Description In 1839, Thoreau and his brother took a small boat upriver and back. Some years later, while in his cabin at Walden Pond, he gathered his notes from that journey and other writings from his journals, and composed this, his first book. Like the rivers it describes, the book meanders through varying territories and climates. He writes of the natural surroundings they encounter and of the history of the region, but also takes long and remarkable detours through topics like friendship,
Description The Night Land is science fiction ahead of its time. Published in 1912, the book introduces a 17th-century gentleman who loses his wife. He soon discovers himself somehow reanimated in Earth’s far future, millions of years from now, when the sun has died and the Earth has become a hellish waste. What remains of humanity lives in titanic mile-high pyramids surrounded by energy shields to protect them from the abhuman monsters lurking in the darkness. The human survivors soon receive
Description Shirley, published in 1849, was Charlotte Brontë’s second novel after Jane Eyre . Published under her pseudonym of “Currer Bell,” it differs in several respects from that earlier work. It is written in the third person with an omniscient narrator, rather than the first-person of Jane Eyre, and incorporates the themes of industrial change and the plight of unemployed workers. It also features strong pleas for the recognition of women’s intellect and right to their independence of
Description Raised a slave in Nero’s court, Epictetus would become one of the most influential philosophers in the Stoic tradition. While exiled in Greece by an emperor who considered philosophers a threat, Epictetus founded a school of philosophy at Nicopolis. His student Arrian of Nicomedia took careful notes of his sometimes cantankerous lectures, the surviving examples of which are now known as the Discourses of Epictetus. In these discourses, Epictetus explains how to gain peace-of-mind by
Description The Water of the Wondrous Isles is a landmark in fantasy fiction. First published a year after Morris’s death in 1897 by Kelmscott Press—Morris’s own printing company—the novel follows Birdalone, a young girl who is stolen as a baby by a witch who takes her to serve in the woods of Evilshaw. After she encounters a wood fairy that helps her escape the witch’s clutches, Birdalone embarks on a series of adventures across the titular Wondrous Isles. These isles are used by Morris both
Description Upper-class New York gentleman Newland Archer is set to wed May Welland in a picture-perfect union when the bride’s cousin, Ellen Olenska, returns from a failed marriage overseas. As Newland endeavors to help Countess Olenska be reinstated into the family’s good graces, his affections for her grow. Newland soon finds himself torn between his desire to conform to the society he knows and his new-found passion for the forbidden Countess. The Age of Innocence was originally published
Description Between 1906 and 1921 John Galsworthy published three novels chronicling the Forsyte family, a fictional upper-middle class family at the end of the Victorian era: The Man of Property, In Chancery, and To Let. In 1922 Galsworthy wrote two interconnecting short stories to bind the three novels together and published the whole as The Forsyte Saga. While the novels follow the Forsyte family at large, the action centers around Soames Forsyte—the scion of a nouveau-riche London tea
Description Eugene Onegin is bored: bored of the city, of parties, and of the superficial St. Petersburg social scene. So when a newly-deceased uncle leaves him his country mansion, he jumps at the chance to play the rural lord. There he meets his new neighbours Lenski, a young poet and stark contrast to Onegin’s affected nonchalance, and Tattiana, a dreamy but introverted romantic, and triggers a set of events with tragic consequences. Serialized over the course of seven years starting in
Description William Sydney Porter, known to readers as O. Henry, was a true raconteur. As a draftsman, a bank teller, a newspaper writer, a fugitive from justice in Central America, and a writer living in New York City, he told stories at each stop and about each stop. His stories are known for their vivid characters who come to life, and sometimes death, in only a few pages. But the most famous characteristic of O. Henry’s stories are the famous “twist” endings, where the outcome comes as a
Description Cicero composed these discourses while in his villa in Tusculum as he was mourning the death of his daughter, in order to convey his philosophy of how to live wisely and well. They take the form of fictional dialogues between Cicero and his friends, with each one focusing on a particular Stoic theme. The first, “On the Contempt of Death,” reminds us that mortality is nothing to be upset about. The second, “On Bearing Pain,” reassures us that philosophy is a balm for pains of the
Description In 1839, Thoreau and his brother took a small boat upriver and back. Some years later, while in his cabin at Walden Pond, he gathered his notes from that journey and other writings from his journals, and composed this, his first book. Like the rivers it describes, the book meanders through varying territories and climates. He writes of the natural surroundings they encounter and of the history of the region, but also takes long and remarkable detours through topics like friendship,
Description The Night Land is science fiction ahead of its time. Published in 1912, the book introduces a 17th-century gentleman who loses his wife. He soon discovers himself somehow reanimated in Earth’s far future, millions of years from now, when the sun has died and the Earth has become a hellish waste. What remains of humanity lives in titanic mile-high pyramids surrounded by energy shields to protect them from the abhuman monsters lurking in the darkness. The human survivors soon receive
Description Shirley, published in 1849, was Charlotte Brontë’s second novel after Jane Eyre . Published under her pseudonym of “Currer Bell,” it differs in several respects from that earlier work. It is written in the third person with an omniscient narrator, rather than the first-person of Jane Eyre, and incorporates the themes of industrial change and the plight of unemployed workers. It also features strong pleas for the recognition of women’s intellect and right to their independence of
Description Raised a slave in Nero’s court, Epictetus would become one of the most influential philosophers in the Stoic tradition. While exiled in Greece by an emperor who considered philosophers a threat, Epictetus founded a school of philosophy at Nicopolis. His student Arrian of Nicomedia took careful notes of his sometimes cantankerous lectures, the surviving examples of which are now known as the Discourses of Epictetus. In these discourses, Epictetus explains how to gain peace-of-mind by
Description The Water of the Wondrous Isles is a landmark in fantasy fiction. First published a year after Morris’s death in 1897 by Kelmscott Press—Morris’s own printing company—the novel follows Birdalone, a young girl who is stolen as a baby by a witch who takes her to serve in the woods of Evilshaw. After she encounters a wood fairy that helps her escape the witch’s clutches, Birdalone embarks on a series of adventures across the titular Wondrous Isles. These isles are used by Morris both
Description Upper-class New York gentleman Newland Archer is set to wed May Welland in a picture-perfect union when the bride’s cousin, Ellen Olenska, returns from a failed marriage overseas. As Newland endeavors to help Countess Olenska be reinstated into the family’s good graces, his affections for her grow. Newland soon finds himself torn between his desire to conform to the society he knows and his new-found passion for the forbidden Countess. The Age of Innocence was originally published
Description Between 1906 and 1921 John Galsworthy published three novels chronicling the Forsyte family, a fictional upper-middle class family at the end of the Victorian era: The Man of Property, In Chancery, and To Let. In 1922 Galsworthy wrote two interconnecting short stories to bind the three novels together and published the whole as The Forsyte Saga. While the novels follow the Forsyte family at large, the action centers around Soames Forsyte—the scion of a nouveau-riche London tea
Description Eugene Onegin is bored: bored of the city, of parties, and of the superficial St. Petersburg social scene. So when a newly-deceased uncle leaves him his country mansion, he jumps at the chance to play the rural lord. There he meets his new neighbours Lenski, a young poet and stark contrast to Onegin’s affected nonchalance, and Tattiana, a dreamy but introverted romantic, and triggers a set of events with tragic consequences. Serialized over the course of seven years starting in
Description William Sydney Porter, known to readers as O. Henry, was a true raconteur. As a draftsman, a bank teller, a newspaper writer, a fugitive from justice in Central America, and a writer living in New York City, he told stories at each stop and about each stop. His stories are known for their vivid characters who come to life, and sometimes death, in only a few pages. But the most famous characteristic of O. Henry’s stories are the famous “twist” endings, where the outcome comes as a
Description Cicero composed these discourses while in his villa in Tusculum as he was mourning the death of his daughter, in order to convey his philosophy of how to live wisely and well. They take the form of fictional dialogues between Cicero and his friends, with each one focusing on a particular Stoic theme. The first, “On the Contempt of Death,” reminds us that mortality is nothing to be upset about. The second, “On Bearing Pain,” reassures us that philosophy is a balm for pains of the