The Man is a 1905 Victorian novel by Bram Stoker, best known for Dracula.[1] A typical Gothic novel, it features horror and romance. The Man has also been published as The Gates of Life.

Charles Dickens was born on 1812, in Portsea, England. His parents were middle-class, but they suffered financially as a result of living beyond their means. When Dickens was twelve years old, his family's dire straits forced him to quit school and work in a blacking factory, a place where shoe polish is made. Within weeks, his father was put in debtor's prison, where Dickens's mother and siblings eventually joined him. At this point, Dickens lived on his own and continued to work at the factory for several months. The horrific conditions in the factory haunted him for the rest of his life, as did the experience of temporary orphanhood. Apparently, Dickens never forgot the day when a more senior boy in the warehouse took it upon himself to instruct Dickens in how to do his work more efficiently. For Dickens, that instruction may have represented the first step toward his full integration into the misery and tedium of working-class life. The more senior boy's name was Bob Fagin. Dickens's residual resentment of him reached a fevered pitch in the characterization of the villain Fagin in Oliver Twist.??After inheriting some money, Dickens's father got out of prison and Charles returned to school. As a young adult, he worked as a law clerk and later as a journalist. His experience as a journalist kept him in close contact with the darker social conditions of the Industrial Revolution, and he grew disillusioned with the attempts of lawmakers to alleviate those conditions. A collection of semi-fictional sketches entitled Sketches by Boz earned him recognition as a writer. Dickens became famous and began to make money from his writing when he published his first novel, The Pickwick Papers, which was serialized in 1836 and published in book form the following year.??In 1837, the first installment of Oliver Twist appeared in the magazine Bentley’s Miscellany, which Dickens was then editing. It was accompanied by illustrations by George Cruikshank, which still accompany many editions of the novel today. Even at this early date, some critics accused Dickens of writing too quickly and too prolifically, since he was paid by the word for his serialized novels. Yet the passion behind Oliver Twist, animated in part by Dickens’s own childhood experiences and in part by his outrage at the living conditions of the poor that he had witnessed as a journalist, touched his contemporary readers. Greatly successful, the novel was a thinly veiled protest against the Poor Law of 1834.??In 1836, Dickens married Catherine Hogarth, but after twenty years of marriage and ten children, he fell in love with Ellen Ternan, an actress many years his junior. Soon after, Dickens and his wife separated, ending a long series of marital difficulties. Dickens remained a prolific writer to the end of his life, and his novels—among them Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield, and Bleak House—continued to earn critical and popular acclaim. He died of a stroke in 1870, at the age of 58, leaving The Mystery of Edwin Drood unfinished.??The Poor Laws: Oliver Twist’s Social Commentary?Oliver Twist opens with a bitter invective directed at the nineteenth-century English Poor Laws. These laws were a distorted manifestation of the Victorian middle class’s emphasis on the virtues of hard work. England in the 1830s was rapidly undergoing a transformation from an agricultural, rural economy to an urban, industrial nation. The growing middle class had achieved an economic influence equal to, if not greater than, that of the British aristocracy.??In the 1830s, the middle class clamored for a share of political power with the landed gentry, bringing about a restructuring of the voting system. Parliament passed the Reform Act, which granted the right to vote to previously disenfranchised middle-class citizens. This desire gave rise to the Evangelical religious movement and inspired sweeping economic and political change.

While most information about individual slaves in the South is unknown, lost, or has been deliberately concealed, Sojourner Truth was a slave in New York State, and there are meticulous records detailing her life, in addition to those in her Narrative. She was born a slave in 1797, named Isabella Baumfree, and then sold three times to different masters before she was fifteen.

This ebook compiles Conan Doyle's greatest writings, including novels and short stories such as "A Study in Scarlet", "The Hound of the Baskervilles", "The Lost World", "The Adventure of the Speckled Band", "The Sign of Four" and "The White Company". This edition has been professionally formatted and contains several tables of contents. The first table of contents (at the very beginning of the ebook) lists the titles of all novels included in this volume. By clicking on one of those titles you will be redirected to the beginning of that work, where you'll find a new TOC that lists all the chapters and sub-chapters of that specific work.

The Return of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of 13 Sherlock Holmes stories, originally published in 1903-1904, by Arthur Conan Doyle. The book was first published on March 7, 1905 by Georges Newnes, Ltd and in a Colonial edition by Longmans. 30,000 copies were made of the initial print run. The US edition by McClure, Phillips & Co. added another 28,000 to the run. This was the first Holmes collection since 1893, when Holmes had "died" in "The Adventure of the Final Problem". Having published The Hound of the Baskervilles in 1901–1902 (although setting it before Holmes' death) Doyle came under intense pressure to revive his famous character.

The Head of the House of Coombe follows the relationships between a group of pre–World War One English nobles and commoners. It also offers both some interesting editorial commentary on the political system in prewar Europe that Burnett feels bears some responsibility for the war and some surprisingly pointed social commentary.

Gabriel Quennec est avocat. Marié, trois enfants, sa vie s’écoule dans l’indifférence totale à tout ce qui l’entoure. Un matin, une voiture le percute violemment alors qu’il se rend à son travail et prend la fuite. Gabriel est tué sur le coup. Dès lors, il n’aura de cesse de retrouver son meurtrier afin de le pousser à se rendre à la justice. Comment se venger lorsque l’on est un fant?me?? Michel, son être de lumière, va l’aider dans cette quête et va lui faire découvrir les maux qui rongent notre société. Au fur et à mesure de son enquête, Gabriel sera confronté au pire comme au meilleur. Gabriel arrivera-t-il à sortir de son indifférence qui le caractérisait de son vivant?? Arrivera-t-il à trouver la paix intérieure?? De sa vie en tant qu'entité, Gabriel laissera à l'humanité un témoignage dans lequel il expliquera son choix. Car Gabriel a une grave décision à prendre. Un récit poignant qui nous pousse à ouvrir les yeux sur ce qu’il se passe autour de nous. Arriverons-nous à réagir avant qu’il ne soit trop tard??

Cymbeline is a play by William Shakespeare, based on an early Celtic British King. Although listed as a tragedy in the First Folio, modern critics often classify it as a romance. Like Othello, Measure for Measure, and The Winter's Tale, it deals with the themes of innocence and jealousy. While its date of composition is unknown, the play is known to have been produced as early as 1611.

The burlesque adventures of Tartarin, a local hero of Tarascon, a small town in southern France, whose invented adventures and reputation as a swashbuckler finally force him to travel to a very prosaic Algiers in search of lions. Instead of finding a romantic, mysterious Oriental fantasy land, he finds a sordid world suspended between Europe and the Middle East. And worst of all, there are no lions left.

In this fourth volume, Proust’s novel takes up for the first time the theme of homosexual love and examines how destructive sexual jealousy can be for those who suffer it. Sodom and Gomorrah is also an unforgiving analysis of both the decadent high society of Paris and the rise of a philistine bourgeoisie that will inevitably supplant it.

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good upon ’Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail. Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail. Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don’t know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain. The mention of Marley’s funeral brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet’s Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middleaged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot—say Saint Paul’s Churchyard for instance—literally to astonish his son’s weak mind..

The Life of Timon of Athens is a play by William Shakespeare about the legendary Athenian misanthrope Timon (and probably influenced by the eponymous philosopher, as well), generally regarded as one of his most obscure and difficult works. Originally grouped with the tragedies, it is generally considered such, but some scholars group it with the problem comedies.

Pride And Prejudice, the story of Mrs. Bennet's attempts to marry off her five daughters is one of the best-loved and most enduring classics in English literature. Excitement fizzes through the Bennet household at Longbourn in Hertfordshire when young, eligible Mr. Charles Bingley rents the fine house nearby. He may have sisters, but he also has male friends, and one of these—the haughty, and even wealthier, Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy—irks the vivacious Elizabeth Bennet, the second of the Bennet girls. She annoys him. Which is how we know they must one day marry. The romantic clash between the opinionated Elizabeth and Darcy is a splendid rendition of civilized sparring. As the characters dance a delicate quadrille of flirtation and intrigue, Jane Austen's radiantly caustic wit and keen observation sparkle.

An ancient feud between two frontier families is inflamed when one of the families takes up cattle rustling. In the grip of their relentless code of loyalty, they fight a war in Tonto Basin, desperately, doggedly, neither side seeing the futility of the conflict. Surrounded by this volatile environment, young Jean finds himself hopelessly in love with a girl from whom he is separated by an impassable barrier.

As You Like It is a pastoral comedy by William Shakespeare based on the novel Rosalynde by Thomas Lodge, believed to have been written in 1599 or early 1600. It features one of Shakespeare's most famous and oft-quoted lines, "All the world's a stage", and has been adapted for radio, film, and musical theatre.

Generations of children have treasured the story of Sara Crewe, the little girl who imagines she's a princess in order to survive hard times at Miss Minchins London boarding school.

First published in 1890, The Sign of Four is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's second book starring legendary detective Sherlock Holmes. The story is complex, involving a secret between four ex-cons from India and a hidden treasure. More complex than the first Holmes novel, The Sign of Four also introduces the detective's drug habit and leaves breadcrumbs for the reader that lead toward the final resolution.

Texas was a huge wide place full of frontiersmen, ranchers, farmers, cowpokes, shiftless no-accounts, shootists, rascals, and politicians -- all of them blended together into a single state. The Rangers -- lawmen, Texas Rangers -- were outnumbered a thousand to one, and in one county -- Pecos county -- the law was all but helpless. Until Ranger Vaughn Steel went to Pecos, looking for revenge. . . .

Twins and their strange taste for destruction. Bram Stoker short stories

The War of the Worlds (1898), by H. G. Wells, is an early science fiction novel which describes an invasion of England by aliens from Mars. It is one of the earliest and best-known depictions of an alien invasion of Earth, and has influenced many others, as well as spawning several films, radio dramas, comic book adaptations, and a television series based on the story. The 1938 radio broadcast caused public outcry against the episode, as many listeners believed that an actual Martian invasion was in progress, a notable example of mass hysteria.

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, originally published in 1894, by Arthur Conan Doyle.