Fiction Books

CHAPTER I THE AGORA The sun had risen in all its splendour, and was flooding the bay and mountains with silvery light. The river Cayster moved on its course, and mixed its waters with the blue of the Ægean Sea, and washed the shores of Samos, appearing like a purple vision on the ocean. Boats and ships of quaint form and gorgeous colouring, propelled by a gentle breeze, moved to and fro, and glided up... more...

AN HABITATION ENFORCED My friend, if cause doth wrest thee,Ere folly hath much oppressed thee,Far from acquaintance kest theeWhere country may digest thee...Thank God that so hath blessed thee,And sit down, Robin, and rest thee.—THOMAS TUSSER. It came without warning, at the very hour his hand was outstretched to crumple the Holz and Gunsberg Combine. The New York doctors called it overwork, and he... more...

INTRODUCTION. [Illustration] Thackeray In His Study At Onslow Square. From a painting by E. M. Ward We know exceedingly little of the genesis and progress of Esmond. “It did not seem to be a part of our lives as Pendennis was,” says Lady Ritchie, though she wrote part of it to dictation. She “only heard Esmond spoken of very rarely”. Perhaps its state was not the less gracious. The Milton girls... more...

INTRODUCTION. The London publishers annually issue statistics of the works that have appeared in England during the year. Sometimes sermons and books on theology reach the highest figures; England is still the England of the Bible, the country that at the time of the Reformation produced three hundred and twenty-six editions of the Scriptures in less than a century, and whose religious literature is so... more...

I.—FIRST, THE CRITICS, AND THEN A WORD ON DICKENS The critics of to-day are suffering from a sort of epidemic of kindness. They have accustomed themselves to the administration of praise in unmeasured doses. They are not, taking them in the mass, critics any longer, but merely professional admirers. They have ceased to be useful to the public, and are becoming dangerous to the interests of letters.... more...

THE OVERTURE. Day of the month and year, November the thirtieth, one thousand eight hundred and thirty-five.  London Time by the great clock of Saint Paul’s, ten at night.  All the lesser London churches strain their metallic throats.  Some, flippantly begin before the heavy bell of the great cathedral; some, tardily begin three, four, half a dozen, strokes behind it; all are in sufficiently near... more...

CHAPTER I. 'For be it knownThat their saint's honour is their own.'—SCOTT. The town of Micklethwayte was rising and thriving. There were salubrious springs which an enterprising doctor had lately brought into notice. The firm of Greenleaf and Dutton manufactured umbrellas in large quantities, from the stout weather-proof family roof down to the daintiest fringed toy of a parasol. There... more...

Chapter I At the far end of Thorhaven towards the north was a little square house surrounded by a privet hedge. It had a green door under a sort of wooden canopy with two flat windows on either side, and seemed to stand there defying the rows and rows of terraces, avenues and meanish semi-detached villas which were creeping up to it. Behind lay the flat fields under a wide sky just as they had lain for... more...

WOMEN O' DULDITCH Dinah Brome stood in the village shop, watching, with eyes keen to detect the slightest discrepancy in the operation, the weighing of her weekly parcels of grocery. She was a strong, wholesome-looking woman of three- or four-and-forty, with a clean, red skin, clear eyes, dark hair, crinkling crisply beneath her sober, respectable hat. All her clothes were sober and respectable,... more...

A Voice in the Wilderness I"La parlate d'amor,O cari fior,Recate i miei sospiri,Narrate i miei matiri,Ditele o cari fior——" Miss Bouverie ceased on the high note, as abruptly as string that snaps beneath the bow, and revolved with the music-stool, to catch but her echoes in the empty room. None had entered behind her back; there was neither sound nor shadow in the deep veranda through... more...