Published before 1800
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The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom
You can call me Dr. Fathom. Or Count Fathom. But I’m not who I say I am. And can you blame me? My mother was a soldiers’ harlot who pocketed extra loot by wandering through the battlefield stripping the dead and dying of valuables. I don’t even know who my father was, except he must have had my handsome looks. People liked looking at me. And people liked how I talked too. Early on, I learned that telling the truth didn’t get you the same quick reward as telling them what they wanted to hear, being assiduously charming, dissimulating. In a word, lying. I became good at it. And I became the favorite of a rich Hungarian count who took me in and coaxed his pathetically na?ve son to look up to me and learn to be like me. Ha! How I wanted to sell my soul to trade places with Renaldo! I wanted his money. I wanted his beautiful life. I wanted his beautiful wife — at least for an extra notch on my belt. This is the story of how I went about achieving those things. It was easy, especially at first. Because, to tell the truth, people secretly yearn for tall tales. – Summary by Arthur Krolman
The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (Volume I)
The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle is a picaresque novel by the Scottish author Tobias Smollett (1721 ? 1771), first published in 1751, and revised and reissued in 1758. It is the story of the fortunes and misfortunes of the egotistical dandy Peregrine Pickle, and it provides a comic and caustic portrayal of 18th century European society. (Summary by Wikipedia)
The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (Volume II)
Volume II continues the story of the fortunes and misfortunes of the egotistical dandy Peregrine Pickle. The novel is written as a series of adventures, with every chapter typically describing a new adventure. There is also a very long independent story, “The Memoirs of a Lady of Quality”, written by Frances Vane, Viscountess Vane, inside the novel. Frances Vane, Viscountess Vane (1715 – 1788), known as Lady Fanny, was a British memoirist known for her highly public adulterous relationships. (Wikipedia )
The Adventures of Roderick Random
I am Roderick Random. This is the contemporary story of my struggle against the adversity of orphan-hood, poverty, press gangs, bloody duels, rival fortune hunters, and the challenge to be well-dressed through it all. In the course of recounting my adventures to you, dear reader, I will give you a front row seat to the characters of English eighteenth century life including highway robbers, womanizing monks, debt-laden gallants, lecherous corrupt officials, effeminate sea captains, bloodthirsty surgeons, and my dear friend Miss Williams, a reformed prostitute. Educated in the classics, armed with a confident conscientious attitude and my long-suffering sidekick, Strap, I fight the good fight staying, on the whole, morally upstanding throughout. Today, if there be such a thing as true happiness on earth, I enjoy it — and without having spent a fortune on college either. After hearing me out, I expect you’ll be as wonderfully transported as one dear wealthy gentleman who listened to my whole story and then blessed God for the adversity I had undergone, which, he said, enlarged the understanding, improved the heart, steeled the constitution, and qualified a young man for all the duties and enjoyments of life much better than any education which affluence could bestow. Summary by Arthur Krolman.
The Blazing World
The Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish is, all at once, a satire, a treatise on natural philosophy, a work of proto-science fiction, and a defiant venture into a scientific world where women were not usually allowed. It tells the tale of a young Lady who is kidnapped by a man that tries to sail away with her. Through divine interference, however, the ship is tossed into a storm and everyone but the Lady perishes. Blown up to the North Pole, she inadvertently passes into to another world, the Blazing World, where she is almost immediately made supreme ruler. As the Lady begins to exercise her will, Cavendish lays out her own Utopia and discusses a wide range of scientific, political, social, and religious topics. But when a war breaks out in her home world, what will the Lady do with all power of the Blazing World behind her? – Summary by Sarah Terry
The Coquette, Or The History of Eliza Wharton
The classic early American epistolary novel about the seduction and ruin of a passionate young woman. Based on the true story of Elizabeth Whitman, whose lonesome death in childbirth in a Connecticut inn sparked widespread discussion and outrage, the novel went through many editions and innumerable printings in the century after its initial publication in 1797. (Summary by Jon Miller)
The Female American
?The Female American; Or The Adventures of Unca Eliza Winkfield, Written by Herself in Two Volumes? was anonymously published under the pseudonym Unca Eliza Winkfield in 1767. Unca Eliza, a half-Native American and half-English woman, is shipwrecked on an island. Discovering the remnants of past civilization, Unca Eliza utilizes the tools she finds and her extensive knowledge (derived from her experience with both the English and Native Americans) to survive the island and immanent encounters with indigenous peoples. This audiobook is a collaborative project by graduate students in the English Department at the University of Oregon. – Summary by Kathleen Gekiere
The Female Quixote Vol. 1
The novel formally inverts Don Quixote: as the don mistakes himself for the knightly hero of a Romance, so Arabella mistakes herself for the maiden love of a Romance. While the don thinks it his duty to praise the Platonically pure damsels he meets (such as the woman he loves), so Arabella believes it is in her power to kill with a look and it is the duty of her lovers to suffer ordeals on her behalf. (Summary by Wikipedia)
The Female Quixote Vol. 2
Second Volume of the novel that formally inverts Don Quixote: as the don mistakes himself for the knightly hero of a Romance, so Arabella mistakes herself for the maiden love of a Romance. While the don thinks it his duty to praise the Platonically pure damsels he meets (such as the woman he loves), so Arabella believes it is in her power to kill with a look and it is the duty of her lovers to suffer ordeals on her behalf. (Summary by Wikipedia) This project was proof listened by Stav Nisser and Barry Eads.