Fiction Books

Many years ago, and many miles away, there was a little Prince who was exactly like the Lord Chamberlain's son, and sometimes even the artful old Chamberlain himself could not tell one from the other. When the Prince became King of Noware, they were still alike as two peas, and one day, when they were playing in the garden, a Magic Bush suddenly grew up behind the King. At the same moment the... more...

Little Oley had wandered into forbidden territory again—Big Brother Sven's ham shack. The glowing bottles here were an irresistible lure, and he liked to pretend that he knew all there was to know about the mysteries in this room. Of course, Sven said that not even he knew all of the mysteries, though he admitted he was one of the best ham operators extant, with QSOs from eighteen countries and... more...

Preface Each Fairy Book demands a preface from the Editor, and these introductions are inevitably both monotonous and unavailing. A sense of literary honesty compels the Editor to keep repeating that he is the Editor, and not the author of the Fairy Tales, just as a distinguished man of science is only the Editor, not the Author of Nature. Like nature, popular tales are too vast to be the creation of a... more...

CHAPTER I "Arthur,—what did you give the man?" "Half a crown, my dear! Now don't make a fuss. I know exactly what you're going to say!" "Half a crown!" said Doris Meadows, in consternation. "The fare was one and twopence. Of course he thought you mad. But I'll get it back!" And she ran to the open window, crying "Hi!" to the driver of a taxi-cab,... more...

THE DEAD ROBIN.All through the win-ter, long and cold,  Dear Minnie ev-ery morn-ing fedThe little spar-rows, pert and bold,  And ro-bins, with their breasts so red. She lov-ed to see the lit-tle birds  Come flut-ter-ing to the win-dow pane,In answer to the gen-tle words  With which she scat-ter-ed crumbs and grain. One ro-bin, bol-der than the rest,  Would perch up-on her fin-ger fair,And... more...

CHAPTER I WE START FOR THE WAR I, James Frisby of Fairlee, in the county of Kent, on the eastern shore of what was known in my youth as the fair Province of Maryland, but now the proud State of that name, growing old in years, but hearty and hale withal, though the blood courses not through my veins as in the days of my youth, sit on the great porch of Fairlee watching the sails on the distant bay,... more...

Much has been written by critics, especially by those in Germany (the native land of criticism), upon the important question, whether to please or to instruct should be the end of Fiction—whether a moral purpose is or is not in harmony with the undidactic spirit perceptible in the higher works of the imagination. And the general result of the discussion has been in favour of those who have contended... more...

"SHAKSPEARE'S RIME WHICH HE MADE AT THE MYTRE." In the third volume of Mr. Collier's valuable History of Dramatic Poetry (p. 275.) is the following passage, which forms part of a note: "Mr. Thorpe, the enterprising bookseller of Bedford Street, is in possession of a MS. full of songs and poems, in the handwriting of a person of the name of Richard Jackson, all copied prior to the... more...

PREFACE A little book on a great subject, especially when that book is one of a "series," is notoriously an object of literary distrust. For the limitations thus imposed upon the writer are such as few men can satisfactorily cope with, and he must needs ask the indulgence of his readers for his painfully-felt shortcomings in dealing with the mass of material which he has to manipulate. And more... more...

PROLOGUE In the October of 1642 there came to Cambridge a man from over-seas. He was travelling backward, after the interval of a generation, through the stages of his youth. From his landing at the port whence he had sailed so many years before in chase of fortune he came to London, where he had bustled and thundered as a stage-player. Here he found a new drama playing in a theatre that took a capital... more...