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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...

Guy Mannering or The Astrologer is a novel by Sir Walter Scott, published anonymously in 1815. According to an introduction that Scott wrote in 1829, he had originally intended to write a story of the supernatural, but changed his mind soon after starting. The book was a huge success, the first edition selling out on the first day of publication. Guy Mannering, after leaving Oxford, is...

The forenoon of the first of April, 1911. General Mitchener is at his writing table in the War Office, opening letters. On his left is the fireplace, with a fire burning. On his right, against the opposite wall is a standing desk with an office stool. The door is in the wall behind him, half way between the table and the desk. The table is not quite in the middle of the room: it is nearer to the...

Poor Folk (Russian: Бедные люди, Bednye Lyudi), sometimes translated as Poor People, is the first novella by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, written over the span of nine months between 1844 and 1845. Dostoyevsky was in financial difficulty because of his extravagant living and his developing gambling addiction; although he had produced some translations of...

Soldiers Three is a collection of short stories by Rudyard Kipling. The three soldiers of the title are Learoyd, Mulvaney and Ortheris, who had also appeared previously in the collection Plain Tales from the Hills. The current version, dating from 1899 and more fully titled Soldiers Three and other stories, consists of three sections which each had previously received separate publication in...

East of Suez: A Play in Seven Scenes is a popular book by William Somerset Maugham, consists of 7 parts: A street in peking A small verandah on an upper storey of the british american tobacco company's premises The temple of fidelity and virtuous inclination The sitting-room in the andersons' apartments The courtyard in the andersons' part of the temple A small room in a chinese...

The Heart of Midlothian is the seventh of Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley Novels. It was originally published in four volumes on 25 July 1818, under the title of Tales of My Landlord, 2nd series, and the author was given as "Jedediah Cleishbotham, Schoolmaster and Parish-clerk of Gandercleugh". Although the identity of the author of the Waverley Novels was well known by this time, Scott still...

Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same. Never resist temptation: prove all things: hold fast that which is good. Do not love your neighbor as yourself. If you are on good terms with yourself it is an impertinence: if on bad, an injury. The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

Wilde’s literary reputation has survived so much that I think it proof against any exhumation of articles which he or his admirers would have preferred to forget. As a matter of fact, I believe this volume will prove of unusual interest; some of the reviews are curiously prophetic; some are, of course, biassed by prejudice hostile or friendly; others are conceived in the author’s...

Letters of Travel (1892-1913), originally published in 1920, is a collection of articles on Japan, the United States, Canada and Egypt.

Rob Roy (1817) is a historical novel by Walter Scott. It is narrated by Frank Osbaldistone, the son of an English merchant who travels first to the North of England, and subsequently to the Scottish Highlands, to collect a debt stolen from his father. On the way he encounters the larger-than-life title character, Rob Roy MacGregor. Though Rob Roy is not the lead character (in fact, the narrative...

Kenilworth. A Romance is a historical novel by Sir Walter Scott, first published on 8 January 1821. Giles Gosling, the innkeeper, had just welcomed his scape-grace nephew Michael Lambourne on his return from Flanders. He invited the Cornishman, Tressilian, and other guests to drink with them. Lambourne made a wager he would obtain an introduction to a certain young lady under the steward...

Overruled (1912) is a comic one-act play written during by George Bernard Shaw. In Shaw's words, it is about "how polygamy occurs among quite ordinary people innocent of all unconventional views concerning it." The play concerns two couples who desire to switch partners, but are prevented from doing so by various considerations and end up negotiating an ambiguous set of...

I was advised on all hands not to write this book, and some English friends who have read it urge me not to publish it.  "You will be accused of selecting the subject," they say, "because sexual viciousness appeals to you, and your method of treatment lays you open to attack. "You criticise and condemn the English conception of justice, and English legal methods: you even question the...

The Years Between, a collection of poems written during the period from just after the Boer War till the aftermath of World War I, was originally published in 1919. It was the first volume of new poems by Kipling published since "The Five Nations" in 1903; including the first book appearance of Kipling's celebrated "The Female of the Species," with its awed refrain "The female of the species is...

Old Mortality is a novel by Sir Walter Scott set in the period 1679–89 in south west Scotland. It forms, along with The Black Dwarf, the 1st series of Scott's Tales of My Landlord. The two novels were published together in 1816. Old Mortality is considered one of Scott's best novels. It was originally titled The Tale of Old Mortality, but is generally shortened in most references. After...

The Abbot (1820) is a historical novel by Sir Walter Scott. A sequel to The Monastery, it is one of Scott's Tales from Benedictine Sources and is set in the time of Mary, Queen of Scots. The story follows the fortunes of certain characters Scott introduced in The Monastery, but it also introduces new characters such as Roland Graeme. Ten years had passed since the final events of The Monastery,...

The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1610–11, and thought by many critics to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone. It is set on a remote island, where Prospero, the rightful Duke of Milan, plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful place using illusion and skilful manipulation. He conjures...

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish author, playwright and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, his plays, as well as the circumstances of...

Traffics and Discoveries, containing 11 stories and 11 poems, was published in 1904. Table of Contents: From the Masjid-al-Aqsa of Sayyid Ahmed (Wahabi) The Captive Poseidon's Law The Bonds of Discipline The Runners A Sahibs' War The Wet Litany "Their Lawful Occasions" The King's Task The Comprehension of Private Copper The Necessitarian Steam Tactics Kaspar's Song in...