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A Christmas Carol is a novella by English author Charles Dickens first published by Chapman & Hall on 17 December 1843. The story tells of sour and stingy Ebenezer Scrooge's ideological, ethical, and emotional transformation after the supernatural visits of Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come. The novella met with instant success and critical acclaim. ( Summary by Wikipedia )

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (published 1876) is a very well-known and popular story concerning American youth. Mark Twain's lively tale of the scrapes and adventures of boyhood is set in St. Petersburg, Missouri, where Tom Sawyer and his friend Huckleberry Finn have the kinds of adventures many boys can imagine: racing bugs during class, impressing girls, especially Becky Thatcher, with fights and stunts in the schoolyard, getting lost in a cave, and playing pirates on the Mississippi River.One of the most famous incidents in the book describes how Tom persuades his friends to do a boring, ...

A collection of stories that inspired the works of many writers such as HP Lovecraft, "The King in Yellow" revolves around the play that the main characters read a part of, and those two acts of the play drive them all into madness. - Summary by Eva Staes

"A Christmas Carol" has been credited with relaunching the celebration of Christmas as we know it. It relaunched Charles Dickens' literary career, that is for sure! More than that, and more importantly, it is an illustration of one "covetous old sinner" and his opportunity for redemption in the eyes of both God and man. For me the book holds a special meaning for it repeatedly shows me that no matter how I often I may make mistakes, mercy and forgiveness are there for the asking. - Summary by Greg Giordano

Set in a time of oppressive colonisation, when large areas of the world were still unknown to Europe, and Africa was literally on maps and minds as a mysterious shadow, Heart of Darkness famously explores the rituals of civilisation and barbarism, and the frighteningly fine line between them.We get the tale through a classic unreliable narrator, relating as Marlow, a ship’s captain, tells how he was sent by the Company to retrieve the wayward Kurtz, and was shaken to discover the true depths of darkness in that creature’s, and in his own, soul. Conrad based the work closely on his own ...

By turns illuminating, infuriating, bewildering, and amusing, Nietzsche's masterwork covers a lot of ground. He rejects most strands of Western thought, especially on the subject of morality, and develops his own theme demanding that individuals embrace their own 'will to power' to give life intention and direction. First published in German in 1887, this translation was produced in 1907 by Helen Zimmern, a long-standing acquaintance of Nietzsche.There is an accessible text at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4363 but it leaves out all words in Greek, and is not in alignment with any printed ...

Emily Brontë's only novel, published in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell, tells the tale of the all-encompassing and passionate, yet thwarted, love between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, and how this unresolved passion eventually destroys them and many around them. Now considered a classic of English literature, Wuthering Heights met with mixed reviews by critics when it first appeared, with many horrified by the stark depictions of mental and physical cruelty. Though Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre was originally considered the best of the Brontë sisters' works, many subsequent critics...

A Tale of Two Cities (1859) is a novel by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. With well over 200 million copies sold, it is among the most famous works of fiction.The novel depicts the plight of the French peasantry demoralized by the French aristocracy in the years leading up to the revolution, the corresponding brutality demonstrated by the revolutionaries toward the former aristocrats in the early years of the revolution, and many unflattering social parallels with life in London during the same time period. It follows the lives of several ...

The tale begins on a Christmas Eve exactly seven years after the death of Ebenezer Scrooge's business partner. Scrooge has no place in his life for kindness, compassion, charity or benevolence. He hates Christmas, calling it "humbug", refuses his nephew Fred's dinner invitation, and rudely turns away two gentlemen who seek a donation from him to provide a Christmas dinner for the Poor... (Summary by Wikipedia and Kara)

Old miser Ebenezer Scrooge undergoes a major transformation after being visited by his deceased colleague Jacob Marley, who warns him to change his ways and has three spirits visit him on the night of Christmas Eve. (Introduction by Jeff Robinson)

Ebenezer Scrooge is a covetous, miserable old man who lives his life apart from his fellow man and is incapable of showing love or understanding towards them. On Christmas Eve he is visited by three ghosts who show him the error of his ways. (Summary by helensears)

The miserly Ebenezer Scrooge is a cold-hearted man of business and has little time for the good humor and charity of the Christmas season. But that's about to change. A visit from his deceased business partner sets in motion a night in which Scrooge is visited by the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future. Will his listen to their messages? Will he heed their warnings? Ebenezer Scrooge is about to take a Christmas journey that he won't soon forget. (Summary by Kyle Munley)

"Come with me, ladies and gentlemen who are in any wise weary of London: come with me: and those that tire at all of the world we know: for we have new worlds here." - Lord Dunsany, the preface to "The Book of Wonder"

Aspects Of Love is an anthology of poetic explorations on the theme of erotic love - though one of the "poets" represented here is better known, even than as a dramatist, as the philosopher, Plato. His Symposium heads off this set of erotic explorations. In The Symposium's philosophic play, he depicts a scene of men cosing together over dinner, each describing what he finds in his experience of love. I have followed this pattern in the choice of works for this anthology - in a similar manner, each of these works deals in a radically different way with the discovery of love. Whether ...

In her autobiography, Annie Besant poignantly writes of her search for the truth of what she believed in, leaving Christianity behind to embrace Atheism, and ultimately finding her peace in Theosophy, which she became interested in after meeting Helena Blavatsky. She moved to India to better study Theosophical ideas and this is where she made her home until her death. She was a gifted orator and writer, often speaking and writing on her religious beliefs, as well as women's rights and social reform. Along with Charles Bradlaugh, she published a paper in support of birth control. It proved to ...

Marcus Aurelius wrote Meditations in Greek while on campaign between 170 and 180, as a source for his own guidance and self-improvement. These memos survive and continue to inspire others to this day. These writings take the form of quotations varying in length from one sentence to long paragraphs. He explicates the Stoic philosophy that the only way a man can be harmed by others is to allow his reaction to overpower him. He shows no particular religious faith in his writings, but seems to believe that some sort of logical, benevolent force organizes the universe in such a way that even "bad" ...

The Divine Comedy (Italian: Commedia, later christened "Divina" by Giovanni Boccaccio), written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321, is widely considered the central epic poem of Italian literature, the last great work of literature of the Middle Ages and the first great work of the Renaissance. A culmination of the medieval world-view of the afterlife, it establishes the Tuscan dialect in which it is written as the Italian standard, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature. - The Divine Comedy is composed of three canticas (or "cantiche") — Inferno (...

A Christmas Carol (full title: A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas) is A Christmas Carol is a Victorian morality tale of an old and bitter miser, Ebenezer Scrooge, who undergoes a profound experience of redemption over the course of one evening. (Wikipedia)

Published in 1879, this play was a bombshell, exposing the tragic hypocrisy of Victorian like middle class marriage. The play is significant for the way it deals with the fate of a married woman, who at the time in Norway lacked reasonable opportunities for self-fulfillment in a male-dominated world. - A wife was almost literally a bird in a cage for display by the husband. Note that this is a solo reading of the entire play by one person. We have an excellent dramatic reading of this play in our catalog also if a more traditional performance is more to your taste.) Summary by phil c

Two love stories are set against the backdrop of high society in Tsarist Russia. Anna awakes from a loveless marriage to find herself drawn irresistibly to the dashing cavalry officer, Count Vronsky. Levin struggles with self-esteem, and even flees to the country, before gaining courage to return and offer himself to the beautiful and pure Kitty. Through troubled courtships, reconciliations, marriage and the birth of each one’s first child, Anna and Levin experience joy and despair as they each struggle to find their place in the world and meaning for their lives. (Introduction by MaryAnn)