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The People of the Abyss (1903) is a work of nonfiction by American writer Jack London. Written after the author spent three months living in London's poverty-stricken East End, The People of the Abyss bears witness to the difficulties faced by hundreds and thousands of people every day in one of the wealthiest nations on earth. Inspired by Friedrich Engels's The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845) and Jacob Riis's How the Other Half Lives,...
42) The art of love
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"The first taste I had for books came to me from my pleasure in the fables of the Metamorphoses of Ovid. For at about seven or eight years of age I would steal away from any other pleasure to read them, inasmuch as this language was my mother tongue, and it was the easiest book I knew and the best suited by its content to my tender age." –Michel de Montaigne
Ars Amatoria; or, The Art of Love (2 AD) is an instructional poem by Ovid. Divided into...
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The Cruise of the Snark (1911) is a work of travel literature by American writer Jack London. In 1906, after achieving early success as an author of novels and short stories, London began dreaming of the adventures of his youth. Inspired, he spent a fortune to build a 45-foot yacht complete with two sails and a 70-horsepower engine, powerful enough to carry him across the Pacific. Envisioning a seven-year journey, London and his wife Charmian set...
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Troilus and Criseyde (c.1385) is an epic poem written by English poet Geoffrey Chaucer. Composed in Middle English, Troilus and Criseyde is the story of two lovers forced apart by the Greek siege of Troy. Often considered Chaucer's finest work for its structural consistency and completeness, the poem adapts Homer's Iliad and other ancient sources which expand on its tradition to tell a Christian moral tale about the importance of faith and the sacred...
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Considered an early feminist classic, Sylvia Townsend Warner's Lolly Willowes; Or The Loving Huntsman is a fantastical comedy about a middle-aged witch and her search for peace that was selected as the first ever Book of the Month upon publication in 1926.
"When her father died, Laura Willowes went to live in London with her elder brother and his family…[she] was a gentle creature, and the little girls loved her; she would soon fit into her new...
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A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin is a "supplement" book published to document Harriet Beecher Stowe's bestselling book and anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin. An instant classic, Uncle Tom's Cabin (which was first published in 1852) had a profound impact on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the United States. Stowe's novel, which was highly controversial at the time, provoked a firestorm of competing and contradictory responses among...
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Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773) is the first book of poetry published by an African American author. Written while Wheatley was a slave in Boston, the collection was published in England. Regarded for her mastery of classical poetic form, Phillis Wheatley earned praise from Voltaire and George Washington. Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral has long been the subject of scholarly work on the history of African American...
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Marie L. McLaughlin delivers a memorable selection of Native American stories infused with folklore and oral traditions passed on from one generation to the next. This book features vivid stories with larger-than-life characters and unforgettable adventures.
Myths and Legends of the Sioux is a collection of vast stories rooted in indigenous culture. The tales are striking and memorable, featuring both human and animal protagonists. In one story,...
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A hybrid of Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience that brings poetry, philosophy and spirituality into an all-inclusive text that's both accessible and enlightening. These selections have an easy-to-follow format that allows readers to smoothly transition from one book to the next.
Blake's writing consists of two parts: one focusing on "innocence" and the other on "experience." They each feature a group of poems that fit their respective themes....
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The Devil's Dictionary (1906) is a work of satire by Ambrose Bierce. Although he is commonly remembered for his chilling short stories on the experiences of Civil War soldiers, Bierce was recognized in his day as a leading journalist and humorist who spent decades ruffling feathers and drawing laughter with his witty opinion columns, poems, and definitions. Toward the end of his career, he decided to compile these satirical definitions into a book,...
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Three Sisters (1900) is a drama in four acts by Russian playwright and short story writer Anton Chekhov. It was first performed at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1901, directed by acclaimed actor Konstantin Stanislavski-who also played the role of Aleksandr Ignatyevich Vershinin, a philosophizing artillery officer in love with middle Prozorov sister Masha. Reviews were mixed at first, but as the play continued to run, Three Sisters became a popular success,...
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The Cherry Orchard (1903) is Russian playwright and short story writer Anton Chekhov's final play. It was first performed at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1904, directed by acclaimed actor Konstantin Stanislavski-who also played the role of Leonid Gayev, the bizarre and uninspired brother of Madame Ranevskaya. It has since become one of twentieth century theater's most important-and most frequently staged-dramatic works.
After five years of living in...
53) The waste land
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The Waste Land is a long poem by T. S. Eliot. It is widely regarded as one of the most important poems of the 20th century and a central text in Modernist poetry. Published in 1922, the 434-line poem first appeared in the United Kingdom in the October issue of The Criterion and in the United States in the November issue of The Dial. It was published in book form in December 1922. Among its famous phrases are "April is the cruelest month", "I will...
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Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921) is a metatheatrical drama by Luigi Pirandello. Viewed as an important work of absurdist literature, the play was a critical failure when it was first, staged in Rome. Revised by its author and bolstered by successful performances in New York City, Six Characters in Search of an Author has been, recognized as a pioneering examination of the nature of creativity, the relationship of the director and actors...
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Presents Mark Twain's authentic and unsuppressed voice, brimming with humor, ideas, and opinions, and speaking clearly from the grave as he intended.
"I've struck it!" Mark Twain wrote in a 1904 letter to a friend. "And I will give it away to you. You will never know how much enjoyment you have lost until you get to dictating your autobiography." Thus, after dozens of false starts and hundreds of pages, Twain embarked on his "Final (and Right) Plan"...
56) Gitanjali
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When W.B. Yeats discovered Rabindranath Tagore's work in translation, he felt an intense kinship with a man, whose work was similarly grounded in spirituality and opposition to the British Empire. For the Irish poet, Tagore's poems were at once deeply personal and essentially universal, like a secret kept by all and shared regardless: "I have carried the manuscript of these translations about with me for days, reading it in railway trains, or on the...
57) John Barleycorn
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Wrestling with the disease of alcoholism for most of his life, Jack London tells all in his autobiography John Barleycorn. Beginning with a discussion of the prohibition movement and its effects, London explores the ways that alcohol affects daily life in the Victorian era. Because there were not many forms of affordable entertainment or reliable communication, bars were the perfect spot for social activity. People were able to sit and drink, enjoying...
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Gerald Arbuthnot receives a promotion from Lord Illingworth, a worldly politician who has a sordid history of women, one of whom is Gerald's widowed mother. When their connection is revealed, the young man questions his past, present and future aspirations.
A Woman of No Importance opens with a high-class party featuring a group of society's most illustrious citizens. In the midst of the event, Gerald Arbuthnot enters and announces his new position...
59) The prince
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With a mix of both respectable and immoral advice, The Prince is a frank analysis on political power. Separated into four sections, The Prince is both a guide to obtain power and an explanation on the aspects that affect it. The first section discusses the types of principalities. According to Machiavelli, there are four different types-hereditary, mixed, new and ecclesiastical. While defining each type, Machiavelli also discusses the implications...
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Sodom and Gomorrah (1921/22) is the fourth volume of Marcel Proust's seven-part novel In Search of Lost Time. Being the last volume that had Proust's direct involvement, Sodom and Gomorrah is a story of love, jealousy and family from a master of Modernist literature. Praised by Virginia Woolf, Vladimir Nabokov, Michael Chabon, and Graham Greene, In Search of Lost Time explores the nature of memory and time while illuminating the history of homosexuality...
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