Fiction Books

PREFACE "The Portrait of a Lady" was, like "Roderick Hudson," begun in Florence, during three months spent there in the spring of 1879. Like "Roderick" and like "The American," it had been designed for publication in "The Atlantic Monthly," where it began to appear in 1880. It differed from its two predecessors, however, in finding a course also open to it, from... more...

CHAPTER I "Faith, there's no man says more and knows less than yerself, I'm thinkin'." "About Ireland, yer riverence?" "And everything else, Mr. O'Connell." "Is that criticism or just temper, Father?" "It's both, Mr. O'Connell." "Sure it's the good judge ye must be of ignorance, Father Cahill." "And what might that... more...

On the morrow, in the evening, Lord Warburton went again to see his friends at their hotel, and at this establishment he learned that they had gone to the opera. He drove to the opera with the idea of paying them a visit in their box after the easy Italian fashion; and when he had obtained his admittance—it was one of the secondary theatres—looked about the large, bare, ill-lighted house. An act... more...

A Suppressed Passage Mr Jenkinson Neeld was an elderly man of comfortable private means; he had chambers in Pall Mall, close to the Imperium Club, and his short stoutish figure, topped by a chubby spectacled face, might be seen entering that dignified establishment every day at lunch time, and also at the hour of dinner on the evenings when he had no invitation elsewhere. He had once practised at the... more...

Chapter One. Pepé, The Sleeper. No landscape on the Biscayan coast, presents a more imposing and picturesque aspect than the little village of Elanchovi. Lying within an amphitheatre of cliffs, whose crests rise above the roofs of the houses, the port is protected from the surge of the sea by a handsome little jetty of chiselled stone; while the single street of which the village is composed,... more...

THE STORY BEGUN BY WALTER HARTRIGHT (of Clement's Inn, Teacher of Drawing) This is the story of what a Woman's patience can endure, and what a Man's resolution can achieve. If the machinery of the Law could be depended on to fathom every case of suspicion, and to conduct every process of inquiry, with moderate assistance only from the lubricating influences of oil of gold, the events... more...

CHAPTER I. In a small house, in a back street, in the large manufacturing town of Cottonborough, the young wife of “Cobbler” Horn lay dying. It was the dusk of a wild evening in early winter; and the cruel cough, which could be heard every now and then, in the lulls of the wind, from the room upstairs, gave deepening emphasis to the sad fact that the youthful wife and mother—for such also she... more...

CHAPTER I. THE REMNANTS OF THE AMEDROZ FAMILY.  Mrs. Amedroz, the wife of Bernard Amedroz, Esq., of Belton Castle, and mother of Charles and Clara Amedroz, died when those children were only eight and six years old, thereby subjecting them to the greatest misfortune which children born in that sphere of life can be made to suffer. And, in the case of this boy and girl the misfortune was aggravated... more...

Uncle Indefer  "I have a conscience, my dear, on this matter," said an old gentleman to a young lady, as the two were sitting in the breakfast parlour of a country house which looked down from the cliffs over the sea on the coast of Carmarthenshire. "And so have I, Uncle Indefer; and as my conscience is backed by my inclination, whereas yours is not—" "You think that I shall give... more...

Chapter I Julia Brabazon The gardens of Clavering Park were removed some three hundred yards from the large, square, sombre-looking stone mansion which was the country-house of Sir Hugh Clavering, the eleventh baronet of that name; and in these gardens, which had but little of beauty to recommend them, I will introduce my readers to two of the personages with whom I wish to make them acquainted in the... more...