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This book has been prepared with the purpose of furnishing students of journalism and young reporters with a large collection of typical news stories. For college classes it may be used as a textbook. For newspaper workers it is offered as a handbook to which they may turn, in a particular case, to find out what news to get, where to get it, and how to present it effectively. Every young writer on a newspaper is called upon to do kinds of reporting in which he lacks experience. If, with the aid of an index, he can turn readily to several instances where more experienced writers have solved problems like his own, he will undertake his new task with a clearer idea of what to do and how to do it.

First published in the year 1846, the present fictional novel ‘Typee: A Romance of the South Seas’ by American writer Herman Melville was his first book to publish. Considered a classic in travel and adventure literature, the narrative is partly based on the author’s actual experiences on the island Nuku Hiva in the South Pacific Marquesas Islands in 1842, liberally supplemented with imaginative reconstruction and adaptation of material from other books.

A modernist novel by noted Irish writer of early twentieth century James Joyce, ‘Ulysses’ chronicles the peripatetic appointments and encounters of Leopold Bloom in Dublin in the course of an ordinary day, 16 June 1904. ‘Ulysses’ is the Latinised name of Odysseus, the hero of Homer’s epic poem ‘Odyssey’, and the novel establishes a series of parallels between the poem and the novel, with structural correspondences between the characters and experiences of Leopold Bloom and Odysseus, and many other characters.

First published in the year 1852, the present novel ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ by famous American writer Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe is an anti-slavery classic novel.

First published in the year 1897, famous Russian novelist, playwright and social critique Anton Pavlovich Chekhov’s play ‘Uncle Vanya: Scenes from Country Life in Four Acts’ “portrays the visit of an elderly professor and his glamorous, much younger second wife, Yelena, to the rural estate that supports their urban lifestyle. Two friends—Vanya, brother of the professor’s late first wife, who has long managed the estate, and Astrov, the local doctor—both fall under Yelena’s spell, while bemoaning the ennui of their provincial existence. Sonya, the professor’s daughter by his first wife, who has worked with Vanya to keep the estate going, suffers from her unrequited feelings for Dr. Astrov. Matters are brought to a crisis when the professor announces his intention to sell the estate, Vanya and Sonya’s home, with a view to investing the proceeds to achieve a higher income for himself and his wife.” -Wikipedia (Uncle Vanya)

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts. We have not used OCR, as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. In books where there are images such as portraits, sketches etc. We have endeavored to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. We feel they deserve to be made for future generations to enjoy.

Under the Lilacs is a children’s novel by Louisa May Alcott, first published in 1878.

Adventure and romance during the Crimean War await the reader in this tale of love and war by James Grant.

First published in the year 1911, the present fictional novel ‘Under Western Eyes’ by Joseph Conrad is viewed as Conrad’s response to the themes explored in Crime and Punishment; Conrad was reputed to have detested Dostoevsky. It is also, some say, Conrad’s response to his own early life; his father was a famous revolutionary imprisoned by the Russians, but, instead of following in his father’s footsteps, at the age of sixteen Conrad left his native land forever.

“There are two natural divisions under which my thoughts will be arranged. I shall endeavour to unfold, 1st, The principles which we adopt in interpreting the Scriptures. And 2dly, Some of the doctrines, which the Scriptures, so interpreted, seem to us clearly to express.” —FROM THE BOOK

Inaugaral Addresses of the Presidents of The United States, from George Washington to George W. Bush (1789-2005)

Perhaps no doctorine of Christian science rouses so much natural doubt and questioning as this, that God knows no such thing as sin. Indeed, this may be a set down as one of the “things hard to be understood,” such as the apostle Peter declared were taught by his fellow apostle Paul, “which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest…unto their own destruction.”
Let us then reason together on this important subject, whose statement in Christian Science may justly be characterzied as wonderful.

There are few circumstances among those which make up the present condition of human knowledge, more unlike what might have been expected, or more significant of the backward state in which speculation on the most important subjects still lingers, than the little progress which has been made in the decision of the controversy respecting the criterion of right and wrong. From the dawn of philosophy, the question concerning the summum bonum, or, what is the same thing, concerning the foundation of morality, has been accounted the main problem in speculative thought, has occupied the most gifted intellects, and divided them into sects and schools, carrying on a vigorous warfare against one another. And after more than two thousand years the same discussions continue, philosophers are still ranged under the same contending banners, and neither thinkers nor mankind at large seem nearer to being unanimous on the subject, than when the youth Socrates listened to the old Protagoras, and asserted (if Plato’s dialogue be grounded on a real conversation) the theory of utilitarianism against the popular morality of the so-called sophist.

Utopia is a frame narrative primarily depicting a fictional island society and its religious, social and political customs. Many aspects of More’s description of Utopia are reminiscent of life in monasteries.

No one, I think, can be more sensible than I am that my story is nothing if not true. Hume has wisely said, “A man cannot speak long of himself without vanity.” I should like to be allowed to add that I have never known or conceived of a person—except probably the reader and writer of these pages—who could talk five minutes about himself without—lying. That is, to be sure, reducing the thing to mathematical exactness. An overestimating smile, or an underestimating shrug of the shoulders, or a tone of the voice even, will always—though sometimes inadvertently—

The volume is designed to serve the purpose of stepping-stone or forecast, has been compiled for the purpose of placing before the public the experiences of thirty-five full years of my life as a biologist and physiological chemist, devoted to the sifting and solution of vital problems of health and eugenics and in the practice of the resultant knowledge of the laws of life discovered in the course of my research.

First published between 1847 to 1848 in a serialized form, the present novel ‘Vanity Fair’ by William Thackeray is a classic. It follows the lives of Becky Sharp and Emmy Sedley amid their friends and families during and after the Napoleonic Wars.

Published in 1935, Ellen Glasgow’s novel ‘Vein of Iron’ is considered to be one of her best. The story opens in the years just before the first World War and laid in the Valley of Virginia. The book traces the experience of a family with four generations of strong women. Faced with a crisis when the bread-winner, a philosopher-minister, is defrocked for his unorthodox views, the women provide the “vein of iron” which carries the family through removal to Queensboro, through war and depression until the final return to the mountains.

Venus in Furs’ is a novella by the Austrian author Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. It was first published in 1870. The novel draws themes, like female dominance and sadomasochism, and character inspiration heavily from Sacher-Masoch’s own life. Wanda von Dunajew is the novel’s central female character, was modelled after Fanny Pistor, who was an emerging literary writer. The two met when Pistor contacted Sacher-Masoch, under assumed name and fictitious title of Baroness Bogdanoff, for suggestions on improving her writing to make it suitable for publication.

Saturday had been a strenuous day for the baseball team of Winona University, and Victor Ollnee, its redoubtable catcher, slept late. Breakfast at the Beta Kappa Fraternity House on Sunday started without him, and Gilbert Frenson, who never played ball or tennis, and Arnold Macey, who was too effeminate to swing a bat, divided the Sunday morning Star between them.

Bronckhorst was not nice in any way. He had no respect for the pretty public and private lies that make life a little less nasty than it is. His manner towards his wife was coarse. There are many things—including actual assault with the clenched fist—that a wife will endure; but seldom a wife can bear—as Mrs. Bronckhorst bore—with a long course of brutal, hard chaff, making light of her weaknesses, her headaches, her small fits of gaiety, her dresses, her queer little attempts to make herself attractive to her husband when she knows that she is not what she has been, and—worst of all—the love that she spends on her children. That particular sort of heavy-handed jest was specially dear to Bronckhorst. I suppose that he had first slipped into it, meaning no harm, in the honeymoon, when folk find their ordinary stock of endearments run short, and so go to the other extreme to express their feelings. A similar impulse makes a man say, ‘Hutt, you old beast!’ when a favourite horse nuzzles his coat-front. Unluckily, when the reaction of marriage sets in, the form of speech remains, and, the tenderness having died out, hurts the wife more than she cares to say. But Mrs. Bronckhorst was devoted to her ‘Teddy’ as she called him. Perhaps that was why he objected to her. Perhaps—this is only a theory to account for his infamous behaviour later on—he gave way to the queer, savage feeling that sometimes takes by the throat a husband twenty years married, when he sees, across the table, the same, same face of his wedded wife, and knows that, as he has sat facing it, so must he continue to sit until the day of its death or his own. Most men and all women know the spasm. It only lasts for three breaths as a rule, must be a ‘throw-back’ to times when men and women were rather worse than they are now, and is too unpleasant to be discussed.

Mr and Mrs Openshaw came from Manchester to settle in London. He had been, what is called in Lancashire, a salesman for a large manufacturing firm, who were extending their business, and opening a warehouse in the city; where Mr Openshaw was now to superintend their affairs. He rather enjoyed the change; having a kind of curiosity about London, which he had never yet been able to gratify in his brief visits to the metropolis. At the same time, he had an odd, shrewd contempt for the inhabitants, whom he always pictured to himself as fine, lazy people, caring nothing but for fashion and aristocracy, and lounging away their days in Bond Street, and such places; ruining good English, and ready in their turn to despise him as a provincial. The hours that the men of business kept in the city scandalized him too, accustomed as he was to the early dinners of Manchester folk and the consequently far longer evenings. Still, he was pleased to go to London, though he would not for the world have confessed it, even to himself, and always spoke of the step to his friends as one demanded of him by the interests of his employers, and sweetened to him by a considerable increase of salary.
—from this book

The Baital-Pachisi, or Twenty-five Tales of a Baital is the history of a huge Bat, Vampire, or Evil Spirit which inhabited and animated dead bodies. It is an old, and thoroughly Hindu, Legend composed in Sanskrit, and is the germ which culminated in the Arabian Nights, and which inspired the “Golden Ass” of Apuleius, Boccacio’s “Decamerone,” the “Pentamerone,” and all that class of facetious fictitious literature.

The all-time loved collection of Hindu tales of Adventure, Magic, and Romance. Top popular series of Vikrarm-Betal tales now in English

“The idea behind the village industries scheme is that we should look to the villages for the supply of our daily needs and that, when we find that some needs are not so supplied, we should see whether with a little trouble and organization, they cannot be profitably supplied by the villagers. In estimating the profit, we should think of the villager, not of ourselves. It may be that, in the initial stages, we might have to pay a little more than the ordinary price and get an inferior article in the bargain. Things will improve, if we will interest ourselves in the supplier of our needs and insist on his doing better and take the trouble of helping to do better.” —from the Book