Description Details
Nothing spooky or supernatural, but a very personal gathering of gossip, letters, and fragments of biography of famous people who have lived in Piccadilly (in London, England) ... and of some of the buildings, now long gone. If any part of any city deserves a book to itself, it is Piccadilly. We shall stand before some house in the hours when the traffic is stilled, and I shall tell of its history, of the men and women who dwelt there, and talked and loved and gambled and lived and died. I shall follow the lines of my temperament and tastes rather than those of completeness and impartiality: it is likely that I shall be voluble about Byron and reticent about Macaulay. (From the preface)...

Description Details
”Why do you choose such a title as The Valley of Vision for your book” said my friend; “do you mean that one can see farther from the valley than from the mountain-top?” This question set me thinking, as every honest question ought to do. Here is the result of my thoughts, which you will take for what it is worth, if you care to read the book. The mountain-top is the place of outlook over the earth and the sea. But it is in the valley of suffering, endurance, and self-sacrifice that the deepest visions of the meaning of life come to us. I take the outcome of this Twentieth Century War as a victory over the mad illusion of world-domination which the Germans saw from the peak of their military power in 1914. The united force of the Allies has grown, through valley-visions of right and justice and human kindness, into an irresistible might before which the German “will to power” has gone down in ruin. (From the Preface)...

Description Details
The Hunter Thompson of the 19th Century, de Quincey is best known for his Confessions of an English Opium Eater (an activity shared with his hero, Samuel Coleridge, much to Wordsworth’s dismay). However, de Quincey’s literary genius is best captured in his essays, which, according to Wikipedia: His immediate influence extended to Edgar Allan Poe, Fitz Hugh Ludlow and Charles Baudelaire, but even major 20th century writers such as Jorge Luis Borges admired and claimed to be partly influenced by his work. (written by TTM)...

Excerpt Details
Essay/Short nonfiction

Description Details
The Memoir of my Aunt, Jane Austen, has been received with more favour than I had ventured to expect. The notices taken of it in the periodical press, as well as letters addressed to me by many with whom I am not personally acquainted, show that an unabated interest is still taken in every particular that can be told about her. I am thus encouraged not only to offer a Second Edition of the Memoir, but also to enlarge it with some additional matter which I might have scrupled to intrude on the public if they had not thus seemed to call for it. In the present Edition, the narrative is somewhat enlarged, and a few more letters are added; with a short specimen of her childish stories. The cancelled chapter of ‘Persuasion’ is given, in compliance with wishes both publicly and privately expressed. A fragment of a story entitled ‘The Watsons’ is printed; p. iii and extracts are given from a novel which she had begun a few months before her death; but the chief addition is a short tale never before published, called ‘Lady Susan.’ {0a} I regret that the little which I have been able to add could not appear in my First Edition; as much of it ...

Excerpt Details
Biography

Description Details
A Practical Handbook of Pertinent Expressions, Striking Similes, Literary, Commercial, Conversational, and Oratorical Terms, for the Embellishment of Speech and Literature, and The Improvement of the Vocabulary of Those Persons Who Read, Write, and Speak English...

Excerpt Details
Essay/Short nonfiction

Description Details
Faith Hope and Charity ...... In the Language of Emerson these translate as: Self - Reliance, Love, and Friendship. (summary by Robert Scott)

Excerpt Details
Essay/Short nonfiction

Description Details
Charlotte Bronte was a British author, the eldest of the three famous Bronte sisters who have become standards of English literature. She is best known for her novel Jane Eyre, one of the greatest classics of all time. Just two years after Charlotte's death, her friend Elizabeth Gaskell wrote her biography. Want to know more about Charlotte Bronte? If you do, please read this biography. Summary by Stav Nisser....

Excerpt Details
Biography

Description Details
In 1881, Mrs. Cecil Hall's brother went to Manitoba to farm. In 1882, she went out for a visit of some two months, and followed that visit with a long sojourn in Colorado, returning to England as the snows began to fall. While there, she had to give up her Lady's ways and help on the farm in many ways she'd never stoop to at home. She makes hay, cooks, paints the barn roof, and cleans. Through it all, the newness helped her keep her temper, and these letters home show an insight into the settlement of Western Canada. These letters have a feel of Little House on the Prarie from an English lady's point of view. (Summary by Sibella Denton)....

Excerpt Details
Biography

Description Details
...Showing Curious ways in which the English Language may be made to convey Ideas or obscure them. A collection of unintentionally humorous uses of the English language. Sections of the work: How she is wrote by the Inaccurate, By Advertisers and on Sign-boards, For Epitaphs, By Correspondents, By the Effusive, How she can be oddly wrote, and By the Untutored. (Summary by TriciaG)...

Excerpt Details
Humor, Languages

Description Details
Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson is widely considered to be the greatest English-language biography ever written. It was revolutionary in its efforts to represent Johnson as he was, celebrating his flaws as well as his genius, and in Boswell's decision to represent Johnson primarily by quoting his writings and relating personal anecdotes rather than relying on matters of public record. From the time of its publication till now, The Life of Johnson has been one of the most popular and influential books ever written. (Summary by Kirsten Ferreri.)...

Excerpt Details
Biography, Literature, Memoirs

Description Details
English Synonyms and Antonyms is basically a vocabulary builder that students might use as they prepare for entrance or exit exams. Each entry gives a list of synonyms, followed by a paragraph that briefly explains or exemplifies the subtle distinctions between the listed words. The entries sometimes close with a few words on the prepositions that follow selected synonyms, but more often with a list of antonyms. By synonyms we usually understand words that coincide or nearly coincide in some part of their meaning, and may hence within certain limits be used interchangeably, while outside of those limits they may differ very greatly in meaning and use. It is the office of a work on synonyms to point out these correspondences and differences, that language may have the flexibility that comes from freedom of selection within the common limits, with the perspicuity and precision that result from exact choice of the fittest words to express each shade of meaning outside of the common limits. (Summary by DSayers and the author from the entry Synonymous)...

Excerpt Details
Languages, Instruction

Description Details
Throughout the ages, languages continue to adapt and change. English, being a relatively new language, is a nice example of that. Though the English vocabulary is continually evolving, the system of punctuation has remained constant for the most part. This means that grammar books from 1895 are still applicable today. Therefore, if the following sentence looks correct to you, perhaps listening to Paul Allardyce's Stops, or How to Punctuate would be a good idea. This, is a recording, all recording's are in the public domain. (Summary by Shurtagal)...

Excerpt Details
Advice, Instruction, Languages

Description Details
This is a collection of city stories, fiction or non-fiction, in English and published before 1923. Contributions have been chosen by the readers themselves. Summary by BellonaTimes....

Excerpt Details
Essay/Short nonfiction, Short stories, Travel

Description Details
The World I Live In by Helen Keller is a collection of essays that poignantly tells of her impressions of the world, through her sense of touch, smell, her imagination and dreams. My hand is to me what your hearing and sight together are to you. In large measure we travel the same highways, read the same books, speak the same language, yet our experiences are different. All my comings and goings turn on the hand as on a pivot. It is the hand that binds me to the world of men and women. The hand is my feeler with which I reach through isolation and darkness and seize every pleasure, every activity that my fingers encounter. With the dropping of a little word from another's hand into mine, a slight flutter of the fingers, began the intelligence, the joy, the fullness of my life. Helen Keller, quoted from her essay, The Seeing Hand (Summary from text and Laura Caldwell)...

Excerpt Details
Essay/Short nonfiction, Biography

Description Details
Charlotte Bronte was a British author, the eldest of the three famous Bronte sisters who have become standards of English literature. She is best known for her novel Jane Eyre, one of the greatest classics of all times. Just two years after Charlotte's death, her friend Elizabeth Gaskell wrote her biography. Want to know more about Charlotte Bronte? If you do, please read this biography. Summary by Stav Nisser....

Excerpt Details
Biography, Literature, Memoirs

Description Details
If you’ve ever studied German (and maybe even if you haven’t), you’re likely to find this short essay to be hilarious. Published as Appendix D from Twain’s 1880 book A Tramp Abroad , this comedic gem outlines the pitfalls one will encounter when trying to wrap one’s mind around the torturous German cases, adjective endings, noun genders, and verb placement. (Summary by Kara)...

Excerpt Details
Essay/Short nonfiction, Comedy, Languages

Description Details
“These papers were originally published as prefaces to the separate books of Dickens in one of the most extensive of those cheap libraries of the classics which are one of the real improvements of recent times. Thus they were harmless, being diluted by, or rather drowned in Dickens. My scrap of theory was a mere dry biscuit to be taken with the grand tawny port of great English comedy; and by most people it was not taken at all--like the biscuit.Nevertheless the essays were not in intention so aimless as they appear in fact. I had a general notion of what needed saying about Dickens to the new generation, though probably I did not say it. I will make another attempt to do so in this prologue, and, possibly fail again. (Summary by G. K. Chesterton)...

Excerpt Details
Essay/Short nonfiction, Literature

Description Details
Witty, opinionated alphabetical examples of what Bierce considered poor (American) English and advice on alternatives - entertaining, thought-provoking, occasionally outdated but so interesting to see how style and taste have changed....

Excerpt Details
Instruction, Humor

Description Details
It need hardly be said that the woman by whom these letter were written had no thought that they would be read by anyone but the person to whom they were addressed. But a request, conveyed under circumstances which the writer herself would have regarded as all-commanding, urges that they should now be given to the world; and, so far as is possible with a due regard to the claims of privacy, what is here printed presents the letters as they were first written in their complete form and sequence. From book explaination...

Excerpt Details
Romance, Biography

Description Details
Collection of short essays concerning French novelist and critic Paul Bourget. Included: What Paul Bourget Thinks of Us and A Little Note to M. Paul Bourget. (Summary by John Greenman)...

Excerpt Details
Essay/Short nonfiction, Humor