Fantasy Books

CHAPTER 1 Curdie was the son of Peter the miner. He lived with his father and mother in a cottage built on a mountain, and he worked with his father inside the mountain. A mountain is a strange and awful thing. In old times, without knowing so much of their strangeness and awfulness as we do, people were yet more afraid of mountains. But then somehow they had not come to see how beautiful they are as... more...

Introduction. Had Rabelais never written his strange and marvellous romance, no one would ever have imagined the possibility of its production. It stands outside other things—a mixture of mad mirth and gravity, of folly and reason, of childishness and grandeur, of the commonplace and the out-of-the-way, of popular verve and polished humanism, of mother-wit and learning, of baseness and nobility, of... more...

A PREFACE The aspect of Trafalgar Square, like everything else in the world, depends largely upon how it is viewed, and through whose eyes it is seen. A Japanese artist, for instance, visiting London, immediately selected Trafalgar Square seen by night-time as a subject for a picture. He thoughtfully omitted any suggestion of either omnibuses, taxi-cabs, or the populace. He likewise decided that all... more...

Verily and indeed it is the unexpected that happens! Probably if there was one person upon the earth from whom the Editor of this, and of a certain previous history, did not expect to hear again, that person was Ludwig Horace Holly. This, too, for a good reason; he believed him to have taken his departure from the earth. When Mr. Holly last wrote, many, many years ago, it was to transmit the manuscript... more...

Introduction Four tales are, it is said, intended by the Author to be appropriate to the Four Seasons: the stern, grave "Sintram", to winter; the tearful, smiling, fresh "Undine", to Spring; the torrid deserts of the "Two Captains", to summer; and the sunset gold of "Aslauga's Knight", to autumn. Of these two are before us. The author of these tales, as well as of... more...

PHILOSOPHY OF FURNITURE. In the internal decoration, if not in the external architecture of their residences, the English are supreme. The Italians have but little sentiment beyond marbles and colours. In France, meliora probant, deteriora sequuntur—the people are too much a race of gadabouts to maintain those household proprieties of which, indeed, they have a delicate appreciation, or at least the... more...

MYSTERY NO. I SHIN SHIRA APPEARS It was very remarkable how I first came to make his acquaintance at all. Shin Shira I mean. I had been sitting at my desk, writing, for quite a long time, when suddenly I heard, as I thought, a noise in another part of the room. I turned my head hastily and looked towards the door, but it was fast closed and there was apparently nobody in the room but myself.... more...

CHAPTER I. A DOUBLE ENIGMA. "I'm afraid that he won't come," said Laura McIntyre, in a disconsolate voice. "Why not?" "Oh, look at the weather; it is something too awful." As she spoke a whirl of snow beat with a muffled patter against the cosy red-curtained window, while a long blast of wind shrieked and whistled through the branches of the great white-limbed elms... more...

A PRIMER OF IMAGINARY GEOGRAPHY "Ship ahoy!" There was an answer from our bark—for such it seemed to me by this time—but I could not make out the words. "Where do you hail from?" was the next question. I strained my ears to catch the response, being naturally anxious to know whence I had come. "From the City of Destruction!" was what I thought I heard; and I confess that it... more...

TALE 1. A new Arabian Night's Entertainment. At the foot of the great mountain Hirgonqúu was anciently situated the kingdom of Larbidel. Geographers, who are not apt to make such just comparisons, said, it resembled a football just going to be kicked away; and so it happened; for the mountain kicked the kingdom into the ocean, and it has never been heard of since. One day a young princess had... more...