In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain creates an entertaining adventure of Middle America in the 1800's - afloat on a raft on the Mississippi River. Huck escapes his civilized life when he arranges his own "murder" and turns back into the backwoods, downriver yokel he started as, and in the process springing a slave, Jim, from bondage.Huck and Jim experience life as a series of tableaus as the river sweeps them through small towns on their way South...
Pride and Prejudice is the most famous of Jane Austen’s novels, and its opening is one of the most famous lines in English literature - “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” Its manuscript was first written between 1796 and 1797, and was initially called First Impressions, but was never published under that title. Following revisions it was published on 28 January 1813 by the same Mr...
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland tells the story of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar and anthropomorphic creatures. The tale plays with logic in ways that have given the story lasting popularity with adults as well as children. It is considered to be one of the most characteristic examples of the "literary nonsense" genre, and its narrative course and structure have been enormously influential, especially in the fantasy genre...
Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), published in 1889, is a humorous account by Jerome K. Jerome of a boating holiday on the Thames between Kingston and Oxford. The book was initially intended to be a serious travel guide, with accounts of local history along the route, but the humorous elements took over to the point where the serious and somewhat sentimental passages seem a distraction to the comic novel...
Lucy Maud Montgomery’s classic children’s novel, Anne of Green Gables tells the story of a red headed orphan girl with a personality you can’t help but love. Despite her “tragical” past, Anne’s optimism and imagination have helped her to always see the best in things. Anne’s life changes considerably when she is accidentally adopted by the Cuthberts, a brother and sister who thought they were getting a boy to help out on the farm...
Lucy Maud Montgomery’s classic children’s novel, Anne of Green Gables tells the story of a red headed orphan girl with a personality you can’t help but love. Despite her “tragical” past, Anne’s optimism and imagination have helped her to always see the best in things. Anne’s life changes considerably when she is accidentally adopted by the Cuthberts, a brother and sister who thought they were getting a boy to help out on the farm...
In this sequel to "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", Alice is playing with her kittens — a black kitten and a white kitten, the offspring of Dinah, Alice's cat in the first book — when she ponders what the world is like on the other side of a mirror's reflection... (summary from wikipedia)
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is an 1889 novel by American humorist and writer Mark Twain. The work is a very early example of time travel in literature, anticipating by six years H. G. Wells' The Time Machine of 1895 (however, unlike Wells, Twain does not give any real explanation of his protagonist's traveling in time). Some early editions are entitled A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur. (Summary by Wikipedia)
The stories, first published in 1902, are fantastic accounts of how various natural phenomena came about. The original editions of Just So Stories were illustrated with woodcuts by Kipling himself. Read along online and see the illustrations at mainlesson.com. Each story is accompanied by a poem, in a somewhat ballad style. Many of the stories are addressed to "Best Beloved" (they were first written for Kipling's eldest daughter, Josephine, who had died during an outbreak of influenza in 1899),...
LibriVox volunteers bring you 14 recordings of Lines on The Mermaid Tavern by John Keats. This was the Fortnightly Poetry project for August 15th, 2010.
LibriVox volunteers bring you 12 recordings of A New Arrival by George W. Cable. This was the Fortnightly Poetry project for May 17th, 2010."The New Arrival" is a valuable poem because it expresses the joy of a young father over his new baby. If girls should be educated to be good mothers, so should boys be taught that fatherhood is the highest and holiest joy and right of man. The child is educator to the man...
This anthology of poetry, published in 1904, contains such favorites as The Raven, My Shadow, and The Village Blacksmith, as well as many lovely poems that may be unfamiliar. Most of the poems in this collection are short enough for children to memorize.
Following the Equator (American English title) or More Tramps Abroad (English title) is a non-fiction travelogue published by American author Mark Twain in 1897.Twain was practically bankrupt in 1894 due to a failed investment into a "revolutionary" typesetting machine. In an attempt to extricate himself from debt of $100,000 (equivalent of about $2 million in 2005) he undertook a tour of the British Empire in 1895, a route chosen to provide numerous opportunities for lectures in the Englis...
Following Anne of Green Gables, the book covers the second chapter in the life of Anne Shirley. Anne of Avonlea follows Anne from the age of 16 to 18, during the two years that she teaches at Avonlea school. It includes many of the characters from Anne of Green Gables, as well new ones like Mr Harrison, Miss Lavendar Lewis, Paul Irving, and the twins Dora and Davy. (Summary from Wikipedia.org)
Hedda Gabler is a play first published in 1890 by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. In it, Hedda Gabler, daughter of an aristocratic General, has just returned from her honeymoon with George Tesman, an aspiring young academic, reliable but not brilliant, who has combined research with their honeymoon. The reappearance of Tesman's academic rival, Eilert Lovborg, throws their lives into disarray. (Summary adapted from Wikipedia by wildemoose)
Edgar Allan Poe is best known for his famous short horror stories; however, horror is not the only genre in which he wrote. How To Write a Blackwood Article and its companion piece A Predicament are satirical works exploring the pieces of the formula generally seen in short horror stories ("articles") found in the Scottish periodical "Blackwood's Magazine" and the successful misapplication of said formula by - horrors! - a woman author! - respectively...
The Hunting of the Snark is a long nonsense poem by Lewis Carroll describing the adventures of ten weirdly assorted characters as they pursue an elusive creature known as a snark. (Summary by Shawn Craig Smith)
It was published in 1893–1894 by Century Magazine in seven installments, and is a detective story with some racial themes. The plot of this novel is a detective story, in which a series of identities — the judge's murderer, Tom, Chambers — must be sorted out. This structure highlights the problem of identity and one's ability to determine one's own identity. Broader issues of identity are the central ideas of this novel...
Jane Austen demonstrated her mastery of the epistolary novel genre in Lady Susan, which she wrote in 1795 but never published. Although the primary focus of this short novel is the selfish behavior of Lady Susan as she engages in affairs and searches for suitable husbands for herself and her young daughter, the actual action shares its importance with Austen’s manipulation of her characters' behavior by means of their reactions to the letters that they receive...
In one of his later novels, the master storyteller spins a tale of two children switched at infancy. A slave takes on the identity of master and heir while the rightful heir is condemned to live the life of a slave. Twain uses this vehicle to explore themes of nature vs. nurture, racial bigotry and moral relativism. The case of mistaken identity is a theme that Twain explored also in THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER; in THE TRAGEDY OF PUDD'NHEAD WILSON he turns the theme into a well-crafted detective s...
This romantic comedy stars a young American girl named Sally, who inherits a considerable fortune and finds her life turned upside down. The typically Wodehouseian cast includes Sally's ambitious brother, an assortment of theater people, a pair of English cousins, and, of course, an Uncle. It's jolly good fun! (Summary by Kara and Wikipedia)
The Pirates of Penzance; or, The Slave of Duty is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. The story concerns Frederic, who, having completed his 21st year, is released from his apprenticeship to a band of tender-hearted pirates. He meets Mabel, the daughter of Major-General Stanley, and the two young people fall instantly in love. Frederic finds out, however, that he was born on 29 February, and so, technically, he only has a birthday each leap yea...
This book tells of a girl named Alice falling through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures.