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The action takes place in London, with excursions to Devon, Yorkshire, and Portsmouth, as we follow the adventures of the eponymous hero. Nicholas is forced to unwelcome employment to help secure support for his widowed mother and his sister from their mercenary relative Ralph, on whose mercy they have been thrown. After many adventures Nicholas finally triumphs over his Uncle, although his success is also tinged with sadness. (Summary by Chris Garbett)...

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Comedy, Literature, Fiction

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Excerpt: FIRST QUARTER; THERE are not many people --and as it is desirable that a story-teller and a story-reader should establish a mutual understanding as soon as possible, I beg it to be noticed that I confine this observation neither to young people nor to little people, but extend it to all conditions of people: little and big, young and old: yet growing up, or already growing down again --there are not, I say, many people who would care to sleep in a church. I don?t mean at sermon-time in warm weather (when the thing has actually been done, once or twice), but in the night, and alone. A great multitude of persons will be violently astonished, I know, by this position, in the broad bold Day. But it applies to Night. It must be argued by night, and I will undertake to maintain it successfully on any gusty winter?s night appointed for the purpose, with any one opponent chosen from the rest, who will meet me singly in an old church-yard, before an old church-door; and will previously empower me to lock him in, if needful to his satisfaction, until morning ......

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Table of Contents: ILLUSTRATION: TROTTY VECK., ii -- FIRST QUARTER, 1 -- THE SECOND QUARTER, 20 -- THIRD QUARTER, 36 -- FOURTH QUARTER, 52 -- ILLUSTRATION: MR. AND MRS. TUGBY., 68...

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Ethan Frome is a novel published in 1911 by the Pulitzer Prize-winning American author Edith Wharton. It is set in the fictitious town of Starkfield, Massachusetts, New England, where an unnamed narrator tells the story of his encounter with Ethan Frome, a man with dreams and desires that end in an ironic turn of events. ( Summary by Wikipedia )...

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Fiction, Literature

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Excerpt: In those lusty ages when the Kaisers lifted high the golden goblet of Aachen, and drank, elbow upward, the green-eyed wine of old romance, there lived, a bow-shot from the bones of the Eleven Thousand Virgins and the Three Holy Kings, a prosperous Rhinelander, by name Gottlieb Groschen, or, as it was sometimes ennobled, Gottlieb von Groschen; than whom no wealthier merchant bartered for the glory of his ancient mothercity, nor more honoured burgess swallowed impartially red juice and white under the shadow of his own fig-tree....

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This is Edith Wharton's second published collection of short stories (1901). One of these seven stories, Copy: A Dialogue, is written as a short play. The role of Hilda is read by Arielle Lipshaw, and the role of Ventnor by Mark F. Smith. (Summary by Elizabeth Klett)...

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Literature, Short stories

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The Portrait of a Lady is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly and Macmillan's Magazine in 1880-1881 and then as a book in 1881. It is the story of a spirited young American woman, Isabel Archer, who affronts her destiny and finds it overwhelming. She inherits a large amount of money and subsequently becomes the victim of Machiavellian scheming by two American expatriates. Like many of James's novels, it is set mostly in Europe, notably England and Italy.Generally regarded as the masterpiece of his early phase of writing, this novel reflects James's absorbing interest in the differences between the New World and the Old. It also treats in a profound way the themes of personal freedom, responsibility, betrayal, and sexuality. (Summary from Wikipedia)...

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Literature

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The Portrait of a Lady is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly and Macmillan's Magazine in 1880-1881 and then as a book in 1881. It is the story of a spirited young American woman, Isabel Archer, who affronts her destiny and finds it overwhelming. She inherits a large amount of money and subsequently becomes the victim of Machiavellian scheming by two American expatriates. Like many of James's novels, it is set mostly in Europe, notably England and Italy. Generally regarded as the masterpiece of his early phase of writing, this novel reflects James's absorbing interest in the differences between the New World and the Old. It also treats in a profound way the themes of personal freedom, responsibility, betrayal, and sexuality. (Summary from Wikipedia)...

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Literature

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Excerpt: ACT I. SCENE I. King Lear?s palace. Enter KENT, GLOUCESTER, and EDMUND. KENT: I thought the king had more affected the Duke of Albany than Cornwall. GLOUCESTER: It did always seem so to us: but now, in the division of the kingdom, it appears not which of the dukes he values most; for equalities are so weighed, that curiosity in neither can make choice of either?s moiety. KENT: Is not this your son, my lord? GLOUCESTER: His breeding, sir, hath been at my charge: I have so often blushed to acknowledge him, that now I am brazed to it. KENT: I cannot conceive you....

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LEAR, King of Britain KING OF FRANCE DUKE OF BURGUNDY DUKE OF CORNWALL DUKE OF ALBANY EARL OF KENT EARL OF GLOUCESTER EDGAR: Son to Gloucester. EDMUND: bastard son to Gloucester. CURAN: a courtier. Old Man: tenant to Gloucester. Doctor Fool OSWALD: Steward to Goneril. A Captain employed by Edmund Gentleman attendant on Cordelia A Herald Servants to Cornwall GONERIL: REGAN: daughters to Lear. CORDELIA: Knights of Lear?s train, Captains, Messengers, Soldiers, and Attendants...

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. Well, when I had been dead about thirty years I begun to get a little anxious. Mind you, had been whizzing through space all that time, like a comet. Like a comet! Why, Peters, I laid over the lot of them! Of course there weren?t any of them going my way, as a steady thing, you know, because they travel in a long circle like the loop of a lasso, whereas I was pointed as straight as a dart for the Hereafter; but I happened on one every now and then that was going my way for an hour or so, and then we had a bit of a brush together....

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Excerpt: Autobiography of a Pocket-Handkerchief by James Fenimore Cooper.

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Excerpt: That homely proverb, used on so many occasions in England, viz. ?That what is bred in the bone will not go out of the flesh,? was never more verified than in the story of my Life. Any one would think that after thirty-five years? affliction, and a variety of unhappy circumstances, which few men, if any, ever went through before, and after near seven years of peace and enjoyment in the fullness of all things; grown old, and when, if ever, it might be allowed me to have had experience of every state of middle life, and to know which was most adapted to make a man completely happy; I say, after all this, any one would have thought that the native propensity to rambling which I gave an account of in my first setting out in the world to have been so predominant in my thoughts, should be worn out, and I might, at sixty one years of age, have been a little inclined to stay at home, and have done venturing life and fortune any more....

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Excerpt: An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids by Anthony Trollope.

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. Part The First. Once upon a time, it matters little when, and in stalwart England, it matters little where, a fierce battle was fought. It was fought upon a long summer day when the waving grass was green. Many a wild flower formed by the Almighty Hand to be a perfumed goblet for the dew, felt its enameled cup filled high with blood that day, and shrinking dropped. Many an insect deriving its delicate color from harmless leaves and herbs, was stained anew that day by dying men, and marked its frightened way with an unnatural track. The painted butterfly took blood into the air upon the edges of its wings. The stream ran red....

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After his father’s death Gerard Roylake returns from Germany to take up his inheritance at Trimley Deen. On one evening he meets his childhood friend, Cristel Toller. They fall in love, but there is a crux. A deaf man, called The Lodger is obsessed with Cristel. He invites Gerard to tea with evil intentions… and Gerard accepts the invitation. The book is written in the first person and tells the story from Gerard's point of view. (Summary by Diana Majlinger)...

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Literature, Fiction

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Excerpt: Why Mrs. General Talboys first made up her mind to pass the winter of 1859 at Rome I never clearly understood. To myself she explained her purposes, soon after her arrival at the Eternal City, by declaring, in her own enthusiastic manner, that she was inspired by a burning desire to drink fresh at the still living fountains of classical poetry and sentiment....

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Excerpt: While the translation is fairly literal, and Malleson (a clergyman) has taken pains with the scientific portions of the work and added the chapter headings, he has made some emendations concerning Biblical references of his own, listed below?...

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. The countryside and the man on a lovely spring morning in the year 1829, a man of fifty or thereabouts was wending his way on horseback along the mountain road that leads to a large village near the Grande Chartreuse. This village is the market town of a populous canton that lies within the limits of a valley of some considerable length. The melting of the snows had filled the boulder- strewn bed of the torrent (often dry) that flows through this valley, which is closely shut in between two parallel mountain barriers, above which the peaks of Savoy and of Dauphine tower on every side....

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. Miriam, Hilda, Kenyon, Donatello Four individuals, in whose fortunes we should be glad to interest the reader, happened to be standing in one of the saloons of the sculpture-gallery in the Capitol at Rome. It was that room (the first, after ascending the staircase) in the centre of which reclines the noble and most pathetic figure of the Dying Gladiator, just sinking into his death-swoon. Around the walls stand the Antinous, the Amazon, the Lycian Apollo, the Juno; all famous productions of antique sculpture, and still shining in the undiminished majesty and beauty of their ideal life, although the marble that embodies them is yellow with time, and perhaps corroded by the damp earth in which they lay buried for centuries. Here, likewise, is seen a symbol (as apt at this moment as it was two thousand years ago) of the Human Soul, with its choice of Innocence or Evil close at hand, in the pretty figure of a child, clasping a dove to her bosom, but assaulted by a snake....

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Excerpt: The double sorwe of Troilus to tellen, That was the kyng Priamus sone of Troye, In louynge how his auentures fellen ffro wo to wele, and after out of ioie, My purpos is, er that I parte fro ye. Thesiphone, thow help me for tendite Thise woful vers that wepen as I write. To the clepe I, thow goddesse of torment, Thow cruwel furie, sorwynge evere in peyne, Help me that am the sorwful instrument That helpeth loveres, as I kan, to pleyne; ffor wel sit it, the sothe for to seyne, A woful wight to han a drery feere, And to a sorwful tale a sory chere....

Table of Contents Details
Table of Contents: Book I, 1 -- Book II, 29 -- Book III, 74 -- Book IV, 121 -- Book V, 165

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Excerpt: A Dispersion. ?A telegram! Make haste and open it, Jane; they always make me so nervous! I believe that is the reason Reginald always will telegraph when he is coming,? said Miss Adeline Mohun, a very pretty, well preserved, though delicate-looking lady of some age about forty, as her elder sister, brisk and lively and some years older, came into the room....