"Sixty years ago, up among the New Hampshire hills, lived Farmer Bassett, with a house full of sturdy sons and daughters growing up about him. They were poor in money, but rich in land and love, for the wide acres of wood, corn, and pasture land fed, warmed, and clothed the flock, while mutual patience, affection, and courage made the old farm-house a very happy home. November had come; the...

Behind A Mask, Or A Woman's Power is a novella written by American author Louisa May Alcott. The novella was originally published in 1866 under the pseudonym of A. M. Barnard in The Flag of Our Union. Set in Victorian era Britain, the story follows Jean Muir, the deceitful governess of the wealthy Coventry family. With expert manipulation, Jean Muir obtains the love, respect, and eventually the...

The highly influential author Louisa May cott wrote the one of the most famous books, A Modern Cinderella Or, The Little Old Shoe And Other Stories. This literary work is considered to be one of the best works of not only the period, but of all time. The book would later go on to be translated into hundreds of languages, distributed worldwide, and come to be part of popular culture for decades,...

Hospital Sketches (1863) is a compilation of four sketches based on letters Louisa May Alcott sent home during the six weeks she spent as a volunteer nurse for the Union Army during the American Civil War in Georgetown. Tribulaton Periwinkle opens the story by complaining, "I want something to do." She dismisses suggestions to write a book, teach, get married, or start acting. When her younger...

Little Women is a novel by American author Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888), which was originally published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869. Alcott wrote the books rapidly over several months at the request of her publisher. The novel follows the lives of four sisters - Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March—detailing their passage from childhood to womanhood, and is loosely based on the author...

Saint Ronan's Well is a novel by Sir Walter Scott. It is the only novel he wrote with a 19th-century setting. Valentine Bulmer and his half-brother Francis Tyrrel had been Mrs Dods' guests at Cleikum Inn when they were students from Edinburgh, and she gladly welcomed Francis when he arrived, some years afterwards, to stay at the inn again, to fish and sketch in the neighbourhood. A mineral...

The Fair Maid of Perth Or, St. Valentine's Day is a novel by Sir Walter Scott. Inspired by the strange story of the Battle of the North Inch, it is set in Perth and other parts of Scotland around 1400. The book had been intended to include two other stories in the same volume, "My Aunt Margaret's Mirror" and "Death of the Laird's Jock", which was to have been titled St. Valentine's Eve. The...

Redgauntlet (1824) is a historical novel by Sir Walter Scott, set in Dumfries, Scotland in 1765, and described by Magnus Magnusson (a point first made by Andrew Lang) as "in a sense, the most autobiographical of Scott's novels." It describes the beginnings of a fictional third Jacobite Rebellion, and includes "Wandering Willie's Tale", a famous short story which frequently appears in...

The Journal of Sir Walter Scott is a diary which the novelist and poet Walter Scott kept between 1825 and 1832. It records the financial disaster which overtook him at the beginning of 1826, and the efforts he made over the next seven years to pay off his debts by writing bestselling books. Since its first complete publication in 1890 it has attracted high praise, being considered by many critics...

Waverley; or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since is an 1814 historical novel by Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832). Published anonymously in 1814 as Scott's first venture into prose fiction, it is often regarded as the first historical novel in the western tradition. It became so popular that Scott's later novels were advertised as being "by the author of Waverley". His series of works on similar themes...

The Seven Seas is a book of poetry by Rudyard Kipling published 1896. Poems include The Lost Legion.

Troilus and Cressida is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1602. It was described by Frederick S. Boas as one of Shakespeare's problem plays. The play ends on a very bleak note with the death of the noble Trojan Hector and destruction of the love between Troilus and Cressida. Throughout the play, the tone lurches wildly between...

Twelfth Night; or, What You Will is a comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written around 1601–02 as a Twelfth Night's entertainment for the close of the Christmas season. The play centres on the twins Viola andSebastian, who are separated in a shipwreck. Viola (who is disguised as a boy) falls in love with Duke Orsino, who in turn is in love...

Hamlet. Romeo and Juliet. Henry V. Macbeth. A Midsummer Night's Dream. King Lear. Lovers of literature will immediately recognize these as signature works of William Shakespeare, whose plays still rank as the greatest dramas ever produced in the English language four centuries after they were written. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare collects all thirty-seven of the...

The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring (originally published London, 1898) is a philosophical commentary on Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, by the Irish writer George Bernard Shaw.  Shaw offered it to those enthusiastic admirers of Wagner who "were unable to follow his ideas, and do not in the least understand the dilemma of Wotan."...

This collection of essays about the relationship between parents and children and also bringing up children in regards to manners, rules and schools is kind of amazing.

The Dark Lady of the Sonnets is a 1910 short comedy by George Bernard Shaw in which William Shakespeare, intending to meet the "Dark Lady", accidentally encounters Queen Elizabeth I and attempts to persuade her to create a national theatre. The play was written as part of a campaign to create a "Shakespeare National Theatre" by 1916.  The play is set at "Fin de siecle...

This text is based on the book “Grimm’s household tales with the author’s notes.” By Grimm Jakob Ludwig Karl. Translated by Margaret Hunt. This text includes all Grimm’s fairy tales and 10 children’s legends. The Margaret Hunt’s translation is very true to the German original. 

Herland is a utopian novel from 1915, written by feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The book describes an isolated society composed entirely of women, who reproduce via parthenogenesis (asexual reproduction). The result is an ideal social order: free of war, conflict, and domination. It first appeared as a serial in The Forerunner, a magazine edited and written by Gilman between 1909 and 1916....

Twice-Told Tales is a short story collection in two volumes by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The first was published in the spring of 1837, and the second in 1842. The stories had all been previously published in magazines and annuals, hence the name.  Hawthorne was encouraged by friend Horatio Bridge to collect these previously anonymous stories; Bridge offered $250 to cover the risk of the...