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An Arnold Bennett classic.
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An Arnold Bennett classic.
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An Arnold Bennett classic.
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An Arnold Bennett classic.
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The adventures of five brothers and sisters growing up in rural England in the late nineteenth century.
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Based on London's observations of the slums of London.
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The first part of this novel exposes the struggles of the working-class of London's day, while the latter part is an exploration of the California landscape, with Sonoma Valley providing the "perfect spot" for the wandering lovers.
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Every town should have a 'card'--someone who gets talked about, someone who does mad and wonderful things, someone who makes you laugh. Bursley in the Five Towns has a 'card': Edward Henry Machin (Denry for short). Denry begins life in a poor little house where the rent is twenty-three pence a week. But before he's thirty, he's made a lot of money, and had more adventures than you and I have had hot dinners. The town of Bursley never stops talking about him. Whatever will young Denry do next?
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The Grand Babylon Hotel in London is an exclusive establishment. Mr Theodore Racksole, an American millionaire, visited with his daughter and bought the place. Events then take an unexpected turn as Theodore and Nella Racksole play detective.
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The pride, pretensions and snobbery of the potteries are handled by Arnold Bennett with amused tolerance. Most of his stories, like the four linked adventures of Vera Cheswardine, set the home life of middle-class manufacturers of earthenware and porcelain against a scenery of coal dust.
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The Old Wives' Tale celebrates the romance of even the most ordinary lives in the course of tracing the passage of time over three generations. It tells the story of the two Baines sisters, placid stay-at-home Constance and rebellious Sophia, from their girlhood to their last days. They move from the family drapery shop in provincial Bursley during the repressive mid-Victorian period to old age in the modern era of mass marketing and the internal combustion engine. The setting ranges from the We... more info>>
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A Samuel Butler classic.
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Mr. Bridges had long been desirous of becoming a candidate for this distinction, but, until the death of Mr. Leader, no vacancy having occurred among the scholars, he had as yet had no opportunity of going in for it. The income to be derived from it was not inconsiderable, and as it led to the porter fellowship the mere pecuniary value was not to be despised, but thirst of fame and the desire of a more public position.
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Now, however sceptical I may yet feel about the truth of all Darwin's theory, I cannot sit quietly by and see him misrepresented in such a scandalously slovenly manner. What Darwin does say is that sometimes diversified and changed habits may be observed in individuals of the same species; that is that there are eccentric animals just as there are eccentric men.
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Alice Adams describes the humourously rediculous life of a fading aristocratic family trying to get back on top of the social ladder. Alice, with a hand from her money-obsesed mother, locks herself in a world where she believes that she is a memeber of the aristocracy. While her family has lost its status, Alice and her parents will stop at nothing to impress others (especially rich young men) with wealth they don't really have. The scheming of each of the family members demonstrates the absurdi... more info>>
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I never met anybody else who looked so pleasantly communicative and managed to say so little. In fact, he didn't say anything at all; and I guessed that this faculty was not without its value in his political career, disastrous as it had proved to his private happiness. His habit of silence, moreover, was not cultivated: you could see that "the secret of it" was just that he was BORN quiet.
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What a ride it was to Venice that day! What magical airs we rode through, and what a thieving old trickster was time, as he always becomes when one wishes hours to be long! I think Poor Jr. had made himself forget everything except that he was with her and that he must be a friend. He committed a thousand ridiculousnesses at the stations; he filled one side of the compartment with the pretty chianti-bottles, with terrible cakes, and with fruits and flowers; he never ceased his joking, which had ... more info>>
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Originally published by Scribners in 1903, this is the story of Kate Orme, who marries a man of weak moral character. When they have a child, she fears that the sins of the father will be the sins of their son. Kate dedicates herself to instilling morality in the boy as he grows, especially after her husband dies. This is a typical Wharton examination of upper-crust society strewn with flaws.
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Part of the generation that produced Ernest Hemingway and Ford Madox Ford, John Dos Passos wrote one of the most grimly honest portraits of World War I. Three Soldiers portrays the lives of a trio of army privates: Fuselli, an Italian American store clerk from San Francisco; Chrisfield, a farm boy from Indiana; and Andrews, a musically gifted Harvard graduate from New York. Hailed as a masterpiece on its original publication in 1921, Three Soldiers is a gripping exploration of fear and ambition,... more info>>
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Wilkie Collins's fifth novel, The Dead Secret explores the relationship between a fallen woman, her illegitimate daughter and the recovery of a hidden secret.
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Heart all right, said the doctor. Lungs all right. No organic disease that I can discover. Philip Lefrank, don't alarm yourself. You are not going to die yet. The disease you are suffering from is--overwork. The remedy in your case is--rest.
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Booth Tarkington (1869-1946) was one of the most popular writers of the early 20th Century, who first achieved acclaim with his historical romance Monsieur Beaucaire (1900). But his more characteristic work was found in such novels as The Gentleman from Indiana (1899), The Conquest of Canaan (1905), and the trilogy consisting of Turmoil (1915), The Magnificent Ambersons (1918) and The Midlander (1921). He won two Pulitzer Prizes for novels, for The Magnificent Ambersons and for Alice Adams (1921... more info>>
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Winner of the 1918 Pulitzer Prize, Tarkington's novel illuminates the period in American history when modern life was first making an impact on the small towns of the Midwest.
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It was Panky, not Hanky, who had given him the Musical Bank money. Panky was the greater humbug of the two, for he would humbug even himself--a thing, by the way, not very hard to do; and yet he was the less successful humbug, for he could humbug no one who was worth humbugging--not for long.
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On having clambered over the ship's side and found myself on deck, I was somewhat taken aback with the apparently inextricable confusion of everything on board; the slush upon the decks, the crying, the kissing, the mustering of the passengers, the stowing away of baggage still left upon the decks, the rain and the gloomy sky created a kind of half- amusing, half-distressing bewilderment.
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