Classic Books

A novel that was very popular from the time of its publication uup till the Second World War, ‘The White Company’ was written by the author of the famous detective series of Sherlock Holmes – Arthur Conan Doyal. This novel is an evidence of Doyle’s passion and his literary beauty as a historian.

The time of this story is a year and a term later than that of The Gold Bat. The history of Wrykyn in between these two books is dealt with in a number of short stories, some of them brainy in the extreme, which have appeared in various magazines. I wanted Messrs Black to publish these, but they were light on their feet and kept away—a painful exhibition of the White Feather.
P. G. Wodehouse

Elizabeth Spellman opened her eyes, turned on her pillow, and minutely studied the face of her sleeping husband. To her, Mahlon Spellman was not a vain, pompous, erratic little man of fifty. When she looked at him she saw the man who had courted her, of whose moral and mental attainments she had been so sure.

The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd is a play by the English writer D. H. Lawrence. It was written in 1911 and the revised version was published in 1914 by Duckworth & Co. in London and Mitchell Kennerley in New York.

In this classic short story, Chekhov takes a snapshot of the Russian life, illuminating the harsh complexities and yet subtle simplicities that interact seamlessly together.

The Wife of His Youth (1899) was Chesnutt’s second collection of short stories, drawing upon his mixed race heritage. These deal largely with race relations, the far-reaching effects of Jim Crow laws, and color prejudice among African Americans toward darker-skinned blacks. Eric J. Sundquist wrote: “Chesnutt’s color-line stories, like his conjure tales, are at their best haunting, psychologically and philosophically astute studies of the nation’s betrayal of the promise of racial equality and its descent into a brutal world of segregation. [He] made the family a means of delineating America’s racial crisis, during slavery and afterward.” For our PG edition, I have added three of Chesnutt’s essays on the “color line” in an Appendix to this collection.

A philosophical work by the famous German philosopher, scholar, philologist, poet and cultural critic Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, ‘The Will to Power, Book I and II’ was first published in the year 1914 in London. The work in two parts focuses on the Nihilist philosophical movement and related views which effected it widely.

Something unusual is happening at Willoughby. The Union Jack floats proudly over the old ivy-covered tower of the school, the schoolrooms are deserted, there is a band playing somewhere, a double row of carriages is drawn up round the large meadow (familiarly called “The Big”), old Mrs Gallop, the orange and sherbert woman, is almost beside herself with business flurry, and boys are going hither and thither, some of them in white ducks with favours on their sleeves, and others in their Sunday “tiles,” with sisters and cousins and aunts in tow, whose presence adds greatly to the brightness of the scene.

First published in the year 1907, English author Algernon Blackwood’s present novella ‘The Willows’ is known as one of the finest classic supernatural tales.

She waited, Kate Croy, for her father to come in, but he kept her unconscionably, and there were moments at which she showed herself, in the glass over the mantel, a face positively pale with the irritation that had brought her to the point of going away without sight of him. It was at this point, however, that she remained; changing her place, moving from the shabby sofa to the armchair upholstered in a glazed cloth that gave at once—she had tried it—the sense of the slippery and of the sticky.

“Excerpt from the book: “You know generally, when people get engaged, there are always people who exclaim : either the man is too good for the girl (and you are too good for me, Billy!), or the girl is too good for the man. But what credit is their good behavior to me? You are a credit to your people, whoever they were; and my own belief is that they were Princes!”

A book with amusing narrative and information, aimed at helping the readers to understand the meanings and significances of various dreams and witchcrafts. This can also serve just as an amusing and interesting read.

“This correspondence, by a meeting between some of the parties, and a separation between the others, could not, to the great detriment of the Post Office revenue, be continued any longer. Very little assistance to the State could be derived from the epistolary intercourse of Mrs. Vernon and her niece; for the former soon perceived, by the style of Frederica’s letters, that they were written under her mother’s inspection! and therefore, deferring all particular enquiry till she could make it personally in London, ceased writing minutely or often.” -an excerpt

AT a time when the pressure of stirring events, and the urgency of public and private interests, render it increasingly desirable that every variety of labour should be attended with an immediate and adequate return; I feel that some apology is necessary for the presumption of inviting the attention of the public to a work, in which I have been compelled to enter into the apparently insignificant detail of familiar and ordinary life.

The often-repeated truth—that “trifles make the sum of human things,” must plead my excuse; as well as the fact, that while our libraries are stored with books of excellent advice on general conduct, we have no single work containing the particular minutiæ of practical duty, to which I have felt myself called upon to invite the consideration of the young women of the present

The Wonderful Visit is an 1895 novel by H. G. Wells. With an angel—a creature of fantasy unlike a religious angel—as protagonist and taking place in contemporary England, the book could be classified as contemporary fantasy, although the genre was not recognised in Wells’s time.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’ is an American children’s novel written by author L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W. W. Denslow. It was first published in 1900. The story chronicles the adventures of a young farm girl named Dorothy in the magical Land of Oz, after she and her pet dog Toto are swept away from their Kansas home by a cyclone. The novel is one of the best-known stories in American literature and has been widely translated.

“Pray, what would you like?” said a Toyman, one day,
Addressing a group of young folks,
“I have toys in abundance, and very cheap, too,
Though not quite so cheap as my jokes.

Born in poverty at Boston, January 19, 1809, dying under painful circumstances at Baltimore, October 7, 1849, his whole literary career of scarcely fifteen years a pitiful struggle for mere subsistence, his memory malignantly misrepresented by his earliest biographer, Griswold, how completely has truth at last routed falsehood and how magnificently has Poe come into his own. For “The Raven,” first published in 1845, and, within a few months, read, recited and parodied wherever the English language was spoken, the half-starved poet received $10! Less than a year later his brother poet, N. P. Willis, issued this touching appeal to the admirers of genius on behalf of the neglected author, his dying wife and her devoted mother, then living under very straitened circumstances in a little cottage at Fordham, N. Y.:

Second volume of renowned story writer of 19th century, ‘The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 2’ consists of best of Edgar Allen Poe’s ghost and horror stories.

Third volume of renowned story writer of 19th century, ‘The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 3’ consists of best of Edgar Allen Poe’s ghost and horror stories.

From the thirteenth century onwards, the name, under the various disguises of Stevinstoun, Stevensoun, Stevensonne, Stenesone, and Stewinsoune, spread across Scotland from the mouth of the Firth of Forth to the mouth of the Firth of Clyde.

The World as I See It is a book by Albert Einstein translated from the German by A. Harris and published in 1935 by John Lane The Bodley Head. The original German book is Mein Weltbild by Albert Einstein, first published in 1934 by Rudolf Kayser.

First published in the year 1818, the present book ‘The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 3 of 3)’ is the third volume of Arthur Schopenhauer’s famous treatise with same title. This work was well received by the critics and marked to be one of the most influential philosophical works of the nineteenth century.

In preparing this volume it has been my aim to omit as few important events as possible without making the book a mere enumeration of names and dates. Above all, I have tried to be accurate. Among the works which I have used as sources, the first one to be mentioned is the great work of Snorre Sturlason: “The Heimskringla, or The Sagas of the Norse Kings,” and I have used the English translation of the same by Samuel Laing, Esq., revised edition by Rasmus B. Anderson (Scribner & Welford, New York, 1889).

Joseph Sheridan le Fanu, Irish novelist, poet, and journalist, was born at Dublin on August 28, 1814. His grandmother was a sister of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, his father a dean. Educated at Trinity College, Dublin, Le Fanu became a contributor to the “Dublin University Magazine,” afterwards its editor, and finally its proprietor. He also owned and edited a Dublin evening paper. Le Fanu first came into prominence in 1837 as the author of the two brilliant Irish ballads, “Phaudhrig Croohore” and “Shamus O’Brien.” His novels, which number more than a dozen, were first published in most cases in his magazine. His power of producing a feeling of weird mystery ranks him with Edgar Allan Poe. It may be questioned whether any Irish novelist has written with more power. The most representative of his stories is “Uncle Silas, a Tale of Bartram-Haugh,” which appeared in 1864. Le Fanu died on February 7, 1873.

An encyclopediac volume which consists of expanded information about the world’s greatest books that changed or contributed greatly to major changes or movements in the world. ARTHUR MEE and J.A. HAMMERTON were the two editors who compiled this informative volume titled ‘The World’s Greatest Books — Volume 09 — Lives and Letters’.

Sent away to the country after a particularly unruly episode, the well-meaning but wayward Bastable children solemnly vow to reform their behavior. But their grand schemes for great and virtuous deeds lead to just as much mayhem as their ordinary games, and sometimes more.

“A thick night and no mistake, Dan. It’s as black as the face of a Nassau pilot. We ought to be nearing the coal wharf by now. Of course they wouldn’t have sense enough to leave a light on it to give us our bearings.”
Captain Jim Wetherly was growling through the window of the darkened wheel-house to his deck-hand, young Dan Frazier, as the oceangoing tug Resolute felt her way up the harbor of Pensacola. She had towed a dismasted bark into port after a long and stubborn tussle with wind and sea, and her master was in haste to fill the empty bunkers and drive her home to Key West, five hundred miles across the blue Gulf.
The mate and several of the crew had gone ashore for the evening, the fat and grizzled chief engineer was loafing on the deck below, and Captain Wetherly was somewhat consoled to have a sympathetic listener in his youngest deck-hand. This Dan Frazier was his nephew, not long out of the Key West High School, and trying his hand at seafaring in the Resolute as the first chance which had offered to ease his mother’s task of caring for him.

The present fictional novel titled ‘The Writer’s Desk Book’ was written by famous novelist William Dana Orcutt. It was first published in the year 1912. The narrative of the book is engaging and fast paced with a lot of drama. The language is typical of the Olf French style.