Fantômas is the first of 32 novels penned from 1911 to 1913 by Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre. The title character is a ruthless thief and killer, a bloodthirsty successor to LeBlanc's Arsène Lupin. The first five novels were made into silent film serials. The character and the movies caught the eye of the French Surrealists who admired the primal violence of Fantômas, as well as his portrayal in the films, which are considered landmarks in French Cinema. In Fantômas , the Marquise de Langrune is savagely murdered and Inspector Juve, who is obsessed with capturing Fantômas, arrives to solve the murder. (Summary by Alan Winterrowd)...

Mystery, Adventure

Preface: What is exaggeration to one class of minds and perceptions, is plain truth to another. That which is commonly called a long-sight, perceives in a prospect innumerable features and bearings non-existent to a short-sighted person. I sometimes ask myself whether there may occasionally be a difference of this kind between some writers and some readers; whether it is always the writer who colors highly, or whether it is now and then the reader whose eye for color is a little dull?...

Preface: A Chancery judge once had the kindness to inform me, as one of a company of some hundred and fifty men and women not labouring under any suspicions of lunacy, that the Court of Chancery, though the shining subject of much popular prejudice (at which point I thought the judge?s eye had a cast in my direction), was almost immaculate....

Excerpt: Dedication. Bob Southey! You?re a poet -- Poet-laureate, And representative of all the race, Although ?t is true that you turn?d out a Tory at Last,-- yours has lately been a common case; And now, my Epic Renegade! what are ye at? With all the Lakers, in and out of place? A nest of tuneful persons, to my eye Like ?four and twenty Blackbirds in a pyre....

Excerpt: Story of the Door. Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary and yet somehow lovable. At friendly meetings, and when the wine was to his taste, something eminently human beaconed from his eye; something indeed which never found its way into his talk, but which spoke not only in these silent symbols of the after-dinner face, but more often and loudly in the acts of his life. He was austere with himself; drank gin when he was alone, to mortify a taste for vintages; and though he enjoyed the theater, had not crossed the doors of one for twenty years. But he had an approved tolerance for others; sometimes wondering, almost with envy, at the high pressure of spirits involved in their misdeeds; and in any extremity inclined to help rather than to reprove. ?I incline to Cain?s heresy,? he used to say quaintly: ?I let my brother go to the devil in his own way.? In this character, it was frequently his fortune to be the last reputable acquaintance and the last good influence in the lives of d...

Preface: In making this abridgement of Boswell?s Life of Johnson I have omitted most of Boswell?s criticisms, comments, and notes, all of Johnson?s opinions in legal cases, most of the letters, and parts of the conversation dealing with matters which were of greater importance in Boswell?s day than now. I have kept in mind an old habit, common enough, I dare say, among its devotees, of opening the book of random, and reading wherever the eye falls upon a passage of especial interest. All such passages, I hope, have been retained, and enough of the whole book to illustrate all the phases of Johnson?s mind and of his time which Boswell observed....

Excerpt: From fairest creatures we desire increase, That thereby beauty?s rose might never die, But as the riper should by time decease, His tender heir might bear his memory: But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes, Feed?st thy light?s flame with self-substantial fuel, Making a famine where abundance lies, Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel. Thou that art now the world?s fresh ornament And only herald to the gaudy spring, Within thine own bud buriest thy content And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding. Pity the world, or else this glutton be, To eat the world?s due, by the grave and thee....

Contents 1 From fairest creatures we desire increase, ..................7 2 When forty winters shall beseige thy brow, ................8 3 Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest ........8 4 Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend ..................9 5 Those hours, that with gentle work did frame ............9 6 Then let not winter?s ragged hand deface .................10 7 Lo! in the orient when the gracious light ..................10 8 Music to hear, why hear?st thou music sadly? ..........11 9 Is it for fear to wet a widow?s eye .............................11 10 For shame! deny that thou bear?st love to any, ........12 11 As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou growest .....12 12 When I do count the clock that tells the time, .........13 13 O, that you were yourself! but, love, you are ..........13 14 Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck; ...........14 15 When I consider every thing that grows ..................14 16 But wherefore do not you a mightier way ...............15 17 Who will believe my verse in time to come, ...........15 18 Shall I compare thee to a summer?s day? ................16...

Excerpt: Preface By Way Of Criticism. These studies are collected from the monthly press. One appeared in the New Quarterly, one in MacMillan?s, and the rest in the Cornhill Magazine. To the Cornhill I owe a double debt of thanks; first, that I was received there in the very best society, and under the eye of the very best of editors; and second, that the proprietors have allowed me to republish so considerable an amount of copy....

Contents PREFACE BY WAY OF CRITICISM. ........................................................................................... 4 CHAPTER I ? VICTOR HUGO?S ROMANCES ........................................................................ 15 CHAPTER II ? SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS.......................................................... 34 CHAPTER III ? WALT WHITMAN............................................................................................. 63 CHAPTER IV ? HENRY DAVID THOREAU: HIS CHARACTER AND OPINIONS........... 84 CHAPTER V ? YOSHIDA-TORAJIRO..................................................................................... 107 CHAPTER VI ? FRANCOIS VILLON, STUDENT, POET, AND HOUSEBREAKER.........117 CHAPTER VII ? CHARLES OF ORLEANS ............................................................................ 141 CHAPTER VIII ? SAMUEL PEPYS .......................................................................................... 170 CHAPTER IX ? JOHN KNOX AND HIS RELATIONS TO WOMEN .................................. 190...