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The Prince and the Pauper is a novel by American author Mark Twain. It was first published in 1881 in Canada, before its 1882 publication in the United States. The novel represents Twain's first attempt at historical fiction. Set in 1547, it tells the story of two young boys who are identical in appearance: Tom Canty, a pauper who lives with his abusive father in Offal Court off Pudding Lanein...

Anne of Green Gables is a bestselling 1908 novel by Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery. Written as fiction for readers of all ages, the literary classic has been considered a children's novel since the mid-twentieth century. It recounts the adventures of Anne Shirley, a young orphan girl, age 11 who is mistakenly sent to Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, a middle-aged brother and sister who have a...

This book is a compilation of interviews, the author Max Miller tells us about his first serious assignment in New York. They present his first professional work as a journalist. Max Millard went to New York City in November 1976, when he was 26 years old. He went with the intention to become a full-time writer. For his articles and columns written for small local papers were not paid. He was...

The Duchess of Padua is a play by Oscar Wilde. It is a five-act melodramatic tragedy set in Padua and written in blank verse. It was written for the actress Mary Anderson in early 1883 while in Paris. After she turned it down, it was abandoned until its first performance at the Broadway Theatre in New York under the...

When Paul spoke in that tone and wore that look, Lillian felt as if they had changed places, and he was the master and she the servant. She wondered over this in her childish mind, but proud and willful as she was, she liked it, and obeyed him with unusual meekness when he suggested that it was time to return.

The Talisman is a novel by Sir Walter Scott. It was published in 1825 as the second of his Tales of the Crusaders, the first being The Betrothed. The Talisman takes place at the end of the Third Crusade, mostly in the camp of the Crusaders in Palestine. Scheming and partisan politics, as well as the illness of King Richard the Lionheart, are placing the Crusade in danger. The main characters are...

This was Twain's most serious, philosophical and private book. He kept it locked in his desk, considered it to be his Bible, and spoke of it as such to friends when he read them passages. He had written it, rewritten it, was finally satisfied with it, but still chose not to release it until after his death. It appears in the form of a dialogue between an old man and a young man who discuss who...

Sam took the rebuke all the more meekly as he perceived the stiff black legs of a turkey poking-out from under my grandmother's apron while she was delivering it. To be exhorted and told of his shortcomings, and then furnished with a turkey at Thanksgiving, was a yearly part of his family program. In time he departed, not only with the turkey, but with us boys in procession after him, bearing a...

“The dying star grew dark; the last light faded from it; went out. Prince Erlik laughed. “And suddenly the old order of things began to pass away more swiftly. “Between earth and outer space—between Creator and created, confusing and confounding their identities,—a rushing darkness grew—the hurrying wrack of immemorial storms heralding whirlwinds through which...

Plain Tales from the Hills (published 1888) is the first collection of short stories by Rudyard Kipling. Out of its 40 stories, "eight-and-twenty", according to Kipling's Preface, were initially published in the Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore, Punjab, British India, between November 1886 and June 1887. "The remaining tales are, more or less, new." (Kipling had worked as a journalist for the...

The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax is one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It is one of the eight stories in the cycle collected as His Last Bow, and one of the few stories in which for much of the plot Watson must act alone and try his best with Holmes left in the background. Holmes sends Dr. Watson to Lausanne to investigate Lady...

Om een goed begin te maken en met een vrij hart naar Meta’s bruiloft te kunnen gaan, mogen wij eerst nog wel eens een praatje over de familie March houden. En dan moet ik al dadelijk zeggen, dat wanneer, sommige mijner oudere lezeressen mochten pruttelen: “Er wordt te veel over ‘liefdesgeschiedenissen’ in dat verhaal gesproken,” (ik ben niet bang, dat jonge menschen...

The Inca of Perusalem, An Almost Historical Comedietta (1915) is a comic one-act play written during World War I by George Bernard Shaw. The plot appears at first to be a fairy-tale like story about a fantastical "Inca", but it eventually becomes obvious that the Inca is Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany.  In a prologue a character called Ermyntrude says that though she...

In compiling the following History from the Archives of Pantouflia, the Editor has incurred several obligations to the Learned. The Return of Benson (chapter xii.) is the fruit of the research of the late Mr. Allen Quatermain, while the final wish of Prince Prigio was suggested by the invention or erudition of a Lady. A study of the Firedrake in South Africa, where he is called the...

Misalliance is a play written in 1909–1910 by George Bernard Shaw. The play takes place entirely on a single Saturday afternoon in the conservatory of a large country house in Hindhead, Surrey in Edwardian era England.  It is a continuation of some of the ideas on marriage that he expressed in 1908 in his play, Getting Married. It was...

The eleven papers which are collected here were written between 1899 and 1905. With the exception of one, entitled "Aspects of Shakespeare's Philosophy," which is now printed for the first time, they were published in periodicals in the course of those six years. The articles treat of varied aspects of Shakespearean drama, its influences and traditions, but I think that all may be credited...

The Turn of the Screw, originally published in 1898, is a gothic ghost story novella written by Henry James. Due to its ambiguous content, it became a favourite text of academics who subscribe to New Criticism. The novella has had differing interpretations, often mutually exclusive. Many critics have tried to determine the exact nature of the evil hinted at by the story. However, others have...

I purpose telling you in the following pages about the exploits of the gallant men who composed the American Navy, beginning with the Revolution and ending with the story of their wonderful deeds in our late war with Spain. You can never read a more interesting story, nor one that will make you feel prouder of your birthright. While our patriot armies have done nobly, it is none the less true...

Man and Wife was Wilkie Collins’ ninth published novel. It is the second of his novels (after No Name) in which social questions provide the main impetus of the plot. Collins increasingly used his novels to explore social abuses, which according to critics tends to detract from their qualities as fiction. The social issue which drives the plot is the state of Scots marriage law; at the time...

Persuasion is Jane Austen's last completed novel. She began it soon after she had finished Emma and completed it in August 1816. She died, at age 41, in 1817; Persuasion was published in December of that year (but dated 1818).  Persuasion is linked to Northanger Abbey not only by the fact that the two books were originally bound up in one volume...