Fiction Books

INTRODUCTION Of all the novels and stories which Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley left in manuscript, only one novelette, Mathilda, is complete. It exists in both rough draft and final copy. In this story, as in all Mary Shelley's writing, there is much that is autobiographical: it would be hard to find a more self-revealing work. For an understanding of Mary's character, especially as she saw... more...

CHAPTER I London lay as if washed with water-colour that Sunday morning, light blue sky and pale dancing sunlight wooing the begrimed stones of Westminster like a young girl with an old lover. The empty streets, clean-swept, were bathed in the light, and appeared to be transformed from the streets of week-day life. Yet the half of Londoners lay late abed, perhaps because six mornings a week of reality... more...

A PROPOSAL. She was eighteen years old and would graduate in a few weeks, yet Elsie looked like a child, lying there in that little white bed, with her golden curls scattered on the pillow and the soft whiteness of her neck and hands shaded by the delicate Valenciennes with which her night robe was profusely decorated. A quantity of hot house flowers lay scattered on the counterpane, where the girl had... more...

PREFACE. This slightly-built romance was the outcome of a wish to set the emotional history of two infinitesimal lives against the stupendous background of the stellar universe, and to impart to readers the sentiment that of these contrasting magnitudes the smaller might be the greater to them as men. But, on the publication of the book people seemed to be less struck with these high aims of the author... more...

The Bad Boy Begins a Diary--Dad Has Become Manager for aCircus--The Bad Boy Expects to Curry the Hyena and Do Stuntson the Trapeze--Ma Says Pa Will Ogle the CircassianBeauty--Pa Buys Some Circus Clothes and Lets His WhiskersGrow. April 10, 19..--I never thought it would come to this, that I should keep a diary, because I am not a good little boy. Nobody ever keeps a diary except a boy that wants to be... more...

I. THE FASCINATING UNKNOWN. HER room was on the ground floor of the house we mutually inhabited, and mine directly above it, so that my opportunities for seeing her were limited to short glimpses of her auburn head as she leaned out of the window to close her shutters at night or open them in the morning. Yet our chance encounter in the hall or on the walk in front, had made so deep an impression upon... more...

CHAPTER I.Description of Fostina's Home—Introduction of Herself and Parents to the Reader—Aunt Aubrey—Sudden Calamity—The Two Brothers and Lewis Mortimer—Introduction of her Uncle, and the Great Change in Fostina's Life.Reader, are you a lover of Nature? And do you behold with pleasure the wonderful works of creation, where the hand of Art has made no claims? Then follow me to the... more...

CHAPTER I. IN SEARCH OF THE WESTERN TONE "What do you care, anyway?" asked Reeve-Howard philosophically. "It isn't as if you depended on the work for a living. Why worry over the fact that a mere pastime fails to be financially a success. You don't need to write—" "Neither do you need to slave over those dry-point things," Thurston retorted, in none the... more...

I. BABCOCK'S DISCOVERY Something worried Babcock. One could see that from the impatient gesture with which he turned away from the ferry window on learning he had half an hour to wait. He paced the slip with hands deep in his pockets, his head on his chest. Every now and then he stopped, snapped open his watch and shut it again quickly, as if to hurry the lagging minutes. For the first time in... more...

CHAPTER I LIEUTENANT ALLEN GROWS INSULTING It was not until he sneered at me openly across the board that I felt my self-control slipping from me. "Lieutenant Allen seems to have a poor opinion of the Virginia troops," I said, as calmly as I could. "Egad, you are right, Lieutenant Stewart," he retorted, his eyes full on mine. "These two weeks past have I been trying to beat some... more...