Fiction Books

Her First Appearance It was at the end of the first act of the first night of "The Sultana," and every member of the Lester Comic Opera Company, from Lester himself down to the wardrobe woman's son, who would have had to work if his mother lost her place, was sick with anxiety. There is perhaps only one other place as feverish as it is behind the scenes on the first night of a comic opera,... more...

PREFACE. The following pages have been written with a view to render some aid in establishing a sound and firm basis for future research, on that absorbing topic, the Causes and Nature of Epidemic Diseases. The amount of information already published on Fevers, on the Exanthemata, and on the Plague, is truly astonishing, and the more so when it is considered, that at present no rational account or... more...

PREFACE It is time for some one to speak out. When we compare the condition and prospects of Science in all its branches, its organization, its standards, its aims, its representatives with those of Literature, how deplorable and how humiliating is the contrast! In the one we see an ordered realm, in the other mere chaos. The one, serious, strenuous, progressive, is displaying an energy as wonderful in... more...

INTRODUCTION It is fun to entertain—if you don't make hard work of it. And why make hard work of it when there are ways to entertain easily? Besides you know that the more easily you do it, the more successful you'll be, and there's hardly a woman in the world—is there?—who wouldn't like to be known as a good hostess. "But," says one of you, "I haven't the... more...

CHAPTER I LATE FOR DINNER Concerning Bridget there was from the outset considerable difference of opinion. Mark Driver, for instance, always showed a tendency to something more than tolerance, and even Carrissima Faversham, in spite of a manifestly unfavourable bias, strove to hold the balance even. It was her brother Lawrence who took the most adverse view; insisting that Miss Rosser was neither more... more...

ENSIGN KNIGHTLEY. It was eleven o'clock at night when Surgeon Wyley of His Majesty's ship Bonetta washed his hands, drew on his coat, and walked from the hospital up the narrow cobbled street of Tangier to the Main-Guard by the Catherine Port. In the upper room of the Main-Guard he found Major Shackleton of the Tangier Foot taking a hand at bassette with Lieutenant Scrope of Trelawney's... more...

When a book about the literature of the eighteen-nineties was given by Mr. Holbrook Jackson to the world, I looked eagerly in the index for Soames, Enoch. It was as I feared: he was not there. But everybody else was. Many writers whom I had quite forgotten, or remembered but faintly, lived again for me, they and their work, in Mr. Holbrook Jackson's pages. The book was as thorough as it was... more...

PREFACE The aim of this book is to give the materials for the inductive study of English verse. Its origin was in certain university courses, for which it proved to be necessary—often for use in a single hour's work—to gather almost numberless books, some of which must ordinarily be inaccessible except in the vicinity of large libraries. I have tried to extract from these books the materials... more...

ENGLISH POEMS TO THE READER Art was a palace once, things great and fair,And strong and holy, found a temple there:Now 'tis a lazar-house of leprous men.O shall me hear an English song again!Still English larks mount in the merry morn,An English May still brings an English thorn,Still English daisies up and down the grass,Still English love for English lad and lass—Yet youngsters blush to sing... more...

Chapter IBirth, parentage, and early years – Christ's Hospital – Jesus College, Cambridge.[1772-1794.] On the 21st of October 1772 there was added to that roll of famous Englishmen of whom Devonshire boasts the parentage a new and not its least illustrious name. Samuel Taylor Coleridge was the son of the Rev. John Coleridge, vicar of Ottery St. Mary in that county, and head master of Henry... more...