Description Details
The Last of the Mohicans is an epic novel by James Fenimore Cooper, first published in January 1826. It was one of the most popular English-language novels of its time, and helped establish Cooper as one of the first world-famous American writers.The story takes place in 1757 during the French and Indian War, when France and Great Britain battled for control of the American and Canadian colonies. During this war, the French often allied themselves with Native American tribes in order to gain an advantage over the British, with unpredictable and often tragic results. (Wikipedia Excerpt)...

Excerpt Details
Historical Fiction

Description Details
Like many soldiers at the beginning of their military careers, Harry Penrose has romantic ideas of climbing the ranks and attaining hero status. However, while stationed at Gallipoli, the realities of war begin to take their toll on Penrose, not only physically, but also mentally where the war has become a 'battle of the mind.' This is his story as related by a fellow soldier, as well as the story of the campaign at Gallipoli which is vividly portrayed from the author's own personal experiences. During his tenure as an officer, Penrose slowly asserts himself; the war takes a toll on his personality, but he begins to live up to his early dreams of heroism. However, his creeping self-doubt grows by degrees; following Gallipoli, he is reassigned from his post as scouting officer once on the Somme, knowing he cannot face another night patrol, and earns the wrath of his commanding officer - an irascible Regular colonel - over a trivial incident. The colonel piles difficult, risky work on him - remarking to the narrator that Master Penrose can go on with [leading ration parties] until he learns to do them properly - and Penrose submits, w...

Excerpt Details
Historical Fiction

Description Details
A classic Victorian novel and a historical novel rolled into one! Read about court and army life during the reign of Queen Anne - a story of Catholic - Protestant intrigue, and the party which aspired to the restoration of Bonny Prince Charlie. And, a good love story as well. (Summary by Karen Merline)...

Excerpt Details
Historical Fiction

Description Details
Natty Bumppo goes by many names: La Longue Carabine, Hawk Eye, Leatherstocking, and in this tale, The Pathfinder. Guide, scout, hunter, and when put to it, soldier, he also fills a lot of roles in pre-Revolution upstate New York. An old friend, Sergeant Dunham of the 55th Regiment of Foot, asks him to guide his daughter through the wilderness to the fort at Oswego where Dunham serves. With the French engaging native Indian allies against the British and the Yankee colonists, such a journey is far from safe. Dunham has a plan in mind - to see his daughter Mable married off to the most redoubtable frontiersman and marksman in the territory, who is Pathfinder himself. But as an attractive and marriageable young lady, she draws other suitors. Then a military expedition contrives to put Sgt. Dunham, Mable, Pathfinder, and two other wooers into an isolated and dangerous garrison. Here treachery raises the stakes, and with the soldiers of the detachment shot down or captured, all of them must show mettle for any of them to escape with their scalps....

Excerpt Details
Historical Fiction

Description Details
Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country. Having lost both parents and his home in northern Vermont, orphan Willie Brower is taken in by Eben Holden, Uncle Eb who transports him westward to save him from being sent to an orphanage. Through the Adirondacks and into the St. Lawrence valley they travel. Eben is kind, happy, and loves to tell stories to the youngster, many of which were to shape the life and ideals of Willie during his life. This story follows Willie as a young orphan, later as a journalist, and finally as a soldier who enlists in the army at the outset of the American Civil War. The book was immensely popular when it was published in 1900 and the years to follow, as the characters were all drawn from people who the author had known himself. (Summary by Roger Melin)...

Excerpt Details
Historical Fiction

Description Details
This story is set in the British province of New York during the French and Indian War, and concerns a Huron massacre (with passive French acquiescence) of from 500 to 1,500 unarmed Anglo-American troops, who had honorably surrendered at Fort William Henry, plus some women and servants; the kidnapping of two sisters, daughters of the British commander; and their rescue by Hawkeye, the last two Mohicans, and others. Parts of the story may have been derived from the capture and death of Jane McCrea in July 1777 near Fort Edward, New York, by members of an Algonquian tribe. (Summary from Wikipedia)...

Excerpt Details
Historical Fiction

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Can You Forgive Her? is the first in a series of six Trollope novels dealing broadly with 19th Century English political scene. It introduces the reader to Plantagenet and Glencora Palliser, as they court, marry, and as Plantagenet sets out on his political career, which is carried on in the foreground or background throughout the series. Each novel has a focus on other particular characters, as well. In this one, it is the delimma of Alice Vavasor, who is a young woman choosing between two suitors: one who has all the best qualities, but who prefers a retiring private life, and another, whose qualities are doubtful, but who is ambitious for public office. There is also a comic subplot involving a widowed aunt, who also must choose between two suitors: Mr. Cheeseacre, a dull but stable farmer, and Capt. Bellfield, a charming but somewhat erratic retired military man....

Excerpt Details
Historical Fiction

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Go on a journey to the coast of Maine and immerse yourself in the picturesque community on Orr’s Island. See the raindrops glistening on the pine needles and hear the waves crashing on the rocks. This is a tale of romance, tragedy, crusty sea captains, an impetuous boy, a loving girl, complete with village gossips and twists in the plot. (Summary by Bridget Gaige)...

Excerpt Details
Historical Fiction, Literature, Sea stories, Teen/Young adult

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A tale of Victorian-style romance, maritime battles and even the penultimate Napoleanic battle - Waterloo. (Introduction by Mike Harris)

Excerpt Details
Historical Fiction, Teen/Young adult, War stories

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During the Indian war with Tippoo Saib, 15 year old Dick Holland and his mother set out from England to find and rescue his father, shipwrecked 6 years earlier, and believed to be held prisoner by the 'Tiger of Mysore'(summary by annise)...

Excerpt Details
Historical Fiction, Teen/Young adult, War stories

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This book tells the story of the American war of Independence from the side of the British. The old flag mentioned in the title is the flag of England. This is a book for young readers, but - as a good book should be - everybody can enjoy it. (Summary by Stav Nisser)...

Excerpt Details
Historical Fiction, Adventure, Teen/Young adult

Description Details
Writing at the end of the American Civil War, Verne weaves this story of a Scottish merchant who, in desperation at the interruption of the flow of Southern cotton due to the Union blockade, determines to build his own fast ship and run guns to the Confederates in exchange for the cotton piling up unsold on their wharves. His simple plan becomes complicated by two passengers who board his new ship under false pretenses in order to carry out a rescue mission, one which Capt. Playfair adopts as his own cause. This is going make the Rebels in Charleston rather unhappy with him.Sure, his new ship is fast - but can it escape the cannonballs of both North and South? (Summary by Mark Smith)...

Excerpt Details
Historical Fiction, War stories, Adventure

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It is a fictional tale of cavalry actions during the U.S. Civil War, under General John Morgan. (Summary by M. Craun)

Excerpt Details
Adventure, Historical Fiction, War stories

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When I first started reading this book, I thought it to be a historical romance novel. As I read further, I pondered whether it might be a sea-faring story. Reading still further, I determined it to be an adventure story. Alas, it is all three. To Have And To Hold, written by Mary Johnston was the bestselling novel of 1900. The story takes place in colonial Jamestown during the 1600...

Excerpt Details
Historical Fiction, Literature

Description Details
Short stories with dramatic parts about civilian life in London during the First World War. Some humorous moments. By the author of Peter Pan. ( Summary by JCarson )...

Excerpt Details
War stories, Historical Fiction

Description Details
These eight stories are made from our Western Frontier as it was in a past as near as yesterday and almost as by-gone as the Revolution; so swiftly do we proceed. They belong to each other in a kinship of life and manners, and a little through the nearer tie of having here and there a character in common. Thus they resemble faintly the separate parts of a whole, and gain, perhaps, something of the invaluable weight of length; and they have been received by my closest friends with suspicion. ...When our national life, our own soil, is so rich in adventures to record, what need is there for one to call upon his invention save to draw, if he can, characters who shall fit these strange and dramatic scenes? One cannot improve upon such realities. If this fiction is at all faithful to the truth from which it springs, let the thanks be given to the patience and boundless hospitality of the Army friends and other friends across the Missouri who have housed my body and instructed my mind. And if the stories entertain the ignorant without grieving the judicious I am content. (Summary from Author's Preface)...

Excerpt Details
Adventure, Historical Fiction, Westerns, Short stories

Description Details
The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service is a boys adventure story set in WWI - Three College Chums join the military and face the perils of spies, submarines and enemy soldiers in the trenches of embattled Europe. An engaging story set in a period where good guys wore white hats, bad guys wore black hats and every chapter ends with a cliffhanger so you have to come back for more! (Summary by Tom Clifton)...

Excerpt Details
Historical Fiction, Teen/Young adult

Description Details
Among the great wars of history there are few, if any, instances of so long and successfully sustained a struggle, against enormous odds, as that of the Seven Years' War, maintained by Prussia--then a small and comparatively insignificant kingdom--against Russia, Austria, and France simultaneously, who were aided also by the forces of most of the minor principalities of Germany. The population of Prussia was not more than five millions, while that of the Allies considerably exceeded a hundred millions. Prussia could put, with the greatest efforts, but a hundred and fifty thousand men into the field, and as these were exhausted she had but small reserves to draw upon; while the Allies could, with comparatively little difficulty, put five hundred thousand men into the field, and replenish them as there was occasion. That the struggle was successfully carried on, for seven years, was due chiefly to the military genius of the king; to his indomitable perseverance; and to a resolution that no disaster could shake, no situation, although apparently hopeless, appall. Something was due also, at the commencement of the war, to the splendid d...

Excerpt Details
Adventure, Historical Fiction, War stories

Description Details
This is a great book if you're looking for an adventure filled novel. It takes place during the Spanish Inquisition and describes some of the horrors that happened giving you an idea of what it was really like to live during that time period. Follow Lysbeth, a young Hollander girl, as she struggles through life enduring times of hardship and peace, sorrow and happiness, war and love. (Introduction by Abigail Rasmussen)...

Excerpt Details
Historical Fiction, Adventure, Romance

Description Details
The story begins in a grim feudal castle in Normandie. The times were troublous, and soon the king compelled Lady Margaret de Villeroy, with her children, to go to Paris as hostages. Guy Aylmer went with her. Paris was turbulent. Soon the guild of the butchers, adopting white hoods as their uniform, seized the city, and besieged the house where our hero and his charges lived. After desperate fighting, the white hoods were beaten and our hero and his charges escaped from the city, and from France. (Summary from the original back cover)...

Excerpt Details
Historical Fiction, Children, War stories

Description Details
These stories detail the lives of soldiers and civilians during the American Civil War. This is the 1909 edition. The 1909 edition omits six stories from the original 1891 edition; these six stories are added to this recording (from an undated English edition). The 1891 edition is entitled In The Midst Of Life; Tales Of Soldiers And Civilians . The Wikipedia entry for the book uses the title Tales of Soldiers and Civilians . Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (June 24, 1842 – after December 26, 1913) was an American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist and satirist. Today, he is best known for his short story, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge and his satirical lexicon, The Devil's Dictionary . The sardonic view of human nature that informed his work – along with his vehemence as a critic, with his motto nothing matters – earned him the nickname Bitter Bierce. Despite his reputation as a searing critic, however, Bierce was known to encourage younger writers, including poet George Sterling and fiction writer W. C. Morrow. Bierce employed a distinctive style of writing, especially in his stories. This style often embraces an ab...

Excerpt Details
Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literature, Mystery, Satire, Short stories, War stories

Description Details
This is a short novel published in 1895 and based vaguely on the battle of Chancellorsville of the American Civil War. Unlike other works on the subject, Crane's novel does not concentrate on the big picture or the glory of war but on the psychology of one of its soldiers....

Excerpt Details
Historical Fiction, War stories

Description Details
volunteers bring you 27 recordings of The Red Flower by Henry van Dyke. This was the Weekly Poetry project for March 11, 2012. Dr. Henry van Dyke was an American author, lecturer, ambassador and pastor. He was in charge of the committee which wrote The Book of Common Worship of 1906, the first printed Presbyterian liturgy. He wrote many poems, short stories, hymns and essays, often with religious themes. This particular poem, written after the outbreak of World War I but set beforehand, contrasts the natural beauty of the summer before the war with the horror and destruction that is to follow. (Summary by Lucy Perry)...

Excerpt Details
Historical Fiction, Memoirs, Nature, War stories, Poetry

Description Details
He was a painter, a poet, a novelist. He lived during the Hungarian revolution and his love of freedom meant his life was often in peril. She was his first love, this girl with the eyes like the sea. She was at heart noble, good and loving. What an excellent lady might have been made out of this woman, if she had only met with a husband who, in the most ordinary acceptance of the word, had been a good fellow, as is really the case with about nine men out of every ten. But she always managed to draw the unlucky tenth out of the urn of destiny. And so she spurned his true love in favor of a high-flying dandy. He went on to pursue a life of politics and she to follow her capricious heart. But yet, throughout her life, she kept returning to him and to the end, of all men, she loved him perhaps best of all. (Eyes Like the Sea won the Hungarian Academy of Sciences prize for literature in 1890.) (Summary by MaryAnn)...

Excerpt Details
Romance, Historical Fiction

Description Details
Set during the Hundred Years' War with France, The White Company tells the story of a young Saxon man who is learning what it is to be a knight. Raised by Cistercian Monks and rejected by a violent elder brother, Alleyn Edricson takes service with one of the foremost knights in the country. When Alleyn falls in love with the knight's daughter, he must prove himself to be a courageous and honourable knight before he can win her hand. Alleyn and his friends set forth with the other men-at-arms to join Prince Edward in Bordeaux, from where they will take part in the Prince's campaign into Spain. It is in Spain that Alleyn and others must prove themselves to be very valiant and hardy cavaliers. (Summary by Clive Catterall)...

Excerpt Details
Historical Fiction, Adventure, War stories

Description Details
Three Soldiers is a 1920 novel by the American writer and critic John Dos Passos. It is one of the key American war novels of the First World War, and remains a classic of the realist war novel genre. H.L. Mencken, then practicing primarily as an American literary critic, praised the book in the pages of the Smart Set. Until Three Soldiers is forgotten and fancy achieves its inevitable victory over fact, no war story can be written in the United States without challenging comparison with it--and no story that is less meticulously true will stand up to it. At one blast it disposed of oceans of romance and blather. It changed the whole tone of American opinion about the war; it even changed the recollections of actual veterans of the war. They saw, no doubt, substantially what Dos Passos saw, but it took his bold realism to disentangle their recollections from the prevailing buncombe and sentimentality. (Summary from Wikipedia)...

Excerpt Details
Historical Fiction, History, War stories

Description Details
Plucky eight year old Anne Nelson, living in Provincetown on the tip of Cape Cod, is determined to bring the Revolutionary War to an end so that she can be reunited with her soldier father. Will she succeed in carrying an important message from Boston to Newburyport, warning the American troops to be prepared, or will she be caught by the English ships patrolling the harbor? (summary by wildemoose)...

Excerpt Details
Historical Fiction, Children

Description Details
Published in 1899 by Houghton Mifflin, Chesnutt's first book, The Conjure Woman, was a collection of seven short stories, all set in Patesville (Fayetteville), North Carolina. While drawing from local color traditions and relying on dialect, Chesnutt's tales of conjuring, a form of magic rooted in African hoodoo, refused to romanticize slave life or the Old South. Though necessarily informed by Joel Chandler Harris's popular Uncle Remus stories and Thomas Nelson Page's plantation fiction, The Conjure Woman consciously moved away from these models, instead offering an almost biting examination of pre- and post-Civil War race relations. These seven short stories use a frame narrator, John, a white carpetbagger who has moved south to protect his wife Annie's failing health and to begin cultivating a grape vineyard. Enamored by remnants of the plantation world, John portrays the South in largely idealistic terms. Yet Uncle Julius McAdoo, the ex-slave and trickster figure extraordinaire who narrates the internal story lines, presents a remarkably different view of Southern life. His accounts include Aun' Peggy's conjure spells in Mars Je...

Excerpt Details
Fiction, Historical Fiction, Short stories

Description Details
These are a collection of humorous letters written by a fictional character to a relation in the north during the Civil War. They were published regularly in the New York Mercury Sunday newspaper for the four years of the war. In the letters, Newell pokes fun at northern generals, politicians, and has hard things to say about southerners. Although Newell is rarely serious, I imagine the letters reflect the bitterness and frustration of many northerners at the time. (Introduction by Margaret)...

Excerpt Details
Fiction, Historical Fiction, Humor, War stories

Description Details
The Northern Army has just be handed a great defeat at Bull Run and is headed back to Washington, DC. How will the North answer this defeat? Follow our hero, Dick Mason, into the Western campaign to find out. This is the second book in the Civil War Series by Joseph A. Altsheler. (Summary by Ann Boulais )...

Excerpt Details
Children, Historical Fiction, War stories

Description Details
The children of Colonel Beverley, a Cavalier officer killed at the Battle of Naseby are believed to have died in the flames when their house, Arnwood, is burned by Roundhead soldiers. However, they escape and are raised by Joseph Armitage, a gamekeeper in his cottage in the New Forest. The story describes how the children adapt from an aristocratic lifestyle to that of simple cottagers. The children are concealed as the grandchildren of Armitage.Eventually after Armitage's death, Edward Beverley leaves and works as a secretary for the sympathetic Puritan placed in charge of the Royal land in the New Forest. He then joins the army of the future King Charles II and after the Royalist defeat at the Battle of Worcester, he escapes to France and lives in exile until the Restoration.His brother and siblings continue to live in the New Forest and they are reunited on the King's return. (Summary from Wikipedia)...

Excerpt Details
Children, Historical Fiction

Description Details
The classic story of Sir Percy Blakeney and his alter ego, the Scarlet Pimpernel. A great adventure, set during the French Revolution. (Summary by Karen Savage)...

Excerpt Details
Adventure, Historical Fiction, Mystery, Romance, War stories, Spy stories

Description Details
This is an unusual story of the English Civil War. There is a good account of the Battle of Newbury, and many historic figures appear: Cromwell (very prominent), Ireton, Prince Rupert, Charles I, Fairfax, and Lambert. The setting for this tale of men and arms is taken from the stirring days of the Bavaliers and the Roundheads, of Puritans and the so-called malignants; but the machines of war are rather in the background, while in the spotlight is a witching woman, a conqueror of hearts and a marker of destinies. The story tells of a woman's ambition that urges valiant men to perilous deeds. (Summary by Barnes & Noble)...

Excerpt Details
Historical Fiction, Advice

Description Details
It is the 1570's, and the people of the Netherlands live in terror under the cruel dominion of Spain. Though many long to be free of Spanish tyranny, efforts at rebellion are failing, and allies are nowhere to be found. Edward “Ned” Martin, son of an English captain and a Dutch lady, is thrust into the conflict when he resolves to help his mother’s people and avenge his murdered relatives. Entering the service of the revolutionary leader William the Silent, Prince of Orange, Ned is called upon to carry out dangerous secret missions deep within occupied territory. Through hairbreadth escapes, fierce sea fights, terrifying sieges, and daring rescues, Ned becomes a witness to the inspiring and heartbreaking events of the rise of the Dutch republic. (Summary by D. Leeson)...

Excerpt Details
Children, Historical Fiction

Description Details
These lesser known stories were penned by Conan Doyle during the period between killing off Sherlock Holmes in 1893 and reluctantly resurrecting him some ten years later. The swashbuckling, eponymous hero, Etienne Gerard, is one of Napoleon's gallant French Hussars, who considers himself the finest of them all. Through these Boys Own Adventures, Conan Doyle pokes gentle fun at both the French and the English. This is the second volume containing eight adventures. (Summary by Phil)...

Excerpt Details
Adventure, Historical Fiction, Humor, Literature, War stories

Description Details
Ben-Hur is a story of two very different heroes. Judah Ben-Hur, a prince of Jerusalem, is involved in an accident to the Roman procurator which is taken to be intentional. He is seized and sent to the fleet as a galley-slave, while his family is imprisoned and the family goods confiscated. When Ben-Hur saves the fleet captain from drowning after his ship is sunk in a fight with pirates, that officer adopts him as son and heir. With Roman training, Ben-Hur distinguishes himself in the arena and the palistrae and appears to be on the way to high military command.With the help of a faithful family retainer and a generous Arab sheik, Ben-Hur is enabled to take part in a widely touted chariot race, where one of the other charioteers is the boyhood friend who connived to punish him for the accident and split his estate. That rival is crippled, financially and bodily, in a no-holds-barred race (memorable from the 1959 movie with Charlton Heston).Ben-Hur turns his attention to the prophesied King of the Jews, when through the sheik he meets Balthasar, one of the Three Wise Men, and hears of the child born years ago. Will Ben-Hur be the gene...

Excerpt Details
Historical Fiction, Adventure

Description Details
Mark Twain's work on Joan of Arc is titled in full Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, by the Sieur Louis de Conte. De Conte is identified as Joan's page and secretary. For those who've always wanted to get behind the Joan of Arc story and to better understand just what happened, Twain's narrative makes the story personal and very accessible. The work is fictionally presented as a translation from the manuscript by Jean Francois Alden, or, in the words of the published book, Freely Translated out of the Ancient French into Modern English from the Original Unpublished Manuscript in the National Archives of France. It was originally published as a serialization in Harper's Magazine beginning in 1895 and later published in book form in 1896. However the Harper's editors decided to cut 12 chapters that describe much of Joan's Great Trial, saying the chapters were not suitable for serialization since, They will not bear mutilation or interruption, but must be read as a whole, as one reads a drama. This recording contains the complete text! De Conte is a fictionalized version of Joan of Arc's page Louis de Contes, and provides narrativ...

Excerpt Details
Historical Fiction, History, Memoirs, War stories

Description Details
One of the first novel-length pieces of nautical fiction, MR. MIDSHIPMAN EASY (1836) is a funny and easygoing account of the adventures of Jack Easy, a son of privilege who joins the Royal Navy. The work begins as a satire on Jack’s attachment to “the rights of man” that may try the listener’s patience. But despair not, for the story soon settles down as the philosophical midshipman begins his many triumphs over bullies, foul weather, and various damned foreigners of murderous intent. Caveat audiens: This novel employs racial/ethnic epithets and religious stereotypes, as well as taking a rather sunny view of supply-side economics. In short, there's something here to offend almost everyone. Frederick Marryat (1792-1848) entered the Royal Navy as a 14-year-old midshipman. He resigned his commission at the rank of captain after 24 years of service to devote his time to writing. (Summary by Adrian Praetzellis)...

Excerpt Details
Historical Fiction, Sea stories

Description Details
Sylvia Fulton is a ten-years-old girl from Boston who stayed in Charleston, South Carolina, before the opening of the civil war. She loves her new home, and her dear friends. However, political tensions are rising, and things start to change. Through these changes, Silvia gets to know the world better: from Estrella, her maid, she starts to understand what it is to be a slave, from her unjust teacher she learns that not all beautiful people are perfect, and from the messages she carries to Fort Sumter she learns what is the meaning of danger. However, this is a lovely book, written mostly for children.(Summary by Stav Nisser)...

Excerpt Details
Children, Historical Fiction, Teen/Young adult, War stories

Description Details
There are few campaigns that, either in point of the immense scale upon which it was undertaken, the completeness of its failure, or the enormous loss of life entailed, appeal to the imagination in so great a degree as that of Napoleon against Russia. Fortunately, we have in the narratives of Sir Robert Wilson, British commissioner with the Russian army, and of Count Segur, who was upon Napoleon's staff, minute descriptions of the events as seen by eye-witnesses, and besides these the campaign has been treated fully by various military writers. I have as usual avoided going into details of horrors and of acts of cruelty and ferocity on both sides, surpassing anything in modern warfare, and have given a mere outline of the operations, with a full account of the stern fight at Smolensk and the terrible struggle at Borodino. I would warn those of my readers who may turn to any of the military works for a further history of the campaign, that the spelling of Russian places and names varies so greatly in the accounts of different writers, that sometimes it is difficult to believe that the same person or town is meant, and even in the nar...

Excerpt Details
Historical Fiction, War stories

Description Details
Charles King (1844 – 1933) was a United States soldier and a distinguished writer. He was the son of Civil War general Rufus King and great grandson of Rufus King, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. He graduated from West point in 1866 and served in the Army during the Indian Wars under George Crook. He was wounded in the arm forcing his retirement from the regular army. During this time he became acquainted with Buffalo Bill Cody. King would later write scripts for several of Cody's silent films. King's writings, relating to American Indians, cover a complex range of opinion within his novels. His sympathy for their cause of defending their homelands, and being forced to adopt a new lifestyle, did not stop him from graphically portraying them as savage and barbaric peoples. However, King also used his writings to harshly criticize U.S. government policies that resulted in Indian treaties not being honored and that permitted rampant corruption among government-appointed reservation agents. As a lieutenant in the 5th Cavalry, King was a participant on the American western frontier, who personally fought in battles...

Excerpt Details
Fiction, Historical Fiction

Description Details
The First Crusade provides the backdrop for a rich tapestry of political machinations, military conflicts, martial rivalries, and love stories, some of which are complicated by differences in religion. The supernatural plays a major role in the action. Partly on this account, and partly because of the multilayered, intertwined plots, the poem met with considerable contemporary criticism, so Tasso revised it radically and published the revision under a new name, La Gerusalemme Conquistata, or Jerusalem Conquered, which has remained virtually unread, a warning to authors who pay attention to the critics. The original poem influenced Edmund Spenser, whose unfinished epic, The Faerie Queene, is still more complicated in plot than Tasso's poem and, being an allegory, affords the supernatural an even greater share in the action. In Milton's Paradise Lost, the council in hell (first half of Book II) owes much to Tasso's similar scene in Book IV. (Someone with sufficient background in Old English might profitably compare the tirade of Satan in Book IV to the remarkably similar speech of Satan in the Anglo-Saxon Genesis.) Moreover, Milton's ...

Excerpt Details
Historical Fiction, Poetry

Description Details
volunteers bring you 13 recordings of A Cry From an Indian Wife by E. Pauline Johnson,. This was the Fortnightly Poetry project for January 29, 2012. In 1892 the opportunity of a lifetime came to this young versifier, when Frank Yeigh, the president of the Young Liberals' Club, of Toronto, conceived the idea of having an evening of Canadian literature, at which all available Canadian authors should be guests and read from their own works. Among the authors present on this occasion was Pauline Johnson, who contributed to the programme one of her compositions, entitled A Cry from an Indian Wife; and when she recited without text this much-discussed poem, which shows the Indian's side of the North-West Rebellion, she was greeted with tremendous applause from an audience which represented the best of Toronto's art, literature and culture. She was the only one on the programme who received an encore, and to this she replied with one of her favourite canoeing poems. The following morning the entire press of Toronto asked why this young writer was not on the platform as a professional reader; while two of the dailies even contained editori...

Excerpt Details
Adventure, Historical Fiction, History, Nature, Politics, Romance, Tragedy, War stories, Poetry