Fiction Books

CHRISTMAS, 1917 A key no thief can steal, no time can rust; A faery door, adventurous and golden; A palace, perfect to our eyes—Ah must Our eyes be holden? Has the past died before this present sin? Has this most cruel age already stonèd To martyrdom that magic Day, within Those halls, enthronèd? No. Through the dancing of the young spring rain, Through the faint summer, and the autumn’s burning,... more...

The beetle woke from a dreamless sleep, yawned, stretched cramped limbs and smiled to himself. In the west the sunset's last glow faded. Stars sprang out in the clear desert sky, dimmed only by the white moon that rose full and brilliant above the eastern horizon. Methodically, suppressing impatience, he went through every evening's ritual of waking. He checked his instruments, scanned the... more...

Out of the Ashes Old Troy reaped rue in the womb of yearsFor stolen Helen's sake;Till tenfold retribution rearsIts wreck on embers slaked with tearsThat mended no heart-ache.The wail of the women sold as slavesLest Troy breed sons againDreed o'er a desert of nameless graves,The heaps and the hills that are Trojan gravesDeep-runneled by the rain. But Troy lives on. Though Helen's rapeAnd... more...

STEPHEN ARCHER Stephen Archer was a stationer, bookseller, and newsmonger in one of the suburbs of London. The newspapers hung in a sort of rack at his door, as if for the convenience of the public to help themselves in passing. On his counter lay penny weeklies and books coming out in parts, amongst which the Family Herald was in force, and the London Journal not to be found. I had occasion once to... more...

It is certainly a curious fact that so many of the voices of what is called our modern religion have come from countries which are not only simple, but may even be called barbaric. A nation like Norway has a great realistic drama without having ever had either a great classical drama or a great romantic drama. A nation like Russia makes us feel its modern fiction when we have never felt its ancient... more...

Chapter I I As a boy he constructed so vividly in imagination that he came to believe in the living reality of his creations: for everybody and everything he found names—real names. Inside him somewhere stretched immense playgrounds, compared to which the hay-fields and lawns of his father's estate seemed trivial: plains without horizon, seas deep enough to float the planets like corks, and... more...

INTRODUCTION "The Fortune of the Rougons" is the initial volume of the Rougon-Macquart series. Though it was by no means M. Zola's first essay in fiction, it was undoubtedly his first great bid for genuine literary fame, and the foundation of what must necessarily be regarded as his life-work. The idea of writing the "natural and social history of a family under the Second Empire,"... more...

I They turned again at the end of the platform. The tail of her long, averted stare was conscious of him, of his big, tweed-suited body and its behaviour, squaring and swelling and tightening in its dignity, of its heavy swing to her shoulder as they turned. She could stave off the worst by not looking at him, by looking at other things, impersonal, innocent things; the bright, yellow, sharp gabled... more...

CHAPTER I. SEAT-SANDAL. "This happy breed of men, this little world." "To knowThat which before us lies in daily lifeIs the prime wisdom." "All that are lovers of virtue ... be quiet, and go a-angling." There is a mountain called Seat-Sandal, between the Dunmail Raise and Grisedale Pass; and those who have stood upon its summit know that Grasmere vale and lake lie at their feet,... more...

PREFACE During the past generation the Old Testament has commanded equally with the New the enthusiastic and devoted study of the great body of biblical scholars throughout the world. Two out of every three graduate students in our universities who specialize in the general field of biblical literature choose the Old as the special centre of their work. At the same time the tendency of the rank and... more...