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Our American Cousin is a three-act play written by English playwright Tom Taylor. The play opened in London in 1858 but quickly made its way to the U.S. and premiered at Laura Keene¿s Theatre in New York City later that year. It remained popular in the U.S. and England for the next several decades. Its most notable claim to fame, however, is that it was the play U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was watching on April 14, 1865 when he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, who used his knowledge of the script to shoot Lincoln during a more raucous scene.The play is a classic Victorian farce with a whole range of stereotyped characters, business, and many entrances and exits. The plot features a boorish but honest American cousin who travels to the aristocratic English countryside to claim his inheritance, and then quickly becomes swept up in the family¿s affairs. An inevitable rescue of the family¿s fortunes and of the various damsels in distress ensues.Our American Cousin was originally written as a farce for an English audience, with the laughs coming mostly at the expense of the naive American character. But after it moved to the U.S. it was eventually recast as a comedy where English caricatures like the pompous Lord Dundreary soon became the primary source of hilarity. This early version, published in 1869, contains fewer of that character¿s nonsensical adages, which soon came to be known as ¿Dundrearyisms,¿ and for which the play eventually gained much of its popular appeal.

Francisco de Quevedo holds the status of a man-of-letters in the same pantheon as Cervantes; but despite that, Pablo de Segovia is his only novel. Quevedo had circulated the manuscript privately for several years before it was published in 1626 without his permission. The novel is partly a satire of contemporary Spanish life, and a caricature of the various social strata Pablo encounters and emulates.Pablo himself is a low-born person who aspires to become a gentleman, but despite his best efforts he repeatedly fails and is eventually forced to become a ¿sharper,¿ or rogue. His failures give Quevedo an avenue to expound on his belief that attempting to break past your social class can only lead to disorder; and that despite one¿s best efforts, bettering oneself is largely impossible. Pablös stumbling from misfortune to misfortune is a farce that helped cement Quevedös reputation as a literary giant.

Moonfleet is a small village near the sea in the south of England, where village legend tells of the notorious Colonel John ¿Blackbeard¿ Mohune who is buried in a family crypt under the church. He is said to have stolen and hidden a diamond from King Charles I. His ghost is said to wander at night looking for the diamond, and the mysterious lights in the churchyard are attributed to his activities.One night a bad storm floods the village. While attending the Sunday service at church, John Trenchard¿an orphan who lives with his aunt¿hears strange sounds from the crypt below. Investigating, he soon finds himself in a smuggler¿s hideout, where he discovers a locket in a coffin that holds a piece of paper inscribed with Bible verses.John soon finds himself swept up in a smuggling venture planned by Elzevir Block, the smugglers¿ leader, and inadvertently finds out that the verses from Blackbeard¿s locket contain a code that will reveal the location of the famous diamond.Moonfleet was hugely popular in its day and was even sometimes studied in schools. Adaptations to screen, radio, and theater continue today.

Lyrical Ballads is a collection of poems by William Wordsworth and his friend and contemporary Samuel Taylor Coleridge. A hugely influential work, Lyrical Ballads is generally acknowledged to have started the Romantic movement in English literature¿a period marked by a departure from the stiff and unapproachable poetry of earlier times, and by a focus on readable, relatable verse written in everyday language. Many of Wordsworth¿s poems focus on the natural world and the down-to-earth people of the country, another far departure from the rational and dry literature of old. Romanticism was one of the largest sea changes in modern English literature, and Lyrical Ballads was its catalyst.This ebook edition is based on the 1805 edition of Lyrical Ballads, and features the famous poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, ¿Tintern Abbey,¿ ¿Expostulation and Reply,¿ ¿Lucy Gray,¿ and many others.

After the success of Robinson Crusoe and its follow-ups, Daniel Defoe published Moll Flanders in 1722. It¿s an episodic, picaresque novel that recounts Moll¿s long life of misadventures. It has a journalistic, plain style, with unadorned, prosaic speech that flows naturally from story to story.The novel is written as a purported autobiography over the course of the narrator¿s life. As a young orphan in poverty, Moll claims she wants to be a ¿gentlewoman¿ when she gets older, not fully understanding what the term means. What she desires is simply independence and a life free from servitude. In adulthood, she pursues this in two ways. She first attempts to find security by marrying a wealthy husband, and¿after several failures and diminishing options¿she turns to thievery. In her interactions, Moll proves streetsmart, deft, and quick on her feet. By traveling back and forth between England and the American colonies, the novel offers a lens into different societies through a variety of occupations.Moll is an enterprising female protagonist, a true individual. Though she receives some help, she is largely on her own in risky situations. She often relies on disguise and deceiving others, but she is always honest with the reader and tells us exactly what she is thinking, including her guilt and remorse.

The third and final book of Henryk Sienkiewicz¿s Trilogy takes a closer and more intimate look at one of the series¿ protagonists: Pan Michael Volodyovski.The Polish Commonwealth has been through intense periods of war, and the peace that follows leaves one of its greatest heroes, Pan Michael, finally free to marry his beloved Panna Anusia. But in a twist of fate, she falls ill and dies, leaving Michael despairing of life¿to the point of him joining a monastery. His friends, shocked at the loss of the great knight which has now left the Commonwealth unprotected, hatch a plan to bring him back to his true calling.As with many of the characters in the Trilogy, Michael is fictional but based heavily on historical record: his character¿s exploits and circumstances owe a lot to the real Polish knight Jerzy Wöodyjowski, who was also in Jan Sobieski¿s cavalry.Pan Michael was, like the other books in the Trilogy, initially serialized in Sienkiewicz¿s newspaper S¿owo, before being collected into a novel five years later in 1893. The book, and the Trilogy as a whole, was very well received, and allowed Sienkiewicz to resign his editorial post to focus on his novels.The novel was the first of the Trilogy to be filmed (as 1969¿s Colonel Wolodyjowski), and it was also later converted into a successful television series in Poland. This edition is based on the 1893 translation by Jeremiah Curtin.

At the age of 10, Fanny Price, the daughter of a poor Portsmouth family, is sent to live with her wealthy uncle¿s family, the Bertrams, at the country estate of Mansfield Park. The Bertrams treat her cruelly at first, and Fanny has trouble fitting in. Her female cousins, Maria and Julia, are fashionable and vapid, and her elder male cousin, Tom, is a drunk. The only family member she feels a connection to is the younger Edmund, who is preparing for life in the clergy.When her uncle leaves to manage business in Antigua, Henry and Mary Crawford, siblings from the region, come to live at Mansfield Park as well. Their arrival begins a series of romantic engagements that strains the entire family¿s relationships.Mansfield Park is unusual in that despite it being a great public success, with the first edition selling out in six months and a second edition selling out two years later, it wasn¿t publicly reviewed until 1821, seven years after it was first published. Contemporary reviews were generally good, praising the novel¿s morality. Modern reviews are more mixed, making it one of Austen¿s more controversial works. Modern critics have called it everything from eccentric and difficult to thoughtful and profound, with any number of interpretations possible depending on the lens one views the work through.

Oliver Twist, or The Parish Boy¿s Progress was Charles Dickens¿ second novel, following The Pickwick Papers, and was published as a serial in the magazine Bentley¿s Miscellany between 1837 and 1839. It details the misadventures of its eponymous character, Oliver Twist, born in a Victorian-era workhouse, his mother dying within minutes of his birth. He is raised in miserable conditions, half-starved, and then sent out as an apprentice to an undertaker. Running away from this situation, he walks to London and falls under the influence of a criminal gang run by an old man called Fagin, who wants to employ the child as a pickpocket.The novel graphically depicts the wretched living conditions of much of the poor people of Victorian times and the disgusting slums in which they were forced to live. It has been accused of perpetrating anti-Semitic stereotypes in the character of Fagin, almost always referred to as ¿the Jew¿ in the book¿s early chapters. Interestingly, while the serial was still running in the magazine, Dickens was eventually persuaded that he was wrong in this and removed many such usages in later episodes. He also introduced more kindly Jewish characters in such later novels as Our Mutual Friend.Oliver Twist was immediately popular in serial form, with its often gripping story and lurid details. It has remained one of Dicken¿s best-loved novels, and the story has often been made into films and television series, as well as into a very popular musical, Oliver!.

King Duncan¿s closest generals, Macbeth and Banquo, have just defeated two invading armies and the Irish rebel Macdonwald. Out across the misty moor, they encounter three witches who reveal to Macbeth a powerful prophecy: ¿All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, thane of Glamis! All hail, Macbeth, hail to thee, thane of Cawdor! All hail, Macbeth, thou shalt be king hereafter!¿ They not only claim that Macbeth will eventually become King of Scotland, but that Banquo will father a line of Scottish kings¿though ominously, Banquo will never be king himself.This shocking tragedy¿a violent caution to those seeking power for its own sake¿is, to this day, one of Shakespeare¿s most popular and influential masterpieces.This Standard Ebooks edition is based on William George Clark and William Aldis Wright¿s 1887 Victoria edition, which is taken from the Globe edition.

Edward Lear began his career as an ornithological illustrator, becoming one of the first major artists to draw birds from living models. During this period he was employed to paint the birds from the private menagerie owned by Edward Stanley, the 13th Earl of Derby and one of Lear¿s closest friends. In 1837, Lear¿s health started to decline. His deteriorating eyesight and failing lungs forced him to abandon the detailed painting required for depicting birds, and, with the help of the earl, he moved to Rome where he established himself as a poet of literary nonsense.While Lear was visiting the Earl of Derby, he wrote poems and drew silly sketches to entertain the earl¿s children. In 1846, he collected together his pile of limericks and illustrations and published his first poetical book, titled A Book of Nonsense and dedicated to the Earl of Derby and his children. He decided to publish under the pseudonym Derry down Derry, but after he started making plans for more books, he republished under his real name.His next book, Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany, and Alphabets wasn¿t published until 24 years later, in 1870. Lear then released More Nonsense, which contains more limericks, in 1872, and Laughable Lyrics in 1877. This final book in the series contains many of Lear¿s most famous fantastical creatures, such as the Quangle Wangle. The influence of Lear¿s poetry in the twentieth-century can be seen in styles like the surrealism movement and the theater of the absurd.

Major Barbara is a three-act play that premiered at the Court Theatre in 1905, and was subsequently published in 1907. It portrays idealist Barbara Undershaft, a Major in the Salvation Army, and her encounter with her long-estranged father who has made his fortune as a ¿dealer of death¿ in the munitions industry. Barbara doesn¿t wish to be associated with her father¿s ill-gotten wealth, but can¿t prevent him from donating to the Salvation Army and eventually converting her family to his capitalist views on how best to help the poor.In the preface, Shaw addresses his critics and explicates his actual attitudes towards the Salvation Army, versus the attitudes and fates portrayed by his characters and responded to by the critics. He continues on to discuss the issues of wealth and poverty, religion and science, and how they all fit into his views of society.Major Barbara is one of the most controversial of Shaw¿s work and was greeted with decidedly mixed reviews, yet it endures as one of his most famous plays.

John Stuart Mill was a prolific and well-regarded author and philosopher in his day, but perhaps his most enduring work is On Liberty, an essay developed over several years and with significant input from his wife. In it, he applies his views on the Utilitarian ethical theory to systems of society and governance. The result became one of the most influential essays on liberal political thought in modern history.In On Liberty Mill addresses such familiar concepts as freedom of speech, the importance of individuality, and the limits of society¿s influence on the individual. He caps the discussion with an application of these principles to problems of the day, including education and the economy.

Madame Bovary, often ranked among the greatest novels of all time, is Flaubert¿s first novel, and considered to be both his masterpiece and one of the most influential works in literary history, with authors from Henry James to Proust to Nabokov heaping it with praise.The novel tells the story of Emma Bovary, a commoner wife of a country doctor, and her attempts to escape the drudgery of day-to-day mediocrity by engaging in adulterous affairs and overspending on luxuries. She remains unsatisfied even though her husband adores her and they want for little, and her shallowness eventually leads to their ruin.The story was first serialized in Revue de Paris, where prosecutors tried to have it censored for obscenity, arguing that not only is the story immoral, but that realism as a literary style is an offence against art and decency. The trial only served to increase the story¿s fame, and when it was published as a single novel it quickly became a bestseller.The novel is groundbreaking in its emphasis on the psychological and emotional lives of its characters. Literature up to then had mostly focusing on the external events that make characters react, instead of focusing on the internal thought processes of those characters. Madame Bovary changed that forever. It was also revolutionary in its criticism of the middle class, which at the time was a still-new social class vying for elbow room between the working poor and hereditary aristocracy. Flaubert critiqued the middle class as being ambitious, shallow, greedy, materialistic, and totally without culture; Emmäs burning desire to reach even higher social strata, contrasted against that satisfaction being fundamentally denied to her by her middle-class nature, is an early echo of Marx¿s theory of alienation in industrial societies.Today Madame Bovary, with its careful but charming description of the banality of everyday life, is considered the first great example of literary realism in fiction novels. Eleanor Marx-Aveling¿s translation, though over a hundred years old, is remarkably fresh and smooth, and is a pleasure even for modern readers.

Published in 1818, Peacock¿s novella Nightmare Abbey is a gentle satire of the then-popular gothic movement in literature. He pokes fun at the genre¿s obsessions and most of the book¿s characters are caricatures of well-known personages of the time.Young Scythrop is the only son of Mr. Glowry, living in the semi-ruined Nightmare Abbey on his estate in Lincolnshire. Mr. Glowry, the survivor of a miserable marriage, is addicted to the depressing and the morbid, surrounding himself with servants whose names, such as Raven, Graves and Skellet, reflect his obsessions. His friends, also, are chosen from those who best reflect his misanthropic views.Scythrop himself imagines himself a philosopher with a unique view of the world, and to this end has written a treatise titled ¿Philosophical Gas; or, a Project for a General Illumination of the Human Mind.¿ Only seven copies of this treatise have ever been sold, and Scythrop dreams of being united with one of the buyers. His passions, though, become more earthy when he falls in love both with his cousin Marionetta and then also with a mysterious woman who appears in his apartment and begs him for asylum, thus creating a situation of romantic farce as he tries to decide between the two.These events are interleaved between entertaining discussions among the varied guests at Nightmare Abbey, richly filled with humor, allusions and quotation.Nightmare Abbey is probably Peacock¿s most successful work of fiction, and helped establish his position as an important satirist of his times. His satire, though, is light-hearted rather than savage and is directed more at foolish opinions than attacking particular persons.

Carol Milford grows up in a mid-sized town in Minnesota before moving to Chicago for college. After her education, during which she¿s exposed to big-city life and culture, she moves to Minneapolis to work as a librarian. She soon meets Will Kennicott, a small-town doctor, and the two get married and move to Gopher Prairie, Kennicott¿s home town.Carol, inspired by big-city ideas, soon begins chafing at the seeming quaintness and even backwardness of the townsfolk, and their conservative, self-satisfied way of life. She struggles to try to reform the town in her image, while finding meaning in the seeming cultural desert she¿s found herself in and in her increasingly cold marriage.Gopher Prairie is a detailed, satirical take on small-town American life, modeled after Sauk Centre, the town in which Lewis himself grew up. The town is fully realized, with generations of inhabitants interacting in a complex web of village society. Its bitingly satirical portrayal made Main Street highly acclaimed by its contemporaries, though many thought the satirical take was perhaps a bit too dark and hopeless. The book¿s celebration and condemnation of small town life make it a candidate for the title of the Great American Novel.Main Street was awarded the 1921 Pulitzer Prize, but the decision was overturned by the prize¿s Board of Trustees and awarded instead to Edith Wharton for The Age of Innocence. When Lewis went on to win the 1926 Pulitzer for Arrowsmith, he declined it¿with the New York Times reporting that he did so because he was still angry at the Pulitzers for being denied the prize for Main Street.Despite the book¿s snub at the Pulitzers, Lewis went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1930, with Main Street being cited as one of the reasons for his win.

King Ferdinand and his three friends, Biron, Longaville, and Dumain, plan to study philosophy for the next three years. During their academic pursuits, they must vow to sleep only three hours a night and not let any woman within a mile of court. These strict rules will prevent any distractions from their work¿but their promises are soon put to the test when a princess and her three companions arrive for a state visit.This Standard Ebooks edition is based on William George Clark and William Aldis Wright¿s 1887 Victoria edition, which is taken from the Globe edition.

In Liberalism, L. T. Hobhouse explains the philosophy of what he calls ¿liberal socialism.¿ Liberalism, as Hobhouse defines it, is the freedom from coercion. Crucially, this means freedom not only from government coercion, but from all forms of coercion, including economic coercion. It¿s important that everyone is free to grow and develop their own individuality within society, but the government has the ultimate responsibility to ensure that one individual¿s freedom is not used to limit the freedom of another.The socialist aspect of the philosophy is the belief that people are not purely self-serving and are capable of voluntarily exercising restraint when needed in order to help society flourish. Viewed through this lens, liberty and equality are not in competition, but rather go hand in hand. In a liberal socialist society, ¿any common life based on the avoidable suffering even of one of those who partake in it is a life not of harmony, but of discord.¿Tracing the history of the idea of liberalism, from pre-liberal societies, to the philosophies forged in the French and American revolutions, to the concept of socialism expounded by John Stuart Mill, Hobhouse defends the progress of liberalism, while asking what the future of liberalism should look like.

In Little Lord Fauntleroy, an American boy named Cedric is transported from the impoverished streets of New York City to the grandeur of his ancestral home, Dorincourt Castle. Here he learns how to become an English aristocrat from the Earl of Dorincourt, his cold and cynical grandfather.Frances Hodgson Burnett published this, her first children¿s story, in St. Nicholas Magazine in 1885. Because of the story¿s popularity, a year later, it was published as an illustrated novel to be sold around the world and translated to 20 different languages.

Suffolk returns from France bringing the new Queen of England, Margaret of Anjou, and a peace treaty. The Duke of Gloucester discovers that the French forces are allowed to keep the territories of Anjou and Maine in a trade for Margaret; he foresees that England will lose what little control remains over France. Because Gloucester heavily influences King Henry VI¿s decisions and is highly respected amongst his peers, he is seen as a major target.Cardinal Beaufort, Gloucester¿s main rival, mentions to Buckingham and Somerset his interest in removing Gloucester. The Duke of York sees Gloucester¿s death as an opportunity to grab the English throne for himself. The French are also in favor of removing Gloucester from power. For Queen Margaret and the Duke of Suffolk to manipulate the king and help France, Henry¿s most loyal advisor must not stand in their way.This Standard Ebooks edition is based on William George Clark and William Aldis Wright¿s 1887 Victoria edition, which is taken from the Globe edition.

Lilith, first published in 1895, tells the story of Mr. Vane, the owner of a library that seems to be haunted by a raven¿the ghost of the library¿s former owner. Mr. Vane eventually follows this strange figure through a mirror and into another world, the ¿region of seven dimensions.¿ There Vane meets a number of characters, including Biblical characters like Adam and his first wife Lilith. Thus begins a battle of good versus evil that reverberates through dimensions. The narrative is heavy with Christian allegory, and MacDonald uses the world to expound on his Christian universalist philosophy while telling a story of life, death and ultimately salvation.Critics consider Lilith to be one of MacDonald¿s darker works, but opinion on it is divided. Despite this, some critics praise it for its rich imagery, with scholar Neil Barron claiming that the novel is the ¿obvious parent of David Lindsay¿s A Voyage to Arcturus,¿ itself a highly influential work of fantasy.

Wodehouse once described his writing as ¿musical comedy without music,¿ and Love Among the Chickens is one of the earliest examples of his trademark style. The narrator, Jeremy Garnet, is a mild-mannered author attempting to finish his next novel in peace and quiet. Enter Stanley Ukridge, a man brimming with endless schemes, who draws the narrator into his latest, ¿the idea of a lifetime¿¿running a chicken farm.With little practical knowledge, yet boundless ambition, they move to a country house and put the plan into action. Along the way, Garnet falls headlong in love with a woman on the train, and becomes consumed with winning her heart, despite formidable obstacles.The original edition of Love Among the Chickens was published in the UK in 1906. This newer edition dates from 1921 and is described as ¿entirely rewritten by the author.¿ It is the first introduction in print of the character Ukridge, who would appear again in other short stories and novels by Wodehouse.

Little Fuzzy is a science fiction novel set on the planet Zarathustra, a world rich in natural resources being exploited by a huge chartered company from Earth. Jack Holloway is a free-lance sunstone miner working on the outskirts of civilization when he encounters a small, fuzzy animal which turns out to be remarkably intelligent. He soon begins to suspect that ¿Little Fuzzy¿ and his family are more than just clever animals, but in fact a new sapient alien species. Such a proposition is directly opposed to the interests of the chartered Zarathustra Company, and conflict ensues.Published in 1962, Little Fuzzy rapidly gained popularity due to the charming nature of the little aliens and the well-handled tensions of the plot. It is today considered to be a classic of the genre, though perhaps considered to fall into the category of juvenile fiction. It was followed by a sequel, Fuzzy Sapiens in 1964.

The first anthology of short stories by Jack London, Lost Face tells seven stories about the Klondike gold rush. In ¿Lost Face,¿ the fur thief Subienkow faces gruesome torture and execution by a tribe of Indians, armed with only his wits. ¿Trust¿ is a story about the dangers of the Yukon River. Jack London¿s best known short story, ¿To Build a Fire,¿ tells the story of a nameless man and his dog attempting to survive in the frozen Northern Territory. In ¿That Spot,¿ the eponymous Spot is a very unusual Yukon sled dog. ¿Flush of Gold¿ is a love story set against the harsh backdrop of the Yukon. ¿The Passing of Marcus O¿Brien¿ deals the tale of the fair-but-tough Judge Marcus O¿Brien in the settlement of Red Cow. ¿The Wit of Porportuk¿ tells the tale of El-Soo and Porportuk, two Indians among the white settlers.

Les Corriveau s¿étaient légué leur terre de père en fils depuis plusieurs générations. Cette belle ferme qui ondulait au loin, défrichée par cette longue lignée de terriens était bien leur ¿uvre. Ils l¿avaient foulée de leurs pieds laborieux, arrosée et fécondée de leur sueur, remuée de leurs bras robustes. Aussi la connaissaient-ils dans tous ses vallons et ses monticules, dans tous ses plis et replis. Ils connaissaient la qualité du sol de tous ses champs. Cette science, apprise par les enfants, qui suivaient leur père, était ensuite transmise à leurs descendants. C¿était la plus vieille terre de la paroisse, que leur ancêtre Louis Corriveau avait en quelque sorte fondée, quand il était venu s¿y établir, il y a bientôt deux siècles. On ne pouvait pas parler des Corriveau sans penser à cette ferme, que tous enviaient. Elle vallonnait sans un plissement, sans une ride, embellie ici d¿un bosquet d¿arbres séculaires qüon avait laissés pour servir d¿abri aux bestiaux, là par un joli ruisseau qui arrosait ses bords fertiles. Et le soir lorsque les douze vaches rentraient en procession lente du riche pâturage, l¿haleine imprégnée de trèfle et de foin où se mêlait la senteur robuste de leur corps tiède, elles embaumaient l¿air.

In the midst of the French Revolution, Pierre, a young firebrand, convinces a group of rabble to rise up against the local duc. Coming across the carriage of the duc¿s daughter on their march, Pierre assaults her, is run over by the carriage, and disappears. Looking to punish someone for the uprising, the duc has Pierre¿s father hanged.Years later, Pierre has changed his name, gathered some wealth, and ingratiated himself with the duc (who does not know him). Pierre has plans to avenge his father¿s death against both the duc and his daughter, and he has enlisted the aid of Chauvelin, the Scarlet Pimpernel¿s avowed enemy. The Pimpernel will have all he can handle if he is to foil Pierre¿s plans.Although published a few years after El Dorado, this sixth published book in the series is set prior to it in the timeline.