the general consensus about Comus. Speaking about her son, who is being educated "somewhere in the southern counties", to her brother Henry, Francesca states: "I'm very fond of him, but I bear the separation well. When he's here it's rather like having a live volcano in the house, a volcano that in its quietest moments asks incessant questions and uses strong scent." Even his teachers are of the opinion that there is little hope for Comus because he "will certainly never grow out of his present stage" and shall therefore remain maladjusted indefinitely. While Francesca cares a great deal for her son, she wishes he could be moulded into an industrious and responsible young man, especially since such a transformation would lead to her own continued welfare. As a "clever and lazily-inclined" woman , who also happens to have no soul and "if pressed in an unguarded moment to describe her soul, would probably have described her drawing-room", she hatches several plans to keep Comus on the straight and narrow in order to circumvent immiseration and remain in her Blue Street residence. All of them involve superlative excogitations for an "advantageous marriage" which are unfortunately thwarted by her unwitting son, his "wanton paltry folly" conniptions, and a varied coterie of bombastic personages bedaubing this sprightly and spirited satire. The numerous "death-blow[s] to her hopes" leave Francesca no other choice but to send Comus away from his "life of idleness and extravagance and temptation" to West Africa, or as Comus sees it to "a convenient depository for tiresome people."

In the Foreword to the book, Evelyn Waugh says that there are "faults in construction" with the The Unbearable Bassington with which I have to agree. Technical snags - as auxiliary characters - abound but they are nugatory in comparison to Saki's unequivocal linguistic agility and the gift to enthral. Saki himself prefaced The Unbearable Bassington with a note, saying: "This story has no moral," which I long-thought about and have to contest because, in fact, the book stands to show that "for your own good" is an argument that will often lead a man to his labefaction, which was the case with Comus and the " tragedy in which he was the chief character". Typically, Saki's characters engage and amuse, but do not encourage empathy and their fates serve merely as vehicles for mocking social solecisms. This is not so with The Unbearable Bassington, for one cannot help but like "the beautiful, wayward, laughing boy, with his naughtiness, his exasperating selfishness, his insurmountable folly and perverseness, his cruelty that spared not even himself." Interestingly enough, the perception of his mother, Francesca, is reversed towards the end of the book from a slightly overbearing and long-suffering figure to a rather loathsome, wholly egotistical and rapacious woman. The Unbearable Bassington combines many of Saki's traits; wit, tension, incident and pathos and in Waugh's words "apparently effortless invention and elegance". And those are all the qualities that consistently spring to mind when reading Saki, which in many regards distinguishes him as a truly great writer.

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Descriptions

- The Education of Henry Adams * Henry Adams

- Dom Casmurro * Machado de Assis

- Emma * Jane Austen

- Eugenie Grandet * Honore de Balzac

- Zuleika Dobson, or, an Oxford love story * Sir Max Beerbohm

- The Old Wives' Tale * Arnold Bennett

- Lorna Doone * R.D. Blackmore

- Lady Audley's Secret * M. E. Braddon

- Wieland: or, the Transformation, an American Tale * Charles Brockden Brown

- Evelina * Fanny Burney

- Don Quixote * Miguel de Cervantes-Saavedra

- No Orchids for Miss Blandish * JAMES HADLEY CHASE

- The Riddle of the Sands * Erskine Childers

- The Awakening * Kate Chopin

- The Woman in White * Wilkie Collins

- Heart of Darkness * Joseph Conrad

- Just William * Richmal Crompton

- Roxana the Fortunate Mistress * Daniel Defoe

- The Diary of a Provincial Lady, free ebooks, ebook, etext * E. M. Delafield

- Martin Chuzzlewit * Charles Dickens

- Sybil, or the Two Nations * Earl of Beaconsfield Benjamin Disraeli

- The Sign of the Four * Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

- Ennui * Maria Edgeworth

- Sidelights on Relativity * Albert Einstein

- Daniel Deronda * George Eliot

- Uncle Silas * Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

- History of Tom Jones, a Foundling * Henry Fielding

- Bouvard and Pecuchet / A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life * Gustave Flaubert

- A Room with a View * E. M. Forster

- The Golden Bough * James George Frazer

- Mary Barton * Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

- The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire * Edward Gibbon

- Herland * Charlotte Perkins Gilman

- The Vicar of Wakefield * Oliver Goldsmith

- Oblomov * Goncharov, Ivan Aleksandrovich

- Creatures That Once Were Men * Maxim Gorky

- The Diary of a Nobody * George Grossmith & Weedon Grossmith

- Far From the Madding Crowd * Thomas Hardy

- The Prisoner of Zenda * Anthony Hope

- Tom Brown's School Days * Thomas Hughes

- Crome Yellow * Aldous Huxley

- The Ambassadors * Henry James

- Pragmatism * William James

- Critique of Pure Reason * Immanuel Kant

- Just So Stories * Rudyard Kipling

- The Princess of Cleves * Madame de Lafayette

- The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillana * Le Sage, Alain Rene

- The Monk; A Romance * M. G. Lewis

- A Voyage to Arcturus * David Lindsay

- Vril: The Power of the Coming Race * Edward Bulwer Lytton

- Brewster's Millions * George Barr McCutcheon

- The Egoist * George Meredith

- The Essays of Michel de Montaigne * Montaigne, Michel de

- Theory Of Games And Economic Behavior * Neumann,John Von.

- The Great Impersonation * E. Phillips Oppenheim

- The Open Society And Its Enemies * Popper,K.R.

- Manon Lescaut * Abbe Prevost

- Ten Days That Shook the World * John Reed

- Pointed Roofs * Dorothy Richardson

- The Fortunes of Richard Mahony * Henry Handel RICHARDSON

- Scaramouche * Rafael Sabatini

- The Unbearable Bassington * Saki

- The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom * Tobias Smollett

- The Adventures of Roderick Random * Tobias Smollett

- Fantomas * Pierre Souvestre

- Starmaker * Olaf Stapledon

- The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman * Laurence Sterne

- Eminent Victorians * Giles Lytton Strachey

- A Tale of a Tub * Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745

- Doctor Thorne * Anthony Trollope

- The Warden * Anthony Trollope

- First Love * Turgenev, Ivan

- The Frontier in American History * Frederick Jackson Turner

- Genji * Various

- Piccadilly Jim * P. G. WODEHOUSE

- Mrs. Dalloway * Woolf, Virginia

- Theresa Raquin * Emile Zola

- Aunt Lee's Library * Aunt Lee, editor

The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom

by Tobias Smollett

2010

Satire

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

The Guardian's 1000 Novels Everyone Should Read

Henry Avila (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

The hero or antihero, as some harsh readers might say, of our story Count Fathom; travels with his mother an angel of mercy and camp follower. She kindly puts wounded soldiers out of their misery ,(don't call it murder!) and picks up a few trinkets from the deceased. The mother's great work is stopped, by a villain shooting her. A generous German officer takes the nine year old future count and raises the boy. Our hero later pays back his benefactor, by removing some items from the owner, his foster father,that will hardly be missed! Borrowing his title also, he crosses Europe and gives lonely women his love. (Nice guy !) Somehow jewelry and money keep appearing in his pocket, a mystery. Going to England, unjust merchants there ,prevent his continuing good deeds by putting him in jail. Over a few unpaid bills;people are so unreasonable. These misunderstandings are resolved and the "Count" is freed. Which shows you that a good man is rewarded for his "philanthropy" !

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The Adventures of Roderick Random

by Tobias Smollett

1748

Sea stories

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David (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

Reread after 25-odd years, and just as lively, scathing, sentimental, violent and all-around human as I remembered it. Rock & roll melodrama from start to finish.

Wikipedia: The Adventures of Roderick Random is a picaresque novel by Tobias Smollett, first published in 1748. It is partially based on Smollett's experience as a naval-surgeon's mate in the British Navy, especially during Battle of Cartagena de Indias in 1741. In the preface, Smollett acknowledges the connections of his novel to the two satirical picaresque works he translated into English: Cervantes' Don Quixote (1605-15) and Alain-Rene Lesage's Gil Blas (1715-47)

Wikipedia contributors. "The Adventures of Roderick Random." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 28 Oct. 2011. Web. 22 Mar. 2012.

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Fantomas

by Pierre Souvestre

1911

Detective and mystery stories

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Fantomas (French pronunciation: [fatomas]) is a fictional character created by French writers Marcel Allain (1885-1969) and Pierre Souvestre (1874-1914).

One of the most popular characters in the history of French crime fiction, Fantomas was created in 1911 and appeared in a total of 32 volumes written by the two collaborators, then a subsequent 11 volumes written by Allain alone after Souvestre's death. The character was also the basis of various film, television, and comic book adaptations. In the history of crime fiction, he represents a transition from Gothic novel villains of the 19th century to modern-day serial killers.

Fantomas was introduced a few years after Arsene Lupin, another well-known thief. But whereas Lupin draws the line at murder, Fantomas has no such qualms and is shown as a sociopath who enjoys killing in a sadistic fashion.

He is totally ruthless, gives no mercy, and is loyal to none, not even his own children. He is a master of disguise, always appearing under an assumed identity, often that of a person whom he has murdered. Fantomas makes use of bizarre and improbable techniques in his crimes, such as plague-infested rats, giant snakes, and rooms that fill with sand.

Wikipedia contributors. "Fantomas." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 13 Mar. 2012. Web. 23 Mar. 2012.

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Starmaker

by Olaf Stapledon

1937

Science Fiction

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

The Guardian's 1000 Novels Everyone Should Read

Dave (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

"Star Maker", by Olaf Stapledon, is an incredible novel by an author whose contributions to science fiction are unique and serve as inspiration to many of the greatest works in the field. It was Stapledon's fourth novel and was first published in 1937. Narrated by the same voice as narrated "Last and First Men" the novel is a sequel of sorts, but at the same time it has a much larger scope and thus there is no noticeable overlap between the two novels. As with "Last and First Men", "Star Maker" is not a conventional novel, so if that is what you are looking for, you should look elsewhere. It is a philosophical journey rather than a conventional story with a traditional plot and characters.

The narrator takes the reader on a journey through the universe and through time, starting on a hill near his home, and ultimately finding the creator of the universe, i.e. the Star Maker. He witnesses the entire life of the universe, and joins with many other minds from other civilizations throughout the galaxy. It is tempting to use phrases like "for its time" when describing this book, but it is a remarkable work for any time. I am sure that some of descriptions of civilizations and their scientific achievements would change if it were written today. However, the statement that the book makes would likely remain the same.

One does not need to read "Last and First Men" (or "Last Men in London" for that matter) to read this novel. The few remarks made in the narration that reference "Last and First Men" will not cause the reader any difficulty. They pass by almost unnoticed, as the reader's focus is on the amazing scope and vision which are contained in this novel. Stapledon's works are not the easiest reads, but they are well worth the effort. The echos of Stapledon's ideas can be read in the works of numerous authors and in some of the greatest works of science fiction.

This book was tied for 13th on the Arkham Survey in 1949 as one of the 'Basic SF Titles'. It also was tied for 30th on the 1975 Locus All-Time poll for Novels; and 32nd on the 1998 Locus All-Time Poll for Novels written prior to 1990.

Star Maker is a science fiction novel by Olaf Stapledon, published in 1937. The book describes a history of life in the universe, dwarfing in scale Stapledon's previous book, Last and First Men (1930), a history of the human species over two billion years. Star Maker tackles philosophical themes such as the essence of life, of birth, decay and death, and the relationship between creation and creator. A pervading theme is that of progressive unity within and between different civilizations. Some of the elements and themes briefly discussed prefigure later fiction concerning genetic engineering and alien life forms. Arthur C. Clarke considered Star Maker to be one of the finest works of science fiction ever written.

The novel is one of the most highly acclaimed in science fiction. Its admirers at the time of first publication saw it as one of the most brilliant, inventive, and daring science fiction books. Among its more famous admirers were H. G. Wells, Virginia Woolf, Jorge Luis Borges, Brian Aldiss and Doris Lessing. Borges wrote a prologue for a 1965 edition and called it "a prodigious novel". Lessing wrote an afterword for a UK edition. Freeman Dyson was also a fan, admitting to basing his concept of Dyson spheres on a section of the book. Among SF writers, Arthur C. Clarke has been most strongly influenced by Stapledon.

Wikipedia contributors. "Star Maker." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 14 Apr. 2012. Web. 18 Apr. 2012.

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The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

by Laurence Sterne

1759

Satire

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

On Gutenberg Best Books Ever Bookshelf

The Greatest Books - the 202nd Greatest Fiction Book of All Time

Melissa Rudder (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

I am shocked at the drastic change of my opinion on The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne. After I read it a mere three years ago, I swore I would take my MA Exam without rereading it to avoid undergoing such torture a second time. I gave it one star on goodreads. Having forgotten everything about the novel (aside from my distaste for it), I had to reread it for the exam. And I thoroughly enjoyed it. I wrote "ha!" in the margins more than I have in any other book. I laughed out loud. I read sections to people around me because I thought they were amusing. I put the book down hesitantly when I had to take a break from it. Very strange.

I think my main problem with reading Tristram Shandy the first time was that I was looking for the linear plot that reached its climax in the third act and then gracefully fell to its denouement. Sterne wants to shake up the expected system--something rather ahead of its time in the 1760s. On my first reading, I rebelled against his diversionary tactics and tangents and dangerously thrust my nose into the book searching for the next big plot development. And that is not how you should readTristram Shandy.

If you're willing to sit back and let Sterne guide you through his "Cock and Bull" story of large attractive noses that (he swears!) are just noses, hobby-horses, hot chestnuts down the pants, do-it-yourself chapters, excommunication forms, unconventional circumcisions, a conscious narrator and constructed audience, swearing nuns, and marble pages, you are sure to have a blast. Just don't fight it.

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Eminent Victorians

by Giles Lytton Strachey

1918

Biography

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

The Modern Library - 100 Best Nonfiction - 53rd on List

The Greatest Books - 86th Greatest Nonfiction Book of All Time

Lyn (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

Lytton Strachey was a writer & critic who had an overnight success with his book, Eminent Victorians, published in 1918. The four short biographies of Florence Nightingale, Cardinal Manning, General Gordon & Thomas Arnold swept away the traditional Victorian three volume biography & ushered in a new, freer, less respectful style of biographical writing. Strachey's book was a reaction to the Victorian hagiographies of great men, often written by their widows or acolytes, which smoothed over any rough edges of the subjects life.

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A Tale of a Tub

by Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745

1704

Satire

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

The Guardian's 1000 Novels Everyone Should Read

A Tale of a Tub was the first major work written by Jonathan Swift, composed between 1694 and 1697 and published in 1704. It is arguably his most difficult satire, and perhaps his most masterly. The Tale is a prose parody which is divided into sections of "digression" and a "tale" of three brothers, each representing one of the main branches of western Christianity.

A Tale was long regarded as a satire on religion itself, and has famously been attacked for that, starting with William Wotton.[1][2] The "tale" presents a consistent satire of religious excess, while the digressions are a series of parodies of contemporary writing in literature, politics, theology, Biblical exegesis, and medicine. The overarching parody is of enthusiasm, pride, and credulity. At the time it was written, politics and religion were still linked very closely in England, and the religious and political aspects of the satire can often hardly be separated. "The work made Swift notorious, and was widely misunderstood, especially by Queen Anne herself who mistook its purpose for profanity."[3] "It effectively disbarred its author from proper preferment within the church,"[3] but is considered one of Swift's best allegories, even by himself. It was enormously popular, but Swift believed it damaged his prospect of advancement in the Church of England.

It is hard to say what the Tale's satire is about, since it is about any number of things. It is most consistent in attacking misreading of all sorts. Both in the narrative sections and the digressions, the single human flaw that underlies all the follies Swift attacks is over-figurative and over-literal reading, both of the Bible and of poetry and political prose. The narrator is seeking hidden knowledge, mechanical operations of things spiritual, spiritual qualities to things physical, and alternate readings of everything.

Wikipedia contributors. "A Tale of a Tub." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 25 Feb. 2012. Web. 23 Mar. 2012.

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Doctor Thorne

by Anthony Trollope

1858

Fiction -- English 19th Century

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

100 Best English-Language Novels of the 20th Century

Cynthia (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

I've read 99 percent of the trollopes, even the obscure ones, and this one is my absolute favorite. It has all the best fantasy romance elements (a wisecracking unmarried heiress who finds true love, a lovely young couple who are kept apart by poverty -- until she turns out to secretly be the daughter of a very wealthy person) and more. It's got all the best of Trollope and allows you to indulge your fantasy that maybe someday everything will work out in your own life...

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The Warden

by Anthony Trollope

1855

Fiction -- English 19th Century

Mike (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

110 Best Books - The Perfect Library

The Greatest Books - 435th Greatest Fiction Boook of All Time

I've always resisted the idea of Trollope. But this book has changed my opinion. It's a kind, generous, humane book--generous to a fault. I've never seen a book where the concluding chapter tells you the bad guy isn't really as bad as he seems. The writing is mostly clean and simple: more like Jane Austen (though not as clever) than Thomas Carlyle (who is parodied in one of the book's less memorable moments), or even Dickens. The story of a weak, easily-led Anglican clergyman who is driven by his conscience to resign an 800 pound/year sinecure is a profile in courage where least expected.

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First Love

by Turgenev, Ivan

1861

Russia -- Fiction

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

On Gutenberg Best Books Ever Bookshelf

Nicole (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

The story, quite simply, of a man's first love is prefaced by a brief frame: after supper, sitting around the table, some men go around and ask each other to tell the stories of their first loves. One man agrees but says he must write it down and send it to them later; he cannot tell it well ex tempore. The rest of the novella is his manuscript. Thus the story of an extremely sensitive and romantic young boy falling in love with Zinaida, a somewhat older, certainly worldier girl, is told at a distance of years, with the benefit of knowledge but also of continued sensitivity and fondness. The narrator isn't ashamed to tell of his own childish silliness. He doesn't try to hide or pass judgment on it, but presents the facts as they were and clearly accepts that these fanciful ideas are just part and parcel of a first love--which is what everyone wanted to hear about anyway.

Then I sang "Not the white snows," and passed from that to a song well known at that period: "I await thee, when the wanton zephyr," then I began reading aloud Yermak's address to the stars from Homyakov's tragedy. I made an attempt to compose something myself in a sentimental vein, and invented the line which was to conclude each verse: "O Zinaida, Zinaida!" but could get no further with it.

The narrator's innocence, in his boyish incarnation at least, makes the dreadful and, truly, as Anthony puts it, shocking ending quite a surprise, although we certainly see it coming before he did. O Zinaida, Zinaida!

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The Frontier in American History

by Frederick Jackson Turner

1921

History

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

The Modern Library - 100 Best Nonfiction

The Greatest Books - the 51st Greatest Nonfiction book of all time

Don Robertson (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

This is a necessary read for historians, and a modestly interesting read for the rest of us. The basic theme is the somewhat unique nature of the American experience as it evolved with the effect of the American frontier -beginning with Western Massachusetts and the Appalachian Mountain regions.

In this collection of essays one can taste the growth of American conservative political doctrine.

The most memorable quote is, -Even a fool can put his coat on better than a wise man can do it for him.-

Shades of Will Rogers as the quintessential American?

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Genji

by Various

1021

Fiction - Japan

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

On Gutenberg Best Books Ever Bookshelf

The Greatest Books - Ranks it the 61st Greatest Fiction Book of All Time

David (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

Arguably the first novel ever written (using a modern definition of novel), and at the very least the first novel written by a woman, this essential work traces the life of a prince in medieval (Heian) Japan. The novel is intensely psychological and manages to very consistently portray the lives of hundreds of individuals across half a century or more. Aside from the insight the novel provides into the extremely rarified culture of the Japanese court in the middle ages, a reader comes away from Genji feeling that he has just witnessed a life, a real, visceral life, with all its ups and downs, beauty and ugliness. It is truly a work of genius. The novelist Yasunari Kawabata was right to declare in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech that Genji "is the highest pinnacle of Japanese literature. Even down to our day there has not been a piece of fiction to compare with it."

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Piccadilly Jim

by P. G. WODEHOUSE

1917

Humor

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

The Guardian's 1000 Novels Everyone Should Read

Mason (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

Wodehouse is comfort, plain and simple. As with damn near all his work, Piccadilly Jim is endlessly amusing, surprisingly wise, and filled with deceptively simple prose that bends the English language like a funhouse mirror (on the Bohemian lifestyle: "Men with new religions greeted women with new hats"). Of all the great prose stylists, he is the easiest to read and the hardest to put down--after a couple consecutive readings of, say, Faulkner, you're bound to go a little meshugenah, but you could probably breeze through the entire Wodehouse oeuvre without so much as a coffee break. At his best--and this is one of his three or four strongest novels--he comes off as nothing less than the sum total of everything civilized humanity has ever learned about good humour. Try it. Love it. Pass it on.

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Mrs. Dalloway

by Woolf, Virginia

1925

Fiction -- America

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

Radcliffe's 100 Best Novels

The Guardian's 100 Greatest Novels of All Time

The Greatest Books - 28th Greatest Fiction Book of All Time

Robert : (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

Get your pitchforks ready. Find a stake you can set fire to. Get ready to riot and burn an effigy of me.

Because I'm about to be honest: I didn't like Mrs. Dalloway. There, I said it. I've probably committed some kind of literary heresy by admitting this, but I've got to keep it real, as the kids say.

On the back of Mrs Dalloway's book cover, Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours, says that this book "was the first novel to split the atom." That's hearty praise-and this is a book that gets a lot of it. Virginia Woolf is a darling of critics. Her stream-of-consciousness, verbose style was unique and new when she first used it in Mrs. Dalloway.

But, man, I just did not enjoy it. Now, as a disclaimer, I fully appreciate Woolf's writing skill and Mrs. Dalloway's place as a great work of literature. I don't dispute that. When I say that I, personally, didn't enjoy this book, that's all I mean-that I personally didn't enjoy this book. I'm not throwing stones at those who are in love with it-and there are many.

Here's an example of one of Woolf's amazingly long, yet poetic, sentences:

It was not to them (not to Hugh, or Richard, or even to devoted Miss Brush) the liberator of the pent egotism, which is a strong martial woman, well nourished, well descended, of direct impulses, downright feelings, and little introspective power (broad and simple-why could not every one be broad and simple? she asked) feels rise within her, once youth is past, and must eject upon some object-it may be Emigration, it may be Emancipation; but whatever it be, this object round which the essence of her soul is daily secreted, becomes inevitably prismatic, lustrous, half looking glass, half precious stone; now carefully hidden in case people should sneer at it; now proudly displayed.

That's a 116 word sentence.

Now the long sentences are difficult enough to focus on, but then you also have to keep up with Woolf's dizzying stream of consciousness technique, which, outside of James Joyce, is the most difficult I've come across.

Basically, the narrator seamlessly jumps around into the heads of one character to the next. Before you realize it, you're reading about the thoughts of someone totally different.

For example:

Calmly and competently, Elizabeth Dalloway mounted the Westminster omnibus.

Going and coming, beckoning, signalling, so the light and shadow which now made the wall grey, now the bananas bright yellow, now made the Strand grey, now made the omnibuses bright yellow, seemed to Septimus Warren Smith lying on the sofa in the sitting room; watching the watery gold glow and fade with the astonishing sensibility of some live creature on the roses, on the wallpaper.

See what just happened there? Bam! We go from Elizabeth Dalloway to Septimus Smith without any forewarning. That happens repeatedly in Mrs. Dalloway, and you've really got to stay on your toes, as the reader, to keep up.

Other Stuff

Opening Line: "Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself."

The Meaning: A lot of the novel seems to revolve around the inevitability of death. One main character dies while others struggle to understand the meaning of death.

Highlights: There's a certain rhythm to Woolf's writing. It's poetic. You can understand why so many people love her writing. Definitely unique.

Lowlights: This book needed a few more periods. Woolf's sentences are long and rife with commas and semicolons. But periods? Not many. You've got to really work to read this book. In fact, you probably need a quiet room with no distractions to focus. Since I read a lot on my lunch break, I found it harder to focus on this book.

Memorable Line: "Death was an attempt to communicate; people feeling the impossibility of reaching the centre which, mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded, one was alone. There was an embrace in death."

Final Thoughts: If you're a Virginia Woolf fan, I hope you'll forgive me, but I simply didn't enjoy Mrs. Dalloway. Maybe it's an acquired taste, kind of like coffee or spinach. Or maybe not. Maybe I'm just a literary simpleton.

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Theresa Raquin

by Emile Zola

1867

Romance

This book is on the following "Best Of" Lists:

On Gutenberg Best Books Ever Bookshelf

Paul Dinger (review reprinted by kind permission of author)

This book is Zola at his best and worst. He can be a great writer of melodrama, you know nothing good is going to come of Therese and her boyfriend, and when it does happen it is still a surprise. Here present also is Zola the scientist who is giving you the elements of crime drama as though he were serving up truth 101. He never saw himself as an artist, yet years later that is the only reason to read him because he was one. It isn't as good as Germinal and La Bete Humain, but it is compelling reading nonetheless.

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Aunt Lee's Library

by Aunt Lee, editor

2012

Annotated Bibliography

Intro Technical Legal

Aunt Lee's Library

This is basically what our English teachers called an "annotated bibliography," morphed into grandeur as curated e-content in the digital age.

I obsessively cross-checked "Best Books Ever" lists with books available in the public domain as free e-books, obtained reprint permission from wonderful online book reviewers and inserted a link to my meta-search engine that searches the best of the free e-book sites , and this e-book is the result.

Think of a coffee house where friendly, literate folk have assembled to argue the merits of great books -- and then they just give them to you -- armfuls of great, free books.

When you've downloaded this e-book to your e-reader, you can browse the reviews of great books, get a hankering to read one, search the meta-search engine for it, download, transfer, and be reading in a matter of minutes.

"I cannot comprehend the neglect of a family library in such days as these." -- Fitzwilliam Darcy, Pride and Prejudice

Clearly, you will never again be bored waiting in line somewhere, but you can also use Aunt Lee's Library to start building an impressive family e-book library using Calibre -- I've written up tutorials that you'll find alongside the search engine.

Technical Notes

This e-book was created from Aunt Lee's personal Calibre e-book library using the catalog function; there may be idiosyncrasies associated with the process, but we will all just have to live with them.

Legal Notes:

At the time of the collection of these reviews, all links to online blogs lead to bookish, academic sorts of sites hosted by rational, pleasant people. It is to be hoped that this remains so, but it is not something I have control over. I specifically disclaim liability, moral or otherwise, for anything that happens when any link is clicked.

Any given work reviewed is not necessarily in the public domain in all countries.

Aunt Lee's Library - Best Works in the Public Domain is about works in the public domain but it is not itself in the public domain.

You are free to:

- redistribute the e-book in its entirety, including the e-book cover, keeping this legal notice intact;

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- email Aunt Lee ( auntlee.onbooks@gmail.com ) with your review of other great books in the public domain for inclusion in Volume II;

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- charge a fee for the redistribution of the work; contact the editor for any commercial purpose;

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The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern

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the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement

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the copyright status of any work in any country.

Intro Technical Legal

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Table of Contents

auntlee125

Authors

Authors beginning with 'A'

Authors beginning with 'B'

Authors beginning with 'C'

Authors beginning with 'D'

Authors beginning with 'E'

Authors beginning with 'F'

Authors beginning with 'G'

Authors beginning with 'H'

Authors beginning with 'J'

Authors beginning with 'K'

Authors beginning with 'L'

Authors beginning with 'M'

Authors beginning with 'N'

Authors beginning with 'O'

Authors beginning with 'P'

Authors beginning with 'R'

Authors beginning with 'S'

Authors beginning with 'T'

Authors beginning with 'V'

Authors beginning with 'W'

Authors beginning with 'Z'

Titles

Titles beginning with 'A'

Titles beginning with 'B'

Titles beginning with 'C'

Titles beginning with 'D'

Titles beginning with 'E'

Titles beginning with 'F'

Titles beginning with 'G'

Titles beginning with 'H'

Titles beginning with 'J'

Titles beginning with 'L'

Titles beginning with 'M'

Titles beginning with 'N'

Titles beginning with 'O'

Titles beginning with 'P'

Titles beginning with 'R'

Titles beginning with 'S'

Titles beginning with 'T'

Titles beginning with 'U'

Titles beginning with 'V'

Titles beginning with 'W'

Titles beginning with 'Z'

Genres

Adventure and Adventurers

Annotated Bibliography

Biography

Detective and Mystery Stories; English

Detective and mystery stories

England -- Fiction

Essays

Fiction - Japan

Fiction -- America

Fiction -- Australia

Fiction -- Brazil

Fiction -- English 19th Century

Fiction -- English 20th Century

Fiction -- English Restoration

Fiction -- English Victorian

Fiction -- Ireland

French literature

Games

Gothic

History

Horror & Ghost Stories

Humor

Juvenile Fiction

Mythology

Philosophy;

Physics

Romance

Rome

Russia -- Fiction

Satire

Science

Science Fiction

Sea stories

Short Stories

Spain -- Fiction

Spy

pulp

Descriptions

The Education of Henry Adams * Henry Adams

Dom Casmurro * Machado de Assis

Emma * Jane Austen

Eugenie Grandet * Honore de Balzac

Zuleika Dobson, or, an Oxford love story * Sir Max Beerbohm

The Old Wives' Tale * Arnold Bennett

Lorna Doone * R.D. Blackmore

Lady Audley's Secret * M. E. Braddon

Wieland: or, the Transformation, an American Tale * Charles Brockden Brown

Evelina * Fanny Burney

Don Quixote * Miguel de Cervantes-Saavedra

No Orchids for Miss Blandish * JAMES HADLEY CHASE

The Riddle of the Sands * Erskine Childers

The Awakening * Kate Chopin

The Woman in White * Wilkie Collins

Heart of Darkness * Joseph Conrad

Just William * Richmal Crompton

Roxana the Fortunate Mistress * Daniel Defoe

The Diary of a Provincial Lady, free ebooks, ebook, etext * E. M. Delafield

Martin Chuzzlewit * Charles Dickens

Sybil, or the Two Nations * Earl of Beaconsfield Benjamin Disraeli

The Sign of the Four * Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Ennui * Maria Edgeworth

Sidelights on Relativity * Albert Einstein

Daniel Deronda * George Eliot

Uncle Silas * Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

History of Tom Jones, a Foundling * Henry Fielding

Bouvard and Pecuchet / A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life * Gustave Flaubert

A Room with a View * E. M. Forster

The Golden Bough * James George Frazer

Mary Barton * Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire * Edward Gibbon

Herland * Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The Vicar of Wakefield * Oliver Goldsmith

Oblomov * Goncharov, Ivan Aleksandrovich

Creatures That Once Were Men * Maxim Gorky

The Diary of a Nobody * George Grossmith & Weedon Grossmith

Far From the Madding Crowd * Thomas Hardy

The Prisoner of Zenda * Anthony Hope

Tom Brown's School Days * Thomas Hughes

Crome Yellow * Aldous Huxley

The Ambassadors * Henry James

Pragmatism * William James

Critique of Pure Reason * Immanuel Kant

Just So Stories * Rudyard Kipling

The Princess of Cleves * Madame de Lafayette

The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillana * Le Sage, Alain Rene

The Monk; A Romance * M. G. Lewis

A Voyage to Arcturus * David Lindsay

Vril: The Power of the Coming Race * Edward Bulwer Lytton

Brewster's Millions * George Barr McCutcheon

The Egoist * George Meredith

The Essays of Michel de Montaigne * Montaigne, Michel de

Theory Of Games And Economic Behavior * Neumann,John Von.

The Great Impersonation * E. Phillips Oppenheim

The Open Society And Its Enemies * Popper,K.R.

Manon Lescaut * Abbe Prevost

Ten Days That Shook the World * John Reed

Pointed Roofs * Dorothy Richardson

The Fortunes of Richard Mahony * Henry Handel RICHARDSON

Scaramouche * Rafael Sabatini

The Unbearable Bassington * Saki

The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom * Tobias Smollett

The Adventures of Roderick Random * Tobias Smollett

Fantomas * Pierre Souvestre

Starmaker * Olaf Stapledon

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman * Laurence Sterne

Eminent Victorians * Giles Lytton Strachey

A Tale of a Tub * Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745

Doctor Thorne * Anthony Trollope

The Warden * Anthony Trollope

First Love * Turgenev, Ivan

The Frontier in American History * Frederick Jackson Turner

Genji * Various

Piccadilly Jim * P. G. WODEHOUSE

Mrs. Dalloway * Woolf, Virginia

Theresa Raquin * Emile Zola

Aunt Lee's Library * Aunt Lee, editor

Table of Contents

auntlee125

Authors

Authors beginning with 'A'

Authors beginning with 'B'

Authors beginning with 'C'

Authors beginning with 'D'

Authors beginning with 'E'

Authors beginning with 'F'

Authors beginning with 'G'

Authors beginning with 'H'

Authors beginning with 'J'

Authors beginning with 'K'

Authors beginning with 'L'

Authors beginning with 'M'

Authors beginning with 'N'

Authors beginning with 'O'

Authors beginning with 'P'

Authors beginning with 'R'

Authors beginning with 'S'

Authors beginning with 'T'

Authors beginning with 'V'

Authors beginning with 'W'

Authors beginning with 'Z'

Titles

Titles beginning with 'A'

Titles beginning with 'B'

Titles beginning with 'C'

Titles beginning with 'D'

Titles beginning with 'E'

Titles beginning with 'F'

Titles beginning with 'G'

Titles beginning with 'H'

Titles beginning with 'J'

Titles beginning with 'L'

Titles beginning with 'M'

Titles beginning with 'N'

Titles beginning with 'O'

Titles beginning with 'P'

Titles beginning with 'R'

Titles beginning with 'S'

Titles beginning with 'T'

Titles beginning with 'U'

Titles beginning with 'V'

Titles beginning with 'W'

Titles beginning with 'Z'

Genres

Adventure and Adventurers

Annotated Bibliography

Biography

Detective and Mystery Stories; English

Detective and mystery stories

England -- Fiction

Essays

Fiction - Japan

Fiction -- America

Fiction -- Australia

Fiction -- Brazil

Fiction -- English 19th Century

Fiction -- English 20th Century

Fiction -- English Restoration

Fiction -- English Victorian

Fiction -- Ireland

French literature

Games

Gothic

History

Horror & Ghost Stories

Humor

Juvenile Fiction

Mythology

Philosophy;

Physics

Romance

Rome

Russia -- Fiction

Satire

Science

Science Fiction

Sea stories

Short Stories

Spain -- Fiction

Spy

pulp

Descriptions

The Education of Henry Adams · Henry Adams

Dom Casmurro · Machado de Assis

Emma · Jane Austen

Eugenie Grandet · Honoré de Balzac

Zuleika Dobson, or, an Oxford love story · Sir Max Beerbohm

The Old Wives' Tale · Arnold Bennett

Lorna Doone · R.D. Blackmore

Lady Audley's Secret · M. E. Braddon

Wieland: or, the Transformation, an American Tale · Charles Brockden Brown

Evelina · Fanny Burney

Don Quixote · Miguel de Cervantes-Saavedra

No Orchids for Miss Blandish · JAMES HADLEY CHASE

The Riddle of the Sands · Erskine Childers

The Awakening · Kate Chopin

The Woman in White · Wilkie Collins

Heart of Darkness · Joseph Conrad

Just William · Richmal Crompton

Roxana the Fortunate Mistress · Daniel Defoe

The Diary of a Provincial Lady, free ebooks, ebook, etext · E. M. Delafield

Martin Chuzzlewit · Charles Dickens

Sybil, or the Two Nations · Earl of Beaconsfield Benjamin Disraeli

The Sign of the Four · Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Ennui · Maria Edgeworth

Sidelights on Relativity · Albert Einstein

Daniel Deronda · George Eliot

Uncle Silas · Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

History of Tom Jones, a Foundling · Henry Fielding

Bouvard and Pécuchet / A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life · Gustave Flaubert

A Room with a View · E. M. Forster

The Golden Bough · James George Frazer

Mary Barton · Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire · Edward Gibbon

Herland · Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The Vicar of Wakefield · Oliver Goldsmith

Oblomov · Goncharov, Ivan Aleksandrovich

Creatures That Once Were Men · Maxim Gorky

The Diary of a Nobody · George Grossmith & Weedon Grossmith

Far From the Madding Crowd · Thomas Hardy

The Prisoner of Zenda · Anthony Hope

Tom Brown's School Days · Thomas Hughes

Crome Yellow · Aldous Huxley

The Ambassadors · Henry James

Pragmatism · William James

Critique of Pure Reason · Immanuel Kant

Just So Stories · Rudyard Kipling

The Princess of Cleves · Madame de Lafayette

The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillana · Le Sage, Alain René

The Monk; A Romance · M. G. Lewis

A Voyage to Arcturus · David Lindsay

Vril: The Power of the Coming Race · Edward Bulwer Lytton

Brewster's Millions · George Barr McCutcheon

The Egoist · George Meredith

The Essays of Michel de Montaigne · Montaigne, Michel de

Theory Of Games And Economic Behavior · Neumann,John Von.

The Great Impersonation · E. Phillips Oppenheim

The Open Society And Its Enemies · Popper,K.R.

Manon Lescaut · Abbé Prévost

Ten Days That Shook the World · John Reed

Pointed Roofs · Dorothy Richardson

The Fortunes of Richard Mahony · Henry Handel RICHARDSON

Scaramouche · Rafael Sabatini

The Unbearable Bassington · Saki

The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom · Tobias Smollett

The Adventures of Roderick Random · Tobias Smollett

Fantomas · Pierre Souvestre

Starmaker · Olaf Stapledon

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman · Laurence Sterne

Eminent Victorians · Giles Lytton Strachey

A Tale of a Tub · Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745

Doctor Thorne · Anthony Trollope

The Warden · Anthony Trollope

First Love · Turgenev, Ivan

The Frontier in American History · Frederick Jackson Turner

Genji · Various

Piccadilly Jim · P. G. WODEHOUSE

Mrs. Dalloway · Woolf, Virginia

Theresa Raquin · Émile Zola

Aunt Lee's Library · Aunt Lee, editor