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There is no more pathetic figure in our world to-day than the common figure of the poor young lady, crushed between classes above and below, and left with scarce a chance of earning her bread with decency. So says Juliet Appleton’s boss, encouraging her to put her story into print. How will this college-educated 23-year-old survive the Darwinian Battle of Life in late Victorian England? She’s fundless in London but armed, by way of adaptive structures, with those two high-tech devices of the day: a bicycle for mobility and a typewriter for utility. (Summary by Grant Hurlock)...

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Fiction

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The extraordinary child-adult Prince Myshkin, confined for several years in a Swiss sanatorium suffering from severe epilepsy, returns to Russia to claim his inheritance and to find a place in healthy human society. The teeming St Petersburg community he enters is far from receptive to an innocent like himself, despite some early successes and relentless pursuit by grotesque fortune-hunters. His naive gaucheries give rise to extreme reactions among his new acquaintance, ranging from anguished protectiveness to mockery and contempt. But even before reaching the city, during the memorable train journey that opens the novel, he has encountered the demonic Rogozhin, the son of a wealthy merchant who is in thrall to the equally doomed Natasha Filippovna: beautiful, capricious and destructively neurotic, she joins with the two weirdly contrasted men in a spiralling dance of death... (Summary by Martin Geeson)...

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Fiction

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The plot centres around Laevsky, who is living in a small seaside town in the Caucasus after running away with another man's wife, Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, amid dreams of starting a new life. The dreams have come to nothing as Laevsky idles away his life drinking and playing cards, and Nadyezhda begins to have other affairs. Laevsky's scheme to run away again, this time without his mistress, brings him into conflict with the rationalist Von Koren, who believes in Darwinian principles of natural selection and extinction of the weak and useless. Matters come to a head when an outburst from Laevsky leads to a duel. Von Koren is determined to teach Laevksy a lesson. (Introduction by Phil)...

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Fiction, Literature

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This play does not represent time in suspension or a snapshot cartoon, but rather a living entity in never ending motion. As with two people reading the same book but not imagining the same things, the actors and producers will be the true creators of new models and ideas due to the existing framework. Consider the theater as a painting with ideas made out of a malleable material. Time stamps its features upon it and producers remodel its structure. Actors, as factors from the literary system, influence the "personality" of the characters through their own personalities. ...

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In some places, some speeches may be adapted or the actors may improvise for a better connection between the moduli and the integrity of the play. In order to test the reaction of the audience, to measure the flair of the critics for the illogicality of the play, and to determine the force of electricity in the thinking and power of adaptability to the environment to the unpropitious conditions of living (Darwin's theory) of the spectators in a hostile and constraining world, the producer may create other variants to break the above conditions to realize totally illogical plays. I hope there will be an exact distinction between "the absurd" and "the illogical." The "absurd" has its absurd logical while the "illogical" has none. We can afford this illogicality because the world depicted in this play is an illogical one. It is an upside-down DRAMA. So the variants: IBAF H CG ED HGB DIF ACE GCE B AHI DF, are distinct illogical plays, even with the permutations done into the moduli G or G. Let's be serious even in... the unreliableness. ...

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Excerpt: The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin.

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This fictional work is written in 1st person by the dog himself. It's a cute story of the adventures in the life of a noble dog who is appropriately named, Job. The canine society in which he lives is an interesting parallel to human society. (Summary by Allyson Hester)...

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Adventure, Animals, Children, Fantasy, Fiction

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Excerpt: On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin.

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If you have read any accounts of adventure in Africa, you will know that travelers never mention animals of any kind that are gifted with the faculty of speech, or gazelles that are overseers for native princes, or hares that eat flesh. No, indeed; only the native-born know of these; and, judging by the immense and rapid strides civilization is making in those parts, it will not be long before such wonderful specimens of zoölogy will be as extinct as the ichthyosaurus, dinornis, and other poor creatures who never dreamed of the awful names that would be applied to them when they were too long dead to show their resentment. As to the truth of these tales, I can only say that they were told to me, in Zanzibar, by negroes whose ancestors told them to them, who had received them from their ancestors, and so back; so that the praise for their accuracy, or the blame for their falsity, lies with the first ancestor who set them going. You may think uncivilized negroes are pretty ignorant people, but the white man who is supposed to have first told the story of “The House that Jack Built” was a mighty poor genius compared with the unknown or...

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Animals, Children, Myths/Legends

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This is the classic story of Mowgli, the young boy raised by wolves in India: his escapades and adventures with his dear friends Bagheera the panther and Baloo the bear, his capture by the Monkey-People, his attempt at reintegration into human society, and his ultimate triumph over his avowed enemy the tiger Shere Khan. Included in the book is the story of the brave white seal, Kotick, and the tenacious young mongoose, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi who battled through the night to protect his human family from a pair of sly and viscous cobras. Packed with adventure and Jungle Law wisdom, this book has pervaded popular culture as the basis of many film and stage adaptations, including the popular Disney movie. Summary by Meredith Hughes and Phil Chenevert...

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Children, Adventure, Animals, Fiction

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This classic children's book by Rudyard Kipling tells the story of Mowgli, a young boy raised by wolves: his escapades and adventures with his dear friends Bagheera the panther and Baloo the bear, his capture by the Monkey-People, his attempt at reintegration into human society, and his ultimate triumph over the lame tiger Shere Khan. The account of Mowgli's adventures is followed by several short stories, including the tales of the brave white seal, Kotick, and the tenacious mongoose, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. Packed with adventure and Jungle Law wisdom, this book has pervaded popular culture as the basis of many film and stage adaptations, including the popular Disney movie, and through its adoption as a motivational book by the Cub Scouts....

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Children, Animals, Adventure

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Having lost her mother, and virtually rendered `orphan`, in the absence of `father`, a little girl Named Bhoomika, by dint of sheer circumstances, happens to reach a virgin teacher. Here, the `blessed opportunity for education` awaits her, as she is inspired and guided by this benevolent lady towards higher education. Once, she was offered a part-time job of `a reader for a blind class-fellow` of hers at Khadi Degree College, Guwahati: and she gladly accepted it. Of course, some nascent opportunities came to her, even in Delhi, when she was staying in a Working Women’s Hostel, while doing some odd jobs to support self, economically. But the travails of life also came her way; and she coped up with every sort of situation, by way of `fine-tuning` the responses from her brain and heart, every time, with an objective to attaining a quality decision from within. Having once been requested by very senior colleague to stay with one spinster Professor, during her illness, she served the lady so dutifully that the Professor persistently requested her to live with her till the young girl is married off. Having attained some extraordinary ...

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"In fact, I had never spoken to her even a single word, though she continued to send me signals for initiating a dialogue with her. I had to go to fetch my daily quota of water from the water-tap, provided at the back of her tenement, for all the four segments, in the vicinity. Almost every time, we had to place our buckets or utensils, in a queue, while waiting for our turn. Being shy of passing through the front lane, while approaching the water-tap, I preferred to walk along the back of the segment, in our front. God knows, how she could spot me from such a long distance that I had come out of my room, with buckets in my hands. Quite often, I marked her busy in looking towards me with furtive glances, while waiting for her turn, as she would deliberately waste her time, simply to ignore the fact of my arrival there and would thus make room for me to place my buckets before hers.” .......... It pains him to recall his last meeting with that `unfortunate girl`, who was destined to spend a spinster's life and breathe her last, while resting her head at Bihari's knee, who kept caressing her forehead, in the presence of her trusted ...

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Having lost her mother, and virtually rendered `orphan`, in the absence of `father`, a little girl Named Bhoomika, by dint of sheer circumstances, happens to reach a virgin teacher. Here, the `blessed opportunity for education` awaits her, as she is inspired and guided by this benevolent lady towards higher education. Once, she was offered a part-time job of `a reader for a blind class-fellow` of hers at Khadi Degree College, Guhahati: and she gladly accepted it. Of course, some nascent opportunities came to her, even in Delhi, when she was staying in a Working Women’s Hostel, while doing some odd jobs to support self, economically. But the travails of life also came her way; and she coped up with every sort of situation, by way of `fine-tuning` the responses from her brain and heart, every time, with an objective to attaining a quality decision from within. Having once been requested by very senior colleague to stay with one spinster Professor, during her illness, she served the lady so dutifully that the Professor persistently requested her to live with her till the young girl is married off. Having attained some extraordinary ...

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"In fact, I had never spoken to her even a single word, though she continued to send me signals for initiating a dialogue with her. I had to go to fetch my daily quota of water from the water-tap, provided at the back of her tenement, for all the four segments, in the vicinity. Almost every time, we had to place our buckets or utensils, in a queue, while waiting for our turn. Being shy of passing through the front lane, while approaching the water-tap, I preferred to walk along the back of the segment, in our front. God knows, how she could spot me from such a long distance that I had come out of my room, with buckets in my hands. Quite often, I marked her busy in looking towards me with furtive glances, while waiting for her turn, as she would deliberately waste her time, simply to ignore the fact of my arrival there and would thus make room for me to place my buckets before hers.” .......... It pains him to recall his last meeting with that `unfortunate girl`, who was destined to spend a spinster's life and breathe her last, while resting her head at Bihari's knee, who kept caressing her forehead, in the presence of her trusted ...

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A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder is the most popular of James De Mille's works. It was serialized posthumously in Harper's Weekly, and published in book form by Harper and Brothers of New York City in 1888. This satiric romance is the story of Adam More, a British sailor. Shipwrecked in Antarctica, he stumbles upon a tropical lost world of prehistoric animals, plants, and a cult of death-worshipping primitives. He also finds a highly developed human society which has reversed the values of Victorian society. Wealth is scorned and poverty revered; death and darkness are preferrable to life and light. Rather than accumulating wealth, the natives seek to divest themselves of it as quickly as possible. At the beginning of each year, the government imposes wealth (the burden of reverse taxation) upon its unfortunate subjects as a form of punishment. A secondary plot about the four yachtsmen who find the manuscript forms a frame for the central narrative. [Condensed from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Strange_Manuscript_Found_in_a_Copper_Cylinder ]...

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Adventure, Satire