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The Witch Mania
The Witch Mania
Charles Mackay
¥8.09
Excerpt from Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions. The essay begins: "The belief that disembodied spirits may be permitted to revisit this world, has its foundation upon that sublime hope of immortality, which is at once the chief solace and greatest triumph of our reason. Even if revelation did not teach us, we feel that we have that within us which shall never die; and all our experience of this life but makes us cling the more fondly to that one repaying hope. But in the early days of "little knowledge," this grand belief became the source of a whole train of superstitions, which, in their turn, became the fount from whence flowed a deluge of blood and horror. Europe, for a period of two centuries and a half, brooded upon the idea, not only that parted spirits walked the earth to meddle in the affairs of men, but that men had power to summon evil spirits to their aid to work woe upon their fellows. An epidemic terror seized upon the nations; no man thought himself secure, either in his person or possessions, from the machinations of the devil and his agents. Every calamity that befell him, he attributed to a witch."
The Champdoce Mystery
The Champdoce Mystery
Emile Gaboriau
¥8.09
Sequel to Caught in the Net. According to Wikipedia: "?mile Gaboriau (November 9, 1832 – September 28, 1873) was a French writer, novelist, journalist, and a pioneer of detective fiction... after publishing some novels and miscellaneous writings, found his real gift in L'Affaire Lerouge (1866). The book, which was Gaboriau's first detective novel, introduced an amateur detective. It also introduced a young police officer named Monsieur Lecoq, who was the hero in three of Gaboriau's later detective novels. The character of Lecoq was based on a real-life thief turned police officer, Eugène Fran?ois Vidocq (1775–1857)."
Affinities and Other Stories
Affinities and Other Stories
Mary Roberts Rinehart
¥8.09
According to Wikipedia: "Mary Roberts Rinehart (August 12, 1876-September 22, 1958) was a prolific author often called the American Agatha Christie.[1] She is considered the source of the phrase "The butler did it", although she did not actually use the phrase herself, and also considered to have invented the "Had-I-But-Known" school of mystery writing.... Rinehart wrote hundreds of short stories, poems, travelogues and special articles. Many of her books and plays, such as The Bat (1920) were adapted for movies, such as The Bat (1926), The Bat Whispers (1930), and The Bat (1959). While many of her books were best-sellers, critics were most appreciative of her murder mysteries. Rinehart, in The Circular Staircase (1908), is credited with inventing the "Had-I-But-Known" school of mystery writing. The Circular Staircase is a novel in which "a middle-aged spinster is persuaded by her niece and nephew to rent a country house for the summer. The house they choose belonged to a bank defaulter who had hidden stolen securities in the walls. The gentle, peace-loving trio is plunged into a series of crimes solved with the help of the aunt. This novel is credited with being the first in the "Had-I-But-Known" school."[3] The Had-I-But-Known mystery novel is one where the principal character (frequently female) does less than sensible things in connection with a crime which have the effect of prolonging the action of the novel. Ogden Nash parodied the school in his poem Don't Guess Let Me Tell You: "Sometimes the Had I But Known then what I know now I could have saved at least three lives by revealing to the Inspector the conversation I heard through that fortuitous hole in the floor." The phrase "The butler did it", which has become a cliché, came from Rinehart's novel The Door, in which the butler actually did do it, although that exact phrase does not actually appear in the work."
The Adventures of Prickly Porky, Illustrated
The Adventures of Prickly Porky, Illustrated
Thornton Burgess
¥8.09
Children's book, first published in 1916, with six black-and-white illustrations. According to Wikipedia: "Thornton Waldo Burgess (January 14, 1874 – June 5, 1965). Born in Sandwich, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, he was a conservationist and author of children's stories. Thornton Waldo Burgess loved the beauty of nature and its living creatures so much that he wrote about them for 50 years. By the time he retired, he had written more than 170 books and 15,000 stories for daily columns in newspapers."
Count Robert of Paris
Count Robert of Paris
Sir Walter Scott
¥8.09
First published in 1831, historical novel set in Constantinople and Scutari in 1097, at the time of the Crusades. One of Sir Walter Scott's "Tales of My Landlord" novels. According to Wikipedia: "Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet (1771 – 1832) was a prolific Scottish historical novelist and poet popular throughout Europe during his time. In some ways Scott was the first English-language author to have a truly international career in his lifetime, with many contemporary readers all over Europe, Australia, and North America. His novels and poetry are still read, and many of his works remain classics of both English-language literature and of Scottish literature. Famous titles include Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, The Lady of The Lake, Waverley, The Heart of Midlothian and The Bride of Lammermoor."
Four Plays
Four Plays
Alexander Ostrovsky
¥8.09
Four classic Russian plays. According to the introduction, "ALEXANDER NIKOLAYEVICH Ostrovsky (1823-86) is the great Russian dramatist of the central decades of the nineteenth century, of the years when the realistic school was all-powerful in Russian literature, of the period when Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy created a literature of prose fiction that has had no superior in the world's history. His work in the drama takes its place beside theirs in the novel. Obviously inferior as it is in certain ways, it yet sheds light on an important side of Russian life that they left practically untouched."
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
Vincinte Blasco Ibanez
¥8.09
According to Wikipedia: "Vicente Blasco Ibá?ez (January 29, 1867 – January 28, 1928) was a Spanish realist novelist writing in Spanish, a screenwriter and occasional film director. Born in Valencia, today he is best known in the English-speaking world for his World War I novel Los cuatro jinetes del apocalipsis. Filmed in 1921 as The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, it was filmed again in 1962, reset in World War II. However, in his time he was a best-selling author inside and outside of Spain, and also known for his controversial political activities. While Sangre y arena (Blood and Sand) and Los cuatro jinetes del apocalipsis are his most popular novels, particularly outside of Spain, his Valencian novels such as La barraca and Ca?as y barro are the ones most valued by scholars."
George Washington
George Washington
Calista McCabe Courtnay
¥8.09
According to Wikipedia: "Washington is seen as a symbol of the United States and republicanism in practice. His devotion to civic virtue made him an exemplary figure among early American politicians. Washington died in 1799, and in his funeral oration, Henry Lee said that of all Americans, he was "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen." Washington has been consistently ranked by scholars as one of the greatest U.S. Presidents."
The Party and Other Stories
The Party and Other Stories
Anton Chekhov
¥8.09
This collection includes: THE PARTY, TERROR, A WOMAN'S KINGDOM, A PROBLEM, THE KISS, 'ANNA ON THE NECK', THE TEACHER OF LITERATURE, NOT WANTED, TYPHUS, A MISFORTUNE, and A TRIFLE FROM LIFE. According to Wikipedia: "Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860 – 1904) was a Russian short-story writer, playwright and physician, considered to be one of the greatest short-story writers in world literature. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics Chekhov practised as a doctor throughout most of his literary career: "Medicine is my lawful wife," he once said, "and literature is my mistress." Chekhov renounced the theatre after the disastrous reception of The Seagull in 1896; but the play was revived to acclaim in 1898 by Constantin Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre, which subsequently also produced Uncle Vanya and premiered Chekhov’s last two plays, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. These four works present a special challenge to the acting ensemble as well as to audiences, because in place of conventional action Chekhov offers a "theatre of mood" and a "submerged life in the text." Chekhov had at first written stories only for the money, but as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations which have influenced the evolution of the modern short story. His originality consists in an early use of the stream-of-consciousness technique, later adopted by James Joyce and other modernists, combined with a disavowal of the moral finality of traditional story structure He made no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them."
In a Hollow of the Hills
In a Hollow of the Hills
Bret Harte
¥8.09
Classic western novel. According to Wikipedia: "Bret Harte (August 25, 1836[2] – May 6, 1902) was an American author and poet, best remembered for his accounts of pioneering life in California. He was born in Albany, New York. ... He moved to California in 1853, later working there in a number of capacities, including miner, teacher, messenger, and journalist. He spent part of his life in the northern California coast town now known as Arcata, then just a mining camp on Humboldt Bay. His first literary efforts, including poetry and prose, appeared in The Californian, an early literary journal edited by Charles Henry Webb. In 1868 he became editor of The Overland Monthly, another new literary magazine, but this one more in tune with the pioneering spirit of excitement in California. His story, "The Luck of Roaring Camp," appeared in the magazine's second edition, propelling Harte to nationwide fame... Determined to pursue his literary career, in 1871 he and his family traveled back East, to New York and eventually to Boston, where he contracted with the publisher of The Atlantic Monthly for an annual salary of $10,000, "an unprecedented sum at the time." His popularity waned, however, and by the end of 1872 he was without a publishing contract and increasingly desperate. He spent the next few years struggling to publish new work (or republish old), delivering lectures about the gold rush, and even selling an advertising jingle to a soap company. In 1878 Harte was appointed to the position of United States Consul in the town of Krefeld, Germany and then to Glasgow in 1880. In 1885 he settled in London. During the thirty years he spent in Europe, he never abandoned writing, and maintained a prodigious output of stories that retained the freshness of his earlier work. He died in England in 1902 of throat cancer and is buried at Frimley."
A Waif of the Plains
A Waif of the Plains
Bret Harte
¥8.09
Classic western novel. According to Wikipedia: "Bret Harte (August 25, 1836[2] – May 6, 1902) was an American author and poet, best remembered for his accounts of pioneering life in California. He was born in Albany, New York. ... He moved to California in 1853, later working there in a number of capacities, including miner, teacher, messenger, and journalist. He spent part of his life in the northern California coast town now known as Arcata, then just a mining camp on Humboldt Bay. His first literary efforts, including poetry and prose, appeared in The Californian, an early literary journal edited by Charles Henry Webb. In 1868 he became editor of The Overland Monthly, another new literary magazine, but this one more in tune with the pioneering spirit of excitement in California. His story, "The Luck of Roaring Camp," appeared in the magazine's second edition, propelling Harte to nationwide fame... Determined to pursue his literary career, in 1871 he and his family traveled back East, to New York and eventually to Boston, where he contracted with the publisher of The Atlantic Monthly for an annual salary of $10,000, "an unprecedented sum at the time." His popularity waned, however, and by the end of 1872 he was without a publishing contract and increasingly desperate. He spent the next few years struggling to publish new work (or republish old), delivering lectures about the gold rush, and even selling an advertising jingle to a soap company. In 1878 Harte was appointed to the position of United States Consul in the town of Krefeld, Germany and then to Glasgow in 1880. In 1885 he settled in London. During the thirty years he spent in Europe, he never abandoned writing, and maintained a prodigious output of stories that retained the freshness of his earlier work. He died in England in 1902 of throat cancer and is buried at Frimley."
Trailin'
Trailin'
Max Brand
¥8.09
Classic western. According to Wikipedia: "Frederick Schiller Faust (May 29, 1892 - May 12, 1944) was an American fiction author known primarily for his thoughtful and literary Westerns. Faust wrote mostly under pen names, and today is primarily known by one, Max Brand. Others include George Owen Baxter, Evan Evans, David Manning, John Frederick, Peter Morland, George Challis, and Frederick Frost. ... Faust managed a massive outpouring of fiction, rivaling Edgar Wallace and especially Isaac Asimov as one of the most prolific authors of all time. He wrote more than 500 novels for magazines and almost as many stories of shorter length. His total literary output is estimated to have been between 25,000,000 and 30,000,000 words. Most of his books and stories were turned out at breakneck rate, sometimes as quickly as 12,000 words in the course of a weekend. New books based on magazine serials or unpublished manuscripts or restored versions continue to appear so that he has averaged a new book every four months for seventy-five years. Beyond this, some work by him is newly reprinted every week of every year in one or another format somewhere in the world."
Five Plays
Five Plays
William Butler Yeats
¥8.09
This file includes: The Land of Heart's Desire, The Countess Cathleen, The Unicorn and the Stars, Cathleen Ni Houlihan, and The Hour-Glass. According to Wikipedia: "William Butler Yeats (13 June 1865 - 28 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years Yeats served as an Irish Senator for two terms. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival, and along with Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn founded the Abbey Theatre, serving as its chief during its early years. In 1923, he was awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature for what the Nobel Committee described as "inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation." He was the first Irishman so honored. Yeats is generally considered one of the few writers whose greatest works were completed after being awarded the Nobel Prize; such works include The Tower (1928) and The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1929). Yeats was born and educated in Dublin, but spent his childhood in County Sligo. He studied poetry in his youth, and from an early age was fascinated by both Irish legends and the occult. Those topics feature in the first phase of his work, which lasted roughly until the turn of the century. His earliest volume of verse was published in 1889, and those slowly paced and lyrical poems display debts to Edmund Spenser and Percy Bysshe Shelley, as well as to the lyricism of the Pre-Raphaelite poets. From 1900, Yeats' poetry grew more physical and realistic. He largely renounced the transcendental beliefs of his youth, though he remained preoccupied with physical and spiritual masks, as well as with cyclical theories of life."
Monsieur Beaucaire
Monsieur Beaucaire
Booth Tarkington
¥8.09
According to Wikipedia: "Newton Booth Tarkington (July 29, 1869, Indianapolis – May 19, 1946) was an American novelist and dramatist best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novels The Magnificent Ambersons and Alice Adams…. Much of Tarkington's work consists of satirical and closely observed studies of the American class system and its foibles. He himself came from a patrician family that came down in the world after the Panic of 1873. Today he is best known for his novel The Magnificent Ambersons, which Orson Welles filmed in 1942. It is included in the Modern Library's list of top-100 novels."
Pleasant Commodie of Faire Em, the Love of William the Conqueror, Shakespeare Ap
Pleasant Commodie of Faire Em, the Love of William the Conqueror, Shakespeare Ap
William Shakespeare
¥8.09
Elizabethan play, sometimes attributed in part to Shakespeare. According to Wikipedia: "William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564 – died 23 April 1616) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "The Bard"). His surviving works consist of 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language, and are performed more often than those of any other playwright."
The Rock of Chickamagua
The Rock of Chickamagua
Joseph Altsheler
¥8.09
Historical novel from the Civil War series. "The Rock of Chickamauga," presenting a critical phase of the great struggle in the west, is the sixth volume in the series, dealing with the Civil War, of which its predecessors have been "The Guns of Bull Run," "The Guns of Shiloh," "The Scouts of Stonewall," "The Sword of Antietam" and "The Star of Gettysburg." Dick Mason who fights on the Northern side, is the hero of this romance, and his friends reappear also. According to Wikipedia: "Joseph Alexander Altsheler (1862 - 1919), was an American author of popular juvenile historical fiction. Altsheler was born in Three Springs, Kentucky to Joseph and Louise Altsheler. In 1885, he took a job at the Louisville Courier-Journal as a reporter and later, an editor. He started working for the New York World in 1892, first as the paper's Hawaiian correspondent and then as the editor of the World's tri-weekly magazine. Due to a lack of suitable stories, he began writing children's stories for the magazine."
限时折扣 The Paris Sketch Book of Mr. M.A. Titmarsh
The Paris Sketch Book of Mr. M.A. Titmarsh
William Makepeace Thackeray
¥8.09
Classic novel. According to Wikipedia: "Thackeray is most often compared to one other great novelist of Victorian literature, Charles Dickens. During the Victorian era, he was ranked second only to Dickens, but he is now much less read and is known almost exclusively for Vanity Fair. In that novel he was able to satirize whole swaths of humanity while retaining a light touch. It also features his most memorable character, the engagingly roguish Becky Sharp. As a result, unlike Thackeray's other novels, it remains popular with the general reading public; it is a standard fixture in university courses and has been repeatedly adapted for movies and television. In Thackeray's own day, some commentators, such as Anthony Trollope, ranked his History of Henry Esmond as his greatest work, perhaps because it expressed Victorian values of duty and earnestness, as did some of his other later novels. It is perhaps for this reason that they have not survived as well as Vanity Fair, which satirizes those values."
The Betrothed
The Betrothed
Sir Walter Scott
¥8.09
Historical novel, first published in 1825. Set in Wales and Gloucester, England, in 1187-1192. According to Wikipedia: "Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet (1771 – 1832) was a prolific Scottish historical novelist and poet popular throughout Europe during his time. In some ways Scott was the first English-language author to have a truly international career in his lifetime, with many contemporary readers all over Europe, Australia, and North America. His novels and poetry are still read, and many of his works remain classics of both English-language literature and of Scottish literature. Famous titles include Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, The Lady of The Lake, Waverley, The Heart of Midlothian and The Bride of Lammermoor."
The Frontier
The Frontier
Maurice Leblanc, Alexander Teixeira de Mattos
¥8.09
According to Wikipedia: "Maurice Marie ?mile Leblanc (11 November 1864 – 6 November 1941) was a French novelist and writer of short stories, known primarily as the creator of the fictional gentleman thief and detective Arsène Lupin, often described as a French counterpart to Arthur Conan Doyle's creation Sherlock Holmes.
Colonel Thorndyke's Secret
Colonel Thorndyke's Secret
G. A. Henty
¥8.09
The vast majority of Henty's novels are historical. This one is a mystery. According to the introduction: ""Colonel Thorndyke's Secret" is a story so far out of the ordinary that it will not be inappropriate to speak a few words regarding the tale and its unusually successful author, Mr. George Alfred Henty. The plot of the story hinges upon the possession of a valuable bracelet, of diamonds, stolen from a Hindoo idol by a British soldier in India. This bracelet falls into the possession of Colonel Thorndyke, who, shortly afterward, is sent home to England because of his wounds. The secret concerning the bracelet is told to the Colonel's brother, a country squire, and the treasure is left to younger members of the Thorndyke family." According to Wikipedia: "George Alfred Henty (8 December 1832 - 16 November 1902), referred to as G. A. Henty, was a prolific English novelist, special correspondent, and Imperialist born in Trumpington, Cambridgeshire, England. He is best known for his historical adventure stories that were popular in the late 19th century. His works include Out on the Pampas (1871), The Young Buglers (1880), With Clive in India (1884) and Wulf the Saxon (1895)"
The Admirable Crichton and Three Other Plays
The Admirable Crichton and Three Other Plays
J. M. Barrie
¥8.09
This collection includes: The Admirable Crichton, Alice Sit-By-the-Fire, Dear Brutus, and What Every Woman Knows. According to Wikipedia: "Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM (9 May 1860 – 19 June 1937) was a Scottish author and dramatist, best remembered today as the creator of Peter Pan. The child of a family of small-town weavers, he was educated in Scotland. He moved to London, where he developed a career as a novelist and playwright. There he met the Llewelyn Davies boys who inspired him in writing about a baby boy who has magical adventures in Kensington Gardens (included in The Little White Bird), then to write Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, a "fairy play" about this ageless boy and an ordinary girl named Wendy who have adventures in the fantasy setting of Neverland. This play quickly overshadowed his previous work and although he continued to write successfully, it became his best-known work, credited with popularising the name Wendy, which was very uncommon previously. Barrie unofficially adopted the Davies boys following the deaths of their parents. Before his death, he gave the rights to the Peter Pan works to Great Ormond Street Hospital, which continues to benefit from them."